‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 345: Israel threatens Lebanon again
Israeli settler violence continues to terrorize Palestinians in the Jordan Valley as the U.S. envoy arrives in the region to deescalate tensions along Lebanon's southern border.
By Qassam Muaddi, September 16, 2024
Casualties
· 41,226 + killed* and at least 95,413 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 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*
· 704+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes 146 children.**
· Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
· The Israeli army recognizes the death of 708 Israeli soldiers and the injury of 4096 others 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 September 16, 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 September 16, 2024.
*** 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) At Funeral in Turkey, Family Mourns American Activist Killed by Israeli Gunfire
The father of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a dual citizen of Turkey and the United States, said that Washington had not done enough to pressure Israel over her death.
By Ben Hubbard and Gulsin Harman, Reporting from Didim, Turkey, Sept. 14, 2024
The coffin of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was carried during her funeral at the Didim Merkez Camisi (Didim Central Mosque) in the Turkish Aegean town of Didim, western Turkey, on Saturday. Credit...Bradley Secker for The New York Times
With Turkish flags flying and chants of “God is great” resounding through the cemetery, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish American activist killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank, was laid to rest on Saturday in a town near Turkey’s Aegean coast.
Although she moved to the United States as a toddler, acquired citizenship and spent most of her life there, the funeral for Ms. Eygi, 26, was deeply Turkish, and profoundly pro-Palestinian.
Hundreds of people, many carrying Palestinian flags and wearing Palestinian scarves, gathered at the central mosque in the town of Didim to say prayers for her, including senior Turkish officials. No American officials attended, and there was not an American flag in sight.
In the 11 months since the war in Gaza began, Ms. Eygi’s two countries have taken starkly different stances toward the conflict. The United States has stood by Israel, continuing to supply its military with bombs even as concerns about civilian deaths have mounted. Turkey, on the other hand, has embraced the Palestinians, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decrying Israel’s conduct and standing up for Hamas, which Israel, the United States and other countries consider a terrorist organization.
Two relatives of Ms. Eygi said the American response to her killing had frustrated them. In an interview before her funeral, her father, also a U.S. citizen, said the United States had not stood up for her.
“I have been living in the U.S. for 25 years, and I know how seriously the U.S. looks out for the safety of its citizens abroad,” said her father, Mehmet Suat Eygi. “I know that when something happens, the U.S. will attack like the eagle on its seal. But when Israel is in question, it transforms into a dove.”
Ms. Eygi, 26, was shot in the head and died on Sept. 6 during a protest by Palestinian and international activists against an Israeli settler outpost near the West Bank village of Beita. The Israeli military has said it is “highly likely” that she was hit “indirectly and unintentionally” and that the matter was still being investigated.
Other activists who were with her at the time said that she had been standing more than 200 yards away and downhill from the soldiers. They added that the protest, during which some demonstrators had thrown stones, had calmed down by the time she was shot.
Senior officials from both of Ms. Eygi’s countries — she was born in Turkey but obtained U.S. citizenship in 2005, her father said, and had lived in the Seattle area — have condemned her killing.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Tuesday called the killing “unprovoked and unjustified,” and on Wednesday, President Biden said in a statement that he was “outraged and deeply saddened” by her death.
“There must be full accountability,” Mr. Biden said.
But addressing the mourners in Didim on Saturday, Numan Kurtulmus, the speaker of the Turkish Parliament, criticized not just Israel, but at the countries that support it.
“This is not only the crime of a few murderous Israeli soldiers,” he said. “This is also the crime of the collaborative states who have the back of that terrorist state.”
Underlining the extent to which Turkey had adopted her killing as a national cause, other officials who attended the funeral included the vice president; the justice, interior and foreign ministers; the head of the largest opposition party and a former prime minister.
Her death came as international criticism of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza has been rising. More that 41,000 people have been killed, according to the Gazan health ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
Airstrikes continued into Saturday, with Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, reporting that 10 people, including women and children, had been killed in a strike that hit a home in Gaza City, among other deaths in the enclave. The Israeli military did not immediately comment.
Ms. Eygi’s body arrived in Turkey on Friday, where Turkey performed its own autopsy. The Turkish president, Mr. Erdogan, said on Monday that his country would pursue her case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Israel has rejected accusations of genocide, saying it is defending itself after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 that killed an estimated 1,200 people.
In Didim, a resort town near the Aegean coast where Ms. Eygi was to be buried, her father said that Turkey had taken a great interest in her case but that he had not received even a condolence call from any American official. An official from the U.S. Embassy in Ankara said that it had been providing consular assistance and had been in touch with Ms. Eygi’s family and with the Turkish authorities.
Mr. Eygi said, “The Turkish government is following the case,” adding, “I hope the U.S. government will do the same. An independent investigation is our biggest wish, but we don’t know how it can be done.”
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2) Nixon Started the War on Drugs. Privately, He Said Pot Was ‘Not Particularly Dangerous.’
President Richard Nixon’s remarks were captured on his secret White House recording system but had eluded the notice of leading Nixon era historians until now.
By Ernesto Londoño, Sept. 14, 2024
President Nixon in an image from Oct. 12, 1973, with, from left, Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford and Alexander Haig. Credit...Associated Press
Demonstrators in Berkeley, Calif., protested the Vietnam War in 1965. Credit...Associated Press
Two years after former President Richard M. Nixon launched a war on drugs in 1971, calling substance use the nation’s “public enemy No. 1,” he made a startling admission during a meeting in the Oval Office.
Speaking to a small group of aides and advisers at the White House in March 1973, Nixon said he knew that marijuana was “not particularly dangerous.”
Nixon, who had publicly argued that curbing drug use globally warranted an “all-out offensive,” also privately expressed unease about the harsh punishments Americans were facing for marijuana crimes. “Penalties should be commensurate with the crime,” Nixon said during that Oval Office conversation, calling a 30-year sentence in a case he recently had learned about “ridiculous.”
The remarks were captured on the president’s secret recording system amid a set of tapes that were only recently made widely available. A lobbyist for the cannabis industry in Minnesota pored over hours of the tapes and came across the remarks, which leading historians on the Nixon era said they found revelatory.
The comments, on scratchy, sometimes hard-to-hear recordings, provide a surprising glimpse into the thinking of the president who implemented the federal government’s drug classification system and decided that marijuana belonged in a category of substances deemed most prone to abuse and of no proven medical value. Over five decades, that designation has led to millions of arrests, which disproportionately affected Black people and hobbled efforts to rigorously study the therapeutic potential of cannabis.
These new insights into the way Nixon spoke about marijuana are coming to light as federal marijuana policy is being reconsidered.
In 2022, President Biden issued a proclamation pardoning thousands of people convicted of certain marijuana crimes under federal law. This spring, the Justice Department signaled its intention to downgrade marijuana in the government’s drug regulatory system, citing a consensus by federal health officials that the plant did not belong in the category of drugs deemed most harmful, known as Schedule I, which includes heroin and L.S.D. (Cocaine and fentanyl, for instance, are included in a more lenient category.)
