标签： Asia

Israel is currently grappling with three interconnected, deeply concerning crises that have laid bare deep-seated social, institutional, and geopolitical vulnerabilities across the nation.

The first crisis erupted from a brutal fatal stabbing that has shaken public trust in law enforcement and reignited long-simmering accusations of institutional bias. On Independence Day evening last week, 21-year-old Yemanu Binyamin Zelka, a pizzeria employee of Ethiopian descent working in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva, was murdered by a group of teenagers. The violence began after Zelka asked the group to stop using party foam spray inside the pizzeria, a minor request that ended with him stabbed to death.

Days passed before law enforcement launched a formal investigation, and authorities ultimately arrested eight minors for questioning. At a meeting with Zelka’s family, Israeli Police Commissioner Danny Levy framed the killing as an inevitable outcome of years of societal disruption: “There was Covid, then war, and then another war. The children lacked stable frameworks, and in the end, it erupts.” Levy’s comment drew furious backlash from the victim’s family, who are calling for full prosecution of the suspects and have openly voiced widespread public frustration over law enforcement’s handling of the case.

Activists and politicians have gone further, alleging that the delayed investigation stems from systemic bias against Israelis of Ethiopian origin. “It is unbelievable that dozens of youths carried out a lynching and murdered Binyamin Yimenu Zelka. No one tried to help. Hundreds of people were present, and not a single person stepped in. This horrifying case must shake the country,” Israeli-Ethiopian activist Avi Yalew wrote on social media platform X. Yalew also questioned why police took so long to make arrests when the entire incident was captured on camera. Ayman Odeh, leader of the left-wing Hadash party, pointed to a broader trend of spiraling violent crime: 2025 is on track to record the highest number of murder victims and the highest murder rate in Israeli history. Odeh blamed the current government for abandoning public safety and called the national police force “failing” at addressing rising criminal activity. Data from Haaretz supports this claim: 107 people have been murdered nationwide since the start of the year, a sharp increase that has coincided with Itamar Ben Gvir’s tenure as national security minister, with the vast majority of victims being Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Alongside rising street violence, Israel is facing an unprecedented mental health crisis among its security forces, with suicide rates reaching 15-year highs. New reporting from Haaretz reveals that at least 12 active-duty Israeli soldiers and police officers have died by suicide since the start of 2025, with three additional non-active reservists also taking their own lives. This marks a continued surge in security personnel suicides that began after Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza in October 2023.

Mental health professionals and serving military officers link the rising death toll to deep underfunding of mental health services for service members, and systemic failures to support at-risk personnel. One serving army mental health officer described the military’s current response to the crisis as “more like putting a Band-Aid on a bleeding main artery,” noting that current resourcing is nowhere near sufficient to meet demand. Critics add that the Israeli military continues to enlist personnel with pre-existing mental health conditions without providing adequate ongoing support. A former army mental health officer stressed that many recent deaths could have been prevented: “at least some of the recent deaths could have been saved if commanders would’ve paid attention to early warning signs.” “This is no longer just a warning – it is a real alarm,” the former officer added.

Official army data confirms the severity of the crisis: 60 active-duty soldiers have died by suicide since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack, including 22 in 2024, the highest annual count in 15 years. Crucially, official numbers exclude suicides by non-active duty personnel, meaning the actual death toll is even higher than reported. This crisis has spilled over into the broader Israeli public: Haaretz data shows 7% of all Israelis now live with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), compared to a global average of just 2%. Rates of depression, anxiety, and substance addiction have also jumped, with the resulting economic damage estimated to reach as much as 100 billion shekels annually.

Compounding these domestic crises is a new geopolitical controversy: a Haaretz investigation has exposed that Israel has been importing stolen Ukrainian wheat from Russia since 2023, a trade that directly funds Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. One year after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Israel began receiving shipments of wheat stolen from Ukrainian territories controlled by Russia, transported on Russian-flagged vessels. Haaretz confirms that more than 30 shipments of stolen Ukrainian grain have been delivered to Israeli buyers by Russian traders, with at least five additional shipments arriving since the start of 2025.

