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Israel’s Genocide Day 367: Israel orders new evacuations in Gaza, expands bombing on Lebanon
The Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon continues to face stiff resistance along the border one week on, while the Israeli army has renewed its assault on northern Gaza, laying siege to Jabalia refugee camp for the sixth time since October 7.
Casualties
· 41,909 + killed* and at least 97,303 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 32,280 of the slain have been identified, including 10,627 children and 5,956 women, representing 60% of the casualties, and 2,770 elderly as of August 6, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble*
· 743+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
· 2,083 Lebanese killed and more than 9,869 wounded by Israeli forces since October 8, 2023***
· Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,189.
· The Israeli army recognizes the death of 720 Israeli soldiers and the injury of at least 4,100 others since October 7.****
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on October 7, 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 7, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on October 7, 2024. The counting is based on the Lebanese official date for the beginning of “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” when Israel began airstrikes on Lebanese territory after the beginning of Hezbollah’s “support front” for Gaza.
**** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.
Source: mondoweiss.net
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On this Wrongful Conviction Day, Leonard Peltier, the longest-serving Indigenous political prisoner, is incarcerated in lockdown-modified operations conditions at USP Coleman I, operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Yet, in this moment of silence, Leonard speaks.
To honor his birthday and all those who are unjustly convicted and incarcerated, the Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee has released a video of Leonard Peltier that is going viral. Narrated by renowned scholar Ward Churchill and set to a video created by award-winning filmmaker Suzie Baer, the film most importantly centers Leonard’s personal reflection on his 80th year.
Jenipher Jones, Mr. Peltier's lead counsel, commented, "This powerfully moving film captures the essence of who I know Leonard to be. I am grateful to Professor Churchill and Suzie Baer for their work and longstanding advocacy of Leonard. As the recent execution of Marcellus Williams-Imam Khaliifah Williams shows us, we as a society bear a responsibility to uplift the cases of all those who are wrongfully convicted and also hold the government accountable to do that for which it professes to exist. We must challenge our impulses of blind blood-thirst for guilt and the use of our legal systems to carry out this malignant pathology. There is absolutely no lawful justification for Leonard's incarceration."
“Leonard Peltier is Native elder whose wrongful incarceration is shameful. His continued imprisonment exemplifies the historical cruelty of the US Government toward Native people. The US BOP's treatment of Leonard Peltier is unlawful, and he deserves his freedom.” —Suzie Baer
Leonard's Statement: Peltier 80th Statement.pdf:
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABHSRNdyB8SKn0I&id=DFF2DD874157D44A%21118178&cid=DFF2DD874157D44A&parId=root&parQt=sharedby&o=OneUp
To view the film, please visit:
https://tinyurl.com/Peltier80thPresentation
We hope to have additional updates on Leonard soon. In the meantime, please engage our calls to action or donate to his defense efforts.
Miigwech.
Donate/ActNow:
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
U.S. Parole Commission Denies Leonard Peltier’s Request for Freedom; President Biden Should Grant Clemency
In response to the U.S. Parole Commission denying Leonard Peltier’s request for parole after a hearing on June 10, Paul O’Brien, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, made the following statement:
“Continuing to keep Leonard Peltier locked behind bars is a human rights travesty. President Biden should grant him clemency and release him immediately. Not only are there ongoing, unresolved concerns about the fairness of his trial, he has spent nearly 50 years in prison, is approaching 80 years old, and suffers from several chronic health problems.
“Leonard Peltier has been incarcerated for far too long. The parole commission should have granted him the freedom to spend his remaining years in his community and surrounded by loved ones.
“No one should be imprisoned after a trial riddled with uncertainty about its fairness. We are now calling on President Biden, once again, to grant Leonard Peltier clemency on humanitarian grounds and as a matter of mercy and justice.”
Background
· Leonard Peltier, Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), was convicted of the murders of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. He has always maintained his innocence. Amnesty International joins Tribal Nations, Tribal Leaders, Members of Congress, former FBI agents, Nobel Peace Prize winners and former U.S. Attorney James Reynolds, whose office handled Peltier’s prosecution and appeal, in urging his release.
· Parole was also rejected at Peltier’s last hearing in 2009. Due to his age, this was likely the last opportunity for parole.
· A clemency request is pending before President Joe Biden. President Biden has committed opens in a new tab to grant clemency/commutation of sentences on a rolling basis rather than at the end of his term, following a review of requests by the White House Counsel’s Office and the Department of Justice.
Amnesty International has examined Peltier’s case extensively for many years, sent observers to his trial in 1977, and long campaigned on his behalf. Most recently, Amnesty International USA sent a letter to the U.S. Parole Commission urging the commission to grant him parole.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/u-s-parole-commission-denies-leonard-peltiers-request-for-freedom-president-biden-should-grant-clemency/
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Beneath The Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader (City Lights, 2024) is a collection of revolutionary essays, written by those who have been detained inside prison walls. Composed by the most structurally dispossessed people on earth, the prisoner class, these words illuminate the steps towards freedom.
Beneath the Mountain documents the struggle — beginning with slavery, genocide, and colonization up to our present day — and imagines a collective, anti-carceral future. These essays were handwritten first on scraps of paper, magazine covers, envelopes, toilet paper, or pages of bibles, scratched down with contraband pencils or the stubby cartridge of a ball-point pen; kites, careworn, copied and shared across tiers and now preserved in this collection for this and future generations. If they were dropped in the prison-controlled mail they were cloaked in prayers, navigating censorship and dustbins. They were very often smuggled out. These words mark resistance, fierce clarity, and speak to the hope of building the world we all deserve to live in.
"Beneath the Mountain reminds us that ancestors and rebels have resisted conquest and enslavement, building marronage against colonialism and genocide."
—Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency
Who stands beneath the mountain but prisoners of war? Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jennifer Black have assembled a book of fire, each voice a flame in captivity...Whether writing from a place of fugivity, the prison camp, the city jail, the modern gulag or death row, these are our revolutionary thinkers, our critics and dreamers, our people. The people who move mountains. —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Filled with insight and energy, this extraordinary book gifts us the opportunity to encounter people’s understanding of the fight for freedom from the inside out. —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag and Abolition Geography
These are the words each writer dreamed as they sought freedom and they need to be studied by people inside and read in every control unit/hole in every prison in America. We can send this book for you to anyone who you know who is currently living, struggling, and fighting
Who better to tell these stories than those who have lived them? Don’t be surprised with what you find within these pages: hope, solidarity, full faith towards the future, and most importantly, love.
Excerpt from the book:
"Revolutionary love speaks to the ways we protect, respect, and empower each other while standing up to state terror. Its presence is affirmed through these texts as a necessary component to help chase away fear and to encourage the solidarity and unity essential for organizing in dangerous times and places. Its absence portends tragedy. Revolutionary love does not stop the state from wanting to kill us, nor is it effective without strategy and tactics, but it is the might that fuels us to stand shoulder to shoulder with others regardless. Perhaps it can move mountains." —Jennifer Black & Mumia Abu-Jamal from the introduction to Beneath The Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader
Get the book at:
https://www.prisonradiostore.com/shop-2/beneath-the-mountain-an-anti-prison-reader-edited-by-mumia-abu-jamal-jennifer-black-city-lights-2024
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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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*Major Announcement*
Claudia De la Cruz wins
Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!
We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.
We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.
We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!
We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.
We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.
The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step:
Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer
Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate
See you in the streets,
Claudia & Karina
Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system.
See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings
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Daniel Hale UPDATE:
In February Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale was transferred from the oppressive maximum-security prison in Marion, Illinois to house confinement. We celebrate his release from Marion. He is laying low right now, recovering from nearly 3 years in prison. Thank goodness he is now being held under much more humane conditions and expected to complete his sentence in July of this year. www.StandWithDaniel Hale.org
More Info about Daniel:
“Drone Whistleblower Subjected To Harsh Confinement Finally Released From Prison”
https://thedissenter.org/drone-whistleblower-cmu-finally-released-from-prison/
“I was punished under the Espionage Act. Why wasn’t Joe Biden?” by Daniel Hale
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) An Israeli strike targeting a West Bank Hamas leader killed civilians, including a family of 4, residents say.
By Raja Abdulrahim and Fatima AbdulKarim, October 4, 2024
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad confirmed the loss of local leaders in an Israeli strike on Thursday on Tulkarm, in the West Bank. But residents said most of the dead were civilians. Credit...Raneen Sawafta/Reuters
An Israeli airstrike tore through a bustling cafe and adjacent homes in a Palestinian city in the West Bank on Thursday night, killing at least 18 people, according to health officials, and leaving a swath of destruction. Residents said a family of four was among the dead, and on Friday, desperate people were still searching for loved ones in the rubble.
The Israeli military said that the strike killed the head of Hamas in the city, Tulkarm, whom it accused of leading attacks on settlers in the West Bank and supplying weapons to other fighters. Both Hamas and another armed group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, confirmed that their local leaders had been killed in the strike. But most of the dead were civilians, according to residents, among them Abu Zahra’s family, including 7-year-old Sham and 5-year-old Karam, who lived above the cafe.
“Our family and the entire camp is already devastated,” said Anas Kharyoush, a cousin of the children’s mother, 28-year-old Saja Abu Zahra, referring to the neighborhood’s origin as a refugee camp for Palestinians displaced from their homes by the wars surrounding Israel’s establishment. “They are not the first martyrs in our family, and this is not the first airstrike in our neighborhood, but it’s the most devastating.”
The explosion was so fierce that the remains of those killed had to be gathered in blankets and sheets and taken to a hospital for bereft family members to identify, according to residents and videos of the aftermath. And the search for the missing continued.
“Mothers are desperate to know about their children, and families are still looking for their loved ones,” said Diala Hadaydah, a paramedic who lives in the neighborhood, who rushed to the scene moments after the strike.
The Israeli military did not respond to questions about the number of civilians killed in Thursday’s strike.
The strike in the densely packed area came amid increasingly deadly Israeli raids on Palestinian towns and cities across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, in what the military labels counterterrorism operations.
Tulkarm, which has a history of armed resistance against the nearly six-decade Israeli occupation of the West Bank, has been the frequent target of such raids. For more than nine days, starting in late August, Israeli bulldozers ripped through roads, infrastructure and businesses there, as well as in nearby Jenin.
Palestinians say they are terrified in their own homes, fearful of onslaughts from the ground — from tanks, armored vehicles or more bulldozers — and from the sky. The Israeli military has said the raids are an effort to crack down on Palestinian armed groups and combat rising attacks against Israelis and settlements.
Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law but have continued to expand, threatening Palestinian livelihoods in cities, towns and farming villages.
Violence in the West Bank has been increasing since the war began in Gaza last Oct. 7, but the toll has been far higher among Palestinians. As one gauge, a United Nations report in mid-September, counting conflict fatalities from January 2023 onward, put Israeli fatalities at 41 and Palestinian fatalities at 722.
In the strike on Tulkarm on Thursday, witnesses said that an Israeli warplane fired at least one missile at the cafe while it was occupied by civilians. The use of a warplane there was unusual. Though Israel has increasingly been conducting once-rare airstrikes in the West Bank since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, they have usually been carried out by armed drones.
Ms. Hadaydah, the paramedic, said the sound of the explosion was unlike anything she had ever heard before. She rushed to the scene and saw the scattered remains of body parts, burned beyond recognition. Ms. Hadaydah said only five bodies were intact.
“I saw teeth, I saw skin, I saw bodies hanging from electricity cables,” Ms. Hadaydah said. “It looked just like Gaza”
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2) Israel Strikes Across Lebanon as Attacks Expand
Israel’s attacks against Hezbollah had largely been concentrated in the south and near Beirut. But Hamas, an ally of Hezbollah, said an Israeli strike in northern Lebanon had killed one of its commanders.
