10 Tips to Make More Money from Your Investments

December 20, 2023

Investing is a smart way to grow your wealth, and if done wisely, it can lead to significant returns. To make the most of your investments, it’s essential to explore various avenues, including high yield investments.

In this article, we’ll delve deep into ten tips to help you make more money from your investments, with a particular focus on high yield options.

1. Diversify Your Portfolio

Diversification is a cornerstone strategy for mitigating risk in your investment portfolio. When considering high yield investments, it’s crucial to remember that they often come with increased risk. While these investments can be highly lucrative, they also carry a higher likelihood of volatility. To strike a balance between risk and reward, spread your investments across different asset classes.

Consider allocating a portion of your portfolio to high yield options like dividend-paying stocks, real estate investment trusts (REITs), or corporate bonds. Simultaneously, maintain a portion of your portfolio in safer, lower-risk assets like blue-chip stocks and government bonds. This diversified approach helps ensure that you’re not overly exposed to the potential downsides of high yield investments.

2. Set Clear Investment Goals

Are you looking for short-term gains, such as covering an upcoming expense, or are you focused on long-term wealth accumulation for retirement or financial independence? Understanding your objectives will guide your investment decisions.

High yield investments may align better with certain goals. For example, if you have a long-term horizon and can tolerate some risk, they might play a more significant role in your portfolio. However, if your goal is capital preservation or shorter-term financial needs, a more conservative approach may be preferable.

3. Research and Stay Informed

In the world of investing, knowledge is power. When it comes to high yield investments, thorough research is essential. Start by understanding the specific high yield assets you’re interested in, whether it’s high-dividend stocks, high-yield bonds, or alternative investments like real estate.

Utilize financial news sources, investment forums, and expert opinions to make informed choices. Regularly monitor the performance of your high yield investments and stay attuned to any news or developments that could impact them. Being well-informed allows you to react thoughtfully to changing market conditions.

4. Consider Risk Tolerance

High yield investments often come with higher risk, which can translate into greater potential rewards. However, it’s crucial to assess your risk tolerance honestly. Determine how comfortable you are with the possibility of both gains and losses.

While high yield investments can be enticing due to their profit potential, they also entail a higher degree of volatility. Before allocating a significant portion of your portfolio to such investments, consider your financial situation and whether you can afford to endure potential downturns. It’s generally advisable not to invest more than you can afford to lose, especially in high-risk assets.

5. Invest Regularly

Consistency is a key principle in the world of investments. To harness the full potential of high yield investments, establish a regular investment plan. One popular method is dollar-cost averaging (DCA), where you invest a fixed amount of money at regular intervals, regardless of market conditions.

DCA helps you benefit from market fluctuations. When prices are low, your fixed investment amount buys more shares or units, and when prices are high, you purchase fewer. Over time, this strategy can lower your average purchase price, potentially enhancing your overall returns.

6. Take Advantage of Tax-Efficient Strategies

High yield investments can generate significant returns, but they may also come with tax implications. It’s essential to explore tax-efficient investment strategies to maximize your gains while minimizing your tax liability.

One tax-efficient approach is to hold high yield investments in tax-advantaged accounts like IRAs or 401(k)s. These accounts offer potential tax benefits, such as tax-deferred growth or tax-free withdrawals in retirement. Additionally, consider tax-efficient asset location by placing tax-inefficient investments in tax-advantaged accounts and tax-efficient ones in taxable accounts.

7. Rebalance Your Portfolio

As you navigate the world of high yield investments, remember that your financial goals and risk tolerance can change over time. Therefore, it’s crucial to periodically review your portfolio and make necessary adjustments.

Rebalancing involves selling overperforming assets and buying underperforming ones to maintain your desired asset allocation. This ensures that you remain aligned with your objectives and risk tolerance. Without rebalancing, your portfolio may become too heavily weighted in high yield investments, potentially exposing you to more risk than you’re comfortable with.

8. Avoid Emotional Decision Making

Emotions can be your worst enemy in the world of investing. High yield investments, in particular, can experience significant price fluctuations, which may trigger emotional reactions. Fear may push you to sell at the bottom of a downturn, while greed can lead to impulsive buying during a market frenzy.

To avoid these common emotional traps, stick to your investment strategy and goals. Develop a disciplined approach that considers your long-term objectives, risk tolerance, and research findings. Rely on data and analysis rather than emotional reactions when making investment decisions.

9. Seek Professional Advice

Consider the benefits of consulting with a certified financial advisor, such as the experts at Team Hewins. Such professionals can provide invaluable insights and assist you in constructing a diversified investment portfolio that includes high-yield options. They are adept at customizing investment strategies to match your unique goals and risk tolerance, ensuring that your financial plan is both ambitious and secure.

Moreover, a financial advisor can be crucial in keeping you aligned with your long-term financial aspirations, steering you away from making impulsive decisions that might undermine your financial stability. Their expertise in navigating the complexities of the financial markets can be a significant asset in your wealth management strategy.

10. Explore Growth-Oriented Assets

In addition to high yield investments, explore growth stocks. These are shares of companies with the potential for substantial capital appreciation. While they may not offer immediate income like high yield assets, the long-term growth potential can significantly increase your investment value over time. Research and identify companies with strong growth prospects in industries poised for expansion.

Risk Factors to Consider While Making more money from Investment

When aiming to make more money from investments, it’s crucial to be aware of various risk factors that can impact your returns. Here are some key risk factors to consider:

Market Risk: The value of your investments can fluctuate due to market conditions, affecting your returns.
Interest Rate Risk: Changes in interest rates can impact bond and fixed-income investments.
Inflation Risk: Inflation erodes the purchasing power of your money over time, affecting real returns.
Credit Risk: Investing in bonds or lending carries the risk that the issuer may default on payments.
Liquidity Risk: Difficulty selling an asset quickly can lead to losses in a downturn.
Political and Regulatory Risk: Changes in government policies or regulations can affect investments.
Business Risk: Company-specific factors like poor management can impact stock investments.
Lack of Research Risk: Insufficient research can result in poor investment choices.

Conclusion

Incorporating high yield investments into your portfolio can be a rewarding endeavor, but it comes with its share of risks. By following these ten tips and staying informed, you can make more money from your investments while managing risk effectively. Remember, the road to financial success is a journey, and thoughtful planning and patience are your allies.

Start your investment journey today, armed with knowledge and a strategic approach, and watch your wealth grow.

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International Trade Theories and Policy in the Developing Countries – A Critical Review

December 19, 2023

By Kalim Siddiqui

Over the centuries, the study of economics has produced a profusion of trade theories, each aspiring to model the real-world dynamics of international trade. Here, Kalim Siddiqui discusses the varying degrees of success with which different trade theories have viewed trade in the context of developing countries.

Introduction

Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) emphasises that nations should, instead of pursuing the accumulation of trade surpluses and gold, engage in free trade. Through the division of labour, countries could specialise and focus on producing the goods in which they have absolute cost advantages and import the goods that would have been more expensive to produce domestically. Removing trade barriers would allow for expanding the size of the market, which was previously confined to national borders, and the exchange of commodities would leave all nations involved better off.
Later David Ricardo (1917) introduced comparative advantage theory. Ricardo showed that countries could still benefit from trade, even in the absence of absolute advantages. Like Smith’s argument of the “invisible hand”, however, Ricardo strictly assumed that capital would not move across borders. This article contributes by re-examining the role of trade theories in developing countries and critically examines these theories and assumptions.

The comparative advantage model emphasises the idea that labour costs must be kept low in labour-surplus economies to take advantage of free trade. The neoclassical model assumes the existing distribution of returns as natural market outcomes, meaning that there is no need for workers to struggle for higher wages. The neoclassical model does not consider how pre-existing social differentiation shapes market outcomes and thus cannot account for inequalities within the labour market. The neoclassical theory also ignores the accumulation of capital and how historically resources were transferred from colonies to Europe, and this has played a vital role in modernisation and economic development in Europe (Siddiqui, 2020a; 2020b).

Gradually as products are matured, the less developed countries start producing these goods, thus completing the life cycle of the product.

According to the international institutions, Ricardo’s comparative advantage theory provided the economic rationale for developing countries to liberalise their trade. It is assumed that full capacity utilisation will lead to efficiency gains and specialisation of the production of goods and services in which the country has its comparative advantage. A country could increase aggregate output by adopting trade liberalisation, which could lead to welfare enhancement for all participating partners. The founders of “free trade”, namely Adam Smith and David Ricardo, were very clear about the immobility of capital in their model and regarded the exchange of capital- or labour-intensive commodities as a perfect substitute for factor mobility (Siddiqui, 2018a, 2018b).

The rationale of larger market and efficiency-seeking corporations is to enhance their position in domestic and global markets to secure monopolistic rents so that patterns of production and trade can be altered to their benefit. The mainstream economists do not question how these countries became rich and powerful and how colonies were forced to adopt an “open trade” policy in the 19th century.

It seems that economic and trade relations are important and contribute to economic changes in a country. In an idealistic situation in the capitalist economic system, international trade and production are supposed to be undertaken by small private businesses that would not have the power to influence and set prices. It is hoped that trade among countries is made to benefit all partners. However, in the real world, this may not be true, and unequal relations including neocolonialist practices are pursued by economically, technologically, and militarily powerful countries. Unequal trade perpetuates inequality between nations and makes the capitalist system vulnerable and unsustainable over the long term (Bieler and Morton, 2014).

International Trade Theories

Adam Smith advocated a greater division of labour and specialisation and he expected this would increase productivity. Smith defended “free trade” and, in the last quarter of the 18th century, the nascent capitalist class opposed excessive interference in the state, though he argued for public provision of education for all. He ignored the violence of primitive accumulation and the necessity of centralised state intervention to create markets (Siddiqui, 2020c).

David Ricardo’s model and mainstream trade theory (also known as neoclassical trade theories) incorrectly proclaim the universal benefits of trade. They ignore the historical facts that, in the 18th and 19th centuries, a great deal of trade had been coercive and brute force was used to implement so-called “free trade” by the colonising powers. It was argued that there were mutual benefits arising from specialisation and exchange based on the assumption that all countries can produce all goods, which is not true and, due to climate barriers, European countries cannot produce goods of the tropical climate.

The Swedish economists Heckscher and Ohlin’s(H-O) model argues that a country’s exports depend on its resource endowment, whether it is labour-abundant or capital-abundant. If a country is capital-abundant, then it will produce and export capital-intensive goods, which will be cheaper. Likewise, a labour-abundant country will produce and export labour-intensive goods. The H-O model has the following assumptions, such as zero transport costs, perfect competition in commodity and factor markets, production functions are homogeneous, and consumers’ tastes are the same in both trading countries. Some contradictions seem to be that there is a lack of initiative from the government to explore other production possibilities and make changes and no scope for diversification. The H-O model ignores institution rigidities like poor financial markets, labour policies, and domestic inflation.

David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage continues to have an important impact on trade policy. In addition to this, the H-O model stresses that if the country can produce a commodity at lower costs than another country as propagated by comparative advantages, then it leads to gains from trade. However, the theory ignores how former colonial countries’ economies are closely linked and dependent on advanced capitalist countries through trade, investment, and political and cultural relationships. His model does not consider how today’s industrialised countries at the beginning of their industrialisation phase benefited from active state intervention. In the late industrialisation countries like Germany, Japan, and the US, state intervention was crucial in the early stages of their industrialisation and clearly these countries defied “comparative advantage” and market signals.

Stolper and Samuelson’s (1941) model expanded on the Heckscher-Ohlin model by adding how changes in prices affect the return to each factor employed in production, whilst maintaining essentially the same assumptions. They found that an increase in the price of a good magnifies the rewards of the factor intensively used in its production, and the returns to the other factor decline. Such changes in factor prices, in turn, lead to adjustments of input factors. Factor substitution and changes in relative factor endowments lie at the core of factor price equalisation (Stiglitz and Charlton, 2006).

In recent decades, the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) has been incorporated into the neoclassical trade theory, which suggests the reallocation of production into low-wage countries where the costs of production are lower. However, in the Ricardian and H-O trade model, FDI is ruled out as it assumes that capital and labour are immobile factors. Considering the role of FDI would mean accepting capital mobility, i.e., capital exports and imports. This would affect factor endowments and comparative advantage. Foreign capital seeks market and efficiency to increase profits by combining capital and new technology with cheap labour.

The greater reliance on foreign capital seems to be due to cost-minimising and / or revenue-maximising considerations. Kindleberger (1964) argues that cost-minimisation and revenue-maximising strategies require firms to set up factories in expanding new markets, since it is cheaper and more efficient to serve the local market through local production. Vernon’s product life cycle (PLC) theory is another variant of linking FDI to a basic cost-minimising consideration, as he argues that the main reason for overseas investments lies in cost-based rationality. As technology matures, competition increases, the companies react by reallocating and setting up production plants abroad to low-wage countries.

The neoclassical trade theories, also known as New Trade Theory (NTT), broadly accept the comparative advantage model that gains from international trade arise independently of comparative advantage, including globalisation, i.e., trade and capital liberalisation and the restructuring of global value chains (Selwyn, 2021).

However, the NTT proves to be more realistic by assuming, inter alia, economies of scale, differentiated products, and monopolistic competition (Krugman, 1985). NTT attempts to explain the mode of serving foreign markets through classical trade theory, rather than a critical engagement with comparative advantage theory, on which most of today’s development and trade policy relies. The NTT seeks to explain larger macro-economic outcomes, including trade patterns, so that differences in labour productivity or factor endowments remain the focal point of economic analysis. The assumption of factor immobility is equally widespread in NTT, even in models that incorporate transnational firms. Monopolistic rents in this literature usually stem from monopolistic market structures as such, which are assumed to be given. Hence, it is possible to reconcile the operations of monopolistic firms with a neoclassical framework and standard trade theory assumptions, but it remains unquestioned as to how this market structure emerged in the first place, where FDI may have been a contributing factor.

Vernon’s (1970) trade theory took into account the role of foreign capital and technology and drew attention towards the “product-life-cycle” model. Innovation which led to the adaptation of new technology in the developed countries was considered to introduce new products that were produced and consumed and exported to the rest of the world, after which the “maturing” of the product was supposed to move away to other less developed countries. Less developed countries initially import these products from developed countries during the first two stages of production. But gradually as products are matured, the less developed countries start producing these goods, thus completing the life cycle of the product.

