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https://www.facebook.com/events/s/art-of-movement-and-evening-of/370445182255203/?mibextid=RQdjqZ
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We are all Palestinian
Listen and view this beautiful, powerful, song by Mistahi Corkill on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQwuhbLczgI
Greetings,
Here is my new song and music video, We are all Palestinian, linked below. If you find it inspiring, please feel free to share with others. All the best!
Mistahi
We are all Palestinian
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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
For More Information:
bayarealabor4palestine@gmail.com
Production of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
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Free Julian Assange
Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange
Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count. We are to believe we are represented in this country. This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well. Please take this action as often as you can:
Find your representatives:
https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
Leave each of your representatives a message individually to:
· Drop the charges against Julian Assange
· Speak out publicly against the indictment and
· Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges:
202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard
Leave a message on the White House comment line to
Demand Julian Assange be pardoned:
202-456-1111
Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST
Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:
202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line
202-514-2000 Main Switchboard
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
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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
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Mr. Kevin Cooper
C-65304. 4-EB-82
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin, CA 94974
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system.
See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings
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Sign the petition:
https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/
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Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale
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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) In Strategic Bind, Israel Weighs Freeing Hostages Against Destroying Hamas
Some Israeli commanders said the government’s two main goals were mutually incompatible. To eradicate Hamas, the military would have to engage in a lengthy war that would most likely cost the hostages’ lives.
By Ronen Bergman and Patrick Kingsley, Jan. 20, 2024
An Israeli soldier patrolling in Gaza, as photographed during an escorted tour by the Israeli military for international journalists. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
After more than 100 days of war, Israel’s limited progress in dismantling Hamas has raised doubts within the military’s high command about the near-term feasibility of achieving the country’s principal wartime objectives: eradicating Hamas and also liberating the Israeli hostages still in Gaza.
Israel has established control over a smaller part of Gaza at this point in the war than it originally envisaged in battle plans from the start of the invasion, which were reviewed by The New York Times. That slower than expected pace has led some commanders to privately express their frustrations over the civilian government’s strategy for Gaza, and led them to conclude that the freedom of more than 100 Israeli hostages still in Gaza can be secured only through diplomatic rather than military means.
The dual objectives of freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas are now mutually incompatible, according to interviews with four senior military leaders, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly about their personal opinions.
There is also a clash between how long Israel would need to fully eradicate Hamas — a time-consuming slog fought in the group’s warren of underground tunnels — and the pressure, applied by Israel’s allies, to wrap up the war quickly amid a spiraling civilian death toll.
The generals further said that a drawn-out battle intended to fully dismantle Hamas would most likely cost the lives of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants invaded Israel, killed roughly 1,200 people and took some 240 captives, according to Israeli estimates.
Hamas freed more than 100 hostages in November, but has said it will not release the others unless Israel agrees to completely cease hostilities. Most of the remaining hostages are thought to be held by Hamas cells that are hiding within the subterranean fortress of tunnels that extends for hundreds of miles beneath the surface of Gaza.
On Thursday, Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief who is serving in the war cabinet, exposed a rift inside the government when he said in a television interview that it was an “illusion” to believe that the hostages could be rescued alive through military operations.
“The situation in Gaza is such that the war aims have yet to be achieved,” said Mr. Eisenkot, adding: “For me, there’s no dilemma. The mission is to rescue civilians, ahead of killing an enemy.”
That strategic bind has amplified the military’s frustration at the indecisiveness of Israel’s civilian leadership, according to the four commanders.
The commanders said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s equivocation about a postwar plan for Gaza was at least in part to blame for the military’s predicament on the battlefield.
Mr. Netanyahu has yet to clarify how Gaza will be governed after the war — and the commanders said that without a long-term vision for the territory, the army could not make short-term tactical decisions about how to capture the parts of Gaza that remain beyond Israeli control. Capturing the southernmost part of Gaza, which lines the Egyptian border, would require greater coordination with Egypt. But Egypt is unwilling to engage without guarantees from Israel over the postwar plan, three of the commanders said.
