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Israel’s Genocide Day 377: Israel says it killed Yahya Sinwar as the extermination of Jabalia continues
Casualties
· 42,438 + killed* and at least 99,246 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 32,280 of the slain have been identified, including 10,627 children and 5,956 women, representing 60% of the casualties, and 2,770 elderly as of August 6, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble*
· 756+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
· 2,367 Lebanese killed and more than 10,096 wounded by Israeli forces since October 8, 2023***
· Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,189.
· The Israeli army recognizes the death of 720 Israeli soldiers and the injury of at least 4,100 others since October 7.****
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on October 17, 2024. Rights groups and public health experts estimate the death toll to be much higher.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of October 15, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on October 7, 2024. The counting is based on the Lebanese official date for the beginning of “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” when Israel began airstrikes on Lebanese territory after the beginning of Hezbollah’s “support front” for Gaza.
**** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.
Source: mondoweiss.net
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On this Wrongful Conviction Day, Leonard Peltier, the longest-serving Indigenous political prisoner, is incarcerated in lockdown-modified operations conditions at USP Coleman I, operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Yet, in this moment of silence, Leonard speaks.
To honor his birthday and all those who are unjustly convicted and incarcerated, the Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee has released a video of Leonard Peltier that is going viral. Narrated by renowned scholar Ward Churchill and set to a video created by award-winning filmmaker Suzie Baer, the film most importantly centers Leonard’s personal reflection on his 80th year.
Jenipher Jones, Mr. Peltier's lead counsel, commented, "This powerfully moving film captures the essence of who I know Leonard to be. I am grateful to Professor Churchill and Suzie Baer for their work and longstanding advocacy of Leonard. As the recent execution of Marcellus Williams-Imam Khaliifah Williams shows us, we as a society bear a responsibility to uplift the cases of all those who are wrongfully convicted and also hold the government accountable to do that for which it professes to exist. We must challenge our impulses of blind blood-thirst for guilt and the use of our legal systems to carry out this malignant pathology. There is absolutely no lawful justification for Leonard's incarceration."
“Leonard Peltier is Native elder whose wrongful incarceration is shameful. His continued imprisonment exemplifies the historical cruelty of the US Government toward Native people. The US BOP's treatment of Leonard Peltier is unlawful, and he deserves his freedom.” —Suzie Baer
Leonard's Statement: Peltier 80th Statement.pdf:
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABHSRNdyB8SKn0I&id=DFF2DD874157D44A%21118178&cid=DFF2DD874157D44A&parId=root&parQt=sharedby&o=OneUp
To view the film, please visit:
https://tinyurl.com/Peltier80thPresentation
We hope to have additional updates on Leonard soon. In the meantime, please engage our calls to action or donate to his defense efforts.
Miigwech.
Donate/ActNow:
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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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) Where a Million Desperate People Are Finding Shelter in Lebanon
Schools, clubs and parks have become places of refuge as the displaced seek safety amid Israeli bombings.
By Alissa J. Rubin, Photographs by David Guttenfelder, Oct. 16, 2024
Alissa J. Rubin and David Guttenfelder reported from Tripoli, Beirut and Mina, Lebanon, over several days and interviewed and photographed dozens of people for this article.
Most worrying of all, humanitarian organizations say, is that almost every day in Lebanon, a new place is bombed, and more people are forced to flee.
At dusk, the parking lot of Tripoli’s Quality Inn is packed with cars and families milling about. Children’s shouts fill the air, reminding some of better times, when the hotel hosted weddings and birthdays parties.
Now, though, the cars in the lot are dusty and battered, the families sit on patches of grass, their faces worn with worry, and the children play in a drained swimming pool. That is because the Quality Inn has been transformed into one of the biggest shelters in Tripoli for displaced Lebanese fleeing Israeli bombing in the country’s south.
“I am lucky. I am with my whole family, and we just want this war to end so we can go home,” said Hassan al-Aaker, 54, voicing a rare note of optimism even though he has no idea whether his house near the southern coastal city of Tyre will still be standing when he finally does go home.
In Lebanon, the displaced are practically everywhere. In Beirut, the capital, where many are staying, they have set up makeshift tents on the corniche by the sea, crafting shelters out of stray metal poles, bits of awnings and blankets. In the city’s parks and squares, some families have placed floor coverings on the ground, anchoring them with cases of water and folded blankets. Others are taking shelter anywhere that they can, mostly in schools but also in unfinished buildings.
The Lebanese government postponed the start of the school year and designated 1,000 schools as shelters, Ivo Freijsen, the Lebanon representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said in an interview. Tourist hotels — there are many in Lebanon, which was a major destination for foreigners until the war — are filled with displaced families who can afford them.
A Rapid Displacement
Of a population of around six million, including about two million Syrian refugees, just over one million people have been forced from their homes by the bombings, the United Nations and the Lebanese authorities say.
Even the most experienced humanitarian workers say they have been startled by the intensity of the attacks and the rapidity with which people have fled.
“Although we had planned for large numbers of people potentially becoming displaced, the speed with which things unfolded — uprooting over one million people in one week — was a surprise,” said Mr. Freijsen, who has worked in war-torn countries for 30 years. In a fast-moving situation like this one, he added, the funds and supplies on hand fall far short of meeting people’s needs.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that as of last week, nearly 700,000 people in Lebanon had been displaced since last October — most in recent weeks — and that about only 186,000 had found places in collective shelters. Others are staying with family members or in rented apartments or hotels, according to the Lebanese government and aid groups.
In addition, nearly 400,000 Lebanese and Syrians have left the country in recent weeks, according to the International Organization for Migration, and more than half of those, about 276,000, have crossed into Syria, as of last week, according to the U.N. refugee agency; of those, about 70 percent are Syrian and about a third are Lebanese.
Help Transcends Divisions
Despite Lebanon’s long history of sectarian tensions that spilled into civil war in the 1970s and lasted 15 years, volunteers from every background across the country have rallied to help. In one of the coolest nightclubs in Beirut, Skybar, the owners have given over the hulking mostly windowless building to displaced families and organized large numbers of volunteers to help out. Its many bars have become dividing lines between families and places to stack blankets, pots and clothes; its dance floor has been subdivided by stacks of mattresses.
Beirut’s parks and squares have become outdoor kitchens where local volunteers are mounting extraordinary efforts to prepare food for the displaced.
In one such kitchen, in a park opposite a public school turned shelter, Hezbollah boy scouts and volunteers prepare 6,000 meals every day. They cook in four or five cauldrons — one for potatoes, another for eggplant, or for fish or chicken, depending on the day. Dozens more volunteers, mostly young women, sit at long tables rolling the fresh food into sandwiches, wrapping them in paper, stacking them on trays and handing them to other volunteers to distribute.
Even with all of the effort, the sheer numbers of displaced are overwhelming these resources, said humanitarian organizations. If the war drags on into the winter, no one knows if the volunteer effort can be sustained or how short of cash the Lebanese government — already reeling from five years of economic calamity — will be, or whether it will be able to supply even the bare necessities for the displaced.
Most worrying of all is that almost every day, a new place is bombed, and more people are put to flight.
“What we’re seeing now is this vast number of people that are arriving and don’t have a support network, an extended family they can stay with or money to rent a place to stay in a hotel,” said Juan Gabriel Wells, the country director for the International Rescue Committee. “And then some are moving for a second or third time because the places they first went are no longer safe.”
