A New Yorker article this week reshaped my understanding of the U.S. government’s indulgence of Israel’s preposterous justifications for its atrocities.

Colin Jones writes about how U.S. military legal theory has quietly evolved to be far more permissive than the public realizes, prioritizing “good faith” decision-making over actual outcomes. As long as soldiers can plausibly claim they believed they were targeting combatants, civilian deaths become legally irrelevant—a kind of Hey, just do your best out there doctrine, delivered with a wink.

Jones contends that U.S. military lawyers view “Israel’s invasion of Gaza—and the public’s reaction to it—as a dress rehearsal” for a potential massive war with a superpower like Russia or China.

In this light, every Israeli war crime Washington waves through strengthens the legal and moral shield for the U.S.’s future violence.

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The West Bank

“The Terrorist Was a 12-Year-Old Boy”

On Wednesday, I saw two headlines about killings in the northern occupied West Bank:

I called the IDF to clarify if the headlines referred to the same incident. Yes, the representative told me, “The terrorist was a 12-year-old boy,” but she refused to tell me what type of explosive. The DCI article suggests the boy may have been throwing stones.

Two days later, soldiers shot and killed a 16-year-old boy working at a shop near Nablus—the 24th Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year, and the 185th since October 7. (Defense for Children International)

I called the IDF back and was told that an “investigation was underway.”

Starts With an H

The IDF’s daily raids of Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank—ostensibly to stamp out militancy—have entered their fourth month. Israeli forces have killed hundreds and displaced 40,000 more. (The Palestine Chronicle)

Soldiers raided a home searching for a man they wanted to detain. When they couldn’t find him, they blindfolded his 12-year-old son, sent a photo to the father, threatened to torture or kill him if he didn’t surrender, and imitated the boy’s voice pretending to beg for help. (Middle East Monitor)

“Israel’s Annexation of the West Bank Is Already Here” (Haaretz)

On Tuesday, Israeli forces demolished the home of a family of seven in Masafer Yatta.

That night, settlers set fire to homes and killed livestock after building a new illegal outpost—one of at least 80 established since October 7—near the town of Sinjil in the north. Wael Ghafari, 48, choked on smoke and tear gas and was struck in the chest with an M16 by a soldier. He collapsed on the doorstep of his burning home and died of a heart attack. Israeli forces arrested one Palestinian and let the settlers walk free. (Haaretz)

On Thursday, settlers torched the town of Bardala and opened fire on its residents. The IDF prevented fire trucks and ambulances from reaching the scene. (Times of Israel)

On Saturday, settlers dressed in military fatigues invaded the Palestinian village of Kaubar, opened fire, kidnapped two young residents, beat them, and released them far from town late in the night. (Times of Israel)

Hamdan Ballal, co-director of No Other Land—who was assaulted and arrested days after winning an Oscar—wrote in the New York Times: “We all fear that our village is the next to be dismantled, our people expelled … There is no law to turn to here and no government that will protect us, no international law and no international bodies that are pushing to stop this violence.”

Gaza

Seeking a Lasting Truce

A BBC source said that Hamas had shown “unprecedented flexibility” in the latest ceasefire negotiations, offering “a truce lasting between five and seven years, the release of all Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, a formal end to the war, and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.” Israel’s last offer demanded complete Hamas disarmament while maintaining their right to continue the military siege after a 45-day ceasefire. (BBC)

This Week in Lying

After a month of furious denials, Israeli officials admitted that an IDF tank killed a UN aid worker in March. (Haaretz)

Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant revealed that a photo the IDF publicized last August during the height of protests demanding a hostage deal was falsely portrayed as a Hamas tunnel; it was actually a water channel covered by a meter of dirt. (Haaretz)

Israel continues to hold Asaad al-Nassasra—a paramedic who survived last month’s massacre—without disclosing his location or granting him access to legal counsel. (Haaretz)

Killing Fields

Israeli forces killed another journalist, Saeed Abu Hassanein—a 20-year radio veteran—along with his wife and daughter. A doctor, preparing to receive his dead parents at the Al-Nasser Medical Complex, asked, “Is my father in pieces, or is he whole?” (Drop Site, Middle East Monitor)

Israeli forces have killed at least 200 Palestinians in Gaza in the last week, including 4-year-old twin girls whose home was bombed as they slept. The death toll is up to 52,243 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. In response to accusations that it manipulates the numbers, the Ministry shared its process for counting the dead under extreme conditions. (Al Jazeera, BBC)

Pioneering New Methods of Death

Israel is experimenting with new AI technology, with support from army reservists who work at Google and Microsoft, to wage its war on Gaza. In one such test in October 2023, an AI audio tool provided an approximate location of a Hamas commander, leading to a strike that killed at least 125 civilians along with him. (New York Times)

The IDF has escalated its bombing of areas it once designated as humanitarian zones—a label it has since abandoned. According to experts, Israel is killing civilians at “four times the rate of previous conflicts.” (Haaretz, Al Jazeera)

