2:00 P.M., New York City
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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:
<https://default.salsalabs.org/T92993480-4fd4-4a61-a43e-95c41c82ebb2/aad59268-5865-44eb-83d5-2371821e9ee4>
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:
<https://default.salsalabs.org/T74ad5ab6-077c-4136-bfe0-867696540584/aad59268-5865-44eb-83d5-2371821e9ee4>
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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 265:
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) Some critically ill children are allowed to leave Gaza for the first time in weeks.
By Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem, June 28, 2024
A Palestinian girl in a vehicle taking children out of Gaza for medical treatment abroad on Thursday. Credit...Mohammed Salem/Reuters
Israel and Egypt agreed to allow at least 19 sick children, most of them cancer patients, to leave Gaza for medical treatment on Thursday, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, in the first major evacuation of critically ill Gazans since the Rafah border crossing shut down in early May.
The Israeli military said the operation had been carried out in coordination with the United States, Egypt and the international community. In total, 68 people — sick and injured patients and their escorts — were allowed to leave, the military said.
Tania Hary, who directs Gisha, an Israeli nonprofit organization that advocates the free movement of Palestinians, said she was relieved that the children may “have a chance at life and finally receive the care they deserve.” But she emphasized that many more sick and wounded people remained trapped in Gaza, without any obvious mechanism for how they might be evacuated.
“It is a drop in an ocean of suffering, as thousands more wait to reach medical facilities outside the strip,” she said. “It serves as another reminder that the most vulnerable residents of Gaza — its children, sick and elderly — are paying the highest price.”
More than 10,000 sick and wounded people in Gaza require urgent care that is available only outside the enclave, the World Health Organization said this week. They include those wounded in airstrikes, as well as cancer patients, children with life-threatening illnesses and older people who need open-heart surgery.
Even before the war, many Gazans were forced to travel abroad for lifesaving treatments, like chemotherapy, which were almost nonexistent in the Gaza Strip. The enclave’s health sector has struggled for more than 15 years under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade intended to contain Hamas.
But the main conduit through which Gazans could leave — the Rafah crossing with Egypt — shut down after Israeli forces captured it in May during a military offensive. Egypt shuttered its side of the gateway in protest, and the Gazan part was later destroyed in a fire, according to the Israeli military, seemingly dashing hopes that the crossing would be reopened in the near future.
At least two sick Gazans who were scheduled to leave in early May have died while awaiting evacuation, their family members said.
With the Rafah crossing closed, the group of children allowed to leave on Thursday was taken into Israeli territory through another border point, Kerem Shalom, before being brought to Egypt. The move did not appear to immediately herald a new permanent route for the critically ill to safely leave Gaza.
One of the children who made the crossing on Thursday was a 10-month-old girl named Sadeel Hamdan.
For months, her family had looked on with growing dread as Sadeel’s condition deteriorated. Her belly swelled like a balloon because of severe liver failure, and she desperately needed a transplant, her father, Tamer Hamdan, said.
On Thursday morning — after weeks of waiting — Mr. Hamdan and Sadeel were finally permitted to leave the enclave. After entering Israel, they were ferried along with other patients to Nitzana, an Israeli border crossing, where they entered Egyptian territory, he said.
“Thank God,” said Mr. Hamdan, who was reached by phone as he sat in a bus on the Egyptian side of the checkpoint. “We’re so happy that we brought out Sadeel safely. Now we just need to complete her treatment.”
Their departure from Gaza, however, was bittersweet. Mr. Hamdan traveled with his daughter so that he could be a partial liver donor, but his wife and three other children were not permitted to join them. He said he feared for their fate in Gaza.
“We’re all heading into the unknown,” he said.
For each patient who left, there were many others left behind. Muna Abu Holi, a college professor from central Gaza, survived an explosion that killed one of her daughters and left two others seriously wounded.
Both of her surviving daughters had received approval to travel through the Rafah crossing on May 7 for medical treatment, according to documents from the Gaza Health Ministry. But the Israeli offensive led to the border’s shutting down.
“We’re grasping for any possible hope,” Ms. Abu Holi said. “Every piece of news we hear, we cling to.”
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2) Why More Older New Yorkers Are Ending Up in Homeless Shelters
The number of people older than 65 who are living in shelters is growing quickly, in an unheralded sign of New York City’s affordable housing crisis.
