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Israel’s Genocide Day 356: Netanyahu denies accepting U.S./French ceasefire proposal with Lebanon
As Israel expands bombing in Lebanon, Hezbollah rockets have reached reached Akka, Haifa, Tiberias, and the lower Galilee. Meanwhile, in Gaza, Israel returned a truckload of decomposing bodies without identification that it had abducted from Gaza.
By Qassam Muaddi, September 26, 2024
Casualties
· 41,467 + killed* and at least 95,921 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*
· 718+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 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 26, 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 25, 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
Editor’s note: This dispatch is a continuation of the ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ daily dispatches, which we have been publishing since October 7, 2023. Moving forward, the dispatches will be filed under the title ‘Israel’s Genocide’, though the subject matter will remain the same. We will continue to bring you updates of the latest events in Gaza and as we enter one year since Israel’s genocidal war began, we believe this new title best reflects the reality of the Palestinian experience on the ground in Gaza and across occupied Palestine.
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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) California Sues Exxon Over Plastics Pollution and Recycling ‘Myth’
The lawsuit, seeking ‘multiple billions of dollars,’ opens a new front in the legal battles with oil and gas companies over climate and environmental issues.
By Karen Zraick and David Gelles, Sept. 23, 2024
An Exxon Mobil chemical recycling plant in Baytown, Texas. Credit...Sergio Flores/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The attorney general of California, Rob Bonta, sued Exxon Mobil on Monday alleging that the oil giant carried out a “decades-long campaign of deception” that overhyped the promise of recycling and spawned a plastic pollution crisis.
The suit, filed in superior court in San Francisco, argued that people were more likely to buy single-use plastics because of the false belief, promoted by Exxon Mobil, that they would be recycled. Mr. Bonta said the company is a leading producer of a key component used to make single-use plastics. The suit seeks unspecified damages that Mr. Bonta estimated would amount of “multiple billions of dollars.”
In an interview, Mr. Bonta said that plastic pollution was “fueled by the myth of recycling, and the leader among them in perpetuating that myth is Exxon Mobil.”
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
The case opens a new front in the legal battles against oil and gas companies over climate and environmental issues. More than two dozen state and local governments, including California, have sued companies for their role in the climate crisis, making claims that the companies deceived the public in a quest for profit. None have gone to trial yet.
The California suit filed on Monday alleged that Exxon Mobil promoted the widely used “chasing arrows” symbol on plastic products, which led buyers to believe that their bottles and other products would, in fact, be recycled if disposed of properly. But only about 5 percent of the plastic waste in the United States is recycled, according to Mr. Bonta’s office, citing an estimate by the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, which looked at 2021 data. At the same time, the amount of plastic manufactured, much of it single-use, grows yearly.
The suit comes after a more than two-year investigation by Mr. Bonta’s office, which issued subpoenas to Exxon Mobil and plastics industry groups in April 2022.
The attorney general said the investigation uncovered new information about misleading claims that Exxon Mobil made about its “advanced recycling” program, which claims to transform used plastics into new products. His office said the case would be the first effort by an American government official to hold a petrochemical company accountable for deception regarding plastics.
Most of the waste processed through the company’s advanced-recycling program is made into fuel, and the new products contain little material that was actually recycled, but they are marketed and sold at a premium, the suit alleges. In a statement, Mr. Bonta’s office called the advanced-recycling program “a public relations stunt.”
The suit pointed to the deleterious effects of plastic utensils, cups, straws and other everyday objects, noting that they break down into “microplastics” that can escape into the environment and contaminate drinking water and soil. Researchers have found evidence of microplastics inside the human body. The lawsuit called for the establishment of an “abatement fund” and other financial penalties.
In a report entitled “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling” earlier this year, the Center for Climate Integrity, an advocacy group, concluded that fossil-fuel and other petrochemical companies had used the “false promise” of recycling to “exponentially increase virgin plastic production over the last six decades.” Plastics are made from fossil fuels, and are part of a category of products called petrochemicals.
The report concluded that recycling plastics has failed because of technical and economic limitations. Even when recycling is technically possible, it can be more expensive than producing new plastic and thus economically not viable, it said.
Mr. Bonta said that the concerns about recycling’s effectiveness could lead to a greater emphasis on reusing items like water bottles and shopping bags for people who want to curb their contribution to pollution. “I think people need to know the limits of recycling and the fact that what they thought they had been recycling for years, has not really been recycled,” he said.
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2) As Lebanon Reels From Israeli Attacks, the Future Is Murky for a Wounded Hezbollah
Some experts said that Israel’s onslaught had left Hezbollah in disarray. Others noted its large weapons stockpiles and history of adapting to battle Israel’s much more high-tech military.
By Ben Hubbard, Reporting from Istanbul, Sept. 24, 2024
The rubble of a building hit by an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on Tuesday. Credit...Mohammed Zaatari/Associated Press
Swaths of southern Lebanon are smoldering ruins. Highways are clogged with thousands fleeing the possibility of an even bigger war between Israel and Hezbollah. As towns and villages prepared for funerals on Tuesday, Lebanon was just beginning to grapple with the fallout from its deadliest day in decades.
