Silverseren

Last December, video emerged showing the bodies of a mother, father and their four sons strewn across a street in Gaza City. Beside them lay a stretcher, shovels and a makeshift white flag. A New York Times investigation examines how they got there and who killed them.

Russia has been secretly acquiring sensitive goods in India and explored building facilities in the country to secure components for its war effort, according to Russian state correspondence seen by the Financial Times.

Moscow’s industry and trade ministry, which oversees defence production to support Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, drew up confidential plans in October 2022 to spend about Rs82bn ($1bn at the time) on securing critical electronics through channels hidden from western governments.

The plan, revealed in letters to a shadowy trade promotion body with strong links to the Russian security services, aimed to use “significant reserves” of rupees amassed by Russian banks from booming oil sales to India. It saw India as an alternative market to source crucial goods “previously supplied from unfriendly countries”.

Children in Gaza began receiving vaccines on Saturday, the Strip’s health ministry announced in a news conference, a day before the large-scale rollout and planned pause in fighting agreed to by Israel and the United Nations World Health Organization.

Associated Press reporters saw roughly ten infants receiving doses of vaccine in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis on Saturday afternoon.

Hours earlier, Gaza's Health Ministry said hospitals received 89 dead on Saturday, including 26 who died in an overnight Israeli bombardment, and 205 wounded — one of the highest daily tallies in months.

The girls, aged 14 to 16, have come for settler training to learn how to occupy Palestinian land — breaking international law. “God promised us this land and told us if you don’t take it, bad people will try and take it and you will have a war,” says Emuna Billa, 19, one of the camp supervisors. “Why do we have a war in Gaza? Because we don’t take Gaza.”

Their guru is Daniella Weiss, a 79-year-old grandmother in a long skirt and patterned headscarf. Founder of the Nachala or Homeland movement, she has been setting up illegal settlements for 49 years and was recently put under international sanctions. “You will be the new emissaries,” she tells the 50 or so girls at the camp. “I call it redeeming, not settling and this is our duty.”

She unfurls a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories dotted with vivid pink house symbols to represent existing and proposed Jewish settlements. Not only are these all across the West Bank, but also in Gaza. Already 674 people have signed up for beachside plots there, she tells me, and “many more want to join”. When someone asks her about settling Lebanon she smiles and says, “Yes, there too”.

The Biden administration on Friday tapped Mira Resnick, an official deeply involved in weapons transfers to Israel, for a new role shaping policy at the State Department on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to two people familiar with the move.

The decision surprised some foreign policy professionals and was seen as particularly alarming by skeptics of President Joe Biden’s near-total backing of Israel’s devastating ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

Resnick previously worked at the State Department’s Political-Military Affairs bureau, which has approved billions in arms shipments to Israel during the Gaza war despite concerns from lawmakers and human rights groups that Israel is violating U.S. and international law in its use of American weaponry.

“Assigning [Resnick] ... reflects a doubling down on the administration’s determination to continue to provide unconditional material support for Israel’s genocidal campaign against civilians in Gaza,” argued Annelle Sheline, a former State Department official who quit the agency in protest over Biden’s approach earlier this year.

The Biden administration on Friday tapped Mira Resnick, an official deeply involved in weapons transfers to Israel, for a new role shaping policy at the State Department on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to two people familiar with the move.

The decision surprised some foreign policy professionals and was seen as particularly alarming by skeptics of President Joe Biden’s near-total backing of Israel’s devastating ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

Resnick previously worked at the State Department’s Political-Military Affairs bureau, which has approved billions in arms shipments to Israel during the Gaza war despite concerns from lawmakers and human rights groups that Israel is violating U.S. and international law in its use of American weaponry.

“Assigning [Resnick] ... reflects a doubling down on the administration’s determination to continue to provide unconditional material support for Israel’s genocidal campaign against civilians in Gaza,” argued Annelle Sheline, a former State Department official who quit the agency in protest over Biden’s approach earlier this year.

“It feels like I’m in an alternate world,” Rima Mohammad, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan, told me of her experience at the Democratic National Convention. She described entering the United Center in Chicago for the convention and encountering giddy attendees after she attended a forum where Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American pediatric intensive care doctor, recounted harrowing details from her medical mission in Gaza. “I was literally bawling at the panel, and then going into the convention where people are excited and celebrating—it was the weirdest feeling,” Mohammad said.

Mohammad is wearing a black-and-white kaffiyeh imprinted with “Democrats for Palestinian Rights” every day that she attends the convention. While almost all other attendees are in full Harris gear, celebrating with “We heart Joe” signs, the uncommitted delegates—around 30 in total, representing some 700,000 voters—clearly stand out among other convention-goers, some of whom have seem wary or guarded around them. Mohammad described a brief encounter with Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as “mostly a photo op.” She said the governor was sympathetic but didn’t have much to say.

Mohammad is the grandchild of Palestinian Nakba survivors who remain refugees, she said; she is also an outspoken Democrat. She is on the public school board in Ann Arbor, and recently ran for Michigan state representative. She’s been stunned by the party’s response to the war in Gaza so far, and was feeling intense whiplash at the DNC. “It’s disappointing that it’s taking the uncommitted delegates to advocate for something so simple and humane,” she said. “The bar is really low. People just want to feel like they’re being taken seriously. This isn’t just about a Muslim or Arab vote; it’s about decency.”

Several major lawmakers, from Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to President Joe Biden, made mention of the atrocities in Gaza during the first night of the Democratic National Convention on Monday. But among the crowd and behind the scenes, efforts to cover up mention of the genocide were still underway.

During Biden’s speech, a Jewish delegation unfurled a large sign revealing the text “Stop Arming Israel.” The effort was quickly stopped by nearby attendees, who blocked the sign with “We [Heart] Joe” sticks while another attendee in a row above the protesters attempted to snatch the banner away.

Another attendee, two rows away from the protesters, used one of the pro-Biden signs to repeatedly hit a woman wearing a hijab on the head.

He may not be in office, but Donald Trump has been speaking with the powers that be about Israel’s war on Gaza—but it’s not in an effort to end the genocide.

Instead, Trump has allegedly been talking with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to avert a cease-fire deal, fearing that doing so could help Vice President Kamala Harris win in November, according to PBS.

“The reporting is that former President Trump is on the phone with the Prime Minister of Israel, urging him not to cut a deal right now, because it’s believed that would help the Harris campaign,” said PBS’s Judy Woodruff Monday night. “So, I don’t know where—who knows whether that will come about or not, but I have to think that the Harris campaign would like for President Biden to do what presidents do, and that’s to work on that one.”

As students return to college campuses across the United States, administrators are bracing for a resurgence in activism against the war in Gaza.

As students return to college campuses across the United States, administrators are bracing for a resurgence in activism against the war in Gaza.

'Our lives are more important than their lives': Gazans not suspected of terrorism are detained and sent as human shields to search tunnels and houses before IDF soldiers enter, with the full knowledge of senior Israeli officers, several sources say; IDF claims this practice is forbidden