Palestinians in Gaza celebrated the ceasefire yesterday evening, but the destruction and grief left in the wake of Israeli airstrikes are enormous. Activestills documented the Israeli operation from beginning to end, capturing its effects in Israel, the West Bank and, most acutely, the Gaza Strip.                                              

By +972 and Activestills At least 23 people, among them 14 women and children, were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza on Sunday, November 18th, bringing the total number of Palestinian casualties since the assassination of Ahmad Jabari to 69. Three Israelis were killed last week when a rocket hit a house in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi. Air strikes on Gaza continued throughout the day, as did rocket launches toward Israeli towns, including several rockets which were intercepted above Tel Aviv by the Iron Dome. At the time of writing, there hasn't been a breakthrough in the effort to reach…

No. Not again. This can't be happening again. But there it is. Once again, just like it was four years ago, it is winter. Reports on tension, violence, the regular exchange of rockets on southern Israeli towns, and assassinations and airstrikes on Gaza dominate the media once more. Calls for revenge and a more resilient response are commonly heard. And then: a bigger attack. Something that Israel knows will drag both sides into using all they have, usually resulting in hundreds of dead and extreme destruction on the Palestinian side, and several killed and severe damage on the Israeli one.…

By David Lehrer Those of us who grew up in the United States in the 1960s may remember that period as one of naïve optimism overshadowed by apocalyptic terror.  We were terrified of the possibility that nuclear missiles from the USSR would be launched at us but naïvely believed that if we just crouched down under our school desks and held our heads between our hands we would be safe. We lived in a MAD, mad world, where MAD stood for Mutual Assured Destruction, the military doctrine and foreign policy that guided the strategic relationship between the two superpowers.  The…

A lot of people appear to be concerned about the "indefensibility" of 1967 borders. A lot of people also seem to be worried about the prospect of Zombie apocalypse. Far be it from me to imply that there is any overlap between the two groups. Nonetheless, these two notions have one thing in common: much like Zombies, the threat posed by 1967 does not exist. This is not an original point: it has been made by commentators as diverse as Jonathan Chait and Josh Marhsall, and many others, I am sure. Their general message has been that the Israeli security…

Eli Yishai, Israel's lethally incompetent Interior Minister, is outraged that Judge Richard Goldstone, who headed the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza war, has not condemned attacks on Israeli civilians. According to Ynet, Yishai sent a letter to Goldstone in which he "demanded of Goldstone to condemn the firing from Gaza as he did with IDF operations in the Gaza Strip." The idea that Goldstone did not condemn the firing of rockets from Gaza is one of the oft-repeated lies about his report. Look, the document is posted on the World Wide Web. It is pretty long, so let me…

There is a direct connection between the Israeli government's disdain towards casualties among the "enemy's" civilian population, and its indifference to the fate of its own civilians. The next war, unfortunately, will probably see both groups badly suffer. As I have written here in the past, there are strong indications that Israel may be inching towards war with several of its neighbors. We have good reason to believe this war will have a devastating impact on the non-Israeli side. But what about ordinary Israeli civilians? How will they fare in such a war? Sadly, it seems there is cause for…