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Relatives of the Palestinians killed in Israeli attack on Nuseirat refugee camp, mourn as the funeral prayers are held for the bodies at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Dair Al-Balah in Gaza’s central strip, on December 12, 2024. (Omar Ashtawy/APAimages)
Israel’s Genocide Day 433: U.S. national security advisor heads to Cairo, Doha for ceasefire talks
Casualties
· 44,835 + killed* and at least 106,356 wounded in the Gaza Strip, 59% of whom are women, children, and elderly.
· 811+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
· 3,962 Lebanese killed and more than 16,520 wounded by Israeli forces since October 8, 2023***
· Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,189.
· Israel recognizes the death of 890 Israeli soldiers, policemen and intelligence officers 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 December 12, 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 December 12, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on December 9, 2024. The counting is based on the Lebanese official date for the beginning of “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” when Israel began airstrikes on Lebanese territory after the beginning of Hezbollah’s “support front” for Gaza.
**** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.
Source: mondoweiss.net
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It’s Movement Time
It’s movement time.
As the Trump presidency take shape, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. Disbelief meshes with despair, and some are quite frankly desolate.
Dry your tears, blow your noses, and join movements of resistance to this madness. Blacks in America have never known a time when resistance wasn’t necessary, including life under a Black president.
For centuries for generations, people have had to struggle for freedom, for respect, for justice. Why should this time be any different?
The ancestors, like the revered Frederick Douglass, lambasted Abraham Lincoln as a fool or coward who wouldn’t fight the civil war with thousands of willing Black troops. Said Douglass, “if there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Said Douglass, “Power concedes nothing without demand.”
So let us struggle. Let us build movements that lift our hearts. Let us remake our history with the brick and mortar of struggle.
—Prison Radio, November 21, 2016
https://www.prisonradio.org/commentary/it-is-movement-time/
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
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We need a united, independent, democratically organized mass movement for peace, justice and equality in solidarity with similar movements worldwide if we are to survive the death agony of capitalism and its inevitable descent into fascism and barbarism before it destroys the world altogether!
—Bonnie Weinstein
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On this Wrongful Conviction Day, Leonard Peltier, the longest-serving Indigenous political prisoner, is incarcerated in lockdown-modified operations conditions at USP Coleman I, operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Yet, in this moment of silence, Leonard speaks.
To honor his birthday and all those who are unjustly convicted and incarcerated, the Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee has released a video of Leonard Peltier that is going viral. Narrated by renowned scholar Ward Churchill and set to a video created by award-winning filmmaker Suzie Baer, the film most importantly centers Leonard’s personal reflection on his 80th year.
Jenipher Jones, Mr. Peltier's lead counsel, commented, "This powerfully moving film captures the essence of who I know Leonard to be. I am grateful to Professor Churchill and Suzie Baer for their work and longstanding advocacy of Leonard. As the recent execution of Marcellus Williams-Imam Khaliifah Williams shows us, we as a society bear a responsibility to uplift the cases of all those who are wrongfully convicted and also hold the government accountable to do that for which it professes to exist. We must challenge our impulses of blind blood-thirst for guilt and the use of our legal systems to carry out this malignant pathology. There is absolutely no lawful justification for Leonard's incarceration."
“Leonard Peltier is Native elder whose wrongful incarceration is shameful. His continued imprisonment exemplifies the historical cruelty of the US Government toward Native people. The US BOP's treatment of Leonard Peltier is unlawful, and he deserves his freedom.” —Suzie Baer
Leonard's Statement: Peltier 80th Statement.pdf:
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABHSRNdyB8SKn0I&id=DFF2DD874157D44A%21118178&cid=DFF2DD874157D44A&parId=root&parQt=sharedby&o=OneUp
To view the film, please visit:
https://tinyurl.com/Peltier80thPresentation
We hope to have additional updates on Leonard soon. In the meantime, please engage our calls to action or donate to his defense efforts.
Miigwech.
Donate/ActNow:
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Beneath The Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader (City Lights, 2024) is a collection of revolutionary essays, written by those who have been detained inside prison walls. Composed by the most structurally dispossessed people on earth, the prisoner class, these words illuminate the steps towards freedom.
