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• Hear the stories of what happened at Dublin from formerly incarcerated survivors.
• Learn about the ongoing lawsuit and the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition.
• Find out how you can become involved in supporting this groundbreaking struggle.
Visit our website or contact us at:
dublinprisonsolidarity@gmail.com
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‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 328:
Israeli Foreign Minister calls West Bank invasion ‘a war in every sense’
The Israeli army’s large-scale assault on the northern West Bank has entered its second day. During a battle in Nur Shams refugee camp, the Israeli army killed wanted resistance fighter Muhammad Jaber “Abu Shuja’,” leader of the Tulkarem Brigade.
By Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau, August 29, 2024
Casualties
· 40,602+ killed* and at least 93,855 wounded in the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza-based Ministry of Health as of August 29, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble.
· 664+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank, 5,600 wounded since October 7, according to Palestinian Ministry of Health as of August 29, 2024.
Key Developments
· Israeli forces kill at least 18 Palestinians, injure dozens as part of large-scale northern West Bank invasion since start of operation. Martyrs include 6 people in Tulkarem, 4 in Tubas, and 8 in Jenin, according to Wafa News Agency.
· Israeli army kills 68 Palestinians, wounds 77 in past 24 hours in Gaza, according to Gaza-based Ministry of Health.
· Israeli army announces large-scale military operation in northern West Bank, including Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas; claims operation largest in West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.
· Israeli army announces assassination of wanted resistance fighter and leader of Tulkarem Brigade, Muhammad “Abu Shuja’” Jaber, alongside four other resistance fighters.
· Israeli army announces on Wednesday death of two soldiers in fighting in Gaza over past 24 hours.
· EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says Israeli West Bank assault must not be “premises” of “war extension” from Gaza, including “full-scale destruction.”
· Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz says operation must deal with northern West Bank similarly to Gaza, including “temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents,” adding that assault is “a war in every sense.”
· UN’s World Food Programme pauses staff operations in Gaza after being shot at by Israeli soldiers at checkpoint, “despite being clearly marked and receiving multiple clearances by Israeli authorities to approach.”
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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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
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) Something’s Poisoning America’s Land. Farmers Fear ‘Forever’ Chemicals.
Fertilizer made from city sewage has been spread on millions of acres of farmland for decades. Scientists say it can contain high levels of the toxic substance.
Hiroko Tabuchi traveled to Texas and Michigan and interviewed ranchers, scientists, investigators and wastewater-treatment experts for this article, Aug. 31, 2024
One of the animals from the contaminated herd Michigan. Credit...Emily Elconin for The New York Times
For decades, farmers across America have been encouraged by the federal government to spread municipal sewage on millions of acres of farmland as fertilizer. It was rich in nutrients, and it helped keep the sludge out of landfills.
But a growing body of research shows that this black sludge, made from the sewage that flows from homes and factories, can contain heavy concentrations of chemicals thought to increase the risk of certain types of cancer and to cause birth defects and developmental delays in children.
Known as “forever chemicals” because of their longevity, these toxic contaminants are now being detected, sometimes at high levels, on farmland across the country, including in Texas, Maine, Michigan, New York and Tennessee. In some cases the chemicals are suspected of sickening or killing livestock and are turning up in produce. Farmers are beginning to fear for their own health.
The national scale of farmland contamination by these chemicals — which are used in everything from microwave popcorn bags and firefighting gear to nonstick pans and stain-resistant carpets — is only now starting to become apparent. There are now lawsuits against providers of the fertilizer, as well as against the Environmental Protection Agency, alleging that the agency failed to regulate the chemicals, known as PFAS.
In Michigan, among the first states to investigate the chemicals in sludge fertilizer, officials shut down one farm where tests found particularly high concentrations in the soil and in cattle that grazed on the land. This year, the state prohibited the property from ever again being used for agriculture. Michigan hasn’t conducted widespread testing at other farms, partly out of concern for the economic effects on its agriculture industry.
In 2022, Maine banned the use of sewage sludge on agricultural fields. It was the first state to do so and is the only state to systematically test farms for the chemicals. Investigators have found contamination on at least 68 of the more than 100 farms checked so far, with some 1,000 sites still to be tested.
“Investigating PFAS is like opening Pandora’s box,” said Nancy McBrady, deputy commissioner of Maine’s Department of Agriculture.
In Texas, several ranchers blamed the chemicals for the deaths of cattle, horses and catfish on their properties after sewage sludge was used as fertilizer on neighboring farmland. Levels of one PFAS chemical in surface water exceeded 1,300 parts per trillion, they say in a lawsuit filed this year against Synagro, the company that supplied the fertilizer. While not directly comparable, the E.P.A.’s drinking-water standard for two PFAS chemicals is 4 parts per trillion.
