Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, November 12, 2023

 

No to APEC Mass Mobilization

Sunday, November 12, 12:00 Noon

March starts at Harry Bridges Plaza (on the Embarcadero, across from the Ferry Building) and proceeds to Moscone Center.

No to APEC Coalition

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Protesters calling for ceasefire in Gaza take over base of the Statue of Liberty

Hundreds of protesters affiliated with the group Jewish Voice for Peace staged a sit-in at the National Park Service site at 1:00 P.M., Monday, November 6, 2023 to call for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/11/06/protesters-statue-liberty-gaza-israel-ceasefire

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

Palestinians killed and wounded by Israel:

As of November 12, 2023, the total number of Palestinians killed by Israel is now over 27,490 in Gaza (at least 4,506 of them children)—and more than 183 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in the occupied West Bank.

Israelis killed and abducted by Hamas: 

A total of 1,200* Israelis killed by Hamas (30 of them children) and 239 abducted on October 7, 2023.

* Israel has revised its official estimated death toll of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, lowering the number to about 1,200 people, down from more than 1,400, a spokesman for the country’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday night.

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!

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Viva Fidel!

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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.)

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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

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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

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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.

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Ruchell Cinque Magee Joins the Ancestors 

                                                         1939-2023

 

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!

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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!

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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.

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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 

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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

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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)

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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

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Sign the petition:

https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/

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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

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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]

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[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

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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

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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

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Articles

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1) Workers in Sweden Will Expand Strike Against Tesla

Swedish unions are joining in blockades and targeted strikes against the U.S. automaker over its refusal to sign a collective bargaining agreement with its mechanics.

By Melissa Eddy and Christina Anderson, Published Nov. 7, 2023, Updated Nov. 8, 2023

Melissa Eddy reported from Berlin, and Christina Anderson from Stockholm.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/07/world/europe/sweden-tesla-strike.html

Tesla’s service center in Segeltorp, Sweden. Workshop workers have gone on strike demanding that the company sign a collective agreement. Credit...TT News Agency, via Reuters

Unions across Sweden said on Tuesday that they would support an effort to pressure Tesla to sign a collective bargaining agreement with its 120 mechanics, joining a campaign to defend a model of organized labor that many Swedes say is essential to the country’s economic success and stability.

 

Dockworkers said they would expand their blockade of the automaker’s shipment to all ports in Sweden next week, after launching the action at four key locations. The electricians’ union said its members would stop servicing Tesla charging stations when they needed a repair, and maintenance workers said they wouldn’t clean Tesla facilities.

 

On Monday, the IF Metall trade union, which represents 300,000 workers across the country including the Tesla mechanics, said its talks with company representatives had ended without resolution. The union began the strike action at Tesla’s 12 service centers on Oct. 27.

 

Tesla, which entered Sweden in 2013, did not respond to requests for comment. The company told Sweden’s TT News Agency that it followed Swedish labor market rules but had chosen not to sign a collective agreement.

 

“It is unfortunate that IF Metall has taken these measures,” Tesla told TT in an emailed statement. “We already offer equivalent or better agreements than those covered by collective bargaining and find no reason to sign any other agreement.”

 

Tesla also said it was committed to “remaining available to our customers” during the strike.

 

That appeared to be the case on Tuesday at a Tesla facility in Segeltorp, a suburb of Stockholm, where customers were dropping off and picking up their cars and mechanics were seen coming and going. They declined to speak with a reporter.

 

IF Metall has said it believes that Tesla has hired outside workers to replace striking employees, but this could not be independently confirmed. “We know that Tesla has people who are not part of the ordinary work force working in some locations,” said Jesper Pettersson, the union’s spokesman.

 

Some Tesla owners arriving to have their cars serviced appeared to be nonplused by the labor actions.

 

“It should be up to the company” whether it signs a collective bargaining agreement, said Karin Bjarle, 42, an e-commerce entrepreneur who had the bulbs in her headlight replaced.

 

The unions supporting IF Metall’s cause said they were trying not only to improve working conditions for mechanics employed by Tesla but to defend Sweden’s longstanding system of organized labor, in which employers and employees work together to reach consensus on wages, benefits and working hours. Such agreements cover about 90 percent of workers in Sweden.

 

“If we let this go, it puts a crack in the whole system,” said Tommy Wreeth, head of the Swedish Transport Workers’ Union, who went to Sodertalje Harbor, south of Stockholm, to rally union members around the blockade against Tesla.

 

“This isn’t just about the metalworkers’ and transport workers’ unions,” he said. “This is important because the whole Swedish model is at stake.”

 

The transport union said last week that it would refuse to unload any Teslas arriving by ship to four large Swedish ports beginning Tuesday. After it learned that Tesla was rerouting shipments to other ports, the union said, it expanded its job action to block such shipments to all Swedish ports starting Nov. 17 unless an agreement is reached.

 

On Tuesday it was unclear if any shipments of Teslas were scheduled to arrive or were turned away at the ports. Mans Frostell, chief executive of Sodertalje Port, said Sodertalje received an average of 1,200 cars a week; there were no Tesla cars in this week’s shipment.

 

Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, has repeatedly pushed back against calls to unionize by his 127,000 employees around the world. But IF Metall and its supporters argue that Tesla’s employees lack the annual wage increases, insurance and pension coverage, and other benefits they would receive if they were under an industrywide collective agreement.

 

“Tesla must accept the rules of the Swedish labor market, and in Sweden we use collective agreements,” said Mikael Pettersson, head of negotiations at Elektrikerna, the electricians’ union.

 

Elektrikerna said its members would not provide any servicing or repairs at Tesla’s 213 charging stations across Sweden starting Nov. 17. “If something breaks, no one will fix it,” the union said in a statement.

 

Cleaning staff at Tesla’s facilities in the Stockholm area and one in Umea in northern Sweden will also start staying home from their jobs on that date, the Swedish Building Maintenance Workers’ Union said.

 

Not only unions are joining in the action. Taxi Stockholm, which advertises its adherence to the collective agreement system, said it would cease all new orders of Teslas for its fleet.

 

“It’s good they’re taking these actions,” said Jesper Nordgaard, 29, a member of the transport union who works at the port of Sodertalje. “My question is why didn’t they do it sooner?”

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2) Striking Actors and Hollywood Studios Agree to a Deal

The agreement all but ends one of the longest labor crises in the history of the entertainment industry. Union members still have to approve the deal.

By Brooks Barnes, John Koblin and Nicole Sperling, Published Nov. 8, 2023, Updated Nov. 9, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/business/media/actors-strike-deal.html

Dual strikes by writers and actors brought Hollywood to a standstill this year. Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Times

One of the longest labor crises in Hollywood history is finally coming to an end.

 

SAG-AFTRA, the union representing tens of thousands of actors, reached a tentative deal for a new contract with entertainment companies on Wednesday, clearing the way for the $134 billion American movie and television business to swing back into motion.

 

Hollywood’s assembly lines have been at a near-standstill since May because of a pair of strikes by writers and actors, resulting in financial pain for studios and for many of the two million Americans — makeup artists, set builders, location scouts, chauffeurs, casting directors — who work in jobs directly or indirectly related to making TV shows and films.

 

Upset about streaming-service pay and fearful of fast-developing artificial intelligence technology, actors joined screenwriters on picket lines in July. The writers had walked out in May over similar concerns. It was the first time since 1960, when Ronald Reagan was the head of the actors’ union and Marilyn Monroe was still starring in films, that actors and writers were both on strike.

 

The Writers Guild of America, which represents 11,500 screenwriters, reached a tentative agreement with studios on Sept. 24 and ended its 148-day strike on Sept. 27. In the coming days, SAG-AFTRA members will vote on whether to accept their union’s deal, which includes hefty gains, like increases in compensation for streaming shows and films, better health care funding, concessions from studios on self-taped auditions, and guarantees that studios will not use artificial intelligence to create digital replicas of their likenesses without payment or approval.

 

SAG-AFTRA, however, failed to receive a percentage of streaming service revenue. It had proposed a 2 percent share — later dropped to 1 percent, before a pivot to a per-subscriber fee. Fran Drescher, the union’s president, had made the demand a priority, but companies like Netflix balked, calling it “a bridge too far.”

 

Instead, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of entertainment companies, proposed a new residual for streaming programs based on performance metrics, which the union, after making some adjustments, agreed to take.

