Weekly Review

In Muwasi, a rural area north of Rafah, the Israeli military shelled a tent camp designated for refugees, killing 25 and injuring twice as many.¹ Israeli officials claimed they could pull off a “blitzkrieg” against Hezbollah, and the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory assessed the use of heavy weapons in Gaza as an “intentional and direct attack on the civilian population,” asserting that Israel had committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, forced starvation, extermination, murder, and inhuman and cruel treatment.^{2 3} Video footage surfaced of an Israeli military truck’s progress through the streets of the West Bank with a wounded Palestinian man strapped to the vehicle’s hood.⁴ An independent study found that rounds fired from an Israeli tank were the cause of death of a Palestinian family of seven who had tried to outdrive Israel’s invasion of Gaza City but were found dead in their bullet-riddled car; among the casualties was a six-year-old who had picked up her dead relative’s cell phone to ask the Red Crescent for help, which was dispatched via an ambulance with two EMTs; the report concluded that the paramedics, too, were killed by tank gunfire.⁵ “As the occupying power, it is incumbent upon the Israeli authorities to restore public order and safety … so that assistance reaches civilians in need,” a U.N. spokesperson said, and the U.N. determined that Gaza is the most dangerous place in the world for an aid worker to be.^{6 7}

Amid temperatures exceeding 120 degrees Fahrenheit, some 1,300 pilgrims died during the Hajj, as the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca experienced an extended heat wave.⁸ Delhi, in its own heat wave, experienced its hottest night on record, with a low of 95 degrees that caused at least five deaths and taxed the Indian capital’s power grid.⁹ Climate activists stormed the green at a professional golf tournament, deploying smoke bombs as a contestant putted for the 18th hole; disrupted, on the eve of the summer solstice, a planned estival festival at Stonehenge by spray-painting several of the stones with orange dyes; and stole into an airfield to douse private jets, one of which they may have believed belonged to Taylor Swift, with a pigmented stain.^{10 11 12} The CEO of Boeing conceded in a Senate hearing that his corporation has retaliated against its whistleblowers, who now number more than a dozen, some of whom have turned up dead; “It happens,” said the CEO.^{13 14 15} Multiple Boeing 737s experienced equipment malfunctions, and the families of the Boeing 737 Max crash victims asked the Department of Justice to fine the plane manufacturer some $25 billion.^{16 17 18 19 20} National Geographic documented the salvaging of a wrecked Tuskegee Airman aircraft that, in 1944, malfunctioned somewhere over Lake Huron and took its African American pilot down with it.²¹ In the United States, Juneteenth was observed.²²

“Light will always triumph over darkness,” read the Trump campaign’s Juneteenth statement.²³ President Vladimir Putin took Kim Jong Un for a joyride, courting him with a limousine, a tea set, and an admiral’s dirk; Putin received a pair of North Korean hunting dogs in return.²⁴ The musician Justin Timberlake was arrested in Sag Harbor for driving while intoxicated; “Sometimes I’m hard to love,” he said in an account of his actions.²⁵ The rapper Travis Scott was arrested for trespassing and disorderly intoxication after breaking into a Miami yacht to yell at its passengers; Scott admitted that he had been drinking and explained himself by saying that “it’s Miami”; he has since begun selling a shirt bearing those words underneath a photo of his mug shot, which had been digitally altered to feature a broad smile.²⁶ Louisiana’s governor, Jeff Landry, amid a dispute with his state’s ethics board, passed legislation to give himself power over it; soon thereafter, Landry enacted a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in all school classrooms. “I can’t wait to be sued,” he said.^{27 28} —Lake Micah