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January 14, 1:00 P.M.
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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
Over 1,000 trade unionists from around Northern California rallied and marched in Oakland to oppose the genocide in Gaza. It was announced during the rally that despite bureaucratic obstacles SEIU 1021 which has over 50,000 members had endorsed the rally and resolution. Unions formally endorsed included AFSCME 3299, OEA, UESF, SEIU 1021, ILWU Local 10, Inlandboatmen’s Union SF Region-ILWU, UNITE HERE Local 2, IFPTE Local 21, SF Public Defenders (workers, not union or unit), Stanford Graduate Workers, Trader Joes United (Rockridge), IWW Bay Area, IWW 460-650 - Ecology Center
National or statewide unions or units (with Bay Area members) that have called for a ceasefire: UAW (international), UAW Local 2865 (statewide), UAW Local 2320, APWU, Starbucks Workers United, California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, CIR/SEIU (national) SEIU-USWW (statewide), Staff Union of CIR/SEIU (unit of CWA local 1032).
The rally was sponsored by Bay Area Labor For Palestine and there was also another Labor For Palestine Rally in New York.
For More Information:
bayarealabor4palestine@gmail.com
Production of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
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Stand With Palestinian Workers: Cease the Genocide Now—Stop Arming Israel!
“We need you to take immediate action—wherever you are in the world—to prevent the arming of the Israeli state and the companies involved in the infrastructure of the blockade.” —An Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel (October 16, 2023)
The undersigned U.S. workers, trade unionists, and anti-apartheid activists join labor around the world in condemning the Israeli siege on Gaza that has killed or maimed thousands of Palestinians—many of them children—and stand with Palestinians’ “right to exist, resist, return, and self-determination.”
The latest Israeli attacks reflect more than a century of ongoing Zionist settler-colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, racism, genocide, and apartheid—including Israel’s establishment through the uprooting and displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1947-1948 Nakba. Indeed, eighty percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza are refugees from other parts of historic Palestine.
Israel’s crimes are only possible because of more than $3.8 billion a year (or $10-plus million per day) in bipartisan U.S. military aid that gives Israel the guns, bullets, tanks, ships, jet fighters, missiles, helicopters, white phosphorus, and other weapons to kill and maim the Palestinian people. This is the same system of racist state violence that, through shared surveillance technology and police exchange programs, brutalizes Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) and working-class people in the United States and around the world.
In response, we demand an immediate end to the genocide, and embrace the recent urgent call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel:
1. To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel. To refuse to transport weapons to Israel.
2. To pass motions in their trade union to this effect.
3. To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution.
4. Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the U.S., funding to it.
We further reaffirm the call on labor bodies to respect previous Palestinian trade union appeals for solidarity by adopting this statement, and/or the model resolution below to divest from Israel Bonds, sever all ties with the Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut, and its US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee, and respect the Palestinian picket line for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).
Please sign and forward widely!
To endorse the following statement as a trade unionist, please click here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd2tpd2c62Sh5YEVDOr2vmGWTuQArt-6OPQMDwd2wUnfNi_rQ/viewform
To endorse as other, please click here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdzWaP1U_KOHlH-ou1R3OD8zsuI5BWW1b9H4gtPoFK_lIQB3g/viewform
Initial Signers on behalf of Labor for Palestine
(Organizational affiliations listed for identification only)
Suzanne Adely, Labor for Palestine, US Palestinian Community Network, Arab Workers Resource Center; Food Chain Workers Alliance (staff); President, National Lawyers Guild; Monadel Herzallah, Arab American Union Members Council; Ruth Jennison, Department Rep., Massachusetts Society of Professors, MTA, NEA; Co-Chair, Labor Standing Committee River Valley DSA; Delegate to Western Mass Area Labor Federation; Lara Kiswani, Executive Director, Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC); Block the Boat; Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325; Jews for Palestinian Right of Return; Corinna Mullin, PSC-CUNY International Committee; CUNY for Palestine; Clarence Thomas, Co-Chair, Million Worker March; Executive Board, ILWU Local 10 (retired.)
The list of signers will be updated periodically.
info@laborforpalestine.net
laborforpalestine.net
The Labor for Palestine model resolution can be found at:
https://laborforpalestine.net
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Jewish Doctor Speaks Out on Israel and Palestine
Dr. Gabor Maté, Hungarian-Canadian physician and author describes his own life experience and expresses his view on the situation in Israel and Palestine.
“I’m personally a Holocaust survivor as an infant, I barely survived. My grandparents were killed in Auschwitz and most of my extended family were killed. I became a Zionist; this dream of the Jewish people resurrected in their historical homeland and the barbed wire of Auschwitz being replaced by the boundaries of a Jewish state with a powerful army…and then I found out that it wasn’t exactly like that, that in order to make this Jewish dream a reality we had to visit a nightmare on the local population.
“There’s no way you could have ever created a Jewish state without oppressing and expelling the local population. Jewish Israeli historians have shown without a doubt that the expulsion of Palestinians was persistent, pervasive, cruel, murderous and with deliberate intent—that’s what’s called the ‘Nakba’ in Arabic; the ‘disaster’ or the ‘catastrophe.’ There’s a law that you cannot deny the Holocaust, but in Israel you’re not allowed to mention the Nakba, even though it’s at the very basis of the foundation of Israel.
“I visited the Occupied Territories (West Bank) during the first intifada. I cried every day for two weeks at what I saw; the brutality of the occupation, the petty harassment, the murderousness of it, the cutting down of Palestinian olive groves, the denial of water rights, the humiliations...and this went on, and now it’s much worse than it was then.
“It’s the longest ethnic cleansing operation in the 20th and 21st century. I could land in Tel Aviv tomorrow and demand citizenship but my Palestinian friend in Vancouver, who was born in Jerusalem, can’t even visit!
“So, then you have these miserable people packed into this, horrible…people call it an ‘outdoor prison,’ which is what it is. You don’t have to support Hamas policies to stand up for Palestinian rights, that’s a complete falsity. You think the worst thing you can say about Hamas, multiply it by a thousand times, and it still will not meet the Israeli repression and killing and dispossession of Palestinians.
“And ‘anybody who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite’ is simply an egregious attempt to intimidate good non-Jews who are willing to stand up for what is true.”
