• 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 335:
Israeli objective in West Bank is not to ‘mow the lawn,’ but ‘pull out the roots’
The UN has said that Israel is now using "war-like tactics" against Palestinians in the northern West Bank. Meanwhile, Netanyahu has reiterated his insistence on maintaining an Israeli military presence along the Philadelphi Corridor.
By Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau, September 5, 2024
Casualties
· 40,861+ killed and at least 94,400 wounded in the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza-based Ministry of Health as of September 5, 2024. At least 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble.
· 691+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank, 5,700 wounded since October 7, according to Palestinian Ministry of Health as of September 5, 2024.
Key Developments
· Israel kills 17 Palestinians, injures 56 others in Gaza in past 24 hours, says Gaza-based health ministry on September 5.
· Israel kills 39 Palestinians, wounds 145 in West Bank since beginning of “Operation Summer Camps” on August 28.
· Israeli army invasion of northern West Bank cities enters ninth day as fighting continues between Palestinian resistance groups and Israeli army in Jenin refugee camp.
· OCHA reports Israel using “lethal war-like tactics” in West Bank.
· Israeli army considers West Bank “second front” in war after Gaza, objective not to “mow the lawn,” but to “pull out the roots,” Israel Hayom reports.
· Gaza-based Health Ministry says Israeli army refusing entry of medical teams to deliver and administer emergency polio vaccines.
· Video footage shows Israel paving road along Philadelphi Corridor.
· Israeli forces reinvade Tulkarem amid continued fighting.
· Israeli army kills group of 6 young men, including Muhammad Zubeidi, son of Palestinian political prisoner and former Gilboa Prison Break escapee Zakaria Zubeidi, in airstrike on al-Far’a refugee camp in Tubas, northern West Bank.
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) 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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2) 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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3) 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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4) 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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5) 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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6) As the first phase of vaccinations ends, an Israeli strike hits a hospital courtyard in central Gaza.
By Lynsey Chutel and Matthew Mpoke Bigg, September 5, 2024
A health worker administered polio vaccine drops to Palestinian children at a U.N. school in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Thursday. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock
Hours after the first phase of a polio vaccination campaign wrapped up in central Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, underscoring the limited nature of the pauses in combat to allow health care workers to reach children.
The strike occurred overnight, just before the effort to vaccinate children shifted on Thursday to the southern part of the Gaza Strip, beginning the second phase of the campaign, the World Health Organization said.
Israel has agreed to brief, staggered pauses in its military offensive in Gaza to allow health officials to make a frantic drive to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children and avert a deadly polio outbreak.
Four people were killed, including women and children in makeshift shelters around Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah, Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, said on Thursday. Video taken by the Reuters news agency showed tents and shelters in ruins, their wooden beams flattened, and people’s belongings strewed outside the hospital, one of Gaza’s largest.
“We sought refuge in a safe place, in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Hospital, displaced and sleeping peacefully, we found nothing but the airstrikes hitting us,” one woman, Iqbal Al-Zeidi, told Reuters.
The Israeli military confirmed the strike, but not the death toll or the proximity to the hospital. It said it had struck a Hamas command center overnight to “remove an immediate threat,” which was “embedded” within a humanitarian area in Deir al-Balah.
“Numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions” and aerial surveillance, the statement said, echoing words often employed by the military after airstrikes in Gaza.
The charitable group Doctors Without Borders said it was the fifth time since March that the hospital or its surroundings had been hit.
In the first phase of the vaccination campaign, the W.H.O. inoculated more than 187,000 children over three days. The second phase was expected to take place in southern Gaza over the next three days, before a third and final phase in northern Gaza. The effort aims to vaccinate a total of about 640,000 children under 10 against the disease, after the first polio case in Gaza in 25 years was recorded in a nearly 1-year-old boy last month.
The war in Gaza created the conditions for a resurgence of polio, said Juliette Touma, the director of communications for UNRWA, the U.N. agency that helps Palestinians in Gaza. Displaced people were living in cramped tents with little access to clean water, she added.
“These are conditions unfit for humans,” she said.
The W.H.O., which is also a U.N. agency, said it had exceeded its target for the first phase by 30,000 children, as more than 2,180 workers fanned out across hospitals, temporary schools and camps for displaced people, visiting tents and areas destroyed by nearly 11 months of fighting.
The initial success of the vaccine campaign reflected a culture of acceptance around vaccinations that was fostered by Gaza’s health care system before the war, Ms. Touma said. The brief pause in fighting, she said, allowed health workers to reach children who are vulnerable to the lifelong effects of polio.
“For six or seven hours there was respite, finally, for people. We knew that our clinics weren’t going to be attacked or bombed because of the pause,” she said. “The mobile teams who move tent to tent were going to be safe, and the culture and vaccines were going to be safe, and that certainly helped.”
The pauses were instrumental in convincing parents that it would be safe to bring their children to the vaccination centers, said Jonathan Crickx, a spokesman for UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency. Before the vaccinations began, aid agencies worked with communities to allay Gazans’ fears and stop disinformation about the vaccines. For the next phase of vaccinations, it would be critical that those pauses were respected, he added.