Beneath the Mountain documents the struggle — beginning with slavery, genocide, and colonization up to our present day — and imagines a collective, anti-carceral future. These essays were handwritten first on scraps of paper, magazine covers, envelopes, toilet paper, or pages of bibles, scratched down with contraband pencils or the stubby cartridge of a ball-point pen; kites, careworn, copied and shared across tiers and now preserved in this collection for this and future generations. If they were dropped in the prison-controlled mail they were cloaked in prayers, navigating censorship and dustbins. They were very often smuggled out. These words mark resistance, fierce clarity, and speak to the hope of building the world we all deserve to live in.
"Beneath the Mountain reminds us that ancestors and rebels have resisted conquest and enslavement, building marronage against colonialism and genocide."
—Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency
Who stands beneath the mountain but prisoners of war? Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jennifer Black have assembled a book of fire, each voice a flame in captivity...Whether writing from a place of fugivity, the prison camp, the city jail, the modern gulag or death row, these are our revolutionary thinkers, our critics and dreamers, our people. The people who move mountains. —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Filled with insight and energy, this extraordinary book gifts us the opportunity to encounter people’s understanding of the fight for freedom from the inside out. —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag and Abolition Geography
These are the words each writer dreamed as they sought freedom and they need to be studied by people inside and read in every control unit/hole in every prison in America. We can send this book for you to anyone who you know who is currently living, struggling, and fighting
Who better to tell these stories than those who have lived them? Don’t be surprised with what you find within these pages: hope, solidarity, full faith towards the future, and most importantly, love.
Excerpt from the book:
"Revolutionary love speaks to the ways we protect, respect, and empower each other while standing up to state terror. Its presence is affirmed through these texts as a necessary component to help chase away fear and to encourage the solidarity and unity essential for organizing in dangerous times and places. Its absence portends tragedy. Revolutionary love does not stop the state from wanting to kill us, nor is it effective without strategy and tactics, but it is the might that fuels us to stand shoulder to shoulder with others regardless. Perhaps it can move mountains." —Jennifer Black & Mumia Abu-Jamal from the introduction to Beneath The Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader
Get the book at:
https://www.prisonradiostore.com/shop-2/beneath-the-mountain-an-anti-prison-reader-edited-by-mumia-abu-jamal-jennifer-black-city-lights-2024
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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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*Major Announcement*
Claudia De la Cruz wins
Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!
We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.
We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.
We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!
We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.
We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.
The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step:
Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer
Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate
See you in the streets,
Claudia & Karina
Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) South Korea’s President Is Impeached After Martial Law Crisis
Some members of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s own party helped remove him from office. But the political uncertainty is far from over.
By Choe Sang-Hun, Jin Yu Young and Victoria Kim, Reporting from Seoul, Dec. 14, 2024
Eleven days ago, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea made a bold power grab, putting the country under military rule for the first time in 45 years, citing frustration at the opposition for obstructing his agenda in Parliament.
His martial law decree lasted only hours, and now he finds himself locked out of power: impeached and suspended by the National Assembly after a vote on Saturday in which a dozen members of his own party turned against him.
Lawmakers sought to draw a line under Mr. Yoon’s tenure after his declaration threw the country’s democracy into chaos and drew public outrage across the country.
Street protests turned to celebrations outside the Assembly when news broke that the impeachment bill had passed. Mr. Yoon’s popularity has plummeted during his two and a half years in office, a term marked by deepening political polarization, scandals involving his wife and a near-constant clash between his government and the opposition-dominated Parliament.
But the political turmoil and uncertainty unleashed by his short-lived declaration of martial law is far from over. Speaking soon after the vote, Mr. Yoon vowed to fight in court to regain his power, even as the police and prosecutors closed in on him with a possible criminal charge of insurrection.
The fate of Mr. Yoon, a deeply unpopular leader, now rests in the hands of the country’s Constitutional Court, which will decide — within the next six months — whether to reinstate or formally remove him. If he is formally removed, South Korea is then supposed to elect a new leader within two months.
During his suspension from office, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the No. 2 official in the government hierarchy, has stepped in as interim leader. Because Mr. Han is not an elected official, he will lead South Korea with no real political heft at a time when the country faces challenges at home and abroad, such as North Korea’s growing nuclear threat and the return of Donald J. Trump to the White House.
“My heart is very heavy,” said Mr. Han, a career bureaucrat. “In this heavy time, I will focus all my strength and effort to stably run the affairs of the state.”
For now, Mr. Yoon’s impeachment was a huge relief for crowds of protesters who have been gathering near the Assembly in recent days to call for his ouster. Hours before the Assembly was set to vote, thousands of people began converging on Parliament, carrying signs that said, “Impeach Yoon Suk Yeol, the Ringleader of Insurrection!”
After the vote, as the news reached them that Mr. Yoon was impeached in a vote with 204 in favor and 85 against, they jumped up and down and hugged one another.
“This is the happiest moment in my life,” said Kim Myoung-sook, 60. “Martial law is a declaration of war on the people, and I was so depressed over the past week.”
Opposition groups were triumphant but cautious. Park Chan-dae, the floor leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, called the impeachment “a victory for the South Korean people and democracy.”
However, the mission to oust Mr. Yoon is not over, said Lee Jae-myung, the main opposition leader. “We’ve just overcome a small mountain,” he told a rally of supporters outside the Assembly. “There is a larger, steeper mountain ahead.”
Mr. Yoon signaled he had no intention of going quietly. In a recorded speech released shortly after his impeachment, he addressed the nation and listed what he considers his accomplishments as president, including his efforts to align the country more closely with the United States and Japan in military ties. Now his efforts were paused, he said.
“But I will never give up,” he said, repeating his intention to fight it in the Constitutional Court.
The Assembly had impeached only two South Korean presidents before. In 2017, the Constitutional Court decided unanimously to subsequently remove Park Geun-hye from office. But in 2004, the court overruled the Assembly and overturned the impeachment of then-President Roh Moo-hyun.
The impeachment of Mr. Yoon was the most dramatic twist in his turbulent term that began in 2022, when he narrowly won an election on a conservative, business-friendly platform. His tenure has been marked by near-constant protests and political deadlock.
Much of his political trouble involved his wife, Kim Keon Hee, who has been accused by his critics and the local news media of accepting improper gifts, including a Dior handbag, and illegally meddling in government affairs, such as personnel decisions.
In the impeachment bill, opposition lawmakers argued that Mr. Yoon had perpetrated an insurrection when he declared martial law on the night of Dec. 3 and sent military troops into the Assembly. They said that was an attempt to stop Parliament from voting down his martial law decree, as it was allowed to do under the Constitution.
His attempt to rule by martial law lasted only six hours, as angry citizens and parliamentary aides slowed down the advance of troops, buying time for lawmakers to gather and vote. But the episode reminded South Koreans of how close their country had come to the brink of martial law, recalling its painful history of military dictatorship decades ago.
In the past week, public pressure had been mounting on the governing party. Mr. Yoon’s popularity rating plunged to 11 percent, a record low, according to a Gallup Korea poll released on Friday.
Opposition lawmakers needed eight supporting votes from Mr. Yoon’s party to impeach him. When they called an impeachment vote last weekend, Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party boycotted it, saying that he should be given a chance to resign rather than be impeached. Only three of its 108 lawmakers participated.
On Saturday, the party said that it officially opposed impeachment, but its lawmakers were allowed to cast their secret ballots. The result indicated that 12 lawmakers from Mr. Yoon’s party had joined the opposition to impeach him and another 11 abstained or cast invalid votes, sealing his fate.
“The impeachment proceedings highlight how checks and balances are essential in stopping abuses of power and supporting the rule of law,” said Simon Henderson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.
Mr. Yoon has maintained that his martial law was part of the presidential power granted by the Constitution. But he faces the possibility of becoming the first president to be arrested before his term ends. Prosecutors have barred him from leaving the country and have arrested his former defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun, and two former police chiefs on charges of helping carry out insurrection.
Under South Korean law, insurrection is a crime punishable by the death penalty or life imprisonment for anyone found by the court to be a ringleader.
But Mr. Yoon’s impeachment “is not the end of South Korea’s political turmoil,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul “It is not even the beginning of the end.”
The impeachment concluded only “an executive-legislative standoff over an attempt at martial law,” he said. “Next is Yoon’s defense in front of the Constitutional Court and likely prosecution for insurrection.”
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2) The Message: Impeach South Korea’s President. The Tune: ‘Feliz Navidad.’