By Liam Stack and Victoria KimLiam Stack reported from Tel Aviv, and Victoria Kim from Seoul., October 5, 2024
Leo Correa/Associated Press
The Israeli military launched attacks across Lebanon on Saturday, and said it had killed two Hamas officials in the country as Israel’s war against Hezbollah and its allies expanded.
Airstrikes hit areas of central, northern and southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said it had struck “weapons storage facilities, command centers and additional terrorist infrastructure” near the capital, Beirut. That appeared to refer to the Dahiya, an area where Hezbollah holds sway and where clouds of smoke were seen rising on Saturday.
A huge Israeli strike around the same area earlier in the week targeted Hashem Safieddine, the presumed successor of Hassan Nasrallah, the recently assassinated leader of Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia. It was not clear whether Mr. Safieddine had been killed.
Israel’s systematic targeting of Hezbollah leaders and their allies appeared to reach deep into Lebanon on Saturday. The armed group Hamas, which is based in Gaza, said that one of its commanders had been killed in an Israeli strike in the Lebanese city of Tripoli, near the country’s northern edge. Hours later, Israel said it had also killed a second high-ranking Hamas commander in Lebanon.
As Israel kept up its campaign, Hezbollah on Saturday fired what Israel’s military said was an estimated 90 rockets into northern Israel. Most appear to have been intercepted by air defense systems, and there were no immediate reports of injuries.
Concern has been building over whether the broadening war would further draw in Iran, which supports both Hamas and Hezbollah and launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel earlier in the week. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Friday that Iran could carry out additional attacks on Israel “if necessary.”
Here is what else to know:
· Iranian diplomacy: Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, arrived in Syria early Saturday, according to Iranian state media. Mr. Araghchi appears to be on a diplomatic tour, and on Friday visited Beirut in an apparent effort to convey Iran’s readiness to support a joint cease-fire in Lebanon and in Gaza.
· Gaza evacuations: The Israeli military announced a new evacuation warning in the Gaza Strip for the first time in several weeks, advising residents of Nuseirat and Bureij in the central part of the enclave to flee. Israel has largely been focused on Lebanon since September, although in August it issued evacuation warnings in Gaza that covered roughly 250,000 people.
· White House remarks: President Biden said on Friday that Israel had not decided how to respond to Iran’s recent attacks but that if he were the Israeli leader, “I would be thinking about other alternatives” to attacking Iran’s oil facilities.
· American death: The State Department said it was “aware and alarmed” about reports of the death in Lebanon of Kamel Ahmad Jawad, an American citizen. His family said in a statement this week that Mr. Jawad, who was from Dearborn, Mich., had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
· Hospital closures: At least four hospitals across southern Lebanon are now out of service as a result of Israel’s bombardment, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. The St. Therese Hospital near the Dahiya has also suspended services, saying that Israeli strikes inflicted “huge damage.”
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3) A Michigan father was killed in an Israeli airstrike, his family says.
By Kate Selig, Oct. 5, 2024
Kamel Ahmad Jawad remained calm, even as Israeli missiles rained down around him in his hometown in southern Lebanon, thousands of miles from his other home, Dearborn, Mich.
That’s what his family recounted in a statement about Mr. Jawad on Tuesday. When the impact of an airstrike knocked him down while he was on the phone with his daughter, he got back up, found his phone and told her he needed to finish praying. Then, he got back to helping others, the family added.
That was his last day alive. Mr. Jawad, an American citizen, husband and father, and resident of Dearborn, was killed on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. during an Israeli airstrike, his family said.
“I would often ask him if he was scared, and he repeatedly told me that we should not be scared because he is doing what he loves the most: helping others live in the land he loved the most,” his daughter Nadine Jawad, a Rhodes scholar and Stanford medical school graduate, wrote in the statement.
When Mr. Jawad’s wife was reached on Friday, she said the family declined to comment further.
The airstrike was part of Israel’s intense bombardment and ground invasion in Lebanon, intended to target Hezbollah forces in that country and stop Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel. The military campaign has caused widespread destruction and displacement. At least 1,600 people have been killed by the airstrikes, and over 1.2 million people have been displaced across the country, according to Lebanese authorities.
A State Department representative wrote in a statement on Friday evening that it had confirmed that Mr. Jawad was a U.S. citizen and that it was “aware and alarmed” of reports of his death.
“We extend our condolences to the family,” the statement said.
His friends and family described Mr. Jawad as a man deeply committed to his faith and to helping others, especially through his frequent trips to Lebanon, where he quietly paid off debts of people living there and supported those without the means to flee. He was also known for his devotion to his family — he is survived by his wife and four children — and his passion for soccer.
“He was this old-school, legendary father figure,” said Hussain Makke, 33, a preacher and teacher of Islamic sciences. Mr. Makke said he was living with his parents in London after his home in Lebanon was destroyed.
Mr. Makke stayed with Mr. Jawad’s sister in Dearborn several years ago. Mr. Makke’s father was also friends with Mr. Jawad and completed the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, with him.
Hamzah Raza, another friend of Mr. Jawad’s who is living in Maryland, described him in a statement on social media as someone who loved people and loved helping people.
Mr. Raza, 27, a religious studies Ph.D. student, recalled in his post how, a week before Mr. Raza went to Lebanon, he told Mr. Jawad that he wanted to buy some books there.
Mr. Raza wrote that Mr. Jawad told him, “Just send the names of the books and I will get them for you. I want you to have as much time as you can seeing the country.”
As the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalated, so, too, did Mr. Jawad’s efforts to help people in Lebanon, Mr. Makke said.
He added that during a recent series of Israeli airstrikes, Mr. Jawad saved his nephew, who was one of Mr. Makke’s students at a seminary in southern Lebanon. Mr. Jawad’s nephew did not have any family in the area, and Mr. Jawad drove to him and took the nephew to Beirut, perhaps saving his life, Mr. Makke said.
Mr. Makke said that a video taken from that experience shows Mr. Jawad laughing and smiling, even though the two were driving under airstrikes.
“He made it into an action movie,” he said. “He knew how to keep morale high, to not feel scared.”
But while Mr. Jawad also could have flown home, he chose to remain behind: “In his last days, he chose to stay near the main hospital in Nabatieh to help the elderly, disabled, injured and those who simply couldn’t financially afford to flee,” the statement from his family said.
His family noted in the statement that Mr. Jawad’s death was one of many across the Middle East.
“The fact that he was an American citizen should not make his story more important than others,” his daughter wrote.
According to a fund-raiser in Mr. Jawad’s memory, he sent a voice note to his children before his death.
“Peace be upon you,” he told them. “Everything is OK, but if something happens to me, your duty is to the poor.”
Kirsten Noyes and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
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4) The U.S. military conducts strikes against the Houthi militia in Yemen.
By Ephrat Livni and Ismaeel Naar, Oct. 4, 2024
Smoke rises after strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. Credit...Osamah Abdulrahman/Associated Press
The United States Central Command said on Friday that it struck Houthi targets in Yemen, including “Houthi offensive military capabilities,” in an effort to secure international waterways.
The Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen has been striking ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Hamas, another Iranian-backed militia, since last year, disrupting commercial shipping. Central Command said on social media that it struck 15 targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.
“These actions were taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for U.S., coalition, and merchant vessels,” the post said.
The Houthi-affiliated al-Masirah TV reported four strikes on Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, seven on the port city of Hodeidah and at least one strike on Dhamar, south of the capital.
The attack on Sanaa came as the Houthis and their supporters were holding their weekly “million-man march” protest, which this week was focused on Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike near Beirut, Lebanon, last Friday.
The Houthi-run Yemen News Agency, SABA, reported that Hashem Sharaf al-Din, a Houthi official, said that he considered the strikes “a desperate attempt” to intimidate the Yemeni people and he vowed not to be deterred by them.
But the Houthi attacks on commercial vessels have increasingly drawn the ire of international actors and condemnation by diplomats. The Red Sea is a key trade route between Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Since the strikes began, many vessels have been forced to reroute. Those that have not have sometimes paid severe consequences.
Ships have been hit and sustained damage, and some sailors have been abducted and held captive for many months, while others have died or been injured in the Houthi attacks. In August, a Houthi strike on a Greek oil tanker threatened to devolve into an environmental disaster as the burning ship remained at sea for weeks, with militia members threatening tugboats attempting to salvage the vessel. The ship was towed to safety in mid-September.
The attacks on commercial shipping have been met with counter strikes by the United States military and British troops before. Between January and May, the two countries’ militaries conducted at least five joint strikes against the Houthis in response to the attacks on shipping.
United States Central Command regularly announces actions against the militant group. In August, after the Houthis said they targeted American warships, the U.S. military struck back. Last week, the Houthis made a similar claim, and now appear to have drawn the same response.
The latest strikes by the United States come as tensions in the Middle East have risen significantly following Israel’s killing of Mr. Nasrallah, its expanded operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon and an escalating conflict with Iran, which launched a salvo of about 200 missiles at Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for the assassinations of some of its proxy groups’ leaders.
On Sunday, the Israeli military also struck in Yemen in response to several recent Houthi missile strikes targeting Israel.
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5) Pro-Palestinian Group Is Relentless in Its Criticism of Israel, and It Isn’t Backing Down
Within Our Lifetime, a group formed by New York students, has galvanized pro-Palestinian activists who are calling for the end of Israel — and facing accusations of antisemitism.
By Sharon Otterman, Oct. 5, 2024
Protesters at a rally organized by the pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime outside a campaign event for Kamala Harris in Harlem in August. Credit...Adam Gray for The New York Times
Without even entering Grand Central Terminal’s soaring main hall on one Thursday evening in July, Nerdeen Kiswani and her pro-Palestinian protest group, Within Our Lifetime, managed to shut it down.
All it took was a flier, posted online, calling on her followers to meet by the iconic clock in the New York train station at 5:30 p.m. The police got there first, barricading the entire space to commuters and tourists. Three helicopters and a drone circled in the sky.
Ms. Kiswani, a 30-year-old Palestinian American with a law degree, moved the protest outside. Wearing a tan hijab partly secured with a pair of oversize sunglasses, she stood on a bench and surveyed the disruption she and the other demonstrators had sparked — honking traffic, rows of police officers in riot gear, a group of pro-Israel counterprotesters setting off air horns to interrupt her.
“I guess they accomplished our goal for us,” she shouted to the protesters, who echoed back her words to amplify them. “Because our goal was to raise awareness about the U.S.-funded Israeli genocide in Gaza.”
After her speech, the crowd began chanting along with her: “Judaism, yes, Zionism no! The state of Israel has got to go!”
New Yorkers have become familiar with the tactics of Ms. Kiswani and Within Our Lifetime, the group she co-founded in 2015, even if they don’t know her by name. Their marches have shut down the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges and snarled Midtown traffic. Their chants of “Long live the Intifada!” outside an exhibition memorializing victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, drew condemnation from as high as the White House. Protesters in her orbit sometimes burn Israeli flags and fly the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Ms. Kiswani says that she supports the liberation of the Palestinian people “by any means necessary,” including armed resistance. This has made her a reviled target for Jewish and Zionist groups like the Anti-Defamation League and Canary Mission, and a familiar figure to the N.Y.P.D.
“If you’re going to fight against essentially a killing machine, you can’t just do it with love and vibes and peace slogans alone,” Ms. Kiswani said in a recent interview. “People need to be able to defend themselves.”
Officially, the group has a few dozen members, and its demonstrations can attract a few hundred people. But some marches, often held together with other anti-Zionist groups, have attracted thousands of people and led to dozens of arrests.
As a sign of its reach, Within Our Lifetime’s Instagram account had some 180,000 followers before Meta shut it down in February. A Meta spokeswoman said the account was suspended for violating guidelines that bar the glorification or support of “dangerous organizations or individuals,” which includes U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.
Some say Within Our Lifetime has discredited the pro-Palestinian movement with hateful, violent messages. Ms. Kiswani has escalated its rhetoric, said Oren Segal, vice president of the ADL Center on Extremism, “so that it’s no longer strange or fringe to see blatant terrorist group flags and symbols at events.”
