A History of ILWU’s Labor Solidarity
Actions from Apartheid South Africa to the Zionist Genocidal War Against Palestinians
The history of ILWU, the longshore union, has been one of the most militant unions when it comes to solidarity actions. Is the recent ILWU Convention reversing that history?
July 30, 2024, 7:00 P.M., PST
No Registration Necessary
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3290219617?pwd=OTFGZUVKcDd4bzVkVjl5ZS94QmdoQT09#success
Presentations by:
· Brian McWilliams—ILWU International Past President
· Anthony Levieges—Activist member of ILWU Ship Clerks Local 34
· Jack Heyman—Retired member of ILWU Longshore Local 10 and supporter
of the Internationalist Group
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Please consider amplifying the new AFT4Palestine divestment campaign's launch tweet:
https://x.com/Aft4Palestine/status/1813973522995396761 (and follow us on social media too!)
We are already getting hit by the right-wing press and AFT leadership is getting thousands of emails (we have been told) so we need some grassroots help getting our campaign message out going into the AFT convention next week!
And if by any chance any of you will be at the AFT convention next week in Houston, please get in touch! We need volunteers to help with the floor campaign and we will also have a AFT4Palestine-ers meet up.
https://www.aft4palestine.org/take-action
Tell AFT: Divest from Genocide, Apartheid, & Scholasticide
The AFT currently holds only one bond of a foreign government in the form of an Israel Bond. Through its investment in Israel Bonds, our union is lending unrestricted funds to the Israeli government that can be used to fund any and all violence and human rights violations–with no guardrails. With resolution #34, we are asking AFT to support justice in Palestine by divesting from its Israel Bond.
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Casualties
· 39,157 + killed* and at least 90,403 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 28,903 Palestinians have been fully identified, and around 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble.*
· 589+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank including eastern Jerusalem. These include 138 children.**
· Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
· 687 Israeli soldiers have been recognized as killed, and 4096 as wounded by the Israeli army since October 7.***
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on July 25, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health on July 24, this is the latest figure.
*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000 including at least 8,000 permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7, as of June 18.Source: mondoweiss.net
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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.
U.S. Parole Commission Denies Leonard Peltier’s Request for Freedom; President Biden Should Grant Clemency
In response to the U.S. Parole Commission denying Leonard Peltier’s request for parole after a hearing on June 10, Paul O’Brien, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, made the following statement:
“Continuing to keep Leonard Peltier locked behind bars is a human rights travesty. President Biden should grant him clemency and release him immediately. Not only are there ongoing, unresolved concerns about the fairness of his trial, he has spent nearly 50 years in prison, is approaching 80 years old, and suffers from several chronic health problems.
“Leonard Peltier has been incarcerated for far too long. The parole commission should have granted him the freedom to spend his remaining years in his community and surrounded by loved ones.
“No one should be imprisoned after a trial riddled with uncertainty about its fairness. We are now calling on President Biden, once again, to grant Leonard Peltier clemency on humanitarian grounds and as a matter of mercy and justice.”
Background
· Leonard Peltier, Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), was convicted of the murders of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. He has always maintained his innocence. Amnesty International joins Tribal Nations, Tribal Leaders, Members of Congress, former FBI agents, Nobel Peace Prize winners and former U.S. Attorney James Reynolds, whose office handled Peltier’s prosecution and appeal, in urging his release.
· Parole was also rejected at Peltier’s last hearing in 2009. Due to his age, this was likely the last opportunity for parole.
· A clemency request is pending before President Joe Biden. President Biden has committed opens in a new tab to grant clemency/commutation of sentences on a rolling basis rather than at the end of his term, following a review of requests by the White House Counsel’s Office and the Department of Justice.
Amnesty International has examined Peltier’s case extensively for many years, sent observers to his trial in 1977, and long campaigned on his behalf. Most recently, Amnesty International USA sent a letter to the U.S. Parole Commission urging the commission to grant him parole.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/u-s-parole-commission-denies-leonard-peltiers-request-for-freedom-president-biden-should-grant-clemency/
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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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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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) U.K.’s Policy on Israel, Long Aligned With America’s, Veers Away
Britain’s new government is likely to withdraw objections to the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s pursuit of a warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, two people told The Times.
By Mark Landler and Stephen Castle, Reporting from London, July 25, 2024
Prime Ministers Rishi Sunak of Britain and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in London. The new British government is more likely to put pressure on Israel over its military response to the Oct. 7 attacks. Credit...Stefan Rousseau/Press Association, via Associated Press
For 10 months, Britain’s Conservative government had moved almost in lock step with the United States in its response to Israel’s war in Gaza. Now, under its new Labour government, Britain is edging away from its closest ally on the conflict.
By the end of this week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to drop the previous government’s objections to the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s pursuit of an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, two people briefed on the government’s deliberations said. The two people spoke on the condition of anonymity given the political sensitivities of the issue.
Last week, Britain said it would restart funding for the main United Nations’ agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA, having concluded that the agency had taken steps to ensure that it meets “the highest standards of neutrality.” The Israeli government had accused a dozen of the agency’s employees of playing a role in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel or their aftermath.
Taken together, these steps show a government that is willing to pile more pressure on Mr. Netanyahu for Israel’s harsh military response in Gaza. It also shows that Mr. Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, is paying more heed to international legal institutions than the United States.
In May, President Biden condemned as “outrageous” the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s effort to obtain arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant. Although the warrants would be largely symbolic measures, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to pass legislation imposing sanctions on court officials.
Analysts noted that Britain’s new government had not imposed concrete measures like halting weapons shipments to Israel. Officials have said they are awaiting the results of a legal review of whether Israel is violating human rights laws.
These early moves suggest that the prime minister, who is the author of a book on European human rights law, is charting his own course on a conflict that has vexed Western leaders, including Mr. Biden, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany. Britain’s close alignment with the United States had caused the Labour Party headaches with many of its own supporters, who agitated for a swifter British call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
“Starmer can say, ‘Judge me by what I’m doing. These are the two early decisions I made. How can you criticize those?’” said Daniel Levy, who runs the U.S./Middle East Project, a research organization based in London and New York.
Mr. Starmer has appointed Richard Hermer, a prominent human rights lawyer and close former colleague, as attorney general. Mr. Hermer will be highly influential in advising the prime minister on Israel, signing off on any legal intervention submitted to the International Criminal Court.
Born into a Jewish family and a supporter of Jewish causes, Mr. Hermer advised the Labour Party to oppose the previous government’s effort to pass a law banning local authorities in Britain from boycotting Israeli-affiliated entities. He argued that it would infringe on their free speech.
