18th Annual CODEPINK Mother’s Day Bridge Walk for PEACE!
Sunday, May 12, Noon
11:45: Gather at the Welcome Center Plaza, on the East (Hill) side of the San Francisco end of bridge.
(IMPORTANT: Arrive 30-40 min. EARLY, as “The Authorities” purposely close nearby parking lots to discourage participation!)
NOON: March Begins
1:30 P.M.: Short Rally after the March on the bridge.
In light of U.S. complicity in the ongoing genocide and forced starvation of the people of Gaza, we will put Palestine front and center. With over 12 thousand children killed and tens of thousands of children hungry and near famine in Gaza alone, not to mention the urgent crisis for the children of Sudan, Ukraine, and Haiti, this is an urgent call for the global family to rise up for humanity.
· FOOD NOT BOMBS! DEMILITARIZE NOW!
· FOOD to GAZA, not Weapons to Israel.
· NO TAX $$ for GENOCIDE
· Not Another Nickel, Not Another Dime, No more Money for Israel’s Crimes.
· Diplomacy Not War!
Let’s again pay tribute to the original meaning of “Mother’s Day,” a global call to ABOLISH WAR:
We’ll read: Julia Ward Howe’s (1870) Mother’s Day Proclamation
Bring your mamas and grandmamas, sons, daughters, and grandchildren—the entire family, and friends too! War is not healthy for children and other living things!
Bring your Kaffiyeh’s, Palestinian Flags, and signs that speak for you.
(Note: Authorities may restrict you from taking flags on the bridge—wear it as a cape!)
Signs larger than 2x3 ft. may also be restricted.
Bring a simple treat to share to celebrate 18 years of CODEPINK bridge walks, and our Bay Area community’s commitment to peace and justice.
We’ll sing John Lennon’s Imagine, one of Bay Area Troubadour Francis Collin’s favorite songs!
Francis Collins Presente!
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** This figure is released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.”
*** The death toll in West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to PA’s Ministry of Health on April 22, this is the latest figure.
Source: mondoweiss.net
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Boris Kagarlitsky is in Prison!
On February 13, the court overturned the previous decision on release and sent Boris Kagarlitsky to prison for five years.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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*Major Announcement*
Claudia De la Cruz wins
Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!
We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.
We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.
We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!
We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.
We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.
The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step:
Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer
Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate
See you in the streets,
Claudia & Karina
Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx
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We are all Palestinian
Listen and view this beautiful, powerful, song by Mistahi Corkill on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQwuhbLczgI
Greetings,
Here is my new song and music video, We are all Palestinian, linked below. If you find it inspiring, please feel free to share with others. All the best!
Mistahi
We are all Palestinian
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Labor for Palestine
Thousands of labor representatives marched Saturday, December 16, in Oakland, California. —Photo by Leon Kunstenaar
Video of December 16th Labor rally for Palestine.
Bay Area Unions and Workers Rally and March For Palestine In Oakland
https://youtu.be/L9k79honqIA
For More Information:
bayarealabor4palestine@gmail.com
Production of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
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Just Like The Nazis Did
By David Rovics
After so many decades of patronage
By the world’s greatest empire
So many potential agreements
Were rejected by opening fire
After crushing so many uprisings
Now they’re making their ultimate bid
Pursuing their Final Solution
Just like the Nazis did
They forced refugees into ghettos
Then set the ghettos aflame
Murdering writers and poets
And so no one remember their names
Killing their entire families
The grandparents, women and kids
The uncles and cousins and babies
Just like the Nazis did
They’re bombing all means of sustaining
Human life at all
See the few shelters remaining
Watch as the tower blocks fall
They’re bombing museums and libraries
In order to get rid
Of any memory of the people who lived here
Just like the Nazis did
They’re saying these people are animals
And they should all end up dead
They’re sending soldiers into schools
And shooting children in the head
The rhetoric is identical
And with Gaza off the grid
They’ve already said what happens next
Just like the Nazis did
Words of war for domestic consumption
And lies for all the rest
To try to distract our attention
Among their enablers in the West
Because Israel needs their imports
To keep those pallets on the skids
They need fuel and they need missiles
Just like the Nazis did
They’re using food as a weapon
They’re using water that way, too
They’re trying to kill everyone in Gaza
Or make them flee, it’s true
As the pundits talk of “after the war”
Like with the Fall of Madrid
The victors are preparing for more
Just like the Nazis did
But it’s after the conquest’s complete
If history is any guide
When the occupying army
Is positioned to decide
When disease and famine kills
Whoever may have hid
Behind the ghetto walls
Just like the Nazis did
All around the world
People are trying to tell
There's a genocide unfolding
Ringing alarm bells
But with such a powerful axis
And so many lucrative bids
They know who wants their money
Just like the Nazis did
There's so many decades of patronage
For the world's greatest empire
So many potential agreements
Were rejected by opening fire
They're crushing so many uprisings
Now they're making their ultimate bid
Pursuing their final solution
Just like the Nazis did
Just like the Nazis did
Just like the Nazis did
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Free Julian Assange
Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange
Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count. We are to believe we are represented in this country. This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well. Please take this action as often as you can:
Find your representatives:
https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
Leave each of your representatives a message individually to:
· Drop the charges against Julian Assange
· Speak out publicly against the indictment and
· Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges:
202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard
Leave a message on the White House comment line to
Demand Julian Assange be pardoned:
202-456-1111
Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST
Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:
202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line
202-514-2000 Main Switchboard
Sign the petition:
https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Leonard Peltier Update - Not One More Year
Coleman 1 has gone on permanent lockdown.
