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‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 349
Nasrallah says ‘we wish’ Israel invades Lebanon
Following the Lebanon pager explosion attacks, Nasrallah said an Israeli invasion would be a “historic opportunity” to target Israeli forces. Earlier in the week, Israel razed an entire residential block in central Gaza, killing at least 40 people.
By Qassam Muaddi, September 19, 2024
Casualties
· 41,272 + killed* and at least 95,551 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*
· 708+ 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 714 Israeli soldiers and the injury of at least 4,100 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 18, 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 19, 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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11) More Wireless Devices Explode in Lebanon
For a second day, hand-held communication devices exploded across Lebanon and in the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut, in an apparent attack on Hezbollah. At least nine people were killed and 300 injured, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.
By Euan Ward and Aaron BoxermanReporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Jerusalem, September 18, 2024
Chaos hit hospitals around Beirut on Tuesday, including the American University of Beirut Medical Center, where many people wounded in the explosions were taken. Credit...Anwar Amro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A second wave of wireless device explosions rocked Lebanon on Wednesday afternoon, killing nine people and wounding 300 others, government officials said. The apparently coordinated attack came as the country reeled from a similar operation the day before that blew up thousands of pagers belonging to members of the militant group Hezbollah.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest attack. Lebanese, U.S. and other officials briefed on the matter say that Israel was responsible for the deadly pager blasts on Tuesday, which blew up the hand-held devices across Lebanon in their owners’ hands and pockets.
Two Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official said some of devices that exploded on Wednesday were hand-held radios belonging to Hezbollah members. One of the devices was a ICOM-branded walkie talkie, according to two officials with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. It is unclear from which company Hezbollah purchased the devices.
“There are buildings burning right now in front of me,” Mortada Smaoui, 30, a resident of Beirut’s southern suburbs, said after a series of explosions hit his neighborhood on Wednesday. He said that firefighters and soldiers were rushing to the scene.
The attack on Tuesday embarrassed Hezbollah and ratcheted up fears of a wider war between the group and Israel. Israeli officials have increasingly suggested that they favor intensifying military operations in Lebanon to fend off Hezbollah, which has fired thousands of missiles and drones at Israel since October in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.
Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, said in a video statement that Israel was “at the outset of a new period in this war.” Without mentioning the explosions in Lebanon, he said the “center of gravity” of Israel’s military efforts was “moving north,” as the country diverted “forces, resources, and energy” toward the threat posed by Hezbollah.
The pager explosions on Tuesday killed at least 12 people and wounded over 2,700 others. Hezbollah claimed eight of the dead as members, but another two were children, including a 9-year-old girl from central Lebanon.
The following day, not even their funerals were safe. When blasts were heard at a rite for dead Hezbollah fighters on Tuesday, mourners were urged to remove the batteries from their devices.
The Lebanese Red Cross said that 30 ambulance teams were responding to “multiple explosions” in different areas of Lebanon, including the country’s south and east. Fires have broken out in homes, cars and shops in several parts of Lebanon, including the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, the Lebanese Civil Defense said.
Despite the tactical forcefulness of the attacks, Hezbollah has said it would not stop fighting until Israel ends its campaign against Hamas in Gaza. The conflict has caused over 150,000 people to flee their homes in Israel and Lebanon, and Israeli officials have faced growing frustration from the tens of thousands of displaced Israelis unable to return home.
Here’s what else to know:
Taiwanese company: Israel hid tiny explosives inside a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported to Lebanon, according to American and other officials briefed on the operation. The Taiwanese company some of the officials named as the supplier, Gold Apollo, on Wednesday sought to distance itself from the devices, saying that another manufacturer with a Hungarian address had made the model of pager targeted in the attack as part of a licensing deal.
A child’s funeral: Mourners gathered in the village of Saraain for the funeral of the youngest confirmed victim of the pager attack: 9-year-old Fatima Abdullah. They chanted as they made their way through the cemetery: “They killed our child Fatima!”