—Independent Catholic News, October 16, 2023
https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/48251
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TERRORISM IN THE EYES OF THE IMPERIAL BEHOLDER - a poem
the French word
for rabies
is
la rage -
rage or outrage
and
the French have a saying -
a man who wants to get rid of his dog
accuses it of spreading rabies
the people of Gaza
treated as inhuman animals
worse than dogs
are charged
with terrorism
come to think of it
what an honor !
world war two's resistance
against nazi extermination
was designated
as terrorism
by the Axis allies
what an honor !
Mandela
was monitored
as a terrorist
by the CIA
What an honor !
Tortuguita
peacefully meditating
near Israeli-funded cop city
was executed
in cold blood
on suspicion
of domestic terrorism
What an honor !
in the spirit of Mandela
in the spirit of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
in the spirit of Tortuguita
in the spirit of Attica
may the anti colonial outrage
of the People of Palestine
contaminate us all -
the only epidemic
worth dying for
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The ongoing Zionist theft of Palestinian land from 1946 to now.
77 years of brutal oppression must end!
End all U.S. aid to Israel now!
For a democratic, secular Palestine!
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Free Julian Assange
Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange
Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count. We are to believe we are represented in this country. This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well. Please take this action as often as you can:
Find your representatives:
https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
Leave each of your representatives a message individually to:
· Drop the charges against Julian Assange
· Speak out publicly against the indictment and
· Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges:
202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard
Leave a message on the White House comment line to
Demand Julian Assange be pardoned:
202-456-1111
Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST
Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:
202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line
202-514-2000 Main Switchboard
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Poetic Petition to Genocide Joe Before He Eats His Turkey
Mr Genocide Joe
you have helped broker
a Thanksgiving truce
in Gaza
where your zionist partners
in war crimes
say they will stop
slaughtering "human animals"
for four days
but
Mr Genocide Joe
closer to home
you have your own hostages
taken in the cointelpro wars
who still languish
in cages
treated worse than animals
inhumanely
so
as you pardon
two turkeys
in the White House today
as you get ready to eat your military turkey
and have it too
it would at last be time
to unchain
at least two of your own "human animals" -
Mumia Abu-Jamal
and
Leonard Peltier
(c) Julia Wright. November 25, 2023. All Rights Reserved to Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier.
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Leonard Peltier’s Letter Delivered to Supporters on September 12, 2023, in Front of the Whitehouse
Dear friends, relatives, supporters, loved ones:
Seventy-nine years old. Mother Earth has taken us on another journey around Grandfather Sun. Babies have taken their first breath. People have lived, loved, and died. Seeds have been planted and sent their roots deep below red earth and their breath to the Stars and our Ancestors.
I am still here.
Time has twisted one more year out of me. A year that has been a moment. A year that has been a lifetime. For almost five decades I’ve existed in a cage of concrete and steel. With the “good time” calculations of the system, I’ve actually served over 60 years.
Year after year, I have encouraged you to live as spirit warriors. Even while in here, I can envision what is real and far beyond these walls. I’ve seen a reawakening of an ancient Native pride that does my heart good.
I may leave this place in a box. That is a cold truth. But I have put my heart and soul into making our world a better place and there is a lot of work left to do – I would like to get out and do it with you.
I know that the spirit warriors coming up behind me have the heart and soul to fight racism and oppression, and to fight the greed that is poisoning our lands, waters, and people.
We are still here.
Remember who you are, even if they come for your land, your water, your family. We are children of Mother Earth and we owe her and her other children our care.
I long to turn my face to the sky. In this cage, I am denied that simple pleasure. I am in prison, but in my mind, I remain as I was born: a free Native spirit.
That is what allows me to laugh, keeps me laughing. These walls cannot contain my laughter – or my hope.
I know there are those who stand with me, who work around the clock for my freedom. I have been blessed to have such friends.
We are still here and you give me hope.
I hope to breathe free air before I die. Hope is a hard thing to hold, but no one is strong enough to take it from me.
I love you. I hope for you. I pray for you.
And prayer is more than a cry to the Creator that runs through your head. Prayer is an action.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
DOKSHA,
LEONARD PELTIER
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
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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Letter from Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
November 6, 2023
I’m back at Red Onion. I have no lines of communication. They have me in the B-3 torture cellblock again where there is no access to a kiosk and they’re withholding my tablet anyway. Even if I had it, it’s no use with no kiosk to sync it to and send/receive messages.
This was a hit. Came from DOC HQ in response folks complaining about my being thrown in solitary at Sussex and the planted knife thing. Kyle Rosch was in on it. The warden and AW here said he’s having me sent back out of state. In any case I don’t want be in this racist trap.
They cut all my outstanding medical referrals to send here cuz there’s no major medical facility in this remote region. I was pending referral to the cardiac clinic at MCV hospital (Medical College of Virginia), which is on the other side of the state. Also was pending referral to urology there. They were supposed to do testing for congestive heart failure and kidney problems related to my legs, feet, and ankles chronic swelling, and other undiagnosed issues: chronic cough, fluid weight gain, sweats, fatigue, chest pain. They just cut these referrals all of which I have copies of from my medical files.
They’ve been removing documents from my file too. Like the order I had for oversize handcuffs—which I was gassed the morning I was transferred here for asking the transferring pigs to honor. They took the order out of my file to try to cover their asses. I and others have copies of that too. At this point things are hectic. I’m back in old form now. I was somewhat in hiatus, trying to get the medical care I needed and not provoking them to avoid the bs while that was going on. But the bs has found me once again : ). I need all possible help here. At a level a bit more intense than in the past cuz I need that diagnostic care they cut the referrals for and it’s not available in this remote area. They’d have to send me back to Sussex or another prison near MCU in the VDOC’s Central or Eastern Region. I’m in the most remote corner of the Western Region. My health is not good! And they’re using the medical quack staff here to rubber stamp blocking my referrals.
Although that lawyer may have given you a message from me, she is not helping me in any way. So no-one should assume because a lawyer surfaced that she is working on anything to aid me. Just have to emphasize that cuz past experience has shown that folks will take a lawyer’s seeming presence as grounds to believe that means some substantial help is here and their help is not needed. Again, I need all possible help here….My health depends on this call for help in a more immediate sense than the cancer situation. I’m having breathing and mobility problems, possibly cardiac related.
