3/04/2024

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, March 5, 2024

  


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International Women’s Day

Codepink March/Rally for Gaza!

Saturday, March 9, 2024, 12:00 Noon

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, CA

 

Gather at Welcome Center Plaza

Southeast end of GG Bridge at 11:30 A.M.

March begins on Eastern Walkway at 12:00 Noon

Rally at Welcome Center Plaza after the march at 1:30 P.M.

Optional:  Bring food to share after the rally to celebrate International Women’s Day and our shared commitment for Global Peace Everywhere, from Gaza to Ukraine!


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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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March and Rally, Saturday, March 2, 2024, San Francisco

See Gaza Strip Access Restrictions.pdf since 2007 at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gaza_Strip_Access_Restrictions.pdf

Palestinians killed and wounded by Israel:
As of March 5, 2024the total number of Palestinians killed by Israel is now over 30,631,* 72,043 wounded, and more than 380+ Palestinians have been killed and 4,600 wounded by Israel in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.  The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) and the Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission released a new tally of Palestinians detained by "Israel", revealing that the number of Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank has risen to more than 6,115.

Israel lowers its estimated October 7 death toll from 1,400 to 1,147, 586 Israeli soldiers killed since ground invasion, 3,221 wounded**


*This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health on Telegram channel. Some rights groups put the death toll number at more than 38,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.

** This figure is released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.”


Source: mondoweiss.net


FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
FOR A DEMOCRATIC, SECULAR PALESTINE!

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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

Thousands at stadium sing, "You'll Never Walk Alone," and wave Palestinian flags in Scotland.


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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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0ad3mEylwY

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

Prison Radio is a project of the Redwood Justice Fund (RJF), which is a California 501c3 (Tax ID no. 680334309) not-for-profit foundation dedicated to the defense of the environment and of civil and human rights secured by law.  Prison Radio/Redwood Justice Fund PO Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94141


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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


Self Portrait by Leonard Peltier


Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132

USP Coleman 1

P.O. Box 1033

Coleman, FL 33521

Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.

Video at:

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


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

 

https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition

 

Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info

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


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Updates From Kevin Cooper 

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

 

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

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

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

As the Sam Adams Associates note:

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


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

Happy new year, and thank you for your support!

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

Twitter: @JesselynRadack

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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Emergency Hotlines

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

 

State and Local Hotlines

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

 

Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312

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

Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963

National Hotline

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

 

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


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Articles

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1) Most of the aid trucks bound for northern Gaza were stopped along the way.

By Hiba Yazbek and Adam Rasgon, Mar. 4, 2024

"Ms. Ikrayyem’s brother Muhammed, 30, who is deaf and mute, slept on the beach for three days awaiting the aid trucks, she said. But after dodging bullets on Thursday, he managed to come home with a 25-kilogram bag of flour that 50 relatives sheltering together were now rationing and mixing with animal feed to make it last as long as possible, she added."

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/04/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Palestinians carried the bodies of people who died in a chaotic scene surrounding aid trucks in Gaza City on Thursday. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Days after an aid delivery in Gaza turned into a deadly disaster, another convoy coordinated by the Israeli military failed to deliver most of its aid to desperate people in the north, Izzat Aqel, a Palestinian businessman involved in the initiative, said on Sunday.

 

Mr. Aqel, who was also involved in the aid delivery operation with the Israeli military that turned bloody last Thursday, said that 16 trucks carrying supplies were sent to the north on Saturday, but that only one made it to Gaza City. The rest, he said, had been swarmed and emptied in the Nuseirat neighborhood in central Gaza.

 

Fifteen more trucks set out for the north on Sunday evening and were slated to enter the area via an inland north-south road, he said.

 

The renewed missions — part of a newly hatched partnership with local businessmen — showed that Israel was pressing ahead with efforts to bring aid to northern Gaza, even after scores of hungry Palestinians were killed in the chaotic melee on Thursday.

 

It was not clear if the army was making significant changes to prevent a repeat of Thursday’s events. Representatives for the Israeli army referred questions about the effort to COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid deliveries into Gaza.

 

COGAT did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The agency wrote on social media that 277 trucks entered Gaza on Sunday, which it said was the highest single-day total since the start of the war. But it was unclear how many of those trucks reached northern Gaza.

 

The convoy that arrived in Gaza City before dawn on Thursday ended in devastation. More than 100 Palestinians were killed after many thousands of people massed around trucks laden with food and supplies, Gazan health officials said.

