JERUSALEM — At the start of its devastating offensive on the Gaza Strip, Israel set an ambitious goal: destroy Hamas. At the time, the Biden administration committed to the objective, giving Israel considerable stocks of weaponry and voicing its support.

Nearly eight months into the war, however, cracks have emerged between the close allies over what defeating Hamas actually looks like. Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden said Hamas was no longer capable of launching an attack on Israel like the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war and that it was time for the fighting to end. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right ministers disagree.

Where the U.S. seeks a quick end to the fighting, Israel’s leadership appears determined to push onward.

Here is how the leaders define the destruction of Hamas.

BIDEN: NO ABILITY TO POSE A THREAT

Biden on Friday said it was time to end the Israel-Hamas war, signaling that the objective of destroying Hamas had already been met because the terrorist group was “no longer capable” of carrying out a large-scale attack on Israel like the one on Oct. 7.

That day, Hamas fighters astonished Israel with a large-scale assault, killing some 1,200 people and dragging about 250 hostages back to Gaza as rocket fire targeted Israeli cities and towns. Hamas has been deemed a terrorist group by the U.S., Canada, and EU.

In the nearly eight months since then, Israel says its air and ground offensive has significantly depleted Hamas’ military capabilities. It claims to have killed 15,000 fighters, half of Hamas’ fighting force, and wounded thousands of others. It also says it has destroyed a significant portion of Gaza’s labyrinthine tunnel network, command and control centers and rocket launchers.

Biden appeared Friday to believe this was enough to satisfy Israel’s objective. He urged Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement to release about 85 remaining hostages, along with the bodies of around 40 more, for an extended cease-fire.

NETANYAHU: ELIMINATE REMAINING MILITARY AND GOVERNING ABILITY

In response to Biden’s suggestion that Hamas was significantly depleted, Netanyahu said Israel would not agree to a permanent cease-fire until “the destruction of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.”

The Israeli army says the eradication of Hamas is still incomplete, with battalions of fighters remaining in the southernmost city of Rafah and fighting still raging in Gaza’s north. Hamas has continued to launch rockets into Israel, although with far lower intensity than in the first months of war. The extent of the group’s governance across the strip remains unclear, though no alternative has emerged.

Still, Netanyahu admits it may be impossible to fully stamp out the ideology of Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007, a year after winning legislative elections against the rival Fatah party. Hamas has managed to survive despite a 16-year blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt, and four previous wars against Israel.

“Hamas has to be eliminated, not as an idea,” Netanyahu said in late March. “Nazism was not destroyed as an idea in World World II, but Nazis don’t govern Germany.”

ISRAEL’S FAR RIGHT: ERADICATE HAMAS AND RESETTLE GAZA

The far-right firebrands within Israel’s ultranationalist government have staunchly rejected Biden’s cease-fire proposal, saying Israel must continue its war in Gaza until Hamas is completely stamped out.

Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have both threatened to leave Netanyahu’s government if he endorsed Biden’s proposal. That would cause the coalition to collapse.

Smotrich said Monday that agreeing to a cease-fire would amount to a humiliation of Israel and a surrender. Increased military pressure, he said, is “the only language understood in the Middle East.”

Ben-Gvir has called for the “voluntary” emigration of Palestinians from Gaza and for a return of Israeli settlements. Israel unilaterally pulled out of more than 20 Jewish settlements in Gaza in 2005, ending a 38-year presence.

Speaking at a resettlement conference in May, Ben-Gvir said that the only way to make sure “the problem won’t come back” was to “return to Gaza now.”

“Return home!,” he chanted, “Return to our holy land!”

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Based on Glenn Stout’s nonfiction account of the same title, “Young Woman and the Sea” gets by on the careful engineering of clichés, Daisy Ridley and a really good piece of irresistibly rousing history.

In 1926, 20-year-old Gertrude Ederle, raised in a German immigrant household in New York City, swam the English Channel in 14 hours and 31 minutes. She bested the previous record-holder, a male, by two hours and became the first female athlete to make the crossing.

Two million people turned out for her ticker-tape parade. President Calvin Coolidge called her “America’s best girl.” After decades and centuries of patriarchal whining about women, swimming and the galling impropriety of the words “women” and “swimming” in close proximity, Ederle’s feat changed the course of athletics.

