‘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) 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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2) 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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3) 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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4) 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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5) After 17 Years in Prison, I’m a Different Person. Do Cases Like Mine Deserve a Second Look?
By Joseph Sanchez, Mr. Sanchez is a writer incarcerated in New York, Sept. 8, 2024
Illustration by Shoshana Schultz/The New York Times
At 21, I was a full-time college student. I also sold drugs and carried guns. In the early-morning hours of April 7, 2007, I was shot on a Bronx street, along with two other people. I survived. One person didn’t. The third, who was badly injured, gave testimony at trial that suggested I shot everyone, including myself. Based on that, I was convicted of all charges.
I maintain my innocence, but I am not here to convince you of that. Innocent-man narratives often discount the need for reforms to help all people, including guilty people. I want to tell you instead about the person I have become over the past 17 years in prison and the people I have met here.
At Sullivan Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in the Catskill Mountains in New York, I’m incarcerated with men who have earned college degrees while incarcerated and who fill their days with volunteer work. Despite bettering our lives — or aging out of criminal behavior — we have no opportunity to demonstrate our rehabilitation outside of parole hearings that may come decades in the future.
Lawmakers across the country have proposed so-called Second Look laws. The First Step Act, which was signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018, gave federal judges the discretion to reduce the sentences of people convicted of federal crimes when there’s compelling evidence to do so.
In New York, State Senator Julia Salazar has introduced legislation that could help reset past policies that contributed to ballooning populations in state prisons. The state’s Second Look legislation would allow judges to weigh factors like victim impact statements, age, whether the prisoners were penalized for bringing their cases to trial (instead of accepting a plea bargain) and participation in rehabilitation programming when considering sentence reductions.
The bill is receiving plenty of support, including from people who will make decisions about the fates of prisoners, like the chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, Rowan Wilson. While running for re-election last year, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said, “Ultimately, there may be individuals who are incarcerated on sentences that no longer meet today’s sensibility of justice.”
After I was arrested in 2007, I waited on Rikers Island for four years before my case went to trial. I soon learned that the threat of violence, not necessarily violence itself, garnered respect. I found ways to make money to pay for my expenses like phone calls and legal fees by smuggling contraband such as tobacco. It must seem as if I was a menace. Maybe I was. But I know I’m no longer the person who languished on Rikers.
When my case finally went to trial, it took just six days. I was struck by the prosecutor’s assertion, during his closing argument, that drug dealers are often both victims and perpetrators of violence. At sentencing, that same prosecutor argued I had no redeemable qualities. The judge said I had committed my entire life to crime.
It seemed as though it wasn’t just my freedom on the table. They also judged my humanity and foreclosed anything I would ever become. I was sentenced to the maximum: 50 years to life.
Days later, a correction officer at Rikers stirred me awake at dawn. It was time to go upstate, to prison. Even though I had carried a scalpel for the past four years to protect myself from other prisoners, that morning I was conflicted. I didn’t want to be who the system thought I was. As I watched the sun rise, I prayed. Before I stepped out of my jail cell for the last time, I flushed the scalpel down the toilet.
At my new prison, I landed a job in the law library, where a fellow prisoner named Darnell Epps taught me the law. He also provided me with a model to follow in prison. Mr. Epps was enrolled in the Cornell College program, exercised religiously and volunteered speaking to kids in the Scared Straight program. He was serving 17 years to life for murder. In time I adopted his routine: powerlifting meets, college classes and volunteer work.
Since Mr. Epps’s release in 2017, he has graduated from Yale Law School and founded his own tech company. I know I can contribute to society as he has. One of my college professors, Jamin Sewell, who teaches law and policy at St. Thomas Aquinas College, wants me to go to law school. But none of that will matter until I appear before a parole board in 2053, when I’m 67 years old. Shouldn’t it matter sooner?
I wonder why the prosecutor suggested my case was a common story, given that my sentence is so much longer than the average punishment. According to the Department of Justice, the median time spent in prison for murder is 17.5 years. I wound up with a trial penalty, meaning I got punished not just for the crime, but for asserting my right to trial, receiving consecutive sentences.
Judges are not wrong for giving out the maximum sentence. I’d say the shock of my sentence was what I needed at the time. It created a seismic shift in my thinking and behavior.
But it’s wrong to think that the Second Look Act would give prisoners “extra credit” for good behavior, as New York State Senator Anthony Palumbo said. Given all the factors that would be reviewed by a judge, it’s unlikely those with bad disciplinary records in prison would be given serious consideration. Rather, the law would serve as a test of redemption for the more than 6,000 people who would otherwise never get any credit for their rehabilitation.
When we have no chances of ever getting out, we start to believe we have nothing to lose. Having the opportunity of a second chance would make people less likely to commit violence inside.
In May, at a college graduation event held at Sullivan, the commissioner of New York State’s Department of Corrections, Daniel Martuscello III, told the audience, “I have full confidence that the individuals in this community will not be judged based on their past, but rather on their present selves and the remarkable individuals they are evolving into right in front of us.”
Life expectancy studies of New York prisoners suggest that I will be dead at 57 years old, long before I face the parole board. Research on correction officers shows they often struggle with their physical and mental health. Our well-being is intertwined. Hopelessness and despair are contagious and toxic — yet another reason the Second Look Act deserves serious consideration.
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6) Three Israelis Are Fatally Shot at West Bank-Jordan Border Crossing
The Allenby crossing, near the West Bank city of Jericho, has been the scene of violence in the past.
By Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Jerusalem, Sept. 8, 2024
Palestinians rallied on Sunday in Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to honor Aysenur Eygi, an activist who was fatally shot during a protest last week. Credit...Raneen Sawafta/Reuters
A gunman killed three Israelis at a sensitive border crossing between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday, according to the Israeli military.
The attack comes amid a surge of violence in the occupied territory since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel prompted the war in Gaza, and at a delicate moment for the relationship between Israel and neighboring Jordan.
The gunman arrived at the Israeli-controlled part of the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan in a truck on Sunday and opened fire on Israeli security forces, the military said in a statement. The military did not identify the gunman, who was killed at the scene. The three victims were forklift operators who worked at the crossing, according to the Israel Airports Authority.
The crossing, near the West Bank city of Jericho, is the main pathway for most Palestinians in the occupied territory to travel abroad, and it has served as an entry point for some aid being delivered to the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel described the gunman as “an abhorrent terrorist” and extended his condolences to the families of the victims.
It was not immediately clear how the gunman managed to take a weapon into the Israeli-controlled part of the crossing. The Israel Airports Authority said in a statement that the Allenby Bridge was closed, as were two land crossings between Israel and Jordan.
Jordan’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that it was investigating the shooting. The country’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Neither the identity nor the motive of the attacker was immediately clear. Hamas — which has called on people in Jordan to escalate protests and violence against Israel — praised the attack but did not take credit for it.
Jordan, whose population is heavily made up of people of Palestinian origin, has been the site of large protests over the war in Gaza since the fighting there began in October. But the country is a close U.S. ally that has a peace treaty with Israel, putting it in a tricky position as it navigates the fallout from the war.
Jordan recalled its ambassador to Israel in November and has repeatedly condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. King Abdullah II of Jordan has been among the key figures pushing for a cease-fire in the enclave.
At the same time, the desert kingdom has maintained its delicate peace treaty with Israel and continues to coordinate with Israeli officials on matters like security and the economy. In April, Jordan helped intercept Iranian missiles and drones during tit-for-tat attacks between Iran and Israel — a move that Israeli officials welcomed and some Palestinians denounced.
The Allenby Bridge crossing has been the scene of earlier violence. In 2014, Israeli soldiers fatally shot a Jordanian judge of Palestinian origin at the crossing, heightening tensions between the neighboring nations.
Last year a Jordanian member of Parliament was charged in a Jordanian court with trying to smuggle weapons through the crossing into the West Bank, according to The Associated Press.
Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 after capturing it from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli war that year.
Violence there has risen sharply since the Hamas-led attack on Israel last October set off the war in Gaza. According to the United Nations, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 600 people in the West Bank since then. Some of those killed were claimed as members by militant groups in the occupied territory, but others appear to have been civilians.
The shooting at the crossing on Sunday came just days after Israel appeared to withdraw from the West Bank city of Jenin following a 10-day raid. The operation, which Israel’s military said was part of an effort to crack down on Palestinian armed groups and combat rising attacks against Israelis, left behind a trail of destruction.