By Andy Newman, June 28, 2024
Robert Kirk, 74, became homeless after he was evicted. He now lives in a shelter in Brooklyn. Credit...Ahmed Gaber for The New York Times
Robert Kirk, a retired jack of many trades, finds himself homeless at the age of 74 after a chain of events that could happen to almost anyone.
His landlady in Brooklyn died, the building’s new owner raised the rent and later evicted the tenants, and he could not find another apartment he could afford with his Social Security check.
Now his neighbors at a hotel shelter in Brownsville, Brooklyn, include a 69-year-old ambulette driver who lost his job and apartment after a leg injury, a 73-year-old former plasterer from Panama and a 78-year-old retired sushi chef from Japan.
They are among the swelling ranks of older people who are homeless in New York City.
According to a report released on Thursday, the number of single adults ages 65 and older in the city’s main shelter system more than doubled from 2014 to 2022, growing nearly three times as quickly as the number of younger single adults in shelters.
There were about 1,700 people older than 65 in single-adult shelters, which house a vast majority of the older New Yorkers who are homeless, during the fiscal year ending in June 2022, up from about 700 eight years earlier. The share of residents in those shelters who were older than 65 increased to 8 percent from 5 percent.
The nonprofit group that released the report, LiveOn NY, which works to improve conditions for aging people, says the rising numbers point to an affordable housing crisis-within-a-crisis in New York City.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people who just muddle along, and they just muddle until they can’t,” Allison Nickerson, the group’s executive director, said in an interview.
More and more older New Yorkers are just a job loss, an uninsured illness or a real-estate flip away from homelessness, LiveOn NY said. The group studied data from the city departments of homelessness and housing and conducted a survey of property managers to produce its report.
About 315,000 older New Yorkers are on waiting lists for affordable apartments in federally constructed buildings reserved for people 62 and older, up from about 230,000 in 2016, the group said. The typical wait is six years; many buildings have longer waits.
“When you’re on an affordable housing wait-list and you’re living on a couch and you’re 80, you don’t have seven or nine years,” Ms. Nickerson said.
The overall market for affordable housing in New York is the tightest it has been in half a century, with vacancy rates for the lowest-priced apartments below 1 percent.
Slowly but surely, Ms. Nickerson said, older people who are too able-bodied to qualify for nursing homes or assisted living facilities but simply have nowhere to live are “infusing into the homeless system.”
The phenomenon is unrelated to the thousands of migrants who have traveled to New York since the summer of 2022, overwhelming the city’s social service apparatus. Few of the migrants who have entered the shelter system for single adults are older, LiveOn NY said.
The number of older adults in shelters is also growing considerably faster than the broader population of seniors is increasing as baby boomers hit retirement age.
There are about 10 specialized shelters in the city for older adults. From the outside, they tend to look like other shelters housed in low-budget hotels, but for the prevalence of people using walkers going in and out.
In recent interviews, several residents of the senior shelters said they preferred them to mixed-age shelters, where conditions can be rough. In senior shelters, people tend to sleep one to four to a room. Some general-population shelters have dozens of people sleeping in one space.
Mr. Kirk, who worked as an administrator at a yoga foundation and as a cabby instructor, said that at one mixed-age shelter he was assigned to, he complained to the staff that his much younger roommate was blasting the TV in the middle of the night.
“I woke up and he was right next to me and he punched me in the face,” Mr. Kirk said.
His neighbor the ambulette driver, who gave his name only as Barry M., said that their senior shelter, at the Days Inn Crown Heights, was a decent place for him to stay while he applies for a subsidized permanent apartment.
“It’s not the Waldorf Astoria,” Barry said, “but my room is clean.”
While many newly constructed buildings in New York have affordable apartments marketed through the city’s fiercely competitive housing lotteries, including some reserved for people ages 62 and over, there are simply far too few to keep pace with demand, LiveOn NY said.
About 30,000 lottery apartments hit the market from 2020 to 2023, LiveOn NY said, but only about 10 percent were in buildings that included apartments reserved for older people. Households with older adults filed 220,000 applications for lottery apartments during that period, and fewer than 2,000 of the households received apartments, the study said.
LiveOn NY urged the city to strengthen its existing affordable-housing programs for older people, particularly those with the lowest incomes. Older adults who enter housing lotteries tend to have significantly lower incomes than younger adults, the group said. They are also more likely to live on fixed incomes and to have mobility issues, both of which limit their housing options.
The City Department of Social Services said on Thursday that during the 10-month period ending in April, nearly 650 single adults older than 65 moved from shelters to subsidized permanent housing. This was more than in any fiscal year since 2019, the city said.
