A still image from a video posted by WikiLeaks showed Julian Assange boarding a plane at London Stansted Airport on Monday. Credit...WikiLeaks, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Assange Agrees to Plead Guilty in Exchange for Release, Ending Standoff With U.S.
Barring last-minute snags, the deal would bring to an end a prolonged battle that began after the WikiLeaks founder became alternately celebrated and reviled for revealing state secrets in the 2010s.
By Glenn Thrush and Megan Specia—Glenn Thrush reported from Washington, and Megan Specia from London, Published June 24, 2024. Updated June 25, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/us/politics/julian-assange-plea-deal.html
See full article #10, below
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Leonard Peltier self portrait
Free Leonard Peltier This Week
The U.S. Parole Commission is considering his parole right now.
He is the longest-held political prisoner in the United States, unjustly kept behind bars for decades.
Click here to email the parole commission:
<https://default.salsalabs.org/T08a66d07-ce14-4f9c-9816-63e4b3fae471/aad59268-5865-44eb-83d5-2371821e9ee4>
<https://default.salsalabs.org/T7fac527a-5c37-4254-94ac-e4c072bf6c25/aad59268-5865-44eb-83d5-2371821e9ee4>
Facebook share link:
<https://default.salsalabs.org/T2b826221-2127-449e-b143-c6fea68a9a3e/aad59268-5865-44eb-83d5-2371821e9ee4>
Donate:
<https://default.salsalabs.org/T00a89414-de23-4f9b-b295-1d646bbec826/aad59268-5865-44eb-83d5-2371821e9ee4>
Twitter share link:
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This is our message:
I write to you today in support of parole for Leonard Peltier, who is almost 80 years old and uses a walker to move about within the walls of a maximum-security prison.
He is imprisoned for his alleged role in the deaths of two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota in 1975. Imprisoned at the age of 31, Mr. Peltier was sentenced for aiding and abetting in a case where his co-defendants, principally charged with the murders, were found not guilty on grounds of self-defense. In fact, the prosecutors have admitted they do not know who killed the agents and could not prove Mr. Peltier committed a crime that day.
A former FBI agent familiar with his case has called publicly for Peltier’s release. A former federal prosecutor who oversaw Peltier’s post-trial sentencing and appeals has also called for his release, saying: “I have realized that the prosecution and continued incarceration of Mr. Peltier was and is unjust. We were not able to prove that Mr. Peltier personally committed any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation.”
Please grant Leonard Peltier his freedom after nearly a half century of incarceration.
Click here to send it:
<https://default.salsalabs.org/Te085aa05-504a-48a6-82ad-9c5e8d34807d/aad59268-5865-44eb-83d5-2371821e9ee4>
Sign here:
<https://default.salsalabs.org/Tdc54f667-6365-407e-afc1-68db164288c0/aad59268-5865-44eb-83d5-2371821e9ee4>
After doing this action, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.
This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $5 now:
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Thank you!
—The RootsAction.org team
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Location: MECA office, 1101 8th St, Berkeley, CA 94710
Join us Sunday, July 21 for our Third Annual Ride for Palestine, a day of solidarity along the 14-mile scenic San Francisco Bay. The ride is designed to be enjoyable for cyclists of all skill levels and the post-Ride event, Gather for Gaza will include delicious Palestinian food, music, dancing, and more.
All funds raised this year will support MECA’s emergency work in Gaza–where the situation is dire and your support is more important than ever. Thanks to the efforts of our community, MECA’s 2022 and 2023 Rides for Palestine were a huge success, together raising more than $125,000 in support of our ongoing work in Palestine.
Help us reach our 2024 Ride for Palestine goal of $150,000 by registering today:
With your support, we can deliver food and other necessities and send a powerful message of solidarity to Gaza.
Ride for Palestinian children. Ride for solidarity. Ride for Gaza.
If you're not in the Bay Area or are not available July 21 but would like to participate you can register at a discounted rate as a Virtual Participant and ride, walk, swim, or even bake cookies for Palestine–you can decide what your fundraising activity looks like. Check out our Ride from Anywhere page to learn more.
Ride from anywhere:
https://rideforpalestine.com/ride-from-anywhere/?emci=ecd65d8d-9fe8-ee11-aaf0-002248223794&emdi=ea000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001&ceid=2453624
Get involved in this year’s event at RideforPalestine.com and feel free to reach out to the MECA team by emailing us at info@rideforpalestine.com.
#GatherforGaza #RideforPalestine #MECAforPeace
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‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 262:
Casualties
Source: mondoweiss.net
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Beneath The Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader (City Lights, 2024) is a collection of revolutionary essays, written by those who have been detained inside prison walls. Composed by the most structurally dispossessed people on earth, the prisoner class, these words illuminate the steps towards freedom.
Beneath the Mountain documents the struggle — beginning with slavery, genocide, and colonization up to our present day — and imagines a collective, anti-carceral future. These essays were handwritten first on scraps of paper, magazine covers, envelopes, toilet paper, or pages of bibles, scratched down with contraband pencils or the stubby cartridge of a ball-point pen; kites, careworn, copied and shared across tiers and now preserved in this collection for this and future generations. If they were dropped in the prison-controlled mail they were cloaked in prayers, navigating censorship and dustbins. They were very often smuggled out. These words mark resistance, fierce clarity, and speak to the hope of building the world we all deserve to live in.
"Beneath the Mountain reminds us that ancestors and rebels have resisted conquest and enslavement, building marronage against colonialism and genocide."
—Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency
Who stands beneath the mountain but prisoners of war? Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jennifer Black have assembled a book of fire, each voice a flame in captivity...Whether writing from a place of fugivity, the prison camp, the city jail, the modern gulag or death row, these are our revolutionary thinkers, our critics and dreamers, our people. The people who move mountains. —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Filled with insight and energy, this extraordinary book gifts us the opportunity to encounter people’s understanding of the fight for freedom from the inside out. —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag and Abolition Geography
These are the words each writer dreamed as they sought freedom and they need to be studied by people inside and read in every control unit/hole in every prison in America. We can send this book for you to anyone who you know who is currently living, struggling, and fighting
Who better to tell these stories than those who have lived them? Don’t be surprised with what you find within these pages: hope, solidarity, full faith towards the future, and most importantly, love.
Excerpt from the book:
"Revolutionary love speaks to the ways we protect, respect, and empower each other while standing up to state terror. Its presence is affirmed through these texts as a necessary component to help chase away fear and to encourage the solidarity and unity essential for organizing in dangerous times and places. Its absence portends tragedy. Revolutionary love does not stop the state from wanting to kill us, nor is it effective without strategy and tactics, but it is the might that fuels us to stand shoulder to shoulder with others regardless. Perhaps it can move mountains." —Jennifer Black & Mumia Abu-Jamal from the introduction to Beneath The Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader
Get the book at:
https://www.prisonradiostore.com/shop-2/beneath-the-mountain-an-anti-prison-reader-edited-by-mumia-abu-jamal-jennifer-black-city-lights-2024
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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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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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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:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
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) Blaming Hamas for Gazans’ Suffering, Many Israelis Feel Little Sympathy
Despite being aware of the devastation in the enclave, many in Israel ask why they should show pity when Palestinians there showed none on Oct. 7.
By Isabel Kershner visited right-wing and liberal strongholds in southern Israel and spoke with Israelis from across the country, June 23, 2024
Michael Zigdon with customers in his restaurant in Netivot. “It wasn’t us who attacked them on Oct. 7,” Mr. Zigdon said. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
The southern Israeli city of Netivot, a working-class hub for mystical rabbis about 10 miles from the Gaza border, escaped the worst of the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, a fluke many residents ascribe to miraculous intervention by the Jewish sages buried here.
Nevertheless, many here seem to show little concern about the suffering now of the Palestinian civilians — practically neighbors — across the fence in Gaza.
Michael Zigdon, who operates a small food shack in Netivot’s rundown market and had employed two men from Gaza until the attack, expressed little sympathy for Gazans, who have endured a ferocious Israeli military onslaught for the past eight months.
“Who wants this war and who doesn’t?” Mr. Zigdon said, while mopping up red food dye that had spilled from a crushed-ice drink machine in his shack. “It wasn’t us who attacked them on Oct. 7.”
Like many Israelis, Mr. Zigdon blamed Hamas for embedding itself in residential areas, endangering Gaza’s civilians, while blurring the distinction himself between Hamas fighters and the general population, as if all were complicit.
Israelis remain gripped by the trauma of what happened on Oct. 7 — when Hamas-led gunmen surged across the border, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 more back to Gaza, according to Israeli officials. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
The pain, still raw, is increasingly overlaid with anger. Much of the collective Israeli psyche is cloistered in self-protective layers of indignation as Israel faces international opprobrium for its prosecution of the war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Most Israelis seem to be aware that their military’s subsequent air and ground offensive in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians — many of them children, according to health officials in Gaza — and wrought widespread destruction on the coastal enclave. But they have also seen the videos of scores of people in civilian clothes looting and attacking residents of the rural Israeli villages during the Hamas raids. While Palestinian polls show broad support among Gazans for the Oct. 7 attack, some Palestinians have spoken out against the atrocities committed by Hamas and its allies that day.
Netivot is a bastion of political and religious conservatism: In the November 2022 election, nearly 92 percent of the city’s vote went to parties making up the hard-line government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Armed groups from Gaza have fired barrages of rockets toward the city over the years. One struck Netivot on Oct. 7 and killed a 12-year-old boy, his father and grandfather.
But the lack of sympathy for the plight of Gazans extends beyond Israel’s traditional, right-wing strongholds. Rachel Riemer, 72, a longtime resident of Urim, a liberal, left-leaning kibbutz, or communal village, about 10 miles south of Netivot and a similar distance from the Gaza border, recalled that, during a previous round of fighting, she had donated money for blankets for Gazan children.
“This time, I don’t have place in my heart to pity them,” she said of Gaza’s civilians. “I know there is much to pity, rationally, I understand. But emotionally I can’t.”
Many Israelis — both conservative and liberal — blame Hamas for starting the war and for embedding its fighters among the Gazan population, operating, according to the military, out of schools, hospitals and mosques, and in tunnels beneath Gazans’ homes.
Many also see Gaza’s civilians as complicit, at least ideologically, in the atrocities of Oct. 7, saying that they brought Hamas to power in the first place, in Palestinian elections in 2006, and that they had not expressed much remorse — though Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007 with little tolerance for any dissent, much less a new vote. As the war has dragged on, more Gazans have been willing to speak out against Hamas, risking retribution.