“We were so desperate to figure out what’s going on, what’s taking our cows from us,” said Tony Coleman, who raises cattle on a 315-acre ranch with his wife, Karen, and her mother, Patsy Schultz, in Johnson County, Texas.
“When we got the tests back, everything started to make sense,” Mr. Coleman said.
Synagro, which is owned by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said it was “vigorously contesting” the allegations. It said its preliminary study of PFAS levels where the sludge was applied showed numbers “drastically lower” than what the plaintiffs claimed, less than 4 parts per trillion in surface water, for example.
“Synagro does not generate PFAS or use them in our processes,” said Kip Cleverley, the company’s chief sustainability officer. “In other words, we are a passive receiver, as are our wastewater utility partners.”
At the center of the crisis is the Environmental Protection Agency, which for decades has encouraged the use of sewage as fertilizer. The agency regulates pathogens and heavy metals in sewage fertilizer, but not PFAS, even as evidence has mounted of their health risks and of their presence in sewage.
The E.P.A. is currently studying the risks posed by PFAS in sludge fertilizer (which the industry calls biosolids) to determine if new rules are necessary.
The agency continues to promote its use on cropland, though elsewhere it has started to take action. In April, it ordered utilities to slash PFAS levels in drinking water to near zero and designated two types of the chemical as hazardous substances that must be cleaned up by polluters. The agency now says there is no safe level of PFAS for humans.
The government was working “to better understand the scope of farms that may have applied contaminated biosolids and develop targeted interventions to support farmers and protect the food supply,” the E.P.A. said in a statement.
Research has shown that PFAS can enter the human food chain from contaminated crops and livestock.
It’s difficult to know how much fertilizer sludge is used nationwide, and E.P.A. data is incomplete. The fertilizer industry says more than 2 million dry tons were used on 4.6 million acres of farmland in 2018. And it estimates that farmers have obtained permits to use sewage sludge on nearly 70 million acres, or about a fifth of all U.S. agricultural land.
Sewage sludge is also applied to landscaping, golf courses and forest land. And it has been used to fill up old mines.
“There’s clearly a need to test every place where biosolids were applied,” said Christopher Higgins, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. “And any industrial facility that is discharging waste to the municipal wastewater facilities probably should be tested.”
Scientists point out that sludge fertilizer has benefits. It contains plant nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. It helps reduce the use of fertilizers made from fossil fuels. It cuts down on the millions of tons of sludge that would otherwise be incinerated, releasing pollution, or would go to landfills, generating greenhouse gases as it decomposes.
“Yet all of the chemistry that society produces, and is exposed to, is in that sewage,” said Rolf Halden, professor of environmental biotechnology at Arizona State University, among the earliest researchers to study PFAS in sewage sludge.
The smell of death
Dana Ames, an environmental crimes investigator at the Constable’s Office in Johnson County, cut her teeth working missing-person cases and grisly homicides. But her first encounter with sludge fertilizer still came as a rude shock.
A farmer had applied the sludge to his fields, and two neighboring ranchers lodged a complaint about the smell. She drove out to investigate.
“I rolled down the window and I literally almost projectile vomited in my vehicle,” she said. “I’m accustomed to smelling death. This was worse than death.”
That call led to a remarkable investigation, overseen by Ms. Ames, into PFAS contamination of the sludge being spread in her county. She obtained a sample of the fertilizer and found it contained 27 different types of PFAS, at least 13 of which matched the PFAS in the soil and water samples from the two ranches.
And when a calf was stillborn at the Coleman ranch, she rushed the carcass to a lab at Texas A&M University. Testing revealed its liver to be full of PFAS: 610,000 parts per trillion.
In February, Ms. Ames and other local officials called an emergency meeting about their findings. “This isn’t just isolated to this county, or even multiple counties. This is going on all over,” said a county commissioner, Larry Woolley. “And the amount of beef and milk that’s gone into the food chain, who knows what their PFAS levels are.”
This year the Colemans and their neighbors James Farmer and Robin Alessi sued the biosolids producer Synagro and also the E.P.A., saying the agency had failed to regulate the chemicals in fertilizer.
They have stopped sending their cattle to market, saying they don’t want to endanger public health. Their days are now filled with long hours of caring for a herd they don’t expect to ever ship.
To cover the costs, they work extra jobs and have dipped into their savings. They fear they have lost their livelihoods forever.
