Day Of Action to Commemorate Murdered Palestinians and All Journalists
Wednesday, December 27, 2023, 12:00 NOON
San Francisco Chronicle
5th and Mission St.
San Francisco
· Stop The War on Palestinian Journalists and People
· Shutdown All U.S. Military and Economic Aid to Israel
· Permanent End to War and Bombing Of Gaza and Targeting of Journalists in Gaza and the West Bank
*‘God Is Under the Rubble in Gaza’: Bethlehem’s Subdued Christmas, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/23/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-bethlehem-christmas.html
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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) ‘We have nothing to keep us warm and dry.' Winter adds to the misery of displaced Gazans.
Hiba Yazbek reporting from Jerusalem, Dec. 24, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/12/24/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
Children at a cooking fire between makeshift tents in the Al-Mawasi neighborhood in Rafah, southern Gaza, last week. Credit...Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images
At night, amid heavy rains and dropping temperatures, Heba and Ehab Ahmad held their two youngest children tightly, relying on their body heat and a thin blanket to keep them warm as water and gusts of wind blew through the holes in their makeshift tent.
“We have nothing to keep us warm and dry,” said Ms. Ahmad, 36. “We are living in conditions that I could have never in my entire life imagined were possible.”
The Ahmad family is among the 1.9 million Gazans who the United Nations says have been displaced since Israel began its relentless bombing campaign and expanded ground operation in retaliation for the Oct. 7, Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
They came to Gaza’s southern Al-Mawasi neighborhood three weeks ago, just as winter crept in. The family of seven took shelter in a small, flimsy tent that they built using overpriced nylon sheets and a few wooden planks, said Mr. Ahmad, 45. They share it with 16 other relatives, he added.
“It’s not even a proper tent,” he joked. “Those who are staying in real tents are the bourgeois in Gaza.”
During the daytime, Mr. Ahmad said, he and his eldest sons attempt to find firewood and cardboard to keep a small fire going, which they use to cook and stay warm. “I’m speaking to you while the smoke from the fire is blinding me,” Mr. Ahmad said in a phone interview on Sunday. In the background, someone could be heard coughing uncontrollably. “The smoke is also hurting our lungs,” he added.
The U.N. and other rights groups have in recent days expressed growing concerns about the further spread of waterborne diseases like cholera and chronic diarrhea in Gaza, with the lack of clean water and unsanitary conditions. Children have been the most severely affected by the increasing rates of infectious disease, according to UNICEF.
Mr. and Ms. Ahmad’s only daughter and youngest child, Jana, 9, had been suffering from severe abdominal pain for nearly two weeks, possibly from extreme dehydration, Mr. Ahmad said. He said he has not been able to take her to a hospital or clinic because the few medical centers that remain functional are completely overwhelmed and hard to reach on foot.
“She’s been screaming in pain, and all we can do is give her some of the rainwater to drink,” Mr. Ahmad said.
The weather was warm when the Ahmads and their five children first fled their home in the northeastern city of Beit Hanoun during the early days of the war. Like many others, Ms. Ahmad said, they did not anticipate being gone for this long and had fled with only some documents and the summer clothes they had on their backs.
“I have been going to look for warm clothes at secondhand street markets,” Mr. Ahmad said, “but they are selling them for insane prices that I can’t afford.”
“For 23 days, we have been trying to find blankets and mattresses,” Mr. Ahmad said. “We have been sleeping on a thin sheet and shaping the sand into a sort of pillow to rest our heads.”
This week, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an international partnership of aid organizations, classified Gaza’s entire population as in crisis in terms of access to food.
Like many other displaced families, the Ahmads, who have moved four times since the start of the war, have struggled to find food and water. They have been eating whatever they could forage, mostly wild leafy greens, Mr. Ahmad said. He added that no aid had reached them so far. Distribution of aid has been complicated by fuel shortages, continued airstrikes and a multitude of other logistical challenges.
There is a silver lining to the rainy weather, though — a short break from the family’s daily struggle to find water.
They placed a bucket outside their tent to collect rainwater, which they used to cook and wash themselves and their clothes.
“It is still contaminated water,” said, “but we have no other alternative. We need to adapt.”
Ameera Harouda contributed reporting from Doha, Qatar.
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2) Israel’s military says battles are intensifying in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis.
By Andrés R. Martínez, Dec. 24, 2023
Smoke rises after airstrikes in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Saturday. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
Israel’s military said battles were intensifying in southern Gaza’s largest city, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave no hint of plans to slow the war against Hamas despite calls from humanitarian groups for a cease-fire and protests at home.
On Sunday, Israel’s military said it had hit about 200 targets in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours. It did not specify where the strikes were focused, though the military had said late Saturday that it was expanding ground operations in southern Gaza.
Soldiers were fighting in a “dense area” above ground in the city, Khan Younis, and more forces would join a division that is working underground there to destroy tunnels operated by Hamas, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the military, said late Saturday. Fighting in the north of Gaza, where Israel says it has gained control of what it described as Hamas strongholds, also has intensified, Admiral Hagari said.
Despite growing calls from most allies for a pause in fighting that would allow more aid into Gaza, Mr. Netanyahu has not backed down from his goal of destroying Hamas, which killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7, according to the Israeli authorities. President Biden sent his defense secretary and top national security adviser to Israel last week to urge the government to scale back the war.
The government of Israel has said it was planning for a new phase of the fighting, but has not yet provided specifics. The nation’s military leaders have said — both last week and on Saturday — that they were bombing hundreds of targets a day in Gaza and sending thousands more soldiers to southern Gaza.
The Israeli military’s bombardments and ground invasion have killed more than 20,000 Gazans in about 11 weeks of fighting, according to the health authorities in Gaza. International alarm has risen over the plight of the territory’s more than two million people, who are increasingly cut off from the outside world, displaced, cold and hungry.
Last week, the United States prevented the U.N. Security Council from calling for a cease-fire, delaying a vote on a resolution until it included only a mention of the need for more humanitarian aid for Gazans. The United States abstained from the vote on Friday, allowing it to pass 13 to 0. Russia also abstained. After the vote, humanitarian groups said that without a cease-fire there was no way to safely distribute aid.
Mr. Biden said he had a long talk with Mr. Netanyahu on Saturday. He called the conversation with the Israeli leader a private one, but said that he did not ask for a cease-fire.
Johnatan Reiss, Rachel Abrams and Nadav Gavrielov contributed reporting.
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3) Netanyahu Visits Gaza as Palestinians Mourn an Attack That Officials Say Killed Dozens
The Gazan Health Ministry blamed Israeli airstrikes for the deaths, and Israel’s military said it was reviewing the episode.