 

Israeli and Palestinian officials and witnesses offered sharply divergent accounts of the chaos. Witnesses described extensive shooting by Israeli forces, and doctors at Gaza hospitals said that most of the casualties were from gunfire. Israeli officials said most of the victims were trampled in a crush of people trying to seize the cargo, although they acknowledged that troops had opened fire at members of the crowd who, the military said, had approached “in a manner that endangered them.”

 

The operation came as hunger and starvation continue to stalk the north of Gaza at extreme levels, prompting the United Nations to warn of a looming famine. The World Food Program and other U.N. agencies have said that they were no longer able to deliver aid to the north, citing civilian attempts to rush aid trucks, Israeli restrictions on convoys, and the poor condition of roads damaged during the war. On Saturday, the United States conducted its first airdrop of aid, although U.S. officials have said such operations cannot move supplies at the same scale as convoys.

 

The Gaza health ministry said on Sunday that 15 children have died in recent days from what it described as malnutrition and dehydration at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north. The ministry did not provide further details about the deaths, but it said that the hospital had run out of oxygen and fuel to power generators and was barely operating with very limited supplies. The ministry added in a statement that the lives of six other children in the intensive care unit were in danger from malnutrition and dehydration.

 

Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement on Sunday that one in six children under the age of 2 in Gaza was acutely malnourished.

 

“These tragic and horrific deaths are man-made, predictable and entirely preventable,” she said of the reported deaths at Kamal Adwan.

 

Driven by hunger, desperate Gazans were still gathering at the same spot where many deaths were reported on Thursday, in hopes that more aid would come.

 

“Even after the massacre people are still going to Al-Rashid Street every day and will continue to until they secure any aid,” Ghada Ikrayyem, a 23-year-old resident of northern Gaza, said. “We expected people to be scared after what happened on Thursday, but we were surprised to see that even more people were going there now.”

 

Ms. Ikrayyem’s brother Muhammed, 30, who is deaf and mute, slept on the beach for three days awaiting the aid trucks, she said. But after dodging bullets on Thursday, he managed to come home with a 25-kilogram bag of flour that 50 relatives sheltering together were now rationing and mixing with animal feed to make it last as long as possible, she added.

 

“He came home terrified, he saw dead bodies everywhere,” Ms. Ikrayyem said in a telephone interview on Sunday. But despite narrowly escaping death on Thursday, Muhammed has returned to the same spot every day since, hoping to secure another bag of flour, she added.

 

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.


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2) U.N. aid agency researchers say Gazans were abused in Israeli detention.

By Monika Pronczuk and Patrick Kingsley, Mar. 4, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/04/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Several blindfolded and handcuffed men in the back of a military vehicle.

Palestinian detainees [blindfolded] being transported by Israeli soldiers in November. Credit...Yossi Zeliger/Reuters


An unpublished investigation by the main United Nations agency for Palestinian affairs accuses Israel of abusing hundreds of Gazans captured during the war with Hamas, according to a copy of the report reviewed by The New York Times.

 

The report was compiled by UNRWA, the U.N. agency that is itself at the center of an investigation after accusations that at least 30 of its 13,000 employees participated in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. The authors of the report allege that the detainees, including at least 1,000 civilians later released without charge, were held at three military sites inside Israel.

 

The report said the detainees included males and females whose ages ranged from 6 to 82. Some, the report said, died in detention.

 

The document includes accounts from detainees who said they were beaten, stripped, robbed, blindfolded, sexually abused and denied access to lawyers and doctors, often for more than a month.

 

The draft document describes “a range of ill-treatment that Gazans of all ages, abilities and backgrounds have reported facing in makeshift detention facilities in Israel.” Such treatment, the report concluded, “was used to extract information or confessions, to intimidate and humiliate, and to punish.”

 

The report is based on interviews with more than 100 of the 1,002 detainees who were released back to Gaza by mid-February. The document estimates that 3,000 other Gazans remain in Israeli detention without access to lawyers. Its findings echo those of several Israeli and Palestinian rights groups, as well as separate investigations by two U.N. special rapporteurs, all of whom allege similar abuses inside Israeli detention centers.

 

The Times was unable to corroborate the entirety of the allegations in the report. But parts of it match the testimony of former Gazan detainees interviewed by The Times.

 

Israel has said that the detentions were necessary to find and interrogate Hamas members after the group’s attack on southern Israel, which killed roughly 1,200 people and led to the abduction of some 250 others, according to the Israeli authorities. Israel says that hundreds of Hamas members have been captured.


