Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 321:
Ceasefire negotiations set to continue in Cairo despite low expectations
By Qassam Muaddi, August 22, 2024
Casualties
· 40,256 + killed* and at least 93,144 wounded in the Gaza Strip. The identities of 32,280 of the slain have been identified, including 10,627 children and 5,956 women, representing 60% of the casualties, and 2,770 elderly, as of August 6, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble*
· 632+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes 140 children.**
· Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
· 693 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 15, 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 15.
*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot 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 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been 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 and 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 Says It Recovered Bodies of 6 Hostages in Gaza
The bodies were retrieved in an overnight operation in southern Gaza, the Israeli military said. Five of the hostages were already known to have died in captivity.
By Isabel Kershner, reporting from Jerusalem, Aug. 20, 2024
Protesters calling for the release of hostages, in Tel Aviv on Monday. Credit...Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israeli forces recovered the bodies of six Israeli hostages from southern Gaza in an overnight operation, the Israeli military said on Tuesday, highlighting the plight of the scores of captives remaining in the Palestinian enclave. Five of the six were previously known to have lost their lives.
Of the roughly 250 people Israeli authorities say were taken hostage during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, Israeli forces have so far rescued only seven hostages alive. Scores of others, mostly women and children, were returned to Israel during a weeklong cease-fire last November. More than 100 captives still remain in Gaza, at least 30 of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said that the six bodies had been retrieved from Hamas tunnels beneath the city of Khan Younis in a “complex operation,” and the military released their names.
Avraham Munder, 79, was the only hostage among the six whose deaths had not already been established. He was abducted from Nir Oz, a kibbutz, or communal village, near the Gaza border, along with three of the others: Haim Peri, 80; Yoram Metzger, 80; and Alexander Dancyg, 75. The remaining two, Nadav Popplewell, 51; and Yagev Buchshtab, 35, were taken from another border community, Nirim.
The exact circumstances of their deaths were not immediately clear. Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, said in March that Mr. Metzger and Mr. Peri were among seven hostages who had been killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. Hamas then said in May that Mr. Popplewell had died from injuries sustained in an Israeli airstrike more than a month before.
Weeks later, the Israeli military said that it was examining the possibility that the three hostages had been killed while Israeli forces were operating in the Khan Younis area.
The retrieval of the bodies came as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken continued a diplomatic push in the region for a cease-fire deal that would see hostages released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. Frustration has grown in Israel over the months of halting negotiations, and family members of the hostages still in Gaza have led regular protests demanding a deal to secure their freedom.
Mati Dancyg, Alexander Dancyg’s son, said he believed there had been opportunities to get him out of Gaza alive. He accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prioritizing political considerations over the hostages’ return under pressure from key members of his governing coalition who oppose a cease-fire deal, considering it a surrender to Hamas.
“It is absolutely clear to me that it was possible to bring him back home,” Mati Dancyg said Tuesday on Israel’s public radio network, Kan, adding, “Netanyahu chose to sacrifice the hostages.’’
Mr. Netanyahu has blamed Hamas for obstructing a deal. His critics in Israel, as well as Hamas officials, say that Mr. Netanyahu recently added new conditions to a proposal outlined by President Biden in late May, adding to the difficulty of finalizing a deal.
“Our hearts grieve over the terrible loss,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement on Tuesday following the military’s announcement about the retrieval of the bodies. “The State of Israel will continue to make every effort to return all of our hostages — the living and the deceased.”
The Hostages Families Forum, an organization that represents many of the hostages’ relatives, said in a statement on Tuesday that “Israel has a moral and ethical obligation to return all the murdered for dignified burial and to bring all living hostages home for rehabilitation.”
“The immediate return of the remaining 109 hostages,” it added, “can only be achieved through a negotiated deal.”
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
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2) Israeli and Hamas Officials See Little Chance for Cease-Fire Breakthrough
By Ronen BergmanAdam Rasgon and Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem, August 20, 2024
Searching through rubble at the location of a strike in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, on Tuesday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Biden administration is again putting its diplomatic heft behind an effort to dislodge months of stalled negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the 10-month-long war in Gaza, and voicing optimism over the potential for a breakthrough.
Israeli and Hamas officials are striking a far different tone. Both sides have poured cold water on the idea that a deal could be imminent, saying that mediators’ efforts — and the latest American proposal aimed at bridging gaps between the two sides — have failed to resolve some of the most substantive disputes in the talks.
On Monday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, making his ninth visit to Israel since the war began, emerged from a three-hour-long meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and announced that the Israeli leader had assented to the new U.S. “bridging proposal,” introduced at talks in Qatar last week.
But Israeli and Hamas officials familiar with the talks said the U.S. plan left major disagreements mostly unresolved. Hamas quickly dismissed the American-led framework as conforming to Mr. Netanyahu’s conditions, which he has stiffened in recent weeks. And on Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu showed little sign of being ready to compromise, repeating his message that Israel would do everything to “preserve our strategic security assets” and “will continue to fight until total victory is achieved over Hamas.”
On Tuesday, as Mr. Blinken traveled to Egypt and Qatar to continue pushing for an agreement, Hamas issued a statement criticizing “misleading claims” by the Biden administration about the talks. It said the latest American proposal amounted to “a reversal” of a framework that Hamas had presented in early July and that U.S. officials repeatedly called a breakthrough.
The negotiations have taken on renewed urgency following the assassinations of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran and Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, in Beirut in late July. Diplomats hoped that a cease-fire in Gaza, or even the prospect of one, might persuade Iran and Hezbollah to hold off or blunt their reprisals.
Under the new U.S. proposal, Israeli troops would be able to continue to patrol part of the Gazan border with Egypt, albeit in reduced numbers — one of Mr. Netanyahu’s core demands, according to four officials familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
That is likely a non-starter for Hamas, which has consistently called for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Egypt has also voiced staunch objections to a long-term Israeli presence in that area, known as the Philadelphi Corridor.
