ANSWER San Francisco -- (415) 821-6545
answer@answersf.org
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Art Against Imprisonment Presents
A Benefit for a New Oakland Mural-
Sumud: Resistance Until Liberation
A collaboration between artists and activists that explores and confronts the deep interconnections between the brutal systems of imprisonment in the U.S. and Palestine.
Caroline Davis on Saxophone
Satya Chima, CCWP
Opium Sabbah, Oakland Jericho Movement
Sunday, March 10, 2:00 P.M.
Eastside Cultural Center
2277 International Blvd., Oakland
For more information contact:
artagainstimprisonment@gmail.com
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Gaza Strip Access Restrictions.pdf since 2007
** This figure is released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.”
Source: mondoweiss.net
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Comment on the New York Times Editorial titled:
“A U.S. Call for a Humanitarian Cease-Fire in Gaza”
Opinion By The Editorial Board, Feb. 24, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/24/opinion/gaza-ceasefire.html
K
Seattle
2m ago
The root of the cycles of violence is the occupation. The US policy in Israel/Palestine has been a failure and contributed to the ongoing suffering on both sides. Even though the US has the capacity to help resolve this issue, it lacks the will.
Consider the following published soon after the occupation started, in September 1967 in an Israeli newspaper by Moshe Machover and others.
Our right to defend ourselves from extermination does not give us the right to oppress others
Occupation entails Foreign Rule
Foreign Rule entails Resistance
Resistance entails Repression
Repression entails Terror and Counter-Terror
The victims of terror are mostly innocent people
Holding on to the occupied territories will turn us into a nation of murderers and murder victims
Let us get out of the Occupied Territories immediately
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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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Just Like The Nazis Did
By David Rovics
After so many decades of patronage
By the world’s greatest empire
So many potential agreements
Were rejected by opening fire
After crushing so many uprisings
Now they’re making their ultimate bid
Pursuing their Final Solution
Just like the Nazis did
They forced refugees into ghettos
Then set the ghettos aflame
Murdering writers and poets
And so no one remember their names
Killing their entire families
The grandparents, women and kids
The uncles and cousins and babies
Just like the Nazis did
They’re bombing all means of sustaining
Human life at all
See the few shelters remaining
Watch as the tower blocks fall
They’re bombing museums and libraries
In order to get rid
Of any memory of the people who lived here
Just like the Nazis did
They’re saying these people are animals
And they should all end up dead
They’re sending soldiers into schools
And shooting children in the head
The rhetoric is identical
And with Gaza off the grid
They’ve already said what happens next
Just like the Nazis did
Words of war for domestic consumption
And lies for all the rest
To try to distract our attention
Among their enablers in the West
Because Israel needs their imports
To keep those pallets on the skids
They need fuel and they need missiles
Just like the Nazis did
They’re using food as a weapon
They’re using water that way, too
They’re trying to kill everyone in Gaza
Or make them flee, it’s true
As the pundits talk of “after the war”
Like with the Fall of Madrid
The victors are preparing for more
Just like the Nazis did
But it’s after the conquest’s complete
If history is any guide
When the occupying army
Is positioned to decide
When disease and famine kills
Whoever may have hid
Behind the ghetto walls
Just like the Nazis did
All around the world
People are trying to tell
There's a genocide unfolding
Ringing alarm bells
But with such a powerful axis
And so many lucrative bids
They know who wants their money
Just like the Nazis did
There's so many decades of patronage
For the world's greatest empire
So many potential agreements
Were rejected by opening fire
They're crushing so many uprisings
Now they're making their ultimate bid
Pursuing their final solution
Just like the Nazis did
Just like the Nazis did
Just like the Nazis did
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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
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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We are saddened to announce the passing of Leonard Peltier’s sister, Linda.
Leonard is humbly requesting help with funeral expenses.
Even a dollar or two would be greatly appreciated.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-leonard-peltier-family-bury-his-sister-linda?utm_campaign=p_cp+fundraiser-sidebar&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer
Respect,
Dawn Lawson
Personal Assistant Leonard Peltier
Executive Assistant Jenipher Jones, Esq.
Secretary Leonard Peltier Ad Hoc Committee
800-901-4413
dawn@allfiredup.blue
www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org
Leonard Peltier Update - Not One More Year
Coleman 1 has gone on permanent lockdown.
The inmates are supposed to be allowed out two hours a day. I have not heard from Leonard since the 18th.
The last time I talked to Leonard, he asked where his supporters were. He asked me if anyone cared about these lockdowns.
Leonard lives in a filthy, cold cell 22 to 24 hours a day. He has not seen a dentist in ten years. I asked him, “On a scale of 1 to 10, is your pain level at 13?” He said, “Something like that.” Leonard is a relentless truth-teller. He does not like it when I say things that do not make sense mathematically.
That is why Leonard remains imprisoned. He will not lie. He will not beg, grovel, or denounce his beliefs.
Please raise your voice. Ask your representatives why they have abdicated their responsibility to oversee the Bureau of Prisons and ensure they adhere to Constitutional law.
Uhuru, The African People’s Socialist Party, has stepped up for Leonard. NOT ONE MORE YEAR.
Fight for Free Speech – YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM8GDeGv90E
Leonard should not have spent a day in prison. Click “LEARN” on our website to find out what really happened on that reservation:
www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org
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) An evacuation plan reinforces Israel’s intention to send troops into Rafah.
By Mike Ives, Feb. 26, 2024
After bombardment in Rafah, southern Gaza, on Sunday. Credit...Said Khatib/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said early Monday that the country’s military had presented a long-awaited plan to the war cabinet for evacuating civilians from “areas of fighting” in the Gaza Strip, a likely reference to an expected invasion of the southern city of Rafah.
Mr. Netanyahu’s office made the announcement before dawn local time on social media. Though Mr. Netanyahu did not provide details of the plan publicly, the comments appeared to reinforce Israel’s intention to launch a ground invasion of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are taking refuge.
