Author: openjargon

• Jeronimo Noriega, a student from San Antonio, moved to Spain and never plans to return to the US.
• Noriega appreciates Spain's work culture, public transportation, and affordable dining experiences.
• Though he misses friends and US customer service, Noriega doesn't plan to move back.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jeronimo Noriega, a 27-year-old student who lives in Spain. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I moved to Oviedo, Asturias in Northwest Spain after growing up in San Antonio and I don't think I'll ever move back to the United States.

If that shocks you, it surprised me too. I never thought I'd live in Europe — I'd never even been there before my siblings and I agreed to move to Spain with my parents. Although I was born in Mexico, I spent most of my life living in the US so moving to Spain was a big difference.

When my family decided we needed a change, we chose Spain because it felt like a natural fit — my grandparents spent their lives living between Spain and Mexico. Although I'm Mexican-American and fluent in Spanish, settling in Spain was initially difficult because my Spanish-speaking skills were rusty after living in America.

Once I started getting more comfortable in the local dialect, I felt more comfortable living in Spain. I've lived here for 14 months and I have a much better quality of life in Spain than I had in the US.

I feel anxious when I get in a car now because I'm so used to walking and taking public transportation in Spain

When I lived in the US, I constantly felt like I was sitting in traffic or relying on my car to get places, but in Spain I just walk everywhere. I'm never stuck in a car. It's not only better for the environment, it's healthier for me too.

The sense of community is so strong here. When I walk around my neighborhood, people say hi to each other and it's so lovely. You don't have that part of the day when you're in your car in America. I love being out in the world while I'm getting from one place to the next and not just siloed in my car.

Living in Spain has shown me there's a different way to exist

I love the work culture in Spain. In America, I felt like my only options were to rise and grind and get beat down by the machine, but everything is different here. In Spain, they seem to value their lives over their work — it's not even a work-life balance.

People take three-hour lunches and drink a bottle of wine before going back to the office or they stop in the middle of the afternoon for a leisure espresso break. It was kind of difficult to transition into that lifestyle because I was so used to the American way of life where work is everything. Even through college, I was constantly working and grinding my life away.

When I first moved to Spain, I felt like I was really lazy. I wondered, what am I doing? I should be working myself to the bone. But then I started to see how Spaniards live and I wanted that level of freedom and joy. Now, I attend a community college and spend my days studying, going to class, and drinking espresso and wine at cafés.

It's normal to go to a wonderful dinner that costs $11 per person, in Spain

I love the restaurant scene. It's not even strange to linger at a table for four or five hours — it's normal. I remember eating dinner in the US and feeling like the waitress was judging me if I didn't leave right after I finished eating. Everything is slower in Spain and it's lovely.

I can buy a coffee for the equivalent of a few dollars and not feel bad about lingering in the coffee shop for a few hours to hang out.

I don't see moving back to the US in my future

My parents asked me the other day if I'd ever consider moving back to the US and I was so struck by the question that I made a TikTok about it. The short answer is: never say never, but I don't see it in my future.

I definitely miss my friends, but I wouldn't let that keep me from life in Spain. I also miss the American customer service — it's so friendly and personable, but maybe that's because of the tipping culture. In Spain, I've noticed that customer service doesn't reflect the level of that in the States unless you're at a high-end restaurant.

Now that I've had a taste of what life is like outside the rat race, I'm not eager to get back on the wheel. Life is long, and you never know what will happen, but I'm staying here for the foreseeable future. All I have to do is take a walk to the coffee shop, have a delicious dinner for $11, or take a break in the middle of a weekday to remind myself why I'm staying.

Correction: January 9, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of the person who moved to Spain. His name is Jeronimo Noriega , not Geronimo.

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• Millvina Dean was only 9 weeks old when her family boarded the Titanic in 1912.
• She never publicly spoke about the Titanic until September 1, 1985, when the wreck was found.
• She lived to be 97 years old, dying in 2009. She was the last living survivor of the ship.

The RMS Titanic and its doomed voyage have captured people's interest since the tragedy in April 1912.

The ship and its passengers were once again brought back into the spotlight when the wreckage was found on September 1, 1985, over 73 years after it sank.

Among those passengers was Millvina Dean, who was just 2 months old when the ship went down. She was the youngest survivor of the tragedy.

Learn more about Dean's remarkable life, including her service during World War II, her relationship with her newfound fame, and why she never saw "Titanic," one of the highest-grossing films ever.

Millvina Dean was just 9 weeks old when she boarded the Titanic in 1912 with her parents and older brother.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, she was the youngest passenger aboard. She boarded the Titanic with her mother, Georgette, her father, Bertram Frank, and her brother, Bertram Vere, before the ship set sail from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912.

But she wasn't supposed to be on the Titanic at all. The Dean family boarded the ship after a coal strike canceled their original trip.

The family was supposed to cross the Atlantic on a different White Star Line ship, according to the Los Angeles Times' obituary of Dean. However, a coal strike led to the cancellation of their original voyage. The White Star Line offered them third-class tickets on the Titanic instead.

Her family was leaving the UK to move to Kansas City, Missouri, to join her father's cousin.

The Deans were going to Missouri to be with her father's cousin, who owned a store in Kansas City, according to Millvina Dean's obituary in The New York Times. Her father was going to co-own the store after the Deans sold the pub they owned in England.

On April 14, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg and later sank. Dean, her mother, and 2-year-old brother survived, but her father died with the many other third-class men who weren't allowed on lifeboats.

According to Dean, her father felt the ship collide with the iceberg, which might have saved his family's lives.

"I think it was my father who saved us," Dean said in 2002, according to the Los Angeles Times. "So many other people thought the Titanic would never sink, and they didn't bother. My father didn't take a chance."

Dean, her mother, and brother were put on lifeboat 13, as reported by BBC News.

The survivors on lifeboats were later picked up by the RMS Carpathia and taken to New York City. But Dean's father was among the more than 1,500 people who died in the tragedy. 

Dean said she believed it was true that White Star Lines employees had prevented third-class passengers from going above deck and potentially escaping the sinking ship, The New York Times reported.

"It couldn't happen nowadays, and it's so wrong, so unjust. What do they say? 'Judy O'Grady and the colonel's lady are sisters under the skin.' That's the way it should have been that night, but it wasn't," she said.

When the Deans returned to England aboard the Adriatic, passengers lined up to hold the baby. The demand was so high an officer made a rule that each person could only hold her for 10 minutes.

Three weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, the RMS Adriatic took some survivors back to England. Dean, her mother, and brother were on board.

"Passengers who knew what the family had been through lined up to hold baby Millvina, the youngest survivor of the Titanic. To keep the line moving, a ship's officer ordered that no one could hold the baby for more than 10 minutes," wrote Mary Rourke of the Los Angeles Times in Dean's obituary.

Dean didn't learn about the true horrors of the Titanic until she was 8 years old when her mother finally told her.

"My mother would never speak of it, because it was her husband and they were only married four years. He was strikingly handsome. I didn't know anything about it until I was 8 years old. And then my mother got married again. That's when I first heard about the Titanic, and about my father going down, everything like that," she told the Belfast Telegraph in 2009.

In another interview with the Irish Times, the Los Angeles Times reported, Dean said that her mother suffered severe headaches every day after the sinking.

Millvina and Bertram Dean were educated using money from the Titanic Relief Fund, a charity formed in England to support survivors.

The White Star Line rather infamously didn't accept any liability for the Titanic's sinking for years, even though the tragedy left almost all of its passengers with no money, no possessions, and in many cases, no breadwinner — many families lost their husbands and fathers since they couldn't get on lifeboats.

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2003 that four years after the crash, the White Star Line agreed to pay the US $665,000, or roughly $430 per passenger.

In 2024, that'd be around $12,700 each.

During World War II, she worked in the British Army's map-making office.

After the war, she worked as a secretary in an engineering office for 20 years, reported the Los Angeles Times.

She never publicly spoke about the Titanic until 1985, when the shipwreck was found.

"Nobody knew about me and the Titanic, to be honest, nobody took any interest, so I took no interest either," she said, according to The New York Times. "But then they found the wreck, and after they found the wreck, they found me."

For decades after, Millvina Dean attended many Titanic exhibitions, conventions, and events. She also traveled to different schools to tell her life's story.

Dean never watched James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster "Titanic" because she was worried it would make her think about what her father had been doing in his final moments.

Even though Dean had said she didn't feel a huge connection to her father, since she never really knew him, she couldn't watch any movies or documentaries relating to the Titanic.

"Because that's the ship on which my father went down. Although I didn't remember him, nothing about him, I would still be emotional. I would think: 'How did he go down? Did he go down with the ship or did he jump overboard?'" she told the Belfast Telegraph in May 2009, weeks before her death.

Her brother Bertram, pictured right, died on the 80th anniversary of the iceberg collision in 1992. He was 81.

Her mother lived to be 96, dying in 1975, according to The New York Times.

In 1997, Millvina Dean finally successfully crossed the Atlantic from Southampton to New York City aboard the Queen Elizabeth II.

Eighty-five years after the ill-fated maiden voyage of the Titanic, Dean finally completed the journey from Southampton to New York City, reported the Deseret News.

According to United Press International, after she arrived in NYC in August, she then journeyed to Kansas City to visit the neighborhood that would've been hers, if everything had gone to plan.

She auctioned off some of her Titanic memorabilia later in life, including the mailbag her mother carried their possessions in after the sinking.

After breaking her hip in 2006, Dean began living in a nursing home. To help with expenses, she auctioned off some items that had been with her family on the Titanic, including a suitcase that sold for $18,650. In total, she raised $53,906, according to NBC News.

 

James Cameron and "Titanic" stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio donated thousands of dollars toward Dean's nursing-home costs in 2009.

Reuters reported that the trio behind "Titanic" donated $30,000 to Dean after her longtime friend Don Mullan challenged them to.

"I laid down the challenge to the 'Titanic' actors and directors to support the Millvina Fund and I was delighted with the generosity they have shown in meeting that challenge," Mullan told the Irish Examiner in 2009.

Millvina Dean died in 2009 at 97. She was the last living survivor of the Titanic.

Millvina Dean's ashes were scattered by her partner, Bruno Nordmanis, at the Southampton Docks, where the Titanic left for its first and only voyage, NBC News reported.

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• I juggled my doctorate studies , a part-time job, and parenting alone for years.
• I cut out alcohol, prioritized parenting, and tried to remain positive during the process.
• In the end, I got my degree and survived the chaos. 

From 2009 to 2013, my life felt like a three-ring circus.

I was working on my doctorate in business administration, raising my 3- and 5-year-old kids, and working part-time. I was doing it all as a newly separated mother, trying to navigate living and parenting alone.

Mornings were a panic as I tried to get the kids fed, dressed, and off to school with a healthy lunch. I was often running on less than five hours of sleep.

I made their bedtime early and non-negotiable. Once the kids were asleep, I had from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. to clean up the dinner dishes, make lunches, tidy the house, do laundry, and do my doctoral work. It was an online doctorate, so aside from the lectures, I had multiple articles to read for each class and discussion posts to answer. I spent 40 to 60 hours a week completing my classwork and homework.

It was a lot to juggle, but I did it. These 5 strategies helped me stay sane in the chaos.

My parenting duties always took precedent

I wasn't going to win any mom of the year awards, but if my kids were clean, fed, and not bleeding, it was a win in my books.

Still, I found genuine ways to connect with my kids — like a short board game or an elaborate blanket fort. I didn't take my kids to as many activities as I would have liked, but I focused on the lifesaving ones, like swim lessons. I figured the rest could wait.

I'd sometimes forgo sleeping for a night to finish my doctoral work if they needed more time with me.

During breaks for the doctoral program, we'd go camping or visit family. The kids looked forward to these times without my nose stuck in a book. I'd always involved them in vacation planning, and one year, my daughter said she wanted to go to Mount Rushmore. So that's what we did. She would hopefully remember that trip more than she would remember the hectic pace of the months before that.

When in doubt, I distracted myself by doing something else

With a house to clean, food to cook, kids to raise, and my ongoing doctorate, there was always something to do. Sometimes, I felt paralyzed because I didn't know where to start. So, if I found myself fading, I would change tasks to something else that I "had" to do. I call this productive procrastination.

Don't want to read any more discourse analysis articles? Do the dishes. Don't want to write a literature review? Pick up the LEGOS that will act as painful land mines on the 3 a.m. trip to the bathroom.

