Amit Segal
@AmitSegal • 103,079 subscribers
Chief political analyst, @N12News. Author, “It’s Noon in Israel” newsletter and “A Call at 4 AM” | https://t.co/52ELID0QxN
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The surprising results of the election makes me think about the parallel reality we’ve been living in for the past three years. If the polls were that far off, perhaps they were also wrong about what the public wanted on the hostage deal, the war and who should be prime minister. In other words, we’ve been living in a reality we thought was unfolding, when in fact a different one was unfolding. If you look at the vote shift itself, almost no seats moved from the Netanyahu bloc to the change bloc. The decline has three causes. First, the Arab vote increased by a dramatic one percentage point. Second, no votes were “wasted” on the Meretz and Balad side, as they were last time. And third, about 2.5 percent of the votes were “wasted” on the Netanyahu bloc’s side: Ofer Winter, a few scattered votes for Noam and Leitner, and the Ethiopian Immigrants Party.
Amit Segal69,554 次观看 • 1 天前
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For the first time in over 20 years, someone has tried to hijack a plane bound for Israel. Miraculously, the attacker, an Omani pilot, was overpowered before he could complete his mission. The entire region held its breath as the morning Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv sent an emergency signal, flashed the hijack code and appeared to veer off course over Saudi airspace. The region then exhaled, almost with a chuckle, when early reports blamed a scuffle between the two pilots. That laughter quickly died as security assessments and passenger testimony revealed that the co-pilot had repeatedly stabbed the captain. The terrorist then seized the controls and pointed the plane toward the ground, dropping almost 20,000 feet in just over a minute, until several crew members and passengers forced their way through the cockpit door and subdued him. Many were injured in the process. The plane made an emergency landing in Tabuk, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, where the passengers are now waiting for Israel to bring them home. The assailant’s specific motive and affiliation are still unconfirmed, but Israel is treating the incident as terrorism. Unlike many of the hijackings in Israel's long history, today's had a happy ending. It also came just weeks after the 25th anniversary of the deadliest hijacking in history. Many questions remain. How was this man cleared to fly the plane? What precisely drove him? And what does this mean for the future of air travel in Israel’s busiest flight corridor? El Al suspended its scheduled flights to the United Arab Emirates in March 2026 due to security threats and has not resumed them since. It is possible that the assailant intended to drive a wedge into this crucial alliance. Just yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu warned in a speech at the IDF’s main air base that “our enemies will try to attack us.” “Don’t mess with us,” he warned. “Our long arm will reach you anywhere, and at any time.” But it was not the avenging fist of the Israeli Air Force nor a heroic rescue by special forces that foiled today’s threat. It was the courage of everyday Israelis. There was a very real and tragic possibility that I would be writing an entirely different article today. With the captain barely hanging on to life, a broken steering system and a damaged wing, it was only by the bravery of a handful of passengers and crew that almost 180 lives were saved. Today, on the fifth day of Sukkot, we will recite the words of Hallel with extra fervor: “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Amit Segal271,394 次观看 • 29 天前
Our tiny country is essentially four very, very different, densely populated electoral districts—a tiny speck in the Middle East. Ultra-Orthodox, Arabs, Likud supporters and secular voters. Or, in short, four streets in four different cities. Let’s start with the secular public, what’s known as the center-left: Tel Aviv. In the last election, voters from the “Change Bloc,” who didn’t know it yet but would soon rally against the judicial overhaul, turned out at nearly the same rate as in the previous election, with a slight decline of about 1 percent. That means their turnout can and will increase, but it’s not yet clear whether it can rise significantly. In general, across the five most recent elections, the most stable factor in Israel is the secular vote. A percentage point here, a percentage point there. It certainly hasn’t declined, but it’s doubtful it will rise significantly. That said, of course, every vote counts. Let’s move on to the next group and head east to Jerusalem: the Likud voters of Mahane Yehuda, the periphery and the major cities of central Israel. Last time, their turnout rose 5 percent compared with the previous election. And it wasn’t just the votes Netanyahu got from them; there was also a significant bonus. The electoral threshold took its toll, Meretz fell below it, and so—I don’t think people are aware of this—Likud received 32 seats in the Knesset. On its own votes, it had only about 28, and the bloc as a whole rose from 60 to 64. Will Likud manage to keep that turnout out of fear of the other camp’s rise, or will voters stay home out of apathy and disappointment? That’s the question. Now, the ultra-Orthodox in Bnei Brak—the ones who, as the joke goes, always turn out at 110 percent. Last time, they managed to bring even more voters to the polls, recording an impressive 8 percent increase compared with the 2021 election. That’s what led every pollster to underestimate their strength. It earned them 18 seats and, as mentioned, defied all the early predictions. But this election may look different. There is apathy, there is anger and there are new small parties. Turnout will likely drop. The big question is by how much. And now for the biggest unknown of all: the Arab public. They also recorded a 7 percent increase last time. It didn’t change their number of seats, because Balad’s roughly 140,000 votes fell below the threshold. Do they have much room left to grow? Absolutely, and it could be worth up to 16 seats. I’m careful not to say 17. In that case, it would be an almost unprecedented case anywhere in the world: a relatively poor sector turning out to vote almost as much as the wealthiest ones. Put it all together, and in the last election, according to Mano Geva, turnout between the coalition and the opposition was even. Now, according to the latest poll, the gap stands at just 2 percent, a figure less favorable for the Eisenkot bloc than it used to be. Four streets, four sectors, and at the end of the street, a decision on which way to turn: left to Eisenkot, right to Netanyahu or, as most polls suggest, straight into a “No Entry” sign.