The movie tidies things up for its tour of Ederle’s life, focused by screenwriter Jeff Nathanson (“Catch Me If You Can,” the forthcoming “Lion King” prequel “Mufasa”) on 15 or so of the subject’s first 20 years. Trudy, as Gertrude was called by some, initially was not the most talented swimmer in the family; her older sister, Meg, was. That shifted soon enough; by the early 1920s, and Trudy’s late teens, she was the most famous female athlete in America, winning gold and bronze medals in the 1924 Paris Olympics. An initial go at the Channel crossing proved unsuccessful, and (some say) actively sabotaged by Ederle’s coach, Jabez Wolffe, who’d himself attempted the crossing 22 times to no avail.

“Young Woman and the Sea” plays around with various degrees of truth and fiction, because it’s not a documentary and, you know, welcome to the concept of movies based on true stories. None of them, not a one, tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It’s not their job. In the film, Ederle’s Olympic triumphs (she won gold and bronze medals) become invisible, rewritten instead as a general part of a general failure and a huge setback for women’s sports. In the film, her second, successful Channel attempt comes mere hours after the first, not a year later.

These things don’t necessarily matter (to me, at least) when a movie’s working as drama. This happens just often enough — and by the precision-tooled setback/triumph/setback/triumph pacing of the climax, just rousingly enough — to take care of business.

Daisy Ridley as Trudy Ederle in “Young Woman and the Sea,” about the first woman to swim the English Channel. (Elena Nenkova / Disney Enterprises)

Throughout, director Joachim Ronning, next in line for the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, manages a fairly pleasing blend of practical 1920s-era recreations, digital effects (plentiful but rarely completely fraudulent-looking) and shamelessly effective melodrama. Every sexist, misogynist resistance point to Ederle’s mission, feels not unlikely (it wasn’t; it was assuredly omnipresent a century ago) but boiled down to reductive, pencil-sketched character traits. Man A is a good man because treats Trudy as an equal, with respect; Men B, C, D, E and F-Z are not good men because they snigger and sneer at her, and all women.

And is too much to have the sniveling Scots swim coach (Christopher Eccleston) actually heave a radio through the nearest window pane at a key moment? Maybe, but who cares? The preview screening crowd was well and truly into the swim of things by that point. While never getting the material she needs to match her skills, Ridley creates a heroine both storybook-vibrant and human-scaled.

It’s not the creative license part of sports biopics that bugs me. It’s the screenwriters’ avoidance of how people actually talked, and behaved, in the time and place of the storyline. In this instance we have a German immigrant family, with good actors (led by Jeanette Hain and Kim Bodnia as Gertud and Henry Ederle) at the helm, yet there’s no attempt at even mentioning the anti-German sentiment of the mid- and post-World War I era. Sometimes it’s not what’s in a movie that weakens it, but what isn’t.

Yet this is sheer irrelevance by the end. Trudy Ederle’s paradoxically exhilarating ordeal amid the choppy waters, threatening skies, jellyfish and sheer physical punishment of the Channel was made for the screen. Not even the most generic film score in recent memory can keep “Young Woman and the Sea,” its title pulling a real-life variation from Hemingway’s old man and his sea, from reaching its destination.

“Young Woman and the Sea” — 2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG (for thematic elements, some language and partial nudity)

Running time: 2:08

How to watch: Premieres in theaters May 31

Phillips is a Tribune critic.

By Chanelle Bessette | NerdWallet

Combining finances with a partner can happen at any stage of your relationship, even if you’ve been married to your partner for a long time. It can be a great opportunity for a couple to get on the same page about what they want their financial future to look like, especially when it comes to big considerations such as child care, homeownership and retirement.

An academic study published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2023 found that couples with joint bank accounts experience less financial conflict and greater harmony within their relationships. The study results indicated that couples who merged their finances had a strong sense of financial partnership. In contrast, couples with separate bank accounts tended to operate in a more “tit for tat” financial exchange.

If you and your partner feel like it’s time to combine your finances, here’s how you can work toward merging your money.

Taking the plunge on merging finances with your partner

Perhaps you’ve kept your finances separate out of convenience, but now you’re getting tired of making online transfers to your partner for every shared expense. Or maybe you’ve got a considerable expense coming up and you want to streamline your accounts.

Jen Mayer, an accredited financial counselor and founder of the Brooklyn, New York-based firm Fully Funded, often works with couples who are deciding whether to combine their finances after a long time together. The first thing she likes to do is retrace the couple’s steps.

“When helping these couples, we usually want to know why their finances weren’t merged originally,” Mayer says. “There may be some beliefs about money from someone’s childhood — like maybe their parents had a bad marriage with a lot of conflict around money — that led them to want to keep their finances separate. We have to work out those beliefs first.”