The inmates are supposed to be allowed out two hours a day. I have not heard from Leonard since the 18th.
The last time I talked to Leonard, he asked where his supporters were. He asked me if anyone cared about these lockdowns.
Leonard lives in a filthy, cold cell 22 to 24 hours a day. He has not seen a dentist in ten years. I asked him, “On a scale of 1 to 10, is your pain level at 13?” He said, “Something like that.” Leonard is a relentless truth-teller. He does not like it when I say things that do not make sense mathematically.
That is why Leonard remains imprisoned. He will not lie. He will not beg, grovel, or denounce his beliefs.
Please raise your voice. Ask your representatives why they have abdicated their responsibility to oversee the Bureau of Prisons and ensure they adhere to Constitutional law.
Uhuru, The African People’s Socialist Party, has stepped up for Leonard. NOT ONE MORE YEAR.
Fight for Free Speech – YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM8GDeGv90E
Leonard should not have spent a day in prison. Click “LEARN” on our website to find out what really happened on that reservation:
www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Mr. Kevin Cooper
C-65304. 4-EB-82
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin, CA 94974
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system.
See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings
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Daniel Hale UPDATE:
In February Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale was transferred from the oppressive maximum-security prison in Marion, Illinois to house confinement. We celebrate his release from Marion. He is laying low right now, recovering from nearly 3 years in prison. Thank goodness he is now being held under much more humane conditions and expected to complete his sentence in July of this year. www.StandWithDaniel Hale.org
More Info about Daniel:
“Drone Whistleblower Subjected To Harsh Confinement Finally Released From Prison”
https://thedissenter.org/drone-whistleblower-cmu-finally-released-from-prison/
“I was punished under the Espionage Act. Why wasn’t Joe Biden?” by Daniel Hale
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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) Israel, Gaza and the Law on Starvation in War
A complex legal question became more pressing after a statement from the U.N. human rights chief.
By Amanda Taub, Reporting from London, May 4, 2024
Palestinians lining up to collect food in Rafah in December. As of mid-April, at least 28 children had died of malnutrition in Gaza hospitals, according to local health authorities. Credit...Fatima Shbair/Associated Press
On March 19, Volker Türk, the United Nations’ human rights chief, said in an official statement that Israel’s policies regarding aid in Gaza might amount to a war crime.
“The extent of Israel’s continued restrictions on the entry of aid into Gaza, together with the manner in which it continues to conduct hostilities, may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war, which is a war crime,” he wrote.
His comments made waves. Using starvation of civilians as a weapon is a serious violation of international humanitarian law, and a war crime under the Rome Statute, the treaty of the International Criminal Court, or I.C.C.
Israeli and foreign officials told The New York Times last week that they were worried that the I.C.C. was preparing to issue arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials — including potentially over accusations that they prevented the delivery of aid to civilians in Gaza. (They also said they believed that the court was considering arrest warrants for Hamas leaders, which could be issued concurrently.)
Let me be clear: There is a high evidentiary bar for war-crime prosecutions, and we have no way of knowing at this stage what a full investigation would reveal, particularly because independent observers have had limited access to Gaza.
We do know that a humanitarian crisis is underway in the enclave and that the specter of famine has loomed increasingly close in recent weeks. And in remarks released on Friday from an upcoming “Meet the Press” interview, Cindy McCain, the director of the World Food Program, said that parts of northern Gaza were now experiencing a “full-blown famine.”
Months of Israeli restrictions have prevented the delivery of sufficient aid into Gaza, and it has proved even harder to bring it into the northern part of the strip, which is under Israeli military control and is where the hunger crisis is most severe.
The active nature of the conflict has also curbed aid distribution: The mass displacement of civilians, a lack of police to protect aid convoys, and the violence itself have stopped some aid from reaching the people who need it most. Aid workers have been killed while trying to do their jobs. All of this has contributed to the “catastrophe” that Türk described: widespread malnourishment and the deaths of children and other vulnerable people from starvation and starvation-related diseases.
When I reached out to the Israeli military for comment this week, it said in a statement that since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, Israel had been “engaged in a war against the terror organization” and that it had worked in coordination with the U.S., Egypt and international aid groups to get aid to Gaza residents. “Israel is constantly making significant efforts to find additional solutions to facilitate the flow of aid to the Gaza Strip and in particular to the north,” a spokesperson added, saying this was evident in the coordination of airdrops and aid packages coming via sea.
Israel has previously vehemently denied placing limits on aid, accusing the United Nations of failing to distribute aid adequately, and Hamas of looting supplies. U.S. and U.N. officials have said there is no evidence of that, other than one shipment that Hamas seized earlier this week, which is now being recovered. In recent weeks, under pressure from the United States and other allies, Israel has loosened some restrictions and there has been a modest increase in aid deliveries.