“A lot of people are still scared to talk about it,” Mr. Coleman said. “But for us, it’s all about being honest. I don’t want to hurt anybody else, even though we feel people have hurt us.”
Mountains of sludge
When the E.P.A. started promoting sludge as nutrient-rich fertilizer decades ago, it seemed like a good idea.
The 1972 Clean Water Act had required industrial plants to start sending their wastewater to treatment plants instead of releasing it into rivers and streams, which was a win for the environment but also produced vast new quantities of sludge that had to go somewhere.
It also meant contaminants like PFAS could end up in the sewage, and ultimately in fertilizer.
The sludge that allegedly contaminated the Colemans’ farm came from the City of Fort Worth water district, which treats sewage from more than 1.2 million people, city records show. Its facility also accepts effluent from industries including aerospace, defense, oil and gas, and auto manufacturing. Synagro takes the sludge and treats it (though not for PFAS, as it’s not required by law) then distributes it as fertilizer.
Wastewater treatment involves many stages, including the use of bacteria that eliminate contaminants. The plant checks for heavy metals and pathogens that can be harmful to health. Yet conventional wastewater plants like these were not designed to monitor or remove PFAS.
Steven Nutter, environmental program manager at Fort Worth’s Village Creek Water Reclamation Facility, said the plant followed all federal and state standards. “The ball is in E.P.A.’s court,” he said.
E.P.A.’s own researchers have found elevated levels in sewage sludge. And in the agency’s most recent survey of biosolids, PFAS were almost universal. A 2018 report by the E.P.A. inspector accused the agency of failing to properly regulate biosolids, saying it had “reduced staff and resources in the biosolids program over time.”
Synagro acknowledges in its latest sustainability report that PFAS are a problem. “One of our industry’s challenges,” it says, “is the potential of unwanted substances in biosolids, like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances,” or PFAS.
Yet banning sludge fertilizer isn’t the way forward, biosolids industry groups say. Maine’s ban has only caused the state to truck more sewage out of state, because local landfills can’t accommodate it, said Janine Burke-Wells, executive director of the North East Biosolids & Residuals Association, which represents producers.
She said regulators should focus on curbing the PFAS entering wastewater by banning use in consumer products or requiring industries to clean their effluent before sending it to treatment plants. “There’s not enough money in the world to take it out at the end,” she said.
Figuring out how to deal with this crisis is a challenge now facing many states. Maine, along with its ban on fertilizer sludge and its testing of farmland, is also offering financial assistance to affected farmers and helping them shift from growing food. Using the land to grow other crops, like flowers, or to install solar panels are some of the options being promoted.
Michigan has taken a different approach.
There, regulators have tested only 15 or so farms that had received fertilizer sludge known to have been contaminated. Instead, Michigan has focused on working with companies to bring down levels of PFAS in their wastewater and has banned the use of sludge with high levels of the chemical.
The state acknowledges the risk of more testing to the livelihoods of its farmers. “We’re very, very conscious about the consequences of doing testing and potentially hurting a farm’s economic success,” said Abigail Hendershott, who heads Michigan’s PFAS Action Response Team. “We want to make sure we’ve got really good data before we go out and start disrupting things.”
That’s small consolation to Jason Grostic, a third-generation cattle farmer in Brighton, Mich., whose property was found to be contaminated by sludge fertilizer in 2020. The state placed a health advisory on his beef, dooming his ranch overnight.
“This stuff isn’t just on my land,” Mr. Grostic said. “People are scared to death that they’re going to lose their farm, just like I did.”
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2) Gaza, Lebanon, West Bank: Why Is Israel Fighting So Many Wars?
As well as its conflict with Hamas, Israel is battling along its border with Lebanon, waging a counterinsurgency in the occupied West Bank and exchanging sporadic fire with Iran and its regional proxies.
By Patrick Kingsley, Reporting from Jerusalem, Aug. 31, 2024
Israeli soldiers in the city of Tulkarm, in the occupied West Bank, on Thursday. Many Israelis have lost hope of using diplomacy to resolve their conflict with the Palestinians. Credit...Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
While Israel’s devastating war with Hamas in Gaza attracts the most attention, its military has also been fighting for months on several other fronts, making this one of the most complex periods of conflict in the country’s 76-year history.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the military has been raiding and striking militant groups in several Palestinian cities, killing about 600 people since October, in the deadliest campaign in the territory for more than two decades. On Wednesday, Israel began one of its biggest maneuvers in the territory in recent months, simultaneously invading three cities to capture or kill militants.
Along the Israel-Lebanon border, Israel has been exchanging rocket and missile fire with Hezbollah, a militia allied with Hamas and backed by Iran, in fighting that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the border and killed hundreds.
