Thursday, March 14, 2024 at 5:30 P.M.
Jack Adams Hall
San Francisco State University
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See Gaza Strip Access Restrictions.pdf since 2007 at:
** 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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*Major Announcement*
Claudia De la Cruz wins
Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!
We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.
We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.
We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!
We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.
We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.
The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step:
Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer
Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate
See you in the streets,
Claudia & Karina
Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx
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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
Sign the petition:
https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/
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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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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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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) Thousands of pregnant women in Gaza suffer from malnutrition, health authorities say.
By Hiba Yazbek and Ameera Harouda reporting from Jerusalem and Doha, Qatar, March 10, 2024
A pregnant Palestinian woman, center, displaced from northern Gaza, in a warehouse where she was taking shelter in Rafah, southern Gaza, last month. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When Wafaa al-Kurd was nearly due to give birth, she said, she weighed less than she did before becoming pregnant and was surviving on rice and artificial juice.
She gave birth to a girl weighing nearly six pounds, named Tayma, just over two weeks ago, she said. Since then, her husband has spent his days scouring markets in northern Gaza, where the family lives, trying to find enough food for his wife to breastfeed and keep Tayma alive.
Nearly 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza are suffering from malnutrition, dehydration and lack of proper health care, according to the Gaza health ministry. In a statement on Friday, the ministry said that about 5,000 women in Gaza were giving birth every month in “harsh, unsafe and unhealthy conditions as a result of bombardment and displacement.”
The ministry added that about 9,000 women, including thousands of mothers and pregnant women, had been killed since Israel’s bombardment and invasion began in early October.
The United Nations and aid agencies have warned that famine is looming in the besieged enclave, where health officials reported that at least 25 people, most of them children, died from malnutrition and dehydration in recent days.
Dr. Deborah Harrington, an obstetrician working at Al Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, said the expectant and new mothers she treated had not received nearly enough pre- and postnatal care, risking both their lives and their babies’.
Some of the new mothers she spoke to said they were forced to give birth in the street, in their shelters or in their cars, because they could not safely reach a hospital in time, Dr. Harrington said.
“Many of them are delivering unsafely, without birth attendants in a hygienic setting, with no lifesaving resources available,” she said.
The Global Nutrition Cluster, a group of aid agencies working in Gaza, found in a report last month that more than 90 percent of children under 2 and pregnant and breastfeeding women, in both northern Gaza and the southern city of Rafah, faced severe food poverty.
Ms. al-Kurd said her biggest pregnancy craving was for tomatoes, which were very scarce in northern Gaza. On her birthday, in November, her husband, Saleh, was determined to find her some.
Hours later, when he finally came home — holding a bag of extremely expensive tomatoes that he bought at the only shop that sold them — his wife was “happier than she was when I bought her a gold ring for her birthday last year,” he said in a phone call on Friday.
Like Ms. Al-Kurd, Aya Saada, who is seven months pregnant with her second child, said that she had not been able to find fruits or vegetables to eat in recent months. She added that she did not always have filtered water to drink. “I’m always getting dizzy and nauseous and I’m constantly tired,” said Ms. Saada, 23, who is sheltering at a hospital in northern Gaza.
“You’re supposed to gain weight during your pregnancy,” Ms. Saada said in a voice message on Friday. “But instead, I’m losing weight.” she added.
Vulnerable mothers give birth to vulnerable babies, Dr. Harrington said, and pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers face particularly high risks of malnourishment.
“If you are malnourished, you’re more likely to be anemic,” she said. “You will miss all the kinds of micronutrients that you need to grow a baby safely.”
Pregnant women who have been injured in the bombardment or who have contracted infectious diseases — which are spreading rapidly throughout Gaza — also face much higher risks of miscarriage and stillbirth, Dr. Harrington added.
“When mothers are ill, then their babies can be ill, too, and that increases stillbirth rates,” she said. “Because women are not having prenatal care, you can’t pick up problems.”
Ms. Saada said that her biggest fear — calling it the only thing on her mind — was that her baby would be born with health issues because she lacked nutritious food and clean water during pregnancy. “It’s not possible to prepare for the arrival of my baby,” she said. “We are now just looking for food to eat.”
“The food I’m eating now is not healthy,” said Kholoud Saada, 34, who is nine months pregnant and sheltering, with her four children, in a tent at a school in northern Gaza, and who is not related to Aya Saada. “There is no healthy food in the markets now, no chicken or fish,” she said. “There is no food fit for a pregnant woman,” she added in a voice message on Friday.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting from Haifa, Israel, and Gaya Gupta from New York.
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2) A U.S. military ship has set sail to help build a pier off Gaza for aid.
By Cassandra Vinograd, March 10, 2024
The coastline at Deir al Balah in southern Gaza last month. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
The U.S. military said on Sunday that a ship had set sail carrying equipment to build a floating pier on Gaza’s coast, part of a Biden administration effort to deliver aid to the enclave by sea and help ease its hunger crisis.
The administration’s plan for a pier and causeway, announced last week, could eventually help deliver as many as two million meals a day for residents of Gaza. But the Pentagon has said that the project will take weeks to complete, and humanitarian officials have criticized the plans, saying delivering aid by truck is far more efficient.
