—Bonnie Weinstein
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Labor for Palestine
Thousands of labor representatives marched Saturday, December 16, in Oakland, California. —Photo by Leon Kunstenaar
Video of December 16th Labor rally for Palestine.
Bay Area Unions and Workers Rally and March For Palestine In Oakland
https://youtu.be/L9k79honqIA
Over 1,000 trade unionists from around Northern California rallied and marched in Oakland to oppose the genocide in Gaza. It was announced during the rally that despite bureaucratic obstacles SEIU 1021 which has over 50,000 members had endorsed the rally and resolution. Unions formally endorsed included AFSCME 3299, OEA, UESF, SEIU 1021, ILWU Local 10, Inlandboatmen’s Union SF Region-ILWU, UNITE HERE Local 2, IFPTE Local 21, SF Public Defenders (workers, not union or unit), Stanford Graduate Workers, Trader Joes United (Rockridge), IWW Bay Area, IWW 460-650 - Ecology Center
National or statewide unions or units (with Bay Area members) that have called for a ceasefire: UAW (international), UAW Local 2865 (statewide), UAW Local 2320, APWU, Starbucks Workers United, California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, CIR/SEIU (national) SEIU-USWW (statewide), Staff Union of CIR/SEIU (unit of CWA local 1032).
The rally was sponsored by Bay Area Labor For Palestine and there was also another Labor For Palestine Rally in New York.
For More Information:
bayarealabor4palestine@gmail.com
Production of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
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Eric Clapton performing in London for Medical Aid to Gaza, December 11, playing a guitar painted with the colors of the Palestinian flag.
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Ann Boyer’s Powerful New York Times Resignation Letter
November 17, 2023
Read: The War Turns Gaza Into a ‘Graveyard’ for Children, By Raja Abdulrahim, Photographs by Samar Abu Elouf and Yousef Masoud, Nov. 18, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/world/middleeast/gaza-children-israel.html
According to Literary Hub[1], "[Early on November 16, 2023], the news broke that Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, essayist, and poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine, Anne Boyer, has resigned from her post, writing in her resignation letter that 'the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone...'"
The letter in full is written below:
"I have resigned as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine.
"The Israeli state’s U.S-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone. There is no safety in it or from it, not for Israel, not for the United States or Europe, and especially not for the many Jewish people slandered by those who claim falsely to fight in their names. Its only profit is the deadly profit of oil interests and weapon manufacturers.
"The world, the future, our hearts—everything grows smaller and harder from this war. It is not only a war of missiles and land invasions. It is an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted throughout decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.
"Because our status quo is self-expression, sometimes the most effective mode of protest for artists is to refuse.
"I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.
"If this resignation leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry, then that is the true shape of the present."
—Anne Boyer
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Viva Fidel!
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Stand With Palestinian Workers: Cease the Genocide Now—Stop Arming Israel!
“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-plus million per day) in bipartisan U.S. 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 Black, Indigenous, people of color (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).
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
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.)
The list of signers will be updated periodically.
info@laborforpalestine.net
laborforpalestine.net
The Labor for Palestine model resolution can be found at:
https://laborforpalestine.net
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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
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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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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
Poetic Petition to Genocide Joe Before He Eats His Turkey
Mr Genocide Joe
you have helped broker
a Thanksgiving truce
in Gaza
where your zionist partners
in war crimes
say they will stop
slaughtering "human animals"
for four days
but
Mr Genocide Joe
closer to home
you have your own hostages
taken in the cointelpro wars
who still languish
in cages
treated worse than animals
inhumanely
so
as you pardon
two turkeys
in the White House today
as you get ready to eat your military turkey
and have it too
it would at last be time
to unchain
at least two of your own "human animals" -
Mumia Abu-Jamal
and
Leonard Peltier
(c) Julia Wright. November 25, 2023. All Rights Reserved to Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier.
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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.
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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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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Letter from Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
November 6, 2023
I’m back at Red Onion. I have no lines of communication. They have me in the B-3 torture cellblock again where there is no access to a kiosk and they’re withholding my tablet anyway. Even if I had it, it’s no use with no kiosk to sync it to and send/receive messages.
This was a hit. Came from DOC HQ in response folks complaining about my being thrown in solitary at Sussex and the planted knife thing. Kyle Rosch was in on it. The warden and AW here said he’s having me sent back out of state. In any case I don’t want be in this racist trap.
They cut all my outstanding medical referrals to send here cuz there’s no major medical facility in this remote region. I was pending referral to the cardiac clinic at MCV hospital (Medical College of Virginia), which is on the other side of the state. Also was pending referral to urology there. They were supposed to do testing for congestive heart failure and kidney problems related to my legs, feet, and ankles chronic swelling, and other undiagnosed issues: chronic cough, fluid weight gain, sweats, fatigue, chest pain. They just cut these referrals all of which I have copies of from my medical files.
They’ve been removing documents from my file too. Like the order I had for oversize handcuffs—which I was gassed the morning I was transferred here for asking the transferring pigs to honor. They took the order out of my file to try to cover their asses. I and others have copies of that too. At this point things are hectic. I’m back in old form now. I was somewhat in hiatus, trying to get the medical care I needed and not provoking them to avoid the bs while that was going on. But the bs has found me once again : ). I need all possible help here. At a level a bit more intense than in the past cuz I need that diagnostic care they cut the referrals for and it’s not available in this remote area. They’d have to send me back to Sussex or another prison near MCU in the VDOC’s Central or Eastern Region. I’m in the most remote corner of the Western Region. My health is not good! And they’re using the medical quack staff here to rubber stamp blocking my referrals.
Although that lawyer may have given you a message from me, she is not helping me in any way. So no-one should assume because a lawyer surfaced that she is working on anything to aid me. Just have to emphasize that cuz past experience has shown that folks will take a lawyer’s seeming presence as grounds to believe that means some substantial help is here and their help is not needed. Again, I need all possible help here….My health depends on this call for help in a more immediate sense than the cancer situation. I’m having breathing and mobility problems, possibly cardiac related.
All power to the people!