Cairo has maintained that it will not accept Israeli troops remaining in the Philadelphi Corridor, which Egyptian officials say would pose national security concerns and would likely anger the Egyptian public.
In a sign of Egypt’s frustrations, state-controlled media outlets, which serve as government mouthpieces, have escalated their language against Israel in recent days, accusing it of trying to pick a fight with Egypt over the corridor to delay progress on a cease-fire in Gaza.
“Netanyahu doesn’t want a cease-fire. So he is creating an artificial problem with Egypt,” a former general, Samir Farag, said on one talk show that aired Monday night.
During the cease-fire talks that ended last Friday, U.S. officials also asked to delay in-depth conversations over Israel’s demand to screen displaced Palestinians returning to northern Gaza for weapons, another key stumbling block, according to two officials familiar with the talks.
Over the past several months, U.S. officials have repeatedly sought to drum up momentum in the negotiations mediated by Egypt and Qatar. In May, President Biden endorsed an Israeli-backed cease-fire proposal, saying both sides had reached a “decisive moment.” The talks crept along for months until the Hamas counterproposal in July, and then stalled.
The talks now appear to be at risk of reaching yet another dead end.
The United States, alongside Egypt and Qatar, have called for another summit in Cairo before the end of the week. Two Israeli officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said that a date for the meeting had yet to be set and that it was unclear where it might be held. Hamas did not participate in the last round of talks, and it has not said whether it will agree to join this time.
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Vivian Yee and Emad Mekay from Cairo.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Israel strikes a school building in Gaza City, and other news.
· Israel’s military struck a school building in Gaza City on Tuesday, targeting what it said was a Hamas command and control center. The Palestinian Civil Defense emergency services said that 12 people, including women and children, had been killed in the attack, which hit the Mustafa Khaft school. The Israeli military did not say whether the strike had caused casualties. In recent weeks, Israel has launched dozens of strikes at school buildings, which are being used as shelters by tens of thousands of displaced in Gaza, drawing sharp criticism from the United Nations and others. The Israeli military says that Hamas has “cynically exploited” schools, hospitals and shelters as bases and civilians as human shields.
· The Gazan Health Ministry said Tuesday that it was still waiting to receive polio vaccines as the risk of an outbreak grows in the territory. After Gaza recorded its first polio case in years, aid groups made plans to vaccinate over 600,000 children in Gaza. The World Health Organization and UNICEF have called for a cease-fire of at least seven days so they can carry out a mass vaccination campaign. It was not immediately clear when the vaccines would arrive. On Sunday, COGAT, the Israeli agency that supervises aid deliveries to Gaza, had said that vaccines to inoculate more than a million children would arrive “in the coming weeks.”
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3) Greenpeace Tries a Novel Tactic in Lawsuit Over Dakota Access Pipeline
The environmental group, which is being sued by the pipeline company in North Dakota, threatened to use new European rules to try to limit potential damages.
By Karen Zraick, Aug. 20, 2024
The pipeline company is suing Greenpeace for millions of dollars in a case that Greenpeace claims is designed to put it out of business. Credit...Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times
Greenpeace recently unveiled a new strategy for fighting a costly lawsuit by an energy company that the group contends is designed to silence critics of the oil industry.
The suit, first filed in federal court in 2017, alleged that Greenpeace had incited the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017, and it sought $300 million in damages.
Greenpeace disputes the claims. It says the lawsuit is designed to essentially force the environmental group to go out of business with an expensive legal fight.
Its new tactic, led by Greenpeace International in Amsterdam, would use the European legal system to try to minimize the financial consequences of a potential loss in United States courts. In a letter to the company last month, lawyers for the group cited a new European Union directive aimed at curbing SLAPP suits, or Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation. Those are defined as meritless suits that seek to shut down civil society groups.
The letter called on the company suing it, Dallas-based Energy Transfer, to drop its suit against Greenpeace International, and to pay damages for its legal costs, or risk a countersuit under the new European rules.
The Background
After the Dakota Access Pipeline was approved in 2016, it became the target of high-profile protests by Native American tribes and environmental groups. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe argued that the pipeline encroached on reservation land and endangered the water supply. Thousands of its supporters joined a nearly eight-month protest encampment near the reservation, and tribal leaders mounted their own legal challenge to the project.
The protesters clashed with the police and private security at times, and the camp was razed after an evacuation order by the North Dakota governor. The state and federal governments are still wrangling over who should pay for $38 million in associated costs, including the response by law enforcement.
The pipeline was paused under the Obama administration, but began operating in 2017 after President Donald J. Trump gave it the green light in an executive order. While the pipeline remains in operation, it is still awaiting final federal approval, which is expected early next year.
The lawsuit by Energy Transfer, the company behind the 1,170-mile crude oil pipeline, names two U.S.-based Greenpeace entities, as well as Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands and coordinates other Greenpeace groups around the world.
After being kicked back to a state court, the suit is scheduled to go before a jury in Morton County, N.D., early next year.
The Claims
Energy Transfer, which is led by a close ally of Mr. Trump, Kelcy Warren, alleged that Greenpeace and other activists incited the protests, spread misinformation and vandalized the project, leading to delays that cost the company millions of dollars.
Energy Transfer initially sued in North Dakota federal court, where it argued that the activists had violated Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, laws. A judge dismissed that claim and found that others were out of its jurisdiction, allowing the case to continue in state court.
Greenpeace says the protests were directed by Native American leaders, not the environmental organization. The group said that it supported the protests but never engaged in property destruction or violence, and that the suit seeks to impose “collective liability” for anything that might happen at a demonstration. Greenpeace International says that its branches operate independently, and that its only involvement was to sign an open letter in 2016 along with 500 other organizations.