On its social media channels, Within Our Lifetime has mourned figures like Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah chief assassinated by Israel last month, and called them martyrs.
But as the war in Gaza grinds on, it has brought new attention to Ms. Kiswani, led some to replicate her efforts around the country and forced political leaders to contend with raw anger on the streets.
A New Generation
Ms. Kiswani bills herself as part of a bolder, new generation of Palestinian American activists who are calling for what she says earlier generations also wanted, but feared to say in public: the replacement of the state of Israel with a state called Palestine, covering all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
“We may look more moderate, or whatever, if we talk about a two-state solution,” she said. “But that’s been dead on arrival for years now. It’s already a one-state solution. It’s a state that’s controlled by Israel in every sense.”
There was no point in softening her message, she said. “People from our community who tried to appease politicians, they were still marginalized. They were still called terrorists,” she added. “So if we’re going to receive that backlash regardless of what we say or do, then we might as well make the full demands of what we want for our people, which is complete and total liberation.”
Ms. Kiswani and the groups that protest with her helped inspire last spring’s campus protests that bedeviled and led to the departure of multiple university leaders. (Ms. Kiswani showed up to the Columbia University encampment on her wedding day in April, still wearing her traditional red and white dress.)
They have also become a concern for Democrats who fear divisions over the war in Gaza might chip away at voters during a presidential election with tight margins.
“They tell us voting for the lesser of two evils is the right thing to do,” Ms. Kiswani told a crowd in August, standing atop a stack of police crowd-control barricades outside a campaign event for Vice President Kamala Harris in Harlem. “So we divest from this system.”
Ms. Kiswani insists she is not antisemitic. Instead, she says she opposes Zionists, those who believe Israel should exist as a Jewish state in its ancient homeland. But Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League say that distinction is a smoke screen, because Zionism is a core part of the identity of most Jews.
Within Our Lifetime’s anti-Zionism is so vitriolic that it has alienated some prominent critics of Israel’s war in Gaza, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat. As protesters waved Hamas flags outside of a Nova Music Festival commemoration in June, Ms. Kiswani called the festival, where hundreds were killed on Oct. 7, “the place where Zionists decided to rave next to a concentration camp.”
The next day, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said the protest was “atrocious antisemitism — plain and simple.”
But Ms. Kiswani also has an increasing number of people willing to protest behind her.
“The world is not doing anything to stop the slaughter of all these thousands and thousands of children,” said Carolyn Antonucci, 64, who came from Connecticut to march at a Within Our Lifetime event on Labor Day with a crowd of thousands that stretched for blocks on Park Avenue. “So I mean, who am I to say what the right thing to do is?”
Sarah Schulman, a playwright who is on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist organization, has known Ms. Kiswani for years and said her point of view makes sense given her experiences.
“I think that the thing people really need to ask themselves when they look at her is, if this was me, and this was my family that was being brutalized and murdered, would I be doing this?” Ms. Schulman said.
In Exile With ‘Nothing to Lose Anymore’
Ms. Kiswani is a daughter of Palestinian refugees from Beit Iksa, a village in the West Bank. Born in Jordan and raised in Brooklyn, where her family opened a restaurant, she attended an Islamic private school for most of her childhood.
She switched to a public high school and then went to the College of Staten Island, a school under the City University of New York system, where she studied human rights and international relations with a focus on the Middle East. There, she co-founded a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. At Hunter College, where she took many of her classes, she continued her activism.
In 2015, Ms. Kiswani said, she was blocked by Israel from visiting her relatives in the West Bank, though she had visited before. The security officers, holding her for 16 hours at the border, cited her work organizing in college.
“I felt like I had nothing to lose anymore,” she said.
Not long after, she and other activists formed NYC Students for Justice in Palestine, a coalition across CUNY schools. In 2018, they renamed the group Within Our Lifetime, to better reflect the urgency of their push to “revitalize the revolutionary spirit of Palestinians living in exile.” Their marches, featuring incendiary chants, sparked intense criticism from pro-Israel groups.
After she enrolled at CUNY Law School, Ms. Kiswani was named “Antisemite of the Year” in 2020 by a group called Stopantisemitism.org. Despite that, she was elected as class graduation speaker in 2022. Her fiery speech, critical of both Israel and what she described as American imperialism, got national attention.
Ms. Kiswani said she runs Within Our Lifetime as a volunteer while studying for the bar exam. The group is not registered as a nonprofit, and has no paid staff. It was fund-raising through the WESPAC Foundation, a nonprofit based in White Plains, N.Y., that helps pro-Palestinian groups. But the arrangement was disrupted by litigation, including a lawsuit accusing Within Our Lifetime of creating a hostile environment for Jewish students, Ms. Kiswani said. Nada Khader, the foundation’s executive director, declined to comment.
Within Our Lifetime does not release a formal membership list because of the dangers of harassment and doxxing. But individuals who have identified themselves as organizers include Fatima Mohammed, who called for a revolution against “capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism” in her 2023 CUNY Law graduation speech, and Abdullah Akl, who in March led a chant in Arabic calling for strikes on Tel Aviv.
One internal N.Y.P.D. document detailing notable arrests during the campus protests last spring listed several who had participated in Within Our Lifetime actions. It included James Carlson, a 40-year-old lawyer described by the police as a “longtime figure in the anarchist world” who was indicted in September on charges of burning another person’s Israeli flag at a protest outside Columbia. Ms. Kiswani said she hadn’t heard of him.
The group’s marches tend to follow a playbook: First, lesser-known leaders warm up the crowd, then Ms. Kiswani steps up and speaks. She’s tall, which helps make her recognizable. “I’m 5-11, so I think I just stand out,” she said.
At her signal, protesters take off at a rapid clip through the city, leaving police officers rushing to keep up. She is occasionally arrested, but reappears at the next demonstration, in her distinctive hijabs and bright lipstick.
She often seems to leave before confrontations with the police escalate. After a rally outside of a Harris campaign event in Harlem, for example, Ms. Kiswani told protesters about an after-party at a restaurant about 10 blocks north. There, the scene devolved into chaos.
Chanting “Harris, Harris you’re a liar! You set Palestine on fire!” a crowd of demonstrators stormed into the restaurant as diners cowered. Police officers descended to restore order. Fourteen people were arrested.
By that point, Ms. Kiswani was nowhere to be found.
Vandalism and Fears of Violence
Ms. Kiswani's chants are broadly protected by the First Amendment. Her protests don’t use amplified sound, so in New York City, they don’t require permits. But Mr. Segal of the Anti-Defamation League argued that her words could incite violent or destructive action.
“The more that you normalize activities that seek to isolate, marginalize and demonize a certain group of people, the more likely it is that people on the fringes of the movement that you are leading are going to take it to the next level,” he said.
Sometimes, there were physical clashes with counterprotesters supporting Israel. Outside Columbia’s gates in February, Noah Lederman, a Jewish student, was pushed against a wall when several protesters at a Within Our Lifetime march spotted his T-shirt with the Israeli flag, he said. After he broke free and started to run away, a protester yelled a threat.
Ms. Kiswani was defiant when a protester from a Within Our Lifetime rally in June boarded a city subway and shouted for Zionists to raise their hand and leave the train, in an episode that led the city police to file misdemeanor charges.
“We don’t want Zionists in Palestine, NYC, our schools, on the train, ANYWHERE,” Ms. Kiswani wrote on X in response to the uproar. “This is free speech, it is saying we don’t want racists here.” Later, in an interview, she said the protester had been joking.
About two weeks after a Within Our Lifetime march targeted the Brooklyn Museum in May, arguing it was complicit in Palestinian genocide, the homes of the museum’s Jewish director and board members were splashed with red paint and hateful slogans. An anonymous group claimed responsibility — Within Our Lifetime marches attract a variety of leftist revolutionary activists — and the police later arrested two people. Neither was part of Within Our Lifetime, Ms. Kiswani said.
Ms. Kiswani has studied revolutionary movements and says that armed resistance has always been a part of them. (Her use of “by any means necessary” is an echo of Malcolm X, she said.)
She said she was freed, in a way, by growing up in a post-Sept. 11 New York City, where Muslims “were used to being called terrorists at school.” If she would be thought of as a terrorist no matter what, she said, why worry about it?
“That kind of propaganda doesn’t work on our generation anymore,” she said.
Julian Roberts-Grmela and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.
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6) Gaza’s Schools Are for Learning, Not for Dying
By Mosab Abu Toha, Oct. 6, 2024
Mr. Abu Toha is a poet, a short story writer, an essayist and the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza.
Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Before war broke out in Gaza, I spent five years teaching English to middle schoolers there. Now I cannot imagine myself returning to teach at schools where students have spent the past year sitting and sleeping on classroom floors with their families, seeking refuge from a relentless assault.
These children were not learning math or language. They were learning the names of Gazan neighborhoods as each was bombed. They were not practicing sports. They were practicing survival, carrying buckets of water for hundreds of feet and running from one classroom to another, from one school to another, from one tent to another, from one city to another, hoping not to be run over by a tank or crushed under bombed-out walls and ceilings.
Across Gaza, hundreds of schools have been turned into shelters, and many of them have been attacked by Israeli forces, who say Hamas fighters use them as command centers. These attacks have killed hundreds of people, according to local health authorities. One Israeli airstrike hit a school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, home to about 12,000 displaced people, for the fifth time in September, killing 18 people.
How can a teacher — me or anyone else — return to teach children and pretend these same places have not been zones of death and suffering? During previous military conflicts in Gaza, it was mainly students who received psychological support. The question of offering support for teachers was rarely raised. But after nearly a year of war, how can traumatized teachers, teachers who may have lost close family members and friends or who even were injured, deal with traumatized students?
How can trauma be treated when it is never-ending? In Gaza there is no post-traumatic stress, because there is never a time without trauma. It was already an environment filled with chronic traumatic stress disorder before this war. After this year, the trauma will grip generations to come. Thousands of children have lost their lives since the Israeli war on Gaza began on Oct. 8, 2023. Others lost body parts. Others lost their parents. Others lost everyone. Over the last year, doctors working in Gaza began using the abbreviation W.C.N.S.F., for “wounded child, no surviving family.”
The last time I was in a school classroom was in November, to take refuge in one in the Jabaliya camp in northern Gaza. I was there with my wife, Maram, and our children, Yazzan, 8; Yaffa, 7; and Mostafa, 4.
Two of Maram’s uncles, as well as her parents and siblings, shared a classroom with four other families. The room was divided into five parts, with Maram’s uncles and parents sharing a somewhat bigger section. We used to eat in their section. It was not more than 27 square feet. The space also contained a 66-gallon water tank, mattresses and kitchenware.
School desks served as partitions to make the tiny rooms and blackboards served the same function in other classrooms. If there were no blackboards, it was probably because parts of them were used for cooking fires. The last time cooking gas trucks entered the north was in October 2023.
In Jabaliya, I remember searching the rubbled streets and lanes of the market for cardboard boxes, usually dirty, or sticks for cooking fires. I would return to the school with something, feeling very accomplished — not as a student or a teacher, but rather as a collector of useful stuff for family survival.
On Nov. 19, before my family and I made our way to the United States, we took a journey toward the southern part of the Gaza Strip, hoping to reach the Rafah border crossing to leave for Egypt. As we reached a checkpoint on Salah al-Din Road, I was detained by the Israeli Army and put in a detention center with dozens of other Palestinians for three days. I was blindfolded, handcuffed and forced to stay on my knees. I was not allowed to speak, or to ask about my family. Upon release I took up another journey, this time to find my wife and kids. I was not sure whether they were still alive.
On the road heading south — anyone moving north would have been shot then — I found them. They were sheltering in another school close to Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah. I joined them and we stayed with two of my wife’s uncles in a tent pitched on the school campus. Rainwater sometimes flooded our tent.
