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Israel’s Genocide Day 404: Israel is committing ethnic cleansing, says Human Rights Watch
Casualties
· 43,736 + killed* and at least 103,370 wounded in the Gaza Strip, including 59% women, children and elderly, as of October 21, 2024.*
· 783+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
· 3,386 Lebanese killed and more than 14,417 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 890 Israeli soldiers and the injury of at least 5,065 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 November 14, 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 November 13, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on November 14, 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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It’s Movement Time
It’s movement time.
As the Trump presidency take shape, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. Disbelief meshes with despair, and some are quite frankly desolate.
Dry your tears, blow your noses, and join movements of resistance to this madness. Blacks in America have never known a time when resistance wasn’t necessary, including life under a Black president.
For centuries for generations, people have had to struggle for freedom, for respect, for justice. Why should this time be any different?
The ancestors, like the revered Frederick Douglass, lambasted Abraham Lincoln as a fool or coward who wouldn’t fight the civil war with thousands of willing Black troops. Said Douglass, “if there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Said Douglass, “Power concedes nothing without demand.”
So let us struggle. Let us build movements that lift our hearts. Let us remake our history with the brick and mortar of struggle.
—Prison Radio, November 21, 2016
https://www.prisonradio.org/commentary/it-is-movement-time/
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
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We need a united, independent, democratically organized mass movement for peace, justice and equality in solidarity with similar movements worldwide if we are to survive the death agony of capitalism and its inevitable descent into fascism and barbarism before it destroys the world altogether!
—Bonnie Weinstein
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On this Wrongful Conviction Day, Leonard Peltier, the longest-serving Indigenous political prisoner, is incarcerated in lockdown-modified operations conditions at USP Coleman I, operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Yet, in this moment of silence, Leonard speaks.
To honor his birthday and all those who are unjustly convicted and incarcerated, the Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee has released a video of Leonard Peltier that is going viral. Narrated by renowned scholar Ward Churchill and set to a video created by award-winning filmmaker Suzie Baer, the film most importantly centers Leonard’s personal reflection on his 80th year.
Jenipher Jones, Mr. Peltier's lead counsel, commented, "This powerfully moving film captures the essence of who I know Leonard to be. I am grateful to Professor Churchill and Suzie Baer for their work and longstanding advocacy of Leonard. As the recent execution of Marcellus Williams-Imam Khaliifah Williams shows us, we as a society bear a responsibility to uplift the cases of all those who are wrongfully convicted and also hold the government accountable to do that for which it professes to exist. We must challenge our impulses of blind blood-thirst for guilt and the use of our legal systems to carry out this malignant pathology. There is absolutely no lawful justification for Leonard's incarceration."
“Leonard Peltier is Native elder whose wrongful incarceration is shameful. His continued imprisonment exemplifies the historical cruelty of the US Government toward Native people. The US BOP's treatment of Leonard Peltier is unlawful, and he deserves his freedom.” —Suzie Baer
Leonard's Statement: Peltier 80th Statement.pdf:
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABHSRNdyB8SKn0I&id=DFF2DD874157D44A%21118178&cid=DFF2DD874157D44A&parId=root&parQt=sharedby&o=OneUp
To view the film, please visit:
https://tinyurl.com/Peltier80thPresentation
We hope to have additional updates on Leonard soon. In the meantime, please engage our calls to action or donate to his defense efforts.
Miigwech.
Donate/ActNow:
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Beneath The Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader (City Lights, 2024) is a collection of revolutionary essays, written by those who have been detained inside prison walls. Composed by the most structurally dispossessed people on earth, the prisoner class, these words illuminate the steps towards freedom.
Beneath the Mountain documents the struggle — beginning with slavery, genocide, and colonization up to our present day — and imagines a collective, anti-carceral future. These essays were handwritten first on scraps of paper, magazine covers, envelopes, toilet paper, or pages of bibles, scratched down with contraband pencils or the stubby cartridge of a ball-point pen; kites, careworn, copied and shared across tiers and now preserved in this collection for this and future generations. If they were dropped in the prison-controlled mail they were cloaked in prayers, navigating censorship and dustbins. They were very often smuggled out. These words mark resistance, fierce clarity, and speak to the hope of building the world we all deserve to live in.
"Beneath the Mountain reminds us that ancestors and rebels have resisted conquest and enslavement, building marronage against colonialism and genocide."
—Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency
Who stands beneath the mountain but prisoners of war? Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jennifer Black have assembled a book of fire, each voice a flame in captivity...Whether writing from a place of fugivity, the prison camp, the city jail, the modern gulag or death row, these are our revolutionary thinkers, our critics and dreamers, our people. The people who move mountains. —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Filled with insight and energy, this extraordinary book gifts us the opportunity to encounter people’s understanding of the fight for freedom from the inside out. —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag and Abolition Geography
These are the words each writer dreamed as they sought freedom and they need to be studied by people inside and read in every control unit/hole in every prison in America. We can send this book for you to anyone who you know who is currently living, struggling, and fighting
Who better to tell these stories than those who have lived them? Don’t be surprised with what you find within these pages: hope, solidarity, full faith towards the future, and most importantly, love.
Excerpt from the book:
"Revolutionary love speaks to the ways we protect, respect, and empower each other while standing up to state terror. Its presence is affirmed through these texts as a necessary component to help chase away fear and to encourage the solidarity and unity essential for organizing in dangerous times and places. Its absence portends tragedy. Revolutionary love does not stop the state from wanting to kill us, nor is it effective without strategy and tactics, but it is the might that fuels us to stand shoulder to shoulder with others regardless. Perhaps it can move mountains." —Jennifer Black & Mumia Abu-Jamal from the introduction to Beneath The Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader
Get the book at:
https://www.prisonradiostore.com/shop-2/beneath-the-mountain-an-anti-prison-reader-edited-by-mumia-abu-jamal-jennifer-black-city-lights-2024
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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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*Major Announcement*
Claudia De la Cruz wins
Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!
We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.
We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.
We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!
We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.
We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.
The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step:
Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer
Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate
See you in the streets,
Claudia & Karina
Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) Aid Deliveries to Gaza Remain Low Despite U.S. Warning to Israel
The Biden administration gave Israel 30 days to increase the flow of aid, warning that aid shipments into Gaza in September had reached an alarmingly low level.
By Liam Stack and Aaron Boxerman, Nov. 13, 2024
Liam Stack reported from Tel Aviv, and Aaron Boxerman from Jerusalem.
Tsafrir Abayov/Associated Press
Despite a U.S. deadline to allow more aid into Gaza, Israel was still letting significantly less food and supplies into the territory than in the months before the warning, according to official Israeli figures.
In an Oct. 13 letter signed by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, the Biden administration gave Israel 30 days to increase the flow of aid or face a possible cutoff in military assistance. It warned that aid shipments into Gaza in September had reached their lowest level at any time since the early months of the war.
More trucks began to enter Gaza in the past several weeks, and in the days before the American deadline, Israel announced a handful of policy changes. But the total amount of aid and commercial goods into Gaza since Oct. 13 has been substantially lower than what the Biden administration had demanded, and far lower than it was even in September.
Despite that, the Biden administration said on Tuesday it did not plan to follow through on its threat to cut military assistance after the deadline expired.
Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, said on Tuesday that Israel had instituted important changes but that “there needs to be more progress.” He added that the administration had not assessed Israel to be in violation of U.S. law.
The sharp decline in the entry of food, medical supplies and other necessities coincided with an Israeli decision in early October to block commerce into the territory, arguing that Hamas was profiting off the trade. Israel recently launched a major offensive against Hamas in North Gaza that has driven tens of thousands from their homes.
Israeli officials say they do not restrict the amount of humanitarian aid that can enter Gaza and argue that aid agencies should be doing more. But the Israeli decision to bar commercial goods was a blow.
According to data made publicly available by the Israeli military, the amount of what it calls “humanitarian goods” entering Gaza — including donated aid and commercial goods sold in markets — fell to 52,000 metric tons from Oct. 1 through Nov. 10 from about 87,000 metric tons in the month of September.
“Things were looking much better,” said Muhannad Hadi, a top United Nations relief official in Jerusalem. “But now, suddenly, everything has collapsed.”
A United Nations-backed panel warned last week that famine was imminent in the northern Gaza Strip, saying that 13 months of war had created “an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine” because of the “rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip.” Israel has criticized that report as based on “partial, biased data and superficial sources.”
Before Israel’s latest offensive in the north, Gazans across the enclave had begun to see nearly forgotten luxuries like fresh fruit and frozen chicken appear in local markets, albeit at inflated prices, mostly imported by businessmen in Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Ayed Abu Ramadan, who leads the Gaza Chamber of Commerce, recalled that a pound of apples could cost as little as $1.60 in late September. But when Israel halted the flow of commercial goods, the markets quickly emptied.
“Now, almost nothing is left,” he said. “And anything that remains is mind-bogglingly expensive.”
Israel has not offered a public explanation for the ban on commercial goods. But an Israeli official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity to comply with Israeli policy, said the authorities banned trade with Gaza because Hamas had been making money by extorting Palestinian importers. Hamas has denied those claims in the past.
Israel has decimated Hamas’s rule in Gaza, but Israel’s soldiers do not enforce law and order. As the price of goods has skyrocketed, so has the profit to be made by pillaging aid convoys, with trucks that ferry valuable commodities emerging as a key target for organized gangs, according to Israeli officials, aid organizations and Gazan civilians and businessmen.
Israeli forces sometimes target Hamas militants seeking to divert aid, but they do not conduct military operations against criminal gangs, the Israeli official said.
Izzat Aqel, a Gazan businessman with a trucking company, said his drivers were increasingly unwilling to work the perilous routes. This month, one of his convoys in southern Gaza was attacked by armed men who shot out the wheels of the vehicles, forcing them to grind to a halt, before stripping them of their aid, he said.
With no way forward, what little aid has entered the Gaza Strip is often stuck at crossings into the enclave.
Aid officials and many donor governments, among them the United States, have blamed Israel for putting up obstacles to providing aid, including by blocking essential items and imposing a byzantine assortment of security restrictions at nearly every stage of the process. Delays have also come from Egypt, where some of the aid is collected before being sent on to Gaza.
In a statement last month, the Israeli military said it “does not restrict the entry of civilian supplies” into Gaza, but requires permits for items that it considers “dual use,” civilian products and supplies that it says can also be used for military purposes, “given Hamas’s deliberate diversion of such goods from civilian to military applications.”
In its Oct. 13 letter, the Biden administration asked Israel to take 16 concrete steps in Gaza, including enabling the entry of at least 350 aid trucks per day. It also called for Israel to remove restrictions, including rules about what kinds of trucks can be used to deliver aid and what items are considered dual use; and to ensure that humanitarian groups have “continuous access” to northern Gaza.
Mr. Blinken and Mr. Austin wrote that Israel had managed to facilitate the vaccination of more than 560,000 children in Gaza against polio. Israeli had “recently demonstrated,” it said, “what is possible and necessary to ensure” civilians receive assistance.
Israel had fulfilled some of the American demands, including opening a new border crossing at Kissufim, in central Gaza, on Tuesday for the first time since 2005. It also expanded an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in central Gaza, another U.S. stipulation meant to allow displaced Gazans sheltering there to move farther inland ahead of the rainy winter.
Israel has also admitted some convoys into northern Gaza, including what the military agency overseeing the aid effort said was hundreds of food and water packages on Tuesday.
But Israel’s military still tightly restricts access to northern Gaza, citing the continuing fighting. The Israeli official also said that Israel would not immediately comply with other requests, such as easing restrictions on what trucks can be used, citing security reasons. According to Israeli military data, 1,789 trucks were let into Gaza in October and 961 in the first 10 days of November.
“Continuous access” to the north has not been permitted, and the areas most affected by the fighting have been off-limits to aid workers for weeks, Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the main U.N. agency that assists Palestinians, UNRWA, said last week.
According to an internal U.N. report compiled last week, meat, fish and fruit are now largely unavailable in Gaza. The vegetables available were on sale for extremely high prices: The price of cucumbers has risen 650 percent since the start of the war, the price of tomatoes by 2,900 percent and the price of onions by 4,900 percent.
In interviews, Gazans said they struggled with a lack of goods, but also with the runaway inflation, for which they blamed unscrupulous businessmen and armed gangs.
“We are sitting here day after day just waiting on those trucks,” said Taghreed al-Barawi, 31, who lives in the southern city of Khan Younis. “People say they are on their way.”
Bilal Shbair contributed reporting from Deir al Balah in Gaza, and Lauren Leatherby from London.
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2) Gaza Militants Release Video of Israeli Russian Hostage
It was the first sign of Sasha Troufanov since May, when the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group posted two videos of him. His family pressed for the release of all the hostages in Gaza.
By Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Jerusalem, Nov. 13, 2024
A photo of Sasha Troufanov displayed at a demonstration in Jerusalem last month calling for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip. Credit...Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A militant group in Gaza released a video on Wednesday showing Sasha Troufanov, an Israeli Russian dual citizen who has been held hostage since the Hamas-led attack on Israel 13 months ago.
It was the first video of Mr. Troufanov since Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second most powerful militant group in Gaza after Hamas, released two videos of him in May. It was not clear when the video was filmed, but in it he refers to having been held in Gaza for a year. He also says he is 28, an indication that it was shot before Nov. 11, his 29th birthday.
The release of the video brought some renewed attention to the plight of the dozens of hostages still believed to be alive in Gaza, who have endured more than a year of war in captivity.
In the video, Mr. Troufanov appears weary, with an untrimmed beard and bags under his eyes. He speaks of a lack of food and water.
His mother, Lena Troufanov, responded to the video with alarm.
“I am relieved to see my son alive, but I am very worried to hear what he is saying,” she said in a statement shared by an Israeli hostage families support group. “I urge that every effort be made to secure his immediate release and that of all other hostages. They have no time left.”
Rights groups and international law experts say that a hostage video is, by definition, made under duress, and that the statements in it are usually coerced. Israeli officials have called the videos of hostages periodically released by Hamas and Islamic Jihad during the war as a form of “psychological warfare,” and experts say their production can constitute a war crime.
Last month, Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, told Russia Today that Hamas would give “priority” to Mr. Troufanov’s release in any exchange of hostages and Palestinian prisoners, “in honor” of President Vladimir Putin of Russia. He said Hamas had spoken to Islamic Jihad about Mr. Troufanov.
During the Hamas-led attack in October 2023 that set off the war in Gaza, Mr. Troufanov, his mother, his grandmother, and his girlfriend were taken captive and his father was killed. The three women were released weeks later during a short-lived cease-fire.
Last week, Sapir Cohen, Mr. Troufanov’s girlfriend, urged President-elect Donald J. Trump to help secure the release of those still held captive in Gaza. “I’m begging you, ensure that rescuing these hostages remains a top priority,” Ms. Cohen said.
Talks aimed at achieving a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of hostages have been deadlocked for months, with Israel and Hamas staking out irreconcilable positions. Any substantial progress on a cease-fire will most likely be delayed until after Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January, analysts said.
Hamas has long insisted on a permanent end to the war and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza before releasing any more hostages. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has vowed to continue fighting until Hamas’s destruction in Gaza, and has suggested Israeli forces would have to remain in parts of the enclave during any cease-fire.
Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly changed his conditions for a deal, and his critics in Israel have accused him of prioritizing his political survival over freeing the hostages. Allies in his hard-line governing coalition have called for indefinite Israeli rule in Gaza, and have opposed truce proposals that would have ended the military offensive against Hamas.
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3) Teixeira Is Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison
The disclosures that Jack Teixeira shared on a social media platform raised questions over how a relatively low-ranking Air National Guardsman had access to some of the country’s most sensitive secrets.
By Maya Shwayder and Eileen Sullivan, Nov. 12, 2024
Maya Shwayder reported from Boston, and Eileen Sullivan from Washington.
Jack Teixeira, in an undated photo posted to social media.
Jack Teixeira, a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of sharing classified government records online, was sentenced on Tuesday to 15 years in prison for one of the most damaging national security leaks in history.
“You are young and you have a future ahead of you, but it is such a serious crime,” the judge, Indira Talwani of Federal District Court in Massachusetts, told Airman Teixeira, who is 22.
The sentencing brings to an end a case that raised questions over how easily a relatively low-level member of the guard had obtained a top-secret clearance that gave him access to some of the country’s most sensitive secrets.
Airman Teixeira, who served as an information technology specialist at an air base on Cape Cod, shared the classified material that he had obtained on Discord, a social media platform popular among gamers. At one point, he acknowledged he had disclosed material that “I’m not supposed to.”
Among Airman Teixeira’s disclosures were details about supplying equipment to Ukraine, including how it would be transported and used. He posted a report on Russian and Ukrainian troop movements that American officials said might have compromised how the United States gathers intelligence.
Shortly before his arrest, a friend told him that some of the disclosures were being shared on a pro-Russian Telegram channel, according to court documents. Airman Teixeira then asked his contact to delete his messages.
An assistant U.S. attorney, arguing that the airman face a term of just under 17 years, pointed to the fallout of the leak. “The damage he caused is historic,” the prosecutor, Jared Dolan, said, later adding, “His conduct and his offenses are unparalleled in breadth, in depth and in quality of the information.”
Airman Teixeira’s lawyer, Michael K. Bachrach, asserted that the sentence should be 11 years, saying that a longer sentence inflicted considerable harm to someone as young as his client. His client, he added, had autism, which contributed to poor decision making.
The airman apologized for the wide-ranging leak. “I’m sorry for all the harm that I’ve wrought and that I’ve caused,” he said. “I understand all the responsibility and consequences falls on my shoulders alone. And I accept whatever that may bring.”
As he left the courtroom, he nodded to his family and said, “See you later.”
Airman Teixeira was arrested at his mother’s house in North Dighton, Mass., in April 2023. He has been held without bail since.
After initially pleading not guilty, Airman Teixeira switched course in March and agreed to plead guilty to six counts of “willful retention and transmission of national defense information” under the Espionage Act.
Airman Teixeira’s lawyers argued that an expert diagnosed him with a type of autism, a condition that they said caused him to make poor decisions, like sharing classified information online.
Mr. Bachrach said his client shared sensitive details with his online friends because he did not have a similar community at work.
The argument did not sway the judge or the prosecution.
Judge Talwani said that the airman’s inability to make friends “doesn’t minimize the offense of taking this information and putting it on the web.”
Mr. Dolan contended that Airman Teixeira had acted of his own volition, recognizing that he was disseminating classified information.
“The defendant understood what he was doing was wrong,” Mr. Dolan said. “He had the ability to make a different choice.” Mr. Dolan’s boss, Joshua Levy, the U.S. attorney for the district of Massachusetts, said the extent of Airman Teixeira’s damage would not be clear for several years.
According to a New York Times investigation of more than 9,500 of his messages, Airman Teixeira was particularly fixated on weapons, mass shootings and conspiracy theories. He routinely displayed disdain toward the government, accusing it of a number of nefarious activities, including by orchestrating mass shootings.
Prosecutors have said that they found no evidence that Airman Teixeira was engaged in espionage, making his case different from traditional spying cases. Instead, he posted the information to feed his ego and impress anonymous friends, they said.
They compared Airman Teixeira’s case with that of a former C.I.A. computer engineer who stole classified information and shared it with WikiLeaks. He was sentenced in February to 40 years in prison.
Mr. Dolan said the airman’s actions should serve as a “cautionary tale for the men and women of the U.S. government and clearance holders.”
He added, “They will be told this is what happens if you betray your promise.”
His family and lawyers blamed a “lackadaisical work atmosphere” on his ability to retrieve and post some of the government’s most closely held secrets.
“This behavior is explained by his autism,” Mr. Bachrach said in court. “And it is also explained by his lack of appropriate supervision.”
Since Airman Teixeira’s arrest, the Defense Department has taken steps to prevent a similar breach in the future, including tightening the controls on who has access to classified information.
“The department is confident that the appropriate steps have been taken to mitigate additional leaks,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday.
Airman Teixeira is set to face a military court-martial in the spring, which could determine whether he is dishonorably discharged from the Air National Guard or faces additional punishments.
John Ismay and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
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4) Israeli Right, Pushing to Annex West Bank, Sees Allies in Trump’s Picks
Arab Americans and liberal Jewish voters, however, have ample reason to fear the naming of pro-settlement, pro-Netanyahu officials to top foreign policy posts in the new administration.
By Jonathan Weisman, Nov. 14, 2024
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, whom President-elect Donald J. Trump has picked as secretary of state, is staunchly pro-Israel and aligned squarely behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s emerging team in the Middle East appears poised to push U.S. foreign policy into even tighter accord with Israel’s far-right government, challenging the marriage of convenience Mr. Trump struck with Muslim voters and potentially straining relations between Israeli and American Jews to a breaking point.
The choice of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as secretary of state, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York as ambassador to the United Nations, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas as ambassador to Israel and Steven C. Witkoff, a real estate developer and golfing buddy of Mr. Trump’s, as special envoy to the Middle East has delighted the president-elect’s most hawkishly pro-Israel backers.
Matt Brooks, the longtime chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, called the nominees “a true dream team for those who care about a strong, vibrant, unshakable U.S.-Israel relationship.”
But Mr. Trump’s foreign policy picks have dismayed liberal Jews and Arab Americans alike, including Arab and Muslim voters who sided with Mr. Trump as a rebuke to the Biden administration’s support of Israel in its war in Gaza. Some Muslim supporters, such as Rabiul Chowdhury, a founder of Muslims for Trump, said they had been led to believe that the man leading the outreach to them, Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Germany and onetime acting intelligence chief, would be made secretary of state.
Samraa Luqman, an environmental justice activist in Dearborn, Mich., and a co-chair of the Abandon Harris campaign among Arab American voters, said she still believed “anything is better” than the Biden administration officials who “led us into a downward spiral in the last year or so.” But she conceded, “I’m not thrilled about the appointments of war hawks and neo-cons, and have been very vocal about my support for Ambassador Richard Grenell to become the next secretary of state.”
Mr. Grenell did not respond to a request for comment.
Layla Elabed, a founder of Uncommitted, a Palestinian-rights group that initially broke with Democrats and then just weeks before Election Day declared that another Trump presidency would be worse than a Kamala Harris one, said she was not surprised by what she likened to a bait-and-switch.
“Trump’s team lied to a community in anger and despair?” she asked ironically. “Isn’t that his whole thing?”
There can be little doubt how Mr. Trump’s nominees would steer American policy in the region.
Mr. Rubio, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is staunchly pro-Israel and aligned squarely behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In May, as President Biden was publicly pressuring Israel not to send its troops into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Mr. Rubio compared that choice to Allied forces stopping short of Berlin during World War II.
“We know Adolf Hitler’s in a bunker. We know that he has a gun in his mouth. We know that, but don’t go in after Hitler, don’t go destroy Berlin, don’t go in,” he said on Fox News radio, mocking the administration’s calls for restraint. “That’s what they’re basically asking Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israelis to do.”
Ms. Stefanik has led Republican attacks on university presidents over antisemitism on campuses where pro-Palestinian protests flourished after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel started the continuing wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
Mr. Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who has frequently visited Israel, has said that its government has every right to annex the occupied West Bank, though the Palestinians have demanded that land for a future state and much of the world treats Israeli settlements there as illegal under international law.
“There is no such thing as the West Bank — it’s Judea and Samaria,” Mr. Huckabee has said, using the biblical names for the territory. “There is no such thing as settlements — they’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There is no such thing as an occupation.”
In 2008, Mr. Huckabee even rejected the idea that Palestinian was a distinct Arab identity, instead arguing that the term was a “political tool to try to force land away from Israel.”
Mr. Witkoff, who served as a liaison for Mr. Trump to the Jewish business community during the campaign, has praised Mr. Netanyahu and castigated Democrats who have given the prime minister a cold shoulder. He expressed disgust for the dozens of Democrats who skipped Mr. Netanyahu’s address to Congress in July.
For good measure, John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s pick to direct the Central Intelligence Agency, recently went on Fox News to praise Israel for putting its foot on the throat of Iran and its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. “We should be assisting Israel in doing so,” he said.
The new team can expect support among Jewish Republicans and the most stalwart defenders of Israel. Mr. Brooks noted that the Biden administration had, at times, tried to pressure Israel to curtail its attacks in Gaza by threatening to withhold arms and aid, and by “creating daylight between the U.S. and Israel.”
“Under the Trump team,” he said, “there will be no daylight, and Israel will be fully supported to do what it needs to do to eliminate Hamas and Hezbollah and curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions and support of terror proxies.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish-led human rights group and an outspoken critic of “anti-Zionism,” congratulated Mr. Huckabee on his selection, advising, “It’s critical that the president’s envoy ensure stalwart U.S.-Israel relations.”
But a majority of American Jews voted once again against Mr. Trump, and liberal Jews reacted with dismay to his choices. Exit polls found that between 66 percent and 78 percent of Jewish voters cast their ballots for Ms. Harris, in line with or considerably higher than the last three presidential elections.
Mr. Trump and his campaign tried hard to use his ardent support for Israel and his accusations of antisemitism within the Democratic Party to peel off Jewish support — though he may well have hurt his cause when he said that Jews would be to blame if he lost.
But as in past years, Jewish voters largely proved more concerned with other issues, including the threat that another Trump term could pose to democratic pluralism and to the position of Jews within an intolerant state, said Amy Spitalnick, the chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
American Jews were repelled, Ms. Spitalnick said, by the idea of “a broader white Christian nationalism backing Trump that would undermine separation of church and state and roll back policies that have made Jews safe.”
Most American Jews also still support a long-term peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, for which Palestinian sovereignty has long been seen by many as a prerequisite. For those Jews, the Trump team and its consequences could herald a reckoning, as they weigh their love for the world’s only Jewish state with an aversion to policies that could destroy any remaining hope of a two-state solution.
Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right minister in the Netanyahu cabinet, said on Monday that Mr. Trump’s election meant 2025 would be the year for Israel to begin annexing the West Bank.
“I intend, with God’s help, to lead a government decision that says that the government of Israel will work with the new administration of President Trump and the international community to apply Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria,” he said.
If, with Mr. Trump’s assent, the Israeli right makes good on threats to annex large parts of the West Bank, to return settlers to Gaza and to begin to evict Palestinians, American and Israeli Jews could be driven apart irrevocably, said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal Zionist group J Street.
“There’s a big, big philosophical question brewing here, a generational question about the concept of Jewish unity,” Mr. Ben-Ami said. The coming years, he added, could herald “a fundamental break between the threads of international Judaism.”
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5) A Big Climate Goal Is Getting Further Out of Reach
A new report forecasts global temperature increases well above the level that world leaders have pledged to avoid.
By Brad Plumer and Mira Rojanasakul, Nov. 14, 2024
The Ilulissat Icefjord in Greenland in July. Climate change is melting the country’s immense ice sheet. Credit...Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Countries have made scant progress in curbing their greenhouse gas emissions over the past year, keeping the planet on track for dangerous levels of warming this century, according to a new report published Thursday.
The report by the Climate Action Tracker, a research group, estimates that the climate and energy policies currently pursued by governments around the world would cause global temperatures to rise roughly 2.7 degrees Celsius, or 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by 2100.
That estimate of future warming has barely budged for three years now, the group said.
“We are clearly failing to bend the curve,” said Sofia Gonzales-Zuñiga, a climate policy specialist at Climate Analytics, a science and policy organization, and a lead author of the report. “As the world edges closer to these dangerous climate thresholds, the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes ever more urgent.”
The study was issued during the United Nations climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, where diplomats and world leaders have gathered to discuss how to raise trillions of dollars to cope with rising global temperatures.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, world leaders had pledged to hold total global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably closer to 1.5 degrees Celsius, to limit the risks from climate catastrophes. Scientists have said that every fraction of a degree of warming brings greater risks from deadly heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction.
That more stringent target looks increasingly out of reach.
Every year, Climate Action Tracker scrutinizes all the climate policies that countries have enacted worldwide, such as regulations to curb pollution from power plants or to improve the efficiency of cars. They then estimate the effect of these policies on future greenhouse gas emissions and calculate how much of a temperature increase the world can expect.
Over the past three years, the United States has enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, which is expected to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into low-carbon technologies like wind, solar and nuclear energy, and carbon capture technology. China has been selling record numbers of electric vehicles. The European Union has ramped up its targets for renewable energy and heat pumps.
Yet the world is still heading for significant warming because global energy demand is growing faster than clean energy is expanding, which means fossil fuel use has been rising to fill the gap.
“Rising emissions while renewables boom is not a paradox,” said Niklas Höhne, a scientist with NewClimate Institute, which partners with Climate Action Tracker. “In recent years fossil fuels won the race against renewables, leading to increasing emissions.”
As part of global climate talks, many countries have formally pledged to zero out their emissions by around midcentury. If governments followed through, warming might be limited to roughly 2.1 degrees Celsius, the report said. But many countries have not backed up those lofty promises with concrete action.
Climate Action Tracker also tried to estimate the potential effects of Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House. He has promised to slash support for clean energy and electric vehicles while dismantling environmental regulations.
The authors calculated that a complete rollback of U.S. climate policies might add as much as a few tenths of a degree of warming by 2100. The effect would be relatively limited, in part because the United States accounts for just 13 percent of global emissions today.
On the other hand, if the Trump administration’s actions led other countries to weaken or abandon their climate policies, the effect might be far greater.
The study also calculated what countries would need to do to hold total warming closer to a long-term average of 1.5 degrees Celsius, as leaders have pledged. The United States would need to slash its emissions roughly 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2035. China would need to cut its emissions by two-thirds over the same time frame. India, Europe, Brazil, Japan and Australia would all have to make deeper cuts than they are currently planning.
This year, Earth will already be 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than preindustrial levels, at least temporarily. At the climate talks in Baku, many world leaders have been reluctant to acknowledge that the world is overwhelmingly likely to exceed that threshold in the years ahead.
But some scientists have been speaking out.
“It is always possible to find arguments to make 1.5°C forever possible, but they increasingly diverge from reality,” wrote Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, in a paper published this week. “It is time to admit that the world will cross 1.5°C.”
At the same time, Dr. Peters wrote, crossing that threshold “does not mean the world has failed.” Scientists have said that climate change risks increase with every fraction of a degree, so it will always be worthwhile to cut emissions as quickly as feasible to prevent further warming. But, he added, focusing on an unrealistic temperature limit “is no longer useful.”
“Crossing 1.5°C is not a time to give up,” he wrote, “but a time to acknowledge our failures and find a new hope moving forward.”
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6) Investigators Assess if Netanyahu’s Aides Forged Oct. 7 Phone Records
Aides to Benjamin Netanyahu are under investigation over accusations of leaks, record-doctoring and intimidation. The Israeli prime minister’s office denies the claims.
By Patrick Kingsley and Ronen Bergman, Nov. 14, 2024
Patrick Kingsley reported from Jerusalem, and Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv.
The inquiry is seen as sensitive in Israel, where the question of what the prime minister knew in advance of Hamas’s invasion could prove crucial to his political future. Credit...Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press
On the morning that Hamas raided Israel last year, a top Israeli general called his prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to tell him that hundreds of militants appeared to be preparing to invade.
Now, aides to the prime minister are under investigation for altering details about that call in the official record of Mr. Netanyahu’s activities that day, according to four officials briefed on the investigation.
The investigation is seen as deeply sensitive in Israel, where the question of what Mr. Netanyahu knew in advance of Hamas’s invasion, and when he was told, could prove crucial to his political future. It is expected to play a key part in a postwar assessment of the role political and military leaders may have played in one of the worst military failures in Israel’s history.
The accusation is just one of several leveled at Mr. Netanyahu’s aides in recent weeks. While Mr. Netanyahu himself is not a subject of a police inquiry, officials in his office are under investigation for trying to bolster his reputation throughout Israel’s war with Hamas by leaking classified military documents, altering official transcripts of his conversations and intimidating people who controlled access to those records.
Though disparate and complex, the cases have helped foster the impression among Mr. Netanyahu’s critics that his team has used illicit means to improve how he is perceived, at the expense of either the truth or national security, or both. Mr. Netanyahu and his office have denied the accusations, countering that it is his accusers who, by spreading falsehoods, have undermined Israel at a time of national peril.
The full extent of the new claims has not been revealed because most of them are subject to a gag order. Officials who told The New York Times about the investigations did so on the condition of anonymity because they were barred from speaking publicly about the matter.
Case 1: Phone records
On the day that Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the prime minister spoke frequently by phone with senior security officials, including with his military secretary, Maj. Gen. Avi Gil.
Police officers are assessing if aides to the prime minister secretly changed the records of those phone calls, according to the four officials briefed on the investigation.
The investigation began after General Gil, who left his post in May, complained in writing to the attorney general that the official transcripts of the calls he had that morning with the prime minister appeared to have been altered, the officials said. General Gil said in his complaint that a senior aide to the prime minister had forced one of the transcribers to doctor the transcripts, the officials said.
In one of the conversations early on Oct. 7, General Gil told the prime minister that hundreds of Hamas operatives had started behaving in a way that suggested that they may be about to invade Israel, according to three officials briefed on the investigation. The timing of that call is one of the details that is said to have been changed in the official transcripts.
The content and timing of these calls are important because they could help shape the way that Mr. Netanyahu is seen by both voters and historians.
For more than a year, Mr. Netanyahu has denied being briefed in advance about the invasion. He has avoided setting up a state inquiry to assess the culpability of Israel’s military and political leaders, including himself.
Case 2: An embarrassing video
The forgery case has been compounded by fears that an aide to Mr. Netanyahu intimidated a military officer who controlled access to the phone records, according to four officials briefed on the incident.
The officer was filmed on a security camera installed in the prime minister’s headquarters committing an act that could cause him personal embarrassment, the officials said.
After the incident, a senior aide to the prime minister approached the officer and told him that he had obtained a video of the embarrassing act, the officials said. The senior aide was the same person accused of ordering the transcriber to tamper with the records of Mr. Netanyahu’s conversations, according to the officials.
The officer told his commanders about the approach, saying that he feared that the aide might use the video to blackmail him in the future, the officials said.
Case 3: A leaked document
Mr. Netanyahu’s aides are also accused of secretly giving a sensitive document to a foreign news outlet, according to six officials briefed on the case.
The document was published in early September, as Mr. Netanyahu came under pressure from large parts of Israeli society to agree to a cease-fire deal with Hamas that would allow for the release of dozens of hostages held by the group.
Mr. Netanyahu argued against a truce, saying that the terms of the deal would allow Hamas to regroup. His stance infuriated many of the hostages’ families, who argued that he had forsaken the captives in favor of far-right lawmakers who had threatened to collapse his coalition if he agreed to a truce.
To bolster his position on Sep. 8, Mr. Netanyahu made a statement at his weekly cabinet meeting citing an article published days earlier in Bild, a German tabloid.
The article was an account of a memorandum, written by a Hamas intelligence officer and later obtained by the Israeli military, that had been leaked to the newspaper.
Bild said the document showed that Hamas sought to manipulate the hostage families into persuading Mr. Netanyahu to compromise in the truce talks and agree to terms less favorable to Israel. Mr. Netanyahu cited Bild’s reporting to argue that Hamas sought to “sow discord among us, to use psychological warfare on the hostages’ families.”
Investigators are examining if Mr. Netanyahu was citing a document that his own aides had leaked, the officials said. But there is no suggestion that Mr. Netanyahu is under investigation himself or that he has been questioned.
Why the leak is being investigated
Israeli officials often give documents to reporters, but the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, is examining this particular leak because the document was taken from a highly classified military intelligence database, according to the six officials briefed on the case. One of Mr. Netanyahu’s aides, Eli Feldstein, has been arrested as part of the investigation, along with four unnamed officers accused of helping to procure the document. All five were detained through a rare legal provision only intended for use in cases in which there are extreme threats to national security.
Mr. Feldstein’s lawyer declined to comment.
The Shin Bet is not investigating a separate article, published in early September in the Jewish Chronicle, a London-based newspaper, that also bolstered Mr. Netanyahu’s narrative, according to four of the officials. That article, which The Chronicle has since retracted, is thought to have been completely fabricated instead of being based on a leaked document, the officials said. It is therefore not considered a security threat worthy of investigation, the officials said.
The investigation into the document leaked to Bild is focused on why officials without full security clearance, like Mr. Feldstein, were allowed to access such a classified document, how such a sensitive document found its way to the press and whether the leak compromised a method by which Israel gathers intelligence. By publicizing the fact that Israel had obtained this document, the leak risked revealing to Hamas that Israel had gained access to a particular stream of information that the group may have previously believed was secure.
While the content of the Bild article is not the focus of the investigation, military leaders are privately frustrated at how the document appears to have been presented by the prime minister’s office to Bild, the officials said.
The newspaper said the document reflected the position of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s hard-line leader in Gaza until his killing in October. But defense officials say that the document was most likely never seen by Mr. Sinwar and that, either way, it suggested that Hamas was willing to show more flexibility in the negotiations than Mr. Netanyahu had acknowledged in public.
Asked for comment, Bild declined to say who had given it the document. The Shin Bet and the police did not respond to requests for comment.
Why the claims have angered some Israelis
To the prime minister’s opponents, the accusations foster the impression that Mr. Netanyahu’s team has used underhanded means to distract from his failures. Critics argue that his aides have prioritized his own political survival, at a time when he should have been singularly focused on the country’s defense.
That impression has been boosted by the fact that Mr. Netanyahu has for years refused to resign despite standing trial for bribery and fraud. To opponents, that refusal suggests he cares more about his own fate than the country’s stability. To Mr. Netanyahu and his allies, the trial is a spurious attempt to overthrow an elected leader.
Mr. Netanyahu’s response
The prime minister’s reaction to the new investigation echoes how he has approached his trial.
He and his office have issued several statements rebutting the accusations, portraying them as a witch hunt.
“As with the previous attempts to inflate accusations against the Prime Minister and those around him, the present matter will also not yield anything whatsoever, but will certainly lead to difficult questions regarding arbitrary enforcement,” his office said in a statement.
Days later, the bureau issued an even stronger response, denouncing the detentions of people under investigation and saying that, “In a democratic country, people are not detained in solitary confinement for 20 days — without access to a lawyer for extended periods — simply to extract false statements against the prime minister.”
Myra Noveck contributed reporting.
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7) Israel Strikes Humanitarian Zone in Gaza
The Israeli military said it had been targeting a loaded weapons launcher in the area, where thousands of displaced people are sheltering in a tent camp.
By Raja Abdulrahim and Nader Ibrahim, Nov. 14, 2024
Raja Abdulrahim reported from Jerusalem, and Nader Ibrahim from London.
Screenshot
The Israeli military has bombed a densely populated tent encampment in southern Gaza designated as a humanitarian zone for thousands of displaced Palestinians, saying the airstrike targeted a loaded weapons launcher in the area.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa and a paramedic based at a medical center where the wounded were taken said that at least one person had been killed in the airstrike on the zone, called Al-Mawasi, which took place on Wednesday. Wafa reported that the victim was a child and that more than 20 other people had been injured.
The Israeli military said that it had targeted the launcher because it posed a threat to Israeli civilians but did not give further details or say what type of weapons the launcher was carrying. The military added that it had issued advanced warnings to civilians in the area to evacuate.
The Israeli military has carried out a number of strikes on Al-Mawasi in the past and has accused Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, of systematically using the humanitarian zone and civilian infrastructure to attack Israelis.
Video on social media, verified by The New York Times, captured a projectile and a large explosion. The projectile hits the ground with a deafening boom, and people can be seen running away as a cloud of dust flies into the sky.
Other video from the scene captured the aftermath of the explosion, showing a large crater and damage to a number of tents.
The international aid group Doctors Without Borders said that one of its clinics, which was about 250 yards from where the strike hit, was also damaged and medical equipment destroyed.
Gabriella Bianchi, a spokeswoman for Doctors Without Borders, said that the aid group had not received any direct warning that a blast was imminent. Residents who received alerts on their phones from the Israeli military did inform the staff, Ms. Bianchi said, but that left only a few minutes to evacuate personnel and hundreds of patients.
In a statement on social media, Doctors Without Borders condemned the attack, saying, “The use of heavy weapons in zones declared by Israeli authorities as safe, is further proof of the blatant disregard for Palestinian lives and humanitarian law.”
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8) Ben & Jerry’s Accuses Unilever of Seeking to Muzzle Its Gaza Stance
The ice cream maker claimed in a lawsuit that its parent company tried to stop it from expressing support for Palestinian refugees.
By Liz Alderman, Nov. 14, 2024
A Ben & Jerry’s factory in Israel in 2021. Tensions between the ice cream maker and its parent company have flared over Ben & Jerry’s social activism. Credit...Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Ben & Jerry’s on Wednesday sued its parent company, Unilever, accusing the consumer goods giant of censorship and threats over the ice cream maker’s attempts to express support for Palestinian refugees. The move ratchets up a longstanding conflict between the two that has flared since the start of the war in Gaza.
The lawsuit claims that Unilever recently tried to dismantle Ben & Jerry’s independent board and sought to muzzle it to prevent the company from calling for a cease-fire and safe passage for refugees, from supporting U.S. students protesting civilian deaths in Gaza, and from urging an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.
“Unilever has silenced each of these efforts,” Ben & Jerry’s said in the lawsuit. The company, which is based in South Burlington, Vt., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Unilever said that it would strongly defend itself against the accusations. “We reject the claims made by B&J’s social mission board,” it said in a statement.
Hamas carried out a devastating attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year, and Israel responded by besieging Gaza, the territory that Hamas once controlled, with an offensive that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and created a humanitarian crisis.
Unilever is one of a number of global multinationals like Starbucks that has been grappling with how to navigate business amid one of the most fraught issues in the world. The British conglomerate bought Ben & Jerry’s in 2000 and holds two of 11 seats on what is supposed to be an independent board.
Under the acquisition deal, Unilever agreed to let Ben & Jerry’s independent board continue to oversee the brand and its image. That included enshrining “guardrails” around the company’s social activism.
The unusual arrangement was supposed to give the founders continued control despite the sale of their company. Instead, Ben & Jerry’s said in the lawsuit, it is now seeking to “safeguard the company from Unilever’s repeated overreaches.”
Tensions flared between the two companies after Ben & Jerry’s declared in 2021 that it would stop selling Chubby Hubby, Cherry Garcia or any of its other flavors in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, saying that it was “inconsistent with our values.”
The activism set off a tempest in Israel and hurt sales at Unilever. Giant U.S. pension funds divested Unilever shares after the Ben & Jerry’s withdrawal, and Unilever shareholders sued.
Unilever sought to diffuse the fallout in 2022 by selling Ben & Jerry’s business in Israel to the ice cream maker’s longstanding partner there, which continued to sell the product under slightly different branding.
In response, Ben & Jerry’s sued to block the transaction, which it said was made without its consent. The companies reached a settlement in December 2022 that required Unilever to respect the ice cream maker’s independent board and social activism.
Earlier this year, Unilever announced it would spin off Ben & Jerry’s at the end of 2025 as part of a broad cost-saving plan.
But as Ben & Jerry’s continued to operate under Unilever’s ownership, the ice cream maker claimed in the lawsuit, its parent company redoubled the pressure — in particular by seeking to squelch the board’s activism in voicing support for Palestinian refugees.
When the board sought to publicly take such stands, Peter ter Kulve, the head of Unilever’s ice cream unit, expressed concern about the “continued perception of antisemitism,” according to the lawsuit.
Unilever also threatened to dismantle the board and sue individual members if Ben & Jerry’s issued a statement calling for peace and a cease-fire, the lawsuit said. Mr. ter Kulve and Jeff Eglash, the head of litigation, called board members and “attempted to intimidate” them with reprisals if the company issued the cease-fire statement, according to the suit.
The Ben & Jerry’s lawsuit said Unilever also blocked it from directing a portion of $5 million in payments it received from the 2022 settlement to human rights groups aiding Palestinian refugees displaced by the war, including the left-leaning Jewish Voice for Peace.
According to the lawsuit, Unilever objected that the group was too critical of the Israeli government, and said that it was seeking to remain “neutral” on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The ice-cream maker said it challenged Unilever’s claim, citing financial donations that Unilever has made to Israeli organizations that it said act as auxiliary services to the Israeli military.
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9) Gaza War Strains Europe’s Efforts at Social Cohesion
Institutions meant to promote civility, from soccer to song, have come under severe stress from rising antisemitism and anti-immigrant politics.
By Steven Erlanger, Reporting from Berlin, Nov. 15, 2024
Pro-Palestinian protesters opposing Israel’s participation in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden, in May. Credit...Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The various institutions of postwar Europe were intended to keep the peace, bring warring peoples together and build a sense of continental attachment and even loyalty. From the growth of the European Union itself to other, softer organizations, dealing with culture or sports, the hope has always been to keep national passions within safe, larger limits.
But growing antisemitism, increased migration and more extremist, anti-immigrant parties have led to backlash and divisions rather than comity. The long war in Gaza has only exacerbated these conflicts and their intensity, especially among young Muslims and others who feel outraged by Israeli bombings and by the tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza, a large proportion of them women and children.
Those tensions were on full display in the recent violence surrounding a soccer match between an Israeli and a Dutch team in Amsterdam, where the authorities are investigating what they call antisemitic attacks on Israeli fans, as well as incendiary actions by both sides. Amsterdam is far from the only example of the divisions in Europe over the Gaza war and of the challenges they present to European governments.
The normally amusing Eurovision Song Contest, which was held this year in Malmo, Sweden, a city with a significant Muslim population, was marred by pro-Palestinian protests against Eden Golan, a contestant from Israel, which participates as a full member.
The original lyrics to her song, “October Rain,” in commemoration of the 1,200 Israelis who died from the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which prompted Israel’s response in Gaza, were rejected by organizers for their political nature, so were altered to be less specific. Her performance was met with booing and jeering from some in the audience, but she did receive a wave of votes from online spectators, pushing her to fifth place.
It was hardly the demonstration of togetherness in art and silliness that organizers have always intended.
In Germany, where supporting the existence of Israel is a “Staatsräson,” a fundamental principle of the German state, there have been numerous examples of anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian rallies. Palestinian supporters say they, too, have felt marginalized, their voices unheard or unheeded.
The police in Germany have shut down pro-Palestinian conferences and denied entry to pro-Palestinian speakers, while some German art organizations have withheld prizes to authors whom they have deemed to have been overly critical of Israel or of Israeli conduct in Gaza or the West Bank.
A year ago, the Frankfurt Book Fair was accused of “shutting down” Palestinian voices, after an awards ceremony to honor “Minor Detail,” a novel by a Palestinian author, Adania Shibli, was canceled because of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Just this week a documentary film about life in the occupied West Bank that won the Berlin film festival this year, “No Other Land,” opened in German cinemas with renewed charges that it exhibits “antisemitic tendencies,” according to the Berlin city website Berlin.de.
The director of the fair, Tricia Tuttle, rejected the charge, and the website changed its wording.
“The Gaza war has infected everything,” said Stefan Kornelius, a senior editor of the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The war causes people to position themselves and support a one-sentence verdict on the Mideast,” he said. “It often runs counter to German Staatsräson on Israel, which supports Israel whatever it takes, and that counterreaction, especially in the arts, causes people to back the Palestinians with some intensity.”
What took place in Amsterdam, however, was of a different order and shook many in Europe beyond the Netherlands.
The match last week between an Israeli team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, and Amsterdam’s Ajax, was part of the Europa League competition run by the Union of European Football Associations, best known as UEFA.
While soccer has always been a deeply partisan sport, stoking nationalism and sometimes related violence, the sport’s near universality also provides a common bond and players from one country often play on teams in others.
Fearing the kind of violence seen in Amsterdam, the authorities in France, which like the Netherlands has a significant minority of Arab and Muslim citizens, deployed an extra 4,000 police officers for a soccer match Thursday evening on the outskirts of Paris between the national teams of Israel and France.
President Emmanuel Macron, his prime minister and two former French presidents attended the match in a show of solidarity against antisemitism, and though demonstrators protested nearby, there was only a minor skirmish in the stands that the police quickly controlled.
Passions have been running high. In Germany, Berlin police are investigating reports that a youth team of Makkabi Berlin, a Jewish football club, was chased by a crowd yelling “Free Palestine” and bearing sticks and knives after a match with another Berlin club. The police said that they were investigating the incident on grounds of breach of the peace, incitement and insult.
If Oct. 7 changed so much for Israel and Jews abroad, Israel’s asymmetric response, which has brought accusations of multiple war crimes and even genocide, has changed much for Arabs and Muslims in Europe, too. Many Muslims in Europe say they feel threatened themselves.
The rise of extremist nationalist parties like the Alternative for Germany, which has numerous neo-Nazi members and has used racist language to condemn immigration and call for the expulsion of nonnative German citizens, has heightened those anxieties.
Aiman Mazyek, chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, said that there is “a climate of fear” among Muslims since Oct. 7.
“Many Muslims in our country are uneasy, they’re afraid to speak out at all, and feel intimidated by the debate,” he said. There have been attacks on mosques and “on Muslims and also those who are perceived to be Muslims at a rate like never before,” he said.
According to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, which monitors both antisemitism and anti-Muslim discrimination, nearly one in every two Muslims in the bloc face racism and discrimination in their daily lives, a sharp increase since 2016, it said in a report last month.
They are targeted, the report said, not just because of their religion, but also because of their skin color and ethnic or immigrant background. Young Muslims born in Europe and women wearing religious clothing are especially affected, the report said, and many face racial profiling by the police.
Given the heightened atmosphere, there was much attention on Thursday’s France-Israel match.
Hélène Conway-Mouret, vice president of the foreign affairs and defense committee of the French Senate, said that feelings among young Muslims were running especially high because of the horrors of the long Gaza conflict and confusion about where they belong.
“There is a real identity issue with second and third generation Muslim immigrants,” she said. “Their parents knew they were Moroccan, for example. But their children wonder, ‘Are they Moroccan,’ and yet they are not.” Nor are they always accepted as French, and face significant discrimination.
In a way, she said, support for the Palestinians “brings them together as a community.”
There have been nearly 70 arrests so far in Amsterdam, including 10 Israelis, for mostly minor offenses. Dutch officials have decried the attacks in Amsterdam as antisemitism, including what they said was an orchestrated effort to seek out Jews, as they also investigate inflammatory actions and vandalism by some Israeli fans.
“What happened over the past few days is a toxic cocktail of antisemitism, hooligan behavior and anger over the war in Palestine and Israel, and other countries in the Middle East,” Femke Halsema, the mayor of Amsterdam, wrote to the City Council.
“Antisemitism can’t be answered with other racism,” she added. “The safety of one group cannot be at the expense of the safety of another.”
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10) Israel Pounds Area Near Beirut Amid Signs of a Widening Offensive
Israel and Hezbollah indicated that they were clashing deeper inside Lebanese territory. An escalation in the fighting could undermine efforts to reach a cease-fire.
By Euan Ward, Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, Nov. 15, 2024
Residents searched for their belongings in the rubble of a destroyed apartment building after an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Lebanon, on Friday. Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
The Israeli military kept up its heavy bombardment of a once densely populated area adjoining Beirut on Friday after saying its ground troops were battling new targets in southern Lebanon, signaling a widening of the fighting that could further undercut cease-fire efforts.
The airstrikes on the Dahiya area, south of Beirut, where the militant group Hezbollah holds sway, were the latest in a string of bombings this week. The Israeli military issued new evacuation warnings just after dawn on Friday, and missiles began landing soon afterward, leveling at least one high-rise residential building that had been identified in the warnings and sending a thick dust cloud through the surrounding streets.
There were no immediate reports of casualties. Most residents fled the Dahiya weeks ago, when Israel’s bombing campaign began.
There were also signs that Israel’s ground invasion was broadening and that its troops were battling Hezbollah fighters deeper inside Lebanese territory.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that its commandos were conducting ground operations against “several new enemy targets” in Lebanon. A senior Lebanese security official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters, said Israeli ground forces were operating around the town of Chamaa, roughly three miles from the border.
Hezbollah also said overnight that it had attacked Israeli soldiers near Tayr Harfa, a town south of Chamaa that it described as part of its “secondary line” of defense and where clashes had not been previously reported. On Friday, the group said it had fired rockets at Israeli troops on the outskirts of Talloussah, another town where fighting had not been previously reported.
A widening Israeli offensive would undermine U.S. diplomatic efforts to stem the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. The Biden administration has renewed a push to contain the fighting after rounds of shuttle diplomacy over the past year failed.
Although Israel’s military leaders originally hoped to conduct a limited ground operation that focused solely on the first line of Lebanese villages along Israel’s northern border, they decided to slightly expand that range, Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier general, said in an interview.
The reason, he said, was that Israeli military officials realized they needed to do more to clear out Hezbollah’s military installations and believed that a broader offensive could force the group into making a diplomatic settlement on terms favorable to Israel.
“There’s an understanding that we need to ramp up the pressure and clear out a greater area, and that’s what they’re doing” Mr. Avivi said.
But there has been no public indication that Hezbollah or its patron, Iran, are willing to acquiesce to Israel’s demands, which include the group’s withdrawal from areas near the Israel-Lebanon border. While Hezbollah’s leaders and weapon stockpiles have been hit hard, the group still poses a formidable threat, firing rockets and drones into Israel daily and killing six Israeli soldiers on Wednesday in southern Lebanon.
A prominent Iranian official, Ali Larijani, met on Friday with Lebanese officials in Beirut to discuss cease-fire efforts, the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon said. Hezbollah is Iran’s most powerful regional proxy, and any diplomatic settlement would almost certainly be contingent on Tehran’s approval.
Asked to comment on reports that U.S. officials had given the Lebanese government a draft cease-fire proposal, Mr. Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said his visit was not intended to “undermine” U.S.-led diplomatic efforts, Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported.
“We want to solve the problem,” Mr. Larijani said.
This month, Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, called the U.S.-led efforts to stem the conflict with Israel futile, saying that the only way to end the war was “on the battlefield.” Still, he did not reject the potential for negotiations on suitable terms, noting that Israel must first end its offensive.
“We are ready for a long war,” he warned.
Cease-fire efforts are further complicated by the fact that, even if Hezbollah agrees to disarm in southern Lebanon, it is unclear how such an agreement would be enforced and by whom. A U.N. resolution that ended the last major conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, in 2006, also called for the group to disarm along the border, but it has been considered a failure.
Israel has also insisted that any cease-fire deal preserve its right to attack Hezbollah again should the group violate the terms of a truce, a stance that the Lebanese government and Hezbollah strongly oppose.
Israel began an intensified military campaign against Hezbollah in September, nearly a year after the group began firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. The Israeli offensive set off a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, displacing nearly a quarter of the population and buckling the country’s health system.
On Thursday, the United States said it was opposed to Israel’s bombing campaign in the Dahiya. Asked at a news briefing about the latest Israeli strikes, a State Department spokesman, Vedant Patel, said, “We do not want to see these kinds of operations in Beirut, especially as it relates to densely populated areas.”
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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11) Trump Immigration Targets: Ukrainians, Venezuelans, Haitians
The president-elect has vowed to end a program that allows thousands of people from troubled nations to stay in the United States.
By Miriam Jordan, Nov. 15, 2024
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump said he would order mass deportations. It is one of many threats that have stirred concerns among immigrants and prompted protests like this one last Saturday in Manhattan. Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed a crackdown on immigration like never before.
While his hard-line rhetoric about illegal immigration harks back to his first campaign, one of the president-elect’s targets this time is a decades-old program providing temporary legal status to about one million immigrants from dangerous and deeply troubled countries such as Haiti and Venezuela.
Known as Temporary Protected Status, the program was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush to help people already in the United States who cannot return safely and immediately to their country because of a natural disaster or an armed conflict.
But for some immigrants, the program, which allows them to work legally, has become all but permanent, a reflection of how troubled many corners of the world are and how little Congress has done to adapt the U.S. immigration system to the realities of global migration in the 21st century.
About 200,000 people with T.P.S. are from Haiti, a long-troubled island nation where the assassination of the president in 2021 led to the collapse of the government and the killings of thousands of people by gangs that now control much of the country. Haitians have emerged as the focus of Mr. Trump’s threats to effectively end the program after he and his running mate, Senator JD Vance, spread false rumors that Haitians who have settled in Springfield, Ohio, were abducting and eating pets.
Thousands of Haitians have settled in the city, and the majority of them have lawful status, often through the program. That has made them attractive to local industries in need of workers. But the influx has strained resources and caused friction among some residents, and Mr. Trump seized on those tensions, vilifying the Haitians who have made Springfield home and threatening to effectively end the program for them and hundreds of thousands of other immigrants.
“Absolutely I’d revoke it,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with News Nation last month, adding that he would send the immigrants back to their country.
Mr. Vance, for his part, has repeatedly characterized Haitians in Springfield and other T.P.S. holders as “illegal aliens” granted “amnesty” by the Biden administration at the wave of a “magic government wand.”
“We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status,” Mr. Vance said at a campaign event last month.
The biggest group of people granted protection under the program — about 350,000 — comes from Venezuela, where political repression and economic collapse under the Maduro regime have led millions to leave in recent years.
Immigrants from some countries, including El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, have been eligible for the protection for more than two decades. Other countries, including Ethiopia, Lebanon and Ukraine, were added more recently.
Proponents of limiting immigration have been critical of the program, which they say allows people who receive the designation to ultimately stay in the United States indefinitely.
Mr. Trump’s advisers have made clear that his administration will reverse course on T.P.S., and his early choices for key immigration roles include notable hard-liners.
Late Sunday, the president-elect announced that Thomas Homan, who led the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency during Mr. Trump’s first term, would manage border policy for the White House. On Tuesday, he selected Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a key ally, to run the Homeland Security Department. And the president-elect is expected to name Stephen Miller, who was instrumental in the crackdown during Mr. Trump’s first term, as the White House deputy chief of staff.
The secretary of homeland security decides whether conditions in a given country merit granting its nationals protected status. The status lasts six to 18 months at a time and can be renewed indefinitely, so long as conditions warrant. Immigrants in the United States, whether they entered legally or not, are eligible for the status, which does not place them on a path to permanent legal residency, or green cards.
The Biden administration has renewed, reinstated or added protections for 16 countries.
Ending the program could uproot people who have been in the United States for years. Many would have to quit their jobs and return to troubled countries, and some families with U.S.-born children could end up separated, with parents forced to leave the United States while their sons and daughters remain.
The Obama administration offered the special status to Haitians in the United States in 2010, after a cataclysmic earthquake devastated the capital and killed at least 250,000 people. At the time, the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, noted that the program would allow Haitians to work legally and send money home to family members, which she called an indirect form of aid.
Since the assassination of the country’s last president in 2021, Haiti has plunged into political chaos and been plagued by gang violence that killed thousands of people and made water, food and health care far harder to obtain.
On Monday, a Spirit Airlines flight from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was struck by gunfire while trying to land in the capital, Port-au-Prince. It was one of three international aircraft hit by gunfire in recent days, which led the F.A.A. to ban U.S. carriers from flying to Haiti for 30 days.
Lesly Joseph, a Haitian dentist, and his wife, flew to the United States in 2021 on tourist visas after being threatened at gunpoint by gangs. The couple felt fortunate, he said, when the Biden administration designated Temporary Protected Status for nationals of Haiti, based on the spiraling violence within a day of their arrival.
“T.P.S. offered me sanctuary to live here and protect my family from harm,” said Dr. Joseph, who lives in Boston and has a 3-year-old American daughter.
Dr. Joseph was hired as a researcher at Boston University and is working toward obtaining a license to practice dentistry in the United States.
If the temporary status gets stripped away, he would immediately lose his job. “I can’t even think of it,” he said.
Returning to Haiti would be akin to a death sentence, Dr. Joseph said, noting that a physician friend had been murdered by gangs this week.
The Trump administration tried to scrap the program in 2017 and 2018 for El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan, and was sued in federal court. The administration argued that the program had turned into a quasi-permanent benefit for hundreds of thousands of people.
The American Civil Liberties Union won a preliminary injunction to keep the program in place, and the Trump administration appealed the decision. The case was still before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit when Mr. Trump left office in 2021, but it became moot after the Biden administration signaled its support for the program.
Now, with three of Mr. Trump’s nominees part of a conservative super majority on the Supreme Court and many more elsewhere in the federal judiciary, a renewed effort to end T.P.S. could fare better in the courts.
“This time around, the Trump administration is likely to be more sophisticated in documenting its policy rationale for why Temporary Protected Status is no longer justified,” said Lenni Benson, a professor at New York Law School.
President Biden has used Temporary Protected Status for “more foreigners from more countries than any previous administration,” said Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that sees legal immigration as essential to a healthy economy.
He said that the president had “appropriately” responded to the increase in the number of countries in turmoil.
The designation helped relieve pressure on Democrat–led cities, like New York, Chicago and Denver, struggling to assist tens of thousands of migrant arrivals. The mayors of those cities urged the administration to allow the migrants to work so that they could achieve self-sufficiency more quickly, and Temporary Protected Status was the answer.
Ahilan Arulanantham, who was lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the case that in 2020 reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, said that he was prepared for another court battle to defend the program.
“The statute requires that the government undertake an objective assessment of the conditions for each country to decide whether that country is safe for the return of nationals,” said Mr. Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the U.C.L.A. School of Law.
“Haiti, which has been the subject of intense political controversy, is obviously very unsafe at the moment,” he said.
Lindsay Aimé, a Haitian community leader in Springfield, said that if Mr. Trump revokes T.P.S., he will cause grave harm to Haitians who have found refuge and stability in the United States.
“Without T.P.S., you can’t work, you can’t drive, and you won’t be able to pay your bills,” he said. But even so, the Haitians who are here already would be unlikely to leave, he said.
“We will try to live peacefully and stay alive here.”
Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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12) Young Gazans Reach Global Audiences with Videos of Everyday Life in War
Displaced young Palestinians are chronicling their wartime routines on TikTok and Instagram, allowing their followers abroad to see a more personal side of the conflict.
By Isabella Kwai and Bilal Shbair, Nov. 16, 2024
Bilal Shbair reported from southern Gaza, where he interviewed Gazans sharing their lives online.
Images from the daily lives of @Omarherzshow, @Gym_rat_in-Gaza and @medo_halimy, who have chronicled their experiences in war-torn Gaza in social media videos.
Seven months into the war in Gaza, Mohammed Said al-Halimy began documenting his daily routine in earnest.
Mr. al-Halimy, known by his friends and online as Medo, already had a teenager’s knack for capturing sunsets, songs and life’s milestones in short video snippets. That life was fractured after Israeli bombs fell on Gaza in response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack, destroying his university and forcing him into a makeshift beach campsite.
As months of fighting ground into the summer, and his displacement became more entrenched, Mr. al-Halimy turned his phone camera to the surreal experience of everyday reality in dystopian circumstances.
“I wanted to show something positive, some resilience despite the daily suffering,” Mr. al-Halimy, 19, said in a July interview, adding that he hoped to capture an “unseen side of our lifestyle.”
Palestinians trapped in Gaza have been recording the war since it began, in often harrowing videos that have given a close-up view of the Israeli bombardment to millions of people worldwide. Many of their posts — raw, personal and at times graphic — went viral early in the conflict as traditional news media outlets struggled to get reporters into the blockaded enclave.
Now, young Gazans are sharing a different window into their lives: their routines amid a year-old war with seemingly no end in sight.
Mr. al-Halimy began posting about the hourslong wait to fill containers with drinking water, about concocting recipes with limited food supplies, and about a new garden plot he created in the soil beside the tent encampment that had for months been his family’s shelter. Showing his new baby mint plant to his Instagram followers, he asked, “Tell me in the comments, what should I name her?”
More than 6,000 miles away in central Florida, Sierra Taft, 36, was watching, checking Mr. al-Halimy’s accounts regularly for updates and worrying about his well-being.
“He felt like somebody that if I had met face to face, I could be best friends with,” she said.
Life in Gaza Through Instagram
Some Palestinians in Gaza document how they cook meals over open fires, using whatever few ingredients are available. Others unpack aid boxes or share exercise routines where doorways double as pull-up bars. And some show how friendly football and chess games are squeezed between piles of rubble and long lines for water.
With a command of English and growing followings, these Palestinian creators share their perspectives and appeal for help using the language of online influencers around the world who have amassed vast audiences by filming the minutiae of their lives.
So when Palestinian creators like Mr. al-Halimy portray normal activities like exercising or cooking against the backdrop of war, it is “a language that reaches,” said Laura Cervi, an associate professor in journalism at the Autonomous University of Barcelona who has studied Palestinian activism online.
“It’s not a number. It’s not like the complex journalistic vernacular,” she said, adding that from the perspective of viewers, “It’s a guy like me that is telling me that he exists — in the way I exist.”
Before the war, Mohammed Faris said his favorite place was the gym. Mr. Faris, a Khan Younis resident, had just started his first year at Al-Aqsa University when the war broke out. His parents, employees of UNRWA, the main United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, encouraged him to start documenting his life. Since April, he has been sharing his diet and exercise routines under the account “Gymrat in Gaza,” which has gained more than 180,000 followers.
“Why not grab this opportunity to talk to the world?” he said in a recent interview from Khan Younis while refilling his supply of water. Mr. Faris said he had raised nearly $13,000 online since he started posting videos, and hoped to eventually evacuate his family from Gaza. He said his audience enjoyed it when he incorporated memes and jokes. “I like to add this touch of sense of humor,” he said.
But he struggles with the instability of being displaced from his home and the scarcity of healthy foods, he said. Finding stable internet connections can be a challenge, and he sometimes waits hours for a video to upload.
“What I want people to receive from my vlogs is that we are trying to cope with the situation,” he said.
The fighting has pushed most Gazans into shrinking areas designated by Israel as “humanitarian zones,” though U.N. officials and aid groups have said that no place in Gaza is safe and they fear famine.
Some viewers have criticized Mr. al-Halimy and others like him, accusing them of sharing misinformation, or questioning their struggle given their lighthearted messaging.
“I’m just showing you the 1 percent of my life — the 1 percent that I’m trying to have fun,” he said in a video posted in May. He added: “We’ve been through hell.”
A Global Reach
Even before the war, young Palestinians were adopting the lighter tone of online social media to conduct what Dr. Cervi calls “playful activism,” pointing to TikTok trends that incorporate humor to make political points.
The insistence on sharing everyday routines or incorporating a lighter tone into material about the war, she added, is its own form of defiance.
“It’s very political because they’re saying, ‘We’re surviving and we will keep on,’” she said. Framing these videos as lifestyle content, she said, makes it more likely that social media algorithms will share them with a broader audience.
Activists elsewhere have used playfully framed videos on social media platforms to share messaging about other causes, Dr. Cervi said, such as the struggle to combat the killing of women in Latin America.
Researchers say that social media postings not only can elevate causes, but also tend to simplify them by removing nuance and centering each creator’s perspective. What seem like candid moments can actually be carefully chosen and edited for effect.
Mr. al-Halimy said creating videos helped him endure his everyday hardships.
“I do my best to set up new, bright sides of my tent life and make it a day to remember,” he said in an interview in the summer. “A moment of pain, to a moment of hope.”
A graduate of a high school for gifted students, Mr. al-Halimy had studied in Texas under a State Department program. He said in July that his family had decided to stay together in Gaza, instead of being separated. His online following was growing fast, and he hoped to raise enough money for them all to leave.
On Aug. 25, he shared his final video on Instagram. The next afternoon, according to a friend who was with him, Mr. al-Halimy was at a makeshift cafe in Khan Younis when he was struck in the head by shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike. His brother, Zeid al-Halimy, said that he died at a Khan Younis hospital.
The Israeli military said it was not aware of an airstrike in the area that day.
In the months since Mr. al-Halimy’s death, his followers have been rewatching his videos and have left dozens of tributes in the comments. Some vowed to plant mint in their own gardens to remember him, and a fund-raising effort for his family has surged to more than $137,000.
Weeks after his death, Ms. Taft, who had never met Mr. al-Halimy in person, said she still thought about him every day. She compared losing him to another recent blow, the death of a close school friend.
“It’s the same feeling of loss,” she said.
Other Palestinians she followed online are never far from her mind.
“I’m wondering who the next one is going to be,” she said.
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13) Israel Strikes Near Beirut as Two Medics Killed in South Lebanon
Israel’s bombing campaign has complicated U.S. diplomacy to stop the Israel-Hezbollah war.
By Liam Stack, Reporting from Tel Aviv, Nov. 16, 2024
Smoke billowing south of Beirut after an Israeli strike on Saturday. Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
The Israeli military pressed on Saturday with its days-long bombing campaign targeting an area near Beirut dominated by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, while in the country’s south, Israeli airstrikes killed two paramedics, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
There were multiple waves of attacks throughout the day on the Dahiya, a predominantly Shiite area south of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. After sundown, powerful blasts were felt and heard in the Beirut city center. Israel, which issued a new flurry of evacuation warnings to local residents, has said these strikes are targeting facilities used by Hezbollah and has accused the group of hiding “terrorist infrastructure” in residential areas.
The past few days have seen one of the heaviest waves of Israeli bombardments on the southern outskirts of Beirut since the beginning of the war. There was no immediate word on casualties from the Saturday attacks.
At the same time, there was growing anger within Lebanon over the mounting numbers of rescue workers killed by Israel in recent weeks. On Saturday, Lebanon’s health ministry condemned the killings of rescue workers as “barbaric attacks” and urged the international community to “ensure respect for international humanitarian laws.”
Israeli strikes have killed almost two dozen rescuers in the past week, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. And more than 145 health care workers in Lebanon have been killed while on duty since the war began in mid-September, according to the World Health Organization.
One of the paramedics was killed on Saturday in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Tibnit, according to the health ministry, which said that two more paramedics in the same town were missing and unaccounted for. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the deaths.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, also denounced the killings of at least a dozen paramedics this week in a single airstrike on a building used by emergency workers in the village of Douris, in the Baalbek region of northeastern Lebanon.
“We deplore the attack on the Lebanese Civil Defense center in Douris village,” he said in a statement on Friday. “The center has been massively damaged. Attacks on health care are becoming the new normal in conflicts. This must stop — everywhere!”
In Israel, air raid sirens sounded across the country’s north on Saturday as Hezbollah launched new drone and rocket attacks over the border. Israel’s military said the munitions either fell in areas that caused little damage or were intercepted by its air defense systems, creating thundering midair explosions that could be heard in the major northern city of Haifa.
Hezbollah began near daily rocket attacks on Israel last October in solidarity with its ally, Hamas, in Gaza. The conflict intensified in mid-September when Israel stepped up attacks on Hezbollah, culminating in a ground invasion of Lebanon on Oct. 1.
The war has driven roughly one million Lebanese from their homes, and Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on the north of Israel have displaced tens of thousands of Israelis.
The days-long bombing campaign in the neighborhoods south of Beirut has complicated U.S. diplomatic efforts for a truce. The Biden administration has recently renewed its efforts to broker a cease-fire. But there has so far been no public indication that Hezbollah or its patron, Iran, are willing to accept Israel’s demands, which include the withdrawal of Hezbollah from the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israel also wants any cease-fire deal to stipulate that it has the right to attack Hezbollah if the group violates the agreement, a demand rejected by both the armed group and the Lebanese government, which is not a party to the conflict.
A prominent Iranian official, Ali Larijani, met on Friday with Lebanese officials in Beirut to discuss the cease-fire efforts, the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon said. Mr. Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, passed messages to Hezbollah from Mr. Khamenei that said he supported ending the war with Israel, according to two Iranians affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The messages also assured Hezbollah that Iran would continue its support and help the group rebuild its forces and recover from the war, they said.
The Iranians, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the supreme leader had also told Hezbollah to accept the terms of a cease-fire deal demanding it move its forces north, in accordance with U.N. Security Council resolution 1701, which ended a past round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
Nabil Berri, a veteran Lebanese politician and the speaker of parliament, was quoted on Saturday in Al Joumhouria, a Lebanese newspaper, expressing cautious optimism about a potential deal. But he said a recently presented American proposal contained elements that Lebanon’s government considered unacceptable.
He told the newspaper it would be “impossible for us to accept” an agreement that included a stipulation that permitted Israel to attack Lebanese territory again in the future.
“Anything that would affect our sovereignty, even discussing it is rejected,” he said.
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14) Liberal Berkeley’s Toughened Stance on Homeless Camps Is a Bellwether
The progressive stronghold in California plans to target large encampments, relying on a Supreme Court decision handed down by a conservative majority.
By Shawn Hubler, Reporting from Berkeley, Calif., Nov. 16, 2024
Homeless encampments in Berkeley, Calif., have frustrated neighboring residents and businesses. Credit...Rachel Bujalski for The New York Times
Berkeley, Calif., long associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, has a reputation for erring on the side of compassion when it comes to addressing drug use and homelessness. The city is such a liberal outlier that Vice President Kamala Harris downplayed her origins there as she tried to appeal to moderate American voters this year.
So it came as a shock to Californians when Berkeley joined the scores of cities that have decided to tighten enforcement on homeless camps this year. In the coming weeks, Berkeley authorities plan to target two sprawling encampments that for years have generated waves of rats, fires, complaints and police calls.
“People are frustrated — even in this very progressive city that cares deeply about addressing homelessness,” Jesse Arreguín, the mayor of Berkeley, said this week.
Berkeley is among more than 75 cities nationwide that have imposed new restrictions on homeless encampments since the Supreme Court decided in June to allow state and local governments to prohibit outdoor sleeping, said Eric Tars, the legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center in Washington, D.C., which has been tracking the legislation.
About a third of the measures have been enacted in California, which is the nation’s most populous state and has a disproportionately large number of homeless residents. Other restrictions have been passed in the Midwest and South, as well as in Washington, Montana and other Western states covered by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had previously banned governments from punishing people for establishing homeless camps.
A handful of cities have made a point of rejecting a hard-line approach, calling it counterproductive. Leaders in Los Angeles, for instance, have said that clearing tents alone will not solve homelessness and that cities need to provide housing, mental health care and employment options to tackle the problem.
But Mr. Tars was struck by how quickly liberal enclaves like Santa Monica or blue-dot college towns like Morgantown, W.Va., have moved in on homeless encampments.
“In almost every one of these communities, the news story about it will say the debate at the City Council went on for like five hours, and lots of people spoke passionately, and a lot of them emphasized that criminalizing homelessness will only make it worse, not better,” Mr. Tars said. “But then they criminalize homelessness anyway.”
Homelessness surged to record proportions in the past several years, particularly in California, where contributing factors such as mental illness and drug addiction have been compounded by soaring housing costs.
After 2018, when the Ninth Circuit ruled that it was unconstitutionally cruel and unusual to punish people for sleeping outside if they had no other option, the number of encampments exploded. As the public grew weary, politicians in California and elsewhere in the West increasingly blamed the Ninth Circuit for the proliferation of homelessness that was visible in communities.
Without enforcement powers, state and local governments spent heavily on homeless services and affordable housing, a strategy that did ease homelessness in some cities. But most communities still have critical shortages of long-term housing, services and shelter beds.
So when the Supreme Court issued its decision this summer, local and state leaders in both parties seized on opportunities to shut down the most persistent encampments.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom urged city and county leaders to quickly and humanely remove homeless camps. To make a point, he showed up himself at freeway underpasses to clear out encampments, carrying garbage bags and debris from sites.
Mr. Newsom accurately read the electorate. In California, voters last week overwhelmingly passed an initiative to impose tougher punishments on theft and drug use, a measure that harnessed the frustrations that residents had about crime and homelessness in the state. The governor did not support the proposition, but it was popular among Democrats and Republicans alike.
“This is an issue that almost seems to transcend politics now,” said Eve Garrow, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “There is just more pressure to make houselessness invisible again.”
Ms. Garrow said she was alarmed by the willingness of more liberal areas to strengthen enforcement. She was particularly concerned because the attitudes coincide with a push by Republican activists to roll back federal housing programs for homeless people, as described in Project 2025, a policy blueprint for a conservative presidential administration.
Republican-led states like Florida and Tennessee have already instituted policies that were influenced by the Cicero Institute, a conservative Texas think tank that pushes to ban unauthorized camping and defund homeless programs that prioritize housing. The institute was founded by Joe Lonsdale, a tech investor who is close to Elon Musk and who has advised the transition team for President-elect Donald J. Trump.
“Unhoused people are some of the most politically powerless folks in society,” Ms. Garrow said. “How do we stem the tide of cruelty against them if even ostensibly progressive cities like Berkeley are not on our side?”
Berkeley officials said the situation is more nuanced than civil rights advocates recognize. Mr. Arreguín said that his city would try to humanely close down encampments.
“We’re not going to arrest people. We’re going to be thoughtful, we’re going to offer alternatives — but we’re going to be firm,” he said.
The city’s new approach, codified in a September resolution, will apply only to encampments that pose documented and narrowly defined fire hazards, or threaten health and public safety, officials said. The resolution specifies that the city’s first priority will continue to be coaxing homeless campers into housing.
“It’s a hard thing to say that one agrees with this conservative Supreme Court, but a course correction was needed,” said Rashi Kesarwani, the Berkeley councilwoman who was the author of the resolution.
Since 2018, Berkeley has opened an emergency shelter and helped fund two additional housing projects with services for homeless people, relying on a real estate tax increase. On Election Day, voters agreed to raise that tax even higher for homeless services.
Between 2022 and 2024, the number of homeless people living without shelter, such as on the streets or in cars, fell 45 percent in Berkeley, Ms. Kesarwani wrote in a September report to the Council. Still, according to the last federal count, nearly 850 people were estimated to be homeless in the city, with about half of them unsheltered and living in her district.
Most problematic, she said, were two persistent encampments in an industrial area in West Berkeley, where some people repeatedly refused to move, even when offered housing. When the city opened motel rooms for 52 people at one encampment last June, 18 refused, while others swiftly moved into the tents that were vacated by the 34 who accepted shelter, according to Ms. Kesarwani’s report.
“What they’re offering is the exact same circumstances you have if you’re in jail or prison,” said Erin Spencer, 44, a homeless veteran who clambered out of a dumpster at an encampment on Harrison Street, in reference to the motel rooms. “No visitors. Can’t bring your stuff in from outside.”
Mr. Spencer pointed to a row of tents and tarps where he said he had lived for about three years with his dog, Bastet. Mr. Spencer called the city’s offers “a trap” and said that if authorities dismantled his camp, he would “go watch them bulldoze it all and then come back and start rebuilding.”
After civil rights groups cited his situation in their Supreme Court argument to protect public encampments, Mr. Spencer was quoted by name in the scathing dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who argued that rousting encampments only traumatized unstable people and deterred them from accepting help.
Across the street from Mr. Spencer, a fellow camper groused that the city also prohibited smoking in its motel rooms. Nearby, a bearded compatriot said that he did not need shelter because he could make a living selling firewood. As he spoke, he poured gasoline from a can into a whiskey bottle, and from the whiskey bottle into a tank of a battered chain saw that he was tinkering with on the curb.
City records over the past year showed that police officers have been called to the West Berkeley sites every day and a half, on average, and that the Fire Department has been summoned about every four and a half days. Complaints from surrounding businesses — automotive shops, artisan bagel bakeries, makers of A.I.-powered robotics — included reports of dumpster fires, bottles of urine tossed at delivery drivers and rodents chewing through the wiring of parked cars.
One group of businesses, including a craft brewery and a firm that builds movie sets, has claimed in a lawsuit that the city’s tolerance for the camps has created a public nuisance.
“Our view is that in a civilized society, you don’t get to just pitch a tent and a barbecue outside someone’s home or business,” said Ilan Wurman, a Minnesota-based lawyer who brought similar litigation in Phoenix, where business owners waged a long and contentious battle against a sprawling homeless encampment known as The Zone.
Still, Cecilia Lunaparra, the youngest member of the Berkeley City Council at age 22, said she had assumed that America’s best-known progressive stronghold would take “a more compassionate approach” than most cities.
Her Council district includes People’s Park, a hallowed ground for liberal activists that served as a homeless refuge until the University of California, Berkeley, launched plans to build student housing and units for homeless people there.
Ms. Lunaparra had urged the City Council to ignore the Supreme Court decision, and to continue treating encampments as if nothing had changed. She said the complaints around the encampments only underscored the need for Berkeley to stay the course with more programs and more housing.
“The fundamental issue here is: What is the actual solution to homelessness?” she said. “I think the actual solution to homelessness is housing.”
Ms. Kesarwani said she agreed — but that Berkeley also had a broader responsibility to the neighborhoods affected by encampments.
“This is us in an impossible situation, trying to be balanced and reasonable,” she said. “This is not the Bay Area swinging to the right.”
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15) Biden’s Policies Offer a Starting Point for Trump’s Border Crackdown
Mr. Trump has criticized the Biden administration for what he calls its lax handling of the border — but it has left him with tools he can use to shut down the border.
By Hamed Aleaziz, Reporting from Washington, Nov. 16, 2024
A U.S. National Guardsman looking out across the Rio Grande into Mexico in Eagle Pass, Texas, in March. Credit...Cheney Orr for The New York Times
President-elect Donald Trump has spent the last year railing against the Biden administration’s immigration policies, saying they left the border wide open and risked American security.
But actions taken by President Biden in the past year, including a sweeping asylum ban and more streamlined deportation procedures, may make it easier for Mr. Trump to fulfill his promise to shut down the border and turn back migrants as quickly as possible.
To be sure, Mr. Biden’s vision for immigration is different from Mr. Trump’s. While the White House has enacted stricter regulations at the border, it has also emphasized legal pathways to enter the country and offered temporary legal status to migrants from certain troubled countries.
After promising a more humane immigration policy when he took office in 2021, Mr. Biden was confronted with a worldwide surge in migration that put pressure on the southern U.S. border. By his second year in office, annual border arrests topped 2 million.
As chaotic scenes emerged of migrants crowding at the border, Republicans like Mr. Trump argued that the Democrats were unable to govern and protect American cities, and they urged a crackdown on immigration. Republican governors such as Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida sent thousands of migrants by bus and plane to Democratic northern cities to highlight the border crisis.
Under relentless political pressure, Mr. Biden eventually took several steps that marked a radical shift in U.S. immigration policy.
In an executive order in June, Mr. Biden blocked migrants from seeking asylum at the border, the most restrictive border policy enacted by any modern Democratic president.
A key feature of the new policy is that migrants being screened at the border are no longer routinely asked whether they fear return. If they do not express fear on their own, they are quickly processed for deportation. Migrant activists say far too many people who would be eligible for asylum are being summarily rejected.
The U.S. also ramped up deportations to countries other than Mexico to record levels, built more space to hold migrants near the border and began removing people more quickly by deporting asylum seekers directly from Border Patrol custody.
Those actions dropped border numbers to lows not seen in several years.
“All of these tools will be in effect when Trump takes office,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
Adam Isacson, who focuses on border security at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization, said that nearly 45,000 of the 54,000 migrants who crossed in September had been deported or detained.
“That certainly lays the groundwork for Trump,” he said, noting that only 9,145 people had been released into the country in September, pending an immigration court hearing.
He added: “So it won’t be too much work for Trump to get it down close to zero. Especially if they find a way to detain people from distant and hard-to-deport countries.”
Mr. Trump has promised to close the border immediately upon taking office. He has committed to a return to a policy known as “Remain in Mexico,” which forces migrants to stay in Mexico until their U.S. cases are resolved. That would be one of his main solutions to shutting down the border, but that policy would likely take time and negotiations to put into place.
In the meantime, he can make use of the infrastructure that the Biden administration has developed.
The administration also announced in July a plan to help Panama deport migrants who cross its borders illegally as a way to cut down on migration targeting the U.S. border.
“This assistance seeks to reduce unprecedented irregular migration through the Darien region, through which over 520,000 migrants transited in 2023,” the State Department said in a statement at the time.
The Biden administration also plans to issue a regulation to make it easier for asylum officers to spot those ineligible for protection, like migrants with serious criminal records, and to quickly remove them from the country.
To increase opportunities for legal immigration, the administration is encouraging migrants to use a mobile app to apply for appointments with Border Patrol and to make a case for asylum. It also has created a program that allows people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the U.S. and stay for two years if they have a financial sponsor.
Those programs have been key targets of Mr. Trump, who has promised to undo them immediately.
“All of the Biden administration restrictions give them a starting point far beyond what they had in 2016,” said Stephanie Leutert, the director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin and a former State Department official in the Biden administration.
Ms. Leutert explained that, unlike in 2017, there are more single adults and families arriving from across the globe.
“So, in a sense, there may be more that the Trump administration will want to immediately undo (the legal pathways) and more that they may want to work with (the restrictions),” she wrote in a text message.
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16) The Hidden Truth Linking the Broken Border to Your Online Shopping Cart
The incoming Trump administration promises an immigration crackdown. But for years, the on-demand economy has been fueled by unscrupulous staffing agencies exploiting migrant workers.
By Steve Eder, Danielle Ivory and Marcela Valdes, Nov. 17, 2024
During the depths of the pandemic, sales at Alo Yoga surged as its popularity exploded on social media. Kendall Jenner appeared on Instagram wearing the brand’s high-waist leggings. Alessandra Ambrosio and Jennifer Lopez were seen in Alo gear, too. In just one year, business reportedly almost doubled, surpassing $1 billion.
Alo’s sister company, Bella+Canvas, a wholesaler of basic apparel, also reached a milestone, selling directly to consumers through its website. To keep up, the two companies turned to a vast new distribution warehouse in Nevada.
Finding workers for such facilities is no small task, but corporate America often looks to a time-tested strategy: contracting with staffing agencies that temporarily employ migrants, including some who enter the country illegally and are desperate for jobs.
This year, America’s southern border was once again a flashpoint in a presidential election, with President-elect Donald J. Trump pledging to deport millions of people who he said were “poisoning the blood” of the country. Within days of his re-election, he announced his intention to appoint hard-liners on immigration.
But despite the tough talk, the broken border has been a lifeline for America’s on-demand economy under both Democratic and Republican administrations, including Mr. Trump’s first term, an investigation by The New York Times found. Thousands of companies have exploited its porousness by plucking workers from the ranks of unauthorized migrants, sometimes with impunity.
Hidden from public view is the middleman role often played by staffing agencies. They recruit workers for warehouses, factories and distribution centers that serve up billions of dollars in goods for brand-name companies.
One of the most notorious agencies, BaronHR, worked with Alo Yoga and Bella+Canvas for years, including at the Nevada warehouse. The reporting shows that the agency’s founder, Luis E. Perez, cast himself as a benefactor for immigrant workers, but in many cases his firms cheated them out of wages and stole their tax payments.
While BaronHR provided jobs to migrants — and employees to companies — it was also an active player on the darker side of the immigration economy. Until the firm collapsed early this year, it was an agent for the exploitation of laborers who were often underpaid and working in unsafe conditions, all while shielding brands from direct responsibility.
To examine this secretive world, The Times scoured thousands of pages of court records, internal corporate documents and regulatory filings, and interviewed 100 migrant employees, as well as regulators and industry experts.
Mr. Perez is now in jail awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to federal tax crimes involving nearly $60 million. But since 2018, while his case went unresolved, records indicate that BaronHR and affiliated firms entered into contracts and collected more than $750 million from corporate partners, including Alo Yoga and Bella+Canvas. Much of the business occurred even as Mr. Trump cracked down on illegal immigration.
The privately held clothing retailers did not respond to repeated requests for comment, including a detailed list of findings addressed to their founders and hand-delivered to their Beverly Hills headquarters. A representative for Ms. Jenner, Ms. Ambrosio and Ms. Lopez declined to comment.
In a statement from jail in Santa Ana, Calif., Mr. Perez said, “There are significant limitations on my ability to meaningfully engage with you,” because of his legal situation and what he characterized as serious health problems.
He said BaronHR was often an employer “in name only” because “clients dictated the employment terms and conditions” and that since 2018 he had had “restricted involvement.” Some of his detractors, he said, were “former disgruntled employees, competitors and less-than-ideal clients.”
On any given day, Mr. Perez’s agencies had upward of 8,000 workers at partner locations, according to a 2021 deposition by a former top executive. Over more than a decade, they provided staffing for at least 800 companies large and small, publicly traded and privately held, client lists and other records obtained by The Times show. In addition to Alo Yoga and Bella+Canvas, the companies included well-known giants like TJX — the parent of T.J. Maxx, HomeGoods and Marshalls — and Keurig Dr Pepper, the beverage maker.
Those records do not identify the workers’ legal status, but a former BaronHR manager, Stacy Mohler, said some companies were adamant about vetting workers, while others just wanted “a warm body.” Another former manager said word spreads quickly about staffing firms that “hire anyone.”
Staffing agencies were among the top employers of unauthorized workers at sites inspected for immigration violations over the past decade, according to data collected by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The records indicate that at least 160 staffing firms, most of them identified during the Trump administration, employed people with suspicious documents or no evidence of authorization.
Immigration experts say this pattern of hiring reflects a far broader phenomenon tracked in the Biden and Obama administrations as well, but staffing agencies contacted by The Times disputed the accuracy of the data or suggested that workers had misrepresented their status.
The industry group representing staffing firms says partners sometimes use them as scapegoats.
“Clients are constantly trying to shift responsibility to us,” said Ed Lenz, senior counsel of the American Staffing Association. (BaronHR was not a member.) “And it’s a chronic longstanding tussle that we have with clients because they’re trying to relieve themselves of as much responsibility as possible.”
Dozens of staffing agencies have been accused of violations at their partner companies’ work sites, including sexual harassment, racial discrimination, wage theft or safety lapses that resulted in amputations, crushed body parts and death.
Federal, state and local regulators have pursued at least 80 investigations of agencies over possible violations involving immigrants, including many who are in the United States illegally, according to records from the Department of Homeland Security obtained through public records requests. They were compiled during the Biden administration but document accusations stretching back at least as far as the Trump era. They do not indicate the status of the investigations, and a department spokesperson did not provide more information.
Three staffing firms, for example, are under investigation by the Illinois Labor Department for concerns related to improper training at Ferrara Candy, the maker of SweeTarts and Jelly Belly jelly beans.
The candy company is also under investigation, records show. In a statement, it described the investigation as “frivolous” and said “all temporary and full-time workers understand the hazards and appropriate safety measures of their assigned role.”
Interviews and regulatory records show that BaronHR and its affiliates have been the subject of at least three investigations involving discrimination or failure to pay workers assigned to dozens of job sites, including at TJX.
In a statement, TJX said it requires staffing partners to provide authorized workers. “As these individuals are Baron employees,” the company said, “it would be inappropriate for us to comment on BaronHR’s business practices.”
Mr. Perez, the BaronHR founder, described “the vast majority” of its workers as “rollover” employees who had been hired by another agency or already worked for the partner company.
Across the country, BaronHR became known for issuing paychecks that shortchanged wages or bounced because of insufficient funds. The Times obtained BaronHR emails, interviewed employees and reviewed lawsuits describing more than a decade of payment problems.
A worker from Colombia said even check-cashing operations that were popular among undocumented immigrants often turned him away. “It was always a headache,” said the man, who worked at the Alo Yoga and Bella+Canvas warehouse in Nevada.
The retailers were among many companies that enlisted Mr. Perez’s services after he and his firms endured government raids, arrests, bankruptcies, indictments and lawsuits, according to interviews, BaronHR client records and court filings.
The relationships are a case study in how companies can benefit from illegal immigration — and can sidestep responsibility as workers are exploited.
In a sworn statement in May, the warehouse operations and safety manager for the two retailers said they had moved the BaronHR workers in California and Nevada to new staffing agencies and had paid missing wages. The intervention came after a work stoppage at the Nevada warehouse in January.
A ‘Game of Whac-a-Mole’
Last year about 13 million people worked in temporary jobs, more than a third of which were in warehouses, distribution centers and other industrial settings, according to the American Staffing Association.
For many unauthorized migrants, staffing firms offer a way to get their footing. In interviews, some recounted that their first job at BaronHR felt like a godsend.
One man from El Salvador had earned $40 a day selling oranges in Los Angeles. When he later made his way to Nevada, BaronHR sent him to the Alo Yoga and Bella+Canvas warehouse for $17 an hour.
A woman who had fled violence in South America worked for two staffing agencies in New Jersey before BaronHR sent her to Pennsylvania. There, she said, she unloaded mannequins, clothes and store decorations for a center owned by TJX for $18 an hour.
Elizeth Peláez, a migrant from Mexico, earned $400 a week as a domestic employee in Florida, before landing work with BaronHR in Nevada. At first, she packed potato chips and vitamins for $10 an hour, and welded wires for casino machines for $11. Eventually, she said, she drove a forklift for $18 an hour.
But her BaronHR paychecks bounced so often, she couldn’t reliably make rent. She slept in an office at a building she cleaned on the side.
“You have to do what they ask,” she explained, “or you’re left with nothing.”
To find such compliant workers, BaronHR relied on social media platforms, like LinkedIn, and word of mouth. It posted fliers in laundromats and stores, and opened offices in immigrant neighborhoods.
For years, Mr. Perez also leveraged his cultural connections.
Born in Mexico and raised in Orange County, Calif., he focused recruitment on Southern California’s Hispanic population. In his statement, he emphasized his humble origins. “I am very familiar with the experience of immigrants struggling to make ends meet,” he said, “because I was one.”
By 2003, his first firm, then called Checkmate Staffing, had hundreds of millions of dollars a year in business, Mr. Perez told government investigators, according to court records. Other disclosures showed that Checkmate workers were deployed to more than 1,200 companies.
Staffing agencies make money by charging companies a “markup” on hourly wages. Some find underhanded ways to gain a competitive edge. Mr. Perez could afford slim markups because he cut corners on required expenses such as workers’ compensation payments and payroll taxes, according to interviews and two decades of criminal cases against him.
Without providing details, Mr. Perez said in his statement that BaronHR relied on third-party contractors that “misled” the staffing agency about workers’ compensation coverage or withheld wages when “clients didn’t pay on time.”
David Weil, former administrator of the U.S. Labor Department’s wage and hour division, said operators like Mr. Perez go “in and out of business under multiple names,” skirting responsibility by creating a “game of Whac-a-Mole.”
He added, “If you create an environment where essentially you’re allowing some businesses to compete on the basis of wage theft, it starts pulling down the standards.”
Mr. Lenz, of the Staffing Association, said that law-abiding firms feel “deeply frustrated” because “they’re being hammered in the marketplace.”
BaronHR and its affiliates flourished, eventually expanding into about 15 states. “We were making hundreds of placements every hour,” said Becky Romero, a former BaronHR executive vice president who has a pending sexual harassment and wrongful termination suit against the company.
‘Nothing Is Getting Fixed’
BaronHR’s practices were hardly an industry secret.
Beginning over a decade ago, there were lawsuits, civil rights complaints and other public actions against the firm. And on multiple occasions, executives at a rival staffing agency emailed BaronHR clients about the problems. A person familiar with the emails said they went to more than 120 undisclosed partner companies.
One executive with the competitor, Partners Personnel, wrote in March 2021 that Mr. Perez’s run-ins with the law had the “potential to significantly disrupt your operations” and put “an unfortunate stain on the staffing industry.”
Some BaronHR clients backed away as the agency’s troubles became more widely known, but hundreds remained steadfast.
When Keurig Dr Pepper signed a new contract with BaronHR in 2019 to staff a facility in California, Mr. Perez and two of his executives were facing state charges for tax and workers’ compensation premium fraud.
Later that year, as federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging Mr. Perez with not paying millions in payroll taxes, Keurig Dr Pepper expanded the partnership to include more warehouses.
The partners then deepened their relationship with a national contract, according to a wrongful termination lawsuit by a former BaronHR employee.
Agency records show that workers were sent to Keurig Dr Pepper locations across the country, including manufacturing and warehouse sites in Florida and Illinois. Like the other BaronHR records reviewed by The Times, these do not indicate workers’ immigration status.
In a statement, Keurig Dr Pepper did not comment on the contract extensions but said it had later terminated its relationship with BaronHR because the firm was “not able to meet the standards expected in our internal vendor processes.”
The company added that it requires all suppliers to comply with the law and its ethical standards, including screening applicants for immigration status. It also said that it “did not observe any conduct” that ran counter to its standards.
Similarly, food affiliates of CJ Group maintained a relationship with BaronHR while they and the staffing firm faced worker lawsuits, records show.
The Times reached out to Schwan’s, which last year merged with the food affiliates and produces products under Red Baron, Bibigo and other brand names. In a statement, a Schwan’s spokesman acknowledged there had been “a handful of situations” when “BaronHR failed to pay workers,” but said “we always paid BaronHR for the work performed,” and “we expect the companies we work with to abide by all laws.”
In interviews, several former employees at BaronHR offices described workers from a variety of sites, including Alo Yoga and Bella+Canvas, complaining about missing wages and bounced paychecks. In some cases, they responded to calls from partner companies about why the workers were not getting paid.
Often, they said, they offered empty promises. But one recalled telling companies, “Nothing is getting fixed.”
In his statement, Mr. Perez said he accepted “ultimate responsibility” for his tax problems, while spreading blame to others.
“My downfall was hiring people with limited training and experience to run the business,” he said, “and retaining professionals who gave me very bad advice.”
‘U.S.A. Strong’
Alo Yoga and Bella+Canvas — which markets itself as “U.S.A. Strong” for creating American jobs — were consistent partners of BaronHR. They are owned by Color Image Apparel, a privately held company based in Beverly Hills, founded by Danny Harris and Marco DeGeorge.
The relationship with BaronHR dates back roughly a decade, when the staffing firm began supplying them workers in suburban Los Angeles, records and interviews show. They also indicate that BaronHR and the retailers were in close communication when problems arose in the Nevada warehouse. BaronHR and other firms providing staffing had representatives stationed in the lunchroom, according to workers and BaronHR corporate employees.
In September 2022, a new contract between Bella+Canvas and BaronHR laid out the agency’s responsibility for screening, hiring and paying workers. Over the previous three years, at least four workers had sued both BaronHR and Bella+Canvas over pay and other claims. Three settled and one, who also filed a discrimination complaint to California’s civil rights agency, has a lawsuit still pending.
The Times interviewed more than 20 people whom BaronHR had hired to work for Alo Yoga, Bella+Canvas, Color Image or their contractors. All of them were undocumented during their employment, and some shared texts, emails, pay stubs and other documents.
Many of the workers described banks rejecting their paychecks for insufficient funds. By last fall, they said, BaronHR often directed them to specific check-cashing businesses that charged high fees.
“The company should not be telling me what to do with my money,” said one worker, Eduardo Olmos.
The designated businesses changed regularly, and by late in the day they sometimes turned people away. Some workers clocked out mid-shift to get paid. In such a rush, Maria Acuña, a former supervisor in Nevada, said she and some co-workers once narrowly avoided a car accident.
“We got out of the car, running,” she said.
Another worker was once stationed in a “V.I.P. section,” packing Alo Yoga items for celebrities and social media influencers. A single mother who was undocumented, she said she fell behind on rent because of bounced paychecks and worried about feeding and clothing her children.
Some said they complained to managers employed by Alo Yoga and Bella+Canvas. Emails document some of the exchanges.
In one of them, a worker complained to a Bella+Canvas manager last year that her bank repeatedly rejected her checks. Their email exchange dragged out over three months and looped in the staffing agency.
While workers struggled to get paid, Alo Yoga promoted steep holiday discounts and, on Instagram, free fast shipping on “party looks” and “winter wish lists.”
Many workers who spoke to The Times had committed to working six-day weeks to meet the demand. In return, BaronHR promised bonuses, but many of those checks bounced too.
After struggling to get paid during the holidays, workers in Nevada occupied the cafeteria and refused to work. Within days, Alo Yoga and Bella+Canvas switched BaronHR workers to other agencies staffing their warehouses.
In May, Delfino Barragan, the warehouse operations and safety manager for the clothing brands, acknowledged in a court filing that, for four weeks beginning last December, BaronHR was “failing to pay its staff.”
He said the brands had paid about $425,000 to the other agencies to cover “labor costs that BaronHR failed to pay,” and blamed the staffing firm’s “breaches” for other potential costs.
Some workers were still reckoning their losses months later. When the Salvadoran man who once sold oranges tried to file his taxes this year, he learned that BaronHR had not reported his income, even though it had deducted federal taxes from his paychecks, he said in interview. In fact, he said, the Internal Revenue Service told him it had no record of his employment at the Nevada warehouse.
‘People Needed This Work’
Employing undocumented immigrants was central to BaronHR’s business.
One company that partnered with the firm determined that two-thirds of its workers from the staffing agency were undocumented, according to a 2019 lawsuit by a former BaronHR executive.
The executive, Michael Morris, who also served on the corporate board, urged Mr. Perez to fire managers “who hired undocumented employees because that practice is unethical and illegal,” the suit said, and raised concerns that workers “were being exploited by BaronHR and its clients.”
Mr. Morris was soon demoted, the lawsuit says, and later fired. Court records show that BaronHR agreed to pay him $250,000 in a settlement that included a nondisclosure clause.
Early this year, when the three federal and state labor agencies notified the Homeland Security Department that BaronHR was being investigated, the workplace violations involved unauthorized workers deployed to dozens of companies, according to interviews and financial documents.
These include a snack company owned at the time by Utz, the Las Vegas hotel Circus Circus, and Alo Yoga and Bella+Canvas. None of them responded to requests for comment.
Several former corporate employees of BaronHR said the firm targeted undocumented immigrants because they were less likely to quit or speak up if mistreated.
“These people needed this work,” said Yesenia Murillo, a sales representative in BaronHR’s Chula Vista, Calif., office in 2017 and 2018, adding that the agency and its clients had leveraged workers' desperation to place them in “dangerous, hazardous, inhumane” jobs.
In 2017, when the Trump administration ratcheted up work-site inspections for undocumented workers, staffing agencies across the country received notices that federal agents would visit.
Around that time, a BaronHR branch manager in Chula Vista ordered employees to throw away hundreds of employment verification documents known as I-9s, according to lawsuits filed by Ms. Murillo and two other former employees.
The next year, employees at the same office were instructed by a compliance auditor to white out portions of I-9s, make faded copies of altered forms, shred forms and forge signatures on unsigned forms, the lawsuits said. The complaints cited an email from Joseph Martinez, BaronHR’s head of sales and operations, expressing frustration at the company’s repeated flouting of the law.
“Clearly there is fraud taking place,” he wrote, adding, “We cannot be falsifying government documents.” According to the employees’ lawyer, Josh Gruenberg, the lawsuits were all settled.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement later inspected the Chula Vista paperwork and issued a warning notice, records show, meaning it found violations that needed to be fixed.
BaronHR was not fined, according to the records. But it was reported to the Homeland Security Department under a Biden administration program that offers some protections for unauthorized workers and temporarily authorized workers who report labor violations.
So far, at least 75 other staffing agencies in 17 states have been investigated, documents show. The Homeland Security Department would not clarify the status of the investigations.
One worker center alone, Arriba Las Vegas, has collected evidence of mistreatment from more than 1,000 people who worked for BaronHR or its affiliates in California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Texas or Nevada, said Bliss Requa-Trautz, the group’s executive director. Almost all of them had been unauthorized to work in the United States, and some had worked for BaronHR stretching back to the Trump and Obama administrations.
‘Scared to Speak Out’
When José Tapia ripped the tendons in his shoulder in 2017 at a warehouse in Carson, Calif., he was rushed not to a hospital but to BaronHR’s branch office to be grilled by a lawyer, according to interviews and allegations in a lawsuit.
Mr. Tapia still has not had the surgery recommended by his doctor, he said, because the staffing agency did not carry the state-mandated insurance that covers such treatment, and he can’t afford to pay for it himself. His case settled, his lawyer said, but he is still awaiting payment.
Over the past 15 years, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspected BaronHR’s work sites roughly 65 times, tallying nearly 100 violations with fines totaling at least $335,000, according to federal data. In most of the incidents, BaronHR’s partner companies were also cited.
Some workers have said in lawsuits and civil rights complaints that they were terminated or stopped receiving assignments after suffering an injury or reporting other health concerns. Others did not receive workers’ compensation payments, records and interviews suggest. Recent bankruptcy filings listed about 300 such unresolved cases, with well over $2 million owed to injured workers, medical providers and others.
The workers’ complaints extended beyond health and safety issues. According to allegations in interviews, lawsuits and regulatory actions, BaronHR also created a permissive environment for discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation and pregnancy.
Mr. Martinez, the former BaronHR executive who raised concerns about falsifying employment documents, filed a discrimination and harassment lawsuit, in which he accused the staffing firm of having kept coded logs that allowed partners to choose workers based on race and other factors.
An internal document, the suit said, referred to Black applicants as “friendlys,” women as “lights” and men as “heavys.”
This year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission settled a discrimination lawsuit against BaronHR and Radiant Services, a commercial laundry company, that raised similar issues involving gender and race. BaronHR agreed to pay $2.2 million, and Radiant $1.1 million.
‘He Wanted Those Things Again’
For more than two decades, state and federal investigators targeted Mr. Perez, the BaronHR founder, for labor and tax violations. He kept slipping away and starting anew.
In the early years, his riches attracted outsize attention and brought coverage in financial and entertainment publications, where he bragged about owning several homes in Southern California and a fleet of luxury cars including a Lamborghini and a Bentley. He talked of sitting courtside at Lakers and Clippers games, partnering with the actor Mario Lopez on a production company, and rubbing elbows with Andy Garcia and other Hollywood celebrities. His company at the time, Checkmate, made Hispanic Magazine’s “Entrepreneur 100” list.
Contacted by The Times, a spokeswoman for Mr. Garcia said the two men met “briefly at a golf tournament” but had no further association. A spokeswoman for Mr. Lopez said Mr. Perez “was barely an acquaintance” and described the partnership as “a complete fabrication.”
In the fall of 2003, Mr. Perez’s fortunes took a turn when investigators raided Checkmate’s offices. Bankruptcy followed, revealing that Checkmate had debts topping $50 million, including $15 million owed to the I.R.S. Soon Mr. Perez and several of his deputies were charged in California with defrauding insurers of nearly $40 million in premiums.
In a personal bankruptcy filing in 2010, he claimed that he had only $17 in his checking account and owed $8 million in taxes. He also listed a $300 stake in a new agency: BaronHR.
In 2011, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office dropped the criminal case against Mr. Perez after a victim, the State Compensation Insurance Fund, told prosecutors that it would disavow its own audits of the alleged fraud, records show. The supervising prosecutor on the case, now retired, told The Times that it was a highly unusual change of position, and could offer no explanation.
At the time, Mr. Perez announced in a news release that he had been “exonerated.” A number of his Checkmate clients followed him to BaronHR.
His phoenixlike return was emblematic of the “Wild West” nature of the staffing world, said Pollie Pent, a former detective with the California Department of Insurance’s fraud division who now works in the insurance industry. “There is very little oversight.”
In 2017, Mr. Perez was in trouble again and spent two mornings at the U.S. attorney’s office in Santa Ana, Calif., trying to cut a deal. Notes from the meetings reveal a rare unvarnished view of the business.
In Mr. Perez’s telling, the staffing industry was filled with people who used prison inmates’ social security numbers to help staff their work sites. He said the constant opening and closing of companies by the same owners signaled that they were evading taxes.
Agencies that skipped paying employment taxes could underbid the competition, said Mr. Perez, who offered to name firms that were “underpricing and skimming.” He also offered to identify partner companies that got their hands dirty by demanding kickbacks.
When it came to his own problems, he deflected many transgressions onto underlings and accountants, but admitted that he had bought cars, a boat and a plane while owing millions of dollars to the I.R.S. — and then hid assets so they would not be seized.
“Perez had a lot of possessions when he was operating Checkmate, and he wanted those things again,” an agent in the U.S. attorney’s office wrote in the notes.
In March 2018, Mr. Perez agreed to a secret plea deal that entailed admitting to tax evasion and cooperating on a broader industry investigation.
But separately, that August, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office charged him and two of his executives with tax and workers’ compensation insurance fraud.
Mr. Perez hardly missed a beat.
That December, he held a glittering gala at the Beverly Hilton Hotel to celebrate a charity he had created and recognize BaronHR’s success. The party featured live music, awards for top salespeople and the announcement of a goal to double the business within five years.
“Working together,” said Mr. Perez in a white tuxedo, “we can do amazing things.”
Within months of the gala, he retracted his secret plea. A federal grand jury indicted him. Even while free on bail for six years, he was “fundamentally unwilling to comply” with the law, prosecutors said.
This spring, as his trial neared, they denounced him as “a serial tax cheat who has built his staffing empire around the chronic failure of his companies to pay applicable federal payroll taxes.”
By then, he and his associates had already reinvented themselves, this time as StaffLab L.L.C. In September, a client list shows, the new firm had already signed up partner companies.
Today, the firm’s website is a blank page.
“My involvement in the staffing industry gave me a piece of the American dream,” Mr. Perez said in his statement from jail, “and then turned into my worst nightmare.”
Reporting was contributed by Churchill Ndonwie, Natasha Rodriguez, Carson Kessler, Angélica Castro-Reyes, Robert Gebeloff and Orlando Mayorquín. Julie Tate and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
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17) Over 30 People Killed in Israeli Strikes in Central and Northern Gaza
As Israel’s military wages a renewed offensive in the northern part of the enclave, Al Bureij and Nuseirat in central Gaza came under attack.
By Hiba Yazbek, Reporting from Nazareth, Israel, Nov. 17, 2024
Outside a hospital in central Gaza on Sunday, a woman mourned victims of an Israeli airstrike. Credit...Abdel Kareem Hana/Associated Press
Israeli airstrikes pummeled two areas in central Gaza and a town in the north of the enclave on Sunday morning, killing more than 30 people and wounding several others, according to local rescue and emergency services.
In central Gaza, a strike on a home in Nuseirat killed four people, the Palestinian Civil Defense said in a statement. Strikes in nearby Al Bureij killed 13 people, according to Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Civil Defense, an emergency rescue group. He said that several others were wounded and that rescuers were still searching for people under the rubble.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strikes in central Gaza, which came as it is waging a renewed offensive in the northern part of the enclave. In an effort to stamp out what the military has called a Hamas resurgence, Israeli troops, tanks and armed drones have bombarded northern Gaza almost daily.
On Sunday, the town of Beit Lahia again came under attack. Mr. Basal said that an Israeli strike on a house there killed 15 people, and that another strike hit a residential building where dozens of people were sheltering. Information on casualties from the strike on the residential building was not immediately available because rescue teams were unable to reach the area, he added.
When asked about Beit Lahia, the Israeli military said that it had carried out several strikes on “terrorist targets” in the town overnight and that there had been continuous efforts to evacuate the civilian population from northern Gaza, where its forces have been operating for over a month.
Gaza’s Civil Defense said it was forced to cease rescue operations in the north late last month because of attacks by the Israeli military on its members and destruction of its equipment.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel.
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