While Israel has said sending troops into the city is necessary to defeat Hamas, it has also signaled optimism about talks on a possible cease-fire, and it was not clear whether Mr. Netanyahu was using the prospect of invading Rafah as a cudgel to gain leverage in the discussions. An Israeli delegation was expected to arrive in Qatar on Monday to continue negotiations with international mediators around securing a temporary cease-fire and the release of some hostages.
The Israeli government has not specified where civilians in Rafah would be expected to go, and the invasion plan has drawn condemnation from some of Israel’s most important allies, including the United States.
A follow-up statement by Mr. Netanyahu’s office said that a new plan for providing humanitarian assistance to the enclave had also been approved after reports that Palestinians in Gaza had surrounded and looted trucks carrying relief supplies because of a desperate lack of food and other necessities. The government did not release the plan or give further details.
Mr. Netanyahu reiterated on Sunday that Israel planned to invade Rafah, a major city along Gaza’s border with Egypt whose civilian population is essentially trapped. Members of his government have set a deadline — the start of the holy month of Ramadan next month — for Hamas to release the more than 100 hostages who remain in the enclave after being captured during the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu said on Sunday that the assault on Rafah could be “delayed somewhat” if a deal is reached with Hamas over the release of the remaining hostages being held in Gaza.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman for the Palestinian Authority’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the Israeli prime minister’s announcement of an evacuation plan, saying that it confirmed his intention “to storm the city of Rafah.”
“The American administration must move in a different and serious way to stop this Israeli madness,” Mr. Abu Rudeineh said in a statement.
The heads of humanitarian organizations including the Red Cross have warned there is nowhere safe for Palestinians in southern Gaza to move to, given the destruction of infrastructure and the large amounts of unexploded ordnance.
António Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations, said Monday that Rafah, with its border crossing, was central to efforts to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza. An Israeli offensive in the city “would not only be terrifying for more than a million Palestinian civilians sheltering there, it would put the final nail in the coffin of our aid programs,” he said in an address opening a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Human rights conventions, Mr. Guterres added, “recognize that terrorizing civilians and depriving them of food, water, and health care is a recipe for endless anger, alienation, extremism and conflict.”
Nick Cumming-Bruce and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
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2) The Palestinian Authority’s government tenders its resignation.
By Patrick Kingsley reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 26, 2024
Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh of the Palestinian Authority during a cabinet meeting in Ramallah in the West Bank on Monday. Credit...Zain Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh of the Palestinian Authority, the body that administers part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, tendered the resignation of his cabinet on Monday, according to the authority’s official news agency.
The decision follows diplomatic efforts involving the United States and Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, to persuade the authority to overhaul itself in a way that would enable it to take over the administration of Gaza after the war there ends.
But it was unclear whether the appointment of a new prime minister and cabinet would be enough to revamp the authority or persuade Israel to let it govern Gaza. President Mahmoud Abbas, the most senior leader of the authority, will remain in position along with his security chiefs, regardless of whether he accepts Mr. Shtayyeh’s resignation.
Israeli leaders had strongly hinted that they would not allow the authority’s existing leadership to run Gaza. American and Arab leaders had hoped that new leadership might make Israel more likely to cede administrative control of Gaza to the authority.
With no functional parliament within the areas controlled by the authority, Mr. Abbas has long ruled by decree, and he exerts wide influence over the judiciary and prosecution system.
According to diplomats briefed on his thinking, Mr. Abbas’s preferred candidate for prime minister is Mohammad Mustafa, a longtime economic adviser who is considered a member of his inner circle.
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3) A man dies after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, authorities say.
By Aishvarya Kavi reporting from Washington, Feb. 26, 2024
The protester filmed his self-immolation in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Credit...Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock
An airman who had set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington in protest of civilian deaths in Gaza died of his injuries on Sunday night, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Air Force, Rose M. Riley, said on Monday.
The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington identified the man as Aaron Bushnell, 25, of San Antonio. A U.S. Air Force spokeswoman, Ann Stefanek, had confirmed on Sunday night that he was an active-duty airman.
Mr. Bushnell appeared to have filmed the protest on Sunday and livestreamed it on the social media platform Twitch. The New York Times could not confirm who was behind the account that posted the video, but the footage matched the details of the incident released by the police.
A man dressed in fatigues identifies himself in the video as Mr. Bushnell and calls himself an active-duty Air Force officer. A LinkedIn profile matching Mr. Bushnell’s name describes him as an “aspiring software engineer” and an active-duty airman for nearly four years.
“I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” a man says in the video, echoing language that opponents of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza have used to describe the war. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all.”
Standing in front of the gates of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, he sets his phone down to douse himself in a clear liquid from a metal bottle. He then lights himself on fire while yelling, “Free Palestine!” until he falls to the ground.
The video shows law enforcement officers approaching him seconds before the fire catches. One is heard off-camera saying: “Can I help you, sir?” The officers scramble for more than a minute to put out the flames.
Officers with the U.S. Secret Service were the first to respond at the embassy, in northwestern Washington, around 1 p.m., said Vito Maggiolo, a spokesman with the city’s fire department. Mr. Bushnell was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries.
The New York Times viewed the video before Twitch removed it on Sunday afternoon, replacing it with a message saying that the channel violated the platform’s guidelines. It was the only video posted to the account, which had a Palestinian flag as its header image.
No staff members of the Israeli Embassy were injured, according to Tal Naim, a spokeswoman for the embassy.
Officers with the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were still working with Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department to investigate the incident, the authorities said on Monday.
Protests against Israel have become a near-daily occurrence across the country since Israel began its military offensive in Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that killed at least 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials. More than 29,000 people have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry.
As international calls for a cease-fire have grown and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has deepened, the Israeli Embassy has been the site of protests that have sometimes resulted in arrests — but seldom in violence.
In December, a protester self-immolated in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta in what police said was “likely an extreme act of political protest.”
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4) Israel launches its deepest airstrikes in Lebanon in years.