I avoided alcohol during the week

A couple of drinks while I was supposed to be focused on my doctoral work often led to bad decisions, which led to a couple more drinks, which then led me to take the night off, thinking that I'd have time to do the work the next day. Drinking as a coping mechanism had become a habit. Life was hard, and alcohol numbed the self-critical voices in my head.

I decided to avoid alcohol and caffeine during the week because I didn't have time for artificial highs or lows. After a difficult month of stopping cold turkey, not drinking became a better habit.

I found small moments to prioritize physical health

There was no way I had time for the gym, but there were things I could do to stay healthy. I did what I called "three for me," which was a one-minute wall-sit, a one-minute plank, and one minute of sit-ups.

There is no day that you can't find three minutes for yourself. I read journal articles during the three minutes, which was one of my few successful multi-tasks.

I also developed a five-day meal plan for healthy, fast, different meals for each night of the week. We ate dinner at the table to talk about our days and connect. I also used weekends to decompress and take a family walk — where we could all get some much-needed vitamin D and reground ourselves in nature.

I reminded myself of my 'why'

I had chosen to do this, and an end was in sight. In one low moment — after a cry about how exhausted and overwhelmed I felt — I found an online therapist whose video said that my brain would listen to whatever I told it. She encourages people to say: "I've chosen to do this. I'm delighted to do this," even when they aren't. When I was feeling particularly whiny, and that advice wasn't cutting it, I'd think like Nike and say out loud: "Just do it."

I also reminded myself of my "why." My "why" would be staring at the mirror or sitting across from me at the breakfast table. I had to remember that I was doing my doctorate to get a job that paid more, would give me more purpose, and would give me more time with my kids.

Dr. Nadine Robinson holds a Doctorate in Business Administration from Athabasca University. She is a part-time professor at Sault College, keynote speaker, and freelance writer. Follow her @theinkran.

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• The threat of a conflict over Taiwan has put the spotlight on the US and Chinese navies.
• The US Navy has been shrinking, meaning China's is now the world's largest.
• A major decline in US shipbuilding capacity could be a problem in the future, analysts say.

The oceans are once again becoming a key geopolitical battleground.

In the Indo-Pacific, the aggressive shadow of China is growing. Meanwhile, sea-based drone warfare in the Black Sea between Russia and Ukraine and the Houthi rebels' disruption of commercial shipping in the Red Sea have become conflict hot spots.

"It's the end of the pacifist period on the seas," Dr Steven Wills of the Center for Maritime Strategy, told Business Insider.

The US fleet is still widely considered the world's most powerful navy due to its 11 aircraft carriers and cutting-edge nuclear submarine capabilities.

However, while maritime pressures have increased, US shipbuilding has stagnated.

"In the early 1990s, the Navy had over 500 ships. But over the course of the 2000s and 2010s, there was a failure to properly follow up naval deployments with enough time for refit, repair, and rest," Wills explained.

As subsidies and funding for maritime infrastructure were cut in the post-Cold War period, industry capabilities slowed. That was compounded by a series of costly shipbuilding blunders.

"The US Navy was really rudderless. They didn't have an idea what it wanted to do," Wills said.

The fleet is now down to just under 300 ships.

Doug Livermore, who until recently was a senior intelligence officer and director of sensitive activities and special operations in the Navy, admits it's "not as robust of a ramp-up as it should be."

In the latest budget released in March, plans for seven new Arleigh Burke-class destroyers were reduced to six. Just one rather than two Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines will be added, while 19 ships will be decommissioned.

"They're scrapping more ships than they're building, which means the US Navy is on a downward trajectory, not an upward trajectory," said Dr Salvatore Mercogliano, a maritime historian at Campbell University.

China outpacing the US

China has overtaken the US Navy in numerical terms with about 370 vessels, according to the Pentagon's 2023 China Military Power Report.

It will grow to be at least 50% larger than America's by 2035, a retired admiral projected in the US Naval Institute's professional journal.

Submarines, which have historically given the US primacy over the sea, are a high priority for the People's Liberation Army Navy.

China operates 60 submarines, according to the Pentagon's latest estimates. That number is expected to rise to 80 by 2035, despite the ongoing retirement of older hulls. Most of its submarines are diesel-powered, but it also has nuclear-powered attack and ballistic missile submarines that have higher speeds and longer ranges.

The US operates 67 submarines, but not all are in the Pacific.

China's navy is still not as technologically advanced, only has two aircraft carriers, and the fleet has minimal active experience, but Livermore says the pace of expansion remains a concern.

"In the early 2000s, the Chinese navy had nothing that could rival US vessels. They were primarily diesel-powered submarines, a few old and loud nuclear-powered submarines. The speed of development is worrying," he said.

Quantity vs quality

The numbers only tell one part of the story, however. Despite its smaller size compared with China, the US Navy is still widely regarded as the world's most powerful.

In 2020, then Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that even if the US stopped building ships, it would take years for China to match the US Navy's power due to its technological capabilities and expertise.

"Ship numbers are important, but they don't tell the whole story," he said.

Another piece of the puzzle is shipbuilding capacity. China is the world's largest shipbuilder. It could use its manufacturing capacity to rapidly build more ships in wartime.

Chinese shipyards have a capacity of about 23.2 million tons, compared to the US' capacity of less than 100,000 tons, according to figures from the US Office of Naval Intelligence that emerged last year.

David Sacks, fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told BI: "One of China's largest shipyards has more capacity than all US shipyards combined. We have to maintain ships as well as obviously build new platforms, and we don't have the workers or the facilities to do that."

Peacetime footing

Gone are the days when merchant ships were built in bulk in the US, capacities that America used to expand its fleet by more than 15 times in World War II. In an extended war, China is poised to rapidly build this kind of vast fleet — a capacity the US lacks.

Instead, the US defense industrial base still finds itself on a post-Cold War peacetime footing, analysts told BI.

Expanding American shipbuilding capacity ought to start now, Wills said: "You don't make the arsenal of democracy overnight."

"The composition of the Navy is a long-term issue. If you want to start changing force structure, it takes time," Mercogliano said.

But given that Japan and South Korea now dominate commercial shipbuilding, some doubt whether this is a realistic or viable option.

That could have consequences in wartime. "It would be very hard to rapidly ramp up and replace battlefield losses just given the current state of the industry," Wills said. "That's not the industry's fault — they can only operate based on what the government gives them."

Taiwan tensions

Rising tensions over Taiwan are another reason some are questioning the size and shape of the US fleet.

