Today at 4:00 P.M.
5th and Mission Street
San Francisco
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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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(Un)Equal Under the Law: Extreme Sentencing and Racial Justice in California
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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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) ‘We need a cease-fire,’ Biden says.
By Michael D. Shear, Hwaida Saad and Andrea Kannapell, Mar. 6, 2024
President Biden said Tuesday that talks on a possible six-week cease-fire in Gaza are “in the hands of Hamas right now.” He spoke just before a Hamas leader in Lebanon appeared to reject a proposed deal the United States is backing, insisting that Israeli hostages would be released only after a cease-fire was in place and Israeli forces have withdrawn.
Mr. Biden said that the Israelis had “been cooperating” in the indirect negotiations, which are being mediated by Qatar and Egypt, and that “a rational offer” had been made.
“We will know in a couple of days what’s going to happen,” Mr. Biden said as he returned to the White House from a weekend in Camp David, where he was preparing for his State of the Union speech, scheduled for Thursday. “We need a cease-fire.”
Mr. Biden’s remarks echoed comments made earlier in the day by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and on Monday by Vice President Kamala Harris regarding their meetings with a member of Israel’s war cabinet, Benny Gantz, who was in Washington on a visit that was not coordinated with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The urgency for a breakthrough in talks has grown as the Islamic holy month of Ramadan approaches, with all sides treating the holiday as a deadline. Ramadan, a month of prayer, introspection and dusk-to-dawn fasting, is the one of the most important times of the Muslim calendar. A continued Israeli military onslaught during the holiday could further inflame Arab-Israeli tensions.
The war is now approaching the five-month mark. Large parts of Gaza are in ruins, more than 30,000 people have been killed by the count of Gazan health officials, and severe hunger, bordering on starvation, is affecting hundreds of thousands.
Still, there was little sign Hamas, the armed group that governs Gaza, was ready to move toward a compromise. In Beirut, Lebanon, on Tuesday, a senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, repeated the group’s demand for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a permanent cease-fire in place before it would release Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
“The security and safety of our people will not be achieved except with a permanent cease-fire and withdrawal from every inch of the Gaza Strip,” Mr. Hamdan said. “A prisoner exchange cannot take place before all of this is achieved.”
Mr. Hamdan said that Hamas had made its position clear to the Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
At a meeting with Mr. Blinken, Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, said that Qatar and its partners would persist “to make sure that this deal happens, despite whoever is trying to undermine the efforts of bringing peace.”
“We want to see an end of the humanitarian suffering; we want to see the hostages back with their families,” he said on Tuesday.
Before the Hamas news conference, Mr. Biden was asked whether a cease-fire was possible before the beginning of Ramadan, which has often been accompanied by heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions over access to a major holy site in Jerusalem.
“There’s got to be a cease-fire,” Mr. Biden said, adding that if a deal is not reached by Ramadan to pause the fighting “it’s going to be very dangerous.”
He added, “So, we are trying very, very hard to get a cease-fire.”
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2) The U.S. makes a second airdrop but says it will not send troops into Gaza help the aid effort.
By Helene Cooper, Mar. 6, 2024
Palestinians in Gaza City scrambled for boxes of supplies airdropped by the United States, Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Credit...Nicolas Garcia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images (Screenshot)
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. However, the Pentagon said on Tuesday that the United States did not intend to send its troops into Gaza to strengthen the aid distribution process.
“At this time there are no plans to put U.S. forces on the ground in Gaza,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said at a news conference.
Some aid experts and humanitarian groups have criticized the American airdrops as insufficient and largely symbolic, given the scale of the hunger problem facing Gaza after five months of war. Cargo planes can only move a fraction of the food a convoy of trucks can deliver, experts say, and a better solution would be for the United States to persuade Israel to open more border crossings and speed up inspections.
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 a French plane in an 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 United States 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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3) Truce talks have been an exhausting tangle of emotions for Gazans.
By Adam Rasgon and Abu Bakr Bashir reporting from Jerusalem and London, Mar. 6, 2024
Palestinians living in tents in Rafah, Gaza, are hoping for a cease-fire and an end to the war so they can return to their homes. Credit...Reuters (Screenshot)
When President Biden suggested last week that a cease-fire was imminent, Khalil el-Halabi was elated.
Mr. Halabi, a 70-year-old retired U.N. official, paraded through a cluster of tents in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, delivering the news to people displaced by the war, prompting cheers and claps. But the joy didn’t last: The next morning, reports that gaps remained between Israel and Hamas brought him back down to earth.
“It’s a form of psychological torture,” Mr. Halabi said. “It’s unbearable. We’re told one day that the war is ending and then the opposite the next day.”
Palestinians in Gaza, whose lives may depend on a cease-fire, have followed news of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas with rapt attention. But a stream of conflicting reports has sent them on an exhausting emotional roller-coaster as they huddle in crowded apartments, tent cities and shelters.