The war has destroyed three quarters of the cold storage and transport infrastructure that medics would normally rely on to keep the vaccine at a stable temperature, Mr. Crickx said. The W.H.O. and its partners spent at least two weeks identifying what cold storage remained in Gaza, and brought ice boxes and packs to preserve the doses.
Some members of Israel’s Parliament have criticized the W.H.O. for working on the effort with UNRWA. The Israeli government has accused employees of the agency of having ties to Hamas. Last month, the U.N. fired nine UNRWA workers after it said an internal investigation had found they “may have been involved” in the Hamas-led attack in Israel last October that touched off the war.
As the United States and others pushed for the polio campaign to proceed, Israel agreed last week to the brief pauses in fighting, while insisting they were not a prelude to a full cease-fire in Gaza. That decision has faced some pushback in Israel. An opposition lawmaker, Yulia Malinovsky, argued that even the limited humanitarian pauses would be beneficial to Hamas, allowing its fighters to regroup.
“Why should we care about an entity that has kidnapped our people and is holding them in conditions that the soul cannot contain?” Ms. Malinovsky said on social media on Wednesday.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed research.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Mediators plan a new cease-fire push, and other news.
· International mediators are finalizing a new cease-fire proposal to narrow the gaps between Israel and Hamas, U.S. and regional officials said, even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists he will not give up control of Gaza’s border with Egypt — a key stumbling block. Qatar and Egypt have drafted revisions that are being discussed with U.S. officials, according to a senior official from one of the mediating countries and two Israeli officials. The U.S. officials said they expected to complete what they termed a “final” proposal with Egyptian and Qatari negotiators on Wednesday or Thursday.
· Hamas released a video of two hostages, recorded before their deaths, whose bodies were among those recovered this week by the Israeli military from a tunnel in Gaza. The video released on Wednesday included footage of Carmel Gat, 40, and Alexander Lobanov, 32. Hamas had released videos of two other hostages this week. The latest release ensures that the fate of the dozens of remaining captives, which has inflamed divisions in Israel, remains in the public eye.
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7) Israeli raids have paralyzed daily life for many in the West Bank.
By Raja Abdulrahim reporting from Jerusalem, September 5, 2024
Palestinians inspect a damaged car after an Israeli airstrike in the West Bank city of Tubas on Thursday. Credit...Alaa Badarneh/EPA, via Shutterstock
Five Palestinians were killed by an Israeli airstrike on their vehicles early Thursday, Palestinian news media said, as one of the longest and most destructive recent Israeli military raids in the occupied West Bank stretched into a ninth day across several cities.
Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, reported the deaths, in the town of Far’a. They added to the toll of an already devastating military offensive, with at least 39 people killed in the raids and 145 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said the strike in Far’a targeted armed fighters who hurled explosives and shot at security forces. It has described the raids as an effort to crack down on Palestinian armed groups and combat rising attacks against Israelis.
Such raids have become a near-daily reality for the nearly three million Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. More than 600 Palestinians have been killed there since the Hamas-led attack on Israel last October, both in military strikes and at the hands of extremist Jewish settlers, according to the United Nations.
Palestinian armed groups have claimed some of those killed in the ongoing Israeli raids as members. None claimed those killed in Far’a as members, and in a statement Hamas referred to them as “residents.”
The nine days of military raids have taken an exceptional toll on Palestinians in several towns and cities, especially Jenin and Tulkarm, where many residents have trapped in their homes for days, saying that Israeli forces are operating outside their doors with armored vehicles. Bulldozers have ripped up entire streets — in what the Israeli military calls an effort to unearth improvised explosives planted by armed groups — and snipers have taken up positions on rooftops and inside homes, residents have said.
For five days, Kafah Abu Sarur, 49, and his family could not leave their home in the eastern part of Jenin as Israeli forces were spread through the streets. Their neighborhood has been raided before, including six months ago when Israeli soldiers stormed into their home and ransacked it, he said.
“But this is the first time we see this kind of brutality,” said Mr. Abu Sarur, a father of seven, in an interview Thursday. “There is no humanity. They uprooted the trees, broke the buildings. The sewer mains meters under the ground, they ripped them up. The electricity, the water — they didn’t leave anything untouched.”
A few days ago, he said, Israeli forces withdrew to the outskirts of their neighborhood. Mr. Abu Sarur ventured outside to get food and water for his family, his brother’s family and his parents, all of whom live in the same building.
He found that the shops had been destroyed. With the roads impassable for vehicles, he saw volunteers bringing bread and other food into the neighborhood on foot.
The Israeli military remains in other parts of the city, he said, including the neighborhood known as Jenin camp, which originated as a refugee camp for Palestinians who fled there after the creation of Israel in 1948 and is now a regular target of Israel’s military raids.
Mr. Abu Sarur said his family was terrified that Israeli soldiers would return, and they all stay fully dressed at night in case troops storm in.
