Palestinians inspect the area after an Israeli attack hit the Al-Zahraa school in the east of Gaza City, on August 8, 2024. (Photo: Hadi Daoud/APA Images)
‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 307:
At least 56 Palestinians killed across Gaza as Israel bombs two more schools in latest massacres
A reported 15 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes on the Abdel Fatah Hamoud and the al-Zahraa schools in Gaza City. With these latest massacres, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks on Thursday alone rose to at least 56.
By Qassam Muaddi, August 8, 2024
Casualties
· 39,699 + killed* and at least 91,722 wounded in the Gaza Strip. The identities of 32,280 of the killed have been identified, including 10,627 children and 5,956 women, representing 60% of the killed, and 2,770 elderly, as of August 6, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble*
· 620+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This include 140 children.**
· Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
· 690 Israeli soldiers and officers 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 August 8, 2024. Rights groups and public health experts estimate the death toll to be much higher.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of August 8.
*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahranot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. 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 Strikes School Complex Turned Shelter in Gaza, Killing Dozens, Local Health Officials Say
By Raja Abdulrahim, Aaron Boxerman and Victoria Kim, August 10, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/10/world/israel-iran-hamas-gaza-war
People grieved following an Israeli strike on a school turned shelter on Saturday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An Israeli airstrike early Saturday hit a school compound in northern Gaza where displaced Palestinians were sheltering, killing dozens of people, according to Gazan officials.
The Israeli military said Hamas and another armed Palestinian group were using the facility for military operations and attacks on Israel.
The strike in Gaza City, the latest in a string of attacks on schools turned into shelters, drew strong condemnation from the European Union and the United Nations, with Josep Borrell Fontelles, the top E.U. diplomat, saying that “there’s no justification for these massacres.”
The series of strikes has taken place alongside mounting international pressure on Israel to conclude a deal for a cease-fire and an exchange of hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian detainees, with President Biden and the leaders of Egypt and Qatar saying this week that “the time has come.”
The Gaza Civil Defense emergency service said more than 90 were killed, but that number could not be confirmed, and two doctors at one hospital in the area gave slightly lower totals.
It was not clear whether any of those killed were combatants. The Israeli military did not provide a death toll, and questioned the Gaza authorities’ statements.
The Civil Defense emergency service said the strike hit as more than 200 people who had gathered before sunrise in a prayer hall to worship. More than 2,000 displaced people had been staying at the shelter, the Al-Tabaeen school in the Al-Daraj neighborhood, Civil Defense said.
The Israeli military says that Hamas embeds itself among civilians to use them as human shields, and uses school buildings as centers of operations — while international law experts have said Israel still has a responsibility to protect civilians. At least 17 school buildings in Gaza have been targeted in the past month, with at least 163 Palestinians killed in the attacks, the U.N. human rights office said in a report this week.
The Civil Defense spokesman, Mahmoud Basal, said 11 children and six women were among the dead, adding that many people were seriously wounded.
The airstrike hit two floors, one of which was used for communal prayers and the other for sheltering women and children, Mr. Basal said. He said the prayer hall inside the school complex has been used for worship since the beginning of the 10-month war.
Many of those wounded in the Israeli strike, including children, were arriving with severe burns covering much of their bodies, said Tayseer al-Tanna, a surgeon at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, who called the scene “very difficult to watch.”
Fadel Naim, a medical official at Al-Ahli Hospital who served for years as dean of the medical college at the Islamic University of Gaza, widely seen as a Hamas stronghold, said the hospital had received at least 70 bodies since Saturday morning. The strike was followed by a flood of people searching for loved ones missing in the wake of the explosion, he said.
Khamis Elessi, a doctor at the same hospital, in Gaza City, said more than 73 identified bodies were brought to the hospital morgue, as were another 10 who have yet to be identified because they were disfigured in the explosion.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said that based on intelligence assessments, approximately 20 militants from the Hamas and Islamic Jihad armed groups, including senior commanders, were operating from the school and using it to carry out attacks.
“The compound, and the mosque that was struck within it, served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility,” he said, without providing details. He added that the information released by Gaza authorities in the past has “proven to be sorely unreliable.”
The Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers are believed to be broadly reliable, though there is often uncertainty in the immediate aftermath of specific strikes, and the destruction of the territory’s health system has made tolls harder to track.
Israeli forces have recently been scaling up military attacks throughout Gaza in areas where they had previously fought Hamas, saying the fighters had regrouped.
Troops had previously moved in on the Al-Daraj neighborhood in early July as part of a renewed ground offensive in Gaza City. But the Israeli military appears to have wound down its ground operation there, even as it continued to conduct airstrikes in the area.
Many of its offensives in recent days have targeted school grounds — a large number of which have been converted into makeshift shelters. The U.N. has said that strikes were escalating and that it was “horrified by the unfolding pattern.”
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, called the deadly attack “another day of horror” in Gaza. He called on all sides not to harm civilians or use schools for military purposes.
“It’s time for these horrors unfolding under our watch to end,” he said on social media. “We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm.”
The U.N. and other rights organizations have repeatedly said that there is no safe place in Gaza as areas people are ordered to evacuate to are subsequently targeted by Israeli airstrikes. Almost the entire population of Gaza — more than two million Palestinians — has been displaced, many people multiple times.
Ameera Harouda, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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2) The U.S. says it won’t halt aid to an Israeli military unit accused of abuses, after Israel took remedial steps.
By Michael Crowley reporting from Washington, August 10, 2024
"The State Department notified Congress this week of its intent to disburse $3.5 billion in new military aid to Israel from a supplemental budget bill approved earlier, the department said in a statement. The disbursement was expected to go forward in 15 days. Israel is expected use the money to purchase arms from the U.S. government or from American companies."
Israeli soldiers from the Netzah Yehuda battalion during a swearing-in ceremony at the end of their military training in Jerusalem last month. Credit...Abir Sultan/EPA, via Shutterstock
The Biden administration will not block U.S. security assistance to an Israeli military unit found to have committed human rights violations, after Israel’s government took steps to prevent further offenses, the State Department said on Friday.
The department determined in April that the unit, the Netzah Yehuda battalion, had committed abuses in the Israeli-occupied West Bank that were serious enough to prompt the invocation of the Leahy Law, which bans U.S. training or the provision of U.S. equipment for foreign troops who commit “gross human rights violations” like rape, murder or torture.
In April, when it became public that the United States was considering imposing sanctions on Israeli battalions accused of human rights violations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders called the possibility “the peak of absurdity and a moral low” at a time when Israeli forces were fighting a war in Gaza against Hamas.
But Israel took sufficient action to meet the Leahy Law’s criteria for “remediation,” in the form of justice and accountability, to make the unit eligible for continued American assistance, the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said in a statement on Friday. The statement did not specifically name Netzah Yehuda, but officials have said it was the only Israeli unit under such scrutiny.
After spending months evaluating information provided by Israel’s government, Mr. Miller said, the department found that the unit’s violations — which occurred in the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the current war with Hamas in Gaza — had “been effectively remediated.” It added: “Consistent with the Leahy process, this unit can continue receiving security assistance from the United States of America.”
A U.S. official said that Israel had provided the Biden administration with information showing that two soldiers who Israeli military prosecutors said should be disciplined had left the Israeli military and were ineligible to serve in the reserves.
The official also said that the Israel Defense Forces had taken other steps to prevent further offenses, including enhanced screening for new recruits and the implementation of a two-week educational seminar for such recruits.
Netzah Yehuda, created to accommodate the religious practices of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, has been repeatedly accused of mistreating Palestinians. The charges against the unit include binding and gagging a 78-year-old Palestinian American who died of a heart attack while in military custody in January 2022.
The unit was transferred in 2022 from the West Bank to the Golan Heights in northern Israel, according to an April letter on the matter that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken sent to the House Speaker, Mike Johnson.
That letter revealed that the State Department had found that two other units with the Israel Defense Forces and two civilian authority units had committed gross human rights violations, but that Israel had also taken adequate remedial steps in response to those cases.
