Bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Jabalia refugee camp are brought to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, October 23, 2024. (Photo: Hadi Daoud/APA Images)
Israel’s Genocide Day 384: Israel continues to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza
The ongoing extermination campaign in northern Gaza is displacing Palestinians from shelters as dozens of residents have been abducted by the Israeli army. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut’s southern Dahiya district.
Casualties
· 42,847 + killed* and at least 100,544 wounded in the Gaza Strip, including 59% women, children and elderly, as of October 21, 2024.*
· 760+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
· 2,574 Lebanese killed and more than 12,001 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 24, 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 22, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on October 24, 2024. The counting is based on the Lebanese official date for the beginning of “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” when Israel began airstrikes on Lebanese territory after the beginning of Hezbollah’s “support front” for Gaza.
**** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.
Source: mondoweiss.net
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On this Wrongful Conviction Day, Leonard Peltier, the longest-serving Indigenous political prisoner, is incarcerated in lockdown-modified operations conditions at USP Coleman I, operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Yet, in this moment of silence, Leonard speaks.
To honor his birthday and all those who are unjustly convicted and incarcerated, the Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee has released a video of Leonard Peltier that is going viral. Narrated by renowned scholar Ward Churchill and set to a video created by award-winning filmmaker Suzie Baer, the film most importantly centers Leonard’s personal reflection on his 80th year.
Jenipher Jones, Mr. Peltier's lead counsel, commented, "This powerfully moving film captures the essence of who I know Leonard to be. I am grateful to Professor Churchill and Suzie Baer for their work and longstanding advocacy of Leonard. As the recent execution of Marcellus Williams-Imam Khaliifah Williams shows us, we as a society bear a responsibility to uplift the cases of all those who are wrongfully convicted and also hold the government accountable to do that for which it professes to exist. We must challenge our impulses of blind blood-thirst for guilt and the use of our legal systems to carry out this malignant pathology. There is absolutely no lawful justification for Leonard's incarceration."
“Leonard Peltier is Native elder whose wrongful incarceration is shameful. His continued imprisonment exemplifies the historical cruelty of the US Government toward Native people. The US BOP's treatment of Leonard Peltier is unlawful, and he deserves his freedom.” —Suzie Baer
Leonard's Statement: Peltier 80th Statement.pdf:
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABHSRNdyB8SKn0I&id=DFF2DD874157D44A%21118178&cid=DFF2DD874157D44A&parId=root&parQt=sharedby&o=OneUp
To view the film, please visit:
https://tinyurl.com/Peltier80thPresentation
We hope to have additional updates on Leonard soon. In the meantime, please engage our calls to action or donate to his defense efforts.
Miigwech.
Donate/ActNow:
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Beneath The Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader (City Lights, 2024) is a collection of revolutionary essays, written by those who have been detained inside prison walls. Composed by the most structurally dispossessed people on earth, the prisoner class, these words illuminate the steps towards freedom.
Beneath the Mountain documents the struggle — beginning with slavery, genocide, and colonization up to our present day — and imagines a collective, anti-carceral future. These essays were handwritten first on scraps of paper, magazine covers, envelopes, toilet paper, or pages of bibles, scratched down with contraband pencils or the stubby cartridge of a ball-point pen; kites, careworn, copied and shared across tiers and now preserved in this collection for this and future generations. If they were dropped in the prison-controlled mail they were cloaked in prayers, navigating censorship and dustbins. They were very often smuggled out. These words mark resistance, fierce clarity, and speak to the hope of building the world we all deserve to live in.
"Beneath the Mountain reminds us that ancestors and rebels have resisted conquest and enslavement, building marronage against colonialism and genocide."
—Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency
Who stands beneath the mountain but prisoners of war? Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jennifer Black have assembled a book of fire, each voice a flame in captivity...Whether writing from a place of fugivity, the prison camp, the city jail, the modern gulag or death row, these are our revolutionary thinkers, our critics and dreamers, our people. The people who move mountains. —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Filled with insight and energy, this extraordinary book gifts us the opportunity to encounter people’s understanding of the fight for freedom from the inside out. —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag and Abolition Geography
These are the words each writer dreamed as they sought freedom and they need to be studied by people inside and read in every control unit/hole in every prison in America. We can send this book for you to anyone who you know who is currently living, struggling, and fighting
Who better to tell these stories than those who have lived them? Don’t be surprised with what you find within these pages: hope, solidarity, full faith towards the future, and most importantly, love.
Excerpt from the book:
"Revolutionary love speaks to the ways we protect, respect, and empower each other while standing up to state terror. Its presence is affirmed through these texts as a necessary component to help chase away fear and to encourage the solidarity and unity essential for organizing in dangerous times and places. Its absence portends tragedy. Revolutionary love does not stop the state from wanting to kill us, nor is it effective without strategy and tactics, but it is the might that fuels us to stand shoulder to shoulder with others regardless. Perhaps it can move mountains." —Jennifer Black & Mumia Abu-Jamal from the introduction to Beneath The Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader
Get the book at:
https://www.prisonradiostore.com/shop-2/beneath-the-mountain-an-anti-prison-reader-edited-by-mumia-abu-jamal-jennifer-black-city-lights-2024
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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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*Major Announcement*
Claudia De la Cruz wins
Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!
We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.
We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.
We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!
We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.
We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.
The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step:
Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer
Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate
See you in the streets,
Claudia & Karina
Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) France backs expansion of Lebanon’s army, and will give €100 million to aid displaced Lebanese, Macron says.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, October 24, 2024
France will support the recruitment of thousands of extra troops for Lebanon’s military and donate around $100 million to support people who have fled their homes because of a war between Israel and the militia group Hezbollah, President Emmanuel Macron of France said Thursday at a conference on Lebanon.
Mr. Macron called for a cease-fire and said that Hezbollah, which has fired thousands of drones and missiles at Israel in the past year, should stop its attacks. He also said that Israel’s continuing invasion of Lebanon, launched this month to end Hezbollah’s aggression, was “regrettable” and he appeared to criticize the rationale for Israel’s push.
“There has been a lot of talk in recent days of a war of civilizations, or of civilizations that must be defended. I’m not sure you can defend a civilization by sowing barbarism yourself,” he said at the opening of the conference in Paris held to help raise funds for Lebanon.
Mr. Macron did not specify exactly how France would support the recruitment of additional troops for Lebanon, whose bitter sectarian divisions and weak central government have helped Hezbollah, a Shiite movement backed by Iran, to gain power.
Thursday’s meeting is the latest example of Mr. Macron’s bid to wield influence in Lebanon, a former French mandate. The historical ties, as well as the fact that French is spoken alongside English and Arabic, the official language, have long given Paris a sense of responsibility toward the country. France, for example, is one of the largest contributors of troops to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.
At the same time, the United States, Israel’s leading backer, remains the region’s most powerful diplomatic force. President Biden’s envoy on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, Amos Hochstein, visited Beirut this week, and met with Lebanese officials. The State Department said it would send its deputy secretary for management, Richard Verma, to the Paris conference.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, also called for a cease-fire at the conference and said that Israeli attacks had put 13 Lebanese hospitals out of service. More than 1.2 million people have fled their homes because of the conflict, the United Nations said more than two weeks ago.
Mr. Mikati said that his government could deploy additional troops to the south as part of any cease-fire deal. The military, which receives support from the United States, is not a party to the conflict and Israel has said repeatedly that it is at war with Hezbollah, not Lebanon. Still, Lebanon refers to Israel as the enemy and does not have diplomatic ties with the country.
Lebanon’s government is largely powerless to rein in Hezbollah or deploy additional troops to the southern border without Hezbollah’s consent. Lebanese officials, including, Mr. Mikati, say that Hezbollah is on board with a nearly 20-year-old U.N. resolution that would allow them to do so, but Hezbollah has not yet publicly said this.