The Israeli military said it had killed 14 militants during the operation, while the health ministry of the Palestinian Authority, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, said 21 people had been killed.
Separately, Aysenur Eygi, an American-Turkish woman, was killed at a protest in the Nablus region of the West Bank on Friday. Her family on Saturday demanded that President Biden and other senior U.S. leaders order an independent investigation to “ensure full accountability for the guilty parties,” saying that an Israeli inquiry was not adequate.
The Israeli military has said that soldiers “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity” who threw stones at Israeli forces. Witnesses on the scene did not deny that some protesters had hurled rocks at Israeli troops but said the clashes had finished by the time Ms. Eygi was shot.
Palestinian officials have said they hope Ms. Eygi’s death will make the U.S. government pay greater attention to the plight of Palestinians.
“Perhaps Biden and the United States will look and see what’s happening here — that there’s an oppressed people," Ghassan Daghlas, the Nablus governor for the Palestinian Authority, said in an interview late on Saturday.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
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7) A deadly shooting at a border crossing highlights worsening unrest in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
By Patrick Kingsley reporting from Jerusalem, September 9, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/09/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war
Israeli soldiers near a military vehicle along a destroyed street in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, last week. Credit...Zain Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In the shadow of the war in Gaza, a parallel conflict in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has intensified as Arab attackers carry out more sophisticated assaults and the Israeli military increases the scope of its raids on Palestinian cities.
A shooting by a Jordanian citizen that killed three Israelis on Sunday at a heavily fortified West Bank border crossing came after three recent attempts by Palestinian militants, including from Hamas, to set off car bombs in the territory. Last month, Hamas and its ally, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, claimed an attempted suicide bombing in Tel Aviv in which the Israeli police said the assailant had come from the West Bank. Less than two weeks later, a drive-by shooting killed three Israeli police officers in the southern West Bank.
Taken together, the violence constitutes the most complex sequence of attacks relating to the volatile West Bank in years, according to analysts, who say it suggests that militant groups have developed new technical, logistical and organizational abilities despite expansive Israeli efforts to contain their insurgency.
“If you compare what’s been happening in recent weeks to what was happening over the past decade, you can see a more organized effort to carry out attacks,” said Ibrahim Dalalsha, a political analyst at the Horizon Center, a research group based in Ramallah, in the West Bank. “A bomber with a bomb in his backpack, wandering the streets of Tel Aviv, is a sign that there is a network that is actually supporting something like this to happen.”
The escalation comes as Israel struggles to contain wider battles not only in Gaza but also with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as with their benefactor, Iran.
Several of the recent attacks occurred as the Israeli military mounted some of its most expansive operations in years in the Palestinian cities of Jenin and Tulkarm, as well as in the Jordan Valley, all strongholds for Palestinian militant groups.
Hundreds of Israeli soldiers spent days in both cities this month, clashing with fighters, killing dozens and uprooting streets and infrastructure in what the Israeli military said was a search for hidden explosives and booby traps.
Israeli analysts and the military said the raids were intended to thwart precisely the kinds of attacks that have mounted in recent weeks.
“The army is operating in three sectors simultaneously — Tulkarm, Jenin and the northern Jordan Valley — to neutralize the strategic bomb that is ticking in Judea and Samaria,” wrote Yossi Yehoshua, a correspondent for Yediot Ahronot, a centrist newspaper, using an Israeli term for the West Bank. “Judea and Samaria is a sector of whispering embers that need to be prevented from burning too intensely.”
The motive for the Jordanian gunman in Sunday’s shooting, which took place on the Israeli-controlled side of the Allenby Bridge crossing between Jordan and the West Bank, was not immediately clear. Jordan’s Interior Ministry said an initial investigation said the gunman, who was killed at the scene, had acted alone.
To Palestinians, the Israeli raids — which the United Nations says have killed more than 600 people since last October, a figure that includes both militants and civilians — only increase Palestinian animosity toward the Israeli occupation, and have done little to temper the militants’ abilities.
Israeli operations “may be able to reduce the number of gunmen here and there,” Mr. Dalalsha said. “But the truth is that, under the current circumstances, I don’t think that could lead to de-escalation. In fact, I think the worst is yet to come, unless we have an end to the war in Gaza.”
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Hamas denies making new cease-fire demands, and other news.
