The violence has resumed as negotiations in Egypt have failed to extend the 72-hour ceasefire. According to an early report on NPR, Israel held its fire for 90 minutes as Hamas rocket fire began again. As of this writing, we hear of two injured on the Israeli side and a ten-year old boy being killed by an IDF air strike on a mosque.
In the meantime, the wars in Iraq and Syria continue to blaze out of control. Thousands from the Christian and Yazidi minority religious communities flee from Islamic State conquests in northern Iraq, as Kurdish Peshmerga militia are outgunned by the jihadi fighters — abundantly equipped with American weapons taken from defeated Iraqi soldiers — and forced to retreat. (The New Yorker’s George Packer has written on ISIS, the Yazidis, Kurdistan, and the Threat of Massacres in Iraq; Dexter Filkins examined the need for American military aid to the Kurds, also in The New Yorker.) The United States is now sending emergency supplies to tens of thousands of desperate refugees and authorizing air strikes.
Violent events in Gaza, Iraq and Ukraine have largely eclipsed news stories out of Syria. But it’s noteworthy that a two-day battle in Syria, two and a half weeks ago, reportedly took over 700 lives, more than one-third of the month-long toll in Gaza to date.
Yesterday, even before this latest setback to our hopes for peace, M.J. Rosenberg, our newest blogger, informed his email list and us that he’s taking an indefinite break from writing on Israel. To us he wrote: “. . . I need to decide if I want to keep doing this. If I do, I’ll be back with you guys.” We know the feeling.
Yesterday, even before this latest setback to our hopes for peace, M.J. Rosenberg, our newest blogger, informed his email list and us that he’s taking an indefinite break from writing on Israel. To us he wrote: “. . . I need to decide if I want to keep doing this. If I do, I’ll be back with you guys.” We know the feeling.
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