Taiwan has been self-governed since 1949, but China sees it as a breakaway province that should be under its control.

While there have been no official signals about a looming conflict with Taiwan, China's leader Xi Jinping has said that he believes unification is inevitable and has refused to rule out using force to achieve that goal.

As a democratic ally in the region and home to a leading AI chipmaker in the form of TSMC, securing Taiwan's freedom is a key strategic and economic goal for the US.

Last month, the commander for the Indo-Pacific told lawmakers that Beijing would be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.

If that ever happens, analysts fear the US Navy could find itself on the back foot.

The Council of Foreign Relations' Sacks pointed to a 2023 CSIS report that said the US would run out of many key munitions for a conflict over Taiwan within the first two weeks.

China's home advantage would also be significant, said Wills. "They're fighting a local game in their backyard whereas the US and everybody else, except Japan, is waging an away game. There are long logistics needed to make that happen."

"I think there ought to be a greater level of urgency here. I'm not seeing it," he added.

Countering Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific took center stage this week at the first-ever trilateral meeting between the US, Japan, and the Philippines.

The US announced more than $1 billion worth of private sector investment in chips and infrastructure to support the region and said security cooperation in the South China Sea had increased to "historic levels."

In the week leading to the summit, the three countries and Australia held their first joint maritime military exercises in a further show of unity.

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• The Uncommitted movement includes a broad swath of Democratic voters upset with Biden over Israel.
• But Arab and Muslim Americans — particularly in Dearborn, Michigan — have been leading the movement.
• For the first time, these voters could play a decisive role in a presidential election.

Abdullah Hammoud was not elected to be a spokesperson for a national political movement.

The 34-year-old mayor of Dearborn, Michigan took office in 2022 after a campaign focused on the nuts and bolts of local government: lowering property taxes, improving city services, and strengthening public safety.

But Dearborn isn't like other cities. A majority of its more than 100,000 residents are Arab Americans, and the city and its environs are home to the largest Muslim population in the United States.

Not coincidentally, it's also the birthplace of the Uncommitted movement, which is urging Democratic voters to cast "uncommitted" ballots to protest President Joe Biden's ongoing support for Israel. Movement leaders are demanding a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and an end to US military support for Israel in exchange for their votes this November.

Dearborn is also one of the few places in the country — along with Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck, two nearby townships that similarly boast large Arab American populations — where the movement has garnered an electoral majority: 56.2% of Dearborn voters cast "uncommitted" ballots on February 27.

When I spoke with Hammoud during my trip to Michigan last month, he was eager to point out that the movement extends well beyond Arab and Muslim Americans.

"I think the media tends to overlook how multiracial, multigenerational, multifaith, multi-ethnic the movement turned out to be," he said. "It downplays the issue of Gaza as solely an Arab and Muslim issue."

Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, two leaders of the "Uncommitted National Movement," made the same point. After all, the vast majority of the more than 100,000 "uncommitted" votes cast in the Michigan primary didn't come from Dearborn. The movement registered more than 10% of the vote in the vast majority of Michigan's 83 counties, with particularly strong showings in university towns like Ann Arbor.

"If Layla and I were to walk into some of the counties where we earned more than 10% of the vote, the percentage of Arabs and Muslims in that county would go up by 200%," Alawieh quipped.

It's an understandable tack for them to take. If the movement were made up solely of Arab and Muslim Americans, then perhaps Biden could afford to just write the community off and hope to garner enough former Nikki Haley supporters to make up the difference.

Yet it's undeniable that the Uncommitted movement represents something new: the emergence of Arab and Muslim Americans as the leaders of a decisive voting bloc in a presidential election.

While these voters have been dependable members of the Democratic coalition in recent years, owing in large part to former President Donald Trump's policies, the ongoing death and destruction in Gaza is driving movement leaders to change course and explicitly leverage their growing political clout.

"Our community has never had this much power and leverage," said Alawieh. "Part of the reason why our power is growing is because we are stepping into the power of our expertise as people who have been most harmed by pro-war US foreign policy."

While the issue of Gaza — where over 33,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, and where hundreds of thousands more have endured displacement and looming famine — is likely top of mind for these voters, the movement also provides an avenue to express other frustrations with the political system.

"It might be the driving force behind the movement, but it's much bigger than Palestine," said Lexis Zeidan, another Uncommitted movement leader. "We can fund war, but not reinvest in our communities here?"

All of this is despite the community's cleared-eyed view of what a second Trump presidency could mean, including an even more deferential relationship with Israel's hard-right government and a potential revival of the "Muslim Ban."

'An existential knowledge that's not with anybody else'

By virtue of its large Arab and Muslim population, Dearborn is one of the most unique places in America — all the more so during the holy month of Ramadan, when the city is relatively sleepy during the day, only to bustle with energy at night.

Immigration from the Arab world began in earnest in the 1920s, when many came for jobs in the burgeoning automotive industry. That existing community then became a magnet for further waves of immigration, particularly in the 1960s and 1990s.

Among Dearborn's Arab residents are Palestinian Americans, like Elabed and Zeidan, who may have relatives facing dire conditions in Gaza. Others are Lebanese Americans, like Alawieh and Hammoud, whose families have experienced Israeli occupation. There are also Iraqis, Yemenis, Syrians, and Egyptians who have faced the consequences of America's foreign policy in the Middle East in a way that others simply have not. The city is represented by Elabed's older sister, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who is the sole Palestinian American in Congress and arguably its strongest critic of Biden's ongoing support for Israel.

"We have an existential knowledge that's not with anybody else," said Hammoud, referring to his city's residents. "We can tell you exactly how the villages are shaped because we've driven those roads. We've shopped at those markets. We have phone calls with people there as frequently as we have phone calls with our family members here."

But while the Arab American community is particularly concentrated in the Detroit area, with implications for 2024 in a closely-watched swing state, there are plenty of Arab American voters scattered in competitive states around the country. The Arab American Institute estimates that there are 206,000 such voters in Florida, 134,000 in Virginia, and 126,000 in Pennsylvania.

"Michigan is a bellwether for what will happen elsewhere," said James Zogby, the president of the institute. "It's a canary in the coal mine for other states."

But the key to the movement's ongoing success has been coalition-building with other communities, including African American voters, young voters, and progressive Jewish voters.