The tension is especially acute in Rafah, which is densely packed with more than one million displaced people. Israel has repeatedly threatened to invade the city as it tries to root out the leadership of Hamas.
The United States is pressing for a cease-fire to be negotiated ahead of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month that begins in about a week. On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris said a deal was on the table for a cease-fire of at least six-weeks, one that would include the release of hostages held by militants in Gaza and the entry of a “significant” amount of aid. The U.S.-backed proposal is to exchange scores of Palestinian prisoners and detainees for 40 hostages in Gaza, officials say.
But the negotiations appear to be making little progress. Israel refused to send a delegation to talks in Cairo this week.
President Biden said Tuesday that cease-fire talks were “in the hands of Hamas right now,” and a Hamas leader in Lebanon appeared to publicly reject the deal, insisting that Israeli hostages would be released only after a cease-fire was in place and Israeli forces have withdrawn, a condition Israel has rejected. But the militant group signaled on Wednesday in a statement that it was still open to negotiations “until an agreement is reached that realizes our people’s interests and demands.”
Nidal Kuhail, 29, a resident of Gaza City who is sheltering in Rafah, said people were closely monitoring their phones and radios for updates on the negotiations, but were growing tired of waiting day after day without a breakthrough.
“We’re oscillating between being happy and then frustrated,” said Mr. Kuhail. “This seesawing in news reports has made the people incredibly confused.”
Those fluctuations have been going on for months, as a series of talks have led to no relief since a seven-day cease-fire in November.
In early February, when reports suggested that Hamas and Israel were nearing a deal, a celebration erupted in the Kuwait Specialty Hospital in Rafah, with people whistling and applauding, said Omar al-Najjar, a volunteer medical intern there.
“The atmosphere was upbeat,” said Mr. Najjar, 24. “People could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.” But the next morning, newer reports showed that the parties will still far from overcoming their differences, casting a depressed mood across the hospital, he said.
Mr. Najjar said hopes for a cease-fire had been dashed so frequently that many were no longer paying attention to the news. “People have completely lost hope,” he said.
Over the past couple of days, the saga played out again. Arabic news outlets reported “significant progress” only to speak of “difficulties” a day later.
Hazem Surour, 20, originally from northern Gaza, said he had stopped letting news reports get his hopes up after months of Israel and Hamas failing to achieve a deal.
“We seriously need something real, not news reports,” he said. “We can only be patient and pray.”
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4) Despite U.S. rebuke, Israel advances plans for more housing in West Bank settlements.
By Aaron Boxerman Reporting from Jerusalem, Mar. 6, 2024
Construction in the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim in the occupied West Bank last month. Credit...Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli government is moving ahead with plans for more than 3,400 new housing units in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a top minister said on Wednesday, shrugging off sharp condemnation of the plans by the Biden administration.
A key committee authorized zoning plans for the settlements of Ma’ale Adumim, Kedar and Efrat, according to the office of Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister. The committee voted to move most of the homes to an intermediate stage of the planning process, while others neared full approval, according to planning documents.
Roughly 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the occupied West Bank, where the Israeli military rules over roughly 2.7 million Palestinians. Much of the Israeli right believes Israel should control the West Bank in perpetuity, while Palestinians see the area as integral to their aspirations for an independent state.
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry condemned the latest moves, saying they represent “an explicit call for the continuation of the spiral of violence and wars.”
Tensions have soared in the occupied West Bank since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel prompted all-out war in Gaza. Over 400 Palestinians, including over 100 minors, have been killed in “conflict-related incidents” across the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the start of the war, according to the United Nations. Thousands of Palestinians have been arrested in mass Israeli detention campaigns intended to root out militants, according to the Israeli military.
Mr. Smotrich announced the decision to advance the housing plans in February after a Palestinian shooting attack there killed at least one Israeli, calling it “an appropriate Zionist response.” A longtime leader of the settler movement, Mr. Smotrich conditioned his entry into the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on receiving more control over construction in the West Bank.
At the time, the Biden administration strongly criticized the new settlement plans. Following Mr. Smotrich’s announcement, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called Israeli settlements “inconsistent with international law,” reversing a Trump-era policy backing them and reverting to a decades-old State Department legal finding.
“I have to say we’re disappointed in the announcement,” Mr. Blinken said in late February. “It’s been longstanding U.S. policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace.”
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5) Israel turned back an aid convoy headed for northern Gaza, a U.N. agency says.
By Anushka Patil, Mar. 6, 2024
Israeli soldiers moving toward the Gaza border on Tuesday. Credit...Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
The Israeli military turned back a convoy trying to take 200 tons of food into northern Gaza on Tuesday, a U.N. agency said, a day after United Nations officials said children in the territory were dying of starvation.