And Israel’s yearslong shadow war with Iran has burst into the open, with each side striking the other directly in April, leading to fears that a relatively contained war in Gaza might end up setting off an all-out war involving Iran, its many proxies across the Middle East and even the United States.
Why are various groups fighting Israel, why is it using force to deal with them, and why is it taking so long for these wars to end?
Why Israel is still fighting in Gaza.
Despite the destruction of much of Hamas’s military infrastructure and tens of thousands of deaths, there is no end in sight to the war in Gaza, partly because Israel has set itself a high threshold for victory: the eradication of the Hamas leadership and the rescue of roughly 100 hostages still held by the group. By contrast, Hamas has a low threshold: It seeks to survive the war intact, a modest goal that allows it to weather a level of devastation that might have caused other groups to surrender.
Hamas’s extensive subterranean tunnel network also makes it hard for Israel to win. Some of the group’s leaders are thought to be deep beneath the ground, surrounded in some cases by Israeli hostages, making it challenging for Israel to find the leaders, let alone attack them without harming its own kidnapped citizens.
Israel’s tactics also make winning more difficult. Its military has swiftly retreated from most of the areas that it has conquered, allowing — in some cases — for Hamas to regroup there and preventing the war from ending in the way that most wars do, with one side capturing the other’s territory.
A cease-fire has also proved elusive, in large part because Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, wants only a temporary truce, while Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, seeks a complete halt.
Why Israel is raiding West Bank cities.
While Israeli soldiers withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the army retained a wide presence across the West Bank, partly to protect roughly 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are considered illegal by most of the world.
The Israeli military regularly raids and strikes Palestinian cities in the West Bank to quell armed Palestinian groups, including Hamas, that mount terrorist attacks on Israelis in those settlements and in Israel itself.
Many militant groups oppose Israel’s existence. They have become more active in recent years as Israel’s occupation has grown more entrenched, all but ending the dream of Palestinian statehood and increasing Palestinian resentment of Israelis. Rising violence by settler extremists against Palestinian civilians, coupled with a sense of growing impunity for those extremists and the expansion of their settlements, have also been cited by Palestinian groups to justify their militancy.
Since the war in Gaza began, Israel has increased its attacks on these armed groups, saying they became even more active amid a rise in arms smuggled from Iran. Israel also says that the Palestinian Authority, the institution that administers Palestinian cities in the West Bank, has become too weak to rein in the groups by itself.
It is unclear how effective the Israeli raids have been, as observers dispute the extent to which they are restricting or encouraging Palestinian militancy.
The Israeli military says its campaign has killed several key militant commanders and thwarted many attacks on Israeli civilians. Yet the militants appear to be honing their techniques: This past month, a Palestinian from the West Bank set off a bomb in Tel Aviv. It was the first incident of its kind in years, and was cited by the Israeli military as an example of why it needed to mount the extensive operation on Wednesday.
Why Israel is striking Lebanon.
Hezbollah, a Hamas-allied militia that controls large parts of southern Lebanon, began firing at Israel in solidarity with Hamas shortly after the Oct. 7 attack.
Ever since, Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging rocket and missile fire across the Israel-Lebanon border, while trying to avoid an all-out ground war that would most likely devastate both countries. Israel’s fighter jets could cripple Beirut, the Lebanese capital, while Hezbollah has thousands of precision-guided missiles that could wreck Israeli cities.
Israel has said it won’t stop targeting Hezbollah assets and operatives until it is safe for the residents of northern Israel, some 60,000 of whom have been displaced by the fighting, to return home. But that is a distant prospect because, in turn, Hezbollah has pledged to carry on firing until the implementation of a lasting cease-fire in Gaza.
With no end in sight in Gaza, the Lebanon battle looks set to drag on, raising the chances of a miscalculation by either side that could cause the conflict to spiral out of control. A Lebanese strike on schoolchildren in July led Israel to kill a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, leading analysts to predict a major escalation until both sides managed to step back from the brink last Sunday.
Why Israel is fighting with Iran.
For decades, Iran’s leaders have said they sought Israel’s destruction. Both countries have clandestinely attacked each other’s interests and both have built competing regional alliances to deter each other. Israel views Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon as an existential threat and has frequently attempted to sabotage the program.
Until the war in Gaza, both sides tried to maintain plausible deniability for their attacks, mainly to avoid a direct confrontation that could escalate into all-out war. Israel had never claimed responsibility for its assassination of Iranian officials. Iran avoided major public provocations of its own, while encouraging proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as Palestinian groups in the West Bank, to attack Israel.
