Naddaf writes, “In the lead-up to the vote, streets have been festooned with giant billboards and posters of candidates with improbable promises of change. It’s a jarring sign of the money being spent on campaigns as the currency continues to slide and inflation, poverty and hunger grow . . . ‘If they are to be elected again, I would find it a direct insult to all of the country and all of the victims of the blast, to every normal human being left in this country,’ said Paul Naggar, the father of one of the youngest victims of the blast, 3-year-old Alexandra. Naggar, director of the newly formed political advocacy group Kulluna Irada, said the election was a historic opportunity but expressed frustration at the opposition’s failure to unite.”

Üngör and Shahhoud write, “So far, much of the attention in public debates has gone to the clashes during the war or to the regime’s merciless bombardments and airstrikes on opposition-held territories. But the neighborhoods under regime control, just on the other side of the front lines, have been comparatively neglected. The Tadamon massacre videos, our interviews with perpetrators and survivor testimony demonstrate that there was a full-blown, murderous cleansing operation unfolding. As we deepened our research, we realized that this massacre was a snapshot in a much wider policy of destruction and extermination that the regime enacted in the southern suburbs. The extent of this genocidal microcosm in this area went far beyond this one videotaped massacre and includes at least four forms of violence: systematic mass killings, imprisonment, sexual violence and economic exploitation.”