Rashid
We need to contact these Virginia Department of Corrections personnel to protest::
VADOC~ Central Administration; USPS—P.O. Box 26963; Richmond, VA 23261
David Robinson Phone : 804-887-8078, Email~david.robinson@vadoc.virginia.gov
Virginia DOC ~ Director, Chadwick S Dotson, Phone~ (804) 674-3081 Email~Chadwick.Dotson@.vadoc.virginia.gov
Virginia Department of Corrections Interstate Compact Liaison
Kyle Rosch, Phone: 804-887-8404, Email: kyle.rosch@vadoc.virginia.gov
VADOC ~Central Administration
Rose L. Durbin, Phone~804-887-7921Email~Rose.Durbin@vadoc.virgina.gov
Red Onion~ Warden, Richard E White, USPS—10800 H. Jack Rose Hwy., Pound, VA 24279
Phone: (276) 796-3536;(or 7510) Email~ rick.white@vadoc.virginia.gov
Red Onion State Prison, Assistant Warden
Shannon Fuller Phone: 276-796-7510 Email: shannon.fuller@VADOC.virginia.gov
Write to Rashid:
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson #1007485
Red Onion State Prison
10800 H. Jack Rose Hwy
Pound, VA 24279
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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
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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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1) Human Rights Watch says Israel is using starvation as a weapon in Gaza.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Dec. 18, 2023
Human Rights Watch accused Israel on Monday of using starvation of civilians as a weapon in its war in Gaza against Hamas by blocking deliveries of food, water and fuel, and by impeding humanitarian access. The group said Israel’s actions could constitute a war crime.
It cited statements by senior Israeli leaders to support its claim that depriving Gazans of necessities was a policy implemented by the country’s armed forces.
The Israeli military said it would issue a formal response to the report later on Monday.
Israel’s government and military have consistently said that Israeli forces are targeting Hamas militants in Gaza and taking steps to avoid civilian casualties, including by urging civilians to flee areas before military operations. It has also pointed to instances in which its forces have rescued or provided aid to civilians caught in fighting.
Human Rights Watch cited a statute of the International Criminal Court that lists as a war crime the act of “intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies.”
On Oct. 9, two days after Hamas-led attacks killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli authorities, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, a territory already impoverished by a 16-year blockade by Israel and Egypt. Mr. Gallant said that no food, water or fuel would be allowed into the territory, which is home to about 2.2 million people.
In the ensuing months, Israel has sharply restricted the entry of goods into Gaza, including nearly all fuel, which it said could be diverted by Hamas for military use. The lack of basic goods has caused many of Gaza’s hospitals to cease functioning and led the United Nations to warn in November that civilians in Gaza faced the “immediate possibility of starvation.” The U.N. World Food Program said last week that more than half of Gaza’s households were facing “severe levels of hunger.”
Human Rights Watch also cited comments by other Israeli officials who said that permission to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza would be contingent on the release of hostages captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attacks. In one example, it cited a comment by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in October in which he said he would not allow food and medicine into Gaza from Israel while hostages remained held.
During a weeklong truce between Israel and Hamas last month that allowed for the release of roughly 100 hostages in exchange for about 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, the Israeli authorities allowed more supplies, including fuel, into Gaza, but aid groups have warned that the amount getting in is a fraction of what is needed.
“Israel has been depriving Gaza’s population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare,” said Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s director for Israel and the Palestinian territories.
“World leaders should be speaking out against this abhorrent war crime, which has devastating effects on Gaza’s population,” Mr. Shakir said in a statement.
Nearly 20,000 people have died in Gaza, many as a result of Israeli airstrikes, according to Gazan health authorities, who say that the majority of those who have died have been women and children.
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2) Israel’s use of unguided munitions could explain the high death toll in Gaza, Pentagon officials say.
By Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt, Dec. 18, 2023
"The United States and Britain used dumb bombs over Dresden, Germany in 1945, killing about 25,000 people."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/12/18/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
Nearly half of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel has used in Gaza have been unguided, according to a U.S. intelligence assessment, which Pentagon officials say may help explain the high civilian death toll.
Even the precision-guided munitions that the United States military has favored in its campaigns in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan produced high civilian casualties. Unguided munitions — so-called dumb bombs — pose an even greater threat to civilians, analysts say.
As the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, visits Israel, Pentagon officials say that one of his key messages in meetings with top Israeli leaders is the importance of limiting harm to Gazans. Israel, Mr. Austin recently predicted, could face “strategic defeat” that would leave the country less secure if it does not do more to protect civilians.
Critics of Israel’s bombing campaign say the message is long overdue, as the death toll in Gaza nears 20,000, according to health officials there.
The United States and Britain used dumb bombs over Dresden, Germany in 1945, killing about 25,000 people. But “military doctrine has evolved since World War II days, and today, the preferred doctrine in highly dense urban areas is to do intelligence-led precision strikes with precision munitions, and special operations forces,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview.
“You have to go slower, with greater precision, and it’s going to take longer and it’s harder, but you have to do that — that’s what Austin is trying to get at,” General Milley said. “He is a soldier. He has experience in combat operations. He understands the military instrument and how you should use it.”
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3) Shame on Israel for Exploiting the Holocaust to Justify Genocide
By Sig Giordano
Mondoweiss, December 18, 2023
Permanent representative of Israel, Gilad Erdan, at the UN wearing a yellow star. (Photo: screenshot from video on the Telegraph YouTube Channel.)
At a United Nations (UN) meeting, on October 31, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s UN Ambassador, put on a Jewish star reminiscent of my grandfather’s. Addressing the UN Security Council, he said the reason he wore the star was to denounce their silence regarding the October 7 attack on Israel. Erdan compared this silence to the silence that allowed for the Holocaust to happen. In response to Erdan, Dani Dayan, the director of Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial museum, quickly called out this misuse of the star, arguing that Erdan was “disgrac[ing] the victims of the Holocaust as well as the state of Israel.”
Dayan was absolutely right to call attention to how offensive it was for Erdan to don the yellow star. Dayan’s reasons, however, are entirely wrong. To make his point, Dayan argued that the yellow star symbolizes the weakness of the Jewish people during the Holocaust, continuing a disturbing and false historical narrative.
Zionists have long sought to paint Holocaust victims as weak to make the case for the founding and then maintenance of the state of Israel. These moves began even before the Holocaust when some Zionists aligned themselves with the eugenic racial science of the day, arguing that Jews must purify their own race creating their own strong breed. Arthur Ruppin, a leading social scientist and head of the World Zionist Organization’s Palestine office in the early 20th century, promoted the settlement of Palestine as the answer to the dangerous results of “racial-mixing” for European Jews. He was not alone, as many Jewish intellectuals argued that forming the Zionist state would allow Jews to “regenerate their own bodies” which were degenerated by the conditions of both assimilation and oppression in Western and Eastern Europe, respectively.
