Russian Death Squads / RuPaul’s Next Drag Race
23.03.2018
King
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Corruption,
Netanyahu and the
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INTERNATIONAL EDITION
MARCH 23, 2018 _ VOL.170 _ NO.11
FEATURES BIBI TALK
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads a Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. During a recent visit to Washington, D.C.,he warned that Israel may face early elections due to a coalition crisis.
GALI TIBBON/AFP/GE T T Y
COVER CREDIT
Photo illustration by Picturebox Creative for Newsweek; Photo of Netanyahu by Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty
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The Fall of King Bibi
If the corruption scandal that’s ensnared Benjamin Netanyahu forces him out of office, he will leave behind a country that is deeply, perhaps irreparably, divided. BY GREGG CARLSTROM
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EDITOR _ Nancy Cooper CREATIVE DIRECTOR _ Michael Goesele
INTERNATIONAL EDITION
MARCH 23, 2018 _ VOL.170 _ NO.11
NEWS DIRECTOR _ Cristina Silva DEPUTY EDITORS _ Mary Kaye Schilling, R.M. Schneiderman OPINION EDITOR _ Laura Davis
EDITORIAL
In Focus 04 Buenos Aires,
Argentina When the Flag Hits the Fans
06 Laikipia National ANTISOCIAL MEDIA
Many conservatives believe that Silicon Valley hates them. Some even yearn for a separate tech capital where MAGA T-shirts are welcome.
Park, Kenya Great White Hopes Rio de Janeiro Strolling Thunder Hamouria, Syria Misfortunes of War
P. 45
Periscope 08 Tech
Conservatives’ Beef With Social Media
14 World
Have Russian Death Squads Gone Rogue?
Horizons 34 Medicine
A Potentially Good Virus
36 Research
Synesthesia Gene Discovered
38 Innovation
Warning About the Big One
Culture 40 Books
Amy Bloom on Her Latest Novel
45 Music
An Interview With Yo La Tengo
48 Parting Shot
RuPaul
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THE NEWS IN PICTURES
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
When the Flag Hits the Fans
Fans cheer for Argentinos Juniors during the soccer team’s match against Boca Juniors at Diego Armando Maradona stadium on March 5. Argentinos won 2-0. →A L E J A N D R O PAG N I
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M A RC H 23, 2018
LAIKIPIA NATIONAL PARK, KENYA
Great White Rhino Hope A warden watches over Najin, front, and her daughter, Patu, the world’s only living female northern white rhinos, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Laikipia National Park on March 7. The conservancy is also home to Sudan, the last remaining male. → BAZ RATNER
RIO DE JANEIRO
HAMOURIA, SYRIA
Strolling Thunder
Misfortunes of War
A woman and a group of children walk—and ride—beside an armored vehicle during a military operation in the violence-plagued Vila Kennedy neighborhood on March 7. It was the third such operation since President Michel Temer ordered Brazilian armed forces to take control of security in order to combat organized crime.
A rescue worker tries to save two men engulfed in flames during a bombing in the Eastern Ghouta region on March 7. In recent weeks, attacks by the Syrian regime in the rebel-held area have killed more than 1,000 and wounded several thousand, according to Doctors Without Borders.
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Periscope
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NEWS, OPINION + ANALYSIS
“Spy exchanges are a bargain—both sides pay a price to get their people back.” » P.14
TECH
Right Click
Conservatives are convinced that Silicon Valley is out to silence them on social media. Do they have a point?
conservatives have long been certain is the world’s most popular social media platform, that Silicon Valley despised them, that its cadone that serves as a news outlet for 45 percent of res of Stanford-trained engineers regarded the right American adults, according to the Pew Research with derision and disgust. In the spring of 2016, Center. Now, just 74 days before the presidential they found something that seemed to be proof of election, Facebook had radically reconfigured that suspicion. Six months before the presidential what its audience would read. election, technology news website Gizmodo pubWhile the true impact of fake news on the eleclished a scoop: News curators at Facebook, one fortion remains in dispute, millions of Americans mer such curator alleged, suppressed stories from undoubtedly saw fake news on Facebook, like the right-leaning outlets, in what amounted to a “chillfollowing viral article from a sham outlet calling ing effect” on conservative media. itself Denver Guardian: “FBI AGENT SUSPECTIn response to the outcry, Facebook dumped its ED IN HILLARY EMAIL LEAKS FOUND DEAD IN human editors, who had the power to either extend APPARENT MURDER-SUICIDE.” or curtail the reach of any news item. Within days, More than a year later, the Facebook affair remains a key moment in the politicization of the network was overwhelmed by a surge of fake news, precisely the kind that human editors were social media. To liberals, it signaled Silicon Valley’s supposed to filter out. An algorithm might have a excessive deference to extreme right-wing persondifficult time figuring out whether Hillary Clinton alities. By declaring themselves impartial platforms, had once worked to free Black Panthers charged many on the left say, social media companies have with murder. But a human editor forsaken their responsibility to the would have needed perhaps 30 secpublic. “It’s now clear that democonds to confirm that she had not— racy suffers if our news environment BY and that allowing the story to trend incentivizes bullshit,” a former Facewould be a public disservice. book employee wrote (on Facebook) ALEXANDER NAZARYAN This change was critical. Facebook @alexnazaryan on Election Day 2016.
Photo illust rat ion by M A X- O - M A T I C
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Though conservatives seemingly won the Facebook battle—and Donald Trump’s tweets now demand a journalistic beat of their own—the right remains convinced that the tech companies we now rely on for news are fundamentally hostile to its convictions. If Facebook was guilty of bias in 2016, the thinking goes, so are denizens of every significant tech campus in Sunnyvale and Cupertino. The case against Silicon Valley has been building since the election. Alleged culprits include Twitter, which the anti-abortion group Live Action criticized last summer for blocking pro-life advertisements as “sensitive content” (Twitter denied targeting Live Action); Airbnb, which several weeks later canceled accounts associated with the “Unite the Right” white nationalist rally last August in Charlottesville, Virginia; and Google, which one study said “downranks” conservative websites, a practice Google vigorously denied. The prevailing mood of victimhood has led some conservatives to conclude they need to create their own Silicon Valley, one where “Make America Great Again” T-shirts won’t elicit terrified mockery. “The world needs social media platforms that are genuinely free. Or even that tilt in a conservative, pro-Christian direction,” urged conservative writer John Zmirak after Live Action went public with its complaints about Twitter. “Think of the difference that Fox News made to U.S. politics. We need something comparable as a social media platform, before we find ourselves muzzled outright.” Others on the right are increasingly acceding to that view. That much was clear at February’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Hours after the keynote address by Trump,
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a small but attentive audience gathered for a panel titled “Suppression of Conservative Views on Social Media: A First Amendment Issue.” A young man passed out baseball hats adorned with the logo of Twitter, only the blue bird was upside down, an “x” where its eye should have been. The audience was a mix of reporters from the mainstream media and fringe personalities who, through the use of social media, have become celebrities in a right-wing media ecosystem that prizes loyalty to Trump and the trolling of liberals as prime journalistic virtues. Their newfound fame has allowed them to criticize the same platforms that made them famous...for bias. There was Jack Posobiec, a self-styled investigator who used Twitter and Periscope, the video-streaming service, to promulgate the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which accused the Clinton campaign of running a child sex-trafficking operation out of a Washington, D.C., restaurant. There was Lucian Wintrich, an improbable, dapper White House correspondent for conspiratorial pro-Trump outlet Gateway Pundit, recently criticized for inventing rumors about survivors of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting. And there was Cassandra Fairbanks, the heavily tattooed pro-Trump journalist
Many on the right imagine an Oberlin graduate lounging in a bean bag as she happily relegates Breitbart News articles to oblivion.
formerly employed by Russian propaganda site Sputnik. The talk that followed—some lamentation, some j’accuse, many grim warnings, not much humor—was a succession of testimonies against Silicon Valley, along with some acknowledgment that quitting its world-changing products is almost impossible. It seemed perfectly timed, coinciding with several new developments that made the topic angry and urgent, a scab demanding to be picked. Just days before CPAC began, Twitter undertook what Gizmodo called “a mass purge of suspected Russian bot accounts.” The move was taken to curb the proliferation of these accounts, which are believed to have influenced the 2016 presidential election by spreading misinformation. But the right, once rife with cold warriors, complained about the move (on Twitter), since the #TwitterLockout appeared to mostly affect the accounts of conservatives. Those who lost followers included white nationalist Richard Spencer and gun activist Dan Bongino. Around the same time, YouTube, which is owned by Google, moved to shutter popular channels as part of its enforcement effort against fake news and “harmful or dangerous” content, including those affiliated with Infowars, the pro-Trump conspiracy site run by Alex Jones. YouTube has apologized for what it called “mistaken removals” and restored the channels. This passed for a tacit concession of the difficult position in which conservatives have put Big Tech by treating every attempt to monitor digital activity as an attempt to silence the right. A profound sense of injur y accordingly informed the CPAC panel, a feeling that Silicon Valley has become as hostile to conservatives as
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CLO CKWISE FROM TOP: JAME S CHEA DLE /AL AMY; C HRIS BU CK/AU GUST; JACK D ORSEY/NEWSPIX/GET T Y; PREVIOUS SPREAD TOP RIGHT: DMITRY EROKHIN/ALAMY
Periscope
TROLL ME THE MONEY
Right-wing media often prizes loyalty to Trump and the trolling of liberals as prime virtues. Clockwise from top: Jones, Posobiec and Dorsey, the Twitter CEO.
