Three Quick Hits: Cancer, Israeli Casualties, Putin's Poland Ploy

The big news tonight, of course, is that Israel has successfully dragged the US into full on war in the Middle East—the US has attacked Yemen. This won’t lead to a good ending. Meanwhile, while we await more details …

The WSJ has an article up that’s sure to attract attention. This was predicted, and the signs that it was growing have been noted. Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall, so we’ll need to wait a bit:

Cancer Is Striking More Young People, and Doctors Are Alarmed and Baffled

Researchers are trying to figure out what is making more young adults sick, and how to identify those at high risk

At Zerohedge this evening there’s a post that summarizes an article from the Jerusalem Post—at the other end of the political spectrum from Haaretz. Nobody can accuse the JPost of trying to make the Israeli regime or military look bad:

Israel Alarmed At 'Terrifying' Number Of Troops Wounded Since Start Of Gaza War

Via The Cradle,

Over 6,000 members of the Israeli security establishment – including the army and the police – have been injured since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza and Lebanon, the Jerusalem Post reports Thursday, citing defense ministry figures.

"The numbers coming out are terrifying," the Israeli outlet wrote. Out of the 6,000 who have been wounded, more than 2,000 are permanently disabled, the report highlights.

The reality appears to be that the actual number, as reported by other Israeli media outlets based on hospital stats, could easily be twice that number. Here’s a pastiche of quotes from the JPost article:

… nothing prepared the medical establishment for the onslaught of injuries resulting from the war over the last three months.

Only a month into the war, the Health Ministry told the Knesset that Israel was not prepared to handle the massive number of people, both military and civilian, wounded in the war, …

“I have never seen a scope like this and an intensity like this,” Edan Kleiman, who heads the nonprofit Disabled Veterans Organization, …

The Defense Ministry said it was working at “full capacity” …

But that will not be enough, according to researchers at Jerusalem’s Taub Center for Social Policy Studies.

Moreover, the chronic shortage in the healthcare workforce is worsening, and the number of hospital beds per population continues to be low.

Even before the war, Israel received poor marks for being ranked in the lower third of the OECD countries in national healthcare expenditure.

This figure puts Israel in the bottom third of the OECD countries.

The per-capita rate of physicians in Israel is lower than the OECD average, …

Those numbers are even more alarming when considering Kleiman’s estimate that the number of wounded is likely to stretch close to 20,000 …

Lastly, we’ve all read about the supposed possibility that Russia would do a deal with Poland for Poland to reacquire Eastern Galicia after the war concludes. I’ve always considered this absurd. Animus against Polish eastern expansion is very strong in Russia. No national leader in Russia could agree to this. Putin’s suggestion has, in fact, been almost a sneering suggestion—I say “sneering” in light of the interethnic hostilities involved—that perhaps the Ukrainians would prefer to join up with Poland. Believe me, that’s a sneer and not a serious suggestion. Moreover, for their part, the Poles are smart enough not to take in the Banderite Western Ukraine—that would be the ultimate Trojan Horse for Poland.

So, the other day I came across a piece at The Carnegie Endowment For International Peace—very definitely not a pro-Russian outfit. Here’s the beginning of the piece. If you’re interested you may wish to follow the link. The point that the author makes, eventually, is that Putin is playing people with this suggestion—and, specificially (as I suggested in a comment the other day) he’s playing Ukrainians:

Why Russia Keeps Insisting That Poland Is Preparing to Partition Ukraine

In the Kremlin’s twisted logic, Ukraine is an artificial construct, and only Russia—as the successor of the country that once granted Ukraine its current borders by seizing land from its neighbors—can now ensure the inviolability of Ukraine’s western territories.

The Russian leadership has repeatedly made the outlandish claim that Poland is preparing to annex territories in western Ukraine. Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) director Sergei Naryshkin recently made this assertion, and he was not the first to do so. Over the past months, Russian President Vladimir Putin several times stated that the idea of absorbing Ukraine is still alive and well in Poland, while Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev warned that Warsaw “is already making moves to seize western Ukrainian territories.” 

These are just a few examples from a long list of official statements and semi-official musings by Russian political figures who have accused Poland—and at times Hungary and Romania—of seeking to reclaim land from Ukraine that they held prior to World War II. The persistence of these statements, undeterred by the complete absence of evidence for the existence of such plans, not to mention Poland’s unswerving support for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, calls to question their goals.