Asked for comment, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that “The P.M. is leading the war on Hamas with unprecedented achievements in a very decisive manner.” In a speech on Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu promised both to achieve “total victory over Hamas,” and also rescue the hostages.
The Israeli military initially declined to respond to the commanders’ comments. After publication online on Saturday, the military released an official statement saying that it did not know the identity of the commanders who spoke to The Times and that their opinions “do not reflect” the military’s position. The statement added, “The release of the hostages is part of the goals of the war, and is of the utmost importance.”
The generals fear that a lengthy campaign — without a postwar plan — would erode any remaining support from Israel’s allies, limiting their willingness to supply additional ammunition.
Foreign leaders have grown alarmed by the death toll caused by Israel’s campaign: More than 24,000 Gazans have been killed in the war, according to health authorities in the enclave, prompting accusations — strongly denied by Israel — of genocide. Gazan officials have not said how many of those killed were combatants, but Israeli military officials say the toll includes more than 8,000 fighters.
Families of hostages have become more vocal about the need to free their relatives through diplomacy not force. Some hostages taken into Gaza have since been declared dead — and it is not yet clear whether they were accidentally killed by Israeli forces or by Hamas.
Of the more than 100 hostages liberated since the invasion began, only one was freed in a rescue operation. The others were all swapped for Palestinian prisoners and detainees during a brief truce in November.
By focusing its efforts on destroying the tunnels, the military risks mistakes that could cost the lives of more Israeli citizens. Three Israeli hostages were already killed by their own soldiers in December, despite waving a white flag and shouting in Hebrew.
“Basically, it’s a stalemate,” said Andreas Krieg, a war expert at King’s College London. “It’s not an environment where you can free hostages,” he added.
“If you go into the tunnels and you try to free them with special forces, or whatever, you will kill them,” Dr. Krieg said. “You either will kill them directly — or indirectly, in booby traps or in a firefight.”
“Basically, it’s a stalemate,” said Andreas Krieg, a war expert at King’s College London. “It’s not an environment where you can free hostages,” he added.
“If you go into the tunnels and you try to free them with special forces, or whatever, you will kill them,” Dr. Krieg said. “You either will kill them directly — or indirectly, in booby traps or in a firefight.”
Many tunnels have been destroyed but if the remaining tunnels are left intact, Hamas will remain effectively undefeated, decreasing the likelihood that the group would release hostages under any circumstances short of a complete cease-fire.
The remaining alternative is a diplomatic settlement that could involve freeing the hostages in exchange for thousands of Palestinians jailed by Israel, along with a cessation of hostilities.
According to three of the commanders interviewed by The Times, the diplomatic route would be the swiftest way of returning the Israelis who remain in captivity.
For some on the Israeli right, the war’s limited progress is the result of the government’s recent decision, following pressure from the United States and other allies, to slow the pace of the invasion.
But military leaders say their campaign has been stymied by a Hamas infrastructure that was more sophisticated than Israeli intelligence officers previously assessed.
Before the invasion, officials thought the tunnel network beneath Gaza was up to 100 miles in length; Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, had claimed in 2021 that it was closer to 300 miles.
Military officials now believe there are up to 450 miles of tunnels underneath a territory that is just 25 miles at its longest point. Under Khan Younis alone, Israel estimates that there are at least 100 miles of passageways, spread across several levels. And across Gaza, there are an estimated 5,700 shafts leading to the network, making it so hard to disconnect the network from the surface that the army has stopped trying to destroy every shaft it finds.
Locating and excavating each tunnel is time-consuming and dangerous. Many are rigged with booby traps, according to the Israeli military.
Once inside, a highly trained Israeli commando loses most of the military advantage he holds above ground. The tunnels are narrow, often only wide enough to pass in single file. That means that any fighting within them is reduced to one-on-one close quarters combat.
