Politics

JERUSALEM — Their eyes red from exhaustion and worry, Jonathan Polin and his wife, Rachel Goldberg, sat Tuesday in a corner of their Jerusalem living room, now converted into a makeshift command center with one aim: finding their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin. It had been five days since Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old California native, left a family dinner celebrating the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah to meet up with his best friend. Goldberg kissed her son goodbye, expecting to see him the next day, Saturday. The following morning, however, air-raid sirens reverberated throughout Jerusalem shortly after 8 a.m. — the first sign there of the massive Hamas operation that would swiftly grow into the deadliest attack on Israel in 50 years. Stepping out of her apartment building’s underground she...

Sooner or later, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s destructive political magic, which has kept him in power for 15 years, was bound to usher in a major tragedy. A year ago, he formed the most radical and incompetent government in Israel’s history. Don’t worry, he assured his critics, I have “two hands firmly on the steering wheel.”But by ruling out any political process in Palestine and boldly asserting, in his government’s guidelines, that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel,” Netanyahu’s fanatical government made bloodshed inevitable.Admittedly, blood flowed in Palestine even when peace-seekers such as Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak were in office. But Netanyahu recklessly invited violence by paying his coalition partners ...

A coach from the Mexican National Rhythmic Gymnastics Team is pleading for help after the war in Israel stranded her and her team during an overseas training trip.“The situation has taken an unexpected and disturbing turn,” said Blajaith Aguilar, the team’s coach, in an Instagram video posted Monday. Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel over the weekend, killing hundreds of people, including many civilians, and trapping others in their homes. Israel responded by hammering the Gaza Strip, reducing whole Palestinian neighborhoods to rubble and cutting off access to food and other supplies. Several American tourists — including New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker — were in Israel when the attacks started, and many are still trapped. Aguilar said her team was preparing for the upcoming Pan Ameri...

Like the Dodgers, the Baltimore Orioles are playing a division series Game 3 on the brink of elimination.Unlike the Dodgers, the Orioles’ starting pitcher will have been drafted and signed by the Dodgers. And he broke ground as the first Israeli pitcher selected in the MLB draft when he was taken by a team other than the Dodgers.Dean Kremer‘s groundbreaking journey to becoming an established big leaguer is singular, but he will take the mound Tuesday against the Texas Rangers with a heavy heart and no small amount of anxiety. Kremer, who holds Israeli and American citizenship, has many family members living in Israel, where he still spends two months a year.After a surprise attack Saturday by the militant group Hamas, Israel declared war on Hamas and launched airstrikes on the Gaza Strip t...

WASHINGTON —  John A. Boehner lasted five years as House speaker before he ran out of patience with his party’s hard-line Freedom Caucus.“Legislative terrorists,” the Ohio Republican called its members after he quit in 2015. “They can’t tell you what they’re for. They can tell you everything they’re against. They’re anarchists. They want total chaos.”Next came Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who lasted three years. “The House is broken,” he griped on his way out.Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) lasted all of nine months.“They are not conservatives,” he said of the Freedom Caucus after they led the drive to oust him as speaker last week. “They don’t get to say they’re conservative because they’re angry and they’re chaotic.”See a pattern?Ever since the tea party movement of 2010 elected a wav...

WASHINGTON —  Its hands largely tied, the Biden administration is weighing options for next steps in working with its longtime ally Israel, but aware that the traditional formulae for restoring calm in the volatile Middle East region no longer apply.Never has Israel suffered this number of casualties — 700 dead at latest count — in such a short period of time as in Saturday’s surprise cross-border attack on civilians and military targets from the Gaza Strip by Hamas militants. It is a unique moment when Israeli casualties exceed those among the Palestinians incurred in numerous fights throughout the decades. At least four U.S. citizens were among the dead, U.S. officials said.Like the United States, world leaders Sunday urged restraint. But Israel will not be able politically or psychologi...

AMMAN, Jordan —  With at least 700 people reported dead in Hamas terrorist and rocket attacks, and more than 400 Gazans reported killed in Israeli counterattacks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Sunday of a protracted conflict as Israel reacts to the bloodiest attack on its own soil in 50 years.Israel pressed its bombing campaign on Gaza on Sunday, firing a relentless barrage on the coastal strip and formally declaring war as Gaza’s Hamas rulers said their fighters continued to battle Israeli forces inside Israel.Israeli citizens were reeling from the unprecedented scale of the mayhem, in which militants slaughtered more than 200 youths at a musical festival and kidnapped elderly people and entire families. The violence shattered the relative comfort that many Israelis have enjo...

When Sharon Farber turned her phone back on after seeing a play with her daughter Saturday, frantic WhatsApp messages poured in from the other side of the world. Her sister in Israel told her that she and other relatives were hiding in bomb shelters because the country was under attack. Terrified and unable to work or sleep, Farber spent the day and night on the phone, calling and texting family and friends, and scrolling through the news. “Here, you’re so far away,” said Farber, a film composer and the music director for Beverly Hills Temple of the Arts. “There’s nothing you can do, except for lose your mind from worry.”Those feelings of fear and helplessness were echoed by many Sunday in Los Angeles’ Jewish community, which was reeling from the deadliest attack in Israel in decades durin...

JERUSALEM —  Israel battled Hamas infiltrators for a third day Monday, massing tens of thousands of troops near the Gaza Strip and making moves toward a full siege of the seaside territory, which Palestinian militants used as a springboard for the biggest attack in decades on Israeli soil. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called for a “complete closure” of the Mediterranean enclave, telling army commanders in southern Israel that “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” would be allowed into Gaza, which is home to about 2.3 million people.Israel has long controlled all formal points of access to the Gaza Strip, except for a tiny border with Egypt that is also blocked. Israel already cut off the territory’s power supply soon after Hamas’ surprise cross-border attack on Saturday by...

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus recently kicked off a new nationwide tour following a six-year hiatus. But for the first time in the show’s century-and-a-half history, there will be no elephants balancing on balls against their will, no bears forced to dance in costume and no lions and tigers corralled by tamers.That’s a good thing. This historic shift underscores our growing national embrace of the principle that animals shouldn’t suffer for our entertainment. Beyond Ringling, however, we still have some distance to go toward fully realizing this value.The circus wove itself into the fabric of American and European culture over the centuries with a captivating array of human performers, from clowns to acrobats, along with animals such as horses. But it wasn’t until the 19th ...