The State Department notified Congress this week of its intent to disburse $3.5 billion in new military aid to Israel from a supplemental budget bill approved earlier, the department said in a statement. The disbursement was expected to go forward in 15 days. Israel is expected use the money to purchase arms from the U.S. government or from American companies.
Edward Wong contributed reporting.
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3) Stay or go? Israeli strikes on schools pose a life-or-death choice for civilians seeking shelter in Gaza.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, August 10, 2024
A deadly Israeli strike on a school turned shelter in northern Gaza on Saturday exposed an agonizing dilemma for civilians in Gaza seeking safety after 10 months of war.
They could stay at the schools turned shelters, hoping for a modicum of security in the desperate conditions of Gaza. Or they can flee, knowing that the shelters themselves can become targets.
The school year has been abandoned in Gaza, and tens of thousands of civilians have flocked to the compounds since the earliest days of the war, trying to build temporary lives in classrooms and corridors, or pitching makeshift tents in schoolyards.
Conditions are atrocious, residents have said, but the schools, which offer walls and access to limited plumbing, are attractive for the simple reason that the alternatives are worse. Israel’s airstrikes and ground assaults continue around the territory. Extreme hunger is widespread. And diseases are spreading fast in squalid, crowded camps and the ruins of former homes.
As a result, schools have been preferable options for many because they have offered the promise of better security in a conflict that has killed nearly 40,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Ahmed Tahseen Abd Shabat, a 25-year-old who had been living at the Hafsa government school in Gaza City with his two brothers and parents, told The New York Times by phone that they arrived there as a last resort after fleeing 10 times since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a deadly attack on Israel that began the conflict.
“I don’t consider moving out of the school despite the constant targeting of schools because there is no safe zone in Gaza,” said Mr. Shabat, who said he had been completing a master's degree in law at Palestine University before the war. “Areas previously officially declared as safe zones are now the complete opposite.”
In recent weeks, he said, people had moved to sleeping inside classrooms rather than in the open air, believing that would offer a degree of protection against shrapnel in the event of a strike. As a result, he said, classrooms were becoming more crowded.
At present, his family was sharing a classroom with three other families, totaling around 20 people, and some of the men were sleeping in hallways to give the women and children more space.
“There is a complete lack of privacy,” he said.
Israel’s strikes on school grounds, which are just one element of its current campaign, appear to reflect a shift in its efforts to root Hamas out from Gaza. Military analysts say that the Israeli military has largely destroyed Hamas’ main battalions as fighting units and that it has also destroyed the group’s network of tunnels, forcing more fighters above ground.
The Israeli military says that Hamas had “cynically exploited” schools, hospitals and shelters, using them as bases and civilians as human shields. It has said its strikes “against this infrastructure are conducted in accordance with international law.”
With each of the strikes it has launched on school areas in recent weeks, the Israeli military has said that it has taken steps “to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.” On Saturday, the military said in a statement that those steps included the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and intelligence information.
In previous high-profile attacks, such as one in July that Israel says killed an important Hamas commander, the military appears not to have issued warnings to civilians in advance to avoid alerting its target. At least 90 people in the vicinity of the strike were killed that day, according to the Gazan health ministry.
Around 200 U.N. buildings have been hit since the start of the conflict, a number not previously seen in the organization’s history, said Juliette Touma, the director of communications for the main agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA. During a more limited conflict in Gaza in 2014, she said, only one U.N. building was hit.
U.N. experts in April expressed concern about what they said was the “systemic destruction” of the enclave’s education system — a process they called “scholasticide.” Ms. Touma argued that the more recent attacks would have a longer-term impact once the war is over.
“Many of those schools cannot be used because they were bombed or they might have unexploded ordnance in them,” she said, adding “What will that mean for the education journey of children in Gaza?”
The United Nations has submitted the coordinates of all of its buildings in Gaza to the warring parties, Ms. Touma said, adding that it has also called for an independent investigation to determine whether the schools have been used as military bases.
“U.N. facilities must never be used for military and fighting purposes, and they should be protected in times of conflict,” she said.
