A microcosm of the current Middle East flare-up played out at a bus station in southern Israel on Sunday night. A Palestinian attacker stabbed and shot several Israelis. Meanwhile, at the other end of the bus station, a man was shot by police and then attacked by bystanders. “In graphic video from the scene, the Eritrean asylum seeker can be seen lying on the ground in a pool of blood, while a mob around him gathers, throwing a bench at him and kicking him.” It turned out the man was entirely un-connected to the attack.

+ NYT Interactive: What started as a popular uprising against the Syrian government four years ago has become a proto-world war with nearly a dozen countries embroiled in two overlapping conflicts.

+ In The New Yorker, Nicholas Schmidle tracks one refugee’s epic escape from Syria: Ten Borders.