“He’s an acknowledged expert of huge standing and reputation in human rights law,” said Colm O’Cinneide, professor of constitutional and human rights law at University College London.
While the government has not said how it plans to respond to the International Criminal Court, Mr. Starmer said in May: “The court should be able to come to its decision in due course. I support the court and I support international law.” Rishi Sunak, his predecessor, called the pursuit of arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant “deeply unhelpful.”
While few analysts expect the new government to stick to the line of the previous one, some believe that, instead of dropping its objection entirely, Britain might choose to submit a more nuanced text to the court.
But Zaki Sarraf, a legal officer for the International Center of Justice for Palestinians, a group that supports the rights of Palestinians, called on the government to take a clear position.
“There can’t be a pick-and-choose approach to this sort of thing,” Mr. Sarraf said in a statement, noting that Mr. Starmer praised the court when it sought an arrest warrant for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “International law must be applied without fear or favor, and he must support these arrest warrants, too.”
The war in Gaza has put Mr. Starmer and the Labour Party into a tricky political position from the start. Mr. Starmer did not want to show daylight with the Conservative government on a major national security issue before the general election. He had also successfully cleansed Labour of a reputation for antisemitism in parts of its rank-and-file membership under the previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who was purged from the party over the issue.
Mr. Starmer initially backed the government’s staunch support of Israel, along with a call for increased humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. He later called for an immediate cease-fire, as did the government, but not soon enough to satisfy people on his party’s left or many Muslim Labour supporters.
Labour’s careful balancing act did not spare the party a backlash at the polls, even in an election in which it won a landslide victory. Jonathan Ashworth, a Labour figure who would probably have been named to a cabinet post, unexpectedly lost his seat to a pro-Palestinian activist.
Mr. Starmer himself won a reduced share of the vote in his North London seat compared with the 2019 election, in part because of a challenge by an independent who voiced anger with Labour’s stance on Israel.
In a biography of Mr. Starmer, the journalist Tom Baldwin wrote that the Labour leader had “publicly backed the Israeli prime minister’s political opponents, branded his rejection of a two-state solution as ‘unacceptable’ and warned any breaches of international law will mean ‘there are going to be consequences for him when this is over.’”
Britain’s shift comes as the United States itself enters a period of heightened political uncertainty on Israel. The withdrawal of Mr. Biden from the 2024 campaign and the emergence of Vice President Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee have raised questions about whether the United States will change its calculus on Israel and the war in Gaza.
“She’s far more frustrated and angrier with Netanyahu than Biden is,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East peace negotiator who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
But Mr. Miller noted that any change in American policy would most likely take the form of greater pressure on Mr. Netanyahu, who addressed a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, to make a cease-fire deal with Hamas.
The White House, he said, would not resume funding to UNRWA or drop opposition to the International Criminal Court because, he said, those steps would provoke a needless election-year fight with Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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2) Newsom Will Order California Officials to Remove Homeless Encampments
The directive from Gov. Gavin Newsom is the nation’s most sweeping response to a Supreme Court decision last month that gave local leaders greater authority to remove homeless campers.
By Shawn Hubler, Reporting from Sacramento, July 25, 2024
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is widely viewed as having presidential aspirations, has channeled $24 billion into homelessness since he took office in 2019. Credit...Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle, via Associated Press
Gov. Gavin Newsom will order California state officials on Thursday to begin dismantling thousands of homeless encampments, according to members of his administration, calling on government leaders to act on a recent Supreme Court decision “with urgency and dignity.”
The executive order, which is expected to affect tens of thousands of people, represents the nation’s most sweeping response to a June ruling that gave governments greater authority to remove homeless people from their streets.
Homeless encampments have vexed California, where housing costs are among the nation’s highest, more than any other state. An estimated 180,000 people were homeless last year in California, the most in the nation, and about 123,000 homeless people on any given night were unsheltered, according to the most recent count. Unlike New York City, most jurisdictions in California do not guarantee a right to housing.
Governor Newsom will advise California cities and counties on how best to ramp up enforcement on a signature issue of his administration, but he cannot force them to take action. He also will mandate that state agencies not simply move campers along, but also work with local governments to house people and provide services into which the state has pumped billions of dollars.
“The state has been hard at work to address this crisis on our streets,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement.
“There are simply no more excuses,” he added. “It’s time for everyone to do their part.”
Mr. Newsom, who is widely viewed as having presidential aspirations, has channeled about $24 billion into homelessness since he took office in 2019. His administration says it helped move more than 165,000 homeless people into temporary or permanent housing two fiscal years ago, the most recent period for which data is available.
The governor’s directive this week follows a Supreme Court decision on June 28 that upheld an Oregon city’s ban on homeless residents sleeping outdoors. The Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit had found in earlier opinions that it was unconstitutional to punish people for sleeping in public spaces when they had no other legal place to spend the night.
Encampments spread as the Ninth Circuit, which covers nine Western states, limited the ability of cities to tackle homelessness with arrests and citations. Many politicians from both parties blamed the rulings, even as cities spent heavily on homeless services and affordable housing to address a suddenly visible problem. Mr. Newsom was among a host of leaders who begged the court to intervene.
The justices granted their request, taking the case that originated in Grants Pass, Ore., and subsequently ruled 6 to 3 along ideological lines that the city had not violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment by ticketing homeless campers. Advocates for homeless people denounced the decision as cruel and predicted that it would incite a “race to the bottom” as cities cracked down.
Some local leaders, including Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, have echoed that opinion. But others have welcomed the decision.
In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, said last week that city officials planned to become “very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments” starting next month and might start citing homeless people who refused offers of shelter. The Republican mayor of Lancaster, Calif., said after the ruling that his community was eager to get moving. “I’m warming up the bulldozer,” Mayor R. Rex Parris said.
Most local governments, however, have been torn since the decision over whether to aggressively enforce laws against homelessness. The Supreme Court ruling left many civil protections intact, including prohibitions on excessive fines and violations of due process, and civil liberties groups have warned local governments that they would sue over mistreatment of vulnerable people living on the street.
Research also indicates that clearing encampments may be of limited value. One recent study, by the RAND Corporation, found that dismantling them had little or no long-term effect on a city’s homeless population. Another survey, conducted last year by the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, found that 75 percent of homeless adults in California were local residents who had become homeless in the county where they had last been housed.
Administration officials, who spoke on background because the executive order had not yet been issued, said it had been drawn up as a regulatory template for government entities that still must deal with encampments, which continue to sprawl across sidewalks, peek from rural wild lands and crop up nightly along beaches and waterways.
So many people have sought shelter near freeways, for example, that the California Department of Transportation has developed its own protocol and dedicated employees for clearing encampments. From one-person pup tents pitched near offramps to large encampments sheltering dozens of people beneath overpasses, Caltrans, as the department is known, has cleared more than 11,000 campsites since 2021, removing more than 248,000 cubic yards of debris, Newsom administration officials said.
