Israel’s Genocide Day 381: Israel pummels northern Gaza amid intensifying extermination campaign
Israel's conditions for a ceasefire with Lebanon include allowing the Israeli army to continue operating in Lebanese territory. Meanwhile, Israel steps up its extermination campaign in northern Gaza, targeting its last remaining hospitals.
Casualties
· 42,010 + killed* and at least 97,590 wounded in the Gaza Strip, including 59% women, children and elderly, as of October 21, 2024.*
· 759+ 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 748 Israeli soldiers and the injury of at least 4,969 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 21, 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 19, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on October 20, 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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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)
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
12) Dozens of Palestinians are dead or missing after an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza, officials say.
By Raja Abdulrahim, October 20, 2024
Rescuers were combing the rubble and searching for survivors on Sunday in the town of Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, where Palestinian officials said an overnight Israeli airstrike hit a residential building and killed dozens of people.
The Gazan Health Ministry said on Sunday that at least 87 people were killed or were missing, with more than 40 others wounded.
“A number of victims are still under the rubble,” it said in a statement, adding that ambulances and rescue workers were having difficulty reaching the site. The Palestinian civil defense, an emergency service, said “dozens” of people had been killed and wounded in the attack, which was reported before midnight on Saturday.
There was no immediate comment from Israel’s military, which late on Saturday issued a statement saying it was examining what had happened. In that statement, it also disputed an initial toll from Hamas officials saying dozens of people had been killed. Those numbers, the military said, “do not align” with its initial assessment.
The Israeli military renewed an offensive earlier this month in northern Gaza, saying it was trying to eliminate a regrouped Hamas presence in the area. Roughly 400,000 people remain in northern Gaza, according to the United Nations, and many have been trapped in their ruined neighborhoods by Israeli airstrikes.
The U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Tor Wennesland, noted that the Beit Lahia strike came after “weeks of intensified operations that have resulted in scores of civilian fatalities.”
“The nightmare in Gaza is intensifying,” he wrote on social media. “Horrifying scenes are unfolding in the northern Strip amidst conflict, relentless Israeli strikes and an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis.”
Al Jazeera broadcast footage on Sunday of the immediate aftermath of the strike, which showed residents and rescue workers pulling limp bodies — including those of small children — from the rubble. Images taken at the scene on Sunday showed what appeared to be a completely flattened building.
Details of the strike were scarce and it was difficult to reach people in northern Gaza by phone. On Saturday, Paltel, a major Palestinian cellular provider, said the renewed Israeli offensive had caused wide-ranging communication blackouts in the northern part of the enclave.
Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
13) He Dreamed of Escaping Gaza. The World Watched Him Burned Alive.
A video of Shaaban al-Dalou burning to death after an Israeli strike at a hospital has stoked criticism from Israel’s allies and highlighted the plight of people trapped in Gaza.
By Bilal Shbair and Erika Solomon, Oct. 20, 2024
Bilal Shbair reported from central Gaza, visiting the site of the fire at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital compound and speaking to several members of the Dalou family.
A picture provided by UNRWA of burning tents of displaced Palestinians in Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Credit...UNRWA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
He was the son his mother boasted about: He memorized the entire Quran as a boy, and rose to the top of his university class. He wanted to become a doctor. But most of all, Shaaban al-Dalou dreamed of escape.
Since Israel launched its devastating retaliation for the Hamas-led attack just over a year ago, Mr. al-Dalou wrote impassioned pleas on social media, posted videos from his family’s small plastic tent and even launched a GoFundMe page calling out to the world for help getting out of the Gaza Strip.
Instead, the world watched him burn to death.
Mr. al-Dalou, 19, was identified by his family as the young man helplessly waving his arms, engulfed in flames, in a video that has become a symbol of the horrors of war for Gazans, trapped inside their blockaded enclave as the international community looks on.
On Oct. 14, Israel said it conducted a “precision strike” on a Hamas command center operating near Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, a coastal city in central Gaza. Dozens of families like the Dalous, forced to flee their homes, had set up tents in a parking lot inside the hospital compound. They had hoped that international laws forbidding most attacks on medical facilities would ensure their safety.
The Israeli military said that the fire that erupted afterward was probably caused by “secondary explosions,” without specifying what that meant. It added that “the incident is under review.”
As fire consumed the Dalou family’s tent, Mr. al-Dalou’s father, Ahmed, ran back inside. He carried his young son, and then his two older daughters, out to safety. By the time he turned back, it was too late for his eldest son.
“I could see him, sitting there, he was lifting his finger and praying,” he said, referring to the Muslim shahada, a creed of faith recited upon birth and at death. “I called out to him: ‘Shaaban, forgive me, son! Forgive me! I can’t do anything.’”