Moving from one school to another as refugees is not like moving up from an elementary school to a middle school. To still live in your own house in Gaza feels like living in a mansion, though it can be dangerous. To live in a classroom feels like living in a hotel room. To live in tents on a school campus feels like living in a hotel lobby.
We eventually made it to Cairo, where in early December I watched a video of the school where we sheltered in Jabaliya being besieged by Israeli tanks and soldiers. It was around that time that a sniper killed one of Maram’s uncles, who was deaf and mute, at the gate of another school in Beit Lahia, where he was sheltering with his wife and their two babies. That school later burned down. It was the same school where Yazzan and Yaffa attended third and first grade before Oct. 7, 2023.
About 625,000 children in Gaza have missed a whole school year because of the war, not to mention the trauma they have suffered. Although in recent weeks the United Nations Relief and Works Agency has been trying to start the new school year inside shelters, the effort is almost pointless given the fact that schools continue to be bombed and Israeli evacuation orders continue to keep people on the move.
While it will take many long years to remove the rubble in Gaza, much less rebuild it, I fear it will take a whole lifetime, if ever, to rebuild a sense of hope in children in a world that has failed them. Governments have been unable to save the children of Gaza and their families, despite a never-ending stream of videos and photos and news reports clearly showing their suffering, day after day.
My eldest sister, Aya, has been complaining to me on the phone lately. It’s never easy to connect with my family in Gaza from my temporary home in Syracuse, N.Y., where I received an appointment as a visiting scholar at Syracuse University. During the short calls, the sound of whirring drones and distant bombing gets mixed with coughing.
“But this is bad for your baby,” I tell her. She is nine months pregnant. Aya barely has had access to fresh food for her entire pregnancy. She, like most Gazans, relies on canned food and some rare and pricey groceries.
Meanwhile, my wife and I prepared our children for their first days at their new American school. We all sat on the couch with my iPad, scrolling down and up through backpacks and water bottles and in a few minutes we placed an order.
If there is to be any hope for the future, the children of Gaza need a better reality, one closer to what I see American children enjoy. They need healthy food and clean water, a safe place to sleep at night. And they need classrooms where they can learn.
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7) A new Israeli map labels nearly all of northern Gaza ‘new evacuation zones.’
By Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Jerusalem, October 6, 2024
A Palestinian family arrives in Gaza City after evacuating the Jabaliya area on Sunday. Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli military appeared to label the vast majority of northern Gaza as an evacuation zone on Sunday, hours after launching a major raid that it said was targeting Hamas in the area.
The move suggested that Israel planned to step up pressure on war-weary residents of northern Gaza to relocate to the southern part of the territory as it continues to fight Hamas in the north.
“In preparation for a new stage in the war, the army is publishing a new evacuation zones map,” read an image posted on the X account of Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman.
The post looked similar to evacuation orders that the military has issued in the past, and was interpreted as such by some people.
The title of the accompanying map refers to “new evacuation zones,” with two lines highlighting routes to central Gaza. But the language in the post was contradictory and unclear as to whether the zones would be enforced now or in the future, “as necessary.”
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are believed to be in northern Gaza, and Israel has prevented displaced people in other parts of the territory from returning there.
Mr. Adraee said later in the day that the announcement was intended only to lay the groundwork for any future evacuation of the north.
Reached by phone, he said that the military hadn’t issued new evacuation orders and that the map merely divided northern Gaza into new blocks that Israel could call on to evacuate in the future.
That was little consolation to some people from northern Gaza, who were uncertain of whether they should leave their homes.
Israel first invaded northern Gaza after weeks of carrying out an intense aerial assault on the enclave in the wake of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks. Since then, it has withdrawn to nearby posts and focused its efforts on other parts of the enclave — only to return again for new operations against Hamas, which has regrouped in its absence. That cycle has repeated, leaving civilians caught in the crossfire in perilous conditions.
Kamel Ajour, 52, a bakery owner in Gaza City, noted that previous evacuation orders had specifically said people needed to leave the area immediately.
“The map is dubious,” he said. “It’s confusing for people.”
Others in Gaza felt similarly. “It’s not clear what it is asking people to do now,” said Yahya al-Masri, 28, who has family in Gaza City.
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8) At a Tennessee Plastics Plant, Sorrow and Uncertainty in Helene’s Wake
More than a week after workers fled flooding outside their factory, much remains unclear, including how many died.
By Edgar Sandoval, Reporting from Erwin, Tenn., Oct. 6, 2024
Bertha Mendoza was one of the factory employees whose body was recovered. Her husband Elias Mendoza, left, and her son Guillermo Mendoza hold a photo of her. Credit...Christian Monterrosa for The New York Times
The few details that are known about Bertha Mendoza’s last moments are heartbreaking.
On the morning of Sept. 27, after remnants of Hurricane Helene flooded the parking lot of a plastics factory in the small town of Erwin, Tenn., Ms. Mendoza, her younger sister and a group their co-workers clung to the bed of a pickup trying to flee from the rising waters.
When the situation became dire, Ms. Mendoza, a 56-year-old mother of four, managed to call her husband and some of her children to tell them she loved them, said her oldest son, Guillermo Mendoza.
“She was able to say farewells, and in one of her last conversations with my father, she said, ‘I love you, and please tell my children that I love them,’” Mr. Mendoza said in an interview in his two-story wooden home in Erwin. “I thank God that even in those last moments, my mom is in danger, and she still thinks about her children.”
It was part of one of the most horrific incidents spawned by Helene, the Category 4 hurricane that hit the coast of Florida on Sept. 26. Initial reports said that an estimated 11 workers, some of whom were immigrants, were washed away outside the factory in Erwin, which sits along the banks of the Nolichucky River and is about 120 miles from Knoxville.
But nine days after the tragedy, little clarity has emerged about what happened, what role the company, Impact Plastics Inc., played and even how many employees may have died.
Ms. Mendoza’s body was found two days after the flood near a bridge not far from the factory, where she worked in quality control. Her sister, Araceli Mendoza, survived.
Family members of the victims and survivors have told advocates of immigrants that the workers were told not to leave the factory even as the downpour began.
“It was unclear if or when employees were allowed to leave,” said Hamp Price, a spokesman with the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, an immigrant rights group.
Organizers with the group were told that the workers “didn’t have evacuation instructions at all,” in either English or Spanish, Mr. Price said. There were also reports of Spanish speakers trying, in vain, to communicate with English speakers during the chaotic evacuation.
At least three workers were found dead and three others remain missing, advocates said.
Since the storm hit, the local authorities said they have recovered bodies of four people who died in the storm, and six people remain unaccounted for. It is unclear how many of them originated from the factory, said Myron Hughes, a spokesman with the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency’s All-Hazards Incident Management Teams.
Various agencies, including the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said they were investigating what played out at the plant.
Erwin, a small mountain town of about 6,000 people, has seen a large influx of Latinos in recent years. They make up about 8 percent of the population, lured by work in strawberry and tomato fields and in factories like Impact Plastics’. The town also attracts tourists who come to hike about 150 miles of forest trails and visit the Nolichucky River that overlooks the Cherokee National Forest.
In a pair of lengthy statements, managers with the company refuted allegations made by the workers and their advocates. The managers said that the workers were never told they were required to stay in the building during the storm, and that they were told to evacuate as soon as the plant lost power that morning.
Company management said that some of the workers lingered in the parking lot after they were given the green light to go home.
When flooding from the storm overtook the factory’s parking lot, a group of workers tried to flee on a pickup truck that belonged to the business next door, Impact Plastics said. But after the rising water caused the truck to flip over, five of the workers and a contactor disappeared, the company said in its statement. Five other workers who had climbed onto the truck made it to safety, the company said.
Greg Coleman, a lawyer representing the Mendoza family and some of the other victims, said in his own statement that he is aware of the version of events released by the company that “appear to place blame on the victims who lost their lives, and by extension their families and those injured.”
“The true facts are continuing to be investigated, and that will be the true story,” he said, adding that his clients and witnesses “have differing opinions from that of the company narrative.” But for now, Mr. Coleman said he and his firm, Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman PLLC, want to focus on helping families heal.
Members of the Mendoza family were left to grieve and figure out what happened.
“It’s hard to process, but at the same time we have seen God through our community, through our church. Everyone has been so supportive,” Mr. Mendoza said.
The Mendozas were one of the first families to move to Erwin. Ms. Mendoza’s husband, Elias Mendoza, 59, first came to the area to work in the fields. He said that once he had secured legal residency, he brought his wife and two children from a small Mexican town in Michoacán.
At first, moving to the mountain region of Tennessee proved challenging for Ms. Mendoza, he said. “There were not a lot of Latinos back then, and she didn’t speak English,” he said.
In the coming years, she began to adjust. She had two more children in Tennessee and befriended other Latinos at a Baptist church in the area. Her sister Araceli told her about work at the plastics factory, where Ms. Mendoza worked on and off over the years.
Guillermo Mendoza, her eldest son, who is a pastor, a school board member and an educator, credits his mom’s dedication for his success in the community.
“My mother was really supportive my whole life,” Mr. Mendoza said. “She wanted a better life for her children than the life she had growing up.”
Ms. Mendoza enjoyed cooking traditional Mexican dishes for her family, including tamales, tres leches cake, mole and homemade tortillas. She also loved recording videos with her four grandchildren.
The Mendozas always looked forward to the month of September. Ms. Mendoza recently celebrated a birthday on Sept. 2. Guillermo Mendoza turned 33 on Sept. 22., and his younger brother and his son were both born on Sept. 23.
“It was an unspoken rule. We said no more births in September,” Mr. Mendoza said.
Sept. 27, the day Ms. Mendoza died, is also the anniversary of Guillermo and his wife’s wedding. After the tragedy, September will be “a difficult month going forward,” he said softly.
Ms. Mendoza’s husband still returns home every night looking for his wife of nearly 40 years.
Most nights, Mr. Mendoza said, he turns over in bed and looks for her. On the last few nights, he has reached to her side of the bed, only to be reminded that it’s empty.
“That’s hard. When I see her clothes, I feel something that is hard to explain,” he said.
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9) Nowhere to Go: How Gaza Became a Mass Death Trap
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been prevented from fleeing the narrow strip of land even as bombs have rained down, famine has loomed and disease has spread.
By Mark Landler, Reporting from London, Oct. 7, 2024
Palestinians after being forced to flee their homes in the West Bank in 1948. Credit...Bettmann, via Getty Images
Of all the grim distinctions of the yearlong war in Gaza that followed the savage Hamas attack on Israel last Oct. 7, one may stand out for its deadly singularity: Palestinian civilians there have nowhere to go. Barricaded by barbed-wire fences, tanks and soldiers, they have been effectively imprisoned for 12 months in a 141-square-mile strip of land between Egypt and Israel that has become a killing zone.
That irreducible fact, rare in even the most catastrophic wars, has magnified the death toll from Israel’s military campaign to root out the Hamas militants. It has challenged not just Israel’s avenging army, but also Arab neighbors, Western powers, aid and refugee groups and human rights defenders.
Lacking the familiar, if tragic, cycle seen in other armed struggles — civilians are violently displaced and flee across borders for refuge — the world has watched the slaughter in Gaza with a kind of helpless horror.
More than 41,000 people have been killed, according to local health officials. While that number includes combatants, a majority were civilians, and the rate of casualties has at times outpaced even the deadliest moments in the U.S.-led attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria.
“It seems unbelievable that these people, who have already endured so much suffering, are unable to leave,” said Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, a Jordanian former diplomat who served as the United Nations High Commissioner for human rights from 2014 to 2018. “The world is not a kind and generous place.”
Yet, as Mr. al-Hussein noted, it is not wholly without precedent.
From 1992 to 1995, Bosnian Serb forces besieged the city of Sarajevo, entrapping hundreds of thousands of residents and subjecting them to bombardment and sniper fire from the surrounding mountaintops. More than 5,000 civilians were killed, making Sarajevo a milestone in what Mr. al-Hussein calls a steady ratcheting-up of the lethality of armed conflicts for civilians since the 1990s.
