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Despite criticism over conduct of Gaza war, some see new diplomatic opportunities

TEL AVIV—Since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has dealt a series of damaging setbacks to its most dangerous regional adversaries. It has hobbled Hamas in Gaza, severely damaged Shiite militia Hezbollah in Lebanon and fended off missile salvos from Tehran while landing its own blows in Iran.

Israel’s military operations—especially its conduct of the war in Gaza, where local authorities say more than 40,000 Palestinians have died—have hurt the country’s international standing. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for its prime minister and former defense minister.

But Israel’s leaders say the military gains are worth the trade-off in reputational damage and argue that the country’s stronger strategic position opens the door for diplomatic gains in the future as Arab countries look for partners to keep Iranian power at bay.

“For the first time in the history of Zionism, there is an opportunity for Israel to be a regional power,” said Avner Golov, a former senior director at Israel’s National Security Council, who is now a vice president at MIND Israel, which advises governments on national security.

It won’t be an easy feat to pull off, especially as public opinion across the Arab world has soured on Israel because of the Gaza war. But with the world’s eyes focused on the horrors emerging from the wreckage of the Assad regime and a Gaza cease-fire potentially on the horizon, Israel might be in a position to repair its international image and diplomatic standing.

Current and former Israeli officials are pushing for aggressive steps to build an Israeli, American and moderate Arab alliance that includes Saudi Arabia and is aimed at checking Iran’s influence. The re-election of Donald Trump, who confronted Iran in his first term and is returning to the presidency next month, has raised hopes for such an alliance, said Golov.

The Gaza war set in motion a sequence of events that has helped lay the groundwork, said Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. Israel has weakened Iran by largely incapacitating its military allies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Those successes triggered the recent fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, a key Tehran ally. Israel has also decimated Iran’s air defenses in two rounds of tit-for-tat airstrikes, leaving Tehran vulnerable in any future confrontation.

“We expect our determination and strength shown over the past year will lead to more regional stability,” said Danon.

Sharren Haskel, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said that, because Israel is on the front lines and has shown its military prowess, “many more countries are realizing that we need to work together in collaboration.” Deepened ties, including normalization with Saudi Arabia, would further isolate Iran, she said.

The two countries were close to such a pact before the war, but Riyadh has since become highly critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza and elsewhere. Yet the kingdom has retained its prewar stance that normalization is possible if Israel agrees to resolve the issue of Palestinian statehood.

Israelis overwhelmingly oppose a Palestinian state now, but Israel could give Palestinians a clear road map to self-governance in Gaza and the West Bank, Golov said. It is unclear whether Saudi Arabia would accept such a compromise.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would struggle to pass such measures with his current coalition, analysts say, because it relies on far-right parties who want to tighten rather than loosen Israeli control over the Palestinian territories. Netanyahu himself has stressed since the current war began that he would oppose a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu recently told The Wall Street Journal that there is optimism for normalization with Saudi Arabia once Israel secures a deal to release hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and pause the fighting there.

Not everyone agrees Israel’s military achievements have made itself or the region safer, and there are risks that the war’s trade-off could still prove costly to Israel.

The widely televised devastation in the Gaza Strip and the rising death toll there have sowed the seeds for future conflicts between Israel and its neighbors, said Hussein Ibish, senior resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a think tank in Washington.

Israel’s military victories, Ibish added, have created a situation in which it will need more soldiers to guard its borders with Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip—as well as in the West Bank, which is partially occupied by Israel.

“It is really surrounded by bitter enemies who have much more reason to be bitter enemies today than they did on Oct. 7,” he said.

Across the Middle East and in many developing countries, meeting with Israeli leaders has become taboo, stifling future cooperation, said William Wechsler, senior director of Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington.

Israel has faced diplomatic blowback in the past. Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and adviser to several prime ministers, thinks it will wane. Israel is a magnet for such criticism today, he said, but that will decrease over time once the war ends.

“Israel enjoys massive unquestionable U.S. support not just because of the need to respond to a Hamas attack or Hezbollah, but the sense that there are important U.S. interests at stake,” said Rabinovich.

The current Middle East conflict, for example, has wider significance as Iran develops closer ties with Russia, which is in turn close to countries that are competing with the U.S. and its allies, Rabinovich said. “It’s not just a regional conflict, but a global one, against the Russia, China, North Korea coalition.”

From the start of the war, one of the key questions for Israel in weighing the war’s trade-offs was whether it would have a free hand to pursue its military goals before the diplomatic consequences became overwhelming, said Micah Goodman, an Israeli author and philosopher.

“We needed to restore deterrence—and in order to restore deterrence, we needed to do things that reduce our legitimacy,” Goodman said. But on balance, he added, “I think Israel managed to pull it off.”

Seoul Semiconductor recently filed a series of patent lawsuits against rival lighting companies and global retailers

Signify, the Dutch multinational lighting company formerly known as Philips Lighting LIGHT 0.48%increase; green up pointing triangle, has been ordered by a German court to recall products allegedly infringing on patents of South Korea’s Seoul Semiconductor 046890 1.78%increase; green up pointing triangle for more than seven years.

A court in Düsseldorf, Germany, last week dismissed Signify’s request to invalidate the patents in question and imposed an immediate sales ban on all of the company’s Philips-brand goods that a ruling said violated patent rights, a Seoul Semiconductor executive told Dow Jones Newswires on Thursday.

