Mumia Abu Jamal Webinar:
The Path to Freedom
August 6. 2024, 3:00-4:30 P.M., Pacific Time
Peace and Power,
Please start Black August off by joining the Abolitionist Law Center on August 6th for a webinar "Overcoming Death By Incarceration: The Path to Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal." Register at this Link
This webinar will present important information on the path to freedom for one of our longest serving political prisoners. Topics to be discussed include legal strategies and updates in Mumia's case, commutation, International Advocacy and compassionate release.
The panel includes Saleem Holbrook, ALC Exec. Director; Bret Grote, ALC Legal Director; Ghani Kempis Songster, former Juvenile Lifer and organizer; Journalist & Professor Linn Washington, Jr. and Dr. Jennifer Black co-editor with Mumia Abu-Jamal of the recently released Beneath the Mountain (City Lights 2024). Plus a special message from Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Please circulate to your network. Flyer below.
In Solidarity
Robert Saleem Holbrook
Executive Director
Abolitionist Law Center
(267)-229-7678
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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
· 39,480 + killed* and at least 91,128 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 28,903 Palestinians have been fully identified, and around 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble.*
· 594+ 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.
· 690 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 31, 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 30, 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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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) Israel’s Security Cabinet Approves Military Response to Rocket Attack From Lebanon
By Isabel Kershner and Euan Ward reporting from Jerusalem and Beirut, July 29,2024
A rocket fired from Lebanon struck a soccer field on Saturday in the Druse Arab village of Majdal Shams. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
Tensions were running high on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border on Monday in anticipation of an escalation in hostilities, after Israel’s security cabinet authorized its leaders to decide on the nature and timing of a military response to a deadly rocket attack from Lebanon over the weekend.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, received the authorization from the cabinet members in a meeting on Sunday night, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.
Israeli politicians have been vocal about the need for a significant military blow in retaliation for the rocket strike, which killed 12 children and teenagers on Saturday in the Druse Arab village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. The Iran-backed militia group Hezbollah, which has been sending rockets into Israel for months, denied responsibility for the attack, but Israel and the United States have blamed the group.
Visiting the scene of the strike on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu said of the victims, “These children are our children, the children of all of us. Israel will not and cannot let this pass and carry on as usual. Our response is coming, and it will be severe.”
Israeli analysts said Hezbollah was most likely aiming at a nearby army base on Mount Hermon and did not intentionally target the village. But the group’s use of inaccurate rockets in an area dotted with civilian communities led to the kind of unintended consequence that risks sparking an all-out war, they said.
In striking back, Mr. Netanyahu must now make his own calculations so that any Israeli retaliation does not expand the conflict more broadly than planned.
Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Israel needed to respond to meet the expectations of the minority Druse community and Israeli public opinion in general, and so as not to show weakness to the enemy. (Local residents heckled Mr. Netanyahu in Majdal Shams, telling him they had no security and chanting “Murderer! Murderer!” at him, videos posted on social media showed.)
But both sides appeared to be signaling that they did not want a full-blown conflagration, Mr. Yaari said, with each watching the other’s movements across the border.
The response will likely be carefully focused in the hope of preventing a prolonged escalation, he said, adding, “There are a lot of ways that Israel could act. There are plenty of targets in the bank.”
Since the strike on Majdal Shams on Saturday, there have been continued exchanges across the border, but they have seemed to fall within the bounds of the routine tit-for-tat of the past few months. The Israeli military said overnight that its aerial defense systems successfully intercepted an unmanned aircraft that crossed from Lebanon into northwestern Israel.
On Monday morning a drone strike in southern Lebanon killed two people and injured three others, including a child, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. The strike targeted a vehicle on the road between two border villages, according to Lebanese media reports.
At least two towns were also hit overnight by Israeli airstrikes, the agency reported. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on those attacks.
Hezbollah began firing across Israel’s northern border nearly 10 months ago in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza, though the strikes and Israel’s responses have been mostly small scale. In the wake of the attack on Saturday, Western diplomats have been scrambling to try to prevent any major Israeli retaliation and Hezbollah counter-response from spiraling into an all-out war, even as the fighting between Israel and Hamas continues in the south.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, in a call from Tokyo on Monday with Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, “reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security against threats from Iranian-backed terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah.” But he also emphasized “the importance of preventing escalation of the conflict and discussed efforts to reach a diplomatic solution” to the hostilities, according to Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman.
Hezbollah has denied responsibility for the rocket attack Saturday that struck a soccer field in Majdal Shams. But the Israeli military said the type of rocket used in the attack is Iranian-made and carries more than 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of explosives. Hezbollah is the only group in Lebanon that possesses such rockets, the military said.
And on Sunday, Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council, said in a statement that Hezbollah had organized the attack. “It was their rocket, and launched from an area they control,” the statement said.
Mr. Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, described Hezbollah’s denials as “ridiculous” after a visit to the Israeli military’s northern command headquarters on Sunday. He warned that Hezbollah would pay “a heavy price” for the strike.
After a restless night, many in Lebanon were relieved on Monday to find there had been no major Israeli retaliation overnight. Children made their way to school. Bakeries fired up their ovens and the roads were clogged with traffic as people went about their daily commute.
“It was cool to wake up and find that I was alive,” said Mohamed Awada, 52, a taxi driver and father of two who lives in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
But fears continued to linger in Lebanon as the country awaited the expected Israeli response amid a highly unpredictable time for the Middle East. Embassies in Lebanon reissued warnings against travel to the country, and urged foreign citizens to leave while flights are still available.
Rena Bitter, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the bureau of consular affairs, described a “complex and quickly changing situation” in a video released by the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on Monday.
Ms. Bitter said that U.S. citizens in Lebanon “should be prepared to shelter in place for long periods of time” if commercial flights were halted. “We recommend that U.S. citizens develop a crisis plan of action and leave before a crisis begins,” Ms. Bitter said.
Some airlines, including the Lufthansa Group, have suspended or adjusted their flight schedules in Lebanon amid the heightened tensions. Middle East Airlines, Lebanon’s national carrier, cited “insurance risks” as a reason for rescheduling overnight flights arriving in Beirut, according to a statement.
Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad in Beirut, Edward Wong in Tokyo and Gabby Sobelmanand Myra Noveck in Jerusalem.
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2) What is the Golan Heights?
By Alissa J. Rubin, July 29, 2024
Firefighters at work after an attack from Lebanon in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights this month. Credit...Gil Eliyahu/Associated Press
The Golan Heights, where a rocket from Lebanon killed 12 children and teenagers on Saturday, is an area bordering Syria that Israel seized during the 1967 Six-Day War. Since then it has been a strategic perch for Israeli forces.
Israel occupied the area and then effectively annexed much of it in 1981. That portion, encompassing nearly 500 square miles, gives Israel a vantage point and proximity to two of Jerusalem’s chief adversaries: Syria and Lebanon. The armed group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, has forces along the nearby southern and southeastern Lebanese border.
Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights has never been recognized by the United Nations, which condemned it at the time. When President Donald J. Trump was in office, he signed a proclamation recognizing Israel’s authority over the land, but the move was criticized internationally and carried primarily symbolic weight.
Both Hezbollah and armed groups in Syria that are also backed by Iran have used the areas along the Lebanese and Syrian borders with the Golan Heights to fire rockets and missiles at Israel.
The largely desert area now has several Israeli military bases, and elsewhere it is relatively thinly populated, with more people in the southern areas, which are better for farming.
Of the more than 50,000 people who live there, about half are people of Syrian ancestry who are Druse, a religion that originated in a branch of Islam. Many Druse residents of the Golan Heights have resisted obtaining Israeli citizenship and have maintained a strong connection to Syria.
Almost all the rest are Israeli Jews, who have settled in the area with the government’s support, much as they have in the West Bank.
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3) Food as You Know It Is About to Change
By David Wallace-Wells, July 28, 2024
Alma Haser
This essay is part of What to Eat on a Burning Planet, a series exploring bold ideas to secure our food supply. Read more about this project in a note from Eliza Barclay, Opinion’s climate editor.
From the vantage of the American supermarket aisle, the modern food system looks like a kind of miracle. Everything has been carefully cultivated for taste and convenience — even those foods billed as organic or heirloom — and produce regarded as exotic luxuries just a few generations ago now seems more like staples, available on demand: avocados, mangoes, out-of-season blueberries imported from Uruguay.
But the supermarket is also increasingly a diorama of the fragility of a system — disrupted in recent years by the pandemic, conflict and, increasingly, climate change. What comes next? Almost certainly, more disruptions and more hazards, enough to remake the whole future of food.
The world as a whole is already facing what the Cornell agricultural economist Chris Barrett calls a “food polycrisis.” Over the past decade, he says, what had long been reliable global patterns of year-on-year improvements in hunger first stalled and then reversed. Rates of undernourishment have grown 21 percent since 2017. Agricultural yields are still growing, but not as quickly as they used to and not as quickly as demand is booming. Obesity has continued to rise, and the average micronutrient content of dozens of popular vegetables has continued to fall. The food system is contributing to the growing burden of diabetes and heart disease and, through new spillovers of infectious diseases from animals to humans as well.
And then there are prices. Worldwide, wholesale food prices, adjusted for inflation, have grown about 50 percent since 1999, and those prices have also grown considerably more volatile, making not just markets but the whole agricultural Rube Goldberg network less reliable. Overall, American grocery prices have grown by almost 21 percent since President Biden took office, a phenomenon central to the widespread perception that the cost of living has exploded on his watch. Between 2020 and 2023, the wholesale price of olive oil tripled; the price of cocoa delivered to American ports jumped by even more in less than two years. The economist Isabella Weber has proposed maintaining the food equivalent of a strategic petroleum reserve, to buffer against shortages and ease inevitable bursts of market chaos.
