Colin Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state, died yesterday at the age of eighty-four. Raised in the South Bronx, as a young man he worked at a toy store owned by a Russian Jew—an immigrant like Powell’s own parents. In an interview with Andrew Falzon, Powell talks about the experience. (Video, 2 minutes.)

Founded in 2004 by IDF veterans, Breaking the Silence aims to expose the supposed wrongdoings of the Israeli military in the West Bank. In her recent Hebrew-language book Who Do You Think You Are?, Yuli Novak, who served as the group’s director until 2017, reflects on the internal turmoil she has experienced in the ensuing years and explains how she came to reject Zionism altogether. Einat Wilf finds the book cliché-ridden and solipsistic, while the author comes across as a “petulant child.” Moreover, writes Wilf, Novak’s argument rests on false premises: