Thursday Briefing: Netanyahu’s address to Congress

July 25, 2024

	By Daniel E. Slotnik

Good morning. We’re covering Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress and disinformation in the U.S. election campaign.

Plus, Singapore’s lab-grown meats.

Benjamin Netanyahu gestures while delivering remarks by pounding his closed fist on a wooden lectern at the U.S. Capitol.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the U.S. Capitol yesterday. Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Netanyahu defended Israel’s war as protesters rallied

Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, defended his country’s military campaign in Gaza before Congress yesterday. His address laid bare the divisions in Washington over a war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Netanyahu did not discuss the status of a cease-fire deal that Hamas and Israel had been negotiating for weeks. He said the war against Hamas was part of a larger conflict between Iran and the U.S., insisting: “We’re not only protecting ourselves; we’re protecting you.”

“Our enemies are your enemies; our fight is your fight; and our victory will be your victory,” Netanyahu said.

But in the House chamber, the erosion of bipartisan support for Israel was evident. Republicans applauded loudly, but dozens of Democratic members boycotted the speech. Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan and the first Palestinian American to be a member of Congress, held up a sign that read “war criminal” as Netanyahu spoke.

Outside the Capitol, more than 5,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators protested Netanyahu’s address, chanting for the U.S. to stop arming Israel. Some clashed with the police and others burned an effigy of the prime minister.

Netanyahu described the antiwar protesters as “Iran’s useful idiots.” He also praised both President Biden and Donald Trump. He will meet both of them, and Vice President Kamala Harris, later this week.

Kamala Harris walks in front of a parked car.

Disinformation about Kamala Harris included false claims about her race. Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Conspiracy theories spread during the U.S. election

The emergence of Vice President Kamala Harris as the new Democratic front-runner touched off a new wave of disinformation and hateful comments online. More than one in 10 posts mentioning her on X on Sunday included racist or sexist attacks, according to PeakMetrics, which tracks activity online.

Social media accounts spreading misinformation saw engagement spike dramatically after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. Some accounts saw an additional bump after President Biden’s resignation from his campaign.

The greater engagement leads to more advertising revenue, so companies have little incentive to slow the spread of toxic content. It seems all but certain that misinformation will continue coursing through this year’s presidential election.

Paris is transformed for the Olympics

The heart of Paris has fallen silent in preparation for the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Games tomorrow.

The ceremony will float through Paris on the Seine and will be the first held outside the secure confines of a stadium. It will depict 12 scenes from French history, intermingled with a parade of 10,000 athletes in boats.

The city has instituted security measures that have thinned crowds of tourists to a trickle and hurt businesses. Projections have fallen to 11 million visitors for the Olympics, from 15 million. Roger Cohen, our Paris bureau chief, takes you on a tour of the Olympic city.

More about the Olympics:

Soccer: The U.S. men’s team is playing France in the group stage. Read the latest updates here.
Equestrian: Charlotte Dujardin, a British dressage rider and three-time Olympic gold medalist, is out of the Games after video emerged showing her whipping a horse during training.

Winter Olympics: Salt Lake City will host the Winter Games in 2034.

MORE TOP NEWS

A group of people crowd onto an inflatable raft being pulled in waist-high brown water. Some of them wear orange life jackets or hold umbrellas.

Floods from Typhoon Gaemi in Manila. Lisa Marie David/Reuters

Taiwan: Typhoon Gaemi made landfall after killing at least six people in the region.
China: Ukraine’s foreign minister held talks with his Chinese counterpart, a sign of Kyiv’s willingness to have China play a role in diplomatic efforts to end the war with Russia.
Trump: The F.B.I. director said that the man who tried to assassinate Donald Trump had researched John F. Kennedy’s assassination and flew a drone to survey the site in the hours before the shooting.
Climate: Earth set the record for the hottest day ever in history — two days in a row.
France: President Emmanuel Macron rejected the left-wing parties’ choice for prime minister and said he would not appoint anyone until after the Paris Olympics.
Media: Rupert Murdoch is locked in a secret legal battle against three of his children over the future of the family’s media empire, according to a court document obtained by The Times.
Germany: The authorities banned the Islamic Center Hamburg, accusing it of supporting Hezbollah and acting as a front for Iran.
New Zealand: A commission of inquiry estimated that more than 200,000 people had been abused while under the care of state and religious organizations from 1950 to 2019.
Italy: Authorities in Sicily are working to save the tourism season from one of the area’s worst droughts in decades.
Nepal: A plane crashed while taking off from an airport in Kathmandu, killing 18 people.
North Korea: Balloons that were loaded with trash and launched across the border hit a symbolically significant target: the South Korean president’s office.
Royals: Profits from the Crown Estate, which oversees the British royal family’s land and property holdings, doubled as a result of deals with offshore wind power producers.

Sports

Soccer: During his 25 years as commissioner, Don Garber has helped Major League Soccer thrive in the U.S.
Golf: Could Xander Schauffele be chosen as P.G.A. player of the year over Scottie Scheffler?

MORNING READ

A woman opens a freezer door inside a market. A large drawing of a steak is stenciled on the wall behind her.

Huber’s Butchery in Singapore. Ore Huiying for The New York Times

Huber’s Butchery is different from other butchers in Singapore: The meat it sells is grown in a lab. The city-state, which has very little land to farm and imports 90 percent of its food, has become a world leader in “cultivated meat.” Its success could have global significance.

CONVERSATION STARTERS

Cocaine sharks: Researchers discovered the drug in 13 sharks they tested off the waters of Rio de Janeiro.
Grandma’s pasta: A company in a small town outside Rome has enlisted real nonnas to teach people how to make pasta by hand.
A taco-shaped revelation: Exquisitely preserved fossils of a shrimplike creature with a taco-shaped shell helped scientists learn how mandibles became widespread.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times .

ARTS AND IDEAS

A bored-looking woman in a luxurious red medieval headdress and dress stands next to a woman streaked with dirt in dark, cheaper clothes.

Zosia Mamet and Saoirse-Monica Jackson in “The Decameron.” Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix

A pandemic series about haves and have-nots

Set against the background of the Black Death, “The Decameron,” a new Netflix series loosely based on a 14-century book by Giovanni Boccaccio, is a comedy about a group of nobles who try to escape the plague by taking refuge in a villa, some with their servants.

Kathleen Jordan, the showrunner, was inspired by the coronavirus pandemic — particularly by various instances of “tone deafness in celebrity culture,” she said. At the time, some starlets complained they felt as though they were in prison in their multimillion dollar mansions, even as frontline responders struggled to save lives.

The resulting show is a soapy tale of romance and intrigue that delivers edge-of-your-seat plot twists with a dark sense of humor. Read more about the show.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Sliced peaches are heaped into a graham cracker crumble crust, in a glass pie plate on a textured table.

Johnny Miller for The New York Times

Bake: A press-in graham cracker crust makes this peaches and cream pie stand out.

Compete: These video games let you experience Olympic glory without all the sweating.

Read: “Catalina” brings readers into the life of a blue-collar brainiac from Ecuador.

Play: Spelling Bee, the Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku. Find all of our games here.

That’s it for today. See you tomorrow. — Dan

P.S. Melissa Hoppert will be the next editor of The Times’s Express desk, which handles breaking news.

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