11/04/2024

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, November 5, 2024

  


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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, arrives for a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, September 10, 2023. (Photo: © Ohad Zwigenberg/EFE via Zuma Press/APA Images)

Israel’s Genocide Day 395: Palestinians say Israel is using hunger as a weapon of war as it blocks 3,800 aid trucks from entering Gaza

 

Israel continues to bomb Kamal Adwan Hospital over a week after raiding the compound in northern Gaza. Meanwhile, fabricated documents falsely attributed to Yahya Sinwar repudiate Israeli claims of Hamas rejectionism in ceasefire talks last summer.

 

By Qassam Muaddi, November 4, 2024


Casualties

 

·      43,259 + killed* and at least 101,827 wounded in the Gaza Strip, including 59% women, children and elderly, as of October 21, 2024.*

 

·      768+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**

 

·      3,002 Lebanese killed and more than 13,492 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 4, 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 3, 2024.

 

*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on November 3, 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

 
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
FOR A DEMOCRATIC, SECULAR PALESTINE!

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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:

https://www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org/donate?link_id=2&can_id=1b2409958245a3dd77323d7f06d7f2df&email_referrer=email_2476307&email_subject=leonard-peltiers-80th-birthday-statement-2024


Leave a message at the Whitehouse:
www.whitehouse.gov/contact

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.

Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWdJdODKO6M&feature=youtu.be


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 

By Monica Hill

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

Prison Radio is a project of the Redwood Justice Fund (RJF), which is a California 501c3 (Tax ID no. 680334309) not-for-profit foundation dedicated to the defense of the environment and of civil and human rights secured by law.  Prison Radio/Redwood Justice Fund PO Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94141


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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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Articles

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1) The Deadliest Year Inside One of America’s Deadliest Jail Systems

Riverside County, Calif., reported its highest detainee death count in decades, including multiple suicides that reveal deep institutional problems.

By Christopher Damien, Nov. 1, 2024

Christopher Damien is reporting about law enforcement in Southern California’s inland and desert communities as part of The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/01/us/california-jail-deaths-riverside-county.html

A display of photographs, small objects and an urn with the inscription: “Alice Renee Upton 3/25/2001-4/28/2022 Forever in our hearts.”

Alicia Upton died by suicide in a Riverside County jail cell that was ostensibly under constant video monitoring. Credit...Kristian Thacker for The New York Times


Alicia Upton paced the concrete floor of her jail cell. She looked around the cramped quarters. Then she pressed the alert button on an intercom attached to the wall.

 

“What is your emergency?” responded a voice, captured on video footage from a camera in the cell. It was a deputy about 50 feet away, in the control room of the women’s mental health unit where Ms. Upton, 21, was being held.

 

“It’s not an emergency, but —” she began, then the deputy cut off the call before she could finish. Charged with a misdemeanor, Ms. Upton was awaiting a court-ordered evaluation to determine whether she was competent to stand trial.

 

She took a few more listless steps, the video shows. She paused beneath a buzzing fluorescent light, then picked up a white bedsheet and said, “It’s time to hang myself.”

 

She was found, limp, 20 minutes later. In the interim, the camera recorded the young woman preparing to end her life. But no guards, who were tasked with monitoring the video feed, noticed until it was too late.

 

Ms. Upton was the first of 19 detainees at Riverside County jails to die in 2022. That total, the highest the department had reported in at least three decades, ranked the jail system, east of Los Angeles, among the most lethal in the nation that year.

 

The deaths, attributed to homicide, overdose, natural causes or suicide, reflected troubling patterns: neglect by jail employees, access to illicit drugs, and cell assignments that put detainees at increased risk of violence or did not allow for close oversight.

 

The suicides — at least three of the deaths, but most likely four — offer particular insight into some of those institutional problems and lapses, an investigation by The New York Times and The Desert Sun found.

 

The county sheriff’s department failed at times to adequately monitor detainees and intervene when they attempted suicide. Guards did not always enforce rules prohibiting detainees with mental illnesses from blocking cell windows and cameras, which hinders the required safety monitoring. The department has often isolated detainees with severe mental illness, which can exacerbate suicidal intentions.

 

And, the investigation found, the department has omitted pertinent facts about the deaths in communications to the families of the dead and to the public.

 

The department has assumed no responsibility for these deaths. California’s attorney general last year opened an ongoing civil rights investigation into the increase in deaths in custody, and Riverside County agreed to pay more than $12 million to settle lawsuits linked to detainee deaths going back to 2020. At least a dozen cases are still pending.

 

The county sheriff, Chad Bianco, did not respond to interview requests or comment on detailed questions about the news organizations’ findings. But on an episode of his podcast this summer devoted to inmate deaths, he said that it can be extremely difficult at times to prevent suicides, and falsely claimed that there had never been any allegation that the department had “somehow done something wrong, or mishandled inmates, or mistreated inmates, or caused their death.”

 

The president of the deputies’ union declined to comment.

 

To understand how the suicides occurred, The Times and The Desert Sun interviewed dozens of people including current and former jail employees, relatives of the dead, independent medical examiners and civil rights lawyers. The news organizations also reviewed court documents, including arrest records, detainee medical and mental health records, and department notes on jail housing decisions.

 

Many of the details in this article have never been publicly reported, including the jail security camera footage reviewed by a reporter — material that is rarely seen by outsiders. The department has not released that footage or a dozen other videos requested by the news organizations under the California Public Records Act.

 

The suicides strongly suggest that, despite a federal class-action suit a decade ago that exposed deficiencies in mental health treatment in Riverside County jails and resulted in new court-ordered requirements, problems persist.

 

One detainee in 2022, who told guards that he was suicidal, was cleared after a medical check to return to his cell without any suicide-watch protocol. He was found dead about an hour later. He had been in custody for one day.

 

Another man, who suffered from schizoaffective disorder, had been mostly segregated from other detainees for two years when he was found hanging, and later died. To conceal his actions, he had covered his cell window and camera without any intervention from guards.

 

No suicides have been reported for 2023, but earlier this year, a man hanged himself while another detainee tried to alert jail guards but couldn’t get their attention.

 

That suicide and a separate drug overdose prompted Capt. Alyssa Vernal, then the head of the jail, to warn staff members that they were failing to maintain basic jail operating standards — including some of the same lapses identified years ago by the federal court.

 

Captain Vernal, who did not respond to requests for comment for this article, wrote in an internal email reviewed by the news organizations, “It has become obvious we are not keeping house or following the rules we should be.”

 

‘Kept Saying She Was Fine’

 

When she was 19, Alicia Upton hit the road and left everything behind. She piled into a friend’s car in West Virginia and embarked on what would become a cross-country trip.

 

In an interview, her mother, Nichole Thompson, recalled believing that she was going on a fleeting adventure before settling back home. “She was resolute when she fixed her mind on something,” said Ms. Thompson, a librarian who raised Alicia and her older sister in the Appalachian town of Lost Creek.

 

From a young age, Alicia was an animal lover who would bring home rabbits and raccoons she hoped to keep as pets. At 14, she sold the Xbox she had gotten for Christmas to buy a horse, which she trained herself. To raise money for the road trip, she sold her four-wheeler and some goats, but not the horse, which she left in the care of a friend.

 

Ms. Upton had shown no signs of mental health problems when she left home, her mother said. She had gone to counseling years earlier after the suicide of a close friend, and her mother felt that she was resilient.

 

The road trip took Ms. Upton to Florida, Texas, and across the country through New Mexico and Arizona. Finally, she called home from Hemet, Calif., a former farming town now sprouting strip malls and tract houses. It is near the western end of Riverside, one of the state’s fastest-growing counties, which extends from the Arizona border almost to Los Angeles.

 

She sounded happy, her mother recalled. She said California was beautiful. As the weeks wore on, though, she mentioned that the car needed costly repairs and that she was often looking for places to sleep.

 

“I walked a fine line, trying to coax her to come back, but also let her have her freedom,” Ms. Thompson said. While some companions left for new destinations, Ms. Upton stayed put.

 

As the months turned into a year, it became clear to Ms. Thompson that her daughter was living on the streets. “She always knew coming home was an option,” Ms. Thompson said. “If I pushed her, I felt she would disconnect. She just kept saying she was fine.”

 

Soon, Ms. Thompson became concerned that her daughter might be struggling with drugs. She recalled Ms. Upton saying irrational things on the phone, like describing seeing relatives who were thousands of miles away.

 

Eventually, Ms. Upton was arrested twice for minor offenses — shoplifting and trespassing. Both times, she was released. But a third arrest was different.

 

On April 19, 2022, a woman found Ms. Upton on her land in San Jacinto. She later told deputies the young woman appeared to be looking for something. When the landowner found a knife on the ground, the two had a confrontation. Ms. Upton left and no one was injured. But she was arrested nearby and charged with possession of drug paraphernalia and making criminal threats, both misdemeanors.

 

The paper trail of Ms. Upton’s incarceration describes her as distraught and combative on arrival at the Robert Presley Detention Center in the city of Riverside. Of the five jails in the county, it is the facility where detainees who need mental health care are most often sent. Reports from the booking note that she did not sign several required documents. One jailer wrote on the signature line that she could not be trusted with a pen.

 

On April 19, 2022, a woman found Ms. Upton on her land in San Jacinto. She later told deputies the young woman appeared to be looking for something. When the landowner found a knife on the ground, the two had a confrontation. Ms. Upton left and no one was injured. But she was arrested nearby and charged with possession of drug paraphernalia and making criminal threats, both misdemeanors.

 

The paper trail of Ms. Upton’s incarceration describes her as distraught and combative on arrival at the Robert Presley Detention Center in the city of Riverside. Of the five jails in the county, it is the facility where detainees who need mental health care are most often sent. Reports from the booking note that she did not sign several required documents. One jailer wrote on the signature line that she could not be trusted with a pen.

