12/07/2023

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, December 8, 2023

 


SAN FRANCISCO

Shut Down Lockheed Martin

12:00-1:30 P.M.

275 Battery St.

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Tuesday, December 12, 2023

8pm EST - 7pm CST - 6pm MST - 5pm PST

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



Palestinians killed and wounded by Israel:
As of December 8, 2023the total number of Palestinians killed by Israel is now over 21,731 (over 900 killed Dec. 2-5 alone)and more than 250 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in the occupied West Bank in the past month. 
8,300 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons. More than 2,000 Palestinians have been arrested since Oct. 7.



Israelis killed and abducted by Hamas: 
A total of 1,200* Israelis killed by Hamas (30 of them children) and 239 abducted on October 7, 2023.
Israel has revised its official estimated death toll of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, lowering the number to about 1,200 people, down from more than 1,400, a spokesman for the country’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday night.

NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE!
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA  PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
FOR A DEMOCRATIC, SECULAR PALESTINE!

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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




[1] https://lithub.com/read-anne-boyers-extraordinary-resignation-letter-from-the-new-york-times/

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Viva Fidel!

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PLEASE SIGN AND FORWARD WIDELY!

 

To endorse the following statement as a trade unionist, please click here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd2tpd2c62Sh5YEVDOr2vmGWTuQArt-6OPQMDwd2wUnfNi_rQ/viewform

 

To endorse as other, please click here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdzWaP1U_KOHlH-ou1R3OD8zsuI5BWW1b9H4gtPoFK_lIQB3g/viewform

 

The list of signers will be updated periodically

Contact: info@laborforpalestine.net

Website: laborforpalestine.net

 

Stand With Palestinian Workers: 

Cease the Genocide Now—Stop Arming Israel!

Labor for Palestine

 

“We need you to take immediate action—wherever you are in the world—to prevent the arming of the Israeli state and the companies involved in the infrastructure of the blockade.” An Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel (October 16, 2023)

 

The undersigned U.S. workers, trade unionists, and anti-apartheid activists join labor around the world in condemning the Israeli siege on Gaza that has killed or maimed thousands of Palestinians—many of them children—and stand with Palestinians’ “right to exist, resist, return, and self-determination.”

 

The latest Israeli attacks reflect more than a century of ongoing Zionist settler-colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, racism, genocide, and apartheid—including Israel’s establishment through the uprooting and displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1947-1948 Nakba. Indeed, eighty percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza are refugees from other parts of historic Palestine.

 

Israel’s crimes are only possible because of more than $3.8 billion a year (or $10+ million per day) in bipartisan US military aid that gives Israel the guns, bullets, tanks, ships, jet fighters, missiles, helicopters, white phosphorus and other weapons to kill and maim the Palestinian people. This is the same system of racist state violence that, through shared surveillance technology and police exchange programs, brutalizes BIPOC and working class people in the United States and around the world.

 

In response, we demand an immediate end to the genocide, and embrace the recent Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel:

 

1.     To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel. To refuse to transport weapons to Israel. 

 

2.     To pass motions in their trade union to this effect. 

 

3.     To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution. 

 

4.     Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the U.S., funding to it.

 

We further reaffirm the call on labor bodies to respect previous Palestinian trade union appeals for solidarity by adopting this statement, and/or the model resolution below to divest from Israel Bonds, sever all ties with the Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut, and its US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee, and respect the Palestinian picket line for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). 

 

Initial Signers on behalf of Labor for Palestine

(organizational affiliations listed for identification only)

Suzanne Adely, Labor for Palestine, US Palestinian Community Network, Arab Workers Resource Center; Food Chain Workers Alliance (staff); President, National Lawyers Guild; Monadel Herzallah, Arab American Union Members Council; Ruth Jennison, Department Rep., Massachusetts Society of Professors, MTA, NEA; Co-Chair, Labor Standing Committee River Valley DSA; Delegate to Western Mass Area Labor Federation; Lara Kiswani, Executive Director, Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC); Block the Boat; Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325; Jews for Palestinian Right of Return; Corinna Mullin, PSC-CUNY International Committee; CUNY for Palestine; Clarence Thomas, Co-Chair, Million Worker March; Executive Board, ILWU Local 10 (retired.)

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Jewish Doctor Speaks Out on Israel and Palestine

Dr. Gabor Maté, Hungarian-Canadian physician and author describes his own life experience and expresses his view on the situation in Israel and Palestine.