The World Food Program was attempting its first food delivery into northern Gaza since it said on Feb. 20 that it had to suspend operations in the region because of Israeli restrictions and a breakdown of civil order among hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of famine.
The convoy of 14 trucks waited for three hours at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint inside central Gaza on Tuesday before the Israeli military turned it away, W.F.P. said in a statement. It was rerouted and then was stopped by a “large crowd of desperate people who looted the food,” said the agency, which is part of the U.N.
The turning away of the convoy “was an operational decision by the forces on the ground,” Shimon Freedman, a spokesman for COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid deliveries into Gaza, said on Wednesday.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about the convoy. It was not clear where the trucks were when the aid was taken.
The organization’s deliveries to the north had already been largely halted for three weeks before the Feb. 20 announcement over safety concerns and what it called the absence of a functional system for coordinating with the Israeli military, which has maintained tight control over aid to Gaza.
At least 15 children in northern Gaza have died in recent days from malnutrition and dehydration, according to the territory’s health ministry.
On Monday, as part of a relief effort involving Palestinian businessmen, 15 trucks were dispatched to northern Gaza, but at least five were looted along the way, according to an Israeli official who was not authorized to comment publicly.
United Nations officials have called for the system for delivering aid to be overhauled, after saying for weeks that Israel was continuing to impose excessive delays at checkpoints, interfering with aid missions and outright denying access to northern Gaza as the humanitarian crisis there spiraled. On Tuesday, a group of U.N.-appointed experts called on Israel to “end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians,” and said it was concerned about “an entire civilian population suffering such unprecedented starvation, so quickly and completely.”
The Israeli military directed a request for comment on Tuesday’s convoy to COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid deliveries into Gaza, which did not immediately respond. The agency has previously denied that it was obstructing aid to Gaza, and Israeli officials have accused Hamas of seizing some supplies.
The World Health Organization said at least 10 of the deaths from malnutrition or dehydration happened at the Kamal Adwan Hospital, which its teams were able to visit for the first time since early October over the weekend.
At a news conference on Tuesday, the leader of the W.H.O.’s sub-office in Gaza, Dr. Ahmed Dahir, said the team saw at least two other malnourished children at Kamal Adwan and that other patients and health care workers themselves were “barely surviving on one meal a day.”
Aaron Boxerman, Adam Rasgon and Adam Sella contributed reporting.
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6) “They Were Not Sexually Abused”
Kibbutz Be’eri rejects story in New York Times October 7 exposé
By Jeremy Scahil
—The Intercept, March 4, 2023
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/04/nyt-october-7-sexual-violence-kibbutz-beeri/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter
Destroyed houses are seen on December 20, 2023, in Be’eri, Israel.
Two of the three victims specifically singled out by the New York Times in a marquee exposé published in December, which alleged that Hamas had deliberately weaponized sexual violence during the October 7 attacks, were not in fact victims of sexual assault, according to the spokesperson for the Kibbutz Be’eri, which the Times identified as the location of the attack.
The rejection of the Times reporting in the kibbutz by Be’eri spokesperson Michal Paikin further undermines the credibility of the paper’s controversial December article “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.”
The Times article described three alleged victims of sexual assault for whom it reported specific biographical information. One, known as the “woman in the black dress,” was Gal Abdush. Some of her family members have contested the claims made by the Times. The other two alleged victims were unnamed teenage sisters from Kibbutz Be’eri whose precise ages were listed in the New York Times, making it possible to identify them.
According to data from the Israeli government’s public list of the victims who died at the kibbutz during the October 7 attacks, as well as a memorial page established by the community itself, the victims in Kibbutz Be’eri matching the description in the New York Times article were sisters Y. and N. Sharabi, ages 13 and 16. (The Intercept has identified the girls but is not printing their first names.)
When asked about the claims made by the New York Times, Paikin independently raised their name. “You’re talking about the Sharabi girls?” she said. “No, they just — they were shot. I’m saying ‘just,’ but they were shot and were not subjected to sexual abuse.” Paikin also disputed the graphic and highly detailed claims of the Israeli special forces paramedic who served as the source for the allegation, which was published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and other media outlets. “It’s not true,” she told The Intercept, referring to the paramedic’s claims about the girls. “They were not sexually abused.”
“We stand by the story and are continuing to report on the issue of sexual violence on Oct. 7,” Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha told The Intercept.
A spokesperson for the Israeli government, Eylon Levy, played a lead role in connecting the anonymous paramedic with international media outlets.
As The Intercept previously reported, Anat Schwartz — an Israeli filmmaker who, before joining the Times, appeared to have no prior experience reporting the news — was hired by the paper to investigate sexual violence on October 7. She worked under Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman, and alongside Adam Sella, who was contracted shortly after October 7 to work for the Times; Sella’s own journalism experience was mostly writing about food and culture. Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Semafor and the former media columnist for the New York Times, reported Sunday that Sella recommended his uncle’s partner, Schwartz, to the Jerusalem bureau chief, and she was brought on board for the investigation. Schwartz told Israeli Army Radio she had personally conducted over 150 interviews for the story.
