Hezbollah Attack Kills 12 Children in Northern Israel

Happy Monday! After breaking news ruined his brunch last week, Wolf Blitzer made sure CNN couldn’t call him back to the office yesterday by … going all the way to Germany.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Election officials declared authoritarian strongman Nicolás Maduro the winner of Venezuela’s presidential elections overnight, despite exit polls suggesting that opposition candidate ​​Edmundo González would emerge victorious. The official tally as of Monday morning had the socialist Maduro with 51 percent of the vote to Gonzalez’s 44 percent, but opposition leader María Corina Machado, who had been kept off the ballot, claimed that González earned 70 percent of the vote. “We have serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday morning. Other world leaders have similarly declined to endorse the official results and have called for transparency.

• Twelve children and teenagers died in northern Israel on Saturday—and dozens more were injured—after a rocket attack from the Iranian-backed, Lebanon-based terrorist organization Hezbollah struck Majdal Shams, a Druze Arab village just miles from the Lebanese border. The rocket struck a local soccer field—where the village’s children often gather to play—in what Israel is calling the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians since October 7. Israel launched limited attacks overnight on Saturday against Hezbollah, though the Israeli government is reportedly preparing a more significant retaliation. 
• U.S. and Japanese officials announced Sunday that the U.S. will set up a new military command in Japan, led by a three-star general. The command will allow coordination with Japanese forces on joint exercises and increase cooperation in the event Japan is attacked. The new structure—which should be in place by March of next year—is considered an upgrade to the so-called “command and control” of U.S. forces in Japan. Leaders previewed the move during the Japanese state visit to the U.S. this spring. 

• The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, increased 2.5 percent year-over-year in June, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported on Friday, down from a 2.6 percent annual increase one month earlier. Core PCE—which excludes more volatile food and energy prices—increased at a slightly higher 2.6 percent year-over-year in June, matching the annual rate from May. The Federal Reserve will meet this week, where economists expect bankers to continue holding rates steady. 
• The Department of Justice (DOJ) last week charged the man awaiting trial for the attempted murder of writer Salman Rushdie with “attempting to provide material support” to the Iranian-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah. Hadi Matar, 26, a dual Lebanese-American citizen, stabbed Rushdie 14 times before a lecture in Chautauqua, New York, in August 2022. Matar, whose trial is expected to begin this September, allegedly attempted to kill Rushdie in accordance with a 1989 fatwa imposed by then-Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordering Muslims to kill the author over his novel The Satanic Verses, which references Islamic doctrine. Hezbollah has endorsed the fatwa, a fact known to Matar in the lead-up to the attack, according to the DOJ. Rushdie, who lost his right eye in the attack, has since written about the incident in his latest non-fiction book, Knife. 
• French investigators are looking into coordinated sabotage attacks on the nation’s railway infrastructure on Friday that stranded hundreds of thousands of travelers hours before the official start of the Paris Summer Olympics. In the early hours of Friday morning, unknown individuals apparently cut wires and burned signal boxes and other electric equipment on three separate major train lines leading into Paris. Maintenance workers foiled a fourth attack on another major railway, though the suspect evaded capture. While law enforcement officials have not publicly identified any suspects—and haven’t ruled out Russian involvement—a far-left group claimed responsibility anonymously in an unverified statement released to the media. Numerous trains headed to Paris were canceled or delayed due to the attacks, forcing some Olympic spectators throughout Europe to wait days for the next services to the French capital. The attacks took place despite a massive security mobilization effort in preparation for the games. 
• The DOJ alleged in a court filing on Friday that the popular social media app TikTok had collected data from U.S. users—including their views on hot-button issues like abortion and gun control—and shared it with employees of its Beijing-headquartered parent company ByteDance. The DOJ disclosed this to federal courts in response to the company’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a measure passed with bipartisan support in April that would require ByteDance to divest from the popular video-based app or face a nationwide ban in the U.S. Defending the law, the DOJ warned the user data could be exploited to the advantage of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). “The collection of data from Americans is not a protected activity,” stated one of the classified filings, the Wall Street Journal reported. 
• A California wildfire allegedly sparked by arson—officially dubbed the Park Fire—spread over the weekend and is now the seventh-largest wildfire in recorded state history. A 42-year-old man has been arrested after reportedly starting the fire in a local park in northern California on Wednesday. The wildfire raged across four California counties over the weekend, and only 12 percent of the 360,000-acre blaze has thus far been contained.

Israel’s Northern Border on Tenterhooks 

TEL AVIV, Israel—On Saturday afternoon, children in the Druze village of Majdal Shams in northeastern Israel had gathered on a local soccer pitch. The kids—most, it seems, younger than 16 years old—were reportedly training with a local coach on the field in the Golan Heights community less than five miles from the Lebanese border. 

