Gaza in the Rearview, West Bank in the Blind Spot

With the U.S. joining the assault on Iran, Israel’s war on Palestinians fades from view

I wrote a story for The Baffler this past week about how Israel has quietly annexed the West Bank under the cover of the war in Gaza. Within a matter of days, Gaza was itself eclipsed—first by the specter of war with Iran, and now by the US’s direct involvement.

Nobody understands the public’s limited attention span better than Israel. Less than a month into the rollout of the fraudulent, blood-soaked Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the world seems to have accepted as a foregone conclusion that each morning at dawn, Israeli forces stationed near aid distribution sites will go on shooting rampages, killing starving Palestinians en masse as they try to get food for their families.

Over 50 killed at aid sites on Tuesday. Twenty-nine on Wednesday. Sixteen on Thursday. Thirty-five on Friday.

Since May 26, Israeli forces have killed more than 400 Palestinians and wounded over 3,000 at these aid sites. Snipers, drones, and tank fire tear people limb from limb. Men, women, children, and the elderly alike.

After the first aid site mass shooting, I wrote, “In a few weeks, after a major outlet investigates, Israel will quietly admit it carried out the first massacre, while insisting it did nothing wrong, and the story will barely register, buried beneath six more atrocities committed in the meantime.”

There’s nothing prophetic about describing a pattern we’ve all seen before. But I didn’t expect it to get this bad.

Until now, I’ve avoided comparing Gaza to Nazi death camps. Israel doesn’t have the mass extermination machinery, like gas chambers and crematoria, of Auschwitz or Treblinka. But this strategy of starving Palestinians then baiting them with food into the crosshairs of firing squads has proven chillingly efficient. The scale may not be the same, but there’s certainly a system in place.

This doesn’t even account for the daily airstrikes on homes, refugee camps, schools, hospitals, and critical infrastructure—attacks that have reportedly intensified since Israel’s assault on Iran—or the state of permanent lockdown imposed across the West Bank in its aftermath.

To the extent that the mainstream media even covers these atrocities anymore, they bury them below the fold. And why wouldn’t they? The political and media establishment here in New York is laser-focused on the two most pressing issues of the day: beating the drums of war with Iran, and dogpiling mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani with spurious charges of antisemitism.

Clockwise from top left: (1) Mailers from candidate Whitney Tilson; (2) A State Senator sends a message from a bunker in Israel, which he visited weeks after being elected to represent New York; (3) A tweet from a sitting Congressman, posted hours after Mamdani received a bomb threat; (4) The son of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel invokes Hitler while urging voters to reject Mamdani.

It’s really remarkable how much of American life now orbits around Israel. A New York City mayoral primary turned referendum on a foreign state. The specter of war with Iran at Israel’s behest. Loyalty oaths enshrined into state law. Free speech crushed on campus to eliminate dissent on Israel. Gestapo-style ICE raids that began by rounding up pro-Palestine activists. Wherever you stand on these issues, it’s undeniable that US politics has become gravitationally bound to the priorities of a rogue client state.

I know there are some American Jews who subscribe to this newsletter not because they agree with my politics, but because someone convinced them it was worth hearing another perspective. To them, I’d sincerely like to know: Do you feel safe yet?

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Here’s this week’s roundup. If you find it useful, please tap the heart (algorithm fuel) and consider sharing it around.

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Iran

NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!

In a speech last month in Saudi Arabia, Trump railed against military intervention in the Middle East: “In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built ... And the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand ... In recent years, far too many American Presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use US policy to dispense justice for their sins.” (WH)

Last night, Trump had a change of heart, pulling the US into Israel’s war by ordering strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities: Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Israel had spent days begging Trump to join the war since only the US possessed the firepower—30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs dropped from a B2 stealth bomber—to destroy Fordow, Iran’s most fortified site, buried under 300 feet of mountain. (NYT)

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

A Navy submarine in the Persian Gulf fired two dozen Tomahawks at Natanz and Isfahan, while B-2 bombers dropped 75 precision-guided munitions, including 14 bunker-busters—the first time the US has used them in combat. Trump declared the sites “completely and totally obliterated,” though Pentagon officials later admitted Fordow may still be partially operational.

This is a real quote.

“Congratulations, President Trump,” Netanyahu said in a video message. “Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history … [and will] help lead the Middle East and beyond to a future of prosperity and peace.” (Al Jazeera)

As for what comes next, Trump said, “If peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill.” (Reuters)

Shared on X by Israel’s Minister of Communications.