The court on Dec. 17 ordered Eindhoven-based Signify to recall and destroy all patent-infringing goods sold through European multinational retailer Conrad Electronic since March 29, 2017. The court also ruled that Signify should be fined $250,000 for any single violation of the sales ban, the executive said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the information hasn’t been made public.

The executive said that the ruling focuses on patented technology, not just individual products, and that the technology applies to products beyond the Philips brand.

Signify, which reported more than $7 billion in revenue last year, said when contacted that it is still actively involved in the continuing patent case.

“Signify is not a defendant in the patent infringement litigation,” Tom Lodge of the company’s corporate communications team said in an email. “Signify is of the opinion that these patents are invalid and therefore [the company] started the current patent invalidity case.”

Seoul Semiconductor personnel said the German court’s decision upheld an earlier ruling that Signify had infringed on their company’s patented technology for lighting with “a color rendering index above 70” to reproduce the colors of objects as close as possible to those in nature.

They said the court decision could have a sizable impact on a global lighting-product market that tops $100 billion in annual sales, as well as on other continuing patent disputes.

Seoul Semiconductor recently filed a series of patent lawsuits against rival lighting companies and global retailers. The light-emitting diode maker said it holds around 18,000 patents after spending nearly $100 million annually in research and development over the past two decades.

The company’s EV business launched its first car in March

Chinese consumer-electronics specialist Xiaomi 1810 3.15%increase; green up pointing triangle will join the electric-vehicle charging networks of rivals NIO NIO 3.13%increase; green up pointing triangle, XPeng XPEV 1.33%increase; green up pointing triangle and Li Auto LI 1.37%increase; green up pointing triangle, giving customers of its emerging auto business access to tens of thousands of charging stations in China.

Xiaomi said in a Weibo post Wednesday that its cars can now be used at more than 14,000 charging stations developed by NIO, 9,000 by XPeng and 6,000 by Li Auto. It didn’t provide further details of the deals.

CCB International analyst Qu Ke described the tie-ups as “a natural move for Xiaomi to make the most of available resources.”

Xiaomi, known mainly for its smartphones and home appliances, is a late entrant to the world’s biggest market for EVs, but it has seen robust sales performance in the crowded and competitive space. Its EV business launched its first car in March, with the segment going on to generate 9.7 billion yuan in revenue, equivalent to $1.33 billion, in the third quarter. The business’s gross profit margin improved to 17.1% from 15.4% in the second quarter.

Xiaomi reached its 2024 delivery goal of 100,000 units in November, earlier than expected, prompting it to raise its annual target to 130,000 units.

Shares of the company, which closed at 32.75 Hong Kong dollars before the Christmas holiday break, have more than doubled this year, thanks to strong earnings and a better-than-expected EV business.

Taiwan Blocks Uber’s $950 Million Takeover of Local Foodpanda Business

Uber had aimed to close the deal in the first half of 2025

Taiwan has blocked Uber Technologies’ UBER -0.26%decrease; red down pointing triangle planned $950 million takeover of Foodpanda’s local delivery business on anticompetition concerns, thwarting the U.S. company’s efforts to expand in Asia.

Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission said Wednesday that competition pressure on Uber’s food-delivery unit in Taiwan stems mainly from Foodpanda, and that eliminating that dynamic would incentivize Uber to raise prices for consumers and eateries on its platform.

The merger would also make it more difficult for other potential competitors to enter the market, the FTC said.

Uber said in a statement that it was disappointed by the decision, and that it had previously made proposals to address Taiwan’s competition concerns. It said it would nonetheless continue to invest in Taiwan, which it described as one of the world’s fastest-growing markets for food delivery.

Delivery Hero, the Berlin-based owner of Foodpanda, said Uber could appeal the decision or terminate the deal.

San Francisco-based Uber in May had announced its plans to buy Foodpanda’s Taiwan delivery business for $950 million in cash, along with a separate $300 million purchase of newly issued ordinary shares of Delivery Hero. It had aimed to close the deal—one of the largest international acquisitions in Taiwan outside of the semiconductor industry—in the first half of 2025.

Uber, which also has operations in Japan and Hong Kong in Asia, said at the time that it expected the acquisition to contribute at least $150 million annually to the adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of its delivery business within 12 months of closing.

Asia is Delivery Hero’s largest market, accounting for about 36% of the company’s revenue in 2023. Foodpanda’s operations in Taiwan were breakeven in terms of adjusted Ebitda in the fiscal year ending March 2024, Delivery Hero said in May.

AI phones could sustain chip sector if data centre spending slows, says Nvidia supplier

Advantest chief warns any faltering in Big Tech’s AI investments will reverberate through supply chain

Demand for artificial intelligence-enabled smartphones could help to protect parts of the semiconductor industry from a “vicious” downturn if investment in data centres slows, said the chief executive of the world’s largest provider of chip testing machines.

Doug Lefever, who leads Nvidia supplier Advantest, said he was watching for any sign of slower spending on AI by big US tech groups. Meta, Google and Microsoft have been heavy investors in data centres that can deliver massive amounts of computing power.

A fall-off “may not last long and then it may go right back up, but because of the concentration [of hyperscalers] right now in the market, any slowdown in the data centre buildout is going to have big reverberations in the supply chain”, said Lefever.

“I don’t like to use the word bubble because it implies that it’s going to go away, but there will be cycles,” he said. “When that next cycle comes . . . it could be pretty vicious.”

In contrast, demand for AI smartphones was “kind of slow” but could take off rapidly, Lefever said.

“Everyone is holding their breath, waiting for the killer app with the AI handsets . . . if that happens and people start replacing their phones, it’s going to be crazy,” he said.