The intensity and length of the conflict in Gaza has tempted both sides to be more brazen, bringing their shadow war into the open. In April, Israel struck an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria, killing several senior Iranian commanders.
Iran responded by firing one of the biggest barrages of cruise and ballistic missiles in military history in the first direct hit on Israel from Iran, raising the specter of a full-on war, but ultimately causing little damage. And when Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, visited Iran in July, Israel took a risk by killing him on Iranian soil, leading Iran to promise another direct strike on Israel.
How Israel explains its use of force.
Israel says it has been left with no choice but to defend itself against an Iran-led regional alliance that aims not only to end Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, but to destroy Israel itself. Israeli officials highlight how Hamas and Hezbollah attacked Israel first, forcing Israel to respond, and they say that Iran’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah makes it necessary for Israel to attack Iran and its assets.
Many Israelis have also lost hope of using diplomacy to resolve their conflict with the Palestinians. In mainstream Israeli discourse, Israel is perceived as having made many concessions to the Palestinians during a failed peace process three decades ago, only for its best offers to be rejected by the Palestinian leadership.
Israelis often cite their withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 as an example of how Israeli good will fell flat: Hamas won legislative elections in 2006, wrested control of Gaza from Fatah, a rival group, a year later and used Gaza as a platform for attacks on Israel that culminated in the Oct. 7 raid, the deadliest day in Israel’s history. As a result, they see force as the only logical deterrent to groups like Hamas that ultimately seek Israel’s destruction rather than sincere coexistence.
Many Israelis yearn to be accepted within the Middle East without using force, and they see nascent economic and diplomatic ties with a growing number of Arab states as a step toward that goal. For now, though, their historical experience is that force often “works.”
More than diplomacy, it was force that helped the fledgling state survive the wars surrounding its creation in 1948. It was Israel’s strong military that allowed it to overcome three enemy states in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. And it was the same military that staved off a surprise Syrian and Egyptian attack in 1973, and helped Israel overcome a wave of suicide bombings in the 2000s.
Some Israelis even think their government is showing too much restraint, and should be striking back even more forcefully against Hezbollah and Iran.
How critics perceive Israel’s use of force.
In Gaza, opponents say that Israel displays too little concern for civilian life, accusing it of mounting a genocide, a charge Israel denies. In Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, Israel’s critics say it has been too provocative in its choice of targets and too reluctant to let diplomacy take its course. For example, some saw Israel’s recent strikes on Mr. Haniyeh and Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander, as irresponsible interventions that crossed too many red lines and risked turning a relatively contained war with Iran and its proxies into an uncontrolled disaster.
More broadly, Israel is also accused of having brought its predicament on itself by failing to agree to a peace deal with the Palestinians two decades ago.
Critics say that Israel conceded too little in the negotiations. They highlight how the young Palestinian militants who attack Israelis in the West Bank have often spent their whole lives under an occupation that has grown more expansive under the current far-right Israeli government, amid growing attacks by settler extremists and stifling restrictions on Palestinian movement within the territory.
Israel’s opponents also see the Oct. 7 attack in the context of Israel’s enforcement, along with Egypt, of a 17-year blockade on Gaza that prevented many Gazans from traveling abroad, stifled the territory’s economy and blocked access to everyday services like 3G internet and some kinds of complex health care.
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3) As Israel Keeps Fighting in West Bank, Residents in One Area Assess the Damage
In the Nur Shams area near Tulkarm, Israeli bulldozers have chewed up large chunks of the roads, and many homes have been left without running water.
By Aaron Boxerman, Aug. 31, 2024
Damage after an Israeli military raid in Nur Shams on Friday. Credit...Alaa Badarneh/EPA, via Shutterstock
Residents of Tulkarm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank were assessing the damage on Saturday in the wake of a two-day raid by Israeli forces, which were pressing on elsewhere in the territory amid signs that fighting with Palestinian militant groups could spread.
In the Nur Shams neighborhood — which was a focus of the raid — Israeli bulldozers had chewed up large chunks of the roads, and many homes were still without running water, said Suleiman Zuhairi, a retired Palestinian Authority official from the area.
Israeli troops were continuing their operation — which began overnight on Wednesday — in the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank, while two episodes farther south prompted fears that the violence was worsening.
Late on Friday night, a Palestinian attacker was killed and three Israeli soldiers wounded after a car exploded in a gas station near a major junction between Jerusalem and Hebron, according to the Israeli authorities. The Israeli military said that another assailant was killed while trying to attack the settlement of Karmei Tzur.
Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks left 1,200 dead in Israel, prompting the war in Gaza, Israel has feared a similar attack from the occupied West Bank, where roughly three million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule. The Israeli military has stepped up its raids there in an attempt to head off the threat, arresting thousands.
The Israeli military says its current raids are targeting strongholds of Palestinian armed groups. Israeli officials said that more than 150 shooting and explosive attacks on Israelis had been planned from the Jenin and Tulkarm areas over the past year. More than 600 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers and civilians since October in the West Bank, according to the United Nations.
On Friday, Tulkarm’s residents held a funeral procession in absentia for Muhammad Jaber, a militant commander killed by Israeli forces during the raid. The Israeli authorities are still holding Mr. Jaber’s body, according to his family.
Mr. Jaber, also known as Abu Shujaa, had become a cult figure in the Nur Shams neighborhood, where he lived, for his armed struggle against Israel. The Israeli military said he had been involved in “numerous terror attacks.”
A relative of Mr. Jaber, Neyaz Zendiq, said that he had spent much of the past few days huddled in his home in Nur Shams alongside his family. Mr. Zendiq’s son Jihad was killed during another Israeli raid in June.
Mr. Jaber was beloved by the camp’s residents, Mr. Zendiq said. “He didn’t accept the humiliation,” Mr. Zendiq added, referring to the Israeli occupation.
But Mr. Zuhairi, the former official, said that Palestinians living in the camp — in search of a leader — had inflated Mr. Jaber into an “icon of struggle,” giving him a reputation that far exceeded his actual activities.
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4) What We Know About the Polio Crisis in Gaza
Israel and Hamas have agreed to brief pauses in fighting so that humanitarian workers can begin an inoculation campaign.
By Ephrat Livni, Aug. 31, 2024
A Palestinian child is examined by a doctor at Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis, as United Nations officials prepare to launch a polio vaccination campaign on Sunday. Credit...Hatem Khaled/Reuters
A mass polio vaccination campaign for young children will begin in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, an especially challenging effort in a war zone where hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced repeatedly, buildings and infrastructure have been destroyed and moving around is often dangerous for aid workers and civilians.
The inoculation campaign depends on brief pauses in fighting and requires coordination among Israeli authorities, humanitarian agencies, aid workers and the health ministry in Gaza, which is run by Hamas.
Israel and Hamas have both said they will abide by staggered pauses in fighting to allow aid workers to vaccinate children, and Israel has said it will not issue evacuation orders in places where vaccinations are happening.
But after nearly a year of almost nonstop fighting in the enclave, there are fears the agreement may not hold long enough to complete the two rounds of vaccinations that health authorities say are needed to prevent the spread of the disease in Gaza and beyond.
“We welcome the commitment to humanitarian pauses in specific areas, and suspension of evacuation orders for the implementation of the campaign,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said in a post on social media on Thursday. “But the only lasting medicine is peace. The only way to fully protect all the children of Gaza is a cease-fire.”
Why is there polio in Gaza?
There are two basic, highly effective types of polio vaccine: an injection that uses dead virus, and an oral inoculation that uses a significantly weakened live strain of the virus.
Wealthier countries now use only the injected vaccine, but the oral version, cheaper and easier to transport and administer, is still commonplace in poorer regions of the world.
The oral vaccine carries a small risk because a vaccinated person can shed live virus in stool or body secretions. That weakened virus poses little threat on its own, but where sanitation is poor and vaccination rates are not high enough, the weakened strain can infect more people and, more troubling, can eventually mutate into a dangerous form.
The widely used vaccines given to young children formerly protected against all three types of poliovirus. But several years ago, with naturally occurring Type 2 eradicated, health authorities removed it from oral vaccines given routinely around the world, including in Gaza.
Health experts say that decision has backfired, creating a population of children who could be susceptible to that type.
Sure enough, the poliovirus detected in Gaza is believed to be vaccine-derived Type 2, which has also caused outbreaks in Africa in recent years. The vaccines to be delivered in Gaza are oral doses specifically targeting Type 2 poliovirus.
Polio vaccination rates in Gaza were at about 99 percent in 2022 but have dropped significantly among babies because of the war, in addition to the vulnerability to Type 2 for vaccinated children. At least 90 percent of children under 10 need to be vaccinated to stop the disease from spreading, Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the top W.H.O. representative in Gaza, told reporters on Thursday.
How widespread is polio in the Gaza Strip?
The first confirmed polio patient in Gaza in 25 years is a boy named Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, who is almost a year old and living with his family in a tent in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza. He was born just before the war, and was unable to get routine vaccinations because the family was constantly forced to move, his mother said.