The two main presidential candidates, too, have voiced support for less restrictive marijuana policies. Vice President Kamala Harris said in March that it was “absurd” that marijuana remains a Schedule I drug. Donald J. Trump has also backed loosening marijuana laws.
Support for easing marijuana policy is not universal. In July, 11 attorneys general urged the Department of Justice to keep cannabis in Schedule I. In a letter, they expressed concern about the appeal of newer, more potent strains of THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana, particularly among young users.
Experts on the Nixon years said that they were previously unaware of the recordings of Nixon speaking about marijuana and that the remarks were significant in light of the policies he had championed, which remain the backbone of today’s drug laws.
“It is counter to his image as sort of the ultimate square of the 1960s and ’70s,” said Gregory Cumming, a government archivist and historian who has worked since 2003 at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.
Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University who coauthored two books about the Nixon tapes, said the comments bolster other historical evidence suggesting that Nixon’s war on drugs was less a reflection of his personal philosophy than a strategy aimed in large part at undermining his political opponents.
“It reinforces Nixon as a Machiavellian political operative,” Mr. Brinkley said, adding that the former president “dehumanized drug users because it was in his political interest to do so.”
Dr. Jerome H. Jaffe, a psychiatry professor who served as Nixon’s drug czar from 1971 to 1973, said in an interview that he did not recall hearing the former president say that marijuana was not particularly dangerous.
Dr. Jaffe called Nixon’s recorded remarks “an interesting discovery.” But he added that he was “not surprised that a number of people, maybe including Nixon, didn’t think marijuana was as dangerous as heroin or cocaine.”
Dr. Jaffe said discussions of drug policy from the era, in which some American troops were returning from Vietnam addicted to drugs like heroin, often overlook Mr. Nixon’s emphasis on getting people with substance abuse issues into treatment.
Prevailing views on marijuana at the time would have made it politically tough for Nixon to take a more lenient approach, Dr. Jaffe said. “Not everything a politician does at a high level is highly correlated with what they think,” he said.
The legal status of cannabis in the United States had fluctuated for decades by the time Nixon, a Republican, was first elected president in 1968.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, American doctors used cannabis to treat a range of conditions. But in the early 1900s, a surge of migrants from Mexico, some of whom smoked marijuana recreationally, led to a backlash, prompting several states to criminalize its use.
In 1937, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act, which effectively criminalized recreational cannabis and all but ended research into its medical applications.
In 1969, the Supreme Court found that law unconstitutional because it violated protections against self-incrimination. But a year later, Nixon once again made marijuana use illegal under federal law, signing the Controlled Substances Act, which established a five-tier classification system ranking drugs based on the government’s perception of their medicinal value and potential for abuse.
The Nixon administration provisionally placed marijuana in Schedule I and appointed a commission to study the health risks. Nixon picked nine of the commission’s 13 members.
All along, Nixon made it clear that he intended marijuana to remain illegal, saying in a recorded 1971 conversation that historians documented years ago: “I want a goddamn strong statement on marijuana.”
But a year later, the commission issued a report that seemed starkly at odds with that desire.
The commission concluded that cannabis use did “not constitute a major threat to public health,” and said it had found no compelling evidence to support widely held notions that marijuana was a gateway to more harmful drugs or a driver of violent crime.
Cannabis use should be decriminalized, the commission suggested, urging the government to curb its use through “persuasion rather than prosecution.”
Nixon ignored the recommendations and kept marijuana in Schedule I.
“In the 1970s, we have to remember that there was a significant group of Americans who thought that marijuana was just about the worst drug in the world,” Mr. Cumming said.
Yet the newly noted recordings indicate that he did not share that view.
In a 1972 recording, Nixon can be heard telling a senior aide that he favored a “modification of penalties” as they discussed drug crimes, “but I don’t talk about it anymore.”
In the Oval Office meeting the following year, Nixon was more expansive. John Ehrlichman, a Nixon aide who later went to prison over the Watergate scandal, and Jerry V. Wilson, who at the time was the police chief in Washington, were among those present.
“Let me tell you, I know nothing about marijuana,” Nixon said at one point. “I know that it’s not particularly dangerous, and most of the kids are for legalizing it. But on the other hand, it’s the wrong signal at this time.”
Nixon can be heard pondering whether marijuana is more harmful than other popular substances like alcohol, cigarettes and even coffee. He said he was open to loosening penalties for drug crimes. But at a time when Nixon perceived the government was “starting to win the war on drugs,” he was reluctant to have a candid debate about substance use.
There were earlier signs of a disconnect between Nixon’s drug policies and his private views.
Mr. Wilson, who became a critic of the war on drugs, wrote in 1994 that Nixon had once told him marijuana was likely no more dangerous than the president’s “favorite psychoactive drug,” the martini.
In 2016, Harper’s Magazine published an article that included excerpts from a 22-year-old interview with Mr. Ehrlichman, who was quoted saying that the Nixon administration intentionally misled the public about the danger of drugs to undermine some of its main opponents: Black activists and groups opposed to the Vietnam War.
“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Mr. Ehrlichman said, according to Harper’s.
Kurtis Hanna, a Minnesota lobbyist who supports drug legalization, has been fascinated by the history of drug policy ever since he was arrested inside a casino in Iowa in 2009 and charged with possession of marijuana.
Last year, he spent hours listening to recordings on the Nixon Library website, including some that were posted online only in the last couple of years. When he heard Nixon say marijuana was not “particularly dangerous,” Mr. Hanna said, he was shocked.
“He was essentially saying the exact opposite of what I understood him to believe,” said Mr. Hanna, 39, who shared his findings with The New York Times.
Mr. Cumming and Mr. Brinkley said it was unsurprising the remarks had been overlooked. Scholars, they said, have tended to focus more on Nixon’s foreign policy and the Watergate scandal. While the Nixon tapes — some 3,700 hours of recordings in all — have given historians a trove of information, mining them has been a laborious process.
Since Colorado and Washington in 2012 became the first states to legalize recreational cannabis, its use in the United States has soared, turning marijuana into a multibillion dollar industry. Public support for legalizing marijuana has grown, polling shows.
Dr. Peter Grinspoon, a cannabis expert who teaches at Harvard Medical School, said that the Nixon era policy meant that for years the government mainly funded studies looking into marijuana’s dangers and showed little interest in its medicinal value. That has begun to change as experts have come to see cannabis as a promising tool to treat opioid addiction, side effects from cancer treatments and chronic pain.
“The opportunity cost of the policies of that era,” he said, “has been tremendous.”
Jack Begg contributed research.
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3) Ending the Boeing Strike Won’t Be Easy. Here’s Why.
The vehemence of workers over wages and other issues caught the company and union leaders off guard.
By Peter Eavis, Sept. 14, 2024
Boeing workers picketed outside the company’s facility in Renton, Wash. The strike comes at a critical time for Boeing’s finances and its reputation with customers and the public. Credit...Grant Hindsley for The New York Times
When thousands of Boeing employees rejected a new labor contract, precipitating a strike that began on Friday, they were at odds not just with management but also with the leaders of their union, who backed the proposed deal.