Baek Jae Gil, whose viral anthem calls for the ouster of President Yoon Suk Yeol, has a long history with the country’s pro-democracy movement.
By John Yoon, Reporting from Seoul, Dec. 13, 2024
While calling for President Yoon Suk Yeol’s removal, tens of thousands of South Korean protesters have danced to traditional percussion, sung a pop genre called trot and blasted “Whiplash,” a hit by the girl group Aespa.
They’ve also left rallies with the melody of “Feliz Navidad” stuck in their heads. The adaptation’s repeated opening verse: “Impeachment is the answer.”
The day after Mr. Yoon’s short-lived declaration of martial law last week, the protest anthem’s creator, Baek Jae Gil, performed it for thousands outside the National Assembly in Seoul. A recording has received nine million views on X, and the song has spread on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. On the Chinese app WeChat, it has been translated into Chinese, he said.
“If Yoon Suk Yeol gets lost, it’s a Merry Christmas,” the crowd sang along to the tune of the 1970 Christmas classic.
Mr. Baek, 52, a professional musician known as Baekja, has been protesting for decades. He has seen demonstrations become more peaceful and the mood lighten since his first rally in 1989. That was during a brutally suppressed teachers movement that led to the formation of a national union.
“It was scary,” he said of those days in an interview last Saturday during protests at the National Assembly. “It was the time of tear gas and violent repression.”
Growing up as the youngest of six children in South Korea’s southwest, Mr. Baek said, he often heard stories from his older brothers about how soldiers suppressed pro-democracy protests in the nearby city of Gwangju in 1980, the last time South Korea was under martial law.
“My brother was almost killed,” he said, adjusting his thick-rimmed glasses.
In middle school, he moved to Seoul at his brothers’ recommendation to find better opportunities. In high school, he wrote poetry, some of it political. He kept writing poems as he studied business at university, and a friend from high school turned them into songs.
He took the stage as a singer for the first time in 1990, the year he started college, at a pro-democracy protest on campus.
Mr. Baek also learned to play the guitar. In 1991, he performed it in the alleyways of Seoul among crowds of students and workers whose demonstrations were set off by the killing of a student activist. About a dozen protesters died setting themselves on fire.
“I sang in the midst of tear gas every week,” he said.
In the past two decades, the police tactics to suppress demonstrations have become less violent. He said that protest culture changed significantly during candlelight vigils in 2002 in response to the deaths of two schoolgirls fatally struck by a U.S. Army vehicle. A U.S. military court acquitted two soldiers in the crash, sparking anger, but the protests remained largely peaceful.
Mr. Baek also saw the mood at demonstrations become brighter after the protests against President Park Geun-hye, some of the largest the country has seen, led to her impeachment in 2016. People were jubilant, he said: A peaceful protest had toppled the country’s leader.
“Protests in South Korea went from being dark and depressing to being fun and exciting,” Mr. Baek said. “There was a sense of pride in democracy.”
Those demonstrations provided the inspiration for his “Feliz Navidad” adaptation. A protester performed a version of the song, originally written by the Puerto Rican singer José Feliciano, titled “Geun-hye Is Not the One.”
(Mr. Feliciano did not comment directly on the latest adaptation. Susan Feliciano, his wife, said in a statement that the lyrics have been repurposed often and that it was gratifying to see the melody endure.)
Mr. Baek wrote his version in 2022, after Mr. Yoon had become president. Protests calling for his removal grew after a crowd crush in Seoul around Halloween killed more than 150 people. Mr. Baek wanted to come up with a song fit for the run-up to Christmas.
“The response has been great,” he said. “It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s a Christmas carol.”
Mr. Baek has run into trouble with other satirical songs. A government-run broadcaster accused him of copyright infringement earlier this year after he used portion of its footage in a YouTube video satirizing the material. At the broadcaster’s request, YouTube deleted his video, and the police launched an investigation. Mr. Baek said he was fighting the case, calling it a targeted infringement on his free speech rights.
Last week, the day after hundreds of soldiers stormed the National Assembly, he sang his anthem and several other songs there to an energized audience that was younger than those he had seen at previous rallies.
“Let’s make Yoon Suk Yeol’s arrest our Christmas gift this year!” he shouted before performing for a crowd of protesters.