It is not yet clear whether any I.C.C. warrants are actually imminent, or if they would be made public — warrants can be issued secretly and kept under seal. It is also possible that the warrants, if issued, could refer not to starvation but to other crimes. Under the I.C.C.’s rules, a warrant requires “reasonable grounds to believe” that a suspect has committed the crime in question. I’m going to examine how that standard might apply to the war crime of starvation of civilians, and why it matters.
What is the threshold for criminal liability?
Although intentionally starving civilians has been considered a violation of international humanitarian law since at least the 1970s, it was only designated as a war crime in 1998, when the I.C.C. was established. And no international tribunal has ever tried someone for the crime of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war.
There are two main elements of the crime, according to the I.C.C. statute. The first is the act itself: actions or policies that deprive civilians of “objects indispensable to their survival,” including by interfering with relief supplies. The second is the intent: Starvation must be deliberately used “as a method of warfare.”
Some legal experts point to an announcement made by Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, two days after the brutal Hamas-led assault on Israel, in which over 1,200 people were killed, as evidence of Israeli intent.
“We are imposing a complete siege,” Gallant said, adding, “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”
In the days that followed, other officials, including the energy minister and the head of the Israeli agency that oversees policy for the occupied territories, also pledged that Gaza would be completely cut off from outside supplies. No aid trucks were allowed into Gaza until Oct. 21, nearly two weeks after Gallant’s statement. Because the strip was already heavily reliant on receiving essential supplies from Israel, that had an immediate impact on civilians.
The publicly announced “complete siege” created a plausible basis to believe the elements of a war crime had been met even before actual starvation took place, according to Tom Dannenbaum, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University who is an expert on the law of sieges and starvation.
“I don’t think there’s really any other way of understanding the declaration of the total siege, and the specific identification of food and water as core components of the list of objects that would be deprived, as anything other than denial of those objects for their sustenance value,” he said.
Israel has said that its officials’ statements about the siege were not a true reflection of its policies, and pointed to an Oct. 29 cabinet meeting at which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “we must prevent a humanitarian disaster” and directed that aid to the Gaza Strip should be increased, along with other cabinet decisions that it says show its efforts to send aid to the territory.
Getting aid in
Israel conducts rigorous checks of the aid trucks that line up at border crossings to bring food and other humanitarian supplies into Gaza, in an attempt to block items that could be used by Hamas. Those inspections have often been slow, aid agencies say, and can result in entire trucks getting rejected for “dual-use” items, such as medical scissors and water filters, that Israel says could have military as well as civilian purposes.
After Oct. 21, Israel began to allow some aid into Gaza, but its restrictions continued to make it impossible to bring in and distribute enough to avert a humanitarian crisis there, according to the United Nations and aid organizations.
The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell Fontelles, told the U.N. Security Council on March 12 that “the natural way of providing support through roads is being closed, artificially closed,” in Gaza, and that “starvation is being used as a weapon of war.”
Tal Heinrich, an Israeli government spokesperson, called Borrell’s statement “false and outrageous” and said that there was “no restriction on the amount of food and water” allowed to be delivered to the Gaza Strip.
In a March 15 letter to a British parliamentary committee, David Cameron, Britain’s foreign secretary, expressed his “enormous frustration” that aid supplied by the United Kingdom had been “routinely held up” on its way to Gaza. “The main blockers remain arbitrary denials by the government of Israel and lengthy clearance procedures including multiple screenings and narrow opening windows in daylight hours,” he wrote.
Before Oct. 7, around 500 trucks entered Gaza each day, carrying both aid and commercial items, Mr. Cameron said. That number fell by approximately 75 percent in the early months of the conflict, and although there has been a modest increase in April, the most recent weekly average for which figures were available was only 202 trucks per day, according to the U.N.
As of April 17, at least 28 children under 12 had died of malnutrition or related causes in Gaza hospitals, according to local health authorities, including a dozen babies under a month old. Officials believe that many more deaths outside hospitals have gone unrecorded.
According to international law, Israel has a right to do things like inspect aid convoys for items that might aid Hamas, such as weapons, and set the times and routes for humanitarian access. But the right is not limitless, experts said: Context matters.
“If there’s not a prospect of civilian starvation, one can engage in that kind of action for those military reasons other than sustenance denial,” Dannenbaum, the Tufts professor, said. But once civilians are at risk of starvation, a party to the conflict “cannot abuse the authority to inspect and set times and routes in a way that arbitrarily impedes humanitarian access to starving civilians,” he added.
Yuval Shany, an international law professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said that such restrictions could potentially satisfy the criminal statute’s intent requirement. “When you are blocking the aid, and the inevitable consequence of doing that is starvation, then you are in an area where knowledge and intent actually collapse into one another.”
What might happen next?
There have been some improvements to aid flows in recent weeks, and on Wednesday Israel reopened the Erez border crossing, allowing some aid to cross directly into northern Gaza, where the humanitarian crisis is most acute. But foreign officials and aid agencies say it is still not enough. “This is real and important progress, but more still needs to be done,” Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, told reporters this week after visiting an aid warehouse in Jordan.
Legally, improvements now do not cancel out possible criminal liability for past actions, Dannenbaum said.
But also, having reasonable grounds for a warrant is not the same thing as having sufficient evidence for a conviction.
“Those inquiries tend to be extraordinarily factually intensive, requiring long and painstaking investigations by the prosecutor’s office,” said Chimène I. Keitner, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and a former international law adviser for the U.S. State Department.
