Reporters are turning to Radios and Generators to keep the news moving
The Ezra Klein Show with Peter Beinart: The Jewish Left, the First Israeli-Hamas War and Israel’s Post-Second Israel
You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.
During the first major Israel-Hamas war, in 2008 and 2009, Palestinian groups claimed the death toll was mostly civilian, with roughly 1,400 people killed. A doctor from Palestine is working at Gaza’s Shifa hospital. The number of dead is between 500 and 600. A majority of them are teenagers between the ages of 17 and 23 who were recruited to the ranks of Hamas. According to the Israeli news site YNet, the doctor wished to remain unidentified because of fear for his life.
My approach is going to be to try to cover it from many different perspectives, but I wanted to start with the one I’m closest to, which has felt particularly tricky in recent weeks: that of the Jewish left. So I invited Spencer Ackerman and Peter Beinart on to the show.
The author of the Newsweek newsletter and “Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and produced Trump”, he is an award-winning columnist for The Nation. Peter Beinart is an editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, the author of the Beinart Notebook newsletter and a professor of journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. The way that Sept. 11 should inform both Israel’s response and the need to empower different kinds of actors is one they have taken up.
The First Public Account of Gaza as a Ground Operation: The Case of Lifshitz, 79, Hostage of Hamas
A pensioner who was released after being held hostage in Gaza said she was beaten as she was taken away on a motorcycle.
She likened the tunnels under Gaza to a spider web and said she was marched through them. She said that she was later treated relatively well, offering the first public account to emerge from the more than 200 hostages estimated to be held by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.
Ms. Lif Shitz told reporters the day after her release that she went through hell and that she sat in a wheelchair in the hospital.
She was freed along with Nurit Cooper, 79, on Monday and transferred from Hamas custody to Israeli forces via the International Committee for the Red Cross and Egypt. Both of their husbands are still being held hostage in Gaza.
Her account of the tunnels offered a glimpse of the difficulties facing Israel as it weighs whether and how to launch a ground invasion of Gaza to eliminate Hamas, which led the devastating Oct. 7 attack against Israel.
Hamas has built a labyrinth of underground passages in Gaza for its fighters, military analysts said, complicating both Israel’s anticipated ground operation and any attempt to rescue the hostages.
“Many people stormed our homes, they beat people, some of them they abducted, like me,” Ms. Lifshitz said. They kidnapped the old and young, it didn’t make a difference.
She said her abductors beat her in the ribs and took away her watch when she was hauled onto a motorcycle. They drove off through the fields.
She said that they took her through the tunnels until they reached a large hall. After two to three hours, they separated the five people from her kibbutz into their own room, where they were monitored by guards and a medic.
Ms. Lifshitz said that she and others were relatively well taken care of, given medicine and the same food as their captors. Fearing disease, her captors worked to sanitize the area, she said, and doctors would visit sporadically to check on them. “They treated us gently and fulfilled all of our needs,” she said.
Ms Lifshitz criticized the Israeli military and the Shin Bet security service for ignoring warnings about the threat to towns near Gaza. The Israeli military’s chief of staff acknowledged after the attack that the military had failed to live up to its mission to protect Israel’s citizens.
Weeks before the assault, Palestinians had rioted and fired explosive balloons near the Gaza border fence, sparking fires in southern Israel, Ms. Lifshitz said.
Israeli survivors find solace in a hotel after a rocket-induced ambush: An Israeli soldier and his family in Kfar Aza
The families lounge on the grass. Kids play basketball. Dogs are taken on walks through the lobby past a handwritten list of funerals that is getting longer.
He and his family moved to Kfar Aza a couple of months ago. It had a dining hall with palm trees, a plastic factory, and other things. Even though rocket fire is a thing in Gaza, there was a waiting list to join.
The survivors of Kibbutz Kfar Aza have evacuated, with hundreds of them staying together at this hotel on another kibbutz north of Tel Aviv, wondering: what next?
Geologist Bar Elisha sits on a lawn chair in the hotel courtyard. The 41-year-old and his two young daughters were home when the ambush began. He left his house to get his firearm from where it was being stored, but it jammed.
Israeli survivors find solace in a hotel in the Hamas attack at home, and their family’s home, in Abu Sayeev
“I was like, oh my gosh, he’s dead,” I said. His entire family is dead. I was sure they were killed in cold blood. Then I heard them moving to the next house, and to the next house,” he says.
He emerged from the rescue 30 hours later with a completely different scene. Homes had gaping holes. The attackers left behind an aerial photograph with buildings identified as targets. These are just some of the details that haunt the survivors.
Schwartzman, who is 37, says that they thought it was safe when they moved there. There was constant bombing, but we were not aware that hundreds or even hundreds of terrorists would come into the kibbutz, and start killing everyone in their home.
Schwartzman’s wife, Keren Flash, lost both of her parents in the attack — they were killed in their home less than 500 feet away from Schwartzman’s home.
