The Sunday Subject: October 6, 2024

Israel launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

Israel has sent limited troops over the border and is preparing to deploy additional forces as part of its ongoing campaign to degrade Hizbullah. Israeli troops have engaged in heavy fighting with Hizbullah in Lebanon, in which Israeli soldiers were killed. Two weeks of Israeli strikes and other attacks targeting Hizbullah have killed more than 1,300 people across Lebanon and displaced more than one million, according to local authorities. Iran responded to the recent assassinations of Hizbullah leaders by firing 200 ballistic missiles towards Israel, which were intercepted. Binyamin Netanyahu said that Iran would pay a “heavy price.”

The hard-right Freedom Party won the most votes in Austria’s general election.

This is the first time the party, which was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s, has claimed victory. Party leader Herbert Kickl has aligned himself with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his self-styled “illiberal democracy,” and has spoken of  becoming Volkskanzler, or people’s chancellor, a term that draws parallels to Nazi Germany. While the party’s chances of forming a government are slim, its victory is the latest in a string of far-right election successes in Europe. This includes the successes of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, Geert Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, Germany’s AfD in Thuringia last month, and France’s National Rally in European elections last June.

Mark Rutte replaced Jens Stoltenberg as NATO’s secretary-general.

Experts expect that Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, will maintain the priorities of his predecessor — rallying support for Kyiv, pushing NATO countries to spend more on defense, and keeping the US engaged in European security. In his first speech as secretary-general, Rutte traveled to Kyiv to reiterate NATO’s commitment to Ukraine, stating that “Your security matters for ours, and your fight for freedom reflects our core principles and values.”

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