The United Nations accused Israel of laying the groundwork for the mass expulsion of Gazans into Egypt this week, an accusation Israel said was “simply not true.” Since October 7, Israeli forces have killed approximately 18,000 civilians and displaced 90% of the enclave, according the Palestinian Health Ministry. Ethnic Cleansing: noun:

The use of violent force or intimidation to drive or remove the civilian population of a given ethnic group from a targeted geographic area.

Other way around, the same could be said of the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel which left 1,139 Israeli civilians and soldiers dead; another 240 tortured and taken hostage, according to Israel social security data. An Israeli military response ensued to eliminate Hamas leadership on the Gaza Strip, and an aggressive military campaign targeting civilians may be designed to get civilians to oust their own leadership in Israel's call for "complete victory."

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi explains, “Israel’s current war is not just aimed at fighting Hamas. It’s an attempt to push the civilian inhabitants to migrate to Egypt.” Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel adds, “one option after the war would be to promote the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza for humanitarian reasons outside of the Strip.” Former Israeli officials have suggested that Egypt could build vast tent cities in its Sinai desert with international funding. Jordan’s King Abdullah II says, “No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt.” Both nation’s have seen an influx of nearly one million displaced refugees and migrants from the region since 1947, and neither wish to be complicit in the ethnic cleaning in Gaza.

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that Israel is losing support over its "indiscriminate" bombing of Gaza and that Benjamin Netanyahu should change, exposing a new rift in relations with the Israeli prime minister. Still, $14.3 billion more was approved for the cause this week, and we need only follow the demand curve to understand what drives the foreign policy of the U.S. Relations with Israel.

Since the conception of Israel 75 years ago, the United States is far and away the biggest supplier of economic and military aid to Israel (130 billion since its founding), and has co-created one of the most formidable and technologically advanced militaries in the Middle East. To wit, Israel’s annual defense budget of $23.6 billion surpasses the total military spending of Egypt, Iran, Lebanon and Jordan combined.

Conversely, what we know about Palestine’s rag tag group of rebels is that for more than three decades they’ve relied on guerrilla warfare-style tactics in its attacks against Israel: utilizing rockets, snipers, improvised explosive devices and underground tunnels. Hamas' funding streams are difficult to verify, though Iran is alleged to provide $100 million annually to Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups, according to the State Department.

While the city of Jerusalem has a sacred meaning for Jews, Muslims and Christians, it also represents a sensitive and complex red line of political conflict. For Palestinians, East Jerusalem (al-Quds) is to be the capital of the future Palestinian State. For Israelis, the entirety of Jerusalem (Yerushaláyim) is the sole and indivisible capital of the Jewish State.

While both agree God created man, Israelis and Palestinians appear to be worshiping two separate Gods. They've concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of faith isn't hope, charity and love but war. The constitutional linch pin of the Quran, Masoretic Text, and Christian Bible is forgiveness, and the principle message of Allah > Yahweh > and Jesus the Christ simply does not tolerate that conclusion.

The Flight into Egypt

Adam Elsheimer’s 1609 oil-on-copper is the first naturalistic rendering of the night sky in Renaissance art. It can fairly be said it informed Lorrain, Rubens and Rembrandt’s The Flight into Egypt.

Elsheimer wasn’t the first to depict the biblical flight into Egypt in which Joseph, Mary, and their newborn “King of the Jews” seek political refuge from King Herod. However, he was the first to juxtapose darkness and light into a religious and temporal narrative.

True to the biblical description, Elsheimer places the Holy Family in a nocturnal setting where their sojourn to political safety is framed by the dichotomy between their fear and faith.

A fire illuminates their templars; a torch the path ahead; and the heavy landscape of trees in black — highlighting the midnight sky, intricate band of the Milky Way, and a magnificent configuration of stars — are all reflected in the waters below. Even the Ursa Major, at far left, had yet to be discovered.

Elsheimer was the first painter to accurately depict the constellations. Leo, above the Holy Family, and its brightest star, Regulus, is the painting's focal point.

It has believed that Elsheimer reworked the painting in 1610, shortly before his death, following the publication of Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius, which showed the Milky Way as composed of individual stars and showed the Moon's surface in unprecedented detail. Symbolizing the path to heaven beginning in the Middle Ages, Elsheimer's Milky Way connects heaven and earth which historian R. H. Wilenski observes, "is no longer a blackcloth but a symbol for boundless space.”

When the family returns from Egypt they identify their land as Judah, the first geographic and political claim to the Holy Land.

The Zone of Interest

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association revealed its 2023 awards this week. The Zone of Interest opened at the 76th Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim, and won the Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Prize in May. The film premiered nationwide in the United States on Friday.

When the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Rudolf Höss, and his wife, Hedwig, strive to build a normal life for their family in a house and garden next to their camp, Sir Martin Amis's 2014 novel endeavors to imagine the social and domestic lives of the Nazi officers who ran the death camps, and the effect their indifference to human suffering had on their general psychology.

In nature, every action has an equal but opposite reaction. Galileo's new science of dynamics opened that reality to Einstein — and the world. While Rudolf Höss oversaw the extermination of 1.1 million Jews at Auschwitz during its less than 5 years in existence, he was himself summarily put to death by hanging after the war. He writes to his eldest son shortly before his execution on April 16, 1947 at Auschwitz:

Dear Son — Keep your good heart. Become a person who lets himself be guided primarily by warmth and humanity. Learn to think and judge for yourself, responsibly. Don't accept everything without criticism and as absolutely true. The biggest mistake of my life was that I believed everything faithfully which came from the top, and I didn't dare to have the least bit of doubt about the truth of that which was presented to me. In all your undertakings, don't just let your mind speak, but listen above all to the voice in your heart. — Your loving Father.

Anne Frank, at 13, in hiding from the Nazis during WWII, so endeavors in The Diary of a Young Girl. “There’s plenty of room for everyone in the world. Enough money, riches, and beauty for all to share. God has made enough for everyone, so let us all begin then by sharing it fairly.”