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—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) 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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2) 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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3) 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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4) 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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5) Aid workers criticize a U.N. resolution on Gaza aid as insufficient without a cease-fire.
By Ben Hubbard and Roni Caryn Rabin, Dec. 23, 2023
Palestinians lined up for a free meal in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Thursday. Credit...Fatima Shbair/Associated Press
United Nations and other aid workers warned on Saturday that a new U.N. Security Council resolution calling for stepped-up aid for Gaza’s embattled civilians would fail to stop the spiraling humanitarian crisis because it did not demand a full halt to the fighting.
The resolution called on the U.N. Secretary General to appoint a special coordinator for aid to Gaza and establish a mechanism to speed up aid delivery in consultation with all relevant parties.
But without a cease-fire to accompany the stepped-up assistance, aid officials said they cannot address the insufficient food and fuel entering the territory, the collapse of Gaza’s commercial sector, frequent comminations [denunciations] disruptions or the inability of relief workers to reach many areas because of intensive Israeli airstrikes and ground operations.
“Right now, we cannot deploy humanitarian aid. It’s impossible,” said Guillemette Thomas, the medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Jerusalem, adding that the shutdown of communications networks has forced it to rely on satellite phones to coordinate food distribution. “People need to be able to get food and water without the fear of being bombed or killed or shot at any moment. We need to be able to move within the strip to access people,” she added.
“The only thing that would be helpful is a cease-fire.”
It was not clear whether the resolution would push Israel, which is not on the Security Council and so did not have a vote, to modify its approach to the war. While such resolutions are considered binding, countries often ignore them.
The resolution referenced a measure passed last month calling for “humanitarian pauses” and called for the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” a demand that Hamas, which still holds about 120 Israelis, was unlikely to heed, hoping instead to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Israeli leaders have vowed to keep fighting until Hamas is destroyed and insist on checking all goods bound for Gaza to prevent the entry of weapons and other supplies that could benefit Hamas’s military effort.
After 11 weeks of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, international alarm has risen over the plight of the territory’s more than 2 million people, who are increasingly cut off from the outside world, displaced, cold and hungry. About 85 percent of Gaza’s people have fled their homes, and fierce Israeli bombardments have killed more than 20,000 people, about 70 percent of them women and children, according to the health authorities in Gaza.
This week, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an international partnership of aid organizations, classified Gaza’s entire population as in crisis or worse in terms of access to food. It noted that this was the “highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity” that the partnership has seen for any given area in nearly two decades of tracking.
Human Rights Watch this week accused the Israeli government of “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare,” which it called “a war crime.”
The Security Council resolution passed on Friday had been meticulously negotiated to avoid objections from the United States, which had vetoed a resolution earlier in December calling for a cease-fire. The United States said then that it backed Israel’s position that stopping the offensive would allow Hamas to rearm and continue to threaten Israel.
The new resolution, which passed after repeated delays with a vote of 13-0, with the United States and Russia abstaining, focused on aid delivery, not stopping the fighting.
It called on the warring parties to “allow, facilitate and enable the immediate, safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance” to civilians in Gaza and to “create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
It was not clear how soon the special coordinator for aid to Gaza would be appointed and how fruitful their efforts would be. Nor did the resolution immediately undo any of the snarls that have limited the amount of aid entering Gaza, including a stringent search regime by the Israeli authorities, who say they want to prevent the entry of any goods that could benefit Hamas.
“The resolution maintains Israel’s security authority to monitor and inspect aid entering Gaza,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said after the vote.
Juliette Touma, the director of communications for U.N.R.W.A., the largest U.N. agency in Gaza, said it may be too soon to know the full impact of the resolution.
“It is welcome, but only time will tell what real difference this resolution is going to make, and it needs to increase the humanitarian assistance that has been going into Gaza.”
The war began after a Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, which killed about 1,200 people and saw 240 others taken back to Gaza as captives, according to Israeli officials. Since then, Gaza has been under siege by Israel, with very limited, and vastly insufficient amounts of aid entering via Gaza’s border with Egypt.
Last week, after significant international pressure, Israel opened its main cargo crossing into Gaza and began letting aid in. That crossing, Kerem Shalom, was open for the first time in this war after an Israeli cabinet vote on Dec. 15 to approve temporarily letting food and other humanitarian aid through.
When the direct crossings from Israel to Gaza were closed, aid trucks were forced to travel from Egypt to Kerem Shalom for inspection by the Israeli military, and then to return to Egypt and enter Gaza from there, drawing out and complicating the process.
The opening of Kerem Shalom was called for as part of the recent hostage deal with Hamas, and Israel was also under immense pressure from United States officials to provide trucks passage through it. If he crossing continues to operate, it could provide some relief, but the cabinet’s approval for its use was temporary.
Ms. Touma said that the aid entering Gaza during the war was woefully insufficient, less than 10 percent of what Gaza received before the war. And the fighting made distributing even limited aid impossible in many parts of Gaza.
“The ongoing military operation and the bombardment are definitely a challenge because you can’t deliver humanitarian assistance under a sky full of airstrikes, and there is very little assistance coming in,” Ms. Touma said.
The small amounts of aid entering Gaza and the complete collapse of the territory’s commercial sector mean that many families have exhausted their resources and are increasingly going hungry, according to aid groups and Gaza residents.
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.
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6) Israel says it’s advancing in Gaza as debate over its military goals grows.
By Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem, Dec. 23, 2023
Evacuating an area of central Gaza after an Israeli warning of increased military operations on Saturday. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
Israeli forces were advancing in the Gaza Strip on Saturday morning, the Israeli military said, continuing to fight deadly battles in northern Gaza almost two months into its ground invasion even as it has said that Hamas’s military capabilities are collapsing there.
The grinding fighting — which has pushed Gazan civilians into a shrinking sliver of the enclave — is increasingly stirring debate about whether the Israeli military’s stated goal of eradicating Hamas is even possible. Israeli troops have focused on northern Gaza and raided parts of the south in an attempt to take out Hamas’s militant forces in the enclave.
The armed group’s extensive tunnel network poses a time-consuming challenge, military officials say. Destroying a tunnel shaft requires precise engineering work and explosives, and the Israeli military also worries that Hamas may be hiding hostages inside some of its underground warrens.
“It can take time to work in a secure manner — to protect the security of our forces: to expose, investigate, extract terrorists from underground, kill them inside the shafts, map the shafts, insert explosives,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said in a televised briefing on Friday.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Saturday that its troops had managed to lure dozens of Palestinian fighters into an ambush in the Issa neighborhood of Gaza City before killing them in a targeted airstrike. The claim could not immediately be verified.
Israeli troops arrested over 200 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza over the past week, raising the total number of those detained to over 700, the military said.
As the fighting presses on, the Israeli authorities have continued to order evacuations of parts of central and southern Gaza in the face of impending military activity there. The United Nations and human rights monitors have warned that even the zones to which the displaced are ordered to evacuate have also faced Israeli bombing.
The Israeli military has issued additional evacuation orders affecting over 150,000 people in Gaza’s central area, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said on Saturday, as Israeli ground troops continue to expand their operation southward.
Gazans “are not pieces on a checkerboard — many have already been displaced several times,” Thomas White, who runs the agency’s Gaza division, wrote on the social platform X. “The Israeli Army just orders people to move into areas where there are ongoing airstrikes. No place is safe, nowhere to go.”
Criticism of the war from within Israel has been muted since Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 assault shocked the country. But even some former senior Israeli security officials have begun to question whether the stated goal — toppling the armed group’s rule in Gaza — is ultimately feasible.
“The war goals should be redefined given the achievements we’ve had so far and with a strategic outlook on what’s happening in the region and around the world,” retired Gen. Avi Mizrahi said in a radio interview on Friday, adding that he did not think the Israeli military “would reach every last Hamas member.”
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7) ‘God Is Under the Rubble in Gaza’: Bethlehem’s Subdued Christmas
The war in Gaza has prompted the city, traditionally seen as the birthplace of Jesus, to tone down its Christmas celebrations.
By Yara Bayoumy and Samar Hazboun, Dec. 23, 2023
Reporting from Bethlehem in the West Bank
The Rev. Munther Isaac lighting a candle next to an improvised crèche this month in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times
There will be no musical festivities. No tree-lighting ceremony. No extravagant decorations that normally bedeck the West Bank city of Bethlehem at Christmas. With the war in Gaza raging, this is a city in mourning.
In perhaps the most overt display of how Israel’s war in Gaza has dampened Christmas celebrations in the city seen as the birthplace of Jesus, a Lutheran church put up its crèche, but with a sad and symbolic twist. The baby Jesus — wrapped in a keffiyeh, the black-and-white checkered scarf that has become a badge of Palestinian identity — is lying not in a makeshift cradle of hay and wood. Instead, he lies among the rubble of broken bricks, stones and tiles that represent so much of Gaza’s destruction.
“We’ve been glued to our screens, seeing children pulled from under the rubble day after day. We’re broken by these images,” said the Rev. Munther Isaac, the pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church who created the crèche. “God is under the rubble in Gaza, this is where we find God right now.”
The war began on Oct. 7, in response to Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel that left about 1,200 dead. As the conflict enters its third month, some of the most ubiquitous images of the death and destruction have been of dead Palestinian children being pulled from the ruins of Israeli airstrikes. Nearly half of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million are children, and about 70 percent of those killed are women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and the United Nations.
The ministry says about 20,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began.
Though Gaza is some 70 kilometers from Bethlehem, which is in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinians in the city feel it acutely. They fret about family and friends in Gaza, and find their own lives restricted — whether through more draconian Israeli limits since the war began on movement into and out of the city, the economic fallout of the war, or canceled Christmas celebrations.
Last month, the patriarchs and heads of various churches in Jerusalem in a statement urged their congregations to forgo “unnecessarily festive activities.” Instead, the statement said, priests and worshipers should “focus more on the spiritual meaning of Christmas in their pastoral activities and liturgical celebrations.”
Local Christian leaders say there are about 35,000 Christians in the Bethlehem area. The symbolism of Christmas is part of the soul of the city.
But the war has cast a pall.
Typically, a giant Christmas tree is erected in the city center on a stage in Manger Square — named for the manger where Jesus’ parents, Mary and Joseph, are said to have sought shelter — and a tree-lighting ceremony takes place with great fanfare. But this year, there is none. The church steeples that dot the city’s skyline and streets are normally adorned with Christmas decorations. But they are now bare.
Still, one tradition that will go on, though in a bit toned-down version, is the famous Procession of the Patriarch, in which the Roman Catholic Patriarch travels from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to mark Joseph and Mary’s journey.
The patriarch will start the procession as usual on Christmas Eve, accompanied by boy and girl scouts, but this year they will march silently, without playing musical instruments.
Once the patriarch arrives in Bethlehem, he will walk down Star Street, the historical street that goes through the old city to the Church of the Nativity, built on the site where Jesus is believed to have been born. He will then celebrate a midnight Mass.
Usually Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and other dignitaries attend the Mass, but it is unclear if they will this year.
Inside the hallowed archways of the church on the edge of Bethlehem’s old city, there are some signs of the holiday; wreaths and red-and-gold ornaments bedeck the columns and some church entrances.
“We will avoid music, outside ceremonies and outside decorations,” said the Rev. Rami Asakrieh, a parish priest of the Latin church of Saint Catherine at the Church of the Nativity. But he added that inside the church, decorations were important.
The horror of war cannot be allowed to bury the spirit of Jesus, he said on a recent day, as church workers set up a small Christmas tree along one of the corridors. “Despite the circumstances, we must still show that Jesus is the source of happiness and peace in the church.”
For the residents of Bethlehem, the war has also reverberated economically.
Tourism makes up a significant portion of the area’s income, said Bethlehem’s mayor, Hanna Hanania, especially during the holiday season. And people are not coming now.
On average, 1.5 million to two million foreign tourists visit Bethlehem city annually. But since the war began, the tourism sector came to a complete stop, and, Mr. Hanania said, “economic life is now paralyzed.”
Rony Fakhouri, a 27-year-old social worker and manager at the Dar Al Majus guesthouse, said the establishment had lost about 100,000 shekels, or about $27,000, in revenue since the start of the war.
He said that the guesthouse usually receives at least 200 guests between October and mid-January. “Between Oct. 7 and today, we’ve had exactly 12 individuals,” he said.
Mr. Fakhouri also works as a night shift duty manager at another hotel, but he has now lost that job.
“Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, they let me keep my job,” he said. “But this time with the war, they’ve let me go.”
“Even if the war stops,” he added, “tourism won’t immediately bounce back.”
For Yousef Al Zuluf, a 22-year-old accountant and fashion designer in Bethlehem, the war in Gaza has hit particularly close. His maternal grandparents and aunt lived there.
His grandfather was reluctant to leave his home even after the fighting started because he had already been displaced once before. He was about 6 years old when he moved to Gaza at the time of the Nakba — as Palestinians refer to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians amid Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948.
“He’s about 82 years old,” Mr. Zuluf said, “he doesn’t want to start a new life somewhere else.”
The family members finally did leave Gaza, using their foreign passports, but only after weeks of living with too little food and water and barely a place to sleep.
For Pastor Isaac, whose Lutheran church has gained some fame with his rubble-themed manger scene, the focus during this holy time needs to be on Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, not on the cancellation of Christmas festivities.
“We don’t see this as a war against Hamas,” he said. “It’s a war against Palestinians.”
He came up with the idea of the altered manger scene as a way of both marking the birth of Jesus, but also acknowledging the death of so many children.
“This is what Christmas looks like now in Palestine, children being killed, houses destroyed and families displaced,” he said of his crèche. “We see the image of Jesus in every child that is killed in Gaza.”
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