One month ago today: Exactly one month ago, Hamas terrorists brutally attacked Israeli civilians, killing 1,400 innocent people in a brutal pogrom and kidnapping 240 (most of whom are still being held hostage).
You probably know what's followed. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began a massive attack on the Gaza Strip, designed to weed out the group responsible for the massive slaughter of civilians. International observers have criticized Israel for hitting civilians in the course of trying to reach their targets. The whole region looks like a powder keg about to blow; Israel's northern front with Iranian-backed Lebanon, where Hezbollah operates, has been heating up, and many fear the cascade of events that will ensue—Iranian-backed groups entering the conflict—if Israel makes a misstep.
Now, after one month of strikes and a ground invasion that started a week ago and has succeeded at splitting Gaza in two, separating north from south, the Israeli military has now killed more than 10,000 Palestinians. Children comprise about 40 percent of the total killed. It's unclear how many of the total dead are Hamas terrorists. Estimates are from Gaza's health ministry, which is controlled by Hamas and thus not always reliable; but when pressed to corroborate death tolls after President Joe Biden cast doubt on them, officials in Gaza "released a list with the names, ages, genders and ID numbers of all those it counted in its death toll, except for 281 whose remains were unidentifiable," per New York Times reporting. "Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children," Union Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters this past Sunday.
Israeli strikes have led to massive civilian death tolls, but the IDF insists that this is due to the way Hamas conducts its operations, using Gazans as human shields. "Hamas fighters, numbering perhaps 30,000 by Israeli estimates, embed within Gaza's population of 2.2 million and store weapons in or under civilian sites," reports The New York Times. Israeli politicians have also turned toward citing massive death tolls imposed by other large Western democracies: the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. (which killed 200,000 civilians); Britain bombing a Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, accidentally hitting a school instead (killing 86 children and more than a dozen adults); a U.S. airstrike in Mosul that ended up killing 100 civilians instead of Islamic State targets.
Attacks on refugee camps keep upping the death toll. One on the Maghazi refugee camp killed 40 over the weekend. A few days prior, an attack near Bureji refugee camp killed 13.
"Very unfair": Yesterday, former President Donald Trump took the witness stand in Manhattan during his civil trial, in which he has already been found to have defrauded banks and insurers by overstating his net worth and property valuations. (This trial will determine penalties and charges.) Referring to financial statements submitted to banks on his behalf: "I would look at them, I would see them, and I would maybe on occasion have some suggestions," said Trump.
"I think I am probably more expert than anyone else," said Trump, referring to his ability to help his lawyers and accountants with property valuation statements they submitted to banks. "I can look at buildings and tell you what they're worth."
"The net worth of me was far greater than the financial statements," said Trump at a different point, to state attorney Kevin Wallace, who was questioning him. "People like you go around and try to demean me and try to hurt me," he added to Wallace. (The trial was "very unfair," added Trump.)
Trump apparently just couldn't stop exaggerating, even on the stand. He was asked about the square footage of his residence at Trump Tower, which he initially claimed was 11,000 square feet. Then he upped it to 12,000, and then to 13,000. He oscillated between minimizing the importance of the asset valuation statements in question and talking up his own contributions to crafting them. But mostly, Trump's impressive showmanship was on full display, as he called the trial a "witch hunt" and reverted to campaign-like soliloquies about the deck being stacked against him.
Scenes from Tamarindo, Costa Rica:
Some of you are needier than my 1-year-old! It appears that in my absence from writing Roundup, the rumor mill started churning and some feared I'd been canned or otherwise abandoned you people. Instead, I was surfing in Costa Rica (and I promise never to leave you ever again).
Anyway, here's some COVID-related rage I stumbled across:
Though surfers tend to be a mighty chill breed, the residual anger at COVID lockdowns is quite strong in some places (and rightfully so). Season two of 100 Foot Wave, which follows the big-wave surfer Garrett McNamara, has more on this, and how it affected the pro surfer community in Nazaré, Portugal. What an insane thing, to dictate that surfers—riding waves solo and outdoors, distanced by the nature of the sport—must stay shut inside, and suffer the health consequences that follow when one chooses a sedentary lifestyle over life outdoors.
QUICK HITS
- Adam Neumann's brainchild, WeWork, just filed for bankruptcy. The company's creditors "agreed on a restructuring plan that would include reducing its portfolio of office leases." It's always been odd to me that Neumann went down in startup-world history as a megalomaniac oddball worth rubbernecking at when WeWork isn't really a startup—it's more of a real estate company, and it still has tons of customers even if it has struggled to figure out how to be profitable. Anyway, I remain soft on (former kibbutznik) Neumann and his cuckoo wife and think they should not be referred to in the same breath as bona fide charlatans like Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes.
- Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for United States v. Rahimi, a case involving whether gun rights can be restricted for people with domestic abuse records.
- In the past, people had, like, dysentery and typhoid and no deodorant or Amazon Prime. I hereby cosign everything Dreyfuss is saying:
"No one has ever suffered as we have suffered" is just especially annoying in this context because actually virtually everyone who ever lived in all of history suffered more than we have suffered.
— Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) November 2, 2023
- Disturbing:
Wikipedia has slashed the entry for Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza to remove Amnesty reports of its use by Hamas as a torture facility, and media reports of its use as a Hamas operational HQ.
They even locked the page. Forget those pesky facts! pic.twitter.com/nZhMc1zXus
— Max Meyer (@mualphaxi) November 4, 2023
- Today, residents of Ohio will vote on a referendum that would establish a constitutional right to an abortion in that state. (For more on today's elections, check out this Politico guide.)
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