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4) Israel Expands Evacuation Orders for Khan Younis in Southern Gaza
By Vivek Shankar and Matthew Mpoke Bigg, August 11, 2024
Displaced Palestinians flee an area of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday. Credit...Hatem Khaled/Reuters
The Israeli military on Sunday ordered civilians to evacuate from part of the humanitarian zone it had set up in southwestern Gaza, saying it was planning to fight in the area because Hamas had “embedded terrorist infrastructure” there.
It was the latest in a string of evacuations ordered by the Israeli military in 10 months of war, and it came a day after Israel gave a similar explanation — that Hamas fighters were hiding among civilians — for a strike on a school-turned-shelter that the local authorities said killed dozens of people.
In recent days, tens of thousands of people have fled the city of Khan Younis after evacuation orders issued by Israel’s military last week.
The new order on Sunday covered the neighborhood of al-Jalaa in Khan Younis. Israel’s military said it was redrawing the border of the humanitarian zone and urged civilians to move to what it said were safe zones. It said it was sending phone messages, dropping fliers and broadcasting these instructions to people in the area.
But many people in Gaza say there is nowhere in the enclave that is truly safe. Israel has previously mounted attacks inside the designated humanitarian zone, including a strike on the outskirts of Khan Younis last month targeting the commander of Hamas’s military wing, Muhammad Deif, that Gazan health authorities said killed at least 90 people in the vicinity.
Residents also say that the repeated orders to move are exhausting, humiliating and expensive. Almost all of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million has been displaced by the war, which the health authorities in the enclave say has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians. Israel has faced international condemnation for not doing enough to prevent civilian casualties.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, said on Sunday that people in Gaza have “nowhere to go" amid the evacuation orders, and that more than 75,000 people had been displaced in the southwestern part of the enclave in recent days.
“Some are only able to carry their children with them, some carry their whole lives in one small bag,” he said in a post on social media. “They are going to overcrowded places where shelters are already overflowing with families.”
Israel has adjusted the borders of the humanitarian zone several times; the area shrank by more than a fifth last month. The latest downsizing appeared to be more limited. Maps and analysis of satellite imagery show that the zone is overcrowded and often hit by strikes.
Hours before announcing the evacuation order on Sunday, Israel’s military said that it had carried out a “targeted raid" in Khan Younis, recovering weapons including rifles and explosives in a tunnel. It also said that its jets had struck dozens of targets and killed fighters, including one who took part in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The military’s claims could not be independently verified.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Harris condemns civilian deaths in an Israeli strike on a school compound, and other news.
· Asked about a strike on a school compound in Gaza that local officials say killed dozens of people, Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters on Saturday that “far too many civilians” had been killed in the enclave. “Israel has a right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas,” she said. “But, as I have said many, many times, they also have, I believe, an important responsibility to avoid civilian casualties.” Ms. Harris also called for a hostage deal and a cease-fire.
· Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, on Sunday condemned the deaths of civilians in the attack and said Israel must comply with international law. “Innocent Palestinians cannot continue to pay the price of defeating Hamas,” she said in a post on social media that also called for a cease-fire. The strike on the school building was also strongly criticized by the European Union and the United Nations.
· Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany said that he spoke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Sunday and that he condemned threats against Israel by Iran and its proxies, which have vowed to retaliate for the assassination in Tehran last month of a top Hamas leader. “The destructive spiral of retaliation must be broken,” Mr. Scholz wrote on social media. “It’s time for an agreement to release the hostages and a ceasefire.”
· Gunmen opened fire from a passing car at Israelis traveling along a main artery in the Jordan Valley area of the occupied West Bank on Sunday, killing a male civilian and moderately wounding another, according to the Israeli military and emergency services. Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency services organization, said the victims were found in two separate vehicles. Searches were underway for the perpetrators, who fled the scene.
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5) Gazans describe carnage after strike on school turned shelter: ‘The dead were all in pieces.’
By Raja Abdulrahim and Ameera Harouda, August 11, 2024
People checking the damage in a school used as a temporary shelter for displaced Palestinians in Gaza City, following an Israeli strike on Saturday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When Hasan Almoghani arrived at the scene shortly after an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza school turned shelter, he said he found a scene of carnage unlike any he had seen in the past 10 months of war: A prayer hall strewed with bodies and body parts over two floors.