Price spikes are like seismographs for the food system, registering much larger drama elsewhere — and sometimes suggesting more tectonic changes underway as well. More than three-quarters of the population of Africa, which has already surpassed one billion, cannot today afford a healthy diet; this is where most of our global population growth is expected to happen this century, and there has been little agricultural productivity growth there for 20 years. Over the same time period, there hasn’t been much growth in the United States either.
Though American agriculture as a whole produces massive profits, Mr. Barrett says, most of the country’s farms actually lose money, and around the world, food scarcity is driving record levels of human displacement and migration. According to the World Food Program, 282 million people in 59 countries went hungry last year, 24 million more than the previous year. And already, Mr. Barrett says, building from research by his Cornell colleague Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, the effects of climate change have reduced the growth of overall global agricultural productivity by between 30 and 35 percent. The climate threats to come loom even larger.
It can be tempting, in an age of apocalyptic imagination, to picture the most dire future climate scenarios: not just yield declines but mass crop failures, not just price spikes but food shortages, not just worsening hunger but mass famine. In a much hotter world, those will indeed become likelier, particularly if agricultural innovation fails to keep pace with climate change; over a 30-year time horizon, the insurer Lloyd’s recently estimated a 50 percent chance of what it called a “major” global food shock.
But disruption is only half the story and perhaps much less than that. Adaptation and innovation will transform the global food supply, too. At least to some degree, crops such as avocados or cocoa, which now regularly appear on lists of climate-endangered foodstuffs, will be replaced or redesigned. Diets will shift, and with them the farmland currently producing staple crops — corn, wheat, soy, rice. The pressure on the present food system is not a sign that it will necessarily fail, only that it must change. Even if that progress does come to pass, securing a stable and bountiful future for food on a much warmer planet, what will it all actually look like?
Over the past few years, as the world has begun a belated sprint toward renewable energy sources, we’ve gotten a pretty clear picture of what is often called the energy transition — clean power, primarily from wind and solar, that will be so cheap and abundant that the dirty old sources can’t possibly compete.
It is considerably harder to picture the equivalent for the food system: a proper food transition, delivering better nutrition more equitably and more affordably to more people, all without devastating ecosystems or polluting local environments or pushing the planet further into climate disarray.
Partly this is a matter of sheer scale. More than half of America’s land is used for agricultural production.
Outside the United States, the patterns are similar: More than one-third of the planet’s land is used to produce food, and 70 percent of all fresh water is used to irrigate farmland. Pacing the supermarket aisle, you might think that whatever you’re buying for lunch or dinner is produced out there somewhere on the periphery of modern life. But globally, the equivalent of South America is now used to grow crops, and the equivalent of Africa is used to graze animals. Combined, this is more of the world’s surface than is occupied by forests and more than 10 times as much land as is occupied by all human settlement. And according to the World Resources Institute, we may need to add almost two Indias to the world’s existing farmland to meet food needs in the second half of this century. — but adding that farmland means cutting down forests, which store carbon, in order to graze more animals, which produce carbon.
This all makes it a pretty unwieldy system to reimagine root and branch, and yet some fundamental changes are necessary, given not only climate’s impending impact on food but food’s ongoing impact on climate. One estimate is that food production is directly responsible for nearly a quarter of all global carbon emissions. Add indirect emissions, Project Drawdown’s Jonathan Foley notes, and agriculture is responsible for one-third of the global total of emissions. If food waste were a country, it would be somewhere around the world’s third or fourth biggest emitter of carbon.
A few years ago, it was possible to imagine a suite of solutions that both addressed the problem of emissions from food production and pivoted away from industrial agriculture. In fact, it was somewhat hard to ignore the hype. But a lot of the buzziest approaches have gotten a bit less buzzy with more scrutiny: sequestering carbon in soil looks trickier than advocates expected, and no-till, climate-smart regenerative farming practices now look less like miracle cures, as well. Much-ballyhooed vertical farming has experienced only stunted growth, thanks in part to its astronomical energy demands. And while genetically-modified varietals look perennially promising, they remain unpopular or even illegal in many parts of the world — a Philippines court recently banned nutritionally-enhanced golden rice, a decision that could result in the deaths of many thousands of children from malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies.
We haven’t changed our behavior much, either. Scientists routinely publish eye-popping estimates of the impact of a switch to a plant-based diet, which could significantly cut emissions for individuals and, at the global level, provide half of the emissions reductions needed to keep the planet from warming by more than two degrees. But while many assume that vegetarianism and veganism are growing at least in rich parts of the world, those trend lines have been pretty flat for decades now in the U.S. — with per capita consumption of meat both here and in Europe growing dramatically over the last 50 years (more recently, beef has gotten somewhat less popular). And while some still believe that lab-grown and cultured meat represent the future of “animal” proteins, none of the major producers exactly took over the meat market.
This has all been especially dispiriting given the rapid progress made not just in renewable energy, but also with those pieces of the climate puzzle once known as the hard-to-abate sectors: things like steel making, cement production and various other areas of heavy industry and infrastructure for which there are suddenly green alternatives, even just a few years deep into meaningful spending on research and development.
In agriculture, the state of progress is very different. Farming may look intuitively like a climate-friendly undertaking, but it remains a stubborn carbon problem — and now looks increasingly likely to outlast the other, more obvious parts of the decarbonization challenge. We have long conceptualized climate change as an industrial crisis, to be solved through a new and green industrial revolution. But in a few decades, we may find ourselves having solved the industrial problems of warming, only to be confronted instead by a persistent set of challenges that seem pre-modern by comparison — how to extract more calories from less land and how to do so without bankrupting the earth and its soils along the way.
About three-quarters of all global agricultural land is vulnerable to substantial climate disruptions, NASA’s Jonas Jägermeyr says, “so mostly everywhere you look, things will change in one way or the other.” And that probably means the food you’re eating, too.
“The good news is, we’ve seen this show before — we’ve faced crises before,” says Mr. Barrett. The examples of success he cites are probably familiar: Innovations to solve the challenges of the Dust Bowl in America and later the Green Revolution in Asia allowed hundreds of millions of people to avoid starvation and helped usher in the fastest escape from extreme poverty the world has ever experienced.
Mr. Barrett sees plenty of promise on the horizon now, too: biofortified crops; new techniques to fix nitrogen from the air, limiting the use of fossil-fuel based fertilizer; resilient varieties, like flood-resistant rice, that are already transforming the paddies of South Asia. But there’s no magic-bullet solution, he says: We need a bundle of innovations and interventions.
And innovation at this scale doesn’t just happen at the snap of a finger. The seedlings tend to bloom only after a decade or two of scientific, political, social and economic germination (and often difficulty). Even where politics are relatively stable, market incentives are often perverse, infrastructure often insufficient and support systems lacking for smallholder farmers trying to innovate their way toward greater crop stability and abundance.
In the United States, investment in agricultural research and development has fallen by almost a third in this young century, and “the failure to invest in improving agricultural productivity, especially of healthier foods, basically traces to complacency,” Mr. Barrett says. All told, he believes that agricultural research and development spending needs to at least triple to keep pace with booming demand.
Mr. Jägermeyr of NASA calls it “the challenge of our generation” — how to save the food system from what he calls a “quadruple squeeze.” First, the problem of productivity and hunger. Second, the risk to ecosystems, under threat from fertilizer runoff deforestation and other pollution. Third, the challenge of nutritional deficiency, as those foods we are growing more of are generally getting worse for us over time. And finally climate, which is driving a “fundamental change across most breadbaskets on the planet,” he says. “It’s pretty complicated,” he admits. “And the scary part is that we have to solve them all.”
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4) Riots at Israeli Army Bases Show Growing Divisions Over War in Gaza
By Patrick Kingsley reporting from Jerusalem., July 30, 2024
"At a hearing in Parliament, a lawmaker from Mr. Netanyahu’s party, Hanoch Milwidsky, was asked whether it was acceptable to sexually abuse a detainee. 'Yes,' he replied. 'If he is Nukhba, everything is legitimate to do. Everything.'”
Right-wing Israelis demonstrated at the Sde Teman military base on Monday. Credit...Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had sent two battalions to protect an army base where nine soldiers were being held on suspicion of abusing a Palestinian man. The move was a sign of the rising tensions a day after the soldiers’ arrests spurred civilian protesters to storm the base and another military complex.
Scores of right-wing protesters, accompanied by at least three lawmakers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, gathered outside the Sde Teiman base on Monday, before some of them surged inside. Others later forced their way into Beit Lid, the base where the soldiers are being held.
Further unrest was expected on Tuesday, when a military court was expected to decide whether to extend the soldiers’ detentions.
The decision to deploy troops inside Israel came as the military leadership questions whether it has enough resources to fight in both Gaza and Lebanon, where cross-border tensions have risen after a deadly rocket attack over the weekend from Lebanon that killed 12 children and teenagers in an Israeli-controlled town.
It reflected the depth of disagreement among Israelis, including within the military, about how to detain, interrogate and punish Palestinians accused of participating in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent ground war in Gaza. It also highlighted a wider battle among Israelis about the future and character of their democracy, in particular over the role of the judiciary and other watchdog institutions.
Since the start of the war, the Israeli military has captured at least 4,000 Gazans, mostly from inside Gaza, and brought them to Sde Teiman, for detention and interrogation. More than 1,000 were later judged to be civilians and returned to Gaza, while others have been held on suspicion of links to Hamas and its Nukhba commando brigade.
