Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: Nearly 300 students were seated at Columbia University on Wednesday afternoon for a two-hour lecture on women’s involvement in peace processes delivered by Hillary Clinton and Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Not even halfway through the class, about 30 students stood up and gathered their computers and backpacks, as part of a planned student walkout. They joined several dozen other protesters congregating near the lobby of the building….

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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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Igor Kossov writes: As fall weather arrives, observers are looking at the status of Ukraine’s three-pronged counteroffensive, which continues to move very slowly. Ukrainian forces have yet to fully break through Russia’s defensive lines and fight to their target cities — Tokmak, Berdiansk, and Vasylivka. Their tempo is heavily limited by minefields, airstrikes, shortages of specialized equipment, troop exhaustion, and uncertain signals from Washington. Many analysts are asking if the operation has already run its course. The ones who spoke…

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The Washington Post reports: One ripple effect of the Israel-Gaza war is the warp-speed unraveling of relations between President Biden and some of his most loyal voters: Muslims and Arab Americans. This week at the White House encapsulated the strains, beginning with a listening session for frustrated administration personnel from those communities and ending with a controversial meeting between the president and five Muslim figures picked by the White House who had faced enormous pressure from activists to decline in…

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Tom Friedman writes: I am watching the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza today and thinking about one of the world leaders I’ve most admired: Manmohan Singh. He was India’s prime minister in late November 2008, when 10 Pakistani jihadist militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, widely believed to be linked to Pakistan’s military intelligence, infiltrated India and killed more than 160 people in Mumbai, including 61 people at two luxury hotels. What was Singh’s military response to India’s Sept. 11? He did…

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Ariel Bernstein writes: On the morning of 7 October, I woke up in Tel Aviv to the sound of alarms. Soon after came a constant stream of horrific news. As we began to piece together the gruesome picture of Hamas’s atrocities that morning, it became apparent that Israel was facing another war in Gaza – this time on an entirely different scale. I write these words 20 days after that cursed Sabbath, during which many hundreds of my people were…

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