Tokyo-based Advantest, a key supplier of testing equipment for Nvidia’s high-end graphics processing units, is one of the companies to benefit most from the rapid rise in demand for semiconductors.

The company controls more than half of the semiconductor testing market, and demand for its services has skyrocketed as chips have become more advanced and expensive.

That dominance has lifted its share price by more than 80 per cent over the past year and about 500 per cent over a five-year period, with a recent dip in December attributed to fears that incoming president Donald Trump would get tougher on China.

While Japan has lost its leading position from the 1980s in chip production, Advantest is part of a cluster of Japanese semiconductor equipment and materials companies that hold dominant market positions in niche yet indispensable parts of the supply chain.

A completed advanced chip might now be tested by Advantest machines between 10 and 20 times, according to Lefever, from when the wafer is cut to the assembly of the finished product. Five years ago, that figure was in single digits.

Testing times have also been extended, with Nvidia’s latest Blackwell product taking three or four times longer to test than the previous generation. This gave Advantest the confidence in October to raise its net income target for the 2024 fiscal year by 16 per cent to ¥122bn ($792mn).

The trend of increasing demand for Advantest machines — which can cost $1mn and have more parts than a commercial aircraft — is unlikely to abate soon. It has focused on higher-end performance testing and in some categories has over 60 per cent market share, according to analysts.

The company is in 18 countries but still draws between 20 and 25 per cent of revenues from China, a level that has fallen recently but with which Lefever says he is comfortable.

It has not been directly targeted by US restrictions to curtail China’s ability to produce advanced technology, in part because sanctions tend to target the ability to fabricate the chips themselves.

Even if China were completely closed off, Lefever expected demand to be healthy enough elsewhere to compensate. When one big company in China was hit by sanctions recently, the lost sales were quickly compensated for by other customers, he said.

“We thought it could be a year, and it was months,” he said. “It was remarkable.”

China’s EV sales set to overtake traditional cars years ahead of west

Volumes forecast to rise 20% next year, smashing international projections and Beijing’s official targets

Electric vehicles are expected to outsell cars with internal combustion engines in China for the first time next year, in a historic inflection point that puts the world’s biggest car market years ahead of western rivals.

China is set to smash international forecasts and Beijing’s official targets with domestic EV sales — including pure battery and plug-in hybrids — growing about 20 per cent year on year to more than 12mn cars in 2025, according to the latest estimates supplied to the Financial Times by four investment banks and research groups. The figure would be more than double the 5.9mn sold in 2022.

At the same time, sales of traditionally powered cars are expected to fall by more than 10 per cent next year to less than 11mn, reflecting a near 30 per cent plunge from 14.8mn in 2022.

Meanwhile, EV sales growth has slowed in Europe and the US, reflecting the legacy car industry’s slow embrace of new technology, uncertainty over government subsidies and rising protectionism against imports from China.

Robert Liew, director of Asia-Pacific renewables research at Wood Mackenzie, said China’s EV milestone signalled its success in domestic technology development and securing global supply chains for critical resources needed for EVs and their batteries. The industry’s scale meant steep manufacturing cost reductions and lower prices for consumers.

“They want to electrify everything,” said Liew. “No other country comes close to China.”

While the pace of Chinese EV sales growth has eased from a post-pandemic frenzy, the forecasts suggest Beijing’s official target, set in 2020, for EVs to account for 50 per cent of car sales by 2035, will be achieved 10 years ahead of schedule. 

Industry forecasts were provided to the FT by investment banks UBS and HSBC, as well as research groups Morningstar and Wood Mackenzie.

They imply that over the coming decade, factories set up in China to produce tens of millions of cars with traditional engines will have almost no domestic market to serve.

They also highlight how the rapid rise of the Chinese EV industry now threatens the national manufacturing champions of Germany, Japan and the US. 

As China’s EV market tracked towards year-on-year growth of near 40 per cent in 2024, the market share of foreign-branded cars fell to a record low of 37 per cent — a sharp decline from 64 per cent in 2020, according to data from Automobility, a Shanghai-based consultancy.

In this month alone, GM wrote down more than $5bn of its business value in China; the holding company behind Porsche warned of a writedown in its Volkswagen stake of up to €20bn; and arch rivals Nissan and Honda said they were responding to a “drastically changing business environment” with a merger.

Chinese carmakers face their own internal rivalry. Yuqian Ding, a veteran Beijing-based analyst with HSBC, said that while EVs were now a “strategically important” part of China’s new, high-tech economy, intense competition was expected to “squeeze” more players out of the market as the industry consolidated.

“While China’s domestic EV sector is clearly flourishing, it is also facing slowing growth — from a very high base — models oversupply, intense competition and a price war,” she said. “The longer-term direction of travel is clear — China’s EV juggernaut is unstoppable.”

Tu Le, founder of consultancy Sino Auto Insights, said the industry was only at “the beginning” of a period of unparalleled upheaval.

Vincent Sun, an equity analyst covering China’s car sector for investment research group Morningstar, noted that several multinational carmakers, including Germany’s Volkswagen, were not expecting to release major new EV models in China until late 2025 or 2026.

HSBC estimated about 90 new car models had been planned for release by manufacturers in China in the fourth quarter of 2024 — about one a day — and nearly 90 per cent were EVs.

Still, Paul Gong, head of Chinese automotive research at UBS, cautioned there was some uncertainty over China’s broader economic policy heading into 2025 and forecast the market would have a “weak start to the year” after a robust finish to 2024.