 

At 118 days, it was the longest movie and television strike in the union’s 90-year history. SAG-AFTRA said in a terse statement that its negotiating committee had voted unanimously to approve the tentative deal, which will proceed to the union’s national board on Friday for “review and consideration.”

 

It added, “Further details will be released following that meeting.”

 

Shaan Sharma, a member of the union’s negotiating committee, said he had mixed emotions about the tentative deal, though he declined to go into specifics because the SAG-AFTRA board still needed to review it.

 

“They say a negotiation is when both sides are unhappy because you can’t get everything you want on either side,” he said, adding, “You can be happy for the deal overall, but you can feel a sense of loss for something that you didn’t get that you thought was important.”

 

Ms. Drescher called the agreement “historic” in a post on Instagram. “We did it!!!!” she wrote. She and other SAG-AFTRA officials had come under severe pressure from agents, crew member unions and even some of her own members, including George Clooney and Ben Affleck, to wrap up what had started to feel like an interminable negotiation.

 

“I’m relieved,” Kevin Zegers, an actor most recently seen in the ABC show “The Rookie: Feds,” said in an interview after the union’s announcement. “If it didn’t end today, there would have been riots.”

 

The studio alliance said in a statement that the tentative agreement “represents a new paradigm,” giving SAG-AFTRA “the biggest contract-on-contract gains in the history of the union.”

 

There is uncertainty over what a poststrike Hollywood will look like. But one thing is certain: There will be fewer jobs for actors and writers in the coming years, undercutting the wins that unions achieved at the bargaining table.

 

Even before the strikes, entertainment companies were cutting back on the number of television shows they ordered, a result of severe pressure from Wall Street to turn money-losing streaming services into profitable businesses. Analysts expect companies to make up for the pair of pricey new labor contracts by reducing costs elsewhere, including by making fewer shows and canceling first-look deals.

 

For the moment, however, the agreements with actors and writers represent a capitulation by Hollywood’s biggest companies, which started the bargaining process with an expectation that the unions, especially SAG-AFTRA, would be relatively compliant. Early in the talks, for instance, the studio alliance — Netflix, Disney, NBCUniversal, Apple, Amazon, Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros. — refused to negotiate on multiple union proposals. “Rejected our proposal, refused to make a counter” became a rallying cry among the striking workers.

 

As the studio alliance tried to limit any gains, the companies cited business challenges, including the rapid decline of cable television and continued streaming losses. Disney, struggling with $4 billion in streaming losses in 2022, eliminated 7,000 jobs in the spring.

 

But the alliance underestimated the pent-up anger pulsating among the studios’ own workers. Writers and actors called the moment “existential,” arguing that the streaming era had deteriorated the working conditions and compensation for rank-and-file members of their professions so much that they could no longer make a living. The companies brushed such comments aside as union bluster and Hollywood dramatics. They found out the workers were serious.

 

With the strikes dragging into the fall and the financial pain on both sides mounting, the studio alliance reluctantly switched from trying to limit gains to figuring out how to get Hollywood’s creative assembly lines running again — even if that meant bending to the will of the unions.

 

“It was all macho, tough-guy stuff from the companies for a while,” said Jason E. Squire, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. “But that certainly did change.”

 

There had previously been 15 years of labor peace in Hollywood.

 

“The executives of these companies didn’t need to worry about labor very much — they worried about other things,” Chris Keyser, a chair of the Writers Guild negotiating committee, said in an interview after the writers’ strike concluded. “They worried about Wall Street and their free cash flow, and all of that.”

 

Mr. Keyser continued: “They could say to their labor executives, ‘Do the same thing you’ve been doing year after year. Just take care of that, because labor costs are not going to be a problem.’ Suddenly, that wasn’t true anymore.” As a result of the strikes, studios are widely expected to overhaul their approach to union negotiations, which in many ways dates to the 1980s.

 

Writers Guild leaders called their deal “exceptional” and “transformative,” noting the creation of viewership-based streaming bonuses and a sharp increase in royalty payments for overseas viewing on streaming services. Film writers received guaranteed payment for a second draft of screenplays, something the union had tried but failed to secure for at least two decades.

 

The Writers Guild said the contract included enhancements worth roughly $233 million annually. When bargaining started in the spring, the guild proposed $429 million in enhancements, while studios countered with $86 million, according to the guild.

 

For an industry upended by the streaming revolution, which the pandemic sped up, the tentative accord takes a meaningful step toward stabilization. About $10 billion in TV and film production has been on hold, according to ProdPro, a production tracking service. That amounts to 176 shows and films.

 

The fallout has been significant, both inside and outside the industry. California’s economy alone has lost more than $5 billion, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Because the actors’ union prohibited its members from participating in promotional campaigns for already-finished work, studios pulled movies like “Dune: Part Two” from the fall release schedule, forgoing as much as $1.6 billion in worldwide ticket sales, according to David A. Gross, a film consultant.

 

With labor harmony restored, the coming weeks should be chaotic. Studio executives and producers will begin a mad scramble to secure soundstages, stars, insurance, writers and crew members so productions can start running again as quickly as possible. Because of the end-of-year holidays, some projects may not restart until January.

 

Both sides will have to go through the arduous process of working together again after a searing six-month standoff. The strikes tore at the fabric of the clubby entertainment world, with actors’ union leaders describing executives as “land barons of a medieval time,” and writers and actors still fuming that it took studio executives months, not weeks, to reach a deal.

 

Workers and businesses caught in the crossfire were idled, potentially leaving bitter feelings toward both sides.

 

And it appears that Hollywood executives will now have to contend with a resurgent labor force, mirroring many other American businesses. In recent weeks, production workers at Walt Disney Animation voted to unionize, as did visual-effects workers at Marvel.

 

Contracts with powerful unions that represent Hollywood crews will expire in June and July, and negotiations are expected to be fractious.

 

“It seemed apparent early on that we were part of a trend in American society where labor was beginning to flex its muscles — where unions were beginning to reassert their power,” said Mr. Keyser, the Writers Guild official.

 

Brooks Barnes and Nicole Sperling reported from Los Angeles, and John Koblin from New York.

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3) ‘Our Family Can Have a Future’: Ford Workers on a New Union Contract

A couple who work at a Ford factory that was on strike for 41 days said the terms of a tentative contract agreement would be transformative for them.

By Neal E. Boudette, Photographs by Nic Antaya, Nov. 9, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/business/economy/ford-strike-wayne-michigan.html

By the end of the four-and-a-half-year contract, both will be making more than $40 an hour.

Dave and Bailey Hodge with their daughter. With the new contract, they plan to work less than their current 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, at the Ford plant in Wayne, Mich.

 

Before autoworkers went on strike in September, Dave and Bailey Hodge were struggling to juggle the demands of working at a Ford Motor plant in Michigan and raising their young family.

 

Both were working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, to earn enough to cover monthly bills, car payments and the mortgage on a home they had recently bought. They were also saving for the things they hoped life would eventually bring — vacations, college for their two children and retirement.

 

They were holding their own financially, but their shifts left them little time away from the assembly line, where both worked from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.

 

“You just sleep all the time you’re not at work,” Ms. Hodge, 25, said. Some days, she’d see her 8-year-old son off to school in the morning. She’d fall asleep with her 14-month-old daughter lying between her and Dave.

 

“I’d wake up in the afternoon, get dinner for the kids and go back to the plant,” she said. “Life revolved around work.”

 

But the couple said they expected all that to change now. Last month, Ford and the United Automobile Workers, the union that Mr. and Ms. Hodge are members of, struck a tentative agreement containing some of the biggest gains that autoworkers had won in a new contract in decades.

 

If the agreement is ratified, Mr. Hodge, who has been at the plant longer than Ms. Hodge, will make almost $39 an hour, up from $32. Ms. Hodge’s hourly wage will increase to more than $35 from $20. By the end of the four-and-a-half-year contract, both will be making more than $40 an hour. The agreement also provides for more time off.

 

Mr. Hodge, 36, said he had teared up when he heard the details. “I was super happy,” he said. “It makes me feel like our family can have a future now.”

 

About 145,000 workers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram, are voting on separate but similar contracts the U.A.W. negotiated with the companies. Many labor and auto experts said a large majority of workers would most likely have the same reaction to the agreements that Mr. Hodge had and would vote in favor of the deals.

