Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, October 29, 2023

"The Rock" on top of Bernal Hill overlooking downtown San Francisco re-painted October 26, 2023, after pro-Israeli Zionist's destroyed it. 

As of October 29, 2023, the total number of Palestinians killed by Israel is now over 8,005 (at least 3,342 of them children—with more than 18,482 Palestinians injured) vs. 1,400 Israelis killed by Hamas (30 of them children) and 200 abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE!

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA  PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!

END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!

FOR A DEMOCRATIC, SECULAR PALESTINE!

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

  *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Viva Fidel!

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

  *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

PLEASE SIGN AND FORWARD WIDELY!

 

To endorse the following statement as a trade unionist, please click here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd2tpd2c62Sh5YEVDOr2vmGWTuQArt-6OPQMDwd2wUnfNi_rQ/viewform

 

To endorse as other, please click here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdzWaP1U_KOHlH-ou1R3OD8zsuI5BWW1b9H4gtPoFK_lIQB3g/viewform

 

The list of signers will be updated periodically

Contact: info@laborforpalestine.net

Website: laborforpalestine.net

 

Stand With Palestinian Workers: 

Cease the Genocide Now—Stop Arming Israel!

Labor for Palestine

 

“We need you to take immediate action—wherever you are in the world—to prevent the arming of the Israeli state and the companies involved in the infrastructure of the blockade.” An Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel (October 16, 2023)

 

The undersigned U.S. workers, trade unionists, and anti-apartheid activists join labor around the world in condemning the Israeli siege on Gaza that has killed or maimed thousands of Palestinians—many of them children—and stand with Palestinians’ “right to exist, resist, return, and self-determination.”

 

The latest Israeli attacks reflect more than a century of ongoing Zionist settler-colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, racism, genocide, and apartheid—including Israel’s establishment through the uprooting and displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1947-1948 Nakba. Indeed, eighty percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza are refugees from other parts of historic Palestine.

 

Israel’s crimes are only possible because of more than $3.8 billion a year (or $10+ million per day) in bipartisan US military aid that gives Israel the guns, bullets, tanks, ships, jet fighters, missiles, helicopters, white phosphorus and other weapons to kill and maim the Palestinian people. This is the same system of racist state violence that, through shared surveillance technology and police exchange programs, brutalizes BIPOC and working class people in the United States and around the world.

 

In response, we demand an immediate end to the genocide, and embrace the recent Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel:

 

1.     To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel. To refuse to transport weapons to Israel. 

 

2.     To pass motions in their trade union to this effect. 

 

3.     To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution. 

 

4.     Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the U.S., funding to it.

 

We further reaffirm the call on labor bodies to respect previous Palestinian trade union appeals for solidarity by adopting this statement, and/or the model resolution below to divest from Israel Bonds, sever all ties with the Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut, and its US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee, and respect the Palestinian picket line for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). 

 

Initial Signers on behalf of Labor for Palestine

(organizational affiliations listed for identification only)

Suzanne Adely, Labor for Palestine, US Palestinian Community Network, Arab Workers Resource Center; Food Chain Workers Alliance (staff); President, National Lawyers Guild; Monadel Herzallah, Arab American Union Members Council; Ruth Jennison, Department Rep., Massachusetts Society of Professors, MTA, NEA; Co-Chair, Labor Standing Committee River Valley DSA; Delegate to Western Mass Area Labor Federation; Lara Kiswani, Executive Director, Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC); Block the Boat; Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325; Jews for Palestinian Right of Return; Corinna Mullin, PSC-CUNY International Committee; CUNY for Palestine; Clarence Thomas, Co-Chair, Million Worker March; Executive Board, ILWU Local 10 (retired.)

 

                                   *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

  *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Join the national march in solidarity with Palestine!

 

Now is the time to stand with the besieged people of Palestine! Gaza is being bombed by the hour. Its people are denied food, water, and electricity by Israel. Tens of thousands more people are likely to die. We must ACT! People are in the streets every day in their local cities and towns. Now we must UNITE! Join the tens-of-thousands people, from every corner of the United States, who are converging for a truly massive National March on Washington D.C. on Saturday, November 4.

 

Today, the Israeli military deliberately bombed a hospital where thousands of people had taken refuge. The death toll is staggering, and the Biden administration has announced that it is preparing 2,000 troops to support Israel after having already deployed an aircraft carrier battle group and war planes.

 

Israel, with the full backing of the U.S. government, is carrying out an unprecedented massacre in Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians are being killed with bombs, bullets and missiles paid for by U.S. tax dollars. This is the latest bloody chapter in the colonial project of Israel, founded with the objective of dispossessing Palestinians from their land.

 

Join us in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, November 4 at 1pm to demand: End the Siege of Gaza! End all U.S. aid to Israel! Free Palestine!

 

Initial co-sponsoring organizations:

 

Palestinian Youth Movement

ANSWER Coalition

American Muslim Association

The People’s Forum

National Students for Justice in Palestine

Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition

Party for Socialism and Liberation

U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)

U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR)

Maryland2Palestine

 

Endorse the march here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdIoioEdHTwb1d8Qx9ZbH2a-gsh3aDa3hWSiSMPsAR0scgIfw/viewform?pli=1

 

Buses and transportation centers are being organized in cities and towns across the country. Check back here for updated information about transportation options.

 

Please make an urgently needed donation to support solidarity work with Palestine in this pivotal moment:

https://www.answercoalition.org/donate?utm_campaign=palestine_11_4_national_demo_a&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

  *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Join us for an exciting Cuba solidarity event coming up on Sunday, November 12th, 4 pm at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley. Liz Oliva Fernández, a Cuban journalist and filmmaker with the Belly of the Beast media organization, is coming to the Bay Area as part of a national tour. She will be showing two new short documentary films exposing what's behind Biden's Cuba policy. This is an important chance for the Bay Area community to learn about current U.S. policy and show support for Cuba. 

Cuba has been outspoken about its solidarity with Palestine/Gaza during the current crisis.

Liz Oliva Fernández

Liz Oliva Fernández is a 29-year old journalist and on-camera television presenter from Havana, Cuba.  She is the award-winning presenter of the acclaimed documentary series The War on Cuba,  produced by Belly of the Beast and executive-produced by Oliver Stone and Danny Glover.  In addition to her journalism and filmmaking, Fernández is a dedicated anti-racist and feminist activist who co-founded Chicas Poderosas Cuba (Powerful Cuban Girls), an initiative that promotes change by inspiring female leadership and gender equality in Cuban society. 

Liz writes: “As a Cuban Black woman, I feel that the reality in which I grew up and still live is reflected in the stories we have told at Belly of the Beast. We challenge clichés – positive and negative – about Cuba and its people. And we are taking on issues that have been ignored or misrepresented by major media outlets both in Cuba and outside.”

Sponsored by Bay Area Cuba Solidarity Network

Venceremos Brigade, Bay Area and 

Richmond, CA - Regla, Cuba Friendship Committee

More info: bayareacubasolidarity@gmail.com

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

  *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Jewish Doctor Speaks Out on Israel and Palestine

Dr. Gabor Maté, Hungarian-Canadian physician and author describes his own life experience and expresses his view on the situation in Israel and Palestine.

“I’m personally a Holocaust survivor as an infant, I barely survived. My grandparents were killed in Auschwitz and most of my extended family were killed. I became a Zionist; this dream of the Jewish people resurrected in their historical homeland and the barbed wire of Auschwitz being replaced by the boundaries of a Jewish state with a powerful army…and then I found out that it wasn’t exactly like that, that in order to make this Jewish dream a reality we had to visit a nightmare on the local population.

“There’s no way you could have ever created a Jewish state without oppressing and expelling the local population. Jewish Israeli historians have shown without a doubt that the expulsion of Palestinians was persistent, pervasive, cruel, murderous and with deliberate intent—that’s what’s called the ‘Nakba’ in Arabic; the ‘disaster’ or the ‘catastrophe.’ There’s a law that you cannot deny the Holocaust, but in Israel you’re not allowed to mention the Nakba, even though it’s at the very basis of the foundation of Israel.

“I visited the Occupied Territories (West Bank) during the first intifada. I cried every day for two weeks at what I saw; the brutality of the occupation, the petty harassment, the murderousness of it, the cutting down of Palestinian olive groves, the denial of water rights, the humiliations...and this went on, and now it’s much worse than it was then.

“It’s the longest ethnic cleansing operation in the 20th and 21st century. I could land in Tel Aviv tomorrow and demand citizenship but my Palestinian friend in Vancouver, who was born in Jerusalem, can’t even visit!

“So, then you have these miserable people packed into this, horrible…people call it an ‘outdoor prison,’ which is what it is. You don’t have to support Hamas policies to stand up for Palestinian rights, that’s a complete falsity. You think the worst thing you can say about Hamas, multiply it by a thousand times, and it still will not meet the Israeli repression and killing and dispossession of Palestinians.

“And ‘anybody who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite’ is simply an egregious attempt to intimidate good non-Jews who are willing to stand up for what is true.”

—Independent Catholic News, October 16, 2023

https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/48251

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

  *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

TERRORISM IN THE EYES OF THE IMPERIAL BEHOLDER - a poem

 

the French word

for rabies

is

la rage -

rage or outrage

 

and 

the French have a saying -

a man who wants to get rid of his dog

accuses it of spreading rabies

 

the people of Gaza

treated as inhuman animals

worse than dogs

are charged

with terrorism

 

come to think of it

what an honor !

 

world war two's resistance

against nazi extermination

was designated

as terrorism

by the Axis allies

 

what an honor !

 

Mandela

was monitored

as a terrorist

by the CIA

 

What an honor !

 

Tortuguita

peacefully meditating

near Israeli-funded cop city

was executed

in cold blood

on suspicion

of domestic terrorism 

 

What an honor !

 

in the spirit of Mandela

in the spirit of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

in the spirit of Tortuguita

in the spirit of Attica

may the anti colonial outrage

of the People of Palestine

contaminate us all -

the only epidemic

worth dying for

 

 (c) Julia Wright. October 17 2023. All Rights Reserved To The family of Wadea Al- Fayoume.