On Sunday, the U.S. military said that an Army ship, the General Frank S. Besson, had set sail from a base near Norfolk, Va., a day earlier.
“Besson, a logistics support vessel, is carrying the first equipment to establish a temporary pier to deliver vital humanitarian supplies,” it said in a post on social media.
The Pentagon has said that one of the main military units involved in the construction of the floating pier would be the Army’s Seventh Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), and that some 1,000 American service members would work to complete it.
The Israeli military will help coordinate the installation of the pier, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said on Saturday. Shipments will be inspected by Israeli troops before they are handed off to aid groups that will distribute it, he said.
The U.S. project is the latest in a flurry of efforts to get more aid into the enclave — including by sea — amid warnings from the United Nations that a famine in Gaza is imminent.
Such plans will come with significant logistical challenges and a hefty price tag, diplomats and officials have said. Aid officials have said that trucks are the most efficient and cheapest way to deliver food and supplies to Gaza, urging Israel to open more border crossings and ease its entry restrictions.
Britain, the European Union and the United Arab Emirates said on Friday that they would join a separate maritime initiative to get aid into Gaza.
And on Saturday, World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit organization founded by the renowned Spanish chef José Andrés, said that its staff was loading a cargo ship in Cyprus with 200 tons of rice, flour and proteins. It added that the ship was expected to depart from Larnaca, Cyprus, as soon as possible and head off on an estimated 60-hour trip to the Gaza Strip.
The ship, called Open Arms, is owned by a Spanish aid group of the same name that is a partner in the initiative along with the United Arab Emirates. They are trying to deliver the first sea shipment of food and humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
Helene Cooper, Gaya Gupta and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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3) Elon Musk Has a Giant Charity. Its Money Stays Close to Home.
After making billions in tax-deductible donations to his philanthropy, the owner of Tesla and SpaceX gave away far less than required in some years — and what he did give often supported his own interests.
By David A. Fahrenthold and Ryan Mac, March 10, 2024
Reporting from Boca Chica, Texas
The current campus of the Ad Astra School, behind the security gates of a SpaceX-owned compound in Boca Chica, Texas. There is no sign of a school. Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Before March 2021, Elon Musk’s charitable foundation had never announced any donations to Cameron County, an impoverished region at the southern tip of Texas that is home to his SpaceX launch site and local officials who help regulate it.
Then, at 8:05 one morning that month, a SpaceX rocket blew up, showering the area with a rain of twisted metal.
The Musk Foundation began giving at 9:27 a.m. local time.
“Am donating $20M to Cameron County schools & $10M to City of Brownsville for downtown revitalization,” Mr. Musk said on Twitter.
Mr. Musk, the world’s second-richest person according to Forbes, presides over SpaceX, Tesla and other companies that are pushing the boundaries of technology, while also controlling a social media platform, now known as X, through which he promotes his often-polarizing political and social views.
At the same time, he runs a charity with billions of dollars, the kind of resources that could make a global impact. But unlike Bill Gates, who has deployed his fortune in an effort to improve health care across Africa, or Walmart’s Walton family, which has spurred change in the American education system, Mr. Musk’s philanthropy has been haphazard and largely self-serving — making him eligible for enormous tax breaks and helping his businesses.
Since 2020, he has seeded his charity with tax-deductible donations of stock worth more than $7 billion at the time, making it one of the largest in the country.
The foundation that houses the money has failed in recent years to give away the bare minimum required by law to justify the tax break, exposing it to the risk of having to pay the government a substantial financial penalty.
Mr. Musk has not hired any staff for his foundation, tax filings show. Its billions are handled by a board that consists of himself and two volunteers, one of whom reports putting in so little time that it averages out to six minutes per week.
In 2022, the last year for which records are available, they gave away $160 million, which was $234 million less than the law required — the fourth-largest shortfall of any foundation in the country.
Mr. Musk is under no obligation to have a charity, and he has made clear that he believes his for-profit enterprises will change the world for the better far more than any philanthropic venture could. But once he set up a nonprofit and filled it with tax-deductible gifts, he was required by law to ensure that his foundation served the public, and that it did not operate for the “private benefit” of its leader.
A New York Times analysis found that, of the Musk Foundation’s giving in 2021 and 2022 — the latest years for which full data is available — about half of the donations had some link to Mr. Musk, one of his employees or one of his businesses.
Among the donations the Musk Foundation has made, there was $55 million to help a major SpaceX customer meet a charitable pledge. There were the millions that went to Cameron County, Texas, after the rocket blew up. And there were donations to two schools closely tied to his businesses: one walled off inside a SpaceX compound, the other located next to a new subdivision for Musk’s employees.
“The really striking thing about Musk is the disjuncture between his outsized public persona, and his very, very minimal philanthropic presence,” said Benjamin Soskis, who studies philanthropy at the Urban Institute. Where other billionaires have aimed for a broad impact on society, Mr. Soskis said Mr. Musk’s foundation lacks “any direction or any real focus, outside his business ventures.”
Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
A school for his children
Mr. Musk and his younger brother, Kimbal, started the Musk Foundation in 2001, a year before the sale of PayPal, the online payments company he co-founded, to eBay for $1.5 billion. He made more than $175 million in the sale, and would seed his namesake foundation with about $2 million worth of eBay shares.
The Musk Foundation’s website initially included slick animations, featuring pictures of satellite dishes and children in classrooms, while encouraging people to apply for grants. By 2005, however, it was wiped clean, replaced by plain black text stating that the foundation was interested in “science education, pediatric health and clean energy.”
It listed no contact information. It still does not.
By September 2014, Forbes estimated that Mr. Musk’s net worth was more than $10 billion, driven up by the value of his holdings of Tesla stock. But he gave little to his own charity. That year, tax filings show, his foundation had $40,121 in the bank.
That fit with Mr. Musk’s public stance on philanthropy. His for-profit companies, he said, were his way of changing the world.
“Tesla has done more to help the environment than all other companies combined,” he said last year at The New York Times’s DealBook conference. “As a leader of the company, I’ve done more for the environment than any single human on earth.”
Mr. Musk, instead, used his small foundation to help groups tied to him personally, including a food charity run by his brother and a “Temple of Whollyness” that was set on fire at the 2013 Burning Man festival, an annual event that he often attends.
He also founded his own nonprofit school called Ad Astra — Latin for “to the stars” — to explore new ways to teach math and science.
But that school, too, would serve a personal purpose for Mr. Musk. In its first year of operation out of his home in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, five of Ad Astra’s 14 students were his own children.
“Kindness and eagerness to learn (and parents that worked at SpaceX) were the only criteria for admission,” wrote Joshua Dahn, the initial head of the school.
Ad Astra later moved to SpaceX’s Hawthorne, Calif., headquarters and grew to more than 50 students. About half were related to SpaceX employees, Mr. Dahn said in an email. Mr. Dahn’s contract even said that the intellectual property he developed at the school would be half owned by Mr. Musk personally, according to a copy obtained by The Times.
Two former SpaceX executives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, recalled that Ad Astra was sometimes discussed as a perk for the children of executives, though it was understood to be near impossible for the offspring of rank-and-file employees to gain admission.
Mr. Musk made a $254 million gift of Tesla stock to his foundation in 2016, and its grants got bigger, but they still seemed to follow no coherent theme.
The Musk Foundation donated $10 million to OpenAI — the groundbreaking artificial intelligence developer, where he sat on the board of directors. (OpenAI was a nonprofit at the time of the gift, though it has now spun out several for-profit companies.) Mr. Musk said in a recent lawsuit against the organization and its founders that he personally gave an additional $34 million before stopping his gifts in 2020. Mr. Musk previously said he had given about $100 million to OpenAI.
But Mr. Musk’s giving often seemed guided by Twitter, where he made splashy promises in response to challenges from internet celebrities: He gave $1 million to plant trees after prompting from the YouTuber Mr. Beast and $1 million to help small businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic after a push from Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports.
On July 5, 2018, he began interacting with Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny, a youth activist in Flint, Mich., who asked him for bicycles for local kids and clean water for her city, which was experiencing a crisis with its water supply. Less than a week later, Mr. Musk tweeted “a commitment” that he would “fund fixing the water in any house in Flint that has water contamination above FDA levels.”
“Will organize a weekend in Flint to add filters to those houses with issues,” he said in another tweet.
But Mr. Musk’s giving often seemed guided by Twitter, where he made splashy promises in response to challenges from internet celebrities: He gave $1 million to plant trees after prompting from the YouTuber Mr. Beast and $1 million to help small businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic after a push from Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports.
On July 5, 2018, he began interacting with Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny, a youth activist in Flint, Mich., who asked him for bicycles for local kids and clean water for her city, which was experiencing a crisis with its water supply. Less than a week later, Mr. Musk tweeted “a commitment” that he would “fund fixing the water in any house in Flint that has water contamination above FDA levels.”
“Will organize a weekend in Flint to add filters to those houses with issues,” he said in another tweet.
Flint asked for much more.
It sent Mr. Musk a four-page letter, asking him to fund new water infrastructure and wide-scale pipe replacements in homes. It also asked Mr. Musk to open a research office or manufacturing facility in the city.
Few of those wishes came true. Tesla sent a corporate development executive, who offered rides around the city hall parking lot in a company vehicle, and Mr. Musk briefly considered placing a self-driving artificial intelligence facility in the city, according to communications obtained by The Times. He also visited Flint and Ms. Copeny’s school.
But Tesla never opened an office there. And since mid-2019, the Musk Foundation has not listed any more gifts to Flint for home water filters or other causes.
Still, the mayor said she was grateful. “He didn’t have to do anything,” she said.
A big donation and a big tax break
At the end of 2021, Mr. Musk had a problem. He had exercised options from a stock bonus plan from Tesla that gave him about $25 billion worth of shares in the automaker. But that came with a price.
“I will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year,” he later posted.
