“Israel has shown, time and again, that it is better at winning wars than at winning what comes after.” David Remnick reports on a nation celebrating a military victory against Iran as it ignores the moral catastrophe it has unleashed in Gaza. Plus:

The reports documenting the starvation experienced by civilians in Gaza have been shocking—and have prompted fresh condemnations from human-rights groups and world leaders. Earlier today, President Trump noted that there was “real starvation” in Gaza, and said, “We have to get the kids fed.” Yet, in Israel, a different story has been told.

For this week’s issue, David Remnick reports from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where he writes that “the horrific scale of suffering among Gazans is nearly invisible in the Israeli media, aside from the liberal paper Haaretz and a few smaller outlets.” The war against Hamas, Remnick observes, “was the moral nightmare that everyone tried to ignore.”

What does it mean for a country to live in denial? In the nearly two years since the October 7th attacks by Hamas, Remnick has been making reporting trips to Israel, attempting to capture how the lives of Palestinians and Israelis have forever been changed. This time, he finds a public that is still celebrating the country’s stunning military success against its longtime Iranian enemy. Even some of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s critics are imagining a Middle East permanently reshaped in their nation’s favor. Meanwhile, the activist left has all but disappeared; artists have lost their role in shaping public opinion; and Netanyahu’s ongoing culture war appears largely triumphant, having pushed the nation’s political climate to the right.

Yet amid this atmosphere of nationalist triumph, Remnick identifies a submerged sense of dread—and a glimmer of resistance. The writer Etgar Keret attends weekly protests against the government, even as he acknowledges the “nonexistent” political influence of liberals like him. “When we go to the beach, you can hear the booms from Gaza. When you eat a lollipop or an ice cream, you hear things being blown up,” Keret explains. “We are doing horrible things, and it’s important for me that people know I oppose this.” Such expressions of moral clarity are rare, though, in an age of confusion and endlessly contested facts that has been harnessed by the Netanyahu government, which speaks a fluent dialect of the MAGA language of politics. “Not only is reality horrible,” Keret notes, “you also don’t know what the real story is.”

Read the story »

For more: read Remnick’s reporting about the October 7th attacks; Yahya Sinwar, the former leader of Hamas in Gaza; and Netanyahu’s use of conflict for political ends.

ICE’s vicious deportation campaign has targeted the city’s food industry, which depends almost entirely on immigrant labor, prompting street venders, family-run restaurant workers, and patrons to stay home. Hannah Goldfield reports on the dramatically contracted food scene, where “the terror felt existential.” Read the story »

Donald Trump’s fight with the Federal Reserve, and with its chairman, Jerome Powell, continues to flare. The Fed is supposed to make independent decisions about the economy, but Trump has repeatedly called for lower interest rates, and has reportedly gone so far as to draft a letter firing Powell.

How bad is it? This one is pulled straight out of the populist authoritarian playbook, John Cassidy writes in his latest Financial Page column. “An independent central bank denies them control of one key tool for stimulating the economy quickly—the ability to cut interest rates,” he notes. “Moreover, to any self-respecting strongman, the very notion of an independent power center is offensive, especially one that is expressly designed to take key policy decisions out of the political realm.”

So far, the President has stopped short of firing Powell, but his attacks aren’t over, Cassidy predicts. The Fed will announce the latest rate decision after its policy meeting ends on Wednesday, so we could see more conflict this week. In the meantime, we’re filing this one under “troubling,” but also “wait and see.”

Submit your best caption for this cartoon. The top three will be featured in next week’s magazine.

P.S. J. P. Morgan pulled a real stunt on “The Gilded Age” last night. If that exact power play didn’t actually occur in American history, it was certainly in character for the U.S. Steel magnate who, according to biographers, was a man whose “febrile mind” epitomized his “outsized, overstuffed” era. 🚂