The Leadup

Just days earlier, Trump had insisted he’d wait two weeks before deciding on direct American involvement, and boasted, “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

According to the Times, Trump had initially resisted Israeli pressure to support its assault but grew increasingly hawkish after watching Fox News celebrate the strikes last week. (NYT)

He brushed off Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s assessment that Iran isn’t building a nuclear weapon—“I don’t care what she said”—and instead echoed Netanyahu’s claims of an imminent Iranian bomb. (Haaretz)

Quickly brought to heel.

Trump posted on social media on Wednesday to demand Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” and slipped into the “we”: “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding… We are not going to take him out (kill!)—at least not for now … We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” and warned Tehran’s 10 million residents to “immediately evacuate.” (Zeteo)

Normal text from a friend.

The Democrats

Before the US attacked Iran, Sen. Tim Kaine introduced a war powers resolution warning of “another endless war,” and Bernie Sanders rallied eight senators behind his “No War Against Iran Act.” Rep. Ro Khanna co-sponsored a bipartisan resolution with Rep. Thomas Massie to block unilateral US involvement, calling it “a defining moment for our party.” Rep. Rashida Tlaib urged Democrats not to “make another mistake” by enabling war. (Reuters)

But Democratic leadership dragged its feet. Despite overwhelming opposition to war among Democratic voters, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries issued statements backing Israel’s right to self-defense and insisting on an “ironclad” US commitment. Neither endorsed Kaine’s War Powers move. (NYT)

Behind the scenes, AIPAC had reportedly been bombarding Democrats with calls and talking points, demanding they “stand with Israel” and echo its maximalist line on Iran. (Drop Site)

After the strikes, Democrats split. Kaine called it “horrible judgment” and pushed for a full Senate vote, while Khanna, McGovern, and AOC demanded an emergency return to Congress and warned Trump had “impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations.” Sanders denounced the strikes as “grossly unconstitutional.”

Texts from last night.

Schumer stuck to procedural complaints, saying Trump must explain the implications “for the safety of Americans” and urging a War Powers vote, without opposing the strikes themselves.

Deranged Sen. John Fetterman tweeted his full support, calling the strikes “the correct move,” and Sen. Jacky Rosen echoed the need to “stand with Israel at this dangerous moment.” (US News)

The Republicans

The antiwar mantle, left open by Democrats, was taken up by MAGA stalwarts over the past week, who warned that intervention would betray the America First doctrine. “Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA,” Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X. Tucker Carlson went viral for eviscerating Ted Cruz over his ignorance of basic facts about Iran, and for failing to understand the difference between ancient biblical Israel and the modern state. (Yahoo News, CBS News)

But hawks like Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham cheered it on. Cruz told Fox News he thinks “it is very much in the interest of America to see regime change,” while Graham called for going “all in” if diplomacy fails.

After the US strikes, Ted Cruz declared it foreclosed Iran’s ability to “rush to build a nuclear arsenal,” while Graham said the regime “deserved it” and called it “the right call.” Speaker Mike Johnson stuck to what was important, praising the operation as a show of Trump’s strength and resolve.

“This is not our fight,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X. “Every time America is on the verge of greatness, we get involved in another foreign war.” (CBS) Rep. Thomas Massie blasted the move as “not constitutional” and revived his resolution with Ro Khanna to prohibit further US involvement. (CBS News)

Iran’s Response

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened to respond with strikes against US forces in the Middle East. “We have repeatedly stated, the number, dispersion, and size of U.S. military bases in the region are not a strength, but have doubled their vulnerability.”

Iran’s foreign minister said Tehran “reserves all options to defend its security.” He said Iran isn’t interested in diplomacy at the moment. “The US crossed a very big red line. We will respond according to our right. The US betrayed diplomacy and betrayed negotiations. They only understand the language of force,” he said. (Axios)

X.

Israel’s War

Israel’s continued assault on Iran—which has included drones, missiles, and car bombs—has reportedly killed at least 430 people, mostly civilians, according to Iran’s health ministry, though one human rights group has put the death toll at double that. (BBC)

Netanyahu, who has claimed Iran was close to a nuclear bomb for 33 years, said it was launched at “the 12th hour” to stop a looming “nuclear Holocaust,” framing it not just as self-defense but as a mission to “protect the world.” (Al Jazeera, J Post)

To the surprise of no one, the mission quickly broadened beyond nuclear prevention to one of regime change. “2,500 years ago, Cyrus the Great, the king of Persia, liberated the Jews,” Netanyahu said. “And today, a Jewish state is creating the means to liberate the Persian people.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel must “bring about a widespread evacuation of the population from Tehran,” a city of 10 million people, “in order to undermine the regime and increase deterrence against missile fire at Israel’s home front.” (Guardian)

Parnia Abbasi, a 23-year-old poet and English teacher, was killed alongside her entire family when an Israeli missile destroyed their Tehran apartment. In her final poem, she wrote, “I burn, I become a fading star.” (ME Eye, Photo Credit: Arvin Abedi)

On Saturday, Israel said it killed Iran’s military coordinator with Hamas. (BBC)

Iran’s Strikes on Israel

Iran’s retaliatory strikes have killed 24 Israelis and wounded hundreds.