Mr. al-Dalou died the day before his 20th birthday. The moment of his death was not only seared into his father’s memory — it was circulated around the world.
The images of people in that camp burning alive, among them also Mr. al-Dalou’s mother, prodded even Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States, to question that attack.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said on Wednesday that she had “watched in horror as images from central Gaza poured across my screen.”
“There are no words, simply no words, to describe what we saw,” she said in a statement to the United Nations. “Israel has a responsibility to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties, even if Hamas was operating near the hospital.”
The video of the burning body, which the family identified as Mr. al-Dalou, was geolocated by The New York Times to the location of the camp in Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Mr. al-Dalou, who had become sickly from trauma and malnutrition amid the ever-worsening siege, often confided in his aunt, Karbahan al-Dalou, about his ideas for escaping Gaza.
“His plan was to get himself out, and then find a way to get out his sisters and his brothers and his parents,” she said in an interview with The Times, as she sat in the hospital room of her daughter Tasnim, who was recovering from shrapnel injuries to her stomach from the same strike.
Mr. al-Dalou also turned to the internet, contacting activists abroad who have helped Gazans set up fund-raising pages online.
“You have to open your heart for us. I am nineteen and I buried my dreams,” he wrote in one Instagram post. “Support me to find them again!”
The campaign raised over $20,000. But even if it had been enough to pay the exorbitant fees to arrange an escape out of Gaza for him and some of his relatives, the effort was futile: Since May, Israel has closed the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, making such exits impossible.
In a text exchange from May that his aunt showed The Times, Mr. al-Dalou asked her if his recurrent illnesses might qualify him for a medical evacuation, which have occasionally taken place. She replied that it was unlikely, and that even a friend “whose sister lost an eye, they are struggling to find a way to get her out.”
Yet she said her nephew, who often joined her in her tent for lunch, seemed unflappable. He would watch the news, analyze speeches by Israel’s prime minister, and tell her: “Be optimistic, all will be well. God willing, God will help us, auntie,” she recalled.
It was a different story among his friends, said his cousin and schoolmate Mohyeddin al-Dalou. During the war, the two often whiled away wistful evenings on the beach.
Mr. al-Dalou used to spin dreams of going abroad to get a Ph.D. in software engineering, which he had studied in his last two years at Al-Azhar University in Gaza. He had already forsaken his ambition to become a doctor, his cousin said, because his family could not afford the cost of those studies.
As the war dragged on, he said, Mr. al-Dalou’s vision of escape transformed from traveling to dying.
“More and more, he would tell me that he wanted to be martyred, he wanted to be with his friends who were martyred, with his grandfather and grandmother in heaven,” he said.
Just 10 days before the attack that killed him, Mr. al-Dalou had a brush with death when Israel struck the mosque near the hospital, where he had been reciting the Quran and spent the night. Israel also said at that time that it was targeting a Hamas command center.
In that blast, which the local authorities said killed 26 people, a piece of shrapnel cut across Mr. al-Dalou’s neck, behind his ear. “His stitches hadn’t even been removed yet,” his aunt said, breaking down into sobs.
In a social media post after the mosque strike, Mr. al-Dalou described waking up in the hospital, shouting to the medics that he had reached heaven with a friend, Anas al-Zarad.
Mr. al-Dalou appeared especially tormented in recent posts over the recent death of that friend, posting pictures of them together as boys and teenagers, laughing and joking.
“I’ve never felt anything more terrifying than the thought of the dead being absent,” he wrote in one post. “The human mind, with all its brain cells and all of its capacity to absorb and to create, is helpless in the face of this absence.”
Those who now face that same rupture in Mr. al-Dalou’s absence recall a young man far wiser than his years, whose ambition and energy seemed boundless, and who made everyone his friend.
Ms. al-Dalou, his aunt, remembered the way his mother, Alaa, had treated Mr. al-Dalou “more like her brother than her son,” with lots of teasing and intimate conversations.
Mr. al-Dalou’s mother once sold her gold bracelets to fund his high school studies. When the war began last year, his aunt said, Mr. al-Dalou used the money he earned working in software engineering online to buy them back for her.
She said Mr. al-Dalou also used his money help his father and uncle, Karbahan’s husband, set up a falafel stand by their tent outside the hospital, as a way to earn money after the two brothers’ small clothing factory was destroyed in the war.
Mr. al-Dalou’s father said he saw their relationship as something beyond that of father and son.
“He kept my secrets, and I kept his,” he said, his face and arms heavily bandaged from burns. “We were friends, and I was proud of that.”
As he stood watching the fire that took his wife and son’s lives, he said he kept speaking to Mr. al-Dalou: “I told Shaaban that I’ve never felt so broken the way I feel broken now. I’ve never felt so defeated like I feel defeated now.”
