The idea of a two state solution that was around the corner allowed liberal Zionists to claim that they were liberals and supported a “Jewish democracy.” Now Gaza has ended the illusion, and it has put many liberal Zionists in crisis. Writings from Joseph Dana, Adam Shatz and Jonathan Freedland all speak to this moment.

The New York Times is helping to downsize the civilian slaughter in Gaza. At a time when the Israeli government has launched an effort to claim that a high percentage of combatants are among the nearly-2000 killed by its army in Gaza, the Times has published an article giving credence to Israel’s crude profiling of men, and even of male children, as potential combatants. If you’re 15-17, you count as an adult, the Times says, flying in the face of the international consensus that adulthood begins at 18. And if you are a Gazan male between the ages of 20-29, you are part of “the population most likely to be militants.” As the Times reporter adds, helpfully, a lower-than-reported Palestinian civilian death rate might change “the characterization of the conflict.”

The best Middle Eastern food in New York is, without a doubt, found in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn at Tanoreen. But if you can’t make it to New York, you can still taste the fabulous cooking of Rawia Bishara, the owner of Tanoreen. Bishara’s new book, published this year, is filled with delectable recipes people can make in their own kitchen. Mondoweiss’ Alex Kane sat down with Bishara to discuss her book, Olives, Lemons and Za’atar: The Best Middle Eastern Home Cooking. Mondoweiss readers who donated over $80 as part of the website’s summer fundraising drive can receive the book, and readers who give over $200 will get a book and be invited to a delicious meal at Tanoreen with the Mondoweiss team.

A lawyer representing Tariq Abu Khdeir said Friday that “there is a lot of support” from officials in Washington for the 15-year-old and his family. “Clearly, there is not as much support as there would be had Tariq been an Israeli-American child who was attacked by Hamas,” Hassan Shibly, an attorney and executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, tells Sam Knight. “Nonetheless, we’re beginning to see change.” Members of the Abu Khdeir family and Shibly traveled to the nation’s capital to appeal to American officials to seek justice for Tariq, a U.S. citizen, and their Palestinian relatives in the West Bank. Above, Tariq Abu Khdeir speaking on Capitol Hill.

The New York Times’ reporting on Israel’s latest assault on Gaza has been a rollercoaster. Unfortunately the high points have been few, short and quickly followed by dizzying and prolonged plunges back into a morass of lazy, credulous recitations of Israeli government talking points, and efforts to portray balance and symmetry in a dramatically unbalanced situation, all permeated by an absence of skepticism and critical analysis, and a failure to explain context. Though Israel has slaughtered over 1000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza and only three civilians have been killed in Israel, in The Times’ upside down world, every Palestinian weapon is a major threat, while Israeli weapons are either defensive or non-existent.

There are more signs today that what the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2008-2009 did for the left, the latest assault is doing for the mainstream: solidifying a perception that Israeli leadership has lost its moorings, opening the floodgates of criticism. The Israeli attack on the UN school yesterday followed later by the attack on civilians in Shuja’iyyah market during an announced ceasefire had an effect on public officials. The school attack at last gained a rebuke from the Obama administration, though it didn’t pin blame on Israel. At the State Department briefing, reporters expressed distress that the U.S. is not saying more. And some of our leading MSM voices are letting their outrage show: Ayman Mohyeldin of NBC and Erin Burnett of CNN have shown humanity and courage. Burnett has tee’d up the obvious question: Why are Americans funding Israeli carnage?

The United Nations has expressed “deep concern” at the mass killings of families: at least 68 Palestinian families in Gaza have had three or more members killed by the Israeli military in the same incident since Israel began its current assault on Gaza on July 7, for a total of 360 people. That’s an average of more than 5 members per family.

Jewish Voice for Peace and the Institute for Middle East Understanding have released a powerful new video featuring celebrities, artists, activists and everyday people speaking out for Palestinian human rights. The video features people holding signs with the names and ages of Palestinian civilians recently killed by the Israeli military in Gaza. Some of the notable people pictured include Chuck D, Jonathan Demme, Gloria Steinem, Wallace Shawn, Tony Kushner, Mira Nair, Roger Waters, Brian Eno, and many others. In a press release to accompany the video playwright Eve Ensler says, “This is a scream on paper. This is a wail. “There are no more words. Only this moment where we rise against the illegal and deathly occupation of Palestine, against mass slaughter of the defenseless, against the complicit silence of the international community, against the military might and arrogance of the Israeli and the U.S. governments who choose annihilation over justice and love.”

Allison Deger made a series of photographs in Gaza demonstrating not just the human cost of the Israeli onslaught, but the price paid by animals. The scenes of animal destruction are reminiscent of Guernica, Picasso’s iconic painting from the Spanish civil war memorializing the 1937 bombing by rightwing forces, killing hundreds of civilians.