| |  | | | | | | | The 300 drones, cruise and ballistic missiles Iran fired Saturday night marked the Islamic Republic's first ever direct attack on Israel, taking the long-time shadow war between arch-enemies out of the shadows and keeping the region on a knife's edge as Israel ponders its "response."
Barbara Slavin, noting the salvo was thwarted thanks to international cooperation, outlines how restraint might prevail. She argues that Iran's Khamenei is caught between hardliners and an Iranian population alienated by his support for an anti-Israel "Axis of Resistance," but that the attack turned Israel into the perceived victim of a massive new aggression. She asks: Will the retaliation continue, or will Biden stay Netanyahu's hand?
Ali Fathollah-Nejad lays out how a direct war pitting Iran against Israel, and possibly the U.S., would be extraordinarily costly for Tehran – even jeopardizing the survival of a regime that is already facing a deep domestic legitimacy crisis, and which knows there will be no 'rallying-around-the-flag' effect in case of full-blown war.
Jeremy Issacharoff – former Iran policy point person for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, who was most recently Israel's ambassador to Germany – argues that both the Gaza war and the Iranian attack clearly demonstrate that Israel needs Palestinian and regional partners. To ensure Iran and Hamas cannot claim victory, Israel must stop postponing progress towards a two-state solution.
Noa Landau – writing about the American evangelical reaction of "religious ecstasy" to the Iranian attack on Israel and what it may herald – argues that the joy that today grips the likes of Pastor John Hagee and his friends is further proof of Netanyahu's dangerous policy errors.
Amira Hass writes of the plight of Gaza residents who have Israeli citizenship. Their bags are packed, their farewells said, but the army's changing procedures are preventing 47 of them, some of them children, from crossing the border from Gaza.
Ilan Cohn writes on how Sudan is experiencing one of the largest ongoing humanitarian catastrophes in the world, even though news of the atrocities, mass displacement and famine there barely make headlines. Jews around the world mobilized for Darfur twenty years ago, he explains, and we must step up again today.
Aron Joseph Ehrlich, an art director at Haaretz, describes Israel's streets as awash in interpretations of October 7, and describes his own ethical and aesthetic dilemmas in how to represent the day that changed everything. | | |
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