A Michigan businessman called Democratic Senate candidate Hill Harper to offer $20 million in campaign contributions if he agreed to drop out and instead mount a primary challenge to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, according to a source with direct knowledge of the call.

The source added that Harper declined the alleged Oct. 16 offer from donor Linden Nelson — which would have split the campaign money between $10 million in bundled contributions directly to Harper’s campaign and $10 million in independent expenditures. Harper declined to comment on the record about the alleged call from Nelson, a Michigan entrepreneur and past donor to candidates in both parties, but he recounted the call in the same terms as the source in a post on X after this story’s publication.

POLITICO reached Nelson briefly to seek comment on the alleged call to Harper, but he ended the call after a few seconds and did not respond to subsequent calls, texts and emails seeking comment… Harper also might not have proven the most ideal recruit to challenge Tlaib with a more pro-Israeli government approach. Harper called for a “humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza, largely echoing the ceasefire support from a few dozen congressional Democratic progressives; he did so on Nov. 10, well after the alleged call from Nelson…In addition, Harper’s Detroit residence is located in Rep. Shri Thanedar’s (D-Mich.) district, not in Tlaib’s. She has represented her district, which includes Dearborn and its large Arab American population, since 2019. Despite facing multiple past Democratic challengers, she’s handily won her primary elections since then.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/22/donor-20-million-tlaib-primary-00128443

Douglas Purcell, the cantor at St. Ignatius Loyola, said in an interview after the service that the lack of mention of the former president seemed to be in accordance with Judge Barry’s wishes.

“Judges are very careful about the words they choose,” he said. “Between the pastor and the son, they mentioned many of her causes — women, people in need — and that we all should be helping our fellow humans. And you wonder how that was being directed.”

Mr. Purcell, 60, added that Judge Barry had converted to Catholicism as an adult and had been a regular at Mass. Early in the service, he led the mourners in the singing of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” a hymn composed in the 16th century by the Protestant reformer Martin Luther that has in recent decades become common in Catholic services. Mr. Purcell, who said he had not voted for Mr. Trump, read aloud some of the words printed in the program:

“The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure, For lo! his doom is sure;

One little word shall fell him.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/style/trump-sister-funeral-maryanne-barry.html?unlocked_article_code=1._kw.ozkq.QZfH_uqV8qSZ&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

On Nov. 8, 1971, Led Zeppelin released its iconic fourth studio album, which was untitled but is widely known as “Led Zeppelin IV.” It features the band’s major hit “Stairway to Heaven,” and the wordless cover shows the image of a bearded, older man with a large bundle of sticks on his back against the backdrop of a decaying wall.

Now, 52 years later to the day, a minor mystery about that cover has been solved. Sometimes thought to be a painting, the image, it turns out, was a Victorian-era photograph of a man who made thatched roofs for cottages in Wiltshire, a rural county in southwestern England. His name was Lot Long and he was 69 at the time, according to Brian Edwards, a researcher who found the photo.

…As for how that photo ended up on the album cover: Legend has it that Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin’s vocalist, and his bandmate Jimmy Page were in an antique shop in Pangbourne, a village about 50 miles west of London along the River Thames, where they spotted a colorized version of the photograph that will be on view in the Wiltshire Museum.

Because the photographer, Mr. Farmer, was also a teacher, Mr. Edwards said, one plausible theory is that he used the picture to teach colorizing to his students. One of those versions may have ended up in a frame in an antique shop. That colorized version of the picture seems to have been lost.

More at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/arts/music/led-zeppelin-iv-album-cover.html?unlocked_article_code=1.80w.ED0Z.hh51OLNV6O9S&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

One of common refrains I’ve read in emails from TPM Readers in recent weeks is how much young people, often the children of readers but sometimes their friends and classmates, get their basic news and impressions of the conflict from TikTok. This comes as no surprise to me because this is the main source of information generally for my two teenage sons. Some of these readers speculate that those messages are being manipulated by foreign actors, perhaps by China, where the company’s ownership is based. Given the stakes and the track record, I would be shocked if this were not happening with various foreign players. But I’m skeptical that it’s a driving factor. For others it’s simply a medium of news, an aesthetic or kind of source which that generation is accustomed to. I’m agnostic on both those questions. But what is more clear is that there is a media and propaganda war about this conflict on TikTok and it is one Israel is losing.