Former detainees and some Israeli soldiers have said that guards routinely abuse Gazans held at Sde Teiman; at least 35 detainees have died either at the site or shortly after leaving it.
Amid international scrutiny of Israel’s wartime conduct, some Israelis have pushed for improvements at the base, leading rights groups have petitioned the Supreme Court to close it and military prosecutors have been more proactive about investigating allegations there.
But many Israelis have decried this scrutiny, saying that soldiers should not be punished for how they treat prisoners believed to have committed atrocities during the Oct. 7 attacks that Israel says killed roughly 1,200 people.
This disagreement reached a boiling point on Monday when military police officers detained nine soldiers at Sde Teiman on suspicion of abusing a Palestinian detainee and transferred them to Beit Lid, a second military base.
A military doctor at the field hospital in Sde Teiman, Prof. Yoel Donchin, said in a phone interview that the Palestinian had been brought to the site’s field hospital roughly three weeks ago with signs of abuse across his body.
Professor Donchin said that the doctors there immediately sent the detainee for several days of treatment at a bigger civilian hospital and informed the military police that he might have been mistreated by either guards or fellow prisoners.
The military did not give details of the abuse allegations, but a lawyer representing three of the soldiers, Nati Rom of Honenu, a right-wing legal aid group, said on Monday that they were being questioned on suspicion of severe sexual abuse of a Palestinian prisoner. Several Israeli media outlets reported that the prisoner had been hospitalized with a serious injury to his anus.
Neither the professor nor the Israeli military would confirm that claim.
The unrest set off alarm from some senior politicians, who said the protesters’s actions — and the support for them from parts of the ruling coalition — threatened the rule of law and the country’s cohesion at a time when unity was most needed.
“Do we want a state here, or militias that do whatever they want?” Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister, wrote on social media. “Stop pouring fuel on the fire.”
“Prevent the dissolution of the State of Israel,” Mr. Bennett said, adding that the riots were the “greatest gift” to Israel’s enemies.
But several ministers and right-wing lawmakers backed the protesters, and in some cases suggested that the need to punish Hamas superseded the military’s need to hold itself to account.
At a hearing in Parliament, a lawmaker from Mr. Netanyahu’s party, Hanoch Milwidsky, was asked whether it was acceptable to sexually abuse a detainee.
“Yes,” he replied. “If he is Nukhba, everything is legitimate to do. Everything.”
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel.
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5) For many Palestinians, the Olympics are easy to root for but hard to actually watch.
By Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, July 30, 2024
Palestinian athletes taking a selfie on Thursday after arriving in Paris for the Olympics. Credit...Yves Herman/Reuters
Displaced three times by the war in Gaza, Mariam Moeen Awwad recently returned to her family’s home in Jabaliya, where amid the damage and destruction she hoped to cling to a routine for the next two weeks.
Without a television, Ms. Awwad, 23, said she would rely on the small screen of her father’s phone to transmit accounts of the Palestinians competing in the Paris Olympics. She said she wanted to feel connected to them, and to the Games, as much as possible.
But even as she expressed hope that the Palestinian team would do well, she acknowledged it would be hard. “My feelings are numb toward everything because of what we are witnessing and experiencing,” she said.
These wartime Olympics carry a particular resonance for Palestinians, many of whom are enduring their 10th month of death and devastation in Gaza. The eight Palestinian athletes represent not only a homeland but a cause, a means of amplifying their voice and concerns to the world.
For many Gazans, preoccupied with the loss of loved ones, their homes and their livelihoods, the grim state of life eclipses any excitement over the Games. Even if they were interested now in staying current on sports and culture news, a scarcity of electricity has made it nearly impossible to keep up with the outside world.
Yasser Shaaban Abdullah Mhana, a legal adviser at the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Communications, explained that many people in northern Gaza did not have access to television or other media, further limiting their ability to stay informed.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where settler violence against Palestinians and their property has surged, the sentiment toward the Olympics reflected promise and a certain resilience.
“This team proves to the world that we are a people who want life, hope and to live,” said Riham Abuaita, 36, of Ramallah, in the West Bank. “We have capabilities, and we hope the team will present the best image of Palestine and convey the pain we are living through.”
Ms. Abuaita said it was “beautiful” that the Palestinians were fielding an Olympic team and that they needed to be present at such international sporting events.
“What matters is that they will carry the Palestinian flag and represent the nation,” she said. “I hope our presence there will convey a message beyond sports, drawing attention to our cause and the ongoing war and atrocities, especially in Gaza.”
In all, eight athletes — six men and two women — are competing in six sports. One of the competitors is Omar Yaser Ismail, a taekwondo fighter. His uncle Ashraf Theeb, 46, of Jenin, in the West Bank, said that he had obtained a visa to travel to Paris but that he was uncertain whether he would be able to watch Mr. Ismail in person.
“Our lives are filled with challenges,” Mr. Theeb said. “I am searching for plane tickets and hoping for the best.”
Mr. Theeb still considers himself somewhat fortunate, even if he is unable to fly to Paris. He intended to follow all of the Palestinian athletes, whose mere participation in the Games, he said, constituted a form of resistance.
“We view it as such, and the team will represent us in the best way possible,” Mr. Theeb said. “They are showing the world that we deserve to live.”
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6) Kamala Harris Can’t Escape Gaza Any More Than Joe Biden Can
By Jamelle Bouie, July 30, 2024
Kenny Holston/The New York Times
The last time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke to a joint meeting of Congress was in 2015, at the invitation of the House speaker, John Boehner, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, when they led the Republican Party in Congress. It was meant, explicitly, to undermine the Obama administration’s effort to reach a deal with Iran limiting Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from American and international sanctions.
Democrats were outraged by the spectacle of congressional Republicans working with a foreign government to subvert the president’s foreign policy. Nearly 60 Democrats, including Vice President Joe Biden, skipped the speech. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, called it “an insult to the intelligence of the United States.”
Last week, Netanyahu was back before Congress for the first time since then. It was a bipartisan invitation, organized by Mike Johnson, the House speaker, a Republican, and agreed to by Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader and a Democrat.
“President Biden and I have known each other for over 40 years,” the prime minister said. “I want to thank him for half a century of friendship to Israel and for being, as he says, a proud Zionist.” Netanyahu called on Congress to fast-track military aid. “Give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster.”
If you were to look out at the House chamber during the speech, you would have seen that around 130 House and Senate Democrats were missing — more than twice as many as who skipped in 2015. And the issue was less partisan than it was moral and ethical: the catastrophic impact of the Gaza war on Palestinian civilians.
Health officials in Gaza say that Israel’s war has killed more than 39,000 people, mostly civilians, and driven a large part of the strip’s 2.3 million residents from their homes. Most of the enclave lies in ruins. Just this weekend, an Israeli airstrike hit a girls’ school sheltering thousands of displaced people in central Gaza, killing at least 30.
Biden has, from time to time, expressed concern about civilian casualties. He has also acknowledged the extent to which American bombs have killed Palestinian civilians. But at no point has Biden publicly reconsidered his practically unconditional support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
He may have temporarily halted delivery of 3,500 bombs in an attempt, much-ballyhooed by the White House, to pressure Netanyahu against a ground invasion of the city of Rafah, but this was small potatoes in light of the nearly 30,000 bombs and munitions — including 14,000 of the highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs that Biden has decried — that the United States has delivered to Israel since October of last year.
Biden’s “ironclad” support for Israel means that the Democrats who skipped the speech weren’t just boycotting Netanyahu. They were sending a message to the administration as well. It is not too different from the message sent by the hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters who marked their ballots “uncommitted” during the presidential primaries.
The signal political story of the moment is the changing of the guard in the Democratic Party after Biden declined to continue his bid for a second term over concerns about his age and ability to prevent Donald Trump from returning to the White House. But the Democratic reaction to Netanyahu’s address to Congress is emblematic of an equally important — and potentially more significant — story: the rapid transformation of the Democratic Party’s attitude toward Israel, driven by deep grass-roots sympathy for the Palestinians.
It’s obviously hard to separate the two stories. Although Biden’s popularity among Democrats was on the decline before the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack that killed nearly 1,200 people, Israel’s subsequent military response in Gaza, and his initial refusal to publicly question the Israeli government’s conduct as the war took shape, revealed a major shift within the Democratic coalition. Young voters led the way, although this should not have come as a surprise. In 2022, the Pew Research Center found that the youngest adults held the warmest views toward Palestinians. Overall, 61 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds held a favorable view of Palestinians and 55 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds felt the same way.
By December, around half of young Democrats disapproved of the Biden administration’s response to the Israel-Hamas war.
Other Democratic constituencies also mobilized in opposition. A coalition of Black clergy members ran an advertisement in this newspaper calling for a bilateral cease-fire. Labor unions, under pressure from many of their members, began to make similar calls. After Biden became the first sitting president to speak from the pulpit at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., the national leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church called on the president to end U.S. financial aid to Israel, condemning the Israeli government’s campaign in Gaza as a “genocide.” In Michigan, Arab American Democrats warned Biden, and the rest of the party, that the state was at risk of flipping to Trump in the general election if the president didn’t change course.
As protests stepped up, rank-and-file Democrats moved further and further away from the president on this issue. By March, 75 percent of Democrats disapproved of Israel’s military action in Gaza and a plurality of Democrats wanted to provide only humanitarian aid to Israel.
Biden’s stance, as unpopular as it was, did not explain the totality of his problems with young Democrats and other voters. But his unyielding support for the Israeli government in the face of a clear humanitarian crisis in Gaza contributed to an atmosphere of profound discontent with his presidency — bad vibes, you could say.