International Trade Theories Vernon’s “product-life-cycle” trade model encompasses three stages of development: 1) Introduction, the invention of a new product, the inventor country produces and exports to other countries. 2) Standardisation – when other countries imitate, and the inventing countries lose the market. 3) Maturation – where the new technology / product becomes very competitive, and the inventing country becomes a net importer of the product. The key point of this model is that the diffusion of new technology takes place slowly and, in the end, all countries benefit from invention. When the new product is introduced, the inventing country has only a domestic market and this situation is typically characterised by high per-unit costs, low-price elasticity of demand, and monopoly power over the product design. It suggests the prevalence of imperfect competition. The critiques say that this life-cycle-product model is very deterministic. It fails to identify why there is imperfect knowledge in the world. This model tells us that innovations take place in some countries because of differences in the development of science and technology due to the existence of high-quality research institutions and education systems. The model ignores global power relations.

In contrast to supply-side explanations of the patterns of trade, an alternative model was presented in terms of “overlapping demand” by Staffan Linder (1961). A range of consumer goods are demanded by countries with similar per capita income. His intra-trade theory argues that patterns of trade are based on “product differentiation”. Soon after, attempts were made to introduce economies of scale in production and the impact of increasing returns which can mutually benefit from trade. Market structure and the size of firms were seen to be linked with economies of scale. This model accepted “imperfect competition” and monopolistic competition, where products were differentiated. This was a deviation from classical trade theory and competitive markets.

The NTT model argues that the producers could influence the market by exercising control over prices as well as market share. This could result in the development of monopolistic competition or oligopoly. Paul Krugman (1981) argues that this permits cost reduction on a global scale while moving production away from countries where costs are higher. Intra-trade in both directions is possible when markets are segmented and firms adopt price discrimination to maximise revenue by taking advantage of the different demand elasticities for the same goods in different countries. More theories were developed related to imperfect competition such as the “strategic trade” theory. Brander and Spencer (1985) presented situations when demand curves are subject to elasticities that are different in both trading countries. For example, Boeing and Airbus’s strategy was one of aggressive pre-emption by creating a market niche through subsidised exports. This model agrees to extend the protection of infant industries policy for a country in the name of building “strategic industries”.

The World Development Report (2020) stresses that comparative advantage trade theory asserts that development led by the “global value chain” (GVC) creates mutual gains for both the companies and suppliers. The report notes: “GVCs allow countries to benefit from the efficiency gained from a much finer international division of labour. GVCs exploit the fact that countries have different comparative advantages not only in different sectors but also in different stages of production within sectors.” (WDR, 2020: 69).

The comparative trade theory was propagated by David Ricardo that countries can benefit from trade even if they do not have an absolute advantage in the production of any good, but if they opt for specialisation in those goods where they have relatively higher productivity. By pursuing comparative advantage, international trade generates win-win outcomes where all trading countries can maximise their incomes and consumers are able to buy cheaper goods. Milberg and Winkler (2013) argue that the static efficiencies of comparative advantage trade theory are irrelevant in the contemporary world, where development is carried out through upgrading by leading firms to save their value capture strategies. As Milberg and Winkler note: “Firms within GVCs have determined the international division of labour … Suppliers have been forced to keep costs (especially labour costs) in check and to maintain mark-ups over costs at a bare minimum” (Milberg and Winkler, 2013: 315). This means that oligopolistic structures undermine competition and economic upgrading.

Paul Krugman further developed the “New Trade Theory” and emphasised that each country specialises in certain goods, as Japan and Germany specialise in car manufacturing. By doing this, they achieve economies of scale and create monopolistic competition, rather than only relying on comparative advantage. His model does not assume barriers to entry and all firms are exporters and produce and export highly similar goods.

Source: UNCTADstat; P. Kaczmarczyk, 2023.

Figure 1 shows the share of the FDI stock in relation to GDP in developed and developing countries. There was a sharp rise in capital flows from the mid-1980s onwards, particularly in developed economies, The acceleration kept up the momentum approaching the 60 per cent threshold, while in developing countries, the pace slowed down after the 2008 global financial crisis. Another indicator of the role of foreign capital is the share of capital flows in relation to Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF), shown in figure 2. The FDI is tied to real productive investment, which finds its way into the national economy’s GFCF. Neoclassical economists regard the development of capital stock as crucial to increasing productivity, economic growth and living conditions (UNCTAD, 2021).

Adam Smith and David Ricardo were bothered by the expectations that the idea of capitalism ended up in a “stationary state”, meaning zero growth. Karl Marx used the term “simple reproduction” to describe such a state, where there is no net addition to production capacity and the economy just reproduces itself at the same level period after period (Siddiqui, 2016).

Mainstream economists ignore the issue of relocation of capital and labour. If a country has a greater supply of capital than labour, then it is supposed to export capital-intensive products to those who are capital-scarce and import labour-intensive products in exchange. Due to climate constraints, certain commodities could grow in certain regions and this would mean that they can produce commodities which the other region badly needs (Siddiqui, 1994).

For example, Britain at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution started with the cotton textiles industry. But Britain could not grow any raw cotton, because of which the industrially pioneering country would need control over distant tropical and semi-tropical lands that could produce raw cotton and get them to supply the quantities it needs. Thus, once we move away from the fairy tale of trade occurring in accordance with “factor endowments” in a situation where the factor endowments themselves were supposedly frozen and could not migrate across country borders, then “imperialism” becomes impossible to ignore. Mainstream economists do precisely this; they ignore imperialism and explain trade as the result of capital and labour not being traded or relocated and try to explain patterns of trade due to comparative advantage.

Contemporary globalisation includes trade and capital liberalisation. The closing down of industries weakens the trades unions in the West and migrant workers, whose employment prospects depend precisely on their not being organised. At the world level, there is thus a shift in the balance of class power from the working class to the capitalists.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was formed in the early 1990s, the high point of free-market capitalism, when the answer to every problem was more markets, more private sector, and less government intervention in the market. However, since the early 1950s, the US has been trying to open markets for trade and certainly international trade in terms of volume has risen sharply, as indicated in figure 3.

Source: World Bank based on data from the World Integrated Trade Solution platform

Note: Figures for Q1 2022 are preliminary. Source: UNCTAD calculations based on national statistics

Moreover, global trade has increased in manufacturing (see figure 4) and in both goods and services (see figure 5). It was said that there was no alternative. There is no doubt that merchandise in manufacturing has risen, especially in India and Brazil. Food exports have increased, especially from countries like Brazil, Russia, France, Italy, and Columbia, as shown in figure 6. However, due to the adoption of a structural adjustment programme and trade liberalisation since the early 1990s, food imports and dependency have risen, especially in African countries, as indicated in figure 7. It is mainly because, as global trade expanded, many poor countries increasingly specialised in export crops, at the expense of food security for their populations.

Source: USITC, US Department of Commerce, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research

This system was also based on the idea that trade was a good thing and high tariffs were usually a bad idea, but to the extent that free-trade policies didn’t achieve those goals. However, the US, the leader of advanced capitalism, had high tariffs until 1940 and only gradually removed them once its supremacy in industries and technology was achieved, and only after did the country begin extending support to free trade, as shown in figure 8.

The WTO (2013) now has the power to protect the rights of big business and big finance, undermining the ability of governments to protect their farmers and infant industries and to regulate big finance and big business. Unlike its predecessor, the WTO incorporated a dispute system with real teeth, which made the whole system enforceable.

Conclusion

Indeed, industries were more developed in Ricardo’s time in Britain compared to Smith’s time. Imports of wheat (corn) had lowered food prices and, as a result, workers’ wages were lower. Then free trade against mercantilists’ protection of domestic policies became less important. In the 1950s, the Heckscher-Ohlin (H-O) model, and later Samuelson (“H-O-S” for short), played down the role of demand in the market in order to bring “resource endowments” of countries to the centre stage as the determining factor of mutually gainful trade. This means that the “free trade” model moved away from the skill- and technology-based Ricardo’s comparative advantage to an endowment-based explanation for countries, with the assumption that all countries have similar access to technology. It was also assumed that factors of production were immobile, then equalisation of commodity prices was supposed to bring about equalisation of factor prices across the trading countries.

Both Smith and Ricardo supported trade and acknowledged that international trade played an important role in economic growth by increasing market size and allowing countries to take advantage of increasing returns to scale due to the division of labour, and specialisation could encourage countries to specialise in the production of commodities in which the country has a comparative advantage (Siddiqui, 1998).

The World Development Report (2020) stresses that comparative advantage trade theory asserts that development led by the “global value chain” (GVC) creates mutual gains for both the companies and suppliers.

Karl Polanyi (1944), in his book The Great Transformation, warned us seven decades ago that trying to turn the whole world into a gigantic marketplace would end in the “demolition of society”. The fascism of the 1930s was the nightmare reaction that Polanyi lived through, but we see our own version of that social breakdown today and the rise of religious extremism and ethnic nationalism. If the developing countries are interested in changing unequal trade, these countries will have to work together to begin creating change on the ground and building up their own industries, supporting their small farmers, regulating, and taxing big business and big finance, and using the proceeds to build up public services, including health and education to remove people’s basic needs from the market.

Mainstream economists believe that “free trade” and openness will provide benefits to developing countries in terms of higher productivity, competition, inflows of capital, and economic growth. However, there is no empirical evidence. With trade openness, they measure the degree to which countries are open to international trade with their imports and exports. Trade openness is defined as the ratio of total trade to GDP, and represents a convenient variable routinely used for cross-country studies on a variety of issues.

The mainstream trade theories emphasise that the measure of openness is linked with higher growth, which is the trade ratio (i.e., imports plus exports divided by GDP). The problem is that it is not itself a policy variable. It is, in fact, determined by other variables in the economy, including variables like tariffs, local skills, government policy, etc. Other crucial factors could be institutions and investment climate, which could lead to both growth and more trade. The mainstream trade model implicitly accepts the status quo, which is why it is unable to deal with urgent contemporary problems such as underdevelopment, rising inequality, imperialism, racism, and environmental problems.

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About the Author

Dr. Kalim Siddiqui is an economist specialising in International Political Economy, Development Economics, International Trade, and International Economics. His work, which combines elements of international political economy and development economics, economic policy, economic history and international trade, often challenges prevailing orthodoxy about which policies promote overall development in less-developed countries. Kalim teaches international economics at the Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics, University of Huddersfield, UK. He has taught economics since 1989 at various universities in Norway and the UK.

References

Bieler, A. and Morton, A.D. (2014). “Uneven and Combined Development and Unequal Exchange: The Second Wind of Neoliberal ‘Free Trade’?” Globalisations, 11(1): 35-45.
Kindleberger, C.P. (1968) International Economics, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kruger, A. (1996). The Political Economy of Trade Protection, Boston: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Krugman, Paul. (1981) “Trade, accumulation and uneven development”, Journal of Development Economics, 8: 149-61.
Milberg, W. and Winkler, B. (2013) Outsourcing Economics: Global Value Chains in Capitalist Development, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Siddiqui, K. (2020a). “Britain’s Trade with China in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century: A Review of the Opium Wars” Asian Profile 48(3): 207-21, Sept.
Siddiqui, K. (2020b). “Prospects of a Multipolar World and the Role of Emerging Economies”, The World Financial Review, November/December, pp. 65-77.
Siddiqui, K. (2020c). “The Study of Economic History and the Importance of Understanding the Past”, The World Financial Review, Nov/Dec, pp.46-59.
Siddiqui, K. (2018a). “U.S. – China Trade War: The Reasons Behind and its Impact on the Global Economy”, The World Financial Review, Nov/Dec, pp.62-8.
Siddiqui, K. (2018b). “David Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage and Developing Countries: Myth and Reality”, International Critical Thought, 8(3): 1-28, Sept. Taylor & Francis.
Siddiqui, K. (2016). “Will the Growth of the BRICs Cause a Shift in the Global Balance of Economic Power in the 21st Century?”, International Journal of Political Economy 45(4): 315-38.
Siddiqui, K. (2016). “International Trade, WTO and Economic Development”, World Review of Political Economy, 7(4): 424-50, winter.
Siddiqui, K. (2015). “Trade Liberalisation and Economic Development: A Critical Review”, International Journal of Political Economy 44(3):228-47.Taylor & Francis.
Siddiqui, K. (1998). “The Export of Agricultural Commodities, Poverty and Ecological Crisis: A Case Study of Central American Countries”, Economic and Political Weekly 33(39): A128-A137, 26 September.
Siddiqui, K. (1994). “International Trade and Problems of Inequality in the Developing Countries”, (Eds) C. Aall and E. Solheim, Miljø Årboka (in Norwegian), pp. 20-39, Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget.
Stiglitz, J. and Charlton, A. (2006). Fair Trade for All, Oxford: Oxford University Press. UNCTAD (2021) World Investment Report, New York: United Nations. WTO (2013). The Case for Open Trade. https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/fact3_e.htm.

DISPLACING A NATION: What Led to (and Caused) the Gaza-Israel Catastrophe

December 19, 2023

Destruction_of_Gaza — Source: Wikimedia Commons

By Dan Steinbock

The Hamas-Israel War did not come out of the blue. It has devastated Gaza and displaced its people. It could result in expulsions in the West Bank over time. And if it escalates regionally, it will further penalize the dire global economic prospects.

On 7 October, 50 years after the Yom Kippur War, several Palestinian militant groups led by Hamas launched a coordinated offensive against the nearby Israeli cities, Gaza border crossings, and adjacent military installations. Some 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, mostly civilians, were brutally killed and 240 taken hostage. The attack triggered Israel’s mass mobilisation and lethal counteroffensive.

By mid-December, over 20,000 Palestinians, some 70 percent of whom women and children, are likely to be killed (although these figures are likely to be gross underestimations) and 1.9 of the 2.3 million Palestinians displaced. If the Israeli offensive would last a year, which is the tacit goal of Israel’s far-right government, over 100,000 Palestinians would be dead by October 7, 2024. As talks continued on hostage deals and hundreds of thousands marched for peace in world capitals, the war has continued, despite a truce and loud calls for lasting ceasefire.

It is a dramatic narrative. But it is about the proximate causes of 7 October, which has been in the cards for years.¹ In late October, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that “nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians,” adding that “Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.”² It was an effort at balance, one that was soon misrepresented by partisan fanatics.

What follows is the story of this “vacuum”. An outline of the ultimate causes; that is, extremist settler terror and missed opportunities of peace, long-standing ethnic cleansing and the effort to control huge offshore oil and gas reserves.