All power to the people!
Rashid
We need to contact these Virginia Department of Corrections personnel to protest::
VADOC~ Central Administration; USPS—P.O. Box 26963; Richmond, VA 23261
David Robinson Phone : 804-887-8078, Email~david.robinson@vadoc.virginia.gov
Virginia DOC ~ Director, Chadwick S Dotson, Phone~ (804) 674-3081 Email~Chadwick.Dotson@.vadoc.virginia.gov
Virginia Department of Corrections Interstate Compact Liaison
Kyle Rosch, Phone: 804-887-8404, Email: kyle.rosch@vadoc.virginia.gov
VADOC ~Central Administration
Rose L. Durbin, Phone~804-887-7921Email~Rose.Durbin@vadoc.virgina.gov
Red Onion~ Warden, Richard E White, USPS—10800 H. Jack Rose Hwy., Pound, VA 24279
Phone: (276) 796-3536;(or 7510) Email~ rick.white@vadoc.virginia.gov
Red Onion State Prison, Assistant Warden
Shannon Fuller Phone: 276-796-7510 Email: shannon.fuller@VADOC.virginia.gov
Write to Rashid:
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson #1007485
Red Onion State Prison
10800 H. Jack Rose Hwy
Pound, VA 24279
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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system.
See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings
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Sign the petition:
https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/
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Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) A Glimpse Inside a Devastated Gaza
In the ruins of two Gazan towns, New York Times journalists witnessed the sheer destruction that Israel’s war has wrought and the devastation of Hamas’s operations.
By Patrick KingsleyPhotographs by Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, Jan. 9, 2024
Patrick Kingsley, a reporter, and Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, a photographer, traveled with Israeli troops to document the effects of the war in Gaza.
Israeli soldiers in central Gaza on Monday.
For a few fleeting moments, the two-story house on the edge of Bureij, a ruined town in central Gaza, still felt like a Palestinian home.
Bottles of nail polish, perfume and hair gel stood untouched on a shelf. A collection of fridge magnets decorated the frame of a mirror. Through a window, one could see laundry, hanging from a neighbor’s washing line, swaying in the gentle breeze.
But despite the trappings of home, the house now has a new function — as a makeshift Israeli military barracks.
Since Israeli ground forces recently fought their way into this part of central Gaza, a unit from the military’s 188th Brigade has taken over the building, using it as a dormitory, storeroom and lookout point.
On Monday, some soldiers were awaiting orders in the ground-floor living room, or standing watch on the terrace above. One bedroom was crowded with the soldiers’ backpacks and equipment.
The house's walls were marred with Hebrew graffiti. “The people of Israel,” read one message, written in black spray paint.
The people of Gaza were nowhere in sight.
The house was emblematic of the ruined wasteland that two journalists for The New York Times witnessed on a three-hour journey with Israeli soldiers through Gaza on Monday morning.
Since Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people, according to officials, Israel has pummeled Gaza from the air and captured large parts of it on the ground, leading to widespread death and destruction.
About 23,000 Gazans have been killed in the Israeli campaign, according to Gazan officials — approximately 1 percent of the population. More than 80 percent of the enclave’s residents have been displaced, according to the United Nations. Some 60 percent of the buildings have been damaged, the U.N. has also said.
As we traveled through central Gaza on Monday, every village bore the marks of war. Some buildings had collapsed entirely, their floors stacked on top of the other like piles of books. Tower blocks, missing whole sections, stood precariously. The house in Bureij was missing an outer wall. A grove of trees next door had been leveled, the plants ripped from their roots and the land churned into mud.
Ultimately, all the buildings near the house would most likely be destroyed, a senior commander said, once the army exploded a Hamas tunnel network that he said lay beneath them.
“They destroyed everything — the buildings, the infrastructure, the farmlands,” Hazem al-Madhoun, 35, an aid worker who was sheltering nearby with his family on Monday morning, said of the Israeli military.
“We lived a very bad experience,” Mr. al-Madhoun said in a phone interview conducted after his family fled to a less dangerous part of Gaza on Monday evening.
The soldiers leading the tour said that the damage had predominantly been the fault of Hamas, both because the Oct. 7 raid forced Israel’s hand and because the group’s fighters had embedded in residential areas, using civilians as human shields.
The Israeli army brought the journalists to Bureij and the neighboring town of Maghazi to try to emphasize that point. They highlighted the proximity of Hamas’s military facilities — including a rocket storehouse and a building that soldiers said was a weapons plant — and the nearby civilian infrastructure.
Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv, a commander at the front, pointed out residential apartment blocks from which, he said, Hamas fighters had fired on the Israeli army and soldiers were forced to fire back at the buildings.
“I try to avoid hitting those towers, but we have no choice,” General Veruv said. “The damage is not the goal. It is a side effect.”
The troops showed off a stockpile of rockets, each roughly three yards long, contained in a shed close to a major civilian highway, a telecommunications depot and a clothing warehouse. A Hamas logo had been stuck to the wall.
The soldiers also took reporters to a civilian steelworks, in which, they said, Hamas had made munitions. Both locations contained large shafts that the soldiers said connected to a vast tunnel network, hundreds of miles long. Much of the damage visible above ground, the soldiers said, was in aid of destroying what could not immediately be seen beneath the surface — a warren of passageways from which, they said, Hamas conducts it military operations, stores weapons and holds some of the surviving 240 hostages captured on Oct. 7.
A third tunnel opening was found in a one-story farmhouse. The military did not allow journalists to enter the shafts to verify how they were used, citing the possible presence of explosives and dangerous chemicals.
Soldiers had torn down the walls of houses in Bureij, like the one where the 188th Brigade was quartering, because it was too dangerous to enter through the front door, General Veruv said. Hamas, he added, often booby-trapped entrances. A grove of trees beside the village may have been filled with land mines, prompting the army to level it, one of his subordinates said.
“I don’t come for revenge,” General Veruv said. “I come because it’s necessary.”
To accompany the soldiers, Times journalists agreed not to photograph a digital map within the Israeli military vehicle or the faces of some special forces fighters. The Times did not allow the Israeli military to screen its coverage before publication.