A vast wave of Israeli airstrikes on Monday targeting parts of the country where Hezbollah holds sway killed hundreds of people and plunged Lebanon into a deep state of uncertainty over what Israel would do next, how deeply the militia had been damaged and what sort of response its remaining forces could muster.
Israel said it had hit more than 1,000 sites, mostly in southern and eastern Lebanon, aimed at the fighters and military infrastructure of Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party and militia it has been fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border for 11 months. At least 558 people were killed in the strikes, including 94 women and 50 children, Lebanon’s health minister told reporters on Tuesday.
That toll marked a terrible milestone for Lebanon: Monday was the country’s deadliest day since its 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990.
“The victims of a strike by the Israeli enemy on the village of Arnoun. Targeted in their homes!” read text over a photo shared on social media of three women killed in one of the strikes.
The death toll given by the health ministry did not differentiate between fighters and civilians, and the strikes overwhelmingly hit parts of the country where Hezbollah dominates, suggesting that Israel had struck another fierce blow to the group. That capped a week in which Israel also blew up electronic devices distributed by Hezbollah, killing dozens of people and injuring thousands more, and assassinated a group of its military leaders in an airstrike near Beirut.
Some experts on Hezbollah suggested that Israel’s recent attacks had largely debilitated the group, leaving its membership in disarray.
“They have no options,” said Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut and the author of a book on Hezbollah. “Israel disabled Hezbollah.”
The attacks since last Tuesday have hit both Hezbollah’s leadership and its fighters hard while severely disrupting their ability to communicate and coordinate large-scale retaliation against Israel, he said.
“Now Hezbollah is headless,” Mr. Khashan said. “Israel eliminated Hezbollah’s leadership, so the rank and file are astray.”
Other experts acknowledged the severity of the blows but were more cautious about writing the group off so quickly, citing its large weapons stockpiles and history of adapting to confront Israel’s much more high-tech military.
Hezbollah was formed with Iranian help in the 1980s to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000. In the years since, it has grown into a significant political player in Lebanon and the country’s most powerful military force while sending fighters to help other Iran-backed forces in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Israel, the United States and other countries consider it a terrorist organization.
Hezbollah launched cross-border attacks on Israel after the start of the war in Gaza last October in solidarity with Hamas, which is also backed by Iran. Israel responded by striking Hezbollah sites in Lebanon, but for many months, both sides made efforts to keep their battle mostly confined to the border area.
Last week, Israeli leaders sharply escalated its attacks on the group, saying that removing it from the border zone was the only way that the tens of thousands of Israelis who have fled their homes in the area could return home.
A diplomat with knowledge of the talks aimed at containing the violence, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the news media, said Israel was demanding that Hezbollah agree to a cease-fire along the Lebanon-Israel border regardless of what happens in the war in Gaza and move its forces and arms away from the frontier.
Joseph Daher, who teaches at Lausanne University in Switzerland and wrote a book about Hezbollah, said Israel has greatly increased the pressure but that Hezbollah was unlikely to agree to its demands.
“It puts pressure politically and socially on Hezbollah, but will it make Hezbollah separate the Gaza front from the Lebanese front? I don’t think so,” he said. “Nor will it get Hezbollah to withdraw its military capacities from the border area.”
So far, at least, Hezbollah does not appear to have changed its strategy of trying to avoid a total war that could cause deep damage to the movement and to Lebanon, Mr. Daher said.
“We are already in a form of war, but they don’t want a total war with Israel,” he said. “This is why they are maintaining a calculated and to some extent moderated reaction, although intensifying their attacks against Israel, as seen this weekend.”
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3) Israel Launches More Strikes on Hezbollah, as Thousands Flee Southern Lebanon
Lebanon health officials said Israeli attacks since Monday have killed hundreds, including women and children. Israel claimed it had killed one senior Hezbollah commander with an airstrike on a building in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
By Victoria Kim, Euan Ward, Aaron Boxerman and Ronen Bergman, September 24, 2024
Hezbollah supporters paying tribute to the victims of an Israeli airstrike, in Dahiyeh, near Beirut, on Saturday. Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
Israel’s military carried out more strikes on Tuesday against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, including in the densely populated neighborhoods south of Beirut, after hundreds of people were killed the previous day in the deadliest barrage of Israeli attacks there in decades.
One strike Tuesday near Beirut, in an area known as Dahiya where Hezbollah is the dominant power, hit a six-story building, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency, and sent a plume of smoke above the Lebanese capital. Lebanon’s health ministry said that six people had been killed and 15 others injured.
The Israeli military claimed the strike had killed Ibrahim Mohammad Qobeisi, identified as a senior Hezbollah commander who oversaw Hezbollah’s missile apparatus. It wasn’t clear how Israel had confirmed his death, and Hezbollah did not immediately comment on the claim.
Hezbollah also continued to fire at northern Israel, but most of the rockets were intercepted as sirens and explosions were heard in several communities. The strikes have unnerved the Middle East, sparking fears of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah as the fighting in Gaza continues with no clear prospect of a truce. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis that they were headed into “complicated days.”
The Israeli military said it had struck 1,600 targets in Lebanon related to Hezbollah, the militant group backed by Iran, on Monday. Panicked by the scope and intensity of the attacks, civilians fled southern Lebanon and sought the relative safety of Beirut, clogging the main roads leading into the capital.
Lebanon’s health minister raised the death toll from the strikes to 558 people, with another 1,800 injured, making Monday the country’s deadliest day since a civil war that ended in 1990. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, although the health minister, Firass Abiad, told a news conference on Tuesday that scores of women and children were among those killed. “The overwhelming majority of those who fell during the attacks that happened yesterday, they were safe and unarmed people in their homes,” Dr. Abiad said.
The pace of Israeli strikes appeared to surpass that seen during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, in which more than 1,000 Lebanese people were killed over a month.
Here is what else to know:
· Commander targeted: An Israel airstrike in Beirut on Monday aimed to kill Ali Karaki, a member of Hezbollah’s top leadership, according to three current and former Israeli officials. Hezbollah said in a statement that he was alive. Israeli strikes in recent months have killed other members of Hezbollah’s top leadership.
· Automated calls: People in Lebanon received text messages and automated calls warning them to move away from Hezbollah’s weapons caches. That drew criticism from rights groups, which argued that Lebanese civilians would have no means of knowing where military targets were located. Lebanon’s information minister accused Israel of “psychological warfare.”
· U.N. meeting: France’s foreign minister said his country was requesting an emergency Security Council meeting on the situation in Lebanon, as world leaders gathered for the United Nations General Assembly this week.
· U.S. troops deploy: The Pentagon said it was sending dozens of additional U.S. troops to the Middle East. About 40,000 American service members are stationed in the region.
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4) Israeli Bulldozers Flatten Mile After Mile in the West Bank
Videos from Tulkarm and Jenin show bulldozers destroying infrastructure and businesses, as well as soldiers impeding local emergency responders.
By Erika Solomon, Lauren Leatherby and Aric Toler, Sept. 25, 2024
The digging damaged water and sewage pipes. In Tulkarm, home to one of the largest refugee camps in the West Bank, videos showed water gushing down a street from what appeared to be a destroyed water main.
Over two weeks, Palestinians watched as Israeli military bulldozers tore up mile after mile of their streets and alleys, sewage seeping into the dusty ruts left behind.
The people of Tulkarm and Jenin, the two West Bank towns that were the focus of Israel’s latest military raids, said they had never before experienced such a scale of destruction.
Residents pointed to one video that shows an Israeli armored bulldozer flattening a decorative roundabout and nearby vegetation.
Visual evidence analyzed by The New York Times supports accounts from residents about the damage from Israel’s latest raids. Videos filmed in Tulkarm and Jenin show bulldozers destroying infrastructure and businesses, and soldiers impeding local emergency responders.
“We watched their bulldozers tear up streets, demolish businesses, pharmacies, schools. They even bulldozed the town soccer field, and a tree in the middle of a road,” said Kamal Abu al-Rub, the governor of Jenin, a governorate in the northern West Bank. “What was the point of all of this?”
In late August, the Israeli military launched one of its most extensive and deadliest raids in the West Bank in years, an escalation from the nearly nightly raids that have become the norm since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.
Israel has described the operations as counterterrorism efforts, aimed at rooting out Hamas and other armed militants who have increased their attacks against Israelis. The military said it had found stockpiles of weapons in its recent operations in the northern West Bank, killed 23 militants and arrested 45. One Israeli soldier was killed in Jenin, it said.
In a response to a detailed list of questions from The Times, the Israeli military said that it operated in accordance with international law and “undertakes all feasible precautions to avoid damaging essential infrastructure.” It said military engineers had to undertake such operations to demine roads or destroy arms stores hidden on private property.
But it acknowledged that these “operations in the area have caused unavoidable harm to certain civilian structures.”
Residents in Jenin and Tulkarm, towns with a history of rebellion against Israeli occupation, had long been accustomed to targeted, nighttime raids. But many of them who spoke to The Times said the raids that lasted for nine days in Jenin and even longer in Tulkarm went far beyond, noting that the extent of the damaged roads and infrastructure surpassed any previous assaults.
Several districts were declared “disaster zones,” officials said, because so many buildings were bombed or blown up that they threatened the stability of the broader neighborhood. And incursions that once focused on the towns’ refugee camps spread deeper into other parts of the city.
Rights groups have also tracked Israeli forces’ intensifying use of airstrikes in the West Bank, which they say violates international law.
“They are imposing conditions, materially and psychologically, that make people feel: Gaza is coming to you,” said Shawan Jabarin, the director of Al Haq, a rights group based in the West Bank. “There is a feeling among Palestinians across the West Bank that what is coming is very bad — that it will be a plan to kill and expel us.”
A Morning Raid
The most recent operations began early on Aug. 28 when residents of Tulkarm and Jenin awoke to Israeli military bulldozers ripping up streets.
The digging damaged water and sewage pipes. In Tulkarm, home to one of the largest refugee camps in the West Bank, videos showed water gushing down a street from what appeared to be a destroyed water main.
For months, Israeli raids destroyed roads and other infrastructure that local officials said they repeatedly fixed, only to see their work razed again in the next assault.
Muhanad Matar, the head of general relations for the municipality of Tulkarm, estimated that in the latest operations alone, more than 90 percent of water and sewage lines had been destroyed.
In Jenin, some 70 percent of roads have been damaged or destroyed by the recent raids, according to the mayor, Nidal Obeidi. Internet, electricity and phone lines were shut down in some areas. Sewage and water lines were also cut, leaving about 80 percent of Jenin without running water, local officials said, including the main hospital.
“The problem with trying to calculate the costs is that it doesn’t stop,” Mr. Matar said. “It’s an unending string of raids.”
Businesses Destroyed
Israeli bulldozers have also plowed through commercial areas. Videos showed them digging up streets in Cinema Square, the heart of Jenin’s business district.
Israel’s military said the risk of militants hiding explosives necessitated the use of “engineering tools when entering areas where the terrorist organizations operate, in order to uncover the axes where explosive devices were planted, and to remove the danger that arises from the terrorist organizations’ use of civilian structures.”
Residents highlighted such efforts as examples of needless destruction. Local business owners who spoke to The Times insisted this area had no links to militants in the city.
Rami Kmail, 35, is the owner of Rami Center, overlooking the square — the corner building with a red storefront seen in the video below.
Mr. Kmail said his store had been damaged in 10 Israeli raids since Oct. 7. It has cost him up to $20,000 in repairs each time.
Like other shopkeepers, he has stopped replacing some window panes and shop signs. “There was no way to keep up with the cost,” he said
Mr. Kmail insisted this kind of destruction was aimed at hurting society and daily life.
“It felt like we were targeted. That was very clear — there was an intentional effort to destroy businesses,” he said. “They think they’re teaching people a lesson. The army’s message is: No one is getting out of this without being punished.”
The owner of the jewelry store being bulldozed in the video below said that all of his display cases were crushed when the facade was destroyed. He spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for his safety.
“I think we lost everything,” he said. Asked if he would reopen, he said: “I don’t know if we are going to be able to. For now only God knows.”
In Tulkarm’s Nur Shams refugee camp, the Kinwa family sold cooking gas canisters for three decades from the ground floor of the building that had long been their home in the Manshiya District. It is one of several districts that municipal officials have declared “disaster zones” to be evacuated.
The business, the family said, went up in flames this month, after Israeli soldiers rigged and detonated explosives in the shop — ignoring neighbors’ warnings that some 50 gas canisters were inside.
“Every other night, we move and find someone else to stay with,” said Ayman Al-Kinwa, who ran the family’s business. “We were a big home, and now we are scattered.”
Unanswered Emergency Calls
Perhaps the heaviest cost of the raids has been the effect on medical care.
Several videos showed ambulances unable to navigate destroyed roads. Ambulance drivers said they sometimes could not find alternate routes among the cratered roads.
Even when roads were intact, Israeli bulldozers, other videos showed, appeared to block emergency vehicles from passing.
Mahmoud Al-Saadi, the head of the Red Crescent branch in Jenin, said that calls for help increased significantly during the recent raids. His teams, he said, failed to respond to 500 to 600 calls per day because they simply could not reach them.
The sudden rise in calls was not only related to the fighting, medics and municipal officials said, but also to soldiers encircling hospitals. The soldiers, they said, granted entry only to ambulances and not civilian vehicles, so rescuers also had to escort patients needing regular treatments, like dialysis or radiation.
One video showed Israeli soldiers inspecting an ambulance in Jenin.
Israel’s military, in response to The Times, said it “does not intend to harm medical personnel. However, in several cases, terrorists have carried out terror attacks via the exploitation of ambulances and medical institutions.”
As a result, the army said it “has been compelled, in some instances, to search ambulances leaving the camps and villages,” but said it tried to minimize the delays.
Mr. Al-Saadi said some of his teams were forced to wait for long periods of time, putting some patients’ lives at risk.
With evacuations so difficult, many volunteers said they put together first-aid kits to treat people at their homes. And in cases where emergency vehicles could not reach people, some Red Crescent officials said, teams sometimes guided people through treatments by phone until one could.
“This is collective punishment,” said Laith Hassan, 25, a volunteer for the Red Crescent in Tulkarm. “I don’t know what else you could call it.”
Increase in Airstrikes
Since the second intifada, or uprising, ended in the early 2000s, Israeli airstrikes on the West Bank have been extremely rare. After Oct. 7, airstrikes by drones, fighter jets and helicopters increased rapidly, killing 41 Palestinians in August alone — more than at any point in close to two decades, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the rights group Al-Haq.
In its latest raid, the Israeli military said it carried out 50 airstrikes “on buildings, infrastructure, and weapon storage sites.” It also said it launched targeted strikes on militants.
A video posted by the military shows what appears to be gunmen being corralled by an Israeli military vehicle. When they open fire and try to flee, an airstrike kills one as they run away.
Such airstrikes violate Israel’s obligations under international law, said Sari Bashi, a program director for Human Rights Watch, which stipulates that an occupying power must conduct security operations as a policing force, not an army.
“One of our concerns is that lethal force is actually a first resort — that the Israeli military is trying to kill people, as opposed to arrest them, under circumstances where it’s possible to arrest them,” she said.
Israel’s army said that it had complied with international law, and that aerial strikes “are carried out in cases where the option of arrest was ruled out in view of the immediate risk to the forces.”
The U.N. office and Al-Haq have both documented more than 150 Palestinians killed by airstrikes in the West Bank since Oct. 7. Palestinians in Jenin and Tulkarm say they increasingly fear the drones that almost constantly circle overhead. Medics and municipal workers repairing roads say they have come under drone surveillance, and have sometimes been fired on.
“They even shot at my car,” said Mr. Obeidi, Jenin’s mayor.
Some Palestinian men, like the shop owner Mr. Al-Kinwa, say they now avoid going outside or gathering in groups.
“The fear of drone strikes is with me 24 hours a day,” he said. “It’s there even when I sleep.”
The intensity of these latest raids, some residents warn, may backfire against Israel’s efforts to ensure its security and lead to more people joining groups like Hamas.
“If you deliberately destroy the place, what do you think those people are going to do?” asked the shopkeeper Mr. Kmail. “Israel just added to the numbers in the resistance.”
Video production by Ainara Tiefenthäler.
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5) Missouri Man Executed After Long Fight for Exoneration
Marcellus Williams, who was convicted of a 1998 murder in suburban St. Louis, maintained he was innocent. But the courts and the governor were not persuaded.
By Shaila Dewan, Published Sept. 24, 2024, Updated Sept. 25, 2024
Mr. Williams had sought clemency from the governor and a stay of execution from state and federal courts. Credit...Marcellus Williams legal team
The state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams on Tuesday evening by lethal injection, over the objections of the local prosecutor whose office obtained Mr. Williams’s murder conviction in 2003.
Mr. Williams, who for decades maintained his innocence, had in recent days sought clemency from the governor and a stay of execution from the State Supreme Court. But on Monday, both the governor, Mike Parson, and the State Supreme Court turned him down, and on Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court, his last hope, declined to intervene.
He was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. at a state prison in Bonne Terre, the Missouri Department of Corrections said in a statement.
Mr. Williams’s lawyer, Tricia Rojo Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project, said it was unjust to execute a man when the prosecutor’s office had admitted it was wrong and had fought to overturn the death sentence. “The execution of an innocent person is the most extreme manifestation of Missouri’s obsession with finality over truth, justice and humanity,” she said.
“Marcellus Williams should be alive today,” the local prosecutor, Wesley Bell, said in a statement. “There were multiple points in the timeline when decisions could have been made that would have spared him the death penalty.”
Over the years Mr. Williams, 55, had received stays of execution — one in 2015 and one in 2017 — but neither led to his conviction’s being thrown out.
A law enacted in 2021 gave him another path to challenge his conviction in the 1998 killing of Felicia Gayle, a well-known newspaper reporter, in her suburban St. Louis home. Under the law, prosecutors can bring a motion to overturn a conviction if they believe there has been a miscarriage of justice. Mr. Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County, reviewed Mr. Williams’s case and filed such a motion last January.
The law has been used only a handful of times. In the three cases that proceeded to the hearing stage, judges agreed to exonerate the defendants in question. But Mr. Williams’s case turned out to be different.
Mr. Bell’s 63-page motion contended that there had been several violations of Mr. Williams’s constitutional rights during the investigation and the trial. In the filing, Mr. Bell asserted that a defense lawyer had not presented mitigating evidence that could have spared Mr. Williams the death penalty and that a prosecutor had improperly rejected Black potential jurors, resulting in a jury with 11 white members and one Black member. Mr. Williams was Black, and Ms. Gayle, the victim, was white.
Mr. Bell, a Democrat who recently won the Democratic primary for a congressional seat, also wrote that there was ample reason to believe that Mr. Williams was innocent. He detailed multiple issues with the credibility of the two key witnesses against Mr. Williams and noted that Mr. Williams was not the source of footprints or hairs found at the crime scene, nor of DNA found on the murder weapon.
Mr. Williams did sell a laptop computer that was stolen from Ms. Gayle’s home, but Mr. Bell said there was evidence that he had received the computer from his girlfriend, who became one of the two witnesses against him in the belief that she would receive leniency in her own criminal cases, he said. Both witnesses died in the intervening years.
While the motion by Mr. Bell’s office wended its way through the court system, the state attorney general, Andrew Bailey, a Republican who was facing his own primary election challenge, asked the State Supreme Court to set an execution date for Mr. Williams. The court scheduled the execution for Sept. 24.
A hearing on Mr. Bell’s motion was scheduled for August. But just before that date, his office received a new analysis of the DNA on the murder weapon, a kitchen knife. Instead of pointing to an unknown suspect, which would have bolstered the case for Mr. Williams’s innocence, the analysis showed that the knife had been handled by a prosecutor and an investigator at the trial.
The finding led Mr. Bell to back away from the assertion that Mr. Williams was innocent. Instead, he offered Mr. Williams a deal that would have taken him off death row. Ms. Gayle’s widower approved of the deal, but Mr. Bailey, the attorney general, objected. He said that the law that had allowed Mr. Bell to bring the motion to overturn did not allow him to come up with a new sentence.
The State Supreme Court agreed with Mr. Bailey, saying that the judge, Bruce Hilton, had to hold the hearing after all. At the hearing, Mr. Bell’s office focused on the claims of constitutional violations, questioning the original prosecutor in the case about why he had handled the murder weapon without gloves and why he had struck Black prospective jurors from the jury pool.
The prosecutor, Keith Larner, testified that in one case he had excluded a prospective Black juror because he closely resembled the defendant. “They looked like they were brothers,” he said.
He also said that the knife had already been tested and that it was not understood at the time that touch could leave traces of DNA on evidence.
First Judge Hilton and then the State Supreme Court rejected Mr. Bell’s arguments, saying that multiple courts and hearings had found that Mr. Williams was guilty and that there was no credible evidence of constitutional violations. Supporters of Mr. Williams, including the N.A.A.C.P., the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Representative Cori Bush of Missouri and Sir Richard Branson, the music magnate and death penalty opponent, called for clemency.
Governor Parson, a Republican, declined those calls on Monday, saying that Mr. Williams’s guilt was a settled matter.
Mr. Williams became a Muslim while in prison and took the name Khaliifah. He appeared in court in recent weeks in the white skullcap that signifies Islamic devotion, and he chose to have an imam present with him in the execution chamber.
When he was offered the chance to write a final statement to be released by the Missouri Department of Corrections, Mr. Williams wrote, “All Praise Be to Allah in Every Situation!!!”
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6) U.S. Pushes Cease-Fire in Lebanon as Netanyahu Says Israel Will Fight On
The Israeli leader was heading to New York for talks. He did not comment on the proposal to pause fighting with Hezbollah, but instructed Israeli forces to battle the Lebanese militia “with full force.”
By Liam Stack, Patrick Kingsley and Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, September 26, 2024
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel instructed his military to keep fighting “with full force” on Thursday, as a high-stakes international diplomatic effort was underway to pause the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu of Israel was heading to New York for the U.N. General Assembly, even as members of his government dismissed a cease-fire proposal that was put forward by the United States, European allies and several Arab nations and Israel’s military carried out new strikes in Lebanon, including one in Beirut, the capital that targeted the commander of Hezbollah’s drone unit.
Israel’s foreign minister rejected the proposal in sentiments echoed by lawmakers across the Israeli political spectrum. The prime minister’s office declined to comment on it, but did not explicitly rule out a cease-fire. Hezbollah has not responded to the proposal, which analysts said would be hard for either side to accept because it falls short of their respective conditions for a truce.
However, senior Israeli officials, including Ron Dermer, the prime minister’s closest adviser, have privately discussed the possibility of a cease-fire with their American counterparts, according to two Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
The escalation of the conflict in Lebanon has raised international alarm. A French official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said that the current escalation could evolve into a full-fledged war between Israel and Hezbollah and that France believes there is only a “narrow window” for a cease-fire deal. The announcement of the proposal on Wednesday, the official said, was the result of weeks of coordination between France — which was in touch with Lebanese parties —- and the United States, which played the major role in talking to Israel.
Israel and Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militia, have been trading fire since the beginning of the war in Gaza, but Israel has intensified its attacks over the last week, with a one of the biggest bombing campaigns in recent military history. On Wednesday, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military chief of staff, suggested that it was preparing for the possibility of a ground invasion.
Here’s what else to know:
· Parties to the proposal: Hezbollah, which as a militant group does not have the same accountability as a state institution in Lebanon, would not be formally asked to accept the proposal. But it’s not always clear where Hezbollah ends and Lebanon begins. The group, which the United States and many other countries consider a terrorist organization, is a dominant political and military power in the country.
· Fresh strikes: Israel’s military said on Thursday that it was striking targets in southern Lebanon in response to a wave of 45 rockets fired into northern Israel. Lebanon’s health ministry said 20 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Younine, a town in the Bekaa Valley, and that three people were killed in the Tyre district, on the country’s Mediterranean coast. The airstrike in Beirut, which targeted the drone unit commander, killed two people and injured fifteen more, according to the ministry.
· Panic and desperation: Israel’s strikes have killed hundreds of people in Lebanon and have spread fear and desperation. Roughly 500,000 people have been displaced, according to Lebanon’s foreign ministry, and civilians have clogged the main roads leading to Beirut, the capital.
· Gaza fears: As world attention focuses on the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah tensions, some Palestinians in Gaza worry that efforts to end the war and humanitarian crisis there will wane. The families of Israeli hostages also worry that their loved ones will be forgotten as Israel’s attention turns to the north.