Targeted Israeli strikes destroyed heavy equipment supplied by international mediators to clear rubble, leaving dozens to die waiting for rescue. (The Washington Post)

Humanitarian Warfare

Israel bombed the Durra Children’s Hospital, putting it out of operation alongside 36 other hospitals in Gaza. (Middle East Monitor)

The untold number of people who have died from treatable ailments are not counted in the official toll. Over 400 dialysis patients have died from a lack of care, and malnutrition has left many too weak to donate blood. (Associated Press, The New Arab)

Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s water infrastructure has forced residents to drink from the sea and contaminated sources. Piles of garbage, sewage, and decomposed bodies have caused a surge of respiratory and skin diseases. (+972 Magazine, Middle East Monitor)

Seven weeks into Israel’s complete blockade of aid into Gaza, the World Food Program announced on Friday that its stocks had been depleted. Photographs showed Gazans butchering a sea turtle that had washed ashore for meat. (Haaretz)

Responding to reports of a humanitarian catastrophe, President Trump said that he told Netanyahu, “You’ve got to be good to Gaza.” (Middle East Monitor)

The Settling of Gaza

Since Israel broke the ceasefire in January, the IDF has vastly expanded its presence across Gaza, reestablishing occupation zones and corridors. With Israeli officials openly pursuing mass expulsion and long-term reoccupation, Hamas has urged Gazans to ignore text messages—allegedly from Israeli sources—offering plans for emigration. (The New York Review of Books, Haaretz)

Pluralism in Palestine

At a Palestinian Central Council meeting in Ramallah, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority—widely seen by Palestinians as corrupt, ineffective, and little more than a subcontractor for Israel—called Hamas “sons of dogs” and demanded they release the remaining hostages to strip Israel of its justification for the war. During the same meeting, Abbas named Hussein al-Sheikh, a close confidant with deep ties to Israeli and American officials, as his vice president and likely successor. A Hamas representative accused Abbas of “repeatedly and suspiciously laying the blame for the crimes of the occupation and its ongoing aggression on our people,” and slammed the appointment as “an external dictate” and “an entrenchment of monopoly and exclusion.” (Al Jazeera)

The BBC reported anti-Hamas protests are on the rise in Gaza as “the group’s iron grip slips.” A few weeks ago, I spoke with Afeef Nessouli, a Lebanese-American aid worker currently in Gaza, about what these protests—framed by some as insignificant and by others as evidence of a turning tide—actually reveal: Gazans, like any people, hold a range of political views.

As Gazan political analyst Muhammad Shehada noted, Israel will use the protests to justify further bombing either way: If Gazans are turning on Hamas, the bombing is working; if they aren’t, the bombing must continue.

Israel

Gaza Casualties

Three Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza over the past week, bringing the total to four since Israel violated the ceasefire in January, and to 411 since the beginning of Israel’s ground invasion in October 2023. (Haaretz)

Rocket Sirens

Rocket sirens sounded near the Dead Sea overnight into Sunday as the IDF intercepted a missile fired from Yemen.

The Only Democracy in the Middle East

Israeli officials banned protesters from showing images of hostages or Gazan children and babies, and barred the entry of 27 Left-wing French officials. (Haaretz, Haaretz)

The head of Shin Bet accused Netanyahu of demanding personal loyalty and attempting to harness the intelligence agency’s powers for his personal and political gain. (Times of Israel)

Holocaust Remembrance

In a Holocaust Remembrance Day speech, Netanyahu said Hamas was “exactly like the Nazis” and reminded the world that Israel answers to no one, citing how he had blown past Biden’s “red line” the year before: “They warned us that if we enter Rafah, they will impose an arms embargo on Israel. I said that, as the Prime Minister of the State of Israel, no one will prevent us from defending ourselves. No one will tie our hands.” (Times of Israel)

Meanwhile, an Israeli mayor who condemned Israel’s “lust for revenge” and asserted that “Never again” applies to everyone faced predictable outrage and threats. (Times of Israel)

“Incitement to Genocide Goes Mainstream”

Gideon Levy wrote in a Haaretz op-ed that “genocide talk has spread into all TV studios,” warning that “The discourse has taken on neo-Nazi attributes.” He quotes Likud lawmaker Moshe Saada saying on Channel 14 that he considered it an “obligation” to starve Gazans. “When future historians try one day to understand what happened in Israel during those years,” Levy concludes, “they will find these voices as the voice of the people … This was what Israel was like then.” (Haaretz)

Joint Struggle

+972 Magazine took on the question of the “role of Israelis in the Palestinian liberation movement,” arguing that “The history of anti-colonial organizing shows there is room for joint struggle—but only if the partnership aims to promote true equality and justice.”