The vibes have changed, obviously. Biden is out and Kamala Harris, the vice president, is the party’s new standard-bearer. She’s backed by a wind of enthusiasm from across the Democratic coalition that has helped the party recover lost ground in the national presidential race. But she is also implicated in the administration’s policy toward Gaza and will have to deal with the changing politics of Israel within her party.
You can already see that Harris is trying to chart her own course between Biden and the Democratic grass roots. At the same time that she condemned protesters who flew Hamas flags and burned an American flag near the Capitol to protest Netanyahu’s address and affirmed her “unwavering commitment” to Israel, she also told reporters that “Israel has a right to defend itself and how it does so matters,” adding that “what has happened in Gaza over the last nine months is devastating” and that “we cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. And I will not be silent.”
It is a real break from the president for Harris to voice this forthright concern for the lives of Palestinian civilians. But it is still unclear what the difference in language means for actual policy. Will a President Harris refrain from making additional weapons shipments? Will she attach humanitarian conditions to future military aid? Will she direct her U.N. ambassador to veto Palestinian requests for full membership in the global body? It is difficult to say. According to CNN, aides and allies who have talked with Harris say that “substantively there is little daylight between her and the president.”
In three weeks, Democrats will almost certainly nominate Harris for the presidency at their national convention in Chicago. It is tempting, here, to make a direct comparison to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, also in Chicago, where Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated after a contentious and chaotic year that began with the Tet offensive and President Lyndon Johnson’s subsequent decision to leave office at the end of his term. In ’68, anti-Vietnam War protests rocked the convention; in ’24, Democrats will face protests against the war in Gaza.
But in our search for analogies and comparisons, we should remember that echoes from the past are still only faint reverberations of sounds once heard. The Vietnam War, largely prosecuted by Johnson, does not occupy the same space in American politics as the Gaza war. We are allies to a combatant, not combatants ourselves. We provide money and munitions, not soldiers. There is no draft, nor is there a steady stream of dead American soldiers and wounded veterans.
In 1968, antiwar Democrats represented a rising tide of youth anger that stood at cross-purposes with establishment Democratic politicians and their constituents among the white working class. Vietnam — among other crises and controversies — produced a deep split within the Democratic coalition, between voters who felt alienated by the movement against the war and activists who felt betrayed by an old guard of sclerotic party elites. All of this came to a head in Chicago, fracturing the Democratic Party for a generation and beyond.
Biden’s support for the Gaza war has alienated and isolated him from the youngest cohorts of the Democratic Party, but it hasn’t split the coalition. Far from standing with the president on this issue, many rank-and-file Democrats are opposed to Israel’s conduct, and many Democratic lawmakers have taken note of the shift in public opinion or helped to lead it. Hence the early pushback, from Senate Democrats, on Biden’s request for additional military aid to Israel in the fall, and the notable absences at Netanyahu’s address, which included two of the most senior Democrats in Congress, Pelosi and James Clyburn, as well as Harris herself.
This clear shift in public opinion is a virtual guarantee Harris will face serious pressure to make a decisive break with Biden on Israel. And even if she doesn’t, there is a strong chance that future Democrats running for president will have to take a meaningfully different tack on Israel than their predecessors.
This is the ultimate upshot of the sea change in attitudes toward Israel, and in support of Palestinians, among Democratic voters. In all likelihood, Joe Biden will be the last Democratic president to express the kind of total and unwavering commitment to the Israeli government that was born of a time when Israel could call itself an underdog in the region. Kamala Harris, if she wins the presidency and intends to run for re-election, will have to keep the views of ordinary Democrats in mind — if she isn’t already aligned with their concerns. And in the next real contest for the Democratic nomination, there will almost certainly be Democrats who take a harder and more critical line toward the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
If this is the future of the politics of Israel in the Democratic Party, then while there may not be a strong analogy to make, overall, between 1968 and 2024, there is a decent one to make between Joe Biden and Lyndon Johnson.
Two old Washington hands who reached the pinnacle of their ambitions and then used their considerable political skills to pass major, and in Johnson’s case, epochal, legislation. Two men who, supremely confident of their ability to guide events, then undermined themselves and their presidencies through stubborn commitments to disastrous conflicts abroad.
When we evaluate Johnson, we evaluate him in the context of Vietnam. We evaluate him in the context, that is, of tens of thousands of dead Americans and millions of dead Vietnamese.
When we evaluate Biden, we will rightfully credit him for his legislative accomplishments as well as the display of genuine statesmanship shown in his decision to step aside for the vice president. But we will also need to weigh what’s praiseworthy in the president’s legacy against his ignominious role as chief supplier for a terrible campaign of relentless destruction and incalculable human suffering.
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7) Killing of Top Hamas Leader in Iran Raises Risk of Wider War
Hamas accused Israel of killing Ismail Haniyeh, who was in Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president, though there was no response from Israel.
By Patrick KingsleyFarnaz FassihiAdam Rasgon and Ronen Bergman, July 31, 2024
Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Ismail Haniyeh, one of the most senior Hamas leaders, was assassinated in Iran, the country’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hamas said on Wednesday, a severe blow to the Palestinian group that threatens to engulf the region in further conflict.
Both Iran and Hamas accused Israel of killing Mr. Haniyeh, who led the group’s political operations from exile in Qatar. He was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of the newly elected president of Iran, Hamas’s main backer, and it was not clear how the killing was carried out.
Hours before the assassination, Israel said it had struck Fuad Shukr, a senior member of Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia that is also backed by Iran and has been fighting a low-level war with Israel since October. The two strikes have suddenly shifted the calculus in the Middle East, after a month in which Israel and Hamas had appeared to edge closer to a cease-fire in Gaza. Such a deal was expected to lead to a truce between Israel and Hezbollah.
Now, the focus is on how Hamas and Hezbollah will respond to the attacks on their leaders; how Iran will react to a strike on its territory; and whether either reaction leads to the outbreak of a wider regional war. An Israeli strike on Iranian commanders in Syria in April led Iran to fire hundreds of missiles at Israel. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Haniyeh’s assassination would prompt a “harsh punishment.”
Mr. Haniyeh was a key figure in Hamas’s cease-fire negotiations with Israel, and his assassination makes the prospects for a deal even more unclear. The United States was not informed of the strike that killed Mr. Haniyeh ahead of time, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said during a trip to Singapore on Wednesday, adding that the Biden administration was continuing to focus on de-escalating the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Israel’s military has not commented on Mr. Haniyeh’s death and said it does not respond to reports in the foreign news media. In recent years it has carried out a number of high-profile assassinations in Iran, rattling the country’s leaders and prompting a security overhaul including the ouster of a top security official.
Here’s what else to know:
· While Israel rarely comments on its actions in Iran, it is usually more open about its strikes in Lebanon. On Tuesday night, the Israeli military swiftly announced a separate strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Mr. Shukr, who it described as a senior commander responsible for a strike on Saturday that killed 12 children and teenagers in an Israeli-controlled town. It is unclear how Hezbollah will respond to a particularly brazen strike on a senior commander in the Lebanese capital.
· Mr. Haniyeh had long played a central role in Hamas, helping lead the group through multiple wars with Israel and through elections, though it is unclear how much control he and other exiled Hamas political leaders exercised over the group’s leaders in Gaza and its military wing, which carried out the Oct. 7 attack. Read the full obituary here.
· Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, takes office facing the major security breach of failing to protect an ally. It raises questions about the safety of Iran’s top leaders who were in close contact with Mr. Haniyeh. The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, met with him on Tuesday.
Gabby Sobelman, Isabel Kershner and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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8) World leaders fear a longer war in Gaza and escalation elsewhere.
By Lynsey Chutel, July 31, 2024
Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, at the swearing-in ceremony for Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in Tehran on Tuesday. Mr. Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran overnight. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Many world leaders and top diplomats condemned the assassination of the senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday, expressing concern that his death could lead to further violence in the Middle East. Some feared that the killing of a central figure in the talks to end the fighting in Gaza could undo the modest progress there.
Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, cast doubt on the prospects of future mediation efforts. Qatar has played a key role in brokering talks between Israel and Hamas.
“Political assassinations & continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on other side?” Sheikh Mohammed, who has led Qatar’s mediation efforts, wrote on social media. “Peace needs serious partners.”
Qatar, a Persian Gulf nation, has acted as a bridge between Hamas and Western nations, while also maintaining informal ties with Israel. Mr. Haniyeh had been living in exile in Qatar since 2017, leading Hamas’s political faction from there.
Just days ago, senior officials from Israel, Egypt, Qatar and the United States met in Rome to discuss a cease-fire. Egypt’s foreign ministry said the overnight strike was a “dangerous escalation,” warning in a statement against “fueling conflict in the region.” It said the attack, combined with stalled progress in the cease-fire negotiations, showed that Israel lacked the political will to calm the situation.
China condemned the assassination and warned that it would lead to further instability. “We are deeply concerned that this incident may lead to escalation and turbulence in the region,” said Lin Jian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Beijing hosted talks last week between the two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, in a bid to create a united Palestinian government that would rule Gaza once the war ended.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the assassination aimed to “interrupt the rightful struggle of Palestinians and demoralize them.”
Mr. Erdogan has previously lashed out at Israel and dismissed the categorization of Hamas as a terror organization. In a show of solidarity, Turkey’s Parliament had planned to host Mr. Haniyeh next month, in a direct response to the address to the U.S. Congress by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel last week, said Omer Celik, a governing party spokesman.
The Kremlin, which has also hosted top Hamas leaders, called for restraint as it criticized the assassination.
“There is no doubt that the killing of Ismail Haniyeh will have an extremely negative impact on the progress of mediated contacts between Hamas and Israel,” a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Andrei Nastasyin, said at a news briefing.
