What Really Went Wrong in Eastern Germany | Patrolling for Taiwan Deterrence, and more

facility, where Hamas prisoners are held. Dozens of civilian activists answered calls broadcast on social media to protest and were soon storming the base. Later that day, the rioters moved on to Beit Lid in central Israel, the base where the military court was to hear the charges against the arrested soldiers, and briefly forced their way in.
Rather than expressing concern about a vigilante attack on a military facility, far-right leaders condemned the army. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, alongside Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, demanded that the military prosecutor “take her hands off the reservists.” The police—which are under Ben-Gvir’s authority—took nearly two weeks before beginning an investigation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken no action against members of his government who took part in the riots.
The Sde Teiman incident was an unusual case of far-right violence inside Israel proper. The West Bank has long been a wild west, with extremist settlers not only directing their attacks against Palestinians but against the army, too, when they feel it is interfering with their interests. That the lawlessness and violence have now spilled over the border into Israel, aided and abetted by some in the government, should come as no surprise: The far-right elements in Netanyahu’s government value chaos not only as a vehicle for promoting annexation of the West Bank but as a means of undermining institutions at home to better secure their grip on power.
How did these extremists come to wield so much power so quickly? The far right in Israel doesn’t have anything close to popular backing for its agenda: In the 2022 election, it captured just 10.8 percent of the vote (considerably less than the 37.1 percent for France’s National Rally and its allies and 23.5 percent for Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, to name two recent European elections). But it has managed to exploit an unusual situation in Israel: a combination of Netanyahu’s political vulnerability and Hamas’s devastating success on Oct. 7, 2023.

Patrolling for Taiwan Deterrence  (Lawrence J. Korb, National Interest)
ince the visit of then-speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to Taiwan in August 2022, tensions between the United States and China over the island have continued to rise.
In a recent letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Representative Michelle Steel (R-CA,) a member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, argued that recent incidents involving China’s aggression toward Taiwan, as well as the Philippines, are unacceptable and must be stopped. More significantly, in a recent article, Chinese Professor Jin Canrong, an advisor to China’s national legislature and several other government bodies, argues that peaceful options for uniting Taiwan are fading.
As the United States decides how to respond to this situation, I have been reminded of something that happened to me many years ago.