Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, November 15, 2023

Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)

11,300 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7. The UN mourns the deaths of more than 100 aid workers in Gaza, the highest number killed in any conflict in its history.

 

TAKE ACTION NOW!

 

·      Demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

·      Demand an end to the blockade that limits humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.

·      Demand an immediate end to the targeting of civilians in Gaza.

·      Demand an immediate cessation to attacks on hospitals and medical facilities.

·      Demand an end to the genocide of Palestinian people.

·       

This webinar will present a brief history of the struggle of the Palestinian people and the current war on Gaza, and offer information on how you can stand against genocide and for justice. The Teach-In will feature Sherene Seikaly, Associate Professor of History at UC Santa Barbara, Beth Miller of Jewish Voice for Peace, and activists Rasha Mubarak and Camille Landry from AfGJ.

 

Please join us for this informative teach-in:

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8716999949423/WN_u5W7v0muQpOR9f9p-nPoKQ?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=b037cf8f-8f3f-4c12-881e-0163f464cd9e#/registration

 

The time to act is now!

 

The unholy alliance of Zionism and imperialism is on full display. At the same time, the indomitable spirit of the Palestinian resistance and anti-war movement is undeniable. Join an action near you to demand a ceasefire and an end to US imperialism. 

 

For a list of global actions and events, visit:

 

Samidoun's Calendar of Resistance for Palestine:

https://samidoun.net/2023/10/calendar-of-resistance-for-palestine-events-and-actions-around-the-world/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=b037cf8f-8f3f-4c12-881e-0163f464cd9e

 

Answer Coalition's list of demonstrations being updated regularly:

https://www.answercoalition.org/join_a_protest_near_you_free_palestine?utm_campaign=palestine_demos_initial_list&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=b037cf8f-8f3f-4c12-881e-0163f464cd9e

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BAY AREA

#CEASEFIRE MASS MEETING

Sunday, November 19

10:00 A.M. – 3:00 P.M.

Bay Resistance, Center for Political Education, APTP and AROC invite you to connect with allies and community to move into forceful action to stop the genocide in Gaza.

In this critical moment, we offer this mass meeting space to get clear on messaging and deepen our shared understanding of our organizing strategy. There will be space for political education, training on organizing skills, action planning, and spaces for arts and culture.

This event is open to everyone to get plugged in, including new people who want to learn more about this movement and activists who want to find ways to do more. We’ll have special breakout sessions for families and parents organizing at schools and in their districts.

Stay tuned for an RSVP link coming soon!  Check HERE for updated details:

https://www.facebook.com/events/267145765886103

Take Urgent Action Now!

Call Congress to Demand a Ceasefire Now!

https://act.uscpr.org/a/callforgaza?oa_ext=AROC

Email Congress to demand a Ceasefire Now!

https://act.uscpr.org/a/stop-funding-israels-massacres?oa_ext=AROC

AROC is the only organization in Northern California that builds power for our SWANA people by providing critical legal support and social services while organizing our community around issues of justice and equity.

Our team invites you to be part of the fabric that holds our work together, in the spirit of takkaful, by donating to our organization today:

https://araborganizing.networkforgood.com/projects/100246-main-giving-page

Donate to AROC:

https://araborganizing.networkforgood.com/projects/100246-main-giving-page

Copyright © 2023 Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC), All rights reserved.

You are receiving this email because you have expressed interest in AROC news and events.

Our mailing address is:

Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC)

522 Valencia Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

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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 15, 2023, the total number of Palestinians killed by Israel is now over 11,300 (at least 4,630 of them children and 3,130 women) with over 27,490 injured in Gaza—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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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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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) 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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2) 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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3) 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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4) 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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5) Al-Shifa Hospital ‘is in the circle of death,’ Gaza’s health ministry says.

By Hiba Yazbek and Ameera Harouda, November 13, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/13/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war-news

Mourners gather around shrouded bodies at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City this month. Credit...Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Israeli military vehicles advanced on Monday to the gates of the besieged Al-Shifa hospital complex, Gazan health officials said, as medical staff painted an increasingly calamitous picture of conditions inside a facility where fuel, medicine and food are running out for the hundreds of patients and thousands of people sheltering there.

 

Dozens of corpses are decomposing at the hospital because there is no way to preserve or remove them, a head nurse and a health official said.