Energy Transfer said in a statement that the lawsuit “is not about free speech as they are trying to claim,” referring to Greenpeace. “We support the rights of all Americans to express their opinions and lawfully protest,” the statement said. “However, when it is not done in accordance with our laws, we have a legal system to deal with that. Beyond that we will let our case speak for itself in February.”
Why It Matters
The new legal strategy in Europe is an early test of the anti-SLAPP rules there. The directive that took effect this year was spurred by a long campaign by journalism and civil-society groups that said powerful interests were trying to clobber them with long, costly legal battles.
The directive instructs national governments to not recognize judgments in foreign SLAPP suits, and to allow countersuits. It leaves it to national governments to decide what constitutes a SLAPP suit.
A growing number of American states also have some sort of anti-SLAPP laws, though North Dakota is not one of them. On the federal level, Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, cited the oil and gas industry’s use of lawsuits against opponents when he introduced an anti-SLAPP bill in 2022.
Deepa Padmanabha, acting co-executive director of Greenpeace USA, said she saw the case as particularly concerning given a rise in anti-protest laws in many states since 2017. “How this case is fought is going to impact the future of advocacy and peaceful protest,” she said. “Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are what this case is about.”
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4) Israel and Hezbollah Exchange Strikes Amid Fears of Escalation
By Gabby Sobelman and Euan Ward reporting from Rehovot, Israel, and Beirut, Lebanon, August 21, 2024
A destroyed home in Katzrin, in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, on Wednesday. Credit...Ariel Schalit/Associated Press
The Israeli military and Hezbollah traded cross-border strikes on Wednesday, leaving at least one person dead deep inside eastern Lebanon, as tensions between the adversaries continued to fuel concerns about a wider regional conflagration.
Israel said that it had struck weapons storage facilities used by Hezbollah, the powerful Iranian-backed militia, in eastern Lebanon for the second time this week. The overnight airstrikes, in an area close to the Syrian border, killed at least one person and injured 30 others, including children, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said in a statement.
In response, Hezbollah said it had targeted an Israeli military base in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Israel’s military said that two houses had been damaged in the village of Katzrin on Wednesday and that at least one person had been injured when dozens of projectiles crossed into the area from Lebanon.
An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, posted on social media a photo of what he said was a house damaged in Katzrin and said, “There was no other target in the area other than a civilian neighborhood and kids on their summer vacation.”
He added: “Attacks against our civilians will not go unanswered.”
The tit-for-tat strikes, and the Israeli official’s threat of further retaliation, highlighted how months of diplomatic efforts have failed to ease hostilities along the Israel-Lebanon border. And they came as the Biden administration has intensified its push for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in hopes of averting a broader Middle East war, although Israeli and Hamas officials have been cool to the latest U.S. proposal.
The sites of the most recent Israeli strikes, in a range of about 40 to 60 miles north of the Israel-Lebanon border in the Bekaa Valley, are deeper inside Lebanon than many of the near-daily attacks the two countries have exchanged since the war in Gaza began. Hezbollah, like other groups in the region backed by Iran, has been attacking Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, leading to the cross-border fire from both countries. Hamas is also backed by Iran.
The military said in a statement that it had detected secondary explosions after its strikes on Wednesday, which it said indicated that there were large amounts of weapons at the sites. At least three areas were targeted, including the town of Nabi Chit, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. There was no immediate comment from Lebanese officials on exactly what was hit.
On Monday, the Israeli military also said it had targeted a number of Hezbollah’s weapons storage facilities in the Bekaa Valley. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said those strikes injured nearly a dozen people, including two children.
Tensions have escalated sharply in the region in recent weeks since the killings of Fuad Shukr, a senior commander in Hezbollah, and Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader of Hamas. Israel has claimed responsibility for Mr. Shukr’s death and is widely believed to be responsible for Mr. Haniyeh’s. Hezbollah and Iran have vowed to retaliate more forcefully than before against Israel.
In a separate strike on Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had killed a commander in the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group associated with the Palestinian Fatah faction that has fought alongside Hezbollah. The commander, Khalil al-Miqdah, who was killed in the strike in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon, worked closely with Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards, the Israeli military said in a statement. That claim could not be independently verified, though the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades confirmed Mr. al-Miqdah’s death in a statement.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken toured the region this week to push for a cease-fire in Gaza, but there appeared to be no breakthroughs in talks. Officials familiar with the latest U.S.-backed proposal said it left major disagreements between Hamas and Israel unresolved.
On Tuesday, a senior Iranian military official, Gen. Ali Mohammad Naeini, the spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, suggested that an attack on Israel might have been placed on hold.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Protesters tell Netanyahu to make a hostage deal, and other news.
· Protesters marched in front of the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday to demand that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accept a deal to end the war and free the remaining hostages. Among the protesters was Zahiro Shahar Mor, whose uncle, Avraham Munder, 79, was confirmed dead by the Israeli military earlier on Tuesday when it announced that it had recovered his body and those of five other hostages in southern Gaza. A group representing some of the hostage families said in a statement that the blood of the hostages was on the hands of Mr. Netanyahu and every member of his government.
· An Israeli strike near a crowded area in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, killed at least nine people on Tuesday, the Palestinian Civil Defense said. The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had transported at least 14 others who were injured. Many victims of the strike were children, according to a reporter for Al Jazeera who was on the scene. Photos taken by a photographer for the Reuters news agency showed medics treating several bloodied children on the floor of nearby Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. All told, at least 43 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza by Tuesday evening, according to Mahmoud Basal, a Civil Defense spokesman.
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5) Biden Approved Secret Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on Chinese Threat
In a classified document approved in March, the president ordered U.S. forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea.
By David E. Sanger, Aug. 20, 2024
David E. Sanger has written about American nuclear strategy for The New York Times for nearly four decades.