At this stage it appears unlikely that any Israeli official would actually stand trial in the International Criminal Court, even if warrants are issued. The court, which has no police force to carry out arrests directly, relies on national governments to arrest suspects within their territories. Individuals who avoid I.C.C.-friendly jurisdictions are therefore fairly safe.
If I.C.C. indictments were announced, however, they would bolster a growing international perception that Israel’s actions in Gaza have violated international law. And that could contribute to the growing political pressure on Israel’s allies to limit their support for Israel, Keitner said.
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2) One Photo That Captures the Loss in Gaza
By Nicholas Kristof, May 4, 2024
via Sam Attar
An American surgeon who volunteered in Gaza sent me a photo that sears me with its glimpse of overwhelming grief: A woman mourns her young son.
I’ve known the surgeon, Dr. Sam Attar, a professor at Northwestern University School of Medicine, for a decade. He has worked in war zones around the world, from Ukraine to Iraq to Syria, but Gaza has been particularly harrowing for him, in part because so many children have suffered or died.
He performed amputations and other orthopedic surgeries recently at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. He was preparing to go into the operating room one day when a woman called him over and asked him to photograph her young son, Karam, in his bed in the I.C.U. Sam went over and only then realized that the boy was dead.
“Every time staff wanted to cover him fully with a blanket, she would flip it back and say, ‘No!’” Sam told me. “And she would start talking to him, asking him where he went.”
The nurses and other doctors who were in the I.C.U. that day said that Karam died of complications from malnutrition. The United Nations confirms that Gazan children have starved to death.
The nurses wanted to remove Karam’s body after he died an hour earlier, but his mother wouldn’t allow it. In her grief, she told Sam that Karam was a prince and she wanted Sam to share the boy’s photo. Perhaps she thought this was a way of commemorating her son.
I’ve criticized the way Israel has conducted the war in Gaza and President Biden’s strong support for it, for a child is killed or injured in the war every 10 minutes, according to the United Nations. More than 14,000 children have been killed in the war, according to the Gaza health authorities. But that’s a number; this photo captures a preventable tragedy.
As I argue that it’s time to end this war, I think this photo has a persuasive power greater than my words, so I’ve given my column space over to this image. As we discuss Gaza, let’s keep in mind that the war unfolds through lives like Karam’s.
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3) Israeli Cabinet Votes to Shut Down Al Jazeera’s Operations in the Country
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, May 5, 2024
Employees working at the offices of Al Jazeera in Jerusalem. Credit...Ammar Awad/Reuters
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Sunday that his cabinet had voted to shut down the Israeli operations of Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based network that is a major source of news in the Arab world and has often highlighted civilian suffering in Gaza during Israel’s war with Hamas.
“The government under my leadership has decided unanimously: The incitement channel Al Jazeera will be shut down in Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said on X, formerly Twitter. It was not immediately clear whether the closure would be temporary or whether it would affect the network’s reporting in Gaza and the West Bank.
Journalism organizations have said that such a closure, which had been under discussion in Israel for weeks, would be a blow to press freedom.
Israel’s communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, said in a video statement that Al Jazeera “will no longer broadcast here in Israel and its equipment will be confiscated.”
In a statement in Arabic, Al Jazeera condemned Israel’s move, which it called a “criminal act.” “Israeli’s suppression of the free press to cover up its crimes has not deterred us from performing our duty,” the network said.
The decision could complicate Israel’s relationship with Qatar, which helps fund the network and has also been helping to mediate cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas. The Qatari government did not immediately comment.
Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement that Al Jazeera’s reporters had “harmed Israel’s security” and incited violence against its soldiers. He had previously called Al Jazeera a “Hamas mouthpiece.” Israeli lawmakers passed a bill last month allowing the government to temporarily close foreign media outlets that Mr. Netanyahu determined were undermining the country’s national security.
The order to close Al Jazeera’s local operations will initially apply for 45 days, and a district court judge must approve it within 24 hours before it is carried out, according to Avraham Hasson, an aide to Israel’s minister of communications. Mr. Hasson said the judge could rule to change the length of the closure. The government has the option of extending it for another 45 days, but any extension would also need a judge’s approval.
Mr. Netanyahu’s government has had a tense relationship for years with Al Jazeera, which has reported extensively from Gaza during the war between Israel and Hamas that began in October.
The war in Gaza has taken a toll on the network’s own employees and their families. In October, Wael al-Dahdouh, the Gaza bureau chief of Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language service, was told live on air that his wife, son, daughter and infant grandson had been killed in central Gaza, where they had been sheltering. In January, his eldest son was killed in an Israeli airstrike, according to the authorities in Gaza.
Liam Stack and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
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4) After a U.N. official says there is famine in northern Gaza, Israel pushes back.
By Liam Stack reporting from Jerusalem, May 5, 2024
A line for food in Rafah in Gaza last month. Credit...Mohammed Abed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
After one of the strongest indications yet from a United Nations agency that parts of the Gaza Strip are experiencing famine, the Israeli agency that oversees the Palestinian territories pushed back, saying it had “increased its humanitarian effort to flood the Gaza Strip with food, medical equipment and equipment for tents.”