 

Doctors and Gazan health officials have said for days that patients at Al-Shifa were dying because of a lack of electricity at the hospital, the Gaza Strip’s largest. Jihan Miqdad, a head nurse in the emergency room at Al-Shifa, said in a phone interview on Monday that patients who were on life support in the intensive care unit were dying because there was little oxygen.

 

“The situation here is catastrophic in every sense of the word,” she said.

 

The hospital and other medical centers in Gaza City have been struggling for weeks to maintain operations as Israeli forces closed in and as supplies of fuel and medicine dwindled. The head of the World Health Organization warned on Sunday that Al-Shifa was “not functioning as a hospital anymore” and was struggling to provide care after three days “without electricity, without water and with very poor internet.”

 

Israeli officials say Hamas uses hospitals in Gaza, including Al-Shifa, as shields to conceal vast complexes for their fighters in tunnels underneath. Hamas has denied the allegations.

 

On Monday, Israeli military vehicles reached a gate on the eastern side of the Al-Shifa complex, where the maternity hospital is, the Gazan health ministry said. In recent days, Israeli troops have reached at least two other hospitals in northern Gaza, stepping up their push to empty the facilities, according to Israeli military officials, as fighting around them intensifies.

 

Al-Shifa was “in the circle of death,” the health ministry said.

 

A spokesman for the health ministry, Dr. ​​Medhat Abbas, said in a phone interview that more than 100 bodies were lying in the hospital’s front yard, another 50 were inside and around 60 were in the morgue. The corpses are starting to decompose, “which turns the hospital into a dangerous place from an epidemiological standpoint,” he said.

 

Staff members and some 8,000 displaced people sheltering at the hospital are suffering from thirst and hunger, Dr. Abbas said. Medical teams are surviving on biscuits and dates, he added.

 

Dr. Nasser Bolbol, the head of the neonatal intensive care unit at Al-Shifa, said in a phone interview that three premature babies had died after the equipment that provides the department with oxygen was knocked out. Hospital staff members moved the 36 remaining premature babies to the only other department that still had oxygen, but that department lacks the incubators the babies need, he said, adding: “Their lives are in danger.”

 

Dr. Bolbol said that the unit had enough baby formula to last another two or three days. He added that the Red Cross was negotiating with Israeli authorities to evacuate the premature babies, but that no agreement had been reached so far.

 

“It’s catastrophic,” said Dr. Bolbol. “I’m watching patients die in front of my eyes and I can’t provide them the slightest bit of help.”

 

Dr. Bolbol said that there had been continuous shelling and strikes near the hospital, and that the building he works in was constantly shaking. “It feels like we have been living through an earthquake for over 24 hours,” he added.

 

Medical staff were unable to leave the building to remove corpses, fearing they would be shot at by Israeli forces stationed nearby, Dr. Bolbol said. He added that some displaced people who had tried to leave the hospital to find food and water had come under fire, and that some had been killed. “Their bodies are still lying on the street,” he said.

 

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about accusations that it was firing on people trying to leave the hospital. It has denied such claims in recent days.

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6) At Tourist Hotels, Israeli Evacuees Plan for Long Stays to Escape Border Attacks

More than 125,000 Israeli evacuees have been resettled from their communities along the dangerous borders with Lebanon and Gaza in the largest internal displacement in the country’s history.

By Mark Landler and Adam GoldmanPhotographs by Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, Nov. 13, 2023

Mark Landler and Avishag Shaar-Yashuv reported from Nazareth and Tiberias, and Adam Goldman from Kiryat Shmona, Israel.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/world/middleeast/israel-evacuees-border-attacks.html

Children who were evacuated from their homes in Arab al-Aramshe, a village on the Lebanese border in northern Israel playing in a makeshift kindergarten in the Golden Crown Hotel in Nazareth.

Lea Raivitz, 68, an evacuated resident of Kibbutz Bar’am, in the dining hall of Caesar Premier Tiberias Hotel in Tiberias. “Being a refugee, even a luxury refugee, is still a refugee,” she said.

Evacuated residents from Kiryat Shmona, near the Lebanese border in the north of Israel, last week on the balcony of the Caesar Premier Tiberias Hotel.