· Hamas denied that it had made new demands in cease-fire talks, with an official again blaming Israel for an impasse in negotiations. Last week, two American officials told The New York Times that Hamas had recently toughened its terms for the release of hostages, asking for more on the release of Palestinian prisoners in the opening phase of an agreement. Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, issued a statement on Monday saying it was “a lie” that the group had made additional demands. He said it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel who had placed new conditions on a deal.
· The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders for northern Gaza on Monday after it said rockets fired from the area had crossed into Israeli territory. The latest evacuation order covers parts of the city of Beit Lahia, according to a social media post by Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman. “Terrorist organizations are once again firing rockets at the State of Israel and carrying out terrorist acts from this area,” he wrote. The Israeli military said on Sunday night that it had intercepted a projectile fired from northern Gaza and that a second had crashed off the coast of the Israeli city of Ashkelon.
· The third phase of a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza is expected to begin on Tuesday in the northern part of the territory, according to Jonathan Crickx, a UNICEF spokesman. The Gazan Health Ministry reported that more than 441,000 children had received a first dose of the vaccine in central and southern Gaza in the first two stages of the campaign. Health officials say the drive has gone relatively smoothly so far, although conditions in the north, which has been hard-hit by the war, may be more challenging. Mr. Crickx said a second round of vaccinations would need to follow in about a month, as health workers aim to administer two doses to at least 90 percent of an estimated 640,000 children under 10.
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8) At least 18 people are killed in airstrikes in Syria, state media reports.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, September 9, 2024
A damaged vehicle in Syria’s Hama Province on Monday. Credit...Firas Makdesi/Reuters
Airstrikes in Syria killed at least 18 people and injured dozens of others, Syria’s state news media and an independent organization reported on Monday. Syria’s official news agency, quoting a military source, blamed Israel and reported that the strikes had targeted military sites in the central region.
In what appeared to be one of the deadliest waves of attacks in Syria in months, the Syrian state-run news agency, SANA, said that 37 people had been injured in the strikes near the city of Masyaf, including six who were in critical condition.
Israel’s military declined to comment on the strikes.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that tracks the war in Syria, said on Monday that strikes had hit the area of a scientific research institute in Masyaf. Work on “developing short- and medium-range precision missiles” is conducted at the institute, the group reported, citing unnamed sources in the Syrian security forces.
The group said that 25 people had been killed in strikes in Masyaf and other areas in the province of Hama, including Syrian combatants, people working with Iranian militias and civilians. It was not possible to confirm the report independently.
In the past, Israel has acknowledged carrying out hundreds of assaults on targets in Syria that it says are linked to Iran. A series of airstrikes in March near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo killed at least 44 people, including 36 Syrian soldiers and seven members of Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia backed by Iran, the observatory said.
The government in Tehran supports and arms a network of proxy militias that have been fighting with Israel, including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthi militia in Yemen.
Israel and Iran have for decades fought a clandestine war, but attacks across borders have escalated since Israel’s military offensive in Gaza began in response to last October’s Hamas-led attack.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
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9) A Trial Over Tyre Nichols’s Death Begins as Memphis Is in a New Bind
As three police officers face a federal trial, the city is embroiled in a standoff with state Republican leaders over its policing and public safety policies.
By Emily Cochrane, Sept. 9, 2024
The agonizing footage of Memphis police officers kicking and punching Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old man, during a Jan. 7, 2023, traffic stop horrified the city and the nation.
Fallout was swift: Five officers were fired and charged in connection with Mr. Nichols’s beating and death. The Police Department disbanded the street crime unit the officers belonged to. And the City Council approved a series of new policing ordinances, including one to reduce traffic stops for minor infractions.
But as three of the former officers are set to stand trial for civil rights and obstruction charges in federal court on Monday, there is a sense for some in Memphis that progress has stalled. The city is again embroiled in a standoff with state Republican leaders over its policing and public safety policies, a brewing dispute that lawmakers have threatened to escalate by stripping the city of a share of state sales tax revenues.
And the violence at the center of the charges is also likely to reignite a debate over police tactics and the often brutal treatment of Black men by law enforcement, at a moment when cities and states have left many of their police accountability goals unresolved.