 *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

       *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

 

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

  *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Ruchell Cinque Magee Joins the Ancestors 

                                                         1939-2023

There will be memorial services for Ruchell Cinque Magee

 

October 31, 2023, at 2:30 P.M.

Forest Lawn

21300 via Verde St

Covina, CA 91724

 

Ruchell Cinque Magee joined the ancestors October 17, 2023, after recently being released after 67 years of being caged!

 

Ruchell Magee was 84 years old and spent most of his life behind bars. Throughout his sixty-seven years of unjust captivity, Ruchell was one of the first and most consistent prisoners linking mass incarceration and the U.S. prison system to slavery. Ruchell Magee took the name Cinque from the enslaved African Sengbe Pieh who led an 1839 rebellion to commandeer the slave ship La Amistad, arguing that Africans have the right to resist “unlawful” slavery. Ruchell maintained that Black people in the US have the right to resist this new form of slavery which is part of the colonial control of Black people in this country:

 

“Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It’s the same but with a new name.”

 

“My fight is to expose the entire system, judicial and prison system, a system of slavery…This will cause benefit not just to myself but to all those who at this time are being criminally oppressed or enslaved by this system.”

 

“You have to deal on your own tactics. You have a right to take up arms to oppose any usurped government, particularly the type of corruption that we have today.” – Ruchell Magee

 

Ruchell’s life commitment, political stance and writings point to the need for a prison abolitionist movement to seriously address the historical legacy of slavery, and slave rebellions in order to truly be in solidarity with the millions of people incarcerated in the US. 

 

May Ruchell Cinque Magee rest in power!

 

Ruchell Cinque Magee joined the ancestors last night after recently being released after 67 years of being caged!

 

Ruchell Magee was 84 years old and spent most of his life behind bars. Throughout his sixty-seven years of unjust captivity, Ruchell was one of the first and most consistent prisoners linking mass incarceration and the U.S. prison system to slavery. Ruchell Magee took the name Cinque from the enslaved African Sengbe Pieh who led an 1839 rebellion to commandeer the slave ship La Amistad, arguing that Africans have the right to resist “unlawful” slavery. Ruchell maintained that Black people in the US have the right to resist this new form of slavery which is part of the colonial control of Black people in this country:

 

“Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It’s the same but with a new name.”

 

“My fight is to expose the entire system, judicial and prison system, a system of slavery…This will cause benefit not just to myself but to all those who at this time are being criminally oppressed or enslaved by this system.”

 

“You have to deal on your own tactics. You have a right to take up arms to oppose any usurped government, particularly the type of corruption that we have today.” – Ruchell Magee

 

Ruchell’s life commitment, political stance and writings point to the need for a prison abolitionist movement to seriously address the historical legacy of slavery, and slave rebellions in order to truly be in solidarity with the millions of people incarcerated in the US. 

 

May Ruchell Cinque Magee rest in power!

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

  *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

The ongoing Zionist theft of Palestinian land from 1946 to now.

77 years of brutal oppression must end!

End all U.S. aid to Israel now!

For a democratic, secular Palestine!

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

  *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Leonard Peltier’s Letter Delivered to Supporters on September 12, 2023, in Front of the Whitehouse

 

Dear friends, relatives, supporters, loved ones:

 

Seventy-nine years old. Mother Earth has taken us on another journey around Grandfather Sun.  Babies have taken their first breath. People have lived, loved, and died. Seeds have been planted and sent their roots deep below red earth and their breath to the Stars and our Ancestors.

 

I am still here.

 

Time has twisted one more year out of me. A year that has been a moment.  A year that has been a lifetime. For almost five decades I’ve existed in a cage of concrete and steel.  With the “good time” calculations of the system, I’ve actually served over 60 years.

 

Year after year, I have encouraged you to live as spirit warriors. Even while in here, I can envision what is real and far beyond these walls.  I’ve seen a reawakening of an ancient Native pride that does my heart good.

 

I may leave this place in a box. That is a cold truth. But I have put my heart and soul into making our world a better place and there is a lot of work left to do – I would like to get out and do it with you.

 

I know that the spirit warriors coming up behind me have the heart and soul to fight racism and oppression, and to fight the greed that is poisoning our lands, waters, and people. 

 

We are still here.

 

Remember who you are, even if they come for your land, your water, your family. We are children of Mother Earth and we owe her and her other children our care.

 

I long to turn my face to the sky. In this cage, I am denied that simple pleasure. I am in prison, but in my mind, I remain as I was born: a free Native spirit.

 

That is what allows me to laugh, keeps me laughing. These walls cannot contain my laughter – or my hope.

 

I know there are those who stand with me, who work around the clock for my freedom. I have been blessed to have such friends.

 

We are still here and you give me hope. 

 

I hope to breathe free air before I die. Hope is a hard thing to hold, but no one is strong enough to take it from me. 

 

I love you. I hope for you. I pray for you. 

 

And prayer is more than a cry to the Creator that runs through your head.  Prayer is an action.

 

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

DOKSHA, 

LEONARD PELTIER

Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132

USP Coleman 1

P.O. Box 1033

Coleman, FL 33521

Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

  *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

   

 

Drop the Charges on the Tampa 5!

Sign the Petition:

https://peoplespetitions.org/tampa5

 

The Tampa 5—Gia Davila, Lauren Pineiro, Laura Rodriguez, Jeanie K, and Chrisley Carpio—are the five Students for a Democratic Society protesters at the University of South Florida who were attacked by campus police and are now facing five to ten years in prison for protesting Governor Ron DeSantis' attacks on diversity programs and all of higher education.

 

On July 12, 2023, the Tampa 5 had their second court appearance. 

 

The Tampa 5 are still in the middle of the process of discovery, which means that they are obtaining evidence from the prosecution that is meant to convict them. They have said publicly that all the security camera footage they have seen so far absolves them, and they are eager to not only receive more of this evidence but also to share it with the world. The Tampa 5 and their supporters demand full transparency and USF's full cooperation with discovery, to which all of the defendants are entitled.

 

In spite of this, the charges have not yet been dropped. The case of the five SDS protesters is hurtling towards a trial. So, they need all of their supporters and all parties interested in the right to protest DeSantis to stay out in the streets!

 

We need to demand that the DeSantis-appointed, unelected State Attorney Susan Lopez and Assistant Prosecutor Justin Diaz drop the charges.

 

We need to win this case once and for all and protect the right of the student movement—and all social movements in the United States—to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech and to protest.

 

Defend the Tampa 5!

 

State Attorney Susy Lopez, Prosecutor Justin Diaz, Drop the Charges!

 

Save Diversity in Higher Education!

 

Protesting DeSantis is Not a Crime!

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Free Julian Assange

Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange

 

Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count.  We are to believe we are represented in this country.  This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well.  Please take this action as often as you can:

 

Find your representatives:

https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

 

Leave each of your representatives a message individually to: 

·      Drop the charges against Julian Assange

·      Speak out publicly against the indictment and

·      Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges: 

           202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard 

 

Leave a message on the White House comment line to 

Demand Julian Assange be pardoned: 

             202-456-1111

             Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST

 

Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:

             202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line

             202-514-2000 Main Switchboard 

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!

FREE HIM NOW!

Write to Mumia at:

Smart Communications/PADOC

Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335

SCI Mahanoy

P.O. Box 33028

St. Petersburg, FL 33733

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Updates From Kevin Cooper 

March 23, 2023 

Dear Friends and Comrades, 

This is Kevin Cooper writing and sending this update to you in 'Peace & Solidarity'. First and foremost I am well and healthy, and over the ill effect(s) that I went through after that biased report from MoFo, and their pro prosecution and law enforcement experts. I am back working with my legal team from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

'We' have made great progress in refuting all that those experts from MoFo came up with by twisting the truth to fit their narrative, or omitting things, ignoring, things, and using all the other tactics that they did to reach their conclusions. Orrick has hired four(4) real experts who have no questionable backgrounds. One is a DNA attorney, like Barry Scheck of the innocence project in New York is for example. A DNA expert, a expect to refute what they say Jousha Ryen said when he was a child, and his memory. A expect on the credibility of MoFo's experts, and the attorney's at Orrick are dealing with the legal issues.

This all is taking a little longer than we first expected it to take, and that in part is because 'we' have to make sure everything is correct in what we have in our reply. We cannot put ourselves in a situation where we can be refuted... Second, some of our experts had other things planned, like court cases and such before they got the phone call from Rene, the now lead attorney of the Orrick team. With that being said, I can say that our experts, and legal team have shown, and will show to the power(s) that be that MoFo's DNA expert could not have come to the conclusion(s) that he came to, without having used 'junk science'! They, and by they I mean my entire legal team, including our experts, have done what we have done ever since Orrick took my case on in 2004, shown that all that is being said by MoFo's experts is not true, and we are once again having to show what the truth really is.

Will this work with the Governor? Who knows... 'but' we are going to try! One of our comrades, Rebecca D.   said to me, 'You and Mumia'...meaning that my case and the case of Mumia Abu Jamal are cases in which no matter what evidence comes out supporting our innocence, or prosecution misconduct, we cannot get a break. That the forces in the so called justice system won't let us go. 'Yes' she is correct about that sad to say...

Our reply will be out hopefully in the not too distant future, and that's because the people in Sacramento have been put on notice that it is coming, and why. Every one of you will receive our draft copy of the reply according to Rene because he wants feedback on it. Carole and others will send it out once they receive it. 'We' were on the verge of getting me out, and those people knew it, so they sabotaged what the Governor ordered them to do, look at all the evidence as well as the DNA evidence. They did not do that, they made this a DNA case, by doing what they did, and twisted the facts on the other issues that they dealt with.   'more later'...