Once a couple is aware of potential hang-ups around money, they can communicate more about their money management, goals and expectations as they begin the merging process. They might find that shared bank accounts can make their lives easier, but they also might choose to partially merge their accounts and keep separate accounts as well so each partner can have independent spending money.

Ultimately, if you’re married, Mayer says, all of your money is in the same pot and belongs to both people. A couple just has to decide how they will manage it.

How to merge finances long after marriage

Track spending habits and consider making a budget. For some, the act of tracking income and expenses can bring up uncomfortable feelings.

“If someone hasn’t been tracking their spending, they might not want to know where their money is going,” Mayer says. “But that information is data, and knowledge is power. If you want to change things, you have to be able to make informed decisions with that data.”

Once you have details about your income versus expenses, you and your partner can decide how much you want to spend on groceries, dining out, clothes and more. You also might make bigger decisions, such as moving into a home with lower rent or buying a car with a monthly payment that you can more easily afford.

Discuss how you’ll split shared expenses. Couples rarely have equal incomes, but when you’re married, your household expenses become a shared responsibility. To avoid resentment, couples should discuss an equitable arrangement for how expenses will be paid and who is responsible for which financial tasks in the household. For example, if one partner makes twice as much money as the other, perhaps they’ll contribute double to household expenses.

Open a joint account or add your partner to an existing account. If you don’t have a shared checking or savings account, you can shop around for a new account or see if your bank will allow you to add a co-owner to an existing account. Keep in mind that co-owners each have full ownership of the account and can withdraw as much money as they see fit. You may want to set spending limits with each other so you’ll both be informed about big purchases and avoid potential overdrafts. For a shared savings account, you’ll want to look for a high-yield account that helps you earn as much interest as possible on your money.

As you navigate the world of shared finances, remember that a strong financial partnership starts with a commitment to honest communication, teamwork and shared goals. These values can help you maintain a solid foundation in your marriage, too.

Chanelle Bessette writes for NerdWallet. Email: cbessette@nerdwallet.com.

The article Merging Finances Long After Marriage? Here’s How to Start originally appeared on NerdWallet.

Growing up in my household, summer was synonymous with pasta salad.

At every backyard barbecue, birthday or casual lunch, my grandma’s version is requested. And every friend that gives it a try begs for the recipe.

Tri-color rotini pasta makes a bright base for a bounty of Italian toppings, (everything but the kitchen sink) like black and green olives, mozzarella, artichokes and pepperoni. The best part is seeing what ingredients picky people leave behind on their plates. My brother isn’t a fan of celery, while I usually leave the black olives behind. But each component is crucial to the formula.

A couple of years ago, we made a cookbook featuring all of our grandmother’s recipes, and the most worn-out page is already the coveted pasta salad recipe.

We pretty much eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and if one family member makes it for themselves, the rest come flocking with Tupperware in hand. I don’t remember a life without Anita Schneider’s pasta salad, and I don’t want to. So, if you want to be the MVP of your next summer party, test out the recipe below:

Anita Schneider’s Pasta Salad:

This recipe takes 40 minutes of prep time and 20 minutes to cook. Serves 8.

Ingredients

1 1-lb package of Tri-color Rotini Pasta (Pasta LaBella)

1 can sliced black olives (3.8 oz)

1 jar sliced green olives (10 oz)

1 can quartered artichokes

1 carton of grape tomatoes (halved)

Small packaged sliced Pepperoni (mini if you can find)

8 oz package of mozzarella cheese

Chopped celery (1 or 2 stalks)

Black pepper to taste

1 bottle Creamy Italian salad dressing (Kraft)

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Steps

Cook pasta according to directions on package. Drain and briefly rinse with cold water and drain well. Stir to cool.

If full size, cut pepperoni slices in half. Cut cheese in approximately 1/2-inch cubes. Drain olives and artichokes. Larger pieces of artichoke can be cut.

Reserve ingredients (not celery) for topping. Reserve 1/2 package of cheese for the top.

Mix all except salad dressing. Add salad dressing to moisten all ingredients. Can refrigerate at this time.

Before serving, add more dressing, if needed, and place in serving bowl.

Suggestions for “dressing” top of salad with reserved ingredients. Place middle of hard-cooked egg in center or use cherry tomato. Arrange 4 or 5 artichoke quarters around center. Cut approximately 1/4 inch or less slices of mozzarella cheese. Slice diagonally to form triangles. Arrange around artichokes (points toward artichokes). Place pepperoni halves around the edges of the bowl for a scallop effect. Use olives wherever.

Enjoy!

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