Then, at 6:18 p.m. local time, the air raid warning siren sounded, as it had hundreds of times in the last nine months. But just seconds later—before the children had time to reach the bomb shelter mere steps away—a rocket carrying more than 110 pounds of explosives struck the soccer field, killing 12 children and injuring dozens more. “It’s Saturday, it’s summer, kids are playing, and we kind of got used to the situation because it’s been going on for a while,” an eyewitness told CNN. “Nothing like this ever happened before.”

Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist group that operates out of Lebanon, implausibly denied responsibility for the attack on Saturday, despite the near-daily barrage of rockets and missiles it has fired at northern Israel since October. Both the United States and Israel said Hezbollah had fired the Iranian-supplied rocket, which, according to Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, “crossed all red lines.”

Israel and Hezbollah on Saturday moved closer to an all-out war than at any point since Hezbollah began its cross-border attacks on Israel following Hamas’ October 7 massacre. As Israel contemplates a significant retaliatory strike after limited attacks overnight Saturday, the risks of a regional war—with direct involvement from Iran and even the U.S.—also grow.

As The Dispatch’s Charlotte Lawson has previously reported, the “northern front” in Israel’s multifront war against Iranian proxies has been on a knife’s edge for months, with Hezbollah’s near-constant rocket fire—and the looming threat of another October 7-style attack out of Lebanon—creating a no-man’s-land across much of northern Israel. An estimated 100,000 people were evacuated from their homes in the north at the start of the war, and most of them still remain displaced nearly 10 months later, with no return date in sight.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the issue of the ongoing tit-for-tat with Hezbollah—which is estimated to have an arsenal of some 200,000 rockets, far dwarfing that of Hamas—during his speech to a joint session of Congress last week. “We are committed to returning them home,” he said of the displaced Israelis from the north. “We prefer to achieve this diplomatically. But let me be clear: Israel will do whatever it must do to restore security to our northern border and return our people safely to their homes.” 

Before Saturday’s attack, there had been diplomatic efforts to head off a wider Israel-Hezbollah war. U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein has been back and forth to the region for months, trying to broker an agreement that would require Hezbollah’s voluntary withdrawal further north, as mandated by a U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006 but has never been properly enforced. Likewise, negotiations over a ceasefire-for-hostages deal that could implicate Hezbollah are reportedly still ongoing.

Netanyahu, fresh off his trip to the U.S., arrived at the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) headquarters in Tel Aviv on Sunday night to deliberate on next steps and get his government’s approval for a military response. The Israeli security cabinet met for more than four hours Sunday evening but didn’t immediately indicate how it would retaliate. “There’s going to be a military clash, but there’s hope that both sides will contain it and not let it go too far,” Yoni Ben-Menachem, a senior Middle East analyst for the Israel-based Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told The Dispatch.

The IDF executed a limited response overnight on what it said were Hezbollah weapons depots and infrastructure mostly, but not exclusively, in southern Lebanon. But there’s likely more to come. “This has been a normal occurrence over the last nine months,” said Joe Truzman, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an expert in Palestinian militant groups and Hezbollah. “When Israel responds to the Majdal Shams attack, it will be obvious.” 

Though no player appears eager for a full-scale war, a miscalculation could still push the region over the edge—in ways that could include Iranian or U.S. involvement. Iran, which has already launched an unprecedented direct attack on Israel in the last nine months, cautioned of “unforeseen consequences” in the event of Israeli retaliation against Hezbollah. “Iran has warned that if Israel has a full war with Hezbollah, Iran will take an active part in it,” Ben-Menachem said. “This means regional war.”

For its part, the White House on Sunday reaffirmed its commitment to the United States’ ally. “Our support for Israel’s security is ironclad and unwavering against all Iran-backed threats, including Hezbollah,” the statement said.

Hezbollah has reportedly been preparing in the last 24 hours for all eventualities, evacuating military outposts and command centers ahead of a potential Israeli retaliation. But Israel could also target dual-use infrastructure meant for both military and civilian use in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, though Hochstein reportedly told Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that such a move could cause the situation to spiral. 

When asked Sunday whether the Lebanese government could control Hezbollah, Lebanese Foreign Minister Bou Habib wasn’t optimistic. “The choice for us is always between bad and worse,” he told CNN’s Ben Wedeman. “I don’t think we can do it, I’ll be frank with you.” 

Boeing’s Breakdown 

For most transportation companies, stranding two NASA astronauts in outer space would be the worst news of the month. But for Boeing, the weeks-delayed return of its Starliner spaceship seems like low-stakes poker since it also officially agreed to a plea deal with the Justice Department last week, accepting guilt over two criminal felony charges related to fatal airline crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people.

As the airline faces criticism from former employees, a spate of midair accidents, and, indeed, felony charges for cutting corners, Boeing—one of only two companies in the world to manufacture large-scale passenger jets—is faced with the task of reassuring the public that passengers are safe on its planes.