By Euan Ward and Hwaida Saad reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, Feb. 26, 2024
Smoke billowing from the site of Israeli airstrikes near the city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, on Monday. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israeli airstrikes inside Lebanon on targets associated with the Hezbollah militia hit deeper than any in recent years on Monday, targeting an area close to the Syrian border.
The Israeli military said that its fighter jets had struck Hezbollah air defenses in the Bekaa Valley, about 60 miles from the Israeli border. It said that the strikes were in response to a surface-to-air missile attack that downed an Israeli drone over southern Lebanon. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for that attack.
At least two Hezbollah fighters were killed in the Israeli airstrikes and at least six other people were wounded, according to Bachir Khodor, mayor of the nearby city of Baalbek. Video from the scene provided by Mr. Khodor, which could not be independently verified, showed a building reduced to rubble and people on stretchers being loaded into an ambulance.
In a statement, Hezbollah said that it had retaliated by firing a rocket barrage toward the Golan Heights, a plateau that Israel seized in 1967, and had aimed at an Israeli army headquarters. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the statement.
The Bekaa Valley, a fertile plain that runs along the Syrian border, has long been a stronghold for Hezbollah, the politically powerful Lebanese militia that has engaged in near-daily clashes with Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7. The fighting has displaced more than 150,000 people on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border and left hundreds dead.
The airstrikes on Monday were the first time that the Israeli military had hit the Bekaa Valley during the current conflict. Its strikes have recently been moving deeper inside Lebanon. Last week, the Israeli military said that it had struck what it called Hezbollah weapons storage facilities near the Lebanese coastal city of Sidon, around 20 miles from the border with Israel.
During a meeting with military officials on Sunday, the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said that his country was “planning to increase the firepower against Hezbollah,” adding that it would not pause operations along the border with Lebanon even if there were a temporary halt to the fighting in Gaza.
“We will increase the fire in the north separately and will continue until the full withdrawal of Hezbollah and the return of Israeli civilians to their homes,” he said.
Hassan Fadlallah, a Hezbollah lawmaker in the Lebanese Parliament, said on Monday that the latest round of Israeli strikes would “not go without a response.”
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
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5) The U.N.’s top court holds a final day of hearings on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Marlise Simons, Feb. 26, 2024
Public hearings on Israel’s policies toward Palestinian territories began last week at the International Court of Justice at The Hague. Credit...Piroschka Van De Wouw/Reuters
The United Nations’ top court on Monday was hearing a final day of arguments on the legality of Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories, proceedings that have added pressure to Israel at a time when attention focuses on the war in Gaza.
The hearings, which began last Monday, are the first time that the court, the International Court of Justice, has been asked to detail the legal consequences of Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation” of the territories, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem, since 1967 — issues that have been the subject of years of debate and resolutions at the United Nations. The U.N. General Assembly asked the court to give an advisory opinion, which it is expected to take months to deliver.
The sessions, held at the Peace Palace in The Hague, are hearing from representatives of more than 50 countries, an unusually high number for the court. Most have sided with the Palestinian representatives, who argued that Israel had long abused Palestinian rights with impunity and denied their right to self-determination.
“Israel has arrogated to itself the right to decide who owns land, who may live on it, how it is used,” Philippe Sands, a member of the Palestinian delegation’s legal team, argued last week. “It has confined Palestinians to enclaves,” he added, and broken up its territory with hundreds of settlements “regarded as a permanent part of Israel.”
Israel has not appeared at the hearings, but, in a written submission, it rejected the questions raised by the proceedings as biased.
The proceedings have been given urgency by Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Health authorities in Gaza say that Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 29,000 people, the majority civilians, and provoked what the United Nations says is a humanitarian disaster.
Since the war began, Israeli forces have also detained hundreds of Palestinians in West Bank raids. Deadly violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers has increased and Palestinian attacks on Israelis have also risen.
A few speakers at the court, including those from the United States, Britain and Hungary, have sided with Israel. On Wednesday, a State Department official argued before the court that Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians were determined by its “very real security needs.”
But Israel’s campaign in Gaza has presented a dilemma to President Biden’s administration, which has continued to supply Israel with military aid while expressing growing concern over the treatment of Palestinians.
Mr. Biden has said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has been “over the top” in its conduct of the war in Gaza. And on Friday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said that the American government was reversing a Trump administration policy and would now consider new Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories to be “inconsistent with international law.”
The final day of hearings at the U.N. court on Monday is scheduled to include arguments by representatives from Turkey, the African Union and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which represents 57 member states, most being Muslim-majority countries.
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6) Gazans gather in the north, awaiting aid trucks that don’t arrive.
By Hiba Yazbek reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 26, 2024
Gazans described hunger and desperation in isolated northern Gaza. Aid organizations said it’s increasingly difficult to deliver any aid to the region. Credit...Mahmoud Essa/Associated Press (Screenshot)
Palestinians in the north of Gaza, growing more hungry and desperate by the day, have been gathering to wait for food assistance that United Nations agencies say can no longer be delivered there.
“I’m here to get flour or any aid to feed my kids before the month of Ramadan,” said Abu Mostafa, a Palestinian man among a crowd of people on the coast in Gaza City on Sunday, in video shot by The Associated Press. “We’re not scared of war or anything. We just need food and water,” he added.
“I cannot feed my own children,” cried another man, Naim Abouseido, standing next to his young son as they waited for aid. “There is no rice, no food, no flour. What did we do to deserve this?”
Several United Nations agencies and aid groups have said that the fighting in Gaza, a lack of help from the Israeli military in facilitating aid deliveries and the breakdown of order had made it increasingly difficult to send aid convoys to much of Gaza.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the main United Nations aid agency that serves Palestinians, said on Sunday that the agency was last able to deliver aid to northern Gaza over a month ago. He added on Monday that famine could be avoided only if more aid trucks got through.
A statement from the Israeli prime minister’s office on Monday said the war cabinet had approved a new plan to provide aid to Gaza. The government did not release the plan or give further details.
Nader Ibrahim contributed reporting from London.
