Good morning, world! There are dates that change the course of history. Sept. 11 was one of them. And Oct. 7 feels like another. Many of the hostages Hamas took two years ago are still not home. The destruction of Gaza is apocalyptic. Now there is some momentum on both sides to end the war. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is under pressure from President Trump and the hostage families. Hamas is under pressure from Arab states and from Gazans devastated by war and famine. My colleague Roger Cohen went to Israel and found a nation battling for its soul. Also:
Israel at war with itself
Two years after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, Israel is torn. Its war in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. But it has not freed all Israeli hostages from Hamas, and the trauma lives on. An expanding settler movement has left Palestinian aspirations for statehood in tatters. And endless war has left Israel divided and more isolated than before. On a recent visit to Israel, I found a country consumed by doubt. That was before the latest negotiations had begun to potentially free the hostages, and, perhaps eventually, end the war. Since those conversations have begun, the country is even more on edge. Israel is at war with Hamas. But it is also at war with itself. Two traumas The longest war of an endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict has come to challenge Israel’s image and understanding of itself. Its military has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, raining down such destruction on every aspect of life in Gaza that much of the world accuses it of genocide. Antisemitism is on the rise. For Palestinians, a statehood that more countries have recognized of late remains a remote aspiration, at best. That is the immovable issue at the heart of war after war. Trump, shrugging off more than a century of failed Western interventions in the Middle East, has proposed a form of tutelage over Gaza that posits prosperity “crafted by well-meaning international groups” as a “pathway” to peace. But Trump’s idea of turning Gaza into a coastal business emporium with “preferred tariff and access rates” and a marginal Palestinian role in governance seems at once demeaning to the people who live there and unlikely to work. Displacement and the quest for a homeland are, of course, intrinsic to the intertwined fates of Israelis and Palestinians. The Holocaust and the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe, in which some 750,000 Palestinians were driven out during Israel’s War of Independence, vie for greater weight on the sterile scales of competitive victimhood. By rekindling nightmarish memories of these disasters, the Oct. 7 attack and retaliatory war in Gaza have pushed the two sides deeper into enmity. ‘We see Netanyahu’s government as our enemy’ Arab neighbors speak of an imperial Israel after Netanyahu’s decapitation of Hezbollah in Lebanon and blow to Iran’s nuclear program. But in Israel, there is little sense of triumph. Rather, Israel has found its weakest enemy, Hamas, the most intractable, perhaps because defeating an idea is never easy. The effort has left the country debating whether it has lost its way and its ideals. Israeli and Hamas negotiators held talks in Cairo yesterday about a possible swap of Israeli hostages in Gaza for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. An estimated 20 hostages — and the corpses of 25 others — have been held in Gaza for more than 725 days. Nimrod Cohen is among them. He recently turned 21. Every few months, his mother, Vicki Cohen, and her husband, Yehuda, receive “signs of life” communications from the Israeli military. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis, including the Cohens, have taken to the streets to demand that the government recognize the nation’s anguish and prioritize the hostages’ release. “We see Netanyahu’s government as our enemy,” Nimrod’s father told me. “He’s only prolonged the war so he can survive.” The only way to end the war, he believes, is for Trump to force Netanyahu to do so. I asked the Cohens how they feel about their nation today. “I don’t want my country to be a country that rules others,” Nimrod’s father said. “I don’t want to live in a country whose international borders are not declared and recognized. I want to live in a normal country.” The toll in Gaza
The shortest-lived government in France’s modern historySébastien Lecornu caught the nation by surprise yesterday when he resigned as prime minister less than 24 hours after forming a cabinet. He had spent less than a month in office, making his government the shortest-lived in the history of the Fifth Republic. The resignation ratcheted up pressure on President Emmanuel Macron to call snap parliamentary elections or even resign — options that he has so far ruled out. Markets were rattled by the resignation, which will jeopardize France’s ability to get a budget passed by the end of the year to tackle its surging deficit.
Football: UEFA approved a landmark move to allow Italy’s Serie A and Spain’s La Liga to play matches abroad, in cities like Miami and Perth. Basketball: How the N.B.A. star Victor Wembanyama used kung fu to return from a potentially deadly injury. Tennis: Jannik Sinner retired from the Shanghai Masters match with a leg injury.
The number of international students arriving in the U.S. in August fell by 19 percent this year compared with last year, the largest decline on record since the pandemic.
Central Park, meant to be an island of calm in the middle of Manhattan, has a vexing new problem: lots of people moving at different speeds in every direction. The pedestrian road that circles the park is full of walkers, runners and horse carriages, as well as spandex-clad cyclists who ride like they’re in the Tour de France. Teenagers race on electric Citi Bikes. Delivery workers zip through the chaos with takeout orders. Can city officials restore order while keeping all the park users happy? Read more.
What they’re wearing … at OktoberfestThere are 225 hours of Oktoberfest, the annual suds-soaked Bavarian celebration that starts in mid-September. The 190th iteration brought millions of revelers to Munich for liters of beer and carnival rides. Jim Tankersley, my successor as Berlin bureau chief, was there not just for the beer, but to write about fashion: Young people and immigrants are reshaping Bavaria’s look, mixing tradition with migration. You can now get lederhosen — the soft leather breeches that are sometimes passed down from father to son — stitched with Arabic calligraphy, or an African-themed dirndl from a seamstress born in Cameroon. “People want to be a part of Bavaria,” one tailor said. Take a look.
Travel: Spend 36 hours in Busan, South Korea’s cool, rough-around-the-edges second city. Listen: All it takes is five minutes to fall in love with Nina Simone. Block: Here’s how to use screening features to stop robocalls. Wear: For jeans, the twist is in.
Dal is an everyday dish for a good reason: It’s simple to make but tastes complex, and the flavor only deepens over time. The South Asian lentil dish is also cheap and endlessly adaptable. Our food reporter Priya Krishna describes it as quintessential “ghar ka khaana,” the Hindi term for “home food.”
Where are these capybaras strolling?
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