Conscripting the Dead

The grief-to-violence pipeline runs hot, Ritchie Torres short-circuits, and the ethnic cleansing grinds on

Quick editor’s note for new readers: I aim to send this out every Saturday or Sunday. It opens with a short reflection on what’s been on my mind, followed by a weekly news roundup organized by region—Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, the US, and occasionally elsewhere. The stories come from American, Arab, Israeli, and European outlets, as well as firsthand testimony, with links to the sources provided throughout, along with my own reporting.

On Friday, Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate—better known in Israel as the “hasbara unit”—staged a choreographed reveal of never-before-seen footage from October 7. The video, which was released abroad but not domestically “out of respect for the family’s wishes,” was explicitly aimed at selling Israel’s new Gaza offensive to foreign critics.

Standing beside Sabine Taasa, whose husband’s violent death we are about to witness, Netanyahu gravely instructs viewers to “Remember October 7”—the words looming behind him—before rattling off a list of atrocities, some real and some fabricated, and declaring, “That is why we fight in Gaza, because we won’t let that happen again.”

“This film should break every decent heart that still beats; it should silence every lie,” Netanyahu says, before commanding: “To the leaders who vilify Israel, I say, ‘Watch this film.’”

He then introduces Sabine, whose voice shakes as she presents the clip. “When you have an enemy next to you, you cannot sleep at night. You [don’t] know when he will attack. I’m here to show all of the world my story, to show the world the truth that October 7 happened in Israel.”

The CCTV footage—which I did not watch—shows her husband, Gil, killed by a grenade while shielding two of their sons, who survived with injuries. Their oldest son was killed by Hamas fighters on a nearby beach.

When the clip ends, Netanyahu reappears with Sabine to deliver the closing line: “We will win this war, we’ll defeat Hamas, we’ll bring back all our hostages, and we’ll make sure October 7th never happens again.”

Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate defines its mission as “fostering legitimacy for Israeli policy and efforts on the battlefield” through “intense combat in the public diplomacy arena.” On its website, the office boasts of securing “in-depth stories in the global media covering the acts of sexual violence perpetrated on October 7,” extracting apologies from media outlets for “false reports,” bringing actor Michael Rapaport into its “command center”—not particularly relevant here, just some comic relief—and launching a website on the “atrocities of October 7” that drew “43 million hits in its first three days.”

All this brought to mind Gabriel Winant’s October 13, 2023, piece in Dissent on the “cruelly political question” of “how to grieve” those killed in the October 7 Hamas assault. Israel is a “machine for the conversion of grief into power,” he writes, “feeding on bodies and tears and turning them into bombs… gobbl[ing] up your grief for Jews and us[ing] it to make more victims of Palestinians.”

By the time Winant’s piece ran, Israel’s retaliatory strikes in Gaza had already killed nearly twice as many people as the Hamas attack, about half women and children. Still, I doubt Winant could have imagined how literally his metaphor would map onto reality.

He quotes the brother of Hayim Katsman, who was killed by Hamas on October 7: “Most important for me and also for my brother is that his death won’t be used to kill innocent people.”

“But as Katsman observes, it is not up to them. The state will do—already is doing—what it does with Jewish grief: transmute it into violence. For the perpetrator, the immediate psychic satisfactions of this maneuver are easy enough to understand, although the long-term costs prove somewhat more complex.

It is this context—the already-political grief at the core of the Zionist adventure—that makes so many on the left so reticent to perform a public shedding of tears over Hamas’s victims. They are, we might darkly say, ‘pre-grieved’: that is, an apparatus is already in place to take their deaths and give them not just any meaning, but specifically the meaning that they find in the bombs falling on Gaza. The appetite for the most grotesque images of violence against Israelis is so ravenous—leading to the repetition of dubious claims of mass beheading and rape that have the appearance of blood libels—because the apparatus of state grief runs so hot. It demands raw material.”

With October 7 eclipsed by the daily torrent of live-streamed horror from Gaza, Netanyahu, who has a new round of killing to sell, shoveled out more grist for the mill: a gruesome state-produced spectacle of Jewish death designed to rouse the drums of war.

Scroll through X under any post about Israel’s atrocities in Gaza and you’ll find hundreds of pro-Israel commenters—functionaries in the death machine—citing the Nova massacre, the Bibas family, the imagined beheadings and microwaved babies, invoked again and again as fuel for more slaughter.

