What to read to understand the war in Gaza

Plus: Inside the right-wing textbooks in schools across the U.S. |

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By Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer For TIME’s latest cover story, Editor-at-Large Karl Vick, our former Jerusalem bureau chief, explains what led up to the violence that started Israel’s new war and what’s different about it from past violence. “Some, groping for a reference point, thought not of 1973 or 1968, but 2001. It felt like 9/11,” he writes. For TIME.com, I looked back at Vick’s 1973 reference, the Yom Kippur war, which occurred exactly 50 years ago, for parallels and contrasts. I interviewed Meron Medzini, the press secretary for Israel’s then-Prime Minister Golda Meir, who talked about the “rage” Israelis are feeling at the massive casualties. And over at the TIME’s Ideas section, the President for the state of Israel Isaac Herzog breaks down what’s at stake, while foreign policy analyst Jon B. Alterman anticipates what comes next.

HISTORY ON TIME.COM What Cultural Genocide Looks Like for Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh By Christina Maranci 'If history is any indication, ethnic cleansing tends to be followed by all kinds of cultural destruction,' writes Christina Maslach. Read More » The History of Nazi Immigration to the U.S. Has Been Forgotten By Claire E. Aubin / Made by History The recent incident in the Canadian House of Commons is a reminder that the past is still very much alive—even if it is aging. Read More » The Right-Wing Textbooks Shaping What Many Americans Know About History By Adam Laats / Made by History Conservative curricula are being pushed into tax-funded history classrooms. Read More » The FBI Claims to Have Learned From Its Surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr.—But It Keeps Doing the Same Things By Lerone A. Martin and Jeanne Theoharis / Made by History The bureau claims to have learned a lesson from its treatment of the civil rights leader, but it still deploys similar tactics. Read More » American Schools Are Abandoning Books By Jonna Perrillo and Andrew Newman / Made by History Book bans aren't the only threat to literature in American classrooms. Read More »

FROM THE TIME VAULT This week in 1954: Marlon Brando BORIS CHALIAPIN The Oct. 11, 1954, cover of TIME “Brando's closest friends admit that he often needs a shave, and that regardless of the company he is in, he belches or scratches as the need arises. Although he now makes as much as $200,000 a picture, he is often without matching trousers and jacket; until very recently he preferred blue jeans for all social gatherings. The day he arrived in Hollywood, Marlon honored the occasion by dressing up in his only suit, but somehow failed to notice that the trousers had a hole in the knee and a slit in the seat, through which the tail of his shirt was showing. Shirts are a nuisance, anyway; when one gets dirty, he just rolls it up in a ball, stuffs it in a closet and buys another. At table, Marlon often drops his head to plate level and shovels it in, and if ketchup splatters on the tablecloth—let it. Once, so the story runs, he was found holding a piece of bread and dreamily buttering his sleeve.” Read More » This week in 1997: Buddhism and Brad Pitt DAVID APPLEBY The Oct. 13, 1997, cover of TIME “Before Seven Years in Tibet , Pitt didn't know much about the country's predominant religion…’Their idea of a civilization that rejects violence on principle--I mean, what?’ he ejaculates with Jackie Gleasonesque incredulity, feigning the shock of someone raised in a society, like ours, with a less diffident regard for force. ‘The Tibetans say, 'Don't look at this as our weakness but as our strength. If we bless our enemies, we become stronger.' They say, basically, 'Thank you for allowing me to become a stronger person by taking all the s___ you're giving me.' On the streets we'd look at someone like that as a wimp. Tibetans go beyond that. It's not fear. It's just, 'I'm sorry you feel that way [about me being a wimp]. I'm sorry you're spinning in that little mudhole.’” Read More » This week in 2010: Militias TY CACEK FOR TIME The Oct. 11, 2010, cover of TIME “Scores of armed antigovernment groups, some of them far more radical, have formed or been revived during the Obama years, according to law-enforcement agencies and outside watchdogs. A six-month TIME investigation reveals that recruiting, planning, training and explicit calls for a shooting war are on the rise, as are criminal investigations by the FBI and state authorities…Within a complex web of ideologies, most of today's armed radicals are linked by self-described Patriot beliefs, which emphasize resistance to tyranny by force of arms and reject the idea that elections can fix what ails the country. Among the most common convictions is that the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, is the Constitution's cornerstone, because only a well-armed populace can enforce its rights. Any form of gun regulation, therefore, is a sure sign of intent to crush other freedoms.” Read More »

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