In the plea deal finalized last week—conditional upon approval from a federal judge—Boeing will admit to conspiring to defraud the federal government, including providing federal regulators with incorrect and incomplete information when applying for certification for its 737 Max airliners in 2017, the newest generation of Boeing’s 737 commercial jets.

Two Boeing 737 Max planes were involved in fatal commercial crashes, one in 2018 and another in 2019. Investigations revealed both were caused by a faulty system that caused the plane’s nose to pitch down without the pilot’s input. To make matters worse, Boeing knew—and didn’t share—that the sensor that warned pilots about the tilt of the nose was faulty. 

In 2021, the DOJ called Boeing on all of it, accusing the company of defrauding the Federal Aviation Agency in the certification process for the 737. But the DOJ was willing to cut a deal. The government would not press charges if the company paid a hefty settlement to affected customers and criminal penalties to the government and agreed to enhance its safety and compliance features. Crucially, the DOJ said installing a third party to monitor Boeing’s fulfillment of that agreement was “unnecessary.”

Whoops. In May, the federal agency told U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor—who had overseen the 2021 agreement—that Boeing violated the agreement by failing to implement its new safety and compliance protocol.

On Wednesday, the two parties formally agreed to a new settlement—and Boeing won’t avoid criminal liability this time. Instead, the largest U.S. aircraft manufacturer will be saddled with a new title: felon. In addition to pleading guilty, Boeing was ordered to pay an additional $243.6 million in penalties and required to spend $455 million over the next three years to strengthen its safety and compliance programs. This time, the DOJ is not relying on the honor system, but will place the company on probation and install an external monitor to ensure the safety and compliance programs are actually implemented.

Though it’s a little strange to think a company—as opposed to its employees—could commit a crime, companies as entities can be held criminally liable for offensible actions that its leadership or a significant share of its employees were privy to, if they were intended to benefit the entire company. And when the DOJ believes companies to have transgressed legal boundaries, it hasn’t shied away from prosecution. 

The conviction does more than just damage Boeing’s reputation—it could jeopardize contracts with government agencies, such as the Department of Defense and NASA. According to the company’s annual report, Boeing received 37 percent—more than $28 billion—of its 2023 revenue from U.S. government contracts. As the Mercatus Institute’s Veronique De Rugy noted last year, Boeing received 49 percent of its 2021 revenue from the federal government, totaling $23 billion. However, the Defense Department, NASA, and other federal agencies could always issue a waiver or an exception that allows Boeing to continue its contract work.

This isn’t the only time in recent months that Boeing has run afoul of the federal government. In January, a mid-cabin door plug on a Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines blew out of the airplane midflight, forcing an emergency landing and causing minor injuries to eight people. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) did not have to do much sleuthing to figure out the cause: “Four bolts that prevent upward movement of the [door] plug were missing.” The bolts were initially inserted, but later removed to fix a different problem—and were never replaced.

While its investigation was ongoing, the NTSB offered Boeing access to sensitive information from the agency’s review of the Alaska Airlines incident. 

Whoops, again. On June 27, one Boeing executive “blatantly violated” federal regulations by preemptively sharing details of the ongoing investigation—and misconstrued the agency’s efforts—causing the NTSB to slap Boeing with sanctions and penalties and bar its access to information while the investigation continued. 

Some former Boeing employees and inspectors see the safety problems as endemic to the company—and that fish may rot from the head. Merle Meyers—who worked at Boeing for 31 years in various roles including as a quality manager until he was pushed out in March 2023—believes that one primary source of Boeing’s struggles is its leadership. “It’s the philosophy [that’s the problem],” he told TMD. “I call it the leadership of darkness.” 

Boeing announced in March that its CEO, Dave Calhoun, would step down at the end of the year. Calhoun’s predecessor, former CEO Dennis Muilenburg, was fired in December 2019, one day after the New York Times reported that, in a private meeting, the FAA had reprimanded Muilenburg for pressuring the agency to end its suspension of the 737 Max following the two fatal crashes. Three months prior, Muilenburg had testified before Congress about the two fatal crashes and actions Boeing could have taken to prevent them. “If we knew everything back then that we know now, we would have made a different decision,” he told Congress. 

But it’s not clear that was true, if some in the aerospace industry are to be believed. “This is a decay of over 20 years of negligence,” said Chris Handley, a former FAA aviation safety inspector. Boeing suffers from a “cultural workplace” problem, he said, where employees from top-level executives to lower-level factory workers can ignore safety procedures with few-to-no repercussions, at least in part, because it helped save money. “[Boeing] started looking at our quality system as something that was a financial opportunity to trim down or increase or use to manipulate their financial situation of the company,” he told TMD.