The death toll in Gaza has spiraled to at least 37,000 since Israel began its ferocious offensive, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Hamas officials deny Israel’s claims that it uses public facilities like hospitals as cover for its military operations, despite some evidence to the contrary. And there is little escape for most of the 2.3 million residents of Gaza, terrified and trapped in a crowded, narrow strip of land — tightly sealed by Israel and Egypt — and backing onto the sea, where a naval blockade is in force.
International organizations have also accused Israel of restricting the entry of aid, causing widespread hunger, though Israeli officials say they have opened up additional crossings for goods and blame humanitarian groups for failing to distribute the aid effectively. Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced and more than half the homes in the coastal enclave are reported to have been damaged or destroyed.
For much of the Israeli public, this war is very different from previous Arab-Israeli conflicts, said Avi Shilon, an Israeli historian based in Tel Aviv, explaining the apparent indifference to the suffering of Palestinians. Unlike the much shorter wars of 1967 or 1973, when state armies fought state armies, this conflict is viewed more like the 1948 war surrounding the creation of modern Israel, or through the prism of the Nazi genocide in Europe, he said.
Mr. Shilon said he saw every unintended death as a “tragedy.” But the Oct. 7 assault — when attackers killed people in their homes, at a music rave, in roadside bomb shelters and at army bases — was broadly seen in Israel as being “just about killing Jews,” Mr. Shilon said, turning the ensuing war into a visceral battle: “Either us or them.”
Rony Baruch, 67, a potato farmer from Urim, which also escaped the brunt of the Oct. 7 attack, said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza was “terrible,” and “painful,” and that it was time to end the war. But he said he did not think his opinion was representative. He also emphasized that Israel was not the “bad guy” in this confrontation.
Many Israelis have remained in a dark place. The Hebrew news media is still filled with stories of loss and courage from Oct. 7. They have watched gruesome video clips of the Oct. 7 atrocities filmed by Hamas gunmen as well as hostage videos released by the armed groups holding them.
A few survivors said they recognized Gazans they had previously employed among the infiltrators. Videos showed some crowds jeering at and abusing hostages as they were paraded through Gaza on Oct. 7. The rescue of four hostages on June 8 came after months of reports about hostages killed in captivity and about the military’s retrieving the remains of some for burial in Israel. Israelis generally paid little attention to the high death toll that the rescue mission exacted on the Gazan side. Gaza’s health officials reported more than 270 killed, including children.
The mainstream Israeli news media rarely focuses on the suffering of Gaza’s civilians and routinely leads news broadcasts with the funerals and profiles of soldiers who have died in battle. Still, according to one poll this year, 87 percent of Jewish Israelis reported having seen at least a few pictures or videos of the destruction in Gaza.
Israelis are divided, broadly along political lines, and sometimes within themselves, over issues like the supply of humanitarian aid.
“I have mixed emotions,” said Sarah Brien, 42, a resident of Urim. “On the one hand, you are obligated as a country to international conventions. On the other, you are not getting anything in return. Has any reliable organization seen any one of the hostages? Who is taking care of them?” The International Committee for the Red Cross has said it has failed to gain access to the hostages.
Israelis acknowledge the hunger in Gaza but accuse Hamas of stealing or diverting aid. Hamas officials deny stealing aid, saying that a few desperate people have looted the deliveries. Many Israelis have seen footage of hungry Gazans swarming the aid trucks. But many say they were also galled by images of Gazans flocking to the beach to find some respite, while hostages remained in the dark.
And some Israelis say that the rest of the world moved on too quickly after Oct. 7.
“The feeling is that for the world, the story began on Oct. 8,” said Tamar Hermann, a professor of political science and a public opinion expert at the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Jerusalem. “They feel that not only are the Gazans showing no remorse, but the world is undermining Israeli suffering.”
At the same time, there is little desire in Israel to see Gazan children starve to death.
“We don’t have the soul for that,” said Hen Kerman, 32, from the southern city of Beersheba.
Ms. Kerman, who works in a private investigations office, and her partner, Rani Kerman, 32, a taxi driver, had come to Netivot to pray at the tomb of a revered sage known as the Baba Sali. They defined themselves as far-rightists.
But like many Israelis, they seemed to harbor few illusions about how the war was going after Mr. Netanyahu and his right-wing government pledged eight months ago to eradicate Hamas.
“Soldiers are dying and Hamas is still there,” Mr. Kerman said.
Some, like Mr. Kerman, say they believe the Israeli military should wreak more destruction on Gaza. Others say Israel should agree to a deal, whatever the cost, to bring the hostages home and focus on an exit plan.
Tali Medina, 52, manages a dairy farm at Urim. Her husband, Haim, was shot and injured by gunmen on Oct. 7 when he was out cycling with a friend.
“I didn’t start this war or keep hostages for more than 200 days,” said Ms. Medina, wearing a T-shirt with the “Brothers in Arms” logo of an antigovernment protest group led by military reserve soldiers. While she opposes the hawkish Israeli government, Ms. Medina — like most Israelis — blames Hamas for the war.
“The reality is very hard, but it’s not my responsibility,” she said.
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2) Israel’s Defense Minister Arrives in Washington Amid Tensions
By Isabel Kershner Reporting from Jerusalem, June 23, 2024
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, will meet with U.S. officials in Washington. Credit...Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel aired new grievances on Sunday over the Biden administration’s supply of munitions for the war in Gaza as his minister of defense arrived in Washington for meetings with senior U.S. officials.
Some Israeli news outlets had portrayed the visit by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, although preplanned, as a “reconciliation” trip aimed at smoothing recent tensions with the country’s most crucial ally. Mr. Netanyahu’s government and the Biden administration have been increasingly at odds over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, and Mr. Netanyahu lashed out at the United States last week for withholding munitions.
But on Sunday morning, Mr. Netanyahu doubled down. In remarks broadcast in Hebrew before his weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu said he appreciated the Biden administration’s support for Israel through eight months of war, “but starting four months ago, there was a dramatic decrease in the supply of armaments.”
“For long weeks, we turned to our American friends and requested that the shipments be expedited. We did that time after time,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding that he had also tried working behind closed doors.
“We received all sorts of explanations, but one thing we didn’t receive: The basic situation didn’t change,” he continued, adding, “Certain items arrived sporadically, but the munitions at large remained behind.”
There was no immediate comment from the Biden administration about the remarks, which could upstage Mr. Gallant in Washington. They come just days after Mr. Netanyahu released a combative video, in English, excoriating the Biden administration for, as the Israeli leader put it, withholding weapons and ammunition when Israel was “fighting for its life” against Iran and other common enemies.
U.S. officials said at the time that they found the video “perplexing” and did not know what Mr. Netanyahu was talking about. While the Israeli prime minister complained of “bottlenecks,” the Biden administration maintained that it had held up only one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs over concerns about their use in densely populated parts of Gaza.
Many Israelis were similarly nonplussed by the prime minister’s decision to pick such a public fight with the White House, with sharp criticism coming even from within his own conservative Likud Party.
Yuli Edelstein, a Likud lawmaker and chairman of the Israeli Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said he was “surprised” by the video. He told Israel’s “Meet the Press” program on Saturday that differences of opinion with the United States should not be handled “via video clips.”
Some Israeli political analysts have suggested that Mr. Netanyahu’s moves might be an effort to intervene in American politics ahead of the November presidential elections and give Donald Trump and the Republicans a stick with which to beat the Democrats. Mr. Netanyahu is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress next month.
Other experts, however, have said Mr. Netanyahu’s public affront likely has more to do with Israel’s domestic politics amid increasing signs of strain in his hawkish coalition — the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history.
“If there’s any logic to be found in a completely illogical move, one has to see all this through the prism of Netanyahu, with his political survival as his ultimate goal,” said Reuven Hazan, a professor of political science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Mr. Netanyahu was “pandering to the extremists in Israel in the short term,” he added, “and probably creating damage for the military, for relations with the United States and for the country in the long term.”
Mr. Netanyahu on Sunday defended his actions, saying he went public based on “years of experience and the knowledge that this step was vital to opening the bottleneck,” adding, “I am willing to absorb personal attacks on behalf of the state of Israel.”
He also suggested that his public criticism might be bearing fruit.
“In light of what I have heard over the past 24 hours,” he said, “I hope and believe that this issue will be resolved in the near future.”
His continuation of the spat on Sunday and Mr. Gallant’s travel to the United States come at a critical juncture. Israel’s military has indicated that it wants to wind down the fighting in Gaza and potentially turn its attention to its northern border with Lebanon, after weeks of escalating tit-for-tat strikes between the Israeli military and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia backed by Iran.
The Biden administration has been working to try to find a diplomatic solution to avert a full-blown conflagration between Israel and Hezbollah. President Biden has also invested time and political capital endorsing an Israeli proposal for a truce in Gaza involving an exchange of hostages — including some with U.S. citizenship — for Palestinian prisoners. Hamas raised significant reservations about the proposal, and talks have been at an impasse.
Mr. Gallant was invited to Washington by his counterpart, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, according to Mr. Gallant’s office. It also said he was scheduled to meet with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and other senior American officials.
“The United States is our most important and central ally,” Mr. Gallant said shortly before his departure. “Our ties are crucial, and perhaps more important than ever, at this time,” he added.
Mr. Gallant and Mr. Netanyahu are themselves rivals who have openly clashed in recent months, even as they jointly oversee Israel’s military operations. As the Israeli prime minister has lashed out at the White House, he also has engaged in increasingly public spats with his military brass and his right-wing coalition partners.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
A drone attack damages a ship in the Red Sea, and other news.
· A drone attack damaged a merchant vessel 65 nautical miles west of the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah, a British government maritime agency said on Sunday. The agency, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, said that the crew was safe and that the vessel was proceeding to port. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen has staged dozens of missile and drone attacks against ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November, disrupting global maritime trade.
· Israel’s military said it killed a militant in an airstrike on Saturday deep inside Lebanese territory as cross-border fire continues to stoke fears of a broader escalation. The Israeli military said in a statement that the target was responsible for funneling weapons to Hamas and to another group, as well as “promotion and execution of terrorist activities against Israel.” Hamas did not immediately comment on the strike. Lebanese state media reported that the strike had hit a village about 25 miles from the Israeli border.
· The U.N. agency that aids Palestinians said that 69 percent of school buildings where displaced families were seeking shelter in Gaza have sustained direct hits or damage. Israel has repeatedly targeted what it says are Hamas fighters located in school buildings in airstrikes that have also killed civilians.