In Struggle & Solidarity,

An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:

Mr. Kevin Cooper

C-65304. 4-EB-82

San Quentin State Prison

San Quentin, CA 94974

 

 

Call California Governor Newsom:

1-(916) 445-2841

Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, 

press 6 to speak with a representative and

wait for someone to answer 

(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

                   

The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system. 

See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:

https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Sign the petition:

https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale

 

I’m pleased to announce that last week our client, Daniel Hale, was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. The “Corner-Brightener Candlestick” was presented to Daniel’s friend Noor Mir. You can watch the online ceremony here. As it happens, this week is also the 20th anniversary of the first drone assassination in Yemen. From the beginning, the drone assassination program has been deeply shrouded in secrecy, allowing U.S. officials to hide significant violations of international law, and the American Constitution. In addition to the lives directly impacted by these strikes, the program has significantly eroded respect for international law and thereby puts civilians around the world in danger. Daniel Hale’s revelations threw a beam of light into a very dark corner, allowing journalists to definitively show that the government's official narrative was a lie. It is thanks to the great personal sacrifice of drone whistleblowers like Hale that public understanding has finally begun to catch up to reality. As the Sam Adams Associates note:  “Mr. Hale was well aware of the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment to which other courageous officials have been subjected — and that he would likely suffer the same. And yet — in the manner of his famous ancestor Nathan Hale — he put his country first, knowing what awaited him at the hands of those who serve what has become a repressive Perpetual War State wreaking havoc upon much of the world.” We hope you’ll join the growing call to pardon or commute Hale’s sentence. U.S. citizens can contact your representatives here.

Happy new year, and thank you for your support! Jesselyn Radack Director Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) ExposeFacts Twitter: @JesselynRadack

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Laws are created to be followed

by the poor.

Laws are made by the rich

to bring some order to exploitation.

The poor are the only law abiders in history.

When the poor make laws

the rich will be no more.

 

—Roque Dalton Presente!

(May 14, 1935 – Assassinated May 10, 1975)[1]

---

[1] Roque Dalton was a Salvadoran poet, essayist, journalist, political activist, and intellectual. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets.

Poems: 

http://cordite.org.au/translations/el-salvador-tragic/

About: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_Dalton

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

A Plea for the Compassionate Release of 

Leonard Peltier

Self Portrait by Leonard Peltier

Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWdJdODKO6M&feature=youtu.be

Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

 

https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition

 

Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info

Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Resources for Resisting Federal Repression

https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/

 

Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests. 

 

The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page. 

 

Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.

 

Emergency Hotlines

If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities. 

 

State and Local Hotlines

If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for: 

 

Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312

San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org

Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963

National Hotline

If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:

 

National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

Articles

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

1) Aid workers in Gaza are trying to do their work and stay alive.

By Monika Pronczuk, Oct. 27, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/27/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Emergency workers bringing a wounded child into Nasser Medical Hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on Wednesday. Credit...Yousef Masoud for The New York Times

Hussam Okal, an aid worker in a U.N.-operated shelter, is trying to help the 22,000 people forced to stay there, while in the same desperate position himself.

 

Israel has ordered more than a million Palestinians to evacuate the north in anticipation of a ground invasion, and the humanitarian situation has become increasingly dire, with the last remaining supplies of fuel, water and medicines running out and organizations forced to make do. Thousands of aid workers, like Mr. Okal, are sticking with their jobs — with little sleep and limited resources — all while trying to stay alive.

 

“We are trying to secure our families, and make them feel safe,” said Mr. Okal, who works for UNRWA, the U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, and who is staying at the same college-turned-shelter in the southern city of Khan Younis where he works. “But on the other hand, we are trying to serve the displaced people.”

 

As airstrikes scream overhead, “we are working in terrifying conditions,” Mr. Okal said. As of Friday, 53 U.N. staff members were killed by Israeli airstrikes, according to UNRWA, with many of them killed at home or while on duty. All of them were Palestinian.

 

But, the biggest challenge of his job is the scarcity, he said: Scarcity of resources to feed the people who have fled there. Scarcity of time to take care of his own family while he is looking after strangers. Scarcity of security, as Israel pummels the enclave.

 

“We suffer from the shortages of everything,” said Mr. Okal, 51, in a voice message.

 

Husam, a medical doctor in Gaza City, has not left his hometown despite Israel’s calls for evacuation. He has continued to deliver what limited supplies of medicines he can secure across the city, amid Israeli airstrikes and increasing fatigue.

 

“We can’t eat, we can’t sleep,” Husam, 40, who asked to be identified only by his first name because he is concerned about his safety, said in a voice message.

 

At his family home, his mother, who is diabetic, is struggling to get the medication she needs. It is extremely difficult, he said, to tend to patients at the same time he is taking care of his family, including his 6-month-old son.

 

He has seen a lot over the decades he has spent working for aid organizations across the Gaza Strip. But he said his most recent visit to the Al-Shifa hospital, the Gaza Strip’s largest medical complex, left him short of words. The wounded are crammed into corridors, which are already filled with people who have fled their homes and are seeking refuge from airstrikes.

 

“I can’t describe what we witnessed there,” he said. “There is a smell of death in front of the emergency department.”

 

“They have a tent where they are putting dead people, most of them children. Inside the emergency department, people are lying on the floor,” he said.

 

The vast majority of those on the ground are Palestinians, but there are foreign nationals, too, who have stayed to help. Seven miles south of Khan Younis, near the border with Egypt, an UNRWA team has been tasked with the difficult job of assessing civilian casualties and damages to U.N. premises.

 

“We are working 18 to 20 hours a day,” said Hector Sharp, the UNRWA’s head of field legal office. “We sleep whenever we can. We eat when we can. We try to have at least one meal a day.”

 

Unlike Palestinian aid workers who did not have a choice, Mr. Sharp, a New Zealand national who has been working in Gaza for the past three years, made the decision to stay. He is sleeping not in a shelter, but in an office that he shares with his colleagues.

 

The job of his team, Mr. Sharp said, was to visit different sites hit by airstrikes inside the enclave, and to advise on possible violations of international law. But it is a very complicated thing to do “in a situation where the international humanitarian standards are not being given enough consideration,” Mr. Sharp said.

 

In the places they visit, there are thousands of people who have not received enough water, bread or medicines for days.

 

“They are expecting us to bring something, because we are U.N. representatives,” he said. “But we are there to see if all sides respect international law.”

 

“And people can’t eat law,” he said. “They can’t drink law.”

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

2) ‘Let Gaza Live’: Calls for Cease-Fire Fill Grand Central Terminal

A large demonstration, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, came as Israel ramped up its military operations inside Gaza.

By Claire Fahy, Julian Roberts-Grmela and Sean Piccoli, Published Oct. 27, 2023, Updated Oct. 28, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/world/middleeast/grand-central-protest-nyc-israel-hamas-gaza.html

Protesters crowded into Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan on Friday. Credit...Bing Guan for The New York Times

Hundreds of protesters calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war streamed into Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan on Friday, in one of the largest protests New York City has seen since the start of the conflict three weeks ago.

 

The demonstration, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, came as Israel ramped up its military operations inside Gaza.

 

The protesters filled the train station, chanting, “Cease-fire now” and “Let Gaza live.” Most wore black shirts that read “not in our name.” One police officer estimated that there were as many as 1,000 protesters.

 

Steve Auerbach, a pediatrician in the city, said he was concerned about the children caught in the middle of the conflict.

 

“This has to stop,” he said. “Calling for a cease-fire should be considered a mainstream, normative position.”

 

Banners declaring “Palestinians should be free” and “Israelis demand cease-fire now” were unfurled over stairwell banisters in the terminal.

 

“I don’t believe in this war,” said Rosalind Petchesky, 81, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace who was later arrested.

 

Sumaya Awad said she wanted the U.S. government to “follow the guidance and the wants of the majority of Americans.”

 

“We’re here engaging in civil disobedience to make it clear that we want the bombs to stop falling,” she said.

 

The protest disrupted the evening commute for thousands of people trying to make trains home Friday evening. Commuters walked by, some pausing, others looking confused. No train delays were reported because of the protest.

 

The police tried unsuccessfully to block the entrances to Grand Central, then stood and watched as demonstrators took over the main concourse.

 

By 7 p.m., with hundreds of protesters still in the station, the police told people to leave and began making dozens of arrests. Soon after, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced that it would not allow anyone to enter the terminal and designated two entryways as exit-only.

 

An organizer estimated that 300 people were arrested, but the police said they would not release a final tally until after midnight.

 

As the demonstration in the main concourse officially wound down, police officers used a lift to get to two protesters standing on a ledge above the ticket booths, in front of the departures board. They were holding a sign that said, in all capital letters, “Never again for anyone.”

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

3) Artists Call for Boycott After Artforum Fires Its Top Editor

Several artists have said they will stop working with the magazine after its response to an open letter that called for Palestinian liberation and a cease-fire.

By Zachary Small, Published Oct. 27, 2023, Updated Oct. 28, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/arts/design/artforum-boycott-goldin-eisenman.html

“I have never lived through a more chilling period,” said the artist Nan Goldin, who signed the open letter published on Artforum. “People are being blacklisted. People are losing their jobs.” Credit...Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images

In the days after Artforum magazine fired its top editor, David Velasco, because of an open letter it published about the Israel-Hamas war, at least four other editors resigned and several prominent artists said they would boycott the publication unless Velasco was reinstated.

 

Divisions over how to discuss the conflict in the Middle East have frayed yearslong relationships between collectors and artists. On Friday, Nicole Eisenman and Nan Goldin criticized the magazine’s owner for terminating Velasco, who had been its editor in chief for six years, and said they would no longer work with Artforum.

 

“I have never lived through a more chilling period,” said Goldin, who is one of the most celebrated living photographers and signed the open letter that called for Palestinian liberation and a cease-fire. “People are being blacklisted. People are losing their jobs.”

 

At least four Artforum editors have resigned after the decision to fire Velasco, including Zach Hatfield, a senior editor; Kate Sutton, an associate editor; and Chloe Wyma, a senior editor. On social media, Hatfield posted that Velasco’s firing “is unacceptable and bodes ominously for the future of the magazine”; Wyma wrote that it “violates everything I had cherished about the magazine and makes my work there untenable.”