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7) ‘Cop City’ Prosecutions Hinge on a New Definition of Domestic Terrorism
Are the protesters against a new police training center part of a violent “extremist organization,” or are the serious charges they face a means of stifling free speech?
By Sean Keenan and Rick Rojas, Feb. 26, 2024
Sean Keenan has reported extensively on the Stop Cop City movement, including at various protests, and Rick Rojas has covered the response to it as The Times’s Atlanta bureau chief.
"Still, Mx. King has no illusions about the gravity of the situation. In fact, they recently had a stark reminder of the stakes: They declined a plea offer of a 10-year sentence that included three years in prison."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/us/cop-city-domestic-terrorism.html
Timothy Bilodeau, 26, was charged with domestic terrorism after taking part in protests against building a new police center in a forested area just outside Atlanta. Credit...Sophie Park for The New York Times
In a forest on the outskirts of Atlanta last March, hundreds of protesters had gathered once again to try to stop the construction of a new police and fire training center.
For Timothy Bilodeau, a 26-year-old who had flown in from Boston, the fight that began in 2021 had gained new urgency after state troopers killed a protester in a shootout in the forest weeks earlier that also wounded an officer.
On the day that Mr. Bilodeau headed in, there was another fiery confrontation. A crowd marched to the development site, where some protesters threw fireworks and Molotov cocktails, setting equipment ablaze. The police arrested nearly two dozen protesters, including Mr. Bilodeau.
As Mr. Bilodeau saw it, he was taking a principled stand against the destruction of the forest. But prosecutors had a darker take: They charged Mr. Bilodeau and 22 others with domestic terrorism.
In all, 42 people involved in the demonstrations against the training facility have been charged under Georgia’s domestic terrorism law, making for one of the largest cases of its kind in the country on a charge that is rarely prosecuted.
As several states have added or expanded laws related to terrorism, or are considering doing so, the case in Georgia is at the center of debate about the need for these measures, the dangers they pose and, more fundamentally, what constitutes terrorism. (One proposal in New York has suggested that blocking traffic, a tactic occasionally used in demonstrations, could be considered domestic terrorism.)
Georgia broadened its definition in 2017 to include attempts to seriously harm or kill people, or to disable or destroy “critical infrastructure,” with the goal of forcing a policy change. The charge carries a penalty of up to 35 years in prison.
Officials in Georgia have argued that those charged were involved in sowing disorder and destruction — actions that demanded a swift and forceful response.
“We will not waver when it comes to keeping people safe, enforcing the rule of law, and ensuring those who engage in criminal activity are vigorously pursued and aggressively prosecuted,” Christopher M. Carr, Georgia’s attorney general, said in a statement.
Critics say that the charges in Georgia justify their worst fear about domestic terrorism laws: that they can frame activism as terrorism, and allow prosecutors to pursue even harsher punishments for “property crimes that were already illegal, simply because of accompanying political expression critical of government policy,” as the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia said in a recent statement.
The result, critics argue, is stifling free speech.
“It’s chilling,” Mr. Bilodeau, a tech consultant, said. “It is a devastating threat to all people who are advocates or activists for the well-being of our planet or climate or communities.”
Legal experts have also raised concerns about many people being prosecuted for serious crimes over the actions of a few.
Mr. Bilodeau’s lawyer, Amanda Clark Palmer, argued in a motion for a bond that his arrest warrant contained “no specific allegation that Mr. Bilodeau himself possessed or threw a rock, firework or Molotov cocktail.”
“The only specific allegation,” she added, “is the following: The accused was observed with muddy clothing from breaching and crossing the embankment. Accused was also in possession of a shield.”
Officials in Georgia have maintained that the charges were warranted, with the Atlanta Police Department calling the accused “violent agitators,” mostly from out of state, who committed violence “under the cover of a peaceful protest.”
The charges have not yet proceeded to indictments, in part because the local district attorney withdrew from the case, citing a “fundamental difference in prosecutorial philosophy” with Mr. Carr, the Republican attorney general.
But the allegations also provided the foundation for a broader case that Mr. Carr's office is pursuing under the state’s racketeering law — a powerful tool that prosecutors have used to target street gangs, public officials accused of corruption and even former President Donald J. Trump, who is accused of conspiring to overturn his election loss in 2020.
Mr. Bilodeau and 60 others are now facing racketeering charges, with prosecutors describing them as part of “an anarchist, anti-police and anti-business extremist organization” that conspired to block the training center. The first trial in the racketeering case could start in the coming weeks.
The Atlanta City Council voted in 2021 to authorize the training facility, officially named the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center and derided by protesters as “Cop City.”
The project stirred a diverse coalition of opponents: environmental activists who objected to developing a rare expanse of forest in a rapidly developing metropolitan area; social justice activists who believed the facility would train officers to police communities with militarized tactics; and nearby residents opposed to a potentially disruptive new neighbor.
The opposition intensified in 2022 as officers began sweeping the site. Protesters had set up camp in the trees and erected barricades to block officers and construction crews. Some of the demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails and set off fireworks, the police said. Officers responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, and in January 2023, a 26-year-old activist, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, known as Tortuguita, was fatally shot by state troopers.
Officials have said that the activist shot first, wounding a trooper, but protesters have remained skeptical, partly because the troopers were not wearing body cameras.
More construction and police vehicles at the site have been set on fire since then, including as recently as late January. Construction companies in Georgia and beyond — including at least one mistakenly associated with the training center — have had equipment vandalized or burned, the authorities said.
Last month, city officials said that the destruction had caused the cost of the facility, which had been estimated at $90 million, to jump by nearly $20 million.
“These individuals are trafficking in fear,” John F. King, Georgia’s insurance and safety fire commissioner, said in a recent news conference announcing rewards of up to $200,000 for help finding and convicting arson suspects.
When Georgia lawmakers strengthened the state’s domestic terrorism laws, it was in part a response to the racist massacre in 2015 at a Black church in Charleston, S.C. The point, they said at the time, was to empower prosecutors to charge perpetrators of racist attacks as domestic terrorists. Georgia lawmakers are currently considering another measure to bolster its law further.