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3) The Israeli military says troops tied a wounded Palestinian to a vehicle.
By Aaron Boxerman, June 23, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/23/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas
Photo from Mondoweiss
Israeli troops tied a wounded Palestinian to the top of a military vehicle on Saturday morning during an operation in the occupied West Bank, a scene that was captured on video and quickly went viral, prompting outrage.
The Israeli military said that the act violated military procedure and that there would be an investigation.
Israeli soldiers raided Wadi Burqin, a Palestinian town on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Jenin, on Saturday morning to arrest Palestinians suspected of involvement in militant groups. Jenin, a longtime stronghold for loosely organized armed groups, has experienced repeated crackdowns by the Israeli military over the past few months.
A firefight broke out between Palestinian militants and Israeli soldiers, the military said. Israeli troops arrested a Palestinian injured in the shooting.
“In violation of orders and standard operating procedures, the suspect was taken by the forces while tied on top of a vehicle,” the Israeli military said, adding that such conduct “does not conform to the values” of its army.
The troops handed over the wounded Palestinian to the Palestinian Red Crescent for medical care, the Israeli military said.
The occupied West Bank has seen increasing violence over the past eight months after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 and during the subsequent war in Gaza. More than 500 Palestinians and 12 Israelis have been killed in the territory, according to the United Nations, and thousands of Palestinians have been arrested in near-nightly Israeli raids.
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4) Israel says it is investigating a strike that killed dozens near a Red Cross office in Gaza.
By Adam Rasgon and Anjana Sankar, June 23, 2024
A Palestinian woman and child grieved as victims were collected after a military strike in the Al-Mawasi area. Credit...Mohammed Salem/Reuters
Israel said Saturday it was investigating an airstrike in Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza after the International Committee of the Red Cross said that “heavy-caliber” projectiles fell meters away from an office and residences for the aid group.
The strike killed at least 22 people and wounded dozens of others who were then taken to a nearby field hospital, the Red Cross said.
William Schomburg, the leader of the Red Cross operation in Gaza, did not blame the Israeli military or Hamas but said all parties to the conflict were aware of the Red Cross’s buildings south of a zone designated as “safer” for displaced Palestinians fleeing fighting in Gaza.
“We’re not here to lay blame,” Mr. Schomburg said, adding that his focus was on how to best respond to the episode and how to avoid it from happening again. The Red Cross strives to remain neutral in conflicts in an effort to be able to provide aid to whomever needs it.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it did not carry out a direct attack against a Red Cross facility. It did not say whether it had struck elsewhere in the area.
“The incident will be quickly examined, and its findings will be presented to our international partners,” the military said in a statement on Saturday.
Since the beginning of the war, Israeli military officials have repeatedly accused Hamas fighters of hiding within the civilian population.
Describing the macabre scene in the aftermath of Friday’s strike, Mr. Schomburg said there were three large explosions that left “piles of dead bodies” and “blood everywhere.” He added that the I.C.R.C. team in Rafah had collected body parts scattered in the area.
“Frankly, it’s nothing like I have ever seen before,” Mr. Schomburg told reporters in an online news briefing Saturday.
Josep Borrell, a top diplomat from the European Union, condemned the attack and called for an independent investigation. He said those responsible should be held accountable.
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5) Puerto Rico Will Not Go Quietly Into the Dark
By Yarimar Bonilla is a contributing Opinion writer who covers race, history, pop culture and the American empire. She wrote and produced the Emmy Award-winning documentary “Privatized Resilience,” about Puerto Rico’s energy crisis, June 23, 2024
This month a massive outage left over 350,000 customers in San Juan, P.R., without power, including my 96-year-old grandmother and 75-year-old mom. Amid a record-breaking heat wave, my mom struggled to keep my grandmother cool with a battery-operated fan. The frustration and fear in my mother’s voice as we spoke on the phone was palpable, and when the call ended, I found myself blinking back tears of rage.
In 2020 the Puerto Rican government transferred management of the electric grid to a newly minted Canadian-American private company, Luma Energy. It promised to bring clean, reliable energy to Puerto Rico after the state-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority filed for bankruptcy and Hurricane Maria knocked out the island’s ailing electric grid.
So why is it that four years later, my mom is still cursing in the dark?
Puerto Rico’s power crisis illustrates the consequences of putting essential services in the hands of a private entity. Reliable electricity is not just a convenience; it is essential for economic stability and public health. Yet residents are paying exorbitant rates for a service that repeatedly fails them. Enough is enough. Puerto Ricans deserve a power grid that works for them, not against them.
After Puerto Rico declared bankruptcy in 2017, the fiscal control board, charged with managing the island’s debt restructuring and finances, began pushing to sell off its assets, but since PREPA couldn’t be sold while undergoing debt restructuring, the government opted for a public-private partnership model in which it retained ownership of the assets — and the debt — while outsourcing operations.
In such arrangements, the partners have a vested interest in the project’s success through shared risks, rewards and performance incentives. The upside in this structure is that unlike with full privatization, the public sector retains responsibility and accountability for ensuring that services are delivered properly. But in Puerto Rico, that has not been the case.
The contract awarded to Luma is outrageously generous. It receives a fixed management fee regardless of whether it keeps the lights on, is guaranteed federal funds for repairs and can charge PREPA for any unexpected operational costs. Luma has even threatened to charge residents more if they seek compensation for appliances damaged by outages and surges. Additionally, until PREPA’s debt restructuring is resolved, Luma is operating under an interim contract that nearly doubles its fee, to $115 million from $70 million.
Puerto Rico’s power authority is now a three-headed monster: Luma handles customer service, transmission, maintenance and repair; another company, Genera PR, takes care of energy generation; and PREPA remains responsible for compliance and the ongoing bankruptcy process.
To date, Luma has spent only a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars allocated for improvements. At this rate, it will take over a century to rebuild the grid — assuming no further disasters. Plus, under a new federal administration those allocated funds could easily disappear. The labyrinth of federal bureaucracy contributes to delays, but it’s only part of the story.
When Luma took over the electric grid, PREPA’s skilled line workers were forced into contracts with reduced benefits. Some were left with little choice but to transfer to jobs mopping floors or cutting grass for other public agencies. Luma replaced them with an inexperienced team led by executives who command extravagant salaries. They blame the constant outages on the island’s weather, vegetation, cats and iguanas.
Since the federal government doesn’t publicly track Puerto Rico’s power outage data, the only performance metric comes from Luma. Public-private partnerships are meant to ensure accountability, but in Puerto Rico the legislature had to issue an arrest warrant for the company’s chief executive just to get basic reports.
In theory, Luma should be accountable to the independent Puerto Rico Energy Bureau, which has criticized it for poor performance, overspending and a lack of transparency. But the bureau is toothless against the Financial Oversight and Management Board, which manages the island’s finances. The board has blocked initiatives like compensating solar owners for energy sold back to the grid, claiming it conflicts with Puerto Rico’s austerity budget.
Hating on Luma has become part of local culture, fueling catchy songs, viral memes, comedy sketches and parody videos. Even Bad Bunny has sung about its epic apagones and has called for the company’s removal . Yet Luma is but a symptom of a broader problem of failed outsourcing and semiprivatization.
No doubt, Puerto Rico’s public agencies need reform, but instead private public partnerships are maintaining the status quo. The result is a landscape of semiprivatized dysfunction — sparking power lines, roads ridden with potholes, collapsing hospitals, glitchy voting machines, a toll collection system susceptible to cyberattacks. All while costs for these services soar.
Even the fiscal control board acknowledges that Luma’s contract was excessive. It boasts that the new contract for Genera PR, which oversees Puerto Rico’s electricity generation, includes performance metrics, accountability mechanisms and penalties for poor performance — everything Luma’s contract lacks.
In 2022, as Luma’s interim contract was coming to an end, Puerto Rico’s legislature voted against renewing it. However, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi vetoed the measure, opting instead to extend the contract without any changes, citing the need for stability through the bankruptcy hearings.
The legislature is now making another push for cancellation. Some believe the contract can be terminated without penalty, given Luma’s glaring failures, while others warn of the steep cancellation costs stipulated in the contract. In any case, it seems better to pursue cancellation than to keep throwing good money after bad. Of course, it is the Fiscal Control Board, not Puerto Rico’s people or its elected officials, that has the final call.
But swapping one private provider for another won’t solve the deeper problems. Puerto Rico needs a comprehensive reassessment of its energy strategy. Groups favoring clean energy, like the Queremos Sol coalition, advocate a decentralized grid with distributed renewable projects, like rooftop solar systems and community microgrids, to avoid the failures of centralized power lines that can be brought down by an unpruned tree or rogue iguana.
Puerto Ricans have already ousted one governor, amid large-scale protests. As the fifth anniversary of those approaches, the warm summer nights in Old San Juan reverberate again with the clatter of pots and pans as demonstrators return to the governor’s mansion, La Fortaleza, demanding change.
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6) Israel’s Defense Minister Holds Talks in Washington on War’s Next Phase
By Mike Ives, June 24, 2024
Rubble from an Israeli bombardment in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. Credit...Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israel’s defense minister was scheduled to meet with two top U.S. officials in Washington on Monday, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the intensive phase of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip was “about to end.”
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant planned to meet with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, on Monday, his office said. He was scheduled to meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Tuesday and with President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on Wednesday.
Early in the war, Mr. Gallant publicly outlined a three-phase battle plan for Gaza that included intense airstrikes against Hamas targets and infrastructure; a period of ground operations aimed at “eliminating pockets of resistance”; and a third phase that would create “a new security reality for the citizens of Israel.” He said over the weekend that his meetings in Washington would feature discussion of “the transition to ‘Phase C’ in Gaza.”
On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu left ambiguity around how his government expects the war to end. In an interview with an Israeli television station, he said at one point that he was ready to agree to a temporary truce and the release of some of hostages in Gaza, then subsequently resume the war. That appeared to contradict an Israeli proposal — endorsed by Mr. Biden and the United Nations Security Council — for a phased deal that would release all the Israeli hostages there and usher in a permanent cease-fire.
Mr. Netanyahu also continued to rule out a proposal, pushed by the Biden administration, to hand over Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, a Western-backed administration that lost control of the enclave in 2007 and exercises limited rule in parts of the occupied West Bank.
One question is how a temporary truce or permanent cease-fire in Gaza might affect tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a powerful militia and Lebanese political faction backed by Iran.