The Times accepted those conditions to secure rare access to wartime Gaza, which has been off-limits to foreign journalists except when embedded with the Israeli military or, in one case, an Emirati aid group.
Reporting in Gaza has otherwise been profoundly challenging: Scores of Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli strikes; Hamas has placed restrictions on the news media; and telecommunications networks have frequently failed, sometimes because of direct Israeli intervention, according to U.S. officials.
Bureij is a place maimed by war — roads ground into dust, plumes of smoke rising from rubble, living rooms naked to the wind. Occasionally, there were moments of fleeting beauty: a bright yellow parakeet, perhaps escaped from an abandoned home, darting past an Israeli tank; a break in the gunfire punctuated by birdsong.
All morning, fighting could be heard throughout the area, most of it machine-gun fire and shelling, as Israeli troops advancing deeper into Gaza clashed with Hamas fighters.
Mr. al-Madhoun, the aid worker, said members of his extended family had almost been caught in the crossfire as they began their journey south on Monday morning, helped by an aid group that coordinated their safe passage with the Israeli army, sharing the family’s coordinates and license plates with the soldiers.
“We were evacuated under the bullets,” Mr. al-Madhoun said.
The death toll in Gaza has prompted accusations that Israel is committing genocide, an allegation that will be brought before the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Thursday.
But, according to the Israeli government and General Veruv, the military is doing its best to preserve civilian life in a battle against an enemy untrammeled by such concerns.
“For me, it’s not a revenge war,” he said. “I have a lot of sympathy for the people here.”
Among the military’s rank-and-file, though, there were signs of a less benign attitude. Self-shot videos have emerged of Israeli soldiers destroying or rifling through belongings found in Gazan homes, or writing disrespectful graffiti on the walls.
In the house in Bureij, one soldier had written a message in Hebrew that appeared to mock another soldier for failing to kill anyone.
“Sapir doesn’t have an X,” the graffiti read.
In military slang, an X refers to the notch that some soldiers inscribe on their rifle after shooting someone dead.
Outside, a lone white-haired goat wandered through the rutted landscape. Its Gazan owners had fled, leaving it to sniff at the tracks of an Israeli tank.
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2) As Israel shifts its war tempo, it offers different messages at home and abroad.
By Patrick Kingsley and Johnatan Reiss reporting from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Jan. 9, 2024
Israeli soldiers near a military vehicle in central Gaza on Monday, during an escorted tour with the Israeli military. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
As gaps widen between Israeli and international perceptions of the war against Hamas in Gaza, the Israeli leadership is employing different rhetoric when addressing the two audiences about how the war will be conducted in 2024.
Israeli officials have begun to tell the international news media that its forces are shifting to a less intense phase of operations, particularly in northern Gaza, amid growing international alarm at the scale of destruction and civilian casualties in the territory.
But after those comments were published on Monday, Israeli leaders sought to reassure the Israeli public that Israel remained committed to a long-term war in Gaza to destroy Hamas, even as its military tactics were shifting.
Analysts said the messages are not incompatible: The pace of a war can ebb without the conflict ending entirely. But they said they reflected the Israeli government’s effort to placate an international audience in the short term in order to pursue its goals over the long term.
On Monday, the Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said in an interview with The New York Times that the war had entered a new phase, with Israel drawing down its troops, focusing on southern regions of Gaza and decreasing the number of airstrikes. Hours earlier, Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, had told The Wall Street Journal that Israel would soon transition from “intense maneuvering” toward “different types of special operations.”
Then, in his daily Hebrew-language press briefing on Monday night, Admiral Hagari responded to a question about his interview with The Times by saying that the goal of dismantling Hamas remained in place, and that the “semantics” of whether the war had entered a new phase “doesn’t serve the Israeli public.”
Separately, the Israeli news media reported that Mr. Gallant had told fellow right-wing lawmakers, in a closed-door meeting, that the war would continue “for many more months,” and for that to happen, Israel needed a “margin for international maneuver.” Mr. Gallant’s office confirmed the remarks.
The comments to international news media also appeared to be an effort to address calls from the United States, Israel’s strongest ally, to ease the fighting, and they came hours before the U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, landed in Tel Aviv for discussions about the war. The Biden administration has been under pressure to scale back its support for Israel, and Mr. Blinken has previously called on Israel to use more precision in its strikes on Gaza.
Writing in Israel Hayom, a right-wing daily newspaper, Yoav Limor, a military commentator, said: “The Israeli government locked itself into conflicting commitments: the commitments that it made to the Israeli public, saying there would be no time limit and the war would continue for as long as necessary until victory; and the commitments it made to the world, first and foremost to the administration in Washington, saying that the war was now transitioning to a new, lower-intensity stage of the war.”
While a majority of Israelis want to see Hamas destroyed after its brutal Oct. 7 raid on Israel, international public opinion has been turning against Israel. More than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its offensive, according to the Gazan health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Adding to pressure on Israel is a hearing scheduled for this week at the International Court of Justice in a case, brought by South Africa, that accuses Israel of attempting a genocide against Palestinians. Israeli officials have strongly denied the allegation.
“With all these put together, Israel wants to put on an image of, ‘OK, we’ve taken the criticism, we’ve integrated and incorporated the remarks,’” Alon Pinkas, Israel’s former consul-general in New York and a political commentator, said in an interview.
By contrast, he said, the Israeli mainstream does not want to hear that the war is winding down while Hamas remains active in much of Gaza. Israelis, he added, “understand that very little has been achieved, if the idea was to eliminate or eradicate or obliterate or annihilate or topple Hamas.”
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3) For Gaza’s Pregnant Women and Newborns, the War Will Never Be Over
By Alice Rothchild, Jan. 9, 2024
Dr. Rothchild is a retired obstetrician and gynecologist, an author, a filmmaker and a former assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
"Doctors are rarely allowed permits to leave Gaza to update their skills, and Israeli authorities restrict the kinds of medications and equipment that are allowed in."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/09/opinion/children-mothers-pregnant-gaza.html
Leaving Gaza City in November. Credit...Mohammed Dahman/Associated Press
After Israel began its invasion of Gaza shortly after Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, Aya Khrais — a pregnant 26-year-old dentist, wife of a doctor and mother of a 2-year-old girl living in Gaza City — lost contact with the doctors and health services she needed for prenatal care and for managing her diabetes.