"Thirty-six times in the Torah, it says in one way or another, love the stranger as yourself, treat the other as you want to be treated," said former Rep. Andy Levin, a prominent progressive Jewish backer of the Uncommitted movement in Michigan. "If you want to be a serious person of faith, who's our most important other? Duh, it's the Palestinian people."

'The Uncommitted campaign of the 80s'

Zogby, who's been active in Democratic politics for decades, sees the Uncommitted movement as the second major wave of Arab American political organizing.

The first wave, in his telling, took place over the course of the 1980s, when he served as deputy campaign manager for Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign. Both that year and in 1988, Jackson explicitly courted Arab American votes and spoke openly about Palestinian rights. In 1988, amid the First Intifada, organizers passed pro-Palestinian resolutions at 11 state Democratic party conventions — not unlike the cease-fire resolutions that have passed in over 100 municipalities across the country since October 7.

"It was the Uncommitted campaign of the 80s," said Zogby. After founding the Arab American Institute in Washington, DC in 1985, he and others worked in the intervening decades to build up Arab American power. Much of that work included registering voters and raising political consciousness in places like Dearborn, where non-Arab mayors had at times sought to fearmonger about the growing Arab American population.

That work also took place against the backdrop of the post-9/11 era, when Arabs and Muslims in the US faced discrimination and political marginalization after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. That marginalization persists, albeit in a lesser form, to this day; in February, a Wall Street Journal opinion writer described Dearborn as "America's Jihad Capital," prompting Mayor Hammoud to announce increased security measures in the city.

Decades of organizing created the conditions for what's emerged today — a voting bloc that not only poses a possible threat to Biden's reelection, but that in recent months has rejected what leaders view as political pandering.

Indeed, while organizers have been clear that they're seeking specific policy changes from Biden, there's been a perception that an increasingly nervous presidential campaign has merely been making a play for votes. And there have been prominent missteps by Biden's administration and campaign, including a White House statement marking 100 days since October 7 that made no mention of the tens of thousands of Palestinians who had died.

Yet even amid those missteps — interpreted often as disrespect – there's a sense of empowerment that comes with holding the fate of the election in your hands.

"People understand that the Michigan Muslim and Arab community is large enough," said Hammoud, "maybe not to elect a president, but maybe to make one lose."

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• Millennial Eliza Green avoided cruises because she felt they were germ-riddled and full of kids.
• A friend suggested a surprise cruise on Virgin's child-free ship and Green apprehensively agreed. 
• She loved the ship experience with sizeable rooms and fun activities, but the pace of travel was too quick. 

This is an as-told-to essay based on a transcribed conversation with millennial Eliza Green, who took her first cruise vacation on Virgin Voyages. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I always thought cruise ships were a place to pick up germs from people, especially children. I'd heard nightmare stories of people getting sick, overcrowding, and bad food. But when friends approached my husband and me to go for a 40th birthday, I was willing to try.

My frequent cruise traveler friend gave us a couple of options. Virgin Voyages sounded particularly appealing. The rooms were affordable, with balconies and no children. Plus, the five-night length felt manageable as a first-time cruiser.

In October 2023, my husband, two other couples, and I embarked on Virgin Voyage's Scarlet Lady Dominican Daze. We set off from the port in Miami for two stops in Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic and Bimini, Bahamas. For lodging and food for two, it cost $3,234.

Still skeptical, I went in with little expectations and just the hope of having a good time with friends.

Cruise food was better than an all-inclusive resort

The food was a pleasant surprise, far better than the buffet options I'd imagined on other cruises. This was our first cruise, but it was our second all-inclusive-style vacation. Compared to the all-inclusive resort in Jamaica, the cruise had a wider variety of cuisines.

For a ship that had to serve thousands, the level of food and choices exceeded my expectations. I never ate the same meal twice. The ease of dining was seamless. Food was included in our prepaid rate, so we didn't have to take out our wallets during mealtime or show our cruise wristband.

There were sit-down restaurants, grab-and-go stations, and dining hall-style venues. We made reservations before our trip since we had a large group and the tables booked up quickly. However, you could walk into restaurants or book upon embarking on the ship through the app.

There were premium items for an extra cost, such as lobster or wagyu, but they were unneeded because there was already so much food provided. Although alcohol was an extra cost, the prepaid option gave us extra dollars toward drinks, which was a good value.

The cabin was a needed respite

Before traveling on a cruise, I'd heard of windowless cabins and cramped rooms. Throughout the journey, I enjoyed spending time in my room, which I hadn't expected.

I was also concerned about seasickness in a confined space on the water. I came prepared with motion sickness remedies, but it never hit me.

The room was sizable and nicer than many hotel rooms I have stayed in on land. The cabin felt huge compared to the hotel I'd stayed at in Miami before embarking on the ship.

We had a bed, seating, and ample closet space, as well as a decent bathroom. I never felt cramped or like I was stumbling around my husband.

As somewhat of an introvert, the room was a nice respite. When I wanted time to recharge, the hammock on the balcony was a great place to read and gave me an escape, making the trip more relaxing.

The entertainment wasn't cheesy like I expected

I hadn't planned to partake in much of the entertainment because I assumed it would be cheesy.

The quality of the shows and activities defied my expectations. We enjoyed a puzzle contest one night, and another night, when we stumbled upon an entertainment show; the performance was impressive and well-produced with polished performers.

Virgin did a nice job of giving every traveler their own experience despite being on the same ship.

The boat's layout made it so we didn't hear noise from the louder late-night parties, and they didn't detract from our vacation. I liked being able to spend time with our friends on the cruise and also seek out our own experiences.

High-tech amenities meant the service was great

All the offerings were shared in an app, which we could easily access onboard from our phones. The well-thought-out amenities, such as using a wristband for drinks and not having to show a room card for dinner, made it so we didn't have to think about anything. We truly felt like we were on vacation.

The bartending staff was friendly, and the service was impressive. Plus, the layout of the boat was easy to navigate. We took advantage of the laundry service for a small fee, as it was reasonable and made our trip more convenient.

In addition, the boat offered other amenities, such as a gym, gaming areas, spa, and shopping boutiques. They even had a tattoo parlor onboard and a medical-grade spa offering botox. Even though we didn't end up using these additional services, it was still nice to know they were available.