Diplomats in Persian Gulf states blamed Israel for the assassination, warning that it could destabilize the region. Hamas has said Israel was behind the killing, but Israel has not discussed it publicly.
Oman, a Gulf sultanate, described the assassination as a “flagrant violation of international law” and called on the international community to “intervene immediately to stop the Israeli aggression and continuing illegitimate occupation of Palestinian lands.”
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said on social media that Israel’s aggression in Gaza “will drag the region toward more wars and destruction.”
The United States has been Israel’s staunchest ally during the war, and its top diplomat, Antony J. Blinken, did not criticize Israel on Wednesday, saying that the White House was still determined to see through a cease-fire deal.
“All I can tell you right now is nothing takes away from the importance, as I said a moment ago, of getting to the cease-fire,” Mr. Blinken said at a public talk on U.S. foreign policy in Singapore.
“I’m not going to speculate on what impact any one event might have,” he added.
Safak Timur, Anton Troianovski, Vivian Yee, Edward Wong and Vivian Nereim contributed reporting.
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9) Nearly 1,000 Native Children Died at Boarding Schools, Interior Dept. Finds
An investigative report, which also documents widespread sexual and physical abuse in a program of forced assimilation, calls on the federal government to apologize and “chart a road to healing.”
By Aishvarya Kavi, Reporting from Washington, July 30, 2024
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo citizen and the first Native American cabinet secretary, has led the effort in accounting for Native American children who attended federal boarding schools. Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
Nearly 1,000 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children died while attending boarding schools that were set up by the U.S. government for the purpose of erasing their tribal ties and cultural practices, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Interior Department.
“For the first time in the history of the country, the U.S. government is accounting for its role in operating Indian boarding schools to forcibly assimilate Indian children, and working to set us on a path to heal from the wounds inflicted by those schools,” Bryan Newland, the department’s assistant secretary for Indian affairs, wrote this month in a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that was included in the report.
The report calls on the federal government to apologize and “chart a road to healing.” Its recommendations include creating a national memorial to commemorate the children’s deaths and educate the public; investing in research and helping Native communities heal from intergenerational stress and trauma; and revitalizing Native languages.
From the early 1800s to the late 1960s, the U.S. government removed Native children from their families and homes and sent them to boarding schools, where they were forcibly assimilated.
It spent nearly $25 billion in today’s dollars on the comprehensive effort, according to the investigative report released on Tuesday, including operating 417 schools across 37 states and territories where children were physically and sexually abused. They were also forcibly converted to Christianity and punished for speaking their Native languages.
The report identified by name almost 19,000 children who attended a federal school between 1819 and 1969, though the Interior Department acknowledges there were more.
The accounting of the bodies of Native American children was one of the main goals of a federal initiative begun more than three years ago after Canada discovered the remains of 215 children at the site of a defunct boarding school and announced a similar effort. Ms. Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo citizen and the first Native American cabinet secretary, has led the effort in the United States.
Tuesday’s report, the second and final from the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, found that 973 children died at Indian boarding schools and were buried at 74 sites, 21 of which are unmarked. The Interior Department said it was working with tribes that want the remains repatriated.
Though political support eventually faded for the forced assimilation of children, the effects of the uprooting and abuse are still felt by Native communities, according to the report. Children were left with lasting psychological trauma, and studies funded by the National Institutes of Health have linked poor physical health in Native American adults to their attendance at federally run schools as children.
The department conducted interviews with hundreds of survivors as part of its investigation. Some described widespread sexual abuse at the schools, as well as routine physical abuse. One attendee described newcomers being stripped of their parkas, which were burned in a furnace. Another recalled that many children became “violently ill” from highly processed foods like powdered milk and canned meats, and were then beaten for soiling their bedding or clothing.
“I remember my braids being cut off; washed like we were dirty; talked to us like we were dirty,” one unnamed participant, from South Dakota, said in the report. “We were dressed in uniforms.”
Others described lasting feelings of abandonment and shame from having their family connections severed when they were taken away to attend the schools.
“I think the worst part of it was at night, listening to all the other children crying themselves to sleep, crying for their parents and just wanting to go home,” said another unnamed participant, from Michigan.
A participant from Washington described how her sister, now a grandmother, still could not sleep in the dark and would wake up screaming when the light was turned off because she had been routinely locked in a closet as a young girl.
The report said that aside from experiencing lasting physical and psychological effects, many children learned only agricultural or manual and domestic labor skills, with tribal economies destabilized by their lack of formal education.
The report said that although “a change in our nation’s understanding” had come quickly — with the troubling history of Indian boarding schools now discussed in books, television shows and movies — many communities were far from healed.
“The new report provides critical information that is needed to understand the complete history and impact of the federal Indian boarding school era,” Beth Wright, a lawyer with the Native American Rights Fund who worked on boarding school cases, said in a statement. “The next step is for the Department of Interior to provide resources and funding directly to tribal nations who desire to research, address and tell their own stories of the impact the federal Indian boarding school era has had on their own communities and people.”
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10) Israel assassinates head of Hamas political bureau amid regional escalation
Israel assassinated Hamas politburo head Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran after a series of mounting regional tensions that included unprecedented Israeli attacks on the "Axis of Resistance," including airstrikes on Beirut and Yemen.
By Qassam Muaddi, July 31, 2024
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/07/israel-assassinates-head-of-hamas-political-bureau-amid-regional-escalation/?ml_recipient=128374304538625728&ml_link=128374301766190865&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2024-07-31&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation
Head of the Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, speaks during a video statement marking the 34th anniversary of the founding of the Hamas movement, Qatar, December 14, 2021. (Photo: Hamas Chief Office/APA Images)
The head of the political bureau of Hamas and former Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an Israeli strike on his residence in the Iranian capital Tehran early on Wednesday. Haniyeh was on a visit to Iran to participate in the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
Hamas announced in a statement that Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli strike, while the Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, accused Israel of the assassination, adding that it “will be severely punished.” The Iranian Revolutionary Guard also accused Israel in a statement, vowing that “the Zionist regime will face a harsh response from the resistance axis and especially Iran.”
Israel, for its part, did not officially claim responsibility for Haniyeh’s killing, although its heritage minister, Amichai Eliyahu, celebrated the assassination, commenting that “this is the correct way to cleanse the world.” The Israeli public broadcaster also said that the assassination occurred by means of a missile launched from outside of Iranian territory.
Haniyeh is the highest-ranking Hamas figure to be assassinated by Israel since the beginning of the current war. He was also heading the ceasefire negotiations on Hamas’s behalf in recent months.
The assassination came hours after an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern Dahiya suburb, considered to be Hezbollah’s most major stronghold. The strike targeted Hezbollah senior commander Fouad Shukr, described as Hassan Nasrallah’s righthand man. The fate of Shukr remains unknown as of the time of writing, but Hezbollah admitted that Shukr was inside the building targeted by Israel. The Israeli attack on Beirut marks the second major assassination in the Lebanese capital, the first being the killing of Hamas leader Saleh Aruri in January. The attack was also likely a response to the killing of 12 Syrian Druze children in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in an explosion that Israel accused Hezbollah of orchestrating, despite the Lebanese group’s categorical denial of responsibility.
Both incidents also come a week after the bombing of Yemen’s Hodeida seaport, which Israel claimed responsibility for in retaliation for a previous drone attack launched by Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement in Tel Aviv, which led to the death of an Israeli citizen.
These three actions signal a regional escalation as the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza has entered its tenth month. At the same time, the U.S. has continued to scramble to conclude a ceasefire and prisoners’ exchange deal ahead of the November presidential election. But both strikes on Beirut and Tehran followed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the U.S. and his speech before Congress, where he pledged to continue the war “until absolute victory” while making no mention of a ceasefire deal.
The attacks on Beirut and Teheran, in addition to the earlier attack on Hodeida, indicate Netanyahu’s intentions to prolong the war by widening its regional scope in order to sabotage a possible ceasefire deal, especially after reports by Israeli media that Israeli security and military chiefs have been pressuring Netanyahu to show flexibility in negotiations. Although Israel and the U.S. have declared that they don’t want a regional war, Israel’s actions make the possibility of such a war closer than ever. The U.S. also announced that it would defend Israel in the event of a wider confrontation.
According to Mokhimar Abu Saadah, a political science professor at the now-destroyed al-Azhar University in Gaza, “the assassination of Haniyeh will lead to the cessation of ceasefire negotiations. They will remain frozen for a while.”
“I do not think that anyone can talk about a deal or a ceasefire in Gaza at present after this assassination,” Abu Saadah told Mondoweiss Gaza correspondent Tareq Hajjaj. “Talk about this matter will be postponed for several days.”
Abu Saadah noted that “Hamas may launch suicide operations or shoot soldiers in the West Bank, especially since there is a general strike over his assassination and a state of grief. However, he dismissed the possibilities of a Hamas response from Gaza, “because there are no more capabilities in Gaza than what Hamas has done in the past ten months.”
“Iran is not willing to go to war with Israel over this assassination,” Abu Saadah believes. “If it responds, it will be a response to avoid embarrassment, because a war wouldn’t be with Israel but with the U.S., and the Iranians don’t want to go to war with Israel’s allies.”
The U.S. also doesn’t seem to be unwilling to support Israel in a regional war, especially ahead of presidential elections and an uncertain transition in the democratic candidacy. However, the U.S. policy so far has been to avoid pressuring Israel in any practical and significant way,
After ten relentless months of killing civilians en masse in Gaza, and following Israel’s indictment at the ICJ for plausibly committing genocide alongside the looming threat of ICC arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, the endorsement that Netanyahu found in Washington last week only served to encourage his conduct, which has now pushed the entire region closer to the brink of a war everyone has been trying to avoid.