She and her family were forced to leave home and move five times to flee the constant bombings, sometimes trekking several miles on foot. When we spoke in early December, she was staying at her sister-in-law’s home in southern Gaza. Dr. Khrais was 32 weeks pregnant and sleeping on a thin mattress directly on the ground, sharing a house with 74 people from 11 families. They lacked water, adequate food, medications, electricity and the tools for basic hygiene.
For the past two months she has had no prenatal care and no vitamins and has not gained any weight. She found a private obstetrician on Dec. 10 who informed her that she had excess amniotic fluid and needed an immediate C-section. She found a private hospital with an opening on Jan. 16. The estimated cost will be $4,000; the family has lost all of its savings as well as its bombed-out home. She has no baby clothes, diapers or formula and no proper place for postpartum recovery. “I am really frightened,” she told me over WhatsApp.
Dr. Khrais’s account is far from uncommon. There are approximately 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, all struggling with a lack of stable shelter, inadequate nutrition and polluted, salty water. Prenatal, postnatal and pediatric care are difficult to obtain. U.N. agencies have dispatched lifesaving medicines and equipment to Gaza but it’s not enough to meet the needs of the population. Extreme shortages of pain medications, antibiotics, seizure and diabetic medications and blood are common. According to the World Health Organization, of the more than 180 women delivering babies each day, 15 percent are likely to encounter complications and be unable to obtain appropriate obstetric and pediatric emergency services. All the while, the threat of injury or death from bombings and military action looms, as does unimaginable emotional trauma.
If these mothers and their children manage to survive the war, they will grapple with its effects for the rest of their lives. Health research into multiple areas of armed conflict (such as Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and Kosovo) reveals that these kinds of conditions are linked to an increase in miscarriages, congenital abnormalities, stillbirths, preterm labor and maternal mortality. Other studies of armed conflict from 1945 to 2017 show that children exposed to war are more likely to suffer from poor living conditions and sanitation, and multigenerational poverty caused by the loss of educational and economic infrastructure.
“Gaza has simply become uninhabitable,” Martin Griffiths, the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and the emergency relief coordinator at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, has said. Women and children have experienced the brunt of this tragedy. The only chance they have at living healthy lives free from lifelong consequences is for the fighting to stop now, and for health services to be restored and rebuilt immediately — a prospect that becomes more challenging and elusive the longer the war is waged.
Pregnancy and childbirth occur in a sociopolitical context; repeated military assaults, the collapse of the health care system and food supply, the absence of adequate shelter and general safety, have lasting impacts on mothers and babies — well after the fighting is quelled.
Before the war, life for pregnant women in Gaza was very challenging. Women there are expected to have large families, and are cared for by overworked doctors and midwives with an unreliable supply of electricity and oxygen. There was already little time for each patient. Despite efforts by the Gaza Health Ministry and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, obstetric practices tend to be a blend of the developed and the developing world. Doctors are rarely allowed permits to leave Gaza to update their skills, and Israeli authorities restrict the kinds of medications and equipment that are allowed in. Infant mortality rates are about seven times higher than they are in Israel. For mothers, hemorrhage, infection, thromboembolic disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension, obstructed labor and unsafe pregnancy terminations have been the leading causes of maternal mortality. Those complications are largely preventable or manageable in the developed world.
Those dangers have worsened during the war as hospitals and health services deteriorate. Some women are giving birth in cars, on the street and in overcrowded shelters at a time when there are increasing infectious diseases such as respiratory illness, hepatitis A and meningitis. Some hospitals, including Al-Nasr Medical Center in Gaza City, and Kamal Adwan in northern Gaza, have reported direct hits on neonatal and maternity departments with deaths to babies and injuries and death to mothers. There are reports of women having C-sections without anesthesia and mothers being discharged as quickly as three hours after birth. The trauma of war can also directly affect newborns: During the 2014 conflict in Gaza, mothers with high exposure to war trauma gave birth to infants who suffered negative sensorimotor, cognitive and emotional development.
Rising food scarcity and malnutrition in Gaza resulting from the current assault will likely lead to its own complications. According to UNICEF, pregnant women suffering from poor diet and nutrition see an increased risk of pre-eclampsia, hemorrhage, anemia and death. Stillbirths can occur, and children may be affected by low birth weight, wasting and developmental delays.
Though Israel says it is scaling back some of its fighting in Gaza, there is unfortunately still no end in sight. Medical resources and food are trickling in, but aid groups in southern Gaza report that they can meet only 25 percent of the needs for two months for malnourished children and their vulnerable mothers.
Dr. Khrais and the estimated 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza are desperate for an end to the fighting so they can safely give birth. But they are just as desperate for an end to the devastation affecting every generation born and raised there.
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4) The Hard Truth of Israel’s Endgame in Gaza
By Peter Beinart, Jan. 9.2024
Peter Beinart warns that the country is committing a sin that “cannot be atoned for.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/09/opinion/israel-gaza-explusion-endgame.html?showTranscript=1
Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images
There is a concept in Judaism called “Chillul Hashem.” It’s one of the greatest sins that a human being can commit. And it is to do something that would bring God’s name itself into disrepute. It seems to me that forcing Palestinians in Gaza into a situation where their choices are either death or expulsion is Chillul Hashem, a sin for which there, actually, in Jewish law, cannot be atoned for.
In a more historical vein, it strikes me as a profound and deeply disturbing irony that a people whose own history has been marked by mass expulsion now has a state that is speaking in our name and enacting policies that are very likely going to create mass expulsion of other people.
My name is Peter Beinart. I’m the author of “The Beinart Notebook” on Substack. I’m also editor-at-large of Jewish currents. And I’ve been writing for The Times about the war in Israel and Gaza. The conventional wisdom in the United States is that Israel doesn’t have a plan for what it wants to do in Gaza after it succeeds in toppling Hamas from power.
But if you listen to Israeli government officials and you look at the consequences of this war on the ground, you can see that at least some in Israel’s government do, indeed, have a strategy, or at least a preference. That strategy is not only to depose Hamas from power, but it is to force many Palestinians in Gaza to leave the territory themselves. Israel’s conduct of the war since Hamas’s massacre on October 7 has virtually made the Gaza Strip unlivable.