On Thursday, in an interview with comedian Adam Friedland, the staunchly pro-Israel Democratic Congressman Richie Torres demonstrated how this moral math works—on one side, cold-blooded murder demanding revenge; on the other, faceless terrorists to be eliminated—but in his case, softened to a liberal register:

Torres appears to recognize the trap he’s walking into and cuts himself off just as he’s about to claim there’s “no comparison” between Israel and Hamas on the death toll alone. Then he falls back on his script: “Hamas is a terrorist organization for murdering innocent children and civilians.” Friedland shoots back, “How many civilians have been killed in this war?”

Torres freezes, then sputters the familiar passive language around Palestinian deaths: “The war is a tragedy… people have been killed in a war, it’s been a tragedy.”

Who can blame Torres for short-circuiting in this moment? The math only works if Palestinian lives are worth far less than Israeli ones—at least 50 times less based on the confirmed deaths in Gaza, though likely closer to 100—a concession no good liberal like Torres would ever say aloud.

This is exactly why these orchestrated rollouts of October 7 footage exist—not to inform, but to deflect from that damning reality. The Times of Israel described Netanyahu’s latest snuff film as a diplomatic “bid to counter criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.” But what could a two-year-old murder video possibly prove about “Israel’s ongoing conduct in Gaza”? And what does Netanyahu mean when he says the video should “silence the lies”? Or when the bereaved widow says she aimed to “show the world the truth that October 7 happened in Israel”? Are they under the impression that opposition to Israel’s annihilation of Gaza is grounded in disbelief that October 7 happened?

Of course not—Netanyahu and his allies understand the illogic. But with even Israel’s generals and top defense officials admitting they’ve already done all they can to degrade Hamas’s military capabilities, Israel’s warmongers have no options left but appeals to shock, fear, trauma, and thirst for revenge. This, in Israel, passes for “national public diplomacy.”

Nothing that did or didn’t happen on October 7 justifies the collective punishment of millions of Palestinians. That was true on October 7, and it’s true now. The same can be said about Israel’s brutality toward Palestinians for over 75 years—an injustice Torres himself inadvertently exposed when he couldn’t explain why Palestinians in 1948 should have borne responsibility for the crimes against Jews by others. Israel’s history is littered with these contradictions, so its most fervent defenders know better than to look too closely.

But for all the historical grievances and competing narratives, one thing should be clear: The dead deserve better than this, and the living do too.

---

If you find my writing valuable, I ask two things:

Here’s this week’s roundup.

---

Gaza

Fait Accompli

As Israeli forces encircled Gaza City, Qatari and Egyptian mediators accused Israel of stonewalling them after Hamas accepted a ceasefire–hostage deal. The cabinet reportedly approved plans for a new offensive without even discussing the offer. (TOI)

Haaretz reports that the deal Hamas accepted was actually Netanyahu’s plan, rebranded as the “Witkoff plan” so it wouldn’t appear that Hamas was conceding directly to him. When Egyptian mediators returned to Netanyahu to confirm that Hamas had agreed to his plan, he stopped returning their calls. (Haaretz)

Israeli military chief Eyal Zamir agreed, saying, “a deal was on the table” to free captives when the decision was made to “conquer” Gaza City. (AJ)

Israel’s top defense chiefs are reportedly still pressing Netanyahu’s cabinet to take the hostage deal on the table, warning the new offensive is “a wild gamble on the lives of hostages and soldiers.” (TOI)

The Conquest

The military’s Population Relocation Unit is attempting to push nearly a million people out of Gaza City, relying on what one officer called firepower “that has not been seen before, certainly not against a civilian population.” (Hayom)

Red Cross president Mirjana Spoljaric warned that mass evacuation of Gaza City is “impossible” and “incomprehensible.” Israel estimates only 10,000 of roughly one million residents have evacuated, but its military declared, “We are not waiting,” designating it a “combat zone,” curtailing airdrops and aid trucks, and canceling the 10-hour humanitarian pauses that had allowed meager aid into the city already gripped by famine. (Haaretz, TOI, New Arab)

At least six of the 19 “designated safe zones” Israel has ordered residents to flee to overlap with areas the military itself has declared too dangerous for civilians. (Haaretz)

