From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday, May 13th.

The national politics news over the weekend was heavily about the next moves for the U.S. in the war between Hamas and Israel,

even as the pain on both sides over there continues to mount. In Israel today, it's the annual

Memorial Day when the country mourns its war dead in a nation that has been attacked so many

times during its short history. They do Memorial Day

as the lead-in to the usually festive Israeli Independence Day, which begins at sundown tonight,

76 years now since the founding in 1948. I think that's going to feel different than it ever did

this year. An Associated Press story this morning is headlined,

with the shock of October 7th still raw,

profound sadness and anger grip Israel on its memorial day.

The AP article starts with the story of a mother whose son was killed by Hamas on October 7th,

but Hamas is still holding the remains,

so even remains, are being held hostage. On the Palestinian side, the tens of thousands of

civilian deaths and the ongoing war, killing more every day by bullets or bombs or by lack of food

or medical care.

That includes in areas of central and northern Gaza, where Hamas is reportedly returning

after Israeli troops moved south and Rafa in the south, even before a more massive

ground invasion, which continues to divide Prime Minister Netanyahu there and President Biden

here. An American in Rafah, an American nurse on Morning Edition today described the scene at a local

hospital. The flies are everywhere. They're in the OR. They're in the ICU. I really think they can predict death.

It's, I don't know, just absolutely unbelievable here. That from Morning Edition this morning.

The U.S. politics of all this, our main focus now are that many people are being left

...