| | | | | Tensions are running especially high this week as negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release deal take place against the volatile backdrop of Israel's operation in Rafah. Amira Hass writes that the IDF's offensive marks the latest exodus of Gaza residents, who are forced to choose between the ruins of Khan Yunis and a coastal strip without water and sewage infrastructure. Chuck Freilich charges that Israel's "go it alone" strategy has had a rude awakening. Mikhael Manekin notes that since October 7, the flagrantly anti-democratic, morally bankrupt political theology of Israel's right-wing Jewish radicals, a worldview that justifies the death, starvation, and hunger of Palestinians, is becoming more dominant. He calls on Jews in Israel and around the world to confront this desecration of our tradition. Israel observed Holocaust Remembrance Day this week and Dina Kraft writes that in the shadow of October 7 and the atrocities in Israel and in Gaza, with the number of living Holocaust survivors ever dwindling, our work as memory-keepers is just beginning. Dov Waxman writes that the violence that broke out at the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA, where he teaches, is a warning for other U.S. campuses, which face the same dangerous spiral of exclusion, radicalization and intensified outside pressure for political gain. Laurel Leff ponders the highly unusual move by 59 U.S. journalism and communications professors to collectively challenge the reporting of a single investigation in the New York Times about Hamas' sexual violence on October 7. | |
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