Both Mr. Wells and Mr. Freijsen of the U.N. refugee agency noted that the recent bombing of Lebanon’s Bekaa region was troubling not only because it forced more people to move, but also because it is a rich farming area that feeds much of the country.
One of the largest concerns, however, is the rapid and huge shift of Shiites from the Dahiya — a collection of neighborhoods on the southern outskirts of Beirut — and from southern Lebanon into Sunni Muslim and Christian communities in the center and north of the country. Lebanon has a bloody history over the past 50 years of sectarian strife between Shiites, Sunnis and Christians, and many fear that uprooting large segments of the population could create dangerous friction.
So far that has not happened. Instead, people of all backgrounds have pitched in to accommodate the displaced, and nowhere more than in Tripoli, the country’s second-largest city, its mayor said.
“Tripoli is a predominantly Sunni city, and when Hezbollah was in charge there was tension,” said the mayor, Riad Yamak. “But the displacement of people in despair, that is totally different. They are Lebanese like us, and the municipality has welcomed them with open arms.”
In just the past two weeks, some 13,000 displaced Lebanese, mostly Shiites, have arrived in the city center, he said, while another 35,000 have ended up in towns in the surrounding countryside.
And some 750 have found refuge in Tripoli’s Quality Inn, where volunteers do what they can to make them feel at home — organizing a clothes closet; supplying mothers with disposable diapers, laundry soap and baby formula; and providing water and two daily meals with the help of the World Food Program and other United Nations assistance. The volunteers have started a free pharmacy and are hoping to bring in a mobile clinic, said Jinane Mombayyed Skaff, a social worker.
‘My House Was Like a Little Kingdom’
But not everyone is so lucky, relatively speaking, to find a place like the hotel. Among the less fortunate were five members of the al-Ali family, who had ended up in a dark, deteriorating school building a few miles away that the principal and volunteers were struggling to make cheerful.
The al-Ali family had started hearing distant explosions a year ago, the father, Mohammed al-Ali, said, when Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire at each other after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel last Oct. 7 that the Israeli authorities said killed roughly 1,200 people. But in their small village of Ain Qana in the coastal hills of southern Lebanon, the war seemed far away.
That changed in September, when Israeli planes began bombing in Nabatieh, the nearest large town. Amina al-Ali, 40, begged her husband to take them away — their two college-aged children and younger son Hussein, who is autistic and was terrified by the blasts. But Mr. al-Ali, a carpenter, had just finished building the family’s home and was reluctant to leave.
“I built it with my own hands, room by room. The only thing I had left to do was to paint it,” he said, his eyes filling with tears. “I had picked a beige for the walls and a brown for the trim.”
But then the Israeli forces sent an immediate evacuation order. Not even taking time to lock the windows or doors, the al-Ali family joined the tens of thousands of other families fleeing from southern Lebanon toward Beirut on roads jammed with cars.
For now, Mr. al-Ali has only his memories to fall back on.
“My house was like a little kingdom. We grew grapes and lemon and olives,” he said as he scrolled through photographs of his carpentry work — tables with curved legs, beds with mirrored headboards and bureaus.
“We want this war to stop and to return to the countryside, to our home, and live our life normally, quietly, so my son and daughter can return to university,” he said softly. “We want nothing but this.”
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2) Israel Strikes Near Beirut For First Time in Days
The attacks, which also hit southern Lebanon, came after the United States expressed concerns about the bombardment of the Lebanese capital. Israel’s military said it had aimed at Hezbollah targets.
By Euan Ward, Victoria Kim and Gabby Sobelman, Oct. 16, 2024
Bilal Kashmar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israel’s military carried out airstrikes early Wednesday in Hezbollah-dominated areas in southern Lebanon and outside Beirut. They were Israel’s first attacks in days near the Lebanese capital and came a day after the United States said that it had expressed concerns about the scale of Israel’s weekslong bombardment there.
The strikes in southern Lebanon hit municipal buildings in Nabatieh and killed at least six people, including the city’s mayor, Lebanese officials said. The attacks targeted a meeting of the municipal council, according to Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati. The Israeli military said that it had struck Hezbollah targets in and around Nabatieh, one of the largest cities in southern Lebanon, many of whose residents have fled after recent Israeli evacuation warnings.
Two strikes in Beirut’s southern outskirts, in the neighborhood of Haret Hreik, were aimed at underground weapon storage facilities used by Hezbollah, Israel’s military said in a statement. They came about an hour after a spokesman for the Israeli military had issued a warning in Arabic to residents to move at least 500 meters away from a building in the area.
Haret Hreik, which was heavily damaged by Israeli airstrikes in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, is part of a collection of neighborhoods south of Beirut known as the Dahiya, where the armed group holds sway. Since last month, Israel has repeatedly struck in and around the area as part of an offensive to kill leaders of Hezbollah and to take out its arsenal.
On Tuesday, a State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters that the United States had conveyed to Israel concerns about the civilian toll of its weekslong bombing campaign in Beirut, during which many of the strikes have been in the Dahiya. “When it comes to the scope and nature of the bombing campaign that we saw in Beirut over the past few weeks, it’s something that we made clear to the government of Israel we had concerns with and we are opposed to,” Mr. Miller said.
Here’s what else to know:
· Gaza aid: A day after the United States publicly warned Israel of consequences within 30 days if it does not allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, there was no official response from the Israeli government. Israel said it had let 50 aid trucks into northern Gaza on Wednesday “in accordance with international law.” That is a fraction of what aid agencies say is needed in northern Gaza, where the United Nations has said that Israel “has tightened a siege” as it steps up military operations against Hamas.
· Northern Lebanon: The U.N. human rights office called on Tuesday for an investigation into an Israeli airstrike a day earlier that killed at least 21 people in the Christian village of Aitou in northern Lebanon, citing potential violations of international laws.
· Medical evacuations: The Israeli Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the Israeli government to explain why there appeared to be no comprehensive system to facilitate evacuations of sick Gazans who are not involved in the Hamas-Israel war to other countries for treatment.
· THAAD crew arrives: A team of U.S. military personnel reached Israel before the arrival of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, which is intended to thwart attacks by Iran, the Pentagon said in a statement on Tuesday. It did not say when the missile defense system would be operational.
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3) Israel permits a small amount of aid into northern Gaza after the U.S. issues a warning.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, October 16, 2024
Distributing meals at a charity kitchen in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, in September. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock
A day after the United States said it had told Israel that a failure to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza could prompt a cutoff of military supplies, one of the starkest U.S. warnings since the war began, there was no official response from the Israeli government.
COGAT, the Israeli government agency that oversees policy in Gaza and the West Bank, insists that it is not limiting aid to Gaza and has blamed humanitarian agencies for failing to distribute the supplies it admits into the enclave after screening. On Wednesday, it announced that it had inspected and permitted 50 aid trucks to enter northern Gaza from Jordan — carrying food, water, medical and other supplies — “in accordance with international law.”
That is a fraction of what aid agencies say is needed to offset a severe hunger crisis in Gaza, especially in the north, where the United Nations has said that Israel “has tightened a siege” this month as it steps up military operations against Hamas.
“People have run out of ways to cope, food systems have collapsed and the risk of famine is real,” the U.N. World Food Program said this week of northern Gaza.
On Sunday, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken sent a letter addressed to Israel’s minister of defense, Yoav Gallant, and its minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, saying that Israel had 30 days to allow more aid into Gaza or the United States, Israel’s main military supplier, would consider cutting off military aid.
The letter describes the humanitarian situation as “increasingly dire” and criticizes Israel’s government for halting commercial imports, preventing aid workers from moving from south to north Gaza, confining the population into a narrow coastal strip and for a burdensome process of vetting what aid can enter the enclave.
Israel should enable a minimum of 350 aid trucks per day to enter, to allow people confined into a so-called humanitarian zone on the coast to move inland before winter and also take other measures, the letter said.
The letter appeared to depart from the U.S. approach of “hectoring” Israel’s government to allow more aid, according to Michael Hanna, U.S. program director for the International Crisis Group think tank.
As a result, it gives the administration “the possibility of having a really serious conversation” with Israel about aid, but some policymakers in Israel would likely view its eventual outcome as an affirmation of the status quo, Mr. Hanna said.
The British government added to the pressure, urging Israel to ensure civilians are protected and aid routes remain open. It called an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday to discuss the issue.
At the meeting, the U.N.’s acting humanitarian chief, Joyce Msuya, told the Security Council that it needed to act to address the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“The level of suffering in Gaza defies our ability to capture it in words, or even to comprehend its scale,” she said. “Reality is brutal in Gaza, and it gets worse every day, as the bombs continue to fall, as fierce fighting continues unabated and as supplies essential for people’s survival and humanitarian assistance are blocked at every turn.”
Aid workers say that extreme hunger in Gaza has been growing for months. The 30-day deadline falls after the U.S. presidential election, potentially making it politically easier for President Biden to take tougher action against Israel than he has so far been willing to.
Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday that aid into Gaza “has fallen by over 50 percent from where it was at its peak” during the war. According to COGAT figures, at least 465 relief trucks entered Gaza over the first half of October, compared to roughly 2,500 over a similar period last month.
On Tuesday, a total of 145 aid trucks entered Gaza through border crossings in the north and south, COGAT said. It added that 610 trucks of aid permitted into Gaza “are waiting for collection” inside the enclave.
Aid groups, for their part, argue that the Israeli military has made it difficult to distribute what little aid is getting into Gaza, often refusing permission for convoys to pass Israeli checkpoints and sometimes firing on them. In addition, Israel’s invasion of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza in May led to the closure of the border crossing there, one of the main conduits for aid.
“The last couple of months, they have not been good at all,” Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA, said in an interview on Tuesday.
The U.S. letter also provided a significant show of diplomatic backing for UNRWA at a time when Israel’s Knesset is considering bills that would declare it a terrorist organization. The United States is deeply concerned about the bill and restrictions on UNRWA that would devastate the humanitarian response at a critical moment, the letter said.
A panel of global experts said in June that almost half a million Gazans faced starvation because of a catastrophic lack of food. This has also made it harder for people to recover from illnesses and war-related injuries amid a health care system that has been devastated by the conflict.
“Medical needs are overwhelming,” the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said on Tuesday.
Aaron Boxerman and Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.
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4) Britain sanctions West Bank settlers and organizations amid rising violence.
By Ephrat Livni, October 16, 2024
The burned remains of a house in Jit in the occupied West Bank that was attacked by Jewish settlers in August. Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Britain has imposed financial sanctions on three Israeli settler outposts and four organizations in the occupied West Bank that it said had supported and sponsored violence against Palestinians in the area, amid a sharp spike in such incidents in the last year.
“The inaction of the Israeli government has allowed an environment of impunity to flourish where settler violence has been allowed to increase unchecked,” David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, said Tuesday in a statement. He added, “As long as violent extremists remain unaccountable, the U.K. and the international community will continue to act.”
The British action follows similar moves taken by its government, the United States and others to address rising Israeli settler violence in the West Bank since the Hamas-led attack in Israel set off a war in Gaza a little over a year ago.
Earlier this month, the U.S. similarly sanctioned individuals and organizations that State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said were “creating an environment where violence and instability thrive.” The U.S. government has taken at least a half dozen similar actions against Israeli settlers and groups supporting or inciting settler violence in the West Bank this year.
Britain in its statement said the measures “follow an unprecedented rise in settler violence in the West Bank over the last year,” noting that the United Nations has recorded more than 1,400 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities since last October. The violent encounters often drive Palestinians off their land, the British statement said, allowing Israeli settlers to seize the territory.
The international community largely considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal, and many of the outposts are illegal under Israeli law, too. But they are often tolerated by the Israeli government and sometimes subsequently legalized, granting them formal access to services like running water, electricity, building permits and funding. The far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been expanding settlements.
Palestinians have long argued that the settlements are a creeping annexation enforced by armed settlers and the Israeli military, carving territory that should become a Palestinian state into an unworkable patchwork and steadily pushing Arabs out of their homes and farms.
The recent increase in settler violence has also drawn condemnation from the Israeli authorities. In August, after a riot by Israeli settlers on the Palestinian town of Jit, Mr. Netanyahu’s office issued a statement decrying the attack and pledging to prosecute settlers who acted criminally.
But Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition has outspoken supporters of settlements in the West Bank, most notably Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. Both vocally oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, and their proclamations and policies have emboldened some settlers.
This year, Britain, France, Canada, and the U.S. have all imposed sanctions on settlers and organizations that they have said were violating the human rights of Palestinians, destabilizing the West Bank and threatening security for everyone in the area. “The measures taken today are part of wider U.K. efforts to support a more stable West Bank, which is vital for the peace and security of both Palestinians and Israelis,” Britain’s statement said on Tuesday.
Canada and the United States on Tuesday also took action against a group and individual they said were tied to a Palestinian terrorist organization operating in the West Bank and Gaza. In a statement, the Treasury Department said it had designated Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, commonly known as Samidoun, as a “sham charity” that raises funds internationally for humanitarian support while actually funding the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the U.S. designated as a terrorist organization in 1997.
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5) Hamas Leader Killed in Gaza Fighting, Israeli Military Says
The Israeli military confirmed that Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was killed on Wednesday. His body was identified by the Israeli authorities, the military said.
By Ronen Bergman and Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Tel Aviv, Oct. 17, 2024

The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that Yahya Sinwar, the powerful and elusive militant leader who has been the No. 1 target for Israel since the beginning of the war, had been killed in battle.
Mr. Sinwar was viewed as the architect of the brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel that set off the 13-month war that has plunged the Gaza Strip into a humanitarian crisis and began a wider conflict that now includes the fighting in Lebanon.
After a firefight in Gaza on Wednesday with Hamas forces, Israeli soldiers retrieved a body that appeared to be that of Mr. Sinwar. On Thursday, after “completing the process of identifying the body,” the military said that Mr. Sinwar, who was in his early 60s, had been “eliminated.”
Since launching the assault on Hamas in Gaza last October in retaliation for Hamas’s cross-border raids, in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 abducted, Israeli officials have repeatedly said that their goal was nothing less than the destruction of the militant group.
But no target loomed larger for Israel than Mr. Sinwar himself. Over his past year in hiding in the devastated enclave, he was believed to still be closely overseeing Hamas military operations.
Mr. Sinwar’s death raises hopes for an end to a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Gazans and plunged many more into a humanitarian crisis.
His death might encourage Hamas to agree to Israeli demands, and might also offer Israel a military success that could lead the Netanyahu government to ease its negotiating stance. Hamas and the Israeli government have remained far apart on key issues during months of negotiations over a truce.
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6) Sinwar’s death may shake Hamas, but won’t topple it, experts say.
By Ben Hubbard, Reporting from Istanbul, October 18, 2024
Soldiers with al Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, in Gaza City in 2011. Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
He was there from the early days of Hamas, rose through the ranks to lead the organization and equipped it for the deadliest assault on Israel in its history.
And now, Yahya Sinwar is dead, depriving the militant group of a ruthless, intelligent leader and raising questions about what direction its battered remnants will take in their fight against Israel.
Mr. Sinwar’s killing was a powerful blow to a violent organization that had already been gravely damaged by a year of brutal combat with Israel. Though he was only the latest senior leader to be killed since the war began, few experts expect Hamas to collapse. Still, the men’s elimination could cause a leadership vacuum and more chaos in its ranks.
Among the senior figures killed since January are Saleh al-Arouri, a key liaison with Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon; Muhammad Deif, the shadowy head of Hamas’s military wing, who Israel said was killed in July; and Ismael Haniyeh, who headed its political office in Qatar, making him central to cease-fire negotiations.
Mr. Sinwar was loathed by Israelis for starting the war and taking Israeli hostages, and resented by many Gazans who blamed him for the extensive suffering the conflict has brought to their lives. But he was revered by Hamas loyalists for helping plot the assault on Israel last October that left 1,200 people dead and 250 others dragged back to Gaza as hostages.
That made him an “iconic figure” among the group’s members, and a hard one to replace, said Fuad Khuffash, a Palestinian analyst close to Hamas.
“Sinwar was an extremely important man in the movement,” Mr. Khuffash said. “His assassination is no easy matter. But it won’t make Hamas retreat and surrender.”
Israel has assassinated dozens of Hamas leaders and killed many thousands of its fighters since the group was founded in the 1980s with the goal of destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamist, Palestinian state. Those blows have never prevented Hamas from rebounding — often with even greater ferocity.
Before the Gaza war began last October, Hamas was stronger and more institutionalized than ever before. It served as the de facto government for Gaza’s 2.2 million people, wielding power over their lives, collecting fees and gathering resources. That included at some points about $30 million monthly from Qatar that was intended to help keep Gaza’s government functioning. Hamas’s position in turn helped it build its military wing, which boasted many thousands of fighters and arsenals of rockets and other weapons.
Israel responded to Hamas’s assault with a devastating air campaign and ground invasion that has left vast portions of Gaza in ruins and killed more than 42,000 people, according to the Gaza health authorities. That figure does not differentiate between fighters and civilians, but Israel claims to have largely gutted the organization, killing large numbers of its combatants and blowing up many of the tunnels they use to covertly move around the territory.
While Israel has not laid out a clear plan for how the war will end or who will run Gaza afterward, it has vowed to prevent Hamas from resuming any role in governance. Yet Hamas has continued to fight, frequently popping back up and launching new attacks in areas that Israel claimed to have cleared.
“Hamas has been fighting this war for a year in a very closed space, so it is already decentralized to the limit, fighting in very small units of a dozen or less fighters who have a lot of autonomy,” said Ramzy Mardini, an associate at the Pearson Institute at the University of Chicago who studies rebellions and civil wars.
Mr. Sinwar’s death is unlikely to affect those operations, he said, since he had lost the ability to direct them, anyway.
But Mr. Sinwar was key to Hamas’s top-level decisions, such as whether to agree to a cease-fire, and officials involved in those talks considered him a hard-liner who was less likely to compromise than his comrades outside Gaza.
It was unclear on Friday when Hamas will announce a successor, or how that transition will affect the negotiating stance of a group that has long been run by a combination of political officials based in Qatar and political and military leaders in Gaza.
In Gaza, Mr. Sinwar might be replaced by his brother Mohammad, a senior figure in the group’s military wing, according to a Western diplomat familiar with Hamas. His logical successor as the head of Hamas’s political office would be Khalil al-Hayya, Mr. Sinwar’s deputy, who is based in Qatar, the diplomat said.
Other prominent remaining Hamas figures include Khaled Meshal and Mousa Abu Marzouk, both former heads of the political office.
It is also possible that Mr. Sinwar’s death will cause chaos inside the organization, making it unclear who has the ability to negotiate on Hamas’s behalf and leaving no one with the stature needed to ensure the compliance of Gaza’s armed groups with any agreement that is reached.
Hamas has never claimed the allegiances of a majority of Palestinians, and many in Gaza celebrated the news of Mr. Sinwar’s death, blaming him for a war that has caused them such suffering.
But Hamas’s message of violent resistance to Israel has long found its recruits among those who have lost the most in the conflict: Palestinian refugees forced into permanent exile with the creation of Israel and their descendants; people who have lost homes and loved ones to Israeli bombs; and young men with no prospects for better lives.
The possibility of any form of statehood or self-determination for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza appears more remote now than it has in many years. And the Gaza war — by killing, wounding, orphaning and displacing so many people — has increased hatred of Israel among Palestinians and the despair that direct recruits to groups like Hamas, no matter who leads them.
“The root of the problem is not Sinwar or even Hamas,” said Hassan Abu Haniyeh, an expert on militant groups at the Politics and Society Institute in Jordan. “The problem is the next day. What are you going to do? You can kill all of Hamas, but what are you going to do on the day after?”
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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7) Texas Supreme Court Halts Execution in Shaken Baby Case
Robert Roberson had been set to be executed on Thursday night for the death of his 2-year-old child. But after a bipartisan intervention by Texas lawmakers, the Supreme Court issued a stay.
By J. David Goodman, Reporting from Houston, Published Oct. 17, 2024, Updated Oct. 18, 2024

The Texas Supreme Court on Thursday halted the execution of Robert Roberson, a Texas man convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter, after a roller-coaster series of legal maneuvers initiated by an unusual intervention from a bipartisan group of Texas House members.
The decision by the state’s highest civil court related to a procedural question raised by the legislators’ issuing a subpoena for Mr. Roberson to testify before the Legislature on Monday and not the details of his case. But the effect was to run out the clock for the time being.
Because the execution could not be carried out before midnight, a new date would now have to be set.
“We’re deeply grateful to the Texas Supreme Court,” two of the legislators, Jeff Leach, a Dallas-area Republican, and Joe Moody, an El Paso Democrat, said in a joint statement. “We look forward to welcoming Robert to the Texas Capitol, and along with 31 million Texans, finally giving him — and the truth — a chance to be heard.”
The execution by lethal injection, which had been set to take place at a prison in Huntsville, would have been the first in a case attributed to shaken baby syndrome, a diagnosis that has raised questions in the scientific community, death penalty experts said.
Lawyers for Mr. Roberson had sought to prevent the execution by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court and requesting a reprieve from Gov. Greg Abbott. But neither stepped in.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday issued a separate order declining to stay the execution. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a statement along with the court’s order, said that while the court could not stop the execution, Mr. Abbott of Texas could and should grant a temporary reprieve.
“An executive reprieve of 30 days would provide the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles with an opportunity to reconsider the evidence of Roberson’s actual innocence,” the justice wrote. “That could prevent a miscarriage of justice from occurring.”
Instead, it was members of the Texas House, outraged by what they saw as injustice in Mr. Roberson’s case, and seeking to make time for a new hearing on the evidence, who forced the execution’s postponement.