Still, even in the case of the Balkans, the world was willing to take in Bosnian refugees. The Gaza war remains, in that sense, sui generis. Its victims are not just barricaded by fences and guns; they are imprisoned by history: that of Israel, and their own. Hamas fighters massacred 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers because of who they were. And the world has treated Palestinian refugees differently than any others because of the Palestinian struggle to carve their own state out of the land they share with the Jews.
When the United Nations adopted a convention on the treatment of refugees in 1951, it did not apply it to the Palestinians, nor were they to be protected by the new organization, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees. Instead, the U.N. created a separate ad hoc agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, known as UNRWA.
The thinking was that the Palestinian issue needed to be settled politically, through the creation of a Palestinian state, which would give the Palestinians a sanctuary like Israel became for the Jewish people after World War II.
Until then, UNRWA would care for the Palestinians and their descendants, many of whom had lost their homes in the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. At that time, about 700,000 of them fled or were expelled in a forced displacement known by Palestinians as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.”
As a peace deal has eluded generations of diplomats, UNRWA’s mandate keeps getting extended. It has put deep roots into the Palestinian population, becoming the de facto administration in parts of Gaza and coexisting uneasily with Hamas.
“For the Palestinians, this is par for the course,” said Stephanie Schwartz, a scholar on migration politics at the London School of Economics. “Somehow, the world has siloed the Palestinian situation from the way we treat the rest of the world’s refugees.”
There are no sprawling makeshift tent cities in Israel or Egypt to house refugees from the Gaza War, like the vast camps in Bangladesh, which shelter more than 800,000 Rohingya from Myanmar; or in Uganda, which house some 200,000 victims of wars in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
That reflects a bitter truth about the plight of the Palestinians: Israel does not want to let them back in because that would alter the character and demography of a Jewish state. The Arab countries to which many fled in the past do not want them, either because they regard such a large group of refugees as destabilizing or because they view it as an effort by some in Israel to drive Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip.
So, while UNRWA operates large refugee camps for Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza itself, these are of little comfort to the 2.3 million people living in Gaza as the war has raged. Aid groups estimate that 90 percent of Palestinians in the enclave have been displaced, some multiple times, because of relocation orders issued by the Israeli military.
Hamas militants hide among the civilian population, taking shelter in hospitals and schools. The ceaseless fighting has led to appalling conditions, with growing fears of famine and disease. The polio virus has recently appeared, with the World Health Organization warning that at least 90 percent of children under the age of 10 must be vaccinated to stop it from spreading.
Such conditions militate against another basic pillar of refugee policy: that people cannot be forced to go back to their homes if they face torture, persecution or other human rights abuses. In the case of children, courts have held that they cannot be returned if they risk inadequate food or medical treatment.
“If Israel can attack terrorists living among civilians and destroy their homes, where are these refugees supposed to go?” said Harold Hongju Koh, a former State Department human-rights official who is a professor at Yale Law School. “This is particularly true if polio returns in Gaza,” he said. “Where do you go when home becomes uninhabitable, not just from war, but from disease?”
When it comes to the Palestinians trapped in Gaza, Professor Schwartz pointed out, even the vocabulary used by advocates for refugees does not seem particularly useful. Refugee groups tend to emphasize the rights of people who have crossed borders to escape war or persecution.
“One of the things to keep in mind is that the current refugee and asylum system inherently has a mobility bias,” she said. “The refugee and asylum system is not built for people trapped in a conflict.”
For all the suffering of those in Gaza, Professor Schwartz said the war was as much about political choices as humanitarian ones.
“The choice not to push Egypt to allow people in; the choice not to push Israel to ensure the right of return for people who do flee; the choice to supply the bombs that cause people to flee — all of these are political choices,” she said. “Humanitarianism is not apolitical; it is political.”
The only way out of this impasse, she and others said, is to break the longstanding stalemate between the Israelis and Palestinians that led to the unique treatment of Palestinian refugees back in 1951. That foundational decision has been a trap for the West and the Arab world, no less than the Palestinians themselves, though Western leaders have not had to pay for their failed peacekeeping with the blood of their families.
“Everybody has got culpability here,” said Michael H. Posner, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor who now teaches at the Stern School of Business at New York University. “It’s a collective failure on the part of the West — the U.S. and the Europeans — and the Arab states to force the parties to sit down and sort out their differences.”
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10) Israel Mounts Heavy Attack on Southern Lebanon
After days of attacks there, Israel carried out further strikes in Lebanon and said it was sending more troops to fight Hezbollah. It also struck in Gaza to destroy a rocket launcher that Hamas used to target Tel Aviv.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Liam Stack and Natan Odenheimer, October 7, 2024
The site of an explosion in the Lebanese village of Kayfoun, south of Beirut, on Monday. Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
Israel’s military kept up its strikes on two fronts on Monday, with an intense barrage on southern Lebanon and a retaliatory attack targeting Hamas in southern Gaza, a sign of how significantly the fighting has spread in the year since Hamas’s cross-border assault.
As Israelis commemorated the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack that sparked Israel’s war in Gaza, Hamas targeted what it called “the depths of the occupation” in Tel Aviv with a rare rocket attack that left little damage. Hours later, Israel responded with what it said was an attack on the rocket launcher that had fired the projectiles.
At the same time, Israel said it was conducting “extensive” strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Dahiya, the densely packed cluster of neighborhoods adjoining Beirut. The skyline in Beirut has been thick with smoke after days of bombardment.
Israel said that it had sent more troops to Lebanon to join the invasion it launched last week to fight Hezbollah, and called on more residents in the country’s south to evacuate.
The Israeli deployments and bombardments show how the fighting has broadened a year after the attack on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 others were taken hostage. In addition to its invasions of Lebanon and Gaza — where more than 40,000 people have been killed — Israel has also conducted airstrikes against the Houthi militia in Yemen in recent days, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate against Iran for its missile and drone attack on his country last Tuesday.
Hezbollah, which like Hamas and the Houthis is backed by Iran, began firing missiles and rockets across Israel’s northern border roughly a year ago in support of Hamas. But Israel expanded its campaign against Hezbollah last month with a wave of bombardments and assassinations, and started a ground invasion last week targeting Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. At least 2,083 people have now been killed in Lebanon and nearly 10,000 wounded since the war began last October, according to Lebanon’s ministry of health, most of those over the last three weeks.
Israel also called on residents of large parts of northern Gaza to evacuate. It says that Hamas’s main fighting units in the enclave have largely been destroyed, but it has continued its operations, seeking to eradicate any threat posed by the group and prevent it from reconstituting its forces.
Here’s what else to know:
· Oct. 7 anniversary: Israelis are gathering to commemorate those killed and abducted a year ago, as Palestinians in Gaza continue to endure a war that has killed tens of thousands of people. Read our live coverage of the anniversary of the attack.
· U.N. peacekeepers: The Israeli military established new positions beside a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon during its invasion of the country’s southern region last week, according to two U.N. spokesmen and satellite imagery obtained by The New York Times. The U.N. said the Israeli move was putting its peacekeepers in the crossfire.
· Gaza evacuations: The Israeli military appeared to label the vast majority of northern Gaza an evacuation zone on Sunday, hours after launching a major raid there targeting Hamas. The announcement suggested that Israel planned to step up pressure on residents of northern Gaza to relocate.
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11) Fears of a Global Oil Shock if the Mideast Crisis Intensifies
The threat of an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran has created an “extraordinarily precarious” global situation, sowing alarm about the potential economic fallout.
By Peter S. Goodman, Oct. 7, 2024
Destruction last week in Dahiya, Lebanon, after several days of deadly Israeli airstrikes. Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
As the world absorbs the prospect of an escalating conflict in the Middle East, the potential economic fallout is sowing increasing alarm. The worst fears center on a broadly debilitating development: a shock to the global oil supply.
Such a result, actively contemplated in world capitals, could yield surging prices for gasoline, fuel and other products made with petroleum like plastics, chemicals and fertilizer. It could discourage investment, hiring, and business expansion, threatening many economies — particularly in Europe — with the risk of recession. The effects would be potent in nations that depend on imported oil, especially poor countries in Africa.
The possibility of this calamitous outcome has come into focus in recent days as Israel plots its response to the barrage of missiles that Iran unleashed last week. Some scenarios are seen as highly unlikely, yet still conceivable: An Israeli strike on Iranian oil installations might prompt Iran to target refineries in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, both major oil producers. Iranian-supported Houthi rebels claimed credit for an attack on Saudi oil installations in 2019. The Trump administration subsequently pinned the blame on Iranian forces.
As it has done before, Iran might also threaten the passage of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway that is the conduit for oil produced in the Persian Gulf, the source of nearly one-third of the world’s oil production. Such a move could entail conflict with American naval ships stationed in the region.
That, too, is currently considered to be improbable. But the upheaval in the region in recent months has pushed out the parameters of possibility, rendering imaginable scenarios that were once dismissed as extreme.
As Israel plots its next move, it has other targets besides Iranian oil installations. Iran would have reason for caution in crafting its own retaliation. Broadening the war to its Persian Gulf neighbors would invite a punishing response that could push Iran’s own economy — already bleak — to the brink of collapse.
Yet the risks of a broader conflict have heightened in recent days as Israel has expanded its military campaign against its enemies to southern Lebanon, where it has targeted the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. Iran’s strikes on Israel have raised the stakes further.
Visions of an intensifying war in the Middle East have added an enormous variable to a global economy already laced with unpredictable forces, from Russia’s war in Ukraine, to the trade conflict between the world’s two largest economies — the United States and China — and the ever-present risk of provocation from North Korea.
“This is an extraordinarily precarious global situation,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund who is now a professor at Harvard University. “The world is probably the most unstable that it’s been since the Cold War. That’s not even mildly an overstatement. It could get worse in a hurry. That would certainly have a big impact on the global economy.”
Every conflict in the Middle East holds the potential to jeopardize the world’s access to oil. This one appears no different.
Last Thursday, after President Biden said his administration was “discussing” the possibility of supporting an Israeli strike on Iran’s oil facilities, oil prices spiked by more than 4 percent. The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, breached $77 a barrel, up from about $71 a barrel before Iran unleashed missiles toward Israel.
The following day, Mr. Biden sought to alleviate concerns, telling reporters that the Israelis “should be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields.”
Experts assert that Israel’s efforts to limit the threat from Iran would be better served by targeting its military capabilities, perhaps firing on its elite Quds Force, which is widely unpopular within Iranian society.
Even if Israel does attack Iran’s oil production, the ramifications of that alone would be minimal for the global economy, analysts say. Iran is a major oil producer, pumping out nearly four million barrels a day, or about 4 percent of the global total, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But other Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could expand production to make up that volume, easing pressures on international prices, experts say.
A similar scenario played out five years ago, after a drone assault on oil installations in Saudi Arabia shut down roughly half the nation’s production. Oil prices surged by a fifth, but then quickly dropped as Saudi Arabia released stocks from its reserves.
“We have precedent for that kind of supply shock,” said Eli Berman, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, and a research director at the University of California Institute on Conflict and Cooperation. “That attack did not result in a regional tit for tat.”
The key question is how Israel will respond to the Iranian missile attack, and what comes after. Iran appears to have strengthened ties with its Persian Gulf neighbors over the last year, diminishing the chance that it would pursue a broader regional conflict. But if that analysis proves wrong and Iran strikes refineries in the region or disrupts shipping, the world could be in for a considerable shock.
In a regional war involving Israel and Iran, oil prices would spike to $130 a barrel and the global economy would suffer a hit of 0.4 percent, according to an analysis by Oxford Economics.
That scenario would hit the global economy with a new source of rising prices just as central banks from the United States to Europe have been declaring victory over inflation in lowering interest rates. Lower rates spell easier credit terms for businesses and consumers, stoking anticipation of a spur to investing, hiring, home-buying and economic growth.