The C.I.A.’s website said Lebanon’s military had around 73,000 active troops, but experts say it has been severely weakened by the country’s economic crisis. Israeli forces killed three Lebanese soldiers this week in southern Lebanon. Israel apologized. On Thursday, Lebanon’s military said that another Israeli attack had killed three more of its soldiers in the south.
Mr. Macron appealed to the conference to support a plan to recruit at least 6,000 additional soldiers and enable the deployment of at least 8,000 additional soldiers in the south.
This is not the first donor conference that Mr. Macron has organized for Lebanon. After a port blast devastated parts of Beirut in 2020, he toured the city before Lebanese politicians did, and held a conference that raised hundreds of millions of dollars.
Euan Ward and Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting
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2) Gaza’s main emergency service says it has ‘completely ceased’ rescue operations in the north.
By Raja Abdulrahim, Reporting from Jerusalem, October 24, 2024
Displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza on Tuesday. Credit...Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters
The main emergency service in Gaza has said it has ceased all rescue operations in the northern part of the territory amid a renewed Israeli offensive in the area.
Scores of Palestinians have been killed since Israel stepped up military operations in northern Gaza this month, saying it was trying to eliminate a regrouped Hamas presence there. 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.
Palestinian Civil Defense, the emergency service, has been responding to the scenes of attacks to treat the wounded and try to pull people from rubble. But on Wednesday night, it said its work in northern Gaza had “completely ceased.”
“The situation has become catastrophic,” it said in a statement on Telegram. “The residents there are left without humanitarian services.”
The statement said three of its rescue workers had been injured by an Israeli drone strike and that five others had been detained by Israeli forces. It added that Israeli tanks had shelled the only fire truck operating in northern Gaza.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
United Nations officials have expressed alarm about the humanitarian situation in northern Gaza, and said the Israeli authorities have denied aid workers’ requests to help find survivors in the aftermath of Israeli strikes.
Gloria Lazic, an aid worker with the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said on social media this week that requests by the agency to help people trapped under rubble in the northern town of Jabaliya had been “repeatedly denied by the Israeli authorities.”
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the main U.N. agency for Palestinians, said much the same in a social media post the same day, writing that “in northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die.”
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
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3) Boeing Workers Resoundingly Reject New Contract and Extend Strike
The vote, hours after Boeing reported a $6.1 billion loss, will extend a nearly six-week-long strike at factories where the company makes its best-selling commercial plane.
By Niraj Chokshi, Reporting from Seattle, Published Oct. 23, 2024, Updated Oct. 24, 2024
Gina Forbush, of Gig Harbor, Wash., reacting to news that striking Boeing machinists had rejected a tentative labor contract on Wednesday. Credit...M. Scott Brauer for The New York Times
Boeing’s largest union rejected a tentative labor contract on Wednesday by a wide margin, extending a damaging strike and adding to the mounting financial problems facing the company, which hours earlier had reported a $6.1 billion loss.
The contract, the second that workers have voted down, was opposed by 64 percent of those voting, according to the union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The union represents about 33,000 workers, but it did not disclose how many voted on Wednesday.
“There’s much more work to do. We will push to get back to the table, we will push for the members’ demands as quickly as we can,” said Jon Holden, president of District 751 of the union, which represents the vast majority of the workers and has led in the talks. He delivered that message at the union’s Seattle headquarters to a room of members chanting, “Fight, fight.”
Boeing declined to comment on the vote, which was a setback for the company’s new chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, who is trying to restore its reputation and business with a strategy he described in detail earlier on Wednesday. In remarks to workers and investors, Mr. Ortberg said Boeing needed to undergo “fundamental culture change” to stabilize the business and to improve execution.
“Our leaders, from me on down, need to be closely integrated with our business and the people who are doing the design and production of our products,” he said. “We need to be on the factory floors, in the back shops and in our engineering labs. We need to know what’s going on, not only with our products, but with our people.”