By Vivian Yee, Ameera Harouda and Nadav Gavrielov, Dec. 25, 2023
Palestinians mourning their relatives killed in an overnight strike on the Al Maghazi area on Monday. Credit...Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli troops fighting in the Gaza Strip on Monday, vowing to stay the course of the war even with the death toll mounting. His trip came hours after Gazan health officials reported that a devastating overnight strike on a crowded neighborhood had killed dozens.
The trip was the Israeli leader’s second known visit to Gaza since the war began. Mr. Netanyahu has been facing increasing pressure from the United States to lower the intensity of the war, but he said on Monday that Israel would “deepen” the fighting in coming days.
The strike late Sunday in central Gaza underscored the risk to civilians as fighting intensifies. Gazans were mourningthe victims in the neighborhood, Al Maghazi, where many who have fled fighting in other parts of the enclave have sought shelter.
Photos of the aftermath on Monday showed a gray concrete building gaping with dark holes where rooms used to be. At the foot of the building was a mound of debris, where men appeared to be digging for survivors, or bodies, without the aid of any heavy equipment.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 70 people had died in Sunday’s attacks on Al Maghazi. But the ongoing difficulty of reaching residents in Gaza, where electricity shortages and communications blackouts have frequently obscured the picture of the war’s fallout, meant the details were blurry.
As the Gazan death toll has soared and civilians have been pushed into smaller and smaller corners of the enclave, international calls for a cease-fire have grown. While Mr. Netanyahu’s government has said it is planning for a new phase of the fighting, the Israeli leader has repeatedly insisted that his military would keep up the war in Gaza until all of its goals were achieved.
“We’re not stopping, we are continuing to fight and are deepening the fighting in the coming days,” he said in a statement released by his Likud Party on Monday, adding that “this will be a long battle and it is not close to ending.”
Gazan Health Ministry officials blamed Israeli airstrikes for the deadly attack on the Al Maghazi neighborhood of central Gaza. Israel’s military said Monday it was reviewing the episode.
Israeli forces are pushing deeper into central Gaza while also continuing to battle Hamas fighters in the enclave’s north and south. Many places in central and southern Gaza are crowded with people who have fled their homes.
“These rockets, it’s like they’re made to destroy mountains, not people,” said Mohamed Abu Shaah, who had taken shelter at an acquaintance’s house in Al Maghazi with his wife and seven daughters. In Al Maghazi, he said, the influx of the newly displaced meant that 20 people were routinely crowding into a single room to sleep at night.
It was the fifth time his own family had packed up and rushed to a new place after fighting and airstrikes threatened the place they had taken shelter.
“We are doing everything we can just to run for our lives,” he said.
The rising death toll in Gaza, which health ministry officials have said stands at about 20,000 people prompted Pope Francis on Monday to focus his Christmas address in part on the plight of Palestinians, as well as on Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
He mentioned Bethlehem, the holy city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where officials have largely canceled Christmas festivities in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, and pleaded for peace to “come in Israel and the Palestinian territories, where war is devastating the lives of those peoples.”
The pope also called for “an end to the military operations with their appalling harvest of innocent civilian victims,” and “for a solution to the desperate humanitarian situation by an opening to the provision of humanitarian aid.”
Gaza is controlled by Hamas, the armed group that led the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel that Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people.
Mr. Abu Shaah said he had just returned from prayer late Sunday night and was about to put his daughters to sleep in the bed that nine of them shared when they heard a loud thud. Afraid they would find themselves under the rubble, they ran downstairs to a scene of devastation.
“We’ve seen a lot, but this is beyond anything we could have imagined,” he said. “Today my family and I are alive, but what about tomorrow?”
Before the war, about 33,000 Palestinians lived in Al Maghazi, an area covering only about a quarter of a square mile, according to the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians. Most families in the neighborhood were originally from villages in the center and south of what was Palestine before they fled or were forcibly displaced in the 1948 war that surrounded Israel’s establishment as a state.
The neighborhood has been hit multiple times before, according to U.N. reports.
Save the Children, an aid group, called the strike on Al Maghazi “another episode of the ongoing horror” in Gaza.
“Families and children are not targets and must be protected,” it said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “We need an immediate and definitive cease-fire to end this misery.”
Jason Horowitz contributed reporting from Rome.
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4) In Campus Protests Over Gaza, Echoes of Outcry Over Vietnam
The war in Vietnam ignited a protest movement that helped define a generation. Is the war between Israel and Hamas doing the same thing?
By Michael Wines, Dec. 24, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/24/us/gaza-vietnam-student-protest.html
Students from the Black Students Organization protesting Columbia University’s suspension of the groups Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Credit...Bing Guan for The New York Times
Richard Flacks remembers the challenges of building a protest movement during the Vietnam War as a pillar of the left-wing political and antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society during the 1960s.
“The whole idea of S.D.S. began with the idea of, ‘We need a new way of being on the left, a new vocabulary, a new strategy,’” said Mr. Flacks, who helped write the group’s manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, in 1962. “We knew we were right, and I don’t think we were arrogant about it.”
Sixty years later, Iman Abid sees similar challenges in the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. “For so long, we couldn’t get Palestine to be that issue for people to care about,” said Ms. Abid, the organizing and advocacy director at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, which works with pro-Palestinian campus organizations. “But now people care about it because they’re seeing it. They’re watching it on their social media. They’re watching it on the news.”
It is too early to know whether the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will define this generation as opposition to the Vietnam War did for many young people more than a half century ago.
But to many who have studied or lived through the Vietnam era, the parallels to the Gaza protests are compelling: a powerful military raining aerial destruction on a small, underdeveloped nonwhite land; a generational divide over the morality of the conflict; a sense that the war represented far broader political and cultural currents; an unswerving confidence — critics might say sanctimony — among students that their cause is righteous.
The differences can be glaring, too, beginning with the terrorist attack by Hamas that set this war in motion, for which there is nothing comparable in Vietnam. The Gaza war is not being fought by the American military, unlike Vietnam, where more than 58,000 Americans died and young men faced a military draft.
Miles Rapoport, a former secretary of state of Connecticut, who joined S.D.S. while studying at Harvard in the 1960s, saw similarities but said the two movements and moments differ in a fundamental way: The United States waded into Vietnam in a show of superpower hubris. Israel, he said, is fighting for its existence after a terrorist attack that killed 1,200 citizens. The current war, he said, “has a lot more moral and philosophical nuance.”
That is reflected in pro-Israel marches and demonstrations to a far greater degree now than was common, particularly on campuses, for supporters of the war during the Vietnam era.