On the eve of Israel’s invasion, the military assessed that it would establish “operational control” over Gaza City, Khan Younis and Rafah — Gaza’s three largest cities — by late December, according to a military planning document reviewed by The Times.
But by mid-January, Israel had yet to begin its advance into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, and still had not forced Hamas from every part of Khan Younis, another major city in the south.
After the army appeared to establish control over northern Gaza at the end of last year, it said that the war had entered a new, less intense phase. Generals withdrew roughly half of the 50,000 troops stationed in northern Gaza at the peak of the campaign in December, and more departures are expected by the end of January.
That created a power vacuum in the north, allowing Hamas fighters and civilian officials to try to reassert their authority there, alarming many Israelis who hoped Hamas had been entirely vanquished in the area.
On Tuesday, Hamas militants in northern Gaza fired a barrage of about 25 rockets into Israeli airspace, angering Israelis who had hoped that after months of war that Hamas’s rocket launching abilities had been destroyed.
In recent days, police officers and welfare officers from the Hamas-run government have re-emerged from hiding in Gaza City and Beit Hanoun, two northern cities, and tried to maintain day-to-day order and restore some welfare services, according to a senior Israeli official who spoke anonymously in order to discuss a sensitive matter.
And Hamas’s top leaders in Gaza — including Mr. Sinwar, Mohammad Deif and Marwan Issa — remain at large.
Some Israeli politicians say that Israel could defeat Hamas faster, and rescue the hostages, by applying more force. They say that more aggression could also compel Hamas to release more hostages without a permanent cease-fire.
“We should apply much more pressure,” said Danny Danon, a senior lawmaker from Mr. Netanyahu’s governing party, Likud. “We made a mistake when we changed the way we were operating.”
But military analysts say that more force will achieve little.
“It is an unwinnable war,” Dr. Krieg said.
“Most of the time when you are in an unwinnable war, you realize that at some point — and you withdraw,” he added. “And they didn’t.”
Mr. Netanyahu says it is still possible to achieve all of Israel’s goals and has dismissed the idea of stopping the war.
“Halting the war before the goals are achieved will broadcast a message of weakness,” he said in his speech on Thursday.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
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2) He Loved Basketball and Wanted to Help His Family Stores. A Bullet Ended It All.
A Palestinian-American teenager was killed by a barrage of gunfire in the West Bank. “This is a shock to the whole family, the community and anyone else with a heart that knows him,” a relative said.
By Anna Betts and Katy Reckdahl, Jan. 21, 2024
The news of Tawfic’s death left friends and relatives in Louisiana in disbelief. Credit...via Hafeth Abdel Jabbar
He loved to play basketball with his friends. He dreamed of studying business administration to help his family’s stores. He enjoyed taking care of his younger siblings and was “very polite, very respectful, very intelligent,” according to his mosque’s president. Then, suddenly, a bullet to his head ended everything.
A Palestinian-American teenager was killed by a barrage of gunfire in the occupied West Bank on Friday. The U.S. State Department confirmed the killing without naming the victim, but the teenager’s family identified him as Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, 17. The details of Tawfic’s death were unclear, but the Israeli police has said that the killing involved an off-duty law enforcement officer and an Israeli civilian, and that they were investigating the incident.
Tawfic was born to Palestinian parents and was raised in the suburbs of New Orleans. His grandfather had come to America “looking for the American dream,” said Sherean Murad, the assistant principal at the Muslim Academy in Gretna, who taught Tawfic civics when he was in the 11th grade.
Tawfic and his family had moved to the West Bank temporarily in May to connect with relatives — he hoped to improve his Arabic while he was there and planned to return to the United States for college.
News of his death left friends and relatives in Louisiana in disbelief.
“We are livid as a community, because it’s so senseless,” Ms. Murad said.
Tawfic’s second cousin, Mohammad Abdelwahhab, a medical assistant in New Orleans, was still trying to process the news on Saturday.
“It was a shock,” said Mr. Abdelwahhab, 21. He added, “This is a shock to the whole family, the community and anyone else with a heart that knows him.”
