Immunisation shot? The case against Binyamin Netanyahu

Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for $15 a month.

Now, you don't even need to wrap it.

Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.

Of $45 for a three month plan equivalent to $15 per month. Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes. If network's busy, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing.

You a very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price. So that means half day.

Yeah.

Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.

Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month. Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow. 135 gigabytes of network busy taxes and fees extra. Cmintmobile.com.

Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. In France, a bill to allow fertility treatments for single and gay women has sparked furious opposition. It's a tricky situation for President Emmanuel Macron and his signature social reform. Yet politically, it's a risk he can't afford not to take. And the South Korean beauty industry has gone global by making cosmetics fun and Instagram friendly. But the country's largest beauty retailer is struggling because of political disputes, online competition and a social push to go makeup free. First up, though. Usually in Israel, the week of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a tranquil holiday time. Not this year. For one thing, a new stage is beginning in a legal fight against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Several days of hearings began this week. Prosecutors will decide whether criminal charges will follow a range of corruption allegations, including accepting piles of luxury Goods, allegations that Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly denied. The case is ratcheting up just as Mr. Netanyahu's political future is looking very uncertain after he failed to form a government earlier this year and forced a second election. Last month, his Likud party lost seats in the Israeli Parliament Knesset. His post vote speech called for a strong government without the support of Arab parties. But he did not claim victory.

Benjamin Netanyahu is now the obstacle to any stable government being formed in Israel. He does not have a majority to form a government, and at the same time, he's nearing the Day of Judgment, when he may have to face a court and answer for his alleged crimes.

Anshul Pfeffer is the Economist's Israel correspondent. He's been following this week's hearings.

Basically, what happens is that a team of lawyers representing Netanyahu arrive at the Justice Ministry in Jerusalem and descend into some cavernous basement meeting room. On either side of the table is a team of the Attorney General and some of the top state attorneys who have been dealing with the Netanyahu case for, by now, over three years. And on the other side, Netanyahu's lawyers. And over these four days, they discuss the three cases which the Attorney General is considering indicting Netanyahu on. And Netanyahu's lawyers argue against every case and try to explain why they don't merit actually becoming a full indictment and being presented as criminal charges in court.

So how do these cases fit into the current political situation in Israel?

Juan Netanyahu is facing these charges ostensibly like any other citizen. He has no immunity right now from prosecution, and he's been the subject of these investigations the last three years while serving as a Prime Minister. But no one is under any illusion that considering a prosecution against the Prime Minister is not a regular case. Netanyahu believes, and I think with some justification, that being the serving Prime Minister while these proceedings are taking place gives him some leverage. Until now, it's allowed him to more or less dictate the timing of interrogations and the place that took place in the Prime Minister's residence and not at a police station. And he's received much longer time than any regular defendant to prepare for the hearing. And what everybody is surmising now is that he's also keeping that as something that he can trade away in a potential plea bargain. That if he has to step down as part of a plea bargain, that is something that he can give in return for some kind of mitigation of a sentence in a plea bargain.

That still seems a little unclear. Would he manage to get immunity if he were to again become Prime Minister?

So Netanyahu as Prime Minister, does not have automatic immunity from prosecution. As a member of the Knesset, he could potentially ask the Knesset to give him parliamentary immunity. But once again, that's not automatic either. One of the things Netanyahu was trying to arrange through changes in the law and especially through having a majority in the Knesset, was that was some form of an immunity. But having failed two weeks ago in the elections on September 17 to win a majority for his coalition, immunity right now doesn't seem to be something that he can hope for.

A lot of how this is going to play out hinges on how the government ends up being formed. I mean, how is that coming along?

Well, what we're seeing now, we're seeing the legal timeline and the political timeline converging. Until now, We've. We've had these two process. We've had the legal process in which the police and then the Justice Ministry were preparing the case against Netanyahu. And at the same time, Netanyahu and his rivals were having their own political struggles. And ostensibly, these two timelines were not affected by each other, though obviously Netanyahu was trying to bring elections forward to try and preempt the legal process. But now he can't escape the legal process anymore. And when the hearing is over next week, then the Attorney General is expected to take a few more weeks to sum up his own decision on whether or not to indict. And that coincides with the crunch period of forming the next coalition in the aftermath of the election. Now, and this is very much affecting the political events, because what we're seeing is we're seeing the opposition not willing to engage with Netanyahu in any way. On the other hand, Netanyahu is trying to rush things along so he can try and seal a deal before he's indicted.

But how exactly does this process work?

How is it that Mr. Netanyahu is trying to build a government?

