State Department Report Says ‘Reasonable to Assess’ Israel Violated International Law

Happy Monday! We were prepared to consider that sorting U.S. presidents into Hogwarts houses might be a more valuable way to judge presidential records than the typical historian rankings. But they lost us when they put Woodrow Wilson in Ravenclaw, not Slytherin. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Russian forces opened up a new front in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv on Friday, advancing toward villages and cities just across the border and forcing more than 4,000 Ukrainians to flee the fighting. Vovchansk, a city just a few miles from the Russian border, has been the site of constant fighting over the weekend, along with several other towns and villages in the northeast. The Russian military claimed that it had taken control of nine villages, but those claims have not yet been independently confirmed. “There are villages that have transformed from ‘a grey zone’ into a zone of fighting and invaders are attempting to dig in in several of them, while others serve for their further advance,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement on Sunday night. The city of Kharkiv, which is some 20 miles from the Russian border, remains under Ukrainian control.
• Meanwhile, 15 people were killed and 20 injured in the partial collapse of an apartment building on Sunday in Belgorod, a Russian city near the border with Ukraine, according to local authorities. Russian law enforcement officials said the building had been struck by Ukrainian artillery, but the Russian Defense Ministry later claimed the damage came from fragments of a Ukrainian missile that Russian forces had shot down. 
• Russian President Vladimir Putin replaced his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, on Sunday, marking the most significant military leadership reshuffling since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Shoigu, who had been defense minister since 2012 and faced increasing criticism from Russian military officials for how he’s conducted the war, will be replaced by Andrei Belousov—an economist who most recently served as deputy prime minister. Shoigu will become the head of Russia’s National Security Council. 
• Some 300,000 people have left Rafah in the last week, according to the United Nations, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) expanded its operations and evacuation warnings in parts of the southernmost city in Gaza over the weekend. The Biden administration has reportedly offered Israel intelligence to help locate Hamas leaders and tunnels, as well as humanitarian aid for people in Gaza, in exchange for Israel forgoing a large-scale attack on Rafah. Meanwhile, fighting between the IDF and Hamas resumed over the weekend in previously cleared areas of northern Gaza, including in Jabalia and Gaza City. 
• The State Department—in a report shared with Congress on Friday—suggested that Israel may have violated international law in its use of American-made weapons in Gaza. “It is difficult to assess or reach conclusive findings on individual incidents,” the report noted. “Nevertheless, given Israel’s significant reliance on U.S.-made defense articles, it is reasonable to assess that defense articles … have been used by Israeli security forces since October 7 in instances inconsistent with its [international humanitarian law] obligations or with established best practices for mitigating civilian harm.” On Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered some of his sharpest criticisms of the war effort, saying that Israel has not shared any plans for rebuilding or securing Gaza after the war and is “on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy, and probably refilled by Hamas.”
• Tens of thousands of demonstrators protested in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi overnight as the ruling party, Georgian Dream, prepares to pass a Russia-inspired foreign agents law that critics say will squash civil society and independent media in Georgia. The Legal Affairs Committee of the Georgian Parliament voted to approve the law on Monday in the legislation’s third hearing, meaning just one parliamentary vote remains before final passage.
• Canadian authorities charged another Indian national with murder over the weekend in connection to the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar—a Sikh nationalist and Canadian citizen—last June in British Columbia that sparked a diplomatic rift between Canada and India. Canada alleges the shooting was potentially ordered by the Indian government, and Singh’s arrest follows the arrest of three other Indian nationals earlier this month who were charged with murdering Nijjar.
• Flash floods across Afghanistan on Friday killed more than 300 people, mostly women and children, according to the United Nations and local authorities. Some 2,000 homes were destroyed by the heavy rainfall, and hundreds of people remain missing. 
• A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld Steve Bannon’s 2022 contempt of Congress conviction on Friday, paving the way for Bannon to serve his four-month prison sentence. However, he can still appeal the ruling to the full bench or the Supreme Court. Bannon, a close adviser to former President Donald Trump and former White House official, was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in 2022 for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House January 6 Committee.

Biden Dangles Carrots and Sticks 

As the sun set in Israel on Sunday evening, the country marked its first Memorial Day since Hamas’ October 7 attack, when terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 200 others. About a quarter of those killed on October 7 are estimated to have been soldiers, and 272 Israel Defense Force (IDF) troops have died in the subsequent war against Hamas—now in its eighth month. There were soldiers among those Hamas kidnapped, too, including some who have been killed in captivity and whose remains are being held hostage. 