Mondoweiss Gaza Correspondent Tareq Hajjaj contributed to this report.
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11) Bomb Smuggled Into Tehran Guesthouse Months Ago Killed Hamas Leader
An explosive device hidden in a heavily guarded complex where Ismail Haniyeh was known to stay in Iran was what killed him, according to a Times investigation.
By Ronen BergmanMark Mazzetti and Farnaz Fassihi, Aug. 1, 2024
Mourners gathered for the funeral in Tehran on Thursday for the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Iran said Israel was behind his assassination. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader of Hamas, was assassinated on Wednesday by an explosive device covertly smuggled into the Tehran guesthouse where he was staying, according to seven Middle Eastern officials, including two Iranians, and an American official.
The bomb had been hidden approximately two months ago in the guesthouse, according to five of the Middle Eastern officials. The guesthouse is run and protected by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and is part of a large compound, known as Neshat, in an upscale neighborhood of northern Tehran.
Mr. Haniyeh was in Iran’s capital for the presidential inauguration. The bomb was detonated remotely, the five officials said, once it was confirmed that he was inside his room at the guesthouse. The blast also killed a bodyguard.
The explosion shook the building, shattered some windows and caused the partial collapse of an exterior wall, according to the two Iranian officials, members of the Revolutionary Guards briefed on the incident. Such damage was also evident in a photograph of the building shared with The New York Times.
Mr. Haniyeh, who had led Hamas’s political office in Qatar, had stayed at the guesthouse several times when visiting Tehran, according to the Middle Eastern officials. All of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive details about the assassination.
Iranian officials and Hamas said Wednesday that Israel was responsible for the assassination, an assessment also reached by several U.S. officials who requested anonymity. The assassination threatened to unleash another wave of violence in the Middle East and upend the ongoing negotiations to end the war in Gaza. Mr. Haniyeh had been a top negotiator in the cease-fire talks.
Israel has not publicly acknowledged responsibility for the killing, but Israeli intelligence officials briefed the United States and other Western governments on the details of the operation in the immediate aftermath, according to the five Middle Eastern officials.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said that the United States had received no advance knowledge of the assassination plot.
In the hours after the killing, speculation immediately focused on the possibility that Israel had killed Mr. Haniyeh with a missile strike, possibly fired from a drone or a plane, similar to how Israel had launched a missile on a military base in Isfahan in April.
That missile theory raised questions about how Israel might have been able to evade Iranian air defense systems again to execute such a brazen airstrike in the capital.
As it turns out, the assassins were able to exploit a different kind of gap in Iran’s defenses: a lapse in the security of a supposedly tightly guarded compound that allowed a bomb to be planted and to remain hidden for many weeks before it would eventually be triggered.
Such a breach, three Iranian officials said, was a catastrophic failure of intelligence and security for Iran and a tremendous embarrassment for the Guards, which uses the compound for retreats, secret meetings and housing prominent guests like Mr. Haniyeh.
How the bomb was stashed in the guesthouse remained unclear. The Middle Eastern officials said that the planning for the assassination took months and required extensive surveillance of the compound. The two Iranian officials who described the nature of the assassination said they did not know how or when the explosives were planted in the room.
Israel decided to carry out the assassination outside Qatar, where Mr. Haniyeh and other senior members of Hamas’s political leadership live. The Qatari government has been mediating the negotiations between Israel and Hamas over a cease-fire in Gaza.
The deadly blast early Wednesday shattered windows and collapsed a portion of the wall of the compound, photographs showed and the Iranian officials said. It appeared to do minimal damage beyond the building itself, as a missile probably would have done.
At around 2 a.m. local time, the device exploded, according to the Middle Eastern officials, including the Iranians. Startled building staff members, the officials said, ran to find the source of the tremendous noise, leading them to the room where Mr. Haniyeh was staying with a bodyguard.
The compound is staffed with a medical team which rushed to the room immediately after the explosion. The team declared that Mr. Haniyeh had died immediately. The team tried to revive the bodyguard, but he, too, was dead.
The leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, was staying next door, two of the Iranian officials said. His room was not badly damaged, suggesting precise planning in the targeting of Mr. Haniyeh.
Khalil al-Hayya, the deputy commander of Hamas in the Gaza Strip who was also in Tehran, arrived at the scene and saw his colleague’s body, according to the five Middle Eastern officials.
Among the people immediately notified, said the three Iranian officials, was Gen. Ismail Ghaani, the commander in chief of the Quds Force, the overseas arm of the Revolutionary Guards, which works closely with Iranian allies in the region, including Hamas and Hezbollah. He notified Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the middle of the night, waking him up, the officials said.
Four hours after the blast, the Revolutionary Guards issued a statement that Mr. Haniyeh had been killed. By 7 a.m., Mr. Khamenei had summoned the members of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council to his compound for an emergency meeting, at which he issued an order to strike Israel in retaliation, according to the three Iranian officials.
Tehran had already been under heightened security because of the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, with senior government officials, military commanders and dignitaries from 86 countries gathering at Parliament in central Tehran for the ceremony.
Mr. Haniyeh had looked cheerful and triumphant on Tuesday during the swearing in, hugging the new president after he delivered his inaugural speech, and the two men raised their hands together, making the victory sign.
In Iran, the method of assassination was the subject of rumor and dispute. The Tasnim News Agency, the media outlet for the Guards, reported that witnesses said an object like a missile had hit the window of Mr. Haniyeh’s room and exploded.
But the two Iranian officials, the members of the Guards briefed on the attack, confirmed that the explosion had taken place inside Mr. Haniyeh’s room, and said that an initial investigation showed that the explosives had been placed there sometime in advance.
They described the attack’s precision and sophistication as similar in tactic to the remote controlled A.I. robot weapon that Israel used to assassinate Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020.
Israeli assassination operations outside of the country are primarily carried out by Mossad, the country’s foreign intelligence service. David Barnea, the head of Mossad, said in January that his service was “obliged” to hunt down the leaders of Hamas, the group behind the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
“It will take time, as it took after the massacre in Munich, but our hands will catch them wherever they are,” Mr. Barnea said, referring to the killing of Israeli athletes by terrorists at the 1972 Olympics.
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12) Israel Claims Killing of Militant Leader as Funerals Are Held for 2 Others
The fate of Muhammad Deif, a top Hamas leader, has been unclear, and the group has not confirmed his death. Funerals for senior officials from Hamas and Hezbollah, both of whom were assassinated this week, drew thousands.
By Aaron BoxermanFarnaz Fassihi and Qasim Nauman, August 1, 2024
Mourners for Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, in Tehran on Thursday. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
The Israeli military said Thursday that its airstrike in mid-July on a Gaza compound had succeeded in killing Muhammad Deif, the leader of Hamas’s armed wing who is believed to have been one of the main planners of the Oct. 7 attacks.
The announcement came as thousands attended the funerals of two major Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Tehran and Beirut, whose assassinations have amplified fears of a wider war in the Middle East and endangered negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza.
In a statement on Thursday, the Israeli military said its conclusion that Mr. Deif had died was based on an intelligence assessment, though it did not offer details.
The death of Mr. Deif would make him the most senior Hamas leader killed in Gaza. His fate has been unclear since Israel targeted him in a major attack that killed at least 90 people, according to Gaza health officials. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied his death.
Israeli leaders, who have made clear that their goal is to destroy Hamas and take out senior figures in the group and other enemies, were quick to celebrate the announcement — the latest revelation in a dizzying two days that have shaken the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are backed by Iran.
Ismail Haniyeh, one of the most senior Hamas leaders, was assassinated in Iran on Wednesday. Hours earlier, Israel said it had struck Fuad Shukr, a senior member of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that has been fighting a low-level war with Israel since October.
Funerals were being held for both men on Thursday, with the region on edge about how Iran and Hezbollah would respond to the killings. Mr. Haniyeh was mourned in Tehran, where Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led funeral prayers, an honor reserved for the highest-ranking figures. Iran and Hamas have both accused Israel of killing Mr. Haniyeh, and Mr. Khamenei has ordered a direct strike on Israel in retaliation.
While Israel has not directly discussed the killing of Mr. Haniyeh, it announced the strike on Mr. Shukr, blaming him for an attack last week that killed 12 children and teenagers in an Israel-controlled village.
Here’s what to know:
· Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called for a cease-fire in Gaza during a news conference in Mongolia, warning that the region was on a path “toward more conflict, more violence, more suffering, more insecurity.” The assassination of Mr. Haniyeh added a new hurdle to talks, which have dragged on for months.
· It was unclear how Iran would respond to the killing of Mr. Haniyeh, but the country’s officials have said the military is considering a combination of drone and missile attacks on military targets near Tel Aviv and Haifa. In April, Iran directed a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel but calibrated that attack to avoid the risk of further escalation.
· The State Department has advised Americans not to go “within 2.5 miles of the Lebanese and Syrian borders” in northern Israel because of the tension in the region. United Airlines and Delta Air Lines suspended flights to Israel.
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13) Two Al Jazeera journalists were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza.
By Ephrat Livni, August 1, 2024
Mourners and colleagues surrounding the body of the Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul, who was killed with a cameraman, Rami al-Refee, on Wednesday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Al Jazeera, the influential Arab news network, said that two of its journalists were killed on Wednesday in an Israeli airstrike on their car in Gaza City.
The Qatar-based network said the reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman, Rami al-Rifee, were killed in Shati camp in northern Gaza after reporting from or near the house of the deceased Hamas political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday. The network accused the Israeli military of targeting the journalists with a “direct hit,” and reported that “their car was clearly marked as a press vehicle.”