The two conflicts are intertwined: Hezbollah began cross-border strikes into northern Israel in support of Hamas after Israel launched its offensive in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Analysts have said that a deal to end the Israel-Hezbollah conflict is unlikely as long as the war in Gaza persists.
Escalating fire across the Israel-Lebanon border in recent weeks has been stoking fears that the fighting could grow into all-out war. Over the weekend, the Israeli military said it had killed a militant in an airstrike deep inside Lebanese territory. Lebanese state media reported that the Israeli strike had hit a village about 25 miles from the border.
On Sunday, Mr. Gallant met in Washington with Amos Hochstein, a Biden adviser who has overseen previous talks between Israel and Lebanon. Mr. Hochstein had met with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem less than a week earlier, as the Israeli military warned that Hezbollah’s cross-border strikes against Israel risked a wider confrontation.
Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Sunday that an Israeli military offensive in Lebanon would risk an Iranian response, according to The Associated Press.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
An Israeli panel issues a warning to Netanyahu in a corruption case, and other news.
· An Israeli government panel issued warnings to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and four others on Monday as part of a yearslong inquiry into a multibillion-dollar purchase of submarines and missile boats from Germany, an episode regarded as the worst corruption scandal in the country’s history. In a statement, the panel said that Mr. Netanyahu had endangered Israel’s security and bypassed official channels with the purchase, during a previous term as prime minister. It was not clear if Mr. Netanyahu himself was suspected of corruption in the case, but the panel said it issued the warning to give him and the others — including a former defense minister and a former head of Mossad — the opportunity to respond. The prime minister defended himself, saying in a statement from his office that the submarines were “a central pillar of Israel’s national security.”
· Israeli jets bombarded an UNRWA compound near Gaza City on Sunday, killing at least eight people, according to Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency. The compound included a training college that had become an aid distribution site for displaced families, according to Reuters. The Israeli military said the compound was being used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, which Hamas denied. A spokeswoman for UNRWA, the main U.N. agency aiding Palestinians in Gaza, said that more than 500 displaced people sheltering at its school buildings have been killed since the start of the war.
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7) An Israeli strike kills the coordinator of ambulance services in Gaza, health officials say.
By Adam Rasgon reporting from Jerusalem, June 24, 2024
Relatives and medical workers praying over the body of Hani al-Jafarawi, the director of ambulance and emergency services in Gaza, at a hospital in Gaza City on Monday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A senior official in charge of coordinating ambulance movements in Gaza was killed by an Israeli strike, the health ministry in the enclave said in a statement on Monday.
The official, Hani al-Jafarawi, the director of ambulance and emergency services in Gaza, was killed in a strike on a health clinic in Gaza City, the ministry said.
The Israeli military didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. It said earlier on Monday that it had killed a man named Muhammad Salah, whom it called a Hamas operative, in Gaza City on Sunday night. It was not clear if the two men were killed in the same strike.
Hundreds of health care workers in Gaza have been killed by Israel’s pulverizing bombing campaign or been caught in the middle of ground combat between the Israeli military and Hamas, according to the ministry.
In an interview, Yousef Abu al-Rish, the deputy minister of the health ministry, said Mr. Jafarawi had relocated to a clinic in Gaza City months ago after an Israeli raid left Al-Shifa Hospital, his previous base of operations, in ruins.
Mr. Abu al-Rish, the most senior health ministry official in Gaza, said Mr. Jafarawi coordinated the transfer of wounded people from the field to hospitals, as well as between hospitals. He had been responsible for doing that work across Gaza, but after Israeli forces divided the enclave in half, he focused on the northern part of the territory.
Mr. Abu al-Rish said a replacement would be named, but predicted that the person would not have the same expertise and contacts.
On Monday, the Israeli military said the Air Force had killed Mr. Salah, the Hamas militant, in Gaza City. It said he was “part of a project to develop strategic weaponry for the Hamas terrorist organization.”
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of exploiting hospital grounds and other civilian infrastructure for military purposes. The militant group has denied the allegation, even though in November the Israeli military revealed a stone-and-concrete tunnel shaft below Al-Shifa. At the time, the health ministry said the military’s raid put the hospital out of service.
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8) Netanyahu says the war’s intensive phase is nearing an end, but fighting will continue.
By Isabel Kershner reporting from Jerusalem, June 24, 2024
“Mr. Netanyahu suggested in the interview that a postwar civilian administration would involve local Palestinians, hopefully with the help of moderate Arab nations. The Israeli military would have to maintain overall security control of the enclave, he said.”
Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, late June 2024. The Israeli government has not proposed a clear plan for the administration of Gaza after the war ends. Credit...Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The intensive phase of Israel’s war against Hamas is “about to end,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Sunday night interview on Israeli television, although he emphasized that did not mean the conflict was coming to a close.
After the operation in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city and the latest focus of Israel’s ground offensive, the prime minister said, Israel would keep “mowing the lawn” — a term long used in Israeli security circles to denote the use of force aimed at curtailing the regrowth of militant organizations.
Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks were the latest suggestion by senior Israeli officials that the war could soon enter a period of change.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, was in Washington for meetings with Biden administration officials, which he said would include discussion of “the transition to ‘Phase C’ in Gaza.”
While Israel’s military says it is close to dismantling or seriously degrading Hamas’s military infrastructure, the government has not proposed any clear plan for the administration of Gaza after the war.
Mr. Netanyahu suggested in the interview that a postwar civilian administration would involve local Palestinians, hopefully with the help of moderate Arab nations. The Israeli military would have to maintain overall security control of the enclave, he said.
The prime minister continued to rule out a proposal that has been pushed by the Biden administration: handing over Gaza to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the occupied West Bank.
To get to the “day after Hamas,” Mr. Netanyahu said, “first you have to eliminate Hamas” — reiterating his longstanding position that the armed group be fully eradicated, a goal that many experts say is unattainable.
The prime minister’s remarks came in a 44-minute interview he granted to “The Patriots,” a populist and often divisive nightly talk show on Channel 14, a right-wing Israeli television station that caters to Mr. Netanyahu’s voter base.
Mr. Netanyahu has rarely been interviewed in Hebrew for an Israeli audience since the start of the war. He has faced criticism domestically for granting frequent interviews to American networks while engaging with Israelis mainly through sporadic televised statements and news conferences or via video clips.
Mr. Netanyahu also addressed the stalled cease-fire negotiations during the interview, suggesting at one point that he was willing to strike a “partial” deal for the return of only some of the 120 hostages being held in Gaza — a statement that his office quickly walked back.
The prime minister said he was ready to agree to a temporary truce and the release of some of the hostages, then subsequently resuming the war. That proposition appeared to contradict an Israeli proposal that was approved last month by Mr. Netanyahu and his war cabinet for a phased deal that would release all the hostages and usher in a permanent cease-fire — a proposal that was endorsed by President Biden and the United Nations Security Council.
But at another point in Sunday’s interview, Mr. Netanyahu said he was committed to bringing back all the remaining hostages, at least a third of whom Israel has said have died in captivity.
In a brief statement issued after the interview, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said it was Hamas that opposed a deal, not Israel, adding: “Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear that we will not leave Gaza until we return all 120 of our hostages, living and deceased.”
The Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, which advocates for the hostages, condemned Mr. Netanyahu’s comments in the interview, saying that failing to advance the cease-fire proposal “abandons 120 hostages and violates the state’s moral obligation to its citizens.”
“The families of the hostages will not allow the government and its leader to back away from their fundamental commitments to our loved ones’ fate,” the group said in a statement. “The responsibility and duty to return all hostages lies with the prime minister.”
Johnatan Reiss and Adam Rasgon contributed reporting.
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9) In San Francisco, Doctors Feud Over ‘Do No Harm’ When It Comes to War Protests
Doctors at the University of California, San Francisco, say that the workplace they once loved has been fractured by the Israel-Hamas war.
By Heather Knight, Reporting from San Francisco, June 24, 2024
Dr. Jess Ghannam has been at U.C.S.F. for 30 years, specializing in chronic illness. He wears a watermelon pin, a symbol of solidarity with Palestinians, and said he feels a “sense of intimidation” from others on campus. Credit...Rachel Bujalski for The New York Times
It looked like any other pro-Palestinian encampment at a college campus in the United States. The tents, the flags, the banners calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.
But this was at the University of California, San Francisco, one of the nation’s pre-eminent medical schools and teaching hospitals. The protesters were medical students and doctors. And the chants of “intifada, intifada, long live intifada!” could be heard by patients in their hospital rooms at the U.C.S.F. Medical Center.
The Israel-Hamas war has frayed social ties around the world, undermining family gatherings and school classrooms. But rarely has it fractured a medical community the way it has at U.C.S.F., where a staff known for celebrating diversity has fallen into an atmosphere of backbiting and distrust.
The university and the medical center are uniquely intertwined, both overseen by the same administration and thought of locally as one premier institution. Unlike other University of California campuses, U.C.S.F. does not have undergraduates and focuses only on health sciences. And for decades, it has built a national reputation for caring for a broad array of patients in the city, from those addicted to fentanyl on the streets to tech billionaires seeking world-class services.
But many say the spirit of camaraderie and inclusion has dissipated since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack against Israel. Doctors there have feuded over whether it is appropriate to openly express feelings about the war within the healing confines of a hospital. In interviews, several Jewish doctors said they had taken an oath to “do no harm,” and that meant keeping politics separate from the care of their patients.
But some doctors said they interpreted “do no harm” in a different way, feeling a moral obligation to speak out against the killing of doctors and patients in Gaza where Israeli strikes have struck hospitals. And they said that as a medical community, it was important for U.C.S.F. to take a stand against the war and call for a cease-fire.
Over the past several months, doctors, medical students and patients have filed hundreds of complaints with the university administration. Some have alleged instances of antisemitism on campus. Others have said they were inappropriately silenced when they tried to express pro-Palestinian points of view.
Jonathan Terdiman, a Jewish gastroenterologist, said the behavior that might be tolerated on an undergraduate campus — such as the “intifada” chant — hits differently at a hospital.
“People are coming here for chemotherapy. They have dire illnesses,” Dr. Terdiman said. “When that chant goes up and is heard in the patient care rooms, which it clearly was, it’s a violation of our professional obligations as health care providers.”
Some Jewish doctors said they have darted into side rooms when they have seen staunch Israel critics approaching. Others said they have tried to keep their Jewish identity a secret. Matthew Smith, a doctoral student in biophysics who is Jewish and wears a skullcap, said he has been told by a lab technician that Israel deserved what happened on Oct. 7 and by another student that “Jews control the banks.”