“I’m personally a Holocaust survivor as an infant, I barely survived. My grandparents were killed in Auschwitz and most of my extended family were killed. I became a Zionist; this dream of the Jewish people resurrected in their historical homeland and the barbed wire of Auschwitz being replaced by the boundaries of a Jewish state with a powerful army…and then I found out that it wasn’t exactly like that, that in order to make this Jewish dream a reality we had to visit a nightmare on the local population.

“There’s no way you could have ever created a Jewish state without oppressing and expelling the local population. Jewish Israeli historians have shown without a doubt that the expulsion of Palestinians was persistent, pervasive, cruel, murderous and with deliberate intent—that’s what’s called the ‘Nakba’ in Arabic; the ‘disaster’ or the ‘catastrophe.’ There’s a law that you cannot deny the Holocaust, but in Israel you’re not allowed to mention the Nakba, even though it’s at the very basis of the foundation of Israel.

“I visited the Occupied Territories (West Bank) during the first intifada. I cried every day for two weeks at what I saw; the brutality of the occupation, the petty harassment, the murderousness of it, the cutting down of Palestinian olive groves, the denial of water rights, the humiliations...and this went on, and now it’s much worse than it was then.

“It’s the longest ethnic cleansing operation in the 20th and 21st century. I could land in Tel Aviv tomorrow and demand citizenship but my Palestinian friend in Vancouver, who was born in Jerusalem, can’t even visit!

“So, then you have these miserable people packed into this, horrible…people call it an ‘outdoor prison,’ which is what it is. You don’t have to support Hamas policies to stand up for Palestinian rights, that’s a complete falsity. You think the worst thing you can say about Hamas, multiply it by a thousand times, and it still will not meet the Israeli repression and killing and dispossession of Palestinians.

“And ‘anybody who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite’ is simply an egregious attempt to intimidate good non-Jews who are willing to stand up for what is true.”

—Independent Catholic News, October 16, 2023

https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/48251

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TERRORISM IN THE EYES OF THE IMPERIAL BEHOLDER - a poem

 

the French word

for rabies

is

la rage -

rage or outrage

 

and 

the French have a saying -

a man who wants to get rid of his dog

accuses it of spreading rabies

 

the people of Gaza

treated as inhuman animals

worse than dogs

are charged

with terrorism

 

come to think of it

what an honor !

 

world war two's resistance

against nazi extermination

was designated

as terrorism

by the Axis allies

 

what an honor !

 

Mandela

was monitored

as a terrorist

by the CIA

 

What an honor !

 

Tortuguita

peacefully meditating

near Israeli-funded cop city

was executed

in cold blood

on suspicion

of domestic terrorism 

 

What an honor !

 

in the spirit of Mandela

in the spirit of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

in the spirit of Tortuguita

in the spirit of Attica

may the anti colonial outrage

of the People of Palestine

contaminate us all -

the only epidemic

worth dying for

 

 (c) Julia Wright. October 17 2023. All Rights Reserved To The family of Wadea Al- Fayoume.


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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 

By Julia Wright

 

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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A Plea for the Compassionate Release of 

Leonard Peltier

Self Portrait by Leonard Peltier


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.

Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWdJdODKO6M&feature=youtu.be


Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

 

https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition

 

Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info

Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603


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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

 

I’m pleased to announce that last week our client, Daniel Hale, was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. The “Corner-Brightener Candlestick” was presented to Daniel’s friend Noor Mir. You can watch the online ceremony here.

As it happens, this week is also the 20th anniversary of the first drone assassination in Yemen. From the beginning, the drone assassination program has been deeply shrouded in secrecy, allowing U.S. officials to hide significant violations of international law, and the American Constitution. In addition to the lives directly impacted by these strikes, the program has significantly eroded respect for international law and thereby puts civilians around the world in danger.

Daniel Hale’s revelations threw a beam of light into a very dark corner, allowing journalists to definitively show that the government's official narrative was a lie. It is thanks to the great personal sacrifice of drone whistleblowers like Hale that public understanding has finally begun to catch up to reality.

As the Sam Adams Associates note:

 “Mr. Hale was well aware of the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment to which other courageous officials have been subjected — and that he would likely suffer the same. And yet — in the manner of his famous ancestor Nathan Hale — he put his country first, knowing what awaited him at the hands of those who serve what has become a repressive Perpetual War State wreaking havoc upon much of the world.”