 

In addition, nearly 50 Artforum employees and contributors have signed a letter demanding that Velasco be reinstated, saying his termination “not only carries chilling implications for Artforum’s editorial independence but disaffirms the very mission of the magazine: to provide a forum for multiple perspectives and cultural debate.”

 

After the magazine published an open letter on Oct. 19 that did not initially mention the attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,400 Israelis, there was a backlash among some readers.

 

A sudden campaign of letters denounced the thousands of artists and cultural workers, including Velasco, who had signed the letter. Gallerists urged people to remove their names from the letter, and several collectors asked the Wexner Center for the Arts, at Ohio State University, to shut down an exhibition of Jumana Manna, a Palestinian artist who had signed the open letter. (A museum spokesman said it would continue to exhibit Manna’s work; she confirmed that the show was still on.)

 

Artforum distanced itself from the open letter after receiving pressure from advertisers. The magazine’s publishers later released a statement that said the post was “not consistent with Artforum’s editorial process,” adding that it was “widely misinterpreted as a statement from the magazine about highly sensitive and complex geopolitical circumstances.”

 

Penske Media Corporation, which owns Artforum, did not respond to a request for comment.

 

More than a dozen artists told The New York Times that threats of reprisal from collectors made it difficult to publicly defend their decision to sign the open letter, emphasizing that their intention was to call for peace.

 

“Collectors are always, in one way or another, making a big deal out of something an artist signed,” said Eisenman, who has exhibited with institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art. “But it is still surprising to learn how many collectors believe that owning a few drawings of mine means they get to tell me what to do with my name.”

 

She added: “I want to echo what activists have been yelling in the streets: Not in my name. This war will not be done in my name. I resent these cowardly bullying and blackmail campaigns to distract everyone in the art world from the central demand of the letter, which was: cease-fire!”

 

Some collectors tried to convince artists to retract their signatures. Others in the art world threatened to voice their concerns by selling works from those who signed the letter.

 

“We have a deaccession plan” that would “diminish the artists’ status,” Sarah Lehat Blumenstein, who fund-raises for a major museum, wrote to members of a WhatsApp group organized as a response to the open letter.

 

In an interview, Blumenstein, who is Jewish, said that such a plan was not active and that her efforts to hold artists accountable came from a fear that rising antisemitism was endangering her right to exist.

 

Goldin said people had incorrectly conflated antisemitism with supporting Palestinians.

 

“Whatever position we took was our right to free speech,” she said. “I have no plans to work with Artforum because they fired someone for whom I have enormous respect.”

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

4) I Fought for the I.D.F. in Gaza. It Made Me Fight for Peace.

By Benzion Sanders, Oct. 28, 2023

Mr. Sanders is the Jerusalem program director of Extend, a group that connects Palestinian and Israeli human rights leaders with American Jewish audiences, and a former staff member of Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation veterans group.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/opinion/international-world/gaza-idf-israel-veterans.html

Beit Hanoun, Gaza, after Israeli bombardment on July 26, 2014. Credit...Ali Hassan/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images

When my Israeli infantry unit arrived at the first village in Gaza, in July 2014, we cleared houses by sending grenades through windows, blowing doors open and firing bullets into rooms to avoid ambush and booby traps. We were told Palestinian civilians had fled.

 

I realized this wasn’t true as I stood over the corpse of an elderly Palestinian woman whose face had been mutilated by shrapnel. She had been lying on the sand floor of a shack, in a pool of blood.

 

That was my experience the last time Israeli troops entered the Gaza Strip in a large-scale way, when my special forces unit, attached to the 993rd Nahal Brigade, was one of the first to go in.

 

Like the invasion that the Israeli military has said is imminent, that campaign was precipitated by atrocities carried out by Hamas terrorists. On June 12 of that year, Hamas kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers; soon after, Israelis murdered a Palestinian teenager. The horrific exchange escalated into a larger conflict; ultimately some 70 Israelis and 2,250 Palestinians were killed over seven weeks. Then, as now, Israelis were told that we were going in to deal a decisive blow to Hamas.

 

As Israeli troops made incursions into Gaza on Friday and prepared for possible street-by-street urban combat, complicated by the presence of more than 200 hostages still being held by Hamas, I know firsthand the terror they can expect in an landscape of ​​postapocalyptic bombed-out neighborhoods, where Hamas fighters could be lying in wait. There’s also the constant fear of coming under attack by mortars and missiles, and the possibility of a gunman emerging from the group’s underground network of tunnels.

 

Those three fateful weeks inside the Gaza Strip transformed me from a deeply religious, Modern Orthodox yeshiva student and West Bank settler into an activist with the movement opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, first with the antiwar veterans organization Breaking the Silence and now with Extend, a group that connects Palestinian and Israeli human rights leaders with American Jewish audiences.

 

All our casualties and the suffering brought on Palestinians in Gaza accomplished nothing since our leaders refused to work on creating a political reality in which more violence would not be inevitable. While I believe in self-defense, fighting in Gaza taught me that if my government doesn’t change its approach from crushing Palestinian hope to committing to Palestinian independence, not only will this war kill an untold number of Israelis and Palestinians in addition to the thousands who already have died, but it also will not decisively end terror. A ground invasion is doomed to failure.

 

Even today, I remember how the ground shook from the constant explosions as we moved into Gaza at dusk at the start of the ground invasion on July 17. As we marched into the village of Umm al-Nasr, our Merkava tanks plowed through the fields next to us, and the aerial and artillery bombardments created relentless thunder and lightning — what we jokingly called the sound-and-light show.

 

Our main task over the two weeks I was in the northern Gaza Strip was to clear and secure a perimeter in urban areas to enable combat engineers to identify and demolish tunnels leading into Israel. We never wanted to stay stationary and become easy targets, so we would take up positions in a new house every night. Each house had to be cleared; in one, I found a Kalashnikov rifle with a combat vest and an explosive device. At one point, I listened in terror to graphic reports from our radioman of soldiers from my unit searching for body parts after a missile struck a nearby house they had taken over, injuring and killing some of my comrades.

 

The battle was unpredictable as we faced an enemy that used the complicated terrain to its advantage. It seemed that the Hamas fighters, like most of the civilians, had fled from our advance. Yet on the fourth day of the ground invasion, as we moved toward the Al-Burrah neighborhood in Beit Hanoun, a city in northeast Gaza, Hamas fighters suddenly came out from a tunnel behind us and killed four soldiers at the border fence.

 

As we withdrew from Beit Hanoun, we heard the roar of Air Force fighter jets overhead, followed by deafening explosions and towering plumes of debris and smoke rising from Al-Burrah. I later learned that in those moments, the airstrikes killed eight members of the Wahdan family, mostly women and children, whose home soldiers from my unit had occupied for days while the family was there.

 

At one point, I scribbled some thoughts on a piece of paper. I wrote that some members of my team had been tallying the number of soldiers killed and discussing whether this operation was worth the losses. “I think it could be worth it,” I wrote, “as long as we decisively eliminate the threat.”

 

That’s the lie they told us, and the lie that’s being repeated today: that we can decisively eliminate the threat of Hamas through a military operation. In the years since, Hamas has only grown stronger, despite our sacrifices and despite the death and destruction we had wrought on Gaza.

 

These periodic episodes of killing and destruction, which Israeli commentators and politicians cynically call “mowing the lawn,” have been a price Israel was willing to pay to avoid being pushed toward a two-state solution. We chose to “manage” the conflict through a combination of brute force and economic incentives, instead of working to solve it by ending our perpetual occupation of Palestinian territory.

 

Many of my Palestinian human rights partners who organize nonviolent protests are targeted and harassed by the Israeli military. I believe these policies have the goal of preventing pressure for a Palestinian state and permitting Israeli settlement development and creeping annexation in the West Bank.

 

For years, many of us on the left in Israel have been warning that we will never have peace and security until we find a political agreement in which Palestinians achieve freedom and independence. It isn’t just human rights activists taking this position: Even Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, has argued for years that Palestinian terror can be defeated only by creating Palestinian hope.

 

Tragically, many of those who made this argument were also the victims of Hamas’s heinous attack on Oct. 7. They included a fellow member of my unit who also served with me in Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation veterans group. He was a security guard at a kibbutz attacked by Hamas and fought the terrorists for seven hours until he ran out of ammunition and was murdered.

 

I left his funeral last week crushed, knowing we had lost such a righteous soul. To me it’s clear. My friend not only fought against Hamas during his final moments to protect his friends and family; he also fought against Hamas during years of activism against the occupation.

 

My heart is broken but I am more resolved than ever to continue his legacy.

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

5) A Dispatch From the Muslim Girl Scouts of Astoria

By Mara Gay, Oct. 28, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/opinion/girl-scouts-palestine-muslim-activism.html

Amira Ismail at a demonstration in Brooklyn supporting Palestinians. Farah Al Qasimi for The New York Times

In her short 17 years on earth, Amira Ismail had never been called a baby killer.

 

That’s what happened one Friday this month, Amira said, on New York City’s Q58 bus, which runs through central Queens.

 

“This lady looked at me, and she was like: ‘You’re disgusting. You’re a baby killer. You’re an antisemite,’” Amira told me. When she talked about this incident, her signature spunk faded. “I just kept saying, ‘That’s not true,’” she said. “I was just on my way to school. I was just wearing my hijab.”

 

Amira was born in Queens in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks. She remembers participating as a child in demonstrations at City Hall as part of a successful movement to make Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha school holidays in New York City.

 

But since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, in which an estimated 1,400 Israelis were killed and some 200 others were kidnapped, Amira, who is Palestinian American, said she has experienced for the first time the full fury of Islamophobia and racism that her older relatives and friends have told stories about all her life. Throughout the city, in fact, there has been an increase in both anti-Muslim and antisemitic attacks.