Israeli soldiers entered Tulkarm again Thursday after briefly withdrawing from it hours earlier, said Faisal Salameh, head of the services committee in Tulkarm camp, a neighborhood of the city. For residents who had been trapped in their homes for days, it was not enough time for them to step out to get provisions or check on loved ones.
“No one had a chance to get anything done,” Mr. Salameh said. “The occupation left but returned quickly.”
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
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8) Breaking Impasse, Macron Names Michel Barnier as French Prime Minister
The president’s choice of a right-wing politician, after an extraordinary delay, inflamed opponents on the left who came out on top in an inconclusive election.
By Roger Cohen and Aurelien Breeden, Reporting from Paris, Sept. 5, 2024
Michel Barnier, 73, is a member of The Republicans, France’s main conservative party. Credit...Firas Abdullah/Sipa USA, via Associated Press
President Emmanuel Macron of France appointed Michel Barnier, a veteran right-wing politician and the European Union’s former top negotiator on Brexit, as the new prime minister on Thursday, in hopes of breaking a political deadlock that has gripped the country since inconclusive snap parliamentary elections almost two months ago.
The French presidency said in a statement that Mr. Macron had entrusted Mr. Barnier “with the task of forming a unity government to serve the country and the French people.”
Mr. Macron’s announcement came as criticism of him mounted over an extraordinary delay in naming a prime minister. Consultations with political leaders dragged on for weeks as a rotating cast of potential candidates were floated by the presidency one day and shot down by opponents the next.
Mr. Barnier, 73, is a member of The Republicans, France’s main conservative party, a weakened group that came in fourth in seat numbers in the parliamentary elections in July.
“This appointment comes after an unprecedented cycle of consultations during which, in line with his constitutional duty, the president sought to ensure that the prime minister and the government would be as stable as possible and give themselves the chance to rally the widest possible support,” the statement from the presidency said.
But Mr. Barnier’s appointment infuriated the New Popular Front, the alliance of left-wing parties that beat expectations and won the most seats — 193 — in the elections for the lower house of Parliament, known as the National Assembly. Their candidate for prime minister, Lucie Castets, a little-known civil servant, was summarily rejected by Mr. Macron.
“The election was stolen,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the founder of the hard-left France Unbowed party, which is part of the New Popular Front, said in a televised speech. “We do not believe for one moment that a majority will be found in the National Assembly to accept such a denial of democracy.”
Neither the New Popular Front nor any other party or coalition is close to the absolute majority of 289 seats required to govern unimpeded, and few parties are inclined to work together — leaving France without any clear governing coalition. No-confidence votes that might even topple Mr. Barnier’s government are widely expected once Parliament officially convenes and he gives a speech outlining his policies.
Never in the 66-year history of the Fifth Republic had the country been so long — more than 50 days — without an active government. The political paralysis began on July 16 with the resignation of Gabriel Attal, the former prime minister, who stayed on in a caretaker capacity but was unable to make any important decisions.
Mr. Barnier, also known in France for organizing the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, is an adept negotiator, having painstakingly found an agreement on Brexit. But he will inevitably struggle with the same difficulty in finding an effective or consistent parliamentary majority that confounded Mr. Macron’s search.
The centrist alliance led by Mr. Macron’s party lost seats in the elections and was left with only 166. The far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen gained many seats and now controls 142 alongside its allies.
In an extraordinary turnabout, Mr. Macron, having rejected the National Rally as a party alien to the democratic arc of the Republic, found himself negotiating daily with Ms. Le Pen in the hope of securing her party’s acceptance of a center-right candidate. In effect, she has had what appeared to amount to a veto over the process in the past several days.
Mr. Macron had little choice. Having rejected the left despite its victory, albeit one that did not allow it to govern on its own, only the acquiescence of the National Rally could protect a center-right candidate like Mr. Barnier from an immediate loss in a no-confidence vote.
Ms. Le Pen said on Thursday that her party wanted a prime minister “who is respectful of National Rally voters.”
“I think Mr. Barnier fits this criterion,” she told reporters. “For the rest, on issues of substance, we will wait to see what Mr. Barnier’s general policy speech is and how he handles the compromises that are going to be necessary on the upcoming budget.”
But the New Popular Front, which includes France Unbowed, the Socialist Party, the Greens and the Communist Party, said immediately that it would reject Mr. Barnier’s government.
“The denial of democracy has reached its peak,” Olivier Faure, the head of the Socialist Party, said on X. “We are entering a regime crisis.”
The left has called for a large demonstration against Mr. Macron in Paris on Saturday. France Unbowed lawmakers have even started an official process to remove Mr. Macron from office, on the grounds that he has refused to accept the results of the parliamentary elections, but that effort has very little chance of succeeding.
Mr. Macron called a political truce for the 2024 Summer Olympics, which were held in Paris and proved to be a great and unifying success for France, momentarily relieving pressure on him. But anger against Mr. Macron has ballooned over the past few weeks.