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7) Israel says it targeted Hamas in a strike on a school compound. Gazan officials report women and children were killed.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, September 26, 2024
Palestinians at a school turned shelter following a strike near Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israel’s military said it struck a school compound in northern Gaza with bombs on Thursday, claiming it housed a Hamas command-and-control center. Palestinian Civil Defense officials said 15 people, including women and children, were killed and dozens of others were wounded.
The attack appeared to be the latest of dozens of airstrikes that Israel’s military has carried out in recent months on schools in Gaza that have been turned into shelters for people forced to flee their homes by the war and airstrikes.
The military said Hamas fighters were using the school in Jabaliya to plan attacks on Israel and its forces, without providing evidence. It said that numerous steps were taken to limit harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions and aerial surveillance, a statement it has routinely made in its reports about airstrikes on the school-turned-shelter compounds.
It has said that Hamas fighters routinely use civilian buildings and hide among ordinary residents in violation of international law. Palestinian authorities say that hundreds of civilians have died in the attacks on the temporary shelters in school compounds. The United Nations, human rights groups and some governments have criticized some of the strikes and say Israel still has a responsibility to protect civilians.
The number of attacks on the compounds has risen at a time when Israeli forces have largely secured control of the enclave and have defeated Hamas’ main battle formations, turning the conflict into a guerrilla war.
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8) Israel Strikes Residential Buildings in Beirut Suburb It Says Housed Hezbollah Headquarters
The announcement came minutes after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel struck a defiant tone at the United Nations General Assembly over his government’s handling of wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
By Liam Stack, Reporting from Tel Aviv, September 27, 2024
Barely an hour after Netanyahu finished speaking, there has been a massive blast in Dahiya, an area south of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. The noise was deafening. I can see thick, black smoke rising above the skyline. Euan Ward for The New York Times
Israel said that its forces had struck what it said was the central headquarters of Hezbollah, under residential buildings in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, an announcement that came minutes after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel took a defiant tone at the United Nations General Assembly over his government’s handling of wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
The Israeli strikes appeared to have been some of the most intense in Beirut since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began last October.
Lebanon’s civil defense agency says paramedics and emergency workers are rushing to the scene of the Israeli strike in southern Beirut in an attempt to retrieve those killed and injured. There was no immediate information about the number of casualties.
Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that after almost a year of Hezbollah firing at Israel and of Israel warning the world that Hezbollah must be stopped, “Israel is doing what every sovereign state in the world would do.”
His comments echoed the sentiments Mr. Netanyahu had expressed earlier in an address to the United Nations in New York.
In his speech, Mr. Netanyahu made no mention of international efforts to broker a cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon. He also threatened Iran after almost a full year of war against Tehran-backed groups, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
“I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran: If you strike us we will strike you,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “There is no place in Iran that long arm of Israel cannot reach, and that is true of the entire Middle East.”
Mr. Netanyahu criticized the U.N. itself as a “swamp of antisemitic bile” and said its members’ concerns about Israel’s conduct were motivated not by humanitarianism but by dislike of Jews.
Many world leaders have used the annual U.N. meeting in New York this week to call for an urgent end to the fighting in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon, and to warn of the risk of a larger regional war in the Middle East. The United States and its allies unveiled a proposal for three-week cease-fire on Wednesday night, but its prospects were uncertain and both Israel and Hezbollah had reason to reject it.
Mr. Netanyahu and politicians across the Israeli political spectrum on Thursday appeared to dim hopes for the plan, with the Israeli leader insisting that the military would keep striking Hezbollah militants in Lebanon with “all our might.”
At the U.N., Mr. Netanyahu portrayed defeating Hezbollah as an existential mission for Israel and called the group “a terror army perched on our northern border.” He did not mention the U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal.
Hours earlier, his office issued a statement saying it “appreciates the U.S. efforts” toward a cease-fire in Lebanon and would continue discussions “in the coming days.” The comments suggested that he was trying to balance demands from the United States, Israel’s most important ally, and the right-wing Israeli lawmakers who help keep his governing coalition in power.
Hezbollah was not formally asked to accept the proposal, and did not publicly respond to it. Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire since the war in Gaza began last October. But over the past 10 days, Israel has moved more decisively against the group, launching one of the biggest bombing campaigns in modern military history and targeting Hezbollah commanders.
The militia, for its part, has pledged to continue its attacks on Israel until there is a cease-fire in Gaza, and the back-and-forth strikes have not ceased. The Israeli military said Friday that it had struck dozens of sites in Lebanon in response to a volley of rockets into northern Israel, most of which were shot down.
Here’s what else to know:
· Abbas speech: Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, used his speech at the United Nations to call on the international community to stop sending weapons to Israel. He accused the country of carrying out a “war of genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. After his speech, diplomats applauded and chanted, “Free, free Palestine,” in the chamber.
· Bombardment in Gaza: The war in Gaza has not stopped, even as Israel’s attention has shifted to Lebanon in the north. The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had struck a school used as a shelter in Gaza, which it said housed a Hamas command center. It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on former schools. Palestinian Civil Defense officials said 35 people had been killed in Israeli strikes across the enclave on Thursday, including 15 in the bombing of the former school, including women and children.