 

In heavily Muslim parts of Queens, she said, police officers are suddenly everywhere, asking for identification and stopping and frisking Muslim men. (New York City has stepped up its police presence around both Muslim and Jewish neighborhoods and sites within the five boroughs.) Most painful though, she said, is the sense that she and her peers are getting that Palestinian lives do not matter, as they watch the United States staunchly back Israel as it heads into war.

 

“It can’t go unrecognized, the thousands of Palestinians that have been murdered in the past two weeks and even more the past 75 years,” Amira said. “There’s no way you can erase that.” That does not mean she is antisemitic, she said. “How can I denounce one system of oppression without denouncing another?” she asked me. The pain in her usually buoyant voice cut through me. I had no answer for her.

 

Many New York City kids have a worldliness about them, a certain telltale moxie. Amira, a joyful, sneaker-wearing, self-described “Queens kid,” can seem unstoppable.

 

When she was just 15, Amira helped topple a major mayoral campaign in America’s largest city, writing a letter accusing the ultraprogressive candidate Dianne Morales of having violated child labor laws while purporting to champion the working class in New York.

 

“My life and my extremely bright future as a 15-year-old activist will not be defined by the failures and harm enabled by Dianne Morales,” Amira wrote in the 2021 letter, which went viral and helped end Ms. Morales’s campaign. “I wrote my college essay about that,” Amira told me with a slightly mischievous smile.

 

In the past two years, Amira has become a veteran organizer. Last weekend, she joined an antiwar protest. First, though, she’ll have to work on earning her latest Girl Scout badge, this one for photography. That will mean satisfying her mother, Abier Rayan, who happens to be Troop 4179’s leader. “She’s tough,” Amira assured me.

 

At a meeting of the Muslim Girl Scouts of Astoria last week, a young woman bounded into the room, asking whether her fellow scouts had secured tickets to an Olivia Rodrigo concert. “She’s the Taylor Swift of our generation,” the scout turned to me to explain.

 

A group of younger girls recited the Girl Scout Law:

 

“I will do my best to be honest and fair, friendly and helpful, considerate and caring, courageous and strong, and responsible for what I say and do, and to respect myself and others, respect authority, use resources wisely, make the world a better place and be a sister to every Girl Scout.”

 

Amira’s mother carefully inspected the work of some of the younger scouts; she wore a blue Girl Scouts U.S.A. vest, filled with colorful badges, and a hot-pink hijab. “It’s no conflict at all,” Ms. Rayan told me of Islam and the Girl Scouts. “You want a strong Muslim American girl.”

 

At the Girl Scouts meeting, Amira and her friends discussed their plans to protest the war in Gaza. “Protests are where you let go of your anger,” Amira told me.

 

Amira’s mother was born in Egypt. In 1948, Ms. Rayan told me, her grandfather lost his home and land in Jaffa to the state of Israel. At the Girl Scout meeting, Ms. Rayan was still waiting for word that relatives in Gaza were safe.

 

“There’s been no communication,” she said. When I asked about Amira, Ms. Rayan’s eyes brightened. “I’m really proud of her,” she said. “You have to be strong. You don’t know where you’re going to be tomorrow.”

 

By Monday, word had reached Ms. Rayan that her relatives had been killed as Israel bombed Gaza City. When I asked whom she had lost, Ms. Rayan replied: “All of them. There’s no one left.” Thousands of Palestinians are estimated to have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza in recent weeks. A death toll is kept by the Gaza Health Ministry, run by Hamas, and cannot be independently verified. Ms. Rayan said those killed in her family included six cousins and their children, who were as young as 2. Other relatives living abroad told her the cousins died beneath the rubble of their home.

 

As Ms. Rayan spoke, I saw Amira’s young face. I wondered how long this bright, spirited Queens kid could keep her fire for what I believe John Lewis would have called “good trouble” in a world that seems hellbent on snuffing it out. I worried about how she would finish her college applications.

 

“I have a lot of angry emotions at the ones in charge,” Amira told me days ago, speaking for so many human beings around the world in this dark time.

 

I thought about what I had seen over that weekend in Brooklyn, where thousands gathered in the Bay Ridge neighborhood, the home of many Arab Americans, to protest the war. In this part of the city, people of many backgrounds carried Palestinian flags through the street. Large groups of police officers gathered on every corner, watching them go by.

 

The crowd was large but quiet when Amira waded in, picked up her megaphone and called for Palestinian liberation. In an instant, thousands of New Yorkers repeated after her, filling the Brooklyn street with their voices. My prayer is that Amira’s generation of leaders will leave a better world than the one it has been given.

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

6) Israel is now a full-scale dictatorship

In the weeks since October 7, there has been no room for dissent in Israeli society. Detention centers are filling up fast with people who show even the slightest opposition. Here are some scenes from the Israeli Dictatorship.

BY YOAV HAIFAWI  OCTOBER 26, 2023

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/israel-is-now-a-full-scale-dictatorship/

Israeli police force was waiting for demonstrators in Umm al Fahm, October 19, 2023 (Photo: Arab 48)

On October 18, after the massacre in the Gaza Baptist Hospital, Herak Haifa called for a demonstration.1 The police announced in advance to the Hebrew media that it would not allow any demonstration against the war and would act “forcefully.” At the designated time, I arrived at “Prisoners Square” with a few banners wrapped under my arm. Before I arrived there, I noticed that the police were deployed all along the German Colony. In the square itself, there were more than a hundred police.

 

I sat quietly on a concrete railing on the side of the road, between the police and a big group of journalists that came to cover the action, the banners rolled between my legs. As the police were distracted, I quietly half-opened the rolled banners, and all the journalists took the opportunity to take quick pictures of the top banner. It said “It Is Genocide!” in English.

 

One woman came to sit near me and took the first banner, still half-rolled. A second one half-appeared: “Stop the Fire Now!” in Hebrew. It was only seconds before the two of us were violently carried away by police. A third man who shouted “why are you doing this?” was also violently detained.

 

About one hundred people came to the demonstration. They did not dare to enter the square, did not carry any banners, and did not dare to shout any slogans. But they were attacked anyway by the police, which ordered them to disperse. Many people were hit and injured by police violence; two women were seriously injured and required treatment at the hospital. The non-demonstrating public tried to stand their ground, withdrawing a few meters with every attack. When they tried to sing together, they were quickly silenced by an especially violent attack. One woman who shouted at the police “We are not afraid,” was promptly violently detained. A Palestinian journalist who was taking pictures of police violence was also detained. The one-sided confrontation continued for almost two hours before the crowd dispersed.

 

Another woman, a Palestinian doctor, was on her way to Haifa when police stopped her car on the highway some 10 kilometers away. She was accused of intending to join the Herak demonstration but denied the accusation. She was detained anyway, leaving the car on the shoulder of the road.

 

The six of us, four women and two men, were interrogated by the Haifa police until 1:00 a.m., and spent the night there in the detention cells. In the morning, we were told that we would be taken “to the court,” but we were taken to the Jelemeh (Kishon) detention center instead. We learned that, because of the “emergency situation,” we would not appear in the court physically but only attend by Skype. The police requested to remand our detention by five days. The judge decided that, despite serious suspicions against us, we could be released on bail.

 

On the same night, October 18, police also dispersed a vigil in solidarity with the people of Gaza in the Palestinian town of Tayibe, near Tel Aviv. They attacked the protesters, beating them with batons. One protester was hospitalized, and two were detained.

 

A demonstration in Umm al-Fahm

 

The only anti-war demonstration I know about within the green line, which is supposed to mark the boundaries of “democratic Israel,” in the first 20 days of “the special situation” was held in Umm al-Fahm on Thursday, October 19. Umm al-Fahm is a densely populated, hilly Palestinian town with a great tradition of struggle, and the police usually do not intervene in whatever happens inside its inner streets. 

 

Herak Umm al-Fahm is bigger than Herak Haifa and more deeply rooted, and it initially called for a demonstration on October 17. But, following the call, the Shabak threatened the central activists of the Herak, and they called off the demonstration. The invitation for October 19 was published under the name of a previously unknown “Herak for Gaza.”

 

The demonstrators gathered at the designated point, and, as they noted heavy police presence around the city, they confined themselves to marching through its thin alleys. Hundreds of people joined the march, expressing their anger at the Israeli attacks and their solidarity with the people of Gaza, but taking care not to use any expressions that might be labeled illegal.

 

Just as they finished the march and one of the organizers congratulated everybody for participating in a peaceful demonstration without any disturbances, they were suddenly surrounded from all sides by a phalanx of riot police and “border guards” that violently attacked them without any warning. Twelve people were arrested in this attack, including a Palestinian journalist.

 

On Friday morning, we waited for the detainees in the Haifa court. In fact, we knew that the detainees would not be brought to the court, but we waited with their families and lawyers for the remand hearing. The detainees were held in the Megiddo prison, which is mostly used for “security detainees” from the West Bank, many of them under administrative detention, but it is now filling up fast with a wave of freedom-of-expression detainees from 1948 Palestine. 

 

The prison guards in Megiddo failed to activate the Skype application to enable the detainees to “attend” the hearing until 3:00 p.m.. The judge suggested holding the hearings on WhatsApp, but the defense lawyers refused, explaining, among other reasons, that they wanted the judge to see the signs of beating on the faces and bodies of the detainees. At 3:30, the judge announced that, as Holy Saturday was nearing, she remanded everybody’s detention, without any hearing, until Saturday night.

 

Both Herak Umm al-Fahm and Herak Haifa called on their supporters to come to the Haifa court on Saturday night to support the detainees’ families. It was not a demonstration but a strong expression of solidarity, with about two hundred people gathering around the court for hours. Only two people from the family of each detainee were allowed in.

 

The hearing finally started at around 1:00 a.m. on Sunday. After long deliberations, all but two of the detainees were released on bail. Two of the detainees that the police regarded as “organizers,” a lawyer and a doctor, were charged with “support for terrorism,” even though the police itself could not specify any specific action or pronunciation that expressed this support. Their detention was remanded on Sunday morning and remanded again on Wednesday, October 25.