Meyers recalled discovering the cultural decay at the company after taking on a new role as a quality manager in 2009. “One of my team leaders spoke up and said, ‘Well, I don’t like having to go … into the system and remove inspection requirements,’” Meyers told TMD. “I about fell out of my chair. … The former quality manager looked the other way, and they would go in and remove inspection requirements on parts that had previous rejection histories.” 

And yet, even when incidents like these were discovered, Boeing rarely responded. “Boeing, for many years, has never provided corrective action for senior managers on-up for bad behavior, unethical behavior—they’ll move them around [instead],” Meyers said. “People, even in quality [positions], get promoted for hustling parts or looking the other way so parts can make it to the airplane. That’s the culture.”

The culture problem is also not contained to a select few departments, according to Meyers. “It’s company-wide,” he told TMD. “I found that they were going to the reclamation site for scrap parts, taking them, and bringing them back into production.”

Now, some aviation experts are wary of Boeing’s products—after all, commercial passengers are essentially trusting Boeing engineers with their lives on every flight. Still, as tragic and preventable as the two fatal crashes and the blown-away door plug were, accidents remain statistically unlikely: There have been three incidents reported with the 737 Max, out of 5,000 daily flights, Boeing pointed out. “The 737 Max family’s in-service reliability is above 99 percent and consistent with other commercial airplane models,” the aerospace company told CNN in March.

But to ask Handley, the former FAA inspector, that’s hardly reassuring. “It’s like if you walk into a fireworks store and somebody says one of the fireworks might be bad, [but reply] ‘Oh, well, I’ll take the risk,’” he said. “Like, that’s a big risk.”

“I wouldn’t get on it,” Meyers told TMD, when asked if he would board a commercial Boeing 737 Max if he needed to travel tonight. “There’s so many issues with it, with wiring, and oxygen, and systems shorting out.” 

Handley agreed. “I would not fly,” he said. “I would walk.”

Worth Your Time

• In a piece for Deseret News, the man known for tracking the decline of religion in America tracked the decline of his own church. “How do you get rid of a pulpit? Or a communion table? Does anyone want 30-year-old choir robes?” social scientist and pastor Ryan Burge wrote. “What I was seeing in the data was unmistakable and mapped perfectly onto what I was seeing every Sunday—mainline Protestant Christianity was in near free fall, and the numbers of nonreligious were rising every single year. … I was being asked to speak in front of crowds of hundreds of people about the past and future of American religion. When I was asked what motivated me to continue to do this kind of work, all I could say was, ‘I’m just trying to help other people see the big picture in American religion.’ What I was really trying to do was to convince myself that the rapid decline of my church wasn’t my fault.”

Presented Without Comment

New York Times: ‘Maybe I’ve Gotten Worse’: Trump Makes Clear That Unity Is Over 

Also Presented Without Comment

CNN: Government to Pay Former FBI Officials $2 Million in Settlements Over Release of Anti-Trump Texts

Ex-FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page reached settlements with the Justice Department that will see the government paying out a total of $2 million in their lawsuits over the department’s 2018 release of their text messages.

Also Also Presented Without Comment

Associated Press: Paris Olympics Organizers Say They Meant No Disrespect With ‘Last Supper’ Tableau

Paris Olympics organizers apologized to anyone who was offended by a tableau that evoked Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” during the glamorous opening ceremony, but defended the concept behind it Sunday.

Da Vinci’s painting depicts the moment when Jesus Christ declared that an apostle would betray him. The scene during Friday’s ceremony featured DJ and producer Barbara Butch — an LGBTQ+ icon — flanked by drag artists and dancers.

In the Zeitgeist

The Olympics are well underway, and the U.S. is already at the top of the leaderboard with 12 medals so far (U 👏 S 👏 A 👏). 

We’d like to give a special shout-out to Nic Fink, an Olympic swimmer who could give us some lessons in time management. The 31-year-old full-time electrical engineer won his first-ever Olympic medal on Sunday, taking silver in the 100-meter breaststroke in a thrilling photo finish.

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: The Dispatch Politics team took a look at the presidential and congressional races 100 days out from the election, Jonah explained why he doesn’t believe flip-flopping is the worst vice in politics, Nick argued (🔒) Democrats’ optimism about Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t completely unfounded, Chris explored whether (🔒) staunch progressive Democrats would tolerate a more moderate Harris general election campaign, and Knox Thames made the case in Dispatch Faith that the U.S. should highlight religious freedom in its great power competition with China.
• On the podcasts: Jonah ruminated on factions of the New Right and President Joe Biden’s true character, and Jamie is joined on The Dispatch Podcast by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. 
• On the site over the weekend: Cliff Smith revisited acclaimed filmmaker David Lean’s Academy-Award-winning masterpiece A Passage to India on the film’s 40th anniversary.
• On the site today: Luis files a dispatch from the “Liberalism in the 21st Century” conference. 

Let Us Know

How concerned are you about an all-out regional war in the Middle East?