About two months ago, he stopped crawling and was feverish. His family took him to a hospital, which sent a sample to a lab in Jordan. A test confirmed health officials’ fears: He had polio.
Gazan health officials have reported multiple children with symptoms consistent with polio, most likely the result of what UNICEF and W.H.O. officials said were severely unsanitary conditions and deteriorating health services.
Poliovirus has been detected in wastewater samples in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, and Deir al Balah, both of which have large populations of displaced Palestinians who have fled Israeli airstrikes.
How will the vaccination campaign work?
Israel has agreed to staggered pauses in military operations, starting Sunday. Vaccinations will begin in central Gaza and last for three days there, with the option for an extension if necessary. The humanitarian pauses will last from early morning until afternoon.
Health authorities plan to next move to southern Gaza for several days, and then the northern region of the enclave.
The World Health Organization and UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund, have delivered more than 1.2 million doses of polio vaccines to distribute to about 640,000 children in Gaza under 10 years old. Another 400,000 doses are on their way.
About 2,100 health and community aid workers in Gaza, at some 700 medical facilities, mobile clinics and shelters, will be administering the vaccines. After they complete the first round, a second, booster round of immunizations will need to be given four weeks after the first dosages. Israel has agreed to staggered pauses for boosters, too.
What is the risk if this campaign fails?
Spread beyond Gaza remains possible for however long the virus continues circulating, underscoring the immediate need for the vaccination campaign. “It is urgent; it is vital,” Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, told reporters this month in Tel Aviv after he met with Israeli officials.
A decades-long global campaign has reduced polio cases by more than 99 percent worldwide. Wild-type poliovirus is now known to exist only in two strongholds — Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Truly eliminating the disease globally would require eradicating wild-type polio in those places and phasing out the live-virus component in oral vaccines. For now, the best protection against polio for any community is still vaccine-induced “herd immunity,” according to Oliver Rosenbauer, a spokesman for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
In places where almost all children have been vaccinated, the likelihood of spread is minimal. But a person anywhere who is unvaccinated remains at risk, as evidenced by a 2022 outbreak that reached New York.
“As long as polio is anywhere,” Mr. Rosenbauer said, “all countries are at risk.”
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5) In the race against polio, Gaza begins a vaccination drive.
By Bilal Shbair, Erika Solomon and Hiba Yazbek, Bilar Shbair reported from Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, September 1, 2024
“The W.H.O. and UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund, have rushed more than 1.2 million doses of oral polio vaccines to the region, and say that 400,000 more doses are on their way.”
A health worker administering the polio vaccine to a Palestinian child in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday. Credit...Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Health workers on Sunday began a polio vaccination drive in Gaza aimed at preventing an outbreak of the quick-spreading disease — a daunting challenge in a besieged enclave shattered by 10 months of war and dependent on commitments by the war’s combatants, Israel and Hamas, to abide by pledged “humanitarian pauses.”
Israel, facing international pressure to prevent a wider outbreak of the crippling disease, moved with relative speed to allow agencies of the United Nations, supported by local health officials, to tackle the crisis in Gaza, where it launched a war in response to the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7.
Although the vaccination drive officially began early Sunday, Gazan health authorities gave some doses to children on Saturday at the Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to reports in Palestinian news media. Videos showed doctors and health workers squeezing droplets of the poliovirus vaccine into the mouths of children who were being treated at the hospital.
“I knew about this campaign by chance. I was frightened when I heard the word polio,” said Maysaa Abu Daqqa, a mother of a 9-year-old, Habib Nizam. Ms. Abu Daqga was waiting in a patients’ room at Nasser Hospital. “When I saw other women accepting the vaccinations for their children, I was encouraged to follow them,” she said.
Both Hamas and Israel agreed to the pauses in the fighting to allow the vaccinations to take place, but the campaign will be tricky to execute. With much of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed, and some 90 percent of the enclave’s roughly two million residents having repeatedly fled Israeli bombardment, it may be impossible to ensure the immunization of all of the enclave’s estimated 640,000 children under age 10.
“This is a race against time,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the main U.N. agency in charge of aiding Palestinians, said in a post on X.
For families seeking to get their children vaccinated, the challenges are layered and fraught: Not only must they trust that the cessations in fighting will hold, but many will have to find transportation, navigate blocked and broken roads and expose themselves to danger and widespread lawlessness to reach the vaccination sites.
The 2,100 people trained to conduct the vaccination drive will face risks, too, including anxieties over a history of deadly assaults on aid workers since the war began.
At a news briefing at Nasser Hospital on Saturday, Dr. Bassam Abu Hamad, a member of the polio campaign committee in Gaza, tried to encourage families to get their children vaccinated.