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3) ‘We have reached a stage of hunger like never before.’

By Nader Ibrahim and Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Mar. 4, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/04/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news




















Some Gazan families were walking south on Sunday, saying it was too hard to get food aid in the north. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock


Some residents of northern Gaza have been walking toward the southern part of the enclave, saying they were trying to find food because they had nothing to eat, video shot by The Associated Press showed.

 

One father, Omar Ahmad, carried his daughter on his shoulders as he walked on the main coastal road on Sunday. “We have reached a stage of hunger like never before,” he said. “When my daughter wants to eat in the morning, I can’t provide her with food or drink.”

 

Aid officials say that the northern part of Gaza has been hardest hit by restrictions on food and other essential items imposed as part of Israel’s war against Hamas. Israeli officials say they are pressing ahead with efforts to get more aid to northern Gaza.

 

In one measure of the desperation in the north, more than 100 Palestinians were killed early on Thursday after many thousands of people massed around trucks laden with food and supplies, Gazan health officials said.

 

Israeli and Palestinian officials offered sharply divergent accounts of what had happened. Witnesses described extensive shooting by Israeli forces. The Israeli military said most of the victims were trampled in the crowd, although Israeli officials acknowledged that troops had opened fire at some who, the army said, had approached “in a manner that endangered them.”


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4) In second airdrop over Gaza, the U.S. delivers 36,800 ready-to-eat meals.

By Helene Cooper, Mar. 5, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/05/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Parachutes over buildings seen in the distance.

Aid packages over northern Gaza on Tuesday. Credit...Nicolas Garcia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


The United States made a second round of airdrops of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, as the Biden administration continued its efforts to prevent a greater humanitarian disaster in the Palestinian territory.

 

U.S. Air Force cargo planes dropped 36,800 ready-to-eat meals, in a joint operation with the Jordanian Air Force, “to provide essential relief to civilians affected by the ongoing conflict,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement on Tuesday. It said that army troops trained in aerial delivery were part of the airdrop, and that it was planning more such missions.

 

The operation on Tuesday followed a first round of airdrops on Saturday, two days after more than 100 Palestinians were killed as Israeli forces opened fire around a convoy of aid trucks in northern Gaza. Doctors at Gaza hospitals said most of the casualties were from gunfire. The Israeli military said most of the victims were trampled as they tried to seize the cargo, although Israeli officials acknowledged that troops had fired on some people who they said had threatened them.

 

After the convoy killings, President Biden said the United States would find new ways to get aid to Palestinians in desperate need because of Israel’s five-month military campaign to destroy Hamas. Only a trickle of aid has been reaching northern Gaza via land, but aid groups have criticized airdrops as ineffective. The amount of aid delivered by four planes in a French-Jordanian airdrop last week was much less than a single truckload.

 

Although Mr. Biden has implored Israel, which has largely sealed its border with Gaza, to clear the way for more aid deliveries, the demand for food, water and medicine there remains huge. Those conditions have put Mr. Biden under political pressure to do more to help the Palestinians, even as the U.S. supplies Israel with military hardware.

 

Despite his frustrations with Israel’s political leadership, Mr. Biden has not threatened to put limits on American military aid to the country.


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5) UNRWA head says Israel is targeting the agency in a ‘deliberate and concerted campaign.’

By Victoria Kim, Mar. 5, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/05/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Philippe Lazzarini, in a shirt and suit jacket, walks amid a group of reporters.

Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general for UNRWA, in Geneva last month. He warned on Monday that the worst might be yet to come in Gaza if humanitarian services collapse. Credit...Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA, via Shutterstock


The head of the United Nations agency providing aid for Palestinians in Gaza has said that his organization was being targeted with a “deliberate and concerted campaign” to undermine its operations when its services are most needed.

 

Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, spoke on Monday before the U.N. General Assembly in New York in some of his strongest remarks in defense of the agency since Israel made public allegations that a dozen of its employees had participated in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks. He warned that the worst might be yet to come if humanitarian services collapse.

 

Israel’s accusations in January prompted 16 donor countries, including the United States, to suspend about $450 million in funding. Mr. Lazzarini said the agency faced a financial crisis while functioning “hand-to-mouth” and would soon be unable to serve millions of people dependent on it for food, shelter and basic medical care.