 

A Surge in Jail Deaths

 

Long before Ms. Upton was sent to the jail, the sheriff’s department had struggled to treat mental illnesses among the nearly 3,700 detainees it housed on any given day.

 

In jail and prison systems across the country, the population of people with mental health needs has surged in recent decades. More than half the detainees in California’s jails have such problems, a 2023 study found. As Riverside County’s jails began to operate as de facto mental health facilities, some detainees who claimed mistreatment took action.

 

Four sued the county in federal court in 2013, in what would become a class action, claiming the department was not providing adequate care.

 

When a judge ordered experts to inspect the claims, Dr. Bruce Gage, then chief of psychiatry for the Washington State Department of Corrections, found multiple problems. Some detainees were not receiving prescribed medications. Others were being medicated indefinitely on mere suppositions of mental illness. It was unclear whether the call buttons in the cells even worked.

 

Dr. Gage reported that the jails didn’t monitor suicidal detainees who were awaiting transfer to psychiatric facilities. The jails had no protocol in place to transition someone who was no longer considered suicidal into less-restrictive living conditions. Detainees either were in a general population and could be outside their cells for hours a day, or confined for all but 15 to 45 minutes.

 

“Riverside County jail system is amongst the most restrictive correctional settings I have visited,” Dr. Gage wrote. Those struggling with mental illness, he added, are “placed at greater risk of harming themselves under these conditions.”

 

Based on the reports, in 2016 a judge ordered a remedial plan that included ongoing inspections of the facilities and the threat of court intervention. Dr. Gage noted that the department had faced a staffing shortage since the 2009 recession, but emphasized that basic standards of care were required by law.

 

Sara Norman, one of the plaintiffs lawyers in the case, said that the jail had made progress in improving medical care, but less so with mental health care. “We have been concerned for years about the dearth of programming and group and individual therapy for people struggling with mental illness in the jails,” she said.

 

Meanwhile, the county system experienced an increase in jail deaths over the past decade. Among them was a man in 2020 who had been arrested for drug possession and was to be released with a citation for a later court appearance. Instead, he died after being violently extracted from his jail cell by guards while experiencing symptoms of psychosis. His relatives received $7.5 million this year to settle a lawsuit.

 

The surge of 19 deaths in 2022 made Riverside’s rate the second-highest in the state, behind Kern County, which had a much smaller jail population. Among the nation’s 15 largest jail systems, Riverside was the second-most deadly, with a rate more than twice that of Chicago, Philadelphia and Dallas.

 

While some people at the Riverside jails were serving criminal sentences, most — including those who died by suicide — were detainees awaiting trial or other resolution of their cases.

 

Robert Robinson, 41, was arrested in September 2022 for trying to cash a fraudulent check at a casino. Because he was a gang dropout, he was considered a likely target of violence and was housed alone.

 

He told jailers while being booked that he was having suicidal thoughts, according to a lawsuit filed by his relatives. He was placed in a cell without a camera and was not put on suicide watch, records show.

 

The next day, he told deputies he was suicidal, and he met with a medical provider and a mental health nurse, according to court documents. Both cleared him to return to his cell alone. About an hour later, a deputy discovered that he had hanged himself.

 

Riverside County settled the civil suit with his relatives this past August for $1.8 million, with no admission of wrongdoing. His family did not respond to requests for comment.

 

Aaron Aubrey, 28, had an extensive history of mental illness and violence. During his three-year incarceration awaiting trial on a murder charge, he was housed in a mental health unit. He spent significant time in isolation after he was charged with killing another detainee in 2020.

 

In December 2022 a guard saw that Mr. Aubrey had blocked his window and covered his camera, but took no action, according to the coroner’s report. During another security check 40 minutes later, the detainee was found hanging. He died six days later at a hospital.

 

And this year, Reynaldo Ramos, 55, hanged himself even as a cell neighbor twice tried to alert guards over the intercom, according to a complaint filed with the county by the man’s relatives. The guards didn’t respond, the complaint said.

 

The claim attributed that account to an anonymous letter sent to the family’s lawyer and separately to a reporter for The Times and The Desert Sun, containing those closely guarded details. A person who had reviewed jail surveillance video of the unit also described the failed alert efforts.

 

Mr. Ramos, who had been given a mental health rating of severe when admitted to the jail on drug charges, was discovered unresponsive during a routine safety check, according to an internal incident report provided to the Times.

 

‘Man Down!’

 

In the days after Ms. Upton’s arrest, her mind continued to fray.

 

On April 28, 2022, a judge ordered her to undergo a mental competency evaluation. Her criminal case was suspended, and with it the possibility of bail, until the findings were reported. When she was admitted to the jail, she had briefly been placed in a safety cell, without access to items that could be used for self-harm. Soon after, she was placed in the mental health unit.

 

That evening, the surveillance video showed, she was restless. Her cellmate was asleep on the top bunk as Ms. Upton paced and looked out of the cell door’s window. Meal trays were stacked at the foot of the bed and clothes were scattered nearby.

 

At 8:13 p.m., she pressed the intercom button, but got only a few words out before the deputy hung up. Moments later, Ms. Upton can be heard in the video saying she intends to hang herself.

 

She looped the bedsheet around her neck and, for a few minutes, tried anchoring it. She smacked her head three times. She looked toward the camera. At one point, it sounded as if she was weeping.

 

Sitting on the bottom bunk, she tied the sheet above her and tightened it around her neck.

 

At 8:18 p.m., Ms. Upton raised a middle finger to the cell camera. Over the next few minutes, the video captured her final movements. By 8:22, she was still.

 

It all unfolded in view of the deputies who were supposed to monitor the feed from her cell. A guard at a workstation near the control room was responsible for constantly tracking the video footage of the unit, according to three former jail employees speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the department.

 

Meanwhile, a deputy in the control room reminded a trainee to occasionally scan the images. They looked up at the feeds from the roughly 40 cameras, two of the former employees said. Spotting Ms. Upton, the deputy shouted over the radio, “Man down!”

 

She had been hanging by the bedsheet for 16 minutes before guards flashed lights signaling an emergency, video footage shows. Two deputies and a jail nurse entered her cell and began resuscitation efforts, but it was futile.

 

The next morning, back in West Virginia, Ms. Upton’s mother woke to pounding on her door, she recalled in an interview. It was a local deputy, who told her to call the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

 

She remembers asking, “Does this mean she’s dead?”

 

Yes.

 

“I thought my heart would stop,” she said.

 

The Sheriff Is the Coroner

 

In Riverside County, the final accounting of how people die depends to a large extent on Sheriff Bianco.

 

A veteran of the department, Mr. Bianco was first elected sheriff in 2018. He has cast himself as a right-wing firebrand at odds with the state’s left-leaning legislature and governor. He has also criticized Attorney General Rob Bonta’s investigation of jail deaths as a “political stunt.”

 

California is one of just three states that allow elected law enforcement officials to oversee coroners’ offices. Until recently in Riverside County, that meant the sheriff’s department typically investigated deaths at its jails while also supervising the pathologists conducting the autopsies. (This year, the department began outsourcing those autopsies.) The final report about the cause of death is signed by the sheriff, who also serves as the coroner.

 

The state legislature has considered bills to separate the offices but none have passed. The California Medical Association has long advocated a separation, saying that the consolidation of the responsibilities of sheriff and coroner is an “immense conflict of interest.”

 

The Times and The Desert Sun found discrepancies when comparing the department’s public death summaries of the 2022 suicides against jail records turned over in civil suits, the video of Ms. Upton’s death and information provided by current and former employees.

 

Mario Solis, who had a history of mental illness, was jailed after a scuffle with a grocery store security guard over a stolen bag of Skittles, according to court records. In September 2022, his mother, Sara Solis, was told that he had died alone in a cell — but not much else. About six months later, she received the department’s summary report.

 

It included findings from an autopsy conducted days after Mr. Solis, 31, died in the mental health unit of the jail in Murrieta. Inside his mouth and throat were two pencils, a toothbrush, a plastic cap and bars of soap, the report said. It also noted cut marks on his arms.

A deputy coroner wrote that Mr. Solis had “an unspecified mental health history” and had been prescribed two psychiatric medications.

 

Sheriff Bianco attributed Mr. Solis’s death to suffocation and blood loss after his jugular vein was punctured. He certified the death as an accident.

 

More than a year later, a lawyer representing the Solis family in a suit against the county received a trove of information the sheriff’s department had not previously disclosed. Jail medical staff had treated Mr. Solis for schizophrenia, including with antipsychotic medication. On three occasions, he said he was suicidal and talked about stabbing himself with a pencil.

 

During a chaotic five-month incarceration, he was transferred 10 times among four county jails and did two stints in intensive psychiatric treatment.

From the start, Mr. Solis had pleaded for help and medication, his scribbled notes show: “I am not well. Please help me before things worsen,” one read. In another, he requested a psychiatric visit, which was arranged but later canceled.

 

On Sept. 2, 2022, Mr. Solis was ruled incompetent to stand trial and ordered to a hospital for treatment. The next day, he was found unconscious in his cell. He had lacerations on his wrist and neck, a nurse wrote. His neck was red and bruised. His mouth and nose were bloody.

 

Photos of the cell show flooding from the toilet that soaked books and trash. One wall was filled with erratic writing.

 

The department’s reports do not explain why Sheriff Bianco determined that the death was accidental.

Mr. Bianco has accused media outlets and advocacy groups of misrepresenting the jail deaths to the public, including on his podcast episode on the topic, which was promoted on the department’s social media channels. Without naming names, the sheriff said that a detainee who had died after swallowing objects, including a pencil, had a “propensity to eat things.”

 

“They suffocated themselves, basically,” Mr. Bianco said. “But we don’t believe it was a suicide.”

 

In 1,600 pages of jail medical notes, there is no mention of Mr. Solis habitually swallowing harmful objects, as the sheriff claimed.

 

“This is not someone who accidentally died,” Hugo Solis, one of Mr. Solis’s brothers, said in an interview. “He killed himself in despair. And the sheriff knows that.”

