Politico: Netanyahu is picking the wrong friends in Europe

Here’s something for Benjamin Netanyahu to consider: The Israeli prime minister should spend less time in Europe praising nationalists like Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán and more time listening to people in Brussels, like European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans.

Look at the recent Hungarian election. During his campaign, Orbán blamed his country’s problems on a Jewish financier, George Soros — and won, big time. After his victory, Orbán spokesman, Zoltán Kovács, said the attacks on Soros “could not possibly be anti-Semitic, since they were echoed by Netanyahu.” [...]

The Commission has also taken a series of important concrete actions to support these words. Timmermans has named the first-ever European coordinator against anti-Semitism. He has pressed internet companies to combat online anti-Semitism. He calls out countries for trying to rehabilitate Holocaust war criminals and minimize their own guilt. And he has unlocked millions of euros in grants to fight anti-Semitism and finance interfaith initiatives. [...]

The European Parliament also deserves praise for its new support for European Judaism. In June 2017, the Parliament adopted its first-ever resolution condemning anti-Semitism. Among other conditions, it requires EU members to appoint national coordinators to combat anti-Semitism, to publicly condemn anti-Semitic statements and to promote education about the Holocaust. [...]

Although European institutions want to avoid intra-Jewish politics, they should ensure that all strains of Judaism are treated equally. Most European countries continue to recognize followers of Orthodox Judaism as the only representatives of the Jewish people. Orthodox communities alone receive government support. State support should also go to progressive, non-Orthodox Jewish movements.

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VICE: Here's What Will Happen After a Huge Earthquake Inevitably Hits California

The San Andreas is the most notorious of these faults. It runs roughly 800 miles long and produces quakes so catastrophic that there’s a 2015 action movie about it starring The Rock. The southern section of the fault generates earthquakes every 150 years on average, and considering some parts of it haven’t ruptured in more than 200 years, Southern California is overdue for a major shaking, otherwise known as “the Big One.” [...]

Scientists don’t know exactly where the Big One will hit or how large it will be when it does, but they do have some ideas: One of the most likely scenarios, according to a 2008 federal study, is a 7.8 magnitude earthquake starting at the Salton Sea and running up through Lake Hughes, on a 200 mile long section of the fault that, in parts, hasn't ruptured since 1680—almost two centuries before California became part of the United States and long before it had any major infrastructure. [...]

The death toll probably won’t be as bad as movies like San Andreas—which Benthien calls “Hollywood fantasy”—make it out to be. Scientists predict that a magnitude 7.8 earthquake along the southern San Andreas would likely kill about 2,000 people—or less than .1 percent of Southern California’s population of more than 22 million. [...]

The estimated total impact of just building damage is $33 billion, not counting the costs following a potential quake-induced fire. It’s a hefty price tag, especially considering that most Californians don’t have earthquake insurance, which is rarely included in homeowners or renters’ insurance. Just over 14 percent of homeowners and 5 percent of renters with residential insurance have an earthquake policy, which typically covers damage to belongings and personal property like furniture and the cost of relocating to either new or temporary housing, according to 2016 data from the California Earthquake Authority. (The state agency, which supplies most of the state’s earthquake insurance, doesn’t keep statistics on how many Californians don’t have residential insurance.) 

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The Atlantic: The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News

The massive new study analyzes every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter’s existence—some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years—and finds that the truth simply cannot compete with hoax and rumor. By every common metric, falsehood consistently dominates the truth on Twitter, the study finds: Fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories. [...]

Though the study is written in the clinical language of statistics, it offers a methodical indictment of the accuracy of information that spreads on these platforms. A false story is much more likely to go viral than a real story, the authors find. A false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker, on average, than a true story does. And while false stories outperform the truth on every subject—including business, terrorism and war, science and technology, and entertainment—fake news about politics regularly does best. [...]

And blame for this problem cannot be laid with our robotic brethren. From 2006 to 2016, Twitter bots amplified true stories as much as they amplified false ones, the study found. Fake news prospers, the authors write, “because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.” [...]

Second, fake news evokes much more emotion than the average tweet. The researchers created a database of the words that Twitter users used to reply to the 126,000 contested tweets, then analyzed it with a state-of-the-art sentiment-analysis tool. Fake tweets tended to elicit words associated with surprise and disgust, while accurate tweets summoned words associated with sadness and trust, they found.

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The New York Review of Books: Israel and Annexation by Lawfare

This epic transformation is taking place after close to fifty years of occupation. During that time, Israel made profound changes to both the landscape and the demography of the territory it conquered. Palestinians were subjected to a military government that denied them participation in the political process that shaped the rules applied to them and determined their future. Israel used the authoritarian powers that international law gives an occupying force to exploit the territory in a way never envisaged by the framers of those laws. It unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem, a move that was widely condemned abroad. The international community does not recognize the unified city as Israel’s capital; even Trump’s declaration on moving the US embassy to Jerusalem stops short of acknowledging the annexation of the city’s eastern parts. [...]

What the government is embarking on amounts to both de jure annexation and the crime of apartheid. In recent months, the expansion of de jure annexation has been staggering. Lawyers for the Ministry of Justice recently drafted a bill to give the Jerusalem district court, rather than the High Court of Justice (which is a bench of the Supreme Court), the power of judicial review over the military government in the Occupied Territories. This shift away from the High Court represents a move to designate the West Bank as a district within Israel. In addition, the attorney general has directed the government’s legal advisers that when drafting bills, they should take into account the need to find a legal mechanism to apply those bills to Israeli settlers as well.

At the same time, the ruling parliamentary coalition has put its lawyers to work drafting numerous annexationist bills. Their latest accomplishments include a law, enacted last year, which instructs the army to confiscate private Palestinian land and assign it to the intruding Israelis who have put up settlements there. This law is not only a naked sanction of land theft; it is also an unprecedented imposition of Knesset legislation on Palestinians who have no parliamentary representation. Another law that passed the legislative process a few weeks ago gives the state’s Council for Higher Education authority over Israel’s academic institutions in the West Bank, normalizing their presence and operation there. One bill currently making its way through the legislature would extend Israel’s law and administration to the municipal areas of Jewish settlements; another proposes the establishment of a Greater Jerusalem Council, which would include nearby settlement blocs. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even bragged recently that these annexation plans are coordinated with the US administration—a claim he had to retract after a strong denial from the White House.

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VICE: How Putin Is Using The Orthodox Church To Build His Power (HBO)

Vladimir Putin's victory in last week's Russian presidential elections came as no surprise. Putin has spent much of the past two decades building an enduring and loyal following in Russia, and alliances with some of the country's most powerful institutions — none, perhaps, more important that the Russian Orthodox Church, which has fully embraced his leadership.

It's all part of a dramatic turnaround for the Church, which just 30 years ago was only a marginal force in Russian society. The Soviets had sought to stamp out organized faith, stripping religion from education, arresting clergymen, and ordering the destruction of many of Russia's grand cathedrals, including one, Christ the Savior, that was demolished to make room for a public pool.

But under Putin, the Church has been making a comeback. More than 70% of Russians today identify as Russian Orthodox, up from 30% at the end of the Soviet Union. And huge swaths of land have been transferred back to religious ownership, with thousands of new churches being built or restored -- at a rate of almost three a day, by church figures. And Putin, by building loyalty among the leaders of a cherished institution, has arguably been the greatest beneficiary of this largesse. 

VICE News Tonight went to Moscow to ask Church leaders, and experts on the role of religion in society, how the church's resurrection has played into Putin's gambit for everlasting power.