So the process of building a coalition, of forming a new government in Israel, is that after the election, the President invites the representatives of different parties for consultations, and he asks them which candidate are they going to endorse for prime minister. We're already past that stage. And Netanyahu received one more endorsement than his main rival, Benny Gantz, leader of Blue and White. But neither of them, neither Gantz nor Netanyahu, received the majority of endorsements. So the President tried to bring them together in a number of meetings and bring their negotiation teams together. And he came up with an interesting idea whereby Netanyahu would remain Prime Minister, the two big parties would join in a coalition government, and Netanyahu would commit to announcing himself as incapacitated the moment he would be indicted, which would mean he would remain prime minister, but all his actual powers would shift to Benny Gantz, who would become acting prime minister. That's A compromise that the president usually wouldn't make that kind of a suggestion. But just because Israel is in a political deadlock right now, he has tried to come up with a suggestion. Gantz has refused the compromise because he's hoping to become full prime minister and to get Netanyahu out of office. So that's where the talks right now are stuck. Netanyahu received the official mandate last week from the president to form a government. That means he gets a four week period in which he can do it. So he's already used up one week and he's expected to return the mandate early to the President because he can't form a government and also because, as we said before, he wants to try and rush the process so that he can try and still either seal a deal or, or go for another election before he's indicted.

I mean, it seems that Israel hasn't had a functioning government in really quite some time. Are you starting to see the effects of that?

What we've seen mainly is the public starting to tune out, especially as now we're in the Rosh Hashanah high holiday season. This is not a period where Israelis usually are very much focused on politics. They're focused on their families and vacations and so on. So it's almost a surreal feeling that momentous political events are happening and the Netanyahu era is drawing to an end while the public is quite disengaged from this.

Angel, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you for having me, Jason.

Right now in France, fertility treatments are only available to heterosexual couples. Single and gay women don't have the same rights to procedures such as ivf. But that might be changing with President Emmanuel Macron's first major social reform is bioethics law. And it's prompting a fresh culture war. Following heated debates last week, France's lower house of parliament approved the bill. But it still needs the green light from the Senate before it can become law. It sparked furious opposition from the conservative Russia and could be a risky move for Mr. Macron. Six years ago, his predecessor, Francois Hollande, faced enormous backlash after legalizing gay marriage. Mass demonstrations went on for months. On Sunday, conservative groups will again take to the streets, this time to march against Mr. Macron's signature bill.

What this law will do is give gay female couples and single women the right for the very first time to have access to IVF and other fertility treatment and for women under the age of 43, for it to be fully reimbursed by the French state.

Sophie Petter is Our Paris bureau chief and the author of a biography of Mr. Macron.

It basically ends the discriminatory rules which have in effect meant that you have treatment available for heterosexual couples, but not for those that are gay.

Why is it that it's sparked such opposition?

Well, I think what it's done is reawaken these old divisions that have always been there in French society between the liberal progressive part of France and the traditional Catholic conservative right. And we've seen those in the past emerge during previous pieces of legislation. Gay marriage, for example, which was legalized in 2013, and those have sort of faded away, but they've been reawakened by the presentation of this new bill before Parliament.

So exactly who is it that's opposing the bill?

The group that organized hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets in Paris and other cities in 2013 against gay marriage was called the Manifertous, which is an anti gay marriage coalition, really, of different groups, family rights groups, some Catholic groups. And it's the same coalition that's got together to organize the demonstration against this piece of legislation. But it's also being opposed by some of the French politicians themselves, notably on the far right. So you've got Marine Le Pen, who has been against it, and others on the sort of right wing end of the Republican Party.

And what are they arguing?

I think the basic argument is very much in tune with that of the Catholic Church in France, and that's that a family needs a father, a child needs a father, and that is shared between, between both those explicitly speaking on behalf of the Church, but also those who identify with the sort of Catholic political right.

And given that there has been so much resistance to this kind of progressivist legislation in the past, I mean, it does seem as if France is kind of out of step with a lot of its Western European neighbours. Why do you think that is?

Well, I think France is out of step in having modernized these rules. You know, if you look at neighbouring countries, Belgium legalized the use of sperm donors back in 2007, for example, by gay couples. So there are countries in Europe that have made that change. France now stands out in a way. But, you know, France has always been a sort of paradoxical mix of a sort of very liberal part of society which wears its Catholicism, if it ever had it. Very likely indeed. You know, abortion was legalized back in 1975 in France, and so it had quite a tolerant attitude towards divorce. But at the same time, there is an under rock of ultra Catholic and strong family values politicians on the conservative Right, so those sort of divisions lie dormant for a while, and then piece of legislation like this exposed them again.

So do the detractors represent an extremely vocal minority, or is this an actual quite big fissure in society at large?

If you look at the polling data, what I think is interesting is that actually the numbers in favor of this sort of move to extend the right to gay couples has increased even over the last six years. It was a minority in favor back in 2013 and today, in fact, there's a large majority in favor. So I think those on the streets campaigning against this law will be vocal and visible, but they don't seem to represent a majority of French people. All the same.

But if this kind of legislation has in the past awakened these divisions, do you think that could happen again? Is there a chance of a repeat of what happened in 2013?