“We’ve been able to grieve a little and heal a little — however, now that this trial is coming up, we’re going to have to relive all of that again,” said RowVaughn Wells, Mr. Nichols’s mother, in an interview. She still has not watched the videos showing what happened to her son.
Mr. Nichols’s stepfather, Rodney Wells, added, “We’ll never fully heal, but justice for Tyre is a step in the right direction.”
Nationwide, cases brought against police officers have resulted in a mixed array of convictions, acquittals and at least one mistrial. Of the five former officers originally charged in connection with Mr. Nichols’s death, two have since pleaded guilty to federal charges of depriving Mr. Nichols of his civil rights and lying about what had happened.
Many of the facts of the case are still shrouded: The pretrial legal arguments — including over what witness testimony and evidence can be heard — have largely been sealed from public view, in part, Judge Mark Norris has said, to ensure an impartial jury.
Representatives for the Police Department and the office of the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee declined to comment. Lawyers for the three former officers set to stand trial, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith, did not respond to a request for comment. Trials on state charges, including second-degree murder, are still pending, as is a multimillion lawsuit against the city.
“The fact that you do have both state and federal charges being brought — you wouldn’t have seen this five years ago,” said Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer who has represented both Mr. Nichols’s family and a number of families affected by police violence. “So there’s incremental progress, but we can’t get complacent.”
Mr. Nichols’s family and Memphis residents are bracing for a painful recitation of the brutal beating he endured and still-unknown details about why he was stopped that night.
“It is not impossible for us to have police officers who are focused on protection and on safety, and not have the death of people at the hands of police,” said State Representative Justin J. Pearson, who represents Memphis and Shelby County in the Tennessee legislature.
In the 20 months since Mr. Nichols’s death, the state’s Republican leaders have repeatedly maligned Steve Mulroy, the newly elected district attorney for Shelby County, and other Memphis-area officials for failing to address the scope of the city’s crime issues and overstepping their legal boundaries.
At least one police reform ordinance supported by Mr. Nichols’s family, which would have prevented police from stopping cars over more minor traffic infractions, was repealed by Republicans in the legislature.
Mr. Mulroy now faces a threat to oust him from his position when the legislature convenes in January, led by State Senator Brent Taylor. And last month, the top two Republicans in the legislature threatened to withhold sales tax revenue from the city, the second-largest in the state, over plans to put three gun safety initiatives on the November ballot.
The referendums include proposed changes to the city charter to require the safe storage of firearms and handgun permits, ban assault rifles and allow law enforcement to temporarily confiscate firearms from people a court deems to be a threat to themselves or others. (The Tennessee legislature has rejected similar proposals, including from Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, after a deadly school shooting in Nashville.)
“With the recent actions of the progressive, soft-on-crime D.A. in Shelby County and the Memphis City Council’s continued efforts to override state law with local measures, we feel it has become necessary to take action and protect all Tennesseans’ rights and liberties,” said Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton in a statement. He and state election officials have argued that state law pre-empts the proposed Memphis ordinances.
Mr. Pearson said that state’s leaders were making it impossible for the city to change. “If you have the state legislature and the executive branch gung-ho about refusing to do anything to help you reduce crime, refusing to do anything to help you with this epidemic that is plaguing you, it is really hard to make progress for a city,” he said.
Memphis has long struggled with high amounts of crime, as well as the systemic oppression of its Black residents, nearly a quarter of whom live in poverty. There were at least 1,038 fatal shootings in Memphis between 2020 and 2023, according to a New York Times analysis, compared with at least 400 in Nashville, the only Tennessee city with more residents. Just over half of Memphis’s 633,000 residents lived near a shooting.
Violent crime rates have since gone down in the city, after harrowing spikes in 2022 and 2023, a trend seen elsewhere in the country. In July, the Police Department said in a presentation to the City Council that homicide, assault and robbery rates had all dropped in the first six months of the year, compared with the same time frame in 2023.
The department’s leader, Chief Cerelyn Davis, who disbanded the street crime unit, has served in an interim capacity since 2021, after a majority of the City Council did not support her renomination.
“I think there may have been some small, incremental changes, but there is a lot more to do,” said Kermit Moore, the president of the Memphis branch of the N.A.A.C.P.
He added, “The citizens of Memphis are ready to get these trials behind us, so our city can heal.”