 

A forensic pathologist and a medical anthropologist reviewed the coroner’s report for this article. Both said that, aside from the mention of Mr. Solis’s psychiatric history and prescriptions, it was unclear whether the coroner staff had reviewed his extensive mental health records or knew about his suicide threats. Both said that information was crucial for determining whether the death was a suicide.

 

Dr. Judy Melinek, a board-certified forensic pathologist, asked, “Why was he left alone and unsupervised after showing severe signs of mental health deterioration?”

 

‘It Was Their Job’

 

Ms. Thompson, Alicia Upton’s mother, said she was stunned at how little information the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department would share about her daughter’s death.

 

For weeks, she said, she struggled to learn even basic details about the events leading up to the suicide. She asked to see any reports and obtain any surveillance video, though she wasn’t sure if she could bear to watch it. But the department declined to provide much of the material she requested.

 

Ms. Thompson sued the sheriff’s department last year, saying that it had failed to monitor and protect her daughter. In its response, the county denied that deputies had failed to monitor Ms. Upton at the time of her suicide. However, according to two former employees, two jail workers faced discipline for lapses.

 

When a reporter described to Ms. Thompson the footage from the jail cell, she said she had long suspected that her daughter had been desperate for help — but had been ignored.

“It was their job to keep her safe,” Ms. Thompson said. “It was their job to monitor her. They didn’t care to do it.”

 

Justin Mayo and Ana Facio-Krajcer contributed reporting. Julie Tate contributed research.

 

This article was reported in partnership with Big Local News at Stanford University.


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2) Iran’s Supreme Leader Threatens Israel With ‘Crushing Response’ to Strikes

His comments came as the Pentagon said it would send additional fighter jets and destroyers to the Middle East.

By Liam Stack, Reporting from Tel Aviv, Nov. 2, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/02/world/middleeast/israel-lebanon-iran-hezbollah.html

Rubble and damaged buildings.Damage from an Israeli airstrike on Friday in Bekaa Valley, in eastern Lebanon. Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times


Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened “a crushing response” to Israeli strikes on his country, as the Pentagon said it would deploy additional resources to the region in the coming months.

 

Tehran initially appeared to play down the damage caused by Israeli strikes inside Iran late last month, raising hopes that it might de-escalate the situation rather than pursue a new cycle of retaliation. But in recent days, Iranian officials have changed their tone.

 

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has the authority as commander in chief to order strikes on Israel. In a statement posted online, he said on Saturday that Israel and the United States would “definitely receive a crushing response” for actions against Iran.

 

His remarks echoed two Iranian officials who this past week said that Iran would retaliate, with one telling state news media that a response would be “definite” and a second saying Iran would launch “a fierce, tooth-breaking” response.

After years of avoiding direct military clashes, Iran and Israel have been locked in an escalating monthslong cycle of retaliation that has drawn in their allies and proxies, bringing the region to the brink of an all-out war.

 

The Pentagon in late September extended the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Gulf of Oman to deter Iranian attacks and shoot down any ballistic missiles fired into Israel.

 

To maintain those kinds of capabilities in the region when that carrier, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, returns to its home port, the Pentagon announced late Friday that a new deployment of ships and land-based warplanes would head to the region.

 

Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had ordered the deployment of fighter aircraft, ballistic missile defense destroyers and B-52 long-range bombers to assist in the defense of Israel and other U.S. interests in the region.

 

“Secretary Austin continues to make clear that should Iran, its partners, or its proxies use this moment to target American personnel or interests in the region, the United States will take every measure necessary to defend our people,” General Ryder said in a statement.

 

The United States has already bolstered its military presence in the region as tensions rise. It sent an advanced missile defense system, called the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, and the 100 American troops needed to operate it, to Israel.

 

Their arrival less than two weeks ago was the first time that U.S. troops had been deployed to Israel for such a mission since the start of the war last October.

 

The Biden administration sent key envoys, including the C.I.A. director, to the Middle East this week in hopes of generating some momentum in talks to end Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and its spiraling conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both groups are Iranian proxies. But those efforts have floundered, and the fighting has continued unabated.

 

On Friday, heavy Israeli strikes killed at least 52 people in central Lebanon, according to the Lebanese authorities, and seven people in Israel were killed by Hezbollah rocket attacks in the country’s north.


The Israeli military said on Saturday that its forces had struck more than 120 sites in both Lebanon and Gaza since the day before, including an airstrike in the Lebanese city of Tyre that it claimed killed two Hezbollah commanders. It also said troops were conducting ground operations in northern, central and southern Gaza.

 

In central Israel on Saturday, a rocket strike hit Tira, an Arab-majority town in central Israel, and injured several people. The Israeli military said that three rocket launches had been detected from Lebanon, including at the region that includes Tira.

 

Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical service, said 11 people were wounded in Tira, with most of the injuries minor to moderate. A photograph and a video posted by the emergency service showed the top floor of a building with its walls blown out.

 

Hezbollah started striking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, its ally in Gaza, after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks last year prompted Israel to launch a war against the group in Gaza.

 

After nearly a year of cross-border attacks that primarily landed in the border region, Hezbollah in recent months has taken aim deeper inside Israel. The militant group launched missiles at the densely populated Tel Aviv area in September and October. Those were intercepted with no reported injuries or damages.

 

Victoria Kim, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and John Ismay contributed reporting.


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3) Federal Jury Finds Ex-Officer Guilty of Violating Breonna Taylor’s Rights

The former detective fired 10 shots through Ms. Taylor’s apartment in a raid in 2020 that set off a wave of protests across the country.

By Orlando Mayorquín, Published Nov. 1, 2024, Updated Nov. 2, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/01/us/breonna-taylor-brett-hankison-verdict.html

Brett Hankison, in a gray jacket and gray-blue tie, holds his arm out in front of him, his palm facing the camera.

Brett Hankison in 2022. The former Louisville, Ky., police detective fired 10 shots through Breonna Taylor’s apartment in a fatal raid in 2020. Credit...Timothy D. Easley/Associated Press


The former police detective who fired 10 shots through Breonna Taylor’s apartment in a deadly raid in Louisville, Ky., in 2020 was found guilty on Friday night of violating her civil rights by using excessive force.

 

But the federal jury earlier in the evening cleared the former officer, Brett Hankison, of violating the rights of Ms. Taylor’s neighbors, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office.

 

Mr. Hankison, who is white, was the only officer to be charged for his actions during the botched operation that set off a wave of protests across the country. But his shots did not kill Ms. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who worked as an emergency room technician. Two other officers, also white, fired the fatal shots, but neither was charged.

 

After the verdict, Mr. Hankison silently walked out of the federal courthouse and stepped into a waiting S.U.V. He declined to answer a reporter’s questions. Mr. Hankison’s lawyers could not immediately be reached.

 

He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced in March.

 

It is not the first time that Mr. Hankison has faced a jury in the case. Last year, a judge declared a mistrial after jurors failed to come to a unanimous verdict on federal civil rights charges. He was previously acquitted of similar state charges.

 

Prosecutors argued in the first federal trial that Mr. Hankison did not have legal justification to use deadly force when he fired through a window and sliding glass door covered by blinds, ultimately hitting a neighboring apartment. He testified that he had been frightened and believed that someone in Ms. Taylor’s home was still shooting at his colleagues.

 

Officers were seeking evidence that Ms. Taylor’s former boyfriend was selling drugs when they barged through her door on March 13, 2020. They were met by gunfire from her current boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who later said he believed the officers were intruders. Mr. Walker fired a bullet that hit an officer in the leg.

 

Two officers, Myles Cosgrove and Jonathan Mattingly, immediately returned fire and shot Ms. Taylor. But they were never charged; prosecutors argued that they had been justified in their actions.

 

The warrant to raid the apartment was based on shoddy surveillance. Three officers were charged by federal prosecutors with knowingly including false information in an affidavit to get a judge to approve the raid. One of them, Kelly Goodlett, pleaded guilty in 2022. The case against the two other officers, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany, is still open.

 

The killing brought national attention to “no-knock” warrants, which allow the police to burst into homes without warning. A judge initially signed off on such a warrant for Ms. Taylor’s apartment, but the officers were later instructed to announce themselves. Whether they actually did has long been in dispute.

 

The Louisville Metro Police Department faced intense scrutiny after Ms. Taylor’s death, and activists protested in the city for months. The police chief was fired in 2020 amid the demonstrations, and a report by the Justice Department last year found that the department had shown a pattern of discriminating against Black people.

 

On Friday, Ms. Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, celebrated the verdict against Mr. Hankison and noted that it had been more than 1,000 days since her daughter’s death.

 

“It took a lot of patience,” she said outside the courthouse. “It was hard. The jurors took their time to really understand that Breonna deserved justice.”


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4) Thousands of Children in Gaza Get 2nd Dose of Polio Vaccine

Aid agencies said that children in some areas of northern Gaza where Israel is mounting an offensive against Hamas will miss the doses, compromising the effectiveness of the campaign.

By Hiba Yazbek, Reporting from Jerusalem, Nov. 3, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/03/world/middleeast/gaza-polio-vaccine.html

Children and adults in front of damaged buildings.

Palestinian children arriving for their vaccinations at a hospital in Gaza City on Saturday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Thousands of children in Gaza City were receiving a second dose of polio vaccine this weekend in an effort that was delayed by intense Israeli bombardment and mass evacuation orders in northern Gaza, the United Nations and other aid agencies said.

 

The second phase of the vaccination campaign was originally set to begin on Oct. 23 across the north of the territory, but it was postponed due to a lack of assurances about pauses in the fighting and bombardment to ensure the safety of health workers, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said in a statement on Friday.

 

The first round of vaccinations in September took place across northern Gaza. Since then, the Israeli military has launched an intense offensive in northern Gaza against what it has said is a resurgence of Hamas in the area.