We hope you’ll join the growing call to pardon or commute Hale’s sentence. U.S. citizens can contact your representatives here.

Happy new year, and thank you for your support!

Jesselyn Radack
Director
Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR)
ExposeFacts

Twitter: @JesselynRadack

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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression

https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/

 

Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests. 

 

The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page. 

 

Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.

 

Emergency Hotlines

If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities. 

 

State and Local Hotlines

If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for: 

 

Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312

San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org

Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963

National Hotline

If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:

 

National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811


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Articles

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1) Dozens are killed amid heavy bombardment in central Gaza, health officials say.

By Shashank Bengali, Dec. 6. 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/12/06/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news#dozens-are-killed-amid-heavy-bombardment-in-central-gaza-health-officials-say
A group of people carrying a body covered by white sheeting.
Palestinians retrieving bodies in Deir al Balah on Tuesday. Aid workers have described intense bombardment by Israeli forces. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock

Gazan health officials said on Wednesday that dozens of bodies had arrived at a major hospital in the central Gaza Strip, and aid agencies warned of critical shortages at that medical facility amid “unrelenting” strikes in the enclave by Israeli forces.

 

The Gaza Health Ministry said that 73 bodies and 123 injured people had been brought to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in the city of Deir al Balah, in the past 24 hours. The circumstances of the deaths and injuries were not immediately known, and the health ministry did not elaborate. But aid workers have described intense bombardment by Israeli forces, which say they are advancing on the major southern city of Khan Younis to root out Hamas militants there.

 

On Wednesday, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a video posted on social media that Israeli forces were closing in on the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.  “Our forces are encircling Sinwar’s house,” he said. “He can escape, but it is only a matter of time until we reach him.”

 

Israeli forces have restricted movement along Gaza’s two main roads and have effectively cut off central Gaza from both the north and south of the territory, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian office.

 

Because of the road closures, “fuel and medical supplies have reached critically low levels at Al-Aqsa hospital,” the aid agency Doctors Without Borders said on Wednesday in a social media post.

 

“The siege must be lifted; medical humanitarian supplies and aid must urgently be supplied to the Gaza Strip in its entirety,” the group’s post said.

 

The agency, which supports operations at the hospital, said that hundreds of patients needed emergency medical care, and that there were dire shortages of medicines, surgical tools and equipment to repair broken bones.

 

“There are 700 patients admitted in the hospital now, with new patients arriving all the time,” the group’s emergency coordinator in Gaza, Marie-Aure Perreaut Revial, said in a statement. “We are running out of essential supplies to treat them.”

 

A Palestinian journalist who has been staying at the hospital for weeks, Mohammed Abu Namous, said that bodies were brought there every day — so many that hospital workers were stacking them atop one another in ice-cream containers.

 

Israeli bombardment in the area “didn’t stop since the beginning of the aggression but its pace has intensified in the last few days,” he said.

 

Israel, which along with Egypt has enforced a 16-year blockade of Gaza, has allowed few humanitarian supplies to enter the territory since war broke out following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, which controls much of the enclave. Since a weeklong truce with Hamas expired last week, Israel has slowed the entry of aid trucks via Egypt.

 

For the past three days, the only aid being distributed in Gaza has been in the southernmost area of Rafah, on the Egyptian border, because of intense fighting and road closures in other parts of the strip, the U.N. humanitarian office said on Wednesday.

 

Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.

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2) A strike that killed a journalist in Lebanon was an ‘apparently deliberate attack’ by Israel, Human Rights Watch says.

By Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Hwaida Saad, Dec. 7, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/12/07/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
Four people sitting in front of a bank of microphones at a new conference. On the left is a yellow sign reading Amnesty International in black letters and on the right is a blue sign reading Human Rights Watch in white letters.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Thursday released findings from their investigations into the deadly strikes by Israel on southern Lebanon on Oct. 13. Credit...Wael Hamzeh/EPA, via Shutterstock

An Oct. 13 strike that killed a videographer for the Reuters news agency and injured six others in southern Lebanon was carried out by the Israeli military and appeared to be a deliberate attack, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

 

The watchdog group said that evidence it had reviewed — including dozens of videos of the incident, photographs and satellite images, and interviews with witnesses and military experts — showed that the journalists were not near areas where fighting was taking place and that there was no military objective near their position.