Once Israel was founded, Holocaust victims were regularly treated as weak and as examples of the opposite of what the Zionist state represented, leading to poor treatment for those survivors who became Israeli citizens. As Dayan, himself reiterated, the Holocaust represents a cautionary tale about the weakness of Jews in the diaspora to be juxtaposed with the strength of Jews in the State of Israel.
Despite their disagreement, Israeli leaders like Erdan and Dayan regularly make use of the Holocaust to defend state violence against Palestinians. Unlike Erdan and Dayan, learning about the genocide against my ancestors has allowed me to understand that what is happening today in Palestine is genocide. To know a genocide is happening is painful in and of itself. To know a genocide is being carried out supposedly in one’s name (as a Jewish person) is extra painful. But, to know a genocide is being justified through an appropriation of my family’s suffering, is infuriating. I am furious. How dare the state of Israel insult my family’s history.
The horrors that my family endured are unimaginable to most. My grandmother and grandfather, teenagers when they met at the camp, were the only surviving members of their families. My grandfather was part of a resistance in the camp, hiding people who were on lists to be transported to Auschwitz. My grandfather literally saved my grandmother’s life. This is not a story of weakness. However, it is a story from which I have learned many lessons about the conditions that allow for genocide.
I remember being 8 or 9 years old, sitting at the kitchen table for breakfast while my mother cooked. The radio was on as it was every morning listening to 1010 WINS news, “You give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world.” In the headlines, a resistance group claimed responsibility for a bombing somewhere outside of the U.S. I asked my mom, ‘What is a resistance group?” She explained the idea of resistance by talking about the Holocaust and her father’s struggle to fight back. While not every person claiming to resist is automatically righteous, I realized when I was older that how one views resistance in any given situation is based on their vantage point. That may seem obvious, but in Western media, politics, and educational contexts, we regularly see an association made between resistance groups and terrorism which creates a taken-for-granted right and wrong side.
In the days after September 11, 2001, as a U.S. citizen living in the United States, I was reminded when I challenged the drive to invade Afghanistan, that I was either with “us” or “against us.” To me, the forced nationalism reminded me of the studies I had taken up during college about the Holocaust. The creation of the “Us vs. Them” mentality to protect Germany was a key part of bringing on board large segments of non-Jewish Germans to the fight against Jewish people.
Resistance takes place against those in a place of power. Also, oppression, by definition, is about being on the losing side of a power dynamic. Then, how is it that, Israel, a country with one of the most powerful militaries in the world, supported by the most powerful military and economic power in the world, the United States, has tried to paint itself as champion of an oppressed people who must fight against Palestinian resistance movements?
Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), published an opinion piece in Time magazine after the October 7 attack, arguing that there is no way to understand Hamas’ attack except as “hate” and “toxic intolerance in its purest form.” Instead of exceptionalizing Jewish experience so that the Holocaust becomes one example in thousands of years of Jewish hatred, what would it look like to pay attention to the real lessons we can learn from the horrors of the Holocaust? The lesson we need is not that Jewish people have always been and always will be hated. The lesson of the Holocaust is that those with economic and political power used nationalism and the idea of so-called inferior types of people being a threat to the nation-state to justify genocide. Many Jewish and non-Jewish people resisted as much as they could. The problem was not a weak resistance, the problem was the strength of nationalist, eugenic narratives.
The good news is that millions of Jewish people and others are undertaking critical study of the situation and pushing against the messages being brought to us by the most powerful Israeli and U.S. leaders. We are standing in solidarity with Palestinians who are fighting for their right to existence and self-determination. We see changes in public opinion polls, and the number of Jewish-led and supported actions against the current genocide is greater than ever before. Many are speaking out and saying loudly, Never Again means Never Again for Anyone.
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4) Israel believes that 129 people, mostly men, are still being held captive in Gaza.
By Patrick Kingsley, Ben Hubbard and Aaron Boxerman, Dec. 20, 2023
Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s top political leader, in 2021. He was in Cairo on Wednesday for more mediated talks on a possible truce and hostage releases. Credit...Aziz Taher/Reuters
Ismail Haniyeh, the top political leader of Hamas, was in Cairo on Wednesday to hold talks with Egyptian officials about a possible truce in the war in Gaza as concerns in Israel grow over the fates of the dozens of hostages still being held in the enclave.
Israel and Hamas are attempting, via mediators in Egypt and Qatar, to discuss a new cease-fire that would see the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, and some proposals have been put on the table, said an official familiar with the talks. An Israeli official said initial steps had been made in the negotiations, but emphasized there was no deal yet.
A senior Hamas official said Israel would need to abide by a new sustained cease-fire and allow the unlimited entry of aid into Gaza before Hamas would start discussing the release of more hostages. If Hamas sticks to those demands, that would mark a departure from an earlier hostage deal that was secured in November, when Hamas discussed a hostage release as part of a wider cease-fire arrangement.
“No negotiations under fire,” the official, Basem Naim, said in a text exchange.
“Allow all the needed aid to enter. Then we can start a comprehensive negotiation.”
Zaher Jabareen, another member of Hamas’s leadership, said “so far, there has been no positive response to any initiative.”
The comments may be more of an opening bid than a final offer: A full cease-fire, enacted without preconditions, would be unacceptable for Israel, since it would allow Hamas to remain in control of parts of Gaza.
“Anyone who thinks we will stop is disconnected from reality. We will not stop fighting until the realization of all the goals we’ve set: eliminating Hamas, freeing our hostages, and removing the threat from Gaza,” Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said in a statement on Wednesday.
But recent events have complicated the Israeli government’s negotiating position. International calls have grown for a cease-fire, and the accidental killing of three hostages by Israeli soldiers last week has heightened domestic pressure to secure another hostage deal.
Israel has vowed to topple Hamas’s rule in Gaza. On Oct. 7, Hamas launched a devastating surprise attack against Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and abducting over 240, according to the Israeli authorities. Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in response. The war has devastated the small, densely populated coastal enclave, killing nearly 20,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities.
For many Palestinians there, the search for food and water has become a daily struggle. Although convoys of trucks bearing humanitarian aid trickle into Gaza on a daily basis, the United Nations and aid groups said they are far outmatched by the desperate need for essential supplies.
The United States, Britain and Germany — Israel’s biggest allies — have been pushing for Israel to at least slow down fighting in Gaza after nearly 10 weeks of war. Israeli officials, including Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, have said the fighting could go on for at least several months at varying levels of intensity.
Israel believes that 129 people kidnapped on Oct. 7, mostly men, are still being held captive in Gaza. A weeklong cease-fire that had allowed the release of dozens of hostages collapsed on Dec. 1 over disagreements about the remaining hostages. Israel resumed its bombardment of the enclave, pushing deeper into southern Gaza, where Israel says Hamas’s leaders are hiding.