The governor’s directive will order other state agencies — including California State Parks and the Department of Fish and Wildlife, both of which oversee immense tracts of land — to adopt versions of the approach being used at Caltrans. Under that approach, the departments will first target encampments that pose a health and safety risk. The state will provide 48 to 72 hours of advance notice, and state officials will work with local service providers to connect homeless campers with services and housing. Personal property collected at each site will be bagged, tagged and stored for at least 60 days.
Administration officials said that Caltrans could immediately accelerate enforcement and that other state agencies should have the new rules in place within a couple of weeks.
The state cannot legally force cities to adopt the Caltrans system. But Mr. Newsom and state lawmakers can pressure local leaders because they control billions of dollars of funding intended to address homelessness.
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3) The U.K. drops its opposition to an International Criminal Court warrant for Netanyahu.
By Stephen Castle Reporting from London, July 26, 2024
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel attending a session in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem, this month. Credit...Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press
Britain on Friday confirmed it was dropping plans to challenge the pursuit of an international warrant against Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the International Criminal Court, underscoring a shift in foreign policy under the country’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer.
The decision marks a divergence from U.S. policy on Israel, which the previous Conservative government had followed closely.
Two people briefed on the government’s deliberations told The New York Times earlier this week that Mr. Starmer would drop the previous government’s objections to the pursuit of warrants by the end of this week.
Downing Street said on Friday that Mr. Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, had decided that Britain would not make a submission to the court as Mr. Sunak’s government had planned.
“This was a proposal by the previous government which was not submitted before the election, and which I can confirm the government will not be pursuing, in line with our longstanding position that this is a matter for the court to decide on,” said an official spokeswoman for Mr. Starmer.
“The government believes strongly in the rule of law and separation of powers,” she added.
In May, Karim Khan, the international criminal court prosecutor, announced he had applied for warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and for the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity during Israel’s military operation in Gaza, including the starvation of civilians.
Mr. Khan simultaneously applied for warrants for three Hamas leaders, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Mr. Sunak described the request for warrants against Israeli officials as “deeply unhelpful,” and a senior government minister, Andrew Mitchell, told Parliament: “We do not think that the I.C.C. has jurisdiction in this case.” In early June, the government applied to the international court for the right to submit objections, and was asked to submit its arguments by July 12. That deadline was extended until Friday after Mr. Sunak called a general election.
The decision not to intervene in the international court proceedings marks the second departure by the new British government from U.S. policy on Israel since Britain’s general election earlier this month.
Last week, David Lammy, Britain’s new foreign secretary, said he would restore funding to the main United Nations relief agency that aids the Palestinians, UNRWA.
The government is also reviewing whether to continue sales of weapons to Israel, a decision that will rest on official legal advice on whether Israel has broken international law in Gaza.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry declined to comment.
Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.K., welcomed the decision not to intervene in the I.C.C. case, describing it as a “significant step in aligning the U.K. with the rule of law.”
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting
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4) Some airdropped aid packages, intended for Gaza, have fallen far off-target.
By Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, July 26, 2024
Aid packages being airdropped from a U.S. plane into the Gaza Strip in March. Credit...Hussein Malla/Associated Press
Some have landed by mistake in Israeli villages. Others have fallen into the sea. Still more have hit and damaged Palestinians’ private property.
Aid packages dropped by foreign air forces over Gaza were intended to alleviate food shortages in the territory, amid widespread hunger and obstacles to distributing food by land. Instead, many packages have missed their targets, damaged cars and homes, caused riots among people fighting over their contents, and even landed outside Gaza — embodying, rather than solving, the problems with aid distribution.
Since March, countries including the United States, Egypt and Jordan have parachuted 9,667 food packages intended for Gaza in 118 airdrops, COGAT, the Israeli military unit responsible for coordinating aid delivery, said last week. The aim has been to stave off famine in the area after the destruction of roads, a breakdown in law and order, Israeli airstrikes and Israeli restrictions on aid workers have made it harder to move food around the enclave.
But at least three packages have landed in Netiv Ha’Asara, an Israeli village at the northern border with the Gaza Strip that was raided by Hamas at the start of the war.
Twelve Palestinians drowned in March while trying to reach aid from an airdrop that fell into the Mediterranean off Gaza’s coast, according to the Gazan authorities. Another package hit one of Gaza’s few remaining functional farms, damaging a greenhouse that was growing vegetables, a video showed.
“What can I say, they need to be directed more accurately,” said Aviran Farin, a spokesman for the regional authority that oversees Netiv Ha’Asara. Mr. Farin described finding dates, rice, canned food and snacks that had been intended for Gaza but ended up in the village.
Another airdrop made it to northern Gaza but hit the home and car of Wajdy Mousa, a software engineer. The package wrecked the vehicle and attracted crowds of desperate Gazans, who surged into Mr. Mousa’s backyard looking for food, Mr. Mousa said in a phone interview. Some were armed with knives to rip open the packages, prompting Mr. Mousa and his family of 12 to huddle inside their locked home for safety.
“I am against these airdrops without any hesitation,” Mr. Mousa said. “They endanger people’s safety and provide no real benefit.”
Some Palestinians disagree, arguing that airdrops, although they are imperfect and insufficient to meet Gazans’ needs in a situation that humanitarian groups still describe as dire, are better than nothing.
“There is no ideal way to deliver aid in a war zone,” said Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American analyst who grew up in Gaza and has written for U.S. and Israeli news media about the merits of airdrops.
There have been “issues, mistakes, and horrors,” Mr. Alkhatib said, but the alternative is worse.
“Risking some lives to feed tens of thousands of people or waiting for a resolution to the entrenched security and logistical problems at the border crossings?” he asked. “Not doing anything allows the problem to get out of hand.”
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5) Israeli forces press forward in Khan Younis. At least 30 people are reported killed in 24 hours.
By Anjana Sankar, July 26, 2024
Palestinian children received aid at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Credit...Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
At least 30 people were killed and dozens more injured over a 24-hour period on Wednesday and Thursday in the Gaza Strip, local health officials said, as the Israeli military pushed deeper into parts of Khan Younis that it had previously designated as humanitarian zones for civilians fleeing the fighting.
The Israeli military, which began a renewed offensive in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis earlier this week, said it was targeting Hamas forces whom it accused of embedding fighters among civilians.
Many of the victims were taken to the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, where photos taken by a photographer for Agence France-Presse showed bloodied children being rushed in for care.