Like Georgia, other states have also moved to expand terrorism-related laws, reflecting an increasingly fractured political climate and fears of rising extremism. A bill in West Virginia would clarify definitions of terrorism and create mandatory sentencing rules.
Last year, Oregon — where the authorities have had showdowns with armed militias on public land, and where far-right demonstrators breached the State Capitol in 2021 — became the latest state to enact a domestic terrorism law.
Officials in Georgia have used the expanded law to target left-wing activism that, they argue, took a violent turn in Atlanta around the time of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
One of the demands in the nationwide protests that followed the murder of George Floyd was to strip funding away from police departments and redirect those resources. The Cop City protesters see Atlanta as doing the opposite with the training center, which officials have hailed as an investment in a police force struggling with depleted ranks and morale.
“We don’t need more police and more of a surveillance state,” said Ayla King, 19, a recent high school graduate from Worcester, Mass., who traveled to Atlanta last March after following the developments on social media. Mx. King, who uses the they pronoun, faces both domestic terrorism and racketeering charges.
Mr. Bilodeau, who spent 17 days in jail after the confrontation last March, declined to discuss what he did in the forest in March, pointing to his impending trial. In charging documents, prosecutors accused him of criminal trespass and of joining “an organized mob designed to overwhelm the police force,” occupy the forest and cause property damage.
He returned to a life in Boston that was upended. His bank closed his accounts, he said. The youth art and music program where he had been a regular volunteer told him he was no longer welcome. His anxiety about the police seeped into his dreams, and he is wary of participating in any more protests.
“This has been just a crushing emotional and legal process, and we’re not really in the thick of things yet,” Mr. Bilodeau said.
Mx. King has had to set aside plans for college.
“This is terrifying,” Mx. King said in an interview in December, before a gag order was issued in their case. “But it’s really important to stay strong and just know that, just because the state says that I’m a domestic terrorist, it doesn’t mean anything, really. It’s such an inflated charge.”
Still, Mx. King has no illusions about the gravity of the situation. In fact, they recently had a stark reminder of the stakes: They declined a plea offer of a 10-year sentence that included three years in prison.
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8) Lead-Tainted Applesauce Sailed Through Gaps in Food-Safety System
Hundreds of American children were poisoned last year. Records show how, time and again, the contamination went unnoticed.
By Christina Jewett and Will Fitzgibbon, Feb. 27, 2024
This article was reported in collaboration with The Examination, a nonprofit newsroom that covers global public health.
Thomas Duong and Nicole Peterson worked with the local health department in North Carolina to figure out why the lead levels in their children’s blood had surged. Credit...Jesse Barber for The New York Times
Cinnamon-flavored applesauce pouches sold in grocery and dollar stores last year poisoned hundreds of American children with extremely high doses of lead, leaving anxious parents to watch for signs of brain damage, developmental delays and seizures.
The Food and Drug Administration, citing Ecuadorean investigators, said a spice grinder was likely responsible for the contamination and said the quick recall of three million applesauce pouches protected the food supply.
But hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The New York Times and the nonprofit health newsroom The Examination, along with interviews with government and company officials in multiple countries, show that in the weeks and months before the recall, the tainted applesauce sailed through a series of checkpoints in a food-safety system meant to protect American consumers.
The documents and interviews offer the clearest accounting to date of the most widespread toxic exposure in food marketed to young children in decades. Children in 44 states ate the tainted applesauce, some of which contained lead at extraordinarily high levels.
Time and again, the tainted cinnamon went untested and undiscovered, the result of an overstretched F.D.A. and a food-safety law that gives companies, at home and abroad, wide latitude on what toxins to look for and whether to test.
“It’s amazing in a bad sense what a catastrophic failure this was,” said Neal Fortin, director of the Institute for Food Laws and Regulations at Michigan State University. “Largely, the food supply regulatory system is based on an honor system.”
The cinnamon originated in Sri Lanka and was shipped to Ecuador, where it was ground into a powder. It was probably there, the F.D.A. has said, that the cinnamon was likely contaminated with lead chromate, a powder that is sometimes illegally used to tint or bulk up spices.
The ground cinnamon was then sold, bagged and sold again to a company called Austrofood, which blended it into applesauce and shipped pouches to the United States. It was sold under the brand name WanaBana and various generic store labels.
Austrofood never tested the cinnamon or its tainted applesauce for lead before shipping it to the United States. The company said it relied on a certificate from a supplier saying the cinnamon was virtually lead free, records show. In a statement, the supplier, Negasmart, did not discuss that certification but said it had complied with all regulations and quality standards.
The F.D.A. can inspect overseas food companies that ship to the United States, but even as food imports soared to record levels in 2022, international inspections fell far short of targets set by law.
American inspectors had not visited Austrofood in five years, records show.
“Companies have the responsibility to take steps to assure that the products they manufacture are not contaminated with unsafe levels of heavy metals,” Jim Jones, the top F.D.A. food official, said in a statement. “The agency’s job is to help the industry comply and hold those who evade these requirements accountable, as appropriate.”
The F.D.A. says it has no authority to investigate far down the international supply chain. Records show that the Ecuadorean government had the authority but not the capacity. Ecuadorean regulators had never before tested cinnamon for toxins and, when the F.D.A. called looking for help, nearly half of the government’s lab equipment was out of service, said Daniel Sánchez, the head of Ecuador’s food safety agency.
Private safety audits commissioned by American importers are supposed to provide another layer of protection. But audits typically look only for the hazards that the importers themselves have identified.
None of the importers would say whether they considered lead a risk or tested for it and it is unclear what, if any, steps they took. But none blocked the applesauce. Records show one auditor gave the applesauce maker an A+ safety rating in December, as American children were being poisoned.
The F.D.A. has the power to test food arriving at the border. There is no indication that anyone tested the applesauce when it arrived at ports in Miami and Baltimore. Inspectors conduct about half as many such tests as they did a decade ago.
The F.D.A. said it planned to analyze the incident and whether it needs to seek new powers from Congress to prevent future outbreaks.