Tax law gives executives sitting on huge stores of their companies’ stock a way to lower that bill: charity. Mr. Musk could donate shares of Tesla, whose stock price had boomed in recent years, to a nonprofit and take a tax deduction based on the value of the stock. It did not matter that he might have paid little to obtain the shares.
In October of that year, Mr. Musk had publicly flirted with the idea of a charitable mega-gift. On Twitter, he wrote that if the United Nations World Food Program could describe how it would spend the money, he would sell Tesla stock and give the program $6 billion.
The U.N. program replied with a plan, but Mr. Musk gave nothing. Instead, Mr. Musk gave to his own foundation: five million Tesla shares, worth $5.7 billion at the time.
The gift tripled the Musk Foundation’s assets and put it among the 20 largest foundations in the country. Tax experts said it could have saved Mr. Musk more than $2 billion off his tax bill.
More donations from Mr. Musk meant more responsibility for his foundation. Tax law requires all foundations to give away 5 percent of their assets every year, so the Musk Foundation was expected to dole out hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
The foundation did not add paid staff to meet that new benchmark. The only recorded change was a tiny one: Matilda Simon, one of Mr. Musk’s family-office employees, who also serves as one of the foundation’s three volunteer board members, increased her workload from 0 hours to 0.1 hours, or six minutes a week, according to tax filings.
The foundation’s two other volunteers — Mr. Musk and Jared Birchall, who as head of Mr. Musk’s family office helps manage his wealth — reported that they each worked an hour a week. Ms. Simon and Mr. Birchall did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2021, the Musk Foundation fell $41 million short of the minimum required donation, tax filings show. In 2022, it missed the 5 percent mark by even more: $193 million. That year, Musk’s foundation gave away only about 2.25 percent of its $7 billion in assets, far below the 5 percent minimum, tax filings show.
With shortfall piled on shortfall, the Musk Foundation was then left $234 million behind by the end of 2022, the fourth-largest gap of any foundation in the country, according to Cause IQ, a firm that analyzes charity data.
“It tells you it’s not yet ready for prime time,” said Brian Galle, a professor who studies nonprofit law at Georgetown University, referring to the minimal giveaways by the foundation. “It’s not yet a professional organization.”
The Musk Foundation has not released details of what it gave away in 2023, or whether it made up its shortfall from the year before. If it did not, it could owe a penalty tax equal to 30 percent of the remaining shortfall from 2022.
Some of the money that the Musk Foundation did give away during those years went to groups with no obvious connection to Mr. Musk’s businesses.
The foundation, for instance, gave $112 million to the XPRIZE Foundation, to honor researchers who remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and oceans. It gave $10 million to the University of Texas to study human population trends — a matter of concern to Mr. Musk, who has said he fears Earth’s population could collapse. That gift was first reported by Bloomberg.
But other grants landed close to Mr. Musk’s own interests.
The Musk Foundation, for instance, gave $5 million to a United Nations program that helps countries identify rural schools that need internet access. In at least two cases, those countries then became Mr. Musk’s customers, connecting their schools with his Starlink satellite service.
One of the biggest gifts helped one of SpaceX’s customers: Jared Isaacman, a Pennsylvania billionaire, who chartered a trip to orbit on a SpaceX rocket in 2021. Mr. Isaacman said the flight would raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital by raffling off one of the four seats on the flight. (Mr. Isaacman declined to say at the time how much he paid for the seats he reserved except that he planned to raise far more for charity than he spent.)
But when Mr. Isaacman touched down on Earth, the mission’s Twitter account said it was still short of his $200 million goal.
“Count me in for $50M,” Mr. Musk tweeted back. The Musk Foundation eventually paid $55 million, its largest donation that year.
A few months later, Mr. Isaacman announced he would pay SpaceX for three more spaceflights. He declined to answer questions about the flights or Mr. Musk’s donation.
Experts on nonprofit law said there appeared to be nothing illegal about that gift, because it did not involve the Musk Foundation paying Mr. Musk or his customer directly.
But Kathleen Enright, the president of the Council on Foundations, said she would have advised Mr. Musk to recuse himself from this decision — and let the other members of the foundation’s board decide whether to give. She said that would ensure that Mr. Musk was not letting the needs of his business control the actions of his foundation, which is supposed to be an independent entity with its own charitable goals.
“It’s not his checkbook,” Ms. Enright said. “It’s not a private, family-owned company. It’s a charitable organization.”
Money for Texas
Starting in late 2020, Mr. Musk began to shift his business operations from California to Texas, and his charities followed.
The Ad Astra School, which had educated some SpaceX employees’ children, moved to a location near the company’s launch site in South Texas. At first, it seemed to be open to the public, according to an archived version of its website from last year.
But that website disappeared. And the Ad Astra campus was placed behind the security gates of a SpaceX-owned compound. At the campus today, there is no sign of a school, only a security guard in a pickup truck and signs that say “Private Property. No Trespassing.”
Mr. Musk has also given $100 million from his foundation to a startup Texas charity called “The Foundation,” which says it wants to start schools and eventually a university.