Source: Attacked by Hamas at home, Israeli survivors find solace in a hotel
Hamas at home: Israeli survivors find solace in a hotel after a shiva for a man from the kibbutz
The Jewish ritual of Shiva can’t be done at home. Their home is no longer a good place to live. Shiva is being held in a bank lobby after shiva.
A group of family members and friends sit shiva for Ofer Baram’s son Aviv, who died of a heart attack at the age of 33.
A volunteer therapist holds sessions in an office of the bank. She helped treat a man from the kibbutz who did not know where his father’s body was.
“He was imagining that his body is … in a bag … with many, many bags of other bodies.” Shmuel says, explaining that, for him, it brought to mind scenes from the Holocaust. “It was so terrible, like Auschwitz, just a very bad image.”
Shmuel specializes in eye movements and knee tapping as a type of therapy that can be used to overcome trauma.
“He said, ‘Dad, goodbye. Shmuel says he loves you. “And he could see his dad and just give him a hug, and say goodbye to him in a normal and dignified way. And then he got peace.”
Source: Attacked by Hamas at home, Israeli survivors find solace in a hotel
The Shefayim Hotel: a humanitarian crisis since the Israeli-Hamas conflict began in October 2001, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists
Other attack survivors at the Shefayim Hotel find peace in being in a group of people that they can trust.
“The human spirit here is so strong,” says Schwartzman. You see the civilians who are taking care of everything.
Since the Israel-Hamas conflict began on October 7, at least 24 journalists have been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The NGO says that’s more than in every previous war in Gaza since 2001. Over 5,000 people have died there since the conflict began. Many in the humanitarian sector are afraid of an impending catastrophe because services are collapsing. It is circumstances like this in which journalism is most urgently needed. Local Palestinian journalists are responsible for reporting, because few international press are able to enter Gaza. They have to work because of internet and power failures, shortages of food and water, and fear of death. Most have had to leave their homes. Many family members have died. They have all been directly targeted because of their work. But many journalists in Gaza have continued to work despite these pressures, figuring out ways to stay online and keep the news moving.
A missile did not hit the hospital, but rather the parking lot. Abundant evidence, confirmed by U.S. intelligence and independent analyses, indicates that the explosion was caused by a missile fired from Gaza, which was intended to kill Israelis but malfunctioned and fell to earth. There is no solid reason to believe the death toll reached anywhere near 500. And the “Gazan health ministry” is not some sort of apolitical body but a Hamas-owned entity, towing and promoting whatever the terrorist organization demands.
The story of Hani al-Agha, the alleged atrocity in the Gaza Strip, and the fate of the Israelis, as revealed by Nathan Thrall
The Palestinians are considered to be republics of fear due to their association with Hamas in Gaza. Palestinians are just as honest as people in other countries. As in any regime, those who stray from the approved line are at serious risk.
Or take the case of Hani al-Agha, a Palestinian journalist who was jailed for weeks and tortured by Hamas in 2019. In that case, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate took the extraordinary step of condemning al-Agha’s arrest and torture as “an attempt to intimidate journalists in Gaza Strip, who are subject to repressive police authority.” Outside of a few news releases the story received no coverage in the wider media.
The news media still needs fixers and freelancers to tell the full story in war zones. People who consume the media should know the threats, pressures, and cultures of the journalists they work for, not because we distrust them as individuals but because we appreciate the dangerous circumstances they find themselves.
Readers want to know how the information about the alleged atrocity in Gaza came to be. It’s bad enough that Hamas tyrannizes Palestinians and terrorizes Israelis. We don’t need it misinforming the rest of us.
The legacy of displacement also loomed large inside Israel, said Nathan Thrall, author of “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama,” a book about the lives of Palestinians and Israelis. “Beyond the shock and atrocities of the attack, it played to the deepest Israeli fears — that all these Palestinians, who live on the other side of the wall, are going to come back and try to retake their villages and homes,” he said.
Soon after, jets bombed the apartments, blowing out his grandmother’s windows. With his sister, she took off into the night with about 6,000 other people, sleeping on the roadside. Eventually they found shelter at a small hospital run by a relative in southern Gaza.
A split was inside the family’s group. Even though the military would soon warn residents that they could be considered a member of a terrorist organization if they stayed, his grandmother was still disobeying the order to leave.
His sister was not sure. He argued with his siblings that she should stay at her grandmother’s apartment. Or risk the short but dangerous journey south?
The news that Mr. Abujayyab’s sister didn’t hear was likely the one she heard. Their internet and power was out, as were bombs, he said in a voice message to his family.
So, for now, Daood and Standing Together are working quietly to make connections between neighbors. “The real work,” she said, “is after this war is over.”
The activists in Lod wanted to make a statement, but without putting volunteers or the community center staff at risk. She understands the risk of danger, since she lived in Israel for six years and saw people in the streets with guns, wanting to have a clash.
When asked about her mission this moment, as Israel mourns the more than 1,400 people killed in this month’s unprecedented attack by Hamas, she said it was important for them to go through.
“It’s very difficult at the moment,” said Shofet, who works with Standing Together, a grassroots organization of Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Shofet, who is Jewish, said that people in Israel are scared and that there’s “this feeling of having to hunt down people who say anything that sympathizes with people in Gaza or strives towards peace.”