Mr. Roberson’s execution was one of two scheduled in the country on Thursday. In Alabama, officials carried out the execution of Derrick Dearman, who had admitted to killing five of his girlfriend’s relatives in 2016. Mr. Dearman, 36, died by lethal injection. He had stopped fighting his death sentence this year and said he wanted to be executed so that his victims’ family members could have justice.
Mr. Roberson’s case has drawn intense national scrutiny because of the role that the shaken baby diagnosis played in his conviction. His lawyers maintain that no crime was committed at all and have presented evidence and expert testimony that his daughter, Nikki, most likely died in 2002 from pneumonia exacerbated by medication that she had been prescribed.
Gretchen Sween, a lawyer for Mr. Roberson, said that his supporters were “elated tonight” by the actions of the “brave, bipartisan Texas lawmakers” who dug into the facts of Mr. Roberson’s case. “He lives to fight another day and hopes that his experience can help improve the integrity of our criminal legal system,” she said.
Shaken baby syndrome is a medical determination that abuse has caused serious or fatal head trauma, and it has played a role in criminal convictions for decades.
The American Academy of Pediatrics still recognizes the diagnosis, but it has come under scrutiny in recent years as some doctors and defense lawyers have challenged its reliability, particularly in cases where little other evidence of abuse exists.
Mr. Roberson’s lawyers have also said that his autism, diagnosed after his trial, played a role in the conviction because investigators saw his apparent lack of emotion or grief as evidence of guilt.
More than half of the Republican-dominated Texas House has lobbied for the case to be reviewed. The detective who helped convict him now says he believes Mr. Roberson is innocent. John Grisham, a novelist who has been supporting Mr. Roberson, pleaded this week for the execution to be halted.
Mr. Roberson, 56, has granted several television interviews from death row, including one this week with Phil McGraw on “Dr. Phil Primetime.”
With few options left, Mr. Roberson’s lawyers had appealed to Mr. Abbott to step in and order a one-time, 30-day reprieve to allow for further legal challenges. Under Texas law, the governor cannot grant clemency after the state board has recommended against it.
Members of the Texas House, urging the courts to reconsider the case, began their attempt to intervene on Wednesday, when they issued a subpoena seeking to delay the execution by compelling Mr. Roberson to testify before a legislative committee on Monday.
Hours before the execution, Mr. Leach and Mr. Moody sought a court order to temporarily halt the execution so that Mr. Roberson could respond to the subpoena. Mr. Leach appeared in the video hearing sitting in his car, an indication of how quickly the proceeding had been arranged.
“This is an extraordinary remedy that the Legislature is seeking,” Mr. Leach said. But he argued that it fell within the powers granted to the Texas House under the State Constitution.
The district court ruled on the validity of the legislators’ subpoena but did not address the merits of the arguments in defense of Mr. Roberson. Soon after, the state’s highest criminal court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, overruled the lower-court decision on the subpoena.
At roughly the same time — and with the execution primed to go ahead once again — the House members then filed an emergency motion with the Texas Supreme Court, which stepped in and ruled that the question of the subpoena was a civil one and should have properly been handled by the State Supreme Court and not the high criminal court.
But the court said in its order that it would not consider the details of Mr. Roberson’s case.
“Anything other than laser-like focus on the specific civil-law questions presented — and especially the competing authority of the legislative and executive branches in this situation — is therefore off limits,” Justice Evan A. Young wrote in a concurrence to the court’s order that was joined by the chief justice, Nathan L. Hecht, and Justice Rebeca Aizpuru Huddle. There was no dissent.
The matter now returns to the district court in Travis County where the Texas attorney general would represent the executive branch against the House members.
Earlier, the attorney general’s office had cited evidence from the trial in opposing the defense’s requests for a stay of execution.
“Roberson has repeatedly challenged the validity of his conviction and death sentence, and he has been properly rejected in each instance,” the state wrote in its brief to the U.S. Supreme Court.
It said there was testimony from Mr. Roberson’s girlfriend that before his daughter’s death, Mr. Roberson was “violent towards Nikki; he had paddled the toddler, shaken and thrown her, threatened her and screamed at her.”
In response, Ms. Sween, Mr. Roberson’s lawyer, said that the attorney general’s description was an “inaccurate summary of testimony from wholly incredible witnesses manufactured for trial” and that the accusations were “unsupported by any contemporaneous records.” She said Mr. Roberson had no history of violence.
Mr. Roberson’s lawyers have argued that the understanding of shaken baby syndrome has changed in the two decades since his trial, and that he was convicted under a narrow understanding of the medical condition when Nikki stopped breathing and Mr. Roberson took her to the emergency room on Jan. 31, 2002.
Mr. Roberson said at the time that a bruise on Nikki’s head could be explained by her having fallen from the bed where they were both sleeping.
Scans taken at the hospital showed subdural bleeding, brain swelling and retinal hemorrhages. The three conditions, taken together, have been used in the past to infer abuse in shaken baby cases.
But those conditions can also appear as a result of disease. Mr. Roberson’s lawyers have argued that Nikki’s condition was more likely explained by the respiratory infection that she had been fighting in the days before her death, and the medication prescribed to her that could have suppressed her breathing.
Mr. Roberson has had his execution delayed once before, in 2016. At that time, the Court of Criminal Appeals intervened so that new medical and expert evidence could be presented by his lawyers.
But the court ultimately ruled against him. It also denied appeals to reconsider his conviction under the state’s “junk science” law, which allows for convictions to be challenged based on changes to the science that was relied upon in their cases.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed reporting.
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8) Despite Sinwar’s Death, Mideast Peace May Still Be Elusive
Just about all of the actors in the region are looking for an “offramp” to the conflict, many analysts say. But Hezbollah and Hamas are talking tough, and Israel is not backing down.
By Vivian Yee, Oct. 19, 2024

The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader whose decision to attack Israel more than a year ago set off the ever-widening war tearing up the Middle East, could be the key to ending the bloodshed. Now that Israel has decapitated Hamas in Gaza, the thinking goes, it might be ready to declare victory and move on, while a demoralized Hamas might show greater flexibility in cease-fire talks.
Or, at least, that outcome would most likely be welcomed by most of the countries. Despite their pledges to keep on fighting, Hezbollah, Hamas and other Iranian proxies may also be looking for offramps, analysts say, even if Israel seems not to be displaying much appetite for taking the win.
“All of them are super eager for offramps. They have been from the start,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, a Middle East expert at the International Crisis Group, speaking of the Arab nations. “It’s a difficult situation for the entire region. And there are many ways in which this could get much worse.”
Egypt and Jordan, just next door to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, have called repeatedly for a cease-fire. Beyond their people’s anguish over civilian suffering in Gaza and Lebanon, they are anxious to end the instability rocking the region and halt the damage to their economies.
Egypt’s prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly, recently warned that Egypt would have to transition to what he called a “war economy” if increasing regional instability threatens critical sources of Egyptian revenue, including tourism and shipping through the Suez Canal. Traffic through the canal has dropped by about half over the past year as Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia has attacked shipping in the Red Sea in what it says is retaliation for Israel’s assault on Gaza.
The Gulf Arab monarchies have also pushed for calm. Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, as well as Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, all discussed working toward an end to the conflict in calls on Thursday with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. Not only is a safe environment good for business, but the Gulf States also recognize that their ambitious national development plans cannot succeed in a region embroiled in constant conflict, especially one involving their neighbor, Iran.
Their belligerent stance notwithstanding, even Israel’s most implacable enemies, the so-called axis of resistance — Iran and the armed groups it supports, including the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, the Houthis and various armed militias in Iraq — may be looking for a way out of a conflict that is proving increasingly destructive and risky for them, analysts say.
“They’re all cornered. The axis of resistance is definitely, definitely on the back foot at the moment,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East security specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Iran, for its part, was not looking for all-out war with Israel in the first place, at least not after Oct. 7, analysts and United States officials who track the conflict say. It initially declined to follow Hamas’s attack on Israel with significant offensives of its own, and while it has responded to Israeli attacks on its soil, it has stopped short of a retaliation that would draw a devastating response from Israel, the analysts and officials say.
But actually agreeing to a cease-fire depends more on Israel and Hamas than on any of those actors. And while many in Israel have called for an end to the fighting to bring home Israeli hostages held in Gaza and lessen the strain on Israel’s military and economy, the country’s leaders have repeatedly escalated the war.
In recent months, Israel has sent troops into Lebanon, killed thousands of people in airstrikes there, struck Yemen and Syria, assassinated a string of top Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and mounted another major offensive in northern Gaza. And it is still expected to deliver a retaliatory strike for a previous Iranian missile assault.
“Today, evil suffered a severe blow, but the task before us is not yet complete,” Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said in a video statement on Thursday after Israel announced Mr. Sinwar’s death.
Iran and its proxies still have the capacity to create havoc, and Hezbollah and a few Iran-backed militias in Iraq projected defiance after Wednesday’s killing. “The resistance will create not hundreds, but thousands like Sinwar to take revenge on his killers,” said Kadhim al-Fartousi, the spokesman for Sayyid al-Shuhada, an Iran-linked Iraqi armed group.
Hezbollah said its leadership gave orders to move to “a new and escalating phase” in its conflict with Israel, without giving details, and Hamas has vowed to fight to the last man.
Nevertheless, the death of Mr. Sinwar is not expected to elicit a major response from Iran or its proxies. Though the Iranian news media and officials were already portraying Mr. Sinwar as a “martyr,” his death was more or less expected, analysts said.
And unlike with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the previous Hamas leader, who was killed in July while visiting Tehran — a humiliation that led Iran to rain missiles on Israel — Mr. Sinwar died far away in Gaza, making his killing less embarrassing to Iran than Mr. Haniyeh’s.
A senior commander in one of the Iraqi militias repeated what fighters like him had been saying for months: Iran and its partners have been facing too much damage from Hamas’s single-minded focus on the Palestinian struggle, which had dragged the whole region into the flames. The commander declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
With Mr. Sinwar’s killing, he said, he believed the region would begin to calm down.
Iran is also trying to limit the growing damage to the proxies it so painstakingly built up over the years with advice, weapons and financing. Such groups were meant to help protect Iran. Now, it finds itself under attack because of them.
“My sense is that the Iranians are looking for breathing room and reprieve here,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Ms. Geranmayeh said Iran could take additional steps to de-escalate the violence, perhaps by urging Hamas’s remaining leaders in Gaza not to avenge Mr. Sinwar’s killing by executing the Israeli captives still in Gaza.
The hostages are politically crucial in both Israel and Washington, and their deaths would further sink any chance of a cease-fire. If Iran can make clear to Israel and the United States that it has helped moderate calls for revenge against the hostages, that could dial down tensions, Ms. Geranmayeh said.
If Hamas’s remaining leaders decide to embrace a cease-fire, analysts said, Iran and its partners, including Hezbollah, are unlikely to object — though any continued Israeli occupation of Gaza could provoke more resistance.
In the end, however, “It’s up to Israel to decide whether to continue escalating, building on what it sees as its own strategic advantage — or whether to call victory and try to consolidate and tone it down,” Mr. Hokayem said.
But Israel shows few signs of letting up.
If Iran and its allies “can get a cease-fire in place now, I don’t think they will say no,” said Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. “Everyone wants this to end at this point. Except for Benjamin Netanyahu.”
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9) Hospitals Are Hit in Israeli Strikes, Gazan Officials Say
The attacks came as Israeli forces fought in northern Gaza, where emergency workers said dozens had been killed in bombardments overnight. Cease-fire hopes dimmed further after the killing of Hamas’s leader.
By Liam Stack, Aaron Boxerman and Victoria Kim, October 19, 2024
Hospitals Are Hit in Israeli Strikes, Gazan Officials Say
The attacks came as Israeli forces fought in northern Gaza, where emergency workers said dozens had been killed in bombardments overnight. Cease-fire hopes dimmed further after the killing of Hamas’s leader.
By Liam Stack, Aaron Boxerman and Victoria Kim, October 19, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/19/world/israel-hamas-yahya-sinwar-news
Hopes that the killing of Hamas’s leader would rekindle momentum toward a cease-fire in Gaza dimmed further on Saturday, as Israeli forces pressed their offensive in the ravaged north of the territory and health officials there said two hospitals had come under attack.
The largest telecommunications provider in the enclave said internet access was completely down in northern Gaza, making the extent of the dayslong Israeli military operation difficult to discern. But Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency service, said that Israeli strikes overnight had killed or injured dozens of people in the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, which Israeli forces have encircled since last week.
Palestinians who had fled to neighboring areas reported intense bombardment and shelling throughout the night. On Saturday morning, the Gazan health ministry said that Israeli forces had fired gunshots and artillery toward the Indonesian Hospital, on Jabaliya’s northern outskirts. The Israeli military confirmed that it was operating in the area but said that there had been no “intentional fire” at the hospital.
Gazan health authorities also said Israeli forces had fired at a building on the grounds of Kamal Adwan Hospital, another major facility near Jabaliya, resulting in one death and multiple injuries. Some 20,000 people had fled Jabaliya on Friday alone, the head of UNRWA, the main U.N. agency aiding Palestinians in Gaza, said on social media, adding that critical shortages of fuel and medical supplies were being reported in the area’s remaining functioning hospitals.
Israel’s deadly assault in Gaza has shown no sign of letting up in the days since Israel announced it had killed Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar. U.S. officials have signaled they will try to renew long-deadlocked talks on a deal to stop the fighting in exchange for the release of the dozens of remaining hostages in Gaza.
But Mr. Sinwar’s longtime deputy said on Friday that the group would not soften its demand for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a video posted to social media on Saturday that his country would continue its fight with Hamas and “Iran’s other terrorist proxies.”
Here is what else to know:
· Major barrage: The Israeli military said that approximately 180 projectiles had been launched from Lebanon into Israel by midafternoon on Saturday. Most were intercepted or allowed to fall into unpopulated areas, but one barrage that was fired toward the cities of Haifa and Acre killed a man and wounded another, emergency workers said. Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia that signaled after Mr. Sinwar’s death that it would escalate its conflict with Israel, issued statements saying it had targeted sites in northern Israel.
· Drone attack: A drone from Lebanon was launched toward Mr. Netanyahu’s private residence in the coastal town of Caesarea and struck a building, his office said in a statement. Mr. Netanyahu and his wife were not there at the time, and there were no injuries, the office said.
· Strikes in Beirut: The Israeli military struck sites in the Dahiya, the densely packed urban area near Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. The strikes occurred a short time after Israel issued evacuation warnings to residents of certain buildings, and appeared to be the heaviest bombardment in the area in days.