We could have spent longer at the destinations

Ironically, the destinations were the most disappointing part of our experience. The cruise made a stop in Puerto Plata and Bimini. Since they were around six hours each, including disembarking and embarking, we didn't get to experience as much of the culture as we would have liked.

That said, we enjoyed a pre-booked waterfall excursion in the Dominican Republic, which we paid for separately. Bimini felt like an extension of the cruise because we stopped at a Virgin-owned beach club for the day. It was fun, but we wish we could have seen more of the island culture.

Even despite that, we felt the cruise was a good value. The quality of the food and the room alone made it worth the investment. Plus, the boat was a great way to travel with friends. In the future, we would cruise again, especially if we could have more time at each stop to improve the experience.

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• Israel's reported use of AI in its war against Hamas is highlighting many of the problems concerning future warfare.
• Inaccuracy and lack of meaningful human oversight could lead to errors and tragedy. 
• There are military benefits to AI, but the tools to keep it in check aren't coming fast enough. 

Artificial intelligence is playing a key and, by some accounts, highly disturbing role in Israel's war in Gaza.

Recent investigative reports suggest the Israeli military let an AI program take the lead on targeting thousands of Hamas operatives in the early days of the fighting and may have played a part in rash and imprecise kills, rampant destruction, and thousands of civilian casualties. The IDF flatly rejects this assertion.

The reporting offers a terrifying glimpse into where warfare could be headed, experts told Business Insider, and a clear example of how bad things can get if humans take a back seat to new technology like AI, especially in life-or-death matters.

"It's been the central argument when we've been talking about autonomous systems, AI, and lethality in war," Mick Ryan, a retired Australian major general and strategist focusing on evolutions in warfare, told BI. "The decision to kill a human is a very big one."

Earlier this month, a joint investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call revealed Israel's Defense Force had been using an AI program named "Lavender" to generate suspected Hamas targets on the Gaza Strip, citing interviews with six anonymous Israeli intelligence officers.

The report alleges the IDF heavily relied on Lavender and essentially treated its information on who to kill "as if it were a human decision," sources said. Once a Palestinian was linked to Hamas and their home was located, sources said, the IDF effectively rubber-stamped the machine decision, barely taking more than a few seconds to review it themselves.

The speed of Israel's targeting put little effort into trying to reduce the harm to civilians nearby, the joint investigation found.

Last fall, details of Israel's Gospel program came to light, revealing that the system took Israel's target generation ability from roughly 50 a year to more than 100 each day.

When asked about the report on Lavender, the IDF referred BI to a statement posted on X by IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. (S.) Nadav Shoshani, who wrote last week that "The IDF does not use AI systems that choose targets for attack. Any other claim shows lack of sufficient knowledge of IDF processes."

Shoshani characterized the system as a cross-checking database that "is designed to aid human analysis, not to replace it." But there are potential risks all the same.

Israel isn't the only country exploring the potential of AI in warfare, and this research is coupled with increasing focus on the use of unmanned systems, as the world is frequently seeing in Ukraine and elsewhere. In this space, anxieties over killer robots are no longer science fiction.

"Just as AI is becoming more commonplace in our work and personal lives, so too in our wars," Peter Singer, a future warfare expert at the New America think tank, told BI, explaining that "we are living through a new industrial revolution, and just like the last one with mechanization, our world is being transformed, both for better and for worse."

AI is developing faster than the tools to keep it in check

Experts said that Israel's reported use of Lavender raises a host of concerns that have long been at the heart of the debate on AI in future warfare.

Many countries, including the US, Russia, and China, have been prioritizing the implementation of AI programs into their militaries. The US' Project Maven, which has since 2017 made major strides to assist troops on-the-ground by sifting through overwhelming amounts of incoming data, is just one example.

The technology, however, has often developed at faster pace than governments can keep up.

According to Ryan, the general trend "is that technology and battlefield requirements are outstripping the consideration of the legal and ethical issues around the application of AI in warfare."

In other words, things are moving too quickly.

"There's just no way that current government and bureaucratic systems of policymaking around these things could keep up," Ryan said, adding that they may "never catch up."

Last November, many governments raised concerns at a United Nations conference that new laws were needed to govern the use of lethal autonomous programs, AI-driven machines involved in making decisions to kill human beings.

But some nations, particularly ones who are currently leading the way in developing and deploying these technologies, were reluctant to impose new restrictions. Namely, the US, Russia, and Israel all appeared particularly hesitant to support new international laws on the matter.

"Many militaries have said, 'Trust us, we'll be responsible with this technology,'" Paul Scharre, an autonomous weapons expert at the Center for New American Security, told BI. But many people are not likely to trust a lack of oversight, and the use of AI by some countries, such as Israel, doesn't give much confidence that militaries are always going to use the new technology responsibly.

A program such as Lavender, as it has been reported, doesn't sound like science fiction, Scharre said, and is very in line with how global militaries are aiming to use AI.

A military would be "going through this process of collecting information, analyzing it, making sense of it, and making the decisions about which targets to attack, whether they're people as part of some insurgent network or organization, or they could be military objectives like tanks or artillery pieces," he told BI.

The next step is moving all of that information into a targeting plan, linking it to specific weapons or platforms, and then actually acting on the plan.

It's time-consuming, and in Israel's case, there's likely been a desire to develop a lot of targets very quickly, Scharre said.

Experts have expressed concerns over the accuracy of such AI targeting programs. Israel's Lavender program reportedly pulls data from a variety of information channels, such as social media and phone usage, to determine targets.

In the +972 Magazine and Local Call report, sources say the program's 90% accuracy rate was deemed acceptable. The glaring issue there is the remaining 10%. That's a substantial number of errors given the scale of Israel's air war and the significant increase in available targets provided by AI.

And the AI is always learning, for better or for worse. With every use, these programs gain knowledge and experience that they then employ in future decision-making. With an accuracy rate of 90%, as the reporting indicates, Lavender's machine learning could be reinforcing both its correct and incorrect kills, Ryan told BI. "We just don't know," he said.

Letting AI do the decision-making in war

Future warfare could see AI working in tandem with humans to process vast amounts of data and suggest potential courses of action in the heat of battle. But there are several possibilities that could taint such a partnership.

The gathered data could be too much for humans to process or understand. If an AI program is processing massive amounts of information to make a list of possible targets, it could reach a point where humans are quickly overwhelmed and unable to meaningfully contribute to decision-making.