 

A humanitarian pause for the second phase of the vaccination campaign was only assured for Gaza City, according to the U.N. agencies. They said that around 15,000 children under 10 in northern towns where the Israeli military has been carrying out the offensive over the last few weeks “remain inaccessible and will be missed during the campaign, compromising its effectiveness.”

 

COGAT, the Israeli government agency that oversees policy in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, said on Sunday that 58,604 children under 10 had been vaccinated in northern Gaza since the second phase of the campaign began a day earlier. It added that Israel would continue to work to “facilitate an effective vaccination campaign.”

 

The Gazan Health Ministry confirmed the number of vaccinations, and the campaign was expected to continue through Monday.

 

The campaign was not entirely without incident, according to humanitarian officials.

 

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said on X that his agency had received a report that six people, including four children, were wounded on Saturday when one of the health care centers distributing the vaccines was struck “in an area where a humanitarian pause was agreed to allow vaccination to proceed.” He did not say who had struck the clinic.

 

An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, replied to that post on X, saying that an initial review by the military showed it had not struck in that area at that time.

 

UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, said separately that the vehicle of one of its staff members who was working on the polio campaign “came under fire by what we believe to be a quadcopter” while driving in northern Gaza on Saturday. The agency said that although the staff member was not injured, the attack illustrated the “grave consequences of the indiscriminate strikes on civilians in the Gaza Strip.” The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about the incident.

 

Aid agencies sought to start a vaccination campaign in Gaza after traces of poliovirus were found in local wastewater in July, and a 10-month-old boy was confirmed in August to be the first resident of Gaza to be paralyzed by poliovirus in 25 years.

 

In September, temporary pauses in the war agreed to by Israel and Hamas allowed aid workers to immunize about 640,000 children under 10 who were at risk of the disease. The campaign began in central Gaza, then moved to the south and ended in the northern area.

 

Here’s what else is happening in the Middle East:

 

·    Hezbollah rockets: At least 26 rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel on Sunday, the Israeli military said, adding that some had been intercepted while others had fallen in open areas. Hezbollah has launched near-daily aerial attacks on Israel since last October. Israeli ground troops invaded southern Lebanon around a month ago, part of a campaign to cripple Hezbollah’s forces and infrastructure in the area.

 

·      Eastern Lebanon: Israel’s military warned people to move away from several buildings in the Baalbek area of eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley on Sunday, saying it would target the buildings in the coming hours because they were used by Hezbollah. Last week, Lebanese officials said Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 60 people in the Bekaa Valley, the deadliest attacks in the region in recent weeks.

 

·      U.S. bombers: The Pentagon has repositioned B-52 Stratofortress bombers from the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota closer to the Middle East, according to the United States Central Command. It did not say how many bombers had been moved, or where they are stationed, but the deployment is consistent with U.S. efforts to deter Iran from launching a retaliatory attack on Israel. 


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5) ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ Review: What Lies Beneath

A passionate and propulsive documentary about the assassination of Patrice Lumumba spins its web in many directions.

By Alissa Wilkinson, Oct. 31, 2024

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, NYT Critic’s Pick, Directed by Johan Grimonprez Documentary

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/31/movies/soundtrack-to-a-coup-detat-review.html

A man in a suit holds his hands up, his wrists wrapped in bandages.

Patrice Lumumba in the documentary “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat.” Credit...Kino Lorber


There are many ways to judge a documentary, but a solid one is this question: Could this movie be an article? A great documentary shouldn’t merely be informative, or even tell a good story; it should also be a movie, harnessing every tool at the filmmaker’s disposal. In making “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” the director Johan Grimonprez used every instrument cinema affords. His documentary is rhythmic and propulsive, with reverberating sound and images juxtaposed against one another to lend more meaning. The result, in a word, is marvelous.

 

It’s also demanding, a full dissertation crammed into one feature film, complete with citations and footnotes. (Literally.) You can’t zone out during this film. But that doesn’t mean it’s dry or academic. “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” is a furious and elliptical film, a piece of true history structured like a spider web and drenched in real urgency. The story at its center is the rise to power and eventual C.I.A.-led assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who was elected in May 1960, shortly before his country gained its independence from Belgium. Congo, a country rich with natural resources that were vital, among other things, to Western countries’ weapons of war, had been colonized by Belgium since the late 19th century.

 

Or is that the story? “Soundtrack” entwines a number of threads, all of which are knotted into one another, though the links aren’t always clear till the movie’s thunderous conclusion. The Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev visits the United States and addresses the United Nations, denouncing American racism and demanding an end to colonialism. Black jazz musicians, like Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie, are sent to perform around the world as “ambassadors” of American good will and freedom, yet segregation is still the law back home. Leaders of African and Asian countries, newly admitted to the United Nations, form a voting bloc that could threaten the influence of world powers like the United States and the Soviet Union. Leaders of newly independent African nations speak of forming a United States of Africa. And while Eisenhower calls for no foreign interference into African politics, the C.I.A. has other plans.

 

“Soundtrack” largely centers on events of 1960, depending almost entirely upon archival footage as well as the memoirs and writings of leaders and operatives from the time. Text — beautifully designed text, in fact, the work of the designer Hans Lettany — provides historical context and voices from the moment, underscored by on-screen citations (right down to the page number). But Grimonprez swirls the timeline a bit, jumping backward and forward just enough that the links between events — Louis Armstrong’s visit to Congo just as Lumumba is under house arrest and C.I.A. agents arrive in the country, for instance — start to emerge.

 

But what really makes “Soundtrack” work is, well, its soundtrack. The film returns over and over to Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln performing their 1960 album “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite.” These famed jazz musicians and many more provide a kind of score, a gorgeous, buoyant, anxious momentum. We watch them play and talk about their music, their hopes for their travels. Yet it’s probably no accident that this film’s title echoes the lauded 2010 documentary “Soundtrack for a Revolution,” which explores the power of Black activists, and in particular their music, in the Civil Rights Movement.

 

This film, though, treads less optimistic territory. One of its major threads is the C.I.A.’s use of unwitting Black musicians to not just spread soft power abroad during the Cold War but also, potentially, provide a smoke screen for the agency’s more covert dealings. Archival footage and audio of interviews with agents, in some cases many years later, underline the point: Art was art, but it was also a useful tool for machinations the artists quite publicly opposed.

 

That is the paradox at the core of argument that “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” makes: Power takes many forms, some of which are invisible to the naked eye, and what you can’t see can be the most consequential. Telling such a story requires the multisensory detail cinema provides. Layering a voice telling us one thing over an image showing us another, all while jazz plays and texts appears, can feel a bit like audiovisual overload. Provoking a bit of confusion is the point. Covert power relies on misdirection, and it is only by looking back that we can sometimes make sense of what happened.

 

That’s why “Soundtrack” lands on a coda. Each of these historical threads, in some way, led to to the Feb. 15, 1961 demonstration at the United Nations protesting Lumumba’s assassination, organized by a group called the Cultural Association of Women of African Heritage and led by Lincoln, Rosa Guy and Maya Angelou. But the story didn’t end there. “Soundtrack” makes an explicit connection between what happened in Congo in 1960 and ongoing conflict today. These events occurred a while ago, but they’re not really history, “Soundtrack” argues. The past, one might say, is never dead. It’s not even past.

 

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

Not rated. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. In theaters.

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Soundtrack to a Coup d'EtatNYT Critic’s Pick

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Director Johan Grimonprez

Writer Johan Grimonprez

Stars Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Malcolm X, Duke Ellington

Rating Not Rated

Running Time 2h 30m

Genre Documentary


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6) Fleeing Northern Gaza Risked His Life. Staying Destroyed His Family.

For Gazans facing Israel’s latest offensive against Hamas in the north, every option is fraught with peril.

By Nader Ibrahim, Erika Solomon and Riley Mellen, Nov. 4, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/world/europe/northern-gaza-evacuation-risks.html

A bald man with a trim beard next to two young girls, one in a pink blouse and dungarees with a toy bunny on them.

Ramy Nasr and two of his daughters, Lamar, left, and Dana, about a month before the war started.


A group of people, including several children and women in head scarves, sitting on debris on a devastated street.Palestinians sitting amid rubble in Beit Lahia, north of Jabaliya, on Tuesday, after a strike that killed dozens there. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


One brother chose to flee. His siblings chose to stay. None of them escaped the horrors of one of the deadliest Israeli campaigns in northern Gaza since the yearlong war began.

 

When Israel started its latest operation in early October to root out Hamas militants in the north of the Gaza Strip, the Nasr family were among some 400,000 people estimated by the United Nations to remain. They faced a near-impossible choice.

 

Staying put has meant enduring devastating bombardment. Hospitals are filled with the dead and wounded. Bodies have been left for weeks beneath the rubble. And it has meant hunger: Rights groups say Israel has imposed restrictions on aid so harsh they could amount to a starvation tactic.

 

But leaving has brought its own perils. Many civilians now believe that fleeing on the orders of Israeli forces is just as deadly.

 

When Ramy Nasr, 44, received an automated voice message from the Israeli army on Oct. 6 declaring most of northern Gaza an evacuation zone, including his hometown, Jabaliya, he took the warning to heart. His 17-year-old daughter, Mira, had already been severely injured by a strike in December, he told The New York Times.

 

A day after he received the message, Mr. Nasr followed one of the many orders Israel has issued in the past weeks — orders so numerous that its main ally, the United States, warned they risk violating international law.

 

Yet Mr. Nasr, like many of his neighbors, said he feared using the route Israeli forces had designated. To reach it, he would have had to trek a mile on foot across active combat zones inside the city. On top of that, he said, Israeli tanks and soldiers were positioned along the evacuation road, which made him wary.

 

Instead of following the army route, Mr. Nasr decided on a shorter one that would allow his family to flee to safety more directly, through an intersection called Abu Sharkh.

 

The decision was almost fatal.