 

“The attack on the journalists’ position directly targeted them,” the report said, labeling the attack a war crime.

 

The Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to the report.

 

Reuters published its own investigation on Thursday and said that an Israeli tank crew had killed its journalist and wounded the others.

 

“The evidence we now have, and have published today, shows that an Israeli tank crew killed our colleague Issam Abdallah,” the Reuters editor in chief, Alessandra Galloni, said in a statement. She called on Israel “to explain how this could have happened and to hold to account those responsible.”

 

On Oct. 13, a week after Hamas attacks on Israel sparked an all-out war, the seven journalists from Reuters, Al Jazeera and Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, were standing on a hilltop in southern Lebanon close to the border with Israel. They were filming and broadcasting cross-border shelling between the Israeli army and Lebanese militants allied with Hamas.

 

The report said that the journalists were wearing antiballistic jackets marked “Press” and had a car marked “TV.” They had been at that position for more than an hour and were visible from an Israeli military location more than a mile away, the report said.

 

The report said that two munitions, fired within 37 seconds of each other, killed Mr. Abdallah, and injured the six others. A car belonging to Al Jazeera was destroyed. Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that it was an “apparently deliberate attack on civilians and thus a war crime.”

 

In a separate report, which contained some of the same information, the human rights group Amnesty International said that the journalists were stationary and that their markings “should have provided sufficient information to Israeli forces that these were journalists and civilians and not a military target.”

 

It said they would have been visible to Israeli forces on the other side of the border, as well as to an Israeli military helicopter and likely an Israeli drone that were flying overhead around the time of the attack.

 

The Amnesty report concluded that Mr. Abdallah was killed by a tank round fired from Israel. The second strike, it said, was from a different Israeli weapon, likely a small guided missile.

 

The incident was “likely a direct attack on civilians that must be investigated as a war crime,” the statement said.

 

At a news conference in Beirut to publicize the findings, Mr. Abdallah’s mother, Fatemah Qanso Abdallah, said that the report had given her some relief, though she questioned whether it would result in accountability.

 

“We will keep calling for justice,” she said, but added: “I’m afraid that these killings will be forgotten.”

 

The Oct. 13 strike is not the only one involving journalists on the Lebanese border in recent weeks.

 

Two television journalists and one other person were killed in southern Lebanon on Nov. 21. Lebanese officials blamed Israel, and a former Pentagon senior intelligence analyst who reviewed images of the incident told The New York Times that the evidence suggested that Israel’s military had fired the weapon.

 

Israel’s military said at the time that there were “a number of launches from Lebanon,” but offered no specifics.

 

The Committee to Protect Journalists, which said it welcomed Thursday’s reports, said that it had found a pattern of the use of lethal force against journalists by the Israel Defense Forces dating back years. Despite numerous investigations “no one was ever held accountable,” it said.


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3) Maps: Tracking the Attacks in Israel and Gaza

By Josh Holder, Dec. 7, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/07/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-maps.html





Source: Satellite image by Planet Labs By The New York Times


Where Israel’s tanks have invaded southern Gaza 

Israel’s renewed offensive has reached the outskirts of Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s largest city, from which thousands of civilians are now trying to flee.

 

Satellite imagery shows the clearest evidence so far of the extent of Israel’s ground offensive in southern Gaza, where armored vehicles can be seen moving toward Khan Younis from several directions. The Times obtained and analyzed the imagery, which was taken on Wednesday morning, from Planet Labs, a commercial satellite company.

 

Israeli tanks, vehicle tracks and defensive fortifications are visible in imagery taken on Sunday, showing that Israeli forces entered southern Gaza via the Kissufim crossing point sometime on Friday or Saturday. Israeli vehicles also crossed the border farther south, to the northeast of Khan Younis, according to a New York Times analysis of publicly available satellite imagery from Copernicus taken on Wednesday.

 

This sequence of images show how quickly the Israeli military has ramped up its operation around Khan Younis, where they believe Hamas leadership is sheltering after fleeing the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

 

Israeli commanders have described intense house-to-house combat with Hamas fighters in the densely populated city of Khan Younis. The city had more than 200,000 residents before the war, and has become more crowded in recent weeks as people fled the intense conflict in northern Gaza.

