Foreign Correspondence, Vol 105
6 questions about the deadly exploding pager attacks in Lebanon, answered
Hello, and happy Friday.
This correspondence comes to you following a brief holiday, a bout of illness, and a major escalation in the Middle East involving *checks notes* exploding pagers. Needless to say, it’s been a week—and I’ll be keeping the top of this edition nice and short.
What I’ve written
There are still more questions than answers surrounding the deadly pager explosions in Lebanon, where as of this writing at least 20 people have been killed and thousands more wounded. In my latest for TIME, I tried to tackle six of the biggest ones:
Experts who spoke with TIME say that this wasn’t a cyberattack. Rather, it was likely the result of an infiltration in the supply chain, which makes how the pagers were manufactured and who was involved all the more critical. “The explosions were likely triggered by pre-implanted explosives, possibly activated via a radio signal, as simple as the paging system itself,” says Lukasz Olejnik, an independent researcher and consultant in cybersecurity and privacy. “The supply chain was likely compromised at some point, either in the factory or during delivery.”
While such an operation would have been difficult to execute, it isn’t beyond the capabilities of a country like Israel. “Israel is obviously still the master of intelligence in the region,” Andreas Krieg, an associate professor for security studies at King’s College London, tells TIME, noting that “it has a network of intelligence and information collection that is unparalleled.”
Keep reading: 6 Questions About the Deadly Exploding Pager Attacks in Lebanon, Answered
It’s easy, amid all the destruction and suffering taking place in Gaza—and, now, Lebanon—to overlook what is happening as little as 34 miles away in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. But as the Israeli military conducts deadly raids in the territory, and as Israeli settler incursions on Palestinian land become even more brazen, the West Bank is proving impossible to ignore. I spoke with residents about what it’s like on the ground:
“What’s happening in Gaza is happening at a much smaller scale in the West Bank,” Omar Haramy, the director of the Palestinian ecumenical organization Sabeel, tells TIME. While West Bank Palestinians haven’t experienced the horrors of bombardment to the same degree as those in Gaza, he adds, they’re starting to get a taste for it now. In the past week, the Israeli military has conducted a series of raids and airstrikes on the territory, targeting what the Israeli government says are “Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructures.” At least 22 people have been killed as a result, according to Palestinian health authorities. Critical infrastructure including roads, water, and energy grids have been destroyed. Residents of at least one refugee camp were given evacuation orders.
“People are traumatized,” Haramy says. “I mean, it’s nothing compared to what’s happening in Gaza; Gaza is a genocide. But if you just go around the West Bank, there’s no infrastructure, communities have no water or access to electricity … It’s like a horror movie.”
Keep reading: ‘It’s Like a Horror Movie:’ West Bank Palestinians Fear War Will Come for Them Next
Plus:
For the TIME100 AI list, I penned a brief profile of European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was instrumental in the passage of the European Union’s landmark AI Act. (As of this week he is a former European Commissioner after he abruptly resigned, citing efforts to undermine him by his boss, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.)
What I’ve read
The Mysterious, Meteoric Rise of Shein • By Timothy McLaughlin in The Atlantic
Porous U.S. trade laws have allowed Shein items to stream across American borders, and Washington lacks the strict digital-platform regulations that the European Union imposed on Shein in April. The company recently hired several executives and lobbyists (including a former Biden-administration Treasury Department official, a longtime Home Depot lobbyist, and a former chief of staff to Senator Marco Rubio, who himself regularly blasts the company) to advance its interests and defend its image in the United States. Driving all of this is the American consumer, who buys approximately one item of clothing a week.
In many ways, Shein is a Chinese success story realized in America.
Biden’s arms transfers to Israel under internal investigation • By John Hudson in The Washington Post
The inspector general inquiries represent one of the last internal checks on an administration intent on surging weaponry to Israel despite criticisms of the country’s military tactics and the enormous civilian death toll in Gaza. The investigations come as some of Washington’s closest allies, including Britain, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium, have restricted military equipment transfers to Israel because of legal and political concerns that the weapons could be used to commit war crimes.
The Afterlife of Donald Trump • By Olivia Nuzzi in New York Magazine
He can never fully see his own ear. He can never fully see himself as others do. I inched closer and narrowed my eyes. The particular spot that he identified with his tap was pristine. I scanned carefully the rest of the terrain. It looked normal and incredible and fine. Ears do not often become famous, and when they do, it is because they have suffered some sort of misfortune. Van Gogh’s self-mutilation. Mike Tyson’s cannibalistic injury to Evander Holyfield. J. Paul Getty III, whose kidnappers cut the whole thing off and put it in the mail. And now this, the luckiest and most famous ear in the world. If you were the kind of person inclined to make such declarations, which Donald Trump is, you might call it the greatest ear of all time.
What I’m thinking about
Or, in this case, who: The Arab American Institute’s executive director Maya Berry gave a formidable performance in the face of a gross and bigoted line of attack from a Louisiana senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee on hate crimes this week (at least it was fitting with the theme, I suppose). Watch the clip, if you can stomach it, here.
Until next time,
Yasmeen