But he added: “We anticipate . . . a strong surge in purchases at the end of 2025, driven by the expiration of subsidies and the imposition of a 5 per cent purchase tax on electric vehicles in 2026 — compared to 0 per cent until the end of 2025.”

Russians turn to 'personal shoppers' to smuggle luxury bags

Customs records show middlemen are keeping high-end fashion flowing to Moscow despite sanctions

Wealthy Russians are routinely sidestepping trade curbs on luxury brands, using a cottage industry of personal shoppers, resellers and cross-border smugglers to stay in step with the best of European fashion.

Instagram and the Telegram social media platform have filled with resellers catering to both large retailers and private buyers in Russia, promising a path to circumvent sanctions on expensive handbags and haute couture.

European luxury brands were hit with restrictions on sales into Russia after Vladimir Putin’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with the EU restricting legal sales to items valued at under €300.

Yet despite average prices for high-end fashion being well above the limit, Russians continue to sport latest western collections in Moscow, bought through a flourishing shadow supply chain. One buyer Lliyenish who has more than 10,000 followers on social media promises to source “anything on your wishlist” from the United Arab Emirates and Europe. Lliyenish did not respond to a request for comment.

Customs records indicate that sanctions curbs are diverting trade through resellers in third countries which do not apply any such restrictions. In September, for instance, a shipment of more than 300 Italian-made Bottega Veneta bags, priced at an average price of $1,800, was shipped into Russia from Dubai by a China-based reseller. Bottega did not respond to a request for comment.

Some brands and Russian importers have also adjusted their offerings to ensure items fall below the sanctions thresholds, according to analysts and customs data.

IBC Real Estate, a Moscow-based retail property consultancy, said about half of major western designer brands that were present in Russia at the start of 2020 are still available and are bringing new clothing lines into the country.

Middlemen saw business boom after sanctions came into force. From an apartment packed with luxury handbags, one buyer in Italy said he shipped 10 to 20 parcels to Russia each week, earning up to €6,000 per week in commission.

“The Italians don’t care,” said the buyer, who asked to be called Mikhail. “For them it is important to sell the product, and what happens to it later is our business.”

Mikhail, who before 2022 scouted the European market for clothing lines to launch in Russia, claims the destination of the goods he buys is an open secret. “Everyone knows me in these shops already, and they know my colleagues. Everyone knows very well where these clothes are going,” he said. 

Latvian customs officials told the Financial Times that they have, since the start of the year, rejected 60 shipments of luxury goods into Russia, many of which had an artificially low price marked on the customs declaration. Middlemen often try to disguise shipments as personal deliveries by, for example, taking tags off the bags.

Western brands can be liable for breaches of export controls if their products appear on the Russian market, regardless of the route into the country.

“In order to establish a defence you’d have to show that you didn’t know, and had no reasonable cause to suspect that the goods were ultimately destined for Russia,” said Gavin Irwin, a barrister at 2 Hare Court chambers. 

In some cases, the price thresholds have shaped decision-making.

FT analysis of Russian customs dockets shows that men’s suits sent to the country by the Italian company Canali were priced for wholesalers at an average of around €600 in the year before the outbreak of the war.

After sanctions hit, the unit price of almost all of the shipments dropped to just under the sanctions threshold of €300. This did not appear to reflect a general change in pricing strategy for the company: Canali suits declared on entry to India, for instance, show no such change.

A representative for Canali stated that they are “fully compliant with all applicable regulations”. Asked about their pricing strategy, they said pricing decisions are “highly confidential and commercially sensitive”. But, they added: “Prices have not fallen for Russian buyers.”

The company said that the price drop reflects that buyers in Russia “select and buy the items available to them, which are those that are able to be exported . . . at a price below the regulatory threshold”.

Some suits made by Canali are currently priced at Tsum, a major Moscow department store, at around Rbs170,000 (€1,600/$1,650).

Ekaterina Nogay, head of IBC Real Estate analytics department, said some other western brands were releasing “capsule collections” priced to meet the pricing requirements of selling in Russia.

“While perhaps not as obvious as export of western components used in Russian weapons, the export of luxury goods also plays an important role in buttressing Putin’s regime,” said Vitali Volovoi, researcher at Squeezing Putin, an organisation that tracks companies’ responses to Russia’s full-scale invasion, which first noted the shift in wholesale prices at Canali. 

“Any public cases of sanctions circumvention decrease the general leverage of sanctions against Russia, and help Putin’s regime build this narrative that they can still get access to brand new western products,” said Yuliia Pavytska, manager of sanctions programme at Kyiv School of Economics Institute.

One Russian, who asked not to be named, said export controls have only had an impact on middle class shoppers like her, who do not buy luxury often and now stopped completely due to the high mark-ups charged by resellers.  

“Rich Russians, who could easily afford it before, continue to get everything through fashion buyers, nothing has changed for them,” the 28-year-old web designer living in Moscow told the FT.

“I’ve always been trying to work more, to earn a little more to afford these luxuries, and with the war it feels like I have gone down a social class.”

Selon plusieurs légendes, Jésus aurait été un maître de sagesse, un gourou ayant marché de l’Himalaya à Bénarès, avant de revenir en Palestine, où sa vie nous est contée par les Evangiles. En ce matin de Noël, « Le Monde des religions » part sur les mystérieuses traces orientales du fondateur du christianisme.