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press,” which released a portion of it late Friday, Cindy McCain, the director of the U.N.’s World Food Program, said there was a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza. She said her assessment was “based on what we have seen and what we have experienced on the ground.”
“It is horror,” said Ms. McCain, the widow of Senator John McCain. “I am so hoping we can get a cease-fire and begin to feed these people, especially in the north, in a much faster fashion.”
In response on Sunday, the Israeli agency, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT, said in a statement that 350 aid trucks, mostly carrying food, were entering the Gaza Strip each day. About 100 of those trucks were reaching northern Gaza, the most isolated and hard-hit area of the territory. It also said April saw a “great surge” in new aid, with more than 6,000 relief trucks entering Gaza, a 28 percent increase from the previous month.
COGAT also listed several projects to improve conditions in Gaza, including opening the Israeli port of Ashdod for humanitarian aid shipments.
But aid groups say the amount of shipments arriving is far below what is needed in Gaza, where the authorities say the war with Israel has killed more than 34,000 people, left roughly two million more homeless and destroyed the territory’s infrastructure and economy.
Ms. McCain, who became head of the World Food Program last year after a stint as an ambassador appointed by President Biden, is the second American official to say there is famine in Gaza. The first was Samantha Power, the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, who made her remarks in congressional testimony last month.
But Ms. McCain’s remarks do not constitute an official declaration, which is a complex bureaucratic process that involves both a U.N. agency, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, and the government of the country where the famine is taking place.
It is unclear what local authority might have the power to do that in Gaza. Israel’s goal in Gaza is overthrowing its Hamas-backed government, which was not widely recognized before the war and has lost control of most of the enclave since the fighting began.
Last month, Arif Husain, the chief economist for the World Food Program, said that the increased levels of aid reaching Gaza in recent weeks were a good start but that they were not enough to address the risk of famine.
He said the arrival of increased amounts of aid “cannot just happen for a day or a week — it has to happen every single day for the foreseeable future.”
“If we can do this, then we can ease the pain, we can avert famine,” he said.
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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5) University Graduations Are Flashpoints for Protests Over Gaza
By Emily Cochrane and Yan Zhuang, May 5, 2024
A student sitting at an encampment after commencement at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., on Saturday. Credit...Jeremy Hogan for The New York Times
A day after pro-Palestinian demonstrations disrupted commencement ceremonies at at least two major universities, college administrators across the United States were bracing for more protests as tensions over the war in Gaza spill into the start of graduation season.
Northeastern University and Ohio State University, two campuses where dozens of protesters have been arrested in recent days, are among the schools hosting thousands of students and their families for commencement on Sunday. The ceremonies, after weeks of campus demonstrations that have prompted police sweeps and more than 2,300 arrests, according to a New York Times tally, offer pro-Palestinian students another high-profile opportunity to criticize Israel’s war in Gaza and to renew calls on their universities to divest from Israel.
On Saturday, dozens of students draped in flags, kaffiyeh and graduation caps briefly disrupted a graduation ceremony at the University of Michigan, and dozens of graduates walked out of commencement at Indiana University in Bloomington.
Administrators are focusing on minimizing disruptions as they grapple with the students’ demands, and have been relying on existing security protocols to keep order on campuses. Some have indicated that they will add security features for graduation ceremonies, or set up designated areas for protests.
Here’s what else to know:
· Police early Sunday removed a pro-Palestinian encampment from the University of Southern California’s campus for a second time. The university has been in turmoil for weeks following its decision not to allow its valedictorian, who is Muslim, to speak at graduation, citing security concerns.
· Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered at Kent State University in Ohio on Saturday, exactly 54 years after National Guard troops opened fire on students demonstrating against the Vietnam War, killing four of them.
· Dozens were arrested on Saturday at the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Virginia, after the schools asked police to force demonstrators from campus property.
· At Vassar College, Pro-Palestinian protesters dismantled their encampment after reaching an agreement with the institution that requires administrators to review a divestment proposal. Students at Brown and Northwestern, among other places, have struck similar deals with administrators.
· The University of Mississippi said it was investigating the conduct of at least one student after counterprotesters directed racist taunts at pro-Palestinian protesters.
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6) Police clear a pro-Palestinian encampment at U.S.C. for a second time.
By and Jonathan Wolfe Reporting from Los Angeles, May 5, 2024
Students shouting, "Who do you protect?" at the cops. (Screenshot)
The Los Angeles Police Department removed a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Southern California early Sunday morning, pushing several dozen people out of the campus gates in the latest crackdown on student protesters there.
The encampment had sprouted up nearly two weeks ago in Alumni Park, a central quad on U.S.C.’s campus in Los Angeles. Shortly after it did, the university called the police to the campus, where they arrested 93 people, but the protest returned soon after. Los Angeles police said on Sunday morning that they had made no arrests while clearing the encampment for the second time.
The university has been in turmoil for several weeks following its decision not to allow its valedictorian, who is Muslim, to speak at graduation. The university cited security concerns, but the valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, said she believed she was being silenced. U.S.C. later canceled its main graduation ceremony altogether, though it will hold a modified celebration this week.
On Sunday, police officers in riot gear entered the campus before dawn, pushing about 25 protesters out of the campus’s metal gates. After the police sweep, the quad was littered with blankets, sweatshirts, coolers, snacks and overturned canopies.
