Weekly Review

The Israeli military launched air strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp, the Maghazi refugee camp, and the Bureij camp, killing and injuring dozens of people.¹ The Gaza Health Ministry announced that 10,000 Palestinians had been killed since the start of the conflict, more than 4,000 of whom were children.² “But what about the teachers?” asked Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard professor emeritus who has represented Jeffrey Epstein, O.J. Simpson, and Claus von Bülow, while questioning the number of dead who were Hamas militants.³ Israel told civilians in Gaza to flee to the south of the city for safety before the military launched attacks there.⁴ The IDF later announced that they’d encircled Gaza City, splitting the strip in two.⁵ It was reported that the majority of Palestinians were living on two pieces of bread per day, and the leaders of the United Nations’ major humanitarian organizations released a joint statement in which they called for an immediate ceasefire and described Israel’s bombing campaign as “horrific” and “unacceptable.”^{6 7} Bolivia cut diplomatic ties with Israel, and Chile and Colombia recalled their ambassadors from the country.⁸ Hezbollah launched multiple rockets at Israel after an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon.⁹ “Anyone who threatens us we will attack them,” said an IDF spokesperson about the strike, which killed a grandmother and her three grandchildren. In Stanford, California, a Muslim student was purposefully struck by a car; in Conroe, Texas, a Muslim woman was stabbed to death while sitting at a picnic table near her apartment; and in Lyon, France, a Jewish woman whose home was vandalized with a swastika was stabbed.^{10 11} In Dagestan, a crowd of people stormed the airport searching for Jews disembarking from a plane from Tel Aviv, Stars of David were graffitied onto buildings in Paris, and a Cornell student was charged with making threats to the university’s Jewish students.^{12 13 14} More than 20 people were killed after shells hit a market in Khartoum, Sudan, in a civil war that has killed more than 9,000 people, and the United Nations announced that Sudanese women and girls were being abducted, chained, and kept in “slave-like conditions” in areas of the country held by the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group attempting to overthrow the government.^{15 16 17} It was reported that large-scale warfare occurred in Europe 1,000 years earlier than was previously thought.¹⁸

King Charles delivered a speech about Britain’s abuses during their colonization of Kenya in which he failed to offer an apology, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan bemoaned the fall of the Ottoman Empire at a rally in Istanbul, and the FBI raided the home of one of Mayor Eric Adams’s top fundraisers over allegations that he received illegal donations from Türkiye.^{19 20 21} “The loss of the presumption of innocence establishes a dangerous precedent that threatens the very foundation of our legal system,” said George Santos, who allegedly swindled a disabled man out of funds for his dying dog’s surgery and lied about losing four employees in the Pulse nightclub shooting, before he survived a vote on his expulsion from Congress.^{22 23} “He told a story and he lied to you,” a prosecutor said during the closing arguments of the case that found FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried guilty on all criminal counts against him.^{24 25} “They have a narrative, they have an end goal, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get there,” Donald Trump Jr. said in an interview about the civil fraud case against his family’s business.²⁶ The Supreme Court heard arguments from a California attorney who wants to trademark the phrase trump too small so he could put it on T-shirts.²⁷

Andy McDonald, a Labour MP, was suspended after participating in a pro-Palestine rally, a pair of Birmingham men released rodents painted the colors of the Palestinian flag into two different McDonald’s, Mayor Adams compared Department of Transportation workers to rats treading water, and it was reported that one all-nighter could ease depression in mice.^{28 29 30 31 32} Several people who attended ApeFest in Hong Kong were diagnosed with welder’s eye.³³ “Apes,” wrote the official Bored Ape Yacht Club X account, “we are aware of the eye-related issues.”³³ “This is the most Florida thing you can do,” said the owner of a Cape Coral roofing company that gives customers a frozen turkey and an AR-15 assault rifle if they buy a new roof.³⁴ A live cluster bomb and ammunition was dropped off at a thrift shop in Wisconsin, and a worker at a restaurant in Lisbon called the police after a tourist incorrectly translated the word “pomegranate” into “grenade,” wrote the word on a napkin, and slid it across the counter to the employee.35 36 A man in England was banned from dressing like a gimp and writhing on the ground for five years.³⁷ —Megan Evershed