85 percent of people have been forced from their homes. Close to 70 percent of the homes themselves have been damaged or destroyed. And a very large percentage of people are now at risk of famine. So Gaza has become a place that’s extraordinarily difficult to live in.
Within six days of Hamas’s attack on October 7, there was a paper that was issued by Israel’s intelligence ministry that suggested that Israel should try to force Gazans out of the Gaza Strip into the Sinai region of Egypt. Egypt has not opened its borders so that people from the Gaza Strip in any significant number can leave the Gaza Strip, but Egypt faces a massive international debt that it needs to pay this year. It owes $28 billion to international creditors. And that economic weakness, according to some reports, makes Israeli leaders believe that Egypt is vulnerable to international pressure to open its border.
These population transfers would mean that Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom are already from the families of refugees that were expelled or who fled in fear in 1948, that their descendants or even they themselves would be forced to become refugees a second time. Palestinians know in their bones that they could be expelled because they were expelled at least once before. Israel was created through the expulsion of more than half of the Palestinians who were then living in the territory that became Israel.
That’s why the Gaza Strip is so overcrowded, because most of the people who live there, their families are not originally from Gaza. They’re from what’s now parts of Israel, and their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents were expelled to what is now the Gaza Strip. And Israel has continued expulsion since then. There was another large scale expulsion when Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. There are expulsions taking place in the West Bank to this day.
Palestinians know because of their family and national history, that Israel has tried to solve its Palestinian problem by forcing Palestinians out. And the Biden administration has said, clearly, that it does not want this to happen. But there is a contradiction between the Biden administration’s rhetoric and its actions, because its policy is actually giving Israel the green light, which is to say that the massive US military aid to Israel, which has been ongoing through this war, and diplomatic support at the United Nations, has been unconditional.
I would like to see the United States go beyond mere words of condemnation and make it clear that the United States will not fund the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. I want US diplomats to understand that the forced expulsion of a population or part of a population is a war crime. It is the kind of thing that will stain the conscience of every nation that is complicit in it and stain the legacy of every US government official who is complicit in it.
I want US government officials to fear that this will be their legacy and to ensure that it’s not. And I would like Jews in Israel and the United States to think about how our ancestors who endured the kinds of things that Palestinians in Gaza are enduring now might think about what we are doing today.
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5) U.S. and British forces intercept 21 projectiles aimed at ships in Red Sea.
Eric Schmitt reporting from Washington, Jan. 10, 2024
A photo provided by Britain’s Ministry of Defense on Wednesday, taken from the bridge of the H.M.S. Diamond, shows missiles fired in the Red Sea.Credit...British Ministry of Defense, via Associated Press
The United States and its allies are weighing how to shut down attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia against commercial ships in the Red Sea, after American and British officials said on Tuesday that their warships had intercepted one of the largest barrages yet of drones and missiles fired from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.
The Houthi attacks, in solidarity with Hamas in its war against Israel, have forced the world’s largest shipping companies to reroute vessels away from the Red Sea, creating delays and extra costs felt around the world through higher prices for oil and other imported goods.
The Biden administration has said it would hold the Houthis responsible for the attacks, a warning that suggested the government may be considering retaliatory strikes on Houthi territory in Yemen, military officials said.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, speaking in a news conference on Wednesday in Manama, Bahrain, the latest stop on his Mideast tour, declined to say what actions might be coming. “What I can tell you is that, as we made clear, and many other countries made clear, there’ll be consequences for the Houthis’ actions,” he said.
He also said that the United States and other nations had repeatedly made clear to Iran that its support for the Houthis’ actions had to stop.
So far, the United States has held back from hitting Houthi bases in Yemen, in large part because it does not want to undermine a fragile truce in Yemen’s civil war. Pentagon officials have drawn up plans for striking missile and drone bases in Yemen and facilities places fast boats used to attack ships appear to be moored.
Britain’s defense secretary, Grant Shapps, said in an interview on British television that London was also considering taking military action if the Houthi attacks did not stop. “The simplest thing to say is ‘watch this space,’” he said.
On Tuesday, fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and four other warships intercepted “a complex attack” involving 18 drones, two anti-ship cruise missiles and one anti-ship ballistic missile, the U.S. military’s Central Command said in a statement. No injuries or damage were reported, the command said.
Mr. Shapps said that the Diamond, a British Navy destroyer, had also responded to repel the Houthis’ “largest attack” since they began targeting ships in the Red Sea.
A Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, said in a statement on Wednesday that the group’s forces had used “a large number” of missiles and drones to target an American ship “that was offering support to the Zionist entity.” It was not immediately clear if he was describing the attack on Tuesday.
Mr. Sarea said the attack it described was in response to an assault by the U.S. Navy 10 days ago that sank three Houthi boats, killing their crew members. The Navy has said the boats fired on American helicopters coming to aid a Maersk cargo ship.
The Houthis “will continue to prevent Israeli ships or those headed to the ports of occupied Palestine from sailing in the Arabian and Red Seas until the aggression stops and the siege on our steadfast brothers in Gaza is lifted,” Mr. Sarea said.
The United States and a dozen allies issued an ultimatum to the Iran-backed Houthis last week to cease their near-daily attacks that have disrupted shipping in the crucial sea lanes that connect the Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal. The Houthis have promised to attack ships until Israel stops the war in the Gaza Strip, where it has been fighting for more than three months.
The rising tensions in the Red Sea have fueled concerns of a wider conflict in the region with militias and groups tied to Iran.
Edward Wong contributed reporting from Manama, Bahrain.
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6) Gaza’s hospitals are buckling and aid convoys can’t move safely, the U.N. says.
By Nick Cumming-Bruce reporting from Geneva, Jan. 10, 2024
Screenshot of woman being helped into the hospital after family member was brought in wrapped in blood-soaked blankets.
A hospital in southern Gaza was hit in a drone attack on Monday, the United Nations said, as intense Israeli bombardment and fighting in the center and south of the strip forced medical personnel to leave hospitals and obstructed deliveries of aid, deepening the humanitarian crisis in the territory.
The U.N. office that coordinates humanitarian efforts said on Tuesday that it had not received clear reports of casualties in the drone attack, at the European Hospital in Khan Younis.