Now, any attempt to reach an agreement must take account of the demands of the rank and file of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. What they want — significantly larger pay raises and far more lucrative retirement benefits than their leaders and Boeing agreed to — may be too much for management. But labor experts said the strength of the strike vote — 96 percent in favor — should help the union get a better deal.
“Those overwhelming numbers are kind of embarrassing, certainly from a public relations standpoint for the union,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist who studies labor at Washington University in St. Louis. “But they also simultaneously present the union with leverage when it does resume negotiations.”
And Boeing is in a difficult spot after a slowdown in commercial jet production — required by regulators after a panel blew out of a passenger jet fuselage in January — led to big financial losses. A long strike at Boeing’s main production base in the Seattle area would add significantly to the losses and possibly tip its credit rating into junk territory, a chilling development for a company with nearly $60 billion in debt.
The federal mediation service said on Friday that the union and Boeing management would resume talks in the coming days.
“We’re going to go back to the bargaining table, and bargain for what our members deserve,” Jon Holden, the president of District 751, the part of the machinists’ union that represents most of the workers on strike, said in an interview. “We’ll push this company farther than they ever thought they’d go.”
Asked whether union leadership had been out of step with the rank and file, Mr. Holden said the vote on the deal enabled members’ views to be heard. “You must never forget that the real power is within your membership,” he said.
Brian West, Boeing’s chief financial officer, speaking at an investor conference on Friday, said the strike would “jeopardize our recovery,” but he also said management was willing to talk to try to get a deal done. “We want to get back to the table and we want to reach an agreement that’s good for our people, their families, our community,” he said.
Asked to comment for this article, Boeing referred to Mr. West’s remarks.
Reaching a deal will not be easy. Wages are a primary reason.
Mid-ranking workers represented by the machinists’ union currently earn a minimum of $20 an hour, which is in line with Amazon delivery drivers, who do not belong to unions. And though that $20 an hour is 25 percent higher than the $16 at the start of the contract, in 2008, inflation has been 44 percent since then.
“The cost of living in the Seattle area is very, very high,” said Andrew Hedden, associate director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at the University of Washington. “There’s been all these pressures that the company hasn’t kept up with.”
Boeing says it offered to raise wages by 25 percent on average for all jobs covered by the contract, with larger increases going to lower-paid workers. Employees who have been at the company for six years or longer earn significantly more than those making the minimum rate. The 5,000 mechanics who do the final check of airplane components and systems were offered annual wages of $130,000 in the deal at the end of the four-year contract, up from $102,000, Boeing said.
And the company offered to let workers carry over the higher wage rate when they switch jobs within the company. The machinists’ union said the current arrangement discouraged workers from seeking other types of work at Boeing to develop their careers.
Despite such offers, the rank and file wanted more, a 40 percent wage increase in particular. “We are firm on that,” said Phet Bouapha, a mechanic who has been at Boeing for nine years and is a union shop steward.
Retirement pay is also a key issue. A decade ago Boeing stopped offering a type of pension that pays out a predictable sum in retirement. “That’s a wound that may never heal,” Mr. Holden, the union leader, said.
Union members want the pension to return in a new contract and said the additional 401(k) contributions offered by management were not enough. “It’s important for people to have long-term security,” Mr. Bouapha said.
The last strike at Boeing, in 2008, lasted nearly two months, a long time for striking workers to be without a paycheck. Strike pay from the union is just $250 a week, beginning in the third week. Ruben Tishchuk, a mechanic who has been at Boeing for six years, said he had sufficient savings to get through at least two weeks of a strike.
“My kid wants to be like his dad and make airplanes, but what will his future be like if they keep chipping away at our benefits?” Mr. Tishchuk said, “It goes beyond me — I’m fighting for my kids’ and grandkids’ futures.”
Asked whether his members could bear a long strike on little income, Mr. Holden, the union leader, said, “The battle of time is going to play out here.”
The strike comes at a critical time for Boeing’s finances and its reputation with customers and the public. The company had to contend with the fallout from fatal crashes, in 2018 and 2019, of its 737 Max plane. The pandemic, which caused a severe drop in global air travel and supply chain snarls, walloped Boeing’s business. And this year a fuselage panel blew out of a plane in flight. Its defense business is weighed down by losses on fixed-price contracts.
Boeing’s leaders had hoped that production of commercial jets would pick up, enabling it to reverse the cash drain from its operations. In the first half of this year, the company’s operations had a cash outflow of over $7 billion. A strike on its own could cause a cash outflow of over $1 billion a month, Jefferies, a Wall Street firm, said in a research note on Friday.
Mr. West, the Boeing executive, said on Friday that the company would be “laserlike focused on actions to conserve cash.” Moody’s Investors Service said on Friday that it was weighing whether to downgrade Boeing’s credit rating to noninvestment grade — “junk” territory.
But labor experts say Boeing is not in such dire straits financially that it cannot afford to improve its offer. For all its problems, Boeing is an effective duopoly, with the European aerospace consortium Airbus, in the making of commercial aircraft and has an order book that will bring in significant revenue. The company said in a recent securities filing that its order backlog was $516 billion at the end of June, and that it expected nearly a fourth of that to be converted into revenue next year, and over two-thirds by the end of 2028.
“They are strong in the long run and in very solid market position,” said Harry Katz, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “They are not like a garment manufacturer with a whole range of competitors.”
Julie Weed contributed reporting and Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
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4) How Rituals of Faith Became Another Casualty of War
Photographs by Sergey Ponomarev, Written by Erika Solomon, Sept. 16, 2024
Israeli security officers observing a group of Palestinians praying outside Al Aqsa Mosque in April.
Palestinian Muslims, particularly those coming from the West Bank, have faced routine restrictions on access to Al Aqsa for years. The Israeli agency overseeing policy for the territory, responding to a question from The New York Times about the number of Palestinians granted entry since October, said that it had issued no permits to West Bank residents, even for access to the mosque, except for “specific laborers.”
Israel is also placing tighter restrictions on the roughly 50,000 Christians who live in the West Bank.
During Easter, Israel limited access to what is known as the celebration of the Holy Fire, when a flame is taken from what is believed to be Jesus’ tomb at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and used to light the candles of visitors. Israel cited safety reasons for the change, but Palestinians accused Israeli officials of curbing the centuries-old tradition as part of efforts to push them out of their ancestral lands.
In the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Christian celebrations have also been forced to break with tradition. In April, a procession of Easter worshipers that usually winds through the streets of central Bethlehem was canceled and held inside the Church of the Nativity instead.
The growing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians are mirrored within Israeli society, in particular in the divide between secular Jews and the ultra-Orthodox, a group that is now about 13 percent of Israel’s population.
In Bnei Brak, a city east of Tel Aviv that is considered Israel’s ultra-Orthodox capital, the photographs of Israeli hostages captured on Oct. 7 that are ubiquitous in more secular areas are notably absent. And some of the ultra-Orthodox celebrating Passover this year clashed with the police over another traditional ritual: the burning of all the bread in their homes before the holiday begins.
Instead of burning their bread in trash bins, as legally required, many defied the police and went to do so on nearby hillsides, aggravating the risk of forest fires that are already plaguing northern Israel amid the daily strikes exchanged between forces in the country’s north and militants across the border in Lebanon.
