Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, when asked to explain the apparent about-face that led him to advocate the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, quoted a beloved Israeli pop ballad. “What you can see from there, you can’t see from here,” he said, referring to the shift in perspective he had supposedly undergone since coming to power.
Although the 2005 Gaza disengagement was perhaps less a change of heart than one of strategy, as his senior adviser later admitted, the lyric became a byword of Israeli politics, an oft-cited reminder that perspective is everything.
Israeli-born Holocaust historian Omer Bartov invoked the same line when he was asked how he had come to view Israel’s ferocious assault on Gaza as a genocide. Living in the US, where he has spent more than three decades, he said, had given him the necessary distance to see the annihilation of Gaza for what it was. “I think it’s very hard to be dispassionate when you’re there,” he said.
Bartov did more than simply apply the word genocide to Israel’s actions: he shouted it from the establishment-media rooftops, making the case in a lengthy July 2025 essay in the New York Times titled: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. (He had addressed some of the arguments in a Guardian essay the year prior.) Bartov’s declaration cost him several close relationships, he told me, even though subsequent events have not only validated his analysis but further demonstrated the lack of concern for Palestinian suffering that has become prevalent in Israeli society.
Texas can require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms, a US appeals court ruled Tuesday in a victory for conservatives who have long sought to incorporate more religion into schools.
The Trump administration is in discussions to potentially send up to 1,100 Afghans who helped US forces during the war in Afghanistan to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a non-profit confirmed on Tuesday.
A watchdog organization has filed a new request for records pertaining to FBI Director Kash Patel, citing new reports of excessive alcohol use from the intelligence chief.
Pundit Tucker Carlson is expressing regret for voicing support for President Trump.
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he would extend the ceasefire with Iran until the country submitted a peace proposal and "discussions are concluded, one way or the other."
Dozens of US military veterans, some with visible disabilities, were arrested on Monday during a protest against the ongoing US-Israeli war against Iran. Approximately 60 veterans and family members gathered in the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill, many wearing military fatigues. They unfurled banners reading “End the War on Iran” and “We Can’t Afford Another War” while standing stoically at attention.
10-day pause in hostilities in Lebanon began on Thursday last week. 