Since the collapse of the deal, efforts to revive talks had failed to gain traction. Mr. Netanyahu vowed to keep fighting, even as criticism of his government’s handling of the war mounts both at home and abroad.
The Israeli military’s announcement on Friday that its forces had mistakenly shot and killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza City underscored the risks Israel’s campaign in Gaza poses to the remaining hostages. It has prompted desperate pleas from their families for an immediate deal to release them.
On Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu met with representatives from the families of Israelis held hostage in Gaza and again pledged to bring them home. Israel’s largely ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog, also told foreign ambassadors that the country was willing to accept another cease-fire to free those held captive by Hamas.
“Israel is ready for another humanitarian pause and additional humanitarian aid in order to enable the release of hostages,” said Mr. Herzog, according to a statement by his office following the meeting.
The C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, met in Warsaw on Monday with David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, and Qatar’s prime minister for talks aimed at restarting hostage and prisoner exchanges, according to U.S. officials.
However, on Tuesday, President Biden expressed only cautious hopes of a deal. Answering a reporter’s question during a trip to Milwaukee, Wis., he said, “There’s no expectation at this point, but we are pushing.”
Rachel Abrams contributed reporting.
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5) Nearly all Gazan households are facing a severe lack of food and water, U.N. and aid groups say.
By Liam Stack, Dec. 20, 2023
Palestinians lining up for a free meal in Rafah, Gaza, on Wednesday. Credit...Hatem Ali/Associated Press
The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip has been dire for weeks, but the U.N. indicated on Wednesday that the enclave was reaching new depths of catastrophe, saying that almost every household was facing a severe lack of food and water.
The conditions in Gaza are the result of Israel’s near-total blockade since the fighting began on Oct. 7, leading Human Rights Watch to level accusations on Monday that Israel was “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement, “Israel has been depriving Gaza’s population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare.”
On Wednesday, Eylon Levy, a spokesman for the Israeli government, accused Hamas of stealing food and water and said “if the aid entering Gaza is inadequate” then international organizations should send more.
“We categorically reject the despicable and libelous allegations that Israeli is somehow obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” Mr. Levy told reporters.
“If they want more food and water to reach Gaza, they should send more food and water to Gaza,” he added. “And while they’re sending more aid, they should condemn Hamas for hijacking aid deliveries and diverting them to its fighters. Their silence is shameful. We will not accept international officials deflecting blame onto us to cover up the fact they’re covering up for Hamas.”
On Wednesday, the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it had been able to deliver food aid to a small number of people in Gaza — including food packages to 2,350 people and hot meals to 1,750 people — but that it was far less than was needed. There are roughly 1.9 million displaced people in Gaza, out of a population of some 2.2 million.
The U.N.’s warning was based on a study conducted by the World Food Program between Dec. 3 and Dec. 12, which said humanitarian conditions had deteriorated severely since the end of November. The study was based on 151 phone interviews with displaced people in southern Gaza.
Among its findings:
· An estimated 85 percent of Gaza’s population has been forced to flee their homes because of Israeli military operations, and 93 percent of those families said they did not have access to enough food. That number rose from 83 percent in November.
· Ninety-six percent of displaced families said they were relying on what the U.N. called “consumption-based coping strategies” to deal with the lack of food, with adults skipping meals so children could eat or families turning to food sources they otherwise would not, like uncommonly eaten animals.
· Most Gazans have inadequate access to water: on average, less than 2 liters of water per day for things like drinking, cooking and bathing. That is far below what the W.F.P. called the “basic survival-level water requirement” of 15 liters per day.
· Most displaced people (70 percent) now burn firewood to cook because of a lack of fuel, while the number of people who say they have no way to heat food at all has risen to 15 percent from 7 percent in late November. The U.N. said 13 percent reported burning garbage to cook. All of these activities increase the risk of respiratory diseases, the U.N. said.
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6) ‘It was a family home.’ Exiled Gazan learns his relatives were killed in an Israeli strike.
By Liam Stack, Dec. 20, 2023
Palestinians gathered last week around the destroyed Shehada family home following Israeli bombardment of Rafah. Credit...Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib was at home in San Francisco when the panicked calls started. An Israeli airstrike on Thursday had hit his family’s home in Rafah, in the so-called safe zone of the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought refuge from the war.
Soon, his phone was flooded with news footage of the home, where he used to go for family barbecues and to play with his grandmother’s ducks. He watched neighbors scramble over its smoking ruins, looking for survivors.
Instead, they found at least 31 bodies, he said, including two women in their 70s, several people in their 60s, and nine children between the ages of 3 months and 9 years. More remain missing. He learned the names of the dead from texts and Facebook updates, spread out over hours and days.
“It was sickening and nauseating,” said Mr. Alkhatib, 33, a writer and vocal critic of Hamas who was granted asylum in the United States after the armed group took power in Gaza in 2007. “My heart was beating out of control with worry and fear. These are people I grew up with. It was a family home.”
The strike that killed many members of Mr. Alkhatib’s family is one of several in recent weeks that have hit zones where the Israeli military told people to go to avoid airstrikes, calling into question the advice and the safety of those who followed it.
The war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking 240 more hostage. Since then, the Israeli military has carried out a massive air campaign and a ground offensive that has displaced 1.9 million people, roughly 85 percent of Gaza’s population, the United Nations says. The campaign has killed almost 20,000 people, according to Gazan health officials, obliterating whole branches of family trees. It has also destroyed the strip’s civilian infrastructure and economy and crippled hospitals.
Azmi Keshawi, a Rafah-based researcher for the International Crisis Group, an independent research organization, said he witnessed three airstrikes there last week: one on Sunday that killed 21 people, one on Monday that killed 11 and one on Tuesday that killed 15.
“The situation on the ground in Rafah is not so calm,” he said.
Nir Dinar, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said Israel has taken “significant steps to urge civilians in the northern Gaza Strip to move toward the safer area in southern Gaza, as well as taking feasible measures to mitigate incidental harm to civilians and civilian property during its operations.”
He declined to answer questions about the airstrikes in Rafah, but said “unfortunately Hamas is embedding itself in safer areas as well, choosing to do so on the expense of the safety of the residents of Gaza.”
Before the war, Rafah Province — which is roughly one third the size of Brooklyn — had a population of around 260,000. But in recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of people from towns to the north have fled there, and now there are signs that public order has begun to break down.