Still, both movements, Mr. Rapoport said, reflect “a kind of instinctive and initial solidarity with the underdog.” He added: “And related is a sense of solidarity with people who are fighting to have their own country and be freed from a kind of colonial existence.”
American campuses have protested over countless causes since Vietnam, notably to oppose apartheid in South Africa and racial injustice after police killings of Black men and women in 2014 and 2020. But a sustained antiwar protest like the one against the Gaza invasion has not been seen for decades.
Loan Tran, a 28-year-old Vietnamese American who is national director of the leftist advocacy group Rising Majority, draws a straight line between Vietnam and Gaza. Mr. Tran’s grandfather, whom he never met, was an American G.I. during the war; his grandmother’s friends fought for North Vietnam against American forces.
“When I hear Palestinians making comparisons to Vietnam and the role of the U.S. and colonialism, it’s really striking for me, and it’s a really poignant connection,” he said. “I feel it in my body, and a lot of people in our Vietnamese community feel it in our bodies, to be resisting war, to be resisting occupation.”
To critics of the Gaza protests, the current movement reflects the excesses, not the virtues, of the Vietnam protests, with chants now that to some suggest genocide against the Jewish people, much as some 1960s protests alienated many Americans by backing North Vietnam against U.S. forces. And those critics also accuse the pro-Palestinian demonstrators of hypocrisy — saying that many of the rallies include side issues that would be antithetical to many Palestinians, like women’s issues and L.G.B.T.Q. rights.
Many supporters of Israel view the movement with a mixture of horror and consternation. Kenneth L. Marcus, the chairman of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a Jewish civil rights institution that is not affiliated with Brandeis University, said the campus demonstrations began even before Israel’s invasion of Gaza occurred.
“There may be some people participating in these protests who think they’re supporting Palestinians, but the movement they are advancing is predominantly an antisemitic movement,” he said, adding that it has its genesis in a celebration of violence. Rather than showing moral strength in the face of campus protests, he said, many university administrators “have responded with weakness and cowardice.”
Those protesting the war in Gaza owe their Vietnam-era forerunners for one legacy: the tactics, from die-ins to chants like “How many kids did you kill today?” that energized both movements. “Students didn’t have much in 1960 to emulate,” said Mr. Flacks, now a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “A lot of the tactics invented at that time became part of the tool kit for activism on campuses.”
The degree to which Israel is doing the fighting, not the United States, creates a different dynamic than the protests over Vietnam.
“It’s not a clear conflict which you and I have a stake in,” said Daniel Millstone, a retired lawyer in New York City who was one of the early antiwar crusaders with S.D.S. More students today have seen Israel firsthand, or know students from the region. “But in the last analysis,” Mr. Millstone said, “even if I have family in Israel — and I do — it’s not my show. It’s their show.”
Certainly, the logistics of staging protests are much more manageable today than 60 years ago. Cellphones and social media have simplified the tasks of recruiting and deploying advocates for a cause; to cite just one example, a crowd of antiwar demonstrators descended recently on Grand Central Station in New York, flash-mob style, after getting an electronic alert.
“I compare that to the demonstrations we put on against the war in Vietnam and many other things, which required an enormous amount of top-down planning,” Mr. Millstone said. Modern campus activism is organized via WhatsApp and iMessages. While the major groups protesting over Gaza have national offices, the movement is largely decentralized.
Universities — and the overall makeup of the protesters — are also vastly changed, as are the political pressures and demands on university presidents.
The Vietnam antiwar movement was overwhelmingly white, like most campuses of the 1960s. But campuses in 2023, particularly urban ones, contain far more students of color, many of whom empathize with Palestinians’ status as an embattled population under the control of a more powerful force. And nonstudents are a bigger part of those protesting now.
“Movements don’t come out of nowhere,” said Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University historian who in the 1960s was both a member of S.D.S. and, briefly, its violent stepchild, the Weather Underground. For the Vietnam protesters, he said, the precursors were the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa and the civil rights movement. For the Gaza protesters, the antecedents stretch from the anti-Muslim backlash after the Sept. 11 attacks to recent racial injustice protests.
When young protesters descended on Ferguson, Mo., after police officers killed an unarmed Black man in 2014, Palestinians offered advice on social media for coping with tear gas. Today, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and elsewhere, Black and Latino students are among the leaders of the pro-Palestinian movement, Professor Flacks said.
And both eras reflect the influence of deeply polarizing political leaders, particularly Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon in the Vietnam era, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, whose hard-line conservatism has given oxygen to campus support for the Palestinian cause.
“Those of us who are my age have direct memories of why Israel was a morally positive framework. It was the haven for people escaping from the worst oppression,” Professor Flacks said. But “what the kids in college now see about Israel is a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu,” which they view as a repressive force supported by established Jewish organizations.
Larry P. Gross, an expert on media and culture at the University of Southern California, said Israeli leaders had not adapted their message, much less policies, to a generation that views Israel not as a besieged Jewish homeland, but as the arbiter of freedom in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza.
“The Israelis and their P.R. arm fundamentally didn’t understand the degree to which they were losing young people,” he said. “They reflexively played the Holocaust card over and over again,” he added, even as “we went from seeing pictures of Russians bombing Ukraine as a war crime to pictures of Israel bombing Gaza.”
Support for Palestinians among the young, he said, “is going to last. I think it’s one of those generational shifts.”
The last time an antiwar movement faced a generational divide, many young people sat out the 1968 presidential election between Mr. Nixon and Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Mr. Nixon won the Electoral College by capturing four states by fewer than 88,000 total votes.
Professor Kazin recently published an article in the liberal journal The New Republic wondering whether history could repeat itself there, too.
“People like me were opposed to Humphrey, and were happy, in a sense, to see him lose,” he said. “Now, a lot of people are saying they’ll never go for Biden. And it’s not clear who they vote for, if they vote at all.”
Alain Delaquérière, Sheelagh McNeill and Anna Betts contributed research.
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5) Aleksei Navalny Found in Remote Arctic Prison, Easing Fears Over His Safety
Supporters of the Russian opposition leader lost contact with him 20 days ago, fueling concern about his health and whereabouts.
By Ivan Nechepurenko and Anton Troianovski, Dec. 25, 2023
The Russian opposition politician Aleksei A. Navalny in an image from a video link during a court hearing in Kovrov, Russia, in 2022. Credit...Yulia Morozova/Reuters
The Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny has been moved to a remote Arctic prison and “is doing well,” his spokeswoman said on Monday, ending a 20-day mystery over his whereabouts that had many supporters fearing the worst.
“We have found Aleksei,” the spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said on social media. “His lawyer saw him today.”
