Commentary Magazine (January 17, 2024) – The latest issue features ‘They’re Coming After Us’ – The sense Israelis have that they are personally vulnerable to outside attack in a manner more like an extended military invasion than a terrorist blow….
I have lost count of the number of times the phrase “I have never felt like this before” has been spoken in my ear, texted to me, or sent to me in an email, in the three months since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
When I talked with Israelis on a trip in November, the phrase described a gut emotion few under the age of 50 said they had ever experienced—the sense that they were personally vulnerable to outside attack in a manner more like an extended military invasion than a terrorist blow. They had lived through years of ineffectual rocket fire that was all but magically extinguished by the Iron Dome and Arrow anti-missile systems.
The American strikes destroyed four missiles that posed a threat to ships in the Red Sea, the Pentagon said. They came on the third day in a row the Houthis have defiantly fired at passing ships.
For a commander in chief, retail campaigning isn’t easy, what with the counterassault team that follows him everywhere. But President Biden is starting to hit the hustings on every Main Street he can find.
The War Has Reined In Ukraine’s Oligarchs, at Least for Now
Oligarchs have lost billions from the shelling of their factories, and the government has used its wartime powers to break their political influence.
The New Yorker – January 22, 2024 issue: The new issue‘s cover featuresPascal Campion’s “Winter Sun” – The artist depicts the beams of sunlight that flicker during the coldest months of the year.
Amid war with Hamas, a hostage crisis, the devastation of Gaza, and Israel’s splintering identity, the Prime Minister seems unable to distinguish between his own interests and his country’s.
To be vigilant—to live without illusions about the ever-present threat of annihilation—was a primary value at No. 4 Haportzim Street, once the Jerusalem address of the Netanyahu family. This wariness had ancient roots. In the Passover Haggadah, the passage beginning “Vehi Sheamda” reminds everyone at the Seder table that in each generation an enemy “rises up to destroy” the Jewish people. “But the Holy One, Blessed be He, delivers us from their hands,” the Haggadah continues. Benzion Netanyahu, the family patriarch and a historian of the Spanish Inquisition, was a secular man. For deliverance, he looked not to faith but to the renunciation of naïveté and the strength of arms. This creed became his middle son’s inheritance, the core of his self-conception as the uniquely unillusioned defender of the State of Israel.
In the early months of the pandemic, joggers on the Bear Creek Greenway, in southern Oregon, began to notice tents cropping up by the path. The Greenway, which connects towns and parks along a tributary of the Rogue River, was beloved for its wetlands and for stands of oaks that attracted migrating birds. Now, as jobs disappeared and services for the poor shut down, it was increasingly a last-ditch place to live. Tents accumulated in messy clusters, where people sometimes smoked fentanyl, and “the Greenway” became a byword for homelessness and drug use. On a popular local Facebook page, one typical comment read, “Though I feel sorry for some of the people in that situation, most of them are just pigs.” In Medford, the largest city along the trail, police demolished encampments and ticketed people for sleeping rough.
Ms. Haley has attracted the interest of non-Republicans who say they’ll caucus for her, as rivals attack her for an insufficiently conservative message.
How College-Educated Republicans Learned to Love Trump Again
Blue-collar white voters make up Donald Trump’s base. But his political resurgence has been fueled largely by Republicans from the other end of the socioeconomic scale.
Monocle on Sunday, January 14, 2024– Emma Nelson, Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Nina dos Santos on the weekend’s biggest talking points. We also speak to Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, in Tokyo and our Singapore correspondent in Taiwan, Naomi Xu Elegant.
With the U.S.-led attacks in Yemen, there is no longer a question of whether the Israel-Hamas war will escalate into a wider conflict. The question is whether it can be contained.
On the Ballot in Iowa: Fear. Anxiety. Hopelessness.
As Monday’s caucuses approach, voters casually throw around the prospect of World War III and civil unrest, anxious of divisions they fear are tearing the country apart.
Monocle on Saturday, January 13, 2024: A discussion of the the Israel-Hamas conflict and the Iowa caucuses. And why are people upset at artificial intelligence finishing Keith Haring’s ‘Unfinished Painting’?
Join Georgina Godwin and communications consultant Simon Brooke for this and more from the week’s news and culture.
The Economist Magazine (January 12, 2024): The latest issue features ‘China’s EV Onslaught’ – An influx of Chinese cars is terrifying the West; Europe’s Silicon Valley; ‘America Fights Back’ – The new contest for sea power; Why Olaf Scholz is no Angela Merkel – Germany is unable and unwilling to lead Europe; What science says about old leaders…
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