Mr. Baek, who sang it again on a stage at last Saturday’s protests, said that he liked to lift people’s mood.
“The wind is biting, isn’t it?” he told thousands of protesters as wind swept his brown-highlighted perm. “If you’re cold, get up and dance!”
The crowd rose and cheered.
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3) Syria Shudders as Assad’s Prison Atrocities Come Into the Light
At the country’s most notorious prison, Syrians confront their worst fears: that they will never know what happened to the loved ones who disappeared.
By Christina Goldbaum, Photographs by Daniel Berehulak, Reporting from Damascus, Syria, and its outskirts, Dec. 14, 2024
Searching for family members at the morgue.
People came by the thousands the day after the rebels arrived in Damascus, racing down the once desolate stretch of road, up a jagged footpath cut into the limestone hillside and through the towering metal gates of Syria’s most notorious prison. They flooded the halls lined with cells, searching for loved ones who had disappeared into the black hole of torture prisons under Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Some tore through the offices of the prison, Sednaya, looking for maps of the building and prisoner logs. One woman shoved a photograph of her missing son toward others walking by, hoping someone had found him. “Do you recognize him?” she pleaded. “Please, please, did you see him?”
In the entrance hall of one section, dozens of men with sledgehammers and pickaxes tore up the floors, convinced there were secret cells with more prisoners deep underground. Crowds swelled around them as people clambered to see what they found, pausing only when Israeli airstrikes landed close enough to shake the prison’s walls.
“Move back, move back!” one man, Ahmad Hajani, 23, yelled. “Let them work!”
Since a rebel coalition overthrew the Assad government last week, unchaining a country ruled by the iron fist of the Assad family for more than 60 years, thousands of Syrians in Damascus, the capital, have taken to the streets to revel in the city’s newfound freedom.
But amid the celebrations, the country has also found itself in the opening chapter of a nationwide reckoning over the horrors that Syrians endured under Mr. al-Assad’s government as they come face to face with the network of prisons, police stations and torture chambers at the center of his family’s brutal rule.
In that time, hundreds of thousands of Syrians were swallowed up by the Assad security forces’ vast apparatus. Over the past 13 years, after the failed rebel uprising and subsequent civil war, Mr. al-Assad wielded the long arms of that system as never before to stamp out every last inkling of dissent.
Protesters, activists, journalists, doctors, aid workers and students were snatched from their shops, plucked from university classrooms and yanked from their cars at checkpoints by the secret police — never to be heard from again.
Many ended up in Sednaya, the notorious prison on the outskirts of Damascus that was often the last place detainees were dumped after months of interrogation in other detention centers. The sprawling prison with three wings became a haunting symbol of Mr. al-Assad’s ruthlessness and the center of some of the worst atrocities committed during his rule.
Tens of thousands of people were crammed into the overcrowded cells, tortured, beaten and deprived of food and water. More than 30,000 detainees were killed, many executed in mass hangings, according to rights groups. Amnesty International called Sednaya a “human slaughterhouse.”
Their relatives lived in an agonizing limbo for years, unsure if their loved ones were alive. They went to local security officials every few months to beg for information and paid thousands of dollars in bribes to government officials to track down their relatives’ whereabouts. If security officers told them their disappeared relative was dead, many refused to believe them.
“They were liars,” one woman, Aziza Mohammed Deek, said of those in Mr. al-Assad’s government. “They were all liars.”
For the relatives, absent proof that their children, siblings or spouses had been killed, they clung to the hope that somewhere, somehow, they had survived. And so, after rebels swept into Damascus last week, throngs of people rushed to prisons and detention facilities across the country.
A few had the tearful reunions they long dreamed of. Many more are still searching, walking across the feces-smeared floors of prison cells, where recently released detainees say they begged for death.
As the week dragged on, thousands have been forced to confront a prospect they had long pushed out of mind: Their loved ones may never return home — at least not alive.
“I’m missing 40 people from my family,” said Bassam Bitaf, 38, standing outside Sednaya. “I have to know where they are, where have they disappeared to? What happened to them? Why can’t we find them?”
The Prison
Sednaya was by most accounts the most fearsome torture prison of the Assad regime. So frightening were the reports of detainees’ being beaten, starved, bloodied and broken that few in Damascus even dared utter its name during Mr. al-Assad’s rule.