For Palestinians, there is no retreat from the post-Oct. 7 landscape. Many have lost jobs they once had in Israel, and those employed by the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, have seen their salaries cut as Israel has halted or slowed transfers of the funds that finance the territory’s operations.
The changes to the cultural and religious practices of Bethlehem’s Christians have not just dampened the mood but also devastated the economy. Tourism, which accounts for a major part of the town’s income, particularly during the holiday season, has plummeted since the start of the war.
Pilgrims no longer crowd Bethlehem’s cobblestone streets. Squares that echoed with the voices of butchers shouting out prices for their slabs of meat, or bakers selling holiday pastries, now are more likely to be silent.
During Ramadan, Laylat al-Qadr, or the Night of Power, is one of the most important dates in the Islamic calendar. For Muslims, it marks the night when the Quran was sent down from heaven to the world.
In years past, families would shop for treats and clothes ahead of that night. This spring, many residents met at their local mosque empty-handed but eager to preserve the tradition of family gatherings of prayer, while children played late into the night.
On Eid al-Fitr, the celebration at the end of Ramadan, families in the West Bank city of Nablus filled graveyards to offer early-morning prayers for loved ones there. When local fighters went to one cemetery to try to shoot guns in honor of their own dead, the families quietly asked them to move away, to avoid a potential crackdown by the authorities.
In the absence of visitors from the West Bank, many of those who traveled to Jerusalem for April’s holy days were Christian pilgrims from abroad. Yet their numbers, too, were much depleted, since tourism to Israel has plummeted more than 70 percent since the start of the war in Gaza.
While the devout of all religions push on determinedly with the practice of their faith, any feeling of celebration has struggled to survive. Those who come to Jerusalem find the long, ancient shopping thoroughfares that stretch through the city’s ancient quarters eerily empty.
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5) First Day of a ‘New Life’ for a Boy With Sickle Cell
Kendric Cromer, 12, is among the first patients to be treated with gene therapy just approved by the F.D.A. that many other patients face obstacles to receiving.
By Gina Kolata, Photographs by Kenny Holston, Sept. 16, 2024
With his parents, Deborah and Keith, who moved into the Kendric’s room for the duration of his hospitalization as he underwent treatment.
There was supposed to be a special party for Kendric Cromer, 12, last Wednesday, but it had to be postponed because he was too groggy to celebrate.
It was meant to mark the first day of his new life — the day he became one of the first children ever to be treated with a newly approved gene therapy that will free him from the sickle cell disease that has stolen his childhood.
On Sept. 11, despite the excitement of the moment, Kendric was unable to keep his eyes open as he lay in his hospital bed at Children’s National Hospital in Washington because of the drugs he had been given in preparation for his treatment.
His life with the disease has been punctuated by episodes of excruciating pain, requiring days in the hospital as doctors tried to control it. Sickle cell eroded his hip bones. It prevented him from riding a bike or playing soccer or even going outside when the temperature was below 55 degrees Fahrenheit because cold often brought on intense pain.
Now he could see a future — in a month or so — without pain from sickle cell.
“I can’t wait to start my new life,” he told his mother, Deborah Cromer.
His disease is caused by an inherited genetic mutation that leads to blood cells that form crescent shapes — sickles — instead of discs. Trapped in blood vessels and organs, the cells cause damage and pain. Gene therapy fixes that problem by giving the patient a new, normal hemoglobin gene.
An estimated 100,000 people in the United States, most of them Black, have sickle cell disease.
Gene therapy dangles the prospect of normalcy for the estimated 20,000 people in the United States with the most severe forms of the disease — lives without constant pain and continuing damage to organs and bones and joints.
But all is not well in the world of sickle cell gene therapy.
Last December, the Food and Drug Administration gave approval to two companies, Bluebird Bio of Somerville, Mass., and Vertex Pharmaceuticals of Boston, to sell the first gene therapies approved for sickle cell disease. After nine months, Kendric remains the first Bluebird patient to progress this far, with at least a few others advancing toward his pace.
Doctors say that it is agonizingly slow to actually start treating patients.
The first step is for Vertex or Bluebird to approve a medical center to deliver the treatment — a process that involves negotiating complex contracts. Bluebird, which sells its therapy only in the United States, declined to disclose how many medical centers it had authorized. Vertex says it has more than 26 authorized centers in the United States and nine more in Europe, Britain and the Middle East.
“We all expected it to be much faster,” said Dr. Leo Wang of City of Hope Children’s Cancer Center in Los Angeles, which has so far sent cells from one patient to Vertex for the treatment, and is in the final stages of getting authorization from Bluebird.
Another problem is capacity. The treatment is labor intensive, requiring patients to spend at least a month in the hospital. City of Hope can treat at least one patient a month, Dr. Wang said. Other large medical centers said they could treat only 10 or fewer per year, and some say they can treat just five or six.
Then there is insurance. Medical centers ask insurers for prior authorization. But even if they get it, hospital officials worry about how and when they will be paid.
“Authorization and reimbursement are not the same thing,” said Dr. Stephan Grupp at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which has not yet started treating patients.
The hospital, he says, has to buy the treatment for $2.2 million per patient from Vertex or $3.1 million from Bluebird. It is reimbursed after the therapy is delivered to the patient. Hospitals get nervous, Dr. Grupp said, because they have to lay out a lot of money. “They want to see that reimbursement happen,” he said.
Some hospitals decided to treat one patient at a time, limiting how much they commit up front.
Making the process even more cumbersome, a hospital has to negotiate separately with each patient’s insurer, said Dr. Julie Kanter of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her medical center has not yet started treating patients.
Most hospitals, she said, “don’t want to approve the treatment until they know what the payment plan looks like.”
A key insurer in the state has not yet committed to paying, Dr. Kanter said.
“It’s unbelievably frustrating,” she said.
Kendric was lucky. His insurer was cooperative. He also rose to the top of the list because of the severity of his disease.
He has been through so much, as have his parents, Ms. Cromer, a real estate agent, and Keith Cromer, a federal employee. They stay in his room every time he is hospitalized. Mr. Cromer sleeps on a chair and Ms. Cromer on a narrow bench.
His treatment began in May when doctors removed his bone marrow stem cells. These immature cells are the source of all the body’s blood. Bluebird’s gene therapy adds a good hemoglobin gene to the cells.
After removing the stem cells, Kendric’s doctors shipped them to Bluebird’s facility in Allendale, N.J.
At that time, Bluebird estimated it would take three to six months before the treated cells would be ready.
The summer started well for Kendric. He volunteered as a counselor at an art camp. And he looked forward to visiting with relatives in South Carolina and spending time at the beach. The family was packed and ready to leave on June 28, when Kendric called home from camp saying he had a terrible headache.
He turned out to have the bacterial infection MRSA, which is difficult to treat.
Although anyone can get such an infection, people with sickle cell are especially susceptible because their genetic disease damages the spleen, said Kendric’s doctor, Robert Nickel.
Mr. and Mrs. Cromer unpacked their bags, canceled their vacation, and moved into Kendric’s hospital room.