America

A Terrorist Comes to America

During his U.S. tour, Israel’s extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir claimed his views were often “misconstrued” and insisted they had “evolved”—a touching story of personal growth. He also announced that top Republicans at Mar-a-Lago agreed Israel should bomb food and aid depots in Gaza. (Times of Israel)

At Yale, students protesting his speech were smeared as antisemites. The next day, the university revoked the club status of Yalies4Palestine, whose members said they hadn’t participated in the protest. (Yale News)

Outside Ben Gvir’s talk in New York on Thursday night, a woman—reportedly a bystander—was chased, assaulted, and threatened with rape by a pro-Israel mob of mostly black-hat Jews chanting “Death to Arabs,” echoing the settler pogroms in the West Bank that Ben Gvir actively encourages. It’s tiresome even to bring this up anymore, but just imagine the reaction if a crowd of crazed Arab men treated a Jewish woman this way; they’d be in El Salvador before the sun came up.

Free Speech Quick-Hits

ICE agents raided the homes of pro-Palestine student activists in Michigan, smashing through doors, seizing electronics, and briefly detaining four students.

The NIH banned grants to any university that boycotts Israeli companies. (Times of Israel)

Pro-Israel groups trained the NYPD to treat watermelons, keffiyehs, and slogans like “All Eyes on Rafah” as forms of antisemitic hate speech. (Jewish Currents)

The Antisemitism Authorities Weigh In

The ADL reported that 2024 saw the highest-ever number of antisemitic incidents in America—58% of which were related to Zionism and Israel—continuing its policy of conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism.

The organization’s president, Jonathan Greenblatt, defended its silence on the potential deportation of student activists without due process: “It’s our job to protect the Jewish people. We’re not sort of public defenders for some of the Hamasniks on these college campuses, and I don’t want to be.” He also defamed student activist Mahmoud Khalil, who had just missed the birth of his first child while being held in ICE detention.

Deborah Lipstadt, Biden’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, said she is “coming down right smack dab in the middle” on the deportations, and is “very, very pleased” with how the Trump administration is addressing antisemitism. “Look, he moved the Embassy to Jerusalem,” she said. “So I give him credit for that … I’m not gonna say just because it’s the Trump Administration it’s bad.” (Forward, The New Yorker)

“A National Disgrace”

Democratic lawmakers who visited Khalil and other imprisoned activists called their treatment a “national disgrace.” During a conversation with Senator Peter Welch, detained Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi emphasized his commitment to the U.S. Constitution and peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians—though, of course, the content of his views has no bearing on his First Amendment rights. (Guardian)

The students have racked up legal victories in their fight against deportation, and the Trump administration abruptly restored thousands of student visas it had previously rescinded. (New York Times)

A new poll shows 71% of likely Democratic primary voters want to restrict military aid to Israel until it ends attacks on civilians. In the meantime, Israel continues to drop U.S. bombs on Gaza and Lebanon. (Zeteo, Drop Site News)

Looking For The Next Big War

As the Israeli government is pressuring Trump to go to war with Iran rather than pursue a nuclear deal, Drop Site revealed that the U.S. National Security Council’s director for Israel and Iran is a former employee of Israel’s Ministry of Defense. (Drop Site News)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been texting his family and friends about U.S. attack plans in Yemen. Senate Democrats are pressing him on mounting civilian deaths from the daily airstrikes, and Houthi rebels have shot down seven Reaper drones worth over $200 million. (New York Times, Washington Post, AP)

A Movie About Phones

Jake Romm reviewed October 8 for Defector, describing it as “not so much a film as it is a way to experience being trapped in a room with someone as they show you posts on their phone,” a style that fosters collective delusion among American Zionists, allowing them to feel personally victimized by October 7 while ignoring the ongoing death and destruction in Gaza.

Europe and the Middle East

To Normalize or Not to Normalize

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has all but abandoned plans to normalize relations with Israel. Syria’s pick-me president Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly of ISIS, told Trump he’d be open to it. (+972 Magazine, Middle East Eye)

Europe Being Europe

The foreign ministers of Germany, France, and the U.K. issued a toothless condemnation of Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid. (Haaretz)

Governments across Europe, too, are using deportations to “disrupt and criminalize Palestine solidarity.” (Mondoweiss)

Sometimes, Protest Works

In Spain, activists successfully pressured their government to cancel a €6.6 million arms order from an Israeli company. (Guardian)

Back to the ICJ

On Monday, the International Court of Justice will begin hearing from 40 countries on what Israel must do to provide aid to Palestinians, though Israel has ignored past rulings.

The Ocean

Shark News

An Israeli man went swimming with sharks and was promptly eaten. People made tasteless jokes and other people got upset. (Times of Israel, Daily Mail)

This was a lot. For your sake and mine, I’m thinking about trimming these down a little going forward. If you have thoughts on what could’ve been cut—or anything else: questions, critiques, whatever—feel free to share in the comments. I welcome it all.

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See you next week. Until then, you can find me on X and Instagram.

Jasper