A U.N. school in central Gaza sheltering people displaced by the fighting was also hit by shelling, along with residential buildings, resulting in an unconfirmed number of deaths and injuries, the U.N. said on Tuesday.
Four people were also injured, including a 5-year-old girl who was left in critical condition, after a shell “broke through a wall” at a Doctors Without Borders shelter in Khan Younis that was housing more than 100 staff members and their families, the aid group said on Monday.
“We’re trying to understand what happened,” the organization said on social media. “MSF had informed Israeli forces that this was an MSF shelter,” it said, using the initials of its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières. “We did not receive evacuation orders.”
The World Health Organization, a U.N. agency, expressed alarm on Tuesday at the Gazan health system’s loss of capacity, as Israeli evacuation notices and heavy bombardments force doctors and nurses to flee.
“We are seeing a humanitarian catastrophe unfold before our eyes across the Gaza Strip,” Sean Casey, the W.H.O. emergency medical team coordinator in Gaza, told reporters. “We are seeing the health system collapse at a very rapid pace.”
On visits on Sunday to Al Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza and Nasser Hospital in the south, Mr. Casey said he found that 70 percent of the medical staff had fled in recent days because of Israeli orders to evacuate and intense fighting in the area. That left a handful of medical staff to treat large numbers of seriously injured people, including many children. Around 600 patients left Al Aqsa Hospital on Sunday, moving to already overcrowded hospitals in the south.
“We cannot lose these health facilities — they absolutely must be protected,” he added, referring to the Aqsa, Nasser and European hospitals. “This is the last line of secondary and tertiary health care that Gaza has. From the north to the south, it has been dropping, hospital after hospital.”
Three weeks after a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for accelerated deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the U.N. said that access for aid groups continues to shrink because of the fighting, a lack of corridors for safe movement of aid trucks and a lack of clearance from Israel to proceed.
“We have far fewer areas in the Gaza Strip where we can access, where we can deliver supplies, where we can take emergency medical teams,” Mr. Casey said. “We have the supplies here, we have the trucks loaded, the people who are ready to go into the hospitals. We cannot move.”
The W.H.O. said that in the past two weeks it had canceled six planned missions to northern Gaza because it did not receive the clearances needed to proceed.
“We see evacuation orders in new areas every couple of days,” Mr. Casey said. “We request coordination, we coordinate with parties to the conflict so that we can move safely, and those requests have consistently, for the past few days, been denied.”
“Every day we make a plan, every day we line up our convoys, we wait for clearance and we don’t get it,” he said, “and then we come back and do it again the next day.”
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the U.N.’s accusations. Israel has said that the militant group Hamas, which it aims to eliminate in Gaza, uses hospitals and other civilian infrastructure to hide fighters and weapons.
Nick Cumming-Bruce reporting from Geneva
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7) Nine Israeli soldiers are killed in Gaza, six of them in a single truck explosion.
By Roni Rabin reporting from Tel Aviv, Jan. 10, 2024
Israeli soldiers in central Gaza, near a deadly explosion that killed six soldiers on Monday. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
Nine Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday in three separate incidents and at least eight others were seriously wounded, including an actor in the popular Netflix series “Fauda.”
It was a heavy toll for a small country where almost every fallen soldier’s life story is described in detail in news media reports, and where soldiers’ funerals are broadcast on television.
In the most deadly of Monday’s incidents, a truck full of explosives blew up in the Bureij area of central Gaza, during what Israeli authorities said was a military operation to destroy an underground rocket and explosives manufacturing facility. The blast killed six soldiers and injured at least eight others, including the “Fauda” actor Idan Amedi.
Although the exact cause of the explosion had not been determined by Tuesday evening, a preliminary investigation suggested that it was inadvertently caused by fire from an Israeli tank, said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesman for the Israeli military.
For safety reasons, most soldiers had been ordered to leave the site where a small crew of combat engineers was preparing the explosives, Admiral Hagari said, and a tank was stationed nearby to secure the area and provide cover. Then the tank identified what was thought to be a threat.
“The tank opened fire at the threat, and in a tragic outcome, struck an electricity pole nearby, knocking it over and igniting the explosives,” Admiral Hagari said.
According to The Times of Israel, the army was leading journalists on a tour of a Hamas rocket manufacturing plant not far from where the explosion occurred. A reporter with The Times of Israel said he heard the blast and saw an explosion burst through the air, capturing it on film.
The three other soldiers killed on Monday died in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the army said, describing operations there as troops destroying dozens of tunnel shafts and underground “terrorist infrastructure.” One soldier was killed in fighting and two were killed by anti-tank fire, the army said.
Israel said its military was consolidating its hold on the region, but that heavy clashes ensued after dozens of Hamas gunmen emerged from underground tunnels as Israeli troops approached. The gunmen were met with gunfire and killed, the army said.
The army said its troops in Khan Younis had discovered “terrorist infrastructure” inside the Islamic University in Gaza, including caches of ammunition composed of AK-47 rifles and cartridges, as well as safes containing what it called “terror funds.” In searches of nearby areas, the military said it found storage facilities for weapons containing roughly 100 mortar shells, ready-to-use explosives, grenades, combat equipment and maps used by Hamas.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
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8) Israel says it killed another Hezbollah commander after back-and-forth attacks.
By Euan Ward, Anushka Patil and Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Jan. 10, 2024
The funeral of a Hezbollah commander, Wissam al-Tawil, in Khirbet Selm, in southern Lebanon, on Tuesday. Credit...Hussein Malla/Associated Press
The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander in an airstrike, further heightening tensions with the Iranian-backed militia after a day of back-and-forth attacks and the apparent Israeli killing of another Hezbollah commander on Monday.
The Israeli military identified the commander killed on Tuesday as Ali Hussein Burji, saying that he led Hezbollah’s aerial unit in southern Lebanon and was responsible for a drone strike that morning on the headquarters of Israel’s northern command, in the city of Safed. The Israeli military had previously said the strike in Safed caused no casualties or damage.
In a statement, Hezbollah denied the Israeli military’s claims about Mr. Burji’s role and involvement in the drone strike, calling them “baseless.” It had announced Mr. Burji’s death earlier in the day without providing details, and before that, said its strike on Safed was in retaliation for the killing on Monday of Wissam Hassan al-Tawil, a senior commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit.