A resident of Gaza City, where the attack on Saturday took place, Mr. Almoghani has been documenting daily life in Gaza during the war. But this was the worst thing he had witnessed, he said.
The strike hit the prayer hall when it was filled with more than 200 people, before the call to worship had sounded at about 4:30 a.m., according to the Gaza Civil Defense service.
The Civil Defense said the Israeli attack killed more than 90 people, including women and children. Two doctors at a hospital that received many of the casualties gave slightly lower tolls.
The Israeli military said Hamas and another armed Palestinian group were using the school compound for military operations and to attack Israel.
In the aftermath, survivors, some of them children, were sifting through the rubble and collecting body parts, witnesses said.
“The dead are all in pieces,” said Mr. Almoghani. “We don’t know if they will be able to save the wounded. It’s just a matter of time.”
He arrived on the scene about 10 minutes after the strike, which he said had collapsed the second floor of the prayer hall, where the women and children had gathered.
He posted a video on his social media page showing a bloodied man being carried out on a makeshift stretcher that appeared to be a door as other people tried to wrap bodies — some of them missing limbs — in blankets.
In another video, an elderly man, his head bandaged, lies on a dirty mattress on the ground with debris from the explosion around him.
Other videos posted online by journalists in Gaza and verified by The New York Times showed dozens of bodies at the scene as well as clothes and rubble scattered over different floors of the damaged building. Mourners crouched over bodies wrapped in white shrouds just outside the school complex.
Many of the casualties were taken to the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.
“We received more than 70 victims who have severe wounds and severe burns,” said Khamis Elessi, a doctor at Al-Ahli. “Their skin had melted.” Many others have lost limbs, he said, adding that many of the wounded are women, children and elderly people.
He said 83 of the dead were brought to Al-Ahli and of those, 73 had been identified. Ten others had yet to be identified because they were disfigured in the explosion, he said.
Like all other Gaza hospitals still functioning, Al-Ahli suffers from a lack of medicine, blood and medical staff, Dr. Elessi said.
The strike was the latest in a string of attacks on schools turned into shelters. There have been 17 in the past month, killing at least 163 Palestinians, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
More than 2,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering at the school hit on Saturday, the Civil Defense said.
Hossam Shabat, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza City, said he arrived at the school less than 30 minutes after the attack.
“The bodies were on fire,” he said. “It was so hard to see.”
The school complex has been used as a shelter since the early days of the war, said Mr. Shabat, who appears to have expressed sympathy for Hamas in social media posts before the group led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that started the war.
He said he knew some of the families who had been sheltering at the school complex.
“This center was full of people who were displaced after their homes had been destroyed,” Mr. Shabat said.
He and Mr. Almoghani both said they saw no sign of any fighters from armed groups at the school.
Those who had been sheltering there for months now have nowhere else to go, Mr. Shabat said.
“Since the massacre, residents have set out to find another center to shelter in,” he said, knowing that any new location could very well be targeted in upcoming strikes.
Sanjana Varghese contributed reporting.
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6) Britain’s Anti-Immigrant Riots Pose Critical Test for Starmer
Even after restoring order, the new prime minister faces a bigger challenge: defusing the issues of fraying public services and a cost of living crisis that underlie the unrest.
By Stephen Castle, Reporting from London, Aug. 12, 2024
The police engaging with a man during an anti-immigration riot this month in Rotherham, England, where a hotel housing some asylum seekers was attacked. Credit...Danny Lawson/Press Association, via Associated Press
With cars being torched and mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers under attack, the riots that swept Britain over the past two weeks have posed the first direct challenge to the new prime minister, Keir Starmer.
But even if the violence has subsided, for now, at least, the shocking scenes of disorder have underscored the scale of the task facing his government.
That, analysts say, includes defusing tensions stoked successfully by far-right groups — over immigration and fraying public services — particularly in areas of Britain that have long been in economic decline.
