Estranged bedfellows: Israel’s government collapses

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence. In New York, I'm John Fassman.

And in London, I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

It's not news that cities compete for talent. Traditionally, they've done this by inducing companies to move there and trusting that the professionals will follow. But some American towns have cut out the middleman by paying people to move.

And one of the best ways to tap into both the mental and the physical well being that music brings is drumming. It's particularly helpful for children who have emotional and behavioral difficulties. And new brain scanning research hints at why. But first, Israel is once again on the path to a general election, the fifth in less than four years. Last night, in a televised address, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced his intention to dissolve the parliament, bringing an end to his short stint as leader. He made the statement jointly with his coalition partner and soon to be caretaker, Prime Minister Yair Lapid. Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasted no time in suggesting he could bring unity where the ruling coalition had failed. It's a return to political jockeying and uncertainty that many Israelis had hoped they'd left behind.

So just a week after this government marked its first anniversary in office, it imploded with its two leaders. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the alternate Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, acknowledging that they can't keep their non majority coalition together.

Anshel Pfeffer is the Economist's Israel correspondent.

They've agreed to go for another election and meanwhile, Lapid will become the new Prime Minister. He'll replace Bennett as part of the coalition agreement between them. And the elections are to be hold around October. This is Israel's fifth election in the space of under four years. So basically, Israel's back to the political paralysis that it was for most of 2019-2021.

And so how did we get here? How did the coalition come together and then ultimately come apart?

So the coalition to begin with was almost unbelievable, certainly unprecedented. It was the coalition of eight rather small, very disparate, very diverse parties, ranging from the nationalist right to the left, and including, for the first time in Israeli history, an Arab Islamist. So this coalition really had one raison d', etre, and that was to end the longer reign of Benjamin Netanyahu. And they achieved that, but they could achieve very little else. They managed to pass a state budget, but beyond that, they couldn't really pass any major legislation. And the contradictions within the coalition were just too much. They couldn't hold onto the majority. Right wing members defected to the opposition, left wing members refused to vote for various national legislation, and ultimately it just couldn't hold.

But what is the inciting incident that made it come apart this week?

So it wasn't one incident this week, it was an accumulation of things. But really it began with losing the majority over two months ago when one of the right wing members defected, citing the Jewish character of the Israeli state that was at risk. And therefore she couldn't remain in the coalition. Without the majority, then it was pretty clear that the next controversial piece of legislation would become the obstacle on which the government would probably founder. In this case, it was a routine renewal of the Israeli laws and regulations in the occupied West Bank. And that was something that many Arab, Palestinian, Israeli Knesset members couldn't vote for. And they didn't. And that was really what pushed more right wing members of the coalition to the exit.

And we know that Mr. Netanyahu is clearly going to run again, but what was his role in the coalition collapsing?

Well, this coalition, which was supposed to end Netanyahu's reign, did succeed in moving him from the Prime Minister's office to the office of the Leader of the opposition, but it didn't remove him from the political scene. And he certainly remained throughout this year very active in trying to bring the government down both in presenting his alternative for a more national and more Jewish government, and also by cajoling and by undermining individual members of the coalition to defect to his bloc of parties. And it took him a year, but he seems to have been successful now. And now he's in a pretty good position going into this next election.

So what happens next? You say for the moment, Israel gets a new prime minister, and then heading toward an election.

So the Knesset still has to dissolve itself. The vote is expected to pass either this Wednesday or sometime next week. That's almost inevitable. The moment that vote passes, there'll be rotation between the prime minister and the alternate prime minister. Nyer Lapid will become the new interim prime minister until a new government is formed after the election, putting him in.

The same position that Mr. Netanyahu was in through four elections, though this might not be very short term at all.

Exactly. So it's important to note that the interim prime minister could be an interim prime minister for a very long time. Lapid certainly is getting an advantage by going into the election as serving prime minister. And this is very important for him as someone who's never been prime minister is not seen by all Israelis as someone with the stature and the gravitas of a prime minister. It'll be very useful for him to be seen over the next few months as the serving prime minister. Joe Biden is coming to Israel. In a few weeks, it'll be Prime Minister Lapid greeting him and taking him around the country. So that will be very good for his image. As we've seen in the last three or four years, being interim prime minister until a new prime minister is appointed by a stable full majority in the Knesset is something that could go on for a very long time. And Lapid is now in the seat, so that for him is a plus.

And so how do you think that election campaign will go? What reshuffling will we see?

Well, the first question is, will the same parties in this Knesset run in the next election? Especially a question for the current coalition of eight rather small parties. Some of them, I expect, will merge with others to improve their chances in the next election. If they don't, then they run the risk of falling, falling below the electoral threshold of 3.25% of the vote. And in that case, basically, their votes are lost and reallocated. So that's an advantage for the Netanyahu bloc, which is made up of only four parties, all of which will probably pass the threshold and therefore not at risk. So the real Question is, can the anti Netanyahu bloc get their act together, merge some of their parties, and somehow have some kind of agreement signed agreement between them not to fight each other and push one another under the threshold, thereby by jeopardizing their majority in the next Knesset?

