Attention to the Unseen

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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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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