While opinion polls show the public clearly supports Mr. Starmer’s crackdown on violent protesters, “a lot of those people who see the rioters as thugs want immigration brought down,” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham.
With cars being torched and mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers under attack, the riots that swept Britain over the past two weeks have posed the first direct challenge to the new prime minister, Keir Starmer.
But even if the violence has subsided, for now, at least, the shocking scenes of disorder have underscored the scale of the task facing his government.
That, analysts say, includes defusing tensions stoked successfully by far-right groups — over immigration and fraying public services — particularly in areas of Britain that have long been in economic decline.
While opinion polls show the public clearly supports Mr. Starmer’s crackdown on violent protesters, “a lot of those people who see the rioters as thugs want immigration brought down,” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham.
Mr. Starmer, who has promised to cut migration numbers, “needs to follow up and do the things he says he’s going to do,” Professor Fielding added, while noting that it was “no accident” that violence erupted in several economically deprived regions.
Concern over immigration, which declined in Britain after Brexit, is on the rise again and, when jobs are scarce and health care and other services are overstretched, immigrants make an easy target for the far right. The campaign leading up to last month’s general election prompted a bitter political dispute over the last government’s plans to send to Rwanda people arriving in Britain on small boats.
But while around 30,000 people entered the country that way last year, that was only a fraction of those admitted legally minus those who left — a number that hit almost 750,000 in 2022.
Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, a research institute, said Mr. Starmer must show he can revive neglected areas where the rightists have found support by bolstering employment and public services.
“He needs to deliver,” Mr. Katwala said, “for those town and cities — whether it’s Southport or Hartlepool — where people’s primary concerns are National Health Service waiting lists and ‘Can I get a job?’”
Those close to Mr. Starmer say he is getting a grip on the disorder, drawing on his experience as a chief prosecutor in 2011, when riots took place in London and he pushed to get those responsible tried, sentenced and jailed swiftly to deter others.
“He has a detailed knowledge of how to do this, and he understands how you prosecute and convict quickly, and you do so visibly in a way that sends a message to anybody who is thinking about participating in one of these riots,” said Claire Ainsley, a former policy director for Mr. Starmer.
But ensuring that such violence does not recur is harder, she said.
“We have had the far right with us in good economic times and in bad economic times,” said Ms. Ainsley, who now works in Britain for the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington-based research institute.
“But it is much harder for them to have any kind of influence when you are in better economic times,” she added. “That means people’s living standards rising and people starting to feel they are better off and that they are part of a system that is working — and that isn’t a description of Britain today.”
Ms. Ainsley pointed to the role of social media in spreading misinformation and stoking tensions, and cautioned against making a direct link between the riots and immigration. She noted that, alongside extremists, some of the rioters may be looters and other opportunists.
It is, she added, “wrong to assume that all of the people participating in these riots are politically motivated by immigration.”
Still, other analysts note the context of the riots, after years of broken promises to reduce immigration and the contentious dispute over the last government’s doomed effort to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda.
They were a particular target of the recent anti-immigrant riots, including in Rotherham, England, where a hotel housing some asylum seekers was attacked on Aug. 4, driving home the severity of the disorder.
Launched by a former prime minister, Boris Johnson, in 2022, the Rwanda plan was adopted as a flagship policy by Rishi Sunak, who entered Downing Street later that year. The courts ruled against the proposal, and despite months of political maneuvering, no asylum seekers were sent to Africa under the plan. After taking office, Mr. Starmer quickly scrapped the effort.
But Mr. Katwala said that by pledging to “stop the boats,” Mr. Sunak had drawn attention to the issue, sending “very loud messages” about how much control he would exert over national borders while delivering none. The result, Mr. Katwala said, was to “stoke up the level of concern over the issue, and completely fail on all fronts.”
By global standards the scale of small-boat arrivals is relatively modest and “the visible lack of control is much more the issue than the number of people coming via that route,” Mr. Katwala said.
While Mr. Starmer can try to lower the political temperature, his practical options for curbing English Channel crossings are limited. He plans to crack down on people-smuggling gangs, but, unless Britain strikes a new migration deal with France, recent experience suggests that step alone is unlikely to resolve the problem.