Federal regulations have warned for years about the risk of tampering with food ingredients.
Changes to the food-safety system were born out of a late 2000s scandal in China, where people used cheap, toxic melamine powder in place of protein powder in baby formula and pet food. Six babies in China and hundreds of dogs in the United States died.
As new laws on imported food took shape, lobbyists for grocery stores and food companies worked to weaken them. Scott Faber, a former lobbyist for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, recalls fending off proposals for more sampling, testing and reporting.
“Our argument at the time was that too much product would be destroyed if you had to do more testing and sampling,” Mr. Faber said. “And clearly babies and toddlers are paying the price for the industry’s success.” He is now a senior official at the Environmental Working Group, where he advocates stricter oversight of the food supply.
Heather Garlich, a spokeswoman for the food industry association FMI, declined to comment on the applesauce recall. “The U.S. is a global leader in food safety due to strong governmental oversight, critical public-private partnerships, and industry initiatives,” Ms. Garlich said.
Food-safety policy is always a balancing act. It would be impossible for F.D.A. agents to open every imported crate of produce or spices and test for every possible contaminant. Every new requirement on companies adds cost to the food.
But critics like Mr. Faber say that the F.D.A. has ceded too much oversight to the companies.
The Food Safety Modernization Act, signed into law in 2011 by President Barack Obama, gave the F.D.A. the power to recall food, trace produce and reject food from foreign companies that turn away American inspectors.
One major change was to require importers to audit their suppliers. Exactly how those companies acted during the applesauce incident remains unclear. F.D.A. data shows that thousands of importers do not audit appropriately.
The law did not come close to putting the F.D.A., which oversees shelf-stable food, cheese and fresh produce, on par with the Department of Agriculture, the other major food regulator. Agriculture inspectors work inside every American meat-processing plant and allow meat imports only from countries with rigorous safety systems.
The F.D.A. asked Congress in 2022 for the authority to set heavy-metal limits and require baby-food makers to test for them — changes that might have prevented last year’s poisoning. Congress did not act.
A Mother Demands Answers
The tainted applesauce might have gone unnoticed for even longer had it not been for a family in North Carolina.
Early last summer, Nicole Peterson and Thomas Duong were alarmed by their young children’s blood-lead levels in a routine screening. Within weeks, the levels had doubled.
Ms. Peterson said the couple worked with the local health department as they tried to determine what could be hurting their children. We “weren’t sleeping and we’re not eating — like this is driving us crazy,” said Ms. Peterson. She and her husband are suing Dollar Tree, where they bought the applesauce, and WanaBana, a U.S. distributor led by Austrofood officers.
A Dollar Tree spokeswoman said the company is committed to the safety of the products it sells. Austrofood said that it had relied on its supplier’s certification and that none of its other products have been recalled.
Their 3-year-old daughter, a fierce, bright girl who loves twirly dresses and nail polish, had a blood-lead level of 24 micrograms per deciliter, nearly seven times the C.D.C.’s level of concern. Her younger brother, an easygoing toddler who loves noisy trucks and dance music, had reached a level of 21.
Public health investigators searched their home and day care, but failed to find the source. When the parents’ blood tests came back normal, they began to suspect one food that only the children ate: foil pouches of cinnamon applesauce.
North Carolina health officials tested them and found extraordinarily high lead levels.
That prompted the F.D.A. to act.
Searching for the Source
In late October, Austrofood recalled millions of applesauce pouches. The F.D.A. has said it believes that this measure eliminated the tainted cinnamon from the U.S. food supply.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 400 infants and toddlers were poisoned. The median test result was six times the level found in the water crisis caused by lead pipes a decade ago in Flint, Mich.
The exposure in Flint was more sustained, and its long-term effects have proved difficult to quantify. But years later, the number of students in the city who qualified for special education doubled.
Earlier this month, the F.D.A. said that Ecuadorean investigators believe the cinnamon was likely contaminated by Carlos Aguilera, who ran a spice mill. The Ecuadorean health agency filed an administrative complaint against Mr. Aguilera, saying he had operated without a permit and used broken machinery that increased the risk of impurities, records show. The complaint is pending.
Ecuadorean officials took packaged cinnamon from Mr. Aguilera’s customers that tested positive for lead, according to inspection reports and interviews.
But investigators found no contaminated cinnamon at Mr. Aguilera’s plant, records show. In an interview with reporters, he denied adding lead chromate.
Austrofood is not explicitly required to test its products for lead. Under F.D.A. regulations, companies must only identify likely food-safety hazards and develop plans to address them.
Austrofood had a plan, but lead was not among its anticipated risks, according to F.D.A. records.
After the lead poisoning, the F.D.A. cited Austrofood for failing to identify lead as a hazard, agency records show.
Where Was the F.D.A.?
The industry was never supposed to entirely police itself. The food-safety law called for the F.D.A. to increase overseas oversight and conduct about 19,000 international food inspections annually.
The agency never came close to that target. Last year, records show that regulators conducted about 1,200 overseas inspections — visiting less than 1 percent of F.D.A.-registered international food makers.
When the Government Accountability Office flagged the problem in 2015, the F.D.A. cited insufficient funding and questioned “the usefulness of conducting that many inspections.” The accountability office recently said it was still waiting for the F.D.A. to say what it considered the appropriate number of inspections.
U.S. officials inspected Austrofood in 2019. It is not clear what testing they conducted, but trade records show that the company was not exporting cinnamon products to the United States, so the spice was likely not a factor in the inspection. Regulators found no problems that they advised fixing, records show.
Inspectors did not return until the lead poisoning was discovered nearly five years later.
There is no record of the F.D.A. ever inspecting the original source of the cinnamon, the Sri Lanka-based Samagi Spice Exports. Nanda Kohona, the company’s marketing director, said the company conducted its own lead tests.
None of the other companies in the cinnamon supply chain were eligible for F.D.A. inspections because they do not ship directly to the United States.