Only a few of the tents were still standing, barricaded by wooden pallets and decorated with messages and Palestinian flags. Signs taped to trees carried messages such as, “every Palestinian has a right to live just like you and I,” and “disclose, divest, defend.”
In recent days, officials had tightened security around the private campus, allowing in only those with a university I.D.
Carol Folt, the U.S.C. president, said in a message to students and others on Friday that “there must be consequences” when people flout campus rules. She said the university had started the disciplinary process for people who had violated laws or campus policies.
Ms. Folt said that although the university valued freedom of expression, the protest had reached a tipping point.
“Free speech and assembly do not include the right to obstruct equal access to campus, damage property, or foment harassment, violence and threats,” Ms. Folt wrote. “Nor is anyone entitled to obstruct the normal functions of our university, including commencement.”
Protesters viewed the police operation on Sunday as an unnecessary escalation. Among the demonstrators’ demands are that the university call for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas, detail its investments and divest from companies that they view as enabling “Israel and U.S. colonialism, apartheid, genocide and violence.”
U.S.C.’s move to clear the protest encampment comes as the University of California, Los Angeles, continues to face scrutiny over its handling of protests. Police officers did not intervene for hours at that campus last week last week as a group of counterprotesters — many of whom wore pro-Israel slogans on their clothing — attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment. The next night, the police arrested about 200 people at the protest there.
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7) Dozens are arrested at the Art Institute of Chicago.
By Yan Zhuang, May 5, 2024
Law enforcement take people into custody at a pro-Palestinian encampment in a garden adjacent to The Art Institute of Chicago on Saturday. Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
The police forcibly dismantled a pro-Palestinian encampment at the Art Institute of Chicago on Saturday and arrested dozens of protesters, hours after demonstrators had gathered in a garden at the institute and set up tents.
Some of the demonstrators were students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which is affiliated with the institute, the school said in a statement.
The Chicago police said on social media that officers had removed the protesters at the school’s request. A Chicago Police spokesman said Sunday that 68 people had been arrested and charged with trespassing.
The protesters set up the encampment in the North Garden, which is part of the Art Institute of Chicago museum, at about 11 a.m. on Saturday, the police said. While encampments at some other U.S. schools during the recent wave of pro-Palestinian protests have stood for days or even weeks before police action, in this case the police said that officers “immediately responded” to maintain the safety of the protesters and the public.
The People’s Art Institute, the organizers of the protest, said on social media that the demonstrators’ demands included that the institute formally condemn Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, remove any programs that legitimize the “occupation of Palestine” and divest from any individuals or entities that support Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Photos that the group uploaded to social media showed a sign in the encampment that read “Hind’s Garden,” a reference to Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed this year in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza..
The school said that it had offered protesters an alternate venue and promised students that they would not face academic sanctions or charges if they relocated there.
The statement added that some protesters “surrounded and shoved a security officer and stole their keys to the museum, blocked emergency exits and barricaded gates.”
After about two hours of negotiations, the school asked officers to remove the protesters, the police said. Officers issued warnings and eventually removed and arrested protesters, the police said.
Videos posted by the organizers showed police forcibly pulling demonstrators out of the human chain they had formed outside the garden while some of the protesters chanted, “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?”
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8) The Israeli military tells civilians in eastern Rafah to leave the city.
By Vivek Shankar and Matthew Mpoke Bigg, May 6, 2024
Displaced Palestinians packing their belongings in Rafah, Gaza, on Monday, following an evacuation order by the Israeli army. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli military on Monday said it was asking about 110,000 Gazans sheltering in eastern Rafah to temporarily evacuate to what it described as a humanitarian zone, a sign that Israel was inching closer to invading the city in defiance of international pressure.
By 9 a.m. local time, the military had begun dropping leaflets in eastern Rafah ordering people to evacuate, and it said it would also notify people by text messages, phone calls and broadcasts in Arabic. An Israeli military spokesman would not say if or when troops would enter the city, but described the evacuation as “part of plans to dismantle Hamas” and to bring back hostages taken on Oct. 7.
Since the start of Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza last year, about a million people have fled to Rafah, the southernmost city in the enclave, where they have been living in dire conditions. Israel has told civilians in many parts of Gaza to evacuate from their homes for safety since the start of the war. But in many instances the places Israel said would be safe for Gazans were also targeted by Israeli airstrikes.
Israel’s closest allies, including the United States, have been urging it not to mount a large ground operation in Rafah, saying it would take a heavy toll on civilians. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected those calls, saying Israel needs to defend itself and eliminate Hamas, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
The evacuation order came a day after officials said that months of talks over a cease-fire and the release of hostages had hit an impasse, with Israel and Hamas still sharply at odds over the duration of any truce. Hamas wants a permanent cease-fire while Mr. Netanyahu has expressed openness to only a temporary halt in the fighting and has said Israel would invade Rafah with or without an agreement.
Salama Marouf, the head of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said in a statement on Monday that the evacuation order showed that Israel “went into truce negotiations deceptively without abandoning the idea of a broad aggression against Rafah.” He said the announcement was “a real test of the seriousness” of the countries that had warned against an invasion of the city.