In a podcast interview produced by Israel’s Channel 12 in January, Schwartz described in detail how she sought to confirm that the girls had been sexually assaulted. She said she first learned of the case when she saw an interview with a man identified as a paramedic from an elite Israeli military unit. The Israeli government coordinated media interviews with the paramedic, who did them with his back turned to the camera to avoid being identified.
In her podcast interview, Schwartz said that she had been unable to find a second source to confirm the paramedic’s account. “I don’t have a second source … for the paramedic with the girls in Be’eri,” she said. “This stage of [getting the] second source, it took a very long time.” While she mentions the second source, in the interview Schwartz does not mention any specifics about actually finding one, and the Times report does not cite any other corroborating witness for its portrayal of the condition in which the girls were allegedly discovered by the paramedic.
In the report, the Times presents unnamed “neighbors” at Kibbutz Be’eri who “said their bodies had been found alone, separated from the rest of their family.” According to the family, however, not even that detail is accurate.
A recent interview in the Israeli media with the Sharabi sisters’ grandparents offers details that directly contradict the Times reporting that the girls at Kibbutz Be’eri were sexually assaulted on October 7. “They were just shot — nothing else had been done to them,” their grandmother Gillian Brisley told Channel 12. (A U.K.-based lawyer for the Brisley family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) The family also gave several interviews to international news outlets before “Screams Without Words” was published that provided information that undercuts the assertions in the Times article, raising questions about why the paper did not include these publicly available details.
THE BRISLEY FAMILY and relatives in Israel who lived with the Sharabis at Kibbutz Be’eri have never asserted that the girls were sexually assaulted. In numerous interviews, the Brisleys have maintained the girls were killed alongside their mother.
According to the Times report, “Screams Without Words”:
A paramedic in an Israeli commando unit said that he had found the bodies of two teenage girls in a room in Be’eri.
One was lying on her side, he said, boxer shorts ripped, bruises by her groin. The other was sprawled on the floor face down, he said, pajama pants pulled to her knees, bottom exposed, semen smeared on her back.
Because his job was to look for survivors, he said, he kept moving and did not document the scene. Neighbors of the two girls killed — who were sisters, 13 and 16 — said their bodies had been found alone, separated from the rest of their family.
The Israeli military allowed the paramedic to speak with reporters on the condition that he not be identified because he serves in “an elite unit.”
On February 29, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcast a feature story on the grandparents, who traveled from Britain to the kibbutz to view the home where their loved ones died and to meet with neighbors, family members, and officials. In the interview, the Brisleys’ description of the deaths of their daughter, Lianne, and their granddaughters contradict virtually every detail, outside of the Be’eri girls’ ages and that they were killed, presented in the Times article.
“They were found between the ‘mamad’” — the house’s safe room — “and the dining room and it’s an awful thing to say, they were just shot — nothing else had been done to them. They were shot,” said Gillian Brisley. “A soldier said he saw our daughter” — the girls’ mother — “but she was covering the two girls and they were shot,” added her husband, Pete, the girls’ grandfather. “The seventh of October was the saddest day of my life.”
Months before the Times story was published on December 28, the Brisleys had already given an interview to the BBC offering details contradicting the depiction that would later appear in the Times, including the assertion the girls were found alone in a room. Gillian Brisley told the BBC on October 30 that the teenage girls were “found all cuddled together with Lianne doing what a mother would do — holding her babies in her arms, trying to protect them at the end.” Brisley said it was a “small comfort but a comfort nevertheless.”
On October 24, the Israeli news site Walla published a story about the family, which also said the girls were killed alongside their mother. Sharon Sharabi, whose brother Eli was the father of the two girls and was kidnapped that day and reportedly taken to Gaza, said that Palestinian fighters entered the family home, broke into their safe room, and killed Lianne and the two girls. “Lianne and [Y] were only identified through dental records, and [N] by DNA,” he said. He did not specify where the forensic examinations had taken place. N was initially reported missing for two weeks because her body had yet to be formally identified.
Sharon Sharabi told The Intercept that his family has not been provided with any specific details about his nieces’ deaths that would allow him to draw a firm conclusion about what happened to them that day. “To tell you concretely what happened in Be’eri, or what happened at the house of the Sharabi family, I don’t have an answer for you,” he said. “There is certainly no credible information I can give you, only testimonies of ZAKA” — private rescue workers — “or of military personnel who arrived at the scene first and saw the atrocities. So any information I might give you is information that I’m not confident about, and therefore I would rather not give it [at all].”
