The Times - UK (2022-06-13)

32 2GM Monday June 13 2022 | the times

Wo r l d

Naftali Bennett has been spending
much of his time lately in his cramped
parliamentary office as he struggles to
cajole an ever-dwindling number of
MPs who prop up the governing
coalition.
Four of the Israeli prime minister’s
closest aides have resigned over the
past few weeks, exhausted at trying to
keep things together. Yet on the eve of
his first anniversary in office, Bennett
denied rumours that he had already
given up. “I have no dilemmas. I said I
would fight with all my strength to keep
this government but not at any price,”
he said in an interview with The Times.
A crucial vote scheduled for today on
applying Israeli laws to citizens living in
the occupied West Bank has had to be
postponed. It failed last Monday when

JOHANNES P. CHRISTO/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

Back on the road Bali in Indonesia hosts the first gathering of Vespa owners outside Europe in an effort to revive tourism

Her brother became the richest man in
the world by providing online pay-
ments, then electric vehicles and trips
to space.
However, Elon Musk’s younger
sister, Tosca, is taking a different route
to create her own fortune.
She is the founder and chief execu-
tive of Passionflix, a $5.99 a month
subscription streaming service focused
on releasing film adaptations of popu-
lar romance novels while also showing
classic movies from the genre.
The 1995 BBC television adaptation
of Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin
Firth as Mr Darcy, is available on the
service, as is the 1999 film of another
Jane Austen work, Mansfield Park.
Films range from the Oh So Vanilla
category through Passion & Romance,
to the NSFW range — not safe for work
— at the extreme end of the “barometer
of naughtiness”. Viewers expecting
more extreme thrills may be dis-
appointed, however. Musk has banned
any frontal nudity below the waist.
Titles in the final category include
Seduction & Snacks, a film about a choc-
olate store owner and her one-night
stand.
Passionflix has raised almost
$22 million in early funding and
Musk, 47, hopes to raise a further
$10 million.
“Most of the time people look
down at romance — there is
apparently something rad-
ical in having female desire
as a main theme,” she told
The New York Times.
“They don’t think that ro-
mance is intellectual
enough.
“I think that is wrong.
Romance is about validat-
ing emotions. It’s about re-
moving shame from sex-

Musk’s sister

woos viewers

with a passion

for romance

uality. It’s about uplifting stories. Noth-

ing we do is about being a victim or

women in jeopardy or the

domestication of women.”

Passionflix, which claims to bring an

“empowering focus to the female gaze”,

was launched in 2017 and is available

around the world. Subscription num-

bers are unavailable but a spokes-

woman said they grew 73 per cent last

year.

She declined to disclose whether her

brother was an investor in Passionflix.

Elon, 50, is in the process of buying

Twitter for $44 billion, a protracted

purchase thrown into doubt amid a dis-

pute over fake accounts. He appeared to

get cold feet shortly after turmoil in the

financial markets put a significant dent

in his wealth — and Twitter’s share

price.

His sister was coy about any financial

links. She said: “If I say that he is an

investor, then everybody says: ‘Oh, she

just got her brother to pay for it.’ And if

I say he didn’t invest then you all say:

‘He doesn’t support her.’”

It is a challenging time for the

streaming business, starkly illustrated

by Netflix’s recent struggles. While still

the biggest platform, increased compe-

tition from deep-pocketed rivals

such as Disney and Amazon have

contributed to a slowdown in

growth, making Wall Street in-

vestors nervous and causing the

share price to plummet since the

start of the year.

Such conditions may

not bode well for a smaller

service such as Passion-

flix, which was further

harmed during the pan-

demic when production

was closed down.

Musk, however, insist-

ed that she was deter-

mined not to give up.

“It’s just not in my

genes,” she said. “Our

family motto could be:

Keep trying, keep trying,

keep trying.”

United States
Keiran Southern Los Angeles

I’ll fight on, vows Israeli hawk whose wings were clipped by coalition

a number of Arab-Israeli members of

the ruling coalition refused to vote in

favour. If it does not pass, some of Ben-

nett’s right-wing colleagues are threat-

ening to bring down the government.