Last week, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, told reporters that on a recent visit to Rafah he watched Gazans stop aid trucks, raid their food and devour it on the spot.
“This is how desperate and hungry they are,” he said. “Everywhere you go, people are hungry, desperate and terrified.”
Mr. Keshawi, the researcher, said he fled his home in Gaza City in the north of the enclave and now lives in a tent on a Rafah sidewalk with his family. No one in Rafah, which lies on the border with Egypt, seemed to have been “ready to receive this amount of people,” he said.
“Living conditions in the shelters are really miserable,” he said. “They have a lot of diseases. You have to line up for hours to go to the bathroom. There is a lack of hygiene, a lack of services by the U.N. to clean up the garbage. Dirty water is running in between the tents.”
When the airstrike hit Mr. Alkhatib’s family home on Dec. 14, dozens of people were inside, and more were in the backyard. He said that was a reflection of the dire conditions in Rafah and the generosity of his uncle, Dr. Abdullah Shehada, 69, and his aunt, Zainab, 73. Both were killed in the strike.
“She opened up the house to dozens of people,” Mr. Alkhatib said, “If there is a building left standing, people squeeze in, and that’s a common feature of what is happening right now in southern Gaza.”
His aunt was a retired teacher at a U.N. school, and his uncle was a well-known physician, he said. The dead also included two more of his aunts, Fatma Nassman, 76, and Hind Nassman and an another uncle, Hassan Nassman, who were both in their 60s. Several children, including his 3-month-old cousin, Ellen, and his 4-month-old cousin, Iyla, were also among the dead.
Mr. Alkhatib said he knew of no justification for the strike: the house was not being used by Hamas.
“I am telling you from my heart, nothing was happening there,” Mr. Alkhatib said. “Even if there was some Hamas guy walking past the place, don’t destroy an entire house and kill everybody in it.”
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7) In Jordan, a Sprawling Palestinian Diaspora Looks Towards Gaza
Photographs by Moises Saman Text by Nicholas Casey, Dec. 20, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/20/magazine/jordan-palestinian-refugees.html
A school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Baqa’a Camp.
Jordan is home to the world’s largest Palestinian diaspora, communities forged by decades of war.
Multiple generations are bound together by a narrative of exile and a longing for a homeland.
The Palestinian diaspora, more than six million people worldwide today, spans the borderlands of Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, together home to nearly a million Palestinians, and includes enclaves as far-flung as Dearborn, Mich., and Santiago, Chile.
The largest proportion of Palestinian exiles, however, is in Jordan, on Israel’s eastern border. One in five people living in Jordan is Palestinian — more than 2.3 million registered refugees in all, a population slightly larger than that of the Gaza Strip. Most of them have full citizenship. Some, including Jordan’s Queen Rania, born to Palestinian parents in Kuwait, have even attained considerable power, but many still reside in Jordan’s 10 official United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) refugee camps or three unofficial camps run with some United Nations assistance. The history of these refugees is a narrative of exile and national aspirations, of longing for a homeland — a palimpsest written and rewritten with each new wave of arrivals.
During and after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that established Israel, more than 700,000 Arabs were forced from their homes, some at gunpoint, an event that would be remembered in Arabic as the nakba — the catastrophe. Stateless, they sought temporary refuge in camps that began as rows of tents in empty fields in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and beyond. Years went by, and the tents were replaced by aluminum buildings, then by concrete ones as clothes stores, restaurants, flea markets and barber shops filled the gaps among the homes and transformed these camps into towns in their own right. Then came the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which had been controlled by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, were conquered by Israel — and thousands more Palestinians fled east. In 1988, Jordan surrendered its claim to the West Bank and stopped recognizing its residents — including its post-1988 refugees — as citizens.
In November, I traveled to the camps with Moises Saman to interview and photograph those living there. We came not just to get a sense of what the war looked like to other refugees but also to gain a greater understanding of what it means to be a Palestinian in this new era of war and displacement.
Each home told a different story. There was the house of Issa Mahmoud Ahmed Ayesh, a proud patriarch in Jordan’s Baqa’a Camp, with 14 children and 63 grandchildren. His family had fled the 1948 war, and he was born in 1949 in a refugee camp in the West Bank. When war came again in 1967, his family fled again, ultimately to Baqa’a Camp. Life there was desolate, Ayesh said. “It was all muddy. There were no schools. I studied at home; it was a bare existence.” Today Baqa’a is a sprawling Middle Eastern city, the largest camp in Jordan, with more than 130,000 residents. Despite his decades there, Ayesh hesitates to call it home. “We will never forget Palestine,” he said.
Additional reporting by Hussam Hasan
Halima Hussein al-Kiswani at Zarqa Camp, established 1949.
Ceremonial keys like the one hanging on the wall behind Halima Hussein al-Kiswani are found in many Palestinian houses; they represent the desire to go back home — in this case, to Beit Iksa, the village near Jerusalem where al-Kiswani, 85, grew up. She gained stardom last year when a video of her singing folk songs she learned as a child was watched more than five million times online. She has had requests for more songs, she says. “But I don’t feel like singing when the people in Gaza are being collected in bags.”
Saadi Mahmoud Ahmed al-Karamla, Madaba Camp.
Saadi Mahmoud Ahmed al-Karamla, 80, fled the village of Dayr Aban, near Jerusalem, in 1948. He recalls that his grandfather — the community’s mokhtar, or designated elder — met many times with Egyptian Army officers, who assured him that his family would return within a week. Instead, his family came eventually to Madaba, an unofficial camp, where it is al-Karamla himself who has been designated as his community’s mokhtar.
Fatima Ali Abdel Rahman Attia, Madaba Camp, established 1955.
Fatima Ali Abdel Rahman Attia and her family were displaced in 1967 from Halhul, in the West Bank, to Amman, Jordan’s capital. They initially took refuge in a mosque and eventually settled in Madaba Camp. As she told her story, Attia clutched a string of prayer beads, a common sight in the Palestinian camps, home to many religious families.
Ibrahim Muhammad Ibrahim al-Titi, Irbid Camp, established 1951.
Ibrahim Muhammad Ibrahim al-Titi, 16, was born in Irbid Camp, and so was his father. It was his grandparents who fled — in 1948, from Iraq al Manshiyya, an Arab village near Gaza City, eventually landing in Irbid Camp. Many Gazan Palestinians cannot claim citizenship in Jordan, which — like many countries around the world — does not offer birthright citizenship. Al-Titi may remain a refugee forever.
Khader Hussein Saleem al-Masa'ed.
Khader Hussein Saleem al-Masa'ed still remembers life as a boy on his family’s farm in the West Bank, cultivating oranges and grapes, surrounded by friends and family visiting from Haifa, Jaffa and Hebron. After the 1967 war, he and his family fled to Baqa’a Camp. A political agitator even in his later years, al-Masa'ed sometimes takes buses to Amman to join demonstrations demanding a right to return to the West Bank. “The camp for me is a temporary emergency residence,” he said. “Is it fair that someone like me, at 70, is homeless?”
Fasayel Ahmed Muhammad Aweij, 48, and Urjwan Abed al-Rahman Abu al-Hana, 9.
Fasayel Ahmed Muhammad Aweij, 48, and her 9-year-old daughter, Urjwan Abed al-Rahman Abu al-Hana near their home in Husn Camp, where al-Hana was born. As her mother looked on, Urjwan offered a song: “My land, they occupied it. My house, they demolished it. And one day they put my family in prison,” she sang. “They killed my childhood.”
Abdul Karim Suleiman al-Asifi, 77.
Abdul Karim Suleiman al-Asifi, 77, was born in Bassat Al-Falq, a tiny village in the West Bank. In the aftermath of 1948, he was displaced to another village in the West Bank, and then another. With the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, he moved again, this time to Sokhna Camp, an unofficial refugee camp in Zarqa, Jordan. Now he is a lifetime away from Bassat Al-Falq, but only about 70 miles.
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8) The W.H.O. describes grim scenes at hospitals in Gaza’s north.
By Liam Stack, Dec. 21, 2023
Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza, seen earlier this month, is able to provide little more than first aid, the head of the World Health Organization said. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Northern Gaza has no more functioning hospitals, the director general of the World Health Organization has said, describing scenes of horror witnessed by aid workers in the ruins of two partially destroyed medical facilities.
Aid workers who visited Al-Ahli and Al-Shifa hospitals on Wednesday during a rare humanitarian mission to deliver supplies “struggled to describe the immense impact recent attacks have had on these health facilities,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O. chief, said in a statement posted to social media.
At Al-Ahli, the aid workers found rows of dead bodies lined up outside the hospital, while severely injured civilians writhed in pain on the floor and the pews of the chapel inside of it, he said.
In a video that Dr. Tedros posted to social media, a member of the medical mission stands inside the chapel, with injured people and crucifixes on the wall visible behind him.
“There are patients here who have been injured for more than a month and have had no surgery; there are patients who have been operated on and are now getting post-operative infections because the hospital doesn’t have sufficient antibiotics,” the aid worker in the video, Sean Casey, says.
“They are suffering enormously here,” he adds. “This is a completely unacceptable situation.”
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs took part in the mission, which it said was only the third humanitarian convoy to reach northern Gaza since a pause in fighting ended on Dec. 1 because of “the ongoing hostilities.”
A spokeswoman for the Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the W.H.O.’s claims. Israel has accused Hamas of using hospitals as command and control centers, allegations that Hamas and medical staff have denied. The Israeli military says it has uncovered tunnels and weapons, including at Al-Shifa, the territory’s largest hospital complex, that it considers proof of its allegations.
Diplomats at the United Nations Security Council have been in intense negotiations this week over a resolution calling for a halt in fighting in the war in Gaza and a major increase aid deliveries. The United States has delayed the vote, according to diplomats, and has been the only member of the Security Council to block demands for an immediate and permanent cease-fire, vetoing two such resolutions.
Dr. Tedros said a cease-fire was necessary “to reinforce and restock remaining health facilities, deliver medical services needed by thousands of injured people and those needing other essential care, and, above all, to stop the bloodshed and death.”
Both hospitals visited by the team of aid workers on Wednesday are unable to provide much more than first aid — which means there are no working hospitals left in northern Gaza, he said. And only a few doctors and nurses remain at Al-Ahli to provide limited care to severely injured people in dire need of surgery and other complex procedures, he added.
Dr. Tedros said aid workers found a courtyard filled with bodies lined up in rows outside Al-Ahli because staff members were unable to leave the hospital to safely bury them. Aid workers also encountered 80 injured people, including older people and young children, sheltering in the hospital’s chapel and orthopedics department, he added.
“They included a 10-year old girl who lost her leg and had no family left to care for her, and an older man awaiting surgery for a gun wound to the chest he may never get, whose entire family had been killed,” said Dr. Tedros.
On Thursday, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that only nine of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were even “partially functional.”
All of those were located in southern Gaza, which has been flooded in recent weeks with hundreds of thousands of displaced people fleeing violence, and were operating at three times their normal capacity, the U.N. said in a statement.
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9) Israel’s deployment of more troops in Gaza signals unshaken intent, experts say.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Dec. 21, 2023
An Israeli army vehicle near the border with Gaza, in southern Israel, on Wednesday. Credit...Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israel’s decision to send thousands more troops to southern Gaza signals a determination to finish its campaign, despite pressure from the United States to modify its tactics to slow the rate of civilian casualties, experts said on Wednesday.
Announcing the deployment of a brigade to the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said late Tuesday that Israel was “deepening” its operations in an effort to defeat Hamas.
His comment suggested to experts that no imminent softening of Israel’s approach should be read into an announcement by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday that, as Hamas’s fighting ability degrades, Israel could “transition gradually to the next phase” of its operation.
The military will likely not gain control of southern Gaza until the end of January at the earliest, according to Yaakov Amidror, a retired major general who served as national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an earlier government.
Israeli forces have not gained full control of northern Gaza after invading on Oct. 27. Mr. Amidror said that the operation in the south would likely take longer, given the number of civilians, the presence of hostages and the fact that Hamas had effectively been corralled in that part of the territory.
If Israel’s military were to gain full control of Gaza, it would launch a second phase of the operation to prevent Hamas or a similar group from regaining control or attacking Israel, he said. That second phase could last all of next year, he added.
Senior U.S. officials who visited Israel in recent days were made aware both of the imperative of the operation and its likely duration, said Mr. Amidror, who received briefings on the security situation.
He said he didn’t think Israel was responding to pressure by Washington to bring the operation to a halt or modify its tactics.
“It’s more a dialogue,” Mr. Amidror said. “They want to express their point of view.”
About 20,000 people have died in Gaza since Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, according to Gaza health officials. The United Nations has warned of a catastrophic situation for civilians, nearly 90 percent of whom have been displaced from their homes.