If there is a silver lining to living in a homeless shelter, it is that it can be a shortcut to finding permanent housing, said Karen Jorgensen, the director of the Valley Lodge shelter on the Upper West Side, a temporary home for about 100 older adults.
Many new apartment buildings contain subsidized units set aside for people who have been homeless, and Ms. Jorgensen said that most Valley Lodge residents find a permanent subsidized apartment within two years.
Earl Boyd, 83, a unicyclist, D.J. and former aquarium cleaner who moved to Valley Lodge in May, said he saw people moving out to permanent housing several times a week.
Valley Lodge’s parent organization, the West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing, also operates an adjoining supportive-housing building — permanent apartments that come with a range of on-site social and medical services — and some Valley Lodge shelter residents wind up there.
Tanya Anderson, a great-grandmother who bounced between streets and shelters for over a decade, has lived in one of the supportive-housing apartments with her son since last year.
“I feel so nice there that I don’t have to live in the street,” said Ms. Anderson, 61.
Another recent arrival is Locket Strowder, 61, a former warehouse worker. Within the space of a couple of years, Mr. Strowder was disabled by tumors in his back, lost his wife to cancer, moved in with a niece in Queens, suffered a reaction to medication and spent three months in a nursing home, fell out with his niece and entered the shelter system, where he was eventually assigned to Valley Lodge.
When a supportive-housing apartment opened in October, he moved in.
“To this day, I’m not where I want to be, not where I used to be,” he said. “But if I can just stay here long enough, I think I’ll be OK. I’ve got people watching over me.”
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3) Iran Warns of ‘Obliterating War’ if Israel Launches an Offensive in Lebanon
By Vivian Nereim, June 29, 2024
Smoke rising after a strike that Israel said hit a Hezbollah target, in Khiam, Lebanon, on Tuesday. Credit...Chris Mcgrath/Getty Images
Iran has threatened an “obliterating war” if Israel launches a full-scale attack in Lebanon, as diplomats work to prevent tensions between Israel and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which is backed by Tehran, from escalating into an all-out conflict.
In a post on X late Friday, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said that “all options,” including the involvement of Iran-backed armed groups across the Middle East, “are on the table.” Chief among those groups is Hezbollah, a powerful militia that dominates southern Lebanon.
At the same time, Iran dismissed warnings from Israeli officials that Israel could invade Lebanon as “psychological warfare.”
Enemies for decades, Israel and Hezbollah have frequently exchanged fire along Israel’s northern border. Since the war in Gaza began last October, Hezbollah and the Israeli military have intensified cross-border strikes. Israeli officials have warned for months that Israel might invade Lebanon if Hezbollah did not pull its forces back from the border area. Hezbollah has also threatened to launch an incursion into Israel.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, met with Biden administration officials in Washington this past week, in large measure to discuss the friction along the Lebanon border.
U.S. officials are keen to avoid an escalation in which Iran and Israel again directly exchange blows, following back-and-forth aerial attacks in April. Political analysts say that Iran appears to want to avoid a direct confrontation as well.
During his visit to Washington, Mr. Gallant told U.S. officials that Israel also did not want a full-scale war with Hezbollah, but that it was prepared to hit the group hard if provoked.
On Thursday, the State Department issued an advisory again warning Americans not travel to Lebanon, emphasizing that Lebanon’s government “cannot guarantee the protection of U.S. citizens against sudden outbreaks of violence and armed conflict.”
Analysts and officials have said that a halt to the fighting in Gaza would be the surest way to defuse the tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.
An Israeli raid in Gaza City enters a third day, and other news.
· An Israeli ground operation in eastern Gaza City entered a third day, with the military saying in a statement on Saturday that its forces had struck “terror targets” in the Shajaiye area. The raid has prompted more displacement, with at least 60,000 people fleeing from areas east and northeast of Gaza City as of Friday, according to the U.N. office of humanitarian affairs. The latest wave of Israeli strikes in Shajaiye began on Thursday, when people described a frantic effort to get out as explosions sounded around them. The Israeli military has said the operation there is targeting Hamas fighters and infrastructure.
· The European Union condemned an Israeli plan to legalize five illicitly built settlement outposts in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, saying in a statement on Saturday that it was “another deliberate attempt at undermining peace efforts” with Palestinians. On Friday, Israeli officials said that they had reached a tentative agreement to retroactively authorize the outposts, a concession to the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. In exchange, Mr. Smotrich would release frozen funds to the struggling Palestinian Authority, which administers some West Bank areas under Israeli occupation. The outposts, though illegal under Israeli law, have proliferated with the tacit support of the Israeli government, in what critics call a slow-motion annexation of land meant for a Palestinian state.