The army also ordered Gaza City’s Greek Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrius to evacuate, but clergy vowed to remain with hundreds of vulnerable civilians sheltering inside, warning that fleeing south would be “nothing less than a death sentence.” (TOI)

Paratroopers say the hours-long process of clearing houses room by room has been replaced by a three-minute one in which a small drone blasts open the roof and a larger drone drops explosives inside, collapsing the structure “ceiling-to-floor.” (Ynet)

Satellite images confirm the scale of destruction, showing Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood reduced to rubble in just three weeks. (NYT)

This is the Israeli military’s seventh assault on Zeitoun, where several divisions have already claimed to have “defeated” the local Hamas battalion. (Haaretz)

Israel is calling up more than 60,000 reservists for the offensive, but turnout has fallen to as low as 40–50% in some units. (NYT)

Amid this, Smotrich laid out his own blueprint to “defeat Hamas” by 2026, promising to “starve and dehydrate Hamas fighters to death,” and vowing that Israel will “completely hold control of the entire strip, forever,” annex a security perimeter, force Hamas leaders into exile, and “open the gates of Gaza for voluntary immigration.” (JPost)

Gaza Trump Riviera

A proposal circulating in Trump’s White House would put Gaza under US control for at least a decade, with all 2M residents either paid to leave ($5,000 cash, four years’ rent, a year of food, and land rights converted into “digital tokens”) or confined in “restricted, secured zones” during reconstruction; in their place, the plan envisions AI “smart cities,” luxury resorts, data centers, and EV plants. Investors are promised a nearly fourfold return on $100 billion, with Israel retaining security rights and Western private contractors operating on the ground. (WaPo)

Hospital Double-Tap

On Monday, Israeli strikes on Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital, the last functioning hospital in southern Gaza, killed at least 22 Palestinians, including five journalists: Reuters contractor Hussam al-Masri, Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Salameh, AP freelancer Mariam Dagga, Moaz Abu Taha, and Ahmed Abu Aziz. The missiles struck the hospital’s fourth floor, a known gathering spot for reporters trying to catch cell signals. An hour earlier, journalists on site had watched an Israeli surveillance quadcopter circling the hospital. (Haaretz)

The first blast killed al-Masri; the second came nine minutes later, hitting as other journalists, Civil Defense workers, and medics rushed to the scene.

From a July story in +972.

BBC Verify found that each of the two blasts consisted of two, near-simultaneous strikes. (BBC)

The Israeli military first claimed it was targeting a “Hamas surveillance camera at the hospital”—photos show it is actually a Reuters camera—before calling it a mistake and saying it would investigate. As outrage grew, Netanyahu said that Israel regretted the “tragic mishap.” (Hayom, JPost)

The following day, Israel released photos of six men killed in the strikes it labeled “terrorists.” Sky News determined that only one of the men was a combatant, and he was killed in an unrelated incident. (Sky)

Abdallah Amer, holding the camera and bag of Reuters journalist Hossam Al-Masri, minutes before he was killed by the second set of strikes.

Several mainstream media outlets, including the New York Times, debunked Israel’s claims behind the attack.

Media Response

Several prominent Israeli commentators justified the strikes: i24’s Zvi Yehezkeli said it was “better late than never,” Israel Hayom’s Shirit Avitan-Cohen told the military to “keep it up,” and both she and Channel 12’s Amit Segal referred to the victims as “‘journalists’” in quotation marks. (Haaretz)

Netanyahu quickly came under fire for expressing regret:

‘Propaganda’ is translated from ‘hasbara.’

Rivka Lafair—the genocidal yogi settler I wrote about in May (left)—weighed in (right).

Haaretz featured the last photos taken by the journalists killed by Israel on Monday, including this one, taken by Mariam Dagga:

One of the journalists killed, Abu Taha, had just worked with Haaretz to build a virtual tour of Gaza’s medical clinics, documenting the mass malnutrition ravaging the population. (X)

Reuters said it stopped sharing its Gaza teams’ coordinates with Israel after “so many journalists were killed in IDF strikes,” including cameraman Hussam al-Masri, who regularly ran a live feed from Nasser Hospital before being killed in Monday’s attack. (NBC News)

Gaza Intelligence Foundation

Days before journalist Mohamed Salama was killed in the Nasser Hospital strikes, US contractors at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation hub interrogated one of his sources about the story he had just published on killings near aid sites, pressing for his identity and whereabouts. I’ve written previously about the intelligence operatives behind the GHF. (MEE)

In a photo shared by GHF, Palestinians hold up their GHF identification cards.