The building itself sits atop a hill on the outskirts of the city, surrounded by rows upon rows of iron fences and concrete walls topped with razor wire. On Monday morning, the brush outside the prison was smoldering — the rebels had set fire to the fields a day earlier, hoping the heat would detonate the land mines scattered across the hillside.
Nonetheless, later that afternoon, the earsplitting clap of a land mine exploding drew a throng of people to the top of an escarpment looking for what had happened. Hours later, crowds rushed to the escarpment again to catch a glimpse of the clouds of smoke from Israeli airstrikes pummeling a hilltop in the distance — which Israel says is part of its effort to destroy weapons and military facilities to keep them out of the hands of Islamist extremists.
Most prisoners in Sednaya were freed early last Sunday as rebels swept into the capital and the officers at the prison fled. But rumors persisted of a secret underground section, known as the “Red Wing,” where yet more prisoners might still be alive.
“They say it’s three stories underground,” said Ghassan al-Debs, 63, walking alongside the crowd. “What if they run out of air? How would they survive?”
This was his second pilgrimage to the prison in two days in search of his son Maher al-Debs, who was arrested at age 16 in 2014 after visiting an uncle in Sahnaya, a town on the southern edge of Damascus.
The police had stopped Maher at a checkpoint as he returned to the city and accused him of visiting opposition forces farther south in Dara’a, a town near the Syria-Jordan border, his father said. A police officer then called his father and demanded $1,000 in exchange for his son’s release. Mr. al-Debs did not have the money, and he has not heard from his son since.
“I never lost hope,” he explained, pausing briefly to catch his breath and leaning his hand against a parked car to steady himself. “I always had hope, because my son is innocent. The charges against him are not real.”
Like thousands around him, Mr. al-Debs had abandoned his car two miles from the prison’s entrance and arrived on foot. He wove around the cars stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic — passing a man praying in the back of his pickup truck, the road too crowded to lay down his prayer mat, and around a group of women sobbing into their palms and crying out for God.
Rebels in mismatched uniforms were scattered throughout the crowd. Some were trying to direct the traffic. Others were making their way to the prison, too, looking for lost loved ones of their own.
At the prison, people wandered around the labyrinth of passageways and hammered randomly at the ground, hoping to hear an echo that might signal a hidden room.
“There are people here,” one woman, Layal Rayess, shouted, pointing at a concrete wall of what appeared to be an electricity room. “I can hear them.”
Ms. Rayess’s son had been snatched off a bus in Damascus 13 years ago, when he was 18. A month later, she learned from an intelligence officer that he was being questioned in a detention facility in the city. She never heard any other news of him.
“They promised he would be released,” she said, wiping tears from her cheek with the palm of her hand. One man with a shovel began pounding its spade into the wall, sending bits of concrete flying into the air.
Ms. Rayess reassured herself with the only bit of hope she had left. Hopefully, she said, her son would be found in the Red Wing.
After a few minutes, the man stopped digging and shook his head. There was nothing there.
The Morgue
By Tuesday morning, the rebels had uncovered 38 bodies at Sednaya, perhaps the first corpses of prisoners to make it out of the prison. Rights groups believe the thousands of others who died there were buried in mass graves or disposed of in a crematorium built at the complex, in what American officials described as an effort to cover up the regime’s atrocities.
Rebels took the corpses to the morgue at Al-Moujtahed Hospital, in the center of the city. The bodies looked starved or mutilated beyond recognition, with missing eyes and sunken cheeks. Some bore thick, red scars around their necks that looked like rope burns, forensic examiners said. Others were covered in round, indented scars, most likely from hot irons.
One had no face to recognize; only a blackened skull remained.
Inside an examination room of the morgue, the examiners inspected the bodies, looking for any identifying marks — tattoos, crooked teeth. They took photographs of their faces from several angles. Some of the presumed prisoners appeared to have died only days before. Others had been dead for weeks, their skin turned a green hue, corpses filling the room with the stench of decomposing flesh. As news of the bodies spread, hundreds of people who had torn through Sednaya the day before rushed to the morgue.
“Just let us take a look!” cried a group of women as they tried to force their way into the examination room.