A joyful clamor echoed in the ballroom of the Golden Crown Hotel. Kindergarten was in full swing for 30 children from Arab al-Aramshe, a village next to Israel’s border with Lebanon. Only this class was meeting 44 miles south, in Nazareth, where nearly 800 of the village’s residents have been living since mid-October, when they were evacuated because of the risk of attacks by the militant group Hezbollah.

 

“On an emotional level, it’s hard for the children because their parents are under stress,” said Dalal Badra, an inspector from Israel’s Education Ministry, who was helping to organize the classes. “They can sense that something is wrong.”

 

These children are part of the largest internal displacement in Israel’s history, a modern-day exodus of more than 125,000 people. They have been evacuated from towns in the south, near Gaza, where Hamas extremists massacred Israeli civilians and soldiers a month ago, and from the north, where tensions have escalated in recent days as Israel has exchanged fire with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, fueling fears that Hezbollah fighters will swarm across the border and do the same to them.

 

It is a logistically complex and costly operation for the Israeli state, which is paying to house the evacuees indefinitely in 280 hotels and guesthouses scattered across the country. As the days stretch into weeks, the government is setting up makeshift schools and medical clinics. In the south, where many of the evacuees survived the Hamas attacks, it has recruited specialists to offer trauma counseling.

 

The Golden Crown, which usually caters to tourists visiting biblical sites in the hometown of Jesus, has been converted into a kind of refugee resort, offering a simulacrum of village life. Its souvenir shop is closed, and the swimming pool has been drained, but the dining room offers three meals a day, the lobby heaves with strollers, and laundry flutters from the balconies of rooms packed with families.

 

Hunched over a laptop at the bar, Adeeb Mazal, Arab al-Aramshe’s community manager, tried to keep track of his vagabond villagers. He said he worried about getting enough aid to pay for their accommodations. He worried about how long they would have to stay in Nazareth. (Israeli officials estimate until the end of the year.) And he worried about their mental health, with the idleness nourishing their fears about Hezbollah.

 

“I try to explain to people, ‘We’re in an emergency situation; we’re not on vacation,’” said Mr. Mazal, who is 34 and, like virtually all of the residents of Arab al-Aramshe, a member of Israel’s minority Arab population.

 

Being Arab makes little difference to their perception of the threat from Hezbollah. Several of Arab al-Aramshe’s residents have served in the Israeli military and the police force. An Israeli flag flies at the entrance to the village. Some said Hezbollah’s fighters would not hesitate to attack them. As for the rockets, said Ali Mohamid, 68, “They don’t discriminate between the blood of Arabs and the blood of Jews.”

 

Still, questions of identity are never far from the surface in Israel, and they are playing out in other ways during this mass displacement.

 

Twenty miles east of Nazareth, in the resort town of Tiberias, hundreds of Israeli evacuees from towns and kibbutzim along the Lebanese border are camped out in the Caesar Premier Tiberias Hotel. They have a splendid view of the Sea of Galilee and the Golan Heights beyond, but nobody is using the palm-fringed swimming pool.

 

Though not as traumatized as the survivors of the Oct. 7 attacks in the south, their mood is watchful and wary. They wonder how long they will be kept from their homes, and whether this enforced exile will have lingering effects.

 

“We’ve tried to make a normal life out of an abnormal situation,” said Lea Raivitz, 68, who lives in Bar’am, a kibbutz less than 1,000 feet from the border with Lebanon. “But being a refugee, even a luxury refugee, is still a refugee. We can’t predict the future. We can’t think about the past. We live in the here and now.”

 

As with Arab al-Aramshe, the 400 residents of Bar’am who are at the hotel have tried to recreate their world, with classes and cultural programs. A baby was born during the evacuation, while the oldest evacuee is 95.

 

For Ms. Raivitz, the biggest fear is that spending months away from the kibbutz will erode its communal culture — change the “we to me,” as she put it. Already, she said, some were complaining about the hotel and moving in with family or friends nearby. As they do, they are taking cars from the fleet of 100 vehicles that belongs to the kibbutz and now fills the hotel’s parking lot.

 

“People are starting to think of themselves,” said Ms. Raivitz, who has worked as a school principal and factory manager. “We always had people to take care of everything. Now they are having to get used to taking care of themselves.”

 

Returning home is out of the question. From the road leading to Bar’am, she said, one can watch militants hoist Hezbollah’s flag at an outpost. The kibbutz’s fences, gates and security cameras could not keep out marauding fighters any more than they did in the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas near Gaza.