Hezbollah’s pagers targeted: Three officials briefed on the Tuesday attack said that the operation targeted hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah operatives who have used such devices for years to make it harder for their messages to be intercepted. The use of pagers became even more widespread after the Oct. 7 attacks, when Hezbollah’s chief warned that Israeli intelligence had penetrated the cellphone network, security experts said.
Covert operations: Israel has carried out a series of clandestine attacks against Iran and its allies as part of a yearslong shadow war. Israel assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist and deputy defense minister, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in 2020 using an A.I.-assisted robot controlled remotely via satellite. In February, Israel blew up two major gas pipelines in Iran, disrupting service to several cities, and, in 2021, an Israeli hack of Iran’s oil ministry servers disrupted gasoline distribution nationwide.
Anushka Patil, Ronen Bergman, Sheera Frenkel, Farnaz Fassihi, and Euan Ward contributed reporting.
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12) A 9-year-old girl killed in the pager attack is laid to rest.
By Hwaida Saad and Liam StackHwaida Saad reported from Saraain, Lebanon, September 18, 2024
The funeral for Fatima Abdullah, who was killed when a pager exploded in her home, in Saraain, Lebanon, on Wednesday. Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
Mourners gathered in the village of Saraain on Wednesday for the funeral of the youngest confirmed victim of the pager attack in Lebanon: 9-year-old Fatima Abdullah.
“The enemy killed us using this small device!” mourners chanted as they made their way through the dry grass of a cemetery. “They killed our child Fatima!”
Zeinab Mousawi, an aunt, said Fatima had just come home from her first day of fourth grade not long before the attack. Many of the mourners were Fatima’s school friends, their faces contorted with grief and shock at the violent death of someone so young.
She was one of two children killed in the attacks on Tuesday that Lebanese officials said had left at least 12 people dead, and that injured nearly 2,800 others. Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said on Wednesday that a second child had died from injuries sustained in the attack. Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group whose members were the apparent target of the explosions, named the second child as Bilal Kanj, 11.
In the attack, pagers across Lebanon simultaneously exploded at 3:30 p.m.
American and other officials briefed on the operation said on Tuesday that Israel had programmed the devices to beep for several seconds before exploding. The victims included nearly 300 people who suffered critical injuries — mostly wounds to the eyes, face and limbs — and others who lost hands or fingers, Dr. Abiad said.
Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement in the explosions.
Fatima was in the kitchen on Tuesday when a pager on the table began to beep, her aunt said. She picked up the device to bring it to her father and was holding it when it exploded, mangling her face and leaving the room covered in blood, she said.
“Fatima was trying to take courses in English,” Ms. Mousawi said. “She loved English.”
Her funeral was held in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, a rural area on the border with Syria that is known as a deep well of support for Hezbollah. Many of the injuries on Tuesday occurred in the Bekaa Valley, in southern Lebanon and in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the capital, all known as Hezbollah strongholds.
Before walking to the cemetery, mourners gathered in the town square, where women wiped tears from the face of Fatima’s weeping mother. A local religious leader led them in a prayer and beseeched God for justice.
Sumaya Mousawi, Fatima’s cousin, said at least 30 people in her hometown of Nabi Sheet were injured in the attack, many in the eyes or stomach. He said Israel would pay for what it had done.
“We are not afraid — the enemy is hiding in shelters, we are not,” he said. “We have missiles, we are strong and we are ready for war.”
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13) Israel Targets Senior Hezbollah Leader in Beirut Airstrike, Officials Say
The United States had accused the leader, Ibrahim Aqeel, of involvement in bombings that killed hundreds in 1983. It wasn’t immediately clear if he was killed, as a flurry of strikes by Israel and the Lebanese armed group raised fears of all-out war.
By Liam Stack and Euan Ward Reporting from Tel Aviv and Beirut, Lebanon, September 20, 2024
A fresh market in Beirut last year. Lebanon is reeling from years of economic crisis, which has left many people unable to afford basic goods. Credit...Diego Ibarra Sánchez for The New York Times
The Israeli military on Friday carried out an airstrike in Beirut that targeted a senior Hezbollah commander who the United States has said played a role in bombings that killed hundreds, officials said. It was the second Israeli strike in two months that aimed at a top Hezbollah official in Lebanon’s capital, and came amid a flurry of attacks by both sides that raised fears of another full-scale war in the Middle East.
The Israeli strike flattened a residential high-rise building in the heart of Dahiya, a densely populated suburban neighborhood south of the city’s center, according to local residents. Lebanon’s health ministry said at least nine people were killed and dozens more were injured.
It was not immediately clear if the senior Hezbollah commander, Ibrahim Aqeel, was among them. Mr. Aqeel has been accused by the United States of being involved in two terrorist attacks in 1983 that killed more than 300 people at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks.
Four officials who said Mr. Aqeel was the target spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Last year, the State Department posted a $7 million reward for information leading to his identification, location, arrest or conviction. It said Mr. Aqeel had also directed the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s, and served on Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council.
Lebanese news networks broadcast images of what appeared to be the damage from the Israeli strike, showing a leveled building in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a sprawling neighborhood where Hezbollah, the powerful armed group, holds sway. Residents described a chaotic scene as ambulances raced through the streets.
In July, an Israeli strike killed another Hezbollah leader, Fuad Shukr, who had also been wanted by the U.S. government for his role in the 1983 attacks in Lebanon.
Israel and Lebanon have been on edge for days since pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members blew up en masse this week, killing at least 37 people and injuring thousands in Lebanon in attacks widely attributed to Israel. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had vowed retribution for the explosions.
Here is what else to know:
Heavy bombardment: The building in Beirut was one of more than 100 sites, mostly in southern Lebanon, that Israel struck since Thursday evening. Lebanese officials said the strikes overnight were some of the heaviest bombardment there in months of back-and-forth attacks. Earlier Friday, Israel said Hezbollah fired at least 140 rockets into northern Israel.
Hezbollah scrambles: Mr. Nasrallah sounded defiant in his speech on Thursday, saying Hezbollah would not cease the cross-border strikes against Israel that it began last October in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. But the group was also scrambling to recover from the stunning security breach. Mr. Nasrallah said it had formed committees to investigate the lapses that led to the attack, which caused panic in Lebanon.
Gazans’ fears: As world attention focuses on heightening Israel-Hezbollah tensions, some Palestinians in Gaza worry that efforts to end the nearly yearlong war and humanitarian crisis there will be sidelined.
Lebanon on edge: After the explosions of Hezbollah-owned devices, people in Lebanon fear others could explode, avoiding cellphones and unplugging baby monitors, televisions and laptops. Lebanon’s aviation authority banned pagers and walkie-talkies from all flights leaving Beirut.
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14) With world’s attention shifting, some in Gaza fear they will be forgotten.
By Raja AbdulrahimReporting from Jerusalem, September 20, 2024
A Palestinian man carries the body of a relative killed in Israeli strikes Tuesday in central Gaza. Credit...Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
After nearly a year of war, fear marks everyday life for Palestinians in Gaza. There is fear of the Israeli warplanes that tear through the skies and carry out deadly airstrikes. There is fear of famine with only a trickle of aid coming in. There is fear of being displaced, yet again, by Israeli evacuation orders.
And now, there is increasing fear of being forgotten.
International attention has been diverted, first by deadly Israeli military raids into Palestinian cities in the occupied West Bank this month, and this week by coordinated attacks against the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel’s leaders have increasingly signaled that they intend to shift their focus from the Gaza Strip to their northern border with Lebanon, in what the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, described this week as a “new phase of the war.”
But the war it is already waging in Gaza has not gone away. Israel, which says it wants to eradicate the armed group Hamas that led the Oct. 7 attack, has not stopped its airstrikes or ground attacks.
And some Gazans worry that the already sputtering efforts to reach a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas will be sidelined as tensions rise in other areas of the Middle East.
“Unfortunately, people see the attention going to the West Bank or Lebanon,” said Muhammad al-Masri, a 31-year-old accountant who has been forced to flee numerous times. “We don’t know what is going to happen here. It’s not just depression or misery. It’s a catastrophe in a terrifying way, and the situation is getting worse all the time.”
He played a brief clip that showed him and his family fleeing recently in the back of a truck, his sunburned face covered in sweat. “The displacement,” he said, letting the camera take in a road packed with people fleeing by vehicle and donkey carts, is “the worst thing people can live through.”
With humanitarian access restricted, about 96 percent of the population in Gaza still faces high levels of acute food insecurity, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a partnership of U.N. agencies and international humanitarian groups, reported this month.Nearly half a million people are facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, meaning families are suffering from an extreme lack of food and face starvation, the group reported.
A separate coalition of aid groups working in Gaza analyzed recent data on aid entering the territory and said that Israel has “systematically blocked” entry of food, medicine, medical supplies, fuel and tents since the war began.
The organizations’ analysis found that as a result of the Israeli government’s restrictions on aid, 83 percent of the food Gazans need is not getting in. Gazans have gone from having an average of two meals a day earlier in the war to just one every other day, the group reported.
COGAT, an Israeli Defense Ministry body that implements government policy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, did not respond to a request for comment on the aid groups’ report.
In August, an average of only 69 humanitarian trucks entered Gaza each day, well below the average of 500 trucks, including those carrying commercial goods, before the war, according to the United Nations.
Some 1.87 million people are in need of shelter, with at least 60 percent of homes damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations.
“With the onset of the winter season, any gust of wind sends all the tents flying because they are all just blankets,” Mr. Al-Masri said. “If we human beings have collapsed, we are tired, we are falling apart, how is a tent going to stay together for an entire year?”
Just a few months ago, Gazans followed every new development in cease-fire negotiations. But now, people have given up hope.
“We wake up and go to sleep, and the airstrikes don’t stop,” aid Rawoand Altatar, who lives with her parents in Gaza City. “Additionally, there’s little food and little water and spread of diseases. People walk through the streets talking to themselves.”
But Ahmed Saleh, a 44-year-old civil servant in Gaza City, said it didn’t matter if the international community shifted its attention elsewhere, because for nearly a year “the world did nothing for Gaza.”
Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.
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15) What Lies Beneath Canada’s Former Indigenous School Sites Fuels a Debate
Despite possible evidence of hundreds of graves at former schools for Indigenous children, challenges in making a clear conclusion have given rise to skeptics.
By Ian Austen, Photographs by Amber Bracken, Reporting from Tk’emlups te Secwepemc, British Columbia, Sept. 20, 2024
The Kamloopa Powwow in Tk’emlups te Secwepemc, British Columbia. Canada’s government believes a significant number of unmarked graves of children lie beneath former residential schools.
A line of children’s clothing set along a highway in British Columbia in 2021 represented the children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
The revelation convulsed all of Canada.
Ground-penetrating radar had found possible signs of 215 unmarked graves at a former residential school in British Columbia run by the Catholic Church that the government had once used to assimilate Indigenous children forcibly taken from their families.
It was the first of some 80 former schools where indications of possible unmarked graves were discovered, and it produced a wave of sorrow and shock in a country that has long struggled with the legacy of its treatment of Indigenous people. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered flags to fly at half-staff, as many Canadians wore orange T-shirts with the slogan “Every Child Matters.”
Three years later, though, no remains have been exhumed and identified.
Many communities are struggling with a difficult choice: Should the sites be left undisturbed and transformed into memorial grounds, or should exhumations be done to identify any victims and return their remains to their communities?
While there is a broad consensus in Canada that children were taken from their families and died in these schools, as the discussions and searches have dragged on, a small universe of conservative Catholic and right-wing activists have become increasingly vocal in questioning the existence of unmarked graves. They are also skeptical of the entire national reconsideration of how Canada treated Indigenous people.
Three years after the announcement about the former Kamloops residential school site, they ask, why has no proof of any remains been uncovered anywhere in the country?
“There’s, so far, no evidence of any remains of children buried around residential schools,” Tom Flanagan, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary and an author of “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth About Residential Schools),” said in an interview.
“Nobody disputes,” he added, “that children died and that the conditions were sometimes chaotic. But that’s quite different from clandestine burials.”
The arguments by Mr. Flanagan and other skeptics have been roundly denounced by elected officials across the political spectrum who say evidence clearly suggests that there are many sites of unmarked burials.
Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation, who made the announcement about the Kamloops site, said, “The denialists, they’re hurtful. They are basically saying that didn’t happen.”
Security guards protecting the potential gravesites in her community have turned away people who have turned up late at night with shovels, she said.
Chief Casimir recalled holding the piece of paper in her hands about the potential gravesites that she read from to deliver the news and knew it would reverberate.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘This is horrible,’” she said.
Now her community is moving slowly and deliberately before deciding what to do next.
“We’ve had many conversations about whether to exhume or not to exhume,” Chief Casimir said. “It is very difficult and it is definitely very complex. We know that it’ll take time. And we also know that we have many steps yet to go.”
“We have to know for sure,” she added, “that we did everything that we can to determine: yes or no, anomaly or grave?”
The Canadian government and Pope Francis have apologized for the gruesome treatment of Indigenous people and the residential schools where children suffered so much abuse.
But the work to try to establish a precise number of potential graves will likely be difficult.
Murray Sinclair, a former judge who headed the National Truth and Reconciliaton Commission to investigate the residential schools system, estimates that at least 10,000 students never made it home from the schools, which were established by the government and operated from the 1880s to the 1990s.
During that period the Canadian government forcibly removed at least 150,000 Indigenous children from their communities and sent them to residential schools, most of which were run by the Roman Catholic Church. Indigenous languages and cultural practices were forbidden, sometimes using force.
And when the children died the government refused to pay to return their bodies to the communities where they came from.
In Ontario, a search of records by investigators working for the province’s chief coroner has so far identified 456 students who died while attending 12 residential schools. Some records show where remains may be buried, the coroner said, but there’s uncertainty about those findings.
At the Kamloops school site, where one of the largest number of potential gravesites was reported, Chief Casimir said her tribe was still analyzing the results of its ground and document searches before deciding whether to conduct exhumations.
Doing so, she added, would be “very intrusive.”
Kimberly Murray, a lawyer and a member of a Mohawk First Nation, was appointed by the federal government in 2021 to examine the issues surrounding potential Indigenous graves and make recommendations about protecting and commemorating the sites.
She says she reminds communities that the work they are doing is because “the government purposely disappeared” Indigenous children, “by not proper record keeping, by not telling the families, by refusing to send them home.”
Many communities, Ms. Murray said, have expanded their physical searches and have employed additional methods to find remains.
One involves placing probes into the ground to detect specific soil acidity that is created by buried human remains.
Another process involves using short pulses of laser light to scan the surfaces of areas where government and church records, as well as the memories of former students, suggest there were burials. The process, using a technology known as lidar, can reveal patterns consistent with burial sites.
Some Indigenous communities have also brought in dogs trained to find remains.
In some cases, Ms. Murray said there was evidence that schools resorted to burying students in mass graves because of disease sweeping through the institutions or to store bodies until the spring thaw made digging graves possible.
Still, Indigenous communities have faced obstacles finding graves, Ms. Murray said, as they struggle getting access to records about the children who died at the schools from the Canadian government and the Catholic Church, despite pledges of cooperation.
Even if exhumations uncover remains, identifying individual bodies or determining a cause of death will likely be impossible, said Dr. Rebekah Jacques, a forensic pathologist who has been working with Indigenous communities that have potential gravesites.
Dr. Jacques has met members of Indigenous communities while serving as a member of a national committee on potential graves at school sites, and she said the question of exhumations hangs heavy over many groups.
“I don’t always have consensus myself about what to do,” she said. “So for me to expect for our communities to have consensus — well, I can really relate to that.”
She also believes that nothing Indigenous communities do, including exhumations, will satisfy skeptics.
For Mr. Flanagan and others who share his viewpoint, their disbelief that there are many gravesites is part of a broader argument against the key conclusion of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission: that the residential schools were a system of brutality that led to “cultural genocide.’’
“The narrative that’s been constructed pulls out all the bad stories and retails those and minimizes the benefit of residential schools,” Mr. Flanagan said, adding that converting Indigenous people in nations colonized by Europeans to Christianity and eradicating their cultures was once common worldwide.
“The churches believed that it was their religious duty, and the politicians thought that it helped to civilize the Indians,” He said. “Would we do that today? No. But our understanding wasn’t available to these people of 150 years ago.”
Government officials and experts say such views are driven by bias and a lack of understanding and sensitivity over what Indigenous children endured for over a century, until 1996.
“There is simply no question about the horrific impact that the residential schools policy had on Indigenous peoples,” said David Lametti, who was Canada’s justice minister and attorney general when Chief Casimir announced the findings at the Kamloops school site.
Government officials, he added, have little doubt that many of the radar anomalies found on school grounds will prove to be gravesites.
“Will every one of those anomalies turn out to be an unmarked grave? Obviously not,” Mr. Lametti, a former law professor now practicing law in Montreal, said. “But there’s enough preponderant evidence already that is compelling.”
Many Indigenous people who favor exhumations want their communities to move more quickly to find remains.
On his ranch in the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation, Garry Gottfriedson, a poet, retired academic and rodeo rider, said that as a former residential school student he wants more openness and progress from leaders.
“It can drag on and on and on and in the meantime, it dies out,” Mr. Gottfriedson said of the discussion about what to do about the gravesites.
“I’m saying: something needs to happen, let it happen,” he added. “But right now, it seems like nothing’s happening.”
Vjosa Isai contributed research.
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16) Karl Marx, Weirder Than Ever
What good is one of the communist thinker’s most important texts to 21st-century readers?
By James Miller, Sept. 19, 2024
James Miller teaches at the New School for Social Research. His latest book is “Can Democracy Work?: A Short History of a Radical Idea, From Ancient Athens to Our World.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/19/books/review/capital-volume-one-karl-marx.html
Jack Smyth
Indifference was the world’s first reaction to Karl Marx’s magnum opus. In 1867, when the first volume of “Capital” was published in German, it was greeted with such silence that the author’s best friend and patron, Friedrich Engels, submitted pseudonymous reviews, most of them combative, to the leading German newspapers, in a futile effort to drum up publicity.
“Capital” had been decades in the making, with Marx producing countless notes, drafts and mathematical equations he couldn’t make work to clinch an argument that capitalism would self-destruct, after creating the basis for something better. As the biographer Francis Wheen relates, Marx’s long-suffering wife, Jenny, was embittered by the public’s mute response to the book’s publication. “If the workers had an inkling of the sacrifices that were necessary for this work, which was written only for them and for their sakes,” she complained to a friend, “they would perhaps show a little more interest.”
Frustrated, Marx asked Engels, in one of the German reviews he wrote, to summarize “Capital” simply, using language that Marx helpfully supplied: It showed how “present society, economically considered, is pregnant with a new, higher form,” and it revealed in human civilization “the same gradual process of evolution that Darwin has demonstrated in natural history,” thus confirming the “doctrine of progress.”
It’s a sign of our times that the editor and translator of an eagerly anticipated new English edition of the book — the first major translation in half a century — largely ignore both Darwin and the idea of progress in their copious notes.
Still, no previous English version of “Capital” has featured such an erudite critical apparatus or such an exacting translation. It’s a remarkable achievement that forces readers to attend to the philosophical subtleties of Marx’s argument.
“‘Capital’ is weird,” the editor Paul North writes in his introduction to the new edition (Princeton University Press, 857 pp., $39.95). The book’s translator, Paul Reitter, concurs, explaining how he has chosen to highlight what he calls every “programmatically weird moment in the text.” In “Capital,” Marx deploys neologisms that sound strange even in German, Reitter argues, with the goal of reflecting the way “capitalism makes the relations between people and things, and the relations among people, extremely unnatural and incompatible with human flourishing.”