 

The military confrontations in Khan Younis are unfolding as humanitarian conditions have grown increasingly dire. Israel is ordering civilians — many who were already displaced from their homes in the north — to evacuate into ever-shrinking pockets of the coastal enclave and officials are struggling to get aid through. The United Nations has warned that shelters are far beyond capacity, forcing many people to sleep on the street or in empty lots.

 

Khan Younis is also under heavy aerial bombardment. One neighborhood to the northeast of the city, shown below, has more than two dozen large craters and numerous destroyed buildings, mirroring the destruction in northern Gaza.


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4) ‘On the brink of full-blown collapse’: Fuel and aid are scarce as relief efforts falter in southern Gaza.

By Victoria Kim, Dec. 8, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/12/08/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

People, mostly children, sitting or standing outdoors near a pot on a makeshift stove. Tents are in the background.

Displaced Palestinians in Al-Mawasi, in the southern Gaza Strip.  Credit...Fatima Shbair/Associated Press


U.N. humanitarian officials warned on Friday of an increasingly dire situation in the Gaza Strip, with aid operations all but incapacitated by the intensifying fighting in the south and civil order breaking down.

 

As the Security Council prepared for a vote over a demand for a cease-fire, relief workers in southern Gaza were anxiously seeking more aid. Israel’s increasing airstrikes and ground operations in the south have made relief efforts erratic and undependable, the United Nations said, and the enclave is facing shortages of food, water and medicine.

 

“With constant bombardment, low and irregular flow of food and other humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip compared to the immense needs of displaced people in our overcrowded shelters and outside, UNRWA’s ability to assist and protect people is reducing fast,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of U.N. agency that assists Palestinians, said in statement.

 

He said he had written to the General Assembly’s president to relay that the agency’s “ability to continue delivering its mandate in Gaza has now become very limited.”

 

Aid workers describe the public’s growing desperation for food, with one U.N. official saying that convoys had been looted and U.N. vehicles stoned.

 

The streets “feel wild, particularly after dark,” Thomas White, the Gaza director of UNRWA said on social media on Friday, adding that “society is on the brink of full-blown collapse.”

 

The Security Council is meeting for a vote on Friday on the situation after António Guterres, the secretary-general, called on the body to declare an immediate cease-fire. He did so by invoking a rarely used tool in the United Nations Charter that empowers the leader of the U.N. to recommend action to the Security Council.

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Thursday that Israel would allow a “minimal” supply of additional fuel “to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics,” without specifying when it would be delivered. Col. Elad Goren, an Israeli military official, told reporters on Thursday that Israel was discussing the quantity of the supply with U.N. agencies, but that it needed a “mechanism” to ensure that the fuel would not go to Hamas.

 

Israel has severely restricted the flow of fuel into Gaza for fear that it would be diverted for military use by Hamas, the armed group that controls the strip. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Thursday that its ambulance center in northern Gaza had been forced to stop transporting the injured because of a lack of fuel.

 

Since the fighting resumed a week ago after a brief cease-fire, Israel’s airstrikes and ground operations have expanded to the southern half of Gaza, displacing many civilians who had been sheltering there after fleeing the north early in the war.

 

Even in southern Gaza, where there has been more access to relief supplies during the war, more than eight out of 10 households are taking extreme measures to cope with food shortages, the World Food Program said this week in an assessment that was based on a survey carried out during the pause in fighting. In the northern half of the enclave, 97 percent of households are taking such steps, it said.

 

Edward Wong and Yara Bayoumy contributed reporting.


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5) Israel’s military says it struck hundreds of Gaza targets in the past 24 hours.

By Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem, Dec. 8, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/12/08/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
Several people helping a person on a ladder move an injured person to safety from the top of a damaged building.
Palestinians rescued a man from a damaged building after Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Thursday. Credit...Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

Israeli forces struck hundreds of targets across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours as troops pushed deeper into the embattled enclave, the Israeli military said on Friday morning, while scores of Palestinian civilians sought shelter in rapidly shrinking areas designated as safe.

 

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled northern Gaza for the south, complying with Israeli orders to leave the area. Israeli troops began their ground invasion in northern Gaza in late October before advancing south over the past week, leaving Gazans with few places to flee to.

 

The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted what it said were “numerous terrorists” in a two-hour series of strikes in Khan Younis, the southern city that has become a focus of fighting. At least three of the Gazans were struck by an Israeli drone, the military said.