“He’s so young,” Mr. Abdelwahhab said, adding, “He was just about to celebrate his graduation and finish and he was going to go on with his goals.”
On Saturday, large crowds of friends and relatives gathered to mourn. During the day, an open house was held at Tawfic’s uncle’s home, where children and women shared memories of the teenager over strong cups of coffee, dates and plates of yellow rice and lamb. In the backyard, men young and old gathered to eat and celebrate Tawfic’s life.
Tawfik Abdeljabar, 23, a close cousin with the same name but a different spelling, said that he and Tawfic had felt like twins. “We would joke about who got the better name. I would say K was better, and he would say C,” Mr. Abdeljabar said.
Another cousin, Zarifa Abdeljabar, 22, recalled memories of the two of them in the West Bank, specifically when they went on drives for iced coffees and enjoyed the peace of the mountains.
Because Tawfic was killed in a religious conflict, he is considered a martyr, Ms. Abdeljabar said. “A warrior of God,” she called him.
In the evening, a vigil was held for the men of Masjid Omar, the mosque in Harvey, La., that Tawfic had attended. Hundreds were there, with many wearing the Palestinian kaffiyeh scarf.
In an interview with The New York Times, Nabil Abukhader, the president of Masjid Omar, urged the Biden administration to do more to “fight for our rights as Americans.”
“It’s important we protect our children from this killing cycle,” he said.
Some family members missed the Saturday gatherings, including two of Tawfic’s uncles and his older brother, who flew out to the West Bank as soon as they heard the news.
One of his cousins was in deep mourning when she went into labor on Friday and gave birth to a baby boy.
She named him Tawfic, with a C.
Gaya Gupta, Roni Caryn Rabin, Rami Nazzal and Anushka Patil contributed reporting.
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3) Despite pressure from Biden, Netanyahu restates his opposition to a two-state solution.
By Adam Rasgon Reporting from Jerusalem, Jan. 21, 2024
President Biden met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his war cabinet in October. Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has doubled down on his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state, again rebuffing pressure from President Biden to agree to that path after the war in Gaza is over.
“I will not compromise on full Israeli security control of the entire area west of the Jordan River — and that is irreconcilable with a Palestinian state,” Mr. Netanyahu posted Saturday evening in Hebrew on X, formerly Twitter.
Mr. Netanyahu’s comments came just a day after Mr. Biden spoke to him about a two-state solution and floated the possibility of a disarmed Palestinian nation that would not threaten Israel’s security. Mr. Biden has argued that the creation of a Palestinian state is the only viable long-term resolution to a conflict that has dragged on for decades, repeating a position held by most American presidents and European leaders in recent history.
While there was no indication that Mr. Netanyahu would ease his strenuous opposition, which is popular with his fragile right-wing political coalition, Mr. Biden expressed optimism that they might yet find consensus.
“There are a number of types of two-state solutions,” the president told reporters at the White House several hours after the call, their first in nearly a month amid tension over the war. “There’s a number of countries that are members of the U.N. that are still — don’t have their own militaries. Number of states that have limitations.” He added, “And so I think there’s ways in which this could work.”
On Sunday, Grant Shapps, Britain’s defense secretary, called Mr. Netanyahu’s latest comments “disappointing.”
“There isn’t another option,” Mr. Shapps told Sky News in a televised interview. “The whole world has agreed that the two-state solution is the best way forward.”
António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, said that denying statehood for the Palestinian people was “unacceptable.”
“The right of the Palestinian people to build their own state must be recognized by all,” Mr. Guterres wrote on X, without referencing Mr. Netanyahu.
The Biden administration and the Israeli government have diverged sharply over how Gaza will be governed when the fighting ends. President Biden and his top diplomat, Antony J. Blinken, have urged Israeli officials to move toward the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state.
Mr. Biden has suggested that a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank, could take over Gaza once Hamas has been removed from power there. Mr. Netanyahu has rejected the idea of the authority returning to the enclave.