Rise and demotion of the peace movement

After the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. Since then, Israel has allowed and encouraged its citizens to live in these settlements, which are motivated by religious, ultra-ethnic and ultra-nationalist sentiments.

At the eve of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, I toured in these Occupied Territories and interviewed both the colonisers and the colonised. What I found most ominous was the gap of perceptions between the two. The Israelis saw a bright future and thought they were paving the way to a lasting peace. The Palestinians saw no future and dreamed of a land of their own.

After the 1973 War, Israel’s Labour coalition began to intensify the expansion of the boundaries of Jerusalem eastward. This encouraged a group of Messianic settlers to create a foothold in the West Bank, including Ma’ale Adumim by the Gush Emunim. These religious far-right Jews were met with protests by the peace activists.³

Among the peace movement’s leaders was Yael Dayan, the daughter of General Moshe Dayan, and a future Labour politician and feminist. Like in 1973, she said recently that “there cannot be a real and lasting peace that can be reconciled with the massive colonisation”.⁴ After discussions with her, I joined the movement and the protests. I saw the settlements as a ticking time bomb that could subvert Israeli democracy, endanger its Jewish and Arab citizens and Palestinians, morph into apartheid, and cause a cycle of “forever wars” with its Arab neighbours.

One of the founders of the “Peace Now” movement was the late novelist Amos Oz, a dear friend whose book on the settler-induced divisions In the Land of Israel (1983) I would later translate. He was among the first Israelis to advocate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Oz warned of the dangers of the occupation already back in 1967 when he called the radicalised settlers neo-Nazis (figure 1).

Legitimation of far-right extremism

In the early ‘70s, the settlers were in the margins of the society. Last December, they entered the government. By summer, the ex-chief of Mossad Tamir Pardo (2011-16) charged prime minister Netanyahu for bringing parties “worse than the Ku Klux Klan” into his government⁵ (figure 2).

Since the tumultuous ‘70s, far-right politics, violent Messianic settlers, and ultra-nationalists like Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach have given rise to extremist movements, massacres of Palestinians, and political parties like Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”), Kach’s ideological successor. Its leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, first gained national notoriety in 1995 by brandishing a Cadillac hood ornament that had been stolen from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him too,” Ben-Gvir said.⁶ Weeks later, Rabin, the architect of the peace process, was assassinated.

As Netanyahu’s minister of national security, Ben-Gvir has espoused Kahanism. As a settler, he lives in an illegal settlement. He has openly called for expulsions of Arab citizens. His provocative visit to the Temple Mount, the locale of al-Aqsa Mosque, contributed to the turmoil, as do recent efforts to replicate such visits.⁷

Through his 20 years of participation in Israeli cabinets, Katz has fought for more resources for settlements. Opposing any two-state solution, he pushes for the annexation of the West Bank and wants to make Gaza Egypt’s headache.

Another fatal decision of the Israeli government was the pledge of the energy minister Israel Katz that no “electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter Gaza” until the hostages would be free.⁸Reminiscent of Nazi practices, such collective punishments are morally repulsive and counterproductive in practice. When revenge massacres are imposed on innocent civilians, they breed new resentment, bitterness, and resistance.

Netanyahu’s Minister of Defence is Bezazel Smotrich, a vehement opponent of a Palestinian state, and self-proclaimed fascist, racist, and homophobe, who also lives in an illegally built West Bank settlement. In 2021, he declared that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, should have “finished the job” and kicked all Palestinians out when Israel was founded. In his view, members of Israel’s Arab minority communities are citizens, but only “for now”.⁹

These are the hollow men in Netanyahu’s government. Neither they nor their peers will ever support policies recognising the sovereign and human rights of the Palestinians. Their ultimate objective is to expunge them. So, when Smotrich was entrusted with much of the administration of the occupied West Bank, the fox took over the hen house. It was a signal to Palestinian Arabs: Leave!

From Kahane’s terror to Sadat-Rabin assassinations

Among the peace activists, the concern in the ‘70s was that if the Messianic far-right Jewish settlers, many of whom came from the US, would be permitted to create a substantial de facto presence, it would be legitimised over time by de jure measures.¹⁰

In the 1980s, Gush Emunim radicalised further, forming the Jewish Underground, a radical terrorist organisation. Its launch was sparked by the Camp David Accords that led to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in 1979, which the movement vehemently opposed, and the settlement project itself, which brought the far-right Messianic Jews in close proximity with the Palestinian communities.¹¹ It was a recipe for massacres.

The Underground conducted vicious terror attacks, including car bombs against Palestinian mayors, and plotted to blow up the Dome of the Rock at the centre of the al-Aqsa mosque.¹² The objective of the terror was to intimidate and bully the Palestinians out of the Occupied Territories.

I learned about these extremist trajectories during a mid-‘70s meeting in Jerusalem with the US-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, the far-right ultra-nationalist politician and later a member of the Knesset until his conviction for terrorism. Interestingly, the fanatically anti-communist Kahane had served as an informant with the FBI in the McCarthyite 1950s.¹³ Having co-founded the far-right Jewish Defense League in the US, he established the ultra-radical Kach in Israel. Both used terror to advance their aims. By the ‘70s, Kahane promoted ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. “Israeli Arabs are moving closer to becoming a majority. Israel should not be committed to national suicide.” In his view, Palestinians had to go.

I had never met anyone as full of hate. Kahane couldn’t even utter the word “Arab” without a hint of disgust. I fully expected him to die in violence (figure 3).

Fast-forward to November 1990. As I was walking to Grand Central in mid-town Manhattan, I heard shots and saw a man running with cops behind him. Kahane had been assassinated. But his spirit lived on. A few years later, Binyamin Netanyahu, then-head of the opposition, contributed to the incendiary political climate where protesters branded prime minister Yitzhak Rabin a “traitor”, “murderer”, even “Nazi” for signing a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Then, Yigal Amir, a Jewish zealot, assassinated Rabin. He was linked with extremists influenced by Kahanism.

Like the Hamas offensive, the assassination was initially attributed to an “intelligence failure”. Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security, could have stopped the killer in advance, but didn’t.14 So, was the assassination “allowed” to happen, the critics asked?

In a historical view, Rabin’s assassination was the Israeli mirror-image of the prior Sadat’s assassination, which has been attributed to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, whose members later figured among the fedayeen in Afghanistan that were armed, trained, and financed by the CIA’s Operation Cyclone.¹⁵ (figure 4).

The assassinations’ message to peacemakers was loud and clear: Don’t even try!

Secret memorandum on the Gazan population transfer

Barely a week after the Hamas attack on 7 October, Israel’s Intelligence Ministry prepared a secret memorandum. It is this Ministry that oversees the Mossad and the Shin Bet, under the prime minister. In the 10-page memo, three options regarding the Palestinian civilians were predicated on “the overthrow of Hamas” and the “evacuation of the population outside of the combat zone”:

- Option A: Population remains in Gaza under Palestinian Authority,
- Option B: … but under local Arab authority.
- Option C: Population is evacuated from Gaza to Sinai.¹⁶

Of these three options, the memo recommended C, the forcible transfer of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to Egypt’s Sinai, as the preferred course of action. In the Ministry’s view, Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Canada would support the plan financially, or by taking in Palestinian refugees as citizens.

Two weeks later, the memo was leaked to the media.¹⁷ It sparked an international firestorm over the “advocacy for ethnic cleansing”. Yet, the option was promoted by the Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, who claimed that members of the Knesset across the political spectrum were backing it.¹⁸In regional view, it was a pipe dream nobody bought.

Certainly, the early stages of Israel’s counteroffensive, “Operation Iron Swords”, reinforced the view that a population displacement is now at the forefront. Two days after the Hamas offensive, IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari stated that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy”.¹⁹ What followed was the Israeli army’s expanded authorisation for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before. The presumably “targeted” killings have absolutely nothing to do with ground realities as Gaza has morphed into a “mass assassination factory”.²⁰Almost half of the Israeli munitions dropped on Gaza have been imprecise “dumb bombs,” US intelligence has acknowledged.

As Prime Minister Netanyahu struggled to downplay the memo, the leak worsened Israeli-Egyptian tensions. Meanwhile, a pro-Likud think-tank outlined “a plan for resettlement and final rehabilitation in Egypt of the entire population of Gaza”.²¹

But, truth be told, the transfer option isn’t exactly news. In Israel, such agendas had been disclosed already over three decades ago, and they were first implemented decades before.

Ethnic cleansing since 1947

Since the late 1980s, Israeli “new historians”, including Benny Morris, Ilan Pappé, Avi Shlaim, and Simha Flapan, have revised Israel’s role in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. In contrast to their precursors, they argued that ethnic cleansing triggered what the Palestinians call the Nakba (“Catastrophe”); that is, the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, and the devastation of their societ.. Even prior to these historians, the Nakba had been described as ethnic cleansing by many Palestinian scholars such as Rashid Khalidi, Adel Manna, and Nur Masalha.

What divided the Israeli new historians was the question of whether the catastrophe was intentionally planned or collateral damage of the 1947 UN Partition Plan and the 1948 Israeli Independence. The damage idea was promoted by Benny Morris; the intentional interpretation by Ilan Pappé.²² Morris relied primarily on Hebrew sources, while Pappé used both Hebrew and Arabic sources.

Today, the Palestinians in Israel, Occupied Territories, neighbouring Arab countries, and worldwide are the descendants of the 720,000 out of 900,000 Palestinians who once lived in areas that became Israel.

In light of historical evidence, ethnic expulsion has accompanied Jewish colonisation in Palestine ever since the 1880s and the beginning of the modern Zionist movement, as Pappé has argued with documentation. These expulsions were not decided on an ad hoc basis, as mainstream historians claimed. Instead, the Palestinian displacement and dispossession constituted ethnic cleansing, in accordance with the Plan Dalet (Plan “D”), drawn up in 1947 by Israel’s future leaders, such as David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of the nation. In this view, the aim has always been, and still remains, “to take over as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians as possible”.²³

After a month of systematic devastation in Gaza, Netanyahu’s far-right defence minister Smotrich stated that the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians in Gaza is the “right humanitarian solution”. Israel would no longer put up with “an independent entity in Gaza”. Meanwhile, Netanyahu lobbied European leaders to help him persuade Egypt to take in refugees from Gaza, without any success, even while he was downplaying his own Intelligence Ministry’s preferred proposal to “evacuate” all Palestinians. By contrast, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said his country rejected any attempt to justify or encourage the displacement of Palestinians outside Gaza.²⁴

In the UN Security Council, ethnic cleansing was defined in 1992 as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas”.²⁵

It is this kind of demographic displacement that has motivated the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, particularly since 1947. But the current efforts at population transfers, whether from Gaza or the West Bank, are no longer dictated by only demographic goals. Since the 1990s, ethnic cleansing seems to have also been motivated by economic objectives.

$644 billion energy reserves

In the late 1990s, the Palestinian Authority (PA) contracted British Gas (BG) to develop the confirmed oil and gas fields of offshore Gaza. With its natural gas industry, Egypt would serve as the on-shore hub and transit point for the gas. BG pledged to finance the development and operation of the resulting facilities in exchange for 90 per cent of the revenues, whereas PA would receive just 10 per cent, plus access to adequate gas to meet their needs.²⁶ But Israel, too, wanted a cut.

In 1999, Prime Minister Ehud Barak deployed the Israeli navy in Gaza’s coastal waters to impede the PA-BG deal. Israel demanded the gas to be piped to its facilities at a below-market-level price and control of all the revenues destined for the Palestinians, presumably to prevent the monies from being used to “fund terror”.²⁷

After 2006, when Hamas triumphed in Gaza’s democratic election, it triggered the surreal intervention by British PM Tony Blair, who proposed the old deal structure, with the exception that the gas would be delivered to Israel, not Egypt, and the funds would first be delivered to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York for future distribution, again presumably to preempt financing of terrorist attacks.²⁸

The two pretexts killed the limited Palestinian budget autonomy, along with the Oslo Accords, as a path was paved for future wars, which would then be blamed on Palestinians as well. And when the Hamas-led Palestinian unity government refused the impossible offer, Israeli PM Ehud Olmert imposed a blockade on Gaza. The “economic warfare” was expected to result in a “political crisis” and uprising against Hamas. Israel put the Palestinians “on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger”.²⁹

Hence, the launch of Israel’s 2006 Operation Cast Lead to subject Gaza to a “shoah” (Hebrew for Holocaust), as Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai warned. The idea was to “send Gaza decades into the past”, said commanding general Yoav Galant, Netanyahu’s current defence minister who now pledges to “wipe this thing called Hamas off the face of the earth”.³⁰

The operation did cause devastation in Gaza but failed to transfer the control of the gas fields to Israel. And as the West was swept by the Greater Recession in 2008-9, the new Netanyahu government found itself struggling with an energy crisis that became severe with the Arab Spring as Israel lost 40 per cent of its gas supplies.

With energy prices soaring, Israel witnessed the largest mass protests in decades.

Ironically, Netanyahu’s government was saved by a discovery of a huge field of recoverable natural gas in the Levantine Basin, a largely offshore formation under the eastern Mediterranean. Israel claimed that “most” of the newly confirmed gas reserves lay within Israeli territory, which sparked the contrary claims by and increasing tensions with Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, and the Palestinians. Based on the 2010 US Geological survey, the oil and gas in the Levant Basin amounted to 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil (figure 6).³¹

What are the economic stakes in this resource struggle? In 2023 US dollars, the value of these resources translated to $557 billion and $87 billion, respectively. That’s about $644 billion in total.³²

But there was more at stake.

The $16-$55 billion Ben Gurion Canal

Located in Egypt, the Suez Canal connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez with the Mediterranean Sea. Some 12 per cent of the world’s trade passes through Suez on 18,000 ships a year. In March 2021, it was blocked for six days by a container ship that had run aground. What if there was an alternative pipeline?

In the mid-19^th century, the British considered the proposal of a canal to the Red Sea via the Dead Sea. In the early 1960s, a secret and controversial US proposal involved 520 nuclear blasts to excavate through Israel’s Negev desert. The idea was kept secret through the Cold War until 20 October 2020, when the Israeli state-owned Europe Asia Pipeline Company (EAPC) and the UAE-based MED-RED Land Bridge inked a deal to use the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline to move oil from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. Interestingly, this occurred just one month after the Abraham Accords on Arab-Israeli normalisation between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain.