The donation moved money out of the Musk Foundation, helping it get closer to reaching that 5 percent minimum donation. But it did not move the money out of Mr. Musk’s orbit: the new charity is run by Mr. Birchall, the head of his family office, and two leaders at Mr. Musk’s accounting firm.
Land records show that the new charity used a shell company to purchase a 40-acre plot of land near Bastrop, Texas. The land is two minutes from a 110-home subdivision that one of Mr. Musk’s companies, a tunneling startup called The Boring Company, is building for its own workers. Online job postings indicate they are planning to open a new Ad Astra School there this summer. The new charity’s leaders declined to answer questions from The Times.
In South Texas, Mr. Musk also used his foundation to rebuild SpaceX’s reputation after the 2021 rocket explosion.
A few days before the blast, Mr. Musk had gone to the office of the top elected official in Cameron County, Eddie Treviño Jr., a Democrat, to complain. Mr. Musk felt the county, home to SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch complex, was taking too long to approve permits and other requests.
Mr. Treviño recounted replying that SpaceX needed to do more to help the impoverished community. “I didn’t specifically say ‘Give us X,’” meaning a specific amount of money, Mr. Treviño said. “But I said, ‘Help me raise this community.’”
But after the explosion, the donations Mr. Treviño had requested began to flow.
But the money didn’t come from SpaceX. Instead, it came from the Musk Foundation.
The foundation paid local schools at least $18 million, which they used to buy everything from classroom laptops to pop-up planetariums to tools for teaching welding to adults. “Some of those adult learners are now working at SpaceX,” said Nereida “Nellie” Cantu, the top official in the Brownsville school district.
The foundation also paid to fix up Brownsville’s dusty downtown. The result was to provide more upscale restaurants — like Le Rêve, Brownsville’s first French bistro — at a time when Mr. Musk was trying to entice employees to move there.
Without any staff to handle the South Texas donations, Mr. Musk deputized Igor Kurganov — a friend and former professional poker player who was never listed as an employee of the foundation — as a liaison. Mr. Kurganov often drilled local officials on the smallest details, like the color of the lights on a Christmas display paid for by the foundation: “‘cool white’ strikes me as suboptimal.”
Mr. Kurganov, who left the Musk Foundation in 2022, did not respond to requests for comment. Brownsville’s mayor said that, so far, Mr. Musk’s foundation has only given about $4.5 million of the $10 million he promised in 2021 for downtown beautification.
But if Mr. Musk’s goal was to improve his company’s public image in Brownsville, the donations appear to have helped.
“He’s given to every organization that exists here in Brownsville, from our homeless shelters to the city of Brownsville to our school children — almost anything I can ever think of,” Jessica Tetreau, a member of the city commission, said in a video filmed outside Mr. Musk’s rocket launch headquarters.
A fresh mural in Brownsville’s downtown depicts the city’s old landmarks — the cathedral, the zoo, the Gulf of Mexico beach — alongside a new one: SpaceX’s rocket complex.
The name of the charity that helped pay for the mural is listed at the bottom left: The Musk Foundation.
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4) A Showcase for Israeli Property Creates Rancor in a Diverse Town
A synagogue in Teaneck, N.J., hosted a show promoting real estate in Israel. Pro-Palestinian groups organized angry demonstrations outside.
By John Leland and Arvind Dilawar, March 11, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/nyregion/synagogue-protest-teaneck-nj.html
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered to protest an event promoting property in Israel. A smaller group of pro-Israel demonstrators confronted them. Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times
Hundreds of demonstrators protested on Sunday outside an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Teaneck, N.J., where 35 Israeli real estate companies were promoting their properties to potential American buyers.
The demonstrators carried Palestinian flags and signs denouncing Israel. Some brought prayer rugs and paused their chants to pray. Cars honked in support, or drivers and passengers flung vitriol at the demonstrators.
The demonstrators traded profanities and taunts with a much smaller group of pro-Israel counter-demonstrators, and police had to break up a few potential fights, but overall they kept the two groups separated.
The real estate show, at Congregation Keter Torah, is one of several in the area this month that have sparked heated protests. And just before the local events, at a sales event outside Toronto last weekend, a man was arrested on charges of attacking pro-Palestinian demonstrators with a nail gun.
Two Israeli companies, called Home in Israel and My Home in Israel, are holding shows in New York and New Jersey within a few days of each other, sometimes in the same Orthodox synagogue. Both companies say the events are promotional, with no actual sales.
Opponents say that the shows violate United States fair housing laws because most of the properties are available only to Jews, and that the Teaneck real estate fair, because it includes properties in the West Bank, also violates international law.
The United Nations and much of the international community, including the United States, say that the West Bank settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention’s proscriptions against moving population into an occupied territory or forcing out people who are there. Israel disputes this contention.
Juda Engelmayer, a spokesman for Keter Torah in Teaneck, said the synagogue merely rented its space to the organizers.
Both companies say that the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and subsequent war have spurred some Jewish Americans’ interest in buying Israeli real estate. In Teaneck, several attendees said they were interested in buying property both because they want to support Israel, and because of rising antisemitism in the United States, especially since the war’s start.
