Attention to the Unseen

Lucy Garbett writes: Sheikh Jarrah today smells of dirty socks and rotting flesh. Israeli police vehicles, known as “skunk trucks”, have been spraying Palestinian homes, shops, restaurants, public spaces and cultural institutions with putrid water at high pressure. The water causes vomiting, stomach pain and skin irritation, and was originally developed by an Israeli company to repel protesters. The stench lasts for days on clothes, skin and homes, leading Palestinians to joke that Jerusalem all smells like shit. Protesters are…

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The Guardian reports: A week of relentless Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip has destroyed power lines, smashed water pipes beneath roads and left human waste spilling out of the ground. With 188 Palestinians having been killed, and families trapped under rubble, fears are mounting of a deepening humanitarian crisis in the enclave, where 2 million people live under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade in place for 14 years. Six of Gaza’s 10 electricity lines are down and supply has been more…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pressing an aggressive campaign against Hamas, targeting its leaders, strategic infrastructure and military sites to deter the militant group from continuing its attacks on Israel. The operation could aid Mr. Netanyahu’s other vital goal of staying in power. One week earlier, Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents were poised to unseat him and form a new government, potentially ending the rule of the country’s longest-serving leader as he faces corruption charges. He denies…

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The Washington Post reports: Taliban checkpoints have proliferated across key parts of Afghanistan as U.S. forces have withdrawn over the past year, leaving Afghan towns and cities increasingly isolated and impeding the Afghan government’s ability to function. Dozens of temporary Taliban checkpoints now dot the main highways leading into and out of the Afghan capital, according to eight local officials, and more than 10 permanent outposts have been established by the militants along the country’s main north-south highway. Many of…

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Garrett M. Graff writes: On the morning of May 1, 2011, most Americans had never heard of Abbottabad. By that night, the dusty midsize city near the mountains of northwest Pakistan was the center of the biggest story in the world. A team of U.S. Navy SEALs had just descended by helicopter on a high-walled mansion there in the dark of night, located the globe’s most hunted man and killed him. The effort to track and execute Osama bin Laden,…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia has moved warplanes to Crimea and bases near Ukraine to an extent greater than has previously been disclosed, adding to its capability for political intimidation or military intervention, according to commercial satellite photos of areas being used for the military buildup. The photos, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, show Su-30 fighters lined up on a runway at an air base in Crimea. The aircraft, which are shown in a satellite photo…

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Wesley Morgan writes: The senior U.S. officer in the Pech, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Ryan, surprised me when I interviewed him about his battalion’s mission. Forty-one years old but with less gray in his short haircut than some of his company commanders, Ryan was a West Point graduate from Pearl River, New York, and he had been in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq since the first months after September 11, as an officer in the night-raiding 75th Ranger Regiment. I…

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The Daily Beast reports: Hours after the Biden administration announced that the remaining 3,500 American troops will return from Afghanistan by the twentieth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a Taliban spokesperson announced a refusal to join U.S.-facilitated peace talks between the Islamic group and the Afghan government. “Until all foreign forces completely withdraw from our homeland, the Islamic Emirate will not participate in any conference that shall make decisions about Afghanistan,” Mohammed Naeem, a spokesperson for the Taliban’s political…

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Al Jazeera reports: As the world marked 10 years since the start of the uprising in Syria last week, renewed efforts are under way to hold President Bashar al-Assad’s government accountable for abuses in the war-torn country. Canada announced this month that it is joining the Netherlands in an international effort to seek justice under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, a process that ultimately could trigger a case at the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ)….

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The Washington Post reports: Russia is steadily massing its largest military presence in years near the Ukrainian border — on land and at sea — as the Kremlin tests Western support for Kyiv and its battles against pro-Moscow separatists less than three months into the Biden administration. Russia’s motivations for the buildup are still unclear and do not necessarily signal a looming offensive, Ukrainian and Western officials said. But moving forces from as far away as Siberia — more than…

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Christopher Miller reports: The staccato crack of gunfire rang out across the cloudy night, startling residents of a modest enclave in southwestern Florida. Lee County sheriff’s deputies, responding to a flood of 911 calls, raced to the area, but in the dark they were unable to find where the shooting had taken place. It wasn’t until the next morning, when employees of a nearby business complex called the Galleria discovered the crime scene. Fifty-year-old Deana Lorenzo was found slumped over…

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The New York Times reports: The Taliban’s swagger is unmistakable. From the recent bellicose speech of their deputy leader, boasting of “conquests,” to sneering references to the “foreign masters” of the “illegitimate” Kabul government, to the Taliban’s own website tally of “puppets” killed — Afghan soldiers — they are promoting a bold message: We have already won the war. And that belief, grounded in military and political reality, is shaping Afghanistan’s volatile present. On the eve of talks in Turkey…

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Charles Lister and Jeffrey Feltman write: From Syria’s northwest, one of the biggest humanitarian crises in the world can look a lot like an endless traffic jam. Every day, lines of trucks loaded with food, water, clothes, medical supplies and construction equipment wait to cross from Turkey into the Syrian hills. Once they manage to get through, they pass into the Syrian town of Bab al-Hawa and head into a region that has seen more war than anywhere else in…

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An open letter from a group of Syrian writers and intellectuals and others who stand in solidarity with them, says: Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising ten years ago, and especially since Russia intervened in Syria on behalf of Bashar al-Assad, there has been a curious and malign development: the emergence of pro-Assad allegiances in the name of “anti-imperialism” among some who otherwise generally identify as progressive or “left,” and the consequent spread of manipulative disinformation that routinely deflects…

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