The risk is there. The organisers are the same and they've managed to mobilise a lot of people in the past, especially when they feel that this government really doesn't speak for them. So, you know, I think we will see a lot of people on the streets, but I think in the end, this piece of legislation is going to go through.

And so if it does become law, when will that happen?

Well, it's already been passed in the lower house of Parliament, in the national assembly. It's now going to the Senate, and it will probably become law at some point early next year in 2020.

But, I mean, demonstrations, people on the street, in the form of the Gilets Jaunes movement, has kind of marked all of Mr. Macron's presidency. I mean, it is nevertheless politically risky.

For him to do this. Right?

In a sense it is, but I think at the same time, he can't really afford not to take that risk. You know, if you look back at the history of the Fifth Republic in France, almost every French president has passed a sort of piece of signature legislation. For example, Valerie Giscard Estan, who legalized abortion in 1970. Francois Mitterrand, the Socialist president who abolished the death penalty in 1981. And then, of course, Francois Hollande, the most recent Socialist president, was the one who legalized gay marriage. So there is a sort of precedent and an expectation that a president passes some sort of piece of progressive legislation. And I think Macron very much wants to go down in history as having done this particular law.

Sophie, thank you very much for joining us.

Thanks, Jason.

First it was South Korea's music industry, exporting K pop, now Korean cosmetics or K beauty, aided by influencers. On YouTube and Instagram for today's video.

Because this is Korean makeup, it's more.

About a soft, subtle setting.

Global trends.

Between 2014 and 2018, exports of cosmetics from Korea to the rest of the world quadrupled.

Laina Shipper is our sole bureau chief.

The thing that people have been particularly attracted to is the fact that it's kind of entertainment. Cosmetics is entertainment.

What do you mean? How can cosmetics be entertaining?

You can go into a shop, you can buy face masks that are filled into brightly colored milkshake cups that have faces on them and you can use the straw that comes out of them to mix them at home. There's snail slime in the ingredients list, there's Game of Thrones themed face masks and various other novelty things to slap on your face. So people sort of think it's fun.

And I mean more broadly, how does that fit into the South Korean beauty market?

The South Korean cosmetics companies have shops that correspond to this thing as an entertainment. So you go in, it doesn't really look like a shop. In the case of Amore Pacific, they're the biggest cosmetics company in South Korea, the seventh biggest in the world. Their flagship store in Gangnam, which is a very glitzy part of Seoul, doesn't really look like shop. It's this beautiful building that's covered in gold effect metal. It's got this grid covering its facade and you wander in there and it's like a museum. You know, there's a tiny $150 jar of face cream on a pedestal surrounded by scenic lighting. And it doesn't really feel like just a normal cosmetics shop.

So the Korean beauty industry spans the whole space between the extremely high end and the simple, cheap and or goofy. I presume Amore Pacific is doing well in trying to cover all that space.

So they used to be doing well, or they used to do well in covering that entire space. But recently they've started to struggle a bit, largely because they haven't paid enough attention to competition, particularly at the lower end of the market. So one of their biggest markets outside of Korea used to be in China, or still is in China, where a lot of local competition has sprung up that frequently has managed to do the things that they used to do really well, better and at lower prices. And another problem they've had is that the structure of the market has changed slightly. So one of the things about the novelty nature of some of these cosmetics is that smaller companies can be really successful by just having, say, one novelty item that they managed to flog to people on the Internet. So the distribution channels have changed. It used to be that you want to buy some luxury cosmetics product, you go into a high end department store or you walk into a specific shop to buy it, and that's no longer true. Particularly in South Korea and in the rest of Asia, people increasingly buy things on the Internet and particularly cosmetics, and that's worked to the advantage of smaller companies.

Well, what are they doing to try to catch up then with the nimbler rivals?

So they've poured a lot of money into marketing, both at home and in other Asian markets. And they're saying they're trying to adjust the way they sell things. So they're trying to catch up on the new distribution channels, reorganizing the way they sell their products, and trying to put particular emphasis on the higher end of the market, particularly in China, because that's where the margins are quite high. So that's where you make the most money. But they've also tried to expand into other markets in case of demand at home. And in the rest of Asia isn't that stable anymore. So they've started opening shops in Europe. You can now buy Sulwhasu in London or Paris. And they want to be in many more countries over the next few years.

But what about the domestic market?

Is there anything stopping them from reviving demand at home?

A slightly different challenge that they're facing in their domestic market is a growing movement in South Korea of women who are actually advocating the abolition of makeup. They call themselves the Corset Free Movement, or some of them aren't. And they've set up these YouTube channels where they crush their makeup and throw away their lipstick and tell other people to do the same. And they're part of a broader feminist movement that's been growing increasingly active in South Korea over the past few years. It's not clear yet whether that's going to hit cosmetic sales on a larger scale because they've yet to convert a majority of women to this point of view. But it's probably something that could play a larger role in the future.

Lena, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you very much, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@exterator.com radio. Offer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here tomorrow.