“It kind of staggers me honestly,” said Gil Rabinovici, an Israeli neurologist who directs the Alzheimer’s disease research center at U.C.S.F. “There is a lot of intimidation going on trying to silence the Jewish voice and Zionist voices.”
Jess Ghannam also said he cannot believe what U.C.S.F. has become, given its well-known history as a place of diversity.
He has been at U.C.S.F. for 30 years, specializing in chronic illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder. His parents are Palestinian, and he joined protests at the encampment and has worn a watermelon pin, a symbol of solidarity with Palestinians.
Patients have thanked him for wearing the pin, he said, because it acknowledged their horror at the destruction in Gaza. But he said that while he has freely worn the pin, some of his colleagues have been instructed by their supervisors to remove their pins and kaffiyeh.
U.C.S.F. has a dress code prohibiting political symbols in patient care settings, but Dr. Ghannam said staff members for years have worn pins supporting abortion rights, Black Lives Matter and the L.G.B.T.Q. community without repercussions.
“It’s become extremely difficult and painful to walk into buildings now at U.C.S.F.,” Dr. Ghannam said. “There is a fear and a sense of intimidation.”
Some Jewish doctors said they felt the outward displays of support for Palestinians were inappropriate to wear while treating patients. They said that some Jewish patients at a fertility clinic were rebuffed when they asked that the symbols be removed.
“I wouldn’t wear an Israeli flag pin in a patient encounter,” Dr. Terdiman said. “Absolutely not.”
Dr. Ghannam said that he has told some of his fellow protesters to remove signs that he felt were inappropriate, such as one at the encampment that declared “UCSF Kills Doctors,” a reference to the demonstrators’ belief that university investments were supporting the war in Gaza.
But he said that he did not have a problem with the “intifada” chant, which pro-Palestinian activists say symbolizes resistance against Israel in Gaza, but many Jews consider a genocidal call against their people.
“People who are screaming that they don’t feel safe are sometimes conflating feeling unsafe with feeling uncomfortable,” he said.
In December, a task force of hospital doctors focused on antiracism discussed via email whether to issue a statement calling for a cease-fire.
Avromi Kanal, a hospitalist and assistant professor of medicine, responded that while he was “horrified by every innocent death,” he worried that a cease-fire would empower Hamas and encourage kidnapping for ransom.
Dr. Kanal has dozens of relatives living in Israel, including one who hid from Hamas for hours at a music festival on the day of the attack and another who works in forensics and had to identify the bodies of dead children. His grandfather survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, with his forearm branded by the Nazis.
Soon after he sent the email questioning a cease-fire resolution, Dr. Kanal learned that someone had forwarded it to another U.C.S.F. doctor, Rupa Marya, who practices internal medicine and said she focuses on how history and power affect health. She criticized his email on X multiple times over several months without naming him.
But later, in a Substack post, Dr. Marya did refer to him by name and called his email an “expression of anti-Arab hate” that prompted doctors of South Asian and North African descent “to say they do not feel safe in his presence.”
Dr. Kanal said that he was shocked a colleague with whom he had never spoken had blasted him so publicly. He met with university leaders multiple times, but he said they took no action. He then filed a complaint with the school’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination, which responded that Dr. Marya’s speech was protected and closed the complaint.
“It’s not the words of my colleague that leave me feeling unwelcome and frankly unsafe here at work,” Dr. Kanal said. “It’s the persistent unwillingness of my leaders to clearly denounce them and ensure my inclusion in this broad community here at U.C.S.F.”
The university did respond to a different post by Dr. Marya. In January, she said on X that “the presence of Zionism in U.S. medicine should be examined as a structural impediment to health equity” as she shared another person’s post about being “terrified” for “Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, South Asian and Black patients” being treated by Zionist doctors and nurses.
The university, without naming Dr. Marya or quoting her post, said in a statement that the notion that Zionist doctors are a threat to their patients was both antisemitic and “a tired and familiar racist conspiracy theory.”
In a written response, Dr. Marya said the statement by U.C.S.F. that addressed her post was “a disingenuous attempt to silence perspectives they don’t like” and that she has never felt, in her 22 years on the job, “the kind of repression” that she has since Oct. 7.
She said she called out Dr. Kanal because his email was the first time she had heard “a doctor put forward an argument to continue the killing of innocent people.”
“It shocked me to see this and it is a violation of a fundamental ethical cornerstone of our profession to do no harm,” she wrote.
If the doctors can agree on anything, it is that the university administrators have done too little to quell tensions and address complaints.
A U.C.S.F. spokeswoman, Kristen Bole, said the university and medical center are working hard to ensure a healing environment for its patients and respect the free speech rights of its employees. She said that Sam Hawgood, the chancellor who oversees both the school and hospital, has convened meetings with faculty to hear their concerns and has issued public statements denouncing intolerance several times.
She declined to address the specifics of how U.C.S.F. has addressed particular complaints. Mr. Hawgood declined a request for an interview.
Rick Sheinfield, a Jewish lawyer who has seen doctors at U.C.S.F. for 30 years, said that he filed a complaint with U.C.S.F. in January over Dr. Marya’s posts. He was told in April that his case was closed with no action taken.
He said that he and his family have received excellent medical care there — from heart surgery to the births of his two children. He is unsure if he will remain a patient, but said he was certain of one thing: If he was starting to look for medical care in San Francisco now, he would strike U.C.S.F. from his list.
It was not so much the posts of one doctor that bothered him, he said, but what he saw as indifference from the larger community.
“I don’t think they would tolerate this if it were medical conspiracy theories alleging such hateful things about other groups,” he said. “But they are tolerating this.”
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10) Assange Agrees to Plead Guilty in Exchange for Release, Ending Standoff With U.S.
Barring last-minute snags, the deal would bring to an end a prolonged battle that began after the WikiLeaks founder became alternately celebrated and reviled for revealing state secrets in the 2010s.
By Glenn Thrush and Megan Specia—Glenn Thrush reported from Washington, and Megan Specia from London, Published June 24, 2024. Updated June 25, 2024
A still image from a video posted by WikiLeaks showed Julian Assange boarding a plane at London Stansted Airport on Monday. Credit...WikiLeaks, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, agreed to plead guilty on Monday to a single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material in exchange for his release from a British prison, ending his long and bitter standoff with the United States.
Mr. Assange, 52, was granted his request to appear before a federal judge at one of the more remote outposts of the federal judiciary, the courthouse in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, according to a brief court filing made public late Monday. He is expected to be sentenced to about five years, the equivalent of the time he has already served in Britain, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the terms of the agreement.
It was a fitting final twist in the case against Mr. Assange, who doggedly opposed extradition to the U.S. mainland. The islands are a United States commonwealth in the middle of the Pacific Ocean — and much closer to Mr. Assange’s native Australia, where he is a citizen, than courts in the continental United States or Hawaii.
Mr. Assange is scheduled to appear in Saipan at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday and is expected to fly back to Australia “at the conclusion of the proceedings,” Matthew J. McKenzie, an official in the Justice Department’s counterterrorism division, wrote in a letter to the judge in the case.
Shortly after the deal was disclosed, his wife, Stella Assange, posted a video of her husband signing paperwork and boarding a plane. Later, she posted flight tracking information that showed the private twin-jet plane had left London Stansted Airport Monday evening, had stopped over in Bangkok on Tuesday evening and was en route to Saipan, where it was expected to land at 6 a.m. local time Wednesday.
The prime minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, appeared to welcome the developments.
“The Australian government has consistently said that Mr. Assange’s case has dragged on for too long, and that there is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration,” Mr. Albanese wrote on X. “We want him brought home to Australia.”
Barring last-minute snags, the deal would bring to an end a prolonged battle that began after Mr. Assange became alternately celebrated and reviled for revealing state secrets in the 2010s.
Those included material about American military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as confidential cables shared among diplomats. During the 2016 campaign, WikiLeaks released thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, leading to revelations that embarrassed the party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
In 2019, a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Assange on 18 counts related to WikiLeaks’ dissemination of a broad array of national security documents. Those included a trove of materials sent to the organization by Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who handed over information about military planning and operations nearly a decade earlier.
If convicted, Mr. Assange could have faced a maximum of 170 years in a federal prison. Until Monday evening, Mr. Assange had been held in Belmarsh, one of Britain’s highest-security prisons, in southeast London.
Mr. Assange was confined to a cell for 23 hours a day, eating his meals off a tray alone, surrounded by 232 books and allowed only an hour a day for exercise in a prison yard, according to an account published in The Nation this year.
When asked about his pallor, Mr. Assange — who has not been able to walk outside unsupervised for more than a decade — joked, “They call it prison pale.”
His release was not unexpected. Earlier this year, Mr. Albanese suggested that U.S. prosecutors needed to conclude the case, and President Biden signaled that he was open to a rapid resolution. Top officials at the Justice Department accepted an agreement with no additional prison time because Mr. Assange had already served longer than most people charged with a similar offense — in this case, over five years in prison in Britain.
Soon after the charges were unsealed in 2019, the London Metropolitan Police entered Ecuador’s embassy, where Mr. Assange had sought sanctuary years earlier to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault. He has been held in custody ever since, as his legal team has fought the Justice Department’s efforts to extradite him.
After weeks of negotiations, Mr. Assange is pleading guilty to one of the charges in the indictment — conspiracy to disseminate national defense information — which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Mr. Assange and his supporters have long argued that his efforts to obtain and publicly release sensitive national security information was in the public interest, and deserved the same First Amendment protections afforded to investigative journalists.
Many supporters renewed those concerns even as they expressed relief that he would be released.
“The United States has now, for the first time in the more than 100-year history of the Espionage Act, obtained an Espionage Act conviction for basic journalistic acts,” said David Greene, head of civil liberties at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on First Amendment issues.
“These charges should never have been brought,” he said.
In 2021, a coalition of civil-liberties and human-rights groups urged the Biden administration to drop its efforts to extradite him from Britain and prosecute him, calling the case “a grave threat” to press freedom.
Much of the conduct he is accused of is what “journalists engage in routinely,” the group contended. “News organizations frequently and necessarily publish classified information in order to inform the public of matters of profound public significance.”
But U.S. officials argued that Mr. Assange’s actions went far beyond news gathering, putting at risk national security. The material furnished by Ms. Manning, prosecutors claimed, endangered the lives of service members and Iraqis who worked with the military, and made it harder for the country to counter external threats.
Mr. Assange has remained in Belmarsh as he has repeatedly challenged the order for his removal. Last month, Mr. Assange won a bid to appeal the extradition order.