His last memory of them is from a day before the fire. The three of them had gone to the beach, chewing sunflower seeds and chatting. “Now, well,” he said, “God rest his soul.”
On Friday, the elder Mr. al-Dalou was dealt another blow: His youngest son, 10, died from the severity of his burn injuries despite his father’s efforts to rescue him. He was buried alongside his mother and his brother.
Arijeta Lajka contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
14) Jill Stein Won’t Stop. No Matter Who Asks.
People in Stein’s life have implored her to abandon her bid for president, lest she throw the election to Donald Trump. She’s on the ballot in almost every critical state.
By Matt Flegenheimer, Oct. 20, 2024
Ms. Stein has run for president twice before, receiving nearly 1.5 million votes in 2016 when she ran against Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. Her support in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that year exceeded Mr. Trump’s margins of victory in those states.Credit...Nic Antaya for The New York Times
Jill Stein, the Green Party’s serial presidential candidate, has heard the pleading from strangers.
“How does it feel to be personally responsible for actually bringing Donald Trump into power?” Ms. Stein recalled being asked this year by a man in New York — another heckler accusing Ms. Stein of tipping the 2016 election.
She has absorbed the glowering across her anxious blue neighborhood outside Boston.
“When people are being propagandized,” Ms. Stein said, “they won’t be especially friendly on the street, put it that way.”
And as she weighed another campaign this time, she found resistance in the most intimate constituency: her own family.
“For her political activities, she does not have the support of the family,” one of Ms. Stein’s adult sons said in an interview, asking not to be identified by name to avoid any personal or professional repercussions from associating with her. “When she told us she was going to run again back in October 2023, we asked her not to.”
Ms. Stein has ignored them all.
Now, strategists in both parties agree, her decision might well echo again through history — by helping a man whose values she nominally abhors.
Ms. Stein is back on the ballot almost everywhere that matters, returning to the campaign fore in an ostensible coin-flip race between Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Democrats see Ms. Stein’s bid as a direct threat in a year when even relatively small voter pools might carry near-existential stakes.
While Ms. Stein condemns both “zombie political parties” as tools of Wall Street and war profiteers, her campaign has focused largely on hammering Ms. Harris, blaming the White House she serves for relentless violence in Gaza and Lebanon.
And Democrats, as never before, are focused on Ms. Stein.
The party has prepared a negative ad blitz for the election’s final weeks, its first-such effort ever directed at a third-party candidate. Fearful that Ms. Stein might divert critical votes in places like Michigan, Democrats are also pressing their case on billboards plastered recently across swing states:
“Jill Stein Helped Trump Once. Don’t Let Her Do It Again.”
For the last eight years, Ms. Stein has taken her place as a peace-peddling, Democrat-bashing, Republican-aided, formerly Russian-boosted villain of the left (and champion, admirers say, of the farther left) while Mr. Trump’s opponents relitigate his rise and move desperately to prevent his return.
In 2016, when Ms. Stein received nearly 1.5 million votes, her support in the decisive states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania exceeded Mr. Trump’s margins of victory. Some national polls now place her around 1 percent, which could be more than enough to make a difference and infuriate her detractors anew.
Such is the lot of the third-party candidate, quadrennially scorned by voters who often wish they had options beyond the major parties’ nominees — only to conclude, by election’s eve, that the choice is effectively binary.
“Forget the lesser evil,” Ms. Stein likes to counter. “Fight for the greater good.”
She dismisses the “spoiler mythology” that has come to define her mainstream identity, noting — accurately enough — that some of her supporters would never back Ms. Harris anyway.
She says that Democrats would do well to look inward, disputing that she bears any responsibility for Mr. Trump’s fortunes, then or now.
“Those conversations never go anywhere,” Ms. Stein, 74, said in a wide-ranging interview.
But then, to Democrats’ eternal distress and consternation, neither does she.
Her bid can feel precision-engineered to damage Ms. Harris with key subgroups: young voters appalled by the United States’ support for Israel; former supporters of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns who feel abandoned by Democrats; Arab American and Muslim voters, especially in Michigan, where fury at Ms. Harris and President Biden has been conspicuous for months. (The state, decided in 2016 by just over 10,000 votes, has more than 300,000 residents with Middle Eastern or North African ancestry.)
“The goal is to punish the vice president,” Hassan Abdel Salam, a founder of Abandon Harris, a group dedicated to her defeat, said this month at a rally in Dearborn, Mich., headlined by Ms. Stein. The group has since endorsed her.
“We are not in a position to win the White House,” another speaker, Kshama Sawant, a former member of the Seattle City Council, told a crowd of about 100 inside an Arab American cultural center. “But we do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan.”