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, appeared to claim responsibility for Mr. al-Tawil’s killing in a television interview late Monday. “This is part of our war,” Mr. Katz said in response to a question about the attack on the Radwan unit. “We strike on Hezbollah’s people.”
Mr. al-Tawil’s funeral was held on Tuesday, with a large procession of mourners carrying his coffin through Khirbet Selm, the village in southern Lebanon where he was killed. A Lebanese security official had earlier said that Israel carried out a strike during the gathering and killed one person.
The New York Times was able to geolocate footage of the airstrike released by the military, confirming that it took place in the vicinity of the funeral in Khirbet Selm.
Hezbollah also said it fired at several areas in northern Israel, including Malkia and Yiftah, on Tuesday. The Israeli military later said it targeted the launch sites for the attacks in retaliation, as well as a drone squad in southern Lebanon, and that Israeli fighter jets had struck military hardware in the area of Kafr Kila.
Earlier Tuesday, Israel also killed three Hezbollah members in a strike on their vehicle in the southern Lebanese town of Ghandouriyeh, according to the Lebanese security official.
Hezbollah has pledged support for Hamas, and in recent days it has stepped up assaults on Israel in response to the killing last week of Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas leader, outside Beirut.
Israeli leaders have repeatedly declared in recent weeks that there are only two options for restoring calm in the conflict with Hezbollah: a diplomatic solution that would move the Radwan forces farther from the border; or, failing that, a major Israeli military offensive aimed at achieving the same goal.
Johnatan Reiss and Arijeta Lajka contributed reporting.
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9) Guards Beat and Waterboarded Prisoners in New York, Lawsuits Say
A guard placed a cloth over a prisoner’s face and poured water over him, creating a sensation that mimics drowning, according to court papers.
By Benjamin Weiser, Jan. 10, 2024
The events described in the suits occurred at Great Meadow Correctional Facility, more than 200 miles north of New York City. Credit...Caleb Kenna for The New York Times
Two prisoners in upstate New York say they were brutally beaten by guards and taken to a different facility to be waterboarded — a method of torture once used by C.I.A. interrogators on terrorism suspects, according to newly filed lawsuits.
Waterboarding induces the sensation of drowning in victims. The episodes cited in the lawsuits by the men occurred Oct. 7 at Great Meadow Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Comstock, N.Y., more than 200 miles north of New York City.
One man, Charles Wright, 44, was taken to a room and forced to lie face up while shackled to a bed, according to his lawsuit. A guard placed a dirty rag over his nose and mouth and poured water over it for 45 seconds; another guard stood by, the suit says.
The second man, Eugene Taylor, 32, was taken to a room where a guard — apparently the same one that placed a rag over Mr. Wright’s mouth — affixed a cloth around Mr. Taylor’s face and repeatedly dunked his head in water while other guards stood around, according to Mr. Taylor’s suit.
The men had been taken to Great Meadow from Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, N.Y., where scores of other prisoners were subjected to physical and psychological abuse during a weeklong lockdown and search in early October, according to a separate lawsuit by 44 prisoners.
Corrections officers, including special teams from other prisons, converged on cells, punching and kicking prisoners, slamming their faces against walls and twisting fingers, the lawsuit says, adding that the search was sparked by a prisoner’s assault on a guard.
The lawsuits, filed recently in the State Court of Claims, come almost a year after 26 inmates at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y., also sued, claiming officers there had orchestrated beatings during a facility-wide search in November 2022.
Bruce Barket, a lawyer whose firm filed the Sing Sing lawsuit a year ago, said then that his firm reported the allegations to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which he said was investigating with the F.B.I., which had interviewed several of his firm’s clients. He said the firm was cooperating with the federal investigation.
“Given that the Department of Corrections administration apparently approved of the brutality, no one should be surprised that some guards escalated the abuse,” said Mr. Barket, whose firm also filed the Green Haven and Great Meadow suits.
The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.
Danielle Muscatello, one of the firm’s attorneys, said that when she interviewed Mr. Wright by phone last fall he didn’t use the term waterboarding but described what had occurred.
“It’s unbelievable that would be happening in our country, let alone New York State,” Ms. Muscatello said.
Thomas Mailey, a spokesman for the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which runs the prisons, said the department had not seen the lawsuits and, in any event, “does not comment on possible or pending litigation.”
Although allegations of brutality in New York State prisons are not unusual, the claim of waterboarding is.
Christopher Dunn, legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said his office received many letters from prisoners, which are read and carefully tracked.
“While any atrocity is possible when it comes to New York prisons,” Mr. Dunn said, “we’ve not received reports of waterboarding.”
Matthew Raymond, an Auburn Correctional Facility prisoner, said in a federal lawsuit that he was placed in shackles on a table in 2016, and a lieutenant held his head down by his hair, pulled his shirt over his face and slowly poured water on his nose and mouth. “He felt like he was drowning and could not catch his breath,” the lawsuit says.
The lieutenant denied the allegations and the lawsuit is pending, said Katie Rosenfeld, one of Mr. Raymond’s lawyers.
The waterboarding described by Mr. Wright and Mr. Taylor, who are both serving sentences for second-degree murder, followed a lockdown at Green Haven and the deployment of special teams of officers, according to their lawsuits.
The state has 21 Corrections Emergency Response Teams, known as CERTs, which are based in correctional facilities and are used, among other things, to conduct facility searches.
At Green Haven, Mr. Wright’s lawsuit says, officers went to cells, beating select prisoners. Officers directed Mr. Wright to strip to his underwear and slippers, place his hands behind his head and turn around. After he complied, an officer punched him in the back of his head, causing him to fall to the floor, the suit says. Officers sprayed pepper spray in his mouth and banged his head against the floor and a toilet, according to the lawsuit.
Mr. Wright’s lawsuit does not identify the guard whom he accuses of waterboarding him at Great Meadow, but it describes him as white with a trimmed beard and a mohawk hairstyle — similar to the description Mr. Taylor offers in his suit.
Mr. Taylor recalls in his lawsuit that after being taken to Great Meadow, he saw five or six other prisoners from Green Haven, some of them crying.
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
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