He added, “I’ve heard all the versions. What’s the truth? I don’t know.” Sharabi emphasized that he firmly believes there was widespread sexual violence committed during the attacks of October 7.
BEFORE THE TIMES published its exposé, the Israeli military paramedic claimed in interviews with the Washington Post, CNN, and an Indian news channel to have seen evidence that two girls had been sexually assaulted at a kibbutz. “One was on the bed. Her arm was dangling from the bed frame. Her legs were bare, with bruises, and she had a bullet hole in the chest-neck area,” he told the Post. The details of the recollection closely matched those the paramedic gave to the Times.
The paramedic’s story was met with skepticism by the news site Mondoweiss. In his first interview, on October 25, with an Indian news channel, the paramedic said he witnessed the scene at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, not Be’eri.
According to the official records of October 7 deaths at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, there were no victims that matched the age estimates offered by the paramedic. The closest possible match would have been sisters who were 18 and 20 years old, who were killed at their home at the kibbutz along with their parents.
When Levy, the Israeli government spokesperson, promoted the Indian TV interview on social media that day, he posted an edited portion of the interview which removed reference to Nahal Oz. Instead, Levy wrote in a tweet that it had occurred at Kibbutz Be’eri, where official records indicated two teenage sisters roughly matching the paramedics description had been killed. “Israeli special forces paramedic describes the aftermath of the brutal rape and execution of Israeli girls in Be’eri during the October 7 Massacre,” Levy tweeted October 25. In a subsequent post, he wrote, “If media want to interview this special forces paramedic about the horrors he saw in the kibbutzim on October 7, drop me a message in my DMs.” When the paramedic was later interviewed on CNN, on November 18, he maintained he had seen the two girls at Kibbutz Be’eri. In his tweet, Levy implied that the paramedic had been to multiple kibbutzim.
By the time Schwartz met the paramedic, the location of the scene was fixed at Be’eri. Schwartz said during her podcast interview that she put extensive effort into trying to confirm the paramedic’s story. “I said, if I want information about the rapes, I have to call the kibbutzim — and nothing,” she said. “No one saw or heard anything.”
Eventually, she reached the unit 669 paramedic, identified in some media interviews as “G.” He relayed the same story he had told other media outlets. Schwartz cited this incident as a central reason she concluded there was organized sexual violence on October 7. “I say, ‘OK, so it happened, one person saw it happen in Be’eri, so it can’t be just one person, because it’s two girls. It’s sisters. It’s in the room. Something about it is systematic, something about it feels to me that it’s not random,” Schwartz concluded on the podcast.
Schwartz does not mention the unnamed neighbors who allegedly saw the two girls alone in the podcast.
It is unclear why the Times did not include the well-publicized statements from the Be’eri girls’ family members. Several of them have done interviews with Israeli media and international newspapers and TV networks, including the BBC, the Daily Mail, and the Daily Telegraph.
The case received significant media attention in the U.K. because Lianne was a British citizen who emigrated to Israel, and her children were dual citizens. The family has also been outspoken in pressuring the British government to put greater effort into freeing Lianne’s husband, Eli Sharabi, the father of the two girls, who is believed to be a hostage in Gaza. The Times article does not mention the fact that there are conflicting details and instead airs the single-sourced assertions offered by the paramedic. If Times reporters had other sources for this story, aside from neighbors who allegedly told the Times the girls were found alone, the readers were not given any indication of it.
On Monday, United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten reported that her team found information indicating sexual violence took place. “In the context of the coordinated attack by Hamas and other armed groups against civilian and military targets throughout the Gaza periphery, the mission team found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in multiple locations during the 7 October attacks, including rape and gang-rape in at least three locations, namely: the Nova music festival site and its surroundings, Road 232, and Kibbutz Re’im,” the report release said, calling for a full investigation. The special representative wrote, “Overall, the mission team was unable to establish whether sexual violence occurred in kibbutz Be’eri.”
The special representative found two high-profile cases of sexual assault alleged to have happened at Kibbutz Be’eri to be “unfounded.” In its coverage of the U.N. report, the Times sourcing on the alleged assaults in Be’eri moves from a singular first responder to plural, and claims that the sexual assault it identified was a separate incident than the two described by the U.N. “First responders told The New York Times they had found bodies of women with signs of sexual assault at those two kibbutzim, but The Times, in its investigation, did not refer to the specific allegations that the U.N. said were unfounded,” the Times reported. (“The plural ‘first responders’ is accurate,” said the Times spokesperson, without elaborating.)
THE CONTROVERSY AROUND the Times coverage gained momentum last week after X user Zei Squirrel highlighted Schwartz’s social media activity, which included “liking” a post that expressed genocidal incitement against Palestinians in Gaza, calling to “turn the strip into a slaughterhouse.” The Intercept then published excerpts of an interview in which Schwartz offered revelatory details about the Times’s reporting process. For months, independent news outlets such as Mondoweiss, The Grayzone, and Electronic Intifada, as well as the independent research collective October 7 Fact Check, have been documenting a variety of problems with the Times story and highlighting inconsistencies.