Ms. Yarmysh’s announcement ended a frantic search through Russia’s vast prison system for Mr. Navalny, who disappeared on Dec. 5. Mr. Navalny’s exiled allies said that they had found him in the remote penal colony in the Arctic after sending more than 600 requests to prisons and other government agencies.
Ivan Zhdanov, director of Mr. Navalny’s anticorruption foundation, said that Mr. Navalny’s lawyers had also looked through every pretrial detention center.
“From the beginning, it was clear that the government wanted to isolate Aleksei, especially ahead of the election,” Mr. Zhdanov said, referring to the coming presidential race in Russia that President Vladimir V. Putin is widely expected to win.
Mr. Navalny’s new penal colony, officially known as IK-3 Polar Wolf, is in the settlement of Kharp and is among the harshest and remotest prisons in Russia. Inmates endure long, dark, cold winters as well as clouds of mosquitoes in the summer.
Mr. Navalny’s previous prison, in the town of Melekhovo, was only about 160 miles east of Moscow, meaning that his lawyers could drive there in a manner of hours. In contrast, the new prison is some 1,200 miles from the capital. A train to Kharp, called the Polar Arrow, departs Moscow every second day and takes 44 hours to reach the town.
“Aleksei’s situation is a clear example of how the system treats political prisoners, trying to isolate and suppress them,” Mr. Zhdanov said on social media.
Ivan Vostrikov, former head of Mr. Navalny’s office in the town of Tyumen, in Siberia, said he had been to Kharp several times. He described the town as “a very beautiful place with a very tough winter.”
“It is practically impossible to run away from it — on the one side there is tundra,” he said in a post on Telegram, a social messaging app. “On the other, there are rocky mountains of Polar Urals,” he added. “That’s why they put the worst criminals and serial killers there.”
Mr. Navalny’s allies had been expecting his transfer to one of Russia’s stricter prisons — known as “special regime” prison colonies — since September, when he lost an appeal against the 19-year sentence he is serving.
Detainees being transferred to remote prisons in Russia can spend weeks being shuttled between trains in special rail cars and have little or no access to the outside world. But Mr. Navalny’s disappearance made headlines almost immediately because of his high-profile status in the Russian political system.
Mr. Navalny has been in custody in Russia since his detention in January 2021 at a Moscow airport, where he had arrived after spending months in Germany recovering from poisoning by a nerve agent. Mr. Navalny and Western governments accused the Kremlin of the poisoning, which Russian officials denied.
Since then, the Russian authorities have brought forth a multitude of new charges against Mr. Navalny. According to Ms. Yarmysh, he is currently a defendant in 14 criminal cases and faces potential sentences of up to 35 years in prison.
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6) 78 Palestine Solidarity Activists Face Charges for Civil Disobedience
By People's Dispatch, December 24, 2023
https://popularresistance.org/78-palestine-solidarity-activists-face-charges-for-civil-disobedience/
Palestinian Youth Movement.
78 Palestine solidarity activists are facing charges following a mass civil disobedience action staged on November 16, in which protesters shut down San Francisco’s Bay Bridge in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Over 150 demonstrators blocked the Bay Bridge on November 16, while US President Joe Biden was in San Francisco for the APEC Summit. Several activists blocked the bridge with cars, and, highlighting their commitment, proceeded to throw their keys into the San Francisco Bay.
Protesters are facing charges ranging from unlawful public assembly, false imprisonment, refusing to comply with a peace officer, and refusing to disperse a riot and obstruction of a public street.
The Palestine solidarity movement in the Bay Area has been mobilizing to put pressure on San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to drop the charges against the protesters. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Jenkins is unwilling as she claimed that “free speech cannot compromise public safety.” The bridge action required “tremendous public resources to resolve,” she said.
Arraignments for the 78 activists began December 18, and over 200 people rallied in front of the San Francisco Criminal Court to demand that DA Jenkins drop the charges. Following the first day of arraignments, a continuance was granted for February 1 and 2.
One of the activists who was arrested at the Bay Bridge action spoke at a press conference held on the courthouse steps on December 18. “I also join the tens of thousands of people who have taken to the streets of San Francisco to demand a permanent ceasefire, to call on our congressional leaders to truly represent the calls from their constituents, and to not allow our tax dollars to fund the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza,” she said.
“If decision-makers do not heed the calls of our emails, our meetings, our phone calls, and our mass mobilizations, then we must do all we can to ensure that our voices are heard,” she continued. “And that means we must disrupt business as usual.”
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7) Nearly Two Million Crowd Into Gaza’s South as Fighting Intensifies
By Zach Levitt, Amy Schoenfeld Walker, Lauren Leatherby and Leanne Abraham, Dec. 26, 2023
Building destroyed on Dec. 20. Two UN schools sheltering about 32,000 people.
Sources: U.N. Relief and Works Agency data as of Dec. 14; news reports; photograph by Shadi Tabatibi/Reuters
Since the end of the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in early December, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has deepened, with evacuation orders and intense fighting squeezing civilians into an ever-shrinking area.
On Friday, the Israeli military again ordered civilians to move south immediately, this time out of an area in central Gaza that was home to almost 90,000 people before the war. At least 60,000 displaced people, most of whom had fled from northern Gaza, had been sheltering there.
Gazans are struggling without sanitation, food or water. More than 1.7 million displaced people are registered in shelters in the south, including a few hundred thousand people who cannot fit within their walls and are sleeping along roads and in open spaces.
Many people have followed Israel’s evacuation orders, but doing so has not brought safety. Israeli bombing, which was relentless during the first six weeks of the war, has continued across the south since the end of the cease-fire, including in areas to which people were told to move.
Damage from airstrikes and fighting has been identified near almost every shelter in Gaza’s three southern regions this month, an analysis of satellite imagery and relief agency data shows. In some cases, shelters have been hit directly.
Many people have followed Israel’s evacuation orders, but doing so has not brought safety. Israeli bombing, which was relentless during the first six weeks of the war, has continued across the south since the end of the cease-fire, including in areas to which people were told to move.
Damage from airstrikes and fighting has been identified near almost every shelter in Gaza’s three southern regions this month, an analysis of satellite imagery and relief agency data shows. In some cases, shelters have been hit directly.
Rafah is now Gaza’s most densely populated area, according to U.N. officials. Data shows that U.N. shelters in Rafah host an average of more than 15,000 registered people each, though most shelters were designed for just 2,000.
The region is not equipped to provide basic services to the displaced, relief organization officials say. Its three hospitals are only partly functional, and people in shelters live in cramped conditions with little food or water. Nearly 500 people on average share a single toilet.
Deir al Balah has also seen an enormous influx of the displaced. But, unlike Rafah, where some limited aid has arrived from Egypt, Deir al Balah and its northern neighbor, Khan Younis, have had little or no access to aid in recent days because of continued attacks.
