Welcome to the LRB podcast. I'm your host, Adam Schatz. On this episode, we will be discussing

the war in Gaza, which broke out after a surprise attack by Hamas fighters in southern Israel.

1,300 Israelis were killed, a thousand of them civilians. More than 250 Israelis are now hostages in the Gaza Strip.

Since then, Israel's airstrikes have led to the death of nearly 3,000 people in Gaza, most of them civilians.

Entire families have been killed and neighborhoods flattened.

A ground offensive seems to be imminent, and Joe Biden is headed to the

region to affirm his unconditional support for Israel, and to warn Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria not to become

involved. Israel and Hamas have fought numerous wars since Israel's disengagement in 2005,

but this war feels much more significant.

And the peoples of Israel and Palestine are both reeling, traumatized, apprehensive, bracing for what comes next.

The regional and international implications, too, are enormous.

The Israeli-Saudy rapprochement that the United States sought to broker

is for the foreseeable future suspended. Already, there have been hideous attacks carried out against

civilians abroad. A six-year-old Palestinian boy was murdered in Illinois, his mother gravely injured

by the family's landlord in apparent

retribution for Hamas' assault. There has been a spike in anti-Semitic incidents in France.

Meanwhile, the Western governments that have lined up behind Israel have in effect been

criminalizing Palestinian descent, banning demonstrations, even the

display of the Palestinian flag. This war seems to know no borders, and there is so far no end in sight.

Joining me on this episode to discuss these developments are two of the most thoughtful commentators on Israel-Palestine.

Mikhail Sfarred, a human rights lawyer based in Israel, and Amjad Iraqi, a London-based

Palestinian writer who is an editor at the online journal 972.

...