A soldier stands before vehicles carrying China’s DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Credit...Thomas Peter/Reuters
President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear strategic plan for the United States that, for the first time, reorients America’s deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal.
The shift comes as the Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the United States’ and Russia’s over the next decade.
The White House never announced that Mr. Biden had approved the revised strategy, called the “Nuclear Employment Guidance,” which also newly seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea. The document, updated every four years or so, is so highly classified that there are no electronic copies, only a small number of hard copies distributed to a few national security officials and Pentagon commanders.
But in recent speeches, two senior administration officials were allowed to allude to the change — in carefully constrained, single sentences — ahead of a more detailed, unclassified notification to Congress expected before Mr. Biden leaves office.
“The president recently issued updated nuclear-weapons employment guidance to account for multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” Vipin Narang, an M.I.T. nuclear strategist who served in the Pentagon, said earlier this month before returning to academia. “And in particular,” he added, the weapons guidance accounted for “the significant increase in the size and diversity” of China’s nuclear arsenal.
In June, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, Pranay Vaddi, also referred to the document, the first to examine in detail whether the United States is prepared to respond to nuclear crises that break out simultaneously or sequentially, with a combination of nuclear and nonnuclear weapons.
The new strategy, Mr. Vaddi said, emphasizes “the need to deter Russia, the PRC and North Korea simultaneously,” using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
In the past, the likelihood that American adversaries could coordinate nuclear threats to outmaneuver the American nuclear arsenal seemed remote. But the emerging partnership between Russia and China, and the conventional arms North Korea and Iran are providing to Russia for the war in Ukraine have fundamentally changed Washington’s thinking.
Already, Russia and China are conducting military exercises together. Intelligence agencies are trying to determine whether Russia is aiding the North Korean and Iranian missile programs in return.
The new document is a stark reminder that whoever is sworn in next Jan. 20 will confront a changed and far more volatile nuclear landscape than the one that existed just three years ago. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine, including during a crisis in October 2022, when Mr. Biden and his aides, looking at intercepts of conversations between senior Russian commanders, feared the likelihood of nuclear use might rise to 50 percent or even higher.
Mr. Biden, along with leaders of Germany and Britain, got China and India to make public statements that there was no role for the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and the crisis abated, at least temporarily.
“It was an important moment,” Richard N. Haass, a former senior State Department and National Security Council official for several Republican presidents, and the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in an interview. “We are dealing with a Russia that is radicalized; the idea that nukes wouldn’t be used in a conventional conflict is not longer a safe assumption.”
The second big change arises from China’s nuclear ambitions. The country’s nuclear expansion is running at an even faster pace than American intelligence officials anticipated two years ago, driven by President Xi Jinping’s determination to scrap the decades-long strategy of maintaining a “minimum deterrent” to reach or exceed the size of Washington’s and Moscow’s arsenals. China’s nuclear complex is now the fastest growing in the world.
Although former President Donald J. Trump confidently predicted that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, would surrender his nuclear weapons after their three in-person meetings, the opposite happened. Mr. Kim has doubled down, and now has more than 60 weapons, officials estimate, and the fuel for many more.
That expansion has changed the nature of the North Korean challenge: When the country possessed just a handful of weapons, it could be deterred by missile defenses. But its expanded arsenal is fast approaching the size of Pakistan’s and Israel’s, and it is large enough that it could, in theory, coordinate threats with Moscow and Beijing.
It was only a matter of time before a fundamentally different nuclear environment began to alter American war plans and strategy, officials say.
“It is our responsibility to see the world as it is, not as we hoped or wished it would be,” Mr. Narang said as he was leaving the Pentagon. “It is possible that we will one day look back and see the quarter-century after the Cold War as nuclear intermission.”
The new challenge is “the real possibility of collaboration and even collusion between our nuclear-armed adversaries,” he said.
So far in the presidential campaign, the new challenges to American nuclear strategy have not been a topic of debate. Mr. Biden, who spent much of his political career as an advocate of nuclear nonproliferation, has never publicly talked in any detail about how he is responding to the challenges of deterring China’s and North Korea’s expanded forces. Nor has Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic Party’s nominee.
At his last news conference in July, just days before he announced he would no longer seek the Democratic nomination for a second term, Mr. Biden acknowledged that he had adopted a policy of seeking ways to interfere in the broader China-Russia partnership.
“Yes, I do, but I’m not prepared to talk about the detail of it in public,” Mr. Biden said. He made no reference to — and was not asked about — how that partnership was altering American nuclear strategy.
Since Harry Truman’s presidency, that strategy has been overwhelmingly focused on the Kremlin’s arsenal. Mr. Biden’s new guidance suggests how quickly that is shifting.
China was mentioned in the last nuclear guidance, issued at the end of the Trump administration, according to an unclassified account provided to Congress in 2020. But that was before the scope of Mr. Xi’s ambitions was understood.
The Biden strategy sharpens that focus to reflect the Pentagon’s estimates that China’s nuclear force would expand to 1,000 by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035, roughly the numbers that the United States and Russia now deploy. In fact, Beijing now appears ahead of that schedule, officials say, and has begun loading nuclear missiles into new silo fields that were spotted by commercial satellites three years ago.
There is another concern about Beijing: It has now halted a short-lived conversation with the United States about improving nuclear safety and security — for example, by agreeing to warn each other of impending missile tests, or setting up hotlines or other means of communication to assure that incidents or accidents do not escalate into nuclear encounters.
One discussion between the two countries took place late last fall, just before Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi met in California, where they sought to repair relations between the two countries. They referred to those talks in a joint statement, but by that time the Chinese had already hinted they were not interested in further discussions, and earlier this summer said the conversations were over. They cited American arms sales to Taiwan, which were underway long before the nuclear safety conversations began.
Mallory Stewart, the assistant secretary for arms control, deterrence and stability at the State Department, said in an interview that the Chinese government was “actively preventing us from having conversations about the risks.”