In the interview, Ms. Stein said she had “kind of a divergent point of view” of her candidacy, with an emphasis on the “kind of.”
“I myself do not speak in terms of defeating one candidate,” she said. “But I really understand — for the communities that are being savaged by Kamala Harris right now and Biden — I totally understand why their prime directive right now is to clarify that this comes with a price to pay.”
At minimum, Ms. Stein seems to concede this much: The goal is to be heard and counted.
If she helps to reinstall Mr. Trump, well, that would certainly register.
“I like her very much,” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Stein at a rally in June. “You know why? She takes 100 percent from them.”
Mindful of 2016 (and Ralph Nader’s 2000 campaign before that), Democrats are giving Ms. Stein their full attention.
Supplementing the ad campaign, Ms. Harris’s allies have also emphasized some of Ms. Stein’s curious associations and remarks, including statements considered deferential to Russia and figures with ties to Mr. Trump and Republicans who have worked to help Ms. Stein secure ballot access.
In Wisconsin, a lawyer who was previously involved in lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2020 election results represented the Green Party. In New Hampshire, a veteran Republican operative submitted signatures for Ms. Stein.
Jay Sekulow, who defended Mr. Trump at his first impeachment trial, has worked on behalf of the Green Party in Nevada, a rare battleground where Democrats have successfully thwarted her.
“We have never knowingly received help from Republicans,” Ms. Stein said, a claim that Democrats find ludicrous. “Now, they might have done this once or twice, having kind of snuck in under the radar.”
To Ms. Stein, any disdain toward her represents the imperial flailing of a desperate party.
She has likened Democratic voters to a spouse trapped in a toxic relationship, “constantly making excuses for your abusive partner.”
Asked if she could imagine any good-faith reason for voters — even those who are plenty frustrated with Democrats — to support Ms. Harris for the sake of stopping Mr. Trump, she paused for a beat.
“I believe that some people are genuine,” she said, “in being misinformed.”
Doctor, Guitarist, Candidate
Ms. Stein does not look the part of a Democratic scourge.
She is a Harvard-trained internist and former folk rocker who gave interviews this month beside a handmade campaign banner that read “People Planet Peace.”
She pushes a $25 minimum wage and the abolition of student and medical debt, shuttling between tossup states like Michigan and less competitive ones like Texas and Washington without obvious electoral coherence.
Her highest elected office was a seat on a town body in Massachusetts more than a decade ago, but she “would not accept as written in stone” that she will not be sworn in as president in January.
Raised in a Reform Jewish household outside Chicago, Ms. Stein aligns herself with civil rights leaders across the ages, gilding her appearances with curated quotations.
“Martin Luther King said …”
“Remember what Alice Walker said …”
“As Frederick Douglass said,” she said in the interview, reciting the line twice within 10 minutes, “‘Power concedes nothing without a demand.’”
In Michigan, she campaigned while flanked by men in fezzes, who stood silently in formation as she accused Ms. Harris of fomenting genocide in Gaza. (An aide referred to the men as her security; one called himself simply “a friend.”)
Ms. Stein’s running mate, Butch Ware, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied African and Islamic history, has called Ms. Harris the “Black face of white supremacy” and likened Barack Obama to a “house negro.” On Oct. 7, one year after the Hamas-led attacks that amounted to the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Mr. Ware recorded a video to “commemorate the one-year anniversary of the modern equivalent of Nat Turner’s rebellion,” invoking the American slave revolt of 1831.
Ms. Stein’s coalition, such as it is, can be disorienting. Her campaign was recently compelled to disavow an endorsement from the antisemitic white supremacist David Duke, who supported Mr. Trump’s past runs. (Mr. Duke told followers that Ms. Stein was “the only candidate who speaks clearly against the war in the Middle East.”)
On some subjects, Ms. Stein can sound something like Mr. Trump and his associates. She complains of being “shadow-banned” on social media and dismisses “the Russia-gate smear” that ensnared her after Mr. Trump’s election.
In 2015, Ms. Stein attended an event in Moscow celebrating RT, the Russian TV network that gave heavy airtime to her 2016 campaign, sitting at a table with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser. (Ms. Stein has downplayed the episode, saying she was there to preach peace.)
Investigators later determined that the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency used social media accounts in 2016 to promote Ms. Stein, hoping to help Mr. Trump. No public finding has suggested that Ms. Stein was aware of the effort.
To some who have known her for years, the notion of Ms. Stein as an international chaos agent is broadly absurd.
At Harvard, she distinguished herself as a gifted student, a nonconformist and a guitarist forever seeking optimal acoustics.
“She would sit in the stairwell with her guitar and sing, to her own amusement,” said Ty Cobb, a schoolmate who later worked as a White House lawyer under Mr. Trump, whom he has since criticized. “She was sort of a free spirit back then, had her own drummer.”
