"For three-and-a-half long hours on Jan. 29, the cellphone in 6-year old Hind Rajab’s hands was the closest thing she had to a lifeline. Alone in the back seat of a car outside a #Gaza City gas station, she was drifting in and out of consciousness, surrounded by bodies, as she told emergency dispatchers that #Israeli tanks were rumbling closer.
...Paramedics were on their way, the dispatchers kept telling her: Hold on."
"Twelve days later, when a #Palestinian civil defense crew finally reached the area, they found Hind’s body in a car riddled with bullets...
The ambulance lay charred roughly 50 meters away (about 164 feet) from the car, its destruction consistent with the use of a round fired by #Israeli tanks, according to six munitions experts." #GiftArticle#GiftLink https://wapo.st/4aCoCqA
A great story from Oregon this morning where a burned puppy was rescued after a trailer fire and has found a home with the local volunteer fire chief. The chief has named him Smoky and plans to one day use him as a fire prevention dog.
"As Mali’s relationship with French — the language of its former colonial ruler, France — has grown more fraught, an effort to use AI to create children’s books in Bambara and other local languages is gaining momentum."
"Indeed, for most of her life she had thought of herself as a normal citizen of the 21st-century United States, endowed with the same rights and privileges as anyone else, and certainly not possessed of any special capacity for time travel."
"How does it feel to be a war-crimes reporter whose family bankrolled a nation that’s committing war crimes?
I can tell you.
I covered the genocide in Bosnia for The Post, wrote a book about it, and reported from Iraq & Afghanistan, among other conflict-ridden countries. Also, my ancestors were key funders of Jewish immigration to British-controlled Palestine." #GiftArticle#GiftLink https://wapo.st/3TUjTtp
(Click on link)
"I watched an agonizing video from #Gaza not long ago. The video shows a grandmother, Hala Khreis, trying to leave a neighborhood that Israeli forces are surrounding. Walking tentatively, she holds the hand of her grandson, who is 5 yrs old & carries a white flag. Suddenly, a shot rings out & she crumples to the ground dead.
"Millions of #Jews in #America feel connected to Israel’s creation. Maybe our ancestors gave or raised money, maybe they went and fought, maybe they donated to #Zionist organizations. What’s a Jew to do now? Everyone makes their own choices, but my experience of war crimes taught me that being #Jewish means standing against any nation that commits war crimes.
"My #Jewish identity was always a bit vague because my ancestors were #German#Jews who assimilated at the speed of cultural sound...
I began to feel more Jewish while covering the #genocide of Bosnia’s #Muslims. What Levin points to — the defense of #Palestinians increasingly being an act of Jewish identity, particularly for younger Jews — feels right for me, too." #GiftArticle https://wapo.st/3TUjTtp
" 'I think Trump and Grenell would upend American leadership of the free world, from Truman on the left to Reagan on the right, and replace it with something much darker,' said Daniel Fried, who spent four decades in top State Department posts, including as an assistant secretary of state and a director of the National Security Council. 'It’s transactional. Democratic values are irrelevant, and it’s isolationist.' ”
"An indictment ... accuses Jose Cesari as being the mastermind of what it describes as the “Beer Theft Enterprise” and says he recruited other participants in the brazen heists via Instagram posts.
In one post, the indictment says, Mr. Cesari wrote, “Need workers who want to make money.” The post had a “Yes” or “No” button, a moneybag emoji and a railroad track in the background, the indictment says. In another, the indictment says, he offered a “guarantee” that those he hired would “make 100k+ in a month” by following the “beer train method.”
Known for his improvised & volatile performances, #Trump is now ending many of his rallies w/ churchlike ritual & casting his prosecutions as persecution.