He was hospitalized for 10 days.
“We spent the Fourth of July here at the hospital,” Ms. Cromer said. He then spent six weeks at home on intravenous antibiotics.
Then the family got good news — Bluebird had completed its treatment of Kendric’s stem cells. The next step in his journey could begin.
On Sept. 5, he began four days of intense chemotherapy to clear his bone marrow, making way for his treated cells to repopulate his marrow.
The infusion began on Wednesday. Kendric took Benadryl to forestall any possible allergic reaction to chemicals used to preserve his cells, but it made him so groggy he could hardly stay awake. He lay in bed with his Spider-Man blanket, a teddy bear and a little stuffed dog.
At 11 a.m. Kendric’s cells were wheeled up to the door of his room, 537 million of them in two small plastic bags of straw-colored liquid, frozen in liquid nitrogen. The hospital’s cellular therapy lab manager, Kathryn Bushnell, thawed the first bag in a pool of warm water. Then Kendric’s nurse, Rachel Purdie, started the infusion.
It took one minute, filling the room with a faint garlic smell from the preservative used to keep his cells viable. He slept through it. Then he got the second bag of cells, opening his eyes this time.
The cells will take up residence in his marrow and gradually divide and grow, re-creating his blood system. In a month, if all works as intended, he should be making blood cells that will not sickle — the cells will have a normal hemoglobin gene.
Kendric will stay in the hospital for a month. During that time he can expect to feel very ill with ulcerating sores in his mouth, throat and esophagus that will emerge about a week after his last infusion. Patients often are unable to eat and have to be fed with a nasogastric line. Children’s National has a laser wand patients can put in their mouth to help prevent the sores.
A big disappointment for Kendric is that he is missing school. He’s a straight A student and says academics are his superpower. He will do his seventh-grade schoolwork remotely for a few months while he recovers from the chemotherapy and long hospitalization.
His parents are contemplating what life without sickle cell will be like.
“This is all we know,” Ms. Cromer said. “We will have to build a new way of life.”
“I have put all of my everything into caring for Kendric,” she added. “I’ve been thinking about how can I reinvent myself.”
As for Kendric, he wants to go to South Carolina for Thanksgiving to see his relatives. He wants to learn to ride a bike and to play basketball.
“I really just want to be a kid,” he said.
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6) One Issue on Which Israeli Extremists Are Mainstream
By Hagai El-Ad was the executive director of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem from 2014 to 2023. He wrote from Jerusalem, Sept. 16, 2024
A Palestinian man in the town of Jit after an attack by Jewish settlers in August. Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
The West Bank is on fire. Over the past several weeks, the Israeli military has carried out repeated, large-scale raids on Palestinian towns with drones and ground forces. Armed settlers targeted Palestinians on a rampage through the town of Jit, while Israeli security forces turned a blind eye. Palestinian communities are being emptied of their people. The violence is omnipresent, and the international community appears determined not to stop it.
But this is not a new story. This latest wave of violence is the inevitable result of what can only be understood as Israel’s decades-long effort to achieve total control over the West Bank. And for too long, Israel’s allies, especially the United States, have studiously underplayed or even ignored the existence of this endeavor.
Some Western officials have recently warned that Palestinians now face the threat of Israel’s “creeping” annexation of the occupied West Bank, as if Israel and its occupation of the Palestinian territory are separate realms. In this view, Israel is a democratic state run by civilian authorities, and the occupation is temporary and run by army generals.
But there is only one regime in Israel-Palestine. The Palestinian Authority controls limited aspects of life in fragmented areas of the West Bank; Israel rules over all the major aspects of life in the territory.
Annexation is not a future prospect; it is a fact of life. Israelis and Palestinians live in a one-state reality.
Internationally, much of the blame for Israel’s current policies is laid at the feet of far-right elements in Israel’s government, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister. The United States regards both of them as audacious outsiders who have no place in the political mainstream.
On Feb. 26, 2023, hundreds of settlers rampaged through the Palestinian town of Huwara. One Palestinian was killed, most likely by a settler, according to an investigation conducted by the human rights group B’Tselem and the audio-analysis group Earshot, and more than 100 others were injured. Afterward, Mr. Smotrich said: “Huwara needs to be wiped out. I think that the State of Israel needs to do that — not, God forbid, private individuals.” A State Department spokesperson described his remarks as “repugnant.” (After receiving widespread criticism, Mr. Smotrich apologized.)
Yet the extremism of Mr. Smotrich and Mr. Ben-Gvir couldn’t be more emblematic of Israel’s evident settlement strategy: to permanently control the entirety of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Israel’s plans for full geographical and political control of the West Bank have been evident for decades. In 2022, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu articulated the basic principles of his current government: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel,” he said, specifically including the West Bank in his description of that land.
Other Israeli leaders have long expressed similar sentiments. In 1975, the defense minister, Shimon Peres, who went on to sign the initial Oslo Accord agreement, said of occupied land, “The debate going on today is not about the very need for settlement, not even about its map or dimensions, but about the procedures for organizing it.” He added, “More than a debate about vision, it’s a debate about timing.”
Israel’s occupation of the land is not “temporary.” It is permanent — physically, geographically and administratively.
Since 1967, Israel has overseen the construction of more than 250 settlements and what the government designates as “outposts” in the West Bank. By now, one in 10 Jewish Israelis — over 700,000 people — are settlers there, where they enjoy the same rights as any other Jewish Israeli. Billions of dollars have been invested in the construction of an interconnected, permanent Israeli infrastructure in land that is, by international law, Palestinian.
All along, Israel has used judicial and administrative resources to give its actions in the occupied West Bank a sheen of legality. The Justice Ministry has repeatedly argued before the High Court of Justice that the “military occupation” is essentially temporary. The justices have agreed. This is crucial, because international law regards any military occupation as inherently temporary.
All the while, successive Israeli governments, working with the court’s approval, have permanently transformed the West Bank. Weeks after the end of the 1967 war, the state formally annexed the 27 square miles of the West Bank now known as East Jerusalem. It established a planning system that denies at least 95 percent of Palestinian applications for building permits and routinely issues demolition orders for their homes. It created regional settlement councils and industrial zones, and it took large parcels of West Bank land by designating them as “state land” or military “firing zones” that are off-limits to Palestinians.
It amended Israeli election law so that settlers could vote within the settlements; the law previously required citizens, with few exceptions, to vote inside the country. It expanded the authority of Israel’s Council for Higher Education to include all Israeli institutions in the settlements. It built a separation barrier that prevents Palestinians from gaining access to their land.
Israel’s settlement policy has been illegal from the get-go, as the government itself has acknowledged. As early as September 1967, an opinion produced by the foreign ministry’s legal counsel stated, “Civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
One week after that opinion was delivered to the prime minister, Levi Eshkol, he told his cabinet to approve a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. That was Israel’s 13th government. Today, the state has its 37th government. Every single one in between has stolen Palestinian land to expand Israel’s dominion. Throughout these years, the High Court has declined to rule on the legality of the settlements.