the studios of Hollywood and the newsrooms of Manhattan are. “They are targeting people for ideological reasons,” said lead speaker James O’Keefe. He’s made a career of this suspicion, which he has applied to any institution with even a whiff of liberalism about its halls. During his talk, O’Keefe presented a covertly recorded video (his modus operandi) of a Twitter holiday party. There, his investigators found one woman who works on the “trust & safety” team. “We’re trying not to get the shitty people to show up” on Twitter, she says, referencing pro-Trump
journalist and conservative activist Mike Cernovich, who during the presidential election spread misinformation about Clinton’s health. (Cernovich also dabbled in Pizzagate, though he has recently moved closer to the political and journalistic mainstream.) The quip about “shitty people” may have been jarring, but it could not have been especially surprising, since Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey often laments how toxic discourse on the platform has become. David Carroll, a media analyst at the Parsons School of Design in New York City, says concerns about liberal
bias in Silicon Valley are vastly exaggerated. “Tech platform algorithms seem designed for equal opportunity attention and engagement: If it plays it pays,” he says. While advertisers may be concerned about the content of a particular political site out of “brand safety issues,” he adds, this is only “the free market and freedom of speech at work.” Concrete evidence of bias may not exist, but that doesn’t stop many on the right from imagining an Oberlin graduate lounging in a beanbag, gazing out over the hills of Palo Alto as she happily relegates Breitbart News articles to oblivion. “Conservatives worry that more human moderation will lead to censoring of content,” says Joan Donovan, a media manipulation researcher at Data & Society, a digital culture think tank partly funded by Microsoft. “But right now, there is no evidence or auditing process to know who, what or how platform companies are moderating in relation to partisan content.” Skeptical conservatives point to the case of Google’s James Damore as proof of an institutionalized intolerance of the right. Google, of course, is a corporation and does not need to answer to anyone but its shareholders. Executives there saw fit to dismiss Damore last summer for his infamous memo, which declared—among other widely disputed assertions—that women were psychologically ill-equipped for certain leadership positions. “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK,” wrote Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the time. This reaction bothered Terry Schilling, head of the conservative American Principles Project and moderator of the CPAC social media panel. “The
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Periscope
TECH
left is contradicting themselves,” he said in a subsequent conversation. He brought up the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case, now before the Supreme Court, in which a gay Colorado couple sued a baker who claimed his Christian convictions prevented him from making them a custom wedding cake. Masterpiece is often cited by liberals as an example of religious intolerance; Schilling argues that Google and its peers show exactly the same intolerance toward conservatives like Damore. Schilling also suggested the tech company had borrowed some social behaviors from college campuses, where safe spaces and trigger warnings abound, and where Trumpism is as welcome as a mandatory math course. Damore made that connection even more explicitly during his CPAC talk. “Most tech workers are
young, straight out of college,” he claimed. “They’ve lived in liberal bubbles their entire life.” And, he maintained, “this bubble is reinforced when they just move to San Francisco.” He said Google executives “cried onstage” after Trump’s election. Part of the problem is that nobody really knows how much to regulate tech or who should do the regulating. Conservatives have traditionally espoused a laissez-faire approach to business, promising to cut taxes and regulations, and railing against what they call onerous workplace protections for protected groups like women and people of color. But in their approach to Silicon Valley, government was suddenly the solution, not the problem. After he was fired, Damore lodged a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, founded during the New Deal and frequently
derided by the right as a group of activist bureaucrats. Despite being run by Trump appointees, the board upheld Google’s decision to fire Damore. At the same time, Silicon Valley may be just as ideologically opposed to the right as those other bastions of coastal elitism, Manhattan and Hollywood. Harmeet Dhillon, a prominent Republican operative in San Francisco who is representing Damore, laid out the case. According to records she has obtained in the course of suing Google, there are 74,000 employees at Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Of these, 39 contributed to the Trump campaign. Google SOCIAL MEDIA CLIMBERS It’s not clear that a bias among tech employees has translated into a bias within their offerings. Above, Dhillon, the Republican operative. At left: Representatives from Facebook, Twitter and Google at a Senate Judiciary hearing in October.
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FROM LEFT: ANDREW HARR ER/BLO OMBE RG/GET T Y; JOE R AE DL E/GE T T Y
employees gave Hillary Clinton’s campaign a total of $1,559,861 while lavishing $40,813 on fringe Green Party candidate Jill Stein. That’s nearly double what they gave to the man who would eventually become president: $24,423. “You’re more likely to die by being shot than to be a Google employee that’s contributed to Republican Party candidates,” Dhillon said. While the statistics aren’t incontrovertible proof of anti-right bias (many Republicans didn’t support Trump either), they certainly don’t bolster the case that Silicon Valley is a nonpartisan technocracy. Yet she could not definitively prove that a bias among tech employees has translated into a bias within Silicon Valley’s offerings. While conservatives complain about censorship, they have generally failed to acknowledge that right-wing sites are far more likely to promulgate fake news than
“It’s now clear that democracy suffers if our news environment incentivizes bullshit.” liberal ones, as the Oxford Internet Institute, part of the British university, has found. That’s because, as the Parsons school’s Carroll explains, aside from established outlets like The Wall Street Journal, National Review and Fox News, the right-wing media landscape is a chaotic jumble of YouTube channels, Twitter feeds, Reddit posts and blogs. While celebrating the supposed demise of what former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin used to call the “lamestream media,” some on the right seem to have forgotten that journalistic standards
and practices—original reporting, fact-checking, the firewall between news and opinion—were largely forged in traditional newsrooms. Any supposed “censorship” could be little more than an acknowledgment that the digital landscape is not lawless and that standards apply to both individual users and media organizations. Carroll believes that enforcing a measure of decency does not amount to anything grander or darker. “People are getting booted from platforms, being ostracized into out-groups, because of their abhorrent conduct rather than any systemic anti-conservative bias,” he argues. Trump adviser Roger Stone, for example, was not expelled from Twitter for his conservative views but, rather, for making threatening and insulting comments about CNN anchor Don Lemon. Conservatives, however, still see an ideological war. As CPAC was coming to an end, Cernovich hosted a party in Washington. Apparently relishing the possibility of confrontation, leftist activists protested the event. Cernovich posted video of the protesters—who he says were affiliated with the loosely organized leftist brigades known collectively as antifa, for “antifascist”—but YouTube removed the post, citing community guidelines regarding “hate speech.” “YouTube is censoring honest, unedited reporting about ANTIFA’s actions,” he wrote on Twitter, where no apparent attempts were made to silence him. “This can mean only one thing—they endorse far-left-wing violence.” YouTube apologized and restored the video of the protest. But by then it was too late. The video Cernovich made of himself reading the email from YouTube—which he, of course, posted on YouTube—has been viewed more than 100,000 times.
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WO RLD
Pick Your Poison
The Kremlin may have ordered a hit on an ex-Russian spy in the U.K. But some point to a scarier prospect—that Moscow’s death squads did it on their own
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when 68-year-old former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned with a deadly nerve agent in the center of the sleepy English country town of Salisbury. It would be outrageous enough if Russia’s president ordered such a hit on British soil. But the more frightening possibility is that the attempted assassination was the work of a Russian death squad operating with official impunity but on its own initiative. Putin has often been blamed for the murder of his opponents—from the poisoning death of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 to the deadly shooting of leading activist Boris Nemtsov on a Moscow bridge in 2015. And perhaps rightly so. But what if Russia’s president is not, in fact, an all-seeing puppet master, as some believe he is, but rather just an average autocratic leader in charge of an unruly and murderous gang of semi-rogue spies? “One thing that makes me cautious [about apportioning blame to the Kremlin] is that it’s just an incredibly dumb thing to do right now,” says a British member of Parliament who has sat on the House of Commons’s Defence Committee (he did not wish “ traitor s will kick the to be quoted on the record before all bucket, trust me,” the man the facts of the case have been unsaid. “ Those folks betrayed their covered). “Russia is on best behavior friends, their brothers in arms. before the World Cup…. This was done Whatever they got in exchange for in such a public manner. For Putin, it, those 30 pieces of silver they were there’s nothing but damage from this.” given, they will choke on them.” Indeed, Litvinenko’s killing poisoned U.K.-Russian relations and This statement is not a line delivered by a Mafia boss in the Godfawas the precursor to several waves of ther series. It’s an actual statement sanctions by the British government then–Russian Prime Minister Vladagainst top Russian officials—first imir Putin made on in connection with national TV in 2010. the 2007 death of antiSo it’s of little surprise c o r r u p t i o n l aw ye r BY that the British media Sergei Magnitsky and were quick to blame the later related to Russia’s OWEN MATTHEWS Kremlin on March 6 @owenmatth annexation of Crimea
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FROM LEFT: MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/GET T Y; BE N STANSALL/AFP/GE T T Y
Periscope
“Nerve agents are so toxic, it is hard to see this as anything other than a state actor.” in 2014. The two countries have only begun to recover from the damage. British politicians have so far been cautious about assigning blame. On March 7, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told Parliament that the U.K. will “respond appropriately and robustly” if a Russian connection is likely. But as with the death of Litvinenko in 2006, even the most intensive forensic investigation of the attempt on Skripal is unlikely to yield any leads that link the attack directly to the Kremlin. Immediately after Skripal’s poisoning, which left the former spy and his daughter comatose on a bench following a lunch at Salisbury’s Zizzi restaurant, Russia’s propaganda machine went into full denial mode. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, told reporters that the allegations were being used to whip up an “anti-Russian campaign in Britain.” And Mikhail Lyubimov, a former KGB London station chief in the 1980s, told Moscow-based Dozd TV that “you’ve got to be an idiot to suddenly do this right before our presidential elections.” Lyubimov’s conspiracy theory is simple: A Western secret service—he didn’t say which one—or “some kind of Russian gang linked to some Western secret services” carried out the attack to whip up anti-Putin feeling in the West. It’s extraordinarily far-fetched. But Lyubimov is right about one thing: Unlike the killing of Litvinenko, the Skripal attack was very public and very traceable. A British government
inquiry concluded that Litvinenko was killed after two former KGB colleagues, Andrei Lugovoi (now a member of the Russian Duma) and Dmitry Kovtun, slipped a dose of deadly polonium into a cup of green tea during a meeting at the Millennium Hotel in London’s Mayfair district. (They’ve denied the allegations.) Litvinenko, who had received political asylum in the U.K. after defecting from Russia, died in agony 23 days later in the hospital. The day before, his doctors tested him for the presence of the rare radioactive element, which naturally decays in the human body and soon becomes untraceable. (Which is the main reason why polonium, along with thallium, was the KGB’s secret poison of choice during the Cold War.) The Skripal hit was very different. Soon after the attack, British police identified the substance used as a
nerve agent—without specifying which one—but said it does not decay and is so deadly that the first policeman on the scene was also admitted to a hospital, in critical condition. Nerve agents such as sarin or VX have been the main components of chemical weapons for 60 years and, for obvious reasons, are closely controlled substances. “Nerve agents are so toxic, it is hard to see this as anything other than a state actor,” conservative lawmaker Tom Tugendhat, who chairs Parliament’s cross-party Foreign Affairs Committee, told the BBC. “Murdering someone on the streets of the U.K. is bad enough, but using
SOME NERVE (GAS) After Skripal’s poisoning, Russia’s propaganda machine went into full denial mode. At left, the Kremlin. Below, a tent covers the area where the attack occurred.