· Iranian leader: Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, offered his condolences for Mr. Sinwar and said Iran stood by Palestinian fighters. “Hamas is alive and will stay alive,” he said, according to a social media post. Iran is a longtime backer of the Gaza-based militant group.
· Sinwar’s autopsy: The Hamas leader was killed by a gunshot wound to the head and had suffered an arm injury in a firefight with Israeli soldiers, the director of Israel’s national forensic institute, Chen Kugel, told The New York Times. Dr. Kugel, who oversaw the autopsy, said that Mr. Sinwar’s body was later handed over to the Israeli military. It was unclear where the body was being kept or what would happen to it.
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10) U.S. ‘Fusion Cells’ Assist in Israel’s Hunt for Hamas Leaders
American commandos and intelligence officers began helping Israel soon after the Oct. 7 attacks last year.
By Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper, Reporting from Washington, Oct. 19, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/19/us/politics/us-military-intelligence-israel-hamas.html
An MQ-9 Reaper drone. U.S. Special Operations forces have flown at least six of them on missions to assist in locating hostages, monitor for signs of life and pass potential leads to the Israel Defense Forces, officials said. Credit...Patrick Fallon/Reuters
Days after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Pentagon quietly dispatched several dozen commandos to Israel to help advise on hostage recovery efforts, U.S. officials said.
Those troops from the Joint Special Operations Command were quickly joined by a group of intelligence officers, some working with the commandos in Israel and others back at the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va.
For more than a year much of the attention, and criticism, around American support for Israel has focused on the U.S.-made bombs and weaponry Israel has used to attack Gaza.
But the intelligence assistance to Israel has also been crucial. U.S. intelligence helped locate the four hostages who were rescued by Israeli commandos in June.
And from nearly the beginning of the war, the U.S. military and intelligence cells were focused not just on looking for hostages, but also hunting for the top leaders of Hamas.
America’s top brass is not claiming credit for the Israeli operation that killed Hamas’s leader Yahya Sinwar, an architect of the Oct. 7 attack. But they note that their intelligence aided the hunt.
“Shortly after the Oct. 7 massacres, I directed Special Operations personnel and our intelligence professionals to work side by side with their Israeli counterparts to help locate and track Sinwar and other Hamas leaders hiding in Gaza,” President Biden said in a statement on Thursday after Israel announced that it had killed Mr. Sinwar.
Over the course of the war in Gaza, according to senior officials, the U.S. “fusion cells” have shifted their emphasis based on the most current actionable intelligence. Sometimes, the best tips were on the locations of hostages. Other times, the cells focused on the whereabouts of the Hamas leaders. But neither mission was ever set aside.
The two American groups analyzing intelligence, in Israel and at C.I.A. headquarters, regularly exchanged information and insights.
Defense Department officials have insisted that they are not directly supporting Israeli military operations on the ground in Gaza, a campaign that has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and reduced the territory to rubble.
But the search for top Hamas leaders was different, officials said.
Hamas-led groups seized about 250 hostages in the attacks last year, including Americans. Mr. Sinwar and other high-level Hamas commanders have kept captives near them, in hopes of deterring Israeli attempts to kill them with a bomb strike. Hamas leaders issued standing orders to shoot hostages if Israeli forces were detected nearby, a strategy designed to deter Israeli commando teams from entering the tunnel network where Mr. Sinwar was long believed to be hiding.
For much of the yearlong war, U.S. military officials have said the search for hostages was their prime mission in Israel. But senior administration officials have described the search for hostages and for the leaders of Hamas as intertwined.
In an interview earlier this year, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said the American military and spy agencies had gained expertise in finding high-value targets from hunting Osama bin Laden and other terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan that was of use to the Israelis.
“We’re putting that experience to use and have been since the early weeks after Oct. 7,” Mr. Sullivan said.
U.S. officials said that senior White House officials regularly met with William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, and Lloyd J. Austin III, the defense secretary, about what more support the targeting cells might need to speed the hunt for Mr. Sinwar.
Officials have not revealed many details about the kind of intelligence the cells have provided Israel.
At least six MQ-9 Reapers controlled by U.S. Special Operations forces have flown missions to assist in locating hostages, monitor for signs of life and pass potential leads to the Israel Defense Forces, the officials said.
The drones cannot map out Hamas’s vast subterranean tunnel network — Israel is using highly classified ground-based sensors to do that — but their infrared radar can detect the heat signatures of people entering or leaving the tunnels from above ground, officials said.
In the end it was a random Israeli unit on patrol in southern Gaza that discovered Mr. Sinwar, the highest-value target of them all.
Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said on Thursday that no U.S. forces had been directly involved in the operation that killed the Hamas leader. “This was an Israeli operation,” he said.
But, American officials insist, the United States helped collect intelligence that helped the Israeli military narrow its search.
In the weeks after Hamas killed a group of hostages in the tunnels below Rafah in southern Gaza, American and Israeli intelligence agencies had focused on the area, believing that could be where Mr. Sinwar was hiding.
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11) Immigrant Survivors of Parkland Shooting Still Waiting for Promised Visas
A humanitarian program offers immigrant crime victims who cooperate with the police a chance to stay in the United States. But most spend years in legal limbo.
By Deborah Sontag, Reporting from Coconut Creek, Fla., Oct. 19, 2024

On Valentine’s Day 2018, Bruna Oliveira’s geography teacher was shot dead at her feet as he ushered students into his classroom to shield them from an approaching gunman. Crouched near his body, holding her breath, the girl feared she would be killed next — dead at 14. But the shooter moved down the hallway on his rampage.
When the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., occurred, Ms. Oliveira’s Brazilian family was living temporarily in the United States with no intention of staying. Her mother, an architect enrolled in an English immersion program, had brought her two children along on her student visa.
But the worst high school shooting in U.S. history made Ms. Oliveira an American, or a would-be American. It was a baptism by bullet, not just for her but also for scores of other immigrant and international students at her school. Many had fled their homelands to escape violence, and now their journey was turned on its head. While their horrified relatives urged them to return to their native countries, the teens, bonded by trauma, dug in their heels.
“It was a massive event that took a real toll on us, but it also, like, truly bonded us forever — to each other and to this country,” said Ms. Oliveira, now a pre-med college senior who aspires to be an emergency medicine doctor because of her experience.
Advised that the government offers a special visa to victims of serious crime who are helpful to law enforcement, Ms. Oliveira and 74 other survivors of the massacre applied for what is known as a U visa.
Little did they know then that the well-intentioned U visa program is among the most dysfunctional in the whole troubled immigration apparatus, with benefits far more delayed than those of the notoriously backlogged asylum program.
During this campaign season, debate on the volatile issue of immigration has focused on unauthorized crossings at the Southwest border. But many already in this country are thwarted when they try to play by the rules, and the little-known U visa program serves as a potent example of just how broken the system has become.
Created by Congress 24 years ago with overwhelming bipartisan support, the visa was meant to encourage unauthorized immigrants fearful of deportation to report crime; it was double-billed as a law enforcement and a humanitarian tool. But, underestimating the prevalence of serious crime and the dearth of other pathways to legalization, lawmakers imposed an annual cap of 10,000 visas that now undermines the program’s intended purpose.
With three times as many applicants most years, a backlog has mushroomed.
