Global Courant
Israel ends its operation in the West Bank
The Israeli army said yesterday it had withdrawn from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin after a large-scale raid that killed at least 12 Palestinians, one Israeli soldier and thousands fled their homes over the past two days.
Palestinians in Jenin yesterday took part in a mass funeral, broadcast live on local television, in honor of the dead. Dozens of residents returned to the Jenin refugee camp to find damaged cars and homes, as well as roads torn apart by Israeli bulldozers.
While the operation ended, it almost certainly did not quell the unrest in Jenin, which was at the center of escalating tensions and violence in the year leading up to the raid. Both Israelis and Palestinians said the armed groups targeted by the raid would rebuild quickly and Israeli soldiers would likely be back soon.
Result: The Israeli army declared the raid a success, saying that soldiers dismantled laboratories for explosives production and removed weapons. But analysts said the operation lacked a deeper strategy and could lead to more violence.
Palestinian perspective: Palestinian analysts said public sentiment was strongly in favor of the armed groups in Jenin and that the Israeli operation was likely to provoke more attacks of revenge rather than bring peace.
The underlying sources of Palestinian anger also persist, including the occupation of the West Bank, the continued encroachment of Jewish settlements and a lack of economic opportunity.
For more: Young Palestinians involved in the fight against Israel write farewell messages to their families. “Don’t cry,” a 14-year-old wrote to his mother before he was killed. “And forgive me for every mistake I’ve made.”
According to forecasts and local news reports, floods in China have already displaced more than 20,000 people. State media reported that floods killed 15 people in the southwestern city of Chongqing. And news footage showed rescuers in central Henan province freeing people from a car stuck in a fast-flowing river.
Heavy rain in southwestern Japan over the weekend flooded homes and killed at least one person. And officials in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh said the heavy rains there on Monday were the most the city had received in three years.
What follows: More bad weather may be on the way. The World Meteorological Organization said this week that El Niño, a cyclical climate pattern that warms surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, had formed for the first time in seven years.
The agency said El Niño this year is likely to combine with human-induced warming to cause more heat waves and disruptive weather worldwide.
A hidden life of dissent in China?
It wasn’t that Bei Zhenying didn’t know her husband had secrets. He was brilliant, proudly nonconformist and intensely private.
But after police burst into the couple’s apartment and take him away, what she learned in the months that followed was more than a personal secret. She now believes her husband, Ruan Xiaohuan, may have been the anonymous dissident behind Program Think, one of the most mysterious blogs on the Chinese internet, which criticized the government and evaded the surveillance state for 12 years, a seemingly unthinkable feat.
But on May 9, 2021, the blog fell silent. The next day, Ruan was taken away.
Analysis: Whether Ruan was Program Think is virtually impossible to confirm. Either way, their fate is part of the same story, of the drastic subterfuge Chinese citizens have to take to voice dissent under Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. They may also ultimately point to the near impossibility of doing so in an ever-expanding surveillance state.
THE LAST NEWS
Around the world
The Russian soldier was captured just days after arriving at the frontline in eastern Ukraine. He was a prisoner before joining the fight, which he saw as a way to make money and reboot his life.
He told my colleagues – in a rare conversation with a POW – that he had just been ordered to dig trenches and work on meager rations. “We thought we were going to be sent to work,” he said, “but they just sent us to die.”
A wam! documentary
Do you remember Wham!? In 1984, the group released the catchy pop song “Wake me up before you leave.” The music video, sung by the band’s heartbreaking frontmen, was an instant hit.
Those frontmen – George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley – are now the subject of a documentary on Netflix. The film, “Wham!”, is directed as a power pop video and charts the band’s brief career in the 1980s. (Unlike bands that split acrimoniously, Wham!
Incorporating archival footage and scrapbook photos of Ridgeley’s mother, the film also explores a seminal moment in pop history: the band’s 1985 premiere in China, when Wham! became the first western pop group to perform in the country. Read our review.