· The troubled aid pier the U.S. military built off Gaza has been removed again because of sea conditions. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, said Friday that the military would be watching weather conditions to see when the pier could be re-established, but noted that aid had already been stockpiled at the pier’s marshaling area and was awaiting distribution. “If there’s not enough room on the marshaling yard, then it doesn’t make sense to put our men and women out there, when there’s nothing to move,” she said. Aid agencies have struggled to deliver supplies across Gaza in recent weeks amid continuing strikes, damage to roads and lawlessness in areas the Israeli military has vacated.
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4) What does it mean when Israel authorizes an illegal West Bank settlement?
By Ephrat Livni, June 29, 2023
The unauthorized settler outpost of Evyatar, left, and the Palestinian village of Beita in the valley below. Credit...Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
Israeli officials have tentatively agreed to legalize five Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, a move that could further inflame tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and draw the ire of the international community, but one that advances the expansionist agenda of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government.
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has agreed to release funds he has been withholding from the financially strapped Palestinian Authority, which administers some West Bank areas under Israeli military rule, in exchange for strengthening Israeli settlements in the territory, his office said on Thursday.
The tentative agreement would ease some of the financial pressure on the Palestinian Authority but would officially tighten Israel’s hold on the West Bank, further complicating any future effort to reach an agreement on a two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis.
Much of the international community views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal, and many of the outposts are illegal under Israeli law, too, but are tolerated by the government. Many whose creation violated Israeli law were later legitimized by the Israeli government, granting them formal access to services like running water, electricity, building permits and funding.
Still, outposts have grown with the tacit agreement of the government for decades. Mr. Netanyahu last year decided to ease the process for approving new settlement construction, transferring authority from the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, to Mr. Smotrich, who believes Israel should annex the West Bank and rule it permanently.
What outposts are being approved by Israel?
The details and timeline for legalizing the five settlements were not immediately clear. Among the settlements that Mr. Smotrich said would be legalized:
· Evyatar: A controversial outpost on Jabal Subeih, a hill near Nablus in the northern West Bank, it is named for Evyatar Borovski, a settler killed by a Palestinian in 2013. In 2021, after the outpost rapidly expanded and incited Palestinian protests, settlers were ordered to evacuate. But they soon returned with the government’s tacit approval.
· Givat Assaf: Located in the central West Bank and settled by religious nationalists in 2002, it was named after Assaf Hershkovitz, a settler killed by a Palestinian. The Israeli advocacy group Peace Now sued for demolition of homes there in 2007, arguing that they were established on private Palestinian property. The government in 2013 said it was considering legalizing the settlement, drawing the ire of American officials. In 2014, four homes shown to have been built on private Palestinian land were demolished under court order.
· Sde Ephraim: Squatters established this outpost in 2018 on a hilltop near the Palestinian village of Ras Karkar, northwest of Ramallah. Settlers and villagers have clashed repeatedly here. This month, the Israeli military said that attackers had set fire to a trailer on the farm outpost.
· Adorayim: This outpost comprises about two dozen religious-nationalist families in the area of Hebron and was established in 2017.
· Heletz: A newly established farming area, it is located amid a cluster of settlements south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem called Gush Etzion.
Are the settlements legal?
Most of the world considers settlements to be illegal under international law. The United Nations General Assembly, the United Nations Security Council and the International Court of Justice have all said that Israeli settlements on the West Bank violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from moving its people into occupied territory. The statute that established the International Criminal Court in 1998 classifies such transfers as war crimes.
The United Nations in 1947 approved a partition creating a Jewish state and a Palestinian one that would include the West Bank, and put Jerusalem under international control. But after the first Arab-Israeli war, Jordan took control of the West Bank, and Jerusalem became divided between Israel and Jordan.
In the 1967 war, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and occupied the West Bank, which it says is disputed territory whose fate should be determined in negotiations. Soon after, it began to permit settlements there.
Palestinians have long argued that the settlements are a creeping annexation enforced by armed settlers and the Israeli military, carving territory that should become a Palestinian state into an unworkable patchwork, and steadily pushing Arabs out of their homes and farms.
Under Israeli law, legal settlements must be built on land held by the state, must have government building permits and must be established by a government resolution.