 

Mr. Lazzarini noted that Israel made the accusations as UNRWA employees had provided testimony in a case before the International Court of Justice about the suffering in Gaza. The submissions were followed by a “corresponding increase in attacks against the agency,” he said.

 

The court, the United Nations’ highest judicial body, has ordered Israel to take immediate steps to facilitate the aid Gaza desperately needs and is weighing whether Israel has committed genocide in its war in Gaza.

 

“Attacks against UNRWA seek to eliminate its role in protecting the rights of Palestinian refugees and acting as a witness to their plight,” Mr. Lazzarini said.

 

Israel has a long history of friction with UNRWA, which was founded in 1949 and is one of the oldest U.N. agencies. Some Israelis say its very existence perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by preventing Palestinians from setting down roots elsewhere in the Middle East as they hope to return to their former homes in what is now Israel.

 

Israel has claimed that at least 10 percent of UNRWA’s staff is affiliated with Palestinian armed groups in Gaza and that what it says are employees’ links to Hamas fundamentally compromise the agency. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel laid out a proposal last month for Gaza’s postwar governance with his war cabinet, as part of which he said UNRWA should be closed and replaced “with responsible international aid agencies.”

 

Last week’s disastrous aid convoy that Israel helped to organize highlighted the steep challenge for other groups trying to provide services in Gaza, where order is virtually nonexistent after five months of war.

 

Mr. Lazzarini said he had not received any additional information to back up Israel’s accusations after they were initially presented to him in January, but that the agency had immediately terminated the staff members’ contracts because of the gravity of the allegation.

 

Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, told reporters on Monday that the United States would wait for the outcome of the U.N. investigations into Israel’s allegations before deciding whether to resume funding for UNRWA. The Biden administration remains extremely concerned for the humanitarian situation in Gaza, he said.

 

“Parents are facing impossible choices about how to feed their children,” he said. “Many don’t know where the next meal will come from, or if it will come at all.”

 

“The situation is simply intolerable,” he said.


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6) Only a trickle of aid reaches northern Gaza, where the threat of famine looms.

By Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon reporting from Jerusalem, Mar. 5, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/05/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Piles of rubble line a multistory building pocked with holes, its windows and doors blown out, as a person sits on the doorstep, leaning on a cane.

Devastation on Sunday in Gaza City, the intended destination for trucks delivering desperately needed food. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Only a trickle of aid managed on Monday to reach the desperately hungry people of the northern Gaza Strip, where the United Nations has warned that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians face a growing threat of famine after nearly five months of fighting and blockade.

 

Fifteen trucks were dispatched overnight to northern Gaza as part of a relief effort involving Palestinian businessmen, according to COGAT, the Israeli military body that regulates aid to the Palestinians. But at least five of those were looted along the way, according to an Israeli official who was not authorized to comment publicly, and so spoke on condition of anonymity.

 

It was unclear exactly how many of the trucks reached their intended destination, Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. Izzat Aqel, a Palestinian businessman involved in the operation, said he aimed to send an additional 30 trucks with food relief to northern Gaza on Monday night.

 

Aid officials have warned that Palestinians in Gaza could be on the brink of famine unless relief is substantially stepped up, with over 500,000 people already facing a dire lack of food. One in six children under the age of 2 in Gaza is acutely malnourished, according to the United Nations. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said visits to hospitals in the north by agency officials — the first since early October — found severe levels of malnutrition and “children dying of starvation.”

 

The dire conditions have prompted crowds of desperate people to swarm aid trucks and contributed to a bloody scene last week, when Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinians who had gathered en masse around a convoy of trucks that had entered northern Gaza. Over 100 Palestinians were killed, many by gunfire, according to Palestinian health officials. The Israeli military said the troops had fired on members of the crowd who approached them in a threatening manner and attributed most of the deaths to a stampede around the convoy.

 

In the wake of the bloodshed at the convoy, Israel has faced even greater international pressure to facilitate more aid for Gazans, particularly in the north.

 

“We’re continuing to push hard for more trucks and routes to get more aid to people,” President Biden wrote on social media on Monday. “There are no excuses. The aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough — and nowhere fast enough.”

 

On Saturday, the United States made airdrops of food into Gaza for the first time.

 

Since October, Israel has told the population of northern Gaza, home to more than a million people, to flee the fighting and head southward. But many remained, though the Israeli invasion began in northern Gaza, and some who evacuated have returned.