UN human rights experts warned of “enforced disappearances” of starving Palestinians, including a child, at GHF sites in Rafah. (France24)

A video appears to show an Israeli sniper shooting a Palestinian near a GHF aid site. (AJ)

GHF announced it is opening up two new aid centers in southern Gaza. (X)

The Toll

The Gaza Health Ministry reports the confirmed death toll is 63,459, with at least 88 killed and 421 injured in the past 24 hours alone. Aid-seekers remain a prime target: 30 killed and 166 injured in the past day, bringing the total to 2,248 killed and over 16,600 injured while seeking aid. (Drop Site)

Booby-trapped robots releasing choking gas have been deployed in northern neighborhoods, while strikes have torn through refugee camps, residential blocks, and tents sheltering the displaced. (Drop Site)

An Israeli airstrike on a Gaza City bakery Saturday killed at least 11 Palestinians, including children, as people waited in line for bread. (Drop Site)

Israel’s assault has left at least 1,500 Palestinians blind and thousands more at risk, as Gaza’s only eye hospital lies in ruins. (MEE)

Newborns are being forced to share incubators at Gaza City’s al-Helou International Hospital. (AJ)

Here are some of those killed or confirmed dead in the past week, courtesy of Gaza Notifications on X:

Israeli ambassador to the US and settler activist Yechiel Leiters denied that Israel targets civilians, telling Jake Tapper, “My own son was killed because we do not kill innocent civilians… If we were doing what we’re being accused of doing, maybe he’d be alive today. So many of our soldiers that have died would have been alive today.” (X)

As I wrote on X, “Flip this statement and you get the Israeli doctrine laid bare: ‘We have to kill Palestinians in order to exist.’”

11:1

Israel bombed a Gaza City apartment building, claiming to kill Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida, with at least 11 civilians reported dead and no confirmation yet of Obeida’s death from Hamas. Footage of the aftermath is brutal. (TOI)

Man-Made Starvation

At least 339 Palestinians have died from Israel’s imposed starvation of Gaza—up from 289 last week—including 124 children. (Al Jazeera)

The UN’s food chief, Cindy McCain, declared Gaza “at breaking point” after visiting Gaza and meeting starving children unrecognizable from malnutrition, urging Israel to scrap the GHF and restore UN aid networks. (TOI)

An Israeli pediatrician described watching a virtual tour of Nasser Hospital as Dr. Ahmed al-Farra moved “from one starving child to another,” seeing conditions he’d “only read about in medical textbooks,” with children’s hair falling out, abdomens bloated, ribs protruding, and heads drooping “like rag dolls,” too weak to smile or cry. He concluded that “there is no way to help these children. They will die or remain with severe neurological deficits for the rest of their lives.” (Haaretz)

Netanyahu shared a Free Press video arguing that children in Gaza aren’t truly starving, since their deaths can be blamed on preexisting conditions:

The boy in this photo, used “debunk” starvation, died of starvation days later. His preexisting condition was rickets—a disease caused and worsened by malnutrition.

Al Jazeera profiled elderly Palestinians starving to death in Gaza. (AJ)

The Captives

Hamas said on Friday, “We will preserve the lives of the captives to the extent that we can. They will remain with our fighters in the places of confrontation, exposed to the same risks.” (JPost)

The Israeli army said it recovered the bodies of Ilan Weiss, 56, killed at Kibbutz Beeri on October 7, and Idan Shtivi, 28, abducted from the Nova festival and declared dead in October 2024 based on intelligence. (BBC, ynet)

On Friday, seven Israeli soldiers were wounded in an explosion targeting an armored vehicle in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, where Al Jazeera reported Hamas attempted to abduct troops. (Guardian, AJ)

---

---

West Bank (and beyond)

Quiet Annexation

Last week, Netanyahu convened senior ministers to debate declaring sovereignty over the West Bank. (Ynet)

Here’s what I wrote on X about the plan that was reportedly proposed:

The question has always been: if Israel declares sovereignty over the West Bank, where exactly will it do it? Just the settlements? The whole territory, risking international condemnation? Only its border with Israel, under the guise of “security”? Now a new plan has been revealed.