In April 2021, Israel announced that work on the Ben Gurion Canal would begin by summer. The construction was expected to take about five years and employ 300,000 engineers and technicians. With estimated costs at $16 to $55 billion, the canal was expected to generate over $6 billion in annual income (figure 7).³³

Following the global pandemic, the UAE, the host of the COP28 conference in Dubai, distanced itself from the controversial plan that Israeli environmentalists so vehemently opposed. The secretive EAPC had a dark environmental record. In 2011, it was responsible for Israel’s worst nature-reserve disaster; in 2014, for its worst environmental disaster.³⁴ Oddly, in January, the Netanyahu cabinet extended secrecy for EAPC, despite objections. As traffic at the EAPC’s terminal on the Gulf of Eilat surged in July, activists warned of an impending disaster.³⁵

By 7 October, the only thing that stood between the Netanyahu government and the massive canal project was Gaza. Hence, the concerted effort to undermine the Palestine Authority, which in the 1990s still controlled Gaza, an attempt that began with Netanyahu’s gamble, in parallel with efforts to take over the offshore energy reserves and the proposed canal-building.

Hamas and Netanyahu divide-and-rule ploy

With a population of over 2 million on some 365 square kilometres, the Gaza Strip is one of the world’s most densely populated areas and “largest open-air prison”. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, it became an Egyptian-administrated territory. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, it came under Israeli occupation.

The precursor of Hamas, Al Mujamma al Islami (“The Islamic Centre”), was established in Gaza in the 1970s under the auspices of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood.³⁶ One of their adherents was the wheelchair-bound Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the future leader of Hamas. Yassin concentrated the Mujamma’s activities on religious and social services. Ironically, Israeli authorities supported its rise, when their main antagonist was still the late Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). So, while PLO operatives in the Occupied Territories faced brutal repression, the Islamists affiliated with Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood could operate in Gaza. Israelis were using the Islamists against the PLO.³⁷

Yassin was jailed in 1984 on a 12-year sentence, but released only a year later. At the time, Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the UN. I interviewed him about his Fighting Terrorism (1986), which offered lessons on “how democracies can defeat domestic and international terrorists”. Smart and slick, he represented a new generation of Israeli politicians trained by American PR experts and his former employer, global consultancy BCG.

Hamas was manna from heaven to Netanyahu. Launched in 1988 amid the first intifada (uprising), it has always refused to accept the existence of the Israeli state. When the peace process began between Rabin and Arafat, Yassin was in prison. Hamas launched a campaign of attacks against civilians, which contributed to the rise of Netanyahu and the Israeli conservatives, and the far right in 1996 (figure 8).

As prime minister, Netanyahu ordered Yassin to be released from prison (“on humanitarian grounds”), despite a life sentence. He relied on the Islamists to sabotage the Oslo Peace Accords. After having expelled Yassin to Jordan, Netanyahu allowed him to return to Gaza as a hero in late 1997. Until his killing in 2004, Yassin initiated a wave of suicide attacks against Israelis. Yet Netanyahu told his Likud Party’s Knesset members in March 2019 that “anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy: to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”³⁸

In the 1990s, as part of the Oslo Accords, most of Gaza had been handed over to the Palestinian Authority, alongside the Israeli settlements, which were evacuated in 2005, despite intense opposition by the Israeli far right. Two years later, after an election victory that rankled with both the West and the PLO, Hamas began administering Gaza. That led both Israel and Egypt to impose a land, sea, and air blockade, which devastated Gaza’s ailing economy.

From economic blockade to military destruction

By 2021, Gaza’s economy was on the verge of collapse.³⁹ Even before the global pandemic, the Palestinians organised widespread protests demanding that Israel end the blockade and address the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. All protests proved futile.

The final solution of Netanyahu government’s far right seems to be the devastation of Gaza and the twisted hope that this would cause a mass emigration of Gazans away from the Israeli border. Hence, the preference for the Dahiya Doctrine, outlined by former IDF Chief Gadi Eizenkot in the 2006 Lebanese War and in the 2008-9 Gaza War. It is premised on the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of “hostile regimes”:

What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on… We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.⁴⁰

Scholars of international law call it “state terrorism”.⁴¹ In the view of the UN, it was a “carefully planned” assault intended “to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population”.⁴² In Gaza, it looks increasingly like a war crime of historical magnitude. Yet, after 7 October, Eisenkot was appointed as a minister without portfolio in Netanyahu’s war cabinet.

The international media have been widely and often rightly criticised for the lack of impartiality in reporting. As an old adage puts it, “the first casualty when war comes is truth”. In Gaza, truth has also been a strategic target, judging by the extraordinary number of journalists killed.

As of December 14, investigations by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) showed 63 journalists and media workers had been killed in some two months. Nine out of 10 were Palestinian, the rest Israelis and Lebanese. It was the deadliest time for journalists ever since the CPJ began gathering data in 1992.⁴³

Yet, international media organisations continued the flawed, surreal rhetoric about “targeted bombing” designed to “minimise the casualties”.

West Bank’s apartheid and settler violence

On 12 October, just days after the Hamas attack, Israeli soldiers and settlers detained three Palestinians from the West Bank village Wadi as-Seeq. For hours, the Palestinians were severely beaten, stripped to their underwear, and photographed handcuffed, in their underwear. The captors urinated on some and extinguished burning cigarettes on others, while trying to penetrate one of them with an object.

Soldiers and settlers also arrested leftist Israeli activists who were present, cuffed and threatened to kill them, and detained them for hours. Both groups were robbed.⁴⁴

Like the Israeli peace movement, the international community considers the settlements a violation of international law.46 But in the absence of effective enforcement, lofty rhetoric has long been a part of the problem.

It would be naïve to explain away such incidents as anomalies. The brutal bullying, the lawless harassment, the collusion of police, military, and settlers, the inhuman treatment – these are all reminiscent of black segregation in South Africa. Based on white supremacy and racial segregation, the system of apartheid was in place from 1948 until 1994. Today, a similar system prevails in the West Bank. Netanyahu’s government seeks to annex the West Bank, which threatens the prospects for a just and lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.⁴⁵

Like the Israeli peace movement, the international community considers the settlements a violation of international law.⁴⁶ But in the absence of effective enforcement, lofty rhetoric has long been a part of the problem. The writing has been on the wall since the 1970s. With settlement expansion, it has turned both bloody and devastating.

In 2015, the former head of Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, warned that “alongside the State of Israel, a de facto State of Judea is being formed” in which “there are different standards, different value systems, different attitudes towards democracy, and there are two legal systems”. Meanwhile, “anarchistic, anti-state, violent, and racist ideologies… are treated tolerantly by the Israeli legal and judicial system.” He criticised the Netanyahu government for turning a blind eye to “Jewish terrorism”.⁴⁷

Half a decade later, Human Rights Watch warned that Israel had crossed the apartheid threshold.⁴⁸ Farsighted Israeli leaders no longer deny the reality of apartheid. Last year, former attorney general Michael Ben-Yair called Israel “an apartheid regime”. In early September this year, even the ex-chief of Mossad, Tamir Pardo, said that Israel’s mechanisms for controlling the Palestinians matched the old South Africa. “There is an apartheid state here,” since “two people are judged under two legal systems”.⁴⁹

Long before the Hamas offensive, Palestinian stagnation reflected economic ruin that was excessive even relative to apartheid South Africa. Today, the Palestinians’ per capita income in comparison to Israelis is lower than that of the blacks relative to the whites in apartheid South Africa.⁵⁰Even before the current war, the Gazans’ position was even worse, far worse. Furthermore, talks for a two-state solution have been stalling since 2014. As a result, nothing has halted the settlers’ steady expansion since the late 1960s (figure 9).

While Gaza is being eradicated, things are getting a lot worse in the West Bank. As international media focused on the Israeli ground assault in Gaza, Zvi Sukkot was appointed chairman of the Knesset Subcommittee for Judea and Samaria (West Bank). Inspired by Kahane, the ex-member of the Jewish terrorist group The Revolt Sukkot has advocated dismantling the state of Israel to establish a Jewish Kingdom, a Judaic theocracy following Jewish Law. He has allegedly participated in a mosque arson, violence against Palestinians, protests against Shin Bet, and demolition of homes. Now he is making his dreams true, seemingly democratically.

In the early 1970s, there were barely 2,000 settlers in the West Bank. Today, that figure exceeds 500,000. Their problem is that they will never win the peace.

Rise of US military aid, plunge of Israeli labour

During the early days of independence, Israel’s politics was dominated by Labour alignments from David Ben-Gurion to Golda Meir. In 1949, the Labour alignment (46) and the left (25) had over 70 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Despite a near monopoly, the alignment still held over 60 seats in 1973, with Labour increasing its voice and the left losing half of its seats. Yet, today the Labour coalition has lost more than 90 per cent of its representation some 75 years ago (figure 10).

The debate on the decline of Israeli Labour is long-lasting.⁵¹ Usually, the losses are attributed to the failure of the Oslo Accords to make Israelis feel more secure, the inability of the alignment to attract Labour voters, the failure to stay attuned to demographic shifts, and the decline of social democratic parties in Western Europe.

Most analysts fail to associate the parallel trends of the plunge of Israeli Labour and the rise of US aid. Even the air triumphs of the Six-Day War were still premised on the French-made Mirage and Super Mystère jets. The US economic and military aid soared only after the 1973 War. Until 2002, Israel was the top recipient of US aid and it has stayed among the top three with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine.

The US has given Israel over $260 billion in military and economic aid, plus $10 billion for missile defence systems. In 2017, the bilateral tie entered a new era as Israel and the US inaugurated the first American military base on Israeli soil, 25 kilometres from Gaza. The US base would deploy Iron Dome to defend against short-range rockets. On 7 October, Hamas soldiers came within a few kilometres of the airfield.

Just weeks before, the Pentagon awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to build US troop facilities for a secret base deep within Israel’s Negev desert, also close to Gaza. Code-named “Site 512”, it is a radar facility that monitors the skies for missile attacks on Israel.⁵² Ironically, on 7 October, Site 512 saw nothing. When rockets burst from Gaza, it was focused on Iran.

In brief, the Pentagon is taking steps to fortify Israel, but mainly in its own Middle East geopolitics, which also involves increasing presence in Lebanon, in close proximity to offshore energy reserves.

Neoliberalism and Israel’s economic erosion

Netanyahu has long advocated neoliberal policies. Since January, his government has also pushed for highly controversial judicial reforms, a series of changes to the judicial system and the balance of powers. The amendment was passed by Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, in late July. The judicial effort reflects descent toward autocracy and was opposed by most Israelis in massive protests.

Behind these judicial reforms looms the Kohelet Forum, an ultra-conservative think-tank partly funded by two Jewish-American billionaires, Arthur Dantchik and Jeffrey Yass. The key financier behind Netanyahu has been the late casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, whose monies have also boosted Rabbi Meir Kahane’s disciples in Israel. In 2019, the US appeals court revived a $1 billion lawsuit by Palestinians seeking to hold Adelson and other pro-Israel defendants liable for alleged war crimes and support of Israeli settlements.⁵³

Netanyahu has led six Israeli cabinets in the past 25 years. He remains haunted by a litany of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust charges. To avoid prosecution, he needs to stay in power.

Thanks to his neoliberalism, Israel has exceptionally high inequality compared to other OECD countries, despite its early socialism. After a remarkable recovery from the pandemic, the risk balance in Israel is tilted to the downside.⁵⁴ The war compounds the risks. Adding to its active military force of 150,000, the Israeli army has summoned 360,000 additional reservists, 8 per cent of Israel’s workforce, for the war on Gaza, which costs Israel $260 million a day.

Long-term trends are alarming. Half a year before the hostilities, 280 senior economists warned that the government’s budget allocations to the ultra-religious Haredi groups, in exchange for their coalition support, “will transform Israel in the long run from an advanced and prosperous country to a backward country”.⁵⁵ The economic backlash associated with the proposed judicial overhaul had led to a massive capital flight and sharp decline in foreign investment, resulting in currency depreciation, a sluggish stock market, a slowdown in tax revenues, and rising public debt.⁵⁶

Recently, the Bank of Israel warned that war was a “major shock” to the economy and more expensive than estimated.

Risk of regional escalation

Regionally, the war has led Biden’s hawks to refocus attention to Iran, once again. Since 2003, the US Army has conducted an analysis called TIRANNT (Theater Iran Near-Term) for a full-scale war with Iran.⁵⁷ Predictably, the war has inflamed tensions with Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, which many in the Congress would like to link with Gaza, despite no evidence of Iran’s direct involvement. To Netanyahu’s government, an Iran conflict would divert attention from Gaza and the West Bank.⁵⁸

The ongoing war has severely undermined US credibility as a neutral broker in the region. Officially, Washington seeks to de-escalate tensions. In practice, US diplomats have been discouraged from publicly using phrases that would urge calm.⁵⁹ Washington’s bipartisan consensus is driven by the Pentagon and Big Defence, which profit from every new major conflict, by selling security without peace, as illustrated by Blinken’s own think-tank.⁶⁰

The Gaza War is a textbook case. In the first six days of its counteroffensive, Israel dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza. That’s almost the number of bombs the US dropped in an entire year on Afghanistan, which is 1,800 times larger than Gaza.

What the region needs is multilateral cooperation and multipolar diplomacy. After $8 trillion in the misguided post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US war theatres have not disappeared. It’s only their arenas that are shifting.

Intelligence failure – or not

Recently, the New York Times reported that “Israel knew Hamas’s attack plan more than a year ago”. Code-named “Jericho Wall”, the 40-page blueprint outlined the kind of lethal invasion that resulted in the death of some 1,200 Israelis. The document was circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities.⁶¹

The Times report reverberated internationally. But it wasn’t a scoop. Soon after 7 October, the Israeli media released several critical pieces indicating that many intelligence analysts’ warnings were ignored. What was new in the Times piece was the blueprint document. Underpinning all these ignored warnings was the flawed belief that Hamas lacked the capability to attack and would not dare to do so.