Dr. Yasser al-Qassem directed the women to a Telegram channel where the hospital was uploading pictures of the corpses.
“The pictures, please, look at the pictures,” he yelled before slamming the door shut. He let out a heavy sigh. “There are too many people,” he said.
As some relatives of the disappeared swiped through their phones looking at the photographs, Roqaya al-Neshi, 65, debated whether to join the crowd pushing its way into the morgue. She did not recognize her son Abdul Salam in any of the pictures, but was not entirely convinced that he was not among them.
The last time Ms. al-Neshi saw her son was in 2019, a year after he was arrested at age 20 from his dorm at Homs University. She had tracked him down in Sednaya and paid a prison officer a $9,000 bribe to visit him. When the guards dragged a young man toward her — feet shackled, hands tied, skin hanging off his bones — she burst into tears.
“I told them, ‘This is not my son,’” she said. “But he told me: ‘I’m your son, Mom. It’s me.”
A month later, the same officer told her Mr. Salam had died, but she refused to believe him. “I told them: ‘I saw him with my own eyes. How are you telling me he’s not alive now?’” she recalled, her cheeks wet with tears.
As she looked on, the mob outside the morgue wore down the hospital staff guarding the door of its cool-storage room. “Go ahead,” one of the doctors yelled. “Whoever wants to come in and check go ahead.” The flood of people crammed into the room, tossing open body bags and yanking morgue refrigerator doors open. Some stumbled out stunned. Others sobbed.
“Oh God, oh God!” one woman cried.
The Reckoning
At the end of Syria’s first week free from the Assad government, the frenzied search for hidden prison cells at Sednaya had dissipated. Instead, people shuffled through prison records scattered across the basement floor, scouring the yellowed pages for the names of loved ones.
A few still hoped they would find some clue that could lead them to their missing relatives, alive. “Maybe they took the prisoners to Iran to use them as bargaining chips with the rebels,” Jamil Ali Al-Abbaa said, rifling through the muddied pages on Thursday evening.
“Or to the Russian military bases,” suggested another, Ahmad al-Aboud, standing nearby.
But most found themselves confronted with a reality they did not want to imagine: The loved ones lost under Mr. al-Assad’s rule were gone forever. The questions that haunted them for decades may never be answered.
“All we wanted was our children. Dead or alive,” said Alya Saloum, 50, whose son disappeared 11 years ago.
“I have no hope left,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “It’s gone. It’s all gone.”
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4) Palestinian Authority Deploys Security Forces Against Militants in West Bank
The authority, which has struggled to crack down on powerful armed groups in the territory, is under pressure from the United States to escalate law-and-order operations.
By Aaron Boxerman and Fatima AbdulKarim, Aaron Boxerman reported from Jerusalem, and Fatima AbdulKarim from Ramallah, West Bank, Dec. 14, 2024
Palestinian security forces taking position during clashes with militants in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Saturday. Credit...Raneen Sawafta/Reuters
The Palestinian Authority announced an unusually public crackdown on militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Saturday, sending armored vehicles through a city’s streets and engaging in gun battles with armed groups.
Palestinian security forces began deploying in the city, Jenin, to “put an end to sedition and chaos,” said Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab, a spokesman for the authority’s security services. The authority administers some West Bank areas under Israeli occupation.
The forces killed a local militant leader in a neighborhood founded by Palestinian refugees, according to General Rajab and residents.
“This situation cannot be allowed to continue. It is unfortunate that we now need to deploy security forces to impose order,” said Mohammad Mustafa, the Palestinian prime minister. “But we will not watch our country destroyed and be silent.”
Violence in the West Bank has sharply escalated since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza. The growing power of militants in West Bank cities like Jenin and Tulkarm has prompted a deadly cycle of Israeli raids and drone strikes, which have devastated Palestinian neighborhoods.
In an attempt to break the cycle of violence, U.S. officials recently urged the Palestinian Authority to escalate its own law-and-order operations in the West Bank, according to two Western diplomats and a Palestinian security official familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
U.S. officials also asked Israel to rein in its raids against the militants in Jenin to give Palestinian law enforcement time to work, they said. The official Palestinian security forces are funded and trained in part by the United States.
The Biden administration and many of its allies hope the fragile Palestinian government will rule