 

Just over 80 percent of the union members at the plant the Hodges work at, in Wayne, Mich., have already voted in favor of the deal. Voting at Ford plants is expected to end on Nov. 17.

 

The tentative agreement also means the Hodges are going back to work after being on strike for 41 days. Their plant, which is a 30-minute drive from downtown Detroit, was one of the first three auto factories to go on strike in September. It makes the Ford Bronco sport utility vehicle and the Ranger pickup truck.

 

Our business reporters. Times journalists are not allowed to have any direct financial stake in companies they cover.

 

On the evening of Sept. 14, Ms. Hodge was on a break when a union representative came by telling workers to leave. She and Mr. Hodge knew a strike was possible and had set aside enough money to cover their expenses for two to three months, but they were still surprised they were called on to strike first.

 

The Hodges were required to walk the picket line at the plant one day a week, leaving them lots of time for the family activities they had been missing. The U.A.W. provided $500 a week for each striking worker. The $1,000 a week the Hodges collected helped, but Ms. Hodge also went to work at a beauty spa.

 

“Dave paid the bills with the strike money, and if I needed anything, I used the money I got from tips,” Ms. Hodge said.

 

But as the strike wore on, the Hodges found they had to keep close track of their grocery shopping and stopped eating out.

 

“At first, you were happy to have some time off and have dinner as a family, put the kids to bed, but then it keeps going on, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, this doesn’t seem to be ending,’” Ms. Hodge said. “As it goes along, it gets scary.”

 

On Oct. 25, Ms. Hodge began getting texts from friends at the plant that the U.A.W. and Ford had reached a tentative agreement. That evening, she and Mr. Hodge watched an announcement by the union’s president, Shawn Fain, on Facebook.

 

For Mr. Hodge, the news of the union’s gains — including a 25 percent general wage increase, cost-of-living adjustments and increased retirement contributions — was hard to fathom given the slower progress workers had made in recent years.

 

He had started at Ford in 2007 as a temporary worker and over five years climbed to the top temporary worker wage of $27 an hour. In 2012, when he became a permanent employee, he had to start at the entry-level wage of $15 an hour.

 

“It took me a good 11 years to get to where I am now,” he said. “So this feels like I’m getting back what I would’ve had.”

 

The Hodges plan to continue working 12-hour, seven-day schedules for a short while to rebuild their savings account, and to take care of expenses they had put off, like fixing the dented bumper and cracked windshield in Ms. Hodge’s Ford Explorer.

 

But eventually, they want to cut back to working Monday through Friday, and perhaps one weekend a month.

 

“It will be great just doing some overtime, not overtime all the time,” Ms. Hodge said. “And we’ll start doing things with the kids. Maybe take them to a hotel that has a swimming pool. That would be nice.”

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4) Video shows a projectile flying into the courtyard of Al Shifa hospital.

By Malachy Browne, Neil Collier and Aaron Boxerman, Nov. 10, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/10/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Screenshot

At least one blast hit inside the Al Shifa complex, Gaza’s largest hospital, in the early morning on Friday, as fighting between Israel and Hamas intensified inside Gaza City. The Gaza health ministry said that one person was killed and several others were wounded.

 

Videos verified by The Times showed what appeared to be a projectile flying into the hospital’s courtyard and striking an area where displaced Gazans were resting overnight. The screams of people could be immediately heard. One man was filmed lying on the ground in pain, with his leg apparently mangled.

 

The source of the blast, whether there were multiple strikes and the extent of the damage at Al Shifa were not immediately clear. Ashraf al-Qidra, the spokesman for the Gaza health ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, attributed an explosion to an Israeli airstrike that he said directly struck the hospital’s obstetrics ward on Friday morning. The Israeli military declined to comment on any of the claims.

 

Dr. Al-Qidra also said Israeli tanks had surrounded two other hospitals — the Rantisi Hospital and ِAl-Nasr Hospital — with scores of displaced Gazans and patients trapped inside. That could not be immediately confirmed.

 

Israel has struck over 14,000 targets in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of its war against Hamas, a figure unrivaled in any of its other Gaza wars. The Israeli military has also said hundreds of Palestinian rockets have fallen short within the enclave.

 

The Israeli military has repeatedly singled out Al Shifa in statements in recent weeks, saying that the hospital gives cover for a Hamas military compound. The Israeli military spokesman, Daniel Hagari, told reporters last month that Hamas “does its command and control in different departments of the hospital.” Hamas has denied the accusations.

 

Doctors at Al Shifa have faced dire conditions as the war has ground on, where they have treated a growing number of patients even as medical supplies and fuel needed to power the hospital have dwindled.

 

Motasem Mortaja, an eyewitness, said the blast took place meters away from him. Mr. Mortaja said a separate blast had hit other clinics within the Shifa medical complex later on Friday morning.

 

Many Gazans remained for weeks in the embattled north, despite Israeli orders to evacuate to the enclave’s south, many of them taking shelter in hospitals like Al Shifa and schools, hoping for safety from Israeli bombing. But Mr. Mortaja said many at Al Shifa had fled by Friday morning.

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5) Intense Protests Again Shut Down Midtown Manhattan Streets

Protesters marched at campuses and through Midtown on Thursday as anger and fear over the war in the Middle East escalated.

By Claire Fahy and Camille Baker, Published Nov. 9, 2023, Updated Nov. 10, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/nyregion/protests-israel-hamas-palestinians-nyc.html

Protesters shut down portions of 34th street, marching past the Christmas lights already strung along Macy’s facade. Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war shut down traffic in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday night, marking one of the largest actions in New York City in recent weeks.

 

Earlier in the day, dozens of students protested at schools around the city.

 

Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests have become a daily occurrence on the city’s streets and campuses in the last month, as anger over the war rises and fears about antisemitic and anti-Muslim bias escalate. Other campus conflicts have broken out on social media, sometimes between students furious with the response of administrators and with each other.

 

The march in Midtown closed sections of Fifth Avenue before protesters turned onto 34th Street, snarling evening commute traffic. Participants waved Palestinian flags and chanted “Shut it down” and “Free Palestine” to a drumbeat as they passed under the Christmas lights already strung along Macy’s facade.

 

“I think there’s a real need for solidarity right now,” said Sam Cribben as she marched along West 34th Street toward Eighth Avenue with a group of friends. “Palestinian people can’t really use their voice that much right now, and it’s on us to use our voices because they’re being silenced.”

 

The day’s protest began as a student walkout. Small groups of high schoolers left their buildings around noon and joined a rally that began in Bryant Park around 3 p.m. Further north at Columbia University, roughly 300 students gathered on the Low Library steps to show their support for the Palestinian cause.

 

A group of pro-Israeli protesters wore shirts that said “Bring Them Home,” a reference to the 240 hostages who were taken during the Hamas attack and who are still inside Gaza.

 

At one point during the campus protest, a student on the Low Steps shouted a profanity aimed at Jews, prompting an uproar from the students around him.

 

Tensions have risen on college campuses in recent weeks as the debate over the Israel-Hamas war has divided student groups and roiled campus life. Fadi Shuman, a computer science undergraduate who is Palestinian, said he was upset Columbia wasn’t doing more to combat Islamophobia on campus.

 

“If we’re lucky, we get a sentence in the emails of two paragraphs,” Mr. Shuman, 31, said. “They won’t use the word ‘Palestine.’ They won’t use the word ‘Gaza’ — it says a lot.”

 

The Bryant Park rally expanded into a march through the streets, but paused as the crowd reached the City University of New York campus on Fifth Avenue. Sandor John, an adjunct professor at CUNY, said he came to support the high schoolers, and recalled protesting the Vietnam War when he was in high school.

 

“I want to show solidarity with the high school students and other students who are very courageously standing up in defense of the people of Gaza,” Mr. John said.

 

Luis Cruz, 19, who traveled to Bryant Park from Staten Island, said he was glad to see students in the crowd.

 

“I always think a younger generation are mostly with the people who are being oppressed instead of the oppressor,” he said.

 

As the protest wound its way up Eighth Avenue toward Times Square, it paused in front of The New York Times, where a group of journalists and writers had also gathered in the lobby to demand The Times’ Editorial Board call for a ceasefire.