Amit Segal35,234 次观看 • 3 天前
In recent weeks — largely unnoticed, at the bottom of the news — there was a major dispute between Shin Bet Director David Zini and Israel's airlines over a ban the Shin Bet had imposed on flights to the UAE. The agency's reasoning was straightforward: it considered security measures at Emirati airports insufficient, and since the Shin Bet is responsible for securing Israeli flights to and from Israel, it dug in and blocked those flights from going ahead. That dispute connects to this incident. The security measures in place for flights to Israel could plausibly have helped prevent this attack — especially given that the pilot appears to have brought the weapon on board himself, whether a knife or an axe (it remains unclear which he used to stab the co-pilot in his attempt to crash the plane). It's worth being precise about jurisdiction here. The Shin Bet is responsible for Israeli flights; the Ministry of Transportation is responsible for foreign airlines departing from Israel; and the Mossad is responsible for thwarting international terrorist threats abroad. This incident — a foreign airline, a foreign pilot — doesn't sit squarely inside any one of those mandates. Investigators are also examining, though far from conclusively, whether the pilot intended to seize control of the aircraft over Jordanian airspace and crash it somewhere inside Israel shortly after. It's one line of inquiry, not an established finding. On the broader alert picture: there had been a general uptick in terror-warning traffic, but the dominant concern regarding the Emirates was a different kind of threat altogether — an attack at the airport itself, or a missile strike, the sort of scenario recalled from the 2002 attack in Mombasa targeting Israelis. As far as I know, the specific scenario that played out here — the pilot himself being the attacker — wasn't raised in any prior discussion. That's something that will need to be investigated.
Amit Segal249,139 次观看 • 29 天前
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As of 10 a.m., voter turnout stands at 16.7 percent. One in six Israelis has already cast a ballot. This is the highest figure since 1981, when Begin and Peres ran against each other—and we still old Israeli shekel. By 2 p.m. we’ll know whether turnout really is this high or whether, as has been the case in recent years, many Israelis simply vote in the morning, get it over with, and then go on outings or just relax, whatever makes them comfortable on election day.
Amit Segal17,479 次观看 • 2 天前
I'm gonna say something a bit different from what that source told the New York Times. He said Fordo was damaged Severely but wasn't destroyed. So I'll tell you what Israel's current assessment is. First off all Natanz was completely wiped out. For Fordo and Isfahan, we're waiting on more confirmations. Not because we think something didn't work, but because it naturally takes longer for those deep underground sites. The big question now is whether Iran's nuke program just went back a few years, or if it's been totally erased. This relates to where the enriched uranium is. That uranium, enriched to 60%, is now incredibly hard for Iran to boost to the 90% needed for a bomb. Israel thinks most, if not all, of the enriched uranium was at Natanz or Isfahan. It wasn't moved, so it was there during the attack. We're now waiting For The BDA Of the Enriched uranium just like we were waiting on Muhammad Sinwar. I know he's under a tunnel and unreachable, but we'll likely know soon if he was also destroyed. This is huge news that could mean the official end of Iran's nuclear program.
Amit Segal2,394,394 次观看 • 1 年前
BREAKING: NEW DETAILS ON BEEPER OPERATION DECLASSIFIED Yes, these are truly breathtaking details, and they include how the secret was kept. After all, thousands of such explosive devices were in the pockets of Hezbollah terrorists, and they detonated at the perfect moment, on September 17, 2024. But it was a close call. The operation could easily have been discovered, and that nearly happened twice. The first time, there was suspicion that one of the Hezbollah terrorists was saying, "There's something suspicious here." Israel organized an assassination, but also arranged for it to appear as collateral damage. In other words, they wanted people to think the person eliminated was actually someone else, so the secret wouldn't be revealed. Then, as suspicion grew, the Iranians sent a special X-ray machine to check whether there were other types of explosives in the pagers. Israel bombed the X-ray machine, once again creating the impression that it was actually looking for something else. These details were shared with Yonit Levy, Channel 12's veteran anchor, and me in an interview, the famous interview with Yoav Galant, his first since stepping down as defense minister a year and a half ago. But they were redacted by the censors, and tonight we can present the full details straight from the former defense minister himself. Sometime during the first week of August, it became clear to us that someone was suspicious of the pagers. Who? I'd rather not go into details, but check the list of those we eliminated, because we eliminated him. Yes. And we made sure to eliminate him along with someone else, so that Hezbollah would understand why we eliminated them in various operations. Okay. After that, we found out that detection devices capable of scanning those pagers were arriving from Iran. We took out the detection devices along with other things. But you understand that the noose was tightening. Then, in the middle of the operation, it turned out that somewhere, the pagers were being inspected. The result is that you find yourself in a position where you either have to act or risk being exposed, and that could happen very quickly. There's only one question on the table: if you try to play around with it somehow, maybe you'll end up carrying out the full operation, starting with the radios and so on. In other words, the strategic event arose out of necessity. Exactly. Yeah, it's a crazy story. And there's something else that shows the sense of humor of the Mossad agents. The pagers were labeled "Amtech," "Mossad Tech," and they even paid Mossad for this operation, at least for part of it. A technology agency. They got it, so to speak, straight up.
Amit Segal91,214 次观看 • 1 个月前