Afterward, Ms. Assange told supporters gathered outside the central London court that the case should be abandoned.
“The Biden administration should distance itself from this shameful prosecution,” said Ms. Assange, who secretly began a relationship with Mr. Assange after joining his legal team fighting extradition efforts to Sweden. The pair have two young sons.
Mr. Assange has rarely been seen in public as his case has wound its way through the courts, citing health issues. In 2021, Mr. Assange had a small stroke while in prison. He did not attend the hearing in May because of undisclosed health reasons.
Ms. Assange, in another video posted to social media that had been recorded outside of Belmarsh Prison last week, said that developments had unfolded very quickly.
“This period of our lives, I am confident now, has come to an end,” she said. She added, “What starts now, with Julian’s freedom, is a new chapter.”
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11) Israel’s Supreme Court Rules the Military Must Draft Ultra-Orthodox Jews
The court ruled there was no basis to exempt the ultra-Orthodox from service, a decision that threatened to split Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government amid the war in Gaza.
By Aaron Boxerman, reporting from Jerusalem, June 25, 2024
A protest against the recruitment of the ultra-Orthodox into the Israeli military in Jerusalem in April. Credit...Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press
Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, a decision that threatened to split Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government amid the war in Gaza.
In a unanimous decision, nine judges held that there was no legal basis for the longstanding military exemption given to many ultra-Orthodox religious students. Given the absence of a law distinguishing between seminarians and other men of draft age, the court ruled, the country’s compulsory service laws must similarly apply to the ultra-Orthodox minority.
In a country where military service is compulsory for most Jewish men and women, the exemption for the ultra-Orthodox has long been a source of contention for secular Israelis. But anger over the group’s special treatment has grown as the war in Gaza has stretched into its ninth month, requiring tens of thousands of reservists to serve multiple tours and costing the lives of hundreds of soldiers.
“These days, in the midst of a difficult war, the burden of that inequality is more acute than ever — and requires the advancement of a sustainable solution to this issue,” the Supreme Court judges wrote in their ruling.
The court’s ruling pits secular Jews against the ultra-Orthodox, who say their study of scripture is as essential as the military to defending Israel. It also exposes the fault lines in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, which depends on the support of two ultra-Orthodox parties amid the country’s deadliest war in decades.
Mr. Netanyahu has called for legislation that would generally maintain the exemption for the religious students. But if he moves ahead with the plan, other members of his government might break ranks amid rising public anger over the government’s strategy for the war in Gaza.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews have been exempt from military service since the founding of Israel in 1948, when the country’s leadership promised them autonomy in exchange for their support in creating a largely secular state. Along with being exempted from the draft, the ultra-Orthodox, known in Hebrew as Haredim, are allowed to run their own education system.
The Supreme Court took aim at that system as well in its ruling, stating that the government could no longer transfer subsidies to religious schools, or yeshivas, that registered draft-age students whose exemptions were no longer legal.
The decision immediately sparked outrage among ultra-Orthodox politicians, who vowed to oppose it.
“The State of Israel was established in order to be a home for the Jewish people, for whom Torah is the bedrock of their existence. The Holy Torah will prevail,” Yitzhak Goldknopf, an ultra-Orthodox minister, said in a statement on Monday.
Roughly 1,000 Haredi men currently serve voluntarily in the military — less than 1 percent of all soldiers — but the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack has appeared to prompt a greater sense of shared destiny with mainstream Israelis among some segments of the Haredi public. More than 2,000 Haredim sought to join the military in the first 10 weeks of the war, according to military statistics.
Gabby Sobelman and Myra Noveck contributed reporting.
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12) Half a Million in Gaza Face Starvation, Report Says
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, June 25, 2024
A malnourished Palestinian girl at the International Medical Corps field hospital in Deir al Balah in southern Gaza on Saturday. Credit...Mohammed Salem/Reuters
Gaza is at high risk of famine and almost half a million people there face starvation because of a catastrophic lack of food, a group of global experts said on Tuesday, though it stopped short of saying that a famine had begun in the enclave as a result of Israel’s war against Hamas.
The experts said that the amount of food reaching northern Gaza had increased in recent months. Israel, under intense pressure from global governments and aid organizations, recently opened border crossings for aid in the north.
The analysis by the group, called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or I.P.C., carries considerable weight. The group is a partnership of U.N. bodies and major relief agencies, and global leaders look to it to gauge the severity of hunger crises and allocate humanitarian aid.
After Hamas led a deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Israeli officials declared a siege of Gaza, and they have severely restricted the entry of humanitarian aid, saying they do not want it to help Hamas. From October to early May, the daily number of aid trucks entering the territory through the two main crossing points in southern Gaza dropped by around 75 percent, according to U.N. data, and reports of hunger and malnourishment have been widespread.
Israeli officials have said for months that there is no limit on the amount of food and other aid that can enter Gaza. In recent weeks, Israel has increased the number of commercial vehicles carrying food and other goods across the border.
While acknowledging the hunger in Gaza, Israeli officials have accused Hamas of stealing or diverting aid. Ismael Thawabteh, deputy head of the Hamas government media office in Gaza, said last month that those allegations were “absolutely false and incorrect.” He added that, while there had been some looting of relief supplies, it had been done by a small number of people who had been forced into desperation by Israel.
Some Gazans have also accused Hamas of benefiting from looted aid.
The I.P.C. report said that almost all of Gaza’s population of around 2.2 million faced high levels of acute food insecurity, and it put Gaza at Phase 4, the “emergency” phase, on its five-level classification scale. But it also said that 495,000 people faced “catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity,” which is Phase 5 on the scale.
“In this phase, households experience an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion of coping capacities,” the report said.
In March, the I.P.C. predicted that famine would likely occur in northern Gaza by the end of May. But on Tuesday, it said that the amount of food and other nutrition delivered there had increased in March and April.
Those increases “appear to have temporarily alleviated conditions” in the north, the report said, adding, “In this context, the available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring.”
In early May, Israel’s military sent ground troops into the southern Gazan city of Rafah, and more than a million people, many of whom had previously been displaced from their homes, fled to a coastal area that lacks basic infrastructure, making them acutely vulnerable.
The military operation closed the Rafah border crossing from Egypt and disrupted aid deliveries at the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel. The situation in the south has since deteriorated, the report said.
The I.P.C. said that to be able to buy food, more than half of households in Gaza “had to exchange their clothes for money, and one-third resorted to picking up trash to sell.” It added that more than half of households often did not have any food to eat and that more than 20 percent went full days and nights without eating.
The I.P.C. identifies a famine when at least 20 percent of households in an area face an extreme lack of food, at least 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition and at least two adults or four children for every 10,000 people die each day from starvation or disease linked to malnutrition. Since the I.P.C. was established in 2004, its approach has been used to identify only two famines: in Somalia in 2011, and in South Sudan in 2017.
After the group’s warning in March that Gaza was at risk of imminent famine, South Africa asked the U.N.’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, to issue emergency orders for Israel to stop what it called the “genocidal starvation” of the Palestinian people. The request was part of South Africa’s broader case that accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza, a charge that Israel rejects.
A month ago, the court, which is based in The Hague, ordered Israel to “immediately” halt its military offensive in Rafah, and it emphasized the need for open land crossings as part of its request for “the unhindered provision” of humanitarian aid. The Rafah offensive continues, but the order increased global pressure on Israel to scale back its attacks and limit civilian casualties.
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13) A strike in Gaza kills a sister of Hamas’s political leader and her family.
By Hiba Yazbek reporting from Jerusalem, June 25, 2024
"Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense, said that emergency rescue crews had removed the bodies of Mr. Haniyeh’s sister, her husband and their eight children from their home in the Shati neighborhood in northern Gaza, which was demolished in the strike."
Searching through the rubble of a destroyed home in Shati in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A strike in the northern Gaza Strip killed a sister of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, and her family on Tuesday, the armed group and a Gazan rescue official said.
Hamas confirmed the death of Mr. Haniyeh’s sister, Zaher Haniyeh, in a statement. The Israeli military said it was aware of the reports but could not “currently confirm” that it had struck the Haniyeh family home.
Mr. Haniyeh, who heads the Hamas political bureau from exile in Qatar, is a longstanding political leader of the group that governs the Gaza Strip and that launched the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense, said that emergency rescue crews had removed the bodies of Mr. Haniyeh’s sister, her husband and their eight children from their home in the Shati neighborhood in northern Gaza, which was demolished in the strike.
An Israeli airstrike in April killed three of Mr. Haniyeh’s sons and three of his grandchildren while they were traveling in a car in Gaza. The Israeli military confirmed the strike and said the sons were active in Hamas’s military operations.
At the time, Mr. Haniyeh did not specify his sons’ roles in the group but called them martyrs. He said that 60 members of his extended family had been killed by Israel over time.
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14) After a Weather Disaster, a Surprise: Some Ornery Monkeys Got Nicer
Macaques, reeling from a hurricane, learned by necessity to get along, a study found. It’s one of the first to suggest that animals can adapt to environmental upheaval with social changes.
By Rachel Nuwer, Published June 20, 2024, Updated June 24, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/climate/macaques-monkeys-hurricane-maria.html
Rhesus macaques on Cayo Santiago, P.R., in October 2017, just weeks after Hurricane Maria swept through. Credit...Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press
Hurricane Maria caused widespread devastation in the Caribbean, not only for people but also for wildlife. Five years after the storm, some of the effects still linger.
Cayo Santiago, a small island off the southeastern coast of Puerto Rico, is a prime example. It transformed almost overnight from a lush jungle oasis to a desert-like spit of sand with mostly skeletal trees.
This posed a big problem for the island’s resident macaques. The monkeys depend on shade to keep cool in tropical daytime heat, but, by wiping out the trees, the storm had rendered that resource in very short supply.
Rhesus macaques are known for being some of the most quarrelsome primates on the planet, with strict social hierarchies maintained through aggression and competition. So it would follow that a simian battle royale would break out over the island’s few remaining patches of shade.
Yet that’s not what happened. Instead, the macaques did something seemingly inexplicable: They started getting along.
“This was really not what we expected,” said Camille Testard, a behavioral ecologist and neuroscientist at Harvard University. “Instead of becoming more competitive, individuals widened their social network and became less aggressive.”
A paper by Dr. Testard and her colleagues, published on Thursday in the journal Science, offers an explanation for this unexpected development. Monkeys who learned to share shade after the storm, they found, had a better chance of survival than those that remained quarrelsome.