This belief was fostered by two tacit factors. First, gender bias and sexism. The longer that militarisation has prevailed in Israel, the more the country’s gender gap has deepened. Today, Israel ranks at the level of El Salvador and Uganda in this regard.⁶² Since 7 October, testimonies from members of mainly female look-out units have bolstered accusations that Netanyahu’s leadership fatally misread the dangers from Gaza. Not just Netanyahu, but senior politicians from across the political spectrum bought into the idea, which was also touted by the Israel Defence Forces and eventually Shin Bet. “It’s infuriating,” said Maya Desiatnik soon after 7 October. “We saw what was happening, we told them about it, and we were the ones who were murdered.” She is from Nahal Oz, where 20 other women border surveillance soldiers were murdered by Hamas.

In the 1980s, the Operation Cyclone led the US to train, arm, and finance a generation of Islamist fedayeen in Afghanistan, including Osama Bin Laden. Netanyahu’s governments thought they could exploit Hamas, not that Hamas could exploit them.

Second, half a century of occupation has left an impact not just on popular opinion but on analytical assessments. The idea that Hamas lacked the capability to attack was predicated on the notion that “they” wouldn’t be as imaginative as “we” can be. Based on one or two years of evidence, Hamas militants trained for the brutal attacks in at least six sites across Gaza in plain sight and less than 1.5 km from Israel’s heavily fortified and monitored border, as even CNN reported in early October.⁶³

Worse, many testimonies by Israeli witnesses to the Hamas attack add to growing evidence that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as it struggled to neutralise Palestinian gunmen. As one witness said to Israel Radio: “[Israeli special forces] eliminated everyone, including the hostages.”⁶⁴

But if the intelligence failure wasn’t a failure at all, what was it?

“Slaughter and Carnage by Another Name”

From the start, Israel’s counteroffensive has relied on a rhetoric of targeted killing, but with actual focus on the destruction of Gaza. In the view of the Israeli military, their operation comprises tactical military targets – underground targets such as tunnels, but particularly power targets like high-rises and residential towers, and operatives’ family homes. In past wars, military and underground targets were in the key role. Now it belongs to power and family-home targets. The real objective is maximum harm to Palestinian civil society.⁶⁵

What about the damage? There are an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 members of Hamas. As of mid-December, 2023, some 3,000 to 5,000 had been killed (7,000 according to Israeli sources); that is, about 7 to 15 per cent. Meanwhile, 1.9 million Palestinians had been displaced, almost 80 per cent of the total. Some 19,000 people have been killed and 50,000 injured, and thousands remain missing, two-thirds of them women and children. More than 60 per cent of the homes and residential units have been destroyed; and with them, most hospitals. And with the collapse of health systems, misery and vice will follow in due time, in the form of famine and epidemics.

Is it a prelude to the West Bank?

There are almost no Palestinians remaining in the vast area stretching east from Ramallah to the outskirts of Jericho. Most of the communities who lived in the area have fled for their lives in recent months as a result of intensifying Israeli settler violence and land seizures, backed by the Israeli army and state institutions. Israeli settlers have chased out entire Palestinian communities in Area C,⁶⁶ an area that just happens to stand “above sizeable reservoirs of oil and natural gas wealth”, as UNCTAD stressed already in the late 2010s (see figure 6).

In the past, ethnic cleansing had mainly demographic objectives. Today, it also serves economic agendas. The consequent damage can no longer be considered collateral but intended.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide resemble each other. Nevertheless, ethnic cleansing is intended primarily to displace a persecuted population from a given territory, whereas genocide is intended mainly to destroy a group. Most Israelis abhor the very idea of genocide, yet both ethnic cleansing and genocide go hand in hand with settler colonialism. Furthermore, the system of apartheid, including its most vicious forms, is already an acknowledged reality in the Occupied Territories.

As Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva says, what’s happening in the Middle East “isn’t a war, it’s a genocide”.⁶⁷ Analytical distinctions are irrelevant to those who lose their loved ones, especially innocent children, in unwarranted wars that are just slaughter and carnage by another name (figure 11).

The prospect of the Second Nakba

The one thing that once stood between the Netanyahu government and the grandiose plans for a Greater Jewish Israel with abundant energy fields was Gaza. Hence, the frantic activity of the Biden administration and the subdued silence of Brussels. Both like the ensuing energy scenarios, but detest the bad PR.

Ultimately, it is these demographic agendas, deeply ingrained in decades of ethnic cleansing, that are now coupled with economic energy aspirations.

In this view, the Israeli intelligence did not fail on 7 October. It did its job; it warned the policymakers about the impending threat. It’s the political leadership that failed. Intentional or not, this neglect serves the far-right government’s tacit political objectives to neutralise Gaza and Palestinian sovereignty by displacing the Gazans, and to advance preconditions for Palestinian expulsions from the West Bank.

There is a trade-off, though. The consequent Israel would no longer be the secular, Jewish-Arab democracy it was once supposed to become. Rather, it may trend toward a militarised, neoliberal Jewish autocracy that most Israelis intensely oppose, but American financiers prefer. Milton Friedmans need their Pinochets. The external chasm between Jews and Palestinians would be replaced by internal divides between rich and poor, secular and religious, Western and Eastern Jews.

Here’s the inconvenient truth: the First Nakba resulted from ethnic expulsions, most of which preceded Israeli independence in 1948. The Second Nakba would also be about sovereignty over gas and oil, should the international community allow it. And if it does, make no mistake about it, our humanity will no longer be the same.

What happens in Palestine won’t stay in Palestine.

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About the Author

Dr. Dan Steinbock is the founder of Difference Group and has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net/.

References
1. Steinbock, D. 2018. “Israel’s 50-Year Time Bomb.” Consortium News, Oct 18.
2. “‘Even War Has Rules’, Secretary-General Tells Security Council, Demanding All Parties in Middle East Uphold International Humanitarian Law, Unrestricted Aid for Gaza.” UN Press Release, Oct 24, 2023.
3. Sprinzak, E. 1986. Fundamentalism, Terrorism, and Democracy: The Case of the Gush Emunim Underground. Presentation at the Wilson Center, Sep. 16. See also T. Hermann & D Newman. 1992. “Extra Parliamentarism in Israel: A Comparative Study of Peace Now and Gush Emunim.” Middle Eastern Studies, 28 (3), 509-530.
4. De Giovannangeli, U. 2020. “Yael Dayan: ‘My Israel Has Been Betrayed.’ “Reset Dialogues on Civilizations. May 7.
5. “Ex-Mossad chief: Netanyahu allies worse than KKK, overhaul is his ‘master plan’.” Times of Israel, Jul. 27, 2023.
6. Hendrix, Steve; Rubin, Shira. 2022. “Israel election: A far-right politician moves closer to power”. Washington Post, Oct. 28.
7. “Biden’s strategy for a far-right Israel: Lay it all on Bibi”. Politico, Dec. 20, 2022. See also “Wave of international criticism after Ben Gvir visits flashpoint Temple Mount”. Times of Israel. Jan. 3, 2023.
8. “No power, water or fuel to Gaza until hostages freed, says Israel minister.” The Guardian Oct. 12, 2023.
9. “Levin said to call for judges who ‘understand’ why Jews don’t want to live near Arabs.” Times of Israel, May 29, 22023.
10. Today, Americans comprise 15% of the overall settlement, although US citizens represent just 2.2% of the total Israeli population. See Hirschorn, Sara Yael. 2017. City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement. Harvard UP.
11. Sandler, S. 1997.Religious Zionism and the State: Political Accommodation and Religious Radicalism in Israel,’ in B. Maddy-Waitzman, E. Inbar (eds.) Religious Radicalism in the Greater Middle East, Besa Studies in International Security, Routledge.
12. Masalha, N. 2000. Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: The Politics of Expansion. London: Pluto Press. See also Ben-Yehuda, N. 2010. Theocratic Democracy: The Social Construction of Religious and Secular Extremism. Oxford UP.
13. Compare Friedman, R. I. 1990. The False Prophet Rabbi Meir Kahan. Lawrence Hill & Co.
14. Barnea, A. 2017. “The Assassination of a Prime Minister: The Intelligence Failure that Failed to Prevent the Murder of Yitzhak Rabin.” International Journal of Intelligence, Security, and Public Affairs, 19:1, 23-43
15. For a critical review, see Parenti, C. 2001. America’s Jihad. Social Justice, Vol. 28, No. 3 (85), Law, Order, and Neoliberalism (Fall 2001), pp. 31-38
16. Options for a policy regarding Gaza’s civilian population. Policy Dept. Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence. Oct 13, 2023.
17. “An Israeli ministry, in a ‘concept paper,’ proposes transferring Gaza civilians to Egypt’s Sinai”. AP News, Oct 30, 2023
18. Gamliel, G. 2023. “Victory is an opportunity for Israel in the midst of crisis.” Jerusalem Post, Nov 19.
19. “‘Emphasis is on damage, not accuracy’: ground offensive into Gaza seems imminent.” The Guardian, Oct 10, 2023.
20. Abraham, Y. 2023. “’A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza.” +972 Magazine, Nov 30.
21. “Zionist think tank publishes blueprint for Palestinian genocide.” The Grayzone, Oct 24, 2023. See also the think-tank’s website https://www.izs.org.il/ Soon afterwards the website went offline and Weitman’s paper was no longer downloadable.
22. Morris, B. 1988. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, Cambridge UP.
23. Pappe, Ilan. 2006. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oneworld, p. 362.
24. “Israeli minister supports “voluntary migration’ of Palestinians in Gaza.” Al Jazeera, Nov. 14, 2023.
25. “Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 780 (1992).” UN Security Council. May 27, 1994. p. 33
26. Schwartz, M. 2015. “The Great Game in the Holy Land.” TomDispatch, Feb 26.
27. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed. 2012. “Israel’s War for Gaza’s Gas.” Le Monde Diplomatique, Nov 28.
28. Schwartz, op. cit.
29. Urquhart, C. 2006. “Gaza on brink of implosion as aid cut-off starts to bite.” The Guardian, Apr 16.
30. “Barak: Hamas Will Pay for Its Escalation in the South.” Haaretz, Feb 29, 2008; “Israel’s new war cabinet vows to wipe Hamas off the earth.” Reuters, Oct 12.
31. Schenk, C. J. e al. 2010. Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the Levant Basin Province, Eastern Mediterranean. US Geological Survey, March.
32. The Economic Costs of the Israeli Occupation for the Palestinian People: The Unrealized Oil and Natural Gas Potential. UNCTAD. 2019.
33. “Israeli pipeline company signs deal to bring UAE oil to Europe.” Reuters, Oct 20, 2020.
34. “Cabinet extends secrecy for state-owned oil infrastructure firms, despite objections.” Times of Israel, Jan 29, 2023.
35. “Number of Oil Tankers in Eilat Has Jumped Fivefold, and Risks Are Rising.” Haaretz, Jul 13, 2023.
36. See Chehab, Z. 2007. Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of Militants, Martyrs and Spies. I.B. Tauris; and Pappe, I. 2017. The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories. Oneworld.
37. Higgins, A. 2009. “How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas.” Wall Street Journal, Jan 25.
38. Weitz, G. 2020. “Another Concept Implodes: Israel Can’t Be Managed by a Criminal Defendant.” Haaretz, Oct. 9.
39. Economic costs of the Israeli occupation for the Palestinian people: The Gaza Strip under closure and restrictions. UNCTAD. Aug. 13, 2020.
40. London, Y. 2008. “The Dahiya Strategy.” [Interview with IDF Northern Command Chief Gadi Eisenkot], Jun. 8.
41. Falk, R. 2011. “Israel’s Violence Against Separation Wall Protests: Along the Road of State Terrorism.” Jan. 7.
42. Report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Sep. 25, 2009.
43. “Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war.” Committee to Protect Journalists, Dec 3, 2023.
44. Shezaf, H. 2023. “Cigarette Burns, Beatings, Attempted Sexual Assault: Settlers and Soldiers Abused Palestinians.” Haaretz, Oct 21.
45. Peace Now in a letter to the President of the United States and the UN Secretary-General: Do not believe Netanyahu. His government is effectively annexing the Occupied Territories. Peace Now, Sep. 20.
46. Barak-Erez, D. 2006. “Israel: The security barrier – between international law, constitutional law, and domestic judicial review”. International Journal of Constitutional Law. 4 (3): 548.
47. “Ex-Shin Bet chief: Government does not want to deal with Jewish terror.” Ynet News, Jul 8, 2015. Diskin wasn’t alone. He was seconded by former Mossad Director Meir Dagan and former IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, who have been highly critical of Netanyahu’s lack of diplomatic progress with Palestinians.
48. A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution. Human Rights Watch, Apr. 2021.
49. “A former Mossad chief says Israel is enforcing an apartheid system in the West Bank.” AP, Sep. 7, 2023. Recently, the parliament’s former speaker Avraham Burg and historian Benny Morris were among more than 2,000 Israeli and US public figures who signed a public statement that “Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid.” See “The Elephant in the Room.” See https://sites.google.com/view/israel-elephant-in-the-room/home
50. Steinbock, D. 2023. “What Led to the Gaza-Israel Catastrophe.” The World Financial Review, Oct 19.
51. Inbar, E. 2009. The Decline of the Israel Labor Party. The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. Bar-Ilan University, Feb. 23; Rapoport, M. 2020. “What happened to Israel’s Labor party?” Middle East Eye, Apr. 30; Mor, S. 2020. “Doves’ Labor Lost: How Israel’s Once-Dominant Party Faded into Insignificance.” Mosaic, Aug. 2.
52. Klippenstein, K. and Boguslaw, D. 2023. “US Quietly Expands Secrext Military Base in Israel.” The Intercept, Oct 27.
53. “Palestinians’ lawsuit in U.S. vs. Adelson, others is revived.” Reuters, Feb 20, 2019.
54. Compare Israel: 2023 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Israel. IMF, Jun. 15.
55. “‘Backward country’: Economists warn government over Haredi budget allocations.” Times of Israel, May 21, 2023.
56. Razin, A. and Sadka, E. 2023. Economic Consequences of a Regime Change: Overview. NBER Working Paper No. 31723, Sep.
57. See Arkin, W. 2006. “The Pentagon Preps for Iran.” Washington Post, Apr. 16.
58. It’s a longstanding quest. See “Ex-Mossad Chief Says He Questioned Legality of Netanyahu’s Order to Prepare Iran Strike”. Haaretz. May 31, 2018
59. “Stunning State Department Memo Warns Diplomats: No Gaza ‘De-Escalation’ Talk.” HuffPost, Oct. 13, 2023.
60. Steinbock, D. 2022. “The Centre of International Insecurity.” The World Financial Review, Jun. 22; Steinbock, Dan. 2023. “The Unwarranted Ukraine Proxy War: A Year Later.” The World Financial Review. Jan. 27. See also “Arms trade ‘Hamas has created additional demand’.” The Guardian, Nov 30, 2023.
61. Bergman, R. and Goldman, A. 2023. “Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago.” New York Times, Nov 30.
62. Global Gender Gap Report 2023. World Economic Forum, Aug.
63. Murphy, P. 2023. “Hamas militants trained for its deadly attack in plain sight and less than a mile from Israel’s heavily fortified border.” CNN, Oct 12.
64. “October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles.” The Grayzone, Oct 27, 2023, based on Haaretz reporting.
65. Abraham 2023, op.cit.
66. Ziv, O. 2023. “It’s like 1948’: Israel cleanses vast West Bank region of nearly all Palestinians.” +792 Magazine, Nov 30; Hawash, I. A. 2023. “‘If you don’t leave, we’ll kill you’: Hundreds flee Israeli settler violence in Hebron area.” +972 Magazine, Nov 22.
67. “President Lula says war in the Middle East is genocide.” Agência Brasil, Oct 25.