“I think the missing piece is having a totally independent regulatory agency checking up on the process, going in and doing inspections,” said Sarah Sorscher, director of regulatory affairs for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Ms. Peterson, the North Carolina mother whose persistence touched off the search, said she was relieved when the applesauce was discovered as the source of lead. But her family is now watching closely for developmental delays in their children.
Even low levels of lead exposure in children have been linked to hyperactivity, mood swings and deficits in reading and social skills.
“We just hope at the end of the day that our kids just are healthy and can stay healthy,” she said.
“They shouldn’t have to worry about what they eat. No one should.”
Genevieve Glatsky and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.
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9) Hamas Signals No Breakthrough in Cease-Fire Talks
By Aaron Boxerman and Hwaida Saad, Feb. 27, 2024
Israeli tanks near the border with Gaza on Monday. Credit...Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
After President Biden expressed cautious optimism about the prospect of a cease-fire in Gaza by next week, Hamas on Tuesday played down suggestions that it was close to reaching an agreement with Israel.
Basem Naim, a Hamas spokesman, said in a text message that Hamas had yet to formally receive “any new proposals” since senior Israeli officials met with Qatari, Egyptian and U.S. mediators in Paris last week to advance a possible deal.
In Paris, Israeli officials discussed a proposal in which roughly 40 hostages could be freed during a roughly six-week cease-fire, which they hope to reach before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins in less than two weeks. In exchange, the officials said, Israel would free Palestinian prisoners — including some serving heavy sentences for terrorism, a notable concession aimed at persuading Hamas to make a deal.
Hamas’s political leaders have long insisted publicly that any new deal to release the more than 100 hostages still being held in Gaza must lead to a permanent cease-fire. Israel has said it will not compromise on its goal of toppling Hamas in Gaza, suggesting it is not ready to declare a long-term truce despite growing international pressure to do so.
Another Hamas official, Ahmad Abdelhadi, said that the group was sticking to its demands and that leaks about the talks were designed to put pressure on Hamas to soften its position.
Hamas “is not interested in any concessions that do not lead to a complete and total cessation of the aggression against our people,” Mr. Abdelhadi said in an interview with al-Mayadeen, a Lebanese broadcaster, televised on Tuesday. “We are not interested in engaging with what’s been floated, because it does not fulfill our demands,” he added.
Qatar, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas, also expressed caution on Tuesday, saying it could not comment on Mr. Biden’s view that negotiators were nearing an agreement. The talks have not reached a breakthrough, although mediators remain optimistic, said Majed al-Ansari, the spokesman for the Qatari foreign ministry.
“The efforts are ongoing, all the parties are conducting regular meetings,” Mr. Al-Ansari told reporters in Doha. “But for now, while we certainly hope it will be achieved as soon as possible, we don’t have anything in our hands so as to comment on that deadline.”
Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas’s political wing, met with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, on Monday to discuss the negotiations. Mr. Haniyeh accused Israel of dragging its feet in the talks and warned that time was running out, according to a Hamas statement about the meeting.
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10) The Red Crescent paused some missions in Gaza after Israeli forces detained its medics.
By Raja Abdulrahim and Nick Cumming-Bruce, Feb. 27, 2024
Palestinian Red Crescent workers near Khan Younis in southern Gaza in December. Credit...Saher Alghorra/ZUMA, via Alamy
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has suspended emergency medical missions for two days in part of Gaza after Israeli forces intercepted a humanitarian convoy evacuating patients from a hospital, interrogating and detaining medical workers.
The Red Crescent and U.N. officials said they had cleared arrangements for the joint Sunday night evacuation mission with the Israeli authorities in advance. Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. aid office in Geneva, said on Tuesday that Israel had known the details of the route, the vehicles and the identities of those traveling in the convoy.
But after the convoy left Al-Amal Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, carrying 24 patients who required surgery, it was nevertheless stopped by Israeli forces.
The soldiers ordered patients and aid workers out of the vehicles, forced paramedics to strip out of their clothes and held the convoy for seven hours, U.N. officials said. One of those detained was released hours later, the Red Crescent said.
In a statement, the Israeli military said that it had stopped the convoy “following intelligence that raised the possibility” that Hamas members were traveling in it. It said it had questioned the Red Crescent workers because of “information regarding their possible involvement in terrorist activity.” It did not say what that information was.
During its monthslong ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israel has detained thousands of men, women and children in large sweeps, stripping them in public before taking them to Israel where they are held incommunicado for weeks or months and interrogated.
The latest incident led the Red Crescent to announce on Monday that it would suspend “all humanitarian coordination procedures on medical missions” in Gaza for the first time since Israel began its military offensive on Oct. 7, meaning it would pause missions to areas where it must arrange its movements with Israeli troops. The group criticized “the lack of commitment and respect of the Israeli occupation forces to the procedures and coordination mechanisms agreed upon.”
It was not the first time personnel with the Red Crescent, one of the main medical aid groups operating in Gaza, came under attack by Israeli forces, said Nebal Farsakh, a spokeswoman for the group.
“In most of the missions, despite prior coordination and approval from the Israeli side, our teams are targeted,” she said in an interview. “They are have been shot at — we have martyrs; paramedics have been killed while on coordinated missions — or repeatedly detained.”
Earlier this month, a missing 6-year-old Palestinian girl and the two Red Crescent rescuers who went looking for her were found dead in Gaza City. The aid group said the rescuers — Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun — had been killed by Israeli fire after their ambulance was bombed, “despite prior coordination” of their movements with the Israeli military. The Israeli military has not commented on the deaths.
In December, Israeli forces shot at a United Nations convoy of armored vehicles as it was returning from delivering aid in northern Gaza, U.N. officials said at the time. The convoy was driving along a route designated by the Israeli military, the U.N. said. No one was injured.
On Tuesday, the U.N. humanitarian team for the Palestinian territories said the interception of the Al-Amal convoy was “not an isolated incident.”
“Aid convoys have come under fire and are systematically denied access to people in need,” it said in a statement. “Humanitarian workers have been harassed, intimidated or detained by Israeli forces and humanitarian infrastructure has been hit.”