Scientists have documented numerous cases of species responding to environmental pressure with physiological or morphological adaptations. But the new study is one of the first to suggest that animals can also respond with persistent changes to their social behavior, Dr. Testard said.
She and her colleagues took advantage of around 12 years of data collected at the Cayo Santiago Field Station, the world’s longest-running primatology field site. Researchers introduced rhesus macaques to the 38-acre island in 1938 and have been studying them ever since.
The approximately 1,000 macaques that live on the island are free-ranging but are fed by the field station staff members. “Access to food is not the main point of contention,” Dr. Testard said. “Shade to avoid heat stress is.”
Daytime temperatures on Cayo Santiago often soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 38 Celsius, which can be deadly for monkeys stranded in the sun.
After Hurricane Maria took out most of the island’s trees, Dr. Testard and her colleagues expected that macaques might invest more in building close alliances so they could join forces to secure shade. But the “complete opposite” happened, she said. Monkeys instead invested in looser partnerships with a larger number of animals, and they became more tolerant of each other overall.
Dr. Testard said she suspected that this was because fighting is an energy-intensive activity that generates more body heat and poses more danger to individuals than “just caring less if another monkey is next to me or not.”
During the most sweltering hours of the afternoon, the researchers observed macaques crowded together in thin strips of shade. But even when temperatures were less stifling, the animals gathered in larger groups compared with their habits before the storm, Dr. Testard said.
Not all the monkeys jumped on the peace train, but those who adhered to aggression were more likely to pay a steep price. The macaque population’s overall death rate did not change after the hurricane. But monkeys that had more friendly relations experienced a 42 percent decrease in their odds of mortality because they were less likely to suffer heat stress.
“Who dies and for what reason is what has changed,” Dr. Testard said.
Noa Pinter-Wollman, a behavioral ecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the research, said that the “fascinating” findings were “a wonderful example of how being social can buffer negative effects of environmental change.”
Julia Fischer, a behavioral biologist at the German Primate Center in Göttingen, who also was not involved in the work, added that the “extremely well-done study” highlighted the importance of behavioral plasticity in helping animals survive when their habitat is upended. “In light of climate change, this is extremely important,” she said.
Whether other animals can also respond to environmental upheaval by adjusting their social norms “is going to be very species- and context-dependent,” Dr. Testard said. Humans probably fall into that category, though. People often band together, for example, after natural and human-caused disasters.
However, Dr. Testard added, there are limits. If resources become too scarce, then humans could descend into a Mad Max-like dystopia of violent competition. “There is hope that we would band together to make things work rather than fight,” she said. “But that’s a big speculation.”
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15) Universal Human Emancipation is an All-Or-Nothing Endeavor
By Bonnie Weinstein, July/August Socialist Viewpoint, Vol. 24, No. 4
On June 10, 2024, when a new pro-Palestinian encampment formed, UCLA officials called for a full police response far quicker than they did in late April.
In four seemingly unrelated events in U.S. news recently, the true nature of U.S. capitalism reveals itself as a violent, terrorist dictatorship—not just abroad—but right here at home.
The U.S. is the leading combatant in the capitalist war against the poor—a war designed to keep the working class in its place of service to them, or face death.
On the homefront
At 12:01 A.M. on June 5, 2024, President Biden carried out his order to shut down the U.S. border with Mexico to nearly all migrants seeking asylum in the United States.1 According to a June 3, 2024, New York Times article by Hamed Aleaziz and Zolan Kanno-Youngs titled, “Biden Expected to Sign Executive Order Restricting Asylum,” Biden’s order essentially criminalized the most vulnerable people—victims of imperialist aggression whose homelands are wrecked by crimes of desperation and poverty who are seeking safety somewhere, anywhere else.:
“…The order would represent the single most restrictive border policy instituted by Mr. Biden, or any modern Democrat, and echoes a 2018 effort by President Donald J. Trump to block migration that was assailed by Democrats and blocked by federal courts. …The order would allow border officials to prevent migrants from claiming asylum and rapidly turn them away once border crossings exceed a certain threshold [to turn away all migrants attempting to cross the border after reaching a limit of 2500 crossings.] …On Sunday [June 2, 2024], border agents made more than 3,500 apprehensions of migrants crossing the border without authorization, according to a person with knowledge of the data.”
Under Biden’s orders, U.S. border agents are using force and violence to keep these desperate people from our border leaving them utterly destitute—without food, water or shelter.
A June 11, 2024, New York Times article by Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield titled, “Torture Accusations Could Lead to Civil Rights Case in Mississippi,” exposes the brutal crimes of a Police Force “Goon Squad” operating in Mississippi:
“Rankin County came to national attention last year after deputies, some from a unit that called itself the Goon Squad, tortured two Black men in their home and shot one of them in the face, nearly killing him. Six officers pleaded guilty and were sentenced to federal prison in March. An investigation by The New York Times and Mississippi Today last fall revealed that nearly two dozen residents experienced similar brutality when Rankin deputies burst into their homes looking for illegal drugs. … In a statement to The Times and Mississippi Today two weeks ago, the Rankin County sheriff’s department said it had conducted an internal review of its deputies. The review came after the news organizations reported that, for a generation, Rankin County deputies had terrorized local residents accused of drug possession. More than 20 people said deputies had beaten, strangled, waterboarded or burned them during home raids and traffic stops. …The department conducted another review in late May after The Times and Mississippi Today unearthed a private text thread where deputies discussed beating criminal suspects, traded memes about rape and posted pictures of rotting human corpses they had found on the job.”
The Rankin County sheriff’s department—armed to the teeth—are routinely brutalizing innocent residents using drugs as a reason to illegally stop and search them.
In a June 11, 2024, New York Times article by Jonathan Wolfe and Jill Cowan, titled “At U.C.L.A., Police Arrest More Than 20 Pro-Palestinian Protesters,” the authors reported that:
“Pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the University of California, Los Angeles, clashed with law enforcement officers on Monday [June 10, 2024], sometimes physically, as they attempted to occupy outdoor areas and re-establish a protest encampment in the last days of the spring quarter. … The demonstration began earlier Monday in the form of a funeral procession, winding its way through campus as protesters read the names of Palestinians killed during the Israel-Hamas war. …The university has experienced a tumultuous spring. Violent attacks by supporters of Israel began on the night of April 30, followed about a day later by the dismantlement of a pro-Palestinian encampment, involving hundreds of arrests. Administrators had allowed that encampment to stand for days, but on Monday, scores of police officers and private security guards moved in swiftly.”
Even on college campuses, menacing police presence and violence against peaceful student protests are the routine measures college administrators are taking against student-resistance to genocide.
The world
Biden’s solution to the U.S./Israel genocide in Gaza is a sadistic “peace deal” that completely leaves out the voice of the Palestinian people.
In a June 5, 2024, New York Times article by Matthew Mpoke Bigg, titled, “Here’s a Closer Look at What is Standing in the Way of a Cease-Fire Deal” details of Biden’s three-phase program for a new and broader occupation of Palestine are explained:
“The proposal would unfold in three phases. In phase one, among other things, Israel would withdraw from population centers in Gaza during a six-week cease-fire, and dozens of women and elderly hostages held in Gaza by Hamas and its allies would be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. During that time, talks over a permanent cease-fire would continue, and if successful, the deal would enter phase two, with the full withdrawal of Israel’s military from the enclave. All hostages and more Palestinian prisoners would be freed. Under phase three, Hamas would return the bodies of hostages who had died, and a three- to five-year reconstruction period, backed by the United States, European countries and international institutions, would begin.”
So, in Biden’s new plan for peace—really a piece of Palestinian land—Israel will not stand alone any longer in the occupation of Palestinian territory from the river to the sea. The United States, Europe and other “friends” will join Israel’s occupation of the people of Palestine—officially.
Biden’s peace plan is blackmail. It outlines the fundamental laws of capital for the working class, i.e., “if you agree to be ruled by us, to work for us, to be policed by us, and obey us without question, we will not bomb you into oblivion. And, in good faith, we will allow more products on the market for you to buy with the pay you earn for the privilege of working for us.”
Capitalists around the world know that Gaza could be an extremely profitable gateway to trade and travel throughout the region and are chomping at the bit for a chance to get a piece of Gaza to call their own.
This is no peace plan. It’s an ultimatum to the people of Palestine—surrender, or the genocide will continue until you are all dead or gone.
This ultimatum does not only apply to the people of Palestine. It applies to the migrants at the U.S./Mexico border, to the brutalized residents of Rankin County, Mississippi, and to the pro-Palestine student protesters at U.S.L.A., and to workers everywhere who choose democracy, social and economic equality, peace and a healthy environment and an end to war here and now.
The only choice capitalism allows the working class to make is to submit to their authority and work for them under their rules, or die.
What can we do about it?
The world’s working class is learning two huge and vital lessons, perhaps not consciously yet. But it is sinking in. One, that capitalism cannot be reformed enough to save the planet. And two, that real democracy comes from the power of masses of humanity acting on our own behalf and in our own interests—interests that are diametrically opposed to the interests of capital.
This is the essential part of our collective quest for a peaceful world. It is the only way to achieve the ultimate goal of a fully democratic, majority rule by, of and for, the working class, with control over the means of production to provide for the equal distribution of goods and services to all.
We must show through our actions how working together democratically, acting in unity and solidarity with each other, we are stronger than the bosses. We must work together to convince the masses of workers that replacing capitalism with socialism is the only way to bring peace to the world.
The power of unity and solidarity
Currently, the “left” is hopelessly sectarian. Even the best, are offering only their own organizations as the “answer.” This is a fear of democracy, which is the antithesis of revolutionary socialism. This is a clear expression of lack of faith in the working class. And it’s defeatist. Somehow, we have to free ourselves from this mindset.
Working people are beginning to see that what’s happening in Gaza is related to what’s happening at the Mexican/American border, in our inner cities, on our campuses and in countries all over the world—the poorest people are trying to defend their lives against the most powerful and sophisticated military forces in the world.
This is the reality of the world’s working class. Yet we are trapped into functioning in the world as if there is no way out of this hold capitalism has over us.
Our own organizations outside of the socialist left—the unions, community groups and organizations fighting for housing, healthcare, education, childcare, for a living wage, etc. offer only one solution—they urge us to vote for the capitalist politicians that give the best lip-service in support of our causes—knowing full well, that they have no intention whatsoever of carrying them out.
