‘Thousands of envelopes with cash’

Recently: Is Iran behind the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia? Alex Vatanka on why the Islamic Republic’s allies don’t always do as they’re told.

Today: In Israel, the claim of a stolen election could decide who governs, and the security service has a week to look into suspected foreign interference. … &c.

Feature: Why is life so hectic? William E. Scheuerman on how high-speed society makes strongmen appealing—and why they can’t really deliver. (Open-access, in partnership with the Marlborough House Foundation.)

For members: Why is invading another country such a hard thing to prosecute? Lawrence Douglas’s new book, The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice.

+ New music from The Nightclubs …

Global

Nineteen seats

On Tuesday in Umm al-Fahm, in northern Israel, 75.7 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, against 38.3 percent in 2022. That night in Nazareth, another Arab city, at a party for the Joint List, an alliance of Arab-led parties, supporters chanted “Go away Ben Gvir” in Arabic—meaning Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister. By Thursday evening, with every vote counted, the Joint List and Ra’am, a separate Arab-led party, had a record 19 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc had 53, eight short of a majority. The opposition bloc of Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief, had 48; with those 19 seats, it would have 67, but before the vote, Eisenkot promised not to govern with Ra’am or the Joint List. Since then, he’s reportedly signaled that he’s open to working with them, on conditions. Earlier on Thursday, Netanyahu had posted his party’s statement on X: “They stole the election in Israel!”

The case so far

Stolen how? Netanyahu’s party, Likud, calls the affair “Ra’amgate,” warns of a “foreign takeover of the Knesset,” and says it’s handed police evidence of “thousands of envelopes with cash.” A police source says there’s “no investigative- or intelligence-based supporting evidence” for the theft claim. Police have arrested seven Ra’am activists on suspicion of bribing voters; the party’s leader, Mansour Abbas, says Ra’am has “no connection whatsoever” to the alleged scheme. Noam Sohlberg, the Supreme Court justice who chairs Israel’s Central Elections Committee, has asked the Shin Bet, the internal security service, to look into “serious suspicions” of foreign funding and report within the week. It’s not yet known whether the arrests connect to that inquiry. President Isaac Herzog wants offenders punished “to the fullest extent of the law” but says, “We must avoid tarnishing an entire community.”

‘Throw the bums out’

Here in The Signal, Lucan Way says people in democracies are “very committed to democracy,” though “they don’t necessarily like its liberal elements, particularly when it comes to minority rights. But they do like the power to ‘throw the bums out.’” Way was speaking in January 2023, after supporters of Brazil’s defeated president, Jair Bolsonaro, stormed government buildings in Brasília over a vote he called fraudulent. Of parties that say an election was stolen, Way says, “Sometimes, in fairness, these claims have been true; oftentimes, they haven’t.” … See “Import-export.”

Before the runoff

On December 4, 2024, Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, declassified intelligence files alleging a Russian-run campaign on TikTok and Telegram for Călin Georgescu, the far-right front-runner in the presidential election. Two days later, the Constitutional Court annulled the first round, and the ruling stopped runoff voting at 951 polling stations abroad. Two weeks later, Snoop, a Romanian investigative site, reported tax-agency findings that the center-right National Liberal Party had paid for a TikTok campaign that ended up promoting Georgescu. In February 2025, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance said Romania had canceled its election on “the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency.” Later that month, prosecutors opened a case against Georgescu that includes false declarations about his campaign’s financing. In March, the election authority barred him from the rerun, and in May, Romanians voted again.

Meanwhile

In Spain, a high-speed train runs into a stopped one near Urda, killing 69; the transport minister calls a controller’s order to resume after a signaling failure “inexplicable,” and unions dispute his talk of human error. … The Trump administration reportedly tells Gulf governments to prepare for a short, intense campaign against Iran after the midterms. … Jair Bolsonaro’s son Flávio Bolsonaro, who lost Brazil’s runoff, lands in Miami and calls himself the “leader of Brazil” (see “Early congratulations”). … The United Nations General Assembly condemns the U.S. embargo on Cuba, with 130 countries in favor, down from 165 last year. … & Astronomers at Chile’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory spot what may be a new dwarf planet beyond Pluto.

Thoughts? concierge@thesgnl.com.

Feature

Ingenious clockwork

Why is life so hectic? William E. Scheuerman on how high-speed society makes strongmen appealing—and why they can’t really deliver.

Do you feel like you’re always rushing to keep up with what you should have finished last week? As if life is hurtling forward at a terrific pace? You’d not be alone. Everyone, it seems, is busy. In fact, this feeling is so widespread that there’s now a growing scientific literature on the health effects of “time scarcity.”

Digital media has made people “used to instant gratification,” Sara Robin says here in The Signal, and if there’s ever a slight moment of boredom, “you can reach for your phone.” You no longer have to live life in first or second gear. As Gloria Mark explores, people’s attention spans on screens have fallen from roughly two and a half minutes in 2004 to 75 seconds in 2012 and to about 48 seconds today.

This isn’t good for political life, Robin says. Today’s challenges require humanity “to come together to work out solutions to problems we’ve never faced before—climate change, building a society where robots do most of the work. All of that will require energy and cooperation. We’re underequipped.”

And the pace of politics itself keeps getting faster. U.S. President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon made a tactic of it, which he called “flooding the zone”: Pump out one provocation after another into the news cycle so that no one can recall last week’s scandal.

What’s all this doing to democracy?

… courtesy of the Marlborough House Foundation.

From the despatch

‘Accumulated evil’

Why is invading another country such a hard thing to prosecute? Lawrence Douglas’s new book, The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice.

On October 9, the United States unveiled new sanctions on the International Criminal Court, among them a ban on transactions between the court and U.S. citizens and companies. The Trump administration objects to the court’s investigation of Americans and to its arrest warrants against two Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC.”

The ICC is also seeking the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for forcibly deporting Ukrainian children—a war crime. Putin is, in other words, charged for how he has conducted the war. But he’s not charged with the crime of starting it.

Why?

Music

‘CD-R’

Sophie Soraya and Hermie Hemlock, a Berlin duo who go by The Nightclubs, make synth-pop out of the bleeps of old video-game consoles …