But there’s another dimension of this I want to note.

Younger Americans are much less instinctively sympathetic to Israel and are more sympathetic to the Palestinians. This is a basic generational fact about American politics and culture. There many reasons for this. The Holocaust ended almost 80 years ago. The post-1967 occupation has dragged on for 56 years. For a generation of Americans their impressions of the conflict are not shaped by epic conventional wars, the terrorist campaigns of the 70s and 80s or even the mass casualty terror attacks of the Second Intifada. They are rather of repeated retaliatory bombing campaigns in Gaza and of a long-serving Israeli Prime Minister publicly disrespecting a black, Democratic President on his home turf, doing so in connivance with that President’s domestic opponents. Over the last decade and a half and especially during the Trump years Benjamin Netanyahu more or less openly acted as a foreign auxiliary of the US Republican party. That had vast consequences and consequences many in the US and Israel saw and warned about at the time.

This is not meant to diminish people’s reactions to what they are seeing on television and social media right now. But no one comes to news or imagery or arguments without a set of assumptions about who is right or wrong, who is more friend or foe. This cynical and malign gamesmanship had profound consequences which Israel itself is a paying a price for today.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/further-observations-on-the-israel-hamas-war

An Israeli government request for 24,000 assault rifles from the United States is drawing scrutiny from American lawmakers and some State Department officials who fear the weapons might end up in the hands of settlers and civilian militias trying to force Palestinians from land in the West Bank, where violence has been surging, U.S. officials say.

The three proposed tranches of semiautomatic and automatic rifles are valued at $34 million and are being ordered directly from American gunmakers, but they require State Department approval and congressional notification. Israel says the rifles would be used by the national police force, but has also indicated that they could be given to civilians, people familiar with the weapons orders told The New York Times. The State Department gave informal notification of the sale last week to congressional committees, which ignited concerns and prompted requests for the department to ask Israel tougher questions about how it intends to use the arms. Within the department, officials working on human rights issues have expressed reservations, while those overseeing weapons sales intend to approve the orders and announce them in the coming days, U.S. officials say.

The Israeli police are seeking to bolster their weapons arsenal after officials pledged to supply thousands of weapons to Israeli civilians in at least 1,000 towns and cities, including Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank…“It’s a very dangerous step,” said Rula Daood, a co-director of Standing Together, a grass-roots movement that promotes equality between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel. “They are using this war to give civilians what they call protection from danger. But when they say danger, they mean the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel. The people receiving these guns are extreme right-wing people who believe there should be first-class and second-class citizens.”

Those fears have heightened because the process has been overseen by Mr. Ben-Gvir, who was barred from serving in the Israeli military as a teenager in the 1990s because of concerns in the security services about his extremist views. Until 2020, Mr. Ben-Gvir displayed a large photograph in his living room of a Jewish mass murderer who killed 29 Palestinians in a West Bank mosque in 1994. Mr. Ben-Gvir’s ministry and Mr. Netanyahu’s office did not respond to queries about how many weapons would be provided to Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

More at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/us/politics/israel-us-weapons-west-bank.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8Uw.3A_F.ZPQDkQVTG_87&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

…In the impoverished northeast of Thailand, past cassava fields and cows dozing in the heat, Watsana Yojampa has her son’s new house almost ready for his return. There is a room for his daughter, soon to be painted purple because that’s her favorite hue of Care Bear. There will be fancy light fixtures and air-conditioning. In less than two years, her son Anucha Angkaew, 28, had saved enough as an avocado farmhand in Israel to pay for the construction. On Oct. 6, Ms. Watsana showed him tile options for the bathroom over a video call. He was very particular about his “modern house” and promised to get back to her on his preferred shade of gray, she said.