An oil shock could reverse that momentum. Oil prices are not merely a key metric in markets, but an elemental force influencing economic activity, policymaking and sentiments in virtually every nation. They largely determine the price of gasoline, which flashes from signs at gas stations, serving as a crude encapsulation of consumer confidence and economic well-being.
Unlike in the early 1970s, when concerted action by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries — the international cartel of oil exporters — choked off supply and sent prices soaring, the world today is far less susceptible to such shocks.
The United States has swelled into the leading oil producer, owing to its aggressive development of shale oil. Some economies have moved aggressively to expand production of wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy, reducing dependence on oil.
The trouble is that global demand for energy has grown even faster, reinforcing the status of oil as a crucial commodity.
From 1971 to 2010, the share of the world’s total energy stocks made up by oil dropped to 31 percent from 44 percent, according to the International Energy Agency. But in the years since, that share has remained steady, even as renewable sources have increased — the result of increased demand from fast-growing developing economies like India, Indonesia and Brazil.
An oil supply crisis would reinforce the imperative for nations to diminish dependence on fossil fuels by expanding supplies of renewable energy. But that would not address the immediate economic threat.
The most wrenching consequence of an oil supply shock would be seen in lower-income countries contending with debt crises, including Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Angola. Governments have slashed spending on public health, education and other services to avoid defaulting on debts. Higher costs for importing oil would worsen that problem.
Pressure would also fall on China, which purchases more than 90 percent of Iran oil exports and depends on imports for roughly three-fourths of its oil consumption.
The Chinese government has cushioned itself against risks of disruption by aggressively increasing the use of electric vehicles and by adding to its oil reserves. Still, a higher energy bill would present an extra challenge as Chinese authorities grapple with worries over huge losses in real estate and weakening economic growth.
The United States may be best positioned to absorb a shock. American companies engaged in fossil fuel production would benefit from a hit to the global supply of oil, reaping gains from higher prices. Yet the impact of slower global economic growth would hinder other American businesses, especially those that export.
Europe appears especially vulnerable to disruption. The continent has long relied on low-priced Russian energy. That supply was crimped after Russia invaded Ukraine, bringing international condemnation and sanctions. The Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, severely restricted the shipment of energy to Europe, forcing many countries to seek alternatives while limiting consumption. A sudden jolt in the price of oil would present another crisis.
“What you would end up with in Europe is stagflation,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, using a term coined in the 1970s to describe a persistent combination of rising prices and slower growth. “You likely get a recession and high inflation at the same time.”
The clearest beneficiary of higher oil prices would be Russia, Mr. Kirkegaard added, supplying Mr. Putin with greater wherewithal to redouble his military assault on Ukraine.
Greater oil revenues would also position Russia to lavish more aid on a key Middle Eastern ally: Iran. The Iranian government has looked to Mr. Putin to help provide the last elements needed to achieve the capability to produce nuclear weapons.
That reality, Mr. Kirkegaard suggested, may limit Israel’s willingness to risk greater escalation of the conflict. If Israel hits Iran hard enough to provoke an Iranian strike aimed at damaging regional energy production, that would increase the price of oil, effectively handing more money to Mr. Putin.
And that would increase the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran.
“If you’re Israel, why help the country that would help Iran reach the nuclear threshold?” Mr. Kirkegaard asked.
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12) Gaza in Ruins After a Year of War
Much of Gaza has been destroyed by Israel’s relentless military campaign.
By Raja Abdulrahim, Helmuth Rosales, Bilal Shbair, Anjali Singhvi, Erika Solomon, Iyad Abuheweila, Abu Bakr Bashir, Ameera Harouda, Malika Khurana, Veronica Penney and Scott Reinhard Oct. 7, 2024
Subuh family land, Khan Younis
Before
Subuh family land, Khan Younis
After
One year ago, Gaza became a battlefield as Israel began a military offensive to root out Hamas in response to the Oct 7. Hamas-led attacks. The war has left Gaza unrecognizable. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and almost everyone living there has been displaced — many of them multiple times.
Nearly 60 percent of buildings have been damaged or destroyed in the besieged enclave, an area about half the size of New York City. Videos and images from before and after the war started in some of the hardest hit areas — including Khan Younis, Gaza City and Jabaliya — reveal the magnitude of ruin across the strip.
Israel says its goal was to eradicate Hamas and destroy the tunnel network it built below ground. But in that attempt, it laid waste to an area that is home to some two million people.
KHAN YOUNIS
54% of buildings have been likely damaged or destroyed.
In Gaza’s south is the governorate of Khan Younis, stretching from its eponymous medieval city, where the citadel wall stands as its historic anchor, to the lush fields that families have tilled for generations.
Now, the people of Khan Younis say they feel unmoored from time and place: The square where they played, prayed and gossiped is a ghost town. The farms that once nourished them have been bulldozed and pounded by Israeli artillery.
Israel says such strikes are necessary to attack Hamas militants and weapons hidden in hospitals, mosques, schools and other civilian areas. International law experts say Israel still has a responsibility to protect civilians even if Hamas exploits them.
CITY CENTER
Within the city of Khan Younis, only one citadel wall remains of its Mamluk-era fortress, ground away by centuries and wars past. It is the city’s lodestone.
That wall has lent its name to everything from the nearby marketplace to a space locals called “Citadel Square.” Here, vendors set up stalls to hawk goods and sugary concoctions and friends gathered around hookah pipes. A young oud player nicknamed Abu Kayan came during Eid holidays to strum Palestinian folk songs.
It was a humble outing even the most impoverished Gazan could enjoy, with a view of the citadel wall and the Grand Mosque on either side.
“What made it cool was that all kinds of people met there,” said Abu Kayan, 22, whose real name is Ahmed Abu-Hasaneen. “It was a place you could feel the spirit of our ancestors. It was a place we could hold on to and preserve.”
Now, the citadel wall looks out over a wasteland of rubble.
“I don’t think this place could be rebuilt,” said Abu Kayan. “Even if it could, nothing can replace the many friends I met there who have been killed, displaced, or fled abroad.”
Towering over the other side of the square was the 96-year-old Grand Mosque — the place to go for Friday prayers and staying up late into the night with family during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan.
“That mosque was like the city’s address — the symbol of Khan Younis,” said Belal Barbakh, 25, who once volunteered to clean its carpets and perfume the halls before holidays.
That address no longer exists — Israel’s military said it struck the mosque to destroy Hamas infrastructure inside it, information The Times could not independently verify.
These days, Mr. Barbakh continues that ritual of cleaning and perfuming in the small plastic tent erected as a prayer hall at the foot of the pile of rubble that is all that remains of the Grand Mosque.
Beyond the mosque was the citadel’s commercial district, where playful hearts, young and old, sought out Hamada Ice Cream and the balloon-festooned Citadel of Toys.
Sisters Asan and Elan al-Farra, 16 and 14, remember birthday parties at Hamada, and the excitement they felt when their parents let them stop there after shopping.
Passing by what is left of Hamada now, Elan said, is like watching the color drained out of her childhood: “It’s depressing seeing a place that was so bright end up black, battered, and dirty.”
Just a few meters away are the pancaked floors of the building once home to the Barbakh brothers and their families — and their Citadel of Toys.
Abdulraouf Barbakh opened the toy store on the ground floor, indulging a childhood obsession with “any and all toys.”
During Eid celebrations, he welcomed a parade of children who marched in, clutching the holiday money their relatives had given them, eager to buy a long coveted doll, ball or water gun.
“I loved to see that smile of pure joy on children’s faces, especially for a people like ours that have suffered so much,” he said.
War has razed the Barbakh building to the ground, and the siblings and cousins who lived there are scattered.
Outside the remnants of their family building, Mr. Barbakh’s nieces and nephews sometimes linger, looking for signs of toys that survived beneath the ruins.
Mr. Barbakh cannot imagine going back to being a purveyor of joy to children.
“My only wish is to rescue my family from this war,” he said. “I have no plans to buy any more toys.”
FARMLAND IN KHUZA’A
The verdant Khuza’a region of Khan Younis, the breadbasket of southern Gaza, is land Jamal Subuh’s family has plowed for over a century. His children still remember their first time helping their father with the harvest, and the taste of the melons, tomatoes and peas they had picked fresh off the vine.
Mr. Subuh shared an image of what his cropland looked like before the war.
Gaza’s farmlands represented a rare source of self-sufficiency in an area that has endured a decades-long blockade by Israel and Egypt.
“From generation to generation, we handed down a love of farming this land,” said Mr. Subuh, who was ordered off his property by Israeli military officials. “We eat from it, make money from it and feed the rest of our people from it.”
For Mr. Subuh, his fields were a chance to leave the next generation better off than his own: Each year, he farmed more lands, to pay for his son’s veterinary school and his daughter’s agricultural engineering degree.
He estimates that miles upon miles of fields have been bulldozed, his crops crushed. Advancing Israeli troops destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of tractors, water pumps and other equipment. The image provided here is the closest Mr. Subuh has been able to get to his land since the war began.
According to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, some 41 percent of the Gaza Strip is cropland. Of that land, it said some 68 percent has been damaged.
After decades of nourishing Gazans, the Subuh family now relies on humanitarian handouts at a displacement camp in central Gaza.
Mr. Subuh expects it would take years to extricate all the unexploded ordinances, replow his fields and ensure the earth is clean of toxic substances that may have seeped into the ground.
Sometimes he regrets not giving up farming sooner, like many Gazan farmers had in previous wars. Yet he mourns the potential end of his farm.
“I had a relationship with that land,” he said. “We had a history together, and I am heartbroken.”
Still, his daughter, Dina, refuses to give up: “I won’t lose my will to plant and care for this land again.”
GAZA CITY
74% of buildings have been likely damaged or destroyed.
Gaza City, the strip’s capital, is home to the ancient Old City, as well as Al-Rimal, a once-vibrant, upper-middle-class neighborhood. The war has torn through the area’s cultural and religious landmarks, including the oldest mosque in Gaza.
OLD CITY
Al-Omari Mosque, wrecked by the war, was the heart of the Old City. It had been a place of worship for thousands of years — evolving as the area’s rulers changed. The ruins of a Roman temple became the site of a Christian Byzantine church in the fifth century, then was repurposed into a mosque in the seventh century.
For Gazans, the unusual architecture of the mosque set it apart from other Muslim houses of worship.
In December, the mosque was all but destroyed in an airstrike by the Israeli military, which said the site had become a command center for Hamas, information that The Times could not independently verify. The strike toppled much of the mosque’s minaret and ruined most of its stone structure — including walls with carved Arabic inscriptions.
Ahmed Abu Sultan used to spend the last 10 days of Ramadan worshiping, sleeping and eating in Al-Omari Mosque. For him, the mosque had spiritual echoes of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a sacred site for Muslims.
“The atmosphere you feel in Jerusalem when you enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, you feel the same atmosphere when you enter the Al-Omari Mosque,” Mr. Abu Sultan said.
Seven months before the war began, he took two of his sons — then 8 and 9 years old — to spend a night at Al-Omari during Ramadan, with hopes of beginning an annual tradition. “I wanted to plant this connection in my children,” he said.
To mark another right of passage, generations of Gazans have passed through the Gold Market abutting the mosque.
Riyad Al-Masri, 29, grew up seeing his brother and other older male relatives shop for jewelry for their brides in the tiny shops under the arched ceilings.
Mr. Al-Masri and his wife, who have been living apart because of the war, had shopped at the market soon after they became engaged in February 2023. Presenting the bride with gold jewelry is a long-standing tradition in Palestinian wedding culture.
“These rituals, we all went through them,” he said. “My older brother, my father, my grandfathers, we would get engaged and then go to the Gold Market with our fiancées and buy what they wanted.”
What remain are shuttered doors and piles of debris.
AL-RIMAL
Al-Rimal was one of the first targets of Israeli airstrikes.
For decades, the neighborhood had been the center of commerce, trade, academia and entertainment in Gaza. On any given day, Gazans could be seen strolling through the Unknown Soldier Park, a welcome green space in the midst of a busy city.