 

Outside the building on West 40th Street, a police cruiser’s back window was smashed, and the vehicle was graffitied with the words “IDF KKK.”

 

Troy Closson, Nate Schweber, Liset Cruz and Erin Nolan contributed reporting.

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6) Man vs. Musk: A Whistleblower Creates Headaches for Tesla

An employee who was fired after expressing safety concerns leaked personnel records and sensitive data about driver-assistance software.

By Jack Ewing, Nov. 10, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/business/tesla-whistleblower-elon-musk.html

Lukasz Krupski, who worked for Tesla in Norway, said he had been fired after expressing concerns about safety. He also leaked personnel records and data about the company’s driver-assistance software. Credit...David B. Torch for The New York Times

A day after Lukasz Krupski put out a fire at a Tesla car delivery location in Norway, seriously burning his hands and preventing a disaster, he got an email from Elon Musk.

 

“Congratulations for saving the day!” Mr. Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, wrote in March 2019.

 

But what started as a story about a heroic employee and a grateful employer has devolved into an epic battle between the carmaker and Mr. Krupski, a service technician. The fight has spawned lawsuits in Norway and the United States and caught the attention of regulators in several countries.

 

After initially being hailed as a savior, Mr. Krupski said in an interview with The New York Times, he was harassed, threatened and eventually fired after complaining about what he considered grave safety problems at his workplace near Oslo. Mr. Krupski, originally from Poland, was part of a crew that helped prepare Teslas for buyers but became so frustrated with the company that last year he handed over reams of data from the carmaker’s computer system to Handelsblatt, a German business newspaper.

 

The data contained lists of Tesla employees, including Mr. Musk, often with their Social Security numbers and other personal information. There were thousands of accident reports and other internal Tesla communications that Handelsblatt used as the basis for stories about flaws with the company’s Autopilot driver-assistance software.

 

The data also provided the basis for stories by Handelsblatt and Wired magazine about how much trouble Tesla was having manufacturing the Cybertruck pickup, which the company has said will be delivered to customers at the end of this month, almost three years behind schedule. (Some of the information came from a second, unidentified Tesla employee.)

 

Mr. Krupski said he had gotten access to sensitive data simply by entering search terms in an internal company website, raising questions about how Tesla protected the privacy of thousands of employees and its own secrets.

 

The Data Protection Authority in the Netherlands, where Tesla has its European headquarters, is investigating whether the breach violated privacy laws. A spokeswoman for the authority confirmed that it was investigating but declined to comment further.

 

Tesla and three lawyers representing the company did not reply to requests for comment.

 

In the United States, Benson Pai, a former Tesla production worker, has sued the automaker in federal court in California, claiming that lax security by Tesla exposed employee information that could be sold to criminals. Lawyers for Mr. Pai are seeking approval from a judge to pursue the case as a class action on behalf of tens of thousands of Tesla employees.

 

Mr. Krupski shared the data with Aaron Greenspan, a prominent Tesla critic and short-seller, who urged him to provide information he had collected about Autopilot to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The safety agency has had a long-running investigation into the software, which can steer, accelerate and stop a car on its own but requires a driver to be ready to take control at any moment. The agency has interviewed Mr. Krupski several times, he said, an indication that his information was taken seriously.

 

Mr. Greenspan said he had begun closing out his short positions in Tesla shortly after hearing from Mr. Krupski.

 

The U.S. safety agency has confirmed that it is investigating whether Autopilot played a role in hundreds of accidents, some fatal, but declined to comment on any interactions with Mr. Krupski. Tesla has maintained that Autopilot makes cars safer and recently prevailed against a lawsuit that had claimed the software was responsible for a fatal crash in California.

 

Mr. Krupski and Mr. Greenspan also wrote a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission raising questions about Tesla’s accounting practices, based in part on the data Mr. Krupski had collected. He said he did not know what the commission had done with the information.

 

The S.E.C. did not respond to a request for comment.

 

Mr. Krupski remained anonymous until he spoke on the record to Handelsblatt last week.

 

In the interview with The Times, Mr. Krupski, 38, said he was unemployed and had exhausted his savings. He has served Tesla with formal notice that he intends to sue for compensation, but cannot pursue the case further until he scrapes together enough money to pay a lawyer. Unlike lawyers in the United States, lawyers in Norway are not allowed to work on commission, collecting a share of any award if they win but nothing if they lose.

 

Tormod Tingstad, an Oslo lawyer, is representing Mr. Krupski free of charge while they try to raise money.

 

None of this could have been foreseen on March 30, 2019, when Mr. Krupski, who had been hired only a few months earlier, was part of a crew summoned on short notice to prepare Teslas for delivery to customers in Norway, where electric vehicles account for more than 80 percent of new car sales.

 

Tesla, which sells cars directly to buyers, was using space in an exhibition hall near Oslo to deliver vehicles. Thousands of people were visiting a motor show in the same complex.

 

Around noon, a charging device that another employee had improperly modified burst into flames beneath a Model 3 sedan. Mr. Krupski yanked the device away and, with his bare hands, pulled out wiring, pipes and other components that were burning and melting. He used rags and towels to suffocate the flames.

 

“It is fair to say that if it wasn’t for his action, the result would have been a car on fire,” Mr. Krupski’s manager wrote in an email to Mr. Musk the next day. Mr. Krupski said the fire could have spread, endangering workers and customers waiting nearby and forcing evacuation of the motor show.

 

The only person seriously injured was Mr. Krupski, who was hospitalized with severe burns but has recovered.

 

After Mr. Musk congratulated Mr. Krupski, the technician replied with complaints about safety practices at Tesla’s Norwegian operation. On the day of the fire, he wrote, there were no fire extinguishers, cardboard boxes and other flammable material were strewn about, and employees were not briefed about where they would be working.

 

“OK, please let me know if there’s anything we should still do,” Mr. Musk replied, according to a copy of the email included in legal documents prepared by Mr. Tingstad.

 

But Mr. Krupski’s direct communications with the Tesla chief executive did not sit well with his bosses in Norway. According to Mr. Krupski, his supervisor began questioning his performance and telling him he had no future at Tesla.

 

“Long story short I am being fired,” Mr. Krupski wrote to Mr. Musk in late April 2019, less than four weeks after the fire. Mr. Musk replied, “I can’t read emails unless critical to Tesla.” That was the end of their correspondence.

 

In the months that followed, Mr. Krupski said, he was threatened and harassed by co-workers and exiled to a basement. One co-worker threatened to stab him in the back with a screwdriver, he said. Mr. Krupski and other workers were furloughed during the pandemic, and he missed work because of stress-related health problems. Then, in 2022, he was fired after being accused of bad behavior and poor time management, and of being a negative influence.

 

His bosses also said Mr. Krupski had taken pictures at a Tesla facility in violation of company policy. He said he had taken photos to document safety issues, which included use of a rolling table that employees put under a car when removing a battery. The table was designed to bear a maximum of 500 kilograms (about 1,100 pounds), Mr. Krupski said, while the batteries weighed substantially more. If a table collapsed, he said, workers could be seriously injured or killed.

 

In a letter to Mr. Krupski’s lawyer, a Norwegian law firm representing Tesla said the company would dispute that he had been subject to retaliation. The letter accused Mr. Krupski of misappropriating company information and threatened to seek damages from him.

 

Tesla has obtained an injunction from a Norwegian court ordering Mr. Krupski not to distribute any more company information. The court also seized his laptop and turned it over to Tesla. The company notified employees of the data breach on Aug. 18, about three months after it learned that Handelsblatt had the information.

 

Information including work email addresses, compensation and Social Security numbers might have been leaked, Tesla told employees in an email, but said, “We have no evidence that any personal information was misused or will be used in a manner that could harm you.”

 

Mr. Krupski said that he had suffered from depression, anxiety and sleeplessness as a result of his battle with Tesla, but that he felt relieved to no longer be anonymous.

 

“I feel like just by going public I have a new rush of energy,” he said. “I have motivation that, OK, I can maybe start building my life again.”

 

Noam Scheiber contributed reporting.

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7) Gaza’s main hospital is without power and at breaking point as fighting closes in.