 

In a video filmed by a resident who had crossed ahead of Mr. Nasr, and which has been verified by The New York Times, a group of people fleeing rush up the road — among them, Mr. Nasr and his family. Suddenly a volley of gunfire and screaming erupts. Mr. Nasr is later seen being loaded onto a truck, his knee bleeding from a gunshot wound. His 9-year-old daughter, Dana, blinks silently in shock as someone presses a white bandage around her neck to stanch a stream of blood running down her checkered pink T-shirt.

 

“If we knew we were going to be shot at, we wouldn’t have crossed,” said Mr. Nasr, who confirmed that the video showed him and his family. Residents have taken to calling the Abu Sharkh intersection a “crossing of death.”

 

The Times spoke to five residents who witnessed gunfire as people tried to cross the intersection, and reviewed more than 80 videos and photographs from Oct. 7 to Oct. 9 showing families, including children and the elderly, hurriedly carrying their belongings amid sporadic shooting. It was not possible to verify the source of the shooting.

 

The Israeli army did not address detailed questions from The Times about the shooting of civilians at the Abu Sharkh crossing — or how residents could have left the town more safely.

 

In a briefing for journalists last week, an Israeli official said the army had encouraged and facilitated the safe passage of Palestinians out of Jabaliya. The official, who declined to be named to discuss military details, said that roughly 50,000 people had left Jabaliya during that process, leaving about 10,000 inside.

 

Israel has accused Hamas of shooting at civilians fleeing northern Gaza, or blocking them from leaving, but Gazans fleeing — among them Mr. Nasr — blame Israeli forces for such shootings. The New York Times could not verify either assertion.

 

When Mr. Nasr told his three siblings who planned to follow him what had happened, his older brother Ammar, who was partially blind, feared he would not survive a similar ordeal. Ammar and two other Nasr siblings decided they were better off staying in the building where they had long lived with their families.

 

“Their fear of leaving ended up getting them killed,” Mr. Nasr said.

 

On Oct. 9, Israeli forces twice called the Nasr residence, ordering the family to evacuate. The Nasrs asked for assurances that they could make the crossing safely, explaining that Ammar had vision problems. The soldiers refused.

 

So the family decided instead to shelter in a building across the alley. Hours later, the building collapsed in a blast. Ammar, his wife and two children were all killed, along with another of Mr. Nasr’s brothers, Arif, and his sister, Ola.

 

The story of their final hours was recounted to The Times by the sole survivor of the blast, a neighbor named Mohammed Shouha. He had decided to shelter with the Nasr family after his sister was shot dead while trying to make the same crossing as Ramy Nasr.

 

The Israeli military declined to offer The Times a specific response to the Nasr family’s story. It said that Hamas had a “documented practice of operating from, nearby, underneath and within densely populated areas,” adding that its own strikes on military targets “are subject to relevant provisions of international law, including the taking of feasible precautions and after an assessment that the expected incidental damage to civilians and civilian property is not excessive in relation to the expected military advantage from the attack.”

 

In satellite imagery taken on Oct. 11, several buildings near the Nasr family home appear badly damaged and destroyed, including the one where Mr. Shouha said they had taken shelter. The Times mapped the buildings’ exact location, matching them to the ruins seen in a verified video two days later. Mr. Nasr’s home appears in the video, showing extensive destruction, with blackened, glassless windows, although it was still standing.

 

The family’s tragedy encapsulates the agonizing plight of civilians in northern Gaza. Whatever they choose — fleeing or staying — they face a military campaign so ferocious that Gazans, rights groups and some regional experts have condemned it as an intentional effort to depopulate the north.

 

“We are facing what could amount to atrocity crimes, including potentially extending to crimes against humanity,” Volker Türk, the United Nations human rights chief, said. “The Israeli government’s policies and practices in northern Gaza risk emptying the area of all Palestinians.”

 

In the past two weeks, two major strikes have killed dozens of people, many of them young children, according to Gazan health officials. The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas militants.

 

Many Gazans in the north say the violence is so pervasive as to feel senseless. Recovering the wounded and the dead is now so perilous, many residents and medics say they are often forced to simply leave bodies in the street.

 

“Whatever moves in the street is shot,” Fatima Hussein, a local journalist who has remained in Jabaliya, told The Times. “There are so many martyrs that medics haven’t been able to reach — they are lying in the streets. Some decompose, others are eaten by cats and dogs. All of northern Gaza is death now.”

 

Many Gazans have taken to sheltering in school buildings. But there, too, they run the risk of strikes by the Israeli military, which says that Hamas militants use the schools for their operations. Accounts from some residents in central Gaza suggest that at least some evacuees have blocked armed militias from moving into these shelters.

 

For Mr. Nasr, escape from his besieged town has not diminished the sense of suffering. He and his family have fled to the relative safety of Gaza City — where they still constantly hear airstrikes, tanks and gunfire as they flee from place to place.

 

In the past few weeks, he has lost siblings and two nieces — their bodies still trapped beneath the rubble, he said. Three of his daughters have been wounded.

 

Were it not for his children, Mr. Nasr said, he would not want to go on.

 

“I wish I had died alongside my siblings,” he said. “Those that die are better off.”

 

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.



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7) Case of Document Leaks Roils Israel

An individual with connections to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office is being investigated. Here’s what to know about how the furor began and what might happen next.

By Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, Nov. 4, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/world/middleeast/israel-netanyahu-leaked-documents-hamas-gaza.html

Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant sitting next to each other outside.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, left, and the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, at an army base near Mitzpe Ramon, Israel, on Thursday. Credit...Amir Cohen/Reuters


The Israeli authorities are investigating a civilian who has been working over the past year in the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is suspected of illegally obtaining and leaking classified documents to the news media.

 

The documents helped support Mr. Netanyahu’s reasoning for adding tough new conditions for a cease-fire deal with Hamas over the summer, amid intense public pressure for a deal to release Israeli hostages and end the fighting in Gaza.

 

The case has roiled Israel, where critics have accused Mr. Netanyahu of torpedoing a deal to return hostages and of prolonging the war in Gaza for political reasons. Key members of his governing coalition had threatened to quit if he made concessions to Hamas.

 

On Sunday, an Israeli court partially lifted a gag order to identify Eliezer Feldstein, who was hired last year to work as a spokesman in Mr. Netanyahu’s office, as a suspect in the case. Three other suspects in the case are members of the military and security establishment, according to the court, and have not been publicly named.

 

The investigation has revolved around the publication and manipulation of real and purported intelligence information in media outlets abroad, according to Israeli news reports and to an Israeli official who was not authorized to discuss sensitive information, including the case. The London-based Jewish Chronicle published — and then retracted — a report claiming Hamas was planning to smuggle Israeli hostages from Gaza to Egypt. A classified document that was leaked to the German newspaper Bild claimed that Hamas was trying to manipulate the Israeli public and wanted to draw out the negotiations.

 

How did this all get started?

 

On Sept. 1, the Israeli military announced that six Israeli hostages had been found dead in a tunnel in Gaza after being fatally shot by their captors, prompting a surge of mass protests and a wave of national anger and grief.

 

About 100 people taken captive by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, remain in Gaza. At least a third of them have been declared dead by the Israeli authorities.

 

On Sept. 2, in a televised news conference, Mr. Netanyahu presented his arguments for a new condition for a cease-fire deal with Hamas: Israel must maintain a permanent presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Without that presence, Mr. Netanyahu said, Hamas could smuggle hostages across the border into Egypt’s Sinai Desert, and from there to Iran or Yemen, where he said they could disappear forever.

 

He also displayed a handwritten document in Arabic that he said was the work of high-ranking Hamas members, which he said had been found in January by Israeli soldiers in an underground command post in Gaza.

 

The document contained instructions for increasing the psychological pressure on Israel by issuing videos and images of hostages and casting doubt on the Israeli government’s narrative that its ground operation in Gaza would help release the hostages. Mr. Netanyahu said it showed Hamas’s strategy of sowing internal discord in Israel and suggested that the popular protests against his government played into Hamas’s hands.

 

When did the leaks happen?

 

On Sept. 5, soon after Mr. Netanyahu’s news conference, The Jewish Chronicle, a British community newspaper, published a report by a freelance journalist. The journalist, Elon Perry, claimed he had obtained Israeli intelligence showing that the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, was preparing to flee Gaza, via the Philadelphi Corridor, to Iran, and to take Israeli hostages with him.

 

The report cited intelligence gleaned from a senior Hamas official who was interrogated by Israel and from documents seized on the day the bodies of the six hostages were recovered.

 

Asked about the report in The Jewish Chronicle, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman, said that he was unaware of any such intelligence or plan by Mr. Sinwar.

 

The Jewish Chronicle later removed that story and others written by Mr. Perry from its website and ended its association with him. The incident cast a cloud on The Chronicle, a 180-year-old newspaper whose ownership has been shrouded in mystery.

 

On Sept. 6, a day after The Jewish Chronicle article ran, Bild published an article it said was based on a Hamas document laying out its plan for psychological warfare against Israel on the hostage issue, claiming that Hamas was in no rush to reach a deal or end the war. Some of the messaging was similar to points Mr. Netanyahu made in his news conference.

 

The Israeli military issued a statement on Monday saying it appeared that the document cited in the Bild article was found about five months ago and was “written as a recommendation by middle ranks in Hamas, and not by Sinwar,” as the Bild headline may have suggested. The document contained information similar to that found in earlier documents, the military said, adding, “The leaking of the document constitutes a serious violation.”

 

Critics say the exposure of the purported intelligence appeared to be part of a disinformation campaign by Mr. Netanyahu or by his supporters, intended to dampen the campaign for the hostages’ release and influence Israeli public opinion in favor of the prime minister’s negotiating positions.

 

Was Netanyahu involved?

 

Mr. Netanyahu has not been questioned about the allegations and his office has denied leaking information. Many details of the case remain murky because of the gag order.

 

In one of its first statements about the affair, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that nobody from his office had been questioned or detained. On Saturday, the prime minister’s office offered a different version, saying that the suspect in question — later revealed to be Mr. Feldstein — had never participated in security discussions and had not seen or received classified information.