On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu repeated his promises to destroy Hamas, vowing in English, in a speech marking Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, that Israel “will defeat our genocidal enemies.”
The Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said that a rocket attack on Sunday by the armed wing of Hamas, which killed four Israeli soldiers near the Kerem Shalom border crossing, was a “violent reminder” of the group’s presence in Rafah. The attack came from an area near the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt and prompted Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, to post on social media: “Netanyahu, go to Rafah now!”
About two weeks ago, the Israeli authorities said that before they moved on Rafah, they would expand a humanitarian zone in nearby Al-Mawasi where civilians could shelter. On Monday, the Israeli military said that it had done so, and that the zone had field hospitals, tents and larger supplies of food, water and medicines.
The military is not calling for a “wide-scale evacuation of Rafah,” Lt. Col. Shoshani told reporters on Monday. “This is a very specific scoped operation at the moment to move people out of harm’s way.”
Previous Israeli evacuation orders offer no clear clues about when a ground operation in Rafah might start.
Israel began instructing civilians to leave northern Gaza and move south for their own safety around two weeks before its invasion began on Oct. 27. Then, in December, Israel urged civilians in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, to move just days before launching an invasion of that city.
In both cases, civilians reported that obeying the orders was fraught with peril, leaving them with agonizing decisions and often no safe options. Northern Gaza was under heavy bombardment in the weeks before the invasion, while people in Khan Younis said that the evacuation orders were inadequately communicated and sometimes left them with just hours to escape.
UNRWA, the U.N. agency that aids Palestinian refugees, said on Monday that it would not evacuate its staff from Rafah and would continue to provide humanitarian aid to those who have taken refuge there.
“An Israeli military offensive will lead to an additional layer of an already unbearable tragedy for the people in Gaza,” Philippe Lazzarini, the agency’s commissioner general, said on social media.
Isabel Kershner, Myra Noveck and Liam Stack contributed reporting.
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9) Media experts condemn Israel’s move against Al Jazeera.
By Steve Lohr, Ma6 6, 2024
The Israeli government’s decision to shut down Al Jazeera’s operations in that country and block its reports there was condemned by American media and free speech experts as a troubling precedent and further evidence that Israel was engaging in a harsh wartime crackdown on democratic freedoms.
The experts noted that it was rare for a democratic government like Israel’s to close down a foreign news outlet. The government described its move as a national security necessity.
But invoking national security as the basis for barring a news organization from operating in a country is “incredibly vague” and “way outside the bounds of democratic norms,” said Joel Simon, director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said that closing off a country to information, news and ideas from abroad has long been a hallmark of repressive governments.
“The legitimacy of any democracy turns in part on its citizens having unrestricted access to foreign media,” Mr. Jaffer said.
Some free speech advocates acknowledged that the United States seems to be pulling back from its role as a champion of information freedom. Washington is moving to ban TikTok, the popular social media app with a Chinese parent company, unless it is sold to American investors.
But Israel, they said, is a different case. Shutting down Al Jazeera is the latest step in “a broad attack on press and speech freedom” by the Israeli government, said Genevieve Lakier, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who writes about freedom of speech. Israel’s actions, she added, are “inconsistent with a commitment to democratic values.”
Carlos Martinez de la Serna, program director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement that Israel’s move “sets an extremely alarming precedent for restricting international media outlets working in Israel.” He called on the Israeli government to reverse course and “allow Al Jazeera and all international media outlets to operate freely in Israel, especially during wartime.”
But there are concerns that Israel may go in the other direction. “Is Al Jazeera a test case?” asked Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Will Israel start going after other news outlets that are not to the government’s liking?”
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10) With Schools in Ruins, Education in Gaza Will Be Hobbled for Years
Most of Gaza’s schools, including all of its universities, have severe damage that makes them unusable, which could harm an entire generation, the United Nations and others say.
By Liam Stack and Bilal Shbair, May 6, 2024
Liam Stack reported from Jerusalem, and Bilal Shbair from Rafah, in the Gaza Strip.
“Seven months of war have devastated every level of education there. More than 80 percent of Gaza’s schools have been severely damaged or destroyed by fighting, according to the United Nations, including every one of its 12 universities.”
Palestinian children last month at a destroyed school in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. More than 80 percent of Gaza’s schools have been severely damaged or destroyed by fighting, according to the United Nations. Credit...Doaa Rouqa/Reuters
Amjad Abu Daqqa was among the top students at his school in Khan Younis, excelling in math and English, and he was applying for a scholarship to study in the United States when war erupted in the Gaza Strip last October.
Teachers used to reward his good grades with trips to local historical sites or to the pier, where they would watch boats and take pictures of the sunset. He dreamed of going into medicine like his big sister, Nagham, who studied dentistry in Gaza City.
But his old life and old dreams now feel far away. His school was bombed, many of his friends and teachers are dead, and his family fled their home to seek safety in Rafah, along with more than one million others.
“Everything in my town is gone forever,” said Amjad, 16. “I feel like I am a body without a soul, and I want to feel hopeful again.”
No end to the war in Gaza is in sight. Even if there were, it would do little to change the bleak educational prospects of more than 625,000 students who the United Nations estimates are in the territory.
Seven months of war have devastated every level of education there. More than 80 percent of Gaza’s schools have been severely damaged or destroyed by fighting, according to the United Nations, including every one of its 12 universities.
