Thursday briefing

Can Israel Really Dismantle Hamas?

Skepticism is growing over one of Israel’s main goals: eliminating Hamas, the Islamist political and military organization that maintains control of the Gaza Strip. Critics such as President Emmanuel Macron of France are increasingly questioning whether the decision to destroy such a deeply entrenched organization was ever realistic.

Since Hamas first emerged in 1987, the group has survived repeated attempts to eliminate its leadership. Experts say the organization’s structure is designed to accommodate such unforeseen circumstances. Moreover, Israel’s devastating tactics in the Gaza war threaten to radicalize a generation of new recruits. The Israeli military estimates it has killed about 8,000 Hamas fighters so far out of a force of between 25,000 and 40,000.

The group’s top echelon, along with most Hamas fighters and remaining Israeli hostages, are believed to be hiding in deep tunnels. Although the Israeli military has said it has demolished at least 1,500 shafts, experts consider the underground infrastructure largely intact.

Quotable: Giora Eiland, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, said Hamas was quickly replacing its top commanders. “From a professional point of view, I have to recognize their resilience,” he said. “I cannot see any sign of a collapse in Hamas’s military capabilities, nor of their political strength to continue running Gaza.”

Other news from the war:

Ukraine’s stolen children

From the beginning of the invasion, Russian authorities deliberately removed children from Ukraine. Some were injured or orphaned in bombings of Ukrainian cities and towns. Some became homeless after their parents were arrested. And some have returned to tell their stories.

Ukraine says it has verified the names of more than 19,000 children transferred to Russia or Russian-controlled territory. In recent months, 387 children have been traced by relatives and returned home, partly with the help of the Save Ukraine charity and SOS Children’s Villages Ukraine.

Their accounts have helped officials and researchers paint a picture of a Russian effort to remove children from Ukraine — often under the pretext of rescuing them from the war zone — to turn them against their homeland and into loyal Russian subjects.

Foreign diplomacy: Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Moscow yesterday on a trip aimed at strengthening economic and defense ties.

A multi-billion dollar copyright case

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, opening a new front in the legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies. The newspaper is the first major U.S. media organization to sue the companies over copyright issues related to its written works.

The lawsuit, which does not include an exact monetary claim, says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’ uniquely valuable works.” The lawsuit also calls on the companies to destroy training data and chatbot models that use copyrighted material from The Times.

Details: The lawsuit alleges that millions of Times articles were used to train automated chatbots, which now compete with the news channel. The complaint cites several examples in which a chatbot provided users with near-verbatim excerpts from Times articles that would otherwise require a paid subscription to view.

THE LAST NEWS

Around the world

At a time when museums around the world are struggling to attract new audiences, the small Crab Museum in Margate, England, uses humor to entice visitors.

An example: a very silly diorama shows a crab holding a pint of beer and another holding a cricket bat. (A sign explained that the species lives in different parts of the world, so “it would be misleading to depict them in a realistic natural environment.”)

Lives lived

Jacques Delors, a passionate French politician who became the main architect of a more united Europe, has died at the age of 98.

SPORTS NEWS

Brand Paris Saint Germain: How Michael Jordan helped make it cool.

Jose Mourinho: The future or one Roman relic?

A Basque ‘philosophy’: Why some are calling for change Athletic Bilbao.

ARTS AND IDEAS

A place to express oneself

Transgender people have turned to video games, some with robust character creators, as places where they can safely explore their gender identity, given the array of tools to change a character’s appearance and a virtual world that readily accepts these changes.

Nearly a decade before she came out as a transgender woman, Anna Anthropy, now a professor of game design, wore a dress in the world of Animal Crossing on the Nintendo GameCube. She left virtual breadcrumbs for her family about information she was unwilling to share as a teenager.

“We were all playing in the same city and I had chosen a female character,” she said. “It wasn’t something we talked about, but it was my way of seeing a version of my family where I was the right gender.”

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That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow. – Natasha

You can reach Natasha and the team at briefing@nytimes.com.