Among the nearly 100 U.N. shelters in southern Gaza, only a handful in Khan Younis have seen significant declines in population. Some are within areas that have been evacuated, and that have seen intense fighting in recent weeks.
Satellite imagery has shown Israeli military vehicles positioned just blocks away from three evacuated shelters in Khan Younis. On Dec. 5, 17,000 people were living in those shelters. By Dec. 12, they were almost completely empty.
The U.N. shares initial reports of damage to shelters and injuries to residents almost daily. For example, fighting on Dec. 17 injured three children in a Khan Younis school after a wall was directly struck. Strikes near another Khan Younis shelter that day killed two Palestinians and injured several others, the agency said.
More than 50 U.N. school buildings in the south have been damaged since the start of the war, according to UNICEF, which relies on reports from other organizations on the ground. Most of these buildings were still housing displaced people as of mid-December.
Relief officials say that it has been difficult to track Gaza’s nearly two million displaced people, many of whom have moved in and out of shelters and the homes of others since the start of the war.
It is even harder to count those who remain in the north, where Israel first launched its attacks and where access has been restricted. A preliminary estimate from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics suggested that as many as 500,000 people might have remained there as of early December.
Without a new cease-fire, relief officials expect that homeless Gazans in the south will face repeated displacement in the weeks to come. And those who have not yet fled their homes are likely to be displaced as attacks continue.
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8) The number of Palestinians in Israeli jails is at a 14-year high, a rights group says.
By Rachel Abrams and Hiba Yazbek, Dec. 27, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/12/27/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
Omar Atshan, 17, and other Palestinian prisoners were greeted by supporters last month after being released from an Israeli prison in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Ramallah. Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
The number of Palestinians in Israeli jails has soared since Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, according to a leading Palestinian human rights group, a surge that it says is driven by a wave of arrests in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
About 7,800 Palestinians from the West Bank were being held in Israeli prisons at the end of November, an increase of nearly 50 percent since the war in Gaza started, according to the rights group, the Palestinian Prisoners Club. It said last week that number represented the most Palestinian detainees held at one time in Israel in at least 14 years.
The Israeli military has been carrying out near-nightly raids across the occupied West Bank since the start of the war in what Israeli officials have described as counterterrorism operations and an extension of their war against Hamas in Gaza.
Palestinian residents and community leaders have said the raids, which were not uncommon before the war, have become more aggressive and more frequent since Oct. 7. Israel has said that the arrests in the West Bank have targeted people affiliated with Hamas but has offered few details.
Many detainees are being held without charge or trial, a status known as administrative detention. The use of administrative detentions orders had hit a 30-year high even before Oct. 7, human rights groups say.
Since the war began, support for Hamas has grown in the occupied West Bank, where there is long-simmering frustration with the Palestinian Authority, the body that has administered cities and towns there for more than two decades. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners as part of a brief cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas last month have added to Hamas’s appeal.
Palestinian prisoner rights groups have said that detainees in Israeli prisons face overcrowded conditions, physical violence and a lack of medical care. Asked about those claims, the Israel Prison Service did not respond directly but said it had imposed tighter restrictions in recent weeks “in connection with the war effort.”
Ahmad Salaymeh, 14, was released from Israeli detention last month as part of the exchange of prisoners for hostages held in Gaza. Ahmad was detained in July on accusations of throwing stones but never charged, according to an Israeli government database. He said the conditions in prison worsened after Oct. 7 as more detainees were brought in.
“Some of us were left to sleep on the floors,” he said, adding that he was beaten in custody and was given little to eat. By the time Ahmad came home, four months after he was detained, he had lost 35 pounds, his father, Nawaf, said in a recent interview.
In a response to questions from The New York Times, the Israel Prison Service said that it was unaware of Ahmad’s claims. It said that all minors had been “imprisoned according to court orders, after being charged with serious crimes of various kinds, among them attempted murder, assault and throwing explosives,” and that “all basic rights required by law are fully applied.”
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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9) Israel returns the bodies of 80 Palestinians to Gaza, officials say.
By Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem, Dec. 27, 2023
Bodies are buried at a mass grave in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Tuesday. Credit...Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images
Israel has returned the corpses of 80 Palestinians to Gaza, a spokesman for the enclave’s health ministry said on Wednesday. The bodies were later buried in a mass grave near Rafah, on Gaza’s southern border, the spokesman said.
An Israeli official said that Israeli soldiers sweeping Gaza in search of hostages held by Hamas and other armed groups had initially taken the bodies to Israel for forensic testing. After determining that none of them were those of hostages, the Israeli authorities coordinated with Palestinian officials to return the bodies to Gaza, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.
The number of bodies was unusually large, but neither Israeli nor Palestinian officials offered information about their identities or how or when the deaths occurred. It is not clear who in Gaza buried the bodies.
Gazan health officials were alerted to the corpses’ return by the Palestinian Authority’s Civil Affairs bureau, which is based in the West Bank and handles bureaucratic coordination with Israel, said Dr. Ashraf al-Qidra, the spokesman for the Gaza health ministry.
The bodies were handed over on Tuesday afternoon at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, through which Israel has allowed some aid to enter Gaza in recent days, Dr. al-Qidra said. Many of the 80 corpses arrived “in pieces or decomposed,” he said in a text message.
A spokesman for the Civil Affairs bureau did not immediately comment. The Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment.
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10) Skepticism Grows Over Israel’s Ability to Dismantle Hamas
Israel has vowed time and again to eliminate the group responsible for the brutal Oct. 7 attack, but critics increasingly see that goal as unrealistic or even impossible.
By Neil MacFarquhar, Dec. 27, 2023
Neil MacFarquhar has spent more than 15 years covering the Middle East for The New York Times and other publications. He has written two books about the Arab world.
An Israeli artillery unit in October near Netivot, Israel, firing toward Gaza. Credit...Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Standing before a gray backdrop decorated with Hamas logos and emblems of a gunman that commemorate the bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Osama Hamdan, the organization’s representative in Lebanon, professed no concern about his Palestinian faction being dislodged from Gaza.
“We are not worried about the future of the Gaza Strip,” he recently told a crowded news conference in his offices in Beirut’s southern suburbs. “The decision maker is the Palestinian people alone.”
Mr. Hamdan thus dismissed one of Israel’s key objectives since the beginning of its assault on Gaza: to dismantle the Islamist political and military organization that was behind the massacre of about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and which still holds more than 100 hostages.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly emphasized that objective even while facing mounting international pressure to scale back military operations. The Biden administration has dispatched senior envoys to Israel to push for a new phase of the war focused on more targeted operations rather than sweeping destruction.
