Just three weeks into the deadliest war between Israel and Hamas, it already is clear that the bloodshed has flipped long-standing assumptions in Israel and the region upside down.

Israel's military and intelligence services were exposed as incompetent and ill-prepared. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decades of attempts to sideline the Palestinians and U.S. efforts to manage the conflict, rather than solve it, badly backfired.

"Stop the bombs and save lives!" the Palestinian ambassador pleaded at an emotional U.N. meeting Thursday on the war in Gaza. But Israel's envoy was adamant, declaring again, "We will not rest until Hamas is obliterated."

The war sparked by Gaza's Hamas rulers' surprise attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 played out in the vast hall of the 193-nation General Assembly, where Arab nations expected to adopt a resolution Friday calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza after the Security Council's four failed attempts to agree on any action.

More than two weeks after Hamas militants rampaged through a string of sleepy farming towns, many Israelis are furious at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, not just for failing to prevent the attack, but for failing to come to their aid afterward.

While the military is launching unrelenting airstrikes in Gaza that have killed thousands of Palestinians, and hundreds of thousands of Israeli troops are massing for a possible ground offensive, government infighting and lack of help for those in need have left traumatized survivors to mourn on their own and volunteers — many of whom spent the past year protesting the government — to take on recovery efforts.

A senior Hamas official has told The Associated Press that the Palestinian militant group had expected stronger intervention from Hezbollah in its war with Israel, in a rare public appeal to its allies in the region.

Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas' decision-making political bureau, said in an interview that "we need more" from allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, in light of an Israeli air campaign that Palestinian health officials say has killed more than 7,000 people, mostly civilians, in the besieged Gaza Strip.

U.S. fighter jets launched airstrikes early Friday on two locations in eastern Syria linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pentagon said, in retaliation for a slew of drone and missile attacks against U.S. bases and personnel in the region that began early last week.

The U.S. strikes reflect the Biden administration's determination to maintain a delicate balance. The U.S. wants to hit Iranian-backed groups suspected of targeting the U.S. as strongly as possible to deter future aggression, possibly fueled by Israel's war against Hamas, while also working to avoid inflaming the region and provoking a wider conflict.

Israeli forces backed by fighter jets and drones carried out a second ground raid into Gaza in as many days and struck targets on the outskirts of Gaza City, the military said Friday, as it prepares for a widely expected ground invasion of the Hamas-ruled territory.

U.S. warplanes meanwhile struck targets in eastern Syria that the Pentagon said were linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard after a string of attacks on U.S. forces by Iran-backed fighters, adding to the already high regional tensions fueled by the three-week-old Gaza war.

Muslim and Jewish civil rights groups say they've seen large increases in reports of harassment, bias and sometimes physical assaults against members of their communities since Oct. 7.

The Anti-Defamation League and the Center on American-Islamic Relations saw increases in reported instances, many involving violence or threats against protesters at rallies in support of Israel or in support of Palestinians over the last two weeks as war broke out between Israel and Hamas. Other attacks and harassment reported by the groups were directed at random Muslim or Jewish people in public.

A man shot and killed at least 16 people at a restaurant and a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday and then fled into the night, sparking a massive search by hundreds of officers while frightened residents stayed locked in their homes.

A police bulletin identified Robert Card, 40, as a person of interest in the attack that sent panicked bowlers scrambling behind pins when shots rang out around 7 p.m. Card was described as a firearms instructor believed to be in the Army Reserve and assigned to a training facility in Saco, Maine.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he will be held accountable for the shocking October 7 attack by Hamas militants, but that will only come after Israel’s war against the militant group.

In a nationally televised address Wednesday night, Netanyahu said he was busy plotting a ground invasion of Gaza, though he refused to say when that might happen. He also expressed sorrow over the attack, which allegedly killed more than 1,400 Israelis and saw over 200 others taken captive in Gaza.

The European Central Bank is ready to leave interest rates unchanged Thursday for the first time in over a year as the Israel-Hamas war spreads even more gloom over already downbeat prospects for Europe's economy.

It would be the bank's first meeting with no change after a torrid pace of 10 straight increases dating to July 2022 that pushed its key rate to a record-high 4%. The ECB would join the U.S. Federal Reserve, Bank of England and others in holding borrowing costs steady — albeit at the highest levels in years — as inflation has eased.