Despite support from the international community, a two-state approach still faces enormous obstacles, including waning support for it among the Israeli and Palestinian populations, the continued building of settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and a divided Palestinian leadership.
Two key partners in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition — Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister — are staunch opponents of a two-state solution. Some analysts have suggested the two ministers and their parties would vote to dissolve the government if Mr. Netanyahu took serious steps to advance the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Analysts pointed out that Mr. Netanyahu’s willingness to undermine his American counterpart was becoming routine.
“Humiliating Biden has become a daily occurrence for Netanyahu,” Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington, wrote on social media.
Peter Baker contributed reporting.
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4) Gaza’s women are bearing the brunt of the war’s toll, aid groups say.
By Victoria Kim, Jan. 21, 2024
Palestinians lining up with their children to receive vaccinations in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip this month.Fatima Shbair/Associated Press
International agencies, aid workers and physicians are giving a harrowing picture of what they say is the disproportionate burden and risk of war borne by the women of Gaza.
With a barely functioning health care system, extreme shortages of food and clean water, and repeated displacement, pregnant women, mothers and newborns are particularly vulnerable, the groups say.
Out of every 10 people killed in Gaza since the Oct. 7 attack in Israel that prompted the war, seven have been women or children, a “cruel inversion” compared with the previous 15 years, when roughly the same proportion of civilians killed in the territory were men, according to U.N. Women, the United Nations’ women’s rights agency.
The agency said in a report released Friday that two mothers were being killed every hour. The agency extrapolated that figure by comparing demographic data on marriage and motherhood in Gaza with the total number of women reported to have been killed. The report also said that nearly a million women and girls had been displaced by the fighting.
On Sunday, Gazan health officials updated the overall death toll, saying that more than 25,000 Palestinians had been killed in the war.
Separately, an official with UNICEF who recently visited Gaza and met with mothers at a hospital in Rafah, the southern city that has become the refuge of last resort for civilians fleeing the fighting, said Friday that the situation for pregnant women and newborns was “beyond belief.”
Tess Ingram, a communications specialist with UNICEF, gave a briefing in Geneva and described speaking with a midwife who said she had performed emergency C-sections on six dead women in the past eight weeks and seen more miscarriages than she could count. A woman told her that her fetus had gone still inside her womb but wondered out loud whether it was for the best that “a baby isn’t born into this nightmare,” Ms. Ingram recounted.
“Becoming a mother should be a time for celebration,” she said. “In Gaza, it’s another child delivered into hell.”
The report and Ms. Ingram’s remarks echoed the warnings of a letter published in the most recent issue of the British medical journal The Lancet, in which five public health experts said “urgent protection” was needed for Gaza’s pregnant women. The World Health Organization has estimated that there are about 52,000 pregnant women in the enclave, with about 180 births each day.
“Women who are pregnant and exposed to armed conflict have higher rates of miscarriage, stillbirths, prematurity, congenital abnormalities and other adverse outcomes,” they said. “What we are currently witnessing will most probably create long-lasting generational effects.”
U.N. Women has faced a storm of criticism for being slow to address the sexual violence committed during the Hamas-led assault in Israel on Oct. 7. On Friday, the agency’s executive director, Sima Bahous, said in a statement that the organization condemns “all acts of sexual and gender-based violence wherever, whenever, and against whomever they are perpetrated” and called for accountability.
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5) A Map Without Israel Plunges a Grade School Into a Political Firestorm
A social media post invited attacks on an Arabic arts teacher in Brooklyn. Parents say the backlash went too far.
By Ginia Bellafante, Jan. 19, 2024
A nine-month-old photo posted on social media by Qatar Foundation International was the catalyst for an uproar at a grade school in Brooklyn last week.
A cherished tradition at Public School 261 in Boerum Hill, the heart of gentrified Brooklyn, is the annual march to Borough Hall in honor of Martin Luther King’s Birthday. Children prepare for weeks, making signs denouncing racism, homophobia, climate upheaval and other expressions of social and ecological pox. So the disappointment was pervasive this year, when the march was canceled and replaced by an assembly in the cafeteria.
