Attention to the Unseen

Benzion Sanders writes: When my Israeli infantry unit arrived at the first village in Gaza, in July 2014, we cleared houses by sending grenades through windows, blowing doors open and firing bullets into rooms to avoid ambush and booby traps. We were told Palestinian civilians had fled. I realized this wasn’t true as I stood over the corpse of an elderly Palestinian woman whose face had been mutilated by shrapnel. She had been lying on the sand floor of a…

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The New York Times reports: In the days after Artforum magazine fired its top editor, David Velasco, because of an open letter it published about the Israel-Hamas war, at least four other editors resigned and several prominent artists said they would boycott the publication unless Velasco was reinstated. Divisions over how to discuss the conflict in the Middle East have frayed yearslong relationships between collectors and artists. On Friday, Nicole Eisenman and Nan Goldin criticized the magazine’s owner for terminating…

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Yes! It’s considered America’s war.Biden unconditional support+ 14bill $ in military aid to Israel.Sending war ships to the ME. Voting against UN resolutions calling to protect civilians, & upholding int’l humanitarian laws. Ignoring Arabs’ warnings re regional conflagration. https://t.co/St9DkOFaXF — Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal) October 29, 2023 Jewish lives matter. Palestinian lives matter. Disheartening how many believe only one of these two. — Edward Luce (@EdwardGLuce) October 28, 2023

Jesse Rosenfeld reports: Gaza has been plunged into darkness and cut off from the world as Israel knocked out phone and internet connections in the besieged Palestinian strip amidst its military’s unprecedented bombardment campaign from land, air and sea. In the desolate, evacuated southern Israeli town of Sderot, the explosions echo constantly as the ground shakes from Israeli bombs smashing one of the world’s most densely populated places, only a few kilometers away. From a vantage point that overlooks Israel’s…

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The Observer reports: On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of liberal Jewish American activists staged sit-ins in the Capitol Hill offices of top Democrats, including in the senate office of progressive champion Bernie Sanders, to demand a ceasefire in the escalating war between Israel and Hamas. As they sang in Hebrew and prayed for peace, the House floor resumed legislative activity for the first time in weeks after the election of a new Republican speaker, congressman Mike Johnson. In his first act,…

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The Guardian reports: Russian forces are believed to have suffered some of the country’s biggest casualty rates so far this year as a result of continued “heavy but inconclusive” fighting around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka. According to the UK Ministry of Defence’s intelligence update on Saturday morning, Russia has probably committed elements of up to eight brigades to the sector where it initiated a “major offensive effort” in mid-October. Ukraine’s armed forces claimed on Saturday that Russia had…

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290 Former @BernieSanders Staffers Are Urging The Senator To Sponsor A "Ceasefire Now" Senate Resolution Story to follow. Watch their video message to Sanders: pic.twitter.com/fnV0DONhbp — Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 24, 2023 Dear Senator Sanders, We, the undersigned, worked for you in your 2016 and 2020 campaigns because we share your principles that all human lives are precious, and that all people deserve dignity, peace, and justice. We saw in your candidacy a chance to make life better for oppressed…

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Reuters reports: U.S. President Joe Biden has cast doubt on casualty figures provided by Palestinian officials in Gaza, but international humanitarian agencies consider them broadly accurate and historically reliable. Although there is no dispute that Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed many people since Hamas ran amok in southern Israel on Oct. 7, Biden said on Wednesday he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using”, without saying why. The health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza responded by…

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Reuters reports: Almost half of Israelis want to hold off on any invasion of Gaza, according to a poll published on Friday, in what may indicate a dip in support for the planned next stage of the counter-offensive against Hamas militants holding some 200 hostages. Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas in response to the Palestinian Islamists’ killing and kidnapping spree in its southern communities on Oct. 7, and has been stepping up tank and infantry raids in concert with heavy…

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