Instead, she said, Beijing “seems to be taking a page out of Russia’s playbook that, until we address tensions and challenges in our bilateral relationship, they will choose not to continue our arms control, risk reduction and nonproliferation conversations.”
It was in China’s interest, she argued, “to prevent these risks of miscalculation and misunderstanding.”
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6) The War in Gaza Is Making Thousands of Orphans
Extended families, hospital staff and volunteers are stepping in to care for Gaza’s many newly orphaned children, some of whom are injured, traumatized and haunted by memories of their parents.
By Vivian Yee and Bilal Shbair, Reporting from Cairo and Khan Younis, Gaza, Aug. 22, 2024
Palestinian children attending a recreational summer camp for orphaned children last month in the northern Gaza Strip. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Abdullah Akeila, left, and his brother Ahmed, right, in Gaza. Credit...Bilal Shbair for The New York Times
The boys are aching to see their parents again. They are convinced it will happen as soon as they can go back to Gaza City, where they were growing up before the war bulldozed that life.
“Baba and mama will be waiting for us there,” they say to their aunt Samar, who is taking care of the four of them, Mohammed, Mahmoud, Ahmed and Abdullah Akeila. They say this even though they were told their parents are dead, have been dead for months, ever since the airstrike that hit next to where the family was sheltering.
Except for Ahmed, the second youngest at 13, none of them saw the bodies. The brothers spend every passing milestone in tears, almost unable to speak — Mother’s Day was hard; so was the Eid holiday — yet still they hold out hope. Every evening when the sundown prayer is said, 9-year-old Abdullah says he can hear his mother’s voice.
Their aunt, Samar al-Jaja, 31, who shares a tent with the children in the Gazan city of Khan Younis, is at a loss. “When they see other parents holding their kids close and talking to them,” she said, “how do they feel?”
The war in Gaza is taking children from parents and parents from children, undoing the natural order of things, rupturing the basic unit of Gazan life. It is making so many orphans in such chaos that no agency or aid group can count them.
Medical staff say children are left to roam hospital hallways and fend for themselves after being rushed there bloodied and alone — “wounded child, no surviving family,” some hospitals label them. Neonatal units house babies whom no one has come to claim.
In Khan Younis, a volunteer-run camp has sprung up to shelter more than 1,000 children who have lost one or both parents, including the Akeilas. One section is dedicated to “only survivors,” children who have lost their entire families, except perhaps a sibling. There is a long waiting list.
Amid the bombing, the constant pell-mell evacuations from tent to tent and apartment to hospital to shelter, no one can say how many children have lost track of their parents, and how many have lost them for good.
Using a statistical method drawn from analyzing other wars, United Nations experts estimate that at least 19,000 children are now surviving apart from their parents, whether with relatives, with other caretakers or on their own.
But the true figure is probably higher. Those other wars did not involve this much bombing and this much displacement in such a small and crowded place, with a population that includes such a high proportion of children, said Jonathan Crickx, a spokesman for the U.N. children’s agency.
The Israeli military says it takes precautions to limit harm to civilians in its devastating campaign in Gaza to eradicate Hamas over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which left about 1,200 people dead and roughly 250 taken hostage. More than 100 captives still remain in Gaza, at least 30 of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel accuses Hamas of endangering Gazans by operating in their midst. Hamas defends its use of civilian clothes and civilian homes, saying its members have no alternative.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed: many of them children, many parents. In April, 41 percent of families Mr. Crickx’s agency surveyed in Gaza were caring for children not their own.
A few children have been born orphans, after their wounded mothers died during labor, said Dr. Deborah Harrington, a British obstetrician who saw two babies born that way while volunteering in Gaza in December.
Far more often, children and parents are sundered when Israeli forces arrest parents, or after an airstrike, the children rushed to hospitals alone in the confusion.
Doctors say they have treated many newly orphaned children, many of them amputees.
“There was no one there to hold their hand, no one there to give them comfort” during the agonizing operations, said Dr. Irfan Galaria, a plastic surgeon from Virginia who volunteered at a Gaza hospital in February.
Aid workers try to track down parents, if they are alive, or relatives. But government systems that could have helped have collapsed. Communications are spotty. Evacuation orders split up family trees, sending the splinters in all directions.
Some young children are so traumatized that they go mute and cannot give their names, making the search near-impossible, according to SOS Children’s Villages, an aid group that runs a Gaza orphanage.
Then there is Mennat-Allah Salah, 11, who talks constantly about her parents. Orphaned in December, she copies the way her mother laughed, winked, walked. She wears her mother’s sneakers and favorite T-shirt, too big though they are.
“My mom,” she said, “was everything to me,” and tears came, and she could not go on.
Among the premature babies who arrived at the Emirati Hospital in the southern city of Rafah in November was a 3-week-old girl whose family was unknown. Her file said she had been found next to a Gaza City mosque after an airstrike that killed dozens of people, according to Amal Abu Khatleh, a neonatal nurse at the hospital. The staff called her “Majhoul,” Arabic for “unidentified.”
Upset by the starkness of that name, Ms. Abu Khatleh decided to give her a proper one: Malak, or “angel.” She called journalists in northern Gaza to find out which families had lost members in a strike near where Malak was found, then questioned patients with those surnames about a missing baby girl. No luck.
In January, worried about Malak’s development, Ms. Abu Khatleh took her home.
As in other Muslim societies, religious strictures make legal adoption impossible in Gaza, though people can take in and financially sponsor orphans. Yet Ms. Abu Khatleh’s family, friends and colleagues rallied around her, donating clothes, formula and diapers.
Unless she finds Malak’s parents, she said, she plans to keep her, despite the legal hurdles.
“I feel Malak is my real daughter,” she said. “I love her. My friends even say she looks like me now.”