Alarmed lawmakers warned that without a government it would become increasingly complicated to pass a budget by the end of the year, which is needed to rein in a ballooning debt and deficit — among the largest in the eurozone. Mr. Barnier will have to reassure Brussels that France can get its finances under control, after the country was rebuked for breaking European Union rules that require strict financial discipline.
Mr. Barnier, who grew up the Savoie region in the French Alps, was first elected to Parliament in 1978. In the 1990s and 2000s he occupied several ministerial positions in right-wing cabinets, putting him in charge of the environment, European affairs, foreign affairs and agriculture. His career continued at the European level, where he was an E.U. commissioner and, from 2016 to 2021, the bloc’s chief negotiator as it navigated Britain’s withdrawal. He ran unsuccessfully to be the presidential candidate for The Republicans in 2022 but had stayed out of the daily churn of French politics in recent years.
Appointing the prime minister, who runs the country on a day-to-day basis, is a presidential prerogative. There is no constitutionally mandated deadline to do so, but it usually happens in the days or at most the weeks that follow a parliamentary election.
But Mr. Macron delayed the decision, driven by a determination to achieve stability and to safeguard his major economic measures, including raising the legal retirement age to 64 from 62. The left has vowed to undo that and other changes that Mr. Macron says have made the French economy more competitive, like lower corporate taxes.
Political opponents argued that Mr. Macron had a democratic obligation, after the defeat of his party, to allow the Parliament to debate and decide on such issues. But in the end distrust of the left outweighed rejection of the far right; and a very personal approach to the decision reinforced the view of Mr. Macron as a remote figure relying almost exclusively on his own judgment.
During the long interlude leading to Mr. Barnier’s appointment, Édouard Philippe, a popular center-right politician and one of Mr. Macron’s former prime ministers, announced that he would be a candidate in the 2027 presidential election that will decide the successor to Mr. Macron, who is term-limited.
The high point of “Macronism” — a centrist mix of shifting policies without an effective political party and dedicated to marginalizing the traditional right and left — is long passed.
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9) American Woman Shot and Killed at West Bank Protest
By Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem, September 6, 2024
Medics providing emergency care at a hospital in Nablus in the occupied West Bank on Friday. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An American woman was shot and killed on Friday during a protest against Israeli settlements in the Palestinian town of Beita in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian officials and witnesses.
The State Department identified the woman as Aysenur Eygi. Three activists who were at the protest on Friday said the woman had been shot by Israeli soldiers. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.
“We are aware of the tragic death of an American citizen, Aysenur Eygi, today in the West Bank,” the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, said in a statement. “We offer our deepest condolences to her family and loved ones.”
U.S. officials said they were still gathering information about the circumstances of her death.
Ms. Eygi, who lived in Seattle, had recently arrived in Israel to join protests showing solidarity with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported that Ms. Eygi was born in Antalya, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, in 1998.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
The second phase of Gaza’s polio campaign is underway, and other news.
· Medical teams administered polio vaccines to more than 161,000 children in southern Gaza on Thursday at the start of the second phase of a vaccination campaign, the Gazan Ministry of Health said. The three-phase drive aims to inoculate a total of about 640,000 children under 10 against the disease, after the territory’s first polio case in 25 years was recorded last month. Israel and Hamas have agreed to hourslong pauses in fighting on days when the vaccines are being administered. Shortly after the first phase of the campaign concluded Wednesday in central Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit a hospital courtyard where displaced people were sheltering. It killed four people, Palestinian news media reported.
· The Houthi militia has targeted tugboats dispatched to a burning oil tanker in the Red Sea, forcing them to turn back, a Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, said on Thursday. The militia attacked the tanker more than two weeks ago, and it remains on fire and “a potentially catastrophic environmental disaster and a navigational hazard,” she said. The tanker, the Greek-flagged Sounion, is carrying more than a million barrels of crude oil. The Houthis, an Iran-backed group based in Yemen, have disrupted global shipping by attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea, claiming they are acting to support Hamas in its war with Israel.
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10) Jenin residents are taking stock after Israel’s 10-day raid, one of the most destructive in the West Bank in years.
By Raja Abdulrahim, September 6. 2024
Inspecting damage inside a home in Jenin on Friday. Credit...Raneen Sawafta/Reuters
An Israeli bulldozer, in Jenin on Sunday. Credit...Ronaldo Schemidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mourners carried the bodies of Palestinians killed during an Israeli raid, in Jenin on Friday. Credit...Nidal Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israeli military forces appeared to withdraw on Friday from the Palestinian city of Jenin after a 10-day raid that killed 21 people, including children, and caused widespread destruction of streets, homes and businesses, according to Palestinian news media and residents.
ِHours after the Israeli military pulled back from the city, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian civil defense teams along with public works and utility employees fanned out to assess the damage and began the effort to restore essential services, according to Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether all soldiers had left Jenin, or whether they would soon return. As Israeli forces have conducted one of their most extensive and deadly raids in the West Bank in years, they have pulled back from Palestinian cities and towns several times over the past week before coming back.