Il existe, en Europe, toute une littérature faisant référence à un supposé séjour de Jésus aux Indes, au Cachemire et au Tibet, datant principalement de la fin du XIXe siècle. Une légende qui illustre la perception paradoxale que l’Occident a de l’Orient, faite de répulsion-domination et de fascination-séduction. Le premier aspect s’est exprimé économiquement et militairement : occupation de l’Inde et de la Chine, création des « compagnies des Indes » par les Occidentaux, racisme colonial…

En même temps, l’Orient fascine : terre de spiritualité, ses langues, tel le sanskrit, exercent une formidable attraction, car elles sont considérées comme les langues originelles. Ce contexte général favorisa l’émergence, en Occident, du mythe d’un Jésus d’Orient. Avec la science moderne, la philosophie des Lumières et la sécularisation, les Eglises ne peuvent plus prétendre au monopole du sens et de la vérité. Leur emprise sur la société se desserre…

Mais la soif spirituelle ne s’apaise pas pour autant : elle se métamorphose, devenant moins ecclésiale, moins dogmatique. Même les Eglises connaissent leurs « modernistes », leurs « libéraux ». Une aubaine pour l’ésotérisme, qui va ainsi enfanter une littérature marquée par l’Orient. C’est dans ce creuset ésotérique que la légende est née.

Jésus, une incarnation du dieu Krishna ?

L’occultiste et écrivain français Louis Jacolliot (1837-1890), qui aurait vécu quelques années en Inde, y exerçant le métier de juge, fut le précurseur de cette légende. Il a consacré une part de ses travaux à la mythologie indienne. Sa Bible dans l’Inde (1869), coup de tonnerre dans la pensée religieuse de l’époque, interrogeait le silence des Evangiles à propos de la vie de Jésus entre 12 et 30 ans. Il s’exclame ainsi : « Et la vérité est que le Christ, pendant cette période, étudia en Egypte, et peut-être même dans l’Inde, les livres sacrés, réservés depuis des siècles aux initiés… » La « révolution accomplie » par Jésus et ses disciples fut possible « grâce aux livres sacrés de l’Inde ». Jésus-Christ serait même une incarnation « chrétienne » du dieu Krishna, fils d’une divinité de l’Inde, né lui aussi d’une vierge. L’Eglise mettra évidemment le livre à l’index.

Mais Jacolliot influencera la théosophe russe Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891). Dans Isis dévoilée (1877) et La Doctrine secrète (1888), elle brosse le portrait d’un Jésus proche de la secte juive des esséniens, dont elle nous dit qu’ils furent des « convertis, missionnaires bouddhistes ». Le « réformateur nazaréen » prêchait alors « la philosophie du Bouddha-Sâkyamouni ». Pour elle, Jésus était « au pied de l’Himalaya plutôt qu’au pied du Sinaï », car son éthique était bien plus proche des doctrines de Manu (grand législateur indien, auteur des Lois de Manu, un traité du IIe siècle avant notre ère environ) et de Gautama (nom du Bouddha historique), que de Yahvé, le dieu vengeur de l’Ancien Testament.

Avec le Russe Nicolas Notovitch (1858-1916), la thèse d’un séjour de Jésus en Orient prend de l’ampleur. Juif devenu chrétien orthodoxe, Notovitch fut un infatigable arpenteur de l’Asie. Il se serait rendu au monastère tibétain de Himis, dans le Ladakh, et y aurait trouvé rien de moins qu’un manuscrit relatant le séjour de Jésus dans le pays. Sa Vie méconnue de Jésus-Christ (1894) reprend les informations qu’il prétend avoir glanées dans ce texte rédigé en pali et en tibétain.

On y apprend ainsi que les Tibétains connaissent Jésus sous le nom d’Issa. Serait-ce une influence de l’islam et de la langue arabe, largement présents en Asie centrale et orientale ? En effet, Issa (ou Aïssa) est le nom arabe de Jésus. Quoi qu’il en soit, un lama aurait expliqué à Notovitch qu’Issa est un « grand prophète, l’un des premiers après les vingt-deux Bouddhas », et « plus grand qu’aucun de tous les dalaï-lamas ». Des milliers de rouleaux le mentionneraient.

Le supérieur du monastère de Himis aurait précisé qu’Issa était un bouddha « qui prêcha la doctrine sainte dans l’Inde et chez les fils d’Israël ». Le manuscrit rapporté par Notovitch donne les informations suivantes : « Lorsque l’enfant sacré eut atteint un certain âge, on l’emmena aux Indes où, jusqu’à l’âge d’homme, il étudia toutes les lois du grand Bouddha qui réside éternellement dans le ciel. »

« Supercherie littéraire ! »

Jésus aurait donc quitté Jérusalem pour se rendre, vers 13 ou 14 ans, aux Indes, par les portes du Sindh (aujourd’hui au Pakistan). Les « prêtres blancs de Brama » lui auraient transmis les enseignements des Veda, la guérison par la prière, l’art d’éloigner l’esprit malin. Mais Jésus développa son propre message, hétérodoxe par rapport à l’hindouisme, car il enseignait – à Bénarès, au Népal ou dans les montagnes de l’Himalaya – aux basses castes, les exhortant à refuser le culte des idoles, contestant même l’autorité des brahmanes et des kshatriyas – occupant la seconde place dans la hiérarchie des castes après les brahmanes, les kshatriyas ont en principe le monopole du pouvoir politique et militaire.

Puis, Jésus quitta l’Inde pour la Perse, tout en continuant sa prédication. A l’âge de 29 ans, il était de retour dans son pays natal. Là, les rédacteurs des Evangiles prennent le relais de l’histoire du Christ, jusqu’au procès et à la crucifixion.