On January 5, Laila Al-Arian, an Emmy and Polk Award-winning executive producer for Al Jazeera English, sent an email to New York Times international editor Phil Pan, as well as Jerusalem bureau chief Patrick Kingsley and the Times standards department, posing detailed questions about the veracity of the Times report. She received no response.
Amid mounting public scrutiny, the Times assigned its reporters to effectively re-report their story. The resulting article was published on January 29, and the paper has since maintained it stands by the original report.
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7) Hamas negotiators leave Cairo with no breakthrough in cease-fire talks.
By Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem, Mar. 7, 2024
The rubble of destroyed houses in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Wednesday. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Hamas negotiators left Cairo on Thursday without a breakthrough in talks over a cease-fire in Gaza, the group said, as hopes for an imminent truce in its five-month-long war with Israel continued to dim.
International mediators have sought to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas that would see the release of some hostages held in Gaza and Palestinians detained in Israeli jails, but weeks of indirect negotiations appear to have stalled. Hamas wants Israel to commit to a permanent cease-fire during or after hostage releases, a demand that Israel has rejected.
“The Hamas delegation left Cairo today to consult with the movement’s leadership, as negotiations and efforts continue to stop the aggression, return the displaced, and bring in aid for the Palestinian people,” Hamas said on Telegram, reiterating its demands in the talks.
Egypt and Qatar, along with the United States, are trying to secure a cease-fire before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins around March 10, worried that there could be flare-ups during the month of fasting.
But despite cautious optimism after Israeli officials met with mediators in Paris in mid-February, the hoped-for deal has yet to materialize. Under a proposed framework for a deal, roughly 40 of the more than 100 remaining hostages in Gaza and some Palestinian prisoners would be released during a six-week truce, according to officials familiar with the matter.
U.S. officials have said that Israel has more or less accepted the framework deal. President Biden said earlier this week that “the Israelis have been cooperating” and that the onus was now on Hamas to accept the proposal.
“There’s an offer out there that’s rational,” Mr. Biden told reporters. He added that if a cease-fire was not reached before Ramadan, “it could be very, very dangerous.”
The Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment on the state of the talks.
Mahmoud Mardawi, a Hamas official, said in a televised interview on Wednesday night that the negotiations had “come to a standstill.” He blamed Israel for “clearly undermining any horizon for an agreement” and demanded a full withdrawal of Israeli troops under any truce. Israeli leaders have said they want to maintain control of security in Gaza after the war.
“The ball is not in our court,” Mr. Mardawi told the Arabic-language broadcaster Al-Ghad on Wednesday. “Whoever agrees to our people’s fundamental demands, that is what will pave the way for an agreement.”
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8) South Africa asks the U.N.’s highest court to intervene to avert ‘genocidal starvation’ in Gaza.
By Victoria Kim, Mar. 7, 2024
Judges at the International Court of Justice ruling on emergency measures against Israel, in The Hague in January. Credit...Piroschka Van De Wouw/Reuters
South Africa has asked the United Nations’ highest court to issue emergency orders for Israel to stop what it called the “genocidal starvation” of the Palestinian people, citing U.N. warnings that Gaza was at risk of imminent famine.
The request on Wednesday to the International Court of Justice in The Hague was part of a case that South Africa filed in December charging Israel with genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel has strenuously denied the genocide allegation, and on Thursday its foreign ministry called on the court to reject South Africa’s latest request.
“South Africa continues to act as the legal arm of Hamas in an attempt to undermine Israel’s inherent right to defend itself and its citizens, and to release all of the hostages,” Lior Haiat, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said on social media.
It was not immediately clear when the court would respond to the request. In January, in an initial ruling in the broader genocide case, the court ordered that Israel should act to prevent its troops from committing genocide in Gaza and to increase the amount of humanitarian aid reaching the territory’s civilians.
Last month, South Africa asked the court to issue an emergency order to stop Israel from sending troops into the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The court did not do so, but said Israel must abide by its initial order to prevent genocide.
The World Court, as it is also known, could take months or years to conclude the broader genocide case.
The case has thrust the usually slow-moving court into the global spotlight, setting it up as a platform for tense arguments and disputes over Israel’s war in Gaza. Despite the symbolic weight of the allegations before it, the court, which settles disputes between U.N. member states, does not have any means of forcing Israel to comply with its orders.
In its request on Wednesday, South Africa accused Israel of causing widespread hunger and near-famine conditions across Gaza. Health authorities there say that children are dying daily of malnutrition and dehydration, and aid groups say people are hungry enough to resort to eating leaves, donkey feed and food scraps.