In the city of Haifa last week, police broke up a rally in support of Gaza. “I am giving you precise instructions: zero tolerance for any incident of incitement — not by a nurse, not by a doctor, not by a singer,” said Israel’s police commissioner, Kobi Shabtai, in a video posted to the Arabic-language TikTok channel for the police. Anyone who wants to sympathize with Gaza is invited to board a bus and go there.
Israel Frey, a journalist on the left-wing, said a right-wing mob attacked and threatened his family after he quoted the Jewish mourners prayer for dead civilians in Gaza. In a video released on social media last week, he said he was in hiding. “They went after me because I talked about the need for empathy and prayer for Gaza’s children,” he said.
Against that backdrop, Shofet and Standing Together’s national co-director Rula Daood arrived at the community center in Lod with a group of volunteers. The main aim of the drive was to raise money for people in need, as many shops and restaurants have closed during the war. About a dozen people — some wearing headscarves and modest clothing, others in V-neck T-shirts and open-toed shoes — chatted in a mix of Arabic and Hebrew as they packed up boxes with basic groceries.
If the activists thought it was safe to put up posters, they brought a pile of them. Standing Together activists tried to put up stickers with a message of Jewish-Arab solidarity the day before, but it didn’t go well. Two of our activists were arrested by the police, said Daood.
This donation drive could be fraught in the moment because of the small gestures of collaboration between Jews and Arabs. Smadar Tzimmerman said that her husband doesn’t like her coming here. She used to work as an art therapist in Arab schools when she was Jewish, so she’s retired now.
She has friends who do peace work, and talking with them fills her with hope, but she admitted that most of Israel doesn’t share her views. Two weeks after the Hamas attack, the anger is still palpable. I won’t speak my mind at a funeral when everyone is grieving and saying ‘let’s kill them’. She said she came to comfort them.
Even if her husband calls her a naive woman, Tzimmerman still believes in building relationships between Jews and Arabs and she hopes for peace.
“Being kind to each other, to know each other — it’s not such a difficult thing to do, if you are willing to do it,” she said. Our leaders aren’t willing to do that.
It’s not only Jewish Israelis who view this approach to peace as wishful thinking. Myada Abu Khaled is a teacher and a volunteer at the community center. “No need now for ‘Let’s do things together,'” she said, “rainbow things and unicorns and so on. It won’t make a difference. We need to be realistic.
Abu Khaled has spent her entire life around Jews — “I speak Hebrew as a mother tongue,” she said — and she has students serving in the Israeli army. She wiped away tears as she said she was afraid to ask about them.
She broke down as she remembered a call that she made to a student in her college class. Friends of the student were killed at the Nova music festival. “I could feel her hatred upon me,” Abu Khaled said. I do not judge her, and I really understand her. I just collapsed when I finished the Zoom. I fell apart.”
She had given up on the idea that there was a society of Arabs and Jews. She explained that she saw that people didn’t like it.
Concerns over Israel’s war strategy; long COVID origins: the Up First briefing: Concerns about Israel and the ongoing crisis in Gaza
Good morning. You’re reading a newsletter. If you subscribe, you will receive the news delivered to your inbox and the Up First show for all the news that’s going on.
Israel has bombarded Gaza for more than two weeks following the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7., in which more than 1,400 people were killed. More than 6,000 people in the Gaza have been killed in Israeli strikes. The UN Secretary-General said Israel’s strategy was a violation of international humanitarian law. Israel claims that a ground invasion is imminent. But U.S. officials are concerned about the possibility of the war spreading.
Mike Johnson is a congressman from Louisiana. House Republicans initially nominated Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer yesterday. He was the only one who could win 217 votes in the full House, and he dropped out of the race hours later.
Source: Up First briefing: Concerns over Israel’s war strategy; long COVID origins
Facebook, Instagram, and Meta: A U.S. Teen Health Crisis in Light of a Palestinian War on Wall Street and the Gaza Emergency Medical Care Act
More than 40 states sued Meta yesterday, accusing Facebook and Instagram’s parent company of violating consumer protection laws by designing deliberately addictive products that harm teen mental health. Meta issued a statement sharing concerns for teen health but hasn’t addressed the substance of the lawsuit.
According to the survey, tension is increasing ahead of next year’s presidential election. The Public Religion Research Institute says 75% of Americans surveyed agree U.S. democracy is “at risk” and nearly a quarter agree “true American patriots may have to resort to violence” to save the country.
A new study showed that depression could be caused by low levels of seroton in the blood. The study traces a possible cause for persistent symptoms like brain fog, memory loss and fatigue all the way from the gut to the brain.
And for Zarifeh—who has lived in Gaza for 55 years and covered its conflicts for 30 of them—the destruction of White Media’s office was not going to put him off.
That first morning, his team set about rebuilding. Israel began to cut off electricity to Gaza. They harnessed the sun’s energy, used generators and portable batteries, and found extra large batteries for charging on the go. Journalists in Gaza will often travel by foot in order to save fuel.