To avoid detection, the vessels involved do not load the stolen grain at Russian ports. Instead, cargo is transferred between ships at sea in the Black Sea to conceal the wheat’s Ukrainian origin. Haaretz journalists successfully tracked two Russian vessels that loaded stolen grain in Ukraine before delivering directly to Israeli ports. One Israeli grain merchant told reporters that Russian suppliers intentionally misrepresented the cargo, claiming the grain originated in Siberia and was shipped west via rail. The merchant said the true origin only came to light after the Ukrainian embassy issued a warning. Israel’s foreign ministry has so far refused to comment on the findings of the investigation.

For anyone experiencing mental health crisis or suicidal thoughts, support is available globally: In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted 24/7 on freephone 116 123. In the US, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline provides free, confidential support 24 hours a day. Additional international helplines can be found via the Befrienders Worldwide website at www.befrienders.org.

Two months into the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, a stark divide has emerged: as the death toll in Iran climbs above 3,500 and households across the globe face soaring energy costs, two powerful industries – fossil fuel production and arms manufacturing – have recorded explosive profit growth driven by regional instability.

The ongoing standoff between Washington and Tehran in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints, has left 1,600 vessels and 20,000 seafarers stranded in the Gulf, pushing international Brent crude prices above $107 per barrel. This supply disruption has sent shockwaves through global energy markets, putting unprecedented financial strain on millions of households across Europe, Asia and beyond, while creating windfall gains for major energy and defense players.

New data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) underscores the long-term growth of the global defense sector: 2025 marked the 11th consecutive year of rising global military spending, which hit a record $2.887 trillion. For the fossil fuel industry, analysis from climate advocacy group Global Witness conducted for *The Guardian* reveals that major oil and gas conglomerates pulled in more than $30 million in excess profits every hour during the first full month of the Iran war.

In the United Kingdom, the impact on household finances is already severe: projections indicate annual energy bills will jump by as much as £300 ($406) starting in July, driven by supply disruptions from the Strait of Hormuz. New polling shows 44% of UK households will be unable to afford these increases, and the crisis has also deepened global food insecurity, as higher energy and transportation costs push up food prices worldwide. Even as ordinary families struggle to heat their homes, top executives at the UK’s largest energy firms have seen their personal wealth surge by millions of pounds.

For example, in the month following the launch of US-Israeli strikes in late February 2026, Harbour Energy CEO Linda Cook saw the value of her company shareholdings jump by more than £4 million, bringing her total stake to £26 million. Shell CEO Wael Sawan’s shares rose by nearly £1.8 million to £13.2 million, while Centrica chief Chris O’Shea gained more than £300,000 in share value and BP deputy CEO Carol Howle’s stake grew by over £500,000, according to data from the End Fuel Poverty coalition. Globally, the trend holds: Chevron CEO Michael Wirth saw his stake gain more than £44 million in value, while Norwegian energy giant Equinor, a major gas supplier to the UK, saw its share price climb by more than 45%.

Jagannadha Pawan Tamvada, a business economics professor at Kingston University, explained that global oil and gas pricing works to the benefit of producers during supply shocks. “Disruptions in supply anywhere in the system raises prices everywhere,” Tamvada told Middle East Eye. Because consumer demand for energy is relatively inflexible, price increases directly translate to higher revenues and profits for energy producers, with all costs passed down to households.

The same profit dynamic plays out in the defense sector. The United States is currently spending an average of $1.8 billion per day on its military involvement in the Iran war, and Lockheed Martin, the largest Pentagon contractor, has seen its stock price jump by nearly 40% since the start of 2026. Tamvada notes that expectations of future instability automatically lift defense stock values, as market actors price in increased government military spending. “The cost of such instability is not felt by these corporations but rather experienced as a benefit. In effect, risk is socialised downward to consumers while upside is concentrated upwards,” he said.

Ruth London, a founding member of campaign group Fuel Poverty Action, argues that energy companies are not just passive beneficiaries of price shocks – they are exploiting the crisis to pad their bottom lines. “It is not that a shortage increases the companies’ costs. Instead they charge more because they can. They pocket the difference,” she said. She added that the fossil fuel industry, which already causes death through fuel poverty, oil conflict, pollution and climate change, has profited enormously from the Iran war while continuing to receive billions in government subsidies. In the UK alone, an estimated 10,000 excess deaths each year are linked to cold-related illness caused by fuel poverty, even as energy executives rake in windfall gains that deepen already extreme inequality.