Mr. Ortberg delivered that message alongside the company’s quarterly financial results, which included the loss of more than $6.1 billion. This month, Boeing also announced plans to cut its work force by about 10 percent, which amounts to 17,000 jobs. The company also recently disclosed plans to raise as much as $25 billion by selling debt or stock over the next three years as it tries to avoid a damaging downgrade to its credit rating. The strike is costing the company tens of millions of dollars each day, according to various estimates.
The negotiations have been contentious. The strike began on Sept. 13 after 95 percent of workers voting rejected an earlier contract offer that had been backed by union leaders and Boeing. Later that month, the company made what it described as its “best and final” offer. The company gave workers just days to approve or reject it, but leaders of the union never put it to a vote. Boeing eventually rescinded the offer, with talks breaking down this month.
The two sides arrived at the now-rejected deal only after the Biden administration got involved. Senior administration officials had been working closely with Boeing and the union in recent months, at President Biden’s direction. Last week, Julie Su, the acting labor secretary, flew to Seattle to meet with company executives and union officials. On Wednesday, Mr. Holden said he planned to ask the White House to continue to try to help the parties find a resolution.
Boeing is important to the United States as an economic engine and as a symbol of manufacturing prowess. It employs almost 150,000 people across the country — nearly half in Washington State — and is one of the nation’s largest exporters. The company also makes military jets, rockets, spacecraft and Air Force One.
Under the contract, workers would have received cumulative raises of nearly 40 percent over four years, a significant increase over the rejected offer and approaching what the union initially sought. The offer included a $7,000 one-time bonus and additional contributions to retirement plans. It also would have preserved an incentive bonus program that the initial rejected offer would have replaced.
Boeing machinists make about $75,000 in average annual pay. Over the last decade, the workers have seen raises under the union contract of 8 percent and more than $4 an hour in additional cost-of-living adjustments, according to the company. Consumer prices in the Seattle area have risen more than 40 percent over the past decade, according to federal data.
But the contract did not revive a defined-benefit pension plan that was frozen a decade ago — an important priority for many union members. Many workers have been furious over that loss for years, and some have said that they felt Boeing had bullied them into agreeing to the freezing of the pension. Workers have also been angry with the leadership of the union’s parent organization, which they say scheduled the vote in a way that supported approval of the offer, prompting a rule change that limited the authority to schedule votes to local union chapters.
“There’s some deep wounds,” Mr. Holden told reporters after announcing the vote results. Mr. Holden also said that the union may explore what he called hybrid defined-benefit programs in negotiations.
On Wednesday afternoon, union members streamed in and out of the Angel of the Winds Arena in Everett, Wash., one of the voting locations and a short drive from a large Boeing factory. A handful held signs and handed out fliers urging others to reject the offer.
In interviews, several said they voted against the offer because they believed the union could hold out for better terms on wages, retirement, health coverage and other benefits. Many said they were frustrated over the lost pension, even if the odds of getting it restored remain in doubt.
“How do they expect to have anybody stay at the company if they don’t have some kind of a pension plan or better investments?” said Darryl Shore, who has worked at Boeing in different roles since 1989.
Mr. Shore said he grew up in the area and both his parents worked at Boeing, but that jobs at the company today don’t hold the same economic promise they did back then.
The rejection of the new contract comes as Boeing is trying to recover from a crisis that began when a panel fell off a 737 Max jet during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, reigniting concerns about the quality and safety of Boeing’s planes. Five years earlier, two fatal Max crashes led regulators worldwide to ground the plane for nearly two years.
After the January episode, the Federal Aviation Administration limited production of the Max, Boeing’s best-selling plane. The company has since increased inspections, added training for new hires, started to simplify procedures and limited tasks performed out of sequence.
The contract’s defeat is also bad news for the manufacturer’s many suppliers. Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the body of the 737 Max and has agreed to sell itself to Boeing, recently announced plans to furlough about 700 employees, starting next week, because of the strike.
The contract being negotiated would replace one that was agreed to in 2008 and extended multiple times. That offer came together only after a two-month strike that led to a decline of more than $6 billion in revenue and a delay in delivering more than 100 airplanes that year, Boeing said at the time.