Splitting Up? How to Financially Prepare for Divorce

December 19, 2023

coins-1015125_1280 (1) — Photo by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

By Dmitriy Borshchak

So you’ve decided to call it quits. Ending a marriage is difficult enough emotionally, and the last thing you need is to also feel financially unprepared. While the legal process of divorce will split your assets, it’s important to take steps now to protect yourself. The good news is, that with some prudent planning, you can emerge from divorce in a stable financial position.

This article provides practical advice on how to prepare your finances before and during divorce proceedings. We’ll walk through the steps to take as soon as you decide to split. How to budget for legal fees and life after divorce, and strategies to consider for dividing assets and debts.

Going through a divorce is challenging, but by planning ahead you’ll gain more control over your financial future. Now take a deep breath – you’ve got this. With determination and by putting one foot in front of the other, you will get through this difficult time.

Assess Your Current Financial Situation

The first step is to get a clear picture of your current financial situation. Go through your statements and records to determine your assets like the value of your home, vehicles, investments, bank accounts, and retirement funds. Also, list your liabilities such as mortgages, loans, and credit card balances.

Calculate your monthly income and expenses. See how much you’re earning from your job, business, rental property or other sources. Then tally up essential costs for housing, food, transportation, insurance, utilities, debt payments, and everything else. The difference between your income and expenses is your disposable income – you’ll want to split this fairly.

Make copies of tax returns, bank statements, investment summaries, insurance policies, wills, and other important documents for the past few years. These provide evidence of your financial history and situation. Store copies in a safe place in case they’re needed for legal proceedings.

If you have joint accounts or own major assets together, now is the time to separate them. Open individual bank accounts and consider refinancing jointly-held properties under one name. The less financial entanglement, the smoother the divorce process will be.

Talk to a lawyer from a family Law firm. A professional can help analyze your situation, determine how best to split assets and create a settlement that’s fair to both parties. They can also suggest steps to protect your credit and secure your financial future post-divorce. The sooner you get your finances in order, the more prepared you’ll be for the legal divorce procedures.

Going through a divorce is difficult enough without money worries. By assessing your situation upfront, separating accounts, and consulting an expert, you’ll gain clarity and confidence in this challenging transition. Stay focused on the light at the end of the tunnel – your new beginning.

Make a Budget for Your New Life

Now that the relationship is ending, it’s time to figure out how you’ll manage on your own. The first step is creating a realistic budget.

Make a list of your income and expenses

Go through your bank statements and bills to see how much you’re making each month and where it’s all going. Be sure to account for essential costs like rent, food, transportation, and childcare if applicable. Also list any joint expenses you currently share to determine how costs may change.

Estimate your new living expenses

Factor in things like potentially paying for your place to live, increased utility bills, and separate insurance policies. If you have kids, account for additional costs like activities, clothing, and school expenses. Overestimate rather than underestimate to avoid financial struggles down the road.

Look for ways to cut costs if needed

See if you can reduce or eliminate any subscriptions, dine out less, or find a more affordable living situation. Even small changes can help make your new budget realistic and sustainable.

Discuss finances respectfully with your ex

Having a constructive conversation about how you’ll split assets and handle any joint financial responsibilities is important. Be willing to compromise when possible to avoid unnecessary conflict. The less financial entanglement with your ex after the divorce, the better for both your well-being and future.

With some organization, budgeting, and by planning ahead, you can gain control of your finances and feel more at ease about starting your new life as a single person. While it may not always be easy, having financial independence will give you a strong foundation to build upon.

Protect Your Credit Score

Going through a divorce is stressful enough without having to worry about your credit score taking a hit. Protecting your credit should be a top priority right now.

Monitor Your Credit Report and Score

Check your credit report and score regularly during this process to catch any suspicious activity early. Dispute any unauthorized charges or accounts right away. Your ex may know personal details that could be used to open new accounts in your name. Be on high alert for identity theft.

Don’t Close Joint Accounts Yet

If you have joint credit cards or loans, don’t close the accounts yet. Closing accounts can hurt your credit utilization ratio and length of credit history, both of which make up 30% of your score. Instead, ask to be removed from the accounts so you’re no longer responsible for payments. The accounts will still show on your reports, but any late or missed payments by your ex won’t damage your score.

Pay Down Balances

Pay down or pay off high-balance accounts like credit cards. High balances hurt your score the most. If needed, you may want to temporarily reduce spending on other things to put more towards debt repayment. The lower your balances, the less interest you’ll pay and the higher your score will go.

Don’t Default on Payments

No matter what happens, keep making at least minimum payments on time. Late or missed payments severely damage your score and stay on reports for years. Set up autopay or payment reminders if needed. Your credit score may feel like the least of your worries right now, but protecting it will benefit you financially long after the divorce is finalized.

Staying on top of these steps will help ensure your credit score comes out of the divorce unscathed. While the legal process moves forward, make credit score protection a financial priority so you have one less thing to stress over during this difficult time. Focusing on self-care will help you stay empowered to safeguard your financial well-being.

Split Up Joint Accounts and Assets

When going through a divorce, separating your joint finances is critical. This means closing joint accounts, dividing assets, and making a plan to handle debt. It may feel overwhelming, but tackling it systematically will help set you up for financial independence.

Close Joint Bank Accounts

The first step is closing any shared bank accounts, like checking and savings accounts. Open new individual accounts in your own name and transfer your portion of the funds. Make sure to cancel any automatic bill payments or deposits linked to the joint accounts.

Divide Investment and Retirement Accounts

Work with your financial advisor or investment firms to split up investment portfolios and retirement accounts (401ks, IRAs, etc.). They can help determine the fairest way to divide them based on your state’s laws. You’ll want to open new individual accounts to hold your portion of the funds.

Determine a Plan for Real Estate and High-Value Assets

If you own a home, vehicle, or other major assets together, decide how you want to handle them. Do you want to sell and split the proceeds? Have one person refinance and buy out the other’s share? Get professional appraisals to determine current market values before negotiating with your ex.

Make a Debt Payment Strategy

Sadly, in many divorces, there is also shared debt to contend with, like mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards. Work with your lawyers and financial advisors to allocate responsibility for fairly repaying debts based on your income and circumstances. Then make a plan for how payments will be made going forward.

Splitting up finances may be complicated, but with open communication and professional guidance, you can disentangle yourself financially and gain independence. Stay calm and systematic, get everything in writing, and don’t hesitate to ask questions. You’ve got this! With time and effort, you will establish yourself financially solo.

Speak With a Financial Advisor About Retirement Accounts

Speaking with a financial advisor about your retirement accounts during a divorce is critical to protecting your financial future. A financial advisor can help ensure your needs are met and avoid unnecessary penalties.

Review Account Details

Sit down with your financial advisor and review all retirement accounts like 401(k)s, IRAs, and pensions. Provide account statements so they understand your balances and investment allocations. Discuss how accounts can be divided while avoiding early withdrawal penalties and maintaining the tax-advantaged status. Your advisor may recommend splitting accounts equally or offsetting accounts against other assets.

Consider a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO)

For accounts like 401(k)s, a QDRO allows splitting the account between spouses without penalty. The QDRO specifies how the account should be divided, either splitting the balance equally or allocating a percentage to each spouse based on the length of the marriage. The QDRO is submitted to the plan administrator who then splits the account.

Look at Spousal Benefits and Survivor Options

If you’re close to retirement age, work with your advisor to evaluate spousal benefits from pensions or Social Security. They can help determine if you’re eligible for benefits based on your ex-spouse’s earning records and if so, how to claim them. You should also review survivor benefit options which provide income to the surviving ex-spouse. Your advisor can help evaluate if changes need to be made to account beneficiaries or survivor benefit options.

Consider Rolling Over Accounts

If part of an IRA or 401(k) is awarded to you as part of the divorce settlement, you may want to roll it over into an account in your name. Your financial advisor can help facilitate the transfer while maintaining the tax-advantaged status. Rolling over the funds gives you full control and flexibility over investment options that suit your needs.

A financial advisor plays an important role in helping you navigate dividing retirement accounts during a divorce. Take advantage of their knowledge and experience to avoid unnecessary taxes or loss of retirement funds. With the right planning and advice, you can get through this difficult process while financially protecting your future.

Conclusion

You’ve been through enough stress and drama in your relationship, the last thing you need is financial trouble on top of it. Now that you’ve made the difficult decision to split, take steps now to make sure you come out the other side in a good place. Talk to a financial advisor, separate accounts, and budget wisely. Though it may not seem like it now, the pain will lessen over time and you will heal. Focus on surrounding yourself with your true supporters, do things each day that make you happy, and be kind to yourself through the process. This is just one more challenge that will make you stronger and wiser. You’ve got this! Stay empowered and look ahead to the bright future waiting for you.

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About the Author

Dmitriy Borshchak is a caring family lawyer in Columbus, Ohio, and the founder of The Law Office of Dmitriy Borshchak. Although he initially explored a brief career in medicine, Dmitriy discovered his true passion in helping people navigate tough situations through the legal field.

At his firm, Dmitriy deals with various complex legal matters like divorce, child custody, child support, marital agreements, fathers’ rights, and spousal support. In every case, he focuses on managing and reducing his clients’ financial and legal risks. Dmitriy takes a personalized and systematic approach, providing clear and straightforward advice to his clients. Regardless of the case’s difficulty, he is committed to strongly advocating for his clients’ rights and best interests.

Explore the Fast Lane to Funds: How No Denial Payday Loans with Direct Lenders Work

December 19, 2023

Welcome to the fast-paced world of no denial payday loans with direct lenders, where financial solutions are just a click away. In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into how these loans operate and how they can provide you with the quick cash infusion you need. So, buckle up and let’s navigate through the ins and outs of this financial express lane.

Unraveling the Mechanics: How No Denial Payday Loans Simplify the Process

No denial payday loans with direct lenders are designed to streamline the borrowing process, putting your urgent financial needs front and center. Unlike traditional loans that may involve extensive credit checks and paperwork, these loans prioritize efficiency. The application process is straightforward, often requiring only basic personal and financial information.

Once you’ve submitted your application, the direct lender assesses it promptly. The absence of a lengthy approval process means you receive a rapid response. In many cases, you can have funds deposited directly into your account within a short timeframe, making these loans a go-to option when time is of the essence.

Direct lenders play a pivotal role in the world of no denial payday loans. They are financial institutions or online platforms that handle your loan application directly, eliminating the need for intermediaries. This direct approach streamlines communication and ensures a more personalized experience.

Choosing payday loans direct lenders only provides you with a direct line of contact, making the borrowing process more transparent. You can communicate directly with the lender, gaining clarity on terms, conditions, and any concerns you might have. This direct relationship fosters trust and allows for a smoother borrowing experience.

Navigating the Terms: What You Need to Know Before Taking the Plunge

Before diving into the world of no-denial payday loans, it’s crucial to understand the terms and conditions. These loans often come with higher interest rates, given the speed and convenience they offer. However, careful consideration and responsible borrowing can be a valuable tool in managing unexpected financial challenges.

Always review the repayment terms, fees, and potential late payment penalties. Being informed empowers you to make sound financial decisions and ensures a positive borrowing experience. Remember, payday loans direct lenders only work in your favor when you approach them with awareness and responsibility.

Mastering the Art of Repayment: Strategies for Successful Payday Loan Management

Successfully navigating the world of payday loans requires borrowing responsibly and mastering the art of repayment. Once you’ve secured a no-denial payday loan with a direct lender, understanding how to manage and repay it is crucial for your financial well-being.

Begin by carefully reviewing the repayment terms outlined by the lender. Take note of the due date and ensure that you have sufficient funds in your account to cover the repayment. Many direct lenders offer flexible repayment options, allowing you to align the repayment schedule with your paydays. Consider setting up automatic payments to avoid any accidental delays and late fees.

If unforeseen circumstances make it challenging to meet the repayment deadline, don’t hesitate to communicate with your lender. Many lenders are willing to work with borrowers facing difficulties, offering extensions or alternative arrangements. Open and honest communication is key to maintaining a positive relationship with your lender and managing your payday loan effectively.

Additionally, as you repay your loan, take the opportunity to assess your overall financial situation. Consider creating a budget to better manage your income and expenses, ensuring that future financial needs can be met without relying solely on payday loans. By mastering the art of repayment, you not only fulfill your current financial obligations but also set the stage for a more stable and secure financial future.

Demystifying Interest Rates: Understanding the True Cost of Payday Loans

While no-denial payday loans with direct lenders offer quick financial solutions, it’s essential to demystify the often-discussed topic of interest rates. Payday loans typically come with higher interest rates than traditional ones, and understanding how these rates work is crucial for informed decision-making.

The interest rate on a payday loan is the cost of borrowing and is usually expressed as an annual percentage rate (APR). It’s important to note that the APR for payday loans is often higher than that of traditional loans due to the short-term nature of these transactions. While the APR may seem significant, remember that payday loans are designed for short-term needs, and the actual cost can be more manageable when viewed in the context of the loan duration.

Simply put, the interest on a payday loan accumulates over a shorter period, resulting in a higher APR. Before securing a payday loan, carefully review the interest rates and ensure you are comfortable with the associated costs. Being informed about interest rates allows you to make decisions aligned with your financial goals and helps you avoid surprises when it comes time to repay the loan.