 

A senior Israeli official said the military was constantly monitoring the situation on the Lebanese border and was ready if Hezbollah changed its strategy. After the harrowing events of Oct. 7, which caught the army off guard, few are reassured.

 

While the northern front has been quieter than the battleground of Gaza, there are signs of escalation. Hezbollah has begun using more powerful artillery, putting more Israeli cities at risk. A guided-missile on Sunday wounded two Israeli civilians, while Israel’s counter-strikes have killed at least 70 Hezbollah militants.

 

Asaf Hamawy, 47, who works for an electronics company, ventured home recently to pick up clothing and other belongings in Kiryat Shmona, a once-bustling border city of 20,000 that is now virtually deserted. A rocket fired by Hezbollah had landed down the street from his house, incinerating three cars.

 

“I would not take my family back,” said Mr. Hamawy, who was a soldier from 1994 to 1997. “I’m not the hero I was 20 years ago. I have three kids now.”

 

None of the evacuees said they were reassured by the recent speech by Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, which was full of fiery language but signaled that the group was not on the brink of joining the war against Israel. The steady rain of rockets is a reminder that things can escalate very quickly.

 

“He’s just testing us,” Mr. Hamawy said. “He wants to see how many days it will take the Israeli army to demolish Hamas. He’s trying to irritate Israel and make us work to defend the northern border.”

 

When a reporter visited Kiryat Shmona in late October, Merkava tanks lurked under the trees as Israeli soldiers patrolled, insisting they could repel any Hezbollah attack. Heavy gunfire crackled in the background, reverberating through the valley. The city is a frequent target of strikes, the damage visible in one house where a rocket left a gaping hole in the roof and charred walls.

 

Residents cannot return until Israel ensures that Hezbollah does not pull off a Hamas-like attack, said Avichai Stern, the mayor of Kiryat Shmona. A video once released by the militants depicted an invasion of northern Israel that looked eerily like what Hamas did across the border from Gaza: a barrage of rockets followed by a multipronged ground attack by Hezbollah fighters.

 

“I see them on the fence,” Mr. Stern said, referring to the Hezbollah fighters. “Until we remove this threat from the fence, no one can promise me I won’t wake up one morning to see the same thing happen here.”

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7) This War Did Not Start a Month Ago

By Dalia Hatuqa, Nov. 14, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/opinion/israel-gaza-war-history.html

Pictures from History/Getty Images

For the past month, normal life in Ramallah — a city in the West Bank usually known for its young population and its vibrant nightlife — has been brought to a standstill.

 

Since Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attacks, Israeli forces have launched numerous raids on the West Bank, arresting people from all walks of life: students, activists, journalists, even individuals posting online in support of Gaza. Air and drone strikes have destroyed houses and streets, targeted numerous refugee camps, and nearly leveled Al-Ansar Mosque. They have pummeled the city of Jenin; last month, Israeli forces destroyed the memorial for an Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, at the spot where she was killed while reporting more than a year ago.

 

Meanwhile, a settlement council has been distributing hundreds of assault rifles to civilian squads in settlements in the northern West Bank, part of a larger effort by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is a settler himself, to arm civilian groups in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. So far, the ministry has purchased 10,000 assault rifles for such teams around the country. It’s part of the atmosphere of escalating violence that has killed more than 130 Palestinians living in the West Bank since Oct. 7.

 

For Palestinians, this type of systematic violence is nothing new.

 

To many inside and outside this war, the brutality of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks was unthinkable, as has been the scale and ferocity of Israel’s reprisal. But Palestinians have been subject to a steady stream of unfathomable violence — as well as the creeping annexation of their land by Israel and Israeli settlers — for generations.

 

If people are going to understand this latest conflict and see a path forward for everyone, we need to be more honest, nuanced and comprehensive about the recent decades of history in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, particularly the impact of occupation and violence on the Palestinians. This story is measured in decades, not weeks; it is not one war, but a continuum of destruction, revenge and trauma.

 

Since the 1948 Nakba — in which entire Palestinian villages were wiped off the map and the modern state of Israel was established — Palestinians have endured a subjugation that has defined their daily lives. For decades, we have been reeling from Israel’s military occupation, as well as a succession of deadly invasions and wars. The wars of 1967 and 1973 helped shape the modern geography and geopolitics of the area, with millions of largely stateless Palestinians split between Gaza and the West Bank. In Gaza, often referred to as the world’s largest open-air prison, Palestinians are prohibited from entering or leaving, except in incredibly rare circumstances.