In most instances, aid officials say, Gaza’s close-knit extended families step in as caretakers. So it went with the Akeila brothers.
Their aunt, Ms. al-Jaja, told the story: There were seven of them, the father, a tailor, the mother, who stayed at home, their four sons and their baby daughter, Fatima.
On Oct. 23, they were sheltering at a relative’s house when an airstrike shattered a neighboring building, according to the family. Zahra Akeila, 40, was killed alongside Fatima, their bodies dug out by relatives six hours later.
Ms. al-Jaja wept for her sister, she recalled. But Ahmed, the only child there to see his mother’s body in her coffin, stayed dry-eyed and silent with shock.
His eldest brother, Mohammed, 21, has been developmentally disabled since birth. The family lied to him at first, saying his mother was in surgery. Mahmoud, 19, who was badly injured in his right leg, was sent to another hospital before they could tell him.
Abdullah, the youngest at 9, was still being treated when they buried her. Hours before the strike, he remembered her making them dinner, handing them juice and chips, promising a few shekels’ allowance; he remembered hearing a boom, remembered her ushering them away from the windows.
The next thing he knew, he said, he was waking up in the hospital. When he would not stop asking about his mother, relatives finally told him, “Mama is in heaven now,” Ms. al-Jaja said.
Another few days, and the children’s father, Mohammed Kamel Akeila, 44, who had been hanging on in intensive care, was dead.
Israel’s military said that the building next to the Akeilas’ shelter that it struck had been Hamas “infrastructure,” without giving details.
Ms. al-Jaja soon left her fiancé in another city to live with the boys. Even after she marries, she said, she and the boys’ uncle will help their grandparents raise them.
“These children’s future is nothing without their parents,” she said. But they would try: “Their mother was such a kind person. Now we have to pay back all the good things she did for us.”
The camp provides some meals and cash. As everyone struggles for survival, however, U.N. social workers have seen a few Gazan families prioritize their own children over orphaned relatives, Mr. Crickx said. And orphans are highly vulnerable to exploitation, violence and abuse.
If they make it to peacetime, shelter, clean water and mental and physical health care will be doubtful, to say nothing of their education, job and marriage prospects.
Even for children who still have parents, postwar Gaza will be a difficult place to grow up, said Mahmoud Kalakh, a charity worker who founded the orphans’ camp.
“So what about these children who have no source of income or provider, having lost their fathers or mothers?” he said.
Abu Bakr Bashir and Ameera Harouda contributed reporting.
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7) Officials Try to Salvage Negotiations for a Cease-Fire in Gaza
By Isabel Kershner reporting from Jerusalem, August 22, 2024
Displaced Palestinians who fled the western part of Khan Younis in Gaza on Wednesday following an evacuation order by the Israeli army. Credit...Mohammed Salem/Reuters
Last-ditch efforts to salvage talks on a cease-fire in Gaza continued on Thursday, hours after President Biden emphasized the “urgency” of closing the deal in a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel amid dimming prospects for a breakthrough.
In the call on Wednesday, Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu discussed upcoming talks in Cairo “to remove any remaining obstacles” to the proposed cease-fire and hostage release deal, according to a statement from the White House.
There was no mention of when those talks might take place, although the White House had said a few days ago that senior negotiators hoped to reconvene in Cairo to finalize the agreement before the end of this week. Mr. Netanyahu’s office confirmed that the call had taken place but did not offer details. An Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Vice President Kamala Harris joined the call.
The Biden administration has been leading the latest push for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, with Egypt and Qatar acting as mediators, and has presented a “bridging proposal” meant to close, or at least narrow, the gaps between the sides.
But a visit to the region this week by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken ended without any apparent resolution to major sticking points — and in acrimony, with Mr. Netanyahu and Hamas officials trading blame for obstructing progress.
One main focus of disagreement is Mr. Netanyahu’s insistence on maintaining an Israeli military presence along the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow piece of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. The Israeli leader has argued that the area has served as a main conduit for weapons smuggling into Gaza, and that abandoning it would allow Hamas to quickly rearm.
Egypt and Hamas strongly object to continued Israeli control of the area, calling for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and Israeli security officials have suggested that other solutions can be found.
Israeli negotiators were taken aback and, in some cases, angered by Mr. Blinken’s statements this week that Mr. Netanyahu had accepted the American bridging proposal and that it was now up to Hamas, according to people familiar with the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share the thinking within Israel’s top security and decision-making circles.
Those statements — which came after a nearly three-hour meeting on Monday between Mr. Blinken and Mr. Netanyahu — made it appear that the Israeli prime minister and the Biden administration saw eye-to-eye on an issue that Hamas clearly would not accede to, one of the people said, dooming the prospects of an agreement. Instead, they said, Mr. Blinken could have just called more vaguely for flexibility on both sides.
The details of the bridging proposal have not been made public. An Israeli official with knowledge of the talks, who was not authorized to speak about them publicly, cautioned that few people really know what is being said behind closed doors, and said that talks were continuing at various levels as part of a difficult negotiation.
Before departing Qatar, the last stop on his regional tour, Mr. Blinken apparently engaged in some damage control, saying, “The agreement is very clear on the schedule and the locations of I.D.F. withdrawals from Gaza,” referring to the Israeli military. He added: “Israel has agreed to that.”
In a follow-up call on Wednesday with the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, Mr. Blinken underscored that the bridging proposal addressed the remaining gaps “in a manner that allows for swift implementation of the deal,” according to a State Department readout of the call.
Mr. Blinken and the emir “welcomed the next round of talks in Cairo,” the statement added, without specifying a date. A meeting between Mr. Blinken and the emir planned for earlier in the week in Qatar was called off because Mr. Al-Thani was feeling unwell.