In a statement on Friday, the Israeli military did not comment on a withdrawal but said its forces “are continuing to act in order to achieve the objectives of the counterterrorism operation.”
Palestinian residents who had been trapped in their homes for days — as Israeli troops and bulldozers roamed Jenin — ventured into the streets Friday and some who had fled the raid returned. They found their neighborhoods unrecognizable.
“God, I just collapsed,” said Kareeman Abu Naise, 30, when she saw video of her home taken by her father-in-law, who had returned to the neighborhood known as Jenin camp.
Ms. Abu Naise, who had fled the raid, heard from neighbors on Sunday that Israeli soldiers had fired a missile at their home, which had already been damaged by an Israeli bulldozer. That night, she said, she couldn’t sleep and cried for hours.
Seeing the damage on video — including the destroyed ground-floor living room where they had received guests — was even more difficult.
“Literally, everything we had was in that house. Our belongings, all our memories, the good and the bad,” said Ms. Abu Naise, a mother of two. Her husband, Muhammad, was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in 2022 as he walked home from work.
“Two of the most precious things to me were my husband and my house,” she said, “and now I’ve lost them both.”
The raids of the past 10 days, which included assaults on the city of Tulkarm, were among the deadliest in the territory in years. At least 39 people have been killed across the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Seven children were among those killed, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, which said that the past week was the deadliest for Palestinian civilians in the West Bank since November.
Nearly three million Palestinians live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. The Israeli military has described the raids that began Aug. 28 — a marked escalation over the near-nightly operations that had already become the norm there — as an effort to crack down on Palestinian armed groups and combat rising attacks against Israelis.
In its statement Friday, the Israeli military said that its forces had killed 14 members of armed Palestinian groups in Jenin over the past week and a half. It also said it had detained more than 30 people suspected of being members of the groups or of planning attacks, and had found weapons and explosives.
It also said it had carried out four airstrikes, a type of attack that had been rare in the West Bank before the Hamas-led assault on Israel last Oct. 7.
Some Jenin residents who had made dangerous escapes from their neighborhoods over the past 10 days returned Friday morning to survey the aftermath of the Israeli attacks. They were also able to check on loved ones whom they couldn’t reach because phone lines were down, residents said.
“Some are burying a martyr or visiting someone who has been wounded or checking on their home or shop,” said Nidal Naghnaghia, a resident who had fled Jenin with his family shortly after the raid began.
Many found homes so badly damaged that they are no longer habitable, and streets so ravaged by bulldozers that cars cannot pass, residents said.
Khulood Jabr, a 39-year-old mother of three, said it was as if people had been freed from their homes as they poured into the streets, surveying the damage. What they saw was as if nothing had been spared, she said.
“There is so much destruction, you can’t describe it. They didn’t leave any shop undamaged,” she said. “What crime did the owners of these shops commit? What do the electrical poles have to do with anything? What does the water have to do with anything?” she went on.
But Ms. Jabr added that she was heartened to see the people of the city banding together to rebuild, even as they feared Israeli forces would soon return.
Some residents were less hopeful, worrying that any attempt to rebuild would again be crushed in the next Israeli offensive.
“All of this will repeat itself, sooner or later,” said Ismail Bani Gharra, 25, who returned to Jenin on Friday. Of the Israeli forces, he said: “They will come again, there will be more raids, and more people killed.”
Anushka Patil, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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11) NYT Video of the Murder of the Abu Salahs Family by the Israeli Defense Force
Warning: Very graphic proof of the targeted murder of innocent civilians and the bulldozing of their bodies into piles of rubble.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000009614868/israel-gaza-war-family-killed.html?smid=url-share
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12) Surprising New Research Links Infant Mortality to Crashing Bat Populations
Without bats to eat insects, farmers turned to more pesticides, a study found. That appears to have increased infant deaths.
By Catrin Einhorn, Sept. 5, 2024
The new study shows how human health can suffer when nature is out of balance. Credit...Kim Raff for The New York Times
The connections are commonsense but the conclusion is shocking.
Bats eat insects. When a fatal disease hit bats, farmers used more pesticides to protect crops. And that, according to a new study, led to an increase in infant mortality.
According to the research, published Thursday in the journal Science, farmers in affected U.S. counties increased their use of insecticides by 31 percent when bat populations declined. In those places, infant mortality rose by an estimated 8 percent.
“It’s a seminal piece,” said Carmen Messerlian, a reproductive epidemiologist at Harvard who was not involved with the research. “I actually think it’s groundbreaking.”
The new study tested various alternatives to see if something else could have driven the increase: Unemployment or drug overdoses, for example. Nothing else was found to cause it.
Dr. Messerlian, who studies how the environment affects fertility, pregnancy and child health, said a growing body of research is showing health effects from toxic chemicals in our environment, even if scientists can’t put their fingers on the causal links.
“If we were to reduce the population-level exposure today, we would save lives,” she said. “It’s as easy as that.”