After college, Ms. Stein continued playing music as she transitioned into medicine, occasionally merging the two pursuits.
“She wrote songs to remember all the bones,” said Mark Allen, a retired advertising executive who became friends with Ms. Stein in the 1970s.
As a Vietnam War-era dissident long skeptical of mainstream politicians, Ms. Stein said she generally voted Democrat anyway before being galvanized by Mr. Nader and the Green Party.
Her political career began in 2002, when she said she was approached to run for governor of Massachusetts. The field included Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner.
“I moved from clinical medicine to political medicine because politics is the mother of all illnesses,” Ms. Stein said — a line she has used since at least her 2012 presidential campaign.
Quickly, she inspired the kind of political zingers that continue to trail her. Some who know her suspect that her contempt for Democrats congealed around this time, deepening with each campaign.
“It was basically the same thing,” Ms. Stein said. “‘A vote for Stein is a vote for Romney.’”
Though Ms. Stein received more than 3 percent of the vote, a surprisingly strong showing, and acquitted herself capably on the debate stage, one exchange seemed to capture her party’s perpetual quest for name recognition.
Mr. Romney turned toward Ms. Stein to address a point she had made about education policy.
“Carla, I agree,” he said, accidentally naming the Libertarian candidate, Carla Howell, who corrected him (“I’m Carla”) as Mr. Romney backpedaled. “I’m sorry. Excuse me. Dr. Stein.”
‘Please Be Courageous and Strategic’
For months, people who know Ms. Stein — friends, relatives, long-lost peers — have discussed privately how best to get through to her.
They worried she was aiding Mr. Trump, despite her protestations. They believed that another dead-end campaign would undercut the ideals she claimed to embody.
Some tried to raise the subject delicately through intermediaries. Others composed painful, pointed messages and sent them directly.
“Your constituents and their votes in swing states could make the difference as to whether the U.S.A. joins the many authoritarian nations of the world,” Mr. Allen, the friend from the 1970s, wrote recently to Ms. Stein, urging her to instruct supporters to back Ms. Harris. “If the election weren’t so close, I’d vote for you, as I did in 2016. Instead, I’m asking you to please be courageous and strategic.”
He received no response.
While both major parties have trained their focus on Ms. Stein as a possible factor, some strategists expect third-party support to be more muted this time.
In 2016, when many voters were convinced that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in, protest voting could feel fairly low-stakes. Few consider Ms. Harris’s candidacy a sure thing.
In recent weeks, Democratic leaders like Jaime Harrison, the party chair, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have gone out of their way to tweak Ms. Stein, whom the congresswoman described as a “predatory” figure who exploits voters’ understandable grievances.
“Democrats have finally learned the lessons of 2000 and 2016,” said Lis Smith, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee on third-party and independent candidates.
Republicans have learned some lessons, too.
“No Republican knows that oil production under Biden is higher than ever. But Jill Stein’s people do,” Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former White House chief strategist, said earlier this year, adding, “The more exposure these guys get, the better it is for us.”
After consecutive campaigns in 2012 and 2016, Ms. Stein did not run in 2020. The Green Party nominee that year, Howie Hawkins, received only about 400,000 votes.
For a time, it appeared that Cornel West, the left-wing intellectual, would represent the Green Party in 2024. After he decided to run instead as an independent, Ms. Stein reassumed the mantle — and reignited Democratic complaints about her.
“The Republicans don’t do it, for some strange reason, as much as the Democrats,” Mr. Nader said in an interview, noting that Libertarians, who are historically considered likelier to siphon votes from Republicans, had not faced equivalent venom or legal challenges. (Gary Johnson, the 2016 Libertarian nominee, received more than four million votes.)
Mr. Nader said that Democrats’ habitual finger-pointing masked their own failure to appeal to disaffected voters. He accused the party of “massive political bigotry.”
Ms. Stein’s supporters tend to explain their choice as a product of principle and exasperation.
Bob McMurray, a campaign volunteer who attended the rally in Dearborn, said he voted for Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Biden in the last two elections. But he faulted Democrats for violence in the Middle East, he said, and could not abide another nose-holding November, even as he surmised that Mr. Trump would be worse for Gaza.
“I’ve spent my entire adult life voting for the lesser of two evils,” he said. “I’m tired of it.”
Ms. Stein has also suggested that a Trump victory might serve the cause of left-wing protest.
“It’s sad to say,” she said, “but the common wisdom is that under Democrats the antiwar movement goes to sleep.”
Asked why she seemed to denounce Ms. Harris so much more often, Ms. Stein said that while the Democrats’ case against Mr. Trump was “generally true,” Republicans illogically attack Democrats “for being too socialist and for being Marxist.”