Mohammad Saqer, the director of nursing at Nasser Hospital, said he had treated three children for severe blast wounds, which he said were most likely from bombardment. Dr. Saqer, who has worked at the medical center for 18 years, said few shipments of medicine and fuel were arriving at the hospital, making treatment difficult.
“So many dead, so many wounded, not enough beds,” Dr. Saqer said. “The situation’s disastrous. We’re rationing electricity, turning off air conditioning, trying to save what we can.”
Patients at the facility have been forced to share beds, and the hospital was “under enormous strain as the killing, wounding and maiming of people continues relentlessly in southern Gaza,” the aid group Doctors Without Borders wrote on social media earlier in the week.
The United Nations said that 150,000 people fled Khan Younis on Monday alone, the day the renewed Israeli offensive began, and that “large-scale displacement” from the area was ongoing.
In Al-Mawasi, the coastal town where the Israeli military ordered Khan Younis residents to go, there is “no space for even a single tent due to the overwhelming number of people desperate for safety,” the Palestinian Red Crescent said. The group said that one of its ambulances came under fire on Thursday as medics were trying assisting injured civilians.
Fighting in recent days has centered around three towns near the city of Khan Younis — Bani Suaila, Al Zanna and Al Qarara. On Wednesday, the Israeli military discovered the bodies of five Israelis in Al Qarara who had been killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The bodies were found in a tunnel used by militants.
“Hamas exploited the humanitarian area and used it to hold our hostages captive,” the military said in a statement on social media. Hamas did not issue a response on its social media channels.
Israeli officials say 115 hostages remain in Gaza, including roughly 40 who are presumed dead.
The military said on Thursday that Hamas had launched several rockets toward Israel from the humanitarian area in Khan Younis earlier in the day. But the strike did not reach Israel and at least one rocket hit a U.N.-run school in Al Qarara, killing two people and injuring several others, the military said.
Schools have not been operating during the war and most of them have become shelters for displaced people. UNRWA, the United Nations’ main relief group for Palestinians that runs schools, did not confirm the attack.
The Israeli military said its forces operating in Khan Younis had killed dozens of Hamas militants over the past day and struck more than 60 terror targets.
Gaza’s health ministry said Israeli military strikes on areas in eastern Khan Younis killed at least 14 people early Thursday, with airstrikes reported in southern Gaza and tanks advancing in central Rafah.
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense, said Israeli forces had killed at least 17 people on Thursday in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, and in Khan Younis, Israeli snipers shot and killed at least one person while he was moving down Salah al-Din Street, Gaza’s main north-south route, he said. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the incident.
Anushka Patil and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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6) Away From the War in Gaza, Another Palestinian Economy Is Wrecked
With the closure of checkpoints, Israeli Arabs cannot come to Jenin and Tulkarm to shop, and West Bank Palestinians cannot leave to work in Israel, cutting incomes and building militancy.
By Steven Erlanger, Photographs by Sergey Ponomarev, July 27, 2024, Steven Erlanger reported from the cities and refugee camps of Jenin and Tulkarm in the northern West Bank.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/27/world/middleeast/west-bank-economy.html
Large parts of Jenin, especially near its extensive refugee camp, have been ravaged by Israeli troops.
Less than three years ago, Wassif Frahat spent $3 million to open a lavish, two-story restaurant, the Ali Baba. With an impressive, pillared entryway, polished stone floors, glittering chandeliers and colorful frescoes on the high ceilings, the restaurant was his commitment to a better future.
The Ali Baba, in Jenin, is just a few minutes’ drive from the Jalameh checkpoint, which in normal times allows Israeli Arab citizens entry to the West Bank. The atmosphere is Palestinian, and the shops, restaurants and services are significantly cheaper than in Israel. The crossing also allows Palestinians with valid entry permits to go to jobs in Israel.
But after Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, the checkpoint was closed. Israel withheld most tax revenue from the authorities in the West Bank, in an effort to weaken them and clamp down more broadly on Palestinians. The economy in the territory’s north collapsed, and the better future that Mr. Frahat expected now seems farther away than ever.
The war that followed the invasion is devastating Gaza, but it is also impoverishing the West Bank, which has become a kind of second front in Israel’s battle against Palestinian militancy.
The Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank but does not run Gaza, has been paying only about 50 percent of the salaries it owes its estimated 140,000 employees. In the West Bank as a whole, which has a population of about three million, 144,000 jobs have disappeared since October, and 148,000 Palestinians who were working in Israel have lost their jobs, according to the World Bank. Before Oct. 7, unemployment in the West Bank was about 13 percent, compared to 45 percent in Gaza.
Mr. Frahat, 51, once had 53 employees at his restaurant and an older one in the city center. “Now I only have 18 because business is down by 90 percent,” he said.
Israeli Arabs are not his only lost customers; local Palestinians have stopped coming, too. They lack money, he said, and fear continued incursions by Israel’s military. Its forces are trying to tamp down increasing militancy among young armed Palestinians who largely run the sprawling refugee camps in Jenin and the cities of Tulkarm and Nablus.
The Israeli army killed seven people in a raid in Jenin on July 5, after a larger operation in late May that killed 12.
“People are afraid to leave their homes,” Mr. Frahat said.
In large parts of Jenin, and especially near its refugee camp, Israeli troops using tanks and armored bulldozers have ripped up roads, cut water and sewage pipes, broken power lines and smashed many storefronts and U.N. offices, including a recently renovated medical clinic. The scene is similar in Tulkarm, with its two refugee camps.
Shlomo Brom, a retired Israeli brigadier general and senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, said that the army was engaged in “preventive actions” to head off a new wave of suicide bombings carried out by “armed groups producing explosives.”
Jenin and some of the camps are bastions of armed resistance to the occupation. Israel has conducted frequent raids over the years, but they have become more common since Oct. 7. Israeli officials say the raids are part of counterterrorism operations against Hamas and an extension of the war. Hundreds of Palestinians have been detained.
The raids have piled only more misery on a failing economy. Amar Abu Beker, 49, the chairman of the Jenin Chamber of Commerce, which represents 5,000 businesses, said that 70 percent of them were struggling to stay afloat.
The chamber is working to repair the key roads that Israeli forces have wrecked because the Palestinian Authority has little money for such work, Mr. Abu Beker said. In addition to the damage done by the checkpoint closure, the economy had been constricted by monthslong general strikes in 2022 and 2023 in sympathy with Palestinians killed in Israeli raids.
“The Palestinian Authority is holding on by its fingernails,” Mr. Abu Beker said. “Without money, you can’t operate.”
In a recent report, the World Bank said that the authority’s financial health “has dramatically worsened in the last three months, significantly raising the risk of a fiscal collapse.” It cited the “drastic reduction” in tax transfers from Israel and “a massive drop in economic activity.”