 

Mr. Netanyahu’s office also accused the authorities of carrying out a selective investigation, arguing that numerous reports based on leaked information had been published during the war without any consequences. It described the investigation as “aggressive and biased.”

 

How has the public reacted?

 

Israel has been in uproar over the revelations that seeped out during the weekend. Prof. Hagai Levine, an Israeli public health expert who is active in the campaign to bring the hostages home, wrote in a social media post on Sunday that “the hostages scam of Netanyahu’s office appears to be more serious than the Watergate affair that led to the resignation of President Nixon.” He described the allegations as a “combination of the abandonment of the abductees, breach of trust and the undermining of state security.”

 

What are the latest developments?

 

In the first official acknowledgment of the suspected security breach, a magistrate’s court in central Israel on Friday partially lifted the gag order on the case.

 

The court ruling stated that several people had been detained as part of a joint investigation by the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, the Israeli police and the military.

 

The judge, Menahem Mizrahi, said they were suspected of “a security breach due to the illegal transfer of classified information,” as well as putting sensitive information and sources at risk, and harming the chances of achieving the war’s objectives in Gaza.

 

In a subsequent ruling on Sunday allowing the publication of Mr. Feldstein’s name, the judge specified that the war objective he was referring to was the return of the hostages.

 

Ronen Bergman, Myra Noveck, and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.


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8) When Chronic Diseases Come With Chronic Financial Pressure

For millions of Americans, paying for the treatment needed to manage their diseases can become its own lifelong problem.

By Carly Stern, Nov. 4, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/well/chronic-disease-medication-insurance-costs.html

Wearing a red cardigan, Shannon Hart sits on a green couch at her home.

Shannon Hart had to leave her job at a software company because of the effects of rheumatoid arthritis. Chronic diseases can hinder people’s ability to work, making medications more difficult to afford. Credit...Marissa Leshnov for The New York Times


Karen Mancera ended the phone call in a panic. In July, she was informed that she was being dropped from a program that allowed her to get free infusions of a medication she needed to keep her chronic inflammatory bowel disease at bay.

 

Without the medication, the symptoms of her disease, called ulcerative colitis, could be debilitating — persistent diarrhea, fatigue, abdominal pain and blood loss so severe she had once been hospitalized. But Johnson & Johnson, which manufactures the medication, Remicade, and runs the program that helped cover the cost of the drug, said she hadn’t submitted the necessary paperwork.

 

Ms. Mancera, 26, said she’d never received it. (Johnson & Johnson said it could not discuss an individual patient’s case, but it would be willing to discuss Ms. Mancera’s eligibility with her.)

 

Because Ms. Mancera’s insurance didn’t cover Remicade, she would be left to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket. As a doctoral student, that wasn’t feasible. Her annual income was under $50,000. So she turned to steroids, a much less effective alternative, she said.

 

“I feel very powerless,” Ms. Mancera said.

 

Ms. Mancera is among the estimated 129 million Americans who deal with a major chronic disease, like a heart condition or an autoimmune disease. Women are even more likely than men to have such conditions. For many, the cost of treating those diseases month after month, year after year, can prove to be its own chronic problem — one that can fill people with fear and lead to drastic measures and risky trade-offs.

 

“I will get through whatever this body does or takes me through,” said Shannon Hart, 59, who has had rheumatoid arthritis since she was a child. “But it’s the financial part of it that scares me.”

 

About three in 10 adults reported not taking medications as prescribed over the past year because of cost, according to data published by the nonprofit KFF in October. People cut pills in half or skip doses to stretch a prescription, or don’t take the drugs at all. Others scrimp on housing costs, food or transportation in order to afford prescriptions, said Dr. Seth A. Berkowitz, an associate professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

 

Women and people with disabilities are particularly likely to skip or delay medication because of financial concerns, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

There is a common misconception that prescription costs are a major issue only for the uninsured, Dr. Berkowitz said. But those with insurance often shoulder a financial burden, too, with co-pays, coinsurance and annual deductibles adding up.

 

“The costs quickly become unaffordable for people, even if they have what they previously thought of as very good health insurance,” he said.

 

‘It’s the Future That Scares the Hell Out of Me’

 

In August, the Biden administration released the results of the first-ever negotiations between Medicare and pharmaceutical companies over the cost of 10 of the most expensive medications, many of which treat chronic diseases. The prices made clear the extraordinary cost some Americans with chronic diseases face. A drug called Stelara, for example, which can treat arthritis and bowel diseases, was recently listed at more than $13,000 per month; Imbruvica, a cancer treatment, was listed at almost $15,000 a month.

 

Even while on Medicare, Ms. Hart has had to pay $1,600 a month to get the medication Enbrel, which she needs to treat her rheumatoid arthritis. Enbrel was a focus of the Medicare negotiations.

 

Untreated, Ms. Hart’s disease can make her joints feel frozen and leave her barely able to move. By the time Ms. Hart reached her late 30s, her rheumatologist was imploring her to stop working. The stress of work increased inflammation and was taking a toll on Ms. Hart’s body.

 

In 2004, Ms. Hart left her job at a software company and filed for disability insurance. She’s since scraped by on those monthly payments, of about $2,500, but it doesn’t go far in Oakland, Calif., where she lives.

 

Struggling with a chronic disease can often hinder people’s ability to work, creating a “really vicious cycle,” Dr. Berkowitz said. “Not only do your expenses go up, but the income coming in may go down.”

 

Ms. Hart resorted to scheduling doctor’s appointments she didn’t need in hopes of stockpiling free medication samples. Then, in 2018, her provider told her about a patient assistance program that could help her get the drug at no cost.

 

Like Ms. Mancera, Ms. Hart considered the program a lifeline. But she, too, lost eligibility — albeit temporarily — after falling behind on paperwork while her mother was dying. She was able to get back on to the assistance program, but the experience served as a reminder of how reliant she is on it.

 

“It’s always in my head that this can evaporate at any time,” Ms. Hart said.

 

For the roughly four in 10 adults who have at least two chronic conditions, these financial pressures — and the precarity that comes with them — can be intensified.

 

Robin Kopel, a 64-year-old living in Somerville, Maine, has been giving herself a weekly injection of the drug Benlysta to treat the autoimmune disease lupus for about five years. It is just one of many issues she must manage, including a related kidney disease and a genetic heart condition. Ms. Kopel takes nine daily prescriptions in addition to her injections.

 

The cost of Benlysta was manageable with the robust insurance coverage she received through her job at CVS Health. But in October, she learned she would be laid off later this year. Her health coverage will run out in January. (CVS Health said it could not comment on individual employees’ statuses, but confirmed news of a layoff.)

 

The development has left her with a feeling of “existential dread,” she said. Still paying off credit card debt and student loans, she does not see retirement as an option, and can only hope to find a new job with decent insurance.

 

“It’s the future that scares the hell out of me,” Ms. Kopel said. “It’s all up in the air.”

 

‘The Doctors Are Here to Help’

 

Many patients feel uncomfortable bringing this subject of cost up with their doctors — and are unsure whether clinicians can help.

 

“I don’t know if they would understand, or if they could do anything about it,” Ms. Mancera said. Stacie Dusetzina, a professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said sentiments like Ms. Mancera’s are common and justified.

 

“We don’t really give enough credit to how difficult it is for the patient to be in that position,” Dr. Dusetzina said.

 

The exact out-of-pocket costs of medications can be difficult for clinicians to figure out during a short visit, said Dr. Michael Steinman, a geriatrician and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. But Dr. Steinman pushes his fellow clinicians to raise the affordability issue anyway.

 

“It’s something that’s very important to patients, something that we pay insufficient attention to, something that has real impacts on people’s lives — either because they’re going broke for the drug or they’re not taking the drug,” Dr. Steinman said.

 

Though he knows it can be challenging, Dr. Berkowitz also encourages patients to express their concerns. “The doctors are here to help. It’s definitely their job to help you navigate the situation,” he said. Speaking up can also have benefits, such as allowing patients to learn about alternative medications, assistance programs and which prescriptions to prioritize. Pharmacists can also be a resource about alternatives, Dr. Dusetzina said.

 

After Ms. Mancera lost access to her medication in July, she began to experience fatigue, blood loss and diarrhea. She didn’t have the energy for work, and her emotional health suffered.

 

Finally, in October, she received her first infusion of Remicade in months after she was able to switch to an insurance plan that helped cover the cost. It was a huge relief, and she soon began to feel healthy again.

 

Then, last week, she received her portion of the bill: $900 for a single infusion. She’ll figure out a way to pay it. But the prospect of spending her whole life worrying about getting her medicine can be hard to swallow.

 

“Honestly,” she said, “it gets pretty overwhelming.”


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9) Boeing Union Approves New Contract, Ending Costly Strike

About 33,000 workers at the aerospace manufacturer had been on strike for nearly two months, having rejected two earlier contract offers.

By Niraj Chokshi, Published Nov. 4, 2024, Updated Nov. 5, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/business/boeing-union-new-contract-strike.html

A building at night with an illuminated Boeing logo. In front of it is an area with a bunch of abandoned picket signs.

Unattended picket signs piling up outside a Boeing facility in Seattle on Monday night, after unionized workers voted to end their strike. Credit...M. Scott Brauer for The New York Times


Members of Boeing’s largest union approved a new contract on Monday, ending a weekslong strike that was one of the country’s most financially damaging work stoppages in decades.

 

The contract was endorsed by 59 percent of those voting, according to the union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The union represents about 33,000 workers, most of whom make commercial airplanes in the Seattle area. More than three-quarters of the members voted on the contract.

 

The union said its members, who had resoundingly voted down two previous contract offers from Boeing, could return to work as soon as Wednesday but must be back by Nov. 12. The strike began on Sept. 13, after the union rejected the company’s first proposal.

 

“You stood strong, you stood tall and you won. This is a victory,” said Jon Holden, the president of District 751 of the machinists union, which represents the vast majority of the workers covered by the contract.

