Attention to the Unseen

The Observer reports: In hospitals around Lebanon, ­hundreds of patients were adjusting to a new life, many of them now with permanent disabilities. The pager explosions resulted in many being blinded and losing a hand. The pagers had beeped twice, and then there was a pause, giving people enough time to bring them to their face before they exploded. “Enucleation [removal of the eye] is a procedure that is rarely ­performed these days. One of our senior ­ophthalmologists was saying…

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Ori Goldberg writes: Israel has not claimed responsibility for the rolling “pager attack” in Lebanon. Israeli social discourse, however, is not even debating the issue. It is clear that “we did it” (exclamation point optional). What is it that we actually did? One can surmise that Israeli intelligence established a company that produced pagers and walkie-talkies and managed to pique Hezbollah’s interest in these devices. Hezbollah prides itself on its low-tech approach to communications, assuming that this makes its network…

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Joshua Yaffa writes: Volodymyr Zelensky’s situation room, where the Ukrainian President monitors developments in his country’s war with Russia, is a windowless chamber, largely taken up by a rectangular conference table and ringed by blackened screens, deep inside the Presidential Administration Building, in central Kyiv. On a recent afternoon, as I sat inside, waiting for Zelensky, I heard his voice—a syrupy baritone, speckled with gravel—before he entered, dressed in his signature military-adjacent style: black T-shirt, olive-drab pants, brown boots. He…

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Timothy Garton Ash writes: Earlier this week, I started a 3,000km, two-day journey back from the other end of Europe, where I witnessed Ukrainian resilience against Russian terror in the besieged city of Kharkiv. A university lecturer told me that from a 12th storey balcony in a north-eastern suburb she had actually seen the flashes of missiles taking off from launchpads just across the frontier, in the Russian city of Belgorod. An S-300 missile can reach Kharkiv from Belgorod in…

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Middle East Eye reports: A group of Michigan-based Democratic voters who launched a historic nationwide primary ballot initiative to enact policy change on Gaza now say their best bet is to continue working through party channels. However, that’s not to say that White House officials or Democratic Party staff have heeded their calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, an arms embargo on Israel, and a lifting of the 17-year-old blockade on the Gaza Strip. In a virtual press conference…

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The Washington Post reports: Thousands of people were injured across Lebanon on Tuesday when electronic pagers used by the militant group Hezbollah simultaneously exploded around 3:30 p.m., the group and Lebanese officials said, in what experts said may have been an unprecedented attack by Israel that possibly involved sabotaging the devices before they were delivered. “Each one who received a new pager, throw it away,” said a voice message that was circulated to Hezbollah members, according to one of the…

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  As Israeli forces launch repeated attacks on civilian areas in Gaza, expand their deadly incursion into the West Bank and threaten retaliation for strikes by Hezbollah and Houthis, we discuss ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas with Palestinian writer Amjad Iraqi and former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy. Despite apparent divisions among Israeli leadership over the terms of an acceptable deal — if such a deal even exists — all of the Israeli proposals are “united by an assumption…

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Mariam Barghouti reports: The sounds of explosions, bulldozers, military drones and heavy gunfire are a constant in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which has been under full military lockdown for nearly 10 days as Israel carries out a military offensive. “The siege on the camp first began outside, on the edges of the camp,” Shatha Sabbagh, 21, told New Lines, referring to the refugee camp built in the city in 1953 that is…

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Parker Yesko writes: War entails unspeakable violence, much of it entirely legal. And yet some violence is so abhorrent that it falls outside the bounds of law. When the perpetrators are U.S. service members, the American military is supposed to hold them to account. It is also supposed to keep records of wrongdoing in a systematic manner. But the military has failed to do so, leaving the public unable to determine whether the military brings its members to justice for…

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In March Reuters reported: Asked whether an Israeli invasion of Rafah would be a red line for him with Netanyahu, Biden said: “It is a red line but I’m never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical. So there’s no red line (in which) I’m going to cut off all weapons so they don’t have the Iron Dome to protect them.” Biden's "red line" was literally erased by Israel https://t.co/mDJZuZxmJE — Yousef Munayyer (@YousefMunayyer) September 10,…

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