One thing the government intends to do is to speed up the system for processing asylum requests to cut the number of would-be refugees accommodated in hotels at public expense — a source of grievance to anti-immigrant protesters. (Asylum seekers tend to be accommodated in less wealthy areas where hotel costs are lower, making them a particular target in the recent riots.)
The fact that many more people have been allowed to enter the country legally has created another issue that has been weaponized by the far right, presenting Mr. Starmer with another big challenge.
Successive Conservative governments promised but failed to reduce annual legal net immigration to below 100,000, and control of the country’s frontiers was a key issue in a 2016 referendum in which Britons voted for Brexit.
Still, since Brexit, legal immigration has tripled, falling back only slightly from its 2022 peak — the highest on record.
Those figures were inflated by programs to accommodate people from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan, for which there was wide public support. But Britain also relies heavily on foreign workers to fill jobs in health care and other sectors, and immigration is a driver of economic growth, so cutting it is hard.
“There is broad support for all the immigration that generates the very high numbers,” said Mr. Katwala, noting that most people welcomed Ukrainians and are happy for foreign workers to fill vacancies in British hospitals, “but then concern about the scale of the number.”
Before losing last month’s general election, Mr. Sunak tightened the migration rules, restricting the right of some legal immigrants to bring relatives to Britain. Those changes are expected to push down the numbers over the next year.
Reducing them further will be difficult without damaging health care and other key sectors, or impeding Mr. Starmer’s central objective of reviving the economy to ease Britain’s cost of living crisis. The recent unrest suggests that lifting economic growth, reviving neglected cities and investing in crumbling public services have never been more important.
The riots are “not telling this government anything it didn’t know,” Professor Fielding said. “They are just making its task more urgent.”
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7) U.S. and Israeli Defense Officials Speak Amid Fears of Escalation in Mideast
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, the Pentagon said. In an unusual disclosure, it said Mr. Austin had ordered a submarine to the Middle East.
By Eric Schmitt, reporting from Washington, Aug. 12, 2024
The U.S.S. Georgia, a guided-missile submarine, in a 2020 photograph released by the U.S. Navy. The submarine is moving to the Middle East amid fears of an escalation in regional conflicts. Credit...Spc. William Gore/U.S. Navy, via Reuters
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, on Sunday, the third call the two are known to have held in a week, amid rising fears of an escalation in the conflict between Israel and Iran.
In the call, Mr. Austin “reiterated the United States’ commitment to take every possible step to defend Israel,” according to a summary provided by the Pentagon press secretary, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder.
In an unusual disclosure, General Ryder said that Mr. Austin had ordered the guided-missile submarine Georgia to the Middle East. The Pentagon rarely announces the movements of its submarine fleet, underscoring the seriousness of the regional crisis.
General Ryder noted that Mr. Austin had already ordered additional combat aircraft and missile-shooting warships to the region. The orders came in response to threats from Iran and its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen to attack Israel to avenge the assassination of a top Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran on July 31.
Mr. Austin has also directed the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, equipped with F-35 fighter jets, to speed to the region, joining the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and its accompanying warships already in the Gulf of Oman.
A statement from the Israeli government said that Mr. Gallant had spoken to Mr. Austin about the Israeli military’s “readiness and capabilities in the face of threats posed by Iran and its regional proxies.”
The Israeli defense minister also discussed “the urgency of achieving an agreement for the release of hostages and thanked the U.S. administration for its leadership and commitment to this issue,” the statement said. The United States and Arab mediators are preparing to present what they have called a “final” proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza at a meeting on Thursday in the Middle East that Israel has said its negotiators will attend. Hamas has not indicated whether its representatives will be at the meeting.
The call between Mr. Austin and Mr. Gallant came a day after an Israeli airstrike hit a school compound in northern Gaza where displaced Palestinians were sheltering, an attack that Gazan authorities said killed dozens of people. Mr. Austin used the call to once again underscore the importance of “mitigating civilian harm” during Israeli operations in the enclave, General Ryder said.
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