I’ve mentioned a few times over the last eight weeks that one of the key challenges in reporting on or making sense of events in Gaza right now is that at the most basic level we don’t know what is happening in the military engagement or even precisely what the aims are. According to the latest reports, some 15,800 residents of Gaza have died in the fighting over the last two months, just a staggering number. Some percentage of those are Hamas combatants. The Gazan health ministry doesn’t disagree. But the great majority are civilians. (The Gaza health ministry is run by Hamas but in previous conflicts there numbers have proven generally accurate.) At the same time Israel has estimated that it has killed some two or three thousand Hamas fighters, just a tiny percentage of a fighting force reputed to total 30,000 or more.

Kate and TPM’s Nicole Lafond are joined by Professor Karen Lee Ashcraft to discuss a masculinity “in crisis,” its intrinsic connection to right-wing politics and how the Josh Hawleys and J.D. Vances of the world are hijacking it for their own ends.

Belaboring The Point is now on YouTube! Check out the latest video episode of the podcast here.

The case of the Zieglers, the Florida GOP traditional values power couple, caught up in a case of three-ways and alleged rape took several turns for the weird and the worse over the weekend. (David provided an update in this morning’s Morning Memo.) The story has a complicated, uncanny dynamic because, on the one hand, it’s that old as the hills story of a family values Republican caught up in sexual practices which, if harmless themselves for consenting adults, don’t at all square with their public personas or policy agenda. On the other, buried in that schadenfreude-y story of Republicans with their pants down is a very credible accusation of rape.

Let’s try to give each part of the story its due.

As you’ve no doubt seen, the series of ceasefires and prisoners-for-hostages exchanges have come to an end and hostilities between the Israeli military and Hamas has resumed. Through several channels Hamas officials have now said that they won’t release any more hostages until the war is over. Though the details are murky it appears that only a small number of female civilians and children remain in captivity. Israel puts the number at 17. Those that remain are male civilians and soldiers.

Yesterday The New York Times published a major article about Hamas’ October 7th massacres in southern Israel. If you haven’t had a chance to read it, I’m going to provide a brief summary and then share a few thoughts on how to contextualize the news.

The gist is that Israel had a lot of intelligence about Hamas’ plans to mount an attack something like the one that occurred on October 7th. And in the last year, Israeli intelligence got ahold of plans for an attack pretty much exactly like the one that unfolded on October 7th. (The Israelis gave the plan, some forty pages in length, the code name “Jericho Wall.”) But mid-level and, in some cases, high-level intelligence and military leaders dismissed the intelligence, considering it either aspirational, something Hamas lacked the resources to accomplish or something that conflicted with its current strategy of seeking “quiet” to focus on effective governance within Gaza.

It’s hard to know where to start with this. But here goes.

Christian Ziegler is the chairman of the Florida Republican party. His wife Bridget is a member of the Sarasota County School Board and cofounder of Moms for Liberty. Today Trident News revealed that Christian Ziegler is currently under criminal investigation after a woman accused him of raping her. The woman filed a complaint with the Sarasota Police Department on October 4th; the alleged rape took place on October 2nd.

The story gets significantly more complicated.

According to the woman’s complaint she was involved in a consensual three-way sexual relationship with Christian and Bridget Ziegler. Christian Ziegler recorded videos of the threesome having sex together. Sources told Trident that police have done a forensic examination of Christian Ziegler’s phone, possibly looking for evidence of those videos.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the ascendant Nikki Haley, the war on the administrative state and Hunter Biden’s journey towards Congress as George Santos is on his way out.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

Henry Kissinger’s death yesterday at the grand, round age of 100 was greeted with a broad chorus of “It’s about times” and “good riddances” and “go straight to hells.” I have always been fascinated by the intensity of the animus toward the man. And to be clear: that’s not because I necessarily disagree with the verdict.

In the quickest possible summary, during his roughly eight years as first National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State, Kissinger spearheaded or oversaw two broad policies which account for most, but by no means all, of what that vituperation is about.

I wanted to flag to your attention this post by John Ganz, someone who, if you’re not familiar with him, is well worth becoming familiar with. Ganz and I see the questions about Israel, the Palestinians and Zionism differently. Indeed I disagree with the title of the post I’m sending you to. But what is most important in writing, especially in commentary, is not that it be “right” but that it be illuminating. Reading what is “right” is often reading a more polished version of what we already think — the utility of which is limited. Ganz manages to approach these questions with insight as well as texture and elegance, no simple feat.

On that matter of disagreement, I want to note something about what I have written on this issue. If you read carefully, I seldom make positive arguments for any particular position or question on this topic. I tend to point up what I see as disconnects or inconsistencies in pat arguments and responses. This is partly temperamental. I don’t like making arguments or claims that aren’t packaged with strong and concrete defenses. It’s also because with all the internal media and imagery there’s a huge amount of what is going on that we simply don’t know. One such question is whether Israel’s retaliation in response to the October 7th massacres is justified.

I had a clarifying moment this early afternoon sharing notes with TPM Reader MH via email. This was about the situation in Israel/Palestine but more particularly how it is impacting both people’s views and politics in the United States. What I think has happened is that the events, which began with the Hamas massacres in southern Israel on October 7th and has continued with Israel’s merciless retaliation, has pushed the discussion among not just Democrats but everyone to the left of the 50 yard line of American politics from “should Israeli policy be different” to “should Israel exist.”

The first is fairly unifying. The second is profoundly divisive and, for a non-trivial chunk of the Democratic coalition, existential.