U visa applicants today will wait an average of five years for work authorization and as long as 20 years for the visa itself. In comparison, an asylum seeker generally secures working papers in seven to eight months, and cases wend their way through immigration court in about four years.
If the U visa system worked as Congress had intended, Ms. Oliveira and the other Parkland survivors would possess not only U visas but green cards by now.
Instead, they are inching forward on a slow-moving queue alongside not only hundreds of thousands of victims of domestic violence, rape and armed robbery, but also other survivors of the nation’s growing number of mass shootings — including the 2017 attack at a music festival in Las Vegas and the 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso.
The lengthy wait, advocates say, reduces the incentives for immigrants to come forward and leaves those who do vulnerable.
For survivors of domestic violence, it can be especially perilous to wait years for working papers after reporting abusers on whom they are financially dependent. In the worst cases — as with a Latina immigrant in the Bronx forced into prostitution and a Mexican mother of five in western North Carolina whose body was found in a ditch — women have ended up trafficked or murdered by their abusers in the interim.
For others, like Ms. Oliveira and her family members, who were allowed to apply along with her, the protracted process is less catastrophic but nonetheless burdensome. They linger in legal limbo, temporarily permitted to live in the United States but without formal immigration status for the indeterminate future.
“The human impact is vast,” said Cristina Velez, legal and policy director of the nonprofit ASISTA Immigration Assistance. “Their lives are frozen in amber.”
A Rush of Applications
From the outset, the U visa program was stymied.
It took the government eight years after Congress created the program to begin issuing the visas, and only then after prodding by lawsuits. This set a precedent; the U visa has spawned a cottage industry of litigation.
Initially, applicants got both employment authorization and visas swiftly, and many were able to report their assailants, help get them prosecuted, find legal work and kick-start newer, safer lives.
As word spread, though, the number of applicants exploded. Ten years ago, some 46,000 immigrant crime victims had pending applications; as of June, 229,568 did (along with 152,109 of their close family members).
That is partly because over time many people who live under the radar get victimized in their neighborhoods and workplaces.
Christopher M. Casazza, a Philadelphia immigration lawyer, said that at least half of his 1,000 U visa applications involve armed robberies.
“A lot of my clients get paid in cash and they’re like walking ATMs, or they get held up working the register at gas stations and convenience stores,” he said. “If there wasn’t a U visa to protect them, they wouldn’t cooperate with the police.”
Sometimes, it is the police who will not cooperate by completing forms that verify applicants’ claims about reported crimes. Participation is discretionary for law enforcement agencies unless they are in a state or city that has ordered them to comply. And even cooperative agencies can take so long to comply that delays pile on delays.
That is where the litigation comes in. Arguing that Congress intended for U visa applicants to get working papers within 60 days, lawsuits usually succeed in getting results for individuals. But they do not change the system.
Efforts to lift the cap have been rebuffed by Congress along with other immigration reform plans. Project 2025, a right-wing policy blueprint, proposes that Congress eliminate the visa entirely. “Victimization should not be a basis for an immigration benefit,” it says, expressing concern about fraud.
Because the visa process is so slow and because about three-quarters of applications are ultimately approved, advocates believe fraud is minimal. Still, like any benefit program, the U visa has attracted some scams and unusual ones at that.
Over the last five years, at least six prosecutions have accused immigrants and conspirators of staging robberies in order to qualify for U visas. In Houston this year, a bystander stumbled on one such bogus robbery in progress and shot the fake robber dead.
‘The Worst Three Hours’
In 2016, when Brazil was going through a volatile period, Ms. Oliveira’s parents decided it would be a good time for their two children to get a break from São Paolo. They themselves had been exchange students in the United States and valued the experience.
As the mother, Alessandra, settled with the children in Parkland and began her English studies, the father, Luiz, a finance manager for Motorola in Brazil, stayed behind but visited regularly.
On Feb. 13, 2018, the father took Bruna to the local Dollar Tree to purchase Valentine’s Day teddy bears and chocolates for her friends. At checkout, the young male cashier appeared to glower at her Marjory Stoneman Douglas hoodie. Father and daughter were both creeped out.
The next day, the parents were finishing a Valentine’s lunch at Red Lobster when their cellphones started buzzing. The Dollar Tree cashier — they would make the connection later — was carving his deadly path through their daughter’s school. They rushed over but could not get beyond a phalanx of ambulances and police cars. In the dark about their daughter’s safety, they huddled with hundreds of other parents under a highway overpass.
“The worst three hours of my life,” her father said.
Inside the school, Bruna and her classmates had curled up on their classroom floor in frozen silence, their teacher’s body straddling the doorway. For a long time afterward, Bruna was haunted by the idea that Scott Beigel, the teacher, had died “because she was the last one back into the class and he was holding the door for her,” her mother said.
Eventually, the police led the ninth graders out single-file, their hands on one another’s shoulders. Bruna squeezed shut her eyes as they passed “the blood and all the bodies in the hallway.”
“Bruna was OK, thanks to God, but I was thinking, ‘What now? Do we go back to Brazil?’” her father, now 59, said.
The following day, when hundreds gathered at their church to mourn and commiserate, her parents watched in tears as their daughter was enveloped in hugs by her friends. For months afterward, those friends were inseparable; either she slept at their houses, or they at hers.
“We knew: That’s it. Our life has changed. She’ll never leave here,” her mother said. But her four-year student visa would not allow the family to stay in the country indefinitely.
So they applied for the U visa. And, with Broward Legal Aid representing the students as a group, their cases were expedited and they received working papers relatively swiftly.
Bruna’s mother got hired as an architect by the county school system. Her father retired and joined his family in Florida.
For her visa application, Bruna was asked to describe how the tragedy affected her. “I will not feel safe ever again,” she wrote.
But the treatment she received for post-traumatic stress disorder helped, and over the next few years, she blossomed. She excelled academically, played flute in the school’s marching band and clocked 800 hours of community service in an effort to “give back to the places that supported me.”
Graduating with a weighted G.P.A. of 4.6, she qualified for a state merit scholarship. But early in her freshman year, the University of South Florida informed her that she would not be allowed to collect it because her immigration status was “deferred.” She was shocked.
“I actually didn’t know I didn’t have the visa,” Ms. Oliveira said. “I was so upset. I went to the Financial Aid office every Friday and cried.”
The university found a way to help her cover most of the costs of college. But the experience made her realize that as Americanized as she felt, she was still technically an outsider.
Over time, her parents faced issues, too. Her mother’s work permit expired and she lost her job. Her father’s employment authorization was delayed for years. They lived off his pension, supplemented by making deliveries for Uber Eats and selling beauty products on Amazon.
Most trying was that they could not leave and re-enter the country. They missed Ms. Oliveira’s grandfather’s dying days and his funeral and now her grandmother is ailing and they long to see her.
Ms. Oliveira and 22 other survivors of the Parkland shooting who had applied for U visas sued for permission to travel abroad. They lost.
Now, preparing to graduate in December, Ms. Oliveira is grappling with the fact that she is ineligible to attend public medical school in Florida and many other states. And she might have as long as another decade’s wait until she is a legal permanent resident.
Still, she considers it unseemly to complain, given that she has mixed feelings about deriving a benefit from the tragedy, anyway.
“I feel so privileged and, like, so blessed, you know, that I was able to walk out of that incident safely and I had so much help to heal,” she said. “So now I’m just going to have faith that everything is going to work out.”
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