The measures to starve the Palestinian Authority of funds, pushed by far-right members of the Israeli government who want to annex the West Bank and resettle Gaza, have alarmed the Biden administration. U.S. officials want the authority to play a role in running postwar Gaza and worry that an economic crash in the West Bank could lead to more violence.
U.S. officials have pressured the Israeli government to release withheld taxes, which make up about 70 percent of the authority’s income. On July 3, Israel agreed to release $116 million, but the Palestinian Authority said it was owed nearly $1.6 billion.
Anas Jaber, 27, is among the Palestinians who have lost their jobs in Israel. He had been making up to 7,000 shekels a month, or about $1,870, as a housekeeper at a Tel Aviv hotel.
“Now I sit at home and live off savings,” he said. “I’m not married, thank God.” His job has been filled by Filipinos and Indians, and he has applied to move to Canada. “Inshallah,” he said. “I’m sick of checkpoints, and I want to sleep at night.”
There has been no water for a week, he said. Near his mother’s house, where he is staying, is graffiti in Hebrew and Arabic on a bullet-pocked wall that says, “Alleyways of death.”
Um Ibrahim, 60, said she used to get 750 shekels every three months from the Palestinian Authority for medicine to treat her diabetes and high blood pressure.
“For the past nine months, nothing,” she said. “The authority is having an economic crisis, so I’m scared I won’t get any help.” And if it collapses? She laughed bitterly. “OK, then, bye-bye.”
The governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Rub, 58, admitted that with checkpoints closed, first during the Covid pandemic and now after Oct. 7, the city is struggling.
“The veins that let us live are Palestinians from Israel, our lifeblood,” he said, sitting in his large office as an American armored personnel carrier guarded the entrance. The city’s Arab American University is mostly shut now, with only a third of its regular 6,000 students, who in normal times pay rent and shop in stores.
Israel did allow the Jalameh checkpoint to open in late May, but only on Friday mornings, when the shops are closed and most people are at mosques, and on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
A large photograph of Mr. Abu al-Rub’s son Shamekh hangs in his office. A doctor who trained in Jordan, Shamekh, then 25, was shot and killed by Israeli troops in November, in nearby Qabatiya, when trying to reach his brother, Muhammad, who had been shot in the leg, Mr. Abu al-Rub said. “They shot my two sons in front of my house,” he said.
He praises the Palestinian security forces, two of whose commanders were in the room monitoring the interview, for keeping law and order on badly reduced salaries. But he acknowledges that the security forces do not maintain a presence in the refugee camps, where Israel says the militants have established control, and he blames Israel for all the trouble.
Asked why young fighters from the camp, known as shabab, sometimes fire on his headquarters, Mr. Abu al-Rub said, “It is Israel that is giving the shabab weapons to fire at the P.A.”
Israeli officials deny such charges but would not comment on individual raids or deaths.
At the entrance to the camp, in the hot sun, Mahmoud Jalmaneh, 56, described how his life had changed as he tried to sell cheap tobacco from a dusty glass cabinet on wheels — 20 cigarettes for 4 shekels, about a dollar, compared to more than $8 for Marlboros, which he does not sell.
Born and raised here, he has seven children, and last July, Israeli troops were caught in a firefight in front of his house and blew it up, he said. “I was a homeowner and now I’m renting, and I have no more money to pay when the landlord comes,” he said.
“The checkpoints are closed; we can’t work in Israel or leave the country,” Mr. Jalmaneh said. “There’s no money, no salaries.”
“We are lonely. We are a people isolated and under occupation. We are fighting the whole world.”
Rami Nazzal contributed reporting from Tulkarm and Jenin, and Natan Odenheimer from Jerusalem.
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7) New Israeli Evacuation Order in Gaza Displaces Palestinians Again
The order affected part of southern Gaza, while farther north, the Israeli military struck the grounds of a school it said was being used by Hamas, killing more than 30 people, Gaza officials said.
By Adam Rasgon and Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, July 27, 2024
Injured Palestinians being taken to a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on Saturday. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock
The Israeli army ordered the evacuation of several neighborhoods in southern Gaza on Saturday, the latest in a series of such directives recently that have forced tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians to relocate yet again.
The decision affects an area around the city of Khan Younis that Israel had previously designated a “humanitarian zone” for Palestinian civilians, who are weary from nearly a year of unrelenting war and a daily struggle to avoid disease and find enough food and clean water to survive.
“People aren’t being regarded as people,” said Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, the main United Nations agency providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza. “They’re being treated as pinballs and chess pieces.”
The Israeli military said its recent evacuations and operations in Khan Younis have targeted a renewed Hamas insurgency and accused Hamas of installing weapons infrastructure in the area under the latest evacuation order on Saturday.
Over the past week, amid new evacuation orders, more than 190,000 people have fled the places where they were sheltering in southern and central Gaza, the United Nations said on Friday.
Dozens of people have been killed in fighting in the area, according to both Israel and Palestinian health officials. The Israeli military said on Friday that its forces had killed more than 100 militants in Khan Younis in recent days, while Palestinian health officials have said that at least some casualties arriving at local hospitals with severe blast wounds have been women and children.
There was also a new Israeli strike in central Gaza on Saturday, in an area some miles north of the zone under the latest evacuation order. Palestinian health officials reported that the Israeli military struck a school-turned-shelter that the Al-Aqsa hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah was using to provide medical services to Palestinians.
More than 30 people were killed in the Israeli attack and scores more wounded, according to Khalil al-Daqran, a spokesman for the Al-Aqsa hospital.
The Israeli military said its forces had struck a Hamas command and control center within the school grounds, which it claimed had been used to wage attacks against the Israeli military and store weapons.
Tariq Abutaha, 30, said in an interview on Saturday that he had fled his home in the Khan Younis suburb of Qizan al-Najjar — inside the zone under the new evacuation order — on Friday as rumors of an impending Israeli operation swirled. He last left there in December, expecting to return a week or two later. But he returned after five months of fighting in the city to find his home partially ruined.
On Friday evening, Mr. Abutaha said he paid $400 for a small truck to ferry 20 family members and whatever belongings they could load to the coastal area of Al Mawasi, which Israel has called a “safer zone” since the early days of the war. As they drove, he watched one scene after another of people fleeing on foot or camping out amid the rubble in the streets.
“We want to get back to our lives. By God, we’re exhausted,” said Mr. Abutaha, as he settled in, once again, in a crowded tent on Gaza’s coast.
Hassan Shehada, 61, a displaced person in Qizan al-Najjar, said he and 25 family members had failed to find a place to go and would remain in the evacuation area, at least until Sunday morning, despite Israel’s orders.
