Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Backgroundbriefing.org. I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with increasing pressure from the White House on Israel,

with Defense Secretary Austin meeting with his Israeli counterpart,

urging the IDF that, quote,

protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral duty and a strategic imperative,

as Palestinian civilian casualties approach 20,000 dead, mostly children.

Joining us is Dove Waxman, Professor and Chair of Israel Studies at the University of California,

Los Angeles.

He's also been a visiting professor at Tel Aviv University, Barra Land University, the Hebrew

University of Jerusalem,

and Oxford University, and is the author of dozens of scholarly articles in four books,

The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israeli Identity, Defending, Defining the Nation,

Israel's Palestinians, the conflict within, trouble in the tribe, the American

Jewish conflict over Israel, and most recently the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what

everyone needs to know. Then we look into today's major doctrinal shift in the Catholic

Church with Pope Francis approving blessings for same-sex couples and divorced and remarried

couples. Joining us to explain this shift and Pope Francis's crackdown on right-wing American

bishops is Joshua McElwee, the news editor of the National Catholic Reporter and their

former Vatican correspondent. His reporting and feature writing have earned

numerous awards from the Catholic Press Association of the US and Canada and have been featured

in Vatican Insider, the Irish Catholic and the official Catholic directory. He is the author of

...