Acknowledging potential concerns some parents might have, he said that the vaccine “is safe and rarely has any side effects,” and urged mothers to “convince each other” to vaccinate their children.
Poliovirus, which is highly contagious, can cause paralysis and death in the unvaccinated. Largely eradicated around the world by decades of public health campaigns, it can thrive in unsanitary conditions and in places where vaccination rates are not high enough. Such rates in Gaza, which health officials have said were at about 99 percent as recently as 2022, have dropped significantly among babies because of the war.
The vaccine drive will be conducted through staggered pauses of fighting in different regions of the Gaza Strip designed to allow aid workers to try to vaccinate children at roughly 700 medical facilities, mobile clinics and shelters.
Israel will “allow a humanitarian corridor” for vaccination personnel to travel and will establish “designated safe areas” for them to administer vaccines during certain hours, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on Saturday.
“Israel views with importance the prevention of a polio outbreak in the Gaza Strip, including for the purpose of preventing the spread of diseases in the region,” it said.
The campaign is expected to last for three days, with each humanitarian pause in place from early morning until midafternoon. There will be an option to extend the vaccine drive if necessary, and then local health officials will shift their focus to southern Gaza. The northern region of the enclave will be treated last, according to the staggered schedule announced by global health officials on Thursday.
Gazans received a text message from the health ministry on Saturday, announcing the beginning of the vaccination drive for children under 10 years old across different parts of the strip starting on Sunday.
The vaccination campaign kicked off in central Gaza, where the health ministry said clinics, hospitals and U.N. schools would be offering the vaccine during the hours of the humanitarian pause.
Early indications suggested that Sunday’s vaccinations were carried out unheeded. UNRWA, the main U.N. agency in charge of aiding Palestinians, said on Sunday afternoon that the humanitarian pauses “were respected” in the areas where vaccinations were taking place.
“The turnout for the first day of the campaign was positive and thousands of children and families were seen lining up ready to receive their vaccine,” it said in a statement.
The W.H.O. and UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund, have rushed more than 1.2 million doses of oral polio vaccines to the region, and say that 400,000 more doses are on their way.
Dr. Majdi Dheir, the head of the campaign against polio in Gaza, said more than 2,700 people had been trained by experts from the health ministry, the World Health Organization and UNICEF to carry out the vaccinations.
Once the first round of vaccinations is complete, a second, booster round of immunizations will need to be administered four weeks later. Israel has agreed to repeat the staggered humanitarian pauses for the boosters as well.
The scale, ambition and logistics of the vaccination campaign are unprecedented in the Gaza war. The fact that the plan for it came together in only six weeks of negotiations after the virus was first detected is a sign of just how serious public health officials believe an outbreak could be.
Because polio can strike and spread rapidly, it is not only a risk to Gazans, but also could spread to neighboring Egypt or Israel, and potentially beyond. Whether the disease can now be contained is impossible to determine, health experts have said.
Israel has begun to offer booster vaccines for soldiers operating in Gaza. But a public health expert, writing in Foreign Policy, warned that effort may not be enough to stop the spread of an outbreak to Israel, citing vaccine opposition among Israel’s ultra-Orthodox, who make up some 17 percent of the population.
Polio is transmitted by contact with the feces of an infected person, or consumption of water or food contaminated by fecal matter.
Aid and rights groups say Israeli strikes have badly damaged access to sanitation and clean water in Gaza, not only risking the spread of preventable diseases but also possibly constituting a war crime. In June, the aid organization Oxfam released a report accusing Israel of destroying more than two-thirds of the enclave’s sewage pumps and all of its wastewater treatment plants.
After the virus was detected in sewage samples from Gaza in July, the W.H.O. director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that the conditions created “the perfect environment for diseases like polio to spread.”
Such warnings became more urgent when, two weeks ago, Gaza confirmed its first case of polio in 25 years, in a nearly 1-year-old boy.
Facing repeated displacement, tens of thousands of Gazans have crammed themselves into camps with little access to water and sanitation. As a result, some 340,000 tons of solid waste have accumulated in or around populated areas, according to a U.N. assessment.
Among some Palestinians on social media, there was cynicism over the vaccine drive, asking what the point was in saving Gazan children from the disease as long as fighting raged.
Mr. Ghebreyesus stressed that the most important objective was reaching a cease-fire, over which negotiations have repeatedly stalled.
“Humanitarian pauses are welcome,” he said in an online video statement. “But ultimately the only solution to safeguard the health of the children of Gaza is a cease-fire. The best medicine is peace.”
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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