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Periscope
a nerve agent puts at risk everyone nearby or who goes to help.” Even if extreme toxicity of the weapon may mean that only a state organization could have got hold of it, does it follow that the hit was ordered by Putin? “Russia hasn’t hunted down its defectors since the 1940s,” Lugovoi, the chief suspect in the Litvinenko killing (whom Russia has refused to extradite on British murder charges), told Radio Echo Moskvy. “Russia cannot have any connection to this, by definition.” Or, according to a former KGB major general who worked for Soviet intelligence in London and requested anonymity because he now works in the private sector in Moscow, “it’s absurd to think our guys would be so clumsy…. This is a crude provocation, dressed up to look like it was us.” On the other hand, Skrip al undoubtedly falls under Putin’s definition of “traitors.” A colonel in the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, he reportedly worked for the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1995 until his retirement in 1999—and received some £100,000 ($139,000) in exchange for betraying GRU agents in Europe, according to Russian court documents. He was arrested in Moscow in December 2004, charged with “high treason in the form of espionage” and sentenced to 13 years in jail. Skripal was released in July 2010 as part of a spy exchange for 10 undercover Russian agents arrested in the United States—including the glamorous redhead Anna Chapman. Skripal was one of four imprisoned British agents included in the swap who made new lives in the U.K. As a convicted double agent, he certainly betrayed the Russian secret world’s honor code of “death to spies”— the actual name of the Soviet war-
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time counterintelligence service, SMERSH. In 2010, a high-ranking Kremlin source told the Kommersant newspaper that “we know who [every spy] is and where.… You can have no doubt—a Mercader has already been sent after him.” (Ramón Mercader was the assassin tasked by the KGB to kill Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940.) But an attempted hit on an officially exchanged spy undermines the whole logic of spy-swap protocol established during the Cold War. “Spy exchanges are a bargain—both sides pay a price to get their people back,”
“This was done in such a public manner. For Putin, there’s nothing but damage from this.”
says one former British diplomat, not authorized to speak on the record, whose time in Moscow coincided with previous spy swaps. “If you start bumping off people [you’ve agreed to exchange], that goes against the spirit of the thing.… It makes it difficult to negotiate in good faith in the future.” It’s possible Skripal’s would-be assassins may not care about the political fallout, which would be evidence, says Mark Galeotti of the Institute of International Relations Prague, of “more cracks forming” in Putin’s control of his espionage services. And the murder attempt could have been the result of a rivalry between different security agencies. The FSB, formerly Russia’s domestic security service, is “increasingly… active abroad,” he says. “This is a very different service” from the longestablished GRU, “one of political policemen used to operating without rules, with impunity and under the benevolent protection of the Kremlin. They neither know nor care about the old etiquette. Their service is powerful enough not to care if its adventures cause problems for the Foreign Ministry.… They are often amateurish, but aggressive.” In the “carnivorously competitive world of Russian security politics,” the pressure is on to adopt a “wartime culture, in which it is better to take a chance than miss one, and in which risks are there to be taken,” Galeotti adds. The FSB’s cavalier attitude toward the niceties of Cold War etiquette has led its assassins to gun down Chechens in Turkey and Austria, to FSB commandos kidnapping an Estonian security officer from his own country—not to mention the hacking and active interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The principle allowing the FSB to
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FROM RUSSIA WITH BLOOD?
FROM LEFT: ITARTASS NEWS AGE NCY/ALAMY; NATASJA WE ITSZ/G ET T Y; PAV E L Z E L E N S K Y/AFP/GET T Y
Unlike the killing of Litvinenko, left, the attack on Skripal, far left, was very public and very traceable. Below, Kovtun (left) and Lugovoi have been accused of killing Litvinenko, but they deny it.
execute Russia’s enemies overseas was enshrined in law in March 2006, when the Duma passed legislation on “counteracting terrorism,” allowing state agencies the power to kill “terrorists” abroad. In 2011, the British inquiry into the Litvinenko killing was shown an FSB “special directive” obtained by British intelligence dating back to 1993; it authorizes “elimination outside of the Russian Federation…of individuals who have left Russia illegally [and are] wanted by federal law enforcement.” And Putin’s public call to eliminate “traitors” in 2010 left few restraints on the secret services’ murder squads. But why now? Skripal left the
GRU 19 years ago and seemed to have been living a quiet life in retirement. The British press has reported he may have been giving lectures to security professionals in the U.K. about Russia’s methods and recruiting tactics. But so far there’s been no evidence that he had an ongoing relationship with MI6 or any other
British intel agency, as was the case with Litvinenko. Another possible motivation: It was personal. The British diplomat says the attack could have been the work of GRU officers whose careers were ruined by Skripal’s betrayal back in the 1990s. Estimates vary, but by some accounts, up to 300 agents and officers were exposed by his revelations—and if they were a few years younger than Skripal, some “may be generals now,” men in a position to take their long-sought revenge. That, of course, is speculation. But what is certain is that in the absence of any other plausible motive, suspicion will fall on Russia, and political pressure will build for the U.K. to take countermeasures. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Johnson, the British foreign secretary, described Russia as a “malign and disruptive force” and suggested that British officials—though not the British national football team—would skip the World Cup in Russia this summer. That may seem like small punishment. The more serious consequence, if an FSB connection can be established, is that Russia has taken another step toward becoming a fullfledged rogue state. More economic sanctions and a rupture of diplomatic relations may suit Putin’s propaganda aims as he boosts his popularity at home by telling Russians that their country is at war. But it will be disastrous for Russia’s economy— and it will give its spies even more freedom to pursue their bloody vendettas around the world.
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If a series of corruption scandals force BE N JA M I N N E TA N YA H U out of office, he will leave behind a country that is deeply, perhaps irreparably, DI V I DE D by
Gregg Carlstrom
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when benjamin netanyahu visited washington earlier this month, it should have been a political triumph, a moment of exultation. For most of his 12 years in power, the hawkish Israeli prime minister was forced to work with presidents who despised him, left-leaning Democrats who talked about settlements and Palestinian statehood. Now, he has Donald Trump. Their March 5 meeting at the White House was the first since the U.S. announced plans to relocate the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem this spring. Israeli politicians had long demanded the move; Netanyahu was the one to deliver it. Ever the flatterer, he compared Trump to Cyrus, the Persian ruler who freed his Jewish police investigations before, as far back as his first subjects 2,500 years ago and let them return to JeJERUSALEM’S LOT Bibi has lorded over term, in the 1990s. “There will be nothing because rusalem. From there, it was off to the annual AmerIsrael’s political scene for there is nothing,” he has said, dismissing the latican Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy 10 years. Now, he seems est spates of corruption probes. And critics have conference, where Netanyahu and his wife were vulnerable. Clockwise from above: a view of made a career of underestimating him. Before the greeted with standing ovations, a warmer welcome Jerusalem, Netanyahu at last election, in 2015, Israelis were convinced Netthan anything he would find back home. AIPAC and Hefetz in court. anyahu was finished. The vote would hinge on the And yet the whole trip was spoiled from the start. economy, they predicted, and the prime minister Hours before Netanyahu met with Trump, Israehad little to offer (he didn’t even bother releasing an economic lis learned that one of the prime minister’s closest advisers had program). He won anyway, in decisive fashion. turned against him. Nir Hefetz, a former journalist, has been Yet even his allies are starting to whisper that this visit to Washdescribed as “Netanyahu’s spin doctor,” the man responsible for ington was his last. After years of investigations, the police are massaging press coverage of the first couple. But after Hefetz’s arclosing in; the cases against him grow more substantive by the day. rest in February, he agreed to turn state’s evidence and hand over The attorney general will decide in the coming months whether recordings of the Netanyahus discussing an alleged criminal conto indict him on a slew of charges, which range from comically spiracy. He is the third confidante of the prime minister known absurd to deathly serious. The man Time once dubbed “King Bibi” to have cooperated with the authorities in recent months. has lorded over Israel’s political scene for 10 years and planned to Netanyahu acted as if nothing was wrong. He is, after all, Isstay for many more. Now, suddenly, he seems vulnerable. rael’s second-longest-serving prime minister. He has survived
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His address to AIPAC was his usual stump speech. He talked about Israel’s security, its burgeoning diplomatic ties in previously unfriendly parts of the world, its enviable high-tech industry. These are undeniable achievements, but they are not Netanyahu’s real legacy. When he goes—and it now seems a question of when, rather than if—he will leave behind a country that is deeply, perhaps irreparably, divided. This division is not entirely his fault. Demographic and cultural changes—from the rapid growth of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish population to the hawkishness of a younger generation raised during the second intifada, the violent Palestinian uprising—play a major role. But he has undeniably sped up the process. He allows the Haredim (the Hebrew word for ultra-Orthodox Jews) to dictate policy on everything from railroad construction to prayer arrangements at the Western Wall. He has largely remained silent about the wild, right-wing incitement aimed at the president and the army. Rather than push back against the racist and nationalist fringes in his coalition, Netanyahu empowers them. The final act of his 2015 campaign, for example, was an Election Day warning that “the Arabs are coming to the polls in droves.” The schisms in Israeli society may be on stark display in a few months. With indictments looming, Netanyahu may call an early election. He would enter the campaign with an approval rating in the low 30s and most Israelis demanding his resignation. Many voters are struggling financially because of a high cost of living, low wages and housing shortages. The peace process with the Palestinians is defunct. And yet, if the election were held today, despite his unpopularity and the growing likelihood of a prosecution, he would probably still win.
luxuriously. Perhaps the highlight was what’s known as Bottlegate: For several years, Sara Netanyahu pocketed the 8-cent refunds from returning empty wine bottles that the state had purchased. (Sara is an influential figure in her husband’s administration, as well as a source of his legal troubles: Two former domestic workers have successfully sued her for abuse.) The allegations turned far more serious on February 13, when the police recommended filing charges against Netanyahu in two separate cases. In the first, he is accused of accepting gifts from billionaires and doing them favors in return, like helping one renew his American residence visa. Their largesse—cigars, champagne and the like—allegedly came to 1 million shekels, or about $288,000. (In a delightful flourish, one of his benefactors was Arnon Milchan, the producer of Pretty Woman.) The other revolves around Arnon Mozes, the publisher of Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s largest paid daily newspaper. It has
Someone Put Bibi in a Corner
the netanyahus have been accused of petty corruption for decades, and the press loves to feast on their lavish lifestyle. Gidi Weitz, a Haaretz correspondent and one Israel’s top investigative reporters, once wrote a story about their penchant for skipping out on the check at an Italian restaurant where he worked in the 1990s. The freebies got larger after Netanyahu was re-elected in 2009: He signed a $2,500 contract for gourmet ice cream at their official residence and had workers install a $127,000 bed on a government plane so the first couple could nap on the five-hour flight to London. Still, these were small-time swindles—a politician taking advantage of his position to live a little more
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long been critical of Netanyahu, a position that owes more to a personal feud than political differences. Sara Netanyahu once compared Mozes to Lord Voldemort, the villain of the Harry Potter novels. Yet according to the police, the two foes held friendly meetings to discuss a quid pro quo. Mozes offered to tone down his newspaper’s coverage of the prime minister. In return, Netanyahu allegedly offered to kneecap Israel Hayom, a popular free paper funded by American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson that has taken a huge chunk out of Yediot’s ad revenues. There is no evidence that Netanyahu acted on his promise. In fact, he did the opposite: He called early elections in 2014 to stop a bill that would have restricted the distribution of Adelson’s newspaper. But the mere discussion may have been a crime. In years past, these allegations would have ended an Israeli politician’s career. Yitzhak Rabin resigned the premiership in 1977 after a journalist discovered that his wife kept a foreign bank account, which held about $10,000 of their own money. Bizarre as it sounds now, that was illegal in Israel, then a relatively poor country in dire need of foreign currency. Rabin admitted it was a “mistake” and said he would not “hide behind parliamentary immunity.” There was no suggestion of corruption, but this technical violation was enough to drive a prime minister from office. No longer. A country romanticized for its socialist kibbutzim has now become a neoliberal economy; among the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of wealthy nations, Israel ranks second only to the United States in economic inequality. “We used to be a very homogeneous society where nobody had a lot of money,” says Ifat Zamir, the head of the Israeli branch of Transparency International. “And then, in the 1990s, some people earned some money, and the world changed with them. And so did the public’s trust in government.” Many Israelis have reacted to the allegations against Netanyahu with apathy. Left-wing activists have organized weekly protests against the prime minister, but even at their peak this summer, the crowds numbered only in the thousands. By March, they had dwindled to a few hundred. And many of the attendees were already inclined to dislike Netanyahu. His right-wing base has not deserted him. Some polls actually show his popularity has increased. In the first days after the police released their recommendation, it was possible to think Netanyahu would keep his job. But the list of allegations keeps MISTAKES AND SCANDALS growing. He is accused of cutting In years past, the allegations another allegedly shady deal, this against Netanyahu would one with the owner of Bezeq, Israel’s have ended an Israeli politician’s career. But no main telecommunications compalonger. Clockwise from top: ny. The businessman, Shaul Elovitch, Mozes, the Netanyahus, Rabin also owns Walla, a popular news and copies of Israel Hayom.