“If only,” her campaign manager, Jason Call, interjected with a laugh.
As a committed activist, Ms. Stein said, it was her duty to “correct the record,” drawing on decades of field research.
“The Democrats,” she said, exhaling for effect, “you have to really study them.”
And no one could keep her from her chosen trade.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
15) Athens Dockworkers Block Ammunition SHIPMENT Bound for Israel
By People's Dispatch., October 19, 2024
Photo: PAME Greece.
Workers At Piraeus Port Prevented The Loading Of Ammunition Destined For Israel.
Condemning the political elite’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Workers at the Piraeus Port in Athens successfully blocked a shipment of ammunition bound for Israel in a late-night action on October 17. Following a call to action by the dockworkers’ union ENEDEP, port workers and activists mobilized to prevent a container of bullets, designated for the port of Haifa, from being loaded onto the ship Marla Bull, owned by Israeli company ZIM Integrated Shipping Services.
In addition to ENEDEP, the action was supported by several workers’ organizations, including the Labor Center of Piraeus and unions of metalworkers and the shipbuilding industry. The workers declared they would not be complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza by allowing the container to sail, as its cargo would be used to kill more Palestinians.
As a result of the action, the Marla Bull was forced to leave the port without the shipment. According to local Palestine solidarity groups, the container remains near the port, guarded by workers and awaiting more investigation by port authorities.
During the action, workers demanded “disengagement from the imperialist plans and their consequences that turn our country and Piraeus Port into a target for retaliation.” They added that Piraeus should not serve as a “base of war.”
“In a port where we fight daily for better living and working conditions for ourselves and our children, there is no place for the butchers of the people,” ENEDEP asserted.
A delegate from the General Union of Palestinian Workers, Mohamed Iqnaibi, commended the workers for their solidarity, stating that Palestinian workers continue to draw strength and courage from their struggles. Similarly, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) praised the action, stating that the working class has shown its strength and is standing on the right side of history.
The party emphasized that the workers’ resistance sends a message of solidarity with the people of Palestine and Lebanon, opposing “the ‘strategic allies’ of the bourgeoisie who support the murderous state of Israel and other Euro-Atlantic butchers of the people.”
In June of this year, workers at Piraeus Port already refused to handle cargo from the ship MSC Altair over concerns that it would be used in Israel’s ongoing attacks on the Gaza Strip. Their determination and resistance are a testament to the working class’ commitment to solidarity and peace, in contrast to the political elites’ complicity in Israel’s crimes.
While the Marla Bull’s cargo was successfully blocked, questions remain about what will follow. According to some reports, workers involved in the action could face legal persecution. However, ENEDEP remains resolute in its support for the liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian people.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
16) Hamas’s Guerrilla Tactics in North Gaza Make It Hard to Defeat
Israel has decimated Hamas’s military wing, along with much of Gaza. But the group’s small-scale, hit-and-run approach poses a threat in the enclave’s north.
By Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, Oct. 22, 2024
The top commanders of Hamas are mostly dead. The group’s rank and file has been decimated. Many of its hide-outs and stockpiles have been captured and destroyed.
But Hamas’s killing of an Israeli colonel in northern Gaza on Sunday underscored how the group’s military wing, though unable to operate as a conventional army, is still a potent guerrilla force with enough fighters and munitions to enmesh the Israeli military in a slow, grinding and as yet unwinnable war.
Col. Ehsan Daksa, a member of Israel’s Arab Druse minority, was killed when a planted explosive blew up near his tank convoy. It was a surprise attack that exemplified how Hamas has held out for nearly a year since Israel invaded Gaza late last October, and will likely be able to even after the death of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, last week.
Hamas’s remaining fighters are hiding from view in ruined buildings and the group’s vast underground tunnel network, much of which remains intact despite Israel’s efforts to destroy it, according to military analysts and Israeli soldiers.
The fighters emerge briefly in small units to booby trap buildings, set roadside bombs, attach mines to Israeli armored vehicles or fire rocket-propelled grenades at Israeli forces before attempting to return underground.
While Hamas cannot defeat Israel in a frontal battle, its small-scale, hit-and-run approach has allowed it to continue to inflict harm on Israel and avoid defeat, even if, according to Israel’s unverified count, Hamas has lost more than 17,000 fighters since the start of the war.
“The guerrilla forces are working well and it will be very difficult to subdue them — not just in the short run, but in the long term,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and a former fighter in the group’s military wing who is now an analyst based in Istanbul.
Though Israel may have destroyed Hamas’s long-range rocket caches, Mr. al-Awawdeh said, “there are still endless explosive devices and light arms at hand.”