By Raja Abdulrahim and Ameera Harouda

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/11/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Patients receiving treatment at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Friday. Credit...Khader Al Zanoun/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Gaza’s main hospital was collapsing on Saturday as the Israeli forces surrounding it began closing in, and an almost complete loss of power and oxygen resulted in the deaths of a premature baby in an incubator and of a number of other patients, according to the hospital director and the Gaza health ministry.

 

Without fuel to run generators, the hospital, Al-Shifa, in Gaza City, has been plunged into darkness and its medical equipment has stopped working. For weeks — amid a cutoff of fuel and electricity by Israel — it has been relying on backup generators and a dwindling supply of fuel, which has now all but run out.

 

At Al-Shifa and several other Gaza City hospitals, thousands of seriously ill and wounded patients and displaced people have been trapped inside while Israeli tanks and snipers surround the compounds and occasionally fire off shots, according to the health ministry, doctors and some witnesses sheltering inside. Nearby, there is intense, close-quarter combat between Israeli troops and fighters from Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that controls Gaza.

 

An Israeli military spokesman said of the hospitals, “We’re slowly closing in on them” and urged people to leave.

 

But some of those who tried to flee on Saturday, including a family, were shot at by Israeli snipers, killing at least one person, according to multiple people at Al-Shifa Hospital, including the director, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya.

 

On Saturday, the Israeli military denied that there was any siege or shooting at Al-Shifa, and said that the military could coordinate with anyone who wanted to leave. Earlier, the military said it was “in the midst of ongoing intense fighting against Hamas” in the vicinity of Al-Shifa.

 

The Israeli military has accused Hamas of operating an underground command center below Al-Shifa, using the hospital as a shield. Both the hospital’s administration and Hamas have denied the allegations.

 

The escalation of strikes on and fighting near some of Gaza City’s hospitals has exacerbated an already catastrophic medical crisis in the territory. Al-Shifa has dozens of other premature babies in incubators that are no longer functioning, said Dr. Nasser Bulbul, head of the hospital’s premature and neonatal department.

 

“We have to transport the babies in blankets and sheets to another building,” he said, where there was a bit of electricity to power incubators. He added that it was dangerous even to move from one building to another inside the medical complex.

 

On Saturday, the Palestine Red Crescent warned that Al-Quds Hospital, another major hospital in Gaza City, was at risk of closing down in the coming hours because it was running out of fuel to power generators. There are currently 500 patients at the hospital, the Red Crescent said.

 

Israeli tanks and military vehicles have surrounded Al-Quds hospital and are shelling the building, the Red Crescent said.

 

The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Friday that the United Nations had verified more than 250 attacks on health care facilities in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including hospitals, clinics, ambulances and patients.

 

“The situation on the ground is impossible to describe,” Dr. Tedros said. “Hospital corridors crammed with the injured, the sick, the dying. Morgues overflowing. Surgery without anesthesia. Tens of thousands of displaced people sheltering at hospitals.”

 

In the I.C.U. at Al-Shifa, after ventilators shut down, medical staff performed manual artificial respiration on some patients for many hours, said Medhat Abbas, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry.

 

Dr. Abu Salmiya, the hospital director, said, “Surgeries have had to stop. Kidney dialysis has stopped and the neonatal unit is in a very dire situation.”

 

“If any wounded now come to us, we will not be able to operate on them,” he added.

 

The power outage is the result of an Israeli siege of Gaza for the past month that has cut off water, food, electricity and fuel. Israel imposed the siege days after a brutal attack by Hamas that killed about 1,200 people, according to the Israeli authorities.

 

The lack of power has forced surgeons to operate by flashlight and doctors and nurses to run ventilators by hand to keep patients alive. Food, water and medicine are also in extremely short supply and medical workers have reported that they have had to perform some surgeries, including amputations and brain operations, without anesthesia.

 

Mahmoud Abu Harbed, a resident of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, has been at Al-Shifa Hospital for more than a month. He said on Saturday that his home was hit by Israeli airstrikes early in the war, wounding his brother, and they fled to the hospital for his brother to be treated and for shelter.

 

“Everyone is on top of one another, displaced people, wounded people, even the medical staff,” he said. “They try to save this person and that person, but they can’t. There’s no electricity or medicine or anything,” he added.

 

“People are afraid, but we pray that God will protect us.”

 

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

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8) Life in Gaza City: Privation, rationing and desperate fear.

By Yousur Al-Hlou reporting from Cairo, November 11, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/11/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Smoke and flares rise over Gaza City during an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel on Friday. Credit...Leo Correa/Associated Press

For years, Mohammad Matar worked on constructing pipelines that moved water across the Gaza Strip — from northern Beit Lahia to southern Rafah. Now, he can barely get access to water himself.

 

Mr. Matar, a 35-year-old civil engineer, was reached by phone on Thursday evening in Gaza City, where he and his family have remained even as Israeli ground forces continue their relentless assault on Hamas.

 

In a city increasingly cut off from the rest of the world, Mr. Matar described days full of desperation and fear.

 

“I have watched a lot of horror movies, but I have never watched a horror movie like this one,” he said. “I am certain that what you see on the TV is not even 5 percent of what we are experiencing.”

 

Mr. Matar says that his family, like many in Gaza, is coping with food shortages. They have not had vegetables for nearly eight days, and he can’t remember the last time he ate chicken or meat. On most days, his family cooks instant noodles over charcoal, and while one box typically lasts a week, he is rationing so that each will last up to to 20 days.

 

“We are trying to conserve what we have until the situation changes — until this sad story is over,” Mr. Matar said.

 

The Israeli military has for weeks ordered residents of northern Gaza to leave for their protection, and warned that those who do not “may be considered a member of a terrorist organization.” In just the past week, as Israel has begun to enact daily combat pauses, an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 residents have fled south by foot, according to UNRWA, the U.N. agency that helps Palestinians.

 

Videos posted to social media by the Israel Defense Forces show families, some with their hands held up, down a main thoroughfare as Israeli soldiers monitor them behind military vehicles.

 

But after fleeing, they remain vulnerable, according to Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications. “This assumption that the south is safe is wrong,” she said in an interview, calling Israel’s order “forced displacement” that had sent droves of people walking south, “dehydrated, exhausted and fearful.”

 

“There is nowhere that is safe in Gaza,” Ms. Touma said.

 

As a result of limited communication and disruptions in aid supply, Ms. Touma said it was impossible to estimate how many people remained in Gaza City, adding that the north had become “the most dangerous area on Earth.”

 

As Israeli troops engage in street battles with Hamas and their relentless attacks engulf more of the city, Mr. Matar and his family have remained.

 

“This is our fate,” he said. “But we hope God will change the situation.”

 

For 10 years, Mr. Matar worked on water infrastructure projects for Saqqa and Khoudary Contracting, a Palestinian construction company based in the West Bank. He said his projects, including building water tanks and the distribution systems attached to them, were now destroyed and estimates that it would take months to a year to restore water to the Gaza Strip when the fighting ends.

 

As for now, he said, “You are privileged if you can find water to wash your hands or face.”

 

On Friday, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, said that Israel’s siege of Gaza — which has limited access to food, water, medicine and fuel for the enclave’s two million residents — had the potential to produce a “much larger catastrophe,” including starvation.

 

There is no fuel to operate Gaza’s underground pumps. And because there are also no bottles of water to be found in the stores, Mr. Matar has been relying on his neighbors’ reserves.

 

“I just take a bunch of buckets and have them fill those with water for me,” he said. “We don’t even know if this water is healthy or not.”

 

Beyond the fear of thirst and hunger, Mr. Matar is most worried for the physical safety of his wife and two daughters, ages 3 and 8, who cling to his side amid the stream of explosions. He tries to distract them with games and laughter, if only temporarily.

 

“When she hears the missiles in her sleep, my 3-year-old jumps,” Mr. Matar said. “She asked me, ‘Why is this happening?’ But what can I say?”

 

Mr. Matar is having a hard time falling asleep himself these days, unsure whether he will wake up the next morning.

 

“I sit and pray with my wife all the time,” he said. “What’s happening is beyond abnormal.” He added: “I want this article to reach people who have the power to stop this war.”

 

Abeer Pamuk contributed reporting from San Francisco.

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9) Israel steps up airstrikes inside Lebanon following Hezbollah drone and missile attacks.

By Euan Ward, Nov. 11, 2023

"Earlier in the day, a hospital in southern Lebanon was also hit by shelling, prompting condemnation from U.N. agencies and Lebanese officials."