That has led critics, including the Palestinian ministry of education and more than two dozen U.N. officials, to accuse Israel of a deliberate pattern of targeting educational facilities, much as it has been accused of targeting hospitals.
“It may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide,’” a group of 25 U.N. experts said in a statement last month.
“These attacks are not isolated incidents,” it added. “They present a systematic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the very foundation of Palestinian society.”
In response, the Israeli military said in a statement on Wednesday that it has no “doctrine that aims at causing maximal damage to civilian infrastructure.” It blamed the destruction of Gaza’s schools, like its hospitals, on the “exploitation of civilian structures for terror purposes” by Hamas, which it said builds tunnels beneath them and uses them to launch attacks and store weapons.
“Under certain conditions this illegal military use can void the schools of protection from attack,” the military said.
Hamas did not respond to a request for comment about Israeli accusations that it had used schools and other civilian sites in Gaza for military purposes. Hamas has long denied such accusations. When Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, accused the group last fall of operating in schools, it responded with a statement saying “the claim that Hamas is using hospitals and schools as military sites is a repetition of a blatantly false narrative.”
The United Nations said last month that it had documented at least 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors who had been killed in Gaza since October, as well as at least 7,819 students and 756 teachers wounded.
The implications for Gaza’s future are as profound as the devastation. Students have already experienced a long gap in their educations and now face a future with few intact schools to return to after the war ends.
The war has “really hugely affected the education system,” said Hamdan al-Agha, 40, a science teacher displaced from Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza. “And it will for generations.”
Before the war, Gaza had 813 schools that employed about 22,000 teachers, according to the Global Education Cluster, a research group that works with the United Nations. Many schools were run by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
But by last week, more than 85 percent of those schools were damaged or destroyed, according to a study conducted by the Education Cluster, based on satellite imagery. It said more than two-thirds of Gaza’s schools would either need to be rebuilt from the ground up or be extensively repaired before their buildings could be safely used again.
An earlier study found that more than a third of school buildings were struck directly and that 53 schools were “totally destroyed.” An additional 38 lost more than half their structures.
Universities have been especially hard hit. Al Azhar University in Gaza City, where Amjad’s sister, Nagham, studied dentistry, is in ruins. The Israeli Army used the campus as an outpost and said Hamas had operated there, leaving behind weapons. Nagham now spends her days cooking, cleaning the family tent and looking after her brother.
More than 320 school buildings have been used as shelters for displaced Gazans, and more than half of those have taken direct hits or were seriously damaged by blasts nearby, the Education Cluster study found.
One Israeli sergeant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he spent a week at Al Azhar University last fall. He said that soldiers found five tunnel entrances on campus and that he saw weapons, including rifles and grenades, in two tunnels.
“I felt like I was in a military base,” the sergeant said. “But if you look closely you can see it’s a university.”
Another soldier, a reservist who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the military used Al-Azhar as a position to guard a supply route through northern Gaza, which was also used to transport Palestinian prisoners.
In their down time, he said, soldiers played backgammon, drank coffee and rummaged through the ruins of the university. Most of the books they found were boring — they were “all about law or chicken anatomy,” he said — but sometimes soldiers found useful items.
“There were laboratories all around,” said the soldier, so “we got beakers and we washed them and cleaned them so we had coffee cups, which was nice.”
Amjad said he could think of five teachers at his school who were killed, including his science teacher, Eyad al-Riqeb, and his physical education teacher, who went by the nickname Abu Shaker. Sometimes going through the list of people and things he has lost feels like too much to bear.
“Gaza lost everything,” he said. “I have become hopeless.”
Some students have tried to continue studying during the war, helped by teachers who volunteer their time or parents who home-school their children in shelters and tents. Nagham has become Amjad’s wartime teacher.
One day he found an English textbook for sale on the sidewalk, where he said vendors often sell books to be used as kindling. His mother wanted to use it to make a fire, but Nagham helped Amjad persuade her to let him keep it. At night, the siblings sit together and review lessons in it. Amjad said he was still determined to study in the United States.
“I just read some paragraphs with her and she helps me with the correct pronunciation,” Amjad said. “She asks me about synonyms and antonyms of simple words we encounter.”
Nagham is happy to do it, but she has dreams of her own. She would like to join online lectures at Al-Najjah University in the West Bank and finish her degree, or at least take advanced English classes.
She has thought about putting her medical training to use in Rafah, but the shattered infrastructure in Gaza makes even dental exams seem impossible.
“All they do here is pull teeth,” she said. “There is no electricity.”
Displaced people in Rafah sometimes offer their tents for use as makeshift schoolhouses, where volunteers provide lessons for children in the camps, said Mohammed Shbair, a school principal from Khan Younis.
This spring, he helped organize five days’ worth of basic instruction taught by volunteers in Rafah. But he thought the lessons could have little impact, he said.
He often sees his former students in the street, selling food or waiting in long lines for bread or basic medicine. Seven months of war have taught them survival skills, not grammar and algebra.
Mr. Shbair, who has spent months living with his own children in a tent near the beach, said they were all just trying to stay alive.
“Most of them spend their whole day looking for firewood for their family,” he said. “How can these students think of any type of learning while basic things are not available for them?”
Adam Sella contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
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