The catalyst for the change was the uproar that emerged after a social media post, nine months old, from Qatar Foundation International, resurfaced with a picture of a P.S. 261 classroom featuring a colorful resource map of North Africa and the Middle East. It was pinned to the wall under a handwritten sign that read: “Arab World.”
Last week, an article in The Free Press, a media site that has positioned itself against what it considers the enemies of free speech, called attention to what was missing from this geography. Algeria, Yemen, Sudan were among the nations that appeared on the poster. Israel did not. Instead, the region was called Palestine.
The map had been used in a class on Arab art and culture for 12 years. But in this tinderbox of a historical moment, the fact of it blasted into wide view largely via The New York Post, which published an article with the headline “Brooklyn Public School Omits Israel From Qatar-Funded Classroom Map, Labels It Palestine.”
A follow-up in The Post later that day focused on the outrage of local officials. Dan Goldman, the Democratic congressman whose district includes Boerum Hill, weighed in to say that he was “deeply concerned.” The politicians wanted to know how the city’s Department of Education signed off on a display that had brushed Israel into nonexistence.
The central office of the D.O.E. has neither the time nor necessarily the commitment to vet everything that happens in every classroom in a system that serves nearly one million children. Some wish that it did. Tova Plaut, an instructional coordinator for the department, has been especially vocal about what has happened at P.S. 261 and sees the issue as the symptom of a broader problem of “Jewish hate and erasure” in city schools, “not a one-off,” she told me.
“This particular example speaks to why there needs to be systemwide training on how to recognize antisemitism,” she said. The definition she prefers is the robust one that comes from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which has been adopted or endorsed by 43 countries.
On Tuesday, the district superintendent, Rafael T. Alvarez, sent a letter to the community to announce that the map had been removed and that the New York Peace Institute, a conflict-resolution consultancy, had been contacted to help “find a way forward.’’ He stressed how long the map had been in use presumably without incident, but he apologized for the effect that it was having. District 15 was “committed to making sure our students feel safe and supported at all times,” he wrote, perhaps somewhat ambitiously. Toward that goal the district would review programming to make sure that it aligned with “core values.”
Parents looking for assurance that the Arab arts class would not be removed from the curriculum were left feeling anxious. “It would be devastating if the program were cut,” Lauren Katzman, the mother of a first grader at 261, told me. Last week, a broad group of parents, teachers and staff members issued a statement calling for protection of a program that honors the “diversity and Arab heritage of the Boerum Hill neighborhood.” More than 240 people had signed it.
Ms. Katzman was among 16 Jewish parents who drafted a separate letter a few days later in a similar vein, condemning “the recent vicious doxxing and harassment campaign against our teacher Ms. Rita Lahoud and her Arabic arts program.” The exposure and all the media intrusion had made many people fear for the safety of all children and teachers at 261. There were now police officers and news crews outside. Reporters had staked out Ms. Lahoud’s home, where she was photographed on the sidewalk.
More than most public schools in New York, P.S. 261 represents the “gorgeous mosaic” of David Dinkins’s famous construction, where children walk to school from public housing and $5 million brownstones, from Jewish, Christian and Muslim families. Much of Brooklyn’s Arab community has shifted south, toward Bay Ridge, but it remains a presence in Boerum Hill, especially along Atlantic Avenue.
It had been the goal of Ms. Lahoud — nearly everyone at the school calls her Ms. Rita — to bring some of that world into the classroom. By the end of any given year, she has taken her students to the Metropolitan Museum to look at Arabic art, administered temporary henna tattoos, taught them how to count and write their names in Arabic, introduced them to pita bread and shown them how to render olive trees in watercolor.
Years of budget tightening within the school system have made interdisciplinary classes like this — merging art, architecture and history across a region, the sort of thing routinely offered at private schools — unusual. P.S. 261 has been able to offer the program because of funding from the nonprofit Qatar Foundation, another aspect of the story that has come under fire in the press. Founded by members of the Qatari royal family, the foundation partners with a range of institutions around the United States including Georgetown and Northwestern Universities as well as the public school system in New Haven, Conn.