There's also the possibility of moving too quickly and making assumptions based on the data, which increases the likelihood that mistakes are made.

International Committee Red Cross Military and Armed Group Adviser Ruben Stewart and Legal Adviser Georgia Hinds wrote about such a problem back in October 2023.

"One touted military advantage of AI is the increase in tempo of decision-making it would give a user over their adversary. Increased tempo often creates additional risks to civilians, which is why techniques that reduce the tempo, such as 'tactical patience,' are employed to reduce civilian casualties," they said.

In the quest to move quickly, humans could take their hands off the wheel, trusting the AI with little oversight.

According to the +972 Magazine and Local Call report, AI-picked targets were only reviewed for about 20 seconds, typically just to ensure the potential kill was male, before a strike was authorized.

The recent reporting raises serious questions about to what extent a human being was "in the loop" during the decision-making process. According to Singer, it's also a potential "illustration of what is sometimes known as 'automation bias,'" which is a situation "where the human deludes themselves into thinking that because the machine provided the answer, it must be true."

"So while a human is 'in the loop,' they aren't doing the job that is assumed of them," Singer added.

Last October, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, made a joint call that militaries "must act now to preserve human control over the use of force" in combat.

"Human control must be retained in life and death decisions. The autonomous targeting of humans by machines is a moral line that we must not cross," they said. "Machines with the power and discretion to take lives without human involvement should be prohibited by international law."

But while there are risks, AI could have many military benefits, such as helping humans process a wide range of data and sources in order to allow them to make informed decisions, as well as survey a variety of options for how to handle situations.

A meaningful "human in the loop" cooperation could be useful, but at the end of the day, it comes down to the human holding up their end of such a relationship — in other words, retaining authority and control of the AI.

"For the entirety of human existence, we've been tool and machine users," Ryan, the retired major general, said. "We are the masters of machines, whether you're piloting aircraft, driving a ship or tank."

But with many of these new autonomous systems and algorithms, he said, militaries won't be using machines, but rather "partnering with them."

Many militaries aren't prepared for such a shift. As Ryan and Clint Hinote wrote in a War on the Rocks commentary earlier this year, "in the coming decade, military institutions may realize a situation where uncrewed systems outnumber humans."

At present, the tactics, training, and leadership models of military institutions are designed for military organizations that are primarily human, and those humans exercise close control of the machines," they wrote.

"Changing education and training to prepare humans for partnering with machines — not just using them — is a necessary but difficult cultural evolution," they said. But that remains a work in progress for many militaries.

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• The US expects Iran will carry out a number of strikes on Israel.
• President Joe Biden issued a warning to Iran, advising them against attacking.
• It comes after Israel killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp  officials in an airstrike in Syria.

The US expects Iran will carry out a number of strikes on Israel as tensions rise in the Middle East, a senior administration official and a source familiar with the intelligence said, per CNN.

One of the people said that US officials believe Iran could be readying as many as 100 cruise missiles for an attack, the report said. ABC News carried a similar report.

Both sources said Iran had been moving military assets, including drones and missiles, in preparation for a possible attack on the Jewish state.

It comes after Israel killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) officials in an airstrike earlier this month.

"There is a real risk that Iranian-backed groups will intensify their targeting of US forces and Israel in response to this latest attack, leading to heightened escalations in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and possibly Jordan," Haid Haid, a consulting fellow in the think tank Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa Programme said in a report.

On Friday, the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah fired 40 rockets into Israel from its Lebanon base, some of which were shot down by Israel's Iron Dome defenses, reports said.

President Joe Biden issued a simple but stark warning to Iran following the reports, saying: "Don't," while also warning that he expected an attack "sooner than later."

"We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel," he added. "We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed."

The US has responded to the latest threat with plans to dispatch its warships, including the aircraft carrier the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, a cruiser, and two destroyers, closer to Israel, reports said.

Tensions between Israel and Iran have ramped up since Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip, following the October 7 terrorist attacks, when Hamas militants killed an estimated 1,200 people in Israel.

The Israeli counteroffensive has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry.

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• Kamala Harris has become the face of the Biden's campaign attacks on Trump's abortion rights record.
• Harris tore into Trump during a Friday rally in the battleground state of Arizona.
• The former president has tried to pivot away from the topic.

Vice President Kamala Harris is making sure abortion rights stay at the forefront of the 2024 campaign.

Harris repeatedly tore into former President Donald Trump during a Friday evening campaign appearance in Arizona, arguing that he is solely responsible for the state Supreme Court upholding an 1864 law that would outlaw virtually all abortions.

"Donald Trump is the architect of this healthcare crisis, that is not a fact that he hides," Harris said at a rally in Tucson. "In fact, he brags about it."

The vice president has long been outspoken in her advocacy for reproductive rights. She is the first president or vice president to visit an abortion clinic, an appearance that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. Harris has also been holding a series of events since January focused on reproductive rights, though, unlike those past rallies, the Biden-Harris reelection campaign hosted Friday's event.

Unlike President Joe Biden, Harris doesn't seem to have the same compunction he does in talking about the issue. According to The New York Times, Harris even advocated for her appearance in Tucson, home to the University of Arizona, to focus on abortion rights instead of student debt before the state Supreme Court released its controversial 4-2 ruling.

Harris has consistently pushed her party on the issue. During the 2020 Democratic presidential run, then-Sen. Harris said states with a history of restricting abortion rights should be forced to get federal approval before enacting new laws. This system would have mirrored the preclearance requirements for voting laws under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. At the same time, Biden struggled before following the progressive push to end his decadeslong support for the Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortion.

Separately from Harris, the Biden campaign has released multiple ads focused explicitly on abortion. The campaign also announced that it will spend seven figures in an ad blitz focused on abortion rights in Arizona. In a new ad, Biden looks directly at the camera, vowing to "fight like hell" for millions of Arizona women who lost their reproductive freedom after the Dobbs decision.

Republicans, including Trump, were quick to condemn the state court's decision but are still grappling with the political reality of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The former president has repeatedly bragged about his role in appointing the three justices that provided the necessary margin for the high court to issue its landmark ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson.

Trump has unsuccessfully tried to pivot away from abortion.

Trump, of course, had no say in appointing any of the seven Arizona Supreme Court justices. All seven, including the one justice who recused himself from the case after his Facebook Post calling abortion "the greatest genocide known to man" resurfaced, were appointed by GOP governors. On Friday, before Harris' rally, Trump publicly pleaded for the Arizona legislature to repeal the 1864 law.