 

The area has been devastated, with many buildings destroyed, and Israeli forces have effectively toppled much of Hamas’s governing structure, leaving widespread chaos and lawlessness.

 

All of the aid trucks entering Gaza have gone into the south, with only a few continuing on to the north.

 

Despite the spiraling humanitarian crisis, Israel has maintained tight restrictions on aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli officials have closely scrutinized trucks bearing desperately needed food and relief at the Kerem Shalom crossing, which aid officials have labeled one key bottleneck. Israel says the inspections are necessary to prevent aid from reaching Hamas, the Palestinian armed group which Israel seeks to root out in Gaza.

 

A day after Israeli officials said 277 trucks — an unusually large number — had been allowed into Gaza over the previous 24 hours, Juliette Touma, the director of communications for UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said 140 aid trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing on Monday.

 

The spike in relief entering showed “when there’s a political will, there’s a way,” she said, but declined to say whether it meant that Israel had loosened its restrictions. The increase in aid shipments was still far beneath what was needed to mitigate the sickness and hunger menacing many Gazans, she added.

 

U.N. officials have said the current system must be overhauled in order to mitigate the unfolding disaster. Both UNRWA and the World Food Program have suspended their operations in northern Gaza, citing both Israeli refusals to authorize convoys and their inability to protect cargoes from being seized by desperate Gazans amid the anarchy.

 

In conversations with their Israeli counterparts, U.N. officials have agitated for Israel to open up a crossing that would allow them to ferry aid directly into northern Gaza, avoiding the perilous southern routes, Jaime McGoldrick, the U.N. humanitarian chief in Jerusalem, told reporters last month.


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7) Palestinians were ‘completely traumatized’ after Israeli detention, aid agency’s chief says.

By Monika Pronczuk, Mar. 5, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/05/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Handcuffed men are escorted by heavily armed soldiers as they walk down a street.

Israeli troops detaining Palestinian men during a raid in Amari, near Ramallah in the West Bank, on Monday. Credit...Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees confirmed Monday that hundreds of Palestinians had reported abuse under Israeli detention, responding to a question about an unpublished investigation it had conducted that was first reported on by The New York Times.

 

“We have seen these people coming back from detention,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, told reporters. Most of them were “completely traumatized by the ordeal they have gone through,” he added.

 

Palestinians interviewed by UNRWA reported a “broad range of ill-treatment” from the Israeli soldiers, Mr. Lazzarini said, including being forced to strip naked, verbal and psychological abuse, threats of electrocution, sleep deprivation, extreme noise and the use of dogs to intimidate people.

 

“We have indeed an internal report about their experiences,” Mr. Lazzarini said, adding that it had been shared with human rights groups.

 

UNRWA staff members have also been among the detainees, the agency said in a separate statement on Monday. It said they reported “torture, severe ill-treatment, abuse and sexual exploitation” while under detention and interrogation, without providing details.

 

Some said that, under torture and ill-treatment, they were forced to give false confessions “in response to questioning about relations between UNRWA and Hamas and involvement in the Oct. 7 attack against Israel,” according to the agency. UNRWA is itself at the center of an investigation after Israel alleged that at least 30 of its 13,000 employees participated in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7.

 

The unpublished report, which was seen by The Times, includes accounts from detainees who said they were beaten, stripped, robbed, blindfolded, sexually abused and denied access to lawyers and doctors, often for more than a month. Some, the report said, died in detention.

 

When presented with the findings of the report by The Times, the Israeli military said in a statement that some detainees had died in detention, including those who had pre-existing illnesses and wounds, without giving more details. It said every death was being investigated by the military police. The military said all mistreatment was “absolutely prohibited” and strongly denied any allegation of sexual abuse, adding that all “concrete complaints regarding inappropriate behavior are forwarded to the relevant authorities for review.”

 

In a separate report released Monday, the United Nations said it found signs that sexual violence was committed in multiple locations during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel. That report was a result of the U.N.’s deployment of a team of experts to Israel and the West Bank, led by Pramila Patten, the secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict. The team said it also heard accounts of sexual violence against Palestinians that implicated Israeli security forces and settlers.

 

Palestinian officials and civil society representatives, it said, told the U.N. team of “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinians in detention, including the increased use of various forms of sexual violence.”

 

The team asked Israel’s government to give access to other U.N. bodies so they could investigate those allegations. The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lior Haiat, said, “Israel rejects the report’s call to investigate Palestinian claims regarding ‘sexual violence by Israeli elements.’”


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