Chutzpah.

After an Iranian missile struck Soroka hospital in southern Israel, Katz called for the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, saying Khamenei “can no longer be allowed to exist.” (On Saturday, Khamenei named potential successors in case he’s assassinated.) (NYT)

Netanyahu condemned the hospital strike, declaring it showed “the entire difference between a democracy that acts according to law to save itself from these murderers, and these murderers who want to destroy each and every one of us.” (JNS)

X.

Israel has, of course, proudly targeted hospitals and civilian infrastructure every day for the past 20 months in Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, and now Iran. In May, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich explicitly stated that the IDF was doing so: “We’re eliminating ministers, bureaucrats, money handlers—everyone who holds up Hamas’ civilian rule.” (Times of Israel)

Apartheid Bunkers

Four Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed when an Iranian missile struck Tamra, a town with no public shelters—like 60 other Arab towns in Israel—due to discriminatory Israeli building policies. Across Israel, Palestinian citizens say they’re being barred from public bomb shelters. (ME Eye)

Gaza

“Crimes of the Century”

Suzy Hansen wrote in New York Magazine that “Israel, with the help of the U.S., broke not only Gaza but the foundations of humanitarian law”:

“In its annihilative force and ambition, the Israeli campaign is unique among modern conflicts. In fact, the term war crime is not even adequate for what’s happening in Gaza, in that it suggests that there is a war happening and there are some crimes in it. Gaza is different, the number of war crimes virtually incalculable, the war not really a war but rather the ceaseless pummeling of one side by the other. ‘If what we are seeing in the Gaza Strip is the future of war,’ Pierre Krähenbühl of the Red Cross said in April, ‘we should all be very concerned, terrified.’”

…

“[Trump] has added a sleazy carelessness to the destruction of Gaza as well as a terrifying ruthlessness to the persecution of pro-Palestinian protesters on U.S. university campuses. And he is supporting Netanyahu as the Israeli leader strikes Iran as part of his own maniacal bid to remain in power. But the onslaught against Palestinians that began with Biden has been just as damaging to the rule of law. It was the Biden administration — with the support of both the Democratic and the Republican parties and the complicity of many media organizations and millions of indifferent Americans — that finally shattered the postwar legal order and allowed the death world to flourish.”

I recommend reading the piece in full.

Mass Death

“There is also a sense that the Israeli army is taking advantage of the diverted attention away from Gaza to carry out more deadly attacks on Palestinians,” Al Jazeera reports.

Beyond the daily aid site massacres, Israeli airstrikes have killed hundreds of Palestinians in the past week, including 202 between Friday and Saturday. (Drop Site)

The result of an Israeli airstrike on the Madhi family home: “Young Sila Madhi has undergone a second, devastating amputation this time up to her pelvis after infections spread through her wounded body. Her remaining leg is now at risk. Her mother, Nisreen, had part of her foot amputated just days ago. Doctors warn more may follow. Her sister Rahat lost her leg, then again up to the pelvis. Shrapnel from the bombing still fills her body.”

Starvation

As Israel continues to block real aid organizations from entering Gaza, Palestinians are starving to death. Doctors describe malnourished children with yellowing skin, thinning hair, brittle nails, bowed legs from rickets, extreme weight loss, anemia, immune deficiency, and constant infections. Many are too weak to stand or play. Mothers can’t breastfeed due to malnutrition, and newborns are being delivered underweight or prematurely. (Intercept)

Full video on CNN.

The director of pediatrics and maternity at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis warned that hundreds of babies are facing imminent death as the hospital has completely run out of baby formula. (MEM)

Gazans are also at risk of dying from thirst as Israel’s blockade has led to the collapse of nearly every water system—only 40% of drinking water facilities remain functional, and fuel for desalination and pumps has run out. (Guardian)

Silent Nightmare

The Palestine Chronicle reported on the nightmare menstrual cycles have become for displaced women in Gaza, where nearly 700,000 lack access to sanitary pads, clean water, painkillers, or privacy, forcing many to manage their periods with rags or tissues, risking infection and humiliation.

West Bank

Masafer Yatta

On Wednesday, Israel quietly authorized a complete military takeover of Masafer Yatta, approving live-fire exercises across 12 Palestinian villages—home to nearly 2,800 people—effectively greenlighting their total erasure without public notice or appeal. (X)

On Saturday, armed settlers entered a Masafer Yatta village and brutally assaulted a resident (video courtesy of Salem Adra):

Raids

As Israel wages war on Iran, it has sealed the West Bank behind hundreds of iron gates and checkpoints, turning Palestinian communities into “cages.” (Mondoweiss)

X.

