Attention to the Unseen

Mother Jones reports: In a private meeting last month with big-money donors, the head of a top conservative group boasted that her outfit had crafted the new voter suppression law in Georgia and was doing the same with similar bills for Republican state legislators across the country. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” she said, “or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”…

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Nathan J Brown writes: It is time to admit what most observers already know: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that diplomats have been dealing with for half a century is over. It is not that a solution has been found. Just the opposite: all the injustices and insecurities that afflict inhabitants of the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea are now so deeply ingrained in daily life that no diplomatic framework can address them now. This leaves some people…

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The Washington Post reports: As bands of Jewish and Arab citizens fought one another and police in towns across Israel for a third night early Thursday, Israelis worried that the battle inside the country may be harder to stop than the air war still being waged with Gaza. Chaos erupted in Israeli cities with mixed Jewish-Arab populations on Wednesday night, marking an escalation in the country’s worst communal violence in two decades. The Israeli media and local residents alike have…

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The New York Times reports: The United States deployed a top diplomat to Israel on Wednesday, in hopes of calming hostilities that have broken out between Israelis and Palestinians. After throngs of Palestinian demonstrators took to the streets of East Jerusalem in recent days to protest Israeli settlements and the evictions of Palestinians there, particularly in the heavily Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, a crackdown by security forces gave way to escalating violence. Hamas militants have launched rockets into Israel,…

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The New York Times reports: A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations. The campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks. The operations against the…

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Peter Beinart writes: Why has the impending eviction of six Palestinian families in East Jerusalem drawn Israelis and Palestinians into a conflict that appears to be spiraling toward yet another war? Because of a word that in the American Jewish community remains largely taboo: the Nakba. The Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, need not refer only to the more than 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled or fled in terror during Israel’s founding. It can also evoke the many expulsions that…

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The Jerusalem Post reports: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to crack down on rioters on Wednesday, after Arabs in mixed cities attacked their Jewish neighbors’ homes, synagogues and businesses. “We are in a struggle on multiple fronts,” Netanyahu said on a visit to Acre. “Last night, after the discussions and decisions at the Defense Ministry about the Gaza Strip, I went to Lod at 2 a.m., another front that opened up with anarchy.” Netanyahu pointed to the extra police and…

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Jeff Greenfield writes: If you’ve been reading the coverage lately, or listened to gloating Democrats, it’s easy to believe the Republican Party is eating itself alive. The former Republican president literally campaigns against incumbents of his own party. NBC calls it a “GOP power struggle”; The Hill describes “deep rifts”; and the Democratic National Committee exults over “a GOP civil war.” After losing the White House, the House and the Senate, its congressional leadership is now in open conflict; Wednesday,…

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The Washington Post reports: Rep. Liz Cheney lost her House leadership position Wednesday, but she aims to become an even more influential political figure capable of weakening former president Trump’s hold on their party — and continuing to push for his purge. Rather than focusing on whipping votes to save her job as conference chair, the Wyoming Republican has drafted plans for increased travel and media appearances, such as an interview Wednesday on NBC’s “Today Show,” meant to drive home…

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Hayes Brown writes: As we’re watching what might well turn into a third intifada play out in Jerusalem, images of fires burning among the trees outside the Al-Aqsa mosque and reports of children being injured in a new volley of airstrikes in Gaza, I can’t get a line from the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry out of my head. “Regrettably, the PA” — the Palestinian Authority — “and Palestinian terror groups are presenting a real-estate dispute between private parties, as a…

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Agencies report: The mayor of Israel’s Lod city pointed to a “civil war out of control,” Israeli media reported late Tuesday, calling upon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to send military forces to handle the situation. The central Israeli city witnessed fierce clashes with police after a funeral procession of an Arab Israeli killed by an Israeli settler. Israeli daily Yediot Ahronoth reported two Israeli police officers in the city of Lod were injured in the clashes, which also saw a…

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