 

In a video statement distributed by the Israeli military on Friday, Brig. Gen. Dan Goldfus — who is commanding troops in Khan Younis — said his forces were “moving from tunnel to tunnel, house to house.”

 

“The enemy is jumping out at us from the orchards, from tunnels,” General Goldfus said, as gunfire crackled in the background. He added that many of his troops had been deployed for over 60 days.

 

Fighting has also continued in northern Gaza even after weeks of close-quarters battles between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen. Israeli troops have focused on Jabaliya and Shuja’iyya, two neighborhoods that they have identified as centers of militant activity.

 

The Israeli military also struck what it said were Hamas military targets inside Al-Azhar University in Gaza City. Israeli troops located an underground tunnel shaft running from the university to a nearby school, the Israeli military said. There was no immediate comment from the university, which has said previous Israeli assaults destroyed and damaged buildings on its campus.

 

About 150,000 civilians are believed to remain in northern Gaza, spread out across 59 shelters, according to the Israeli military.

 

More than 15,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to Gaza health officials. Israel started its military campaign to topple Hamas in the enclave after the armed Palestinian group launched a large-scale surprise assault on Oct. 7, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking over 240 hostage, according to Israeli officials.

 

In the face of the spiraling death toll in Gaza, U.S. officials have urged Israel to fight in a more targeted manner as its troops moved into southern Gaza this week.

 

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Thursday that Israel needed to do more to lessen the harm to Gaza’s civilians.

 

“It is imperative, it remains imperative, that Israel put a premium on civilian protection,” Mr. Blinken told reporters in Washington. “There does remain a gap between exactly what I said when I was there, the intent to protect civilians, and the actual results that we’re seeing on the ground.”

 

Aid-raid sirens warning of incoming rocket fire blared in the central Israeli city of Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon, sending scores of Israelis running for bomb shelters. There were no immediate reports of casualties.


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6) New arrivals in Rafah, fleeing the fighting in the north, face food shortages and airstrikes.

By Gaya Gupta, Dec. 8, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/12/08/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
A plastic water bottle, a can of beans and a can of tinned meat.
Ola Abu Hasaballah, 35, and her family of four were given a bottle of water, a can of beans and a small can of tinned meat to eat for the next three days. Credit...Ola Abu Hasaballah

A Palestinian child was among those gathered for food in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Saturday. Credit...Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

The first time she and her family had to move was in the early days of the war, when they fled their home in Gaza City.

 

Ola Abu Hasaballah, 35, recalled leaving home, under relentless bombing, with her husband, her 4-month-old baby and her 5-year-old son. Describing the night as a catastrophe, she said she thought they’d be gone for a day, maybe two.

 

It’s been nearly two months since that night. And on Monday, she moved for the seventh time in her search for a safe haven — this time to the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border from the city of Khan Younis farther north.

 

Ms. Hasaballah described the dismal conditions she and many other displaced Palestinians are facing in Rafah, where the Israeli military has directed civilians to go. Explosions leave her and others in constant terror, while meager portions and crowded lines for food fill her with a sense of desperation.

 

“The food and water are very rare here,” she said in a WhatsApp message. “I spent all day with a small piece of bread, and that’s it.”

 

She said that she had waited this morning for six hours in a crowded line to get food, starting at 7 a.m. Many people were sleeping in line, she said.

 

She sent a picture of what her family of four had been given to eat for the next three days. One plastic bottle of water, a can of beans and a small can of tinned meat.

 

The United Nations said that Rafah has been the only place in Gaza to receive any humanitarian aid in nearly a week. Tens of thousands of people have fled there in recent days, and the city is overflowing with displaced Palestinians, forcing many to sleep on the street.

 

After the collapse of a seven-day truce last week, the Israeli military directed civilians in Khan Younis, where many Palestinians had sought refuge in the beginning of the war, to move farther south to Rafah.

 

Israeli airstrikes have nonetheless hit Rafah. Ms. Hasaballah said she has heard explosions since Wednesday night, and she fears for her two young children. “I am doing my best to keep them safe,” she said.

 

Another woman, Heba Usrof, 29, who also fled Khan Younis to take shelter in a refugee camp in Rafah, said she heard several big explosions during the day on Thursday.

 

“Today is more difficult than the previous days in Rafah,” she said. “However, the worst day for me here was the day the ground operations started on Khan Younis. Too many big explosions and strikes.”

 

Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.


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