“We have no idea what to do. This is a real problem. We’re tired of moving over and over,” he said, likening life in Gaza to going through “a slow death.”
In any case, fleeing to comply with Israeli evacuation orders provides little guarantee of safety for Palestinian civilians.
The Israeli military has said it will target Hamas anywhere the armed group operates, contending it has used schools, hospitals, and the Israeli-designated “safer zone” for military purposes.
Israeli ground forces invaded Khan Younis in December, beginning a four-month battle that devastated the city. After the troops withdrew in April, some residents returned to their homes, began clearing streets, and sought to rebuild their lives as much as possible.
Then came another wave of Israeli evacuation orders in early July, followed by at least two more sets of instructions for Palestinians to flee their neighborhoods. For many, it was far from their first time fleeing their homes.
Kamal al-Madhoun, 66, said he saw hundreds of displaced people arriving in western Khan Younis on Saturday, carrying heavy bags and looks of desperation on their faces.
Watching the people trying to find a place to set up makeshift shelters worried Mr. al-Madhoun, who wondered whether he might find himself in the same situation next.
“Absolutely nothing is permanent,” he said. “We’re always full of fear that we’ll have to go through that miserable experience again.”
The Israeli military said another reason for the wide-scale operations in this area recently was an attempt to recover the bodies of Israeli hostages.
Israeli forces worked for almost 30 hours on Wednesday to extract the bodies of five hostages from a tunnel shaft nearly 200 meters long and 20 meters underground, the military said.
“We were right next to those bodies in the past” without knowing it, lamented Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military chief of staff. “We didn’t know how to reach them.”
The operation in Khan Younis was escalating again just days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel met with President Biden in Washington, where they discussed efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza that would also free the roughly 115 living and dead hostages there.
The negotiations appear to have ground to a halt in recent weeks, despite some renewed optimism. Israel has yet to formally issue its response to Hamas’s latest counterproposal, which the Palestinian group handed to Qatari and Egyptian mediators in early July.
Relatives of several American-Israeli hostages met with Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu on Thursday. After the discussions, they expressed hope that an agreement could yet go forward; in November, roughly 105 of the 250 hostages were freed in a weeklong truce.
“We feel probably more optimistic than we have since the first round of releases in late November,” Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagui was abducted during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, told reporters at a news conference.
Ronen Bergman contributed reporting to this article.
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8) Bats Already Had Problems. Now, Add Taxidermy Listings on Etsy and eBay.
Online sales appear to be compounding threats from climate change and habitat loss, according to new research.
By Rachel Nuwer, Published July 25, 2024, Updated July 26, 2024
A listing this month on Etsy, one of three e-commerce sites that researchers monitored for bat specimens.
Some of the bright orange bats were framed in shadow boxes, their boldly striped wings spread wide. Others were mounted in miniature coffins with shiny fittings. A few were promoted as Halloween or Christmas gifts.
Bigger, more charismatic species like elephants and tigers usually come to mind when the illicit animal trade is mentioned. But a study published this month has revealed a flourishing black market in stuffed and mounted bats that, until now, has gone largely unnoticed. In the United States, especially, bats are openly sold, intact or as skeletons, on e-commerce sites like Etsy, eBay and Amazon.
“If people aren’t discerning, they might think they’re buying products that are sustainably sourced, but they’re not,” said Nistara Randhawa, an epidemiologist and data scientist at the University of California, Davis, and a co-author of the study, which appeared in The European Journal of Wildlife Research. “Instead, they could be inadvertently supporting the population decline of this bat species in the wild.”
Other researchers first noticed a worrisome number of bats for sale on eBay in 2014. Dr. Randhawa and her colleagues followed up on that observation with a more systematic study. From October to December 2022, they regularly searched for listings on eBay, Etsy and Amazon. Many types of bats appeared in the results, but they focused primarily on Kerivoula picta, a species from Asia known as the painted woolly bat or fire bat, because its distinctive orange fur and striped wings make it easy to identify.
In 2020, conservationists declared K. picta “near threatened” after determining that the overall population had very likely declined by up to 25 percent over the past 15 years. They cited online demand for specimens and skulls as one of the primary threats driving that decline.
In the search, the group found a total of 856 bats listed for sale online, a quarter of which were K. picta. Etsy accounted for half of the listings, eBay for 45 percent and Amazon for 5 percent.
Most sellers were in the United States, and some indicated that specimens had been imported from Indonesia. Many claimed that their bats were sustainably sourced or bred in captivity. One Etsy seller even stated that purchasing from them helps to “prevent extinction and support the fight against deforestation and habitat destruction worldwide.”
Such claims are “rubbish,” said Chris Shepherd, a co-author of the study and executive director of Monitor, a wildlife trade research group that focuses on lesser-known species. “It’s a frivolous and purely luxury trade,” he added.
K. picta, like the vast majority of other bat species, has yet to be evaluated for inclusion in international wildlife trade regulations. But the species is illegal to hunt or sell in most, if not all, of the respective countries where it occurs, including Indonesia, said Joanna Coleman, an ecologist and conservation biologist at Queens College, part of the City University of New York. She was also a co-author of the findings.
This would make K. picta illegal to trade in the United States under the Lacey Act, which prohibits the importing and sale of wildlife that was unlawfully obtained in its home country. “We’re talking about a fundamentally illegal activity,” Dr. Coleman said. “It’s also very unlikely to be sustainable.”
Amazon declined a request for comment about the study’s findings and what, if anything, the company does to limit illegal wildlife trade on its platform. Scott Overland, an eBay spokesman, said that the site prohibited the sale of all bats, “whether live, dead or taxidermy.”
On Monday, after The Times sent eBay links to two listings of K. picta being advertised by a seller in Indonesia, the posts were removed. By Tuesday, one of the posts had reappeared, along with 36 other listings for bat specimens of different species from the same seller. After the Times pointed this out, the seller’s account disappeared.
“Users found attempting to list prohibited items may face consequences up to, and including, a permanent suspension,” Mr. Overland said.
An Etsy spokesperson, who declined to be identified by name or quoted directly, said that taxidermy was allowed on the site but that sellers had to comply with the company’s policy of prohibiting the sale of endangered or threatened wildlife. When asked whether Etsy planned to take any action against the sellers offering bats on the platform, the spokesperson said that it was the responsibility of sellers to know and follow the law.
The Times contacted several sellers with current listings for K. picta on Etsy and Amazon. One of the most active was listed as Charles Limmer. A Long Island resident with the same name has previously been indicted on charges of wildlife trafficking. Mr. Limmer did not respond to a request for comment. The Etsy spokesperson later said that Mr. Limmer’s account had been flagged for review.