“Oil and gas price shocks are like Christmas for fossil fuel companies: they can sit back and watch as their profits multiply,” said Philip Evans, senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace UK. Evans called on governments to implement robust new taxes on the extraordinary profiteering occurring during the crisis to prevent ordinary households from bearing the entire economic burden.

Forty leading UK civil society organizations have joined that call, sending an open letter to the British government through Tax Justice UK urging the chancellor to impose a strong windfall tax on corporate profiteering from the Iran war. “During these times of global crises, certain companies make record profits amidst human suffering in Iran and ordinary people in this country end up footing the bill,” said Caitlin Boswell, deputy director of Tax Justice UK. She explained that years of corporate lobbying have left the UK tax system structured to protect wealthy corporate interests, allowing firms to evade taxes while continuing to receive taxpayer-funded subsidies for fossil fuel production.

The UK previously implemented a windfall tax on energy companies that raised £6.8 billion in 2022-2023 following the energy shock caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but widespread negative media coverage – shaped by the fossil fuel industry’s media influence – undermined public support for the policy. Today, polling from YouGov shows the cost of living crisis remains the top issue for UK voters, but the ruling Labour government has refused to impose new taxes on energy firms profiting from the current price spike. According to Boswell, this inaction “just goes to show the sheer power of these vested interest groups and these industries that have… too much political capture.”

Patrick Galey, head of investigations at Global Witness, describes the fossil fuel industry as the richest and most powerful industry in human history, and also the most devious. After decades of denying the reality of human-caused climate change, Galey says the industry has continued to deliberately obfuscate and delay climate action even after the scientific consensus became undeniable. The Iran conflict marks the second major global energy shock in five years, following the 2022 shock from the Ukraine war, and forecasters warn the fallout from the current crisis will be far more severe.

Galey argues the core lesson from this crisis is the urgent need for a permanent global transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy – a shift that is critical not just for climate stability, but for global geopolitical freedom. “Energy independence engenders genuine geopolitical freedom and independence because you are not having to constantly tiptoe around the autocrats that you want to buy fossil fuels from,” he said, pointing to Spain as an example of a nation that has gained greater diplomatic leverage by reducing its reliance on imported fossil fuels. Galey says continued dependence on fossil fuels is a deliberate policy choice, noting that Labour ministers met with fossil fuel lobbyists more than 500 times in their first year in office, and new Labour MPs accepted more than £45,000 in campaign donations from oil and gas companies.

Fossil fuel and arms manufacturing are already two of the most heavily subsidized industries in the UK: the government provides an estimated £17.5 billion in annual subsidies to oil and gas production, while BAE Systems, the UK’s largest arms contractor, receives £1 billion in annual government science subsidies. Andrew Feinstein, a former South African ANC MP and founding director of Shadow World Investigations, calls this system “corporate welfarism,” where public money is privatized for corporate gain through state subsidies and no-bid contracts.

Feinstein notes that the arms trade accounts for an estimated 40% of all global corruption despite making up just 0.5% of total global trade, making it uniquely vulnerable to unethical profiteering. He points to evidence of brazen insider trading tied to the Iran war in the United States, including on prediction platform Polymarket, where former President Donald Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and sits on the advisory board. The *Financial Times* reports that more than $500 million in oil futures bets were placed just minutes before Trump announced a planned de-escalation with Iran, suggesting investors had advance insider knowledge of the announcement that allowed them to profit from market shifts.

“I have never seen war and conflict manipulated so nakedly for short-term profiteering… that is an element which is quite unique to the assault on Iran,” Feinstein said. “Wars are being partly fought to enable insiders to play the stock market and to profiteer in the short term on national security announcements. There is little attempt to hide it.”

The arms industry also benefits from built-in government secrecy, Feinstein explained. Though BAE Systems paid a $400 million fine for corrupt deals in 2010, the firm is still treated as an arm of the British state, and its executives receive extremely high levels of security clearance that give them unique access to sensitive government information and unparalleled policy influence. Anna Stavrianakis, an international relations professor at the University of Sussex, notes that while defense companies are privately owned, they receive massive taxpayer subsidies through government defense budgets, while all profits are kept private by corporate shareholders.