Israeli forces killed 22-year-old Moataz Hajajla in the West Bank village of Al-Walaja, claiming without evidence that he pulled a knife and tried to seize a soldier’s weapon. Witnesses say soldiers beat Hajajla after he intervened as they assaulted his sick father, then dragged him to a nearby building and shot him on a balcony. The army took his body and has refused to return it for burial. (Haaretz)

An Israeli sniper shot a 12-year-old boy in the shoulder and his 21-year-old cousin in the back and abdomen in East Jerusalem, leaving the younger boy hospitalized and his cousin potentially paralyzed. The army claimed, without evidence, that the boys were throwing Molotovs, but witnesses say the street was quiet and the boys were eating pizza after returning from a family gathering; video evidence supports their account. The army later confiscated all local security footage. (Haaretz)

B’Tselem reported on a deadly March 2025 raid in the Ein Beit al-Maa refugee camp, where Israeli soldiers shot and killed 23-year-old ‘Udai Qatoni as he ate a sandwich outside a café, mistaking him for a target because he leaned on the wrong car—then fired on those trying to help, ransacked the café, tied up and blindfolded patrons, denied medical care, and left with Qatoni’s body and stolen cash.

Pogroms

Armed Israeli settlers torched farmland in the West Bank town of Surif, then shot at Palestinians trying to extinguish the flames—killing 48-year-old Mohammad al-Hur and injuring seven more, including one critically, as soldiers stood by. (ME Eye)

Israel

The Cost of War

Netanyahu said, “Each of us bears a personal cost, and this did not escape my family—this is the second time that [my son] Benny Avner has cancelled a wedding due to missile threats.” (ME Eye)

Beacon of Light

Israel’s assault on Iran has unified a once-fractured political establishment behind Netanyahu, with 83% of Jewish Israelis backing the strikes and opposition leaders declaring, “There is no opposition and no coalition” when it comes to confronting Iran’s nuclear program. (Times of Israel)

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for the arrest of anyone caught watching Al Jazeera, weeks after banning the network outright. (ME Eye)

In Haifa, Israeli police detained five Palestinians for wearing shirts reading “Stop the War,” declaring them illegal. (Haaretz)

Israeli forces stormed prison cells, unleashed dogs, and beat shackled Palestinian detainees with batons and tear gas in retaliation for alleged celebrations over Iran’s attack on Israel. (X)

Roots of Zionism

Maura Finkelstein, who was fired from Muhlenberg College for social media posts, argues that Jewish supremacy is not a distortion of Zionism but its founding logic, tracing Israel’s present-day genocide and occupation back to Herzl’s colonial appeals to white supremacists like Cecil Rhodes. (Mondoweiss)

US

Mahmoud Khalil is Free

Student activist and new father Mahmoud Khalil was freed from ICE detention after three months when a federal judge ordered his release. (Al Jazeera)

“No one is illegal — no human is illegal,” Khalil said. “Justice will prevail no matter what this administration may try.” [Kathleen Flynn/Reuters]

With his wife and baby after landing at Newark.

Dick Pics for ICE

At LAX last week, Australian writer Alistair Kitchen was detained, interrogated, and deported by CBP, and explicitly told it was because of what he “wrote online about the protests at Columbia University” (sympathetic posts about the solidarity encampments). During his interrogation, officers forced him to unlock his phone, including the “Hidden” photo folder. “We looked at a photo of my penis together,” he writes. (TNY)

Government

Florida Rep. Randy Fine, when pressed on his earlier call to nuke Gaza, said he now opposes the idea, but only because “the fallout would drift into Israel” and “kill the hostages.” (Mediaite)

USAID

Zeteo reports that USAID officials are being forced to approve a $30 million grant to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the US- and Israeli-backed group behind the daily aid massacres. (Zeteo)

World

Courage in England

The BBC scrapped its long-delayed documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, citing fears it would appear biased. (Guardian)

A yearlong analysis of nearly 4,000 BBC articles and 32,000 broadcasts found the network mentioned Israeli deaths 33 times more often than Palestinian ones, used terms like “massacre” and “butchered” almost exclusively for Israelis, and gave Israeli guests twice the airtime. (New Arab)

Palestine Action broke into a British air base and sprayed red paint into the engines of two RAF planes, accusing the UK of aiding a “genocide” in Gaza by refueling US and Israeli fighter jets en route to the war. (Times of Israel)

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Thanks for reading. Two questions to consider in the comments:

1. How do we stay focused on the ongoing atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank while also mobilizing against a full-scale US war with Iran?

2. What do you see as the most plausible best- and worst-case scenarios for how this war with Iran could end?