Dès sa sortie, le livre de Notovitch suscita des réactions hostiles : « Supercherie littéraire ! », crient de nombreux auteurs, dans des cercles catholiques (Giovannini R., 1894), rabbiniques (Deutsch G., 1896) mais aussi théosophiques (Mead G., 1894). L’orientaliste Max Müller (1823-1900), grand traducteur de textes orientaux, affirme également n’avoir jamais entendu parler de ce manuscrit de Himis.

Mais le débat est lancé. Des voyageurs passés par le monastère disent confirmer son inexistence. L’écrivain russe, sans remettre en cause son récit, nuance ses propos dans les éditions ultérieures, précisant qu’il s’est basé sur des notices fragmentaires. Le supérieur tibétain de Himis aurait, quant à lui, selon certaines auteurs de l’époque, nié la véracité du récit…

Pourtant, malgré ces réfutations, la légende du séjour asiatique de Jésus se prolongera tout au long du XXe siècle. Le peintre et théosophe russe Nicolas Roerich (1874-1947), qui visitera le Tibet à la fin des années 1920, aurait partagé cette croyance. Citons également L’Evangile du Verseau de Jésus le Christ (1908), de l’Américain Levi H. Dowling (1844-1911), qui, lui aussi, nous parle des années indiennes et tibétaines de Jésus.

Et le mythe prend un nouvel élan lorsqu’un hindou, disciple direct de Ramakrishna et proche de Vivekananda – éminents maîtres spirituels des XIXe-XXe siècles –, Swami Abhedananda (1866-1939), prétend, à son tour, avoir vu le manuscrit de Himis en 1922, qui fut intégré à son livre Journey into Kashmir and Tibet, publié à Calcutta.

Une légende présente dans l’hindouisme et en islam

Le mystère de ce manuscrit, dont plus personne ne verra la trace après Abhedananda (certains le disent disparu après un pillage du monastère par les communistes chinois en 1950…), perdurera. En 2011, l’éditeur allemand Norbert Klatt y consacre un ouvrage, Jesus in Indien, suggérant qu’il s’agissait peut-être de restes d’une Vie de Jésus écrite par les Frères moraves, un groupe missionnaire originaire de Bohème, présent dans la région. Peut-être n’a-t-il tout simplement jamais existé.

Quoi qu’il en soit, la légende du Jésus indien ou tibétain circulera jusqu’à nos jours dans divers courants de l’ésotérisme moderne et du New Age, du Livre d’Urantia (ouvrage ésotérique publié en 1955, dont le but est d’« étendre la conscience cosmique et la spiritualité de notre planète ») jusqu’aux explorations des annales akashiques (concept ésotérique créé par les théosophes à la fin du XIXe siècle, postulant l’existence d’une mémoire cosmique enregistrant les événements du monde) par les écrivains Daniel Meurois et Anne Givaudan…

A noter également que des traces de la légende du Jésus indien se retrouvent dans la littérature hindoue, dans un passage – à l’authenticité fortement discutée – du Bhavishya Purana, un texte sacré datant, au moins, du VIe siècle. Certains interprètes voient, en effet, Jésus dans le « Mlechha » (non-Indien) nommé Isha Putra (« fils de Dieu »), né d’une femme célibataire nommée Kumari, et dont le texte relate la rencontre avec le roi indien Shalivahana (ayant pourtant vécu à la fin du premier siècle et au début du deuxième… après Jésus-Christ).

On trouve également écho de cette légende dans l’ahmadisme, un courant musulman né au Pakistan à fin du XIXe siècle, tirant son nom du réformateur Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Selon lui, Jésus a bien été crucifié à Jérusalem, mais il ne serait pas mort. Blessé, il aurait été transporté à Srinagar, dans le Cachemire, où il serait mort à l’âge de 120 ans. Les ahmadis se considèrent ainsi comme les gardiens de la tombe du Christ, Roza Bal, une bâtisse rectangulaire devenue lieu de pèlerinage.

Nous sommes, quoi qu’il en soit, assez loin de ce que l’on sait du Jésus historique, au sujet duquel les avancées de la recherche contemporaine tendent davantage à souligner la judéité que l’indianité, mais aussi du Christ vénéré par les chrétiens en tant que fils de Dieu porteur du salut par la croix : avec le mythe indo-tibétain, Jésus devient un instructeur, porteur d’un enseignement secret, un maître de sagesse.

The giant data centers behind AI models and crypto farms consume so much power that they will require every possible source of electricity generation, including renewables such as solar and wind, industry executives say.

Data centers put unique stress on the power grid by sucking up energy around the clock on top of short bursts of even more electricity. A new breed of giant data centers each need as much energy as a midsize city.

“We already don’t have enough electricity to meet the demands of these server farms, whether it’s AI or crypto,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R., N.D.), who has discussed energy strategy with Trump and his advisers.

That is why the U.S. needs as much energy as it can generate including from renewables and fossil fuels, Cramer said. He supports former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican and Trump’s pick for interior secretary who is slated to head the White House’s National Energy Council.

Investors are buying shares of power companies to bet on rising demand from data centers and the all-sources strategy. An exchange-traded fund tracking big utilities has risen more than 20% this year, the second time in the past decade it has climbed that much.

Natural gas and renewables will continue to account for the bulk of new electricity generation, utility executives say. A gusher of solar and wind projects waiting to connect to the power grid likely represent the fastest path to raise electricity demand. New nuclear plants some technology giants are considering would take a decade or more to construct.