“Palestinian children are starving to death as a direct result of the deliberate acts and omissions of Israel — in violation of the Genocide Convention and of the court’s order,” lawyers for South Africa wrote in the filing.
For months, international observers and aid groups have been warning that Gaza’s 2.2 million civilians are facing starvation amid acute shortages of food and water. Distributing the limited supplies inside the territory has become more challenging, with the destruction of infrastructure and increasing lawlessness as desperate people loot aid convoys.
In asking the court to intervene, South Africa pointed to last week’s aid delivery in northern Gaza that turned deadly, and Israel’s efforts to discredit UNRWA, the main U.N. agency providing assistance for Palestinian refugees. South Africa said that the humanitarian situation in Gaza had rapidly deteriorated in the weeks since the court declined to issue an emergency order to stop a possible Israeli advance into Rafah. At that time, the court said the “perilous situation” across Gaza required Israel to comply with its order to avert genocide.
“The situation then ‘perilous’ is now so terrifying as to be unspeakable,” South Africa said in the filing.
Adam Sella contributed reporting.
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9) In his State of the Union speech, Biden urges Israel to ‘do its part’ to increase aid to Gaza.
By Victoria Kim, Mar. 8, 2024
President Biden said Thursday in his State of the Union address that a U.S. operation would “enable a massive increase” in the assistance entering Gaza. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Biden in his State of the Union address on Thursday night defended U.S. efforts to increase the amount of aid reaching Gaza, while imploring Israel to “do its part” and not use humanitarian assistance as a bargaining chip.
He outlined the U.S. military plan announced earlier in the day to build a floating pier near Gaza’s Mediterranean coast to supply food, water, medicine and other necessities to the enclave’s civilians, saying the operation would “enable a massive increase” in the assistance entering the territory.
American officials have said that they “worked closely” with Israel to develop the initiative, which would make the United States more directly involved in delivering aid, but did not specify whether Israel would provide direct support for the operation. The Biden administration has been accused by critics of not doing enough to rein in Israel’s attacks and for moving too slowly to address the suffering in Gaza.
“Israel must allow more aid into Gaza and ensure that humanitarian workers aren’t caught in the crossfire,” Mr. Biden said, to applause. “Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.”
Aid groups and international organizations have been sounding the alarm on the catastrophic levels of hunger and near-famine conditions afflicting Gaza’s 2.2 million people five months after Israel launched its war in Gaza. The number of aid convoys entering the territory has remained far below prewar levels and humanitarian organizations say much more aid is needed to meet staggering needs throughout the enclave.
Hopes for an imminent agreement to pause the fighting are dim, with negotiators for Hamas leaving talks in Cairo without a breakthrough on Thursday. The same day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to press ahead with Israel’s ground offensive, including pushing into Rafah, in Gaza’s south, where hundreds of thousands of Gazans have sought shelter from bombardment and fighting.
Human rights experts have called for Israel’s leading arms suppliers, the United States and Germany, to halt military aid. Last month, the Senate passed a foreign aid package including $14.1 billion requested by the Biden administration for military aid in support of Israel’s war with Hamas. The same package set aside $10 billion for humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones around the world, including Gaza.
Officials said the U.S. plans to get aid to Gazans by sea would entail hundreds or thousands of U.S. troops on ships just offshore and take 30 to 60 days to implement. The extraordinary undertaking is a sign that the Biden administration’s pleas to Israeli leaders to lessen the human suffering in Gaza have been ineffectual. The United States has already carried out airdrops of aid, a step some observers criticized for being expensive, imprecise and insufficient compared to the need.
Mr. Biden also said that Israeli authorities would announce the opening of a third border crossing into northern Gaza, where the shortages of food and assistance has been especially extreme. Two crossings are open are on the southern end of the strip, but aid coming through is limited, and humanitarian groups have struggled to navigate the security risks amid a landscape of ruin to get supplies to the north, where hundreds of thousands of people remain.
In his speech, the president, directly addressing Israeli leaders, said: “Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip.”
Progressive lawmakers and activists sought to use the occasion of the State of the Union to criticize Mr. Biden’s decisions on the war in Gaza. A representative from Missouri invited as her guest to the address a Palestinian graduate student who said she has lost 35 family members. Activists staged a protest outside the White House demanding an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.
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10) Israeli forces ‘fired precisely’ at Gazans near an aid convoy, the military says in an initial review.
By Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem, Mar. 8, 2024
The body of a Palestinian killed near an aid convoy in Gaza City last week. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israeli soldiers “fired precisely” at Gazans who approached them during a chaotic scene near an aid convoy in northern Gaza last week that led to the deaths of dozens of Palestinians, but they did not fire on the convoy itself, the Israeli military said on Friday after an initial internal review.