That would be a pity, lamented Ben-

nett, 50, who not so long ago was known

for his hawkish, nationalistic views.

“I’ve developed in this year,” he said.

“I’ve learnt to appreciate the value of

compromise. I believe that we can keep

on going despite this coalition’s difficult

structure.”

When the new government was

sworn in hardly any expected the dis-

parate coalition of eight parties, includ-

ing rightwingers, centrists and left-

wingers, as well as for the first time in

Israeli history an Arab-Islamist party,

to survive more than a few months.

Yet it has lasted a year and Bennett is

confident that it can keep on going “for

another month, and another month”.

He praised the Islamist party leader,

Mansour Abbas, a man he promised on

the eve of the last election not to sit with

in the same government, as “truly a

leader who comes along once in a gen-

eration”. But Abbas is having difficulty

marshalling his own party members

and things are not made easier by the

relentless campaign being waged by the

former prime minister Binyamin Net-

anyahu, claiming that the government

is relying on “supporters of terror”.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving

prime minister, is, at 72, raring for a

comeback and eager to fight another

election, of which Israel has already

had four in just over three years. Such

an outcome, Bennett said, would mean

“falling back into chaos”.

Bennett admits that he could be out

within weeks but acts as if he has years

left in office. He has embarked on an ag-

gressive covert campaign against

Israel’s main enemy, Iran, where senior

intelligence officials have been assassi-

nated and military sites blown up rec-

ently. He will not acknowledge that

Mossad, the Israeli security service, is

behind any of these operations but

boasts: “We are no longer playing with

Iran’s proxies, with the octopus tenta-

cles, but going right for the head.”

Bennett has plans for a defence pact,

in which Israel and the moderate Arab

states will share a network of radars,

early-warning systems, interceptor

missiles and lasers, which will shield

them from Iranian missiles. Last week

he flew to Abu Dhabi to meet Sheikh

Mohammed bin Zayed, president of the

United Arab Emirates and one of the

most influential Arab leaders, to discuss

these and other Iran-related matters.

Until recently such a meeting would

never have happened in public. Since

the Abraham Accords, brokered by the

Trump administration, Israel has est-

ablished diplomatic relations with the

UAE, Bahrain and Morocco.

“There’s a lot more we can do with

the countries in the region,” said Ben-

nett, who relishes Israel’s emergence

from long decades of isolation in the

Middle East. On the agenda are solar-

energy fields and desalination plants

being built with Jordan to Israel’s east,

and Israeli factories in Egypt to the

west. “We have to take advantage of the

fact that we are adjacent economies

and move production there.”

Israel
Anshel Pfeffer Jerusalem

Tosca Musk, 47, banned
full-frontal nudity

Exorcism centre for ‘epidemic of possessions’

The Catholic Church in the Philippines

is building Asia’s first centre dedicated

to exorcisms, claiming that possessions

have surged since the pandemic.

The St Michael Centre for Spiritual

Liberation and Exorcism in Manila will

be a training centre for priests. It will

have a chapel and rooms for interviews,

counselling and exorcisms. “A product

of more than seven years of prayers,

planning and fundraising, this will be

the first of its kind in Asia, if not the

world,” the Manila archdiocese said.

The Philippines has the third-largest

Catholic population, after Brazil and

Mexico. Father Jose Francisco Syquia,

director of the archdiocese, said that

Manila’s existing seminary was ill-

equipped to deal with the effects of the

pandemic on people’s mental health.

Although exorcisms are often depict-

ed in films as the violent purging of evil

spirits, Father Syquia said “full posses-

sion” accounted for only about 20 per

cent of cases. “Most are oppression —

people who start to become harassed

physically, they get sick without any

reason.” He said witchcraft and un-

healthy domestic situations could be

contributing factors.

The Vatican first offered its exorcism

course in 2005 and the centre is expect-

ed to train priests from other countries.

Naftali Bennett has

kept the unlikely

coalition going for

a year but faces a

crunch vote today

Philippines

George Styllis