Building Financial Resilience: Beyond Payday Loans

No denial payday loans with direct lenders can be valuable in addressing immediate financial challenges, but building long-term financial resilience goes beyond quick fixes. Consider exploring additional strategies to strengthen your financial foundation and reduce reliance on payday loans.

Start by establishing an emergency fund. Having savings set aside for unexpected expenses can provide a safety net, reducing the need for immediate financial assistance. Even small, consistent contributions to your emergency fund can add up over time and provide a buffer against unforeseen circumstances.

Additionally, focus on improving your overall financial literacy. Understanding key financial concepts, such as budgeting, saving, and investing, empowers you to make informed decisions about your money. Many resources, including online courses, books, and financial advisors, can help you enhance your financial knowledge and make strides toward long-term financial well-being.

Building financial resilience also involves addressing the root causes of financial challenges. Evaluate your spending habits and look for opportunities to cut unnecessary expenses. Developing a proactive and sustainable approach to managing your finances can lead to greater stability and reduce the need for short-term financial solutions like payday loans.

Incorporating these strategies into your financial journey can contribute to a more resilient and secure financial future. While payday loans provide quick relief, the ultimate goal is to build a foundation that allows you to navigate financial challenges with confidence and stability.

On the Road to Financial Relief: Wrapping Up Your No Denial Payday Loan Journey

In conclusion, no denial payday loans with direct lenders offer a swift and accessible path to financial relief.

You can make the most of this financial tool by understanding the mechanics, appreciating the direct lender advantage, and navigating the terms wisely. When used responsibly, these loans can be your ally in overcoming unexpected financial bumps in the road. So, when you need quick funds, consider the fast lane of no denial payday loans with direct lenders. Your financial journey awaits!

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Guarding the Virtual Perimeter: Cyber Security Strategies Using Free Online Reverse Phone Searches

December 19, 2023

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, cyber security is paramount. One tool often overlooked in the arsenal of cyber defense strategies is the use of free online reverse phone searches. This technique can be a critical component in identifying and mitigating potential threats.

Utilizing this approach, organizations can transform a simple piece of information — a phone number — into a powerful security asset. This article delves into how reverse phone searches can bolster cyber security measures, offering insights into their practical applications, selection of appropriate tools, real-world case studies, and future trends.

Understanding Reverse Phone Searches

Reverse phone searches serve as a crucial investigative tool in the cyber security domain. By converting a phone number into a comprehensive profile, these searches enable security professionals to uncover the identity behind anonymous calls or texts.

This knowledge forms the foundation for assessing potential threats and implementing preventive measures. Whether it’s a suspicious number linked to phishing attempts or an unrecognized caller trying to access sensitive company data, understanding the mechanics and applications of reverse phone searches is fundamental in constructing an effective defense strategy.

What is a Reverse Phone Search?

A reverse phone search is a process where you input a phone number into a search engine or database to retrieve information about the owner of that number. This can include the person’s name, address, and other publicly available details.

How It Helps in Cyber Security

Identifying Unknown Contacts: Reverse phone searches can help identify unknown numbers that appear in company logs, helping to pinpoint potential scammers or hackers.
Verifying Identities: It ensures the authenticity of a person or organization claiming to be a particular entity, reducing the risk of phishing or social engineering attacks.

Advanced Applications in Cyber Security

Tracking Suspicious Activity: By monitoring unusual or repeated calls from the same number, organizations can detect patterns indicative of reconnaissance attempts by cybercriminals.
Enhancing Employee Awareness: Educating employees about the importance of reverse phone searches in identifying potential threats can be a simple yet effective way to strengthen an organization’s overall cyber security posture.

Free Online Reverse Phone Search Tools

Choosing and utilizing the right reverse phone search tool is vital in enhancing cyber security. With many free online resources available, it’s important to discern which tools offer the most reliable and accurate information. These tools assist in identifying potential threats and play a significant role in maintaining operational security. By integrating these tools into their security protocols, organizations can proactively address vulnerabilities, reinforcing their defense against cyber threats.

Selecting the Right Tool

Accuracy: The tool should have a proven track record of providing accurate and up-to-date information.
User Privacy: Ensure the tool respects user privacy and doesn’t misuse the searched data.
Ease of Use: It should have a user-friendly interface, enabling quick searches without requiring extensive technical knowledge.

Leveraging Free Tools Effectively

Integrating with Existing Security Protocols: These tools can be integrated into existing security measures, like employee training programs or security software, to provide an additional layer of defense.
Regular Audits and Updates: Regularly auditing the effectiveness of these tools and keeping them updated ensures that they remain a reliable resource in the cyber security toolkit.

For a deeper dive into executing effective reverse phone searches, consider reading this detailed guide on “The Best Ways to Conduct a Free Reverse Phone Lookup,” which provides step-by-step instructions and expert tips.

Case Studies and Success Stories

The practical applications of reverse phone searches in cyber security are best illustrated through real-world examples. Organizations can gain insights into effectively implementing these tools by analyzing case studies and success stories. These narratives highlight the successes and shed light on the challenges faced, offering a comprehensive understanding of how reverse phone searches can be leveraged in various scenarios to enhance security measures.

Real-World Applications

Preventing Data Breaches: Illustrate how a company successfully identified and stopped a phishing attempt by verifying the suspicious number through a reverse phone search, preventing a potential data breach.
Enhancing Customer Trust: Demonstrate how a business used reverse phone searches to validate customer information, enhancing trust and security in online transactions.

Lessons Learned

Best Practices: Outline the best practices learned from these case studies, such as the importance of prompt verification of suspicious numbers and integrating these searches into regular security assessments.
Avoiding Pitfalls: Highlight common mistakes to avoid, like over-reliance on this single tool or ignoring the importance of cross-verifying information obtained from reverse phone searches.

Future Trends and Developments

As the digital world advances, so do the methods and technologies used in cyber security. Reverse phone searches are evolving and becoming more sophisticated by integrating new technologies like AI and machine learning. Understanding these developments and their implications is crucial for avoiding emerging threats. By keeping abreast of these changes, organizations can adapt their strategies accordingly, ensuring their security measures remain robust and effective in the face of evolving cyber challenges.

Emerging Technologies and Their Impact

Artificial Intelligence in Reverse Phone Searches: Discuss how AI is integrated into reverse phone search tools to provide more accurate and context-aware results.
Data Privacy Concerns: Explore the evolving landscape of data privacy laws and how they might affect the use of reverse phone searches in cyber security.

Preparing for the Future

Adapting to New Threats: Emphasize the need for continuous adaptation and learning in the face of new and evolving cyber threats.
Integrating with Other Security Measures: Discuss how reverse phone searches can be part of a more comprehensive cyber security strategy.

Conclusion

In conclusion, free online reverse phone searches are an underutilized yet powerful tool in the realm of cyber security.

Their ability to unmask potential threats and validate identities makes them essential to any comprehensive security strategy. As technology advances, so will the capabilities of these tools, making them an indispensable asset in guarding the virtual perimeter against an ever-changing array of cyber threats.

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Securing Bytes: How Free Reverse Phone Lookups Can Enhance Your Cyber Security Arsenal

December 19, 2023

Welcome to the digital battlefield, where your business’s cybersecurity safeguards valuable information. In this article, we’ll explore how integrating free reverse phone lookups into your cybersecurity arsenal can provide an additional layer of defense. Businesses are increasingly relying on cyber security services to safeguard their digital assets from evolving threats. Cyber threats are ever-evolving, and staying ahead in the fight is essential to secure your bytes.

Proactive Defense: Leveraging Free Reverse Phone Lookups for Early Threat Detection

In cybersecurity, a proactive defense is your first line of protection. It’s like having a watchtower to spot potential threats before they breach your fortress. Free reverse phone lookups offer an early threat detection mechanism, allowing you to investigate and verify the authenticity of incoming communications before they become potential security risks.

Imagine receiving a call from an unknown number claiming to be a client or partner. With a free reverse phone lookup, you can quickly check the number’s legitimacy and identify any red flags associated with known scams or fraudulent activities. This proactive approach ensures that you can thwart potential threats immediately, preventing them from infiltrating your digital defenses.

By integrating free reverse phone lookups into your cybersecurity strategy, you’re not just reacting to threats as they occur; you’re actively identifying and neutralizing them before they pose a significant risk to your business. It’s like having a cyber guardian that scans the horizon for potential dangers, allowing you to stay one step ahead in the game.

Strengthening Access Controls: Verifying Identities for Secure Entry Points

Access controls are like the gates to your digital kingdom – securing them is essential to prevent unauthorized entry. Free reverse phone lookups act as your virtual gatekeeper, verifying the identities associated with phone numbers trying to gain access to your business. You fortify your defenses against unauthorized or potentially malicious entities by strengthening access controls.

Consider scenarios where sensitive information is shared through phone conversations or text messages. With free reverse phone lookups, you can ensure that the individuals on the other end are who they claim to be. This verification process adds a layer of security to your communication channels, reducing the risk of falling victim to impersonation or social engineering attacks.

Strengthening access controls through free reverse phone lookups is akin to adding additional locks to your digital doors. It’s not about restricting legitimate access; it’s about ensuring that only verified and authorized individuals can enter, protecting your business from potential security breaches.

Deep Dive into Digital Threats: Unraveling the Complexities of Cybersecurity Challenges

In cybersecurity, understanding the intricacies of digital threats is essential for developing effective defense strategies. It’s like embarking on a deep-sea exploration – the more you comprehend the underwater terrain, the better equipped you are to navigate potential dangers. Let’s dive deep into digital threats, unraveling the complexities businesses face in safeguarding their valuable assets.

Digital threats come in various forms, from malware and phishing attacks to sophisticated hacking attempts. Each threat has unique challenges, requiring businesses to stay informed and adaptive. Consider malware as a silent predator, infiltrating systems undetected, while phishing attacks act like deceptive sirens, luring unsuspecting individuals into divulging sensitive information.

Understanding the motivations behind digital threats is crucial. Some threats aim for financial gain, while others target sensitive data for espionage or disruption. By delving into the motivations and methods employed by cyber adversaries, businesses can tailor their cybersecurity measures to mitigate specific risks effectively.

The landscape of digital threats is continually evolving, with cybercriminals adopting new tactics and technologies.

Businesses must stay ahead of the curve by investing in cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions and fostering a culture of cybersecurity awareness among employees. Just as deep-sea explorers rely on advanced equipment to navigate uncharted waters, businesses need advanced tools and knowledge to navigate the ever-changing landscape of digital threats.

Adaptive Defense Strategies: Navigating the Dynamic Terrain of Cybersecurity

In the dynamic terrain of cybersecurity, adopting adaptive defense strategies is akin to being a skilled pilot navigating through turbulent skies. Cyber threats are not static; they evolve, adapt, and find new vulnerabilities to exploit. To effectively safeguard your business, you must employ defense strategies that are equally dynamic and responsive to the evolving threat landscape.

Traditional cybersecurity measures often focus on building strong perimeter defenses. While these are crucial, relying solely on perimeter defenses is like fortifying the castle walls without considering potential infiltration from within. Adaptive defense strategies recognize the importance of a multi-layered approach, incorporating continuous monitoring, threat intelligence, and incident response.

Continuous monitoring is your cybersecurity radar, providing real-time insights into potential threats. It’s like having a vigilant lookout, scanning the horizon for any signs of danger. By proactively identifying and addressing security incidents as they occur, businesses can significantly reduce the impact of cyber threats.

Threat intelligence is the equivalent of having a comprehensive map of the digital battlefield. It provides valuable information about emerging threats, tactics used by cyber adversaries, and vulnerabilities that may be exploited. With this intelligence, businesses can decide where to reinforce their defenses and allocate resources effectively.

Incident response is your cybersecurity emergency protocol. It’s like having a well-rehearsed disaster recovery plan in case of unforeseen events. With a structured and efficient incident response plan, businesses can minimize the damage caused by cyber incidents, swiftly contain threats, and return to normal operations with minimal disruption.

Human Element in Cybersecurity: Empowering Your Team as the First Line of Defense

Recognizing the human element as the first line of defense in the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape is paramount. It’s like acknowledging that your team is the crew steering the ship through digital waters. While advanced technologies play a crucial role, empowering your team with cybersecurity awareness and training is a proactive step towards building a resilient defense against cyber threats.

Imagine cybersecurity awareness as the navigation skills of your crew. Just as sailors must be adept at reading the stars and understanding navigation charts, employees must be educated on identifying potential security risks. Regular cybersecurity training sessions ensure that your team is equipped with the knowledge to recognize phishing attempts, avoid social engineering tactics, and adhere to secure online practices.

The human element also extends to cultivating a culture of cybersecurity within your organization. It’s like fostering a sense of collective responsibility among your crew members to maintain the ship’s integrity. Encouraging employees to be vigilant, report suspicious activities, and adhere to cybersecurity policies creates a united front against potential threats.

Additionally, recognizing that mistakes can happen is part of the human element. Cybersecurity incidents sometimes result from unintentional actions. By establishing a non-punitive reporting culture where employees feel comfortable reporting mistakes or potential security concerns, businesses can address issues promptly and implement corrective measures to prevent similar incidents.

As businesses navigate the complex seas of cybersecurity, the human element is the compass guiding the ship through potential dangers. Empowering your team with knowledge, fostering a culture of cybersecurity, and acknowledging the crucial role employees play in the defense strategy are key components of building a resilient cybersecurity framework.

Building Trustworthy Networks: Establishing Secure Business Relationships

In the digital landscape, building trustworthy networks is akin to forging alliances in the business world. Free reverse phone lookups contribute to the establishment of secure and trustworthy connections by validating the identities of those with whom you interact. As you expand your business relationships, ensuring the authenticity of your contacts becomes paramount.

Imagine reaching out to potential clients or partners. Before engaging in business discussions, you can use free reverse phone lookups to confirm the legitimacy of their contact information. This due diligence not only safeguards your business from potential scams but also fosters a sense of trust and security in your professional relationships.

Building trustworthy networks is like constructing a bridge – a solid foundation ensures a secure connection. You’re laying the groundwork for reliable and authentic business relationships by incorporating free reverse phone lookups into your networking practices. It’s not just about securing your bytes; it’s about creating a network of trust that strengthens your business’s overall resilience.

Empower Your Cybersecurity Strategy

By adopting a proactive defense, strengthening access controls, and building trustworthy networks, you’re confidently empowering your business to navigate the digital landscape.