“We are victims of psychological terrorism,” said Emma Horowitz, citing extreme security measures taken at her children’s Jewish school since Oct. 7.
Similar sales events have gone on for decades, sometimes with protests outside. But this year, amid the anger over Israel’s war in Gaza, demonstrations have been more robust. “For us, it’s just pretty outrageous,” said Wassim Kanaan, chair of American Muslims for Palestine-New Jersey, one of the groups that organized against the Teaneck event.
“This has nothing to do with the Jewish faith,” he said. “It has everything to do with the policies of the state of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians. But there’s a weaponization of antisemitism allegations to silence advocates for Palestine.”
Further events by My Home in Israel, which organized the Teaneck show, are slated for synagogues in Cedarhurst, on Long Island, on Tuesday, and in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Wednesday.
At least two complaints have been filed with state and federal civil rights offices against the events.
Tara Oliver, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey attorney general’s office, declined to discuss the Teaneck event, citing “potential or pending enforcement matters.” But she said that the state’s Law Against Discrimination “generally prohibits entities from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, national origin, ancestry, and other protected characteristics in housing,” though it allows some exceptions for religious entities. The office will have to determine how or whether the law applies to land sales in Israel and the West Bank, where restrictive covenants are legal.
Teaneck, which once touted itself as a model of religious harmony, with a Muslim mayor and an Orthodox Jewish deputy mayor, has become a seat of conflict over the Israeli-Palestinian hostilities. The township, with a population of almost 42,000, has the second-largest Jewish community in the state, accounting for more than a third of the residents, and at least 15 synagogues. But it is also a diverse township, and since the start of the war, residents say, it has become increasingly polarized.
“A lot of this stuff is raw on both sides,” said Rayed Hassan, who runs the Al-Ummah Cultural Center, a mosque and nonsectarian gym about four miles from Keter Torah synagogue. “Eventually, something’s got to break. And it’s not just Palestinians that are involved. You have African Americans, you have the Hispanic community involved. It’s just brewing.” He recently increased security at the center in response to threats.
In November, when about 75 students at Teaneck High School held a walkout over U.S. support of Israel’s war in Gaza, it drew scathing condemnation from local Jewish leaders and elected officials, who accused the school of fomenting antisemitism. School officials now face a federal discrimination investigation over their handling of the walkout.
Since then, tensions — and fears — have only escalated, said Hillary Goldberg, a member of the township council, who has been a vocal supporter of Israel and critic of the walkout. “I have been threatened; I had a box truck with my picture on it and the words ‘liar liar’ driven around town; my house has been broken into; I have received antisemitic messages,” she said in an email. She added, “I have never felt so afraid to be Jewish as now,” she said.
Because of the elevated potential for conflict, Home in Israel did not advertise the time or location of its events. People had to register in advance, and were screened for anti-Israel comments on social media, said Julian Shapiro, who runs Home in Israel. Both companies said that they welcome non-Jews at the events. Opponents say they have been denied entry, or required to name their synagogue and rabbi to get in.
Mr. Shapiro did explain that some of the properties shown by Home in Israel are reserved for Jews only, per Israeli law. “When there’s an area where only Jewish people can buy, Arabs don’t want to buy,” he said. “When there’s an area where Arab people live, their villages, their towns, their cities, Jewish people don’t want to live.”
Home in Israel is an affiliate of U.S.-based Keller Williams Realty and is working with Keller Williams agents licensed in New York and New Jersey. Home in Israel would not let The Times enter its events.
Mr. Shapiro stressed that Home in Israel, unlike My Home in Israel — which held the Teaneck show and upcoming shows in Long Island and Brooklyn — does not offer properties in the West Bank, though this has not stopped demonstrators from leveling this charge.
In Teaneck on Sunday, roughly 400 people attended the sales event, despite the loud protest outside. By midafternoon, as a cool drizzle thinned the crowd, protesters hurled red liquid at a car leaving the sales event. The demonstration ended peacefully, despite extremely high levels of anger.
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5) Ramadan Begins as Hunger and Fear Stalk Gaza
By Raja Abdulrahim and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, March 11, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/11/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
Marking Ramadan in Deir al Balah and Rafah in southern Gaza on Sunday. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock; Fatima Shbair/Associated Press; Said Khatib/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan is usually a time of religious devotion, dawn-to-dusk fasting, charity, family gatherings and nightly feasts.
All that seems far away this year in Gaza, now in the sixth month of an Israeli military offensive and near-total blockade. More than 31,000 people have been killed in Israel’s bombardments and ground invasion, severe hunger is spreading and the coastal strip has been devastated. The war has erased how Palestinians here used to live and observe Ramadan.
In peaceful times, the streets of Gaza’s cities would be packed with families buying Ramadan decorations and supplies — colorful lamps, food and sweets — and preparing for days of fasting, evenings of eating with family and nights of prayer at mosques.
“I remember the festivities of the month while walking through the market streets, with chants and praises everywhere,” said Ahmad Shbat, a 24-year-old street vendor. “Everything was available, and the mosques played a vital role.”
