THE GAZA WAR: The Gaza Health Ministry claims that hundreds of people were killed and wounded in an airstrike on Gaza’s largest refugee community that Israel claims succeeded at killing a Hamas commander who helped plan the October 7th massacre in which 1,400 people died.

  Israel’s military issued a statement saying, “His elimination was carried out as part of a wide-scale strike on terrorists and terror infrastructure belonging to the Central Jabaliya Battalion, which had taken control over civilian buildings in Gaza City.”  In other words, they knew they would likely kill and wound civilians.

  Children were reported to be pulling other children from the rubble. By the depth of the craters, it appears that Israel had used enormous “bunker buster” weapons.

  While Israel says it is hitting military targets, The NY Times reports that analysis of satellite pictures shows that 25 percent of the buildings in northern Gaza are damaged or destroyed.

  Israel says 10 of its soldiers were killed just yesterday.

  Today, foreign nationals and some of the wounded were starting to cross the Gaza border into Egypt. About 500 foreigners and dual passport holders were crossing. 

  The United Nations continues to warn that a humanitarian disaster is growing under the Israeli siege, and not just from the bombs. “The scale of the horror people are experiencing in Gaza is really hard to convey,” Martin Griffiths, the UN’s chief for humanitarian and relief affairs, said in a statement. “People are becoming increasingly desperate, as they search for food, water and shelter amid the relentless bombing campaign that is wiping out whole families and entire neighborhoods.”

  Some American forces are present in Israel, but they are not supposed to join the fight. However, the Pentagon announced that American commandos are in Israel to help locate the more than 200 hostages seized by Hamas.

IT’S POLITICAL: The House of Representatives’ rookie speaker Mike Johnson has introduced a $14 billion aid bill for Israel that would simultaneously cut the same amount of money from the budget for the Internal revenue Service.

  Johnson’s bill also does not include the aid for Ukraine requested by President Biden. The speaker has previously voted against aid for embattled Ukraine.

  His bill might put Johnson on a collision course with the Senate, including Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell, but Johnson said in an interview on Fox News that, “If you put this to the American people and weigh the two needs, I think they will say standing with Israel and protecting the innocent is a more immediate need than I.R.S. agents.” 

HATE: A 21-year-old engineering student at Cornell University has been arrested for making anti-Jewish death threats that had the Ithaca, New York campus on alert. Patrick Dai, a junior from Pittsford, New York has been charged with posting threats to kill or injure another using interstate communications. He could go to prison for up to five years. 

  Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee yesterday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that since the Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s ferocious response, antisemitic threats in the US have reached “historic levels.”

  It’s not just individuals like the Cornell incident. Wray also said the Israel/Gaza war has raised the threat of attacks on the US with several terrorist groups specifically calling for attacks. “We assess that the actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate several years ago,” he said.

  And he said, “The gaps in our intelligence are real and it’s something we have concerns about.”

THIRD BASE: The Texas Rangers beat Arizona 11-7 last night, putting them one win away from a World Series championship. The Rangers scored 10 runs in the first three innings.

CRUELEST CUT: The world of ice hockey is reeling after the death Saturday of Adam Johnson, a 29-year-old former NHL forward, who died during a professional game in Sheffield, England when his throat was cut by the skate of an opposing player. Johnson got up and skated to the bench, leaving an obviously fatal trail of blood on the ice. 

  Cuts in hockey are common, but less so on the neck. No NHL players have died of a cut on the neck, but a 16 year high school student in Connecticut died of the injury last year. Some NHL players say they are reconsidering whether to wear neck protection. 

  Sixty years ago, hockey players didn’t wear helmets, let alone face protection. Even goalies didn’t wear masks. Some had faces stitched like a quilt.  The professional league in Britain said neck guards will be mandatory next season.

THE SPIN RACK: Under grilling by a federal prosecutor, FTX crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried yesterday denied knowing $8 billion in customer money had been misappropriated until just before his company collapsed last year. He’s accused of fraud, using customer money for outside investments, expensive real estate, and other purposes. — A member of the New York city council is promoting a method of getting rid of rats by pumping carbon monoxide into their nests. Council member Julie Menin says the method has led to a “remarkable reduction” in rats for her upper West Side District. — A federal jury ruled that the National Association of Realtors and several large brokerages had conspired to inflate commissions paid to real estate agents. They were ordered to pay damages of nearly $1.8 billion. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Speaking with NPR about her new book Policing Pregnant Bodies, historian Kathleen Crowther suggested doing away with the old “bun in the oven” metaphor for pregnancy because it is passive and replacing it with something like “a guest in the house” because taking care of a guest is active.

  We suggest just using the word “pregnant.”

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