The new study is the latest to find dire consequences for humans when ecosystems are thrown out of balance. Recent research by the same author, Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, found that a die-off of vultures in India had led to half a million excess human deaths as rotting livestock carcasses polluted water and spurred an increase in feral dogs, spreading waterborne diseases and rabies.
“We often pay a lot of attention to global extinctions, where species completely disappear,” Dr. Frank said. “But we start experiencing loss and damages well before that.”
To come up with his findings, Dr. Frank analyzed county-level data on the detection of white-nose syndrome in bats, pesticide use by farmers and a variety of health indicators, including infant mortality. Two environmental economists who were not involved with Dr. Frank’s study, Jason Shogren of the University of Wyoming and Eli Fenichel of Yale, praised the methodology and the efforts Dr. Frank made to seek a different explanation for the uptick in both insecticides and infant mortality.
“He uses simple statistical methods to the most cutting edge techniques, and the takeaway is the same,” Dr. Fenichel said. “Fungal disease killed bats, bats stopped eating enough insects, farmers applied more pesticide to maximize profit and keep food plentiful and cheap, the extra pesticide use led to more babies dying. It is a sobering result.”
Dr. Frank estimated the number of infant deaths at 1,334 throughout 245 counties affected by white-nose syndrome from 2006 to 2017.
Three species of bats in North America have been decimated by white-nose syndrome, a disease caused by a fungus that attacks the animals during hibernation. Researchers first discovered sick and dying bats with white fuzz on their noses, ears and wings in the Northeast in the mid-2000s. The fungus can live on clothes, shoes and gear, which is how scientists believe it arrived in North America, probably from Europe. Since then, bats with white-nose syndrome have been confirmed in 40 states and nine Canadian provinces. Researchers are working to find ways to help bats survive the disease.
More broadly, 52 percent of bat species in North America are at risk of severe declines over the next 15 years from a variety of causes, including habitat loss, climate change and collisions with wind turbines, said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International, a nonprofit group.
Biologists have long known that the animals provide an important ecosystem service by controlling pest insects. But they’ve been underappreciated by the public, Dr. Frick said.
“We just take these services for granted because they’re happening without our ability to quantify them, usually,” she said.
Ecosystems are complicated things, interwoven with connections that scientists only partially understand, so biodiversity is exceedingly difficult to quantify in all kinds of ways. But economists are trying.
Dr. Frank does so by searching for natural experiments. He found this one while procrastinating, he said. After downloading some data from the United States Geological Survey, he wasn’t in the mood to start analyzing it. Instead, he started poking around to see what other information was on the website and came across an article about bats and white-nose syndrome. From his training in ecology, he knew bats were important for insect control and pollination. As an economist, he knew he had stumbled upon something rare.
“Reading how this disease is spreading from county to county, decimating bat populations, made my economist senses go, ‘Oh, this is probably the best natural experiment you can have,’” Dr. Frank recalled. “It’s the closest we’re going to get to just going out there into the wild and randomly manipulating bat population levels to see what happens at a large, meaningful spatial scale.”
An earlier estimate put the agricultural value of bats in the billions per year, and another study found that land rental rates dropped in counties hit by white-nose syndrome.
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13) The Pivotal Decision That Led to a Resurgence of Polio
In 2016, the global health authorities removed a type of poliovirus from the oral vaccine. The virus caused a growing number of outbreaks and has now arrived in Gaza.
By Apoorva Mandavilli, Sept. 7, 2024
A child in Gaza receives the oral polio vaccine. The vaccine’s composition was altered in 2016, with unexpected consequences. Credit...Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The poliovirus that paralyzed a child in Gaza, the first case in the region in 25 years, has traveled a long path.
It most likely arose in Nigeria and made its way to Chad, where it was first detected in 2019, according to genetic analysis. It emerged in Sudan in 2020 and then found a foothold in Egypt, in unvaccinated pockets of Luxor and North Sinai — next door to Gaza.
This journey was the consequence of a fateful decision by global health organizations to pare down the oral polio vaccine in 2016. The move, now called “the switch,” was intended to help eradicate the disease.
Instead, the change has led to outbreaks of polio in dozens of countries and has paralyzed more than 3,300 children. A formal evaluation, commissioned by the global polio eradication program and led by two independent experts, was unflinching in its assessment: “The switch was an unqualified failure.”
One consequence now is the furious scramble to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children in a decimated conflict zone, just the sort of environment in which polio thrives. It’s not yet clear whether the virus can be contained in Gaza.
By most measures, the campaign to end polio has been extremely successful. Vaccination has cut down the number of cases worldwide by more than 99.9 percent and is estimated to have prevented more than 20 million cases of paralysis.
There are three types of naturally occurring or “wild-type” polioviruses. Type 1 persists only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Type 2 was last reported in 1999 and was declared eradicated in September 2015. Type 3 was eradicated in October 2019.
Before 2016, the oral vaccine contained live but weakened viruses of all three types, designed to prod the body to a broad immune response. Children who received the oral vaccine shed the weakened viruses in their feces, an expected consequence.