Now families have been separated and dispersed as most of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents have been forced to flee their homes. Many live in crowded tent encampments. Mosques that Israel claimed were used by Hamas fighters have been bombed to rubble. Gazans had hoped that a cease-fire deal would be reached before Ramadan began, but that didn’t happen.
Muslims can be exempt from fasting for many reasons, and some in Gaza have said that the hardships of war will make it difficult to observe daylong fasts. Others say that with starvation threatening Gaza, most are eating only one meal a day in any case and fasting will be no different from the hunger they have been forced to endure for months.
The enclave is nearing a famine, United Nations officials say. Almost no aid has reached northern Gaza for weeks. Gazan health officials say at least 20 Palestinian children have died from malnutrition and dehydration.
People are so hungry that some have resorted to eating leaves and animal feed. Many have been subsisting on a native wild plant known as Egyptian mallow, commonly eaten by Palestinians.
Mr. Shbat, who was displaced from his home, is sheltering with four members of his family in a school classroom in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza. He said that Ramadan this year “won’t be pleasant, especially because we will be away from our houses and loved ones.”
“There is no meaning to the month without gathering around the table with the family,” he said in a phone interview. And with the destruction of mosques, he added, it feels like “we lost the joy of Ramadan.”
Still, people are doing what they can to observe the holiday. At the school where Mr. Shbat is living, he said, people have prepared the courtyard for the nightly Ramadan prayers called taraweeh.
Iman Ali, a 42-year-old mother of four whose husband was killed in the war, said in a telephone interview from Jabaliya that she would spend her days going out to look for food for her children, two of whom are injured. But she can’t find anything in the markets to buy, she said. For more than a month she and her children have had barely anything to eat.
“Even without Ramadan, we are fasting,” she said.
Normally in the lead-up to Ramadan, Ms. Ali would be at her home in northern Gaza preparing the house for a month of worship and festivities. Instead, she spends her days walking the streets looking for food and praying for an aid airdrop from the sky.
Despite the daily struggles and uncertainty they are living through, they hold on to their faith and religious practices.
“We can’t not fast,” Ms. Ali said. “It’s Ramadan.”
Ameera Harouda contributed reporting.
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6) Navigating Israeli Restrictions, Many Palestinians Find It Hard to Reach Al Aqsa
Muslim access to the mosque compound has long been a point of contention as Israel has exerted tighter control.
By Raja Abdulrahim, Reporting from Jerusalem’s Old City, March 11, 2024
Muslims who were prevented from entering Al Aqsa Mosque on Friday prayed instead on a sidewalk outside the Old City of Jerusalem. Credit...Afif Amireh for The New York Times
As the sermon about the Muslim holy month of Ramadan sounded over the speakers from Al Aqsa Mosque, 13-year-old Yousef al-Sideeq sat on a bench outside the compound’s gates.
“Most Fridays they prevent me from getting in, for no reason,” the young Jerusalem resident said, referring to the Israeli police.
Every Friday, Yousef visits Jerusalem’s Old City to pray at Al Aqsa, the third holiest site for Muslims and part of the compound sacred to Jewish people, who call it the Temple Mount. But since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks and Israel’s ensuing bombardment of Gaza, heavily armed Israeli police forces who guard many of the Old City’s gates have stopped him from entering the compound, he said.
He has managed to get in only twice.
Muslim access to the mosque has long been a point of contention as Israel has exerted tighter control in recent years over the compound, one of many restrictions Palestinians living under decades of Israeli occupation have had to endure.
As Ramadan begins, many also fear what, if any, additional constraints Israel may impose on the religious site, which can draw 200,000 people in one day from not just Jerusalem but the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Israel as a whole.
The Israeli police said that people were “entering after enhanced security checks that are conducted due to the current reality, alongside efforts to prevent any disturbances.” But they did not answer specific questions about whether there was a policy preventing certain worshipers, especially young men, from entering the mosque on Friday.
They said they were “maintaining a balance between the freedom of worship and the imperative of ensuring security.”
Late on Sunday, Palestinian and Israeli news media reported that police officers prevented many Palestinians from entering Al Aqsa to perform prayers for the start of Ramadan. Both media cited a video that showed officers with batons chasing and beating some Palestinians.
Israel has said there has been no change to the status quo, which allows only Muslims to worship at the compound. The site is revered by Jews as the location of two ancient temples, and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, the compound containing Al Aqsa Mosque and other important Islamic prayer spaces. The compound includes the Dome of the Rock, a gold-domed prayer hall.
Israel captured East Jerusalem, including the Old City and the Aqsa compound, from Jordan in 1967 and later annexed it. Much of the world considers it occupied territory and does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem.
Many Palestinians say their access to Al Aqsa compound has become increasingly restricted in favor of Jews, who consider the Temple Mount the most sacred place in Judaism.
Incidents at the compound have at times been the spark for broader conflicts. The second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, was set off in 2000 when Ariel Sharon, who later became Israel’s prime minister, visited Al Aqsa surrounded by hundreds of police officers. Confrontations at the compound in May 2021 contributed to the outbreak of an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas.