The mission to Al-Amal on Sunday was the first since Jan. 21, when the hospital was cut off by intense fighting. In the intervening month the hospital was attacked 40 times, resulting in the death of at least 25 people, the U.N. reported.
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11) A Jordanian-French airdrop underscores the urgency of Gazans’ need.
By Anushka Patil, Feb. 27, 2024
Large crowds gathered along the coast in Deir al Balah on Monday as Jordan and France airdropped food and other aid supplies, some of which ended up in the sea. Credit...Alaa Fayad, via X (Screenshot)
Jordan and France airdropped food and other supplies to people in Gaza on Monday, parachuting some packages of aid into the sea, a challenging effort that underlined the desperate need in Gaza as aid groups have warned of growing restrictions on their ability to distribute supplies.
Video footage showed a cluster of parachutes falling into the sea near Deir al Balah, a city in central Gaza. Men in small boats paddled out through choppy water to retrieve the aid, watched by a crowd of hundreds who scrambled for the packages once they had reached the shore.
Alaa Fayad, a veterinary student who shot footage of the scene on the beach that he posted online, said the aid did not amount to much. “It was sad seeing people I know well running and crowding to get aid that’s not nearly enough,” he said.
Three planes from the Royal Jordanian Air Force and one from its French counterpart dropped the supplies, including ready-made meals, over several sites, the Jordanian Army said in a statement. The French plane dropped more than two tons of food and hygiene supplies, the French foreign ministry said.
The amount is just a fraction of what the United Nations says is the need facing Gaza’s more than two million residents. The two tons of aid dropped by the French plane is less than a single truckload of supplies. It was not immediately clear why at least some of the aid was dropped over the sea.
Aid groups typically drop supplies by air only as a last resort, given the inefficiency and relative cost of the method compared to road deliveries, as well as the risk to people who could potentially be hit as it falls to the ground.
Still, France, which participated in an earlier airdrop, said it was ramping up its work with Jordan because Gaza’s “humanitarian situation is absolutely urgent,” according to a French foreign ministry statement.
“With a growing number of civilians in Gaza dying of hunger and disease,” the statement said, there need to be more avenues for aid deliveries, including the port of Ashdod in Israel, north of Gaza.
Jordan began airdropping aid in November and has completed more than a dozen missions since, largely to resupply its field hospitals in Gaza. At least one airdrop mission was jointly carried out with France in January, and two others delivered aid supplied by the Netherlands and Britain.
In previous airdrops, Jordan said it had coordinated its efforts with the Israeli authorities, who have insisted on inspecting all aid entering Gaza. The Israeli military confirmed that it had approved the latest airdrops and said that it had not advised the French and Jordanians to drop the aid over the sea.
Calls for internationally coordinated airdrops have intensified as aid groups simultaneously warn that the hunger crisis in Gaza is reaching a tipping point and that some obstacles to traditional aid distribution have become insurmountable.
Last week, the World Food Program suspended food deliveries to northern Gaza, saying that despite extreme needs there, it could not safely operate amid gunfire and the “collapse of civil order” in recent days. The W.F.P. and other United Nations aid agencies have repeatedly warned that their access to northern Gaza was being systematically impeded by Israeli authorities, calling on the government to ease its restrictions. Israel has denied blocking aid deliveries.
The suspension of W.F.P. deliveries in an area where they are needed most indicates that, despite their many limitations, airdrops may be one of the few viable options remaining to quickly get food to northern Gaza, according to Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Middle East policy analyst who grew up in the enclave. Jordan’s airdrops, he said, have set a “critical precedent” for the feasibility of the approach.
“Simply wishing for a cease-fire or simply wishing for better Israeli cooperation” is not enough, Mr. Fouad Alkhatib said. “We need action right now.”
Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Nader Ibrahim contributed reporting.
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12) Israel submits a report on measures to prevent genocide in Gaza, as ordered by the U.N.’s top court.
By Anushka Patil, Feb. 27, 2024
Palestinians recovering a victim as they searched a damaged building in Rafah on Monday. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock
The Israeli government said on Monday that it had submitted a progress report demanded by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the U.N.’s highest court, on measures it ordered Israel to take last month to prevent the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave.
The filing from Israel, whose contents were not made public, came after several human rights groups issued statements on Monday accusing Israel of violating the court’s legally binding order. Because the court does not have an enforcement mechanism, the rights groups also called on other countries to pressure Israel to comply and to stop providing it with weapons.
In an interim ruling on Jan. 26 in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide, the court ordered Israel to immediately implement six measures to limit harm to Palestinian civilians and report back within a month. The measures included taking all steps within Israel’s power to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza and enabling the provision of “urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.”
The International Federation for Human Rights said that Israel had “utterly failed” to comply with the court’s order and that violence against Palestinian civilians had “continued unabated.”
Similar condemnations were issued by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which cited data from the United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs showing that even as the risk of famine grew, Israeli restrictions on aid distribution remained in place and the daily average number of aid trucks entering Gaza dropped significantly in the weeks after the court’s order.
“The Israeli government is starving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, putting them in even more peril than before the World Court’s binding order,” Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s director for Israel and Palestine, said in a statement.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the accusations made by the human rights groups. It has previously denied responsibility for the lack of aid reaching civilians. The Israeli military’s top lawyer recently found “unacceptable conduct” by Israeli forces in Gaza, including some that appeared criminal, and warned commanders to prevent violations of international law that would damage Israel’s standing.
Airwars, a nonprofit watchdog that monitors civilian deaths in conflict zones, released a report on Monday that detailed “patterns of harm” for Palestinian civilians in Gaza during the two weeks following the court’s interim ruling.
Civilians in Gaza were reported killed each day during that time period, Airwars said. It identified five incidents in which civilians waiting to receive humanitarian aid were killed or injured, and six in which health care workers or emergency medical workers were killed.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, about 3,700 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since the court’s ruling on Jan. 26. The ministry said that as of Monday, more than 29,000 people had been killed since the start of the war.
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