Under the Oslo accords, signed by Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s, both sides agreed that the status of Israeli settlements would be resolved by negotiation, a prospect that grows dimmer with each new outpost.
The U.N. General Assembly last year asked the International Court of Justice to give an opinion on the legal consequences “from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory.”
How many settlements are there?
Some settlement construction has continued under every Israeli government for decades. As of last year, more than 130 settlements had been built with Israeli government permission since 1967.
More than 100 unauthorized settlement outposts have been erected since the 1990s, and the Israeli authorities are working on legalizing many of them retroactively.
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank — not counting more than 200,000 in East Jerusalem — alongside more than 2.7 million Palestinians. Some of the settlements are home to religious Zionists who believe that the area is their biblical birthright. Many secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews also moved there, largely for cheaper housing.
This year, the Israeli government had designated a record amount of land, about 6,000 acres, as eligible for settlement by March, another signal of Mr. Smotrich’s intent to deepen the Israeli hold on the West Bank.
In March, the U.N. human rights chief, Volker Türk, condemned the rapid expansion of settlements after a U.N. report showed a “dramatic increase in the intensity, severity and regularity of Israeli settler and state violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, particularly since 7 October, 2023, which is accelerating Palestinians’ displacement from their land.”
Tor Wennesland, the U.N.’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, on Tuesday said that signs of expedited settlement and legalization of outposts undermine prospects for a two-state solution.
That appears to be the goal for Mr. Smotrich, who adamantly opposes Palestinian statehood. He has said that he will legalize additional outposts in response to any nation that announces recognition of a Palestinian state.
In the last two months, Spain, Ireland, Norway, Slovenia and Armenia have formally recognized an independent Palestinian state. In a social media post on Thursday, Mr. Smotrich indicated that the latest settlement legalization was a response to those decisions.
“We’ll continue developing the settlements to maintain Israel’s security and to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger our existence,” he said.
Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, the head of Israel’s Central Command, which is responsible for the West Bank, has said that since Mr. Smotrich took office the effort to clamp down on illegal settlement construction has dwindled “to the point where it has disappeared.”
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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5) A Message From the West Bank: ‘We Are Coming to Horrible Days’
By Nicholas Kristof, June 29, 2024
Abdel-Majeed Hassan on the charred ground where he said his car was set on fire recently. His burned sheep shed is behind him. Credit...Nicholas Kristof
The West Bank village of Qusra was smoldering as I arrived. Clouds of black smoke swirled from a field where rampaging Israeli settlers had lit it on fire, while also setting fire to Palestinian homes and vehicles, according to Qusra residents.
“At any moment, we expect settlers to attack,” said Abdel-Majeed Hassan, a salt-of-the-earth farmer in his 70s. He showed me the blackened ground where his car had been set on fire, the latest of four cars belonging to his family that he said settlers had destroyed.
Six residents of this village have been killed in such attacks since October, when the Israeli government responded to the Hamas terror attack from Gaza by imposing far harsher rule in the West Bank — more checkpoints, more raids, more Israeli settlements — and by giving armed settlers freer rein to attack Palestinian farmers. The result is a despair and fury that every Palestinian I spoke to predicted would lead to a bloody uprising.
I met Hassan here in 2015, on one of my many trips to Israel and the Palestinian territories over the years. Despite enduring repeated attacks by settlers who coveted his land, he thought then that he could hang on to his family farm.
Now he’s not so sure. His wife argues for abandoning their house for fear that settlers will firebomb it. After settlers smashed all their windows, the family installed heavy steel screens and window shutters, but this month settlers still tried to force their way inside while his granddaughter was visiting. So now he tells his grandchildren not to visit, and he or his son stands watch all night, every night.
A few days before my visit, Hassan said, settlers set fire to his barn with his sheep inside. Hassan ran and extinguished the fire as settlers hurled stones; “rocks were falling on my head like rain,” he said. Others in the village confirmed his account.
That is life for Palestinians in the West Bank today.
There are places in the world with significantly worse oppression and killing, including in Arab countries like Sudan, Syria and Yemen that draw less attention or protest. But Israel’s “state-backed settler violence,” as Amnesty International describes it, is enforced by American weapons provided to Israel. When armed settlers terrorize Palestinians and force them off their land — as has happened to 18 communities since October — they sometimes carry American M16 rifles. Sometimes they are escorted by Israeli troops.