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February 2016, Ehud Olmert, the previous prime minister, was being driven to the facility. Two years earlier, he was convicted of bribery and sentenced to 19 months behind bars. A morning show on Israeli radio wanted to offer some advice to the new inmate. That wasn’t hard to arrange: A veritable shadow Cabinet has done time in Israeli prisons. The hosts called a former health minister, Shlomo Benizri, to offer tips. (“The guards are not sentimental about ministers,” he noted.) But Netanyahu’s case could be different for one reason: Israeli law is clear that a minister charged with serious offenses must step down, but says nothing about a prime minister. Olmert resigned before he was charged. His successor is determined to stay. The legal consensus is that he can, until he is convicted and exhausts his appeals. So at least for now, his battle is political. Olmert stood down after his coalition partners told him, first privately and then publicly, that he had lost their support. He also came under withering attack from the opposition. “A prime minister who is sunk up to his neck in investigations has no moral and public mandate,” said the opposition leader at the time. That opposition leader was Netanyahu, who seems to have forgotten his earlier edict. He is under no real pressure to resign. His allies are standing by him. Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who was in Washington to attend the AIPAC confab, said Netanyahu should be presumed innocent until proved otherwise. Miri Regev, the populist culture minister, said she was “unimpressed” by the case against Netanyahu: “I don’t rush to hang people in the village square.” There is talk in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, of early elections—but as a show of strength for Netanyahu, not of weakness. Just a few weeks ago, his coalition seemed unassailable, on track to become the first since 1988 to serve a full four-year term. It passed a two-year budget in December 2016, all but assuring its survival until the next scheduled election. (Under Israeli law, if a government fails to pass a budget, it automatically dissolves.) But now the ultra-Orthodox parties have threatened to vote against the next budget unless the Knesset passes a law exempting Haredi men from the army draft. Though the spending plan does not have to pass until December, Netanyahu may use it as a pretext to go to the polls. He has good reason to be confident. Surveys of the Israeli electorate can be admittedly unreliable. Days before the 2015 election, most of them had the Likud Party trailing well behind its main
SARA NETANYAHU ONCE COMPARED MOZES TO Lord Voldemort, THE VILLAIN OF THE HARRY POTTER NOVELS. website. In this case, the favors may have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The police are also looking at whether Netanyahu and his aides offered to promote a judge if she agreed to halt a case against the prime minister’s wife. And looming in the background are allegations that top security officials took bribes from a German conglomerate that makes the nuclear-capable submarines used by Israel’s navy. The last one has yet to implicate Netanyahu, but several of his advisers are under investigation. As one Knesset member puts it, speaking anonymously because of the matter’s sensitivity, “We still have a few red lines, and one of them is messing with national security.”
Mr. Status Quo
if netanyahu is one day sentenced to the minimum-security Maasiyahu Prison, he will be following a well-worn path. In
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TO THE END OF THE LAND
Netanyahu has exacerbated the divisions in Israel. At left, the barrier dividing a Jewish settlement from a Palestinian refugee camp in East Jerusalem. At right, the Western Wall.
WE USED TO BE A VERY homogeneous SOCIETY WHERE NOB
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DI E G O CU PO LO/ NU RPHOTO/G E T T Y FROM LEFT: LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY;
ODY HAD A LOT OF MONEY.
center-left competitor. Still, they offer a decent barometer of the public mood. The latest poll, conducted by Channel 10, puts Likud, Netanyahu’s party, at 29 seats, just one below its current total. In second place, with 24 seats, is Yesh Atid, a centrist party that has seesawed in popularity since it was founded in 2012. Labor ranks a distant third, with just 12 mandates, half of what it has now. The rest of the Knesset would remain largely the same. Some analysts paint Israel as a country lurching inexorably to the right. This is an oversimplification. In 1981, the right-wing and religious bloc won 64 seats in the 120-member Knesset. In 2015, it won 67. The center-left ceded a lot of ground—but almost all of it to the Arab parties, which came into existence in the 1990s. The size of the conservative, religious bloc has remained almost constant for a generation. The real shift is found within the blocs. In 1981, the two largest parties—Likud and Alignment, a forerunner of Labor—won 95 seats, nearly four-fifths of the Knesset. No other party won more than 5 percent of the vote. In the last election, though, Likud and Labor won just 54 seats. Even if they agreed to form a unity government, they still wouldn’t have a majority. Seven other parties, from across the ideological spectrum, cleared the 5 percent mark. This fragmentation makes it hard for many Israeli politicians to form coalitions. Netanyahu could reassemble his current one, albeit with a smaller majority. Yair Lapid, the chairman of Yesh Atid, would struggle with the task. Even with a broad coalition spanning from the center-right to the far left, he would fall short of a majority. To cross the 60-seat threshold, he would need either the ultra-Orthodox parties or the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu faction. The latter is a far-right party that campaigned in 2015 on ethnic cleansing and reviving the death penalty. And Lapid built his political career agitating against the former, demanding cuts to their welfare benefits and an end to their draft exemptions. Either would be an awkward fit. Most of Netanyahu’s potential replacements face a similar
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dilemma. Though he carries on as the opposition leader, the unpopular Isaac Herzog no longer controls the Labor Party. His successor, Avi Gabbay, was elected to the top job in Labor last year and immediately set out to court right-wing voters. His popularity soon plummeted and has yet to recover. Bennett’s Jewish Home Party is too closely linked to the settlers, and Avigdor Lieberman’s party, Yisrael Beiteinu, to Russian émigrés. Neither is likely to win a plurality in the Knesset. A few recently retired generals are eyeing a second career in politics, but they need to find a party to run with, and some of them are still in a cooling-off period that bars them from running for office. As it stands, Likud is the only party with a realistic shot at forming a government. Netanyahu’s resilience seems puzzling, given that he has little to offer his voters. His critics often deride him as “Mr. Status Quo.” In 2011, massive socioeconomic protests shook Israel. They started with a small tent city on a fashionable boulevard in Tel Aviv; by September, hundreds of thousands of people were in the streets to complain about the high cost of living. They ended without
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any major reforms. Mobile phone plans are cheaper. Supermarkets slashed the price of cottage cheese. But the fundamentals of the economy remain unchanged. Netanyahu has done little to address a nationwide housing shortage that has made apartments unaffordable for the majority of young Israelis. (Buying a five-bedroom apartment costs the average Israeli almost 16 years’ pay, compared with seven and a half in France and five in the United States.) Meanwhile, the prime minister hasn’t tried to address the constant skirmishes over religion and culture that roil Israeli politics, from restrictions on business during the Sabbath to the growing incitement against liberal activists and academics. To some foreign audiences, Netanyahu’s most unforgivable lapse is his inaction on the peace process. Every month, the centrist Israel Democracy Institute conducts a survey called the Peace Index. The first two questions are always the same: Do you support peace talks with the Palestinians? Do you think they will succeed? The latest numbers are grim. Nearly 60 percent of Israeli Jews support the process, but just 18 percent believe it will
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TO HEAR NETANYAHU TELL IT, THEY ARE FIGHTING FOR CONTROL AGAINST AN ARRAY OF entrenched elites.
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bring peace. Put those numbers together, and barely one in 10 Jewish Israelis both supports and believes in a two-state solution. An overwhelming majority thinks the status quo is here to stay. (The Palestinians are similarly resigned.) “Netanyahu had two goals when he took office,” says a former adviser, who asked for anonymity to speak frankly about his ex-boss. “One of them was to dismantle the Oslo Accords.” The prime minister has never put it so bluntly—at least in public. But he has been successful. For nearly a decade, he has stalled, agreeing to peace talks but never to the substantive concessions that might advance the process. He says one thing in Hebrew and another in English. Days before the 2015 election, he promised to never establish a Palestinian state. After his victory was secured—and after sharp criticism in the West—he tried to disavow those comments. When Trump first took office and asked Netanyahu to “hold back” on settlements, the prime minister was nonplussed. “He’s going to lose interest,” another aide predicted last year, while Trump was visiting Jerusalem. Sure enough, the president is no longer on speaking terms
with the Palestinians and seems to doubt he can reach what he once called the “ultimate deal.” In fairness, even a dovish prime minister would struggle to negotiate with the Palestinians, divided as they are between Fatah, the secular party that controls the West Bank, and Hamas, the Islamist group that seized power in Gaza in 2007. Nor would he receive much help from the current White House. The American ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is an unabashed supporter of Israeli settlements. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whose family’s charity has donated money to settler groups, was meant to play a leading role in the peace process. Today, he is mired in scandal, his role in the White House greatly diminished. Yet there is no reason to think Netanyahu’s successors will be willing or able to implement the two-state solution. Of the six men likely to replace him, four are avowed opponents of Palestinian statehood. Bennett wants to annex two-thirds of the West Bank, a step that would preclude a Palestinian state. Lieberman rejects the idea of statehood, as do most of the leading lights within the Likud. When journalists from Walla polled the Cabinet, just four ministers were willing to publicly endorse a two-state plan. While Lapid and Gabbay support it, they have been vague about how they might achieve it—how to avoid the misSTICKS AND STONES takes that crippled 25 years of U.S.-led There is no reason to think Netanyahu’s negotiations. They offer nothing beyond successors will be vague talk of “regional initiatives” and willing or able to “involving the Arab states.” There is little implement the twostate solution. Above, incentive to do otherwise. The issue does Netanyahu with Trump not bring in many votes, nor does it even in New York. Below, come up much in Israeli politics. Before Palestinians protesting in the West Bank and the 2015 election, the heads of most maGaza, respectively. jor parties gathered for a two-and-a-halfhour debate on Channel 2. The word peace was uttered exactly five times, three of them by Ayman Odeh, who leads the party that represents Palestinian citizens of Israel. “This is not a parameter that differentiates between the parties,” said Dani Dayan, a former settler leader who now serves as Israel’s consul-general in New York. “Because Israelis understand that whoever is prime minister, nothing will change.”
‘I Didn’t Have a Newspaper’
netanyahu’s first stint in office lasted only three years. He won by a narrow margin in 1996, and voters quickly soured on him. The peace process was faltering. The blood-soaked occupation of south Lebanon seemed endless. Stories of corruption were already swirling around Netanyahu and some of his coalition partners. The public tossed him out in 1999, handing Ehud Barak the election by a 12-point margin.
