Today's Liberal News

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Promises to Spoil the Election

Three words told the story. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign had billed this afternoon’s event in Philadelphia as a “much-anticipated announcement.” Of course, that specific phrase may have been more true than intended.Ever since Kennedy entered the Democratic presidential primary race in the spring, observers had been anticipating that he’d one day announce his honest intentions as a 2024 candidate.

Hamas’s Attack Confounds Middle East Experts

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Israel is at war, and has ordered a complete siege of Gaza after Hamas’s surprise attack on Saturday. Hamas is holding at least 150 hostages, and more than 900 Israelis and more than 600 Palestinians have been killed.

Images of the Mass Kidnapping of Israelis by Hamas

More accounts are emerging of kidnappings, rapes, and torture committed by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians. So far, at least 150 Israelis, most of them apparently civilians, were kidnapped by Hamas gunmen and stolen across Israel’s border with Gaza. Among the kidnapped are elderly women and small children. Human-rights groups are tracking these kidnappings as evidence of war crimes.

This War Isn’t Like Israel’s Earlier Wars

On Saturday night, I was seated on the first El Al plane to fly from the United States to Israel since Hamas had attacked my country. Many airlines had canceled flights to and from Israel, but El Al had refused to grant the terrorists that victory. Though we took off after midnight, sleep was impossible. My mind writhed thinking of the reports of unbearable Israeli casualties, the images of the captured and the dead, and the prospect of wider war.

Historian Rashid Khalidi: Palestinians “Living Under Incredible Oppression, … It Had to Explode”

In New York, we speak with Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, who lays out how this weekend’s extreme violence between Hamas and Israel will force “a paradigm shift.” Colonial powers will no longer believe they can force people to live under the conditions Israel has subjected Palestinians to and expect no retaliation of the oppressed, says Khalidi.

300+ More Sex Abuse Survivors Sue Columbia U. & Jailed OB-GYN Robert Hadden

We speak to the attorney suing Columbia University and its affiliated hospitals on behalf of some 300 more patients who say they were sexually assaulted by former Columbia University obstetrician Robert Hadden over two decades while Columbia shielded the sexual predator. Anthony T. DiPietro filed a new lawsuit against the university and its affiliated hospitals earlier this week. “Columbia knew from the beginning,” DiPietro says of Hadden’s abuse and its subsequent cover-up.

As Fraud Trial Gets Underway, Trump Tries to Provoke Judge to Jail Him: David Cay Johnston

We get an update on Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial with Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter David Cay Johnston. New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking to fine Trump $250 million and is asking for a permanent ban on Trump family members running a business in New York. The outcome of the trial could put the future of the Trump Organization in jeopardy.

Is Israel at War With Iran?

The October 7 attacks on Israel by the Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are being compared to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. In fact, with more than 600 Israelis dead at the time of this writing, the proportional death toll is several times higher than that of 9/11, and the factor of surprise is arguably greater than at Pearl Harbor.But 9/11 and Pearl Harbor weren’t just tragic attacks. They were casus belli for seismic wars.

A Shocked and Frazzled Collective Mind

I will never forget that mild, golden early-October day almost exactly 50 years ago: the jarring sound of the sirens that tore into the otherworldly silence of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement; the ultra-Orthodox men, still wrapped in their snow-white High Holiday robes and fringed prayer shawls, riding on army jeeps that drove them to their volunteer positions in hospitals and military morgues—an inconceivable sight.

A Message From Iran

The Hamas attack against Israel is not only a massive Israeli intelligence and military (as well as a U.S. intelligence) failure, but also a dramatic success for Iran’s axis of resistance from Yemen to Gaza. The highly choreographed, multipronged, day-long operation and incursion into Israel itself, involving the use of motorized paragliders and drones and the taking of hostages, required months of planning and training that only Iran and Hezbollah could have provided.

Five Observations About the War in Israel

Yesterday, Hamas launched a multifront attack that shocked Israel, infiltrating the Gaza border by land, sea, and air. The attack took place on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, nearly 50 years to the day after an Arab coalition’s surprise attack on Israel—the last assault of this scale—spurred the Yom Kippur War in 1973.More than 600 Israelis have been killed, according to local reports.