And critics both within Israel and outside have questioned whether resolving to destroy such a deeply entrenched organization was ever realistic. One former Israeli national security adviser called the plan “vague.”
“I think that we have reached a moment when the Israeli authorities will have to define more clearly what their final objective is,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said this month. “The total destruction of Hamas? Does anybody think that’s possible? If it’s that, the war will last 10 years.”
Since it first emerged in 1987, Hamas has survived repeated attempts to eliminate its leadership. The organization’s very structure was designed to absorb such contingencies, according to political and military specialists. In addition, Israel’s devastating tactics in the Gaza war threaten to radicalize a broader segment of the population, inspiring new recruits.
Analysts see the most optimal outcome for Israel probably consisting of degrading Hamas’s military capabilities to prevent the group from repeating such a devastating attack. But even that limited goal is considered a formidable slog.
Hamas is rooted in the ideology that Israeli control over what it regards as Palestinians lands must be opposed by force, a tenet likely to endure, experts said.
“As long as that context is there, you will be dealing with some form of Hamas,” said Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank. “To assume that you can simply uproot an organization like that is fantasy.”
The Israeli military said this week that it had killed about 8,000 Hamas fighters out of a force estimated at 25,000 to 40,000. But it is unclear how the count is being made. About 500 have surrendered, according to the military, though Hamas has denied that all were from its ranks.
The military has at times delivered positive progress reports on its objectives, describing as “imminent” full control over the areas in northern Gaza where it began its ground offensive in late October.
But Mr. Netanyahu acknowledged on Sunday that the war “is exacting a very heavy cost from us” as the military announced that 15 soldiers had been killed in the previous 48 hours alone. Rockets are still being fired almost daily from southern Gaza into Israel, albeit far fewer than before.
Michael Milshtein, a former senior intelligence officer for Israel, criticized statements by some Israeli leaders depicting Hamas as being at its breaking point, saying that might create false expectations about the length of the war.
“They’ve been saying this for a while, that Hamas is collapsing,” Mr. Milshtein said. “But it’s just not true. Every day, we’re facing tough battles.”
The Israeli military distributed fliers in Gaza recently offering cash for information leading to the arrest of four Hamas leaders.
“Hamas has lost its power. They couldn’t fry an egg,” said the flier in Arabic, quoting a folk expression. “The end of Hamas is near.”
The military promised $400,000 for Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, and $100,000 for Mohammed Deif, head of its military wing, the Qassam Brigades. The two are considered the architects of the Oct. 7 attack.
Although long among the most wanted men in Gaza, the elusive Mr. Deif has avoided assassination or capture. The only picture of him in public is a decades-old headshot.
The bounties appeared to be another indication that Israel is struggling to remove the Hamas leadership.
The group’s top echelon are believed to be sheltering, along with most of its fighters and the remaining hostages, in deep tunnels. Although the Israeli army has said that it demolished at least 1,500 shafts, experts consider the underground infrastructure is largely intact.
The tunnels, built over 15 years, are believed to be so extensive, estimated at hundreds of miles long, that Israelis call them the Gaza Metro.
“Hamas is actually weathering this assault quite well,” said Tareq Baconi, an author who wrote a book about the group. “It’s still showing that it has an offensive military capability.”
Giora Eiland, a retired major general and former head of Israel’s National Security Council, said Hamas had demonstrated the ability to quickly replace commanders who are killed with others equally capable and equally devoted.
“From a professional point of view, I must give credit to their resilience,” he said. “I cannot see any signs of collapse of the military abilities of Hamas nor in their political strength to continue to lead Gaza.”
Hamas is rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood, which was born in Egypt in 1928 as a religious social reform movement but has often been blamed for fomenting jihadist violence in recent decades. Israel once allowed the group to grow as an Islamist counterweight to the more mainstream and secular Palestine Liberation Organization.
In one of Israel’s first, notorious efforts to dismantle Hamas, in 1992, it deported 415 of its leaders and allies, dumping them in a buffer zone along the Israel-Lebanon border. Over the months before their return, they built an alliance with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the most powerful Iran-backed militia in the region.
The United States and Israel condemn both Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations.
A string of Israeli assassinations of Hamas political, military and religious leaders also failed to weaken the group. It won control of Gaza in free Palestinian elections in 2006, then evicted its more moderate rival, the Palestinian Authority, in a bloody conflict the next year.
Israel fought three other wars in Gaza targeting Hamas between 2008 and the current crisis.
The operations of the Hamas military wing, the Qassam Brigades, remain opaque. The units were designed to continue functioning even if Israel destroyed parts.
Divided geographically, its five main brigades were in northern Gaza; Gaza City; central Gaza; and two southern cities, Khan Younis and Rafah.
Most of the elite troops were in the two northern brigades, which constitute about 60 percent of the force, said an Israeli military official who requested anonymity under military regulations. About half of them have been killed, wounded, arrested or fled south, the official claimed.
For Israel, the aim is first to dismantle the government, then to disperse the fighters and eliminate the commanders and their primary subordinates, the Israeli official said.
But Azzam Tamimi, a Palestinian journalist and member of the Muslim Brotherhood who has written a book about Hamas, said the group was prepared for that.
“The top leadership can disappear at any time because they can be killed, they can be arrested, they can be deported,” he said. “So they developed this mechanism of the easy transfer of command.”
The Qassam Brigades are divided into battalions, with even smaller units defending individual neighborhoods. Other specialized battalions include an anti-tank unit, a tunnel-construction unit and an air wing whose drones and paragliders were an important element of the surprise attack on Oct. 7, according to analysts and former military and intelligence officials.
The Nukhba Brigade, consisting of about 1,000 highly trained fighters, also appears to have played a central role on Oct. 7.
Trying to eliminate Hamas entirely would require fighting from street to street and house to house, and Israel lacks both the time and personnel, said Elliot Chapman, a Middle East analyst with Janes, a defense analysis firm.
As the United States found in attempting to squash Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the organizations tend to spring back once the armed pressure is lifted. The Gaza fight has been compared to the campaign to wrest Mosul, Iraq, from the Islamic State less than a decade ago, but there are significant differences.
Notably, Hamas is organic to Gaza — it grew out of frustration with the mainstream factions abandoning the armed struggle against the Israeli occupation. Hamas refuses to recognize Israel, and according to its founding charter, is committed to its destruction.
The scale of Israel’s war is likely to radicalize a new generation: More than 20,000 Gazans have been reported killed thus far, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Some Gazans curse Hamas, even taking to the airwaves or social media to do it, despite the organization’s history of repressing opponents. Other Gazans, however, say that they still back “the resistance,” and Hamas has long attracted support by providing services like schools and clinics.