With Israel possibly winding down the most intensive phase of its war in Gaza, we should be paying much more attention to the crisis building in the more populous West Bank. The United Nations reports that 536 Palestinians, including 130 children, in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the last eight months. During the same period, seven Israeli soldiers and five settlers have been killed here by Palestinians.
One way of thinking of it: An average of about 60 Palestinians have been killed each month in the West Bank since early October, in an area nominally at peace — six times the pace at which American soldiers were killed on average during the war in Afghanistan.
It could get much worse. Hassan warned that the West Bank is seething with so much frustration that “a big explosion is coming.” Others predicted that this wouldn’t be an organized rebellion but more of a spontaneous uprising, perhaps magnified by the possible collapse of the Palestinian Authority.
“There’s a war in Gaza, but the big war will be here in the West Bank,” Muamar Orabi, managing director of a West Bank news organization called Wattan, told me. Including East Jerusalem, the West Bank is home to three million Palestinians and 720,000 Jewish settlers.
Historically, Palestinians had few firearms, but that is changing. Military weapons are being smuggled into the West Bank, apparently mostly from Israel, and are sold on the black market.
“ People think that the only path left is armed resistance,” one young Palestinian man told me.
Extremists in the Israeli government are pressing ahead. When settlers invaded the farming village of Burqa in the West Bank last summer and shot dead a 19-year-old man, the U.S. State Department called it a “terror attack by Israeli extremist settlers.” But Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, suggested the killer “should get a medal of honor.”
Older Palestinians like Hassan mostly don’t want confrontation. I asked him what he does when settlers periodically cut down the trees in his olive orchard, and he smiled sadly.
“I replant,” he said.
“I do my best to calm this new generation,” he said. “But I fear that one day they will no longer listen to me.”
Again and again, I encountered that dynamic. Abdul Hakim Wadi, 53, preaches patience even after his brother, a chemist, and his nephew, a lawyer, were shot dead while in a funeral procession mourning four other Qusra residents killed the previous day. “We have been preventing the youth from doing anything,” Wadi told me. But his 18-year-old son, Omar, thinks his dad is deluded.
“I have lost hope,” Omar told me. The only thing Israelis understand, he said, is force. “We no longer have these conversations,” his father told me, “because he says, ‘your generation has ruined our lives.’”
Hani Ouda, 70, the mayor of Qusra, believes in peace. “It’s impossible for them to get rid of all Palestinians, and it’s impossible for us to get rid of all Israelis,” he told me. “The only solution is for us to live side by side.”
But the hope seems beaten out of him. He wanted to show me his orchards, so he took me to a road and pointed to his land that he can no longer set foot on.
“If we go beyond here, we could get shot or arrested,” he said. Then he took me to the community hall, built with German aid money but now burned and unusable. Some 200 settlers set fire to it this spring, when they also burned six homes and a bus, Ouda said. And now, he warned, “we are coming to horrible days” with “lots of bloodshed.”
I don’t know how to assess the risk. I see deep anger and frustration among West Bank Palestinians but also great fear and recognition that an uprising could be suicidal. Over the decades, I’ve often heard predictions of upheavals that never come to pass, while others, like the Tiananmen Square or Arab Spring movements, erupted with little warning.
What is clear is the deterioration in freedom and well-being in the West Bank since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. The heightened repression feels partly opportunistic — a land grab — but it is also shaped by a determination that Israel will never again be vulnerable to massacres.
Israelis do have legitimate reason to be fearful, and Palestinians do throw rocks at settlers and occasionally kill or injure them. While on average fewer than one settler has been killed a month since Oct. 7, that’s partly because settlers have guns, high walls and soldiers protecting them. Polls show growing support for Hamas on the West Bank, and many Israelis conclude that their survival depends on crushing Palestinians, not trusting them.
The village of Qusra has about 5,000 inhabitants, while the nearby Jewish settlement of Migdalim has about 600. One angry Qusra resident told me that it might take 2,000 Palestinian attackers, but they probably could overrun Migdalim if it came to that. So Migdalim settlers have a right to be nervous, but it’s also true that settlers have earned the loathing directed at them.
Settlers in Migdalim did not respond to my requests for comment, but Shmuel Junger, who works with an organization that supports settlements, said in an email that it is the people of Qusra who have attacked Migdalim, not the other way around.
“After everything we witnessed on Oct. 7, do you still believe that Israelis shouldn’t do everything in their power to protect their homes?” Junger asked.
That attitude reflects the tragic symmetry of the Middle East today. Israelis and Palestinians largely agree on just one point: The other side is untrustworthy, inhumane, illegitimate and extremist.