The destruction appears also to have made it more complicated for Israel’s allies to offer unconditional support for the war, given a shift in voter sentiment since the military campaign began. A New York Times/Siena College poll this week showed that U.S. voters have broadly disapproved of President Biden’s stance on the conflict.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Wednesday that the United States wants to see “a shift to more targeted operations, with a smaller number of forces that’s really focused in on dealing with the leadership, Hamas’s tunnel network and a few other critical things.”
“The last couple of months have been gut-wrenching,” he said, which is why the U.S. is “doing everything possible to minimize the harm to those who are caught in the crossfire.”
The question remains about how much the timing and scope of Israel’s military campaign will be affected by the views of its key backers.
Many Israelis argue that even the country’s supporters can fail to fully grasp how the defeat of Hamas is an imperative following the attack on Oct. 7, in which 1,200 people were killed in Israel and about 240 others were taken hostage.
Mr. Netanyahu is also under pressure in Israel to secure the release of more of the hostages. A pause in the fighting, as happened for a week starting in November, could be a mechanism to achieve that.
Sending more troops to southern Gaza in advance of a possible truce makes it more likely that Israel can secure its military goals and also achieve the possible elimination of Hamas’s top leadership, said Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow at King’s College London who specializes in the Arab-Israeli conflict and a former Israeli military officer.
That would allow Mr. Netanyahu to argue to a domestic electorate that the campaign had been a success, even if the pace of operations slows in the coming weeks.
“To do that, you need more boots on the ground,” Mr. Bregman said. “Time is short. They are in a hurry.”
Michael Crowley contributed reporting.
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10) A Times Investigation Tracked Israel’s Use of One of Its Most Destructive Bombs in South Gaza
By Robin Stein, Haley Willis, Ishaan Jhaveri, Danielle Miller, Aaron Byrd and Natalie Reneau, Published Dec. 21, 2023, Updated Dec. 22, 2023
Child being rescued from a bomb explosion in October 2023.
During the first six weeks of the war in Gaza, Israel routinely used one of its biggest and most destructive bombs in areas it designated safe for civilians, according to an analysis of visual evidence by The New York Times.
The video investigation focuses on the use of 2,000-pound bombs in an area of southern Gaza where Israel had ordered civilians to move for safety. While bombs of that size are used by several Western militaries, munitions experts say they are almost never dropped by U.S. forces in densely populated areas anymore.
The Times programmed an artificial intelligence tool to scan satellite imagery of south Gaza for bomb craters. Times reporters manually reviewed the search results, looking for craters measuring roughly 40 feet across or larger. Munitions experts say typically only 2,000-pound bombs form craters of that size in Gaza’s light, sandy soil.
Ultimately, the investigation identified 208 craters in satellite imagery and drone footage. Because of limited satellite imagery and variations in a bomb’s effects, there are likely to have been many cases that were not captured. But the findings reveal that 2,000-pound bombs posed a pervasive threat to civilians seeking safety across south Gaza.
In response to questions about the bomb’s use in south Gaza, an Israeli military spokesman said in a statement to The Times that Israel’s priority was destroying Hamas and “questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage.” The spokesman also said that the I.D.F. “takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
But U.S. officials have said that Israel should do more to reduce civilian casualties while fighting Hamas. The Pentagon increased shipments to Israel of smaller bombs that it considers better suited to urban environments like Gaza. Still, since October, the United States has also sent more than 5,000 MK-84 munitions — a type of 2,000-pound bomb.
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11) U.N. Security Council Passes Gaza Aid Resolution as U.S. Abstains
By Farnaz Fassihi and Michael Levenson, Dec. 22, 2023
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, speaks to Palestinian Ambassador, Riyad Mansour, on Friday. Credit...Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The United Nations Security Council on Friday adopted a resolution calling for a major increase in aid to desperate civilians in the Gaza Strip, ending nearly a week of intense diplomatic wrangling for the U.S. to not block the measure.
The vote was 13-0 in favor of the resolution, with the United States and Russia abstaining. The final version of the measure did not call for a cease-fire and was unlikely to affect the fighting in Gaza, where about 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and ground operations.
The resolution was adopted after Council diplomats repeatedly delayed the vote this week and reworked the measure in intense negotiations involving the governments of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the United States, aimed at winning support from the White House and its allies in the Israeli government.
The United States had previously vetoed two resolutions calling for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas. That put Washington increasingly at odds with other major powers and with the Arab world.
Russia proposed an amendment that would have partially reverted to an earlier version of the resolution, including a pause in the fighting, but the United States vetoed that amendment.
Friday’s resolution, put forward by the United Arab Emirates, the only Arab country currently on the 15-member council, calls on the warring parties in Gaza to allow the use of “all available routes” into Gaza for aid deliveries, according to a draft that was circulated before the vote.
The draft also dropped a call for the “urgent suspension of hostilities” from an earlier version, instead calling for “urgent steps” to allow unhindered humanitarian access and the creation of “conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
“We know this is not a perfect text, we know only a cease-fire will stop the suffering,” said Lana Nusseibeh, the ambassador for the United Arab Emirates who has been leading the negotiations.
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12) Israel tells Gazans to evacuate more territory, as its offensive grinds slowly forward.
By Isabel Kershner, Dec. 22, 2023
The site of Israeli strikes in Khan Younis last week. Israeli troops are inching ahead in intense fighting in the southern city, which Israel now considers the key center of Hamas’s control. Credit...Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
The Israeli military on Friday instructed residents in the central Gaza Strip to move farther south immediately, as its troops continued their slow advance through the enclave and expectations of an imminent victory over Hamas appeared dim.
The call to evacuate in Al Bureij — an area in central Gaza where Israel has not previously focused its offensive — comes as the military has been operating in the northern Gaza Strip and engaging in intense fighting in recent weeks in and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
“Our forces continue to intensify ground operations in northern and southern Gaza,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesman for the Israeli military, said on Thursday night.
Israel says it has achieved operational control in some areas in the north, but the grinding progress is leading some prominent Israeli military analysts and political commentators to point to a widening gap between the reality on the ground and the rhetoric of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who pledged on Wednesday that the war “will continue until Hamas is eliminated — until victory.”
As the Gazan death toll has soared and civilians have been pushed into a small southern corner of the enclave, Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United States and other countries to scale back its operations and move to a less intensive phase of fighting in the coming weeks.
The military’s goal is to bring down Hamas’s rule in Gaza, destroy or degrade its military capabilities to the point that it no longer poses a threat to Israel and to bring back about 120 hostages who remain in Gaza.
But Hamas’s top leaders so far have evaded capture, and Gaza’s armed groups have continued to fire rockets into Israel, including two barrages that reached Tel Aviv and its environs this week.
Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, dismissed Mr. Netanyahu’s declarations about eliminating Hamas as “foolish” and “absurd propaganda.”
“Netanyahu raises the slogan of victory and the elimination of Hamas,” Mr. Rishq said in a statement on Friday. He added: “It is an illusion and a mirage that will not be achieved, and it will crash due to the steadfastness of our people.”
Political commentators and some military experts have been lowering expectations for a quick and decisive victory.
“Nobody should imagine that there will be a situation where we put a flag on top of a hill and say ‘OK, we won, and now Gaza will be peaceful and safe,’ It will not happen,” said Gabi Siboni, a colonel in the reserves and a fellow at the conservative-leaning Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. “The reality is that we are going to be fighting in Gaza for years to come.”
Others echoed that assessment. “There will be no ‘victory picture,’” wrote Ben Caspit, a political columnist and a longtime critic of Mr. Netanyahu, in Friday’s Maariv newspaper. He added: “The realization that ‘eliminating’ Hamas is an unrealistic short-term objective is creeping in.”
Israel has used thousands of airstrikes, heavy bombs and artillery as it tries to dismantle Hamas and its infrastructure, and the Gaza Health Ministry said on Thursday that the death toll in Gaza was more than 20,000.
During the first six weeks of the war, it regularly used 2,000-pound bombs — some of its biggest and most destructive — in areas it designated safe for civilians, according to an analysis of visual evidence by The New York Times. While bombs of that size are used by several Western militaries, munitions experts say they are almost never dropped by U.S. forces in densely populated areas anymore.
Gazans who have left their homes and moved south say they do not feel safe there and that no areas are off-limits for Israeli bombing. Israel called on Friday for people to leave Al Bureij for shelters in Deir al-Balah, which lies a short distance further south in central Gaza.
“It is not safe here either,” said Nevin Muhaisen, 35, a teacher from northern Gaza who moved to Deir al-Balah early in the war and shares an apartment with about 30 members of her extended family, by WhatsApp message. “I keep hearing explosions at the coastal part of the city and in Khan Younis,” she added.
Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.
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13) The Christmas Truce of 1914 and the Demand for a Cease-Fire in Gaza
The World War I phenomenon should remind us of the urgency to end the mass killings—and to help us realize that a cease-fire to stop the violence is within reach.
By Phyllis Bennis, December 20, 2023
British and German soldiers during the Christmas truce of 1914 in WWI.
Around the world and in unprecedented numbers across the United States, people of conscience are demanding an immediate end to the unfathomable horror escalating by the hour in Gaza. In the streets, in train stations, on bridges, outside the White House and Congress, on social media, on the phone — doing everything we can to demand a cease-fire.
Protests are everywhere, and every day. On Tuesday, the directors of more than 80 leading social justice organizations (including Alex Han of In These Times) were arrested after refusing to move from the Capitol Rotunda. Before that, Jewish elders chanted “Not in our name!” as they chained themselves to the White House fence (police had to use bolt cutters to take them away). Muslim communities mobilized thousands in prayer outside of Congress, students have been walking out of class, there have been sustained and regular Palestinian-led protests, activists with Jewish Voice for Peace occupied Grand Central Station, Liberty Island, and more than 1,000 marched and took over the Manhattan Bridge.
Daily marches, protests, sit-ins in small towns and big cities from coast to coast are happening with such frequency it’s almost impossible to keep track. A cavalcade of public letters, walk-outs, resignations, and acts of resistance from federal workers — from State Department officials to White House interns — all say they can no longer remain silent in the face of U.S. support for Israel’s assault. All are demanding a cease-fire.
The urgency of the moment, the non-stop killing playing out in real time, visible to everyone with a cell phone all around the world, has brought many into political engagement for the first time. More than 19,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including more than 7,000 children. More than 50,000 others have been wounded, thousands remain missing or under rubble, and more than 85% of Gaza’s entire population has been displaced.
The violence started in early October and now it’s almost Christmas. For many of us who work in policy and international affairs, war and Christmas inevitably leads to the story of the Christmas Truce, an event of more than 100 years ago that bridges history and myth. It was in the first months of World War I along the Western Front, where young French, English and Scottish soldiers faced off against their German counterparts in opposing trenches that were all — on both sides — cold, wet, muddy and miserable.
By Christmas Eve they had been fighting in those trenches for six months, venturing out into the no-man’s land between the two sides only to retrieve the bodies of their fellow soldiers, already dead.
As Christmas approached, some of the soldiers on both sides received gifts from families at home and from others. And on Christmas Eve, according to British historian Simon Jones, German soldiers who had received small holiday trees lit candles on their branches, and raised them up to the edge of the trenches, knowing their enemies in trenches — often just yards away — would see them. Soldiers on both sides started singing carols, and it turned out that Silent Night was familiar in both languages.
Then, small groups of soldiers from each side slowly emerged from their trenches. They met up in the no-man’s land and used the bits they knew of each other’s languages to greet one another. They exchanged small gifts — tobacco and buttons from their uniform jackets. No one had planned for this, it was as if, somehow, Christmas interrupted the warring madness, the violence, at least for a moment.
At one point, a soccer ball appeared, and a friendly game ensued.
“In places, the Germans put up boards on the trenches reading ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘You no fight, we no fight.’ Officers told their men not to shoot unless it was absolutely necessary and once one side ceased fire, the other followed,” according to Jones. “The quiet was described by an officer as unfamiliar: ‘The silence seemed extraordinary after the usual din. From all sides birds seem to arrive, and we hardly ever see a bird generally.’”
It was indeed a Christmas truce. It mostly ended the next day, though in some areas along the Western Front the truce lasted for many days. In some areas, soldiers on both sides just stopped fighting, ignoring their commanders’ orders to return to the trenches and resume shooting at each other.
Of course there are enormous differences between the battles of World War I and the Israeli assault on Gaza underway today. The Christmas Truce of 1914 stopped — at least momentarily — a war between two formal armies, more or less evenly matched, fighting on behalf of powerful European colonial states, also more or less evenly matched. Where the armies fought in their trenches, it was soldiers who died — few civilians were anywhere nearby.
What is underway in Gaza today is a war of colonization, ethnic cleansing and genocide. It pits one of the strongest, most advanced military forces in the world, replete with tanks, drones, warplanes and more, as well as its own nuclear weapons arsenal and the backing of the most powerful military in the history of the world, against a civilian population of slightly more 2.3 million people — women, men, children, babies, elders — and a small insurgency.
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