Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: A top Ukrainian general’s assessment that the war with Russia is a stalemate is fueling partisan passions as a debate on whether to bolster Kyiv with more weapons roils Congress. The stunning admission by Gen. Valery Zaluzhnyy, commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, is reverberating on Capitol Hill — where Republicans are arguing his comments are a reason to rethink America’s as-long-as-it-takes support for Kyiv. And that could make Ukraine’s uphill climb against Russia and in the…

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Vice News reports: Israel has acknowledged that a government ministry drafted a report proposing the forced, permanent transfer of Gaza’s population to Egypt, fuelling fears of a further catastrophic dispossession of Palestinians. The 10-page document by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence, dated the 13th of October, recommends the transfer of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, as the preferred option for securing Israel’s security at the end of the assault on Gaza. The document recommended…

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Hussein Ibish writes: Israel has launched what appears to be the first phase of a massive ground incursion into Gaza, vowing that Hamas must be eliminated or somehow rendered irrelevant, even at the expense of smashing Gaza to pieces. But what then? Israeli officials have reportedly told the Biden administration that they haven’t engaged in any serious postconflict planning. That’s probably because none of their options is good and, despite a plethora of fantastical proposals, nobody is going to step…

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The New York Times reports: It became evident to U.S. officials that Israeli leaders believed mass civilian casualties were an acceptable price in the military campaign. In private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II — including the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — to try to defeat those countries. Publicly, Mr. Biden’s language…

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Wendy Pearlman writes: Responding to Hamas’ horrific killing of some 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7, Israel has targeted the Gaza Strip with one of the most devastating military assaults of modern times. By day six, according to Middle East analyst Charles Lister, Israel had dropped more than twice as many bombs on this densely populated civilian area as the anti-Islamic State coalition dropped per month on an area 126 times as large. By day nine, Israel had pummeled 2.2 million…

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