Many Gazans who visited the park, along Omar Al-Mukhtar Street, could enjoy slushies in the summer or a warm custard drink in the winter from the nearby ice cream parlor, Qazim.
The park was a gathering place for rallies and protests. When past wars ended in a cease-fire deal, people celebrated there.
Now the park has been razed and bulldozed. The Palestine Bank tower, along with other buildings overlooking the square, has been gutted and damaged.
Not far away, the Rashaad Shawa center, which housed the oldest library in the Gaza Strip, has been severely damaged. The first cultural center in Gaza, it once stored the strip’s historical archives, passports and other documents of families who moved to the strip.
Opened in 1986 as a single meat spit, it had inspired restaurants from the north to the south. It was initially called “The People’s Cafeteria,” but it soon took on a different name after one of its owners, Ihsan Abdo, became known for dressing like “a sheikh” with a long robe and white turban.
Back in the 1950s, the neighborhood was mostly an empty, sandy expanse. Al-Rimal, which means sands in Arabic, was named for its terrain.
As nearby Gaza City areas began to get overcrowded, traders and businessmen started to buy land in Al-Rimal. There they built large homes and multistory buildings, bringing their trades with them into ground-floor shops and storefronts.
“These landmarks have memories and imprints in the heart of every person who came to Gaza,” said Husam Skeek, a community and tribal leader.
JABALIYA
81% of buildings have been likely damaged or destroyed.
The town of Jabaliya in the north, which had a role in one of the most pivotal moments of modern Palestinian history, has now become a byword for Gaza’s destruction.
As descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes in 1948, many in Jabaliya say this war has evoked a sense of transgenerational trauma. Some describe it as reliving the “Nakba,” or catastrophe: The loss of land, community, and above all, home.
Nowhere has that loss felt as potent as in Al-Trans, the heart of Jabaliya’s social life and its history as a place to protest every power that has controlled Gaza — from Israel to Hamas.
Al-Trans is one of the areas that has been decimated by several Israeli incursions into Jabaliya, where the Israeli military repeatedly used 2,000-pound bombs.
Israel says Jabaliya is a stronghold for Hamas and other militants responsible for the Oct. 7 attacks. After a strike near Al-Trans last October, the Israeli military told The Times that it had destroyed a “military fighting compound” and a tunnel that had been used by Hamas. But locals describe the extent of the destruction as collective punishment.
Named after the first electricity transmitter erected in the area, Al-Trans intersection stood at the center of Jabaliya — figuratively and geographically. This is where people went to shop for groceries, get their hair done, meet friends — and, perhaps most significantly, to protest.
“Jabaliya, and Al-Trans specifically, was a place of change,” said Fatima Hussein, 37, a journalist from the town. “Whenever we have confronted a regime or oppressive force — no matter what that force was — the movement started here.”
In 1987, protests against Israeli occupation that started in Al-Trans set off the First Intifada. Locals rebelled against their own leaders, too: The 2019 “We Want to Live” protests took off from Al-Trans, voicing growing popular anger over repressive Hamas rule.
“Our creativity, our awareness, it was born out of suffering,” said Ahmed Jawda, 30, a protest organizer born in Jabaliya. “Suffering makes you insist on living life.”
That creativity was present in local businesses like the Nahed Al-Assali furniture store. In an enclave struggling with poverty, Al-Assali became hugely successful by offering bargain prices and pay by installment.
“The secret of our success was taking people into consideration,” said Wissam, Nahed’s brother and business partner. “We went easy on people, especially with the price.”
Al-Assali was where newlyweds furnished their new home, and pilgrims purchased prayer rugs. Now it is a pile of charred concrete.
Gone, too, is the Rabaa Market and Cafe, where friends lingered for hours to gossip, and activists planned their protests. So is Abu Eskander Cafe, the local nut roastery, and the Syrian Kitchen, a restaurant so popular that locals simply called it “The Syrian.”
The loss of the landmarks that mapped Gazans’ most cherished memories makes the notion of rebuilding seem impossible to many.
The war has no end in sight. Even if it were to stop today, the cost of rebuilding Gaza would be staggering.
In the first eight months alone, a U.N. preliminary assessment said, the war created 39 million tons of rubble, containing unexploded bombs, asbestos, other hazardous substances and even human remains. In May, a World Bank report estimated it could take 80 years to rebuild the homes that have been destroyed.
But for Gazans, neither time nor money can replace all that has been lost.
If the trauma of previous generations of Palestinians was displacement, Mr. Jawda said, it is now also the feeling of an identity being erased: “Destroying a place destroys a part of who you are.”
Sources and methodology
The Times reviewed and verified user-generated videos that captured neighborhoods in Jabaliya, Gaza City and Khan Younis, posted from 2021 through 2023, before the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023. Reporters also reviewed footage taken in the same neighborhoods after the war to show what was damaged or destroyed.
The map animation of the Gaza Strip comes from analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University. The analysis identified all buildings that have likely been damaged since October 2023 using radar signals from passing satellites that measure changes in ground height.
The percentage of buildings likely damaged or destroyed displayed at the top of each section is based on analysis by Mr. Scher and Dr. Van Den Hoek for the boundaries of Khan Younis governorate, Gaza City governorate and Jabaliya municipality.
The neighborhood maps use Humanitarian OpenStreetMap data for building footprints. Structure damage estimates use data from the United Nations Satellite Centre and from the analysis by Mr. Scher and Dr. Van Den Hoek. In cases where verified video showed the damage was more severe than in the data, the neighborhood maps were updated accordingly.
Additional reporting by Aric Toler and Haley Willis.
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13) Israel Sends More Soldiers Into Lebanon
Israel added a fourth division to its forces entering the country and pounded the Hezbollah-dominated suburbs south of Beirut on Tuesday. The Iranian-backed group fired more than 100 rockets toward the Israeli city of Haifa.
By Gabby Sobelman and Euan Ward, October 8, 2024
Israel sent more troops into Lebanon on Tuesday and pounded the densely populated neighborhoods south of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. The midday airstrikes could be heard from miles away.
The bombardment followed the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel that set off the war in Gaza. Israel said in a statement on Tuesday that a fourth division of soldiers had begun operating in Lebanon.
The Israeli military said Hezbollah had fired “approximately 135 projectiles” as of 3 p.m. local time, most of which were intercepted. A home was hit north of Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city. It was the second time since Sunday that areas near Haifa were struck by Hezbollah rockets. No injuries were reported.
Hezbollah has been firing into Israel over the past year in support of Hamas, which, like Hezbollah, is backed by Iran. Last week, Israel sent ground troops into southern Lebanon to try to stop the attacks and eliminate the threat near its border.
Here is what else to know:
· Houthi arms talks: The Russian arms dealer Viktor A. Bout is trying to broker a deal with Houthi militants in Yemen, who are backed by Iran and have been attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, according to Western officials. The negotiations are continuing, but no deal has been completed and no arms have been transferred, the officials said.
· Lebanon deaths: More than 2,000 people have been killed and nearly 10,000 injured in Lebanon since the war in Gaza began last October, according to Lebanon’s ministry of health. Most of the deaths and injuries have occurred over the past three weeks. The World Health Organization said that Israeli attacks in Lebanon had killed at least 65 health workers and injured 40 others since Sept. 17.
· Retaliation on Iran: Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said on Monday that Israeli officials were debating when and where to attack Iran in retaliation for the missile barrage it fired at Israel last week. “It will happen,” he said.
· Gaza deaths: The Palestinian health authorities said the death toll over the past year had surpassed 41,900, with more than 97,590 people injured. Adding to the toll, Palestinian civil defense said on Tuesday that 12 people had been killed and several others injured in Israeli airstrikes on a home and tents housing displaced people in the Bureij area of central Gaza. The Israeli military said its troops were “eliminating terrorists” in the area.
Aryn Baker and Hiba Yazbek contributed reporting.
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14) Lead Drinking-Water Pipes Must Be Replaced Nationwide, E.P.A. Says
The “historic” rule aims to eliminate a major source of lead poisoning and comes a decade after a drinking-water crisis in Flint, Mich.
By Hiroko Tabuchi, Oct. 8, 2024
Lead, a neurotoxin, is particularly dangerous to children. A length of lead pipe being replaced in Newark in 2019. Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times
The Biden administration unveiled on Tuesday a landmark rule that would require water utilities to replace virtually every lead pipe in the country within 10 years, tackling a major source of a neurotoxin that is particularly dangerous to infants and children.
President Biden is scheduled to visit Wisconsin to tout the new policy, which is widely seen as popular in industrial Midwestern states that are expected to play a major role in deciding the presidential election next month. Replacing lead pipes nationwide could also create jobs. Vice President Kamala Harris has also called for replacing lead pipes, an issue especially important for underserved communities, a priority.
“The President understands the urgency of getting lead out of communities because he and Vice President Harris know that ensuring everyone has access to clean water is a moral imperative,” Michael S. Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said.
Lead poisoning can cause irreversible damage to the nervous system and the brain and poses a particular risk to infants and children, impairing their cognitive development and causing behavioral disorders. Service lines, the lead pipes that bring water into homes, are thought to be a major source of lead exposure for children. (Lead-based paint, sometimes found in older buildings, is another.)
The dangers of lead contamination came into sharp relief in Flint, Mich., a decade ago. A change in the water source in 2014, coupled with inadequate treatment and testing, caused high amounts of lead and Legionella bacteria to leach into the tap water of about 100,000 residents.
The new rule imposes the strictest limits on lead in drinking water since federal standards were first set decades ago. Utilities will be required to take stock of their lead pipes and replace them over the next 10 years. The measure replaces less stringent regulations, adopted during the Trump administration, on lead in drinking water.
The improvements will protect millions of Americans from exposure to lead, the E.P.A. said. The rule will also protect up to 900,000 infants from having low birth weight, and will prevent up to 200,000 I.Q. points lost among children, among other health benefits, the E.P.A. estimated.
“This rule is historic. It’s a game changer, said Mona Hanna, associate dean at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine and a local pediatrician whose research helped to expose the Flint water crisis. “We’ve been living too long on our great-grandparents’ infrastructure,” she said.
Favored for their malleability and durability, lead pipes were installed on a major scale from the late 1800s, particularly in large cities. When the plumbing corrodes, however, lead can leach into drinking water. The federal government banned lead pipe in new plumbing in 1986. But tens of millions of Americans are still thought to drink water from old systems with lead-contamination issues.
Digging up and replacing the nation’s lead pipes to address that health risk will be a colossal undertaking. The E.P.A. estimates that water utilities must replace about nine million lead pipes at a total cost of $20 billion to $30 billion over a decade. While much of that cost will fall to the utilities, and most likely their customers, $15 billion in federal funding is also available under the 2021 infrastructure law to help pay for the effort. On Tuesday, the E.P.A. announced $2.6 billion in new funding to support lead pipe replacement.
The rule was expected to face opposition from some utilities, which have cited rising costs, supply-chain problems, labor shortages and incomplete or missing building records as obstacles to the rapid replacement of lead pipes. Earlier this year, the group joined chemical companies to sue over rules requiring the cleanup of so-called forever chemicals linked to cancer and other health risks.
The new rule, which updates regulations under the 1991 Safe Drinking Water Act, also lowers the allowable amount of lead in the meantime to 10 parts per billion, from the current 15 parts per billion. If the water supply repeatedly exceeds the new threshold, utilities must make water filters available. Some public-health advocates had called for a lower standard of between zero and five parts per billion.
The rule also doesn’t require utilities to pay for the portion of lead lines that are on private property, including within a home. E.P.A. officials have expressed concerns that such a requirement would go beyond the agency’s legal authority.
However, environmental groups say that such an omission would shift the onus onto lower-income homeowners who may be unable to afford lead-pipe removal. Research has shown that Black, Latino and low-income neighborhoods are disproportionately more likely to receive contaminated water through a lead pipe.