A recent poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that most respondents endorsed the Hamas attack on Israel. Support for Hamas in Gaza since the war started has risen to 42 percent, from 38 percent, the poll reported.
At best, Israel can probably contain Hamas, experts said.
But even if Israel somehow succeeded in dismantling the group in Gaza, there are still branches in the West Bank and abroad, in places like Lebanon and Turkey, that could revive it.
“The right way to think about it is to degrade the organization to the point that it is no longer a sustainable threat,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired C.I.A. officer who specialized in Middle East counterterrorism.
“You cannot just have a strategy of killing everybody,” he added. “You have to have that day-after scenario.”
Aaron Boxerman, Hwaida Saad and Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.
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11) Another video shows Gazan detainees stripped to their underwear.
By Vivian Yee, Arijeta Lajka and Christoph Koettl, Dec. 27, 2023
Screenshot of Palestinian men stripped and handcuffed surrounded by tanks and IDF armed forces.
More video footage has emerged showing dozens of Palestinians in Gaza lined up and stripped to their underwear as armed Israeli soldiers look on, in footage reminiscent of images of Palestinian detainees in Gaza that generated outrage earlier this month.
In the new video, men — and at least three young boys — wearing only their underwear are seen lined up in front of a row of soldiers in the grassy field at Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City, their hands on their heads. The video shows Israeli soldiers supervising as dozens of men kneel on the grass, hands apparently tied behind their backs. Others walk in a line, their hands up, carrying pieces of paper.
The video also shows several women and children gathered together on the field, as well as several Israeli military vehicles, including bulldozers, tanks and trucks.
The New York Times verified the video, which was uploaded on Sunday by an Israeli photographer who said on his social media pages that he had embedded with a unit of the Israeli military, the Nahal Brigade’s 932nd battalion. It was likely filmed around mid-December.
The video, which spread quickly on Palestinian media and social media, mirrored previous footage and photos of Palestinian detainees stripped to their underwear in northern Gaza that prompted accusations that Israel was violating international law in its detention of Palestinians.
The Israeli military argued at the time that it had needed to round up the men en masse to determine if they were Hamas fighters, and it needed to strip them to their underwear to make sure they were not armed.
Earlier this month, the military said it was arresting military-age men found in northern Gaza. But, in addition to the boys among the stripped men, the video also shows several gray-haired men, one of whom appears to be leaning on two other men for support as he walks.
A spokesman for Israel’s military, Nir Dinar, declined to comment on the video because it had not been released by the military. In general, Mr. Dinar said in a statement, the Israeli military treats detainees in accordance with international law, adding that detainees are often made to hand over clothing to be searched for weapons or explosives.
“Detainees are given back their clothes when it’s possible to do so,” he said, without giving a specific time frame, and detainees were released if found not to be participating in “terrorist activities.”
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12) Tom Smothers, Comic Half of the Smothers Brothers, Dies at 86
Though he played a naïve buffoon onstage, he was the driving force behind the folk-singing duo’s groundbreaking TV show.
By William Grimes, Dec. 27, 2023
Tom, left, and Dick Smothers, the hosts of the CBS variety show “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” in 1969. Credit...CBS Photo Archive
Tom Smothers, the older half of the comic folk duo the Smothers Brothers, whose skits and songs on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in the late 1960s brought political satire and a spirit of youthful irreverence to network television, paving the way for shows like “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show,” died on Tuesday at his home in Santa Rosa, Calif., a city in Sonoma County. He was 86.
He died “following a recent battle with cancer,” a spokesman for the National Comedy Center announced on behalf of the family.
The Smothers Brothers made their way to network television as a folk act with a difference. With Tom playing guitar and Dick playing stand-up bass, they spent as much time bickering as singing.
With an innocent expression and a stammering delivery, Tom would try to introduce their songs with a story, only to be picked at by his skeptical brother. As frustration mounted, he would turn, seething, and often deliver a trademark non sequitur: “Mom always liked you best.”
Hoping to reach a younger audience, CBS gave the brothers creative control over “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” a one-hour variety show that made its debut in February 1967. For the next three seasons it courted controversy as it addressed American policy in Vietnam, religious fundamentalism, racial strife and recreational drug use.
Running features like Leigh French’s “Share a Little Tea With Goldie,” replete with drug references, either delighted or scandalized, depending on the age and the politics of the viewer.
“During the first year, we kept saying the show has to have something to say more than just empty sketches and vacuous comedy,” Mr. Smothers said in a 2006 interview. “So we always tried to put something of value in there, something that made a point and reflected what was happening out in the streets.”
Tom, more liberal than his brother and largely responsible for the production of the show, brought in writers attuned to the thinking of the Baby Boom generation — among them Rob Reiner, Steve Martin, Pat Paulsen, and Mason Williams — and stretched the boundaries of taste at every turn.
“Easter is when Jesus comes out of his tomb, and if he sees his shadow he goes back in and we get six more weeks of winter,” Tom said on one show.
Far more combative than his mild-mannered brother, who survives him, Tom fought network executives and censors until CBS, tired of complaints from its rural affiliates, especially in the South, abruptly canceled the show in April 1969 and replaced it with “Hee Haw,” a corn-pone counterpart to the fast-paced (and often controversial) “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” that featured country music stars.
“In any other medium we would be regarded as moderate,” Tom Smothers told reporters at a news conference the day after the show was canceled. “Here we are regarded as rebels and extremists.”
An Army Family
Thomas Bolyn Smothers III was born on Feb. 2, 1937, on Governors Island in New York Harbor, where his father, a West Point graduate and Army major, was stationed. The family relocated to Manila when Major Smothers was reassigned. Shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the family moved again, to the Los Angeles area, where Tom and Dick’s mother, Ruth (Remick) Smothers, had grown up. She found work in an aircraft factory.
Major Smothers remained on Corregidor in Manila Bay to fight and was taken prisoner on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines. He survived the Bataan death march, but in 1945 he died of injuries sustained when American planes mistakenly bombed the prison ship transporting him to a camp in Japan.
Tom attended an assortment of schools as his mother descended into alcoholism and moved from husband to husband. In 1955, he graduated from Redondo Union High School, where he was a state champion on the parallel bars.
While in high school, he and Dick, two years his junior, sang in a barbershop group that won second prize on “Rocket to Stardom,” a local talent contest broadcast from the showroom of a Los Angeles Oldsmobile dealer.
At San Jose State College (now University), where Tom studied advertising, the brothers decided to ride the folk music wave and formed the Casual Quintet. In early 1959, by then a trio with Bobby Blackmore as lead singer, they began performing at the Purple Onion in San Francisco, a popular showcase for folk singers and comedians, billed as the Smothers Brothers and Gawd.