Settler leaders are now pressing Netanyahu to declare sovereignty over every part of the West Bank without major Palestinian population centers, whether in Areas A, B, or C. The plan would “effectively alter the map with minimal demographic consequences”—in other words, annex as much land as possible without the obligation to grant Palestinians citizenship. From there, they buy time to continue the ethnic cleansing of the remaining Palestinian areas, after which they’ll surely annex them too.

Last Sunday, I wrote about the gray zone between a one- and two-state solution that Netanyahu preferred—“Palestinian statehood forever denied,” while also “avoiding a one-state reality in which Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank would naturally be considered citizens.” But the settlers demanded more, and this is, frankly, a perfect way to give them what they want while staying in that gray zone, where quiet, gradual annexation can continue. Plus, the international response will be more limited than it might've been if they formally annexed the whole WB all at once.

At a Jerusalem event celebrating the legalization of several West Bank outposts, Netanyahu said, “It began in Gaza and will end in Gaza,” a line widely read as hinting at plans to reestablish settlements in Gaza. (TOI)

American real estate firms like My Israel Home are selling luxury villas in illegal West Bank settlements to US buyers, often pitching them inside synagogues in New York and New Jersey. (Nation)

This Week in Pogroms

The UN has logged over 1,000 settler assaults in the West Bank since January, attacks that killed 11 Palestinians and injured 696 others. (Over 170 more have been killed by Israeli soldiers.) In just one August week, settlers carried out 29 attacks across 23 communities, wounding 11 people, including an elderly man, a child, and three women, and damaging 700 olive trees. (Haaretz)

One month after 31-year-old Palestinian teacher Awdeh Hathaleen was shot dead by settler Yinon Levy in Umm al-Kheir, settlers erected a new outpost on the exact site of his killing. (ynet)

Israeli settlers under army protection set up three new outposts east of Hebron’s Birin village, seizing 6,400 dunums of land and destroying crops and wells. (MEM)

On Tuesday, settlers stormed Khirbet Aqawis in Masafer Yatta, beating residents and foreign activists. (Anadolu)

Israeli settlers seized 50 acres of land in Masafer Yatta belonging to Palestinian-American doctor Nidal Jboor, co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide, uprooting a property with more than 500 olive trees featured in the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. (MEE)

In the South Hebron Hills, settlers grazing sheep on Palestinian land attacked Palestinians and Israeli activists with clubs, pepper spray, and stones, injuring seven—including a woman with a cracked shoulder and broken hand—while smashing solar panels, windows, and vehicles, and stealing equipment; police left before the assault and only returned after the settlers escaped. (Haaretz)

On Thursday, Israeli settlers beat a Palestinian shepherd near Ramallah, stole at least 300 sheep, and left him stranded at an army checkpoint as he tried to reach a hospital; settlers also attacked the nearby village of Taybeh. (MEE)

Settler Terrorists Arrested!

Israeli police and Shin Bet arrested five settlers from the “hilltop youth” on suspicion of carrying out “acts of terror”—not against Palestinians, but against Israeli security forces in the West Bank. (TOI)

General of Bloodshed

Gideon Levy argues that Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, the settler-raised head of Israel’s Central Command, has turned the West Bank into a laboratory of collective punishment—ordering the uprooting of 3,100 olive trees in Al-Mughayyir, enabling 10 wildcat outposts, and overseeing pogroms in which Palestinians were killed by army and settler gunfire. “This general of bloodshed has now become the face of the West Bank and the moral image of the entire country,” he writes. In response, Netanyahu accused Haaretz of blood libel and “genuine antisemitic incitement.” (Haaretz, JNS)

Israel’s leading civil rights group filed the first wartime complaint against a senior officer, urging a criminal probe of Bluth for suspected war crimes after the collective punishment near Al-Mughayyir. (JPost)

Hundreds of Israeli soldiers stormed Sebastia in a full-scale military invasion, raiding homes, teargassing and beating residents, interrogating people in the street, stationing snipers on rooftops, and forcibly evicting a family to turn their house into a military outpost—part of a broader plan to seize the town for an archaeological theme park. Mayor Mohammad Azem, whom I wrote about last year, says it is the most intense siege on Sebastia since 1987. (Local Source)