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4) The Other War for These Gazans Is Against Cancer
Photographs by Laura Boushnak, Text by Laura Boushnak and Cassandra Vinograd, October 25, 2024
Mohammed playing on his PlayStation with his brother.
Laura Boushnak spent time with three cancer patients receiving treatment in Amman, Jordan, after their evacuation from Gaza.
Oct. 25, 2024
The skies were quiet and Mohammed Ashour was finally safe, but for days after leaving Gaza the 13-year-old was unable to sleep.
He had made it to a cancer-treatment center in Jordan, and the hope it offered, and yet he could not stop thinking about what he had left behind.
The two-bedroom apartment, for example, where his family had sought shelter. They had crammed into it with about 70 relatives after fleeing the fighting in Gaza, but when they left for Jordan, the stocks of flour were empty.
“What would the family who stayed behind have for dinner?” Mohammed recalls wondering during his sleepless nights.
Israeli officials said this month that more than 4,000 patients had gotten out of Gaza for medical treatment since the war began. But as of late June, more than 10,000 people in the enclave required urgent medical care that was available only elsewhere, according to the World Health Organization.
For the small number of Gazan cancer patients who like Mohammed are receiving care in Jordan’s capital, Amman, that knowledge brings burdens. As well as their illness, they battle deep feelings of guilt, fear and homesickness.
When the Israeli military started bombing Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, what Mohammed hated most, he said, was the sound of airstrikes. The smells after an explosion were also a problem, and would make his breathing difficult.
Mohammed, a top student, was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma before the war began, in January 2023. When the fighting began, his mother, Maha, was determined to get him abroad for treatment.
Even before the war, many Gazans were forced to travel for lifesaving medical care: The enclave’s health sector had struggled for years under a crippling blockade by Israel and Egypt that intensified after Hamas took over. Getting out of Gaza, though, required permits — a process that grew vastly more complicated and costly after the war began.
Ms. Ashour insisted that the whole family leave together, saying that she could not imagine abandoning her husband and other children. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital stepped in and helped the whole family make it to the King Hussein Cancer Center in Amman.
Before the war, the center had about two dozen cancer patients from Gaza. Last month, the total was five adults and 49 children, receiving treatment, food and accommodation.
Most of the patients are housed a seven-minute car ride from the hospital, on the fourth floor of an Amman hotel. That’s where Mohammed has been staying, and where his mother has been preparing meals for him.
Mohammed’s doctors advised him not to socialize too much after he got a bone-marrow transplant that compromised his immune system. But the smell of his mother’s cooking wafts through the hallway of the fourth floor, drawing other children to her door seeking tastes.
They also come to take turns on Mohammed’s PlayStation. He hid it in a bag when his family fled central Gaza, knowing his father would not have allowed him to pack it.
Ms. Ashour helps care for some of the other children, since not all were able to leave Gaza with their mothers. The fourth floor, she said, has developed a sense of community, a comfort amid so much uncertainty.
“Our destiny is ambiguous,” she said. “Where can we go once Mohammed’s treatment is over here in Amman? Even if we are allowed to go back to Gaza, everything is destroyed.”
The same uncertainty eats away at another of the center’s patients, Hussam Shehadeh, a 52-year-old man who is fighting Stage 4 cancer.
“I left the physical war behind, but I entered the psychological one,” he said. “My whole family is in Gaza.”
Information about what is happening to his family back home is often scarce. “Sometimes I can’t reach them for four to five days,” Mr. Shehadeh said. Hovering over him is a big fear: “What if I die without seeing them?”
Mr. Shehadeh left Gaza 20 days before the war started. Doctors there had discovered a brain tumor but could not treat it.
It pained him to leave his wife and four children behind, he said. But Amman was his only hope of survival.
“I just want to live a normal life,” he said. “It’s not my fault that I live in Gaza, where there is no health care for cancer patients.”