Some of those explosives were stockpiled before the start of the war. Others are repurposed Israeli munitions that failed to explode on impact, according to both Hamas and the Israeli military. Hamas released a video this week that appeared to show Hamas combatants turning an unexploded Israeli missile into an improvised bomb.
In open combat, Hamas’s fighters are no match for Israel’s army, as the killing of Mr. Sinwar in southern Gaza last week showed. Cornered in the ruins of Rafah, Mr. Sinwar was killed by an Israeli unit that could call on tanks, drones and snipers for backup.
But his death is unlikely to affect the capacity of the Hamas fighters in northern Gaza, according to Israeli and Palestinian analysts.
Since Israel took control last November of a key thoroughfare that divides north and south Gaza, Hamas’s leadership in the south, which included Mr. Sinwar, has exercised little direct control over fighters in the north. And after over a year of guerrilla fighting, Hamas’s remaining fighters are likely now used to making decisions locally instead of taking orders from a centralized command structure.
In addition, the group said over the summer that it had recruited new fighters, though it is unclear how many it signed up, or how well trained they are.
Hamas has also benefited from Israel’s refusal to either hold ground or transfer power in Gaza to an alternative Palestinian leadership. Time and again, Israeli soldiers have forced Hamas from a neighborhood, only to retreat within weeks without handing power to Hamas’s Palestinian rivals. That has allowed the group to return and re-exert control, often prompting the Israeli military to return months or even weeks later.
Israel’s current campaign in Jabaliya in northern Gaza, where Colonel Daksa was killed, is at least its third operation there over the past year.
Israeli officials say that this latest action is necessary to undercut a resurgent Hamas.
Yet the aimlessness of Israel’s strategy has led to questions from both Israelis and Palestinians about why its soldiers were sent again to Jabaliya.
“We occupy territories, and then we get out,” said Michael Milstein, an Israeli analyst of Palestinian affairs. “This kind of doctrine means that you find yourself in endless war.”
Meanwhile, Palestinians say this operation in Jabaliya has been one of the most traumatic of an already brutal war. As fighting intensifies, the specter of famine once again looms over northern Gaza, and health care workers have warned that the area’s last remaining hospitals are at risk of collapse.
For Palestinians, the general assumption is that this is an attempt to expel the remaining population of northern Gaza. The majority of the north’s prewar population — roughly one million people — fled south at the war’s onset, but about 400,000 are thought to remain.
The Palestinian alarm has been partly fomented by a prominent former Israeli general, Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, who has publicly pressed Israel’s government to depopulate northern Gaza by cutting off food and water.
Under General Eiland’s plan, the Israeli military would give the remaining 400,000 one week to move south before declaring the north a closed military zone. Israel would then block all supplies to the north in an effort to force Hamas militants to capitulate and return the hostages it has been holding since last October’s attack on Israel.
“They will face two alternatives: either to surrender or to die of starvation,” General Eiland, a former director of Israel’s national security council, said in an interview.
Any civilians who refused to leave would suffer the consequences, without any new supplies entering, the general said.
“We are giving them all the chance. And if some of them decide to stay, well, it is probably their problem,” said General Eiland.
The plan has generated significant debate and some support in Israel, including from government ministers and lawmakers, as some Israelis seek decisive solutions to a repetitive war.
Human rights advocates have said that such a policy, if carried out, would violate international law and severely threaten the welfare of civilians in northern Gaza.
Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, said General Eiland’s plan would involve “the deliberate creation of humanitarian crises as a weapon of war.” Besieging an enemy in a small area could be acceptable, he said, but not a siege of such a wide territory.
The general’s proposals “could very likely amount to a war crime,” said Mr. Sfard.
Both Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, and Omer Dostri, the spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said this month that the government is not implementing the plan.
Still, Mr. Dostri said Mr. Netanyahu had studied the plan.
Palestinians speculate that a version of it has become Israeli government policy: Israel has issued evacuation warnings for more neighborhoods in northern Gaza, home to at least tens of thousands of people, and the amount of aid entering the area has sharply declined the start of October.
Montaser Bahja, 50, said he fled his home in Jabaliya to shelter elsewhere in northern Gaza at the start of Israel’s renewed operation. He said relatives who remained have described Israel’s bombardments as unusually fierce, and that the new policy appeared to be part of an attempt — along with the restriction on humanitarian aid — to force people to move south.
“They might be shy about saying it in front of the world and deny it,” said Mr. Bahja, a high school English teacher. “But based on what they’re doing on the ground, it seems like that’s what it is.”
Israeli officials have said that they allow plenty of aid into all parts of Gaza and blamed shortages on the United Nations and relief organizations’ logistical challenges.
Just 410 relief trucks have entered Gaza in the first three weeks of October, compared to roughly 3,000 in September, according to the United Nations. The Israeli military’s own figures show a similar drop.