 

On Sunday morning, at 5:55 a.m., after the hearing finished, we gathered at the court’s entrance, about thirty of us who had endured the long sleepless night, to thank and applaud our legal team. The team that fought through the whole night was led by advocate Hassan Jabarin, the head of Adalah Center, and included some 20 lawyers and assistants from Adalah and several other associations, as well as volunteers. When the court guards noticed us converging on the entrance, they summoned a reinforcement of armed police.

 

Women in Black vigil dispersed

 

Women in Black in Haifa have been holding an “anti-occupation” vigil every Friday, for as long as I can remember, maybe 40 years or more. On Friday, October 13, as there was no other way to express my opposition to the war, I joined them. We stood there quietly on the Bahai Circle in the German Colony, some 20 of us, mostly older Jewish women. I held a banner saying “No to revenge, For prisoners exchange,” which was about the most radical choice available. 

 

Soon, the police came and explained that “because of the situation,” no political demonstrations were allowed. When the organizers tried to argue with them, they simply forcefully took the banners from our hands and confiscated them along with the banners lying on the ground. As we sat there without banners, the police demanded that we disperse. We defiantly stayed, and they finally withdrew and guarded us from the other side of the street until we completed the full hour that was designated for the vigil. 

 

For the coming weeks, the organizers requested we limit the content on the banners, so as not to provoke the Jewish public or the police, to only two slogans: 

 

First of all, a prisoner exchange

Haifa – the home of all of us, Jews and Arabs

Without calling for, at least, a ceasefire, it seemed pointless to me.

 

An Arab-Jewish meeting against the war

 

The High Follow-Up Committee of the Arab public, which unites all political parties representing 1948 Palestinians, tried to take the initiative to forge unity with Jewish activists against the war. They called for a public meeting in a closed hall in Haifa that was to take place on Thursday, October 26. In their call they lamented the suffering of civilians on both sides of the Gaza border.

 

Yet, today, it was announced that even this activity was to be prevented by the police. Apparently, for lack of any legal grounds, the police found the “soft point” among the owners of the hall where the meeting had to be held. They threatened them that if the meeting took place, they would close their hall for a long time.

 

Full-Dictatorship

 

There is very little Palestinian, democratic, or pro-peace political activity right now within the green line. But the detention centers are filling up fast with people who are persecuted for any, or no, reason. Itamar Ben-Gvir is fast mobilizing and arming hundreds of local militias to serve as vigilantes to supervise any Palestinian dissent. Fascist mobs are hunting dissidents on social media, and sometimes in the streets.

 

I hope to stay free and safe so I can report more of it.

 

When the last Netanyahu – Ben-Gvir government was established, they proudly labeled themselves a Full-Right government. Now, with full public unity between all Zionist parties for the destruction of Gaza, they can be proud of a much bigger achievement, converting Israel to a Full-Dictatorship.

 

Notes

 

1. The word “Herak” is derived from the word “haraka” meaning “movement.” The word started getting used in political contexts around 20 years ago and took on popularity during the Arab Spring. Unlike traditional political movements, which imply organization and official leadership, “Herak” connotes something more open and relates more to the action itself than to the formal organization. So, the name “Herak Haifa” is somewhere between “Haifa Movement” and “Haifa Action.”

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

7) ‘Our Souls Mean Nothing at All’

By Nicholas Kristof, Oct. 28, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/opinion/israel-gaza-hamas-invasion.html

Gaza City, Credit...Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

The most consequential decision Israel will face in the coming days is how hard to continue hitting Gaza. Should it undertake a monthslong ground invasion? Continue with large-scale aerial bombardment? Allow fuel into Gaza to keep hospitals running?

 

Over the last week that I’ve spent reporting in Israel and the West Bank, I’ve tried to listen and learn. So let me share why I believe we’ll some day look back at this moment and see a profound moral and policy failure.

 

But let me start with someone smart who has a different take.

 

Ehud Barak, the former Israeli general, defense minister and prime minister, knows more about the military challenges of taking on Gaza than almost anybody. In 2009 he oversaw a major ground offensive against Hamas. I dropped by his home in Tel Aviv, and we sat in his office, surrounded by his collection of framed cartoons mocking him — he has a thick skin — as he argued in favor of a ground invasion as the only way to crush Hamas.

 

“There is no way but to send many tens of thousands of boots on the ground,” he said, but he acknowledged that this will be a prolonged and bloody task. He estimated that there is a 50 percent chance that it will lead to a war with Hezbollah in the north, plus some risk of attacks from militias on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights and of serious unrest on the West Bank.

 

Barak also warned that after a number of months when Israel might be ready to withdraw from Gaza, it could have trouble handing the territory over to someone else. But it’s conceivable, he said, that Israel could find a multilateral Arab force to take over Gaza and that this force could eventually transfer control of the territory to the Palestinian Authority. On balance, he thinks that it is possible for Israel to destroy most of Hamas’s capabilities, establish a no-go zone along the border and extricate itself.

 

For my part, I’m skeptical that either the invasion or the handover would go well, partly because I’ve observed so many military operations that started optimistically and ended as bloody quagmires. But Barak also made another important point: Israel will now finally end Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy of bolstering Hamas.

 

What? Israel supported Hamas?

 

Yes, under Netanyahu, Israel approved the transfer of over $1 billion to Gaza from Qatar — intended to cover expenses such as salaries and energy costs — but some funds reached Hamas’ military wing, Ha’aretz reported. (Qatar has denied that the money was misused.) Netanyahu’s aim, according to Barak and others, was to buttress Hamas so as to weaken the rival Palestinian Authority and undermine any possibility of a two-state solution. “Those who want to thwart the possibility of a Palestinian state should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas,” Netanyahu reportedly said in 2019.

 

That monetary lifeline to Hamas will now surely be cut, and that may hurt the organization as much as any number of bombs.

 

Israel has the right to defend itself and strike military targets in Gaza, and there should be strong international pressure on Hamas to release its hostages. My reporting in Gaza over the years convinces me that Gazans themselves would be much better off if Hamas could be removed: Some American liberals don’t appreciate how repressive, misogynistic, homophobic and economically incompetent Hamas is in Gaza, to say nothing of its long history of terror attacks on Israel. All this explains why many Gazans are fed up with Hamas.

 

“Hamas spends money building tunnels, not investing in people,” a Gaza woman told me. She was stuck in Jerusalem, where her young son was receiving cancer treatment at a Palestinian hospital.

 

The despair in Gaza, she said, is such that for years some young men have simply dreamed of becoming “martyrs” and winning honor by killing Israelis.

 

“In Gaza, there is no hope,” she said. “There is no life, there is nothing we have from living in Gaza. The only thing people can do is become a martyr.”

 

The woman, whom I’m not identifying for fear of retaliation by Hamas, says that she is against the killing of civilians on either side, and that now she weeps each day as she follows the bombing of Gaza and wonders if her husband and other children there will survive. Her son with cancer was sitting a few feet away, watching videos on his mom’s phone, and I looked over to see what he was watching.

 

It was TikToks of his neighborhood being bombed.

 

He was glued to the screen as videos showed areas the size of multiple football fields near his home turned into rubble; satellite imagery shows other large areas pulverized as well. No one knows how many people are caught in the wreckage, but some Gazans told me they had heard cries from inside collapsed buildings. They lack proper equipment to rescue people, so eventually, the cries stop, and a stench rises.

 

Despite her own opposition to Hamas, the woman said that anger at the Israeli attacks will probably boost support for Hamas in the territory.

 

One well-educated young woman inside Gaza, Amal, told me over WhatsApp that the victims she knew of were mostly civilians, and she sounded full of despair.

 

“Constant bombardment has me feeling as if I am not human anymore, as if our souls mean nothing at all,” she told me. “We are being massacred.”

 

A 16-year-old girl in Gaza offered this message, conveyed through Save the Children: “It’s like we are overpaying the price for a sin we didn’t commit. We were always with peace and will always be.”

 

As Israel stands poised to escalate the war, there are two arguments to think through. The first is pragmatic: Can a siege and large-scale ground invasion succeed in erasing Hamas?

 

I’m skeptical, and when I hear backers of an invasion speak of removing Hamas I have the same sinking feeling as when I heard hawks in 2002 and 2003 cheerily promising to liberate Iraq. Just because it would be good to eliminate a brutal regime doesn’t mean it is readily achievable; the Taliban can confirm that.

 

The answers to the question of who will take over a battered Gaza after months of warfare also seem too iffy to me. It won’t be Egypt, said the former Egyptian foreign minister Nabil Fahmy.

 

“I can’t imagine any international force being ready to take on what’s left there,” Fahmy told me. He thinks an Israeli invasion is unlikely to destroy Hamas and is more likely to inflame radicalism in Gaza, and he warns that President Biden has damaged American standing in the region because of his perceived indifference to Palestinian lives.

 

The second prism through which to consider the Gaza war is a moral one, for we have values as well as interests. Decades from now when we look back at this moment, I suspect it’s the moral failures that we may most regret — the inability of some on the left (and many in the Arab world) to condemn the barbaric Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis, and the acceptance by so many Americans and Israelis that countless children and civilians must pay with their lives in what Netanyahu described as Israel’s “mighty vengeance.”

 

When Israeli Jews were asked in a poll whether the suffering of Palestinian civilians should be taken into account in planning the war on Gaza, 83 percent said “not at all” or “not so much.” I can’t help feeling that while we say that all lives have equal value, President Biden has likewise greatly prioritized Israeli children over Gazan children.

 

I give Biden great credit for promptly moving two aircraft carrier groups to the region, to help deter Hezbollah or others from joining the war. The White House was right to condemn the “grotesque” and “antisemitic” messages on some college campuses. And Biden’s compassion for victims of the Hamas attacks was so heartfelt that he built up political capital in Israel — but so far he hasn’t leveraged it to get significant aid into Gaza.

 

The United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, has condemned what he called “clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza.” The Biden administration, which in the context of Ukraine constantly speaks of international law, vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to deliver aid.