As you continue to fortify your cybersecurity strategy, remember to check this article out for additional tips and strategies to stay ahead in the ongoing battle to secure your bytes. Stay vigilant, stay secure, and forge a path toward a digitally resilient business environment.

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Here’s Why the Next Casino Revolution is in the Metaverse

December 19, 2023

The Metaverse has been a hot topic for the past three years because of all the possibilities that it allows. One of the major factors that makes it so trending is who was interested in the technology in the first place. Besides Facebook’s rebranding to Meta, the more interesting developments are casino operators’ keen interest in it.

That is why the emergence of Metaverse casinos is among the top projects on platforms like Decentraland and Sandbox. They are the biggest investors in this space and their projects and this will be reflected in the structure of their virtual reality (VR) casinos. Why are they bringing casino gaming to the Metaverse? Here are five reasons that answer that question:

Immersive roamable world to emulate the casino experience

The main appeal of online casinos is how they make games accessible to gamblers who have no time to visit a gambling house. However, this service is limited because two of the best aspects of a brick-and-mortar casino are the ambience and social environment. A Metaverse casino is the perfect way to make this happen.

Casinos aim to use the Metaverse technology to bring gambling to new heights in terms of both player experience and immersion. They use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to build a virtual gambling house with a functional lounge and table games. Players’ avatar exploring Decentraland and Sandbox are free to enter and play together.

Access to various Web3 apps to promote a DeFi economy

The world is now slowly moving towards decentralised finance (DeFi) as more industries implement support for crypto payment. It’s more secure, reliable, and cost-effective than modern banking, making it ideal for both users and business owners alike. Implementing Web3 features to businesses is one thing but taking the industry to the blockchain is even better.

Thus, Metaverse gambling is a much safer and convenient way for gamblers to use crypto when betting. Wallets are already integrated into the app so deposits and withdrawals using services like MetaMask is an easy process for anyone to follow. You won’t need to use credit cards or provide personal information to third-party providers, maintaining your anonymity.

Variety of valuable assets gamblers can invest in

The games are not the only aspects of the Metaverse gamblers are going to enjoy. There will be a large variety of stores from all kinds of creators to look forward to. Find them gathering at plazas or holding auctions for all kinds of NFTs. Some can even be upstart artists and your investment will help fund their way to stardom.

Capacity to scale with an ever-growing number of people

The technology to host a VR casino world can be done outside of the Metaverse. However, this is reliant on the capacity of servers that the casino needs to pay for to support large traffic. It’s possible but it’s a risky investment because daily traffic is hard to guarantee.

The Metaverse, on the other hand, is built on a scalable blockchain supported by various nodes. This means that the casino doesn’t have to spend a cent to maintain it except if they become stakeholders on the blockchain. Plus, the Metaverse has almost guaranteed traffic because of other attractions that players can interact with if they need a break from gambling.

Platform to host grand events where gamblers can be included

Gambling isn’t the only form of entertainment that the Metaverse can provide accessibility to. Artists’ hosting concerts is another one that can benefit from it. Many people can’t go to live concerts because ticket prices are high and the venue can be out of town or country. If they’re in the Metaverse, then everyone can participate either for free or at a cheaper cost.

The best Metaverse casino can fund these types of events for their players. They can fund concerts and offer invitations to their VIPs as part of their exclusive rewards program while also helping artists expand their platform. That is the beauty of collaborative projects and the Metaverse makes that easier for everyone involved.

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Maximizing Rewards: Smart Strategies for Credit Card Use

December 19, 2023

Gold Visa — *Photo by Pixabay on Pexels*

Credit cards, in the realm of modern finance, are not just plastic conveniences but potent vehicles for reaping rewards. At the heart of this ecosystem lie credit card processing fees, a subtle yet significant factor borne by merchants, which intricately influences the rewards system.

Recognizing and navigating this aspect elevates the use of credit cards from simple transactions to strategic financial planning. In this exploration, we’ll unveil how adept credit card management can lead to impressive rewards, bolstering your financial health and savvy.

Decoding Credit Card Rewards

Understanding the reward landscape is the first step. Credit cards typically offer three types of rewards: cashback, points and travel miles. Cashback cards return a portion of spending in cash, while points and travel miles accumulate rewards redeemable for various perks, including flights and hotel stays.

The right card aligns with personal spending habits and lifestyle preferences. For globe-trotters, a card offering travel miles is a fitting choice. In contrast, if you’re looking for a versatile option, the best cashback credit card can provide excellent value by offering returns on everyday purchases. However, it’s crucial to understand the specifics of these rewards, like expiration dates and redemption criteria, to leverage their potential fully.

Cultivating Wise Spending Habits

The essence of maximizing rewards lies in judicious spending. Using a credit card for everyday expenses like groceries and fuel can accrue significant rewards. However, spending within means is vital, avoiding the trap where the pursuit of rewards leads to imprudent expenditure.

Credit cards often include extra perks, such as extended warranties and travel insurance. Leveraging these benefits, especially for major purchases, can yield considerable savings and security.

Navigating Balances and Payments

Timely payments are the cornerstone of credit card management. Consistent, punctual bill payment avoids hefty interest charges and bolsters credit scores, unlocking more favorable financial opportunities in the future.

Effective management involves a budget to track monthly spending and card use, ensuring the balance is within repayment capacity. Carrying a balance can incur interest, quickly diminishing the value of any reward.

Understanding and managing interest rates is also crucial. High rates can negate reward benefits. Prioritizing repayment of high-interest credit cards or transferring balances to lower-interest options can be wise moves.

Exploring Advanced Techniques

For the more adventurous, there are advanced strategies to boost rewards further. Card churning, the approach of opening and closing cards to maximize bonuses, can be lucrative but risky, potentially impacting credit scores. Category maximization involves using different cards for specific spending categories to earn higher rewards. Additionally, combining cards from the same issuer can amplify rewards, as some cards offer complementary benefits.

While these strategies can be rewarding, they demand careful planning and awareness of pitfalls like annual fees and the impact of multiple inquiries on credit health. Staying abreast of changes in policies and reward programs is crucial. Issuers often update offerings, so regular reviews of credit card portfolios ensure alignment with financial goals and spending habits.

Leveraging Technology for Credit Card Management

Harnessing digital technology is a smart move in mastering credit card use. Personal finance apps and online banking platforms offer a dashboard view of your spending, allowing you to track expenses with ease and accuracy. This immediate access to financial data is crucial for staying on budget and maximizing your card’s reward potential. Automated payment setups through these digital tools safeguard against late fees, thus protecting your credit score.

Additionally, these platforms often provide insights into spending trends, enabling you to pinpoint where rewards can be maximized. Keeping up with your card’s app also keeps you informed about new offers and shifts in reward schemes. Integrating these technological solutions transforms routine expenses into strategic financial maneuvers, ensuring your credit card works effectively.

Concluding Thoughts

Mastering credit card use is more than averting debt; it’s about extracting maximum value from the rewards and benefits. Understanding reward types, maintaining intelligent spending habits and balancing reward pursuit with financial prudence is vital.

Advanced tactics like card churning and category maximization can elevate rewards but require careful thought and discipline. Keeping informed about the ever-evolving credit card scene ensures that your cards continue to serve your financial interests.

By embracing these strategies, you can unlock the full potential of your cards, reaping financial benefits while fostering a healthy economic lifestyle. Successful credit card management is a blend of astute usage and fiscal discipline. This blend can lead to significant rewards and long-term financial well-being.

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Avoiding Costly Mistakes in Investor Relations

December 19, 2023

By Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

Raising funding is no easy feat, especially for first-time founders. You need a solid business plan, traction to demonstrate market fit, and the skills to pitch effectively. Yet founders often trip up when it comes to investor relations – the ongoing communication and relationship building after that first check clears.

“We’ve seen companies make mistakes managing investors that have cost them dearly down the line,” said Michael Mohammadi, CEO and co-founder of StormX, an investor relations platform. I sat down with Mohammadi and his co-founder Eduardo Fonnegra to get their tips on avoiding common investor relation pitfalls.

Don’t Get Caught Up in Short-Term Fundraising

It’s tempting to focus on immediate fundraising needs without considering the long-term ramifications of taking on certain investors. “A lot of founders get caught up in just meeting the first couple of investors who can give them money,” said Mohammadi. However, not all money is created equal.

The wrong investor partner can hurt you down the road, especially if their priorities end up misaligned with the direction you want to take the company. Make sure to evaluate investors thoroughly, not just based on the size of their check, but whether they’ll be able to provide strategic advice and introductions that support your vision. With the right investor relationships, fundraising becomes a byproduct of building something great.

This tendency to prioritise short-term gains over long-term success is an example of the cognitive bias known as loss aversion. Founders are so anxious to avoid the pain of missing payroll or running out of cash in the near term that they make hasty decisions on investors that cost them later. Being aware of this bias can help founders take a balanced perspective.

Don’t Neglect Ongoing Investor Relations

You’ve finally gotten that first investment. Time to get back to product development, right? Not so fast. Investor relations require ongoing nurturing, not just during capital raises.

“A lot of startup founders think that the only way investors will respond favorably is if they provide their best pitch on first contact,” said Mohammadi. Unfortunately, this Shark Tank-style approach often backfires. Don’t think of investor communication as a one-and-done sales job. The goal is to establish authentic relationships based on mutual understanding.

By keeping your investors engaged and informed, you build crucial trust and support for when you eventually need to raise capital again.

Schedule regular investor updates through calls and newsletters. Seek investor advice to strengthen your business model. And involve them in important strategic decisions as valued partners. By keeping your investors engaged and informed, you build crucial trust and support for when you eventually need to raise capital again.

Here, founders can fall prey to confirmation bias – a cognitive bias that involves seeking out information that validates their existing perspective while ignoring contradictory evidence. After landing an initial investment, founders feel confirmed that their model and pitch worked. Yet neglecting ongoing investor relations undermines long-term success. Being cognisant of this bias is key.

Hone Your Messaging for Changing Markets

Markets are fickle beasts. Economic fluctuations – whether upswings or downturns – impact the types of companies investors are willing to fund. During periods of uncertainty, it’s especially critical to tailor your messaging and positioning.

“When markets get rough, founders need to reevaluate their business model and value proposition,” said Mohammadi. Demonstrate how you’re building an enduring company, not just riding a trend. Highlight how your product solves real customer pain points.

While some investors get skittish in downturns, money continues flowing into promising startups across sectors. “VCs are always looking to invest in the next revolutionary, innovative project,” said Fonnegra. Rather than following perceived “hot” areas, stick to your vision. With clear and targeted messaging, you can get funding even in tricky times.

Fix Operational Weak Spots before Fundraising

The strength of your operations will directly impact fundraising success. “We want to see companies have all their positioning in order before connecting them with investors,” said Mohammadi.

Yet some founders rush into pitching before getting their house in order. Have your pitch deck, financials, KPI dashboards, and other materials ready for investor scrutiny. Build up marketing and sales to demonstrate traction.

Have your pitch deck, financials, KPI dashboards, and other materials ready for investor scrutiny.

Work on any weak spots in your team roster or business processes, and show scalability. The more you button up operations on the frontend, the easier fundraising becomes on the backend. Investors want to put money into startups primed for growth.

Don’t Just Focus on Fundraising

At the end of the day, fundraising is not the end goal. It’s a means to grow your business. “Too many founders focus on pitching, pitching, pitching. They need to spend more time on actual relationship building,” Mohammadi emphasised.

Rather than getting fixated on closes, think about how you can forge durable relationships with investors. Successful investor relations depend on cultivating a network that supports you during good times and bad.

Even if an investor passes, stay in touch. They may connect you with others or come back around in the future. With strong relationships, fundraising takes care of itself.

Pick Investors Who Truly Understand You

Successful investor relations depend on cultivating a network that supports you during good times and bad.

Not all investors are created equal. Beyond just capital, you want backers who grasp your vision and can provide strategic guidance. Vet potential investors thoroughly, just as they’ll be vetting you. Look for overlaps in values, priorities, and working styles. Seek warm introductions from other founders and advisors to find the best fits.

Taking the time to choose compatible investors reduces friction down the line. With investors who share your mindset and interests, you don’t have to worry about pushing your company in directions that don’t feel right.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Community

Investor relations are undergoing a shift from a VC-centric model to community-driven funding. “I think crowdfunding and blockchain will revolutionise startup investing,” said Mohammadi.

Platforms like Republic and Wefunder make it easier than ever for founders to connect directly with customers, fans and smaller-dollar investors rather than relying solely on institutional capital.

Build an engaged community that wants to invest in your success. Share progress transparently, solicit input and reward loyalty. A grassroots investor base will provide funding as well as invaluable feedback to hone your product-market fit.

Embrace Investor Relations as an Ongoing Journey

The companies with the strongest investor ties don’t view fundraising as a one-off event. They embed communication with investors as an integral ongoing component of operations. Making investor relations a habit avoids scrambling to reactively raise capital and build rapport when your back is against the wall.

Successful investor relationships are earned over time through consistent outreach and alignment on values.

Successful investor relationships are earned over time through consistent outreach and alignment on values. Maintain these connections during funding downtimes so they’re primed to move when it counts. With disciplined nurturing of your investor network, you’ll be fundraising-ready no matter what the markets throw at you.

Conclusion

The tips above, synthesised from my in-depth conversation with StormX’s founders, provide actionable best practices to build investor relationships that fuel sustainable startup success. Avoiding missteps like focusing on short-term fundraising, neglecting ongoing communication, and not addressing operational weaknesses beforehand will pay dividends as your company matures. Investor relations are challenging but immensely rewarding when done right. With commitment and savvy relationship skills, you can secure the backing to turn your vision into reality.

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About the Author

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky helps leaders use hybrid work to improve retention and productivity while cutting costs. He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. He is the best-selling author of 7 books, including the global best-sellers Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters and The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships. His newest book is Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage. His cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 650 articles and 550 interviews in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Inc. Magazine, USA Today, CBS News, Fox News, Time, Business Insider, Fortune, and elsewhere. His writing was translated into Chinese, Korean, German, Russian, Polish, Spanish, French, and other languages. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, and speaking and training for Fortune 500 companies from Aflac to Xerox, and over 15 years in academia as a behavioural scientist at UNC-Chapel Hill and Ohio State. A proud Ukrainian American, Dr Gleb lives in Columbus, Ohio.

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