Twenty-year-old Musab Al-Eida died in Israeli custody after soldiers shot him at Hebron’s Tel Rumeida checkpoint, detained him while critically wounded, and held him at Ofer prison. (WAFA)

Israeli forces stormed Nablus with dozens of vehicles in a 10-hour raid on Wednesday, arresting one resident, wounding at least 27 Palestinians, while ordering families to evacuate, placing snipers on rooftops, and raiding multiple stores and homes. (Haaretz)

Israeli forces detained 60-year-old Saeed Amour, a Masafer Yatta community leader who lost his leg to settler gunfire in April, after settlers assaulted him in Hebron (Anadolu):

Israeli forces fired tear gas at protesters in Hebron demanding the release of Palestinian bodies, as Israel continues to withhold at least 726 corpses. (MEE)

Bank Robbery in Ramallah

On Tuesday, Israeli forces conducted their largest West Bank raid in months, storming downtown Ramallah, targeting money exchanges, and wounding 58 Palestinians with live fire, rubber bullets, and tear gas; the military later said the operation—with undercover units and multiple battalions—was aimed at seizing Hamas “terror funds,” providing no evidence. The raid likely sought to undermine the Ramallah-based PA as it pushes for state recognition. (JPost)

I wrote a short Twitter thread about Israel’s history of trying to collapse the distinction between the PA and Hamas to undermine Palestinian statehood attempts.

War on Children

Hundreds of Palestinian children in East Jerusalem have no school placement after Israel’s new law banning UNRWA. (Haaretz)

Israeli soldiers raided Hebron’s Al-Rashidin School, with security footage showing troops storming classrooms; Palestinian outlets reported that forces also hit other schools in the city and arrested several teachers. (AJ)

---

Israel

The Whole World is Wrong

The 2025 Global Peace Index ranked Israel 155th most peaceful country out of 163. (ynet)

Oh, okay.

War Heroes

Netanyahu said the October 7 attacks “probably would not have happened if Donald Trump were president,” arguing Iran would have acted more cautiously. (ynet)

Half-Morality

Gideon Levy argued that Israel’s protest movement shows “half-morality,” which is not really morality at all, consumed with the fate of 20 hostages while ignoring Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians. (Haaretz)

Becca Strober wrote of the protesters: “Israelis want to end the current fighting under a sincere belief, and clear privilege, that we can step back to October 6th. To a time bubble that existed between the Second Intifada and October 7th in which Israel could utilize daily violence against Palestinians without Israelis feeling the major impact of that violence.” (Uneven Ground)

National Security Minister Ben Gvir unveiled a new policy to ban protests that block major roads or take place at synagogues, and threatened to impose it even without the approval of the attorney general. He is reportedly threatening to fire Tel Aviv’s police chief Haim Sargarof over what he’s perceived as an insufficient crackdown. (TOI, TOI)

As Greta Thunberg and hundreds of activists set sail in the largest Gaza flotilla to date, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is urging Netanyahu to abandon past “gentle” handling and detain them under “terrorist-level” prison conditions. (Hayom)

Jerusalem police blocked a Standing Together fundraiser for Gaza aid, citing Israel’s anti-terror law and claiming donations could “serve Hamas.” (Haaretz)

Standing Together activists vandalized Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir’s home with red paint; Zamir lives with his family in a residential neighborhood—a practice Israel calls using “human shields” when targeting Hamas members in Gaza. (JPost)

Greater Israel

Jeremy Loffredo reported from the ground in southern Lebanon, where he found villagers living under constant surveillance and fire from nearby Israeli positions—farmers killed by drones, residents shot at while repairing water tanks, and homes, mosques, and schools reduced to rubble after more than 3,000 ceasefire violations since November 2024. (Drop Site)

The New Arab reported on the group of Israeli settlers behind last week’s crossing into Syria, who call themselves the “Bashan Pioneers,” framing their incursion as part of a broader push for a “Greater Israel” extending into Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. (New Arab)

An Israeli airstrike on Sanaa killed Houthi prime minister Ahmed al-Rahawi, the most senior Houthi official slain since the US-Israeli campaign began, along with several other ministers. (AP)

On Balance

President Isaac Herzog is weighing a pardon for Jewish terrorist Ami Popper—who murdered seven Palestinian workers in 1990—as a gesture of “balance and reconciliation” to blunt right-wing backlash against a possible Gaza hostage deal. (Haaretz)

