Crooked Media - What A Day: The fog of war

The Israel-Hamas war continues to unleash unspeakable horrors on Gaza. On Tuesday, an airstrike destroyed the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, killing over 500 people.
 

• The al-Shifa hospital, the largest on the Gaza Strip, was sending overflow patients to al-Ahli; now both hospitals are inoperative. It was the second strike on al-Ahli since Saturday, and the hospital’s administration had interpreted the earlier attack, which struck its cancer ward, as a warning to leave. They sought assurances from the Church of England, which runs the hospital and asked the Israel Defense Forces not to attack it again, according to a Palestinian Ministry of Health press conference. The IDF also struck a United Nations school being used as a shelter on Tuesday, the U.N. said.
   

• Monday afternoon, the X (Twitter) account for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared quotations from his remarks to the Israeli Knesset, the country’s parliament. One post read, “This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” The post was deleted on Tuesday around the same time that information began emerging about the attack on the al-Ahli hospital. Israeli officials initially blamed a failed Hamas rocket attack in a now-deleted post on X, providing video timestamped after the attack had taken place. 
   

• Israeli government officials and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have “categorically” denied that the IDF destroyed the facility, instead blaming it on the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a small extremist group that sometimes works with Hamas. The U.N. human rights office said on Tuesday that Israel’s siege of Gaza and demand for the evacuation of 1.1 million civilians in a war zone could constitute a breach of international law. Hezbollah, the Islamist militant group based in Lebanon, has begun shelling Israel across its Lebanese border. The group went to war with Israel in 2006 and is backed by Iran and allied with Hamas; in multinational conflicts, Hezbollah has often functioned as a tool of Iranian enforcement. Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, threatened Israel on Monday with a war “on multiple fronts.” To this, Netanyahu replied, “Do not test us in the north.”

The incident has made President Biden’s Wednesday trip to Israel a matter of even more dire urgency. 
 

• Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas canceled his upcoming meeting with President Biden in response to the hospital bombing. Abbas will instead attend a summit of Palestinian leaders in Ramallah, in the West Bank. President Biden also postponed his visit to Jordan. Pressure to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza is mounting, but the Israeli government has remained obstinate. Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir stated on Tuesday that the only things that should be entering Gaza, “are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid,” until Hamas releases the hostages taken during the October 7 attacks that killed 1,400 Israeli civilians. Two-thirds of the casualties so far in Gaza are children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. 
   

• Egypt, the only country other than Israel that shares a border with Gaza, is preparing for the possible opening of the Rafah border crossing after it was struck four times in the ongoing airstrikes. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Saturday that the Rafah crossing has been officially open on the Egyptian side, but the airstrikes have made roads unusable on the Gaza side. However, Egypt also made clear it will resist any push for the country to accept large numbers of Palestinian refugees. 

As the fog of war descends, and misinformation floods so much of the rhetoric we see surrounding this conflict, trusted journalistic outlets remain indispensable. Sure would be nice if Elon Musk hadn’t gutted X’s/Twitter’s entire content moderation system, down-ranked news sources, removed headlines from news articles, and un-verified every journalist who wouldn’t pay $8/month right before one of the most consequential Middle Eastern conflicts of our time erupted. Perfect website, no notes!

On this week’s Stuck with Damon Young, United States Representative Summer Lee stops by to talk about the student loan debt defrost and recent clashes with her GOP peers over the impending government shutdown. To hear more about her experience grillin’ the GOP, tune into the most recent episode of Stuck with Damon Young, wherever you pod.

Ultraconservative hard-liner, MAGA-head, and big fan of January 6 Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) lost his first vote to become Speaker of the House, and delayed a second vote until Wednesday. Almost two weeks after the GOP caucus booted Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, the Lower Chamber remains paralyzed without a leader. Jordan became the nominee after the first choice of the caucus, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), withdrew from the race when he figured out he didn’t have the votes. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said it’s clear that Jordan doesn’t have the votes and urged his GOP colleagues to “get off the sidelines, break away from the arena,” and “find a bipartisan path forward.”

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) stated on the House floor, “A vote today to make the architect of a nationwide abortion ban, a vocal election denier, and an insurrection insider to the speaker of this house would be a terrible message to the country and our allies.” Not wrong! And also pretty savvy in its inclusion of the international community, who are probably biting their nails along with the rest of us to see whether somebody sane gets the speakership or whether we’re all—the rest of the world very much included!—saddled with a cowardly bully who couldn’t even be bothered to stand up for the wrestlers he coached, let alone the best interests of an entire nation. Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), a key holdout, said he would only consider voting for Jordan if he commits to voting on Ukraine funding and admit that Trump lost the 2020 election. Good luck with that, Ken!

Disgraced former president Donald Trump voluntarily appeared at his New York civil fraud trial on Tuesday. He used the occasion to complain that the pesky fraud case is taking time away from his campaign. 
 

The Department of Commerce announced a new slate of export controls on Tuesday meant to curb China’s development of advanced artificial intelligence technologies. Okay, but since AI is “an expensive money pit,” maybe the best offensive decision would be to just let them knock themselves out?
 

As China looks to curtail foreign influence within its borders, civil servants, bankers, and state employees are facing tighter constraints on private travel abroad and increased scrutiny about their “foreign connections.” 
 

Johnson & Johnson announced a two-year restructuring plan for its orthopedics business after medical device sales fell short for the third quarter. 

Three members of a California family pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiracy charges for their roles in a $600 million black market ring of stolen catalytic converters. Precious metals such as platinum and palladium can be extracted from the stolen parts—the converters themselves can fetch $1,000 apiece on the black market.

A 53-year-old Black man in Georgia named Leonard Allen Cure, who spent more than 16 year imprisoned in Florida on a wrongful conviction, was fatally shot on Monday by a Georgia sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating the shooting, as is customary when such incidents happen at the hands of officers. The agency did not reveal what prompted the deputy to pull over Cure’s car in the first place. 

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) who was recently revealed to be illegally acting as a foreign agent of the Egyptian government, will not attend tomorrow’s classified Congressional briefings on Israel and Hamas after (very legitimate!) questions were raised about the national security risks posed by his attendance. 

India’s high court unanimously declined to legalize same-sex marriage on Tuesday, and left the decision to the nation’s parliament.

The U.S. Senate unanimously agreed to fill committee slots vacated by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Most importantly, interim Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA) will fill the key seat on the Judiciary Committee needed for Democrats to regain the majority so that President Biden’s judicial nominees can move forward without GOP support.  

Domestic manufacturing output rose in the United States unexpectedly in September despite the ongoing auto strikes across the Detroit Three companies. 

A government bid in Hong Kong to deny same-sex couples the right to rent and own public housing has failed after a high court said that it was “discriminatory in nature.”