In Amman, he underwent surgery to remove the tumor. That has affected movement on his right side. But the hardest thing about his illness, Mr. Shehadeh said, has been having to endure it alone.
His wife was recently able to join him in Amman, but he tries to call home as often as he can. He said he was troubled by how his 15-year-old son sounds, as if he had aged 10 years in a few months.
Transfixed by the news, Mr. Shehadeh, who was once the director of a cultural center in Gaza, keeps the TV on all day in his small, tidy room. That’s how he learned about the deaths of three friends, he said. “We reached a point where we envy the dead ones,” he said.
Mohammed Abdel Hadi, too, left his family in Gaza to get treatment in Amman, but the separation has been much harder for him: He is only 13.
A few weeks after arriving at the King Hussein Cancer Center, the boy known for his smile locked himself in his room and refused to come out — or to receive treatment — unless his parents came and joined him. (He had traveled with an uncle as his caretaker.)
The hospital workers were unable to coax Mohammed out. Only a call from his mother, phoning from the family’s partially destroyed home in central Gaza, succeeded.
Mohammed was diagnosed with acute leukemia during his summer vacation in July 2023. It took around two months to get the paperwork for him to seek treatment in Jerusalem — the first time he had left Gaza. He spent 35 days there before returning home to continue his regimen.
The war began a few days later, and Mohammed’s family fled their home to seek shelter with thousands of others in school buildings. Despite the bombardment, Mohammed managed to attend a treatment session at a local hospital. “I was terrified,” he said, recalling the sound of explosions and how he hid in another patient’s room when a blast went off near the hospital.
As the fighting intensified, Mohammed’s parents feared cancer care would become inaccessible, so they too decided to try getting their son, who dreams of becoming a professional soccer player, out of Gaza.
When the permits came through, Mohammed left Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, with his uncle, Saadi Abdel Hadi. His parents and three younger siblings stayed behind.
After about a month of waiting in Cairo for the proper paperwork, Mohammed and his uncle made it to Amman on Dec. 23. There, he began treatment and enrolled in school.
While it was challenging at first — classes are taught in English — Mohammed said that he had made many new friends and that they cared for him. But Amman was not home.
“Once the war ends, I want to go back to Gaza,” he said. “I miss the sea.”
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5) Israeli attacks kill dozens in southern Gaza, health officials say.
By Raja Abdulrahim, Liam Stack and Abu Bakr Bashir Reporting from Cairo and Tel Aviv, October 25, 2024
People inspected damage at the site of an Israeli strike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday. Credit...Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis killed dozens of Palestinians overnight into Friday, according to the Gazan health ministry.
The ministry said at least 38 people had been killed and dozens more injured in the strikes, which hit residential areas. The circumstances of the strikes were unclear, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions. It has said in the past that it is targeting Hamas fighters and infrastructure in Khan Younis.
The casualties reported by the health ministry could not immediately be verified. Official accounts of death tolls often fluctuate in the hours after an attack.
The ministry also said on Friday that Israeli forces had conducted a raid at Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few functioning hospitals left in northern Gaza, where an Israeli military offensive has worsened a dire humanitarian crisis.
“The situation inside the hospital is catastrophic in every sense of the word,” the health ministry said in a statement. Calls to the hospital’s director, Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh, were not answered on Friday morning.
The Israeli military said on Friday that it was “operating in the area” of the hospital based on intelligence information that suggested “terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the area.”
The humanitarian crisis in northern Gaza has drawn criticism from aid groups, the United Nations and the United States, which said last week that it could cut military aid to Israel if it did not allow more humanitarian assistance into the territory.
Israel says it is battling Hamas fighters in Jabaliya, a large northern town, and the surrounding area. The United Nations has said 400,000 people have been trapped there for weeks by Israeli bombardment.
Food, medicine and medical supplies have been in short supply for many months at Kamal Adwan Hospital and throughout the north. This week, the main emergency service in Gaza said the Israeli offensive had forced it to cease all rescue operations in the northern part of the territory.
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