But when some of these vaccine-derived Type 2 viruses circulated among clusters of children who had not been immunized, the pathogens on occasion slowly reverted to a form that causes paralysis. The odds were very low: Vaccine-associated paralysis occurs roughly once in every 2.7 million doses administered.
Still, because of this rare possibility, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative — a partnership of several groups including the World Health Organization, Rotary International and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — decided to remove Type 2 virus from the vaccine after the wild-type virus was eradicated.
The switch, in April 2016, was a remarkable event, with 155 countries and territories simultaneously replacing triple-hit vaccines with two-hit ones in two weeks.
At the time, there had already been some reports of Type 2 vaccine-derived polio, and officials expected more. So they stockpiled doses of another oral vaccine targeted only to Type 2 to be used to snuff out outbreaks.
And they planned for low-income countries to switch to the injected polio vaccine, which is used in richer and middle-income nations. It uses a dead virus and so cannot cause disease.
The strategy was sound, even many of the harshest critics say. But the execution, particularly in the crucial first years, was bungled.
Even though the global health authorities have spent nearly $2 billion responding to outbreaks, cases of vaccine-derived Type 2 polio have increased tenfold since before 2016. This is the virus that has reached Gaza, and the territory is not alone.
At least eight countries are battling outbreaks of vaccine-derived polio this week. Because one in about 200 infected children becomes paralyzed, even a single case of paralysis — as in Gaza — suggests widespread transmission of the virus.
But calling the switch a failure now is Monday morning quarterbacking, said Dr. Hamid Jafari, W.H.O.’s director of polio eradication for the eastern Mediterranean region.
“It looks really awful, but it wasn’t like people were making these decisions with their eyes closed,” he said.
There were unexpected speed bumps in executing the plan, he noted, including delays in vaccine availability, intense conflicts and the Covid-19 pandemic, which derailed immunization programs worldwide.
“A lot of things were planned and were expected to fall into place that didn’t,” he said. “These are things that are beyond the control of anyone.”
Outside experts say those factors may have contributed to the failure, but they lay the blame squarely with a sluggish and tentative response to the Type 2 outbreaks.
Outbreaks can best be stopped by using the oral vaccine. The injected vaccine is excellent at preventing paralysis, but it does not prevent spread of the virus and is cumbersome to administer.
By contrast, oral vaccines are delivered as two drops on the tongue, are inexpensive and rapidly strengthen immune defenses in the intestines, where the poliovirus multiplies.
But this has presented global health officials with a dilemma. To extinguish an outbreak of Type 2 vaccine-derived polio, health workers need to quickly immunize large numbers of children with the oral Type 2 vaccine.
But continued use of that vaccine leaves open the possibility of further outbreaks. That concern led officials to focus on using as little Type 2 vaccine as possible to control outbreaks, said Kimberly M. Thompson, president of Kid Risk, a nonprofit that applies mathematical modeling to childhood diseases, including polio.
“They were trying to do this surgical strike kind of approach” instead of being fast and aggressive, she said. “That was a big mistake.”
The approach also had the unintended effect of causing distrust in the vaccine, making countries even more hesitant to use it when needed. But “it was never the vaccine, it was always the poor implementation,” said Dr. Roland Sutter, one of the experts who led the analysis, which described the switch as an “unqualified failure.”
“The language, the words, are very deliberate,” he said.
“If we would have done a good job in the first year and second year with outbreak control, I think we would have a very different conversation,” he added.
In talking of eradicating polio, many experts continue to make a distinction between wild Type 2 virus and the vaccine-derived one. But by the time the vaccine-derived virus has regained enough virulence enough to cause paralysis, Dr. Sutter said, “no virologist would tell you that there is a difference.”
The eradication campaign is also overly optimistic about eradicating wild Type 1 virus from Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are notoriously difficult to manage because of inaccessible topography and nomadic populations, he said.
“The narrative that’s being promoted is that we are very, very close again in Pakistan, Afghanistan as well,” Dr. Sutter added. “And we are not close.”
In some ways, the eradication goal is farther away than it was in 2016.
Because children who received the oral vaccine after 2016 are not protected from Type 2 poliovirus, it now has more opportunities to set off a chain of infections, Dr. Thompson said.
Other factors, including conflict zones and weak routine immunization programs, continue to prevent eradication. Vaccine hesitancy, growing populations and overcrowding further complicate matters.
Before the war, polio would have found little purchase in Gaza, where vaccination rates hovered around 99 percent. By mid-2024, the rate had dropped to about 86 percent, below the threshold needed to prevent outbreaks.
No signs of polio have been seen in North Sinai since December. By then, the virus may have already made its way into Gaza, where it found exactly the conditions — many unvaccinated children packed together in unsanitary situations — that allow it to thrive.
Vaccination campaigns are best conducted door to door to ensure that no child is missed. But that is not possible in Gaza, where many homes have been destroyed and people are moving in search of relatives or safe havens.