“Renewables are poised to supply immediately what no one else can do, and that growth will be explosive,” said Sheldon Kimber, chief executive of renewable-energy developer Intersect Power.

Intersect recently said it would join with Google and investment company TPG on renewable-power and battery-storage projects for data centers. The companies are targeting $20 billion in investments by the end of the decade.

Technology behemoths driving AI, including Google and Microsoft, have made ambitious pledges to cut carbon emissions. The companies are plowing billions of dollars into zero-carbon energy sources such as nuclear and geothermal power from under the earth’s surface.

“The demand swell that’s unfolding is really going to push and advance a lot of clean-energy technologies,” said Chase Lochmiller, CEO of Crusoe, a startup that aims to power data centers and AI infrastructure with clean energy. Crusoe recently raised $600 million from investors including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Nvidia and Fidelity.

The likelihood that Trump could inadvertently trigger a surge of investment into clean energy runs counter to fears the sector is in for a reckoning. Trump has vowed to pull out of the Paris climate accord, as he did during his first term. The U.S. rejoined under President Biden.

Trump has said he wants to repeal Biden’s 2022 climate law. But the law has bipartisan support in Congress. Trump has criticized wind energy and electric vehicles, though he softened his stance on EVs after Tesla CEO Elon Musk began backing his campaign.

In a post announcing he was naming venture capitalist and Musk ally David Sacks as AI and crypto “czar,” Trump said the two industries are “critical to the future of American competitiveness.” Trump has said increasing energy production would be key to winning the AI arms race with China and other countries.

He has also proposed accelerated permitting for companies that invest more than $1 billion in the U.S., which would give a boost to clean-power efforts such as transmission lines across states.

After the election, OpenAI, the maker of the popular ChatGPT chatbot, put out an “infrastructure blueprint” for the U.S. that included streamlined state and federal permitting for solar, wind and nuclear projects as well as a law to speed transmission and gas pipeline construction.

Tech and energy executives say they need such projects to meet U.S. electricity demand that is forecast to increase nearly 16% by 2029, according to consulting firm Grid Strategies. “We’re going to need every kind of resource that’s ready and able to get built,” said Shashank Sane, who leads energy developer Invenergy’s transmission business.

The company is working on a giant transmission project to carry wind and solar power from Kansas to Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. The Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office recently said it would lend Invenergy nearly $5 billion for phase one of the project taking power from Kansas to Missouri.

The data-center frenzy is also fueling investment in new natural-gas gas plants. Facebook parent Meta Platforms recently said it would spend $10 billion on a data center in Louisiana, prompting the utility Entergy to build three new gas plants and new solar and battery storage projects.

“I can’t think of a time that the gas business has had more fun than they’re having right now,” Scott Strazik, CEO of gas turbine maker GE Vernova, said recently.

How a new wave of homeownership is helping to revive the city’s residential sector

New Venice resident Tommaso Calabro has a few confessions to make.

At the end of 2023, the 34-year-old art-gallery owner moved into a 14th-century palazzo in Venice’s central San Polo district, but he seldom cooks in his cozy kitchen, restored by a previous owner. And just about the last place he goes is at the top of the list of millions of Venice’s annual visitors—Piazza San Marco, where the traffic of day trippers has all but replaced the square’s once-iconic pigeon flocks.

“I am rarely in San Marco,” says Calabro, who paid $4.38 million in late 2023 for a 5,600-square-foot portion of the palazzo, which he has divided up into a high-ceilinged gallery space and a sprawling upper-floor, two-bedroom apartment. Instead, he says, he prefers Zattere, at the lower edge of the historic center, where the spectacular light reflecting off the wide Giudecca Canal reminds him of classic Venetian paintings. “It’s my favorite part of Venice,” he says of an area that many tourists miss entirely.

Calabro, who currently divides his time between Venice and Milan, where his gallery has another branch, is part of a new wave of second-home buyers reinvigorating historic Venice’s residential sector.

Ordinary daily life in the heart of Venice has taken a major hit over the last several decades. According to statistics from the city of Venice, the historic center’s permanent population has dropped from a post-war high of just under 175,000 in 1951 to just below 50,000 in 2023—the lowest point, by some estimates, since the Middle Ages. Former residents, relocating to less expensive and more convenient homes on the mainland, have been fleeing soaring tourist numbers, high real-estate prices, and mounting threats of periodic flooding, says Jacopo Galli, a professor of architectural design at Università Iuav di Venezia, who is affiliated with the Venice Sustainability Foundation, a public-private initiative researching ways to promote residential growth in the city.

Services that Italians expect in their daily lives, says Galli, such as easy access to ordinary food markets and a variety of specialty shops, are “just no longer present” in parts of the city, he says, citing in particular the area around Piazza San Marco.

Now, longtime Venice watchers are hoping that recent second-home buyers, whose numbers have spiked in the wake of the pandemic, can give their corners of historic Venice a newfound lived-in feeling.

Jane da Mosto moved to Venice from the U.K. in the mid-1990s. She is co-founder and executive director of We Are Here Venice, a local NGO that is trying to protect the city against the economic and environmental onslaughts of mass tourism, and she says the city’s growing numbers of second-home owners “are potentially a really important resource for Venice,” because they are true residents, rather than mere visitors or speculators. Servane Giol, a France-born author who moved to the city 25 years ago, likes to call this conspicuous crop “the new Venetians.”

Venice native Stefano Campostrini is a statistician who has studied demographic trends in and around the historic center. A professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Campostrini says you don’t need to be a full-time resident, let alone a native, to help revive the city’s beleaguered residential situation, which has been harmed by short-term vacation rentals, the proliferation of businesses catering almost exclusively to day tourists, and a high vacancy rate.