 

The new contract will raise wages more than 43 percent cumulatively over the next four years, an improvement over the two previous offers. The first proposal would have raised wages just over 27 percent.

 

Union leaders and Boeing had urged the workers to approve the deal. The union’s leadership had warned that future offers from the company could have worse terms than this proposal.

 

In a statement, Boeing’s chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, said he was “pleased” that the agreement had been reached. “While the past few months have been difficult for all of us, we are all part of the same team,” he said. “We will only move forward by listening and working together.”

 

Mr. Ortberg, who joined the company in August, is trying to restore Boeing’s reputation and business after multiple setbacks in recent years. Last month, he announced plans to cut about 17,000 jobs, or 10 percent of Boeing’s global work force, and make other changes.

 

Boeing recently reported that it lost more than $6.1 billion in the three months that ended in September. Last week, it raised more than $21 billion by selling shares to investors, an effort to strengthen its financial position and stave off the loss of its investment-grade credit rating. Moody’s Ratings and Fitch Ratings both described the fund-raising as a positive step, but said they were still reviewing whether to downgrade Boeing’s credit rating to “junk” status, which could raise its borrowing costs.

 

The contract talks were contentious because workers had grown frustrated with the company’s management. Many were still angry over labor negotiations a decade ago, when the union agreed to let Boeing freeze a pension plan that included guaranteed monthly retirement payouts. Even though the company was unlikely to agree to restore that pension, workers pushed for better benefits elsewhere in the contract to make up for that concession.

 

Officials in the Biden administration had closely monitored the negotiations, which began in March. After talks broke down last month, officials helped to bring the two sides back to the table. Both Boeing and the union thanked the acting labor secretary, Julie Su, who made three trips to Seattle, for helping to facilitate the discussions that resulted in the deal.

 

In a statement, President Biden congratulated Boeing and the union. “Good contracts benefit workers, businesses and consumers,” he said.

 

In addition to the increase in wages, the new contract also includes a $12,000 ratification bonus, which is four times as much as the bonus in the initial offer. The deal calls for improved retirement benefits and a commitment by Boeing to build its next commercial airplane in the Seattle region.

 

“We’ve never gotten that before. They’ve never given us a commitment for an airplane program before it’s launched, before it’s designed,” Mr. Holden said at a news conference after the results were announced.

 

Boeing has said the average annual pay of machinists will rise to more than $119,000 by the end of the contract, up from nearly $76,000 today, after those raises and other benefits are taken into account.

 

The walkout’s financial toll rivals ones involving workers at General Motors in 1998 and at UPS in 1997, according to an analysis by Anderson Economic Group, a research and consulting firm in Michigan. Boeing had suffered at least $5.5 billion in lost earnings in the first six weeks of the strike, according to the firm. The total economic fallout, including its effect on Boeing’s suppliers and customers, was more than $9.6 billion.

 

In response to the strike, Boeing took several cost-cutting measures, including pausing some spending and issuing temporary furloughs for tens of thousands of other employees. Some of the company’s suppliers have taken similar measures.

 

The contract replaces a 2008 agreement, reached after a two-month strike, that was modified and extended multiple times since. That strike contributed to a decline in Boeing’s revenue of about $6.4 billion that year because the company delivered 104 fewer planes than expected.

 

Most of the striking workers were based at factories in the Seattle area, where Boeing makes several commercial airplanes, including its most popular jet, the 737 Max. The Max accounts for three-fourths of the 6,200 planes Boeing has on order, but production is far short of the company’s target because of a crisis that began in January when a panel blew off a Max plane during an Alaska Airlines flight.

 

That episode renewed concerns about the quality and safety of Boeing planes five years after two fatal crashes involving the Max. In response to the panel blowout, the Federal Aviation Administration capped Max production to 38 planes per month. Production was well below that number before the strike.


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10) I Voted for Harris but Gaza’s Horrors Weigh on My Conscience

By Megan K. Stack, Ms. Stack is a contributing Opinion writer who has reported from Middle East for years, Nov. 5, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/05/opinion/kamala-harris-gaza-israel-palestine.html

A boy on a bicycle rides down a dirt road in Gaza, past crumbled buildings.

Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


I voted for Kamala Harris, even though I think that places me on the wrong side of history.

 

Given Ms. Harris’s competition, I calculated that voting for her was the least harmful thing I could do. But that doesn’t mean I feel good about it. I can’t relate to Democrats and liberals who describe voting for Ms. Harris as an unadulterated act of virtue. I’ll never forget that the Biden administration — in which Ms. Harris was second in command, and whose Middle East policies she promises to carry on unchanged — bears responsibility for the mass murder and starvation of trapped Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.

 

The Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7 were a hideous war crime but the ruthless violence that Israel has visited upon Gaza’s men, women and children ever since cannot be justified. And we are complicit: U.S. weapons, U.S. money and U.S. political protection have enabled Israel to keep killing.

 

Americans should realize that it is entirely possible — probable, according to many legal scholars — that our grandchildren’s history books will describe the Biden administration’s indispensable role in Palestinian genocide. The International Court of Justice has already found this definition of what Israel is doing in Gaza “plausible.”

 

This is not an ordinary political problem for the American conscience. This is not about trepidation about which judges may be appointed or policy differences about trade and tariffs. Gaza is something else entirely — a stain that will cling to our country.

 

“Generations of Israelis will have to live with what we have done in Gaza over the last year,” an Israeli lawyer, Michael Sfard, wrote in Haaretz last week. “Generations of Israelis will have to explain to their children and grandchildren why we behaved that way. Some will have to explain why they didn’t refuse to bomb. And some will have to explain why they didn’t do more to stop the horror.”

 

His warnings could apply to Americans, too.

 

I know that if Donald Trump wins, the Democrats and leftists who withheld their vote from Ms. Harris in revulsion and anger over Gaza will be shamed and blamed for his victory. When Palestinians are persecuted in the West Bank or Gaza while the Trumps parade around Jerusalem swapping fundamental political rights for real estate deals, those same voters will be harangued anew.

 

But it is not unreasonable — in fact, it’s cleareyed — to regard a vote for Ms. Harris as an endorsement of the horrific violence on Gaza, as much as it is a stand against Mr. Trump.

 

American voters are faced with those two problems not just simultaneously, but in relation to one another. Confronting this dilemma won’t be easy for everyone, and it shouldn’t be. The problem of individual agency within a malign system is as old as organized society. Choosing conscience over convenience is fundamental to the stories we Americans tell about ourselves.

 

We are carefully taught — in religious settings, but also social — that we must refuse, however uncomfortable this refusal may be, to go along with something we know to be wrong. That human beings are most noble — indeed, most human — when they assert individual morality against the evils of a depersonalized system. “It is neither safe nor right to go against conscience,” wrote Martin Luther. “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.”

 

A few centuries later, looking out over a roiling United States, one of that German priest’s namesakes picked up this line of thought: “And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right,” said Martin Luther King Jr.

 

In a voter on the street interview making the rounds on social media, a woman tells the reporter Don Lemon that she voted early for Jill Stein. “Are you serious?” he exclaims. She’ll help elect Trump, he tells her.

 

“I’m not voting for genocide,” she replies. “When is the time for us to stand up and say, enough is enough? Like, what is your red line?”

 

Mr. Lemon responds with a condescending lecture in which he compares politics to public transportation. In this metaphor, he says, the woman wants a limousine to whisk her from door to door. She should, presumably, shut up and get on a bus.

 

He never engages with the conundrum she’d presented: When do we say enough is enough? What is your red line?

 

I see the nightmare Mr. Trump presents to many Americans. That’s why, in the end, I voted for Kamala Harris. Because of Jan. 6. Because of women’s rights. For a lot of reasons, but mostly because I concede that the mass death of Palestinians in Gaza and the failure to find a political resolution will, almost certainly, worsen under Mr. Trump.

 

But what about the nightmare we’re already living, nearly 13 months of anguish in Gaza? Last week the United Nations called the situation in northern Gaza “apocalyptic,” and warned that the entire population is now at “imminent risk” of death. The United States has not only, for excruciating months, failed to use its considerable leverage to pressure Israel to allow more food to reach starving Palestinians, but also defunded the United Nations refugee relief agency that is the top distributor of food aid to Palestinians. The Biden administration has also reportedly ignored or defied its own internal assessments that weapons shipments to Israel should legally be suspended because of international humanitarian law violations in their use.

 

We should be glad that we still live in a country where people examine their own relationship to these faraway events. Imagine if nobody thought 40,000 dead was worth a protest vote (or non-vote). Imagine if all of our students simply shrugged off the bleeding children filling their TikTok feeds and went back to playing video games.

 

Maybe the right side of history just isn’t on the ballot. Maybe we should get ready to live with the consequences.


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11) Israeli or Palestinian, U.S. Voters in the West Bank Say Biden Let Them Down

Tens of thousands of U.S. citizens live in the Israeli-occupied territory, on opposing sides of an entrenched conflict, where neither Palestinians nor Israelis have much enthusiasm for Kamala Harris.

By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, Nov. 5, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/05/world/middleeast/west-bank-us-election.html

A standing man clasps the hand of another man, seated in a row of mourners, while uniformed soldiers and others stand in the background.

Eli Knoller, seated, at his son’s funeral in July in Karnei Shomron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with a government minister, Avi Dichter. Credit...Erik Marmor/Flash90


Like many Israelis, Bronx-born Eli Knoller, who has dual citizenship and lives in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, hopes the next American president allows Israel to “finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza, where his son was killed in battle.

 

Abduljabbar Alqam, a Palestinian American who lives just a few miles away, is horrified by what he calls U.S. complicity in the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.

 

But they have at least one thing in common: Neither planned to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Alqam believes the Biden administration has been too supportive of Israel and the war in Gaza; Mr. Knoller believes it has not been supportive enough.

