*Wellness … presents collective social ills as problems for the individual to solve through some alchemy of consumer behavior.* Some will benefit, by chance or the placebo effect; meanwhile, the main effect is distractive.

War crimes that HAMAS and Israel seem to have committed, according to the UN.

HAMAS, as a terrorist organization, makes no effort to disguise its war crimes as anything but war crimes. That makes it easy to be certain that that's what they are.

Israel presents supposed excuses which surely can't be valid, but the UN won't state the conclusion as a certainty without an investigation.

UNRWA, which provides humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, says that a cease fire is essential to save the civilians there, who are all in danger from the siege imposed by Israel.

Reporters Without Borders has concluded that Israel intentionally attacked press vehicles in Lebanon, killing and injuring some of the reporters.

*Australia’s new UN counter-terror chief fears world repeating ‘same mistakes’ of the past in Israel-Gaza conflict: … [namely, trying to] counter terrorism with military might.*

This is more wisdom than we expect to find in government responses to terrorism. The usual mistakes come out of political pressure, the demand to "strike the enemy" even if it is counterproductive to do so.

Arguing that Gaza's civilians urgently need a cessation of fighting, regardless of what it is called and how it is described.

The difference between a "cease fire" and a "humanitarian pause (in fighting)" may not be the deep gulf that it appears.

Presumably a "cease fire" is intended to be permanent while a "pause" is not. But there have been dozens of ceasefires between Israel and HAMAS in Gaza, and each one did end. HAMAS broke some of them, and Israel broke others. Conversely, a cease fire which wasn't explicitly designated as permanent could nonetheless be extended, as the article points out.

I do not mean to say that the difference is nothing at all. If a "pause" is agreed to last for a week (say), the sides would probably resume fighting after that week. By contrast, a cease fire with no scheduled end might last for months — many of them did in the past. So the details of a truce do matter, but not in an all-or-nothing way.

The crucial point is that in practice there is no way Israel could eliminate HAMAS from Gaza, except by eliminating Palestinians from Gaza — and that would be an enormous war crime that nothing could excuse. Israel cannot achieve the "victory" it says it is aiming for. As for HAMAS's war crimes on Oct 7, they were based on surprise. It lacks the power to commit more crimes now. Therefore, Israel has no opportunity to prevent further HAMAS war crimes by fighting HAMAS now. It can kill some HAMAS fighters for revenge, but only by killing far more Palestinian civilians. The sooner Israel stops its bombardment and siege, the less its war crimes will be.