World roundup: August 26 2024

Stories from Israel-Palestine, Libya, Ukraine, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

August 26, 1071: A Seljuk army inflicts a crushing defeat on Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV near the city of Manzikert. Arguably one of the most decisive battles in history, Manzikert and the imperial political chaos that followed allowed the Seljuks to pierce the Byzantine Empire’s Anatolian heartland. Although it survived (more or less) for nearly another 400 years, the empire never fully recovered. Manzikert is also important as the seminal event leading to the formation of the Crusading movement.

August 26, 1922: The Turkish army begins what’s known as its “Great Offensive,” the final push to oust an occupying Greek army from Anatolia. The offensive was successful and brought the 1919-1922 Greco-Turkish War, itself a theater of the larger Turkish War of Independence, to a victorious (from Turkey’s perspective) conclusion.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Israeli military (IDF) issued new evacuation orders for parts of the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah late Sunday, further compressing the vast majority of Gaza’s remaining population. Its evacuations in that city have displaced some 250,000 people thus far according to local officials. Deir al-Balah is the only city in Gaza that hasn’t yet been subject to a full blown IDF offensive—though I suppose a cynic might suggest that what it’s doing now amounts (or will amount, when it’s over) to a full blown offensive, albeit without having been labeled as such. This would allow an intentionally credulous Western media and Biden administration (which still won’t acknowledge that the IDF assaulted Rafah) to pretend that the Israelis are still maintaining a small portion of Gaza as a “safe zone” for civilians. But you’d have to be a real cynic to think such a thing.