Gradually, the brothers introduced comic patter into their act, satirizing the folk music scene and turning their sibling rivalry — which was genuine — into shtick. The act “slowly evolved to be a running argument between two brothers who sang but never finished a song,” Mr. Smothers said in 2006.
Audiences loved it. Their two-week engagement at the Purple Onion was extended to nine months, and in 1961 the Smothers Brothers, now a duo, were booked into the Blue Angel in New York.
Robert Shelton, reviewing the show in The New York Times, compared Tom’s delivery to “a frightened 10th grader giving a memorized talk at a Kiwanis meeting.”
He added, “He speaks in a nervous, distracted sort of cretin double-talk that has him stumbling over big words, muffing lines with naïve unconcern, singing off-key, committing malapropisms, garbling lyrics and eternally upstaging his younger brother.”
The brothers became regulars on “The Tonight Show” with Jack Paar, “The Garry Moore Show” and “The New Steve Allen Show.” They signed with Mercury Records and recorded “The Smothers Brothers at the Purple Onion,” the first of several successful albums. They toured college campuses nonstop.
In 1963, Tom married Stephanie Shorr. The marriage ended in divorce, as did his marriage to Rochelle Robley. In addition to his brother, he is survived by his wife, Marcy Carriker Smothers; their son, Bo, and daughter, Riley Rose Smothers; and a grandson. His son from his first marriage, Thomas Bolyn Smothers IV, died last year.
In a statement, Dick Smothers said, “Tom was not only the loving older brother that everyone would want in their life, he was a one-of-a-kind creative partner.”
In 1965, CBS gave the brothers their own sitcom, “The Smothers Brothers Show,” produced by Aaron Spelling. It did not play to their strengths: Tom played a probationary angel sent back to earth to move in with and watch over his brother, a swinging bachelor played by Dick.
The ratings were strong, but it was a miserable experience. Deprived of their instruments and a live audience, and saddled with a laugh track, the brothers struggled.
“It was a nothing show,” Tom told The New York Times in 1967. “There was no point of reference, nothing meaningful, no satire in it.”
After “The Garry Moore Show” failed to challenge “Bonanza” on Sunday nights, Michael Dann, the head programmer at CBS, took a chance on a Smothers Brothers variety show.
Connecting With the Young
Expectations were low, but “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” connected with viewers, especially younger ones, and outperformed “Bonanza” in the ratings. The humor was irreverent, the writing was sharp, and musical guests like the Who and Jefferson Airplane broke the variety-show mold.
The brothers looked like clean-cut collegians, but their cheery, up-tempo songs could bite. “The war in Vietnam keeps on a-ragin’,” one began. “Black and whites still haven’t worked it out./Pollution, guns and poverty surround us./No wonder everybody’s droppin’ out.”
A war with CBS executives began almost immediately, and a pattern quickly developed. The censors would cut words, lines or entire sketches. Mr. Smothers would fight tooth and nail to have them reinstated, often successfully. When thwarted, he would complain loudly and publicly.
After CBS cut the words “breast” and “heterosexual” from an early sketch, written by Elaine May, about two professional censors (played by Tom Smothers and Ms. May), Mr. Smothers told The Times: “The censors censored the censorship bit. It’s a real infringement of our creative rights.”
He lost the first round of his campaign to have Pete Seeger, absent from television after being blacklisted in the 1950s, perform his antiwar ballad “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.” The segment was pulled in 1967 but broadcast a year later.
“Television is old and tired,” Mr. Smothers told McCall’s magazine in 1968. “Television is a lie. The people who censor our shows are all conditioned to a very scared way of thinking, which is reflected in the kind of programs the networks put on. Television should be as free as the movies, as the newspapers, as music to reflect what’s happening.”
CBS began insisting that an advance tape of each week’s show be sent to the network and its affiliates for their review. In April 1969, when the tape of a show that included a satirical sermon, delivered by the comedian David Steinberg, failed to arrive on schedule for the second time, CBS informed the brothers that they had broken their contract and that the show, whose option had been renewed two weeks earlier, would be canceled.
The move was not a complete surprise.
“Tommy has been sticking pins in CBS ever since he started feeling his oats when he found he could command good ratings,” Percy Shain, the television critic for The Boston Globe, wrote. “He has been at times snide, ugly, resentful, bullheaded. In his various arguments with the network he has refused to compromise one iota. Every deletion meant a battle.”
TV Guide, in a stern editorial, deemed the cancellation “wise, determined and wholly justified.”
For the rest of his life, Mr. Smothers remained convinced that President Richard M. Nixon, who had assumed office just three months earlier after defeating Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, had pressured CBS to cancel the show.
“When Nixon said, ‘I want those guys off,’ they were off,” he told “Speaking Freely,” a television program produced by the First Amendment Center, in 2001. “If Humphrey had been elected, we would have been on.”
The brothers briefly returned to network television in 1970 with the tepid “Smothers Brothers Summer Show” on ABC. The next year Tom, increasingly outspoken on politics, starred, without his brother, in “Tom Smothers’ Organic Prime Time Space Ride,” a syndicated half-hour variety show that was long on relevance and short on laughs.
“I lost perspective, my sense of humor,” he said in the 2006 interview. “I became a poster boy for the First Amendment, freedom of speech, and I started buying into it. It was about three years when I was deadly serious about everything.”
Hollywood and Broadway
Tom pursued a career as an actor, in “Serial,” “The Silver Bears” and other movies. With his brother, he appeared in the comedy “I Love My Wife” on Broadway in 1978 and on a national tour.
The brothers reunited on television in 1975 for a new, tamer version of “The Smothers Brothers Show,” broadcast on NBC, and a 1988 reunion show. They also appeared (not as brothers) in a short-lived 1981 drama series, “Fitz and Bones.” But their career ended as it had begun, in concert performances.
Tom added a new comic persona to the act, Yo-Yo Man, performing dazzling yo-yo tricks that he learned after falling in love with the song “(I’m a) Yo-Yo Man.” In 2010, Tom announced that he and his brother were retiring as an act.
At the 1969 Emmys, “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” received an award for outstanding writing achievement in comedy, variety or music. Mr. Smothers had removed himself from the show’s list of writers on the ballot, worried that his name might alienate voters. In 2008 the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences gave him a special commemorative Emmy for the show, presented by Steve Martin.
In an interview for the Archive of American Television in 2000, Mr. Smothers looked back on the show and its impact. “It was the ’60s that we reflected,” he said. “The country was going through a revolution — a social revolution, a political and consciousness revolution, about government and its part. We tried to reflect that.”
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
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