A day after that call, Hamas attackers besieged Israeli communities near the border with Gaza. By the time the bloodletting stopped, 32 Thai agricultural workers had been killed and at least 22 taken hostage, according to the Thai Foreign Ministry. Another accounting puts the total number of Thais who were killed, kidnapped or are missing but feared dead at 80. Either way, Thais, who have no connection to Israel except as a destination for a few years of hard work, are the second-largest group of victims in the Oct. 7 attack, after Israelis. Mr. Anucha was among a group of Thai hostages whose photos were released on social media, their faces terrified as a masked man aimed an assault rifle at them. His 7-year-old daughter still does not know what happened in Israel. The family has told her his phone is broken and that’s why Daddy has halted his daily check-ins.

…Thailand is the largest source of foreign farm labor in Israel, with about 30,000 citizens working there before the Hamas attack. Nearly a month later, the plight of Thai farmworkers remains caught up in a haze of bureaucratic mystery and diplomatic ambiguity. Families of those who are missing or believed to be held hostage say they have received no communication from Thai or Israeli government officials.

Many family members in Thailand say they have no idea whether their loved ones are dead or alive — or how to find out. Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara, the Thai foreign minister, flew to the Middle East and said on Friday that Iran, Egypt and Qatar were acting as intermediaries with Hamas to try to free the hostages. An earlier Israeli count of the Thai hostages put the number at 54, out of more than 220 people thought to have been taken to Gaza. On Wednesday, Ms. Watsana received a call from a local Thai official saying that she needed to submit a DNA sample. Is it because her son has died or is it a routine collection process? She does not know. The local official said he did not know, either.

More at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/world/asia/thailand-hostages-hamas-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8Ew.J5gP.7qJHZNA0nKA-&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

On the afternoon of his 15th birthday, Attiya Nabaheen was walking home from his school in Gaza when an Israeli soldier shot him in the neck. It was November 2014, and Mr. Nabaheen was on his family’s land, situated about 500 meters from the militarized Green Line demarcating the Gaza Strip. In court proceedings, a lawyer representing the Israeli government claimed that Mr. Nabaheen was too close to the fence and didn’t heed warning shots before he was hit. Neither his age nor the fact that he was unarmed stopped the soldier from firing at the boy. The injury left Mr. Nabaheen permanently paralyzed and wheelchair bound for the rest of his life. This all happened during a cease-fire, a time of supposed peace, or status quo, in Gaza.

I’m a human rights lawyer from Haifa, now completing my doctorate studies in the United States. I also litigate Palestinian civil and political rights cases, and Mr. Nabaheen was my client. I represented him as part of a landmark case that sought civil remedies for his life-changing injuries through the Israeli court system. The case didn’t go how we had hoped it would: It ended with the Israeli Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of a 2012 law under which residents of the Gaza Strip are effectively banned from claiming civil remedies against Israeli actions, including unlawful actions with no connection to active situations of armed conflict. Put simply, Mr. Nabaheen’s case set a chilling precedent such that no one in Gaza can seek compensation for any damages caused by Israel.

I say Mr. Nabaheen was my client because last month I received word that he, along with 12 of his family members, 10 of them children, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his family’s building the day after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Mr. Nabaheen, who was 24 at the time of his death, had survived five major attacks on Gaza. This was the one that finally killed him. His short life is emblematic of the policies and practices that the Israeli regime imposes on Palestinians in Gaza. Without meaningful avenues to make a claim against injustice, Palestinians are effectively left with no place to turn. But the people of Gaza, like all people, deserve to enjoy full civil rights, including the right to compensatory damages. Without those rights, what can we expect them to do with their pain?

…Mr. Nabaheen’s life and death encapsulate the Palestinian search for undelivered justice, an ongoing nakba, meaning “catastrophe,” that has only intensified in the last month. So many Palestinians continue to suffer a similar fate to that of Mr. Nabaheen, falling victim to the arbitrary brutality of Israeli shelling. As I write this, more than 9,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Gazan health ministry. Many of them, like Mr. Nabaheen, had already survived several wars before finally succumbing to this one. And like Mr. Nabaheen, there will likely be no recognition or recourse for their tragedies. There will be no meaningful avenues through which their families can seek justice.

More at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/opinion/unarmed-teen-israel-gaza.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7kw.RW2w.CSL7wHj6O-lN&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare