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• Hear the stories of what happened at Dublin from formerly incarcerated survivors.
• Learn about the ongoing lawsuit and the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition.
• Find out how you can become involved in supporting this groundbreaking struggle.
Visit our website or contact us at:
dublinprisonsolidarity@gmail.com
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‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 332:
West Bank resistance attacks carried out in Hebron
By Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau, August 29, 2024
Casualties
· 40,786+ killed and at least 94,224 wounded in the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza-based Ministry of Health as of September 2, 2024. At least 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble.
· 681+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank, 5,700 wounded since October 7, according to Palestinian Ministry of Health as of September 2, 2024.
Key Developments
· Israel kills 48 Palestinians, injures 70 others in Gaza in past 24 hours in three separate massacres of families, says Gaza-based health ministry.
· Israel kills 29 Palestinians, wounds 121 in West Bank since beginning of “Operation Summer Camps” last Wednesday.
· Israeli army invasion of northern West Bank cities enters sixth day as residents of Jenin and Jenin refugee camp displaced, while siege of Tulkarem and Tulkarem refugee camps continues.
· Six Israeli captives in Gaza found dead in Rafah tunnel on Sunday, causing uproar in Israel at Netanyahu recalcitrance in reaching ceasefire and captive exchange deal.
· Largest Israeli labor federation, Histadrut, calls for general strike on Monday amid widespread protests in Tel Aviv calling on Netanyahu to conclude ceasefire deal. On Monday, general strike is observed in commercial centers and leading to shortening of school hours and temporary closure of Ben Gurion Airport.
· Former Palestinian Presidential Guard, Muhannad al-Asoud, shoots and kills three Israeli police officers on Sunday near Tarqumiya checkpoint outside Hebron.
· UNRWA in partnership with WHO and UNICEF begins Polio vaccination campaign in Gaza for children under age of 10.
· UK suspends some arms shipments to Israel, citing “clear risk” such weapons will be used for “serious violation of international humanitarian law.”
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) Something’s Poisoning America’s Land. Farmers Fear ‘Forever’ Chemicals.
Fertilizer made from city sewage has been spread on millions of acres of farmland for decades. Scientists say it can contain high levels of the toxic substance.
Hiroko Tabuchi traveled to Texas and Michigan and interviewed ranchers, scientists, investigators and wastewater-treatment experts for this article, Aug. 31, 2024
One of the animals from the contaminated herd Michigan. Credit...Emily Elconin for The New York Times
For decades, farmers across America have been encouraged by the federal government to spread municipal sewage on millions of acres of farmland as fertilizer. It was rich in nutrients, and it helped keep the sludge out of landfills.
But a growing body of research shows that this black sludge, made from the sewage that flows from homes and factories, can contain heavy concentrations of chemicals thought to increase the risk of certain types of cancer and to cause birth defects and developmental delays in children.
Known as “forever chemicals” because of their longevity, these toxic contaminants are now being detected, sometimes at high levels, on farmland across the country, including in Texas, Maine, Michigan, New York and Tennessee. In some cases the chemicals are suspected of sickening or killing livestock and are turning up in produce. Farmers are beginning to fear for their own health.
The national scale of farmland contamination by these chemicals — which are used in everything from microwave popcorn bags and firefighting gear to nonstick pans and stain-resistant carpets — is only now starting to become apparent. There are now lawsuits against providers of the fertilizer, as well as against the Environmental Protection Agency, alleging that the agency failed to regulate the chemicals, known as PFAS.
In Michigan, among the first states to investigate the chemicals in sludge fertilizer, officials shut down one farm where tests found particularly high concentrations in the soil and in cattle that grazed on the land. This year, the state prohibited the property from ever again being used for agriculture. Michigan hasn’t conducted widespread testing at other farms, partly out of concern for the economic effects on its agriculture industry.
In 2022, Maine banned the use of sewage sludge on agricultural fields. It was the first state to do so and is the only state to systematically test farms for the chemicals. Investigators have found contamination on at least 68 of the more than 100 farms checked so far, with some 1,000 sites still to be tested.
“Investigating PFAS is like opening Pandora’s box,” said Nancy McBrady, deputy commissioner of Maine’s Department of Agriculture.
In Texas, several ranchers blamed the chemicals for the deaths of cattle, horses and catfish on their properties after sewage sludge was used as fertilizer on neighboring farmland. Levels of one PFAS chemical in surface water exceeded 1,300 parts per trillion, they say in a lawsuit filed this year against Synagro, the company that supplied the fertilizer. While not directly comparable, the E.P.A.’s drinking-water standard for two PFAS chemicals is 4 parts per trillion.
“We were so desperate to figure out what’s going on, what’s taking our cows from us,” said Tony Coleman, who raises cattle on a 315-acre ranch with his wife, Karen, and her mother, Patsy Schultz, in Johnson County, Texas.
“When we got the tests back, everything started to make sense,” Mr. Coleman said.
Synagro, which is owned by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said it was “vigorously contesting” the allegations. It said its preliminary study of PFAS levels where the sludge was applied showed numbers “drastically lower” than what the plaintiffs claimed, less than 4 parts per trillion in surface water, for example.
“Synagro does not generate PFAS or use them in our processes,” said Kip Cleverley, the company’s chief sustainability officer. “In other words, we are a passive receiver, as are our wastewater utility partners.”
At the center of the crisis is the Environmental Protection Agency, which for decades has encouraged the use of sewage as fertilizer. The agency regulates pathogens and heavy metals in sewage fertilizer, but not PFAS, even as evidence has mounted of their health risks and of their presence in sewage.
The E.P.A. is currently studying the risks posed by PFAS in sludge fertilizer (which the industry calls biosolids) to determine if new rules are necessary.
The agency continues to promote its use on cropland, though elsewhere it has started to take action. In April, it ordered utilities to slash PFAS levels in drinking water to near zero and designated two types of the chemical as hazardous substances that must be cleaned up by polluters. The agency now says there is no safe level of PFAS for humans.
The government was working “to better understand the scope of farms that may have applied contaminated biosolids and develop targeted interventions to support farmers and protect the food supply,” the E.P.A. said in a statement.
Research has shown that PFAS can enter the human food chain from contaminated crops and livestock.
It’s difficult to know how much fertilizer sludge is used nationwide, and E.P.A. data is incomplete. The fertilizer industry says more than 2 million dry tons were used on 4.6 million acres of farmland in 2018. And it estimates that farmers have obtained permits to use sewage sludge on nearly 70 million acres, or about a fifth of all U.S. agricultural land.
Sewage sludge is also applied to landscaping, golf courses and forest land. And it has been used to fill up old mines.
“There’s clearly a need to test every place where biosolids were applied,” said Christopher Higgins, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. “And any industrial facility that is discharging waste to the municipal wastewater facilities probably should be tested.”
Scientists point out that sludge fertilizer has benefits. It contains plant nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. It helps reduce the use of fertilizers made from fossil fuels. It cuts down on the millions of tons of sludge that would otherwise be incinerated, releasing pollution, or would go to landfills, generating greenhouse gases as it decomposes.
“Yet all of the chemistry that society produces, and is exposed to, is in that sewage,” said Rolf Halden, professor of environmental biotechnology at Arizona State University, among the earliest researchers to study PFAS in sewage sludge.
The smell of death
Dana Ames, an environmental crimes investigator at the Constable’s Office in Johnson County, cut her teeth working missing-person cases and grisly homicides. But her first encounter with sludge fertilizer still came as a rude shock.
A farmer had applied the sludge to his fields, and two neighboring ranchers lodged a complaint about the smell. She drove out to investigate.
“I rolled down the window and I literally almost projectile vomited in my vehicle,” she said. “I’m accustomed to smelling death. This was worse than death.”
That call led to a remarkable investigation, overseen by Ms. Ames, into PFAS contamination of the sludge being spread in her county. She obtained a sample of the fertilizer and found it contained 27 different types of PFAS, at least 13 of which matched the PFAS in the soil and water samples from the two ranches.
And when a calf was stillborn at the Coleman ranch, she rushed the carcass to a lab at Texas A&M University. Testing revealed its liver to be full of PFAS: 610,000 parts per trillion.
In February, Ms. Ames and other local officials called an emergency meeting about their findings. “This isn’t just isolated to this county, or even multiple counties. This is going on all over,” said a county commissioner, Larry Woolley. “And the amount of beef and milk that’s gone into the food chain, who knows what their PFAS levels are.”
This year the Colemans and their neighbors James Farmer and Robin Alessi sued the biosolids producer Synagro and also the E.P.A., saying the agency had failed to regulate the chemicals in fertilizer.
They have stopped sending their cattle to market, saying they don’t want to endanger public health. Their days are now filled with long hours of caring for a herd they don’t expect to ever ship.
To cover the costs, they work extra jobs and have dipped into their savings. They fear they have lost their livelihoods forever.
“A lot of people are still scared to talk about it,” Mr. Coleman said. “But for us, it’s all about being honest. I don’t want to hurt anybody else, even though we feel people have hurt us.”
Mountains of sludge
When the E.P.A. started promoting sludge as nutrient-rich fertilizer decades ago, it seemed like a good idea.
The 1972 Clean Water Act had required industrial plants to start sending their wastewater to treatment plants instead of releasing it into rivers and streams, which was a win for the environment but also produced vast new quantities of sludge that had to go somewhere.
It also meant contaminants like PFAS could end up in the sewage, and ultimately in fertilizer.
The sludge that allegedly contaminated the Colemans’ farm came from the City of Fort Worth water district, which treats sewage from more than 1.2 million people, city records show. Its facility also accepts effluent from industries including aerospace, defense, oil and gas, and auto manufacturing. Synagro takes the sludge and treats it (though not for PFAS, as it’s not required by law) then distributes it as fertilizer.
Wastewater treatment involves many stages, including the use of bacteria that eliminate contaminants. The plant checks for heavy metals and pathogens that can be harmful to health. Yet conventional wastewater plants like these were not designed to monitor or remove PFAS.
Steven Nutter, environmental program manager at Fort Worth’s Village Creek Water Reclamation Facility, said the plant followed all federal and state standards. “The ball is in E.P.A.’s court,” he said.
E.P.A.’s own researchers have found elevated levels in sewage sludge. And in the agency’s most recent survey of biosolids, PFAS were almost universal. A 2018 report by the E.P.A. inspector accused the agency of failing to properly regulate biosolids, saying it had “reduced staff and resources in the biosolids program over time.”
Synagro acknowledges in its latest sustainability report that PFAS are a problem. “One of our industry’s challenges,” it says, “is the potential of unwanted substances in biosolids, like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances,” or PFAS.
Yet banning sludge fertilizer isn’t the way forward, biosolids industry groups say. Maine’s ban has only caused the state to truck more sewage out of state, because local landfills can’t accommodate it, said Janine Burke-Wells, executive director of the North East Biosolids & Residuals Association, which represents producers.
She said regulators should focus on curbing the PFAS entering wastewater by banning use in consumer products or requiring industries to clean their effluent before sending it to treatment plants. “There’s not enough money in the world to take it out at the end,” she said.
Figuring out how to deal with this crisis is a challenge now facing many states. Maine, along with its ban on fertilizer sludge and its testing of farmland, is also offering financial assistance to affected farmers and helping them shift from growing food. Using the land to grow other crops, like flowers, or to install solar panels are some of the options being promoted.
Michigan has taken a different approach.
There, regulators have tested only 15 or so farms that had received fertilizer sludge known to have been contaminated. Instead, Michigan has focused on working with companies to bring down levels of PFAS in their wastewater and has banned the use of sludge with high levels of the chemical.
The state acknowledges the risk of more testing to the livelihoods of its farmers. “We’re very, very conscious about the consequences of doing testing and potentially hurting a farm’s economic success,” said Abigail Hendershott, who heads Michigan’s PFAS Action Response Team. “We want to make sure we’ve got really good data before we go out and start disrupting things.”
That’s small consolation to Jason Grostic, a third-generation cattle farmer in Brighton, Mich., whose property was found to be contaminated by sludge fertilizer in 2020. The state placed a health advisory on his beef, dooming his ranch overnight.
“This stuff isn’t just on my land,” Mr. Grostic said. “People are scared to death that they’re going to lose their farm, just like I did.”
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2) Gaza, Lebanon, West Bank: Why Is Israel Fighting So Many Wars?
As well as its conflict with Hamas, Israel is battling along its border with Lebanon, waging a counterinsurgency in the occupied West Bank and exchanging sporadic fire with Iran and its regional proxies.
By Patrick Kingsley, Reporting from Jerusalem, Aug. 31, 2024
Israeli soldiers in the city of Tulkarm, in the occupied West Bank, on Thursday. Many Israelis have lost hope of using diplomacy to resolve their conflict with the Palestinians. Credit...Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
While Israel’s devastating war with Hamas in Gaza attracts the most attention, its military has also been fighting for months on several other fronts, making this one of the most complex periods of conflict in the country’s 76-year history.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the military has been raiding and striking militant groups in several Palestinian cities, killing about 600 people since October, in the deadliest campaign in the territory for more than two decades. On Wednesday, Israel began one of its biggest maneuvers in the territory in recent months, simultaneously invading three cities to capture or kill militants.
Along the Israel-Lebanon border, Israel has been exchanging rocket and missile fire with Hezbollah, a militia allied with Hamas and backed by Iran, in fighting that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the border and killed hundreds.
And Israel’s yearslong shadow war with Iran has burst into the open, with each side striking the other directly in April, leading to fears that a relatively contained war in Gaza might end up setting off an all-out war involving Iran, its many proxies across the Middle East and even the United States.
Why are various groups fighting Israel, why is it using force to deal with them, and why is it taking so long for these wars to end?
Why Israel is still fighting in Gaza.
Despite the destruction of much of Hamas’s military infrastructure and tens of thousands of deaths, there is no end in sight to the war in Gaza, partly because Israel has set itself a high threshold for victory: the eradication of the Hamas leadership and the rescue of roughly 100 hostages still held by the group. By contrast, Hamas has a low threshold: It seeks to survive the war intact, a modest goal that allows it to weather a level of devastation that might have caused other groups to surrender.
Hamas’s extensive subterranean tunnel network also makes it hard for Israel to win. Some of the group’s leaders are thought to be deep beneath the ground, surrounded in some cases by Israeli hostages, making it challenging for Israel to find the leaders, let alone attack them without harming its own kidnapped citizens.
Israel’s tactics also make winning more difficult. Its military has swiftly retreated from most of the areas that it has conquered, allowing — in some cases — for Hamas to regroup there and preventing the war from ending in the way that most wars do, with one side capturing the other’s territory.
A cease-fire has also proved elusive, in large part because Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, wants only a temporary truce, while Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, seeks a complete halt.
Why Israel is raiding West Bank cities.
While Israeli soldiers withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the army retained a wide presence across the West Bank, partly to protect roughly 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are considered illegal by most of the world.
The Israeli military regularly raids and strikes Palestinian cities in the West Bank to quell armed Palestinian groups, including Hamas, that mount terrorist attacks on Israelis in those settlements and in Israel itself.
Many militant groups oppose Israel’s existence. They have become more active in recent years as Israel’s occupation has grown more entrenched, all but ending the dream of Palestinian statehood and increasing Palestinian resentment of Israelis. Rising violence by settler extremists against Palestinian civilians, coupled with a sense of growing impunity for those extremists and the expansion of their settlements, have also been cited by Palestinian groups to justify their militancy.
Since the war in Gaza began, Israel has increased its attacks on these armed groups, saying they became even more active amid a rise in arms smuggled from Iran. Israel also says that the Palestinian Authority, the institution that administers Palestinian cities in the West Bank, has become too weak to rein in the groups by itself.
It is unclear how effective the Israeli raids have been, as observers dispute the extent to which they are restricting or encouraging Palestinian militancy.
The Israeli military says its campaign has killed several key militant commanders and thwarted many attacks on Israeli civilians. Yet the militants appear to be honing their techniques: This past month, a Palestinian from the West Bank set off a bomb in Tel Aviv. It was the first incident of its kind in years, and was cited by the Israeli military as an example of why it needed to mount the extensive operation on Wednesday.
Why Israel is striking Lebanon.
Hezbollah, a Hamas-allied militia that controls large parts of southern Lebanon, began firing at Israel in solidarity with Hamas shortly after the Oct. 7 attack.
Ever since, Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging rocket and missile fire across the Israel-Lebanon border, while trying to avoid an all-out ground war that would most likely devastate both countries. Israel’s fighter jets could cripple Beirut, the Lebanese capital, while Hezbollah has thousands of precision-guided missiles that could wreck Israeli cities.
Israel has said it won’t stop targeting Hezbollah assets and operatives until it is safe for the residents of northern Israel, some 60,000 of whom have been displaced by the fighting, to return home. But that is a distant prospect because, in turn, Hezbollah has pledged to carry on firing until the implementation of a lasting cease-fire in Gaza.
With no end in sight in Gaza, the Lebanon battle looks set to drag on, raising the chances of a miscalculation by either side that could cause the conflict to spiral out of control. A Lebanese strike on schoolchildren in July led Israel to kill a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, leading analysts to predict a major escalation until both sides managed to step back from the brink last Sunday.
Why Israel is fighting with Iran.
For decades, Iran’s leaders have said they sought Israel’s destruction. Both countries have clandestinely attacked each other’s interests and both have built competing regional alliances to deter each other. Israel views Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon as an existential threat and has frequently attempted to sabotage the program.
Until the war in Gaza, both sides tried to maintain plausible deniability for their attacks, mainly to avoid a direct confrontation that could escalate into all-out war. Israel had never claimed responsibility for its assassination of Iranian officials. Iran avoided major public provocations of its own, while encouraging proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as Palestinian groups in the West Bank, to attack Israel.
The intensity and length of the conflict in Gaza has tempted both sides to be more brazen, bringing their shadow war into the open. In April, Israel struck an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria, killing several senior Iranian commanders.
Iran responded by firing one of the biggest barrages of cruise and ballistic missiles in military history in the first direct hit on Israel from Iran, raising the specter of a full-on war, but ultimately causing little damage. And when Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, visited Iran in July, Israel took a risk by killing him on Iranian soil, leading Iran to promise another direct strike on Israel.
How Israel explains its use of force.
Israel says it has been left with no choice but to defend itself against an Iran-led regional alliance that aims not only to end Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, but to destroy Israel itself. Israeli officials highlight how Hamas and Hezbollah attacked Israel first, forcing Israel to respond, and they say that Iran’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah makes it necessary for Israel to attack Iran and its assets.
Many Israelis have also lost hope of using diplomacy to resolve their conflict with the Palestinians. In mainstream Israeli discourse, Israel is perceived as having made many concessions to the Palestinians during a failed peace process three decades ago, only for its best offers to be rejected by the Palestinian leadership.
Israelis often cite their withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 as an example of how Israeli good will fell flat: Hamas won legislative elections in 2006, wrested control of Gaza from Fatah, a rival group, a year later and used Gaza as a platform for attacks on Israel that culminated in the Oct. 7 raid, the deadliest day in Israel’s history. As a result, they see force as the only logical deterrent to groups like Hamas that ultimately seek Israel’s destruction rather than sincere coexistence.
Many Israelis yearn to be accepted within the Middle East without using force, and they see nascent economic and diplomatic ties with a growing number of Arab states as a step toward that goal. For now, though, their historical experience is that force often “works.”
More than diplomacy, it was force that helped the fledgling state survive the wars surrounding its creation in 1948. It was Israel’s strong military that allowed it to overcome three enemy states in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. And it was the same military that staved off a surprise Syrian and Egyptian attack in 1973, and helped Israel overcome a wave of suicide bombings in the 2000s.
Some Israelis even think their government is showing too much restraint, and should be striking back even more forcefully against Hezbollah and Iran.
How critics perceive Israel’s use of force.
In Gaza, opponents say that Israel displays too little concern for civilian life, accusing it of mounting a genocide, a charge Israel denies. In Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, Israel’s critics say it has been too provocative in its choice of targets and too reluctant to let diplomacy take its course. For example, some saw Israel’s recent strikes on Mr. Haniyeh and Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander, as irresponsible interventions that crossed too many red lines and risked turning a relatively contained war with Iran and its proxies into an uncontrolled disaster.
More broadly, Israel is also accused of having brought its predicament on itself by failing to agree to a peace deal with the Palestinians two decades ago.
Critics say that Israel conceded too little in the negotiations. They highlight how the young Palestinian militants who attack Israelis in the West Bank have often spent their whole lives under an occupation that has grown more expansive under the current far-right Israeli government, amid growing attacks by settler extremists and stifling restrictions on Palestinian movement within the territory.
Israel’s opponents also see the Oct. 7 attack in the context of Israel’s enforcement, along with Egypt, of a 17-year blockade on Gaza that prevented many Gazans from traveling abroad, stifled the territory’s economy and blocked access to everyday services like 3G internet and some kinds of complex health care.
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3) As Israel Keeps Fighting in West Bank, Residents in One Area Assess the Damage
In the Nur Shams area near Tulkarm, Israeli bulldozers have chewed up large chunks of the roads, and many homes have been left without running water.
By Aaron Boxerman, Aug. 31, 2024
Damage after an Israeli military raid in Nur Shams on Friday. Credit...Alaa Badarneh/EPA, via Shutterstock
Residents of Tulkarm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank were assessing the damage on Saturday in the wake of a two-day raid by Israeli forces, which were pressing on elsewhere in the territory amid signs that fighting with Palestinian militant groups could spread.
In the Nur Shams neighborhood — which was a focus of the raid — Israeli bulldozers had chewed up large chunks of the roads, and many homes were still without running water, said Suleiman Zuhairi, a retired Palestinian Authority official from the area.
Israeli troops were continuing their operation — which began overnight on Wednesday — in the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank, while two episodes farther south prompted fears that the violence was worsening.
Late on Friday night, a Palestinian attacker was killed and three Israeli soldiers wounded after a car exploded in a gas station near a major junction between Jerusalem and Hebron, according to the Israeli authorities. The Israeli military said that another assailant was killed while trying to attack the settlement of Karmei Tzur.
Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks left 1,200 dead in Israel, prompting the war in Gaza, Israel has feared a similar attack from the occupied West Bank, where roughly three million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule. The Israeli military has stepped up its raids there in an attempt to head off the threat, arresting thousands.
The Israeli military says its current raids are targeting strongholds of Palestinian armed groups. Israeli officials said that more than 150 shooting and explosive attacks on Israelis had been planned from the Jenin and Tulkarm areas over the past year. More than 600 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers and civilians since October in the West Bank, according to the United Nations.
On Friday, Tulkarm’s residents held a funeral procession in absentia for Muhammad Jaber, a militant commander killed by Israeli forces during the raid. The Israeli authorities are still holding Mr. Jaber’s body, according to his family.
Mr. Jaber, also known as Abu Shujaa, had become a cult figure in the Nur Shams neighborhood, where he lived, for his armed struggle against Israel. The Israeli military said he had been involved in “numerous terror attacks.”
A relative of Mr. Jaber, Neyaz Zendiq, said that he had spent much of the past few days huddled in his home in Nur Shams alongside his family. Mr. Zendiq’s son Jihad was killed during another Israeli raid in June.
Mr. Jaber was beloved by the camp’s residents, Mr. Zendiq said. “He didn’t accept the humiliation,” Mr. Zendiq added, referring to the Israeli occupation.
But Mr. Zuhairi, the former official, said that Palestinians living in the camp — in search of a leader — had inflated Mr. Jaber into an “icon of struggle,” giving him a reputation that far exceeded his actual activities.
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4) What We Know About the Polio Crisis in Gaza
Israel and Hamas have agreed to brief pauses in fighting so that humanitarian workers can begin an inoculation campaign.
By Ephrat Livni, Aug. 31, 2024
A Palestinian child is examined by a doctor at Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis, as United Nations officials prepare to launch a polio vaccination campaign on Sunday. Credit...Hatem Khaled/Reuters
A mass polio vaccination campaign for young children will begin in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, an especially challenging effort in a war zone where hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced repeatedly, buildings and infrastructure have been destroyed and moving around is often dangerous for aid workers and civilians.
The inoculation campaign depends on brief pauses in fighting and requires coordination among Israeli authorities, humanitarian agencies, aid workers and the health ministry in Gaza, which is run by Hamas.
Israel and Hamas have both said they will abide by staggered pauses in fighting to allow aid workers to vaccinate children, and Israel has said it will not issue evacuation orders in places where vaccinations are happening.
But after nearly a year of almost nonstop fighting in the enclave, there are fears the agreement may not hold long enough to complete the two rounds of vaccinations that health authorities say are needed to prevent the spread of the disease in Gaza and beyond.
“We welcome the commitment to humanitarian pauses in specific areas, and suspension of evacuation orders for the implementation of the campaign,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said in a post on social media on Thursday. “But the only lasting medicine is peace. The only way to fully protect all the children of Gaza is a cease-fire.”
Why is there polio in Gaza?
There are two basic, highly effective types of polio vaccine: an injection that uses dead virus, and an oral inoculation that uses a significantly weakened live strain of the virus.
Wealthier countries now use only the injected vaccine, but the oral version, cheaper and easier to transport and administer, is still commonplace in poorer regions of the world.
The oral vaccine carries a small risk because a vaccinated person can shed live virus in stool or body secretions. That weakened virus poses little threat on its own, but where sanitation is poor and vaccination rates are not high enough, the weakened strain can infect more people and, more troubling, can eventually mutate into a dangerous form.
The widely used vaccines given to young children formerly protected against all three types of poliovirus. But several years ago, with naturally occurring Type 2 eradicated, health authorities removed it from oral vaccines given routinely around the world, including in Gaza.
Health experts say that decision has backfired, creating a population of children who could be susceptible to that type.
Sure enough, the poliovirus detected in Gaza is believed to be vaccine-derived Type 2, which has also caused outbreaks in Africa in recent years. The vaccines to be delivered in Gaza are oral doses specifically targeting Type 2 poliovirus.
Polio vaccination rates in Gaza were at about 99 percent in 2022 but have dropped significantly among babies because of the war, in addition to the vulnerability to Type 2 for vaccinated children. At least 90 percent of children under 10 need to be vaccinated to stop the disease from spreading, Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the top W.H.O. representative in Gaza, told reporters on Thursday.
How widespread is polio in the Gaza Strip?
The first confirmed polio patient in Gaza in 25 years is a boy named Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, who is almost a year old and living with his family in a tent in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza. He was born just before the war, and was unable to get routine vaccinations because the family was constantly forced to move, his mother said.
About two months ago, he stopped crawling and was feverish. His family took him to a hospital, which sent a sample to a lab in Jordan. A test confirmed health officials’ fears: He had polio.
Gazan health officials have reported multiple children with symptoms consistent with polio, most likely the result of what UNICEF and W.H.O. officials said were severely unsanitary conditions and deteriorating health services.
Poliovirus has been detected in wastewater samples in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, and Deir al Balah, both of which have large populations of displaced Palestinians who have fled Israeli airstrikes.
How will the vaccination campaign work?
Israel has agreed to staggered pauses in military operations, starting Sunday. Vaccinations will begin in central Gaza and last for three days there, with the option for an extension if necessary. The humanitarian pauses will last from early morning until afternoon.
Health authorities plan to next move to southern Gaza for several days, and then the northern region of the enclave.
The World Health Organization and UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund, have delivered more than 1.2 million doses of polio vaccines to distribute to about 640,000 children in Gaza under 10 years old. Another 400,000 doses are on their way.
About 2,100 health and community aid workers in Gaza, at some 700 medical facilities, mobile clinics and shelters, will be administering the vaccines. After they complete the first round, a second, booster round of immunizations will need to be given four weeks after the first dosages. Israel has agreed to staggered pauses for boosters, too.
What is the risk if this campaign fails?
Spread beyond Gaza remains possible for however long the virus continues circulating, underscoring the immediate need for the vaccination campaign. “It is urgent; it is vital,” Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, told reporters this month in Tel Aviv after he met with Israeli officials.
A decades-long global campaign has reduced polio cases by more than 99 percent worldwide. Wild-type poliovirus is now known to exist only in two strongholds — Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Truly eliminating the disease globally would require eradicating wild-type polio in those places and phasing out the live-virus component in oral vaccines. For now, the best protection against polio for any community is still vaccine-induced “herd immunity,” according to Oliver Rosenbauer, a spokesman for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
In places where almost all children have been vaccinated, the likelihood of spread is minimal. But a person anywhere who is unvaccinated remains at risk, as evidenced by a 2022 outbreak that reached New York.
“As long as polio is anywhere,” Mr. Rosenbauer said, “all countries are at risk.”
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5) In the race against polio, Gaza begins a vaccination drive.
By Bilal Shbair, Erika Solomon and Hiba Yazbek, Bilar Shbair reported from Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, September 1, 2024
“The W.H.O. and UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund, have rushed more than 1.2 million doses of oral polio vaccines to the region, and say that 400,000 more doses are on their way.”
A health worker administering the polio vaccine to a Palestinian child in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday. Credit...Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Health workers on Sunday began a polio vaccination drive in Gaza aimed at preventing an outbreak of the quick-spreading disease — a daunting challenge in a besieged enclave shattered by 10 months of war and dependent on commitments by the war’s combatants, Israel and Hamas, to abide by pledged “humanitarian pauses.”
Israel, facing international pressure to prevent a wider outbreak of the crippling disease, moved with relative speed to allow agencies of the United Nations, supported by local health officials, to tackle the crisis in Gaza, where it launched a war in response to the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7.
Although the vaccination drive officially began early Sunday, Gazan health authorities gave some doses to children on Saturday at the Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to reports in Palestinian news media. Videos showed doctors and health workers squeezing droplets of the poliovirus vaccine into the mouths of children who were being treated at the hospital.
“I knew about this campaign by chance. I was frightened when I heard the word polio,” said Maysaa Abu Daqqa, a mother of a 9-year-old, Habib Nizam. Ms. Abu Daqga was waiting in a patients’ room at Nasser Hospital. “When I saw other women accepting the vaccinations for their children, I was encouraged to follow them,” she said.
Both Hamas and Israel agreed to the pauses in the fighting to allow the vaccinations to take place, but the campaign will be tricky to execute. With much of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed, and some 90 percent of the enclave’s roughly two million residents having repeatedly fled Israeli bombardment, it may be impossible to ensure the immunization of all of the enclave’s estimated 640,000 children under age 10.
“This is a race against time,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the main U.N. agency in charge of aiding Palestinians, said in a post on X.
For families seeking to get their children vaccinated, the challenges are layered and fraught: Not only must they trust that the cessations in fighting will hold, but many will have to find transportation, navigate blocked and broken roads and expose themselves to danger and widespread lawlessness to reach the vaccination sites.
The 2,100 people trained to conduct the vaccination drive will face risks, too, including anxieties over a history of deadly assaults on aid workers since the war began.
At a news briefing at Nasser Hospital on Saturday, Dr. Bassam Abu Hamad, a member of the polio campaign committee in Gaza, tried to encourage families to get their children vaccinated.
Acknowledging potential concerns some parents might have, he said that the vaccine “is safe and rarely has any side effects,” and urged mothers to “convince each other” to vaccinate their children.
Poliovirus, which is highly contagious, can cause paralysis and death in the unvaccinated. Largely eradicated around the world by decades of public health campaigns, it can thrive in unsanitary conditions and in places where vaccination rates are not high enough. Such rates in Gaza, which health officials have said were at about 99 percent as recently as 2022, have dropped significantly among babies because of the war.
The vaccine drive will be conducted through staggered pauses of fighting in different regions of the Gaza Strip designed to allow aid workers to try to vaccinate children at roughly 700 medical facilities, mobile clinics and shelters.
Israel will “allow a humanitarian corridor” for vaccination personnel to travel and will establish “designated safe areas” for them to administer vaccines during certain hours, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on Saturday.
“Israel views with importance the prevention of a polio outbreak in the Gaza Strip, including for the purpose of preventing the spread of diseases in the region,” it said.
The campaign is expected to last for three days, with each humanitarian pause in place from early morning until midafternoon. There will be an option to extend the vaccine drive if necessary, and then local health officials will shift their focus to southern Gaza. The northern region of the enclave will be treated last, according to the staggered schedule announced by global health officials on Thursday.
Gazans received a text message from the health ministry on Saturday, announcing the beginning of the vaccination drive for children under 10 years old across different parts of the strip starting on Sunday.
The vaccination campaign kicked off in central Gaza, where the health ministry said clinics, hospitals and U.N. schools would be offering the vaccine during the hours of the humanitarian pause.
Early indications suggested that Sunday’s vaccinations were carried out unheeded. UNRWA, the main U.N. agency in charge of aiding Palestinians, said on Sunday afternoon that the humanitarian pauses “were respected” in the areas where vaccinations were taking place.
“The turnout for the first day of the campaign was positive and thousands of children and families were seen lining up ready to receive their vaccine,” it said in a statement.
The W.H.O. and UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund, have rushed more than 1.2 million doses of oral polio vaccines to the region, and say that 400,000 more doses are on their way.
Dr. Majdi Dheir, the head of the campaign against polio in Gaza, said more than 2,700 people had been trained by experts from the health ministry, the World Health Organization and UNICEF to carry out the vaccinations.
Once the first round of vaccinations is complete, a second, booster round of immunizations will need to be administered four weeks later. Israel has agreed to repeat the staggered humanitarian pauses for the boosters as well.
The scale, ambition and logistics of the vaccination campaign are unprecedented in the Gaza war. The fact that the plan for it came together in only six weeks of negotiations after the virus was first detected is a sign of just how serious public health officials believe an outbreak could be.
Because polio can strike and spread rapidly, it is not only a risk to Gazans, but also could spread to neighboring Egypt or Israel, and potentially beyond. Whether the disease can now be contained is impossible to determine, health experts have said.
Israel has begun to offer booster vaccines for soldiers operating in Gaza. But a public health expert, writing in Foreign Policy, warned that effort may not be enough to stop the spread of an outbreak to Israel, citing vaccine opposition among Israel’s ultra-Orthodox, who make up some 17 percent of the population.
Polio is transmitted by contact with the feces of an infected person, or consumption of water or food contaminated by fecal matter.
Aid and rights groups say Israeli strikes have badly damaged access to sanitation and clean water in Gaza, not only risking the spread of preventable diseases but also possibly constituting a war crime. In June, the aid organization Oxfam released a report accusing Israel of destroying more than two-thirds of the enclave’s sewage pumps and all of its wastewater treatment plants.
After the virus was detected in sewage samples from Gaza in July, the W.H.O. director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that the conditions created “the perfect environment for diseases like polio to spread.”
Such warnings became more urgent when, two weeks ago, Gaza confirmed its first case of polio in 25 years, in a nearly 1-year-old boy.
Facing repeated displacement, tens of thousands of Gazans have crammed themselves into camps with little access to water and sanitation. As a result, some 340,000 tons of solid waste have accumulated in or around populated areas, according to a U.N. assessment.
Among some Palestinians on social media, there was cynicism over the vaccine drive, asking what the point was in saving Gazan children from the disease as long as fighting raged.
Mr. Ghebreyesus stressed that the most important objective was reaching a cease-fire, over which negotiations have repeatedly stalled.
“Humanitarian pauses are welcome,” he said in an online video statement. “But ultimately the only solution to safeguard the health of the children of Gaza is a cease-fire. The best medicine is peace.”
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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6) Brief Strike in Israel Lays Bare Anger Over Hostage Killings
Here’s how the strike and protests unfolded in Israel on Monday.
By Adam RasgonGabby Sobelman and Aaron Boxerman, September 2, 2024
Demonstrators blocked a road near Kibbutz Yakum in Israel on Monday, calling for a deal for the release of hostages held in Gaza. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
Scenes of protest mingled with business as usual on Monday across much of Israel, as a brief work stoppage in protest of the government’s war strategy in Gaza led thousands to walk off their jobs for several hours, while in some sectors the strike’s effects were less noticeable.
Scores of people staged a peaceful protest at an entrance to the town of Rehovot in central Israel in the morning as police officers directed traffic — significantly lighter than usual — around them. Many of the passing cars honked in support.
In Rehovot’s main street, several hundred protesters marched, many holding Israeli flags, others with yellow flags and yellow balloons. Most of the shops and cafes were closed. Almost all displayed posters of Nimrod Cohen, a soldier from Rehovot who was taken hostage in the Oct. 7 attacks and remains captive in Gaza.
In Jerusalem, signs of the strike were less apparent, with many markets, restaurants and stores open.
At Mahane Yehuda, a large open-air market in the city, nut purveyors, fruit and vegetable hawkers and bakeries were serving customers. Only a few shops were closed.
Yaakov Levi, 60, an owner of a wine store, said he identified with the protests in support of freeing the hostages and agreed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hadn’t done enough to secure their freedom. But he argued that striking was ineffectual.
“Shutting down the market won’t change the opinion of the government’s decision makers,” he said, surrounded by bottles of wine from Israel and abroad. “It will only make us as business owners suffer.”
The war, Mr. Levi said, had already exacted a major cost from businesses, especially with so many Israelis serving as reservists in Gaza.
Down the street at Nocturno, a popular restaurant, people were sipping hot coffee and biting into tomato-and-cucumber salads and shakshuka, eggs cooked in tomato sauce.
Near Mr. Netanyahu’s residence, dozens of protesters hoisted Israeli flags and signs bearing photos of hostages.
Shai Leifer, 37, a director of a Hebrew-language education program, said she was skipping work on Monday to demand that Mr. Netanyahu bring the hostages home.
“I came today to scream for the hostages,” she said. “We’ve had enough. We’re tired of it.”
A few dozen demonstrators also gathered near Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the Israeli communities hit hardest in the Oct. 7 attacks. Carmel Gat, one of the six Israeli hostages whose bodies were brought back from Gaza over the weekend, was abducted from Be’eri along with her sister-in-law Yarden; her mother, Kinneret, was killed. One of the demonstrators on Monday carried a sign begging forgiveness from Ms. Gat for Israel’s failure to save her.
In the city of Ra’anana in central Israel, dozens of protesters blocked a major intersection, holding signs bearing the faces of hostages. Tal Mayzels Atlas, an activist at the junction, shared a video of the protest showing Ruth Strum, the mother of hostages Yair and Eitan Horn addressing Israel’s leaders through a megaphone.
“I want my sons back,” she says in the video. “Why are you doing this to us? Bring them all back, now.”
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7) As Israel’s Rifts Widen, Netanyahu Remains Defiant
In strikes and protests, many Israelis are pushing their government to prioritize the release of hostages above the immediate defeat of Hamas. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to change course.
By Patrick Kingsley, Reporting from Jerusalem, Sept. 3, 2024
Demonstrators blocked a road in Tel Aviv on Monday, calling for a deal for the release of hostages held in Gaza. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
When Israel’s largest union began a strike on Monday, building on the largest anti-government protests since the start of the war in Gaza, the group hoped to persuade the government to swiftly agree to a cease-fire.
Within hours, its effort fizzled as the union — which represents 800,000 Israelis — complied with a court order to end the strike. And the day ended with a defiant speech from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he refused to compromise in the negotiations with Hamas and implicitly rebuked the protesters for straining Israel’s social cohesion.
Despite one of the biggest displays of wartime dissent in Israel’s history, an emotionally potent moment failed to evolve into a political turning point.
“Politically, it could have been much worse for Netanyahu,” said Ariel Kahana, a commentator for Israel Hayom, a leading right-wing newspaper. “It looks like the opposition has lost,” Mr. Kahana added.
While the strike slowed or suspended services at thousands of schools and several municipalities, transport networks and hospitals, some sectors were only partly affected. Many municipal authorities and institutions declined to take part.
Unlike in March 2023, when a general strike and mass protests prompted Mr. Netanyahu to suspend a contentious plan to overhaul the judiciary, this time his right-wing party maintained the public unity it has displayed throughout the war. Only Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, voted against a recent cabinet motion to restrict the circumstances in which Israel could agree to a cease-fire, and few, if any, other senior officials from his party, Likud, have broken ranks in public.
“The first condition for victory in this existential war is internal unity,” Mr. Netanyahu said in his speech on Monday night, even as more protesters tried to break through police lines near his private residence in Jerusalem. “We need to stand together as one against a cruel enemy that wants to destroy us all, each and every one,” he said.
The defiance from Mr. Netanyahu and dissent from his critics reflected the growing schism within Israel about the country’s immediate priorities.
The protesters want the government to compromise and agree to a cease-fire and hostage release deal even if it allows Hamas to survive the war. The government and its supporters want to hold out for a deal that will make it easier for the Israeli military to continue fighting Hamas after a short truce — even if playing hardball delays the release of the hostages and more to die in captivity.
The protesters were particularly incensed by the announcement on Sunday that the Israeli military had discovered the bodies of six Israeli hostages who were previously thought to be alive, and who the military said had recently been killed by Hamas. The government’s critics said that most if not all of them could have been saved if Mr. Netanyahu had agreed to a truce.
Funerals for some of the slain hostages took place on Monday afternoon in the presence of vast crowds of mourners.
“I really hope that this is a turning point,” said Gil Dickmann, a cousin of one of the hostages buried on Monday, Carmel Gat. Speaking at a news briefing hours before the funeral, Mr. Dickmann agreed that it was important for Israel to destroy Hamas, but said that the hostages must be freed first.
“Act now and sign this deal,” Mr. Dickmann said. “We must save lives before it’s too late.”
By nightfall, Mr. Dickmann’s demand had gone unmet, as the prime minister doubled down on his refusal to withdraw from strategic areas of Gaza, a core Hamas demand.
In part, Mr. Netanyahu remained unswayed because the protesters were not drawn from his right-wing base, meaning that he faces little political cost for ignoring them, analysts said.
Mr. Netanyahu's right-wing supporters largely accept his argument for driving a hard bargain with Hamas. In fact, the strike and protests are likely to boost Mr. Netanyahu in the eyes of right-wing Israelis, because they feel he is being criticized in bad faith, according to Nadav Shtrauchler, a political analyst and former strategist for Mr. Netanyahu.
“His supporters see this strike as a prize for terror,” Mr. Shtrauchler said. “For many people on the right wing, it’s not reasonable,” Mr. Shtrauchler added.
After Mr. Netanyahu rejected the protesters’ demands on Monday night, a firebrand Likud lawmaker, Tally Gotliv, exemplified the buoyant mood of his base. “This is how you do it!” Ms. Gottliv wrote on social media. “Mr. Prime Minister, a demonstration of control and leadership.”
In 2023, it was increasingly vocal unease from a handful members of Likud’s moderate wing that helped persuade Mr. Netanyahu to slow the pace of his judicial overhaul.
Now, there is less internal opposition. Mr. Gallant, the defense minister, was the sole cabinet member who voted against a motion last week that prevents Israel from agreeing to withdraw from Gaza as part of a cease-fire deal, a decision that makes a deal less likely. And Mr. Gallant was again a lone voice on Sunday, as he called on the cabinet to reverse its decision.
“No one in Likud is saying: We’re going to bring you down,” said Mr. Shtrauchler. “The only opposition is from Gallant.”
Some political moderates may have been put off by the accusatory tone of the protests and strikes, Mr. Kahana said. Two recent polls suggested that significant numbers of Israelis still feel there are legitimate reasons to be wary of a cease-fire deal that cedes too much ground to Hamas.
“Everyone wants, of course, the hostages back home now. But at the same time we want our security,” said Mr. Kahana, who shares Mr. Netanyahu’s wariness of a hasty truce. “The disagreement is about how to bring them home.”
Others may have avoided joining the strike because they feel that the social unrest throughout the first nine months of 2023 made Israel more vulnerable to Hamas’s attack last October.
Israelis of all backgrounds agree that the 2023 domestic unrest weakened Israel in the eyes of its enemies. The fear of creating a similar impression likely dented support for the protests among some Israelis, Mr. Kahana said.
“One of the main lessons for mainstream Israelis from 2023 was that we must keep our unity,” he said.
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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8) The vaccine drive has been more successful than expected, a W.H.O. official says.
By Nick Cumming-Bruce and Hiba Yazbek, September 3. 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/03/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war
Administering the polio vaccine to a child in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza on Sunday. Credit...Abdel Kareem Hana/Associated Press
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that the campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza against polio had so far been more successful than expected as families flocked to receive the treatment.
Teams of health workers delivered the two-drop oral vaccine to 161,030 children in the first two days of the roughly 10-day operation, surpassing the organization’s goal of 150,000 for the first phase of the campaign in central Gaza.
“It’s going well,” Rik Peeperkorn, the organization’s representative for the Palestinian territories, told reporters by video link from Gaza on Tuesday, describing an “almost festive” atmosphere as families went to designated sites to get their children vaccinated.
While Israeli airstrikes continued in other parts of Gaza, Israel agreed to pauses in the fighting in specific areas to allow the vaccination drive to proceed, and “until now they work,” Dr. Peeperkorn said.
Health teams will next take the effort to southern Gaza, where the W.H.O. estimates that it needs to reach 340,000 children before going to the north to inoculate some 150,000 more.
The W.H.O. and its partner agencies in Gaza say they need to reach 90 percent of children under 10 to avert the spread of polio. Gazans are experiencing an explosion of infectious diseases in the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions created by the war and the destruction of Gaza’s health care infrastructure.
Medical Aid for Palestinians, an aid group supporting the effort, said in a statement on Tuesday that the main challenges of the campaign included ensuring safe access for medical workers and keeping the vaccines refrigerated in the face of electricity outages and fuel shortages, as well as the consequences of damage to sanitation and health care infrastructure.
The success of the vaccination campaign relies heavily on the staggered pauses in fighting in different regions of the Gaza Strip, which both Hamas and Israel agreed to and which they appear to be respecting. The pauses are intended to allow families and aid workers to safely reach vaccination sites between the hours of 7:30 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Mohammed Abu Hajar, a 41-year-old driver who has been sheltering in central Gaza, where the campaign kicked off, said he took his two children to get vaccinated because “a child getting sick could lead to death,” given the collapsed health care system and a severe lack of medical supplies. “There is no other option,” he said.
But the vaccination campaign brought with it another blessing for Mr. Abu Hajar: the temporary pause in fighting, during which he said he had been able to “move around comfortably and feel some reassurance” that there would not be strikes.
Mazen Abdulwaha, a displaced father of seven, said he had been worried about his children ever since he first heard that the virus had been detected in Gaza’s wastewater, because they “live in camps where wastewater follows us everywhere.” He took his three youngest children to get vaccinated as soon as the campaign began.
Like others in central Gaza, Mr. Abdulwaha, 36, said his family was “trying to take advantage” of the pauses in fighting during the four days of the campaign in that area, but he remained cautious because he did not trust Israeli forces to adhere to them. “We had to bear this risk to vaccinate our children and protect them from diseases,” he said.
But for some, the humanitarian pauses offered little relief after more than 10 months of a brutal war.
“A calm of five to six hours means nothing,” said Mohammed al-Sapti, a 32-year-old who is sheltering in Nuseirat in central Gaza. “There is no such thing as temporary safety as long as we are living under siege, exhaustion and torture,” he added.
Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Ameera Harouda from Doha, Qatar.
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9) Israeli forces return to Tulkarm as the West Bank offensive stretches to a 7th day.
By Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem, September 3, 2024
"Israeli bulldozers have torn up main roads — in what military officials say is an effort to unearth improvised explosives planted by militants — along with water pipes and electrical cables. Many Palestinians in Jenin have spent days without electricity or running water, according to the local governor, Kamal Abu al-Rub."
Israeli operations in the occupied West Bank entered their seventh day on Tuesday, leaving a trail of destruction. Credit...Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images (Screenshot)
Israeli forces were operating again on Tuesday in Tulkarm, a Palestinian city from which they had withdrawn last week, as one of the longest and most destructive recent Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank reached its seventh day.
The Israeli military said the operation in the northern West Bank aimed to crack down on increasingly powerful Palestinian militants in the area. Palestinian militants said they were firing back, and a series of unusual attempted bombings against Israeli targets further highlighted the growing strength and ambition of such groups in the West Bank.
At least 30 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials, since the Israeli raids began on Wednesday last week. Many were publicly mourned as fighters by Palestinian militant groups. Those killed also included two older people, including a man in his 60s who suffered from mental illness, according to his family.
Israeli soldiers withdrew from Tulkarm last week after two days of fighting, even as a raid continued in the city of Jenin to the north. But on Monday evening, Israeli forces began again deploying throughout Tulkarm in large numbers, said Ma’mun Abu al-Heija, a resident of Nur Shams, a neighborhood on the city’s outskirts.
On Tuesday, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl was killed by Israeli gunfire in Kafr Dan, just outside Jenin, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah said in a statement. The circumstances were not immediately clear and the Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment.
Israeli troops typically use less force in operations in the West Bank than they do in Gaza, much of which has been destroyed in Israel’s nearly 11-month-long war against Hamas. But these raids have been unusually destructive, residents and Palestinian officials in the West Bank said.
Israeli bulldozers have torn up main roads — in what military officials say is an effort to unearth improvised explosives planted by militants — along with water pipes and electrical cables. Many Palestinians in Jenin have spent days without electricity or running water, according to the local governor, Kamal Abu al-Rub.
Some residents of Jenin have begun to flee, fearing for their lives. Omar Obeid, 62, said he had left the city over the weekend with his children and many of his neighbors, walking through streets torn up by Israeli forces. They had been trapped at home for days without running water or electricity, he said.
“We tried to take a path that would avoid the army, but we still were risking our lives,” he said in a phone interview.
Eventually, he said, they reached a relative’s home in nearby Yabad and took shelter. Intermittent gunfire and explosions are distant but still audible, he said.
Israeli officials have described the raids as necessary to combat rising Palestinian militancy, particularly a spate of attempted bombings, over the past few weeks. The return of the tactic has revived difficult memories for Israelis, whose national psyche was scarred by dozens of Palestinian suicide attacks in the early 2000s that left hundreds of civilians dead.
Over the weekend, two cars rigged with explosives burst into flames during attacks in the southern West Bank. Israeli forces killed the two assailants, who Hamas said were members of its armed wing. And on Monday, Israel’s police said sappers had disarmed a car bomb near the Israeli settlement of Ateret in the central West Bank.
In mid-August, Hamas and its ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a bombing in Tel Aviv that wounded one person and killed the assailant. The armed groups claimed it was a suicide bombing.
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10) Gazans Grapple With Prospect of Israeli Presence Postwar
Some say they will reluctantly stomach a postwar Israeli military presence in the territory if that allows them to go home. Others worry about another long-term occupation.
By Bilal Shbair, Hiba Yazbek and Abu Bakr Bashir, Bilal Shbair talked to displaced people in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, for this article. Others were reached by phone elsewhere in the enclave where they were sheltering, Sept. 4, 2024.
Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, in August. Amid cease-fire efforts, Gazans said in interviews that they were mainly concerned about getting home safely after multiple displacements and bombardments. Credit...Mohammed Salem/Reuters
Cease-fire talks in Gaza have stalled again, in part over Israel’s demand to retain a military presence in the territory, which Hamas and Egypt oppose. But the view among some Gazans on that point is less clear-cut.
Their lives have been devastated after almost a year of war and they say they find the idea of Israeli soldiers staying on — and of the checkpoints becoming permanent — disturbing. But if that helps bring an end to the war, it is a price they are willing to pay. Other Gazans expressed serious misgivings about allowing an Israeli military presence in Gaza, and some opposed it outright.
“Of course I do not accept the presence of checkpoints on our return to the north,” said Mohammad Qadoura, 40, who was displaced from his home in Gaza City. “But if this would lead to the end of the war, I would reluctantly agree.”
Abdul Aziz Said, 33, a social worker from central Gaza, said that if an Israeli presence in the territory was “what it takes to end this war, I would totally agree.” He added, “I want this war to come to an end now and at any cost.”
Israel has said that the presence of its soldiers in Gaza after a permanent cease-fire is necessary to prevent Hamas from regrouping and weapons from being smuggled across the territory. In particular, Israel wants some Israeli troops to patrol part of the Egypt-Gaza border because it believes Egypt has not done enough to prevent Hamas from smuggling arms. And Israel believes that having Israeli troops within Gaza would aim to prevent Hamas fighters from going back en masse to regroup in the northern part of the enclave.
The latest high-level effort to reach a cease-fire agreement in Gaza ended on Aug. 25, with Israel and Hamas, the group that governs the enclave, remaining far apart on several critical issues. One of those, according to an American official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, is whether Israeli forces will remain on the Gaza side of the border with Egypt, and if so, how many.
This has emerged as a crucial issue. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel considers an Israeli military presence in the area, which Israel calls the Philadelphi Corridor and Egypt calls Salah Al Din, vital to preventing Hamas from rearming after the war or rebuilding tunnels to Egypt.
Hamas rejects a continued Israeli presence in the area and is demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Egypt says that keeping Israeli troops in the Philadelphi Corridor would raise national security concerns and be unacceptable to the Egyptian public.
Additionally, Israeli forces have built a security road, which they call the Netzarim corridor, that cuts across Gaza from east to west. Israeli officials have said that they want troops to keep patrolling that road, through which Palestinians must travel between the north and south of Gaza. While the negotiators haggle over the terms of a cease-fire, nine Gazans said in interviews with The New York Times in recent days that they were mainly concerned about getting home safely after multiple displacements and months of relentless bombardment.
Israel operates a number of checkpoints across Gaza that are often mobile and temporary. Many Gazans say they fear that the checkpoints will become permanent or expand if a cease-fire deal is reached that includes the Israeli demands.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled their homes after repeated Israeli evacuation orders and moved from the north to the south since the war began. For many, returning home could mean confronting Israeli troops and passing through the Netzarim corridor, where they could be subjected to searches, interrogations and arrest.
Even though growing numbers of Gazans appear to fault Hamas for its role in starting the war and helping to bring death and destruction upon them, they blame Israel first and foremost.
Mohamed al-Sek, 44, a teacher and father of four from Gaza City who was displaced to central Gaza, said that he was not concerned about passing through Israeli checkpoints or being searched.
He said that only those affiliated with Hamas should be worried. “My priority is to return to my home in Gaza City and restore my old life,” Mr. al-Sek said.
But Salah Gharbia, 57, who crossed a checkpoint across the Netzarim corridor while evacuating to central Gaza from Gaza City with his seven daughters without too much trouble a few months ago, said he was worried that other families with young sons could have a more difficult time at checkpoints “even if they are not Hamas.”
The continued presence of Israeli checkpoints in Gaza would just create “more obstacles and suffocating procedures for Palestinians,” he said.
But not all Gazans were able to stomach the idea of Israel’s presence after the war ends.
“Arrests and oppression will continue,” Faten Alyan, 40, a housewife from northern Gaza, said of having Israeli troops and checkpoints in Gaza after the war. “The brutality of the occupation will confront us in a humiliating way.”
Nedaa Adel, 27, a therapist from Gaza City who was displaced to central Gaza, said she worried that Israeli troops could arrest her husband at checkpoints because she said he worked for the Hamas government but was not a militant.
“I want this war to end now, but not with this condition,” Ms. Adel said.
Najlaa al-Ghalayiny, 44, a social activist from Gaza City who now lives in a tent in an area Israel has designated a humanitarian zone after multiple displacements, said it would be difficult for Palestinians to accept the regular sight of Israeli soldiers near their homes.
A prolonged Israeli presence in Gaza “might be the first step of reoccupying” it, she added, referring to the years before Israel withdrew its decades-long military presence on the ground from Gaza in 2005.
Fadel al-Tatar, 47, said he believed that Israel wanted to “place its authority on Gaza,” in a similar way to what it had done in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli checkpoints and settlements are widespread.
“I am afraid of having more checkpoints in the future that will divide the Gaza Strip into pieces,” he added.
Still, Mr. al-Tatar said that if a cease-fire deal was reached, he would go back to his home in the north “without caring about the procedures the army can place.”
He said that many others would also do the same, “leaving behind their makeshift tents and painful memories.”
Ameera Harouda contributed reporting from Doha, Qatar.
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11) What Is the Philadelphi Corridor, and Why Does It Matter?
An eight-mile-long strip of land between the Gaza Strip and Egypt is a focus of the cease-fire talks involving Israel and Hamas.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Published May 30, 2024, Updated Sept. 4, 2024
The Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of land along Gaza’s southern border. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has vowed to maintain an Israeli military presence in a narrow strip of Gaza along the border with Egypt, one of the main sticking points in the talks over a cease-fire deal in the war. Mr. Netanyahu has called the area, known in Israel as the Philadelphi Corridor, a “lifeline” for Hamas’s smuggling operations.
Control of the corridor has emerged as a primary bone of contention in the cease-fire talks mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States. Hamas has said it will not accept any deal that does not require a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Here’s a look at the importance of the border area:
What is the corridor?
It is land around 100 yards wide that runs roughly eight miles from Israel’s border to the Mediterranean. The new border, which divided the city of Rafah, was set up under the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979. To the northeast is Gaza, while Egypt lies to the southwest.
Egyptian border guards have been policing the land under an agreement with Israel made in 2005 when Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza. The Israelis used the code name Philadelphi for the area, while Egyptian officials call it Salah Al Din.
Why does the corridor matter to Israel?
Senior Israeli officials had set control of the strip as a military objective during the war in Gaza that began in October 2023. Hamas had dug tunnels beneath the strip — some wide enough for trucks, according to military experts — and used them to smuggle weapons and personnel into Gazan territory from Egypt.
Israel invaded southern Gaza in May and soon afterward said its troops were positioned along the entirety of the corridor.
“This is the way they can get in and out without asking the Israelis,” said Ahron Bregman, a political scientist and expert in Middle East security issues at King’s College in London, and a former Israeli military officer. If the tunnels remain open, he said in an interview this spring, it will be easier for Hamas to rebuild its military capacity after the war.
What does Egypt say about the corridor?
Egypt’s position on the corridor has been clear: It has consistently said that the longstanding “security agreements and protocols” it and Israel have signed to govern the area commit Israel to keeping troops away from it.
For decades before the war, Egypt stationed guards along its side of the Gaza border. It reinforced those forces after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on Israel that set off the current fighting in Gaza.
Egypt has warned Israel to avoid doing anything that might force Gazans across the border or threaten a landmark peace agreement signed by the two countries in 1979. While Egypt has opened its borders to refugees in other regional conflicts, the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi fears that if Palestinian civilians crossed the border to escape the war they could destabilize the country and become a drag on its economy.
The government also sees Hamas as an adversary and does not want to give it a foothold in Egypt. Hamas began as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that was closely linked to the government that Mr. el-Sisi overthrew in 2013. His government has suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood since taking power.
Why does the corridor matter to Palestinians?
Egypt is the only country other than Israel that borders Gaza, so Israel’s control of the corridor is likely to be viewed by Palestinians as a sign of increasing isolation.
The cross-border tunnels used by Hamas have been also been a conduit for Egyptian and Palestinian merchants to bring food and other goods into Gaza. Israeli control of the strip will likely halt that underground trade.
Hamas has said it opposes any Israeli presence in the border strip and instead wants a complete Israeli withdrawal from the whole of Gaza.
How is the corridor affecting Israel-Hamas peace talks?
Mr. Netanyahu in public has adopted an uncompromising stance on the corridor, insisting Israeli forces will stay there to prevent Hamas smuggling. In a news conference on Monday, he said, “Being present in the Philadelphi corridor is strategic, diplomatic issue,” and added: “We need to reinforce the fact that we’re there.”
That appears to be a change from an earlier cease-fire proposal that Israel had supported in may, which suggested that the military would pull out of the border zone. In late July, according to New York Times reporting, Israel provided new information to mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and the United States that Israel only intended to reduce its forces in the area.
On Monday, Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, said the corridor was the primary obstacle in the talks. “Without withdrawing from the Philadelphi corridor, there will be no agreement,” Mr. Hayya, Hamas’s lead negotiator, told the pan-Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in August that the United States would “not accept any long-term occupation of Gaza by Israel,” an apparent reference to an Israeli withdrawal that would include from the border strip.
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12) Deregulation and Dishonesty Led to Deadly Grenfell Fire, Inquiry Finds
A damning final report into Britain’s worst residential fire since World War II blamed a litany of cost-cutting, dishonest sales practices and lax regulation for the blaze that killed 72 people.
By Mark Landler, Reporting from London, Sept. 4, 2024
Grenfell Tower, as seen from a nearby Underground station, in London, in 2017. Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times
As the fire raced from floor to floor, residents were forced to decide: Wait for rescuers or try to escape?
Seven years after flames engulfed Grenfell Tower, a public housing block in West London, killing 72 people, a public inquiry on Wednesday blamed unscrupulous manufacturers, a cost-cutting local government and reckless deregulation for the disaster, Britain’s worst residential fire since World War II.
The 1,671-page final report laid out a litany of corner-cutting, dishonest sales practices, incompetence and lax regulation that led to the tower being wrapped in low-cost flammable cladding, which, after it caught fire in the early hours of June 14, 2017, quickly turned the building into an inferno.
Many of the causes laid out in the report were documented in months of testimony before the inquiry, which was called by the prime minister at the time, Theresa May, and chaired over a seven-year period by a retired judge, Martin Moore-Bick.
But the report painted a damning picture of a Conservative-run local council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, eager to reduce costs, working with contractors who installed combustible cladding panels, purchased from suppliers who knew that they should never have been used in a high-rise building.
The suppliers “engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data, and mislead the market,” the report said. In the case of the flammable foam insulation installed alongside the panels, it said one of the key regulators, the Building Research Establishment, “was complicit in that strategy.”
Among the companies that came under the harshest criticism was Arconic, an American aluminum maker formerly known as Alcoa. It sold the cladding for Grenfell, the report said, but “deliberately concealed from the market the true extent of the danger” of using it in a high-rise structure.
Arconic has previously acknowledged its role in the tragedy as a supplier of building materials.
The publication of the report is a milestone in the aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy, which has haunted Britain since 2017, when images of the burning building and of the desperate efforts to save its trapped residents appalled the British public. In the years since, Grenfell has become a politically charged symbol of the costs of deregulation and of the persistent social inequality in Britain’s capital.
“How was it possible in 21st-century London for a reinforced concrete building, itself structurally impervious to fire, to be turned into a death trap that would enable fire to sweep through it an uncontrolled way in a matter of hours, despite what were thought to be effective regulations designed to prevent just such an event?” the authors of the report said in setting out their investigation.
“There is no simple answer,” they concluded. But the inquiry found fault with virtually everyone involved in the 2015 project to refurbish Grenfell Tower, a 24-floor public housing block that was originally constructed in 1972, its Brutalist style a striking landmark near some of London’s most upscale neighborhoods.
“The choice of combustible materials for the cladding of Grenfell Tower resulted from a series of errors caused by the incompetence of the organizations and individuals involved in the refurbishment,” the report said.
Relatives of the victims hope the publication of the report will open the door to prosecution of those involved in the refurbishment, as well as the management and upkeep, of the building. But criminal trials are not expected to begin before 2027, a decade after the disaster.
In 2023, about 900 people settled a civil case against Kensington and Chelsea, as well as French and American companies that sold the cladding and insulation. The settlement, worth 150 million pounds, or $196 million, was mediated by David Neuberger, a former president of Britain’s Supreme Court.
On Wednesday, relatives of the victims expressed satisfaction that the report had established a chain of culpability for the disaster. But some said they were still frustrated that people had not yet been brought to justice.
Joe Powell, the Labour member of Parliament for Kensington and Bayswater, said in a statement, “The government and police must now do everything in their power to bring those responsible to justice, using the full force of the law.”
While much of the report focused on suppliers and contractors, it was also critical of local and national governments and regulatory agencies, which it said were well aware of the risks of combustible cladding in high-rise buildings. It said the Department for Communities and Local Government, which has since been reorganized, was dominated by a zeal for deregulation in the years leading up to the fire, disregarding the lessons of a deadly high-rise apartment fire in London in 2009.
“The government’s deregulatory agenda, enthusiastically supported by some junior ministers and the secretary of state, dominated the department’s thinking to such an extent that even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded,” the report said, referring to the housing secretary at the time, Eric Pickles.
The report recommended that the government consolidate the fragmented regulations governing the construction industry under a single regulator.
London’s fire brigade also came in for criticism for not being adequately prepared to respond to a fast-spreading fire in a high-rise residential building. The report said firefighters were overwhelmed by the large number of calls for help, from inside and outside the building.
Grenfell’s tenant management organization was faulted for its antagonistic relationship with those who lived in the tower, some of whom it regarded as “militant troublemakers” when they raised safety concerns.
Many residents regarded the tenant organization as an “uncaring and bullying overlord that belittled and marginalized them, regarded them as a nuisance, or worse, and failed to take their concerns seriously,” the report said.
Still, of all the responsible parties, the inquiry portrayed the contractors and suppliers as the prime culprits.
It said Celotex, which made the plastic foam insulation, “embarked on a dishonest scheme to mislead its customers and the wider market.” Kingspan, an Irish company that supplied a small portion of the insulation, “knowingly created a false market in insulation for use” in high-rise buildings, the report said, by misrepresenting test results to reassure customers that its product was safe in buildings taller than 18 meters, or 59 feet.
The report said the project itself was dogged by cost-cutting, incompetence and a refusal to take responsibility. The landlord pushed the principal contractor, Rydon, to shave costs from its bid. The architecture firm, Studio E, favored using zinc panels, but switched to ones made with cheaper aluminum composite material because they were cheaper, failing to recognize their fire risk.
“Studio E therefore bears a very significant degree of responsibility for the disaster,” the report said.
But it was not alone. The report said all the contractors and designers either disregarded regulations or shifted responsibility for meeting them.
“Everyone involved in the choice of materials to be used in the external wall thought that responsibility for their suitability and safety lay with someone else,” the report concluded.
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13) Phoenix Marks 100 Straight Days of 100-Degree Temperatures
The city reached the sweaty milestone on Tuesday. The previous record of 76 straight days was set in 1993.
By Derrick Bryson Taylor, Sept. 4, 2024
Heat shimmered off the pavement in Phoenix in late July, in the middle of the city’s stretch of 100 days of heat over 100 degrees. Credit...Mario Tama/Getty Images
For Phoenix, a city accustomed to intense heat, the dog days of summer have been exceptional this year. On Tuesday, the city reached a milestone, marking its 100th straight day with temperatures of at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit, meteorologists said, adding there was no end in sight.
“We’re going to continue that streak for the next several days,” Gabriel Lojero, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Phoenix, said on Wednesday. “The overall pattern continues to suggest warmer-than-normal temperatures.”
The Weather Service said on social media that it was the longest streak on record for the city. The previous record was set in 1993, at 76 straight days.
“The problem is that we’ve had a drier-than-normal monsoon season here in Phoenix,” Mr. Lojero said. “At times during the summer months, we do depend on days where you have a lot of clouds, or it’s rain, and so, your temperatures tend to cool down somewhat.”
This year’s meteorological summer — June, July and August — was also the hottest on record for Phoenix, with an average temperature of 98.9. Mr. Lojero said that was a “significant” mark because it was nearly two degrees higher than last year’s average, 97 degrees, which was also a record.
More than 30 million people across the Southwest — particularly large portions of Arizona and Southern California — were under an excessive heat warning Wednesday morning.
That warning will be in effect for Phoenix until Friday evening. Dangerously hot temperatures, up to 118 degrees, were expected to blanket the city, creating an extreme heat risk.
The Weather Service warned that heat-related illnesses significantly increase during intense heat and suggested residents take extra precautions if they intend to work or spend time outdoors.
“When possible, reschedule strenuous activities to early morning or evening,” the Weather Service said. “Know the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Wear lightweight and loosefitting clothing when possible and drink plenty of water.”
Last summer, the city’s patience and endurance were tested during a long stretch of days with 110-degree temperatures, leaving some wondering whether the city could adapt to its new reality of longer, deadlier heat waves.
A recent report on heat-related deaths from Maricopa County, where Phoenix is the seat, said there were 645 heat-related deaths in 2023, up from 425 the previous year.
The report also said that 71 percent of heat-related deaths occurred on a day when the Weather Service had issued an excessive heat warning.
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14) The Fallacy of Voting for Capitalist Politicians
Why we need an independent, anti-capitalist workers party to win a socialist future
Editorial By Bonnie Weinstein and Carole Seligman
It is astounding to see so many of the U.S. left following in lockstep in support of Kamala Harris, as if she is anything different than Biden. In fact, it doesn’t really matter who we vote for, because our only choices are among the ruling capitalist class in the U.S., and they will do whatever is necessary to protect their command of the massive wealth created by workers—we who manufacture the over-priced products they sell back to us at great profits for themselves.
Capitalism must be able to make a profit—by any means necessary—and the American arms industry is the most profitable in the world. Kamala Harris won’t do a thing to undermine it any more than she will stop sending more arms to Israel.
Even though the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 40,000 (up to 186,000 according to The Lancet) and many more are unaccounted for, sick and starving, the U.S. is sending another $3.5 billion to aid the U.S./Israeli genocide against the people of Palestine.
In an August 10, 2024, New York Times article by Michael Crowley titled, “The U.S. Says it Won’t Halt Aid to an Israeli Military Unit Accused of Abuses, after Israel Took Remedial Steps,” not only will Harris, if elected, continue arming convicted war criminals, but she will continue to arm Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the occupied territories:
“The Biden administration will not block U.S. security assistance to an Israeli military unit found to have committed human rights violations, after Israel’s government took steps to prevent further offenses, the State Department said on Friday [August 9, 2024]. The department determined in April that the unit, the Netzah Yehuda battalion, had committed abuses in the Israeli-occupied West Bank that were serious enough to prompt the invocation of the Leahy Law, which bans U.S. training or the provision of U.S. equipment for foreign troops who commit ‘gross human rights violations’ like rape, murder or torture. …After spending months evaluating information provided by Israel’s government, …the department found that the unit’s violations—which occurred in the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the current war with Hamas in Gaza—had ‘been effectively remediated.’ It added: ‘Consistent with the Leahy process, this unit can continue receiving security assistance from the United States of America.’ A U.S. official said that Israel had provided the Biden administration with information showing that two soldiers who Israeli military prosecutors said should be disciplined had left the Israeli military and were ineligible to serve in the reserves. The official also said that the Israel Defense Forces had taken other steps to prevent further offenses, including enhanced screening for new recruits and the implementation of a two-week educational seminar for such recruits. …The State Department notified Congress this week of its intent to disburse $3.5 billion in new military aid to Israel from a supplemental budget bill approved earlier, the department said in a statement. The disbursement was expected to go forward in 15 days. Israel is expected to use the money to purchase arms from the U.S. government or from American companies.” [my emphasis]
Kamala Harris supports sending more aid to Israel as does her running mate, Tim Waltz—as does both the Democratic and Republican Parties, and the capitalist class as a whole.
Capitalist party politicians are no friends of labor
I read somewhere, before Harris made her final choice for Vice President, that she should pick United Auto Workers President, Shawn Fain, as her running mate. He probably would have been up for it since he has thrown his full support behind her campaign!
Fain was one of the first major U.S. labor leaders to call for a permanent cease fire in the U.S./Israeli genocide in Gaza, and UAW local 4811 authorized a strike in May in support of student encampments against the genocide.[1]
It was a bold and courageous move by a major labor leader that led to many more unions taking up the call for an immediate cease fire.
Then Fain came out in support of Kamala Harris for President of the U.S.—placing a damper on his opposition to the relentless bombing and killing of the people of Palestine, unfortunately, he is not alone.