Campaign Against Arms Trade has described the relationship between private defense firms and Western governments as far more than a revolving door between public and private roles – it is an “open plan office,” reflecting the complete integration of industry interests into government policy. For example, Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems has directly interfered in UK democratic politics by meeting with the Home Office during the government’s crackdown on Palestine Action, a grassroots activist group that targets Elbit’s UK facilities. “There is a shared set of assumptions between industry and government that protest needs to be contained and that direct action needs to be repressed,” Stavrianakis said.

On Sunday, a wave of coordinated, large-scale attacks across Mali left the country’s defense minister dead and plunged multiple regions into heavy fighting, marking one of the most significant escalations of conflict in the Sahel nation in recent years.

Sadio Camara, Mali’s top defense official, was killed after a suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into his private residence in Kati, a garrison town located just outside the capital Bamako. A violent gun battle erupted immediately following the blast, during which Camara engaged the attacking force, successfully neutralizing multiple assailants before succumbing to his injuries at a local hospital, an official government statement confirmed. The attack also claimed the lives of Camara’s second wife and two of his grandchildren. Mali’s government has since announced a two-day national period of mourning to honor the dead.

The assassination of Camara was not an isolated incident: it formed a core component of a synchronized multi-front offensive launched jointly by two armed factions: the Tuareg-led separatist Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group. The coalition opened attacks across multiple strategic points spanning the country, from the Kati government stronghold near Bamako and Mopti’s Sévaré in central Mali, to the northern regional hubs of Gao and Kidal. Heavy fighting in Bamako’s Senou district forced a temporary closure of the capital’s international airport while security forces restored order.

The highest-stakes confrontation of the weekend offensive unfolded around Kidal, a strategically critical northern city that was the FLA’s longtime stronghold before Malian government forces backed by Russia’s Wagner Group retook the city from separatist control in November 2023, ending a decade of insurgent rule. By Sunday evening, the status of Kidal remained contested: separatist spokespersons claimed the city had fallen to their forces after reaching an agreement to allow Russian paramilitary troops supporting the Malian government to withdraw from a besieged outpost on the city’s outskirts. Malian army chief of staff Oumar Diarra rejected the separatist claim, stating that government troops had carried out a tactical repositioning of forces and that active combat was still underway in the area.

Mali has been mired in escalating instability since a 2020 military coup led by Assimi Goita ousted the country’s civilian government amid widespread public discontent over persistent insecurity. Goita’s junta pledged to crush the northern Tuareg rebellion and root out transnational militant groups, but more than four years later, large swathes of Mali remain outside central government control. Russian paramilitary support has been a cornerstone of the junta’s counterinsurgency strategy: after Wagner provided backing for the 2023 recapture of Kidal, the Moscow-aligned force was replaced by Africa Corps, a new paramilitary unit directly controlled by Russia’s ministry of defense, in mid-2025. According to Russian state broadcaster Vesti, Africa Corps fighters fought alongside Malian government troops over the weekend, repelling multiple insurgent attacks and preventing insurgents from seizing the presidential palace in Bamako. The outlet confirmed that several Africa Corps personnel suffered injuries in the fighting, but provided no additional details.

The weekend offensive marks a major escalation in violence that has been building across Mali for years. JNIM, the al-Qaeda-aligned group, has steadily expanded its operations across the country in recent times: in September 2024, the group carried out a deadly attack on a paramilitary police training academy near Bamako’s airport that killed roughly 70 people. More recently, the group imposed a widespread fuel blockade that has cut off electricity and critical supplies to many residents and businesses in the capital.

The coordinated attacks drew swift condemnation from the Alliance of Sahel States, the bloc made up of three West African nations all ruled by military juntas — Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. In a joint statement, the alliance described the offensive as “a monstrous plot backed by the enemies of the liberation of the Sahel”. All three bloc members have cut diplomatic and political ties with their former colonial ruler France and other Western powers in recent years, and have deepened their military and political alliances with Moscow.