The final element of this symmetry is that each denies that there is any symmetry at all.
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The anger about land theft and settler violence is compounded by a growing economic crisis. The World Bank estimates that about 300,000 people in the West Bank have lost their jobs since Oct. 7.
The economic difficulties were compounded in May when a far-right Israeli cabinet minister, Bezalel Smotrich, began withholding Palestinian tax revenue from the Palestinian Authority, or P.A. Along with other punitive financial measures taken by Israel, there are growing fears that the P.A. could collapse — but Smotrich is not concerned.
“If this causes the collapse of the P.A., let it collapse,” he reportedly said.
In contrast, the Biden administration is alarmed. “If you saw the Palestinian Authority collapse and instability spread across the West Bank, it’s not just a problem for the Palestinians,” said Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman. “It is also a massive security threat for the state of Israel.”
There were reports on Friday that Smotrich had tentatively agreed to release some of the funds to the P.A. in exchange for strengthening Israeli settlements. There was no official announcement, however.
If the P.A. collapses, its security forces would no longer be there to gather intelligence on threats and prevent attacks, and it’s not clear what would happen to their guns.
President Biden and leaders of other Group of 7 nations this month called on Israel to release the tax funds. “Actions that weaken the Palestinian Authority must stop,” the leaders said in their communiqué.
Palestinians believe that the Israeli right would like to provoke an explosion of violence and use it as an excuse for an ethnic cleansing.
For my part, I think a simpler explanation is more likely: Israel is once again acting shortsightedly, against its own security interests. To paraphrase what the former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban said of Palestinians, the Israeli right never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Policy to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is immensely complex, with infinite room for nuance. I’ve focused here on the security dimension, for I believe it’s in American and Israeli interests to create a Palestinian state. But one more thing must be said: The seizure and occupation of other people’s land is wrong. And it is not wrong in a complicated, finely balanced way; it is simply, straightforwardly wrong.
The Biden administration has spoken out against Israel’s abuses in the West Bank, imposed financial sanctions on some violent settlers and withheld delivery of thousands of M16 rifles for fear that they would be handed out to settlers. Those steps are useful but inadequate. Biden didn’t respond forcefully even when Israel in March announced one of the largest seizures of Palestinian land in the West Bank since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
I’m afraid that Biden’s refusal to stand up more firmly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister — over either Gaza or the West Bank — enables more extremism and increases the risk of a cataclysm.
Israeli officials are right to despair about the lack of credible Palestinian leadership, but there is a step they could take to address that. Israel could release Marwan Barghouti, the most popular Palestinian leader, from prison. Barghouti has spent more than two decades in prison for murdering Israelis, and Israel regards him as a terrorist. But he favors a two-state solution and he has enough legitimacy that he just might be able to deliver a peace deal. As a result, some serious Israeli commentators favor his release.
“He is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in,” wrote Alon Liel, a former director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
The United States should push for Barghouti’s release and also press Israel harder to clamp down on illegal settlements and settler thuggery. For the same reason we oppose Palestinian terrorism, we should stand against Israeli terrorism.
I believe critics of Israel overuse the term “apartheid,” because Arab and Druze citizens of Israel have sat in the Knesset, held cabinet posts and, in 2007, briefly served as acting president. But the West Bank? Yes, that is apartheid.
“The entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is organized under a single principle: advancing and cementing the supremacy of one group — Jews — over another — Palestinians,” says B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization.
The occupation is as toxic to Israelis as it is to Palestinians. “We are losing our identity as people, as Jews and as human beings,” Ami Ayalon, the former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency, told the journalist Christiane Amanpour.
Americans should call for Israel to grant Palestinians in the West Bank the same rights — including voting rights — that it gives settlers in the West Bank. That’s a way of reminding Israel that it cannot simply occupy land decade after decade.
The United States is already in the thick of the West Bank conflict. Many settlers have American accents and draw financial support from donors in the United States. Meanwhile, some of the West Bank Palestinians on the other side of the fences also have American accents.
“I’m an American citizen, but if they attack me here, what can I do?” said Sayel Kanan, an engineer who lived in New Jersey for a dozen years and is now mayor of Burqa. “They can break my gate; they can kill me.”
Kanan put up a high wall around his home for protection from settlers (just as settlers put up high walls around their homes for protection from Palestinians), but he says he still fears for himself and for his son, a doctor who is also an American citizen. Settlers recently burned Kanan’s olive orchard and previously destroyed two of his vehicles, he said.