The overwhelming majority of unions have made the same anti-working-class choice and have endorsed Harris for President to convince workers that voting for one capitalist over another will improve our lives.
The fight for human rights, economic and social equality can’t depend upon the representatives of the capitalist class because the very essence of capitalism is that the private ownership of the means of production and control over the workers who produce everything, serves not only to maintain—but to constantly increase financial benefits for the capitalist class—at the expense of the working class.
They pay us as little as possible and keep the rest for themselves. Depending on capitalist politicians to solve our problems is the main underlying problem the working class must overcome if we are to survive capitalism.
Reformism and the popular front vs. independent working-class organizing
For decades the U.S. labor movement’s leadership has been stymied by a policy of collaboration with sections of the capitalist class who, by their own laws and guns, control the land, property and the means of production while profiting from the labor of the masses of workers who toil for them on their farms, in their factories and places of business for just enough money to survive.
The leaders of the labor movement have been corrupted. By their own admission, they brag that they are “in partnership with the bosses.” They claim that their partnership with the bosses will somehow result in decisions more sympathetic to workers.
But the truth is the opposite. Labor support for capitalist politicians only serves to reaffirm the myth that if we elect this or that capitalist candidate—we are electing a “friend of the working class.”
Workers can never gain by partnering with capitalists because our interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the capitalist class.
The main interests of workers are to benefit from the fruits of our labor, and the only way to do that is to take the control of the means of production out of the hands of the capitalist class and use the wealth of this production, of our labor, for the benefit of all. But we can only achieve this by ending capitalism and building socialism. The interest of the capitalist class is to maximize their own wealth and profit off the labor of the working masses.
The test of time and the lessons of history
This struggle between the two primary contending classes today—the working class and the capitalist class—is not a new idea.
In 1931, Spanish workers made a series of attempts to take power into their hands to “guide the fate of society.” Trotsky wrote about it in 1938 in his thesis, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International(popularly called The Transitional Program)[2]:
“In all countries the proletariat [working class] is racked by a deep disquiet. The multi-millioned masses again and again enter the road of revolution. But each time they are blocked by their own conservative bureaucratic machines. The Spanish proletariat has made a series of heroic attempts since April 1931 to take power in its hands and guide the fate of society. However, its own parties (Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists, POUMists [Workers Party of Marxist Unification])—each in its own way acted as a brake and thus prepared Franco’s triumphs. In France, the great wave of ‘sit-down’ strikes, particularly during June 1936, revealed the whole-hearted readiness of the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist system. However, the leading organizations (Socialists, Stalinists, Syndicalists) under the label of the Popular Front succeeded in canalizing and damming, at least temporarily, the revolutionary stream. The unprecedented wave of sit-down strikes and the amazingly rapid growth of industrial unionism in the United States (the CIO [The Congress of Industrial Organizations]) is the most indisputable expression of the instinctive striving of the American workers to raise themselves to the level of the tasks imposed on them by history. But here. too, the leading political organizations, including the newly created CIO, do everything possible to keep in check and paralyze the revolutionary pressure of the masses.
There is a name for this type of class collaboration—the popular, or people’s front:
“As a bloc, a political coalition, the popular (or people’s) front is not merely a matter of policy, but of organization. Opportunists regularly pursue class-collaborationist policies, tailing after one or another bourgeois or petty-bourgeois force. But it is in moments of crisis or acute struggle that they find it necessary to organizationally chain the working class and other oppressed groups to the class enemy (or a sector of it). …The popular front, of course, claims to stand for all things ‘progressive’: ‘human rights,’ ‘peace,’ racial harmony, etc. The framework is usually presented as ‘democratic’ and it is always bourgeois. But the popular front is more than just the usual hypocritical and empty phrases of capitalist politics: it is a guarantee by the misleaders of the workers movement to the rulers that in case of emergency, as the ranks radicalize, the workers organizations will stand in the way of revolutionary action, enforcing the discipline of their bourgeois ‘allies.’ …The experience of Russia demonstrated, and the experience of Spain and France once again confirms, that even under very favorable conditions the parties of petty bourgeois democracy (S.R.s [Socialist Revolutionary Party], Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists) are incapable of creating a government of workers and peasants, that is, a government independent of the bourgeoisie.’”
What’s happening in our time, is that while the divide among the capitalist class is widening, and the far right is gaining strength in their attempt to further divide the working class against each other—blaming immigrants, people of color, the LGBTQ community, the homeless and the poor—as the cause of all the problems in our society. The Democrats carry out these policies, but claim their hands are tied by the far right.
But there are very encouraging signs that today’s working class is recognizing that collaboration with capitalists is a trap, and they are beginning to reject it.
They are realizing that the capitalist class, whether on the “left” or the “right,” are two sides of the same coin, and the only way to ensure that fascism will not take hold ever again is to unite the entire working class in self-defense against fascism—capitalism’s inevitable descent into barbarism to preserve their power, wealth and dominance over the working class and any who support them.
Workers reject fascism
In an August 9, 2024, article in the New York Times by Megan Specia titled, “Liverpool Sends a Message to Far-Right Rioters: Not Here,” in response to week-long anti-immigrant violence in their community:
“What they got, instead, was a night of near celebration by people opposed to the racism and anti-immigrant sentiments that drove the week of rioting in cities and towns across Britain. People in Liverpool had been especially unnerved since an online list of what were said to be new far-right targets for protests included a local charity that works with asylum seekers. Neighbors texted neighbors to head to the streets to counter any racist rioters. Local unions and leaders of neighborhood mosques also put out the word, as did a nationwide collective called ‘Stand Up to Racism.’ …People carried signs reading ‘Not in our city,’ and ‘Will trade racists for refugees.’ … What united many of them was the feeling that working-class people are in life’s struggles together. As the evening light turned golden and night slowly set in, one young woman raised a sign that read, ‘The Enemy of the Working Class Travels By Private Jet Not Migrant Dinghy,’ to applause from many standing nearby. …Matty Delaney, 33, who lives just outside Liverpool, said he had heard on Instagram about the demonstration against racism and thought it was important to deliver a clear message to those who had rioted, particularly as a young, white, working-class man. ‘We’ve got more in common with an Indian nurse, with a Black bricklayer than we do with the Elon Musks, the Nigel Farages, the Tommy Robinsons, of the world—all these people who are stoking violence,’ Mr. Delaney said.”
The power of the working class is that we are the overwhelming majority. The capitalist class makes up less than one percent of humanity. Our power lies in our ability to unite not just the working class, but to bring small business owners, farmers, professionals and all those in the middle between the working class and the capitalist class—over to the side of workers in opposition to capitalism, and in support of socialism. It is the only hope for our survival.
Solidarity among workers can overcome the divisions between us and finally end capitalism’s class-structured society that keeps the one percent on top and the masses in service to them.
This will happen only if popular-frontism is torn asunder and a new, united front of the working class against capitalism is formed.
This is a struggle for power over the wealth we workers produce. Fascism is the ultimate weapon the capitalist class will use to prevent us and our allies from uniting against them because they know we have the power to defeat them if we do.
We can’t change society by supporting capitalist parties and their representatives at the ballot box—because the elections are controlled by the rich. Corporations routinely support both the Democratic and Republican Party candidates with large financial contributions.
Our labor misleaders do the same with their support of Democratic or Republican candidates—and the campaign contributions they make to them with our union dues.
The “partnership” between labor leaders and the bosses is a large part of how the ruling rich maintain their control over the working class.
Today, our task is to bring workers, en masse, into the struggle to defeat capitalism and establish socialism—first, by taking the leadership of our organizations into our own hands and out of the hands of the labor fakers who partner with the bosses against us.
Our goal must be to form a united, socialist party of the working class—a party that could not only seriously contest the capitalist electoral process—but have the power to challenge their rule once and for all.
A united front of workers and our allies against capitalism and for socialism will have the power to put a halt to fascism and war, and usher in a world of social and economic justice and equality, and a future for all life on the planet. The alternative cannot be contemplated.
Note: Socialists are on the ballot in California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. [3] The same candidates and other socialist candidates are on the ballot in a few other states, so some of us can cast a protest vote for socialism this year.
[1] “UAW 4811 authorizes strike over response to Gaza encampments”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5lq9HtjMIc
[2] Excerpts from Leon Trotsky’s The Transitional Program, 1938
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/internationalist/pamphlets/Pop-Front-OptV5.pdf
[3] The candidates of the Peace and Freedom Party in California are Claudia De La Cruz for President and Karina Garcia for Vice President—representatives of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
https://votesocialist2024.com
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15) U.S. and Israel: The Terrorists of the Century
By Chris Kinder
http://socialistviewpoint.org/sepoct_24/sepoct_24_07.html
June 7, 2024—“Death to Arabs,” shouted the flag-waving Israelis on their annual “Jerusalem Day” (June 5th) march through the Damascus Gate—Old City area of Jerusalem that is historically Palestinian. “We are delivering a message from here to Hamas,” declared Israel’s fascist National Security Secretary, Itamar Ben-Gvir, “Damascus Gate is ours, and with God’s help, total victory is ours.”
This war-mongering declaration soon provoked an answer from Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who said, “Our people will not rest until the occupation is gone and an independent Palestinian state is established, with Jerusalem as its capital,” as reported by the Associated Press.
This exchange comes at a time when both Israel and its chief funder and promoter, Joe Biden, are going through some significant changes. Israel is showing signs of weakness and even failure in its military actions, even as its aggressions are increasing. It has been going back to areas in the North, such as Gaza City, where Hamas was allegedly defeated, asserting that Hamas was now concentrated in Rafah, which, as of this writing (early June) it is still grinding through.
Israel bombs and attacks refugee camp…twice
A major target in the north has been the Jabaliya refugee camp, the largest of such camps in Gaza. Jabaliya is decades old, having existed since after the Nakba of 1948. The residents, their children and grandchildren, were prisoners—never allowed to leave—for fear that they might try to exercise their right of return to their former homes.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in December it had “secured” control of Jabaliya in an action that killed “many terrorists.” Israel then scaled down operations in the North, claiming that “Hamas’s battalions had been dismantled.” But on May 12th, Israel attacked Jabaliya for a second time, saying its “intelligence information” showed “attempts by Hamas to reassemble its terrorist infrastructure and operatives in the area.” Over the next three weeks, “battles raged as tanks and troops advanced into the refugee camp under the cover of intense air and artillery strikes.” When the Israelis finally left, rubble was everywhere, and bodies were left lying in the streets.[1]
Israel will kill and destroy, but never win
The brutal Israeli attack on Jabaliya shows Israel’s increased murderous intensity, but also its weakness. No matter what it does, it will never be able to defeat Hamas. Hamas will always be able to recruit enough volunteers to keep fighting. Palestinians have been on these lands for centuries and they will not abandon their home. This “war” is very like the U.S. war against Vietnam in that respect. Despite the military superiority of the American army, the National Liberation Front won through their determination, their tunnels, and mainly through their massive support from the people of Vietnam, just like the Palestinians.
Besides the ineffectiveness of their “war,” Israel seems to be facing a stronger Hamas than Hamas before. This is hard to judge from afar, but Israel took serious casualties in the action in Jabaliya, and Hamas was pretty effective, judging from some short videos of their fighters in action and published short videos showing their operatives taking out fighters and tanks effectively from positions in heavy foliage, and one gruesome scene showing a dead Israeli soldier’s body being dragged through a tunnel.[2]
Cracks in Israeli military
In early June, it seemed that Israel was pumping up its aggression in Rafah, in defiance of Biden’s demand that Israel not escalate there. But it turns out that Israel is also starting to break up internally. It has admitted to disciplinary problems and difficulty in controlling the rank and file of its army. Apparently, soldiers in the field have been trashing houses and blowing up universities at will, without orders; and would-be settlers both in and out of the military are actively planning to move in after the war, as they have in the West Bank.
There is a growing rift between the ultra-rightists in the war cabinet who want Israel to rule Gaza directly, and promote Israeli settlement after the war, and those in government, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in particular, favoring some control by non-Hamas Palestinians in an independent state, albeit under overall Israeli domination. A video surfaced on Israeli social networks on May 25th, showing an armed man in uniform threatening mutiny. In a message directed to defense officials and Netanyahu, he demanded that Gallant “should resign,” and said that 100,000 reservists serving in Gaza “are not willing to ‘hand over the keys of Gaza to any Palestinian Authority’ or other ‘Arab entity.’”