“Where are we supposed to go?” said the father of one deceased soldier whose body is being held by Hamas in Gaza. “There is no burial site for us to go to.”

As Israel remembers its war dead, the IDF has continued its “precision” strikes against Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza and perhaps the last stronghold of Hamas in the enclave. But the operation has faced sharp pushback from its most important ally in recent days as President Joe Biden suggested he’d suspend certain weapons shipments to Israel if the targeted offensive turned into a full-scale invasion. On Friday, a State Department report called into question Israel’s adherence to …

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our full 1,631-word story on the Biden administration’s latest approach to Israel’s war against Hamas is available in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time

• Writing for Defector, Puja Changoiwala explored how some Indian citizens have been tricked into fighting in Russia’s war against Ukraine. “When 23-year-old Mohammed Sufiyan left India for Moscow on Dec. 17 of last year, he assumed that he would be working as a helper in a Russian government office,” Changoiwala wrote. “He had been promised a monthly salary of up to ₹100,000 ($1,196) and, a year later, Russian citizenship. Instead, a few days after he landed in Moscow, Sufiyan was sent to a military training camp for 15 days, and then was shipped off to the Russia-Ukraine border to fight on behalf of the Russian forces.”
• Ross Douthat argued in the New York Times that our foreign policy discussions are lacking in moral realism. “Seeing statecraft as a tragic balancing of evils is still essential, especially amid the kind of moral fervor that attends a conflict like Israel’s war in Gaza,” he wrote. “The alternative is a form of argument in which essential aspects of the world, being inconvenient to moral absolutism, simply disappear. For example, reading the apologia for pro-Palestinian protests from certain left-wing intellectuals, you have a sense of both elision and exaggeration, a hype around Israeli moral failures—it’s not enough for a war that yields so many casualties to be unjust, if it’s wrong it must be genocide—that ends up suppressing the harsh implications of a simple call for peace. … Maybe the Gaza war is unjust enough, and Israeli goals unachievable enough, that there’s no alternative to vindicating Hamas’s blood-soaked strategy. But you have to be honest about what you’re endorsing: a brutal weighing-out of evils, not any sort of triumph for ‘universally desirable’ ideals.”

Presented Without Comment

BBC News: UK Ban On Selling Arms To Israel Would Strengthen Hamas, Says [Foreign Secretary] David Cameron

Lord Cameron said the last time he was urged to end weapons sales to Israel, when three Britons were killed in an airstrike on aid workers in Gaza, “a few days later there was a brutal attack by Iran on Israel.” Just to simply announce today that we will change our approach on arms exports, it would make Hamas stronger, and it would make a hostage deal less likely,” he adds.

Also Presented Without Comment

The Guardian: Trump Praises Fictional Serial Killer Hannibal Lecter During Rally Speech

“Has anyone ever seen ‘The Silence of the Lambs’? The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’s a wonderful man. He often times would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? ‘Excuse me, I’m about to have a friend for dinner,’ as this poor doctor walked by. ‘I’m about to have a friend for dinner.’ But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations. The late, great Hannibal Lecter.”

Also Also Presented Without Comment

NBC New York: Actor Steve Buscemi Bloodied and Bruised After Punch to the Face on NYC Street

In the Zeitgeist

The trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis dropped last week. Coppola has been developing the film for decades and spent $120 million of his own money to finance it. The famed director described the film as a Roman epic.

Toeing the Company Line

• The Monthly Mailbag (🔒) is back, and this time, TMD’s deputy editor, Grayson Logue, is in the hot seat. You can submit your questions for him here.
• In the newsletters: Kevin unpacked how the pandemic radicalized a large portion of Americans, the Dispatch Politics crew reported on Haley Republicans’ frustrations with Biden’s Israel policy, Jonah eulogized the Tea Party movement, Nick dissected (🔒) Trump’s “mandate for disaster” if he’s reelected, and Chris outlined (🔒) the faults with Biden’s pursuit of the median voter.
• On the podcasts: On this weekend’s episode of The Remnant, Jonah ruminated on Biden’s Israel policy, the Cult of Youth, and the war against all things normal. On today’s Dispatch Podcast, Jamie interviews Bill Ayers, co-founder of the far-left Weather Underground, about the far-left’s view of Israel.
• On the site over the weekend: Tal Fortgang dove into Abigail Shrier’s new book, Bad Therapy, Guy Denton reviewed Luca Guadagnino’s new film, Challengers, and Jeffrey Bilbro explored the fragmented moral culture of American colleges and universities. 
• On the site: John reports on the Libertarian Party’s evolving relationship with Trump.