Some of the outer areas of the historic city, where more modest worker housing was built, feel almost derelict. Campostrini says that up to 20% of Venetian residential units are likely just sitting empty, with owners either unwilling to renovate or just biding their time while waiting for prices to go even higher. Second-home buyers, though their base may be elsewhere, can help to restore a residential character to certain parts of the city, says Campostrini.

Tommaso Calabro bought his palace complex from the owner of a foundation, who used it for exhibits, and he now makes his home, for at least part of every week, in what was previously a pied-à-terre used intermittently by a foundation officer. “To be Venetian doesn’t mean your family has been here for centuries,” says Campostrini, citing the Venetian Republic’s tradition, nearly unique in Italy, of welcoming resident foreign colonies during its heyday in the 13th and 16th centuries. Over time, these former foreigners became fully incorporated into Venetian life. “You can become Venetian,” he says.

While there are no reliable statistics tracking second-home ownership in Venice, ballooning numbers of second-home sales at local real-estate agencies testify to the trend. Serena Bombassei, owner and managing director of Venice Real Estate/Knight Frank, says that growth in interest from second-home buyers at her agency has increased at a rate of at least 10% annually since 2022. The new arrivals are willing to put up with the exotic hassles of renovating centuries-old homes, often built on wooden piles and accessible only by canal, to fulfill what are typically longstanding dreams of living in the traffic-free city of legendary beauty.

Marty Saggese, executive director of a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization, first visited Venice in 1987, and “it was my favorite place in the world since then.” Now 66, he decided to buy a vacation home here just after the pandemic, and he found an unusual two-bedroom duplex near Zattere, with a massive kitchen custom-built by the previous owner, a professional chef. He paid $626,000 in 2023, and plans to spend an additional $62,000 on a renovation that will replace worn-out wooden floors, expose ceiling beams, and update lighting.

Among his own Venetian-style roadblocks in turning the loft space, likely once a wash house for a nearby palazzo, into a new home: approvals from three separate planning commissions that have postponed closing by well over a year. Saggese’s architect, Venetian native Giovanni Rubin de Cervin Albrizzi, says delays were in part caused by Saggese’s conversion of a previously commercial space into residential use. While waiting to close, Saggese has been renting the unit from the seller.

Saggese’s home is in the district of Dorsoduro, which runs along the bottom of the historic center. At its outer tip, along the Grand Canal, the district has lost many ordinary shops and can resemble a resort more than a city. Deeper into Dorsoduro, there is a residual and even vibrant residential feel, with neighborhood butchers, hardware stores, and fresh produce sold from canal barges—which is Saggese’s favorite way to shop.

Local business owners in the heart of Dorsoduro concur on the uptick of second-home owners. “That side has really picked up since 2021,” says Giuseppe Baldan, owner of Club Delfino, a neighborhood gym, who now counts a growing number of new Venetians working out alongside his native-Venetian regulars.

Local, a one-star Michelin restaurant with a $200 nine-course menu, has begun to notice second-home owners among its recurring clientele. “This is a trend we have definitely noticed since the pandemic,” says owner Benedetta Fullin, adding that “French, English and Americans are the nationalities that we see doing it the most.”

Fortuny is the home-furnishings label based on the island of Giudecca, just across from Zattere. The company’s co-owner and creative director, Mickey Riad, says new second-home owners have helped Fortuny to double Venice-based sales in the last few years.

Venice has six historic districts, or sestieri, and a few in particular are noted for maintaining a strong residential character, including Castello, which extends eastward from San Marco. “It’s still all Venetian here,” says Argentine-American architect Emilio Ambasz, who has used a portion of an 18th-century Castello palazzo as his Venice base since the mid-1980s.

Ambasz has put his four-story, eight-bedroom landmark, totaling nearly 14,000 square feet, on the market, with an asking price of $14.6 million. Venice Sotheby’s International Realty has the listing.

Ambasz says he is considering including the décor in the sale for an additional $8.34 million.

Barbara Da Rin, of Bologna’s Nomisma, an economic-research company that evaluates the real-estate sector, says Venice prices are down somewhat since prepandemic levels. Still, the city is one of Italy’s most expensive, with average premium prices now coming in third, behind Milan and Rome. Real-estate professionals attribute these high prices to investors eager to buy up and convert residential units to short-term vacation rentals, which the Venice city government—unlike those of other major tourist destinations in Europe, such as Amsterdam and Barcelona—has been slow to regulate.

Venice Real Estate/Knight Frank has listed a recently restored duplex, centered on the prime floor, or piano nobile, of a 16th-century palazzo, for $10.23 million. The extravagant two-bedroom, right on the Grand Canal, has a view of the Rialto Bridge—once associated with the city’s local fish market and now a prime spot for selfies.

Even wealthy Venetians are largely priced out of the luxury market in the historic center, says Michelangelo Ravagnan, the agent who sold Calabro his gallery complex. Ravagnan, a native Venetian himself, says Venetians willing to spend more than around $1.5 million are inclined to head to the Lido, the outer island known for its Art Nouveau villas, beaches and car access. He says buyers dedicated to staying in the historic center might opt for a unit in Cannaregio, another sestiere with a residential feel, where his agency has a 2,580-square-foot, three-bedroom triplex listed for $1.2 million.

Staying put in the historic center might come at a price, but it means “living the Venetian life,” says Campostrini.