 

This history has been absent from much of the discourse surrounding the Israel-Hamas war, as though the attacks of Oct. 7 were completely arbitrary. The truth is, even in times of relative peace, Palestinians are second-class citizens in Israel — if they are deemed citizens at all. According to Israeli law, Palestinians do not have the right to national self-determination, which is reserved for Jewish citizens of the state. A variety of laws restrict Palestinians’ right to movement, governing everything from where they can live to what personal identifications they can hold to whether or not they can visit family members elsewhere.

 

The “right of return” — the right of Palestinians and their descendants to return to villages they were ethnically cleansed from during the 1948 war — is central to many Palestinians’ political perspective because so many are still, legally, refugees. In Gaza, for instance, roughly two-thirds of the population consists of refugees. This status is not some abstraction; it dictates everything from where people live to what schools they go to or doctors they see.

 

Many Gazans have parents and grandparents who grew up only a few miles from where they live now, in areas they are now, of course, forbidden to enter. They still invoke rich memories from their childhood or adolescence, when they walked through citrus groves in Yaffa or olive fields in Qumya — the latter of which, like many villages whose people were expelled into Gaza during the 1948 war, was later transformed into a kibbutz.

 

There have been periods of increased cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians over the past 75 years. But these were usually preceded by times of increased conflict, such as the first and second intifadas, or popular uprisings. The intifadas, in which Palestinians participated in large-scale resistance, sometimes civil and sometimes violent, are often presented by Western media as random or indiscriminate bursts of murderous savagery — as has been the case with the Oct. 7 attacks. But that violence did not happen in a vacuum.

 

Stark conditions in Palestinian communities — including the ever-tightening control of daily life through violent night raids, arrests, military checkpoints and the building of illegal Israeli settlements — were the backdrop to these outbursts. Unfortunately, from a historical standpoint, these acts of violence seem to be the only things that have moved the needle politically for Palestinians.

 

The death and destruction we Palestinians have collectively witnessed and endured has prolonged our generational trauma. Even before this conflict, PTSD was a mainstay in Palestinian homes, as was depression. As a young population, children bear the brunt of Israel’s military rule: Many are snatched at night from their beds or from the arms of their mothers, beaten and imprisoned after being tried arbitrarily in military courts. Others are shot and paralyzed, if not killed.

 

In Gaza, these victims have virtually no legal possibility of recourse from the Israeli state. Under the 16-year siege of Gaza, Israeli administrators have controlled access to electricity, food and water, at one point determining the number of calories Gazans could consume before sliding into malnutrition. They have also allowed Gaza and the occupied territories to serve as a testing ground for Israel’s vaunted security tech firms. Many people from Gaza have risked the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to get out, only to die en route.

 

With Gaza sealed for the past 16 years, and the West Bank largely contained by settler violence and the army, Israel has been able to keep its occupation indefinite. The periodic spasms of violence — such as the occasional small group or lone wolf attacks and rocket barrages — reinforce the state’s justification for long-term control of Palestinians and Palestinian lands.

 

Over the years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisers have been very clear that a separate, sovereign Palestinian state is not on the negotiating table. Neither is the possibility of giving Palestinians the rights that Israelis enjoy. So the status quo of endless occupation — and regular cycles of violence — have become normalized, with the international community seemingly unwilling or unable to hold Israel’s government to account.

 

The Oct. 7 attacks broke that state of play. The occupation’s unsustainable nature was laid bare for all to see, as was the impossibility of governing two peoples but privileging one of them over the other.

 

Dark days are ahead — that much we know. Having lived through wars, invasions and bombardments, we have come to expect the worst. In the West Bank, morale is low on the quiet streets. Twenty-four-hour Arabic satellite news stations provide a droning, ubiquitous background to daily life. They play a constant stream of horrific images and videos: all shocking, but not unprecedented.

 

A feeling of helplessness permeates the West Bank’s cities and villages as we watch more and more fellow Palestinians — now more than 11,100, according to the Gazan health ministry — lose their lives. Israeli officials have proposed pushing Gaza’s population into Egypt’s Sinai Desert, which would render them refugees twice or three times over, and perhaps edge the Israeli settler project into a new, more expansive phase. In the West Bank, we look around, and wonder: Could it happen here? Is it happening already?