And in terms of new coalitions that may be formed, what was notable about this most recent government was that, as you said, it contained an Arab party. How do you think that will play out? How has it gone as an experiment?

Well, I think it'll be a major issue in the coming election. Netanyahu is already attacking the government and his rivals in the upcoming election for having sat in government with an Arab party who he calls terror supporters, accusing them of being the Muslim Brotherhood and so on. So he's going to try and use that to hammer them. I think they will try and say that this was an experiment that worked. The fact that the government did function for an entire year and there was a partnership here, an unlikely partnership, and it's certainly the most important thing to say about this government, that it did exist for an entire year with a very unlikely makeup. And it may not be a very long time in politics, but actually in Israeli coalitions it is.

But nevertheless, it has looked for years now like it's very difficult for someone to get or at least to hang on to power in Israeli politics. Why do you suppose that is?

Well, there's no question that Israeli politics is in a very long period of dysfunctionality. And that's partly to do with Benjamin Netanyahu himself. The fact that despite facing multiple corruption charges, despite having failed to win four elections consecutively, he's still there leading Likut. He still has the support of a very large part of the Israeli public, nearly half, according to the polls. That is something which in itself is polarizing the Israeli public and making it very difficult to build any kind of coherent coalition, because there are people who would be sitting together with Likud, with Netanyahu's party, if it wasn't for his leadership. That's one of the major reasons for dysfunctionality, the other reason the Israeli public really is. But not just over Netanyahu, but over core issues of state and religion, over the future of the Israel Palestine conflict. And then there's the question of the participation of the Arab public in the Israeli election. They do vote. They are 21% of the population. But until this government, they weren't part of any ruling coalition. And if they were to become legitimate players in any future government calculations, that would change the landscape. And until that does happen, I think this dysfunctionality will continue.

Anshul, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you for having me, Jason. It was a pleasure.

The Hotel Maytag is five stories tall, built of brick and beautifully chiseled stone. A solid square block in every direction. It sits right in the middle of downtown Newton, Iowa, opposite the courthouse. Fred Maytag, the scion of a prominent local family whose name adorned generations of American washers and dryers, built it in 1926. Locals like to say it was the first hotel west of the Mississippi to have air conditioning. These days, it still brings a touch of glamour to the town.

And now it hosts our wine bar here in our community. And it's the first time we've had a wine bar in the city of Newton just dedicated to that. They have small plate offerings rather than.

Mike Hanson is the mayor of Newton, and he recently showed me around. It didn't take that long. Newton's a pretty small town.

This has been First Newton national bank forever.

I was gonna say this is a bank building if I've ever seen one.

Yeah, forever.

Like the Hotel Maytag, the bank building is a throwback to a time before prefabrication, when skilled masons chip buildings out of stone and weren't afraid to show a little flair. Mayor Hanson, predictably, but also understandably, is really proud of his town.

I'm able to brag that we've been able to enjoy our hometown rural town pleasantries. Here in Newton. We are a very safe community. Our crime rate is. We're fortunate enough to have a crime rate.

That Newton has a wine bar in a cheery downtown is a bit of a surprise. Newton faced a lot of the challenges that other small rural towns face. In 2007, the Maytag Company, which was a leading employer, closed its factory there. Three years later, 60 Minutes, an American news program, visited. Since the recession, we've seen a lot.

Of troubled towns in the country, but nothing that looks quite as broken as new.

Even the local chapter of the Optimist.

Club has closed in 2011. Do you know how many construction starts we had here in the city of Newton?

How many?

Zero.

Oh, wow.

Yes, that's a problem. Everybody in the construction business and in the development business was riding Newton off as a dead horse. But we proved them wrong.

Because with more than 15,000 people, Newton now has its largest ever population. One thing the city did to grow its population, it paid people to move there. Since 2014, if you buy or build a new house in Newton, the town will give you $10,000, cash to spend as you wish.

We now have built over 100 homes, 103, 104, I think some $26 million in additional taxable value.

Craig Armstrong works for the city of Newton. He helped design the policy.

The concept was, let's provide an incentive of some sort that will be sufficient enough to engender new home construction and or new custom homes that people would want to come buy a piece of land and then build a home. My opinion was that cash is king. If you want to get somebody to do something, dangle a little cash in front of them and make it significant enough to make it make a difference, you know, a few hundred bucks isn't going to do it.

It was one of a package of measures for redevelopment, including tearing down dilapidated buildings and making that town square look refreshed. But out of that package, paying people to move got the most headlines and has been widely emulated.

So we went to college after high school, lived in Des Moines for about three and a half years. We really didn't have any plans on coming.

Dakota Hills received one of the grants. He and his wife are just the kind of people it's designed to lure. They're young professionals who grew up in Newton but had left.

That wasn't necessarily because we don't like Newton. We love Newton. It's a good small town, great community. It was just we didn't have plans because we both were working in Des Moines.

Even when they both got jobs in town, they thought about living elsewhere and commuting. But the money made the choice easy.