“Part of what drew us to 261 is that the principal was going to be creative and find ways to bring joy and culture into our kids’ lives,” Sarah Eisenstein, another parent, said. “It would be wonderful to live in a world where schools didn’t have to write a grant to get art or choose between things.”
Was it inevitable that the rancor upending college campuses would find its way into a Brooklyn primary school? In a place as diverse as P.S. 261, ideological conflict is not altogether surprising. But Ms. Eisenstein wasn’t prepared for the intensity of the disagreement.
“In the past we always were able to discuss and work through differences as a community,” she said. “This time it seems like someone from outside our community really wants to stir up the divisions of our larger society. But parents are really coming together to say, ‘That’s not happening here.’”
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6) When States Try to Take Away Americans’ Freedom of Thought
By The Editorial Board, Jan. 20, 2024
Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times
Universities have always been a home for the world’s great arguments. Professors and students are supposed to debate the issues of the moment, gaining understanding of the other side’s views, refining and strengthening their positions, and learning how to solve problems. Argument thrives in a culture of openness, and maintaining that culture ought to be paramount for universities, as well as any institution that wants to shape public policy or debate.
There are many ways to stifle a culture of openness; in recent years, both the far left and the far right have shown a willingness to win arguments by silencing the other side. But the threat that Americans should be most concerned about is any attempt by government to limit the freedom of individuals to express their views or to dictate what they say.
That is what happened when Nathan Thrall, a writer on Israeli-Palestinian issues, was invited by the University of Arkansas to speak on the subject last year, and an ideological barrier imposed by the state government prevented him from joining that debate. Mr. Thrall, like everyone else who enters a business relationship to an arm of the Arkansas government, was required by state law, as stipulated by the contract for his speaking fee, to sign a pledge that he would not boycott Israel. He refused to do so, calling the requirement “McCarthyist” and an affront to his free-speech rights.
This meant that he was unable to share his perspective, informed by years of experience writing about the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, at a time when students have a desperate need to understand the causes and effects of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The campus has lost many other speakers for the same reason, and students say they are missing out on the chance to hear a variety of voices.
“As the conflict rages in the Middle East and we attempt to make sense of it, we find our ability to listen to and learn from multiple perspectives and foster an informed conversation radically curtailed by the university’s interpretation of the statute,” one group of students and teachers wrote in a petition to remove the pledge.
The Arkansas regulation is part of a disturbing trend by state governments to silence speakers on subjects including race, gender, slavery and American history. The measures they have imposed restrict both academic freedom — the freedom to explore ideas and pursue research independently, without interference by the state — and freedom of expression more broadly.
Americans may disagree about boycotts as a matter of policy. (This editorial board doesn’t support boycotting Israel.) But as an act of protest, support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement falls clearly within the realm of free expression protected by the First Amendment. Arkansas and more than two dozen other states have enacted laws that prohibit state contractors from engaging in a boycott. These laws are abridging the speech of those individuals, groups and companies, and so represent a violation of their constitutional rights. In 1982, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed that nonviolent political boycotts were protected speech and could not be prohibited by government officials.
Several federal judges have made that point about the laws targeting Israel boycotts, and a few states have weakened their laws as a result.
“The certification that one is not engaged in a boycott of Israel is no different than requiring a person to espouse certain political beliefs or to engage in certain political associations,” wrote a U.S. District judge, Mark Cohen in 2021, striking down an anti-boycott statute in Georgia. “The Supreme Court has found similar requirements to be unconstitutional on their face.”
Unfortunately, the federal appeals court based in Atlanta chose not to overturn the Georgia statute last June, relying in part on a 2022 decision by another appeals court that the Arkansas anti-boycott statute was constitutional. That ruling was based on an unusually convoluted logic that said the law was intended to regulate commercial activity, not speech.