 

Any kind of shared future is most likely a longer way off than it was a month ago. But Palestinians already knew that. Was the day before Hamas’s attacks considered “peace”? Maybe for Israelis it was, but for Palestinians it wasn’t.

 

Dalia Hatuqa is an independent journalist specializing in Palestinian-Israeli affairs.

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8) More Than 400 U.S. Officials Sign Letter Protesting Biden’s Israel Policy

The signers, representing some 40 government agencies, reflect growing internal dissent over the administration’s support of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

By Maria Abi-Habib, Michael Crowley and Edward Wong, Nov. 14, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/us/politics/israel-biden-letter-gaza-cease-fire.html

A rally in support of Gaza in Washington earlier this month. “The overwhelming majority of Americans support a cease-fire,” a letter addressed to President Biden states. Credit...Amir Hamja/The New York Times

More than 400 political appointees and staff members representing some 40 government agencies sent a letter to President Biden on Tuesday protesting his support of Israel in its war in Gaza.

 

The letter, part of growing internal dissent over the administration’s support of the war, calls on the president to seek an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and to push Israel to allow humanitarian aid into the territory. It is the latest of several protest letters from officials throughout the Biden administration, including three internal memos to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken signed by dozens of State Department employees as well as an open letter signed by more than 1,000 employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

 

The signatories of the letter submitted on Tuesday and the one circulating among USAID employees are anonymous, the USAID letter explains, out of “concern for our personal safety and risk of potentially losing our jobs.” The signatories of the State Department dissent cables must disclose their names, but those cables have not been released publicly.

 

Although the Biden administration has recently started voicing concern over the high numbers of Palestinian civilians killed while urging Israel to show restraint, that budding criticism does not appear to be placating many in the U.S. government.

 

The letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, began by denouncing the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, then urged Mr. Biden to stop the bloodshed caused by Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza.

 

“We call on President Biden to urgently demand a cease-fire; and to call for de-escalation of the current conflict by securing the immediate release of the Israeli hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians; the restoration of water, fuel, electricity and other basic services; and the passage of adequate humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip,” the letter states.

 

Two political appointees who helped organize the letter to Mr. Biden said the majority of the signatories are political appointees of various faiths who work throughout government, from the National Security Council to the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.

 

Some of the signatories helped Mr. Biden get elected in 2020 and said in interviews they were concerned that the administration’s support of Israel’s war in Gaza clashed with Democratic voters’ stance on the issue.

 

“The overwhelming majority of Americans support a cease-fire,” the letter states, linking to a poll from October that shows that 66 percent of Americans, including 80 percent of Democrats, believe the United States should put pressure on Israel for a cease-fire.

 

“Furthermore, Americans do not want the U.S. military to be drawn into another costly and senseless war in the Middle East.”

 

Israel launched a ground invasion last month in Gaza in response to bloody attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,200 people, according to the Israeli government. So far, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military offensive according to Gaza’s health ministry.

 

Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken, like Israel’s leadership, say they oppose a cease-fire — a long-term halt in fighting, typically accompanied by political negotiations — on the grounds that it would spare Hamas and allow it to reconstitute for future attacks. They have instead called for “pauses,” short interruptions in the fighting lasting perhaps a few hours, to allow for clearly defined humanitarian missions like aid delivery into Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. U.S. officials say they have done more than any other nation to ensure that at least some aid enters Gaza.

 

The two people who helped organize the letter to Mr. Biden said they had agreed to serve the administration because the president stressed that he wanted a government that was more representative of American voters. But, they said, their concerns and those of other political appointees have largely been dismissed.

 

Some U.S. officials said privately that while senior officials welcome disagreement, government workers must understand and accept that they will not always agree with U.S. policy. The dissent over Gaza reflects a generational divide and comes mostly from employees in their 20s and 30s, the officials said — though many older people have also signed dissenting documents, according to people who have collected signatures.

 

The letters of protest come after a contentious meeting on Oct. 23 at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where 70 Muslim and Arab political appointees gathered with senior Biden administration officials, including Jeffrey D. Zients, the chief of staff, and Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris.