The account differs sharply from those of witnesses and Palestinian officials who described extensive shooting after thousands of desperate Gazans massed around an Israeli-organized aid convoy. The deaths prompted global outrage and underscored the widespread hunger and hopelessness in northern Gaza, where five months of war and little aid have driven many to the brink.
The initial review largely matched Israel’s early account of the disaster, reiterating its claim that many civilians were harmed or killed in a stampede as they crowded around the aid trucks. It said that Israeli forces had opened fire toward dozens of Gazans who had approached them.
Gazan officials did not immediately respond to the Israeli review.
The Israeli military said that its review found that the soldiers had “fired precisely” at people who were approaching them in what it said was an attempt to keep “suspects” at a distance.
“As they continued to approach, the troops fired to remove the threat,” it said in a statement summarizing the review’s findings.
Hours after the disaster, doctors in Gaza described receiving scores of casualties at hospitals in the area, many of them killed or wounded by gunfire.
A fact-finding committee appointed by the Israeli military chief of staff will continue to investigate the episode, the military said. Some human rights groups say that the Israeli military lacks independent accountability mechanisms and rarely penalizes soldiers for harming Palestinians in contested circumstances.
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11) Several nations say they will participate in a sea route for aid to Gaza.
By Monika Pronczuk and Aaron Boxerman, Mar. 8, 2024
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and President Nikos Christodoulides of Cyprus at the port of Larnaca on Friday. Credit...Andreas Loucaides/Cypriot government's Press and Information Office, via Agence France-Presse
Britain, the European Union and the United Arab Emirates will join the United States in opening a maritime route for humanitarian relief to Gaza, officials said on Friday, adding momentum to a complex and untested effort to bring urgently needed aid to the territory by sea.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U. executive body, and David Cameron, Britain’s foreign secretary, announced their participation hours after President Biden outlined a U.S. plan to build a temporary floating pier off Gaza’s Mediterranean coast to support the shipment of food, water, medicine and other necessities to desperate Palestinian civilians.
Ms. von der Leyen said that the first ship carrying aid could depart the E.U. nation of Cyprus for Gaza as soon as Friday, with more to follow on Sunday. But it was not immediately clear how or where the vessels would unload their cargo or how it would be distributed amid Israeli bombardment and attacks by hungry Palestinians on aid trucks.
Gaza does not have a functioning port, its coastal waters are too shallow for most vessels and U.S. officials have said it could take 30 to 60 days to set up the floating pier.
At a news conference in Cyprus, Ms. von der Leyen offered few details. Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday that it supported a maritime corridor as long as goods are checked “in accordance with Israeli standards” before leaving Cyprus.
Despite the many questions, U.S. and European officials emphasized the urgent need to open new routes for aid into Gaza, where relief agencies say that 2.2 million Palestinians are facing extreme hunger amid Israeli airstrikes and ground attacks against Hamas. In a joint statement, Britain, the E.U. and the United Arab Emirates said the maritime corridor must “be part of a sustained effort to increase the flow of humanitarian aid and commercial commodities into Gaza through all possible routes.”
For months, the United States and others have warned that Israel was not allowing sufficient aid by land into Gaza. Those concerns have multiplied in recent days, as Palestinian health officials reported that some Gazan children had died of malnutrition and the United Nations warned that more than 570,000 people are facing “catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation.”
Aid officials say that sea shipments — and a limited number of airdrops conducted by the United States and other nations — cannot make up for the lack of supply routes by land. Only about 100 relief trucks entered Gaza each day in February, on average, through the two open land routes, a fraction of what was going in before the war began in October. Israel has insisted on inspecting shipments into Gaza, arguing that they could be diverted by Hamas, but says it does not restrict how much aid gets in.
“We know the difficulties faced at the land borders in Gaza,” Ms. von der Leyen told reporters.
Mr. Cameron, in announcing that Britain would join the maritime effort, said in a social media post: “We continue to urge Israel to allow more trucks into Gaza as the fastest way to get aid to those who need it.”
Israeli officials have not said whether they would open more land routes into Gaza, as many aid agencies have called for, particularly into northern Gaza where relief deliveries have all but stopped because of insecurity.
Plans for the sea route began taking shape months ago. In November, President Nikos Christodoulides of Cyprus, announced an initiative to collect shipments in his country, inspect them at the port of Larnaca and sail them through a secure sea corridor to Gaza, about 240 miles away.
A spokesman for the Cyprus government, Konstantinos Letymbiotis, said that if initial shipments this weekend are successful, more deliveries would follow. He said it would take about 15 hours to make the journey, although he declined to say where the shipment would be delivered in Gaza, citing security concerns.
“As a European Union member at the heart of the region, Cyprus bears a moral duty to do its utmost to assist in alleviating the humanitarian crisis,” Mr. Christodoulides said on Friday.
Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting.
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