In fact, the law is entirely about religion and politics, not commerce, as its lead sponsor, State Senator Bart Hester, made clear to The Times last year, and it was clearly intended to restrict speech. Mr. Hester said he was glad the law blocked Mr. Thrall’s appearance. “Keeping someone who wants to come speak on behalf of terrorists off our college campuses is a win,” he said.
Last February, the Supreme Court declined to review the Arkansas ruling, leaving the anti-boycott law in place. The court has not explicitly ruled that anti-boycott laws are constitutional; in the absence of such a ruling, courts should strike down these laws as an unconstitutional use of state power to silence individuals and an infringement on free expression.
States are interfering with the right to speak and teach freely on other issues as well. At least 10 states are considering laws that impose severe restrictions on a teacher’s right to speak to students about the importance of diversity and inclusion, following in the footsteps of Florida’s “Stop WOKE” law. That law, which was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022 and was expanded last year, makes it illegal for educators to say out loud in the classroom that they support the principles of affirmative action, or that American history is full of racist episodes, or that systemic racism has played a role in the institutions and economy of the country.
A U.S. district judge based in Tallahassee, Mark Walker, struck down the key provisions of the law as “positively dystopian” and unconstitutional as applied to higher education. “Striking at the heart of ‘open-mindedness and critical inquiry,’ the State of Florida has taken over the ‘marketplace of ideas’ to suppress disfavored viewpoints and limit where professors may shine their light,” he wrote, adding, “The First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark.”
A federal appeals court has agreed with Judge Walker, blocking enforcement of the law, but that hasn’t stopped other states from trying the same thing, hoping to get a different reaction from their federal courts.
Often, conservative lawmakers are responding to similar impulses on the left, which is more likely to use the tools of media, entertainment and academia rather than the law to shape public discussion. So while a vast majority of these current efforts come from lawmakers on the right, Americans should be as wary of efforts on the left to control what people can think or debate.
California’s community college system recently decided to dictate to its professors a set of anti-racist principles to teach to their students. The college system leadership said that the instructors — all state employees — would be judged on whether they acknowledge “that cultural and social identities are diverse, fluid and intersectional,” and would have to demonstrate “an ongoing awareness and recognition of racial, social and cultural identities with fluency regarding their relevance in creating structures of oppression and marginalization.”
Recruiting a diverse staff of educators and giving students an opportunity to learn about a wide range of cultures and societies are important goals. And some universities, such as the State University of New York, have adopted policies that allow much more freedom to students and administrators to fulfill those goals as they see fit. But as a recent PEN America report put it, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, “There is a difference between protecting a school’s or faculty member’s right to include D.E.I. programming, and mandating that they do so, especially in higher education.” The report called the California mandate “one of the most censorious educational gag orders we have seen.”
Some higher education institutions have required new employees to sign statements supporting their personal commitments to D.E.I. principles, a litmus test that could have the effect of creating a uniform campus culture without a variety of viewpoints. One 2021 survey found that 19 percent of college jobs required these statements. Last year, The Times wrote about a noted psychology professor (and affirmative-action supporter) who lost a chance to teach at U.C.L.A. because he disagreed with the usefulness of required diversity statements, calling them “value signaling.”
At Ohio State University, several departments would not hire professors unless they “demonstrated commitments and leadership in contribution to diversity, equity and inclusion through research, teaching, mentoring, and/or outreach and engagement.” After protests by free-speech groups, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Ohio State said it would stop requiring these statements.
It would be easy to dismiss all of these rules and restrictions as a political tit for tat. But Americans should recognize what is happening as an escalation. Years of policing speech on college campuses, in the name of sensitivity, are now having unintended consequences. There is an “an imbalance around free speech on college campuses,” as the Harvard professor Ryan Enos told Michelle Goldberg of The Times. Many who point this out “are not doing it to stand up for free speech; they’re just doing it because they want to shut down speech they disagree with.”
The censoriousness at the heart of all these policies ought to concern all Americans.
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