Biden admits: Israel’s “war” can’t be won
The U.S. President's surprising announcement on the last day of May that “Israel has now offered, has offered, a comprehensive new proposal,” was a fabrication from the start. First of all, there was no such Israeli proposal; what Biden proposed was the outline of a peace plan that Hamas agreed to and that Israel walked away from, back in early May. Also, Biden claimed that after “several months” of his administration working “relentlessly,” the first thing they have come up was a cease fire, all be it an “enduring” one. But a ceasefire, “enduring” or not, is what the U.S. has invariably vetoed at the UN Security Council, as Israel dismissed it out of hand. It had to “fully defeat”—read “annihilate”—Hamas, you see.
Biden has no doubt been pressuring Netanyahu with this message in private for more than a month now and receiving the wave-off. He even stopped one shipment of weapons, including the 2,000 pound “bunker bombs” at one point. But only this measure has had any effect on Israel’s genocide, and that amounted to a slight easing of the intensity of its attack on the southern city of Rafah. In the first week of June, Israel’s short-lived taming of itself was clearly over.
Biden’s proposal is a lost cause. His through-the-looking-glass proposal even states that “Hamas has been ‘devastated,’” and is “no longer capable of carrying out another October 7.” So, why is the IDF going back over targets in the north that it said were already cleared of Hamas? And how did Hamas put up the effective fight that it did in Jabaliya?
“Terrorist:” the word that lost its place
The word “terrorist” is the most mis-placed designation in the world. It is always used to describe the small gang of murderers or even individuals acting out of questionable sanity. Usually “the terrorists” are a group striking out against powerful entities, like cities or nations, with no hope whatsoever of achieving anything more than notoriety.
Israel slapped the terrorist label on Hamas way before the October 7th attack; it actually funded Hamas from the beginning in the 1980s precisely so it would have more than one “terrorist” group that would presumably fight amongst themselves, thus weakening Israel’s enemies.
This designation must be turned around. The world is more “terrorized” by what Israel has been doing in the last eight-going-on-nine months than it has been by anything else, and that is saying a lot. Everyone remembers the Nazi Holocaust, but very few are alive now who actually lived through it. Yet it is happening again, with the Jewish state leading the way, and Palestinians the victims.
What comprises a genocidal war?
As is widely reported and well known now throughout the world, Israel’s “war” on Palestine is more of a genocide than a war. Israel is making its “war” by:
1. Killing not just another army, but a specific ethnicity, or “group” of people. It starts with de-humanizing the target not as people, but as “human animals,” as Defense Secretary Yoav Gallant declared just a day or two after the October 7th attack. Israel is mass murdering them in “extermination zones” similar to “kill-anything-that-moves” areas designated by the U.S. in its war on Vietnam, except that Israel puts out notices saying an area is safe and then bombs them days or hours later.
2. War by confinement, which is one of the most astonishing things about this “war” in Gaza—it is literally an open-air prison. Israel’s “war” is like jailing masses of people, and then machine-gunning them through the bars. This makes it unlike almost all other wars, and very much like the Holocaust, in which its victims were put in concentration camps before being killed in the ovens.
3. War by mass starvation. The confinement makes this easy, by turning away trucks full of aid on the excuse that it has the smallest thing—such as scissors used in medical operations—that they say Hamas might use as a weapon. Famine has raised its ugly head in Gaza and is getting worse rapidly now that the Israeli military has captured the Rafah border crossing. This crossing is critical, since most of the essential aid comes through it from Egypt. Starvation threatens both the current generation and the future, as babies are dying for lack of mothers’ milk along with children dying of malnutrition.
4. War by spreading disease; Israel is blocking medications and anesthetics as well as food from entering the Gazan concentration camp. Doctors in what is left of hospitals must operate on the wounded without these essentials.
5. War by destroying both homes and infrastructure: schools, hospitals, shops, etc. All 12 of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed; and schools that are still standing are used as shelters for people whose homes are now rubble. Israel has even destroyed water purification stations and some water pipes, which is responsible for a huge number of deaths: thirst can’t be quenched, wounds can’t be cleaned, disease is spread from person to person, through contaminated drinking water, sewer water, and so on.
In addition to all these genocidal crimes, Israel is trying to hide what it is doing by erasing the evidence before it comes back to haunt them in the future.[3] Note also that this “cultural erasure” and the bombing of areas that it said were safe only hours or day’s previously may be cynically seen by some as Israel’s “improvements” over Hitler’s Holocaust, but the real test of a genocide comes at ground level.
The genocide convention of 1948
Both Israel and its chief backer and funder, the U.S., are signatories to the Genocide Convention of 1948. Israel signed on in 1949, just a few months after committing its first major act of this crime, which was to forcibly expel some 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and villages— “mandate territory”—killing many who resisted, demolishing their homes, imprisoning them in refugee camps, and refusing to let them or their offspring back into their homes (or what was left of them.)
Genocide does not mean killing the entirety of a population. Article II of the Convention makes clear what it does mean: “…genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”[4]
This is the Holocaust—again
As of 2022, 152 states have signed on to this Convention. I do not think that Israel gives a hoot about where the children go, it just wants them dead or gone; so, it may not be guilty of the fifth crime in the Convention. But Israel is guilty of all the other specifics in the Convention beyond a shadow of a doubt. The fact that the president and most of the Congress of the U.S. denies that this is a genocide and continues to fund and provide weapons to Israel makes it equally guilty for this complicity. (“Complicity” is a crime mentioned in part three of the Convention.) The fact that students in the U.S. are taking the lead to protest, and that the majority agrees with them, is a breath of fresh air.
It is common knowledge that the Genocide Convention was drafted after World War II in reaction to the Nazi Holocaust, but many today seem to have trouble equating what Israel is doing today with the Nazi Holocaust. I disagree, and I think the Polish-Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” in 1944 to describe Nazi policies in occupied Europe, would agree.[5]
What it is like at ground level
It takes an up-close observation to see what this terrorist regime in Tel Aviv is doing to people—and that, of course is hard to do. But damning reports are there. An exceptional medical doctor from the U.S. was in the first medical aid group to get into Gaza in December as Israel’s bombing war was raging. Professor David Hasan at Duke University was in a medical team of physicians from the U.S., Canada, and England working through an aid organization linked to the UN and the World Health Organization.
The mission of Hasan’s group was to get to the European Hospital, near Khan Yunis in the south of the Gaza Strip. His visit—the first one—was around two months into the war, and already “The hospital itself looked like a refugee camp,” he said in an interview for Haaretz, the left leaning Israeli newspaper.[6] “I had never seen so many people living inside a hospital.” It was necessary to constantly look down so as not to step on someone who might be a patient or person seeking some sort of shelter.
Doctors there faced limb amputations without anesthetics and C-sections without sedatives, and many painful choices. Israel’s murderous bombings largely came at night, and “During the night, it was not possible to rescue anyone because there was no electricity,” and “…just being outside was dangerous.” “Every morning around 8:00, a wave of wounded people arrived.…Many of them died from loss of blood or reached us in worse condition because they did not receive immediate treatment. At that point, around nine-out-of-ten of them could not be saved.”
The story of “Jacob”
At one point in Hasan’s stay in the hospital a wounded child about two-years-old arrived. The minute he arrived Hasan knew that he could not be saved, so he turned to help others who had a better chance. But he did not forget about this two-year-old. He went out to see if the child had family. He was told that “his whole family was buried under the ruins, and he was the only one who had been pulled out.” Right then Hasan decided that this child would not die without someone noticing and crying over him, and that he would have to be that person. “I held him to me. I cried over him, and I named him ‘Jacob.’ I vowed that if I have a son, I will name him ‘Jacob’ in his memory.”
On the last day of his first trip, Hasan found that he was infected with COVID-19. Of course he had been fully vaccinated, but “The situation in Gaza is the perfect storm for viruses, a combination of wounds that become infected because they cannot be cleaned properly,” he said. “Almost every person we operated on died a few days later, due to infection.”
“Things were getting worse”
Hasan went back in March and found that conditions were much worse. He encountered more hunger and a higher density of displaced people. “I saw people who had clearly lost a great deal of weight and many more cases of infectious diseases. Mothers arrived with no milk to feed their babies; they were so weak.” The hospital staff was clearly burned out, still working, but fewer of them. They don’t earn any money, and they were constantly in fear of what might be going on at home, he said. “Two doctors who worked alongside me returned home after a 24-hour shift and found that their families were buried under the ruins.”
Another report describes another doctor who had a terrible choice. He was faced with two mothers who between them had three babies who each needed an incubator. He was lucky that there was a working incubator at all; but it only had room for two babies. What a choice! This doctor decided that each mother come away with at least one baby, and thus the remaining baby would have to die.
Palestinians are survivors
Palestinians are going to bed hungry, and in fear of the next bombing of whatever shelter they have managed to acquire, or where they can go when the next attack comes. For a people who have been forced to live like this, year in and year out at least since 1948 and before, they are the most humane and welcoming of anyone in our world. They are terrorized by Israel’s barbarity. To call them or their voted-for leadership “terrorist” for fighting back is criminal.
But what is Hamas? Certainly, this needs more study. We have a great rising of students and their many supporters all over the U.S. demanding a permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, but who have a complete lack of knowledge about Hamas. And as I plan on learning more myself, I leave the reader with two things. One is Hamas’ very rational and unprejudiced programmatic explanation of their October 7th attack called, “Our Narrative…Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” available in the March/April 2024 issue of Socialist Viewpoint, available online.[7] This narrative from the Hamas Media Office demolishes the lies about October 7th, and details what Hamas wants for Palestine.
An eyewitness report
I will conclude with a report from Helena Cobban, a non-resident Senior Fellow at Center for International Policy, and journalist at justworldnews.org. Cobban’s report in a recent interview on Flashpoints, KPFA radio, was not something you expect to hear from a Washington, D.C. think tank. Cobban has visited Palestine and Gaza several times, and she said that Biden’s May 31st plan will go nowhere. She agrees that it is Israel who blocks such plans, not Hamas. Cobban testified that Gaza had a thriving civilization, with good schools, good universities, good professionals etc., and she condemned Israel for its dehumanization of Palestinians. Hamas “has been coded as the Mau Mau were by imperialist Britain. They were feared and condemned as savages, but when the British gave up, they became a quite human government.”
In Gaza, Hamas has broad support, Cobban said. She has met with many members of Hamas on her trips, the majority of whom were women. Women have always been respected and promoted into skills by Hamas. Four Hamas women were elected to government positions in the last election. “Too many on the left in the U.S. drank the Cool Aid on Hamas,” she said.
A Hamas woman once sat on the roof of a mosque during the war so that Israel wouldn’t bomb it. She was assassinated at some point later, Cobban said. In the interview, flashpoint’s Dennis Bernstein asked Cobban if it was true that Israel was intentionally killing all the family members of targeted journalists, and she said yes.
There is a lot more to learn about Hamas, but one thing is crystal clear: The only solution to this war is the total defeat of Israel, the imprisonment of Israel’s top civilian and military leaders, the abolition of Israel as a state, and the creation of a free Palestine with equal rights for all.
[1] “Gazans returning to Jabalia describe 'horrifying' destruction,” BBC News, June 3, 2024.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cl44v6e8461o#
[2] “Most Significant Operations”—Quds Brigades Reveal Israeli Losses in Jabaliya, Palestine Chronicle, June 2, 2024.
[3] This “cultural erasure” was reported by Vijay Prashad, a historian and journalist heard on KPFA’s Flashpoints program, June 3, 2024.
[4] Find the complete text at this UN citation:
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention
[6] Netta Ahituv, “The Chilling Testimony of a U.S. Neurosurgeon Who Went to Gaza to Save Lives,” Haaretz, May 9, 2024, haaretz.com/Israel-news.
[7] http://socialistviewpoint.org/marapr_24/marapr_24_06.html
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PDF.pdf
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