“The assassination of Ismail and Rami, while they were documenting the crimes of Israeli forces, underscores the urgent need for immediate legal action against the occupation forces to ensure that there is no impunity,” Al Jazeera Media Network said in a statement.
Mohammed Moawad, Al Jazeera’s managing editor, praised Mr. al-Ghoul’s courage in a post on social media.
“Ismail was renowned for his professionalism and dedication, bringing the world’s attention to the suffering and atrocities committed in Gaza,” he said.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has said the war in Gaza has led to the deadliest period for correspondents since it began gathering data in 1992, with at least 111 journalists and media workers among the more than 39,000 people killed in Gaza.
Mr. Moawad posted a message that he said had been written by Mr. al-Ghoul, in which the journalist reflected on being haunted by the incessant civilian suffering and death he’d seen while reporting on the conflict in Gaza.
“Let me tell you, my friend, that I no longer know the taste of sleep,” Mr. al-Ghoul wrote. “The bodies of children and the screams of the injured and their blood-soaked images never leave my sight. The cries of mothers and the wailing of men who are missing their loved ones never fade from my hearing.”
He added: “I am tired, my friend.”
An Al Jazeera video from outside a hospital showed two corpses on stretchers wearing vests meant to protect journalists, marked with the word “press.” The journalists were on their way to a hospital after being asked to leave the area by Israeli forces, according to Al Jazeera.
Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement on social media that the organization was “dismayed” by the journalists’ deaths.
“Journalists are civilians and should never be targeted,” she said. “Israel must explain why two more Al Jazeera journalists have been killed in what appears to be a direct strike.”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Israel has a fraught relationship with Al Jazeera. In May, the Israeli government shut down the organization’s local operations in a step that critics denounced as anti-democratic and part of a broader crackdown on dissent over the war against Hamas.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Al Jazeera, a major source of news in the Arab world that has often highlighted civilian suffering in Gaza, of harming Israel’s security and inciting violence against its soldiers, though Israeli officials offered no examples. The initial order to shut down, set for 45 days, has since been extended.
The New York Times and other major international outlets have evacuated Palestinian journalists who had been working for them in Gaza. Israel and Egypt have restricted entry by international journalists into Gaza — with the exception of coordinated visits to specific sites with the Israeli military — so the stories that emerge from the war have often been left to local Palestinian reporters to document alone, working in extremely dangerous conditions.
“It is clear that journalists need to be protected,” Stéphane Dujarric, a United Nations spokesman, told reporters in a briefing on Wednesday. “These and other similar incidents must be fully and transparently investigated, and there must be accountability.”
Anushka Patil contributed reporting.
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14) Fears of Wider Mideast Conflict Deepen, With U.S. Seen as ‘Not in Control’
American officials said they had no advance warning of the attack on the Hamas leader in Iran, raising worries of a power vacuum that could lead to a broader geopolitical crisis.
By Mark Landler, Reporting from London, Aug. 1, 2024
People in Tehran on Wednesday held Iranian and Palestinian flags and images of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who was killed in the city that morning. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
For months, diplomats and analysts in foreign capitals have worried that prolonged political upheaval in the United States could invite aggression abroad, whether in Russia’s waging of war in Ukraine, North Korea’s rogue nuclear ambitions or China’s expansionist designs in the South China Sea.
Now, less than 100 days before Americans elect a new president, that broader geopolitical crisis has erupted in the familiar theater of the Middle East. The targeted killings of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders in Beirut and Tehran have deepened fears of a regionwide conflict — one that the United States, caught up in its own political drama at home, may have little capacity to avert or even contain.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the United States had not been involved in, or even informed of, the operation in Tehran, which the Iranian government swiftly blamed on Israel. To some, Mr. Blinken’s statement confirmed a dangerous power vacuum in the region.
“We thought it would be Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping or Kim Jong-un who would take advantage of this period in the U.S.,” said Vali R. Nasr, a professor of international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “Nobody counted on an American ally doing it.”
“This is going to make the region extremely nervous,” said Mr. Nasr, who served in the State Department during the Obama administration. “It’s never good for the United States to be seen as not in control.”
For President Biden, who expended time and prestige trying to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas to release hostages in Gaza, the back-to-back assassinations of the Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, and the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, could signal the futility of his diplomatic efforts, at least for now.
Moreover, the United States could find itself drawn into a direct conflict with Iran, something both countries have taken pains to avoid through months of tensions over the war in Gaza. In April, American officials worked behind the scenes to persuade Iran to limit its military reprisal against Israel after Israeli jets carried out a deadly strike on a meeting of Iranian generals in Damascus, Syria.
This time, however, the killing of Mr. Haniyeh, while he was in Tehran to attend the swearing-in of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, suggests that American sensitivities counted for little, analysts said. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, quickly blamed Israel and vowed “harsh punishment.”
“That is an attempt to humiliate the Iranians by showing they can’t protect their own guests at that ceremony,” said Daniel Levy, who runs the U.S./Middle East Project, a research organization based in London and New York. “It signifies another crossing of multiple lines by Israel.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel brought his case against Iran directly to Washington. Addressing a joint session of Congress last week, he said: “Iran’s axis of terror confronts America, Israel and our Arab friends. This is not a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization.”
Dozens of Democrats boycotted Mr. Netanyahu’s speech to protest Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza. But he appeared undeterred, and the visit gave him a firsthand look at a country in unusual political flux. He met with Mr. Biden only four days after he withdrew from the presidential race, as well as with Vice President Kamala Harris, who has swiftly become the presumptive Democratic nominee.
While Ms. Harris echoed Mr. Biden’s support of Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorism, she also made clear that she would speak out on behalf of the civilians killed and maimed in the Gaza conflict.
“We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies,” she said, in language notably stronger than that normally used by Mr. Biden. “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent.”
Mr. Netanyahu later traveled to Palm Beach, Fla., to meet with former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee. When Mr. Netanyahu handed him a photograph of a child who he said had been taken captive by Hamas during its deadly Oct. 7 attacks, Mr. Trump told him, “We’ll get it taken care of.”
Some analysts have suggested that Mr. Netanyahu, an astute observer of American politics, saw an opportunity in the political tumult in the United States to act against Hamas and its sponsor, Iran.
“Maybe he decided there is a definite vacuum in Washington, so this is the time to act,” Mr. Nasr said.
The loss of American influence in the Middle East would normally worry allies in Europe. But they have their own problems. In France and Germany, leaders are preoccupied by surging right-wing populist parties. In London, a new Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer, has edged away from the United States in its handling of Israel, after months in which London had been in lock step with Washington.
Britain last week dropped its objections to arrest warrants sought by the International Criminal Court for Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant. It is weighing whether to suspend weapons shipments to Israel, though it has put off a decision pending further legal review.
The strikes also came at a moment of rising Israeli anxiety about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which have expanded since the Biden administration’s efforts to revive parts of a 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran collapsed in 2022.
Pointing out the lack of leverage the United States has over Iran on its nuclear program, some analysts suggested that Israel might have acted partly out of frustration that the West had not prevented Iran from edging closer to producing a bomb. Provoking a conflict, they said, could give Israel the pretext to strike its nuclear facilities.
“Israel has been quite concerned about the creeping development of the Iranian nuclear program,” said Jonathan Paris, a former Middle East fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The U.S. is noticeably not doing much about it. If I were an Israeli interested in deterrence, this might be one way to do it.”
The assassination could deprive the United States of a fresh diplomatic partner in the form of Iran’s new president, Mr. Pezeshkian. A heart surgeon who beat a hard-line conservative in July, he has portrayed himself as a reformer. But analysts said it would be difficult for him to pursue any diplomatic engagement with the West after such an embarrassing attack.
Still, other experts warned against exaggerating the importance of Mr. Pezeshkian, given the paramount role of Mr. Khamenei. The president’s “relative impotence was exposed on day one,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
Mr. Sadjadpour also cautioned against assuming that Iran would risk an all-out war over the killing of Mr. Haniyeh. It did not do so after the United States assassinated Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the powerful leader of its Quds Force, in 2020. Iran’s previous reprisals against Israel have never proved all that effective.
“Israel has routinely humiliated the Islamic Republic by assassinating high-level targets inside Iran, but Iran’s retaliations have never deterred future Israeli operations,” Mr. Sadjadpour said. “The parameters of an Iranian retaliation need to be face-saving but not life-threatening for the regime.”
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15) Sonya Massey’s Killing Is Black America’s Sorrow
By Charles M. Blow, Opinion Columnist, reporting from Chicago, July 31, 2024
Sonya Massey’s daughter and son, Jeanette and Malachi, put their arms around Sonya’s mother, Donna. Credit...Rashod Taylor for The New York Times
In the days before she was killed, Sonya Massey was having death premonitions. She kept telling her family that she was going to die, that someone was going to kill her. On July 6, a local sheriff’s deputy became the incarnation of her fears: He shot her in the face in her own kitchen.
Massey, a 36-year-old Illinois woman, had called 911 because she thought there was an intruder in her house. Two Sangamon County deputies arrived and entered her home, and one of them, Sean Grayson, began cursing at her and threatening her over a pot of boiling water that she was holding. Grayson shot her at close range as she ducked behind a counter saying she was sorry.
The Associated Press reported that according to her family, Massey had been struggling with mental illness and “had admitted herself to a 30-day inpatient program in St. Louis sometime during the week before her death, but returned two days later without explanation.”
At a news conference on Tuesday at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church on Chicago’s West Side, Ben Crump, an attorney for Massey’s family, said “many people said she had a premonition” because when the officers arrived she repeatedly said, “Please, God,” she asked one of the officers to grab her Bible and one of the last things she said before she was shot was, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”
Among the first things Massey said when she opened the door for the officers was: “Please don’t hurt me.”