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/11/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli border. Clashes in the border area show no sign of abating. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Israeli military ratcheted up its airstrikes inside Lebanon on Friday evening, targeting Hezbollah weapons depots and intelligence infrastructure after a series of drone and missile attacks by the powerful Lebanese militant group left four Israeli soldiers severely injured.

 

Earlier in the day, a hospital in southern Lebanon was also hit by shelling, prompting condemnation from U.N. agencies and Lebanese officials.

 

The violence on the border between Lebanon and Israel has shown little sign of abating as Israel battles Hamas in Gaza. Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a speech last week that his group would continue to exchange fire with Israel’s military to tie up some of its forces in the border area, reducing the number that could be deployed to Gaza.

 

However, Mr. Nasrallah also said that he was keeping Hezbollah’s forces prepared should hostilities with Israel escalate. “All the possibilities on our Lebanese front are open,” he said. “All the choices are available, and we could resort to them at any time.”

 

The comments fueled concerns that the border clashes — already Israel’s most serious since its 2006 war with Hezbollah — could escalate.

 

On Friday, the U.N.’s deputy special coordinator in Lebanon, Imran Riza, called for restraint after what he described as “alarming attacks” on civilians in the country’s south. His statement followed an Israeli drone strike on Sunday that killed a woman and three girls in southern Lebanon, prompting Hezbollah to fire a barrage of Grad rockets at the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona, killing one person.

 

Samir Ayoub, a journalist and the great-uncle of the three girls killed in southern Lebanon, was also injured in the attack. He told Al Mayadeen, an Arabic satellite channel based in Beirut, that they were sisters and had returned to their village to gather school books after fleeing to Beirut amid the clashes.

 

“They were burning right in front of my eyes,” he said, breaking into tears. “I was helpless.”

 

More than 25,000 Lebanese have been displaced amid the fighting, according to the U.N. migration agency. And Israel has expanded the evacuations of its communities along the increasingly volatile northern border.

 

Hezbollah is far from the only militant group operating inside Lebanon, complicating efforts by U.N. and Western officials to maintain calm.

 

On Monday, Hamas claimed responsibility for a rocket attack from Lebanon, setting off sirens around the northern Israeli port city of Haifa — the farthest into Israel that Lebanese fire has targeted since the war began.

 

An Israeli strike on Mays al-Jabal Hospital in southern Lebanon added to the mounting risk of an escalation. Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, said in a statement that the strike was a “crime against humanity.”

 

The shell did not explode, he said, avoiding a potential “massacre,” but a doctor had been injured.

 

The World Health Organization said it was “deeply concerned” about the reports of the strike on the hospital.

 

“Attacks on health care are a violation of international humanitarian law and must be stopped,” the agency said in a statement.

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10) The W.H.O. chief says more than 250 attacks on Gaza and West Bank health care facilities have been verified.

By Farnaz Fassihi, Nov. 11, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/11/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news#the-who-chief-says-more-than-250-attacks-on-gaza-and-west-bank-health-care-facilities-have-been-verified

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, left, the director general of the World Health Organization, at a United Nations Security Council meeting on Friday. Credit...Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The United Nations has verified more than 250 attacks on health care facilities in Gaza and the West Bank, including hospitals, clinics, ambulances and patients, with five hospitals hit in the last week alone, according to the director general of the United Nations’ World Health Organization.

 

The United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting on Friday focused on the health crisis in Gaza, but the attacks on hospitals dominated the discussion. As the meeting began, U.N. officials and diplomats said they were receiving reports of fighting outside Rantisi Hospital and Al-Shifa Hospital, which was struck on Friday.

 

“The situation on the ground is impossible to describe,” said the director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Hospital corridors crammed with the injured, the sick, the dying. Morgues overflowing. Surgery without anesthesia. Tens of thousands of displaced people sheltering at hospitals.”

 

Dr. Tedros told the Security Council that the W.H.O. had also documented 25 attacks on Israeli health care facilities.

 

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said Hamas’s main command headquarters was under Al-Shifa Hospital. Both Hamas and the hospital have denied that accusation.

 

Mr. Erdan criticized the United Nations and the Security Council, accusing them of receiving “every single information” from Hamas’s leaders and of failing to call out Hamas for its atrocities.

 

“What about Hamas’s exploitation of hospitals, ambulances and medical clinics for terror in Gaza?” Mr. Erdan asked the Council, saying that Hamas operated tunnels underneath and adjacent to the hospitals.

 

Marwan Jilani, the director general of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, told the Council that he had rewritten his speech several times as the situation around Gaza hospitals deteriorated on Friday. He said patients and tens of thousands of civilians taking shelter at hospitals were at risk from direct and indirect fire.

 

Twenty people were injured, and one killed, by direct fire at Al-Shifa Hospital, Dr. Jilani said.

 

“The health sector in Gaza is under attack,” he told the Council. “Hospitals are being deliberately targeted in a desperate attempt to force the civilian population out of Gaza.” He said four hospitals had been targeted in the past 24 hours.

 

Hospitals in Gaza are facing extraordinary challenges, including a lack of fuel and electricity, which has forced doctors to operate in the dark and to prioritize which patients should get care. Surgeons have had to operate, including amputating limbs, without anesthesia. Disease is spreading because of lack of food, water and hygiene, U.N. officials and Dr. Jilani said.

 

“The wounded are no longer being treated for their injuries,” Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian surgeon volunteering at Al-Shifa Hospital, said in a post on X on Friday night. “They are being stabalised the best they could.”

 

At the Quds Hospital, where 40,000 displaced Palestinians are sheltering, the main generator was shut down after it ran out of fuel, and Dr. Jilani said there was a real possibility that all of the patients in its intensive care unit and the babies in incubators would die.

 

Calls for a cease-fire have intensified at the United Nations, with officials and many diplomats calling for an immediate halt to the fighting to save trapped civilians and deliver humanitarian aid at scale. The Security Council, however, remains divided over the wording of a legally binding resolution. Russia, China, France and some other members are insisting on language demanding a cease-fire, while the United States is rejecting calls for a cease-fire and asking for the resolution to include Israel’s right to defend itself.

 

Diplomats said one proposal being floated was to introduce multiple resolutions, addressing one issue at a time. They said Malta, a nonpermanent member of the Council, was working on a resolution that would focus only on protecting children in Gaza and ensuring that they received adequate care.

 

In Gaza, medical workers have coined a new abbreviation, W.C.N.S.F.: “Wounded Child, No Surviving Family,” said Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the Council. “Let that sink in.”

 

“Medical staff tell us that they are in fear of their lives and the lives of their patients being taken,” Ms. Nusseibeh said. “And they do not know if they will make it until the morning.”

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11) Violence by West Bank Settlers Cannot Be Ignored

By Serge Schmemann, Nov. 11, 2023

Mr. Schmemann, a former Jerusalem bureau chief for the Times, is a member of the editorial board.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/opinion/west-bank-settler-violence.html

Raneen Sawafta/Reuters

After the thousands of Israelis killed on Oct. 7, and the thousands more Palestinians in Gaza killed in the war against Hamas, it may appear unseemly to focus on the relatively small and sadly familiar clashes between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank. But it would be a mistake to overlook the danger of the escalation in settler violence over the past month.

 

That appears to be the calculation of the militant settlers and nationalist extremists in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, ardent champions of expanding the Jewish presence in occupied territories. By all accounts, the number of Palestinians displaced or killed in clashes with the Israeli Army have risen sharply since Oct. 7. Right-wing extremists have cited the Hamas attack as justification, but they also seem keenly aware that the diversion of global and Israeli attention away from the West Bank offers cover for more audacious land grabs.

 

The immediate danger is that the West Bank will also explode in large-scale violence, which could prove far bloodier and more destructive than previous uprisings. Since Oct. 7, the Israeli Army has tightened travel restrictions around the West Bank and has increased the number of raids against suspected militant hideouts. The Palestinians there whom I spoke to by telephone said people were aware of how terrible the consequences of an uprising would be.

 

But the mood in the West Bank, they said, is angry, and any incident could spark a wave of fury in the streets. On Thursday, at least 10 Palestinians were reported killed in an Israeli Army raid in a refugee camp in Jenin, a frequent target.