So for us, it just made sense to use it towards the construction, building, down payment of the house. Because I think the whole incentive for us is it gave us kind of that flexibility to even build a home, which we didn't really think was possible before. Just to have $10,000 added in. That process was kind of, I think, the final push or piece.

It's not just Newton that's opening its wallet for movers. The Shoals in northwest Alabama will pay remote workers $10,000 to move there. Southwest Michigan will give people up to $15,000 toward a mortgage. And Tulsa, Oklahoma, offers $10,000 over the course of a year.

Cities have been competing with each other since the beginning of time to try to attract and retain residents. So this is a new flavor on a very old game.

Brett Theodos directs the Community Economic Development Hub and is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. His work focuses on affordable home ownership and neighborhood change.

We don't have any evidence that they work. They haven't been used at such a scale as to really make a difference. If you think about it like this, the incentives are actually fairly modest in size. They might cover closing costs. They might cover moving expenses. They're not big enough to be an ongoing subsidy that would attract people to a place simply for that reason.

Newton, as Craig Armstrong noted earlier, has doled out 100 grants. Tulsa has given 1,700 in a city of 400,000.

The fundamentals of what a city offers are far and above more important than any incentive program. And those are the basics that have always mattered and will always matter. What's the climate? What's the cost of living? What's the quality of schools? What is crime like?

And setting aside the grants, Newton really does have a host of advantages that other cities don't. It's in commuting distance of Des Moines, Iowa's capital. It's just off the highway, and it has the Iowa Speedway racetrack bringing tourists in. Still, Mayor Hanson likes the policy, and so do the residents of Newton.

It's no different than we invest in our own personal assets and what have you. If we're not willing to invest in ourselves, who's going to do that? And so we have been able to convey that message to our citizens here, and for the most part, they get it. Now. If we'd have went the other way, I probably wouldn't be here standing here talking to you. You'd be talking to some other mayor.

The city of Newton is set to renew the policy next year, Even if the $10,000 isn't necessarily its greatest selling point.

This is just the old rural Iowa feel here in our hometown, and we are very welcoming. Doesn't matter who you are or what you are, we invite you to come in and enjoy our community and become a part of it.

Music can lift people's spirits. It can also improve physical health. One of the best ways to feel the effects is by drumming. As well as being physically demanding, drumming requires people to synchronize their limbs and to react to outside stimuli. And now a new study shows that drumming can reach those who find it difficult to communicate.

Researchers have previously found that learning how to drum is helpful for children who have emotional and behavioral difficulties.

Ann Hanna writes for the Economist.

And most recently, a team at the Klemberg Drumming Project have been looking into how drumming can help autistic teenagers.

Tell me about the Clem Burke Drumming Project. Who are they and what do they do?

It's an organization named after Blondie's drummer, who is actually one of the co founders, it's basically a group of scientists that work together to look at the physical, mental and health benefits of drumming. And a lot of their previous work has shown that teaching children with these difficulties helps them to control their reactions more generally, to focus more effectively on tasks that they're given and to communicate better with other people. And their latest work, which was released only a couple of weeks ago, was led by Marie Stephanie Cachart. And it goes one step further.

We recruited 36 participants. Half of them underwent drum intuition twice a week over eight weeks. What we found is really significant reduction in hyperactivity and attentional difficulties in participants who had learned to drum. And then in terms of brain scans, what we found is a change in brain regions associated with inhibitory control and attentional difficulties and self regulation as well. So we were quite excited about this because this is really promising in terms of having an intervention that can work for autistic individuals and that can really help with their quality of life and mental well being.

Why drumming specifically, as opposed to any.

Other musical instrument, Drumming is unique in a few senses in that it combines music and exercise as well. You have to use your whole body, not just your arms. You have to coordinate all of your limbs and it requires quite a high level of motor control. Ms. Kahart told us that autistic individuals sometimes struggle with body movement and with motor control. So this is particularly helpful in that it helps to enhance that.

And so that's sort of anecdotal evidence that drumming can help. What did the research find?

The research found, as expected, that most of the people in the drumming group did show those positive behavioural changes. Their carers and their parents filled out questionnaires before and after that showed that, and these behavioral changes were reflected in their brains. So the FMRI scans showed that several clusters of connectivity between parts of the brains had strengthened during the experiment. So these changes in the brain's wetwear really nicely match the changes in behaviour which learning to drum induces.

So, Anne, could drumming also help others with different kinds of developmental disabilities?

Ms. Cahart and her colleagues think that there are signs that drumming could be really useful for individuals with other types of disorders, such as dementia, stroke, depression, PTSD and even adhd. But this work on autism is a gratifying confirmation of drumming's power to heal. The changes that Marie described, some of them were really extraordinary, so the parents were describing that they were finding it much easier to communicate with their children. Most of them carried on with drumming after the project, which was really great, and others pushed themselves in ways that they wouldn't usually like, for example, signing up to educational courses.

I had one mother who was almost in tears because her child had made eye contact with her teacher for the first time. It was a huge, huge step.

Anne, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thanks so much.

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