Prices of vegetables and canned goods in northern Gaza’s makeshift street markets are skyrocketing, Palestinians say, adding to concerns among rights activists that Israeli restrictions have already led to widespread hunger.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
17) The F.B.I. is investigating a leak of classified documents that appear to show Israel’s plans for retaliatory attacks on Iran.
By Adam Goldman Reporting from Washington, October 22, 2024
The F.B.I. is investigating a leak of highly classified documents that appear to show Israel’s plans to retaliate against Iran for a missile attack earlier this month, the agency confirmed on Tuesday.
The documents were prepared by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for analyzing images and information collected by American spy satellites. The N.G.A is part of the United States intelligence community and conducts sensitive work in support of clandestine and military operations.
The information in the documents is highly classified and details interpretations of satellite imagery that shed light on a possible strike by Israel on Iran. They began circulating on Friday on the Telegram app. U.S. officials have previously said they did not know from where the documents had been taken, and that they were looking for the original source of the leak.
In a statement, the F.B.I. said it was “working closely with our partners in the Department of Defense and intelligence community. As this is an ongoing investigation, we have no further comment.” The bureau is responsible for investigating violations of the Espionage Act, which outlaws the unauthorized retention of defense-related information that could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary.
Israel has made it clear it intends to retaliate for an Iranian missile barrage on Oct. 1. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said that the strike was launched after the assassinations of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon; Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, killed in Tehran in July; and an Iranian commander. U.S. officials believe the strike could take place in the coming days.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
18) Settler activists meet at the Gaza border for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
By Natan Odenheimer, Reporting from Be’eri, Israel, Oct. 21, 2024
For more than a year, Israel has restricted access to the sandy area between Israeli villages and the eastern border of Gaza. But on Monday, authorities made a rare exception for an event promoting settlement construction in the Gaza Strip, led by 10 members of the government and senior ministers, half from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party, and including the far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
Though only a few hundred, mostly religious, attendees gathered in the remote desert makeshift compound of wooden huts with white sheets as walls — built to reflect the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which commemorates the Israelites’ journey through the desert by spending time in temporary shelters — the event highlighted the influence of settler activists within the Israeli government and Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party.
In January, Mr. Netanyahu said that his government did not support plans to build settlements on the ruins of Gaza. His opposition likely stems from concerns that re-establishing settlements could complicate Israel’s security situation and damage its standing abroad, as settlements are considered illegal under international law. Israel also faces frequent criticism for the hardships Palestinians endure under Israeli military rule and the presence of settlers in the West Bank.
But as the war against Hamas continues with no end in sight, and amid uncertainty about Israel’s postwar plan, some in the Israeli leader’s coalition want to put pressure on him to reverse, or at least soften, his position on reviving Jewish settlements in Gaza.
“Everyone in Likud supports this as an idea,” said Avihai Boaron, a member of the Knesset from the Likud party who attended the event. “Our job now is to legitimize this as a plan.”
For much of the world, the settlements, which were dismantled in Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, were viewed as a barrier to resolving the conflict — a stance that continues to apply to those in the West Bank.
But for settler activists who believe the Gaza Strip is part of a biblical land promised to the Jewish people, leaving it in 2005 wasn’t just a mistake: it was a sin. They argue that if a Jewish civilian population had remained there, protected by the military, Hamas would not have been able to carry out the brutal attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
Rebuilding Jewish settlements in Gaza, they now say, is the only thing that can ensure the security of Israelis. “This will prevent the next massacre,” said Yinon Goldstein, 23, a West Bank settler who is part of an activist group that aspires to establish New Gaza, or a Jewish metropolitan area in place of the devastated Palestinian Gaza City.
Polling since the beginning of the war has suggested that the majority of Israelis aren’t persuaded by these arguments, and some security experts disputed these claims, saying that the real motivations for building settlements in Gaza are religious, not practical.
Behind the main stage, later taken by Mr. Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister — who praised efforts to encourage Palestinians to leave Gaza — and Mr. Smotrich, the finance minister, who vowed to reintroduce Jewish settlements in Gaza, clouds of smoke rose from a distant Palestinian town in the enclave, accompanied by the thunderous roar of artillery fire. Yet, the attendees seemed to pay little notice.
Most came for the day, but a group of about 10 settler activists hoping to be the first to rebuild in Gaza has been camping for several months a short drive from there — near a highway, under a concrete bridge, a mile and a half from the northeast corner of the Gaza border.
A squad of soldiers, still dusty from fighting in northern Gaza, stopped by for coffee. Their officer, Yaron Arkash, 24, asked one of the settlers camping there who in the government was pushing for resettling Gaza.
“If I could,” Mr. Arkash said, “I’d build a home there in a heartbeat.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