This is not a temporary occupation, nor does the military ultimately run it. Israel’s civilian transportation ministry is the authority that oversees the construction of roads in the West Bank, roads on which Israel’s civilian police issue traffic tickets. The Israel Electric Corporation is the largest supplier of power throughout Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Water infrastructure for Israel and the settlements is provided by Israel’s national water company, Mekorot. And Israel’s Central Elections Committee oversees voting for all Israeli citizens, including the settlers in occupied territory.
The military is, of course, directly vested with some powers. It protects Israeli settlers. It guards checkpoints, raids and demolishes Palestinian homes, and administers military courts, which only ever try Palestinians. But in the end, the military operates at the behest of Israel’s civilian leaders. As Israeli law states, “The military is subject to the authority of the government.”
So when far-right politicians like Mr. Smotrich call for the destruction of Palestinian towns or advocate “mega-dramatic” changes to Israel’s occupation bureaucracy, these comments must be understood for what they are: part of an internal Israeli debate on how — not whether — to subjugate and dispossess the Palestinians. Similarly, it was not the modification of Jim Crow laws in the United States that introduced racial segregation, nor was it the occasional adjustment to South Africa’s apartheid laws that enshrined Afrikaner supremacy.
In the one-state reality that is Israel-Palestine, half of the population is Jewish, and half is Palestinian. While Jewish Israelis retain all their rights regardless of where they live, Israel maintains a hierarchy of subjecthoods for Palestinians, and this hierarchy is based precisely according to where they live. Palestinian citizens of Israel are second-class by law. In occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinians are “permanent residents.” In the rest of the occupied territories, they are stateless subjects. Nowhere in the entire area under Israel’s control, between the river and the sea, will one find equality between Jews and Palestinians. This kind of regime has a name: apartheid.
In 1973, a young senator named Joe Biden fretted that Israel, under Labor party leadership, was “creeping toward annexation.” It arrived there. Over a decade ago, secretary of state John Kerry told a group of world leaders that, if the conflict remained unresolved, Israel would be an “apartheid state.” It is one.
Israeli liberals and Western diplomats tend to believe there are two paths forward: a binational, single state, or the two-state solution. But there is a third path: ethnic cleansing, by the expulsion of Palestinians. This is the path that Israel appears to be choosing. Will the United States and Israel’s other allies finally do something about it?
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7) Wireless Devices Explode Across Lebanon After Israel Warns Hezbollah
A Lebanese official said pagers belonging to Hezbollah militants had exploded, and the health minister said hundreds of people were injured. The Israeli military declined to comment.
By Patrick KingsleyEuan Ward and Ronen Bergman, September 17, 2024
Emergency workers at a hospital in Beirut, Lebanon, on Tuesday. Credit...Hussein Malla/Associated Press
Large numbers of “wireless devices” simultaneously exploded across Lebanon in an apparently coordinated attack that caused hundreds of injuries, Lebanese health officials said on Tuesday, a day after Israeli leaders warned that they were considering stepping up their military campaign against Hezbollah.
A Lebanese intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said that the blasts occurred after pagers belonging to Hezbollah members exploded across the country. Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said that hundreds of people had been injured in the blasts but that the authorities were still working to gather an exact figure.
The Israeli military declined to comment.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said in a statement that many people had arrived at Lebanese hospitals after being wounded when their wireless devices exploded. The ministry warned citizens to stay away from similar devices until it was clear what had caused the blasts.
The Lebanese Red Cross said in a statement that 80 ambulances were responding to “multiple bombings” in southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as in Beirut, the capital, and Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces Directorate asked people to clear the roads so people could be rushed to hospitals.
The blasts appeared to be the latest salvo in an 11-month conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that began last October, after Hezbollah began firing into Israeli territory in solidarity with its ally, Hamas. The conflict has largely remained contained to exchanges of missiles and rockets, but for months, leaders on either side have warned that it could expand into a war involving ground forces.
Ronen Bergman, Johnatan Reiss and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
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8) Netanyahu is said to be considering firing his defense minister as tensions rise with Hezbollah.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, September 17, 2024
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is reportedly contemplating dismissing his defense minister, a move that would help stabilize his fractious ruling coalition but potentially create instability at the top of Israel’s defense establishment at a time of mounting tensions with Hezbollah.
The Israeli press has widely reported that Mr. Netanyahu was weighing firing Mr. Gallant and replacing him with Gideon Saar, who leads the right-wing New Hope party. An official in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition confirmed that there were such discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks.
The talks to replace Israel’s top defense official at a time of war rattled the country as increased chatter about an escalation with Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese armed group, led many to fear a wider conflict following months of war in Gaza. Hezbollah has fired missiles and drones at Israel in solidarity with Hamas, its Palestinian ally, prompting Israeli strikes across the border into Lebanon.
Israel’s cabinet signed off overnight on a new official war goal at a meeting in an underground part of Israel’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv: returning the tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by Hezbollah rocket fire to their homes, a move that would require reducing the threat of cross-border attacks. Just a few hours earlier, Mr. Gallant had told Amos Hochstein, a U.S. official tasked with brokering a settlement between Israel and Hezbollah, that “the only way left” to achieve that goal was “military action.”
Adding to the sense of escalation, on Tuesday afternoon, the Israeli military accused Hezbollah of attempting to assassinate a retired senior member of the country’s security services with an explosive device that could be remotely detonated from Lebanon. The same operatives were behind a similar attempted attack in Tel Aviv last year, the military said. Hezbollah declined to comment.
A hawkish former general, Mr. Gallant, 65, is a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party. But the two have long butted heads: Mr. Netanyahu sought to fire Mr. Gallant last year for calling for a halt to his plan to weaken Israel’s judiciary, which prompted mass protests and a general strike.
In recent months, Mr. Gallant has repeatedly taken positions that put him at odds with Mr. Netanyahu over the conduct of Israel’s war against Hamas and its allies. He has appeared to criticize Mr. Netanyahu for not articulating a clear postwar vision for the Gaza Strip and voted against a cabinet decision to back one of the prime minister’s key cease-fire demands.
By bringing in Mr. Saar, the coalition official said, Mr. Netanyahu would stabilize his fragile governing coalition, which currently commands a thin parliamentary majority of 64 out of 120 seats and relies on hard-liners in the Israeli government. Mr. Saar’s party, while small, has enough seats to dilute the power of those hard-line parties, which have suggested they could pull out of Mr. Netanyahu’s government over policies they oppose, including a potential cease-fire with Hamas.
Neither Mr. Netanyahu nor Mr. Saar has explicitly denied that the two are negotiating his entry into the government. In a statement, Mr. Saar’s party said there was “nothing new” on the matter, while Mr. Netanyahu’s office said that the reports were incorrect. Neither statement mentioned Mr. Gallant.
But a growing number of Likud lawmakers have called for Mr. Gallant’s immediate dismissal in recent days, accusing him of being disloyal to Mr. Netanyahu and undermining the government.
“It’s insufferable, and the prime minister seems to understand that it’s insufferable, and that a new defense minister is needed,” Shlomo Karhi, a Likud minister, said in a televised interview on Tuesday. “Who will that be? What’s needed is someone the prime minister can trust.”