The Biden administration, Egypt and Qatar have also pushed for a cease-fire in hopes that it will calm tensions between Israel and Iran, which has pledged to retaliate for the killings last month of senior leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, two of its proxy forces in the region. Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, the Qatari prime minister, will travel to Iran in the coming days for talks with senior officials, Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported on Thursday.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
A deadly Israeli airstrike hits the West Bank, and other news.
· An Israeli airstrike hit the West Bank town of Tulkarm, the Israeli military and Palestinian news media reported on Thursday. Three Palestinians were killed in the Thursday morning strike, which hit a home in Tulkarm, according to Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited control in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. A spokesman for the Israeli military, Avichay Adraee, said that an Air Force unit had targeted “armed terrorists.” Nearly 600 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank from the start of the war in Gaza in October through Aug. 12, according to the United Nations.
· Israeli warplanes attacked more than 10 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon overnight, the Israeli military said in a statement on Thursday. Israeli forces have conducted at least two similar rounds of strikes against the powerful Iranian-backed militia this week. The two sides have traded cross-border strikes for months.
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8) Sugar Industry Faces Pressure Over Coerced Hysterectomies and Labor Abuses
After an investigation that ran in The New York Times, the industry is edging toward change. But companies in western India are reluctant to abandon an abusive labor system.
By Megha Rajagopalan, Megha Rajagopalan spent months with the sugar cane harvesters of Maharashtra, India, to investigate labor abuses. She reported this article from London, Aug. 22, 2024
Workers said that they made the equivalent of $5 a day. Mill owners said that changing labor practices would jeopardize their businesses by making it easier for employees to leave. Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
The sugar industry is facing pressure to clean up its supply chains and improve oversight after revelations that women in India, the world’s second-largest sugar producer, work in debt bondage and are coerced into getting hysterectomies.
In the wake of the report, a group of labor leaders in India went on a three-day hunger strike recently to demand better working conditions. One of the companies that buys sugar in Maharashtra, Coca-Cola, quietly met with Indian government leaders and sugar suppliers last month to discuss responsible harvesting. And Bonsucro, a sugar industry body that sets standards, said that it would create a human rights task force.
The investigation into the sugar industry, by The New York Times and The Fuller Project, revealed a range of labor abuses, including that female sugar cane cutters in the western India state of Maharashtra were pushed into illegal child marriages so that they could work alongside their husbands. Locked into debt to their employers, the women are forced to return to the fields season after season, the report found.
Women also described facing pressure to undergo hysterectomies for routine ailments like painful periods, adding that they usually had to borrow from their employers to pay for the surgery. That often ended the women’s periods and kept them in the fields, but such procedures can also have consequences including early menopause.
Sugar producers and buyers have known about this abusive system for years, the investigation revealed. But multinational companies have done little in response. One mill that profited off abuses even received a seal of approval from Bonsucro. (Major brands like Coke, PepsiCo, Unilever and General Mills have used Bonsucro endorsements to bolster the images of their supply chains.)
Since the investigation was published, labor and environmental groups on Bonsucro’s member council have pushed to create a task force to improve inspections and to determine how inspectors missed the abuses. Bonsucro’s chief executive, Danielle Morley, had been aware that coerced hysterectomies were a problem in Maharashtra, the investigation found, but no one told inspectors to look out for it.
Companies were slow to agree to a task force, according to people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss the process, but they ultimately endorsed its creation.
Bonsucro said in an email that the working group had “received widespread support” from members. But Jason Glaser, who sits on the Bonsucro members council and is chief of La Isla Network, a Washington-based research group focusing on workers’ health and safety, said that he would like to see the brands “make more vocal and clear commitments.”
“They shouldn’t outsource the solution completely,” he added, referring to the task force. “They’ve made their money on the way things are, and the way things are is bad.”
Mr. Glaser said that the task force would initially focus on reports of coerced hysterectomies.
At the heart of the abuses is how workers are paid. Instead of wages, migrant workers in Maharashtra receive advances each season. Those function as loans that are repaid through work. With no documentation or rules governing the advances, workers often finish the season in debt and must return.
Workers said that they made the equivalent of $5 a day. Mill owners said that the workers had always been paid that way and that changing the practice would jeopardize their businesses by making it easier for workers to leave.
Maurice van Beers, a representative of the Dutch labor organization CNV Internationaal, said the industry’s focus needed to change. “I’ve been in discussions, sitting in a very luxurious conference room talking about sustainability, but it’s hard to talk about living wages for the poorest workers,” he said.
Coca-Cola and Pepsico have said that they are looking into the problems. Pepsico said that, when compared to Maharashtra’s total production, the company and its partners bought a relatively small amount of the state’s sugar.
After the investigation’s publication, Coca-Cola officials met with farm owners and Indian politicians to start a project called the Coalition for Responsible Sugarcane India.
Coca-Cola did not elaborate on the coalition’s goals, but said that it had expanded programs to work toward “continuous improvement” with suppliers in Maharashtra.
A union of cane harvesters in India said last week that the five labor leaders who had gone on hunger strike had carried out their protest at the sugar commissioner’s office in Pune, a city in Maharashtra.
Mr. Glaser of La Isla Network said that he would like to see a pilot project in which companies invested to improve the supply chain of a single sugar mill. That could cost $2 million to $3.5 million, he said, a tiny fraction of the profits of multinational companies. If successful, that could be a model.
“No one will go bankrupt or lose their competitive edge by making sure women aren’t forced to have hysterectomies,” Mr. Glaser said.
Qadri Inzamam, a reporter with The Fuller Project, contributed reporting.
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9) Farm Workers Union Battles California Grower Owned by Democratic Donors
Wonderful Nurseries, owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, has sued the state to overturn a labor organizing law championed by the United Farm Workers.