NaturalByJim, an Etsy seller in Akron, Ohio, was the only one who responded. “These specimens were legally imported over 20 yrs ago,” he wrote. “They have been stored in a freezer.” Dr. Coleman noted that the Lacey Act was passed in 1900. The Times was unable to verify the seller’s claim or to determine from where those bats had been imported.
Vincent Nijman, a wildlife trade researcher at Oxford Brookes University in England who was not involved in the research, noted that Etsy sellers in Oregon, Ohio, New York and Britain all advertised K. picta specimens with virtually the same packaging and mounting, even down to the pattern of staples used. This suggests that “they all come from the same supplier, which seems to be based in East Java,” Dr. Nijman said.
Given the limited scope of the study, the findings were almost certainly an underestimate of the true extent of the bat trade, Dr. Coleman said. She said she had spotted K. picta specimens for sale on dozens of other websites and at curio shops.
For now, the findings highlight the fact that “just about any animal that can be traded will be traded, if money can be made,” Dr. Nijman said. As with many other types of wildlife commerce, he added, there is “no evidence and no data to suggest it is sustainable or ethical.”
Bat populations around the world already face myriad threats from climate change, habitat loss, persecution, wildlife disease, collisions with wind turbines and more, said Liam McGuire, an ecologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who was not involved in the research. “To see bat populations further threatened purely for decorative and aesthetic purposes is very concerning.”
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9) Fears of Escalation After Rocket From Lebanon Hits Soccer Field
Diplomats were scrambling to prevent a surge in fighting, officials said, after Israel struck Lebanon overnight in response to a rocket attack that killed at least 12 civilians in an Israeli-controlled town.
By Patrick KingsleyEuan Ward and Isabel Kershner, Patrick Kingsley reported from Jerusalem, Euan Ward from Beirut, Lebanon, and Isabel Kershner from the Golan Heights, July 28, 2024
“The Golan Heights is a territory once held by Syria that was captured by Israel during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. Israel annexed the territory in 1981, a move that was not recognized by most of the world. Decades later, President Donald J. Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty there, but most countries consider it occupied territory.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/28/world/middleeast/israel-lebanon-strike.html
Mourners on Sunday surrounded coffins of those killed in a rocket strike from Lebanon a day earlier in the town of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Credit...Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Western diplomats were scrambling on Sunday to prevent a surge of fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border, officials said, after a rocket from Lebanon on Saturday killed at least 12 people in an Israeli-controlled town, most of them children. The rocket prompted Israel to retaliate early Sunday with strikes across Lebanon.
The initial Israeli response appeared to stop short of a major escalation, but there were still fears that the fallout from the rocket launch would lead to all-out war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, facing domestic pressure to mount a fiercer response, was set to meet with senior government ministers on Sunday afternoon to discuss further steps, after flying back early from a trip to the United States.
Israel blamed Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Lebanese group that has been attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, for the deadly rocket attack on Saturday on the Druse Arab town of Majdal Shams. Hezbollah has denied it was responsible.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said at a news conference on Sunday in Tokyo that there was “every indication” that the rocket was fired by Hezbollah.
U.S. diplomats were working on Sunday to contain the hostilities and asked Lebanon’s government to relay a message to Hezbollah to show restraint in the face of a further Israeli response, according to Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib.
“We are trying to restrain Hezbollah now from retaliating to whatever the Israelis do next,” Mr. Bou Habib said in a call with The New York Times. It was not immediately possible to confirm that with U.S. officials.
French officials also passed messages back and forth between Israel and Hezbollah, according to a Western official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. France still has some influence in Lebanon owing to its former status as a French protectorate after World War I.
The Israeli military said its overnight strikes had chiefly targeted places in Lebanon that it had often hit in the past, mostly close to the border with Israel or surrounding the southern port of Tyre. It reported one strike in the Bekaa Valley, roughly 60 miles north of the Israel-Lebanon border, where it has been striking less frequently since February.
Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported extensive damage and some casualties resulting from the overnight Israeli strikes that began shortly after midnight and lasted until dawn. It was not immediately clear if the casualties were civilians or militants.
The rocket strike on Saturday, which hit children at a soccer field, was the deadliest assault on Israeli-controlled territory since Israel and Hezbollah began exchanging missile and rocket fire in October.
Some Israelis want Mr. Netanyahu to authorize a full-scale ground invasion of southern Lebanon in order to deter similar attacks. But others fear that such a move would prompt a far more devastating response from Hezbollah, whose arsenal of weapons is considered larger and most sophisticated than almost any other nonstate actor in the region.
Israeli commanders are also wary of opening up a second major war while the war in Gaza is still raging. After nine months of fighting with Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel’s munitions stockpiles have dwindled, raising questions about how intense a battle it could fight in Lebanon.
For now, Israeli officials say that they are still open to a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Hezbollah. Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Oren Marmorstein, said in a statement on Sunday that a full-scale war could still be averted through the enforcement of a never-implemented United Nations resolution from 2006 that would create a demilitarized zone in southern Lebanon.
Still, there were strong expectations on Sunday morning that Israel might mount a bigger response. That, analysts fear, could tip the low-level hostilities between Israel and militias led by Hezbollah into more intense conflict.
Roughly 100,000 people in Lebanon and 60,000 in Israel have been displaced, with scores of schools and health centers shuttered in both countries.
More than 460 people in Lebanon have been killed, most of them militants. More than 100 were civilians, including 12 children and 21 health workers, according to the United Nations and Lebanon’s Health Ministry. The fighting has killed 22 Israeli soldiers and 24 civilians, according to the Israeli government.
But unlike in Gaza, both sides have largely avoided attacks that cause overwhelming loss of life, which would in turn prompt their opponent to respond with overwhelming force.
The scale of the bloodshed on Saturday night has provided one of the strongest tests to that calculus since October.
“Hezbollah will pay a heavy price, which it has not paid up to now,” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in an overnight statement.
U.N. officials urged Israel and Hezbollah to “exercise maximum restraint,” warning that “it could ignite a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief,” according to a joint statement by the U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the chief of U.N. peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, Lt. Gen. Aroldo Lázaro.
The attack on Saturday set off widespread grief in the Golan Heights, where thousands of Druse Arabs observed a day of mourning on Sunday, shutting shops and other workplaces. Thousands went by bus to Majdal Shams to attend the funerals of those slain.
“The worst thing that has happened to the Druse in my memory,” said Diab Shams, 21, a Druse electrical engineering student who was traveling by bus to the town. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said, with tears in his eyes.
As the bus passed a Jewish Israeli town, scores of Jewish residents could be seen gathered beside the road waving both Israeli and Druse flags in a gesture of solidarity with the Druse community.