 

Every account I’ve heard from Gaza this past week, including directly from people there who despise Hamas, suggests that the civilian toll there has been horrendous. One gauge is that at least 53 United Nations staff members have been killed so far, including teachers, an engineer, a psychologist and a gynecologist. More than 20 journalists have been killed, too, and an Al Jazeera correspondent lost his wife, son, daughter and grandson to an airstrike.

 

And now the suffering in Gaza is set to get much worse.

 

That’s partly because hospitals are running out of diesel fuel, and Israel is not allowing fuel into the territory. I understand the reason: Hamas could use diesel fuel for its attacks on Israelis, and an Israeli military spokesman also told me that United Nations alarmists may be exaggerating the shortage. Yet if hospitals lack fuel and cannot operate generators, babies in incubators may die along with people needing dialysis or surgeries. Some 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza would face greater risks if hospitals can’t take them.

 

“We are on the brink of collapse,” Philippe Lazzarini, who runs the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, the largest aid agency in Gaza, told me.

 

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, lead physician in Gaza for the aid group MedGlobal, put it this way, “When the fuel runs out tomorrow, this hospital will rapidly become a mass grave.”

 

Because of the siege, Gaza is also running out of insulin and anesthetic, according to Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization.

 

Fadi Abu Shammalah, who works in Gaza with a civil society organization called Just Vision, visited the United States this year at the invitation of the State Department, presumably because he was seen as a potential bridge across cultures. “I love you,” he told me over the phone, speaking of Americans. “You are so kind to me.”

 

I thanked him but noted that we were also providing some of the bombs being dropped near him. He said he doubted that the Americans he so admired understood how the war was actually playing out against civilians.

 

“Is it a war against Hamas, really?” he asked. “Or it’s against my kids?” He said that as bombs dropped, he tried to calm his terrified children by saying that if they could hear the explosions, they were safe; it’s the bombs you never hear that kill you. That backfired; when there was silence, the children feared they were about to be obliterated.

 

“One of the reasons the Oct. 7 attacks were so horrible was because adult men slaughtered children,” said Sari Bashi of Human Rights Watch. “But adult men are slaughtering children every day in Gaza by dropping bombs on their homes.”

 

Israel faces an agonizing challenge: A neighboring territory is ruled by well-armed terrorists who have committed unimaginable atrocities, aim to commit more and now shelter in tunnels beneath a population of more than two million people. It’s a nightmare. But the sober question must be: What policies will reduce the risk, not inflame it, while honoring the intrinsic value of Palestinian life as well as Israeli life?

 

People will answer that question in different ways, and I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I think some day we will look back in horror at both the Hamas butchery in Israel and at the worsening tableau of suffering in Gaza in which we are complicit.

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

8) I’m a Pediatrician in Gaza. Please Save Us From This Horror.

By Hussam Abu Safyia, Oct. 29, 2023

Dr. Abu Safyia is a pediatrician at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/pediatrician-gaza-hospitals-fuel.html

Mohammed Abed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

At Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, we are no strangers to treating victims of airstrikes over the years. The team all too often must rush into the emergency room, all hands on deck, ready to treat shrapnel wounds, burns and blood loss. In the early days of the current Israel-Hamas conflict, our hospital of only 80 beds was quickly overrun. On Oct. 17, following the explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, we were flooded with dozens of wounded and dying victims. By the next day, our patient roster had grown by nearly 120. We knew it would be another sleepless night, another in a string of far too many since the violence started 10 days earlier.

 

As many as three to four children had to share single beds, and many more were forced to settle for the floors. Some patients from the hospital explosion came in screaming in pain, but others were silent, in shock or beyond saving. With anesthesia, iodine, alcohol, blood and even gauze running low or entirely gone, we had a dwindling supply of tools to help ease the human suffering. The people who flocked to Kamal Adwan to sleep in our hallways or even the parking lot, believing it safer than their homes, were no doubt as frightened as we were.

 

As I write this, the hospital is on the precipice of true disaster. We are down to the last gallons of fuel necessary to run the electric generators, despite our most stringent efforts to ration it since the start of hostilities. Lights are off most of the time, elevators are out and patients are carried between floors. When the fuel runs out, we will no longer be able to function at night after the sun goes down. Most of the tools and equipment needed to run a modern hospital like ventilators, defibrillators and our neonatal units will become useless. When the generators fall silent, we will be relegated to practicing medieval-level medicine. Without an urgent resupply of fuel, the lights will go out permanently, and our hospital could turn into a morgue.

 

Kamal Adwan is far from the only hospital reaching its breaking point, as doctors like myself desperately cry out for more aid to Gaza. I’m a pediatrician at Kamal Adwan, part of a team of nine MedGlobal doctors and humanitarian aid workers that have been on the ground in Gaza since 2018. In that time we’ve seen our share of tragedy, suffering and shortage, but nothing could have prepared us for the horrors of the past few weeks. My team and I have divided our time between caring for patients and locally sourcing and distributing medical supplies, food and fuel to 11 different hospitals — $1.3 million worth of resources since the violence began. And it is still not nearly enough.

 

Most of us have chosen to remain in northern Gaza, defying the evacuation orders because we’re unwilling to leave behind our patients, for many of whom evacuation would mean certain death. Abandoning them now would be a violation of my Hippocratic oath as well as basic human decency. My wife and six children have also stayed at the hospital with me since the violence began. I’ve tried to convince them to head south, but my wife told me that we will either live or die together. Many Palestinians in north Gaza feel the same, risking their lives at home rather than face the prospect of becoming refugees in the south.

 

Doctors are no strangers to tragedy or death and are trained to steel themselves against it, but the pressure we’ve been under these past few weeks is beyond any training. One of my colleagues lost his father and brother to an airstrike in the first week of the fighting; another saw his dead son wheeled in by an emergency crew. At a professional level, a personal level and most fundamentally a human level, the people of Gaza and the medics who care for them are at a breaking point. Like our patients, especially the children, this conflict will leave every one of us traumatized.

 

Even so, we are treating our patients to the best of our ability with the bare minimum of electricity, medicine and supplies. We sterilize wounds with vinegar, previously unthinkable in our modern intensive care unit. Drinking water ran out days ago, and the water we do have isn’t potable, contributing to a rising tide of intestinal infections and diseases not seen in Gaza in years. Our morgue filled to capacity within the first week and we’ve had to store many dead children in a nearby tent, praying that the decomposing bodies don’t contaminate the water wells or spread further disease. We fear an outbreak of cholera and typhoid. We fear for the long-term mental health impacts on the children in our care. Their little bodies are quick to injure and quick to heal, but their minds and spirits will need a lifetime of care to overcome what they have seen and experienced.

 

On Oct. 20, as I finished operating on a girl who had lost her leg, I stepped into the hallway and my wife was there to hug me. Our home, she told me, had been destroyed in an airstrike on an adjacent building while I was in surgery. The hospital is now our only home. At night, I go to my office and close the door to cry, away from the eyes of my patients and family.

 

It may be hard to understand why any of us are still at the hospital, running our resupply routes and struggling against a sea of despair. The answer is hope. As Kamal Adwan Hospital and Gaza itself run out of everything — food, water, fuel, medicine — the one thing we have not yet run out of is hope. I see it in my fellow doctors and the MedGlobal team risking their life every day to drive the streets of Gaza delivering supplies. I see it in the eyes of our patients — not all, but many. There’s a resilience and tenacity at the heart of the human experience that’s stronger than any horrors men can inflict on one another.

 

Through that hope, we make an urgent plea to the rest of the world to send more aid into Gaza. In order for hospitals like Kamal Adwan to continue functioning, we desperately need more resources — especially fuel for our generators. If we cannot turn the lights back on and keep lifesaving equipment running, too many of our patients will end up needlessly dying.

 

We hope that people will read our story and share in our desires: for a cease-fire, for a full opening of border crossings so that the wounded and sick may leave and lifesaving supplies can reach the tired, hungry and the displaced. For a normal life of peace where hospitals in the region see Israeli and Palestinian patients side by side, unburdened by grief, separation and war. We need the world’s help to sustain these hopes and bring this senseless violence to an end.

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

9) Deep Rising’ Review: Who Gets to Mine the Ocean Floor?

Matthieu Rytz’s documentary about the bounty at the bottom of the sea examines the fight over whether to reap these riches or preserve them.

By Lisa Kennedy, Oct. 26, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/movies/deep-rising-review.html

An undersea glass sponge, one example of ocean life seen in “Deep Rising.” Credit...Geomar/Abramorama

Documentaries on ecological crises often begin by scaring the bejesus out of viewers before adding a note of tempered optimism. For “Deep Rising,” a film about the race to mine the deep seabed (in particular, the floor beneath the Pacific’s vast Clarion-Clipperton Zone), the director Matthieu Rytz eschews shock for awe, and inflammatory rhetoric for measured persuasion.

 

The director’s choice of his two chief characters proves richly dialectical. Gerard Barron is the hipster CEO of The Metals Company, a Canadian mining concern focused on harvesting polymetallic nodules containing nickel, manganese, cobalt and copper among other minerals that the so-called green economy craves. (“Please get nickel!,” Elon Musk can be heard saying in an audio clip.) Sandor Mulsow is a warm, serious-minded marine geologist and the former head of the Office of Environmental Management and Mineral Resources at the International Seabed Authority, the organization the U.N. has tasked with protecting the ocean floor.

 

Rytz takes care not to lionize or demonize either man. Even so, the pitch Barron gives a roomful of high-net investors sounds too good — and low-impact — to be true.

 

The composer Olafur Arnalds’s string-led score and the actor Jason Momoa’s sonorous narration add to the film’s argument that where the world’s biodiversity and the seafloor’s still mysterious environs are concerned, caution and care are paramount.

 

The footage of iridescent creatures with billowing tentacles or translucent bodies mesmerizes but it also creates contemplative pauses amid the documentary’s facts, interviews and the damning history of the mining industry. The optimism here resides in the filmmaker’s trusting his audience to grapple with the entwined fates of the seafloor, its inhabitants and humankind.