"The Supreme Court in Arizona went too far on their Abortion Ruling, enacting and approving an inappropriate Law from 1864," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "So now the Governor and the Arizona Legislature must use HEART, COMMON SENSE, and ACT IMMEDIATELY, to remedy what has happened."

Even before the Arizona ruling, the former president tried to wash his hands of the topic.

Trump said that the future of abortion rights should be determined at the state level either by legislation, at the ballot box, or a combination of both. His declaration left many questions unanswered, particularly given his shifting views.

Some political allies were also disappointed Trump no longer favored a nationwide abortion ban. Trump's White House supported legislation that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or the life of the mother. On Friday, speaking alongside Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump said that he no longer needed to support a nationwide abortion ban since Roe was reversed.

"We broke Roe v. Wade, and we did something that nobody thought was possible — we gave it back to the states and the states are working very brilliantly, in some cases conservative and in some cases not conservative, but they are working and it's working the way it's supposed to," Trump said.

Harris referenced Trump's comments during her speech and said Americans shouldn't be gaslit into thinking that the former president wouldn't support a ban.

"Here is what a second Trump term looks like — more bans, more suffering, and less freedom," she said. "Just like he did in Arizona, he basically wants to take America back to the 1800s. But we are not going to let that happen."

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• More than six months after Hamas' Oct. 7 massacre, Israel is still fighting the militants in Gaza.
• The IDF has managed to kill some of Hamas' top commanders, but it continues to hunt down others.
• These individuals are likely hiding underground, a top White House official said last month.

More than six months into its war in Gaza, Israel has little to show for its efforts. It has been unable to kill or capture the most senior members of Hamas' leadership, and its scorched-earth offensive has left a trail of death and destruction in its wake.

Israel's inability thus far to eliminate the top Hamas commanders it wants most is complicating ones of its stated war aims: crushing the militant group. Officials have said that the devastating war — triggered by Hamas' Oct. 7 massacre that killed some 1,200 people — will continue until the country achieves its goals, which include returning all the hostages, destroying Hamas, and demilitarizing the entirety of Gaza.

But securing these objectives in full is proving to be elusive for the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF. Fears are growing that many of the remaining hostages may already be dead, Israeli clearing operations throughout Gaza have not prevented Hamas from returning to areas that were once the sites of hard-fought and bloody battles, and there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus on a workable post-war governance plan.

Israel has claimed that it has eliminated a significant number of mid- to senior-level commanders of Hamas' military wing, known as the al-Qassam Brigades. In December, for instance, the IDF released a photo purporting to show multiple commanders it had killed.

A mid-March Israeli airstrike killed Marwan Issa, the deputy head of Hamas' military wing who had been hiding in an underground compound in central Gaza, according to the IDF.

Jake Sullivan, who serves as the White House national security advisor, identified Issa as Hamas' "number three" in Gaza and said that after his death last month that Israel had "killed thousands of Hamas fighters, including senior commanders."

The exact number of militants killed is unclear. Israel said in late-February that it had killed 12,000 members of Hamas' 30,000-strong pre-war force. Hamas, by contrast, claimed at the time that its death toll was only half of that figure.

As of this week, more than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, including 25,000 women and children, according to figures released by Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry. The death toll, which is cited by the United Nations, does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Israel has also managed to strike at Hamas' political wing, which operates in exile in Qatar.

An early January explosion in a Beirut suburb eliminated Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, which is often referred to as its politburo. He was the militant group's senior official in Lebanon, responsible for maintaining ties with Hezbollah, another Iran-backed proxy force like Hamas.

And more recently, on Wednesday, the IDF and Israel's Shin Bet security agency confirmed in a joint announcement that an airstrike in central Gaza had killed three sons of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas' political wing.

All three men were known to be Hamas military operatives, Israel said. Haniyeh responded to their deaths by stating that this incident would not change his demands to stop the fighting.

But several top Hamas military leaders, including those most wanted by Israel, remain at-large.

This includes figures such as Yahya Sinwar, the overall head of the organization in Gaza, his brother Mohammed, a leader in the al-Qassam Brigades, and Mohammed Deif, who is the commander of the military wing.

"The rest of the top leaders are in hiding, likely deep in the Hamas tunnel network," Sullivan said during a March White House briefing. "And justice will come for them too, and we are helping to ensure that."

Hamas' vast and sophisticated tunnel network underneath Gaza — where the militants have been able to hide and facilitate the movement of weapons, and from which they can launch surprise assaults — has proven to be a headache for Israeli forces.

Retired Maj. Gen. Charlie Herbert, a former officer in the British army, told Business Insider that Hamas leaders who are hiding below ground are able to maintain operational, personal, and communications security there.

Israel's inability to kill them is less of an intelligence failure, said Herbert, who has also served as the senior NATO advisor to Afghanistan's interior ministry, and more that the country has yet to link any intelligence success it does have with an effective kinetic strike targeting the senior leaders.

Israel has found "no real success" at getting Sinwar over the last six months, Herbert said.

What it needs to do instead, he argued, is pivot away from major combat operations toward a more targeted and methodical campaign that also reduces civilian casualties, allows displaced Palestinians to return to their homes, and boosts the flow of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave.

Herbert said the Israeli military should "retain freedom of maneuver into Gaza for their military forces as and when they require and conduct an intelligence-driven counter-terrorist strategy, whacking Hamas as and when you can do."

Indeed, on Thursday, the IDF announced it was beginning a "precise operation" in central Gaza, seemingly marking a new phase in its efforts to hunt down Hamas leaders. It was unclear if the move came in direct response to the killings of Haniyeh's sons the day prior.

"Overnight, the 162nd Division began a precise, intelligence-based operation to eliminate terrorist operatives and strike terrorist infrastructure in central Gaza," the IDF said in a statement shared to the Telegram messaging platform. What that may look like is a mystery though.

The IDF announcement came just days after the IDF withdrew its forces from the southern city of Khan Younis. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the move was to prepare for "future missions," including a planned offensive in Rafah, where scores of civilians are sheltering.

The potential Rafah assault has drawn concern and pushback from Western governments, including the Biden administration, amid rising international criticism of Israel's aggressive military campaign as the death toll continues to mount and the humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to worsen.

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