The Republican supermajority has a history of flexing its might over its biggest, Democratic-governed cities: The Council that oversees Nashville and its surrounding county has repeatedly tangled with the legislature in court.
But Memphis’s leaders say the perceived overreach by the largely white state Republican leadership particularly rankles in their city, where more than a third of the state’s Black residents live and an increasing majority of leaders are Black.
“We’re taking some hits; we’ve experienced some dark days,” said J.B. Smiley Jr., a member of the Memphis City Council who announced a lawsuit to force the three gun safety initiatives on the ballot. “Things will get better because we’re going to actively think about how to approach this situation and actively put legislation forward and actively be vocal about things that have negative and harmful impact on our community.”
A hearing over the lawsuit is scheduled for Sept. 16, as the trial for the former Memphis police officers will be underway.
“We just have to pause a little bit because of the trial and everything, and make sure we get justice for Ty,” Ms. Wells said. “But once this is all over, we’ll be back in Washington, Nashville, wherever we need to be in order to get some kind of reform.”
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10) “We Are All Aysenur”
Seattle marches for American activist demanding justice
By Palestine Chronicle Staff
—Palestine Chronicle, September 8, 2024
Hundreds of protesters gathered in Seattle in Washington State on Saturday, September 7, 2024, in memory of American activist of Turkish descent, Aysenur Ezgi, who was killed by Israeli occupation forces on Friday, September 6, 2024, in Beita, in the Nablus district in the West Bank.
The protesters, who gathered at Westlake Park in downtown Seattle to pay tribute to the activist, chanted and held banners demanding justice for the 26-year-old woman.
The gathering kicked off with a moment of silence in memory of Aysenur Ezgi and speeches that paid tribute to the young woman and condemned the Israeli crime, according to KING TV (channel 5), a television station in Seattle, Washington, affiliated with NBC.
“Today is all about her because we all loved her,” Aziz Junejo told KING TV.
Junejo told the TV channel that Ezgi was active in the movement for a free Palestine and was part of the University of Washington protest earlier in the spring, expressing the grief the whole community is feeling and devastation over her loss.
“For them just to shoot her in the head, it’s a targeted kill, it’s murder and we are deeply saddened by this,” Junejo told KING TV.
During the memorial gathering protesters held the young activist’s pictures and signs that read: “Aysenur Ezgi Martyred For Palestine Rest in Power,” “Justice 4 Aysenur,” “Today We Are All Aysenur,” “Resistance is Not Terrorism! Free Palestine!”
Taylor Young who is with the “Shut it Down Coalition for Palestine” told KING TV that the absence of Ezgi is deeply felt by the community.
“We all got to know her through the encampments, through the various actions the community has organized for Palestine so if you’ve been to them, you probably know her,” she said.
According to the TV channel, the protesters marched from Fourth Avenue along Pine Street to Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle.
“We will not stop showing up until we see a totally liberated Palestine,” Young vowed while speaking to KING TV.
“What she is, is an embodiment of what so many of us are trying to do which is to endlessly and ceaselessly do everything you can to fight for the liberation of people,” she added.
The young woman stressed that they are gathered in memory of Aysenur Ezgi and to “demand an end to the occupation, demand and arms embargo, demand the release of all Palestinian political prisoners.”
Aysenur’s murder
Aysenur Ezgi died on September 6, 2024, from critical head injuries after being shot by Israeli occupation forces in Beita, south of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
The activist—an American of Turkish descent—was shot in the head with live ammunition while participating in the weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlement expansion, the Palestine Chronicle correspondent from the West Bank reported.
Medical sources confirmed that she was immediately transported to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, where she was admitted to the intensive care unit. Despite extensive efforts by medical staff, she succumbed to her severe injuries.
The American activist’s murder was condemned worldwide.
The family of the Turkish-American activist has urged the U.S. government to order an independent investigation into her death.
“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. We welcome the White House’s statement of condolences, but given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate,” Ezgi’s family said in a statement.
“We call on President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Secretary of State Blinken to order an independent investigation into the unlawful killing of a U.S. citizen and to ensure full accountability for the guilty parties,” they added.
The United Nations reiterated the family’s request demanding an independent investigation into the killing.
The UN spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said at a news conference on Friday: “I can tell you that we would want to see a full investigation of the circumstances and that people should be held accountable.”
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