People “who for many decades have already been disadvantaged, who live in communities that have lead pipes, lead paint, dirty air, and have suffered extra burdens” could get left behind, said Erik D. Olson, senior strategic director for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Nevertheless, he added, the policy was a big step forward.
The new rule allows some utilities with a particularly large number of lead service lines to go beyond the 10-year deadline. Under a draft version of the rule, Chicago, which has the most lead pipes in the nation, would have gotten as long as 50 years to remove them all. The final rule promises to shorten that timeline significantly.
Lead scares continue to pop up across the country. Earlier this year, testing in Syracuse, N.Y., found lead levels in the drinking water of some homes at many times the federal limit. Syracuse now plans to use state and federal financing to start replacing the approximately 14,000 service lines in the city, which expects to get to 2,400 of them next year.
“We’d been told for decades that our water was safe,” said Oceanna Fair, a retired nurse who found out a month ago that her home in Syracuse is serviced by lead pipes. Concerned for her grandchildren, whom she cares for during the day, she is now getting filters installed in her home.
She also looked into the cost of getting her pipes replaced: $10,000. “Most people can’t afford that,” she said. “We need help to ensure everyone gets safe and clean water.”
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15) Removing Books From Libraries Often Takes Debate. But There’s a Quieter Way.
Weeding, or culling old, damaged or outdated books, is standard practice in libraries. But in some cases it is being used to remove books because of the viewpoint they express.
By Elizabeth A. Harris, Oct. 8, 2024
Two lawsuits have recently taken up weeding. The practice allows librarians to keep collections current, but some have argued that it has been used in some instances to remove books for their content. Credit...Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press
Thousands of books have been removed from schools and libraries over the past several years, often accompanied by stormy public meetings and acrimonious debate. But there is a quieter way books have been pulled from libraries — a process called weeding.
The practice is standard for librarians, a regular part of keeping their collections current. Traditionally, weeding involves removing books that are damaged, out of date or haven’t been checked out in a long time. This makes room for new editions and titles that are of more interest to the community.
Now, three years into surge in challenges and removals of books from libraries, weeding is sometimes being used to remove books because of the viewpoint they express or the story they tell. The issue is now working its way through the court system.
Advocates say that, increasingly, administrators and library board officials are using this approach to avoid the public spectacle of formally pulling them because of their content.
“When you remove a book because you believe it’s critical race theory, or portrays L.G.B.T.Q. lives or because you believe it’s too vulgar,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, “that’s not weeding. That’s censorship.”
In recent years, the number of books that have been restricted or removed has surged around the country, fed in part by conservative organizations, lists of books that circulated on social media and state laws that have decided what kinds of books are appropriate for children.
Those in favor of restricting access to certain titles say they are trying to protect children from encountering difficult, inappropriate or sensitive topics while they are alone in the library, or at school without guidance from their parents. Those who oppose these restrictions say libraries should represent a wide range of viewpoints.
Usually, removing a book from a school or library because of its content requires a process. That can include extensive public notice and input as well as board meetings, which can get volatile and heated.
Weeding, on the other hand, is part of the day-to-day work of maintaining a collection. Librarians do this largely on their own, though most libraries have weeding policies and criteria to help guide the choices.
One common standard is called “MUSTIE,” which stands for Misleading, Ugly (damaged or worn out), Superseded (by a newer edition), Trivial, Irrelevant (to the community) and Elsewhere (meaning the material could easily be found someplace else).
The work is essential to keep collections in good shape. Caldwell-Stone of the library association said that librarians never know what they’re going to find when they go into a library’s book return drop box — and generally, they try to sort through it while wearing gloves. She was once told that a book was returned with a strip of bacon pressed between the pages as a book mark. That book, for example, had to go.
Two lawsuits have recently taken up the practice, and how it is being used.
According to a suit filed in federal court this year, officials in Nassau County, Florida removed or restricted access to 36 books in its public school library after members of an organization called Citizens Defending Freedom said they were inappropriate for children. County officials said they removed most of the books because they violated a state obscenity law.
Three of those books did not go through the usual process, according to Lauren Zimmerman, a partner at Selendy Gay, and one of the lawyers who filed the case. Instead, they were weeded. Among them was a picture book called “And Tango Makes Three,” about a penguin family with two penguin dads.
The district said it weeded its only copy of “Tango” because of a “lack of circulation,” the lawsuit said. But according to court documents, it had been checked out at least five times in the previous five years, while thousands of other books in the district’s public libraries that had not been checked out at all during that period were not removed.
The other weeded books were “Ghost Boys,” about racism in the United States, and “Almost Perfect,” a coming-of-age story about a high school romance involving a transgender student, according to the court documents.
The Nassau County case settled last month and all three books will go back on the shelves, along with 21 others. The remaining 12 books will be available for checkout to students who are at least 18 years old, or who have permission from their parents. A lawyer representing Nassau County did not respond to requests for comment.
“It took generations of work by countless individuals for books like ‘Tango’ to make it onto shelves of libraries,” said Justin Richardson, one of the authors of “And Tango makes Three,” who was a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “We’re simply not going to sit by and let them take them off.”
Another instance where weeding has landed in court is a case that began in Llano County, Tex. and is now in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. According to court documents, public library officials removed 17 books, including “Caste,” by Isabel Wilkerson, which is about race in the United States, and “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health,” by Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley, which has illustrations of sex and masturbation.
County officials said those books were weeded. Lawyers for Llano County have asked the court to reverse a 29-year-old precedent on the issue. They’ve argued that while none of these books were removed because of their content or viewpoint, library officials have the right to do so. Removing books is not a violation of patrons’ rights, the lawyers argued, because the government is not obligated to supply books in the first place. The government is not allowed to stop you from accessing books, but it doesn’t have to help.
This summer, a three-judge panel ruled, in a split decision, that books could not be removed based on their viewpoint. But a few weeks later, the Fifth Circuit made an unusual choice: It would rehear the case, this time in front of the full court. Oral arguments took place last month, and a decision is expected in several months.
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16) Biden’s Moral Failure in Israel
By Peter Beinart, Oct. 8, 2024
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Joe Biden’s presidency has a distinct origin story. As he tells it, he was done with politics, happily retired from public life. That changed after Donald Trump’s equivocal response to the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va. It was then that Mr. Biden realized that Mr. Trump and his allies threatened what he called the “soul of this nation”: its commitment to equality. So he re-entered the fray.
Ever since, Mr. Biden has argued that championing equality is the key to preserving American democracy at home and enhancing American influence abroad. He began a 2019 campaign announcement video by noting that Charlottesville was home to Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the words “all men are created equal.” In his acceptance speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, he claimed America’s “great purpose” was “to be a light to the world once again. To finally live up to and make real the words written in the sacred documents that founded this nation that all men and women are created equal.”
In his 2021 Inaugural Address, he described American history as a “constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, and demonization have long torn us apart.” He promised to make the United States once again a “beacon to the world.” Since taking office, the president has framed a commitment to equality as the answer not only to the rise of domestic white nationalism but also to the authoritarian powers who threaten democracy overseas.
This self-presentation now lies in ruin. Through his unwavering backing of Israel, Mr. Biden has effectively supported its unequal treatment and oppression of Palestinians—especially in Gaza—and undermined the ethical rationale for his presidency.
Domestically, Mr. Biden counterposed equality to his predecessor’s ethnonationalistic tendencies. Mr. Trump has repeatedly implied that Americans who aren’t white and Christian are not truly American. In 2016, he said that Gonzalo Curiel, a judge born in Indiana, could not rule fairly on civil lawsuits against Trump University because of his Mexican heritage, given Mr. Trump’s promises to build a wall between this country and Mexico. In 2019, Mr. Trump demanded that the four congresswomen of color who constitute the so-called Squad—three of whom were born in the United States—“go back” to the countries they were from. Mr. Biden, by contrast, declared in a May 2023 speech to Howard University’s graduating class that America was based on an idea—equal rights—“not religion, not ethnicity.” Throughout his presidency, Mr. Biden has depicted himself as defending that principle from authoritarian impulses both at home and abroad.
But Israel’s political system is explicitly based on religion and ethnicity. Its controversial 2018 nation-state bill declares that Jews alone can “exercise national self-determination.” Most of the Palestinians under Israeli control—those in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—can’t become citizens of the state that dominates their lives. A minority of Palestinians who live within Israel’s 1967 borders do enjoy citizenship and the right to vote. But when Arab Israeli politicians advanced a bill that would have made legal equality between Arab and Jewish citizens a foundation of Israeli law in 2018, the speaker of Israel’s parliament refused to allow a vote on it because it would “gnaw at the foundations of the state.”
As I have previously argued, there was a Zionist tradition that envisioned Jews living equally alongside Palestinians in a binational state—although many Americans now take for granted that Israel gives Jews legal supremacy.
But when it comes to Israel, Mr. Biden hasn’t supported equality under the law. The war in Gaza has made that contradiction impossible to ignore. It is most glaring when Biden expresses deep empathy for Israeli suffering but relative indifference to the far larger number of dead Palestinians, or when his administration seems to distinguish even between American citizens, showing more concern for those murdered by Hamas than for those killed by Israel’s military.
No wonder, according to a September survey by the Institute for Global Affairs, Democrats consider Mr. Biden’s policy on Gaza his greatest foreign policy failure. Young Americans are especially alienated by the chasm between Mr. Biden’s actions and his stated ideals. A March poll by Harvard’s Institute of Politics found that more than three-quarters of Americans under the age of 30 disapprove of his policy toward Israel’s war in Gaza.
Mr. Biden’s near-unconditional support for Israel’s actions has damaged his reputation overseas, as well. He has long claimed that the United States, unlike Russia and China, defends a “rules-based” order in which all countries, irrespective of their power, are bound by certain standards. That rhetoric reached a crescendo after Russia tried to overrun Kyiv in February 2022. At stake in Ukraine, Mr. Biden told a Polish audience the following month, was the choice “between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.” That September, Mr. Biden told the United Nations that members of the Security Council should “refrain from the use of the veto, except in rare, extraordinary situations.” It was another swipe at Moscow, which during Mr. Biden’s presidency had employed its veto seven times, and an effort to associate the United States with a fairer international order, in which even the most powerful nations cannot act with impunity. To strengthen those rules, the Biden administration in July of last year reportedly ordered the United States to share evidence on Kremlin officials that could help the International Criminal Court in its investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine.
Then came the Oct. 7 massacre and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza. In the war’s first seven months, the Biden administration vetoed four resolutions concerning Israel and Palestine. Mr. Biden denounced the I.C.C.’s chief prosecutor for requesting warrants for the arrests of Hamas and Israeli leaders. While Mr. Biden has warned against Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombing of Gaza and the loss of civilian life, he has also repeatedly reiterated his support of Israel and supplied the country with vast quantities of arms.
Whatever chance Mr. Biden had of convincing large numbers of foreigners that the United States believed that international law applies to all has now largely collapsed. Over the past year, according to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of people who trust Mr. Biden “to do the right thing regarding world affairs” has dropped by double digits in Britain, Japan, Australia, Spain and Sweden—all key allies in the great power struggle Mr. Biden is waging against Moscow and Beijing. Britons, Canadians and Italians have less faith in Mr. Biden today than they had in George W. Bush in 2003, the year he invaded Iraq.
Last month, in his final speech to the United Nations, Mr. Biden acknowledged that “many look at the world today and see difficulties and react with despair.” What he didn’t acknowledge is that for many who believe in the vision of equality Mr. Biden himself once outlined, he has contributed to that despair—by effectively treating Palestinians as lesser human beings, and by treating Israel as above international law.
A few days before Mr. Biden’s speech, the Gaza Health Ministry released a catalog of the names and ages of Palestinians killed in this war. According to The Guardian, the first 100 pages are composed entirely of the names of children who died under the age of 10. Their lives will need to be accounted for when historians gauge how Mr. Biden shaped the “soul of this nation.”
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