 

The Biden administration has made clear it is aware of the tensions. “I continue to be alarmed about extremist settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank; pouring gasoline on fire is what it’s like,” President Biden recently said. “It has to stop now.” The administration also took the unusual step of seeking, and getting, assurances from Israel that none of the thousands of American assault weapons sought by Israel would go to civilians in the West Bank settlements.

 

Mr. Netanyahu, however, has shown little interest in restraining his allies. Though he formed a special war cabinet with opposition leaders to manage the conduct of the campaign against Hamas, his original coalition government remains intact, including the religious-nationalist extremists Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, both unequivocal champions of settling Jews in the West Bank, which they refer to as the biblical Judea and Samaria. Before the Hamas raid, the far-right government was pushing for “judicial reform” which drew broad and sustained opposition in Israel as an attempt to free the government of judicial restraints on its actions in occupied territory.

 

Despite the national preoccupation with Gaza over the past month — or perhaps because of it — the zealots have kept at it. Mr. Smotrich has called for widening Palestinian no-go areas around Israeli settlements, including a ban on Palestinians harvesting olives near the settlements. Mr. Ben-Gvir has dismissed concerns raised by Israeli intelligence agencies about settler violence, referring to it as nothing more than “graffiti” by Israeli youths on Palestinian property and reportedly asking why there was so much attention given to it.

 

It’s hardly graffiti. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 150 Palestinians, including 44 children, have been killed by Israeli forces, and eight others by Israeli settlers, since Oct. 7, and at least 111 Palestinian households comprising 905 people were displaced. In that same time, three Israeli soldiers were killed in attacks by Palestinians. That represents an increase from an already high average of three incidents against Palestinians a day so far this year to an average of seven a day.

 

The figures don’t give the full story of the ways in which Palestinians are terrorized: the uprooting of hundreds of their olive trees, the vandalizing of property, the beatings and shootings, and the roads and outposts the settlers, and sometimes the army, have built to connect settlements and outposts.In an incident reported by The Times last week, a Palestinian vendor and his family were picking olives when four armed Jewish settlers showed up and began yelling. The Palestinians fled, but the vendor, Bilal Mohammad Saleh, turned back to grab his phone. Mr. Saleh was shot dead, the seventh Palestinian to be killed by settlers since Oct. 7.

 

Palestinians have also found threatening leaflets under their windshield wipers, with messages like: “A great catastrophe will descend upon your heads soon. We will destroy every enemy and expel you forcefully from our Holy Land that God has written for us. Wherever you are, carry your loads immediately and leave to where you came from. We are coming for you.”

 

The settlements are not a new project; they began to crop up almost immediately after Israel conquered much of the West Bank in the Six Day War of 1967. Since then, despite the fact that most of the world regards the settlements as illegal, the settlements have steadily expanded and swelled. Under the Oslo Accords of 1993, which gave the Palestinians limited self-rule, the settlements were set aside as one of the issues to be resolved in future negotiations. But that issue has never been resolved, and they continued to expand. Under Israeli law, Jews living in the settlements are treated as Israeli citizens, while their stateless Palestinian neighbors live under military occupation.

 

There are more Israeli settlements in the West Bank than Israel has officially recognized, and over 100 illegal settler outposts. According to population statistics maintained by the settler site WestBankJewishPopulationStats.com, their population went over 500,000 in January, and is projected to clear one million by 2047. Baruch Gordon, one of the authors of the report, said the population growth was testimony to the permanence of the Jewish presence in the West Bank. Opponents of the settlements, he said, “say eventually they’ll go away with a globally negotiated peace deal.” However, “the facts on the ground are saying that we crossed the threshold of half a million, and that is a major mark and we’re here to stay.”

 

The Biden administration and the American people have shown extraordinary support for Israel, both moral and material, and much more is on the way. That is good and proper: Israel is a close ally and faces formidable hostility in its neighborhood and the world. It shows no lack of respect for the Jewish state, and its struggle, to condemn the extremist minority whose goals and methods only undermine any chance for eventual peace and the real security Israelis so ardently seek. Mr. Biden and his lieutenants must be unequivocal in their demand that Israel take serious measures to restrain the zealots, including those in government.

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12) They Wanted to Get Sober. They Got a Nightmare Instead.

Arizona spent $1 billion on addiction treatment, much of it fraudulent, officials said. Scores of Native Americans who sought help are still struggling with untreated addiction — and some died in rehab.

By Jack Healy, Nov. 11, 2023

Reporting from Phoenix and Bylas, Ariz., Jack Healy interviewed more than a dozen families and obtained autopsy reports to detail deaths in Arizona’s sober-living system.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/us/arizona-native-american-addiction.html

Vernadell Johnson, grandmother of Monica Antonio, standing beside her grave in Bylas, Ariz. Credit...Minesh Bacrania for The New York Times

The white vans were the first thing people noticed.

 

They began popping up around tribal reservations in the Southwest a few years ago, trolling through alleys and parking lots on a hunt for new business. They approached anyone who looked homeless or intoxicated with an alluring pitch: Get in, and we’ll give you shelter, sobriety and a better life.

 

Monica Antonio, 21, was one of thousands of people who leaped at the chance. She had been desperate to stop drinking for her three young children, her family said. But the San Carlos Apache Reservation in rural eastern Arizona, where she lived, had limited resources for drug or alcohol treatment. So last January, a van whisked her 130 miles to one of hundreds of sober-living houses that have proliferated around Phoenix in recent years, with little oversight or control.

 

She did well at first, earning a 30-day sobriety certificate, but friends and family said they started to worry when Ms. Antonio posted online photos showing drinking and drug use inside her sober-living home. They said she started to slip.

 

“I told her, ‘Monica, you’re supposed to be sobering up, don’t you have rules?’” said her grandmother, Vernadell Johnson. “She said no.”

 

She had tumbled into what prosecutors and tribal leaders call one of the largest, most exploitative frauds in Arizona’s history — a scheme in which hundreds of rehab centers provided shoddy or nonexistent addiction treatment to thousands of vulnerable Native Americans that cost the state as much as $1 billion. Scores of people ended up homeless, still struggling with untreated addiction, officials say.

 

In the grimmest cases, tribal members died of overdoses inside the sober homes where they had sought help.

 

Navajo activists in Phoenix, who first alerted authorities more than a year ago to problems inside the sober-living homes, say they have tracked the deaths of at least 40 Native Americans who had been at these homes. Some died while they were still patients; some overdosed on buses or the streets after fleeing or getting kicked out. Others ended up homeless in Phoenix and died of heat exposure or were hit by cars.

 

“It’s one of the greatest failures of Arizona government ever,” said Attorney General Kris Mayes, who, along with Gov. Katie Hobbs, announced a crackdown against the treatment centers earlier this year.

 

Ms. Mayes said the treatment centers operated largely unchecked for years, taking advantage of gaps in an Arizona program that funds health care for low-income tribal members. The schemes exploited overlapping American woes — addiction, soaring homelessness and a long history of disregard for Native American health.

 

Operators set up companies with names like Healing Fountain, Happy Valley or Angelic Behavioral Health, registered with the state as counseling centers and behavioral health residential facilities, and placed them in subdivisions where small-scale investors have snapped up homes as rental properties.

 

They began running up huge bills, Arizona authorities say. One business billed the state thousands, purportedly to treat a 4-year-old for alcohol addiction. Another charged $1.2 million to treat a parent and two young children for a year.

 

Similar frauds have occurred in Nevada, Georgia and Texas, Ms. Mayes said, though on a smaller scale.

 

The money Arizona paid out to these programs through its Medicaid system exploded over the past four years, from $53 million in 2019 to $668 million last year. Officials said they do not know how much of that was for legitimate treatment, and how much was fraud.

 

“It’s scary that this is happening in the middle of America,” said President Buu Nygren of the Navajo Nation, which declared a public health emergency over the fraud.

 

State officials said the Medicaid fund for Native American treatment amounted to a virtually unguarded pool of money that was poorly regulated and easily exploited. They have since tightened their rules and shut off the unlimited supply of money.

 

Reva Stewart, a Navajo activist working with families to find their relatives, said some fraudulent homes are still operating and people are still being recruited. “It’s really frustrating,” she said.

 

State officials say they are continuing to investigate.