It seems very clear that Massey was in distress, that what she needed was help. What she got was a bullet that hit her face just below her left eye and exited her head behind her ear.
In the wake of so many of these incidents, we see the wreckage of family members struggling to make sense of the senseless, facing the gantlet of news coverage while their emotional wounds are fresh and tender, expected to convert the screams stuck in their throats into coherent calls for justice.
On Tuesday I spoke with Donna Massey, Sonya’s mother, in a meeting room in the back of the church. Donna is a slight woman whose face was gloomy and drawn, like a cloud, still gray, but emptied of rain.
She told me that she has been hearing voices since her daughter was killed and that she now has a nightmare of being killed the same way. When I asked her about the terrible pain of having to bury her child, she burst into tears: “Oh, God. Nobody should have to do it, nobody.”
Sonya Massey’s 17-year-old son, Malachi, described to me the devastation of returning to the house where his mother was killed, how empty it felt, and how empty he felt: “I still feel lost without my mom right now.”
He is just a boy, a motherless child, whose world is now forever shattered.
This kind of devastation has happened so often, to so many families, that it has become a motif of Black existence in this country, an enduring injury, a simmering sadness, an ambient terror.
And America has refused to enact meaningful federal legislation to address the problem.
Had it become law, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which was shelved in the Senate in 2021, may well have saved Sonya Massey’s life. One of its provisions, as described on the website of the House Judiciary Committee’s Democrats, was the creation of “a nationwide police misconduct registry to prevent problematic officers who are fired or leave one agency from moving to another jurisdiction without any accountability.”
Grayson had worked at six law enforcement agencies in the last four years and was charged with two D.U.I. misdemeanors, one in 2015 and the other in 2016.
He has been fired from the Sangamon County sheriff’s office and charged with three counts of aggravated murder, one count of aggravated battery with a firearm and one count of official misconduct.
This is an encouraging first step, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem. After over a decade of interviewing the families of Black people slain by the police, I have come to the conclusion that what we see in far too many of these situations is the manifestation of a societal sickness that fundamentally devalues Black life.
The Washington Post has been tracking fatal police shootings since 2015. As The Post reports, these shootings have risen in recent years and in 2023 “police killed the highest number of people on record.” A disproportionate number of those killings were of Black people. According to The Post, Black Americans “are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans.”
As long as this trend continues, telling us that as a society we still acquiesce to the assignment of value — and threat — on the basis of race, it will continue to short-circuit people’s natural empathetic impulses and pose an outsize danger to Black lives from the police.
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16) Many of Gaza’s Medical Workers Have Been Detained or Killed
Out of a prewar total of about 20,000 health workers, 500 have been killed in the war, according to the W.H.O., and more than 300 are in Israeli detention, Gaza’s health ministry says.
By Anjana Sankar, Aug. 2, 2024
A doctor inspecting damage at Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock
Dr. Khaled El Serr last spoke to his family in mid-March, a week before Israeli troops raided the hospital in southern Gaza where he worked as a surgeon.
“No one has seen or heard of him ever again,” said his cousin, Osaid AlSerr, a surgical resident in the United States. “We do not even know whether he is dead or alive.”
Dr. El Serr was arrested by the Israeli military, according to Amnesty International, citing the accounts of co-workers and Palestinian detainees who have been released. But the military has refused to say whether it is holding him.
His story is not unique. More than 300 of Gaza’s health workers are in Israeli detention, the enclave’s health ministry says, while others have been detained for a time and then released. And according to the World Health Organization, 500 have been killed in the war, out of a prewar total of about 20,000.
Based on estimates of the war’s toll, that means medical workers have been killed and detained at higher rates than Gazans generally, a severe blow to a health care system whose facilities have been devastated by war, and a population weakened by hunger, lack of clean water and the rampant spread of diseases.
“That equates to an average of two health care workers killed every day, with one in every 40 health care workers, or 2.5 percent of Gaza’s health care work force, now dead,” Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British charity, said in a statement.
Asked about the detentions, the Israeli military said in a written response that “it does not deliberately detain doctors” but that “suspects of terrorist activities are detained” and taken for detention and questioning in Israel. Those found not to have been involved in “terrorist activity” are released back to the Gaza Strip, the military said.
Some of the doctors who have been released have said they were tortured in Israeli jails, which the Israeli military has denied. Others have died in custody, according to rights groups.
The director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, was taken into custody seven months ago, after Israeli forces first raided the hospital — the largest in Gaza — saying that Hamas fighters were using it for military purposes and had tunnels underneath it. No charges were brought against him.
Released on July 1, Dr. Abu Salmiya said at a news conference that he and others had been subjected to “extreme torture” His finger had been broken, he said, and he had been beaten over the head repeatedly. His release set off a round of finger-pointing among Israeli authorities over who had authorized his detention, but there was no additional clarity on the cause or conditions of his time being held.
One of the doctors who died in Israeli custody was Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, 50, the head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa Hospital. He died in April at Ofer Prison in the West Bank, prompting a wave of criticism from the United Nations and rights groups.
“Dr. Adnan’s case raises serious concerns that he died following torture at the hands of Israeli authorities — his death demands an independent international investigation,” Tlaleng Mofokeng, a U.N. special rapporteur on health care rights said in a U.N. news release. The statement said that the doctor had “reportedly been beaten in prison, with his body showing signs of torture,” but gave no other details.
Israel’s prison service confirmed his death but declined to say anything about how he died.
Dr. Iyad Rantisi, a 53-year-old gynecologist who worked at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, also died in custody, in Shikma Prison on Nov. 11, six days after he was arrested, the Israeli news outlet Haaretz reported in June.
Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, which Haaretz reported ran the interrogation facility at Shikma, said Dr. Rantisi had been arrested on suspicion of being involved in holding Israeli hostages. “The circumstances leading to his death are being checked by the relevant authorities,” the security agency said in a statement on June 19.
Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, many hospitals in Gaza have come under attack from the Israeli military, which has accused Hamas fighters of using them as bases. Hamas and Palestinian doctors have repeatedly denied that claim.
The U.N. Human Rights Office said it had gathered “credible information” that Israeli military raids on hospitals had often led “to mass detention and enforced disappearances, including of medical staff.” The “systematic attacks on hospitals” and the killing, detention and enforced disappearance of health workers had a devastating impact on the people,” the U.N. body said in a statement on June 25.
Only a dozen of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning at all, according to Gaza’s health officials, with the others crippled in raids or rendered dysfunctional because of shortages of fuel and medical supplies. The detention of health care workers has further weakened Gaza’s fragile health care system as it tries to treat thousands wounded in Israeli airstrikes.
Dr. Ahmed Al Moghrabi, who worked as a plastic surgeon at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis before fleeing to Egypt, said the fate of many of his colleagues, including Dr. Khaled Al Serr, remains unknown.
He recounted the “utter chaos” he witnessed when Israeli forces laid siege to Nasser Hospital in February. He said that he saw snipers atop buildings surrounding the hospital, and that one of his nurses was shot in the chest. He said he left the building through a checkpoint that Israeli troops had set up yards away from the hospital.
“I was lucky that they did not detain me,” he said.
Dr. El Serr had returned to Nasser Hospital after the February raid because he was the only general surgeon at the facility, Dr. Moghrabi said. “He was a young and committed doctor who often took to social media to post about what was going on in Gaza,” Dr. Moghrabi said.
With no news about Dr. El Serr since March, Amnesty International began a campaign in June urging Israeli authorities to release him. The rights group has demanded that Israel disclose the whereabouts and legal status of all Palestinian health care workers who have been taken into custody and release then unless they have been charged with a crime and given due process.
Dr. El Serr’s parents, who are in Rafah, are desperate to have information about their son, Osaid Al Serr said. “We are trying everything possible,” he said. “He was a doctor who went above and beyond to do his duty and did not deserve this fate.”
Osaid Al Serr said his cousin’s resilience was apparent during their regular communication on a WhatsApp group Dr. El Serr had set up early during the war to seek help from doctors abroad. “He would post about complicated cases and discuss medical approaches he could take,” he said. “These are doctors Gaza needs badly. They should not be in jails.”
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17) U.S. Poised to Send More Combat Aircraft to Middle East, Officials Say
How many planes to send is still being worked out, as are final approvals from senior officials including Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III.
One of the F15 fighter jets the U.S. sent to Israel since October 7.
The United States is preparing to send additional combat aircraft to the Middle East in response to threats from Iran and its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen to attack Israel in the coming days to avenge the death of Ismail Haniyeh this week, American officials said on Friday.
One U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said that American forces in the Middle East were taking “necessary measures” to increase combat readiness and to protect U.S. troops and allies against any threats from Iran or Iran-backed militia groups.
How many planes to send is still being worked out, as are final approvals from senior officials including Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III. Officials said they were seeking to calibrate the American response to send enough of the right types of aircraft as quickly as possible to help defend Israel without appearing to escalate the conflict.
Any additional air power could be crucial. Iran fired more than 300 drones and missiles against Israel in a major attack in April, but only a handful got through, causing only slight damage. U.S. Air Force jets based in Jordan and in Saudi Arabia coordinated with French, Jordanian and British Air Force fighters to shoot down more than 80 drones.
Iran telegraphed that strike in advance, giving the Pentagon sufficient time to move additional combat aircraft and Navy ships into place while U.S. commanders negotiated access to airspace for fighter jets to operate in and coordinated air defense batteries on the ground to help defend Israel.
It’s unclear whether Israel and its allies will have that much time to prepare for any new round of major Iranian attacks, officials said.
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