 

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, tens of thousands of U.S. citizens live on opposing sides of one of the world’s most entrenched conflicts, and many are bitterly disappointed with the Biden administration’s approach to Israel’s war in Gaza, triggered by the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel last October.

 

Opinion polls show that Israelis largely support former President Donald J. Trump, fondly recalling his near-unreserved support for a country now facing increasing international isolation, while many Palestinians are frustrated with President Biden’s backing for Israel and see little difference between the two candidates. Their frustrations reflect the wider discontent over the war in Gaza across the American political spectrum.

 

“The Democrats need to lose, and they need to know that one of the biggest reasons they lost is their stance on Israel,” said Mr. Alqam, 37, who planned to vote for the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein. “It’s about making a statement.”

 

The war in Gaza has confounded the final year of Mr. Biden’s presidency, creating a rift inside his party and exposing American weakness in the Middle East. His envoys have shuttled around the region for months trying in vain to clinch a cease-fire deal.

 

How his successor will affect the conflict is far from clear. Mr. Trump took staunch pro-Israel stances during his term, including a proposed peace plan that strongly favored Israeli demands over Palestinian ones. But he has also called on Israel to wind down the war.

 

Ms. Harris has mostly stuck to President Biden’s views: backing Israel’s right to self-defense while pressing for a deal to end the war and release the hostages held in Gaza. She has taken a stronger tone on Palestinian suffering, but has not signaled a markedly different approach if elected.

 

 

Estimates vary widely, but at least 150,000 Americans live in Israel, which has a population of roughly 10 million, according to the U.S. government. Roughly 60,000 live in Israeli settlements in the West Bank — which much of the international community deems illegal — making them roughly 15 percent of the settler population, according to Sara Yael Hirschhorn, a lecturer at Haifa University.

 

Thousands of Palestinian Americans also live in the West Bank, though there are no official statistics.

 

Generations of Palestinians have ferried back and forth between the United States, where they are equal citizens under the law, and the West Bank, where they are subject to Israel’s two-tiered system. Israeli law gives settlers all the rights of their neighbors in Israel proper, while Palestinians in the West Bank — U.S. citizens or not — live under Israeli military occupation, with far fewer rights.

 

Kory Bardash, the co-chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel, lives in Efrat, a settlement with many Americans, where he coached Little League baseball. Over the past year, the United States has projected impotence rather than decisiveness in the Middle East, which is bad for Israel, he said.

 

“Under the current administration, the players in this neighborhood sense weakness,” said Mr. Bardash, who canvassed for Mr. Trump.

 

A handful of settlers, pointing to Mr. Trump’s often unpredictable political zigzags, still support Ms. Harris, including Herzl Hefter, an American-born Orthodox rabbi who lives in Efrat. He said at least some of his neighbors shared his misgivings over what he called Mr. Trump’s “moral rot” but had nonetheless decided to “hold their nose and vote for Trump.”

 

“But it doesn’t mean that in this policy or that policy, maybe Trump would be better,” said Mr. Hefter, 67. “It’s really impossible to know, because he’s totally unreliable and crazy.”

 

A few miles north of Jerusalem, thousands of Palestinian Americans live in towns where many split their time between the Middle East and the United States. In Turmus Aya, a quiet, relatively prosperous village close to Ramallah, Americans make up a large part of the population, particularly in the summer, when expatriates pack into the town, towing their children for monthslong visits.

 

Mr. Alqam, who was born in New Jersey, spent several childhood years living in Turmus Aya. In 2023, he and his wife moved back from Louisiana so his three children would connect with their roots and learn Arabic — although many children in Turmus Aya prefer to chatter together in English.

 

Returning from abroad brought Mr. Alqam again face-to-face with the maze of Israeli restrictions on Palestinians across the West Bank, which Israel says are necessary to prevent further militant attacks. He sought to reassure his children that their U.S. passports might protect them regardless.

 

“In America, we would have equal rights. But in this country, they have superiority, more rights, more protection, more safety,” said Mr. Alqam, referring to Jewish Israelis.

 

Two weeks after their arrival, Jewish extremists stormed into their hometown, torching homes in retaliation for a Palestinian attack earlier that day that had killed four Israelis. One of the town’s residents was fatally shot during the clashes.

 

Mr. Alqam conceded that Israeli hard-liners might be further emboldened if Mr. Trump was elected, potentially moving to annex the West Bank. But he said the situation was rapidly getting worse either way — making it important to first change attitudes in the United States.

 

“I’m willing to take four years of a little bit more suffering in order to hopefully change something bigger,” Mr. Alqam said, referring to a potential Trump victory.

 

Some Palestinians do support Ms. Harris, while acknowledging frustration with her on Gaza. Hakeem Asheh, a Palestinian American living in the West Bank city of Nablus, said he was willing to “give Harris a chance.”

 

“The Democratic Party is changing its views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There’s a new vision,” said Mr. Asheh, who worked as a drugstore manager in Connecticut before returning to Nablus a decade ago. “I doubt Harris will implement it — but over time, that might change.”

 

But it is unclear how much either candidate would influence Israel, where many view the ongoing wars as existential conflicts.

 

Mr. Knoller, 60, moved to Karnei Shomron, a settlement in the northern West Bank which, like Efrat, was built up in part by American immigrants. In July, his son Nadav, 30, was killed while on a third tour of reserve duty in Gaza, leaving behind a wife and 18-month-old son.

 

For Mr. Knoller, the decision to vote for Mr. Trump was simple.

 

If Ms. Harris is elected, the United States will probably “pressure Israel to possibly reach a cease-fire and release thousands of Hamas terrorists” in exchange for Israeli hostages held in Gaza, he said. “That’s something I can’t support.”


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12) Gazans Fear Neither Candidate in U.S. Election Will Help Them

American politics have not been topmost in the minds of Gazans. “We only need one thing: for this war to come to an end,” one man said.

By Liam Stack, Bilal Shbair and Abu Bakr Bashir, Nov. 5, 2024

Liam Stack reported from Tel Aviv, and Bilal Shbair from Deir al Balah in central Gaza.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/05/world/middleeast/gaza-us-election-harris-trump.html

A man sits in the foreground with a landscape of ruined buildings behind him.

The rubble of a destroyed house in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Monday. Credit...Mohammed Salem/Reuters


The Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza has been divisive for left-leaning voters in the United States, including many Arab Americans, and some say it has soured them on Vice President Kamala Harris’s candidacy.

 

Many in Gaza share that anger over the United States’ willingness to keep shipping weapons to Israel to carry out its campaign against Hamas despite the death and devastation in Gaza. But in interviews across the territory, many said they were skeptical that either Ms. Harris or former President Donald J. Trump would do much to improve their situation.

 

“I am fearful that both candidates are for the same thing, which is no end in sight for the war in Gaza,” said Abdul Kareem al-Kahlout, 35, a math teacher in Deir al Balah.

 

The war began after the militant group Hamas led the Oct. 7 terror attack that Israeli authorities say killed about 1,200 people in Israel. Since then, the Israeli military’s bombardment and ground operations in Gaza have killed more than 43,000 people, according to local authorities, a figure that includes Hamas fighters. The war has pushed the remaining population to the brink of famine and left much of the territory in ruins.

 

Many people interviewed in Gaza said they were more focused on keeping themselves and their loved ones alive after more than a year of war. They have had little access to electricity or the internet, or to adequate food and medicine, so they have not had much time to follow American politics.

 

 

“I have no preference,” said Mohammed Owaida, 33, who is from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. “We only need one thing: for this war to come to an end. We are exhausted. Whoever wins and can do that, I support.”

 

Across the border, polls show that Israelis overwhelmingly view Mr. Trump as the candidate who best serves their country’s interests, an opinion based largely on the sense that his first term in office brought benefits to Israel. While a Harris win would offer a sense of continuity at a turbulent time, many Israelis assume it would come with more criticism of Israeli policies toward Palestinians.

 

Mr. Trump took staunch pro-Israel stances during his term, including a proposed peace plan that strongly favored Israeli demands over Palestinian ones. But he has also called on Israel to wind down the war. Ms. Harris has mostly stuck to President Biden’s views: backing Israel’s right to self-defense while pressing for a deal to end the war and release the hostages held in Gaza.

 

Israelis generally believe that whoever wins, there won’t be a serious change in relations with the United States, their most important ally. And many in Gaza agreed, saying it was unlikely that the United States would waver in its support for Israel.

 

Lina Rabah, 36, said she thought American leaders viewed the people of the Gaza Strip as little more than “a chess piece on their board.”

 

“All I want is for the United States to see us as humans, not just as numbers in a long conflict,” said Ms. Rabah, who has three children.

 

“If either Trump or Harris truly values human life and human rights, then they must use their power — not remarks or speeches to the media — to press for an immediate cease-fire,” she said.

 

Rima Swaisi, a journalist from Gaza City who works for Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority, said she thought Ms. Harris was more likely to pursue an end to the war than Mr. Trump, who has been a strong supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. She called Ms. Harris the “less worse” option, and said she would never forget that Mr. Trump “gave Jerusalem to Israel” by moving the U.S. Embassy to that city from Tel Aviv in 2017, in a break with decades of American policy.

 

“If we have to choose between the two devils, then anyone but Trump,” she said. Of Ms. Harris, she said: “I just hope she wins and most importantly does something differently toward the Palestinian people.”

 

But some in Gaza said the election did not present Palestinians with a less bad option.

 

Hanin Ashour, 33, said she had lost four family members since the war began, including two young children: Mariam, 8 months, and Omar, 2. American officials have often talked about human rights, she said, but now she blames them for the deaths of her loved ones.

 

She has become so disgusted by U.S. policies, she said, that she will not even use humanitarian aid from American organizations. To her, the idea of pinning her hopes on an American politician is absurd.

 

“I cannot even eat anything that comes from the country that killed my innocent family members,” she said. “So what — am I supposed to wait to hear from U.S. presidents who support Israel with missiles? How am I supposed to listen to them?”

 

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.


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