US

Deep Thoughts with President Trump

“It’s got to get over with because between the hunger and all the other problems— worse than hunger, pure death and people getting killed—and I’m the one that brought back the hostages... Right now they’re talking about Gaza City. They’re always talking about something. At some point, it’s going to get settled. I’m telling you, better get it settled soon. That means nobody can forget October 7.” (Haaretz)

Trump Diplomacy

As the push for Palestinian statehood grows, the Trump administration said it will deny and revoke visas for senior Palestinian officials seeking to attend next month’s UN General Assembly—an unprecedented move that breaks the US host-country agreement with the UN. (Axios)

Trump convened a White House meeting on Gaza with Tony Blair, whose institute has been involved in the “Trump Riviera” scheme, and Jared Kushner, who last year said Gaza’s “waterfront property could be very valuable.” The meeting, which pulled in Netanyahu’s top adviser Ron Dermer, reportedly ended without any decisions being made. (Axios)

Party Lines

A new Quinnipiac poll finds half of US voters believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza; support breaks down along party lines, with 75% of Democrats agreeing, but 64% of Republicans rejecting the claim; 60% of voters oppose more military aid, including 75% of Democrats, while 56% of Republicans support continuing it. (JNS)

Zeteo blasted Democrats for ignoring the “scandal of the summer”: Israeli cyber official Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, arrested in Las Vegas for allegedly trying to meet a 15-year-old in an FBI sting, skipped court and flew home after posting just $10,000 bail with no passport seizure, travel limits, or monitoring—an unusually lenient release for a foreign national facing a serious felony—arguing that Democrats are too afraid of AIPAC and charges of antisemitism to seize it. (Zeteo)

American Hostage

More than 100 US human rights, faith, and civil rights groups signed a letter demanding that Secretary of State Marco Rubio secure the release of 16-year-old American-Palestinian Mohammed Zaher Ibrahim, held in Israeli military detention since February. (Guardian)

Days later, Rubio met with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar in Washington to reaffirm US support for Israel’s security and discuss how to counter Iran’s “malign influence,” but he forgot to ask about the captive American teen. (State)

The Democrats

At a Minneapolis DNC meeting, chair Ken Martin abruptly scrapped dueling resolutions on Israel and Gaza—one calling for an arms embargo and recognition of Palestine, the other, his own, urging a ceasefire, hostage release, and two-state solution—and punted the issue to a task force to avoid a floor fight. (NYT)

Senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley visited Ramallah, where they met PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the fathers of Mohammed Zaher Ibrahim and the murdered American Sayfollah Musallet, and other families of Americans killed by settlers. In Israel, the Senators toured the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza, urging Israel to let in more aid, and met with families of Israeli hostages.

Curiously, in their statement, they demanded the release of the Israeli hostages, while saying nothing about the teenage American hostage whose family they had just met. (X)

Whitewashing Tour

In an interview with Isaac Chotiner, Biden’s Ambassador to Israel, Jacob Lew, rejected the charge that Biden officials worked to keep Netanyahu’s coalition afloat, even as he acknowledged that Netanyahu ran out the clock on the Biden administration rather than answer its questions about atrocities. Pressed on Israeli strikes that killed children, he explained that many of them were actually “the children of fighters.” He also defended the floating aid pier, saying, “When the decision on the pier was made, it was supposed to work in a better way. It wasn’t supposed to get ripped apart by waves in the Mediterranean.” (TNY)

Former Biden national security advisor Jake Sullivan said he privately urged Democrats to support withholding US weapons from Israel after the March ceasefire collapse, calling it a “credible position I would support,” after working to block such measures during his time in the administration. (JPost)

America First

On August 20, two brothers protesting Egypt’s role in restricting aid to Gaza outside the Egyptian Mission to the UN in Manhattan were dragged inside by security guards, beaten with a metal chain, and choked before being arrested by the NYPD and charged with assault. (NYT)

Year Three of the Siege

The Beverly Hills school board voted to fly Israeli flags in every district building during Jewish Heritage Month to combat antisemitism. (Forward)

I find this, from the Jewish National Syndicate, to be quite embarrassing.

---

Thanks for reading. As always, I welcome your thoughts, questions, etc. in the comments.

And if you’ve made it this far and can afford it, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.