· Sirens in Tel Aviv: Yemen’s Houthi militia, which like Hezbollah and Hamas is backed by Iran, launched a missile at Tel Aviv for the second time in two weeks early Friday morning. The launch set off sirens across central Israel, but the Israeli military said that it had intercepted the missile and that it caused no damage. Such attacks were once rare but have become more common: It was the second time in three days that an Iran-backed group had aimed a missile at the city.
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9) Israel is likely to have enough weapons for multiple conflicts.
By Lara Jakes, who writes frequently about the weapons industry, September 27, 2024
Smoke rising over southern Lebanon after Israeli strikes on Monday. Credit...Aziz Taher/Reuters
Over the last week alone, Israel launched more than 2,000 airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon and continued its near-daily bombings against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Its air defenses also fended off attacks, in one instance intercepting a ballistic missile headed for Tel Aviv.
And there are no signs of the onslaught slowing. “We’re not stopping, while simultaneously preparing plans for the next phases,” the Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said on Wednesday.
But how long can Israel keep it up?
Military and weapons experts say that is not clear. Israel, like many countries, is highly secretive about the weapons in its stockpile, and government spokespeople who vigorously safeguard that information did not respond to requests for comment.
Yet there are several reasons why experts believe Israel could outlast its adversaries in its two-front offensive, even while defending itself from approaching strikes. Israel’s defense industry churned out so many weapons last year that it was able to export some, even despite the war in Gaza beginning in October. The United States has sent Israel at least tens of thousands of missiles, bombs and artillery rounds in recent years.
And given the threats it has faced, Israel has almost certainly built up its stockpiles to sustain multiple conflicts at once — especially if Iran rallies its allied groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen to strike at the same time.
“It will not run out, because in the Middle East, you cannot run out of weapons,” said Yehoshua Kalisky, a military technology expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “The leaders know how to calculate the amount of weapons that are needed, and what they would have to have in the stockpile, because in this jungle you have to be strong.”
Here is what we know about Israel’s weapons arsenal.
The demands on air defenses
Israel says it has been targeted by more than 9,300 Hezbollah rockets since Oct. 8, 2023. Although those attacks killed 49 people, Mr. Kalisky estimated that most of those rockets — 75 percent — were intercepted by Iron Dome, Israel’s vaunted air defense system.
U.S. officials reportedly assessed this summer that Iron Dome batteries could be overwhelmed in a full-blown war with Hezbollah. Analysts have estimated Hezbollah has stockpiled between 100,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles.
But one indicator of Israel’s air defense arsenal is the sheer number of interceptor missiles it was able to fire against Iranian missiles and drones in a single night last April, said Tom Karako, a missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
On April 14, Israel shot down most of about 330 incoming drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles with its Iron Dome and Arrow 3 defensive weapons. Some were also intercepted by the United States and other allies. That showed what he said was “an amazing success” of Israeli air defenses that were clearly well-equipped.
Still, “there’s not enough Iron Domes in the world to catch all of the rockets that Hezbollah has,” he said. “Missile defense buys you time, but you have to use that time well to end the threat by other means.”
A ‘surplus’ of weapons made in Israel
Last year, Israel’s defense industry produced enough weapons “to have a capacity surplus to meet its own needs, within the country itself,” said Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms transfers.
In fact, Israeli companies produced so many arms in 2023 that they were able to export a record high $13 billion in weapons to foreign militaries.
With that kind of surplus, “we must assume that Israel is confident that it has the kind of arsenals which it can use in case the conflict would escalate further,” Mr. Wezeman said.
Defense industry companies generally do not release production numbers, in part for competitive reasons. But Mr. Wezeman said Israel’s weapons manufacturers focus largely on producing ammunition, guided bombs and missiles.
Tens of thousands of American imports
The United States is Israel’s largest arms supplier, and the only country that has delivered missiles and bombs to Israel over the last 15 years, according to the Stockholm institute, SIPRI.
SIPRI estimates that the Pentagon and American arms companies have delivered at least 29,100 guided bombs, artillery rockets and various missiles to Israel since 2009. More than a third were delivered in the last two years alone, and the 15-year total almost certainly is a low estimate, Mr. Wezeman said, since comprehensive weapons sales are rarely publicized and Congress is only notified of the most expensive arms transfers.
In the weeks immediately following the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that started the war in Gaza, the United States sent planeloads of weapons to Israel, including about 3,000 bombs and tens of thousands of artillery shells. The United States has also delivered at least $3.5 billion in unspecified “essential wartime procurement,” Israel’s Defense Ministry said in a statement Thursday.
But since May, the Biden administration has stopped sending Israel 2,000-pound bombs for fear they would cause mass casualties of civilians. And Israel is still waiting for additional bombs, guidance kits and fuses for munitions that it has asked the United States to send over the last year, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute.
Bradley Bowman, a weapons expert there, said those requests show that Israel is trying to build up its stockpile.
“These are things that Israel needs,” Mr. Bowman said. “If you look at the quantities of attacks going back and forth since Oct. 8, but especially in the last week or so, they are increasingly more frequent and more intense. So they’re clearly expending munitions.”
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