The Israeli government did not acquiesce to the W.H.O.’s requests to vaccinate over a period of seven days and to begin the campaign first in the north and finish in the south, which has the largest population of unvaccinated children.
Instead, health officials were told to start the campaign in the central zone and finish in the north.
So far, the campaign has succeeded in immunizing many more children than expected. That may be because the W.H.O. underestimated the number of children who needed the vaccine or because some families traveled from other parts of Gaza to get the vaccine, Dr. Jafari said.
Experts with the eradication program remain optimistic that the world can eradicate all types of polio, everywhere.
The vaccine in Gaza is a newer version of the Type 2 oral vaccine, which relies on a weakened virus that is less likely to regain virulence. It has cut the risk of vaccine-derived outbreaks by 80 percent, said Dr. Ananda Bandyopadhyay, deputy director for polio at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The children immunized for the first time in Gaza remain vulnerable to Type 1 polio, should that virus find its way into the region from Pakistan or Afghanistan, where it still circulates.
Later this month, a W.H.O. committee will discuss potentially using the Type 2 oral vaccine alongside the one that targets Types 1 and 3, at least in some areas at high risk.
“One has to still figure out as to how exactly you do that,” Dr. Bandyopadhyay said.
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14) Israel Strikes Schools Turned Shelters in Gaza
Israel said it had launched a “precise strike” against Hamas militants operating from two school compounds in northern Gaza, as the family of a slain American lashes out at Israel.
By Erika Solomon and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Sept. 7, 2024
Palestinians mourn over bodies in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, on Saturday. Credit...Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had struck two school compounds in northern Gaza that Hamas was using as a military base, while the family of a young Turkish American woman released an angry statement blaming Israel for her killing in a West Bank protest on Friday.
According to Gazan rescue services, an overnight Israeli strike on the Halimah al-Saadiyah school in the town of Jabaliya killed four people who had been sheltering in tents that displaced Palestinians have set up around the facility. A second strike on Saturday hit the Amr Ibn al-As school in Gaza City, which medics said had killed three people and wounded 20 more.
Israel’s military said in statements for each attack that it had carried out a “precise strike” targeting Hamas militants who were using the former school compounds as a base, but did not add whether anyone had been killed. In both statements, the military said that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians,” and blamed Hamas fighters for intermingling with Gaza’s civilian population.
Schools closed down in Gaza after Israel’s invasion, but many have been turned into makeshift shelters that now house tens of thousands trying to flee Israeli bombardment. Despite the risks, Gazans continue to crowd into the buildings, which provide toilets and running water that are in short supply elsewhere in the enclave.
The deaths from the latest strikes add to the more than 40,000 Palestinians who have been killed in 11 months of war, according to the Gazan health authorities. Their figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
U.N. officials and aid groups have said that no place in Gaza was truly safe for its nearly two million civilians, a vast majority of them having been displaced by the fighting,
Over recent months, Israel has ordered round after round of civilian evacuations and has repeatedly shrunk the size of the enclave’s designated “humanitarian zone” in central Gaza. The action has forced an increasing number of Palestinians to squeeze into ever tighter areas, or to seek shelter around places they hope to be somewhat safer, such as hospitals and schools.
The Israeli military is also investigating the killing of the Turkish American woman, 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, on Friday. Her family released a statement Saturday blaming her death on Israeli soldiers and calling for an independent investigation.
“Her presence in our lives was taken needlessly, unlawfully and violently by the Israeli military,” the family said. “A U.S. citizen, Aysenur was peacefully standing for justice when she was killed by a bullet that video shows came from an Israeli military shooter.”
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has called Ms. Eygi’s death “a tragic loss,” adding that “the most important thing to do is to gather the facts.”
Even as northern Gaza continues to face bombardment, Israel and Hamas have largely stood by their pledge to pause hostilities in areas where health care workers are conducting a polio vaccine campaign for children. Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that the vaccination drive that is taking place in the southern part of the enclave is now in its “final days,” and will then move to the north of the enclave.
The vaccine campaign reached around 350,000 children in Gaza as of Friday, which is about half of the children the drive aims to inoculate, according to the United Nation’s Children Agency, UNICEF.
Yet even as the effort to halt the spread of the disease appears to be succeeding, critics have argued that it does little to protect Gaza’s children from the deadly conditions civilians face daily in the enclave, which has been under bombardment since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, Palestinian news media outlets reported that a baby, Yaqeen al-Astal, had died of malnutrition. It added that the child was the 37th to die of hunger in Gaza since Israel imposed a stricter siege on the enclave in response to the Oct. 7 attacks. Although Gaza had already been under an Israeli blockade before the war, its current restrictions are so tight that even the entry of humanitarian aid has been severely limited. Officials from the Gaza Health Ministry were unable to immediately confirm reports of the child’s death from malnutrition.
Earlier this week, Victor Aguayo, the development director of UNICEF, said the agency had estimated that more than 50,000 children in Gaza were suffering from malnutrition. “There is no doubt in my mind that the risk of famine and a large-scale, severe nutrition crisis in Gaza is real,” he said.
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