Mr. Gallant’s dismissal would remove perhaps the most significant Israeli leader who vigorously supports a cease-fire deal that would free the hostages held in Gaza. He has also been a key point of contact for the United States amid tensions between Mr. Netanyahu and the Biden administration.
It could also help Mr. Netanyahu smooth over a domestic political crisis with his ultra-Orthodox coalition allies. Mr. Netanyahu must pass a new law to regulate the long-running exemption for the ultra-Orthodox from military service or else a new Supreme Court ruling will force them to enlist — a red line for many in the community.
Mr. Netanyahu hopes that Mr. Saar will be more willing to compromise than Mr. Gallant, who had demanded that any new legislation enjoy broad support across the political spectrum, said Nadav Shtrauchler, an Israeli political consultant who has worked for the prime minister.
Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant have differences that precede the war with Hamas.
“It’s no secret that the two of them have clashed in most stages of the war, and it’s only gotten worse,” Mr. Shtrauchler said.
In May, Mr. Gallant warned that the lack of a postwar plan for governing Gaza could force Israel to impose direct military rule in the territory, costing it “blood and many victims, for no purpose.” His remarks were widely understood as an implicit criticism of Mr. Netanyahu.
Three months later, he was the sole Israeli minister to vote against a cabinet decision that prevented Israel from withdrawing from Gaza’s border with Egypt as part of a cease-fire agreement, widely seen as a key obstacle to reaching a deal with Hamas. Mr. Netanyahu has insisted that Israel maintain a presence there during a proposed truce.
Mr. Saar, 57, is a longtime veteran of Israel’s political landscape who never quite managed to clinch one of the most senior ministerial posts. A former member of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party, Mr. Saar broke with him in 2020 in an attempt to challenge the prime minister.
At the time, Mr. Saar vowed he would not join Mr. Netanyahu. After the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, he entered an emergency unity government with Mr. Netanyahu alongside Benny Gantz, another opposition politician, before withdrawing in March.
His New Hope party now has low support in opinion polls, most of which show it would not receive enough votes to again enter Parliament at all. Mr. Saar likely hoped the prominence of the job would put him back on the political map, said Mr. Shtrauchler.
Gabby Sobelman and Euan Ward contributed reporting.
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9) Hamas Is Surviving War With Israel. Now It Hopes to Thrive in Gaza Again.
Khaled Meshal, one of Hamas’s most senior officials, said in an interview that the militant group expects to play a decisive role in the enclave when the war is over.
By Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Doha, Qatar, Sept. 17, 2024
People walking on a street in Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, on Sunday. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas’s militants, dismantled the command structure of nearly all its battalions and pummeled its tunnel network. The bombing campaign in Gaza has been so devastating that the urban landscape in the territory has become unrecognizable.
But Israel’s military has said that eliminating Hamas isn’t possible — even if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for “total victory” over the militant group.
One of Hamas’s most senior officials, Khaled Meshal, maintains that the group is even winning the war and will play a decisive role in Gaza’s future.
“Hamas has the upper hand,” Mr. Meshal said in an interview with The New York Times in Doha, Qatar, where he is based. “It has remained steadfast” and brought the Israeli military into “a state of attrition,” he said.
Hamas’s reasoning is simple — winning simply means surviving and, at least for now, the group has managed to do that, even if it is severely weakened.
The comments by Mr. Meshal, 68, in the two-hour interview in the living room of his home in Doha, offered rare insights into the thinking of Hamas officials. He is one of the most senior figures in Hamas’s political office and is considered a key architect of the group’s strategy.
Mr. Meshal was the target in 1997 of a failed assassination attempt by Israel in Jordan, and he served as Hamas’s political chief for more than two decades. In early September, U.S. federal prosecutors unsealed charges against him and other Hamas leaders, accusing them of playing a central role in planning and carrying out the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
In the interview, Mr. Meshal made clear that Hamas officials are not in a rush to conclude a cease-fire with Israel at any price, and will not give up on their main demands for an end to the war and an Israeli withdrawal.
Independent analysts have made similar assessments about Hamas’s priorities. “They completely feel time is on their side,” said Ghaith al-Omari, an expert on Palestinian affairs. “They think they’re the only game in town.”
It is a confidence continuously tested on the battlefield in Gaza. While Hamas remains a powerful force in the enclave, it has faced criticism from Gazans who blame the group for putting them in harm’s way. And Hamas’s definition of success may no longer be valid if the war drags on for years and Israel succeeds in taking out much of Hamas’s remaining firepower, according to Palestinian analysts.
At the war’s start, President Biden expressed a similar position to that of Mr. Netanyahu — that Hamas needed to be eliminated. But Mr. Biden no longer speaks of its eradication, and both the United States and Israel have taken part in indirect negotiations with Hamas.
Mr. Meshal said he took that to mean that the United States was acknowledging Hamas was not going anywhere.
“The Israeli-American vision wasn’t talking about the day after the war, but the day after Hamas,” he said, referring to the initial stance by Israel and the United States.
Now, he said, the United States is saying, “We’re waiting for Hamas’s response.”
“They’re practically recognizing Hamas,” he added, without mentioning that the group has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel.
Some current and former Israeli security officials also say they believe that Hamas is unlikely to be defeated in this war.
“Hamas is winning this war,” Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni, a former commander of the Israeli military’s Gaza division, said. “Our soldiers are winning every tactical encounter with Hamas, but we’re losing the war, and in a big way.”
Thousands of Hamas fighters and government officials continue to wield control over large parts of Gaza. In cities where Israeli forces briefly took control, their eventual departure left a void that was swiftly filled by Hamas and other militant groups.
General Shamni said that while it was undeniable that Israel has devastated Hamas’s military capabilities, Hamas has retaken towns within “15 minutes” of Israeli withdrawals.
“There’s no one that can challenge Hamas there after Israeli forces leave,” he said.
The greatest failure, General Shamni said, is that Mr. Netanyahu has not tried to introduce a realistic alternative governing body in Gaza in the aftermath of Israeli retreats.
In late June, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, dismissed Mr. Netanyahu’s proposition that Hamas could be wiped out.
“Hamas is an idea,” he told Israel’s Channel 13. “Those who think we can make Hamas disappear are wrong,” he said. “The thought that it is possible to destroy Hamas, to make Hamas vanish — that is throwing sand in the eyes of the public.”
Last month, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described Mr. Netanyahu’s “total victory” slogan as “nonsense.” And some Israeli security officials have said the battle with Hamas will be left for their children.
The Israeli military has said it has killed more than 17,000 militants in Gaza. A military intelligence official said this summer that Israel had succeeded in undermining Hamas’s ability to fire long-range rockets at Israel, though they had other less sophisticated munitions.
The process of taking over and demolishing tunnels, the official said, was an extremely complex engineering project that could take years.
Some members of the military leadership have concluded that a cease-fire with Hamas was the best path forward, even if it leaves the group in power for the time being.
Despite Hamas’s immense losses, including many senior commanders killed by Israel, Mr. Meshal said he was confident that the group would play a dominant role in Gaza following the war. He dismissed alternative American and Israeli proposals for administering the territory without Hamas.