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C REDIT TK
For Bibi, though, all these issues were secondary. Contemplating his defeat on election night, he told aides, “I lost because I didn’t have a newspaper.” He solved that problem before his next run for the premiership a decade later. Israel Hayom made no attempt to be an objective source of news. The loss-making paper, subsidized heavily by Adelson, was propaganda for Netanyahu; the prime minister’s office even reportedly dictated its headlines. His ambition went beyond winning the daily war for headlines. On the eve of Israel’s 70th birthday, the country’s political history can be cleaved roughly into two halves. The first was dominated by the center-left predecessors of the Labor Party. The political establishment was largely liberal, secular men of Ashkenazi descent. Likud did not win its first election until 1977, an event that Israel’s main news anchor famously dubbed “the revolution.” Since then, the left has struggled to regain power. Right-wing prime ministers have ruled for 29 of the past 40 years. And yet the Likud continues to act like a permanent opposition party. To hear Netanyahu and his allies tell it, they are fighting for control against the entrenched elites: the military, the judiciary, academia. (His friend in the White House might call this the “deep state.”) To hear his advisers tell it, this was Netanyahu’s second goal— to reshape Israel’s establishment. His obsession with manipulating the media is one example. He has appointed an unprecedented number of religious Israelis to the top echelons of the security services. Ayelet Shaked, the nationalist justice minister, is trying to change the way judges are appointed, handing power to the Knesset instead of a judiciary seen as leftist. Regev, the culture minister, lashes out constantly at artists, even proposing a “loyalty test” for those who receive state funding. Nearly one in four Israeli primary school students is ultra-Orthodox, up from one in 10 a generation ago. Though most Israelis support a greater separation between synagogue and state, ultra-Orthodox politicians are pushing in the opposite direction. In the fall of 2016, they balked at the state railway’s plan to conduct maintenance on the Jewish Sabbath. The timing made sense: Trains do not run on Saturdays, road traffic is light, and most workers have the day off. But the Haredim, under pressure from their constituents, threatened to bring down the government unless the repairs were canceled. Netanyahu dawdled until the last possible moment—Friday afternoon, less than an hour before the Sabbath. Then MELANCHOLY BIBI he canceled the work, a move that cost After years of investigations, the the state millions and caused gridlock police are closing in the following Sunday. All this to avoid on Netanyahu, and alienating a religious constituency that the cases against him grow more substantive alienates a majority of Israelis. by the day. But if new Different Israeli Jews have fundaelections happen soon, mentally incompatible views on how to he could still win.
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“A PRIME MINISTER WHO IS SUNK UP TO HIS NECK IN INVESTIGATIONS HAS NO MORAL AND public mandate.” define Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state.” Sixty-nine percent of the ultra-Orthodox and 46 percent of the national-religious (a plurality) feel that the state is too democratic. Fifty-nine percent of secular Jews think it is too Jewish. A majority of Israeli Jews feel it is inappropriate for Arab lawmakers to sit in the coalition, and many think it is acceptable that the state allocates more money to Jewish communities than to Arab ones. In the first decades after 1948, Israel was surrounded by hostile (and much larger) Arab states. The sense of shared danger helped bind together Jews from all over the world, especially since the memory of the Holocaust was still fresh. Those ties weakened after the treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Still, the peace process continued to stitch up Israeli society, albeit into two halves: a “peace camp” that believed a two-state solution was the only way to safeguard the country’s future and an opposing group that felt otherwise. There was nonetheless a sense of shared destiny, that both sides were arguing over a common fate. By 2018, however, there is no real threat to draw Israelis together. The country has peace treaties with two of its four neighbors; a third, Syria, is in ruins; and the fourth, Lebanon, is so weak that Israel routinely uses its airspace to launch strikes in Syria. (Hezbollah poses a serious threat, but hardly one that could destroy the country, and it is constrained by both its involvement in Syria and Israeli deterrence.) Neither the Iranian nuclear program nor the pro-Palestinian boycott sanctions and divestment movement currently threaten Israel’s survival. And the status quo with the Palestinians, rightly or not, seems sustainable well into the future. Few Israelis give it much thought on a daily basis. Their society cannot be drawn together by the need to stand united in the face of mortal danger, because it does not exist. “At this point, and for the foreseeable future, there is no existential threat facing Israel,” said Moshe Ya’alon, who served as defense minister until 2016. Ofer Zalzberg, a Jerusalem-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, seems to agree. “We’re caught in a crisis of identity. It’s the autonomy of the individual versus Jewish tradition. And nobody knows which side will win,” he says.
‘Full of Hubris’
if netanyahu left office tomorrow, it would be difficult to choose a headline for his political obituary. Menachem Begin signed a lasting peace treaty with Egypt, and Rabin did the same with Jordan. Barak ended the occupation of Lebanon. Ariel Sharon
withdrew from Gaza. Shimon Peres oversaw vital reforms that paved the way for Israel’s high-tech economy. Even Olmert, despite his ignominious end, could argue that he pursued a serious attempt at peace with both Syria and the Palestinians. Netanyahu simply survived. In his third government, he agreed to a plan to draft ultra-Orthodox men into the army; in his fourth, he postponed it. He announced the mixed-gender prayer space at the Western Wall to great fanfare, but he never opened it. His promise to lower prices and housing costs has gone unfulfilled. Even his wars have been indecisive. The year “1973 was the last time...both sides said, OK, let’s make a deal,” says Oded Eran, a longtime Israeli diplomat. “All of the wars since ended with a U.N. resolution, which was only partially effective, or the arrangement of 2012. What does it mean that we end it unilaterally? It means that Israel continues to live under the current circumstances. It’s not clear what is actually ending.” A senior officer in the Israeli army once called Netanyahu “a character from a Greek tragedy.” (The officer is still in the military and asked for anonymity.) He is both a gifted politician and an educated man, a keen student of world history and contemporary geopolitics. As a man of the right, the son of a prominent Revisionist historian and a former army commando, he had the stature to be a transformative politician in the mold of Begin. But his lust for power led him to pursue short-term tactics instead of grand strategy, and the schisms in Israeli society deepened all the while. “He’s full of hubris,” the officer said. Or as the Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker wrote in Haaretz in February, “After Netanyahu goes, a lot of the warped norms of governing will go with him. It’s not corruption but normalcy that’s at stake.” This is true enough. The next prime minister, whoever it is, will probably not be dogged by tales of cigars and champagne and verbal abuse of the domestic help at the official residence. The prime minister’s wife won’t steal bottle deposit refunds. His son won’t ask the sons of wealthy oligarchs to spot him 400 shekels for a prostitute, as Yair Netanyahu did. But on the most critical questions of Israel’s future—its relationship with the Palestinians, and with itself—the prime minister’s successor may not be much different at all. →Gregg Carlstrom is a Middle East correspondent for The Economist. Portions of this article were adapted from his book, How Long Will Israel Survive? The Threat From Within.
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Taking Candy From a Bibi Yair Lapid, Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief rival, spoke to Newsweek about peace with the Palestinians and the future of Israel b y Jack Moore
centrist Israeli politician working as Benjamin Netanyahu’s finance minister. Today, he is a key witness in the corruption probe dogging the prime minister. He’s also Netanyahu’s chief rival in the 2019 elections. If they were held tomorrow, pollsters say, Lapid’s centrist party, Yesh Atid—which means “There is a future”—could win several more seats than Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party, though Lapid would have to form a coalition from within a weak and crowded opposition. Then again, Netanyahu is under significant pressure. On February 13, the Israeli police recommended the country’s attorney general indict him on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The same evening, Lapid confirmed Israeli press reports that he had been crucial to that explosive recommendation. He served as a key witness in one of the four bribery probes involving Netanyahu. In that case, prosecutors allege that Netanyahu tried to push a law through Lapid’s Finance Ministry that would have provided tax breaks to a billionaire associate—Hollywood mogul Arnon Milchan—who had given the Netanyahu family some 750,000 shekels ($218,000) in lavish gifts. (Lapid says he refused to pass the law, despite pressure from Netanyahu.) “Like any law-abiding citizen who
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is asked by the police to help them get to the truth, I went and answered all their questions,” Lapid said in a statement on February 14. He described it as a “sad day” when an Israeli leader is accused of criminal offenses, and he has publicly called for Bibi to step aside. Netanyahu’s allies have responded angrily, calling Lapid a “snitch,” while the Israeli leader has tried to
Do you represent a true change from Benjamin Netanyahu? When you’ve been in politics for this long, you are first and foremost a politician. What we are offering is a real alternative to that. [Unlike Netanyahu], I truly believe we need to make progress with the Palestinians. I believe in the two-state solution, but in bringing it about cautiously. How do you propose to do that? In order to be super strong, we
FRONT AND CENTER
Pollsters say Lapid’s party could win more seats than Netanyahu’s, though Lapid would have to form a coalition from within a weak and crowded opposition.
AR IEL J EROZOLIMSKI/BLO OMBE RG/GET T Y
THREE YEARS AGO, YAIR LAPID WAS A
appear steadfast, saying he will not resign. As the scandal widened, Newsweek spoke with Lapid in Tel Aviv about his vision for the country and his bid to end the longest single term of any prime minister in Israeli history.
need to separate from the Palestinians. Our attempt to run the lives of 2.9 million Palestinians in the West Bank and another 2 million in Gaza is not strengthening the country; it weakens it. We will find a strong, secure way of separating ourselves from them. I want this to be a democratic and Jewish state. A binational state will not be either. Do you think that Israel has become more right wing and nationalist in recent years? A majority of Israelis still support the two-state solution. There is a group in our society that tells people, “The game is over. There are too many settlers out there. There will be no Palestinian state.” But not only are they wrong, the majority of
“I WANT TO BE THE GUY WHO MADE IT possible FOR ISRAEL TO LIVE WITHOUT THE CONSTANT SHADOW OF THE conflict.” Israelis feel that they are wrong. We can have a two-state solution, and I truly believe this is the only solution. What about the future of Jerusalem? On Jerusalem, there will be no compromise. Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu, have traditionally come from a military background. You don’t. How will you make up for that with voters?
I am surrounded by security people. It is not about a question of what kind of soldier you were in your 20s. It’s about the quality of decision-making. Israel has been criticized for deporting migrants from Africa. Given the history of the Jewish people, do you think this criticism is valid? I remember even in Britain [where Lapid spent part of his childhood] they used to ask me, “Why did you come here? You should not stay. You know we need the jobs for our people, not for some immigrants.” When people migrate in order to get a job, it is OK to say, “Sorry, we don’t want you here.” There is a widely accepted humanitarian crisis in Gaza. How would you deal with that? In 2005, Israel did what the world asked it to in Gaza. We dismantled the settlements, the army left, and they built terror tunnels, and up until this moment have fired approximately 15,000 rockets over Israeli citizens. But critics would argue that Egypt and Israel restrict land and sea access to the strip. They only need to do one thing for the blockade to be lifted: stop firing at people. What is your position on Israeli settlements in the West Bank? The big blocs are going to remain part of Israel; there are very few Palestinians in any of them, and they are close to our border. A vast majority of people there are Jews. Now, even in bilateral discussions like [former Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert had with Abu Mazen
[Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president], there was an understanding that the big blocs are going to remain part of Israel. So you do not believe in a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders? There is no way back. But there will be territory swaps. There will be solutions. This is part of my problem with the Palestinians. They are saying this is a zero-sum game. This is, to me, living proof that they don’t want an agreement. Do you agree there are separate forms of law in the West Bank for Arabs and Jews, and would you change that? Give me the name of another army who sends to jail a soldier, like we recently did, just because he shot a terrorist. Some people compare the system to apartheid in South Africa. What do you say to that? This is so ridiculous that I don’t even know where to start answering. You know what, an Arab Supreme Court justice sent the prime minister to jail a few years back [Olmert in 2014]. Can you imagine? There was an Arab Knesset member who was sitting next to us in this coffee place just now. Is there a partner for peace? Enemies make peace, not partners. Will there be elections this year, and will you win them? I’m not guessing. This is your job. What do you want your legacy to be? I want to be the guy who made it possible for Israel to live without the constant shadow of the conflict.