 

Arizona has suspended more than 300 treatment businesses — including the company that ran the home where Ms. Antonio stayed. It has charged more than 40 people with defrauding taxpayers by running up huge bills through Arizona’s American Indian Health Program, which is part of its Medicaid system.

 

The F.B.I. and federal prosecutors are investigating. In July, a woman from Mesa., Ariz., became one of the first people convicted after she pleaded guilty to federal charges of money laundering and wire fraud. Prosecutors say she was an owner of two treatment companies that received $22 million. According to court documents, she spent the money on four Mercedes-Benz cars, homes in Las Vegas and Arizona, diamond necklaces and a showroom’s worth of Gucci, Versace and Louis Vuitton bags.

 

Tribal leaders and more than a dozen former patients said that the human toll of the scheme was far worse and larger than any financial loss.

 

People who traveled from as far as Montana and the Dakotas described Arizona’s sober-living providers as slapdash operations where drugs and alcohol were plentiful, but actual help was scarce. Some homes were well kept while others were furnished only with mattresses and a few boxes of macaroni and cheese.

 

“It was so empty and depressing,” said Cydney Smith, a San Carlos Apache member who lived in a residential facility last year. “The door was broken. No bed. People were coming in and doing drugs.”

 

According to interviews with activists, former patients and Arizona officials, the small staffs who ran the homes made little effort to help people stay sober, and in some cases fostered their addiction. The white vans sometimes stopped at liquor stores on the way to Phoenix to ply people with alcohol.

 

Some homes conducted regular drug tests and had zero tolerance. Others looked the other way while people smoked meth and drank in their bedrooms, former residents said.

 

“There were fights, there were drugs, there was alcohol in these homes,” said State Senator Theresa Hatathlie, a Navajo citizen who says she tried for years to get regulators to shut down the unlicensed sober-living houses. “There was no enforcement. The idea seems like: Let’s keep them drunk, keep them using. The longer they stay, the more money.”

 

It was a volume business, and the operators paid residents to recruit friends and family as new patients.

 

Several tribal members said they never spoke with any counselors or addiction experts. Instead, they were shuttled to group rehab sessions, where the only requirement was that they sign in and provide their tribal identification numbers so providers could start billing.

 

Often, patients decided to leave the homes or were evicted when the treatment centers abruptly shuttered. This left them on the street, stranded hundreds of miles from family with no money and no way to call home.

 

Joryan Polk, 22, a member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, had grown so despondent during his drug treatment program that he called his mother to say that no one was listening or helping, his mother said. He was found dead and face down in his bedroom last January after overdosing on meth and fentanyl. Residents at the home told a police officer that nobody had checked on Mr. Polk for about two days, according to a police report.

 

The facility where he had been receiving care, Empire Wellness, was suspended in July for billing issues, according to state officials. State officials have declined to provide details about the investigation into the business; the facility’s owner did not answer questions about the investigation.

 

Daniel Fallah, the owner, said that he had tried to help Mr. Polk get off drugs and that his company regularly did drug screenings and did not allow its patients to use. He said there were staff members inside the home to monitor residents.

 

“Everybody’s a grown-up,” he said, in an interview before the business was suspended. “People make choices.”

 

Police reports and autopsies chronicling several deaths have ruled them to be accidents, and state officials have not filed criminal charges relating to any deaths. Several families said they were desperate for answers or some accountability, but had not been able to find lawyers to file lawsuits or even reach the people behind the now-suspended companies that ran the treatment centers.

 

Friends and relatives of Ms. Antonio, the patient from the San Carlos Apache Reservation, said they were still trying to unravel what happened to her.

 

One night in late March, Ms. Antonio and a friend left her sober-living home and drank at a small park in a gated community in southwest Phoenix, according to a police report. She was left lying by the front door, where a staff member found Ms. Antonio on the ground holding a can of alcohol, the report said. The staff member let Ms. Antonio into the house, but did not call for medical help.

 

She was found dead on her mattress the next morning. An autopsy found she had died of alcohol poisoning. Tessie Dillon, one of Ms. Antonio’s aunts, said the family rushed from the San Carlos reservation to Phoenix. She said the sober-living home reeked of alcohol, and that Ms. Antonio’s bedroom had little else than a thin mattress and her clothes piled in the closet.

 

Ms. Dillon said Ms. Antonio’s three children, who are now 8, 7 and 5 years old, still ask for their mother. She still has questions about why nobody checked on Ms. Antonio the night she died, why she was simply put to bed. Officials for the business, which was suspended by the state, did not respond to a request for comment.

 

An administrator from the treatment business did promise to pay Ms. Antonio’s $5,000 funeral bill, Ms. Dillon said.

 

“We sent them the invoice,” she said. “Nothing.”

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13) Al-Quds Hospital halts operations as it runs out of fuel and power, the Red Crescent says.

By Cassandra Vinograd and Vivian Yee, Nov. 12, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/12/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City last month. Israeli tanks and military vehicles have surrounded the hospital, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock

The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Sunday that Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City was “no longer operational,” as power outages and shortages of fuel continued to wreak havoc on Gaza’s health facilities amid raging battles between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters.

 

Israel’s ground invasion of the territory has moved deeper into Gaza City in the last few days, slowly closing in on the hospitals that have provided refuge for tens of thousands of civilians, but that Israel says are shielding Hamas military operations in tunnels below.

 

The Red Crescent had said on Saturday that Israeli tanks and military vehicles had surrounded Al-Quds Hospital, the second-largest in Gaza City, and were shelling the building. It said the hospital had 500 patients and warned that fuel shortages caused by Israel’s siege of Gaza, which has cut off power to the coastal strip and deprived it of any new fuel deliveries, put the hospital at risk of closing down.

 

On Sunday, it declared that the hospital, where it said more than 14,000 displaced people had also been sheltering, was “out of service and no longer operational.”

 

“The cessation of services is due to the depletion of available fuel and power outage,” the organization said in a statement, adding that medical workers were “making every effort to provide care to patients and the wounded.”

 

The announcement left one less hospital available for Gazans amid a spiraling crisis. Four others that are adjacent to one another — the Rantisi children’s hospital, Al-Nasr Hospital, and two other medical centers specializing in optometry and psychiatry — were evacuated on Friday.

 

And conditions at Gaza’s main hospital, Al-Shifa, are dire. Thousands of seriously ill and wounded patients and displaced people have been trapped inside, while Israeli tanks and troops surround the compound, with snipers occasionally firing off shots, according to Gaza’s health ministry, doctors and some witnesses sheltering inside. Nearby, there is intense, close-quarter combat between Israeli troops and fighters from Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that controls Gaza.

 

The World Health Organization said on Sunday that it had lost communication with its contacts at Al-Shifa, where the Gaza health ministry said a day earlier that at least five wounded patients — including a premature baby in an incubator — had died as a result of the power outage. Without fuel to run generators, the hospital has been plunged into darkness, the health ministry and the hospital’s administrator said.

 

“W.H.O. has grave concerns for the safety of the health workers, hundreds of sick and injured patients, including babies on life support and displaced people who remain inside the hospital,” the U.N. agency said in a statement. “The number of inpatients is reportedly almost double its capacity, even after restricting services to lifesaving emergency care.”

 

President Biden’s national security adviser warned Israel on Sunday against engaging in combat in hospitals in Gaza, even though he said he agreed with its view that Hamas uses such civilian facilities “as human shields” to house its fighters and store its weapons.

 

“The United States does not want to see firefights in hospitals, where innocent people, patients receiving medical care, are caught in the crossfire,” Jake Sullivan, the adviser, said in an interview with “Face the Nation” to be aired later in the morning on CBS. “And we’ve had active consultations with Israeli defense forces on this.”

 

In Gaza City, Al Ahli Hospital appears to be one of the few facilities able to accept new patients. Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, a British-Palestinian doctor volunteering there, said in a voice note on Sunday that the hospital had two operating rooms and three surgeons to handle more than 500 wounded people, some of whom had been transferred from Al Shifa. He said that Al Ahli has no X-ray technician or anesthesia, and that multiple patients have died because the hospital no longer has access to blood transfusions.

 

“You have a feeling that the place is back to the same conditions and the same capabilities it had” during World War I, Dr. Abu Sittah said. “The situation is so bleak.”

 

Raja Abdulrahim and Peter Baker contributed reporting.

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