Hamas, the Palestinian armed group which has been in control of Gaza for years, called its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel Al Aqsa Flood, saying it was in part a response to “Judaization plans” at the mosque.
The attack killed about 1,200 people, and some 200 people were taken hostage, according to the Israeli authorities. Israel’s assault on Gaza in its war against Hamas has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health officials.
In recent years, Jewish worshipers have prayed inside the Aqsa compound. The most extreme seek to build a third Jewish temple on the site of the Dome of the Rock.
Some of the most provocative episodes have been raids into the Aqsa compound by baton-wielding police forces firing tear gas and sponge-tipped bullets who have clashed with Palestinians throwing stones and setting off fireworks.
“Al Aqsa Flood came as a response to the settlers’ violations against Al Aqsa,” said Walid Kilani, a Hamas spokesman in Lebanon, referring to Jewish worshipers.
Israeli police officers “stormed the mosque and insulted the Muslim prayers there,” he added. “We had to retaliate, as Al Aqsa is our holy site and is mentioned in the Quran.”
In the initial weeks of the war, only Muslims ages 60 and older were allowed in, said Mohammad al-Ashhab, a spokesman for the Waqf — an Islamic trust that administers the mosque and that is financed and overseen by Jordan.
Attendance at Friday Prayer, a Muslim holy day, dropped to just 1,000 from 50,000, he said.
Though the situation has improved since then, he said, many Muslims are still prevented from attending.
Many Palestinians fear for the future of Al Aqsa, especially while Israel’s most right-wing government ever is in power.
Last week, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it had decided against putting new restrictions on Al Aqsa during Ramadan and would allow a similar number of worshipers as in previous years.
In addition to longstanding Israeli restrictions on Muslims coming from the occupied West Bank, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, had called on the government to impose limits this year on Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Still, the ambiguous language of the Israeli government’s decision has some concerned. Human rights groups fear that freedom of worship could be curtailed under the guise of security and safety.
“Netanyahu’s statement does not actually guarantee full freedom of access for Muslims to Al Aqsa, but rather conditions it on security and safety needs,” Ir Amim, an Israeli rights group that focuses on Jerusalem, said in a statement following the decision. “This in turn may lead to a decision to ultimately apply collective entry restrictions during Ramadan.”
“Our freedom of worship has gone backwards,” Mr. al-Ashhab said.
To reach Al Aqsa Mosque compound, Muslim worshipers on Friday had to get through at least three layers of police barricades, where the authorities prevented people from entering, checked IDs or searched bags. Many arrived with prayer rugs in hand.
AbdulAziz Sbeitan, 30, was rushing through a Muslim cemetery on the edge of the Old City, having been turned away from Lion’s Gate, one of seven entrances to the historic district. He was on the phone with friends who were trying to enter from other gates.
The Jerusalem native has always attended Friday Prayer at Al Aqsa, but since Oct. 7 he hasn’t been able to get in once. Each Friday he tries multiple gates.
Sometimes he accompanies an older woman or young girls in an effort to get through, but each time the police have pushed him back, he said.
“It is a house of God and the house of our ancestors,” Mr. Sbeitan said as he walked quickly toward Herod’s Gate. “As Muslims, it is important; Al Aqsa is for Muslims.”
As he arrived at Herod’s Gate, he saw many young men being turned away, in some cases violently shoved by the police.
Mr. Sbeitan cursed under his breath as he lit a cigarette, watching. Around him other young men offered advice and, in some cases, discouragement.
“Come, let’s try another gate,” one said to his friend.
“Guys, we tried all the gates, they won’t let you in,” another man told them. “They let us in once, and then once we were inside the gate they pushed us back out.”
He said the Israeli police told him that young men were not allowed to enter. Like many others, the man, a 28-year-old Jerusalemite, didn’t want to give his name for fear of retribution by the police.
It wasn’t just young single men being barred. Fathers with little children and some women were turned away as well.
“It’s all according to their whims,” one woman said as she walked away after being prevented from entering through Lion’s Gate.
As the call to prayer sounded inside Al Aqsa, Yousef, the 13-year-old, joined an impromptu gathering of dozens of young men who couldn’t get in.
In past weeks those prevented from praying inside Al Aqsa would gather in the streets and conduct their own sermon and prayer. But on Friday it seemed even harder as the Israeli police shoved them away from Lion’s Gate and farther outside the walls of the Old City.
Undeterred, one man began the call to prayer, at times barely audible over the sound of sirens and horns along the street, buses trundling past and the police shouting.
Soon, another man stepped on top of a sidewalk stone barrier and began to give an off-the-cuff sermon.
“Will we not liberate Palestine?” said the man, who gave his name only as Yousef, fearing retribution despite the risk he had already taken in leading a sermon.
As he finished, more heavily armed police officers piled out of two vehicles.
The man appeared unfazed. He then led dozens — mostly teenagers and men in their 20s and 30s — in prayer on a crowded Jerusalem sidewalk surrounded by two churches and the Tomb of the Virgin. The gold Dome of the Rock, the center of the Aqsa compound, was barely visible over the Old City walls.
Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting from London.
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