The Golan Heights is a territory once held by Syria that was captured by Israel during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. Israel annexed the territory in 1981, a move that was not recognized by most of the world. Decades later, President Donald J. Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty there, but most countries consider it occupied territory.
Roughly 20,000 Druse Arabs live in the Golan Heights, including in the town hit by the rocket; some still consider themselves Syrian, refusing Israeli passports, while a minority have taken Israeli citizenship. Jewish Israelis began settling the territory after 1967, and more than 20,000 now live in the area.
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10) This Dirty Industry Is Better Off Operating in America
By Stephen Lezak, Dr. Lezak is a researcher at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford who studies the politics of climate change, July 23, 2024
“The decline of domestic mining means that Americans are outsourcing the environmental and social costs of our inexpensive consumer goods to lower-income nations. More than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, sometimes called the blood diamond of electric vehicle batteries, comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where child labor and sexual violence are rampant in mines. About half of the world’s nickel, another key ingredient in electric vehicle batteries, comes from mines in Indonesia, some of which have wiped out almost 200,000 acres of rainforest amid allegations of operating illegally on Indigenous land. In the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, where I’ve studied the environmental impacts of mining, I met fluorite miners who lamented the destruction of their landscapes and the poisoning of their groundwater.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/23/opinion/lithium-copper-minerals-mining.html
The SQM lithium mine at the Atacama salt flat in the Antofagasta region of Chile last year. Credit...Ivan Alvarado/Reuters
Seventy years ago, the United States was the world’s leading producer of fluorite, a brilliantly multicolored mineral essential to industries such as steel. But the last American fluorite mine closed nearly 30 years ago, unable to compete with cheaper operations in places like Mongolia.
Although America has abundant deposits of many of the critical minerals that go into our vehicles, electronics and buildings, these materials are mostly mined abroad in poorer nations where labor is cheap (or worse, workers are enslaved) and environmental laws are more permissive, rarely enforced or easily sidestepped with bribes.
The decline of domestic mining means that Americans are outsourcing the environmental and social costs of our inexpensive consumer goods to lower-income nations. More than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, sometimes called the blood diamond of electric vehicle batteries, comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where child labor and sexual violence are rampant in mines. About half of the world’s nickel, another key ingredient in electric vehicle batteries, comes from mines in Indonesia, some of which have wiped out almost 200,000 acres of rainforest amid allegations of operating illegally on Indigenous land. In the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, where I’ve studied the environmental impacts of mining, I met fluorite miners who lamented the destruction of their landscapes and the poisoning of their groundwater.
Demand for these minerals is only growing as we make the transition away from fossil fuels, and leaving them in the ground will jeopardize climate progress. A United Nations study found that meeting international climate goals by 2030 could require building as many as 80 copper mines, 70 lithium mines and 70 nickel mines to supply the materials for electric vehicles, solar panels and a host of other low-carbon technologies.
The ethical and strategic way to handle this situation is for the federal government and environmentalists to encourage this industry to return to the United States and to hold it to the highest sustainability standards. Because safe and ethical mines are more expensive to run, consumers will have to pay a small premium for products with minerals sourced from these operations. Many of us are already paying more for responsibly sourced goods, such as chocolate and coffee. We should demand the same for our smartphones and batteries.
Reinventing the American mining industry might be more broadly appealing than it seems. On the right, conservatives are looking to shore up the jobs and tax revenue in rural communities generated by the fossil fuel industry, which is likely to decline as the energy transition gains momentum. Meanwhile, defense hawks are looking to outmaneuver China, which has a near monopoly on the supply chains of several critical minerals.
On the left, the Biden administration is looking to deliver on its made-in-America industrial policy, including the Inflation Reduction Act, which created tax incentives and $250 million in grants for domestic critical mineral production. Many of the law’s provisions, like a generous credit for electric vehicles, require manufacturers to source at least half of the critical minerals in batteries from the United States or nations with which we have free trade agreements.
Several experts have proposed further reforms to advance critical minerals mining in the United States. The Bipartisan Policy Center has suggested creating time limits for federal environmental reviews and funding work force development. But reinventing a domestic industry faces two simple issues. The first is cost.
Paying fair wages, safely storing toxic waste and setting aside money for cleanup is expensive, and some mining companies prefer to try to make larger profits by operating in countries with cheaper labor and laxer regulations. A coordinated effort by purchasers of these minerals — companies such as Apple and General Motors — could change that calculus. By committing to purchasing ethically sourced materials, these companies could spur miners and investors to chase higher profits by selling the materials at a higher price in the same way organic farmers do with organic food. Federal and state governments can also commit to purchasing only vehicles with materials sourced from mines certified by groups like the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance.
In my conversations with industry insiders, I frequently hear that supply chains are too long and complex for manufacturers to ensure that responsibly produced minerals wind up in products. But behind this weak excuse is a stubborn reluctance to depart from the status quo. Just last month, the Swedish automaker Volvo announced that one of its new electric vehicle models would have a groundbreaking “battery passport” telling consumers where its battery components were mined and processed. Other companies can no longer pretend to be powerless over their supply chains.
The more persistent obstacle standing in the way of bringing more mining home to the United States is vitriol among mining companies, local communities and environmental groups — vitriol that stalls proposed developments and causes decades-long lead times for new mines. This conflict — usually waged through lawsuits and other administrative maneuvers — stems from a centuries-long history of mining companies’ poisoning rural (and especially tribal) communities and landscapes. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 40 percent of the nation’s rivers and 50 percent of the nation’s lakes have been contaminated in part by abandoned mines. Even today, some companies act unethically and cut corners, for example by declaring bankruptcy to dodge legal requirements to repair environmental damage after a mine closes.
But the mining industry can leave behind this shameful legacy. Recent advances have made it possible to extract minerals with a much smaller environmental footprint, such as by reprocessing old waste materials at once abandoned mines. And some mining companies have shown a willingness to safeguard local communities. One mine in Montana has a binding agreement with regional residents to pay for independent experts to monitor local water quality, going far beyond federal and state requirements. Although mining will never be zero-impact, it has the potential to be fair and responsible.
Achieving safe and ethical mining will require collaboration from environmental groups. Instead of reflexively opposing mining projects, activists should demand that new American mines hew to the highest sustainability standards. They should also push Congress to reform America’s inadequate mining laws, such as by requiring mining companies to sign benefit-sharing agreements with local communities before breaking ground on new mines.
It’s easy to shirk responsibility for the faraway impacts of what we buy and consume, and it’s noble to defend the landscapes we call home. But turning a blind eye to the consequences of our affluence exacts a great cost. It’s time to look squarely at that damage and ask ourselves: What can we do to make mining — and the global energy transition — a fair trade for people and the planet?
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