For example, the novel German term Werthding — literally “value-thing” — suggests how useful physical objects have nonphysical aspects: They represent (in Marx’s words) “gelatinous blobs of undifferentiated human labor” that help define their worth and enable them to be exchanged. Emphasizing the weirdness of the language underlines the idea that capitalism inevitably produces alienation between factory workers and the thing they’ve helped make, as Marx writes elsewhere, “like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”
Born in 1818 in what is now southwestern Germany, Marx was trained as a philosopher and employed as a journalist before striking up a friendship with Engels in the 1840s and joining a roiling bohemian underground of unruly writers and professional insurrectionists. Together Marx and Engels wrote “The Communist Manifesto” and lived through the European revolutions of 1848, only to see their hopes for radical change deferred if not dashed. By then, Marx, in part under the influence of Engels, had already begun what became a lifelong study of political economy and the shameful conditions created for workers by the rise of industrial capitalism.
Marx had exacting standards: He was too scrupulous to finish “Capital” — Engels published subsequent volumes based on Marx’s notebooks — and he wanted the difficult opening pages of the first volume to force readers to think for themselves. “There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits,” he wrote in the preface to the first French translation. Fortunately, the body of the text, which makes judicious use of British government reports detailing the wretched lives of its working classes, is easier to follow, and more literary in its ambitions. It’s partly a simple horror story of unjustifiable human suffering at the hands of a faceless monster more fearsome than Hobbes’s Leviathan — the shadowy system of capital, in Marx’s view, was more soul-sucking than any of the laws imposed by sovereign rulers.
The first English translation of “Capital” was supervised by Engels and appeared in 1887, four years after Marx’s death. By then, “Capital” had belatedly reached a large and rapidly growing audience, thanks to Marx’s notoriety as an activist and a leader in the International Workingmen’s Association; his pitiless defense of the bloody Paris Commune of 1871 as one model of what a proletariat revolt against capital might look like; and the subsequent rise of socialist political parties and militant trade unions. “The bible of the working class,” Engels proudly called it.
Once consecrated, “Capital” was easy to treat as an evidence-based lodestar for ongoing direct action. This was certainly how the translator Ben Fowkes and the Belgian economist Ernest Mandel approached the second major English edition, a Penguin paperback published in 1976 after the Russian Revolution of 1917; the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949; the student uprisings of 1968; and in the wake of pitched struggles for radical self-determination in former colonies like Algeria, Vietnam and Nicaragua.
“It is most unlikely,” Mandel wrote, “that capitalism will survive another half-century of the crises (military, political, social, monetary, cultural) which have occurred uninterruptedly since 1914. It is most probable, moreover, that ‘Capital’ and what it stands for — namely a scientific analysis of bourgeois society which represents the proletariat’s class consciousness at its highest level — will in the end prove to have made a decisive contribution to capitalism’s replacement by a classless society of associated producers.”
Five decades later, with capitalism still firmly intact, the American political theorist Wendy Brown briskly lays aside such hopes in the preface of the new Princeton translation, calling them a “fantasy.” She also worries that if the workers of the world were ever to use freely what Marx called “the free gift of nature” in order to create more abundance for human beings, they might trigger an “ecological catastrophe,” something that she says the author of “Capital” only considers in passing. Brown suggests that the main contemporary value of Marx’s text is as a “critical theory” that reveals the system of capital as “a philosophical object.” In other words, it might not be the best guide for political practice.
Certainly, “Capital” is a cerebral read and the dangers of the world Marx lived in are not all the same as ours. Still, it’s a bit weird (if that’s the right word) that the scholars working on this new English edition of Marx’s most revered text should downplay Marx’s own deepest hopes, not just for a future classless society, but also for an ongoing process of upheaval that results, yes, in suffering, but also in ongoing technological and moral progress.
For if capital is just “extremely unnatural and incompatible with human flourishing,” and inexorably leading toward the destruction of the planet, what’s the point? Marx couldn’t predict the future, and neither can we. But, as he once put it, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
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