“I love America as a land of opportunity, but its foreign policy?” He paused. “I have lots of questions.”
So should we all.
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6) To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race
By The Editorial Board, June 28, 2024
Damon Winter/The New York Times
President Biden has repeatedly and rightfully described the stakes in this November’s presidential election as nothing less than the future of American democracy.
Donald Trump has proved himself to be a significant jeopardy to that democracy — an erratic and self-interested figure unworthy of the public trust. He systematically attempted to undermine the integrity of elections. His supporters have described, publicly, a 2025 agenda that would give him the power to carry out the most extreme of his promises and threats. If he is returned to office, he has vowed to be a different kind of president, unrestrained by the checks on power built into the American political system.
Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it. His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.
At Thursday’s debate, the president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.
The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.
Mr. Biden has been an admirable president. Under his leadership, the nation has prospered and begun to address a range of long-term challenges, and the wounds ripped open by Mr. Trump have begun to heal. But the greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election.
As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble. There are Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency. There is no reason for the party to risk the stability and security of the country by forcing voters to choose between Mr. Trump’s deficiencies and those of Mr. Biden. It’s too big a bet to simply hope Americans will overlook or discount Mr. Biden’s age and infirmity that they see with their own eyes.
If the race comes down to a choice between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the sitting president would be this board’s unequivocal pick. That is how much of a danger Mr. Trump poses. But given that very danger, the stakes for the country and the uneven abilities of Mr. Biden, the United States needs a stronger opponent to the presumptive Republican nominee. To make a call for a new Democratic nominee this late in a campaign is a decision not taken lightly, but it reflects the scale and seriousness of Mr. Trump’s challenge to the values and institutions of this country and the inadequacy of Mr. Biden to confront him.
Ending his candidacy would be against all of Mr. Biden’s personal and political instincts. He has picked himself up from tragedies and setbacks in the past and clearly believes he can do so again. Supporters of the president are already explaining away Thursday’s debate as one data point compared with three years of accomplishments. But the president’s performance cannot be written off as a bad night or blamed on a supposed cold, because it affirmed concerns that have been mounting for months or even years. Even when Mr. Biden tried to lay out his policy proposals, he stumbled. It cannot be outweighed by other public appearances because he has limited and carefully controlled his public appearances.
It should be remembered that Mr. Biden challenged Mr. Trump to this verbal duel. He set the rules, and he insisted on a date months earlier than any previous general election debate. He understood that he needed to address longstanding public concerns about his mental acuity and that he needed to do so as soon as possible.
The truth Mr. Biden needs to confront now is that he failed his own test.
In polls and interviews, voters say they are seeking fresh voices to take on Mr. Trump. And the consolation for Mr. Biden and his supporters is that there is still time to rally behind a different candidate. While Americans are conditioned to the long slog of multiyear presidential elections, in many democracies, campaigns are staged in the space of a few months.
It is a tragedy that Republicans themselves are not engaged in deeper soul-searching after Thursday’s debate. Mr. Trump’s own performance ought to be regarded as disqualifying. He lied brazenly and repeatedly about his own actions, his record as president and his opponent. He described plans that would harm the American economy, undermine civil liberties and fray America’s relationships with other nations. He refused to promise that he would accept defeat, returning instead to the kind of rhetoric that incited the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.
The Republican Party, however, has been co-opted by Mr. Trump’s ambitions. The burden rests on the Democratic Party to put the interests of the nation above the ambitions of a single man.
Democrats who have deferred to Mr. Biden must now find the courage to speak plain truths to the party’s leader. The confidants and aides who have encouraged the president’s candidacy and who sheltered him from unscripted appearances in public should recognize the damage to Mr. Biden’s standing and the unlikelihood that he can repair it.
Mr. Biden answered an urgent question on Thursday night. It was not the answer that he and his supporters were hoping for. But if the risk of a second Trump term is as great as he says it is — and we agree with him that the danger is enormous — then his dedication to this country leaves him and his party only one choice.
The clearest path for Democrats to defeat a candidate defined by his lies is to deal truthfully with the American public: acknowledge that Mr. Biden can’t continue his race, and create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place to defeat Mr. Trump in November.
It is the best chance to protect the soul of the nation — the cause that drew Mr. Biden to run for the presidency in 2019 — from the malign warping of Mr. Trump. And it is the best service that Mr. Biden can provide to a country that he has nobly served for so long.
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