 

The meeting started with a general question: How many of the appointees have faced pressure from family or friends to resign over the Biden administration’s support of Israel in the conflict? Dozens of hands shot up, according to one attendee and another who was briefed about the meeting.

 

Senior administration officials opened the floor to take questions and comments. Some attendees cried as they demanded that the administration call for a cease-fire, curb weapons shipments to the Israeli military and stop disregarding Palestinian civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip.

 

The State Department memos to Mr. Blinken were cables sent internally, through what is known as the dissent channel. The channel was created during the Vietnam War to encourage department employees to share disagreements with official policy. Under State Department rules, dissenters are protected from retaliation.

 

On Monday, Mr. Blinken responded to the internal dissent in a message emailed to department employees. “I know that for many of you, the suffering caused by this crisis is taking a profound personal toll,” he wrote, adding that he was aware that “some people in the department may disagree with approaches we are taking or have views on what we can do better.”

 

He added: “We’re listening: What you share is informing our policy and our messages.”

 

Maria Abi-Habib is an investigative correspondent based in Mexico City, covering Latin America. She previously reported from Afghanistan, across the Middle East and in India, where she covered South Asia. More about Maria Abi-Habib

 

Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent who has reported for The Times for more than 24 years from New York, Baghdad, Beijing and Washington. He was on a team of Pulitzer Prize finalists for Iraq War coverage. More about Edward Wong

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9) The U.N. highlights the harrowing conditions in Gaza for pregnant women.

By Farnaz Fassihi, Nov. 15, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/15/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

In a photograph provided by the United Nations Population Fund, an injured woman named Sondos speaks from a hospital bed after delivering her baby at Al-Hilo Hospital in Gaza City. Credit...Bisan Ouda/U.N.F.P.A.

About 50,000 women are currently pregnant in Gaza and about one in 10 is due in the coming month, meaning an average of 180 births a day can be expected amid the harrowing, life-threatening conditions created by the war between Israel and Hamas, according to the United Nations agency for women’s health.

 

Pregnant women have been seriously injured in the collapse of buildings under Israeli bombardment, are sheltering at facilities that lack hygiene and are suffering from the enclave’s lack of sufficient food and water, says the agency — the United Nations Population Fund, known as U.N.F.P.A. The collapse of Gaza’s health care system means pregnant women are not receiving adequate medical care, and some face C-sections with limited anesthesia, the agency says.

 

To highlight the range and gravity of the dangers the war entails for pregnant women, U.N.F.P.A. shared a package of video and audio interviews taken by a Gaza filmmaker who has worked frequently for the agency, Bisan Ouda, at Al-Hilo hospital in Gaza City on Nov. 1. U.N.F.P.A. released the material to reporters last week and published some on its website.

 

“These stories give a sense of what it is like for women to give birth in Gaza right now: amid fear of bombardment, with inadequate medication or even basic sanitation,” Anna Jefferys, a spokeswoman for the agency, said on Tuesday.

 

“When a woman cannot give birth with any semblance of safety and cannot even access anesthesia for a C-section you know that things are very, very wrong,” she added.

 

In one of the videos, a gynecologist, Dr. Haya Hijazi, says that pregnant women are arriving at the hospital with third- or fourth-degree burns and missing limbs, and that a woman who was nine months pregnant suffered a miscarriage when she fell as she was running from an explosion.

 

In an audio interview accompanied by photographs, a woman named Sondos, 26, speaks from a hospital bed with a metal contraption bracing one of her legs. She says that she was eight months pregnant when her house collapsed after an explosion, trapping her under the rubble and shattering bones in both of her legs. She underwent surgery, and the baby’s heart weakened, but she was still able to deliver, she says.

 

Another woman, Raghda Talaat Harb, 37, says in an audio interview that she was a month past her due date and waiting for a C-section, and that doctors told her that general anesthesia was not available. She says they told her she would be given a low percentage of anesthesia and that they would try to perform the operation as rapidly as possible.

 

For women who manage to deliver their babies, a mountain of challenges remain, according to the U.N., including their own malnourishment and dehydration, the absence of safe shelters and hygiene and the lack of clean water needed for feeding babies formula if necessary.

 

In one of the audio interviews released by U.N.F.P.A., Samaa, 17, says she is taking her newborn to shelter at a school and expresses fears that there could be strikes nearby.

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