“All their illusions about filling the vacuum are behind us,” he said.
The United States has proposed bringing a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority to Gaza; Israel’s defense minister has suggested that Arab forces provide security in the territory; and Mr. Netanyahu has considered working with “local stakeholders with managerial experience.”
“Assuming Hamas won’t be in Gaza or influencing the situation is a mistaken assumption,” Mr. Meshal said, insisting that Palestinians alone would determine arrangements for the territory.
Hamas’s confidence about maintaining a dominant role in a postwar Gaza has also been seen in private meetings with Palestinian politicians.
“Assuming Hamas won’t be in Gaza or influencing the situation is a mistaken assumption,” Mr. Meshal said, insisting that Palestinians alone would determine arrangements for the territory.
Hamas’s confidence about maintaining a dominant role in a postwar Gaza has also been seen in private meetings with Palestinian politicians.
With the first anniversary of the war approaching, Akram Atallah, a columnist for Al-Ayyam, a Ramallah-based newspaper, listed Hamas’s accomplishments: It has stopped Israel from achieving a decisive victory; it has forced Israel to dispatch representatives to negotiate with it; and it has preserved a substantial number of fighters.
He also said that Hamas’s grip could be undone with time. “If the war ends now, it would be a victory for Hamas,” Mr. Atallah said. “But if it ends in two years, the results could change, and we don’t know where things will go.”
Whatever happens to Hamas, it is civilians who have paid the highest price in Gaza. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and most of its population of around 2 million has been displaced.
Many Palestinians in Gaza have lashed out at Hamas for launching the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that left 1,200 people dead, accusing the group of giving Israel a pretext to wage a massive bombing campaign that has reduced cities to rubble.
Mr. Meshal dismissed criticism of Hamas’s decision. Palestinian critics of Hamas represented a minority, he said.
“As a Palestinian, my responsibility is to fight and resist until liberation,” he said.
He acknowledged that the assault had caused enormous destruction but said it was a “price” Palestinians must pay for freedom.
Asked how the Hamas-led attack had helped improve the situation given the devastation in Gaza, he insisted it was less about achieving a military victory over Israel than making it realize its policies weren’t sustainable.
“Before Oct. 7, Gaza was dying a slow death,” Mr. Meshal said. “We were in a big prison and we wanted to get rid of this situation.”
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10) It Was Only a Matter of Time Before Abortion Bans Killed Someone
By Michelle Goldberg, Sept. 16, 2024
Nydia Blas for ProPublica
It was inevitable, once Roe v. Wade was overturned and states started banning abortion, that women were going to die. Over the last two years, we’ve learned of countless close calls. In Oklahoma, 25-year-old Jaci Statton, sick and bleeding with a nonviable partial molar pregnancy, said medical staff told her to wait in a parking lot until she was “crashing” or on the verge of a heart attack. In Florida, Anya Cook was sent home from the hospital after her membranes ruptured at 16 weeks; she then nearly bled to death in the bathroom of a hair salon. Women in Texas and Louisiana have been denied treatment for life-threatening ectopic pregnancies.
And now ProPublica has identified at least two women who died “after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care.” According to ProPublica’s Kavitha Surana, “There are almost certainly others.”
On Monday, thanks to Surana, we learned the story of one of those women, Amber Nicole Thurman, an otherwise healthy 28-year-old medical assistant from Georgia with a 6-year-old son. In 2022, Thurman and her child had just moved out of her family’s place and into their own apartment, and she was planning to start nursing school. When she found out she was pregnant with twins, her best friend told ProPublica, she felt she needed an abortion to preserve her newfound stability, but Georgia had enacted a 6-week abortion ban, and she’d just passed the deadline.
She waited, hoping the law would be put on hold, but eventually she arranged babysitting, took time off from work and borrowed a car in order to get a surgical abortion in North Carolina. Though she and her best friend woke up at 4 a.m. for the drive, they hit terrible traffic on their way there. “The clinic couldn’t hold Thurman’s spot longer than 15 minutes — it was inundated with women from other states where bans had taken effect,” wrote Surana. It offered her a medication abortion instead.
Medication abortion is usually safe and effective, but in about 3 percent to 5 percent of cases, women end up needing either another dose of misoprostol, one of the two drugs in the regimen, or surgery. That’s what happened to Thurman. Days after taking her second pill, she was in pain and bleeding heavily. The clinic in North Carolina would have offered her free follow-up care, but it was too far away.
Eventually, suffering a severe infection, she passed out and ended up in a hospital in suburban Atlanta. She needed a D.&C., a procedure to empty the uterus, but doctors waited 20 hours to operate as her blood pressure sank, and her organs began to fail. According to Surana, Thurman’s last words to her mother were, “Promise me you’ll take care of my son.” A state medical review committee ruled her death “preventable.”
ProPublica didn’t discover exactly why doctors let Thurman’s condition deteriorate for so long without treating her, but it’s not a stretch to assume they were scared. As in other states where women have been denied routine abortion care, Georgia’s ban includes an exception for procedures “necessary in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or the substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” But as we’ve seen again and again, hospitals aren’t sure how to interpret this language, especially with the threat of prison time hanging over everyone involved. So medical staff sometimes hesitate to act until the threat to a woman’s life is undeniable, at which point it may be too late.
The shattering fallout from abortion prohibition was entirely predictable for anyone who has paid attention to such bans in other countries. In Ireland, for example, 31-year-old Savita Halappanavar died of septicemia in 2012 after doctors refused to treat her for a miscarriage as long as her fetus had a heartbeat. Her case helped galvanize support for Ireland’s 2018 national referendum to make abortion legal, which passed in a landslide.
It’s too early to know whether Thurman’s death will have a similarly catalytic effect in the United States. I suspect that the anti-abortion movement will claim that she was killed by abortion pills and use her case to further its quest to outlaw them. “Mandate for Leadership,” the legislative agenda laid out by Project 2025, a coalition of conservative groups close to Donald Trump, calls on the F.D.A. to reverse its approval of “chemical abortion drugs.” It cites 26 deaths of women after taking mifepristone, the other drug in the medication abortion regimen.
F.D.A. figures show that only half of those deaths — out of 4.9 million people who’ve used the medication — have anything to do with abortion. (Three of the cases, for example, are women who were confirmed or suspected homicide victims.) But the canard that abortion drugs are dangerous is a staple of anti-abortion propaganda, and conservatives may try to use it to deflect outrage over Thurman’s death.
No one should let them. All medications come with some risk, but abortion pills are safer than penicillin or Viagra and significantly less perilous than childbirth. The complications Thurman faced didn’t have to be deadly; a timely medical intervention could have saved her life. And as long as abortion bans persist, more women are likely to die the same way. Some probably already have. As Surana notes, state committees tasked with reviewing maternal mortality typically operate with a two-year lag, so experts are only just beginning to delve into the details of pregnancy-related deaths that have happened since Roe was overturned. ProPublica plans to publish an investigation into a second woman’s death soon.
For now, it shouldn’t take even more stories of senseless suffering for these cruel laws to become politically untenable. In Ireland, the name Savita became a rallying cry. The name Amber should be one here.
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