By Kurtis Lee, Reporting from Los Angeles, Aug. 22, 2024
Members of the United Farm Workers marching in 2022 to urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that they argued would make it easier for farmworkers to organize. Credit...Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle, via Associated Press
The allegations ricocheted through the agricultural fields and into a Central Valley courthouse, where one of California’s most powerful companies and an iconic union were trading charges of deception and coercion in a fight over worker representation.
Some farmworkers at Wonderful Nurseries — part of the Wonderful Company, the conglomerate behind famous brands of pomegranate juice and pistachios, as well as Fiji Water — said they had been duped into signing cards to join a union. On the other side, the United Farm Workers, the union formed in the 1960s by labor figures including Cesar Chavez, contends that the influential company, owned by the Los Angeles billionaires and powerhouse Democratic donors Stewart and Lynda Resnick, is trying to thwart the will of workers through intimidation and coercion.
For months, the back and forth has played out before the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which arbitrates labor fights between workers and growers, and in a courthouse not far from Wonderful’s sprawling fields.
In May, the company filed a legal challenge against the state that could overturn a 2022 law that made it easier for farmworkers to take part in unionization votes.
After vetoing a previous version over procedural concerns, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the measure following public pressure from President Biden and Representative Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker. The U.F.W. heralded the bill’s enactment as a critical victory, but several big growers said that it would allow union organizers to unfairly influence the process.
The law paved the way for farmworkers to vote for union representation by signing union authorization cards, a process known simply as card check. Its passage coincided with an era of greater mobilization to unionize workers during the pandemic and a willingness to press demands for better working conditions and respect from employers, said Victor Narro, project director and labor studies professor at the U.C.L.A. Labor Center.
“There is new energy in the fight for a voice in the workplace, which is why there has been a wave of union organizing campaigns since the pandemic,” Mr. Narro said.
Last fall, the U.F.W. secured its first organizing success in six years, unionizing nearly 300 workers at a tomato packing plant in the Central Valley using the card check system.
The union now represents around 7,000 workers, compared with 60,000 in the 1970s. That substantial contraction has been attributed to a variety of factors: strife and attrition within the union’s early nucleus, disillusionment among members, pushback from growers, strategic missteps, and an insufficient emphasis on organizing.
In recent months, the union has focused its organizing and legal efforts on the battle against Wonderful Nurseries, whose owners, the Resnicks, have donated millions to Democratic politicians and philanthropic ventures that have landed their names on facilities at U.C.L.A., the Hammer Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The U.F.W. filed a petition with the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board in February attesting that most of the more than 600 farmworkers at Wonderful Nurseries in the small Central Valley city of Wasco had signed union authorization cards.
But Wonderful quickly pushed back, filing a motion asking the board to halt the process of certifying the workers’ signatures.
The company provided signed declarations from roughly 150 workers claiming that the U.F.W. had made them think that signing the cards was a prerequisite to receive $600 in federal relief funds for farmworkers.
Some said that union workers had “stalked” them and “tricked” them into signing, according to transcripts.
The labor relations board allowed the certification process to move forward. A regional director of the board acknowledged in a hearing of the panel that it had not addressed the concerns outlined in the declarations, according to transcripts.
Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns for the U.F.W., said the effort to organize at Wonderful is about ensuring fundamental respect and fairness for both subcontracted and direct employees.
“These workers wanted to have a voice on the job where their work is building enormous profits for the company, and they have the right to come together and form their union,” Ms. Strater said.
But some workers who initially signed cards later gathered for an April protest to publicly distance themselves from the unionization effort. They chanted and carried signs that read “No queremos unión!” — “We do not want union!”
“They said clearly — this I do remember — that it was $600 of aid for farmworkers who worked during Covid,” Claudia Chavez, an employee of a labor contractor for Wonderful, told The Los Angeles Times. She said she had not known she was voting for the union.
The U.F.W. filed a complaint with the labor relations board claiming unfair labor practices by Wonderful, arguing that it had used union-busting tactics to coerce workers into filing the declarations.
According to the complaint, workers were pressured by human resources managers and a consultant to assert that they had been misled and did not want to be a part of the union. Inside a conference room and a greenhouse, according to the complaint, the managers and the consultant spoke with workers in Spanish, intimidating and persuading them to revoke their signatures from the cards.
The labor relations board’s general counsel sided with the union and ordered the company to “cease and desist from interrogating agricultural employees regarding their union support.” In response to the ruling, the company said the board “shows once again they are more interested in shamelessly backing the U.F.W. than protecting farmworkers or safeguarding the integrity of a union vote.”
In May, Wonderful sued the board, arguing that the state law allowing unionization through card check deprives employers of due process. The lawsuit came toward the end of a 90-day window for the company and the union to reach a collective bargaining agreement or have one prescribed by the board.
During a June hearing for the lawsuit, dozens of U.F.W. members marched outside the courthouse. Using megaphones and donning bright red T-shirts emblazoned with the union symbol — the Aztec eagle — they castigated Wonderful as a dishonest company that did not care about workers.
Last month, the judge overseeing the case issued a preliminary injunction that halted the bargaining process.
A final ruling is pending, but the judge indicated that Wonderful was “likely to prevail” on its challenge to the 2022 law, adding that compliance “with a process that is likely unconstitutional” would cause irreparable harm.
In a statement, Rob Yraceburu, president of Wonderful Nurseries, said the “company’s history of working with agricultural workers is rooted in mutual trust, collaboration and respect.” (Some company subsidiaries are unionized or have been in the past.)
He said that after hearing from farmworkers that they had “felt misled” into signing the union authorization cards, “we answered these employee questions with full transparency and honesty.”
The company said the Resnicks had declined to comment on the dispute.
Teresa Romero, president of the U.F.W., released a public letter to supporters after the preliminary injunction was granted.
“It’s very clear Wonderful is determined to use its considerable resources to deny farmworkers their rights,” she said. “This is a heavy blow, but these workers are courageous and determined to seek what they deserve: dignity at work and a fair union contract.”
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