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

10) Protesters fill the streets in New York to support Palestinians in Gaza.

A large demonstration crossed the Brooklyn Bridge a day after Israel pushed into Gaza.

By Erin Nolan, Eliza Fawcett and Nate Schweber, Oct. 28, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/nyregion/palestine-protest-brooklyn-barclays-center-nyc.html

Protesters cross the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday as they demonstrate against the continuing Israeli military assault on Gaza. Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Crowds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators packed the streets of Brooklyn on Saturday as they called on the U.S. government to stop sending aid to Israel.

 

The march was organized by the Palestinian-led community group Within Our Lifetime, and participants stretched for several blocks as they traveled from the Brooklyn Museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, chanting “Free, free Palestine!”

 

The demonstration was the latest in a string of protests around New York City since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Saturday’s march took place a day after Israeli forces began what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called “the second stage of the war.”

 

Waving a Palestinian flag as she marched, Alaa Essafi said that after Israel’s escalated attacks, it felt especially important that she travel from her home in New Jersey to support her “brothers and sisters in Palestine.”

 

“Together we will send a message,” Ms. Essafi, 21, said.

 

The museum has a large outdoor plaza, and it has been the site of several large-scale gatherings, including a Black Lives Matter demonstration in 2020 that drew more than 15,000 people.

 

Standing outside the museum, Hany Barakat, 34, said he had family in Gaza and that some had been killed during recent airstrikes.

 

“It has to stop” said Mr. Barakat, who is Egyptian and lives in New Jersey.

 

The protest prompted the police to shut down several blocks of the Eastern Parkway. Helicopters and a drone hovered above the crowd.

 

The crowd waved banners and held signs that bore messages including, “We demand a free Palestine” and “Let Gaza Live.” At the Brooklyn Bridge, a few people scaled a metal support structure and unfurled Palestinian flags, prompting protesters to erupt into chants of, “Gaza! Gaza! Gaza!”

 

The demonstration began to thin as it crossed into Manhattan and daylight faded. Just before 7 p.m., as the crowd streamed through SoHo, the Muslim call to prayer echoed through the streets and event organizers instructed everyone to stop marching to allow time to pray.

 

The final destination was Union Square, where hundreds of protesters stopped to beat drums. Some carried signs that read, “Support Palestinian resistance,” while others climbed the square’s iconic George Washington statue.

 

Liset Cruz and Michael D. Regan contributed to this story.

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

11) Newsom still convinced of Death Row prisoner Kevin Cooper’s guilt following report alleging bias, racism

Photo of Bob Egelko

Bob Egelko, Oct. 25, 2023, Updated: Oct. 27, 2023

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/kevin-cooper-gavin-newsom-18193725.php

An investigation ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom into the hotly contested death sentence of Kevin Cooper concluded in January that Cooper was clearly guilty of the 1983 murders of a married couple and two children in San Bernardino County. Now Cooper’s lawyers, in their own report to Newsom, say the investigation was a one-sided effort that ignored evidence of innocence and racism.

 

The study Newsom commissioned, labeled as a report from an independent counsel, was “riddled with confirmation bias and a steadfast commitment to ‘stick to the script’ the prosecution has been peddling for the last 40 years,” attorney Norman Hile and his colleagues said in a 77-page rebuttal they have sent to the governor.

 

The defense lawyers said prosecutors at Cooper’s trial in 1985 failed to disclose bloody coveralls that could have incriminated another man, clothing a sheriff’s deputy threw into a dumpster without testing it. They said the report to Newsom had distorted and largely ignored evidence that the 8-year-old boy who survived the attacks identified the assailants as white men. Cooper is Black.

 

And Cooper’s current attorneys said the supposedly independent expert witnesses whose conclusions were cited in the January report to Newsom included a former San Francisco police crime laboratory investigator who resigned in 1999, after a judge questioned his work, and two former Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators.

 

The lawyers cited a 2015 report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an affiliate of the Organization of American States, that concluded the government “violated Mr. Cooper’s right to due process and to a fair trial.” The commission said courts that had upheld his conviction and death sentence had failed to adequately review the competence of his court-appointed trial attorneys or evidence of racism in his prosecution and trial.

 

But Danella Debel, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the governor has reviewed the defense lawyers’ conclusions and remains convinced that Cooper is guilty.

 

Cooper, now 65, was convicted and sentenced to death for the fatal stabbings of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica Ryen, and 11-year-old house guest Christopher Hughes at the Ryens’ home in Chino Hills. Two days before the killings, Cooper had escaped from a nearby state prison, where he was serving a sentence for burglary.

 

State and federal courts have rejected his appeals, and he was within hours of execution in 2004 when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay. The 9th Circuit rejected a later appeal from Cooper in 2009, but five judges led by William Fletcher issued a 101-page dissent, saying they had reason to believe officers had “manipulated and planted evidence” against Cooper. 

 

Vice President Kamala Harris, when she was a U.S. senator from California, urged Newsom, then the governor-elect in 2018, to order new DNA testing on evidence in the case. Newsom issued that order in February 2019, declared a moratorium on all executions in the state a month later, and in May 2021 ordered what he described as an independent investigation into Cooper’s case.

 

The 104-page report issued in January by the San Francisco law firm Morrison Foerster to the state Board of Parole Hearings said there was “conclusive” evidence of Cooper’s guilt. A spokesperson for the board told the Chronicle shortly afterward that the report had been “independent and unbiased” and that no further review was needed.

 

A central dispute between the two reports was Cooper’s claim that the actual killer was Lee Furrow, a paroled murderer who had also been in the area. Furrow’s former girlfriend told a state investigator that soon after the killings she saw him wearing a pair of bloodstained coveralls. Six months later, a sheriff’s deputy questioned Furrow, then took the coveralls and discarded them without any testing.

 

Two men who had worked with Furrow on construction projects told a California investigator that they had heard Furrow say in 2018 that “me and my boys, we butchered a whole family.” But in the January report, the law firm said the workers had recently seen a television program that described Furrow as a possible suspect.

 

The firm also said the killer’s clothing would have been covered with blood, and not the scattered bloodstains described by Furrow’s former girlfriend, and that Cooper’s DNA — but not Furrow’s — were found at the murder site. Cooper’s lawyers said they had evidence that his DNA had been planted.

 

The rebuttal was issued by lawyers from the firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, who did not represent Cooper at his trial but agreed to take up his case at their own cost in 2003. Their report contended the evidence about Furrow, discovered after the trial, not only called Cooper’s guilt into question but also showed that prosecutors had violated their constitutional obligation to notify the defense of any information they could have used in his case.

 

In addition to the bloody coveralls, they said, prosecutors failed to disclose that another shirt with blood on it was found near the crime scene and was not tested; that witnesses had told officers that three white people with blood on their clothes were seen in a nearby bar the night of the murders; and that another witness described seeing three men, one with blond hair, in the Ryens’ car that day.

 

The lawyers said they contacted some of the former jurors and described the evidence they had not seen at the trial. “Had I known at the time of the deliberations the information recently provided to me … or had there been just one more piece of evidence of Mr. Cooper’s innocence during the trial,” one unidentified juror was quoted as saying, “I would have recognized that there was reasonable doubt about Mr. Cooper’s guilt, and I would have voted ‘not guilty.’ ”

 

Another dispute involved the only survivor of the attack, 8-year-old Josh Ryen, whose parents and sister were killed. Josh, whose throat was slashed, was questioned in the hospital by a social worker when he was unable to speak, but he signaled, by touching letters and numbers on a page, that the attackers had been three white men. Furrow is white.

 

The boy later told a sheriff’s deputy that three Mexican men had been at the house that night. And after seeing a televised photo of Cooper, Josh said, according to a law enforcement officer, “That wasn’t the guy that did it.”

 

Josh Ryen did not testify at Cooper’s trial, and he said recently he is now convinced of Cooper’s guilt. The January report said the boy’s responses in the hospital did not support Cooper’s case because Josh “never stated that he saw or got a good look” at the killer or killers.

 

That conclusion, Cooper’s lawyers said, ignores not only the evidence of what Josh Ryen said at the time of the crime but also the fact that he changed his account after being questioned by prosecution investigators.

 

“The analytical gymnastics (by the law firm) to reach the conclusion that Josh Ryen’s statement that Cooper ‘wasn’t the guy’ actually meant that Cooper was the guy is confirmation bias in its highest, and most blatant, form,” defense lawyers said.  

 

Their report was submitted to the Board of Parole Hearings, whose members were appointed by Newsom and his predecessors. The ultimate decision for Newsom is whether to grant clemency to Cooper and either vacate his conviction or commute his sentence — an action he has not taken for any of the 654 prisoners under death sentences in California, despite Newsom’s condemnation of capital punishment as unjust and racist.

 

Newsom has not indicated he is considering clemency for any condemned prisoners or responded to the Chronicle’s inquiries on the issue. Without clemency, his successor as governor could lift Newsom’s moratorium and return the prisoners to Death Row.

 

Cooper could also file a legal challenge under the Racial Justice Act, a state law signed by Newsom in 2020 and broadened last year. It allows prisoners under death sentences to seek to overturn their sentences and convictions based on racial bias at their trial, such as the unjustified dismissal of Black jurors or racist conduct by prosecutors. It will be expanded in 2026 to apply to all past felony convictions. 

 

Cooper’s lawyers contend his prosecutors removed Black jurors without justification, and that county prosecutors ignored evidence of white killers and pressured Josh Ryen to change his description of the attackers’ race. But Rene Kathawala, one of Cooper’s lawyers, said they would need access to records that prosecutors would almost certainly refuse to disclose, leading to lengthy legal battles.

 

“It could take years to get decided,” Kathawala said, and at Cooper’s age, “there’s no guarantee that he’ll ever see the results.”

 

Reach Bob Egelko: begelko@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @BobEgelko

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*

*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*