Attention to the Unseen

NBC News reports: A new survey conducted by one of Joe Biden’s former pollsters shows the president’s support has cratered among Muslim and Arab Democrats in Michigan, a key demographic group that overwhelmingly backed Biden in the swing state in 2020. The poll lends further credence to the warnings Arab and Muslim community leaders in Michigan and beyond have been issuing for weeks: that Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza could cost him a state that he won by…

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Politico reports: Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday the United States should use aid to Israel as leverage to force its government to change its approach. “If you want this money, you got to change your military strategy, Sanders (I-Vt.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked about a possible aid package for Israel to be considered by the Senate. But the two senators who followed Sanders on that program were much more concerned about what Iran might be…

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Politico reports: Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu was suspended indefinitely after he said in an interview that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was “one of the possibilities,” the government announced on Sunday. “Eliyahu’s statements are not based in reality,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on X. Israel and its military “are operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents,” the prime minister added. A member of the ultra-nationalist…

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The Hill reports: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has invited former President Trump to his country’s war zone, saying the former president “can’t manage this war.” Zelensky, who joined NBC “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker, responded to Trump’s claims that he could end the war with Russia in 24 hours. “Former President Trump said that about 24 hours, that he can manage it and finish the war,” Zelensky said during the interview that airs Sunday. “For me, what can I…

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James Bamford writes: A future film about Israel’s massive October 7 intelligence failure might be titled All Quiet on the Gaza Front. For months if not years, members of Hamas had covertly plotted their breakout from Gaza, long referred to as Israel’s open-air prison for Palestinians. As if designed by Orwell and Kafka, Gaza subjects its 2.3 million inhabitants to endless surveillance of their voices, faces, and movements; they are trapped in a labyrinthine maze of fences, checkpoints, and humiliation….

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Michelle Goldberg writes: Last week, the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law sent a letter to nearly 200 college presidents urging them to investigate campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine for potential violations of federal and state laws against providing material support to terrorism. As evidence for these very serious accusations, the ADL and the Brandeis center offered only the student group’s own strident rhetoric, including a sentence in its online…

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Politico reports: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday denied a report that EU and U.S. officials have spoken with the government in Kyiv about possible peace talks with Russia. “No leader of the United States or European Union, our partners — nobody puts pressure on us for us sitting at the negotiation table with Russia and give something away,” Zelenskyy told a joint press conference in Kyiv with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who was on an unannounced…

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Adam Serwer writes: On October 7, the Islamist militant group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, killed more than 1,400 people in Israel. Israel responded with military operations that have killed several times that number of Palestinians in Gaza, a territory described by Human Rights Watch as an “open-air prison” as a result of an Israeli and Egyptian blockade. In both cases, most of the casualties are civilians. The conflict has reverberated into other areas of the world, including the…

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Faysal Itani writes: Like many Lebanese, I spent the morning glued to my screen waiting for Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s first speech since the beginning of the latest Israel-Palestine war. While I haven’t lived in Lebanon for more than a decade, Nasrallah’s speeches remain important events in my life, as both a foreign policy professional and a Lebanese. So I found myself parked on the side of a Washington road in rush hour traffic, watching. After all, he was expected…

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The Intercept reports: President Joe Biden, asked last week what his government planned to do to reduce the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, responded by rejecting the idea that the numbers could be trusted. “I have no notion if Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed,” Biden said on Wednesday. “I’m sure innocents have been killed and it is the price of waging war,” he added. “But I have no confidence in the number that…

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Politico reports: Joe Biden and top aides have discussed the likelihood that Benjamin Netanyahu’s political days are numbered — and the president has conveyed that sentiment to the Israeli prime minister in a recent conversation. The topic of Netanyahu’s short political shelf life has come up in recent White House meetings involving Biden, according to two senior administration officials. That has included discussions that have taken place since Biden’s trip to Israel, where he met with Netanyahu. Biden has gone…

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