They count on workers’ belief in the myth of “lesser evilism.” This is the full extent of American democracy under capitalism. They give workers only one choice at election time—to vote for capitalist politicians—essentially surrendering our independence to those who have, and will continue to betray us.
We must make war on capital—not people
The power to change society is in the hands of the working class—unity and solidarity to defeat capitalism’s economic and military slaughter of the working class is achievable.
Capitalism is slavery of a different kind. It binds humanity to a system of economic slavery. Under capitalism workers are the producers of the wealth and plenty that only the ruling capitalist class can enjoy.
But we can turn things right side up! We can take the ownership of the means of production and the resources of the world out of the hands of the capitalist minority and put them and into our hands—we, the overwhelming majority of humanity—the working class.
All those who understand that capitalism offers no future to humanity and all life on our planet must put aside our petty differences and show that we can come together—to discuss and resolve our differences democratically—and begin to organize our workplaces and communities to fulfill the needs of all of us.
We, on the left, who understand that capitalism is the cause of all suffering in the world must act now to lead the way to building an independent, democratically functioning, revolutionary socialist political party of the working class to defeat capitalism and build socialism—it’s a necessary endeavor.
1 “Biden Shut the Border to Asylum Seekers. The Question Is Whether the Order Can Be Enforced.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/us/politics/biden-asylum-seekers-enforcement.html?searchResultPosition=4
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16) Foreign Police Officers Land on the Ground in Haiti
The first wave of a 2,500-member international force sent to restore order in the gang-plagued Caribbean nation has arrived, but critics worry the plan will fail.
By Frances Robles and Abdi Latif Dahir, Reporting from Florida and Nairobi, Kenya, June 25, 2024
Members of a Kenyan police force, part of a new security mission, after landing on Tuesday in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Credit...Ralph Tedy Erol/Reuters
Foreign law enforcement officers began arriving in Haiti on Tuesday, more than a year and a half after the prime minister there issued a plea to other countries for help to stop the rampant gang violence that has upended the Caribbean nation.
Since that appeal went out in October 2022, more than 7,500 people have been killed by violence — more than 2,500 people so far this year alone, the United Nations said.
With the presidency vacant and a weakened national government, dozens of gangs took over much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, putting up roadblocks, kidnapping and killing civilians and attacking entire neighborhoods. About 200,000 people were forced out of their homes between March and May, according to the U.N.
Now an initial group of 400 Kenyan police officers are arriving in Haiti to take on the gangs, an effort largely organized by the Biden administration. The Kenyans are the first to deploy of an expected 2,500-member force of international police officers and soldiers from eight countries.
“You are undertaking a vital mission that transcends borders and cultures,” President William Ruto of Kenya told the officers on Monday. “Your presence in Haiti will bring hope and relief to communities torn apart by violence and ravaged by disorder.”
The Kenyan officers are expected to tackle a long list of priorities, among them retaking control of the country’s main port, as well as freeing major highways from criminal groups that demand drivers for money.
“Gang checkpoints on these roads are also a major source of their income generated by extorting money from everyone passing through and by kidnapping and holding people for hefty ransoms,” said William O’Neill, the U.N.’s human rights expert on Haiti.
“While much delayed, the arrival of the Kenyans comes at a good time,” particularly since a new police chief and prime minister have been named in recent weeks, he said.
A small assessment team from Kenya arrived in May to begin preparations but found the equipment lacking. That left the United States, the main supplier for the mission, rushing to find armored vehicles and other equipment.
“The Kenyans do not want to be one of these missions that show up on the ground and, for a month, they never leave their base,” Dennis B. Hankins, the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, said in an interview. “They want to be able to see quickly that they are making an impact.’’
Officially called the Multinational Security Support Mission, the deployment is expected to last at least a year, according to the U.S. government. Sanctioned by the U.N. and mostly financed by the United States, its goal is to support the Haitian police and establish enough stability so the transitional government can set up elections to choose a new president, as well as a National Assembly.
The U.S. military has flown more than 90 flights into Haiti to prepare for the mission, carrying more than 2,600 tons of supplies. Civilian contractors have been building sleeping quarters for the Kenyan officers at Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince.
In May, Haitian government officials began clearing the airport perimeter of hundreds of houses, which had made it easier for gangs to hide and fire at aircraft, forcing the airfield to close.
The airport has reopened to commercial flights. But gang leaders have said that they will fight the Kenyans, who they consider invaders.
“As soon as we got the airport open and functional and we started seeing military flights, that had a real significant psychological impact on the population,” Mr. Hankins said.
Many experts are guarded in their assessment of the international force, mainly because aside from tackling the insecurity there is no comprehensive plan to address the root causes of Haiti’s many governance problems.
After Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigned in late April, it took several weeks for political parties to agree on who would serve on a new transitional presidential council. It was a full month before a replacement for Mr. Henry took office.
Garry Conille, a former U.N. official, accepted the post in late May. His office and the transitional council declined to comment Monday about the upcoming deployment.
Haitian authorities have difficult decisions ahead, Mr. Hankins said, such as whether wresting control of the central hospital in Port-au-Prince from gangs should take place first, or securing the port so that fuel, food and other commodities can flow consistently.
The gangs, he added, did not fight back while preparations at the airport were made. The Kenyans will “support” the Haitian police, but not replace them, he said, so that when the mission ends their departure doesn’t create “a security vacuum.”
So far, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Chad, Jamaica and Kenya have officially offered personnel for the mission.
But the mission has not received much financial commitment.
While Kenyan officials estimate the cost will run up to $600 million, a U.N. fund to pay for it has only $21 million. The United States has pledged more than $300 million to finance the mission.
The Kenyan deployment comes a month after Mr. Ruto of Kenya traveled to the United States at President Biden’s invitation. The four-day trip was the first state visit by a Kenyan president in two decades and the first by an African leader since 2008.
The United States, Canada and France — Haiti’s biggest benefactors and allies — were unwilling to send troops of their own to Haiti.
Kenya was the first nation to publicly offer to do so. Many experts believed the mission would be more welcomed if was led by an African nation.
Experts say that Mr. Ruto, who won the presidency in 2022 after a closely contested election, was using the deployment to further boost his profile on the global stage.
The deployment comes even as Mr. Ruto faces massive protests nationwide against a finance bill that critics say will increase the already high cost of living.
A team of Haitian police commanders recently visited Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, while Mr. Ruto held talks with the Haitian transitional presidential council.
At a police camp in Nairobi, officers who will be part of the deployment made final preparations. They have undergone physical and weapons training and received new helmets and body armor, according to interviews with officers who spoke on the condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak publicly to reporters.
They have also taken intensive French and Creole courses.
Beyond protecting key infrastructure, the officers at some point will be expected to secure the presidential palace, which remains in shambles after a 2010 earthquake but continues to be a symbolic place of power in Haiti.
“The early deployment of this force is going to be very vulnerable,” said Sophie Rutenbar, a visiting scholar at the New York University Center on International Cooperation who has worked in Haiti.
The initial group is likely to “play it safe” at the start, she said, but even as more officers arrive from other countries, their task will be daunting, particularly since they have not worked together before, do not speak the same languages or have a shared “operational framework.”
Eugene Chen, a former U.N. official who follows Haiti closely, said the international mission seemed to emerge out of a desperation to do something. Without finding ways to support Haiti’s political process, the mission could exacerbate the violence, Mr. Chen said.
“It’s not clear,” Mr. Chen added, “that this is the right answer.”
Abdi Latif Dahir contributed reporting from Nairobi, and David C. Adams from Miami.
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17) Casualties Reported as Police Fire on Protesters in Kenya
Demonstrators breached the parliament building to protest the passage of a bill that raises taxes. At least four people were shot, one fatally, the independent Kenya Human Rights Commission said.
By Abdi Latif Dahir, Reporting from Nairobi, Kenya, June 25, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/25/world/kenya-protests
Demonstrators try to obstruct a police vehicle during a demonstration against Kenya’s proposed finance bill, in Nairobi on Tuesday. Credit...Simon Maina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Police fired tear gas and shots rang out Tuesday as thousands of demonstrators flooded the streets around Kenya’s Parliament after lawmakers passed tax increases that critics say will make life onerous for millions.
The independent Kenya Human Rights Commission said that four people had been shot, one of them fatally. That could not be independently confirmed. A video the commission posted to social media showed police firing as protesters marched toward them.
At least part of the main Parliament building’s entrance was briefly on fire and Kenya’s Red Cross said that its vehicles had been attacked and staff members injured.
The debate over the finance bill that includes the tax hikes has shaken Kenya, an East African economic powerhouse of 54 million people that has long been an anchor of stability in a tumultuous region. At least one person was killed and 200 others were injured in protests across the country last week, according to Amnesty International.
The contentious bill was introduced by the government of President William Ruto in May to raise revenue and limit borrowing in an economy facing a heavy debt burden. But Kenyans have widely criticized the legislation, saying it adds punitive new taxes and raises others on a wide range of goods and services that would escalate living costs.
The president now has two weeks to sign the legislation into law or send it back to Parliament for further amendments.
Detractors of the bill have pointed to corruption and mismanagement of funds, and faulted the opulent lifestyle and extravagant spending that they say have characterized the administration of Mr. Ruto, who has been in office since 2022.
Protesters draped in the Kenyan flag blew whistles and trumpets and chanted, “Ruto must go.” There were signs the protests were spreading beyond the capital, as protesters blocked streets with burning tires in Nakuru, a city some 100 miles from Nairobi.
Here’s what else to know:
· The protests have been guided by younger people who have used social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram to initiate a leaderless movement that has galvanized the nation. Besides organizing protests in almost three dozen counties across Kenya, young people have translated the bill into several local languages and used the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT to simplify it.
· The internet watchdog group NetBlocks is reporting a major disruption to internet connectivity in Kenya. Kenya’s communications authority said it had “no intention whatsoever” of shutting down internet traffic.
· Before Tuesday’s demonstration, several activists who are prominent critics of the bill were abducted, according to the Law Society of Kenya. The abductors’ identities were not publicly known, but some were believed to be intelligence officers, said the Law Society’s president, Faith Odhiambo. Ms. Odhiambo later said that some of those abducted had been released.
· CNN aired footage of the half-sister of former President Barack Obama, Auma Obama, being tear-gassed as she was interviewed about her opposition to the bill.
· The protests comes as an initial group of 400 Kenyan police officers was arriving in Haiti for help to stop the rampant gang violence that has upended the Caribbean nation, an effort largely organized by the Biden administration. The Kenyans are the first to deploy of an expected 2,500-member force of international police officers and soldiers from eight countries.
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