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SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY + HEALTH
M E D I CINE
When Life Hands You a LemonShaped Virus... ...Figure out how it works. It might have a role in medical science
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as a graduate student, rebecca hochstein spent years walking the perilous backcountry of Yellowstone National Park, searching for hidden microbes. Eventually, she found a virus unlike any other. Hochstein, then at Montana State University, found the organism in water she’d taken from a 176-degree Fahrenheit hot spring in the park. She reported the discovery in 2016 and worked with an international team of researchers to take a closer look at the specimen, now named the Acidianus tailed spindle virus. The team shot X-rays at the virus to reveal the molecules making up its proteins. They also used a $7 million cryo-electron microscope to freeze the virus and pummel it with electrons, giving them an atomic-level picture. What they saw surprised them. The virus is a shapeshifter: At one moment, it looks like a lemon, but in the next it can transform into a long cylinder. Most viruses look like lemons, spheres or cylinders. Researchers know how the latter two shapes are made, but not how viruses build the lemon-like configuration. Such knowledge could be important in using viruses as vessels for administering drugs, an emerging field of medicine. “The virus is like a container,” says Hochstein, now a researcher at the University of Minnesota. “You fill it with what you want.” And when it burrows inside a host cell—as viruses do to survive—it releases its medical filling instead of its own DNA. The notion that Acidianus could deliver drugs intrigued the team. The hot and acidic conditions of its natural habitat might make the virus ideally suited to surviving, say, the hot and acidic human stomach. Determining whether Acidianus might be clinically useful first requires knowing how it works. That’s where the atomic-level view comes in. According to the team’s detailed description, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February, Acidianus is made of long, brick-like structures that look like ropes. Spirals of these ropes form the lemon-shaped container. The researchers think pushing its DNA into a host makes the virus change shape, much like an actual lemon does when it is squeezed. Apparently, in the BY microscopic world of viruses, when life hands you lemons, SYDNEY PEREIRA @sydneyp1234 make cylinders.
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F RO M L E F T: TI NA LO E SE K A NN; BRYAN M U L L E NNI X /G E T T Y
Horizons
HOPE SPRINGS
Hochstein, left, carried a stick when hiking Yellowstone National Park. “You can pound the ground ahead of you,” she said, “and then step gingerly.”
The hot and acidic conditions of its natural habitat
might make the virus ideally suited to surviving the hot and acidic human stomach.
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Horizons
R E S E ARCH
Fifty Shades of A
some families argue over Tilot wanted a more precise look, and politics, others over who conshe turned to a method called whole trols the remote. But Carol Steen exome sequencing. “That gave us the and her father fight over the color of accuracy we needed to point to spenumerical digits. She once insisted cific genes,” she says. that 5 was yellow. “And my father said, Among the approximately 20,000 ‘No, it’s yellow ocher,’” she says. genes in the human genome, the researchers found six that differed Steen and her father share a trait called synesthesia, in which senses are slightly in people with synesthesia. crossed. An experience in one sense In these genes, just one or a handful stimulates an experience in another, of nucleotides—the compounds that so you might hear colors or taste make up our genes—were swapped sounds or see letters in vivid hues. for ones that aren’t usually there. Scientists have long suspected Each of the synesthesia genes has a that this peculiar ability is written direct connection to how the brain somewhere in our DNA. The Steens works. Known as COL4A1, ITGA2, support that notion: Several of their MYO10, ROBO3, SLC9A6 and SLIT2, distant relatives are also they are related to a process called axonosynesthetes. And new genesis, which is how research, published BY neurons connect to in Proceedings of the National Academy of KATE SHERIDAN each other as the brain @sheridan_kate Sciences in March, not develops in the womb only supports that idea and into childhood. The but pinpoints the genes responsible. altered genes didn’t travel as a group; Amanda Tilot, a geneticist at the they appeared in just one or two of Max Planck Institute for Psycholinthe three families. But changes in just a few were enough to cause a guistics, recruited three families to help her probe the genetic underpinradical difference in perception. nings of the trait. In two of the famFinding altered versions of genes ilies, three generations of women encoding essential information experienced sounds as colors. In the about neuron connections matches third, a man and his mother, daughprevious findings. One study found ter, sister and grandson experienced that the brain cells of synesthetes were more interconnected than that same phenomenon. those of people without this trait. Tilot and her colleagues wanted That tighter network may be the to know where synesthesia comes result of thicker nerve endings or from. Prior research seeking genes extra myelin, a mix of protein and had identified wide swaths of the genome with potential connections; fat that makes impulses move faster.
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HANIBAR AM/GE T T Y
People who connect letters and numbers with specific colors now have a genetic explanation
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IN LIVING COLOR Carol Steen, who has synesthesia, sees a specific and vivid palette of colors tied to the alphabet.
CR E D I T T K
“We usually have no idea that there are differences in how our neighbors perceive different aspects of the world.”
Even though just 4 percent of the global population has synesthesia, the work, says Tilot, is broadly relevant. She cites the famous internet frenzy triggered by the image of a dress that some people saw as blue and black and others as white and gold. “Sensory perception is something that has natural variation,” says Tilot. It’s a variation that frequently goes undetected. “We usually have no idea that there are differences in how our neighbors perceive aspects of the world,” says Tilot. The debate surrounding the colors of the dress brought this phenomenon to the surface. We may not all be synesthetes, says Tilot, but we all experience the world differently. Synesthesia hasn’t always been easy for Steen. When she was 7, she told her best friend that the letter A was, “the prettiest pink I’ve ever seen,” she recalls. The friend told her she was weird and never talked to her again. Steen, an artist and digital multimedia design professor at Touro College in New York, co-founded the American Synesthesia Association in 1995. Over the years, she’s come to see her condition as a strength and advantage. When she shops for paint, for example, she listens to music and searches for the color matching the one in her mind (a rather poetic idea, come to think of it). Synesthesia has also kept her healthy: Steen once told her dentist that her tooth was “glowing orange.” It turned out she needed a root canal. Steen and her father, meanwhile, have learned to avoid tension by never discussing their number-color disagreements—proving synesthesia families are just like every other.
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Horizons
INNOVATION
Shake and Wake
A new earthquake warning system could provide vital extra seconds to prepare on september 8, 2017, sirens rang out across Mexico City. A minute later, the ground began trembling from a major earthquake off Mexico’s southern coast. The shake killed at least 60 people, but that minute may have saved a few lives. That there was a siren at all is something the vulnerable U.S. West Coast is unaccustomed to. “ The way I know that an earthquake is happening,” says Robert-Michael
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de Groot, who lives near Los Angeles, “is I feel shaking.” De Groot coordinates a program at the U.S. Geological Survey designed to change that. A plan to alert the Pacific region about an imminent earthquake could give people precious seconds they need to escape death. In this area, where a giant earthquake— aka “the Big One”—could strike anytime, such early notice is urgently needed. De Groot and his team at
the USGS are locked in a race against the Big One, and at the moment the earthquake is in the lead. Predicting an earthquake is, for now at least, impossible. Fault zones—crushed rock separating large pieces of the Earth’s crust that give rise to seismic events—have BY no consistent red flags that warn us of an MEGHAN BARTELS impending disaster. @meghanbartels
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FROM LEFT: DAVID L. RYAN/GET T Y; GARY S. CHAPMAN/GET T Y
To test the worthiness of the digital system, “It’s always nice to have a real earthquake. But not too big, right?” And building a citywide siren system—like those in use in Mexico and Japan—requires infrastructure, money and time that won’t be available to U.S. cities soon. Instead, the USGS is focusing on ShakeAlert, which produces a much more targeted, digital siren. The program relies on the one warning sign we can count on: the earthquake itself. From its source, an earthquake sends waves of energy through the ground or ocean. These waves are what cause roads to crack and buildings to crumble. But radio waves move faster, which means a radio signal emitted from the source of an earthquake will reach a city seconds faster than the shakes. A warning carried by radio signal could give people a moment, however brief, to prepare. ShakeAlert uses a network of sensors that pinpoint the exact location of any seismic activity as soon as it begins. Each one consists of a rubber tub buried underground containing sensors that pick up shaking. On top is an antenna that sends data to USGS computers that can then calculate about how much shaking the earthquake will cause once it reaches any given location. The USGS estimates that alerting California, Oregon and Washington about an earthquake requires 1,675 sensors spread across the region. So far, 859 are operating. Cities are the priority, says de Groot, and California’s network should be about threequarters completed by the end of 2018.
That’s slower than the USGS had hoped, given that installations began almost a decade ago. The project has lagged in part because it’s currently running on half its desired budget. Each sensor costs about $60,000. In order to address what Donald Trump called “higher priorities,” the president requested twice that the funding be canceled, in May 2017 and again in February. Congress restored part of the money for this year’s government budget but has yet to decide whether to continue that funding into next year. Testing the worthiness of the system raises an odd conundrum: The best time to find out if ShakeAlert works is during an actual event. “It’s always nice to have a real earthquake,” de Groot says. “But not too big, right?” His wish came true on January 4, when a magnitude 4.4 quake hit near Berkeley. The Bay Area light rail system, known as BART, wants to use the program to stop trains before an earthquake hits. On January 4, BART received a ShakeAlert indicating the
A BIG ONE Opposite: A collapsed building
in San Francisco after the devastating October 17, 1989, earthquake. Below: A seismograph records a quake.
intensity of the imminent shaking; however, the earthquake struck at just after 2:30 a.m., when no trains were on the rails. Still, says BART engineer Chung-Soo Doo, the agency successfully alerted construction workers before the earthquake began. If trains had been running, the transit system’s control center would have automatically slowed them down and informed human operators, so they could determine if the train needed stopping. “From a public safety standpoint,” says BART engineer Tracy Johnson, ShakeAlert seems like something the rail system can take advantage of “with very little downside.” The only risk, says Johnson, is false alarms. A similar program with the Los Angeles light rail system is in the early stages, and the USGS is also hoping utility companies, emergency responders, and education and health care services can use ShakeAlert. Public access to ShakeAlert is unlikely for the foreseeable future because the technology required for such a widespread system doesn’t exist. While mass alerts for tornadoes and Amber Alerts for missing children all for more preparation time, the value of earthquake alerts expires in minutes. “There’s currently no way to get a message quickly enough from our system to the public, because none of our systems were built for speed,” says de Groot. “The beauty of a hurricane or tornado warning is you have some time to do something about it.” Anyone who signs up to receive the alerts would need to know how best to respond within seconds. No matter how much technology we have, says de Groot, it will always be largely based on guesswork. No earthquake drills or computer simulations can mimic the reality of the Big One. “Earthquakes,” he says, “are very complex organisms.”
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Culture
HIGH, LOW + EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN
FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS
A rare press shot of Hickok with Roosevelt (and Paul Pearson, governor of the Virgin Islands) on a trip in 1934, two years into their romance. Hickok was often cut out of such photos.
The Love That Had No Name
Amy Bloom’s new novel, White Houses, imagines the bittersweet romance between Eleanor Roosevelt and journalist Lorena Hickok, as well as an enviably modern and open marriage between a president and first lady 40
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LE FT: FOTOSEA RCH/GE T T Y; TOP RIGHT: C OURTEYS O F LO GOTV
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MOTHER OF ALL DRAG QUEENS RuPaul tries on some new milestones » P.48
it’s hard to upstage a figure as sainted Were you always an Eleanor Roosevelt fan? as Eleanor Roosevelt, but author Amy Bloom In the vaguest way. My parents were Democrats and has found a voice if not as saintly then certainly as Jews from New York, and so Eleanor Roosevelt was memorable: Eleanor’s onetime lover and lifelong in the family stream, just like unions were in the friend, the tough-minded journalist Lorena Hickok. family stream. I must have skipped most of AmeriTheir romantic relationship, actively erased by the can history in high school because I knew nothing about anything, but happily, history obliges; if you press in their lifetime, remained in the shadows until Susan Quinn’s 2016 dual biography, Eleanor missed it the first time around, you’re definitely and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady. going to get to see it again. Historical fiction is a favorite of Bloom’s, as are explorations of sexuality and gender, and Hickok That’s never truer than now, but what specifically had the sort picaresque life the author favors—like about the Roosevelts relates to today? the 1920s adventuress fleeing the pogroms of RusThe vitriolic response to FDR reminded me of the sia in 2007’s Away, or the half-sisters of 2014’s Lucky response to Obama. It was deeply personal rage, disappointment, resentment and fear that went Us, in search of fame and fortune in 1940s Hollyway beyond the political. FDR was wood. Her latest novel, White Houses, is historical in a different way, with hanged in effigy in country clubs all an actual timeline and reported facts. across America for being a traitor to BY But Hickok’s real story has enough his class; the rumor was that he was gaps that Bloom could play around. secretly Jewish—Franklin Delano MARY KAYE SCHILLING What’s undisputed is her desperRoosenfeld, as they used to write. ate girlhood in South Dakota and a That someone of his class would care career as a reporter for the Associated Press; by 1932, about people who were suffering was otherwise Hickok was America’s most famous female reporter. inexplicable—inexplicable and sort of shameful. Hick, as many called her, first interviewed Eleanor for the AP in 1928; in the next few years, their Why did you choose Hickok to tell their story? relationship deepened to the point that she could I didn’t want to take on the voice of a figure as well-known as Eleanor. While I wanted to be no longer objectively cover the Roosevelts. When FDR was inaugurated in 1933, Hick got a White inside the Roosevelt’s story, I wanted the voice to House job investigating for the New Deal initiabe that of an outsider. Lorena describes the Roosetive—and a bedroom adjoining the first lady’s. velts in the book as people who had silver; they It was researching Lucky Us that piqued Bloom’s never bought silver. A friend said that to me once interest in the Roosevelts. “If you’re looking in the to describe her husband’s family, and I thought, ’30s and ’40s,” says Bloom, “you can’t escape them.” Oh, that’s very different. I needed a narrator who That took her to the Roosevelt library and Eleanor’s could be mindful of that, and also understand 18 boxes of correspondence with Hick—3,000 letwhat it means. ters in all. “Somebody said to me, ‘Why did you And I was fascinated by the idea that Eleanor’s write a novel as opposed to a history?’” says Bloom. relationship with Lorena had been erased from his“Because I’m a novelist not a historian! It’s like when tory. Hickok was cropped out of most of the press photographs that included her. What could it be people would say to Willie Sutton, ‘Why do you rob like to be alive as that is happening? And what banks?’ It’s because that’s where the money is.” Newsweek spoke to Bloom about White Houses, could it be like to be madly in love with someone now being developed into a TV series with who is married to your political hero? Lorena was, Emmy-winning director Jane Anderson (Olive Kitlike Eleanor, not just a dyed-in-the-wool Demoteridge). “I love how Jane describes it,” says Bloom. crat; she was a big FDR fan, which means her hero “It’s the ragtag American version of The Crown.” and friend was also her rival.
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Culture
The media was remarkably hands-off regarding both Eleanor’s relationship with Hickok and FDR’s various affairs, most obviously with his White House secretary, Marguerite “Missy” LeHand. The fact that he was in a wheelchair and married to Eleanor created a great deal of sympathy—perhaps not with the wider American public but certainly among male journalists, and then later among historians. Also, who wants to be married to Eleanor Roosevelt? She’s a great lady, a saint, an icon. Well, that must be exhausting! [Laughs.] Eleanor picked Missy to be her husband’s White House secretary, and she made it very clear that she was not, in fact, dismayed by his relationship with her. That made everybody else relax. It took some of the barb out of it for the journalists covering the White House. That Eleanor hand-picked Missy LeHand strikes me as pragmatic and highly evolved. She knew Franklin needed to be adored, to be served, to have women around him that had no other wish than to attend to him. None of that was going to be her. In your novel, you suggest that President Roosevelt gave Hickok a job in his White House to keep Eleanor happy. T h e r e ’s n o w ay t h a t s h e w a s e m p l o y e d w i t h o u t Fr a n k l i n’s approval. And he obviously knew that she was in the White House in a bedroom adjoining his wife. I think to myself, You know, if my spouse had a lover in my house, even if it was a very big house, I’m pretty sure I would notice. [Laughs.] I would assume the same was true for Franklin.
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Hickok and Eleanor shared political and social ideas, but their personalities were very different: Eleanor was modest and unshowy, well educated and from polite society. Hickok only finished high school, and she was as fierce and fearless as the male journalists she worked with. Other than Hickok’s letters and her journalism, what did you use to build her personality and voice? It took me a while to find her voice, but fortunately there’s a lot of space around Lorena. Facts are known, but there’s lots people don’t know about her, and much of what was written back then is from the Roosevelt narrative point of view. So while what I read about her might be warm and sympathetic, warm and sympathetic is not one’s own point of view.
“Eleanor picked Missy to be her husband’s secretary and made it clear that she was not dismayed by their relationship.”
I think people felt they were being kind to Lorena, but the stance was always “poor little lesbian tugboat chugging along after the Roosevelt steamship.” And I thought, None of us, in our own lives, are the little tugboat. We are the center of the story. One of my favorite parts of Hickok’s story is her adolescent stint with a circus, which included a relationship with someone who was then called a “hermaphrodite.” True? No. I feel bad about disappointing people regarding that story, but that’s the fun part of being a novelist. All of Lorena’s early childhood is based entirely on known fact, including the rape by her father and running away from home at 14. With the circus, there was a gap between the time Lorena leaves a terrible job cooking on a ranch and the time she starts high school in Chicago. I gave myself the opportunity to write about something I’ve always wanted to write about, the circus, which offered the opportunity for Lorena to see what being an outsider really looks like, to see more of the world and to see more of the ways in which people can be in the world—both harder and easier. You include private conversations between FDR and Hickok, of which there is no record. How do you think he felt about his wife having a lesbian relationship? Would he have seen Hickok as a threat? There’s a fantasy we have that people who lived 50, 60 or 70 years ago must be completely different human beings. These were modern people! They didn’t have cellphones or computers, but they lived in the modern world. And it was clear to me from Franklin’s correspondence with other friends of Eleanor’s, who
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CLO CKWISE FROM LEFT: E VERE T T COL LECT ION HISTORIC AL /A LAMY; STO CK MONTAGE/GET T Y; AP PHOTO
OF AGE Roosevelt, top, and Hickok: Even allowing “that they might have been young and lovely at some point, they were not young and lovely when they met, but what they saw was beautiful to each other,” says Bloom. Opposite: Missy LeHand.
were lesbian couples, that he was.… For a man of his background and personality, he had a sort of genial condescension, but also a lot of warmth and affection. I didn’t think he would be threatened by Lorena. What was the lesbian community like in the ’30s and ’40s? There were upper-class women who knew each other, who had gone to girl’s colleges and boarding schools—a significant number of presidents of the Seven Sisters colleges were in long-term lesbian relationships. It’s so funny to read all these historians claiming Eleanor was a sheltered Victorian that wouldn’t know a lesbian if she fell across one, and I’m like, How can you imagine that to be true, given all the evidence of her life? But [lesbians] were careful; there
was no socializing in public. You saw your friends at dinner parties, maybe people went away for part of the summer or had a country house. If you were working or middle class, there might have been a bar available to you. But it was dangerous. Being exposed was not just about reputation or someone looking at you askance; it was somebody beating you to a pulp and leaving you by the side of the road, and nobody would care.
In reading Eleanor’s letters, what surprised you most about her? The way she continued to evolve as a person. She started as someone who certainly had progressive views for her class and background, but I would say she was mildly anti-Semitic— politely anti-Semitic. She wasn’t going to put anybody in an oven, but she was also appalled by their vulgarity, clothes and pushiness. She was also quite anti-Catholic. One of the letters she received was from an African-American women who wrote that she and her husband had named their twins Eleanor and Franklin. Eleanor wrote back a very Eleanor Roosevelt letter, saying, “We are so charmed that you have named your delightful little pickaninnies after us.” The woman, who was quite an exceptional person herself, writes back, “I am sure you meant this in the kindest way, and apparently you don’t know that this is an offensive term and causes me pain. I would encourage you not to use that expression.” A lot of people would have been shamed by the letter, and a good person would have taken note of it and perhaps changed her style of speech. But Eleanor wrote to a long list of friends and said, “Here’s what I’ve discovered: This is an offensive term. It’s very important that we not use this ever again.” Did Eleanor become more outspoken after FDR died in 1945? Absolutely. Her feeling that women should lead by their quiet, moral superiority was something she abandoned entirely by the time she was 60. She realized that wasn’t getting
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anybody anywhere! [Laughs.] You need to get out and vote and run for office, you need to have agency in this world and make it a better place, and nobody can do it but you. And here we are, in 2018, still encouraging the same things. Do you have any thoughts as to why America embraced Eleanor so completely and could never do the same for Hillary Clinton? One could argue that Hillary was doing for Bill Clinton what Eleanor did for FDR, and much further along in history. I don’t know that I’m particularly insightful about the relationship of America with Hillary Clinton, but people outside the immediate Roosevelt circle did not know about [FDR’s longtime mistress] Lucy Mercer. They knew about Missy, but that was clearly
BOOKS
OK with Franklin and Eleanor—and not just OK in a stand-by-your-man fashion; these were two exceptional people who had figured out how they were going to do things. Eleanor was always fine with her role; she had goals and principles but no personal ambition. And that was in addition to her innate sweetness and guilelessness. Her championing of people who were suffering was genuine—entirely for the purpose of improving their lives. Now, why it should be necessary for America to have important and powerful women who are above all modest and devoted and willing to step back is another issue. I think there are things we expect from mothers that we don’t expect from fathers, and I’m pretty sure until men start bearing children, that’s not going to change.
What, in particular, attracted you to Eleanor and Lorena’s love story? There was something very romantic to me about these women who fall in love in middle age. Even allowing for the fact that they might have been young and lovely at some point, they were not young and lovely when they met, but what they saw was beautiful to each other. Hickok left journalism for Eleanor, and her career suffered for it. When she died, six years after Eleanor, in 1968, her ashes were buried in her town’s cemetery, in an area for unclaimed remains. It’s a pretty heartbreaking ending for such a pioneering woman. Lorena’s friendship with Eleanor continued after the romance ended—not at an intense pitch, but they were never out of each other’s lives. And Lorena wrote a young adult biography of Helen Keller that was enormously successful. That helped me write the novel because there was something so heartbreaking about the story otherwise. I had to overcome my sadness about it. How did you do that? An friend of mine once said, “Honey, there are no happy endings, even in long and happy marriages, because somebody gets hit by a bus.” The chances of your going out at the same moment are very small. I had to accept that the more you love somebody, the more loss there’s going to be, and that love is never wasted. Then I could write my book.
WINNING The Roosevelts after his second
inauguration, in 1937. “Hickok was a big fan of FDR, which means her hero and friend was also her rival,” says Bloom.
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MUSIC
Quiet Riot
Yo La Tengo, the most persistent and reliably great of indie-rock bands, returns with a 15th album. As always, there was no plan a few months ago, ira kaplan and Georgia Hubley, the husband-wife duo who have performed together in the band Yo La Tengo for 34 years, had some friends over at their apartment. They told the friends a secret: Yo La Tengo had completed a new album—the band’s 15th— and planned to call it There’s a Riot Goin’ On, a timely nod to Sly and the Family Stone. Turned out their guests had never heard the Sly Stone album. Kaplan,
Photo illust rat ion by G L U E K I T
who considers it one of his favorites, mimics his reaction: “You don’t know that record!?” He immediately retrieved it from his record collection and played it for them. For decades, Yo La Tengo has performed a similarly curatorial role for its fan base. The beloved Hoboken, New Jersey, band has a repBY utation for whipping out impromptu covers ZACH SCHONFELD in concert and hosting @zzzzaaaacccchhh
surprise guest performers at their sometimes-annual Hanukkah shows. (A favorite tradition is performing all eight nights of Hanukkah at the same venue.) Kaplan was a rock critic before he was a rocker, and the band’s discography is littered with erudite cultural references and obscure covers, such as a killer deconstruction of George McCrae’s “You Can Have It All.” So why not nab a Sly Stone title in 2018? A quick rock grammar lesson: What’s Going On (no apostrophe on
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Going) refers to Marvin Gaye’s landmark 1971 album. What’s Goin’ On is the title of a Frank Strozier Quintet album from 1977. There’s a Riot Goin’ On—titled in response to Gaye’s album—is the name of the 1971 masterpiece by Sly and the Family Stone, recorded at a time of vicious national upheaval. And There’s a Riot Going On (no apostrophe) is the name of the new Yo La Tengo album. (The Sly title is so iconic that a spell check suggests you change Going to Goin’.) The album title “did feel right,” says Kaplan, 61, during a recent conversation at the Manhattan offices of Matador Records. Kaplan is dressed in his trademark uniform—jeans and a thinly striped T-shirt—and seated opposite the band’s bassist, James McNew. (Hubley is absent, preferring to let her bandmates do interviews.) Yo La Tengo chose the title in early 2017, around the time millions of Americans really were taking to the streets to protest a certain real estate mogul’s new presidency. But Riot sounds nothing like Sly Stone. And despite its resistance-sounding title, the material is not outwardly political. If anything, there seems to be a deliberate contradiction between the title and the calming sounds of the album, centered around murmuring loops and drifting ambient passages. The dreamy sprawl of style and texture— wide-ranging but not random or scattershot—adds up to the band’s warmest and most serene collection of music since 2000’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. “It was a wholly hermetic experience,” McNew says of making the album. There was no conventional recording or demoing. The trio worked entirely alone at their studio, and instead of writing songs the way they typically do, they went through years’
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worth of unused melodies, discarded film scores and odds and ends to create something new. (Eschewing an outside engineer or producer, McNew constructed the album himself in Pro Tools.) “I don’t think we were thinking about why we were recording,” Kaplan says. “We just were. Over the years, we’ve tried as much as possible not even to tell ourselves we’re working on a new record. It’s mainly like, Let’s get together and play with as little concern as possible for the end result.” here’s a bombshell revelation: The members of Yo La Tengo no longer live in New Jersey. Though the band is practically a mascot of Hoboken, Kaplan and Hubley quietly moved to Manhattan in 2014, not long after the original Maxwell’s— the famous Jersey hotbed of indie music and the longtime venue for Yo La Tengo’s Hanukkah residency— closed down. (The band resurrected the Hanukkah tradition at the Bowery Ballroom in 2017.) McNew now lives in Brooklyn. For a certain population of indie nerds, Yo La Tengo is as synonymous with the Garden State as Bruce Springsteen. But “even when we were living in Hoboken, it wasn’t so much Hoboken that we cared about,” Kaplan says. “It was Maxwell’s and WFMU. We love the Guitar Bar. There
Yo La Tengo finds transcendence in spontaneity. At one show, the band re-enacted an entire Seinfeld episode onstage.
are things we love in Hoboken.” And Yo La Tengo still maintains a studio there, where the band rehearses and recorded their new album. It’s also where the band formed: Kaplan and Hubley met in the early 1980s, after frequently spotting each other at the same record stores and concerts. The couple decided to start a band and placed a classified ad in The Village Voice, where Kaplan sometimes wrote about music: “Guitarist & bassist wanted for band that may or may not sound like the Soft Boys, Mission of Burma and Love.” After releasing a string of scrappy, almost-great albums on Coyote Records and undergoing numerous personnel shifts, Yo La Tengo solidified its lineup when McNew joined on bass, just in time for the 1992 album May I Sing With Me. With 1993’s Painful, an indelible balance of dreamy
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Culture
THEY’LL BE AROUND
From left: Hubley, McNew and Kaplan in Hoboken, New Jersey, where the band formed and still records today.
ballads and feedback-fuzz noisiness, the band achieved greatness. And then…pretty much stayed that way. Has there ever been an indie-rock band more persistent and reliably great than Yo La Tengo? The sturdy trio is one of the few continuous flag-bearers of the 1980s American indie underground left standing. Sonic Youth—led by another husband-wife duo—dissolved along with Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore’s marriage. Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. took lengthy breaks. R.E.M. gracefully bowed out. So did the Replacements, though less gracefully. The band has been active in some form or another since 1984. During that time, empires have fallen, popes have come and gone, the music industry has teetered on the brink of collapse, and Yo La Tengo has endured, pumping out quality records every
two to four years as if it’s nothing. All of those albums are enjoyable, and several of them (particularly Painful and 1997’s I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, a stylistic tour de force) are regarded as ironclad classics. “ They have this rare ability to know when and exactly how to change things up to keep themselves interested,” says John McEntire, who mixed the new album and produced 2013’s Fade. “Being able to be like, Oh, now we’re gonna be the Condo Fucks for two months. [Or] when they had to spin the wheel and do whatever came up.” McEntire is referring to the band’s eccentric Wheel of Fortune tour, in which fans determined the evening’s set list by spinning a giant wheel. The wheel might, for instance, dictate that the band could play only songs that start with the letter S. One night,
it landed on “Sitcom Theatre,” and Yo La Tengo re-enacted an entire Seinfeld episode onstage. When I mention the band’s remarkable longevity, Kaplan shrugs it off. “We just like playing,” he says. “So it’s really not that hard.” When I point out that Yo La Tengo seems like the chief surviving indie band from that ’80s generation, he refuses the honor. “The Mekons—they don’t do that much, but they’re still a thing,” he argues. “Certainly the Flaming Lips. And our friends Antietam are completely remarkable. They started before we did.” But the Flaming Lips generally play the same set list every night, while Yo La Tengo finds transcendence in spontaneity. The band’s versatility in concert is impressive. In the past three years, they’ve brought up Kaplan’s 80-something mother to sing at Central Park’s Summerstage, sung through yellow balloons with experimental composer Alvin Lucier in 2016 and shared the stage with Nick Lowe at a Hanukkah show, having never even rehearsed with Lowe. A recurring theme in our interview is Yo La Tengo’s lack of interest in making plans. Consider the Wheel of Fortune: Let fate decide. McNew says the new album was recorded “accidentally,” and Kaplan says the band didn’t start worrying about the 2017 Hanukkah shows until a few weeks before. “We’ve learned to concentrate our worrying,” says McNew. About the only long-term plan Kaplan will accede to is the band’s future. Asked if Yo La Tengo will be around for another 30 years, he doesn’t hesitate: “Definitely.” What about doing all eight nights of Hanukkah again? They have no clue.
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Culture
Illustration by B R I T T S P E N C E R
P A R T ING SHOT
RuPaul rupaul got his first break in 1989, as the most beautiful backup dancer in the music video for the B-52s hit “Love Shack.” Before then, he was a struggling performer dancing in bars or fronting his band, Wee Wee Pole, in Atlanta’s gay-scruffy music scene. After moving to New York City—becoming a key member of the Pyramid Club’s drag revolution—Ru made a leap from the fringes to the mainstream, beginning with music. His first hit single, “Supermodel (You Better Work),” was prophetic, because he hasn’t stopped, creating a TV reality show spinoff empire that began on Logo in 2008 with the Emmy-winning RuPaul’s Drag Race, which starts its 10th season, on VH1, on March 22. The mother of all drag queens has been a legend to his fans for decades, and Hollywood is finally catching up. On March 16, he will receive a star on the Walk of Fame. “It feels like the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me,” says RuPaul, who grew up in San Diego and asked his family to drop him off at Hollywood Boulevard when they visited Los Angeles, just to gaze at the stars. “It’s more important than the Emmys, honestly. I get choked up thinking about it.”
“Drag has always made fun of anything people take too seriously.”
How has competing on Drag Race changed since Season 1? The girls in Season 1 had no idea what the show was; they were acting on blind faith. Now, the kids come on thinking: Oh, I’ve got this; I’m going to produce myself, line up my catchphrases, brand myself, because that’s what RuPaul wants. That’s a big mistake. I choose contestants based on how authentic they are. Yes, they’re dragged up, but I want their real personalities. And that’s true for everyone. I wish people could see how similarly everyone behaves. They’re not giving their true self to the world; it’s a performance they think everyone wants to see. Why has The Handmaid’s Tale been referenced on All-Stars Season 3? The Margaret Atwood novel is a cautionary tale for what happens if the ego mind, and the accompanying sense of entitlement, is left to its own devices. Drag has always made fun of the ego mind, as often as it makes fun of anything people take too seriously. What do you make of the hate mail queens are getting this season? The people who do that are very, very young—13-year-olds with a strong Wi-Fi connection. They haven’t figured out the gravity of the words they use. The truth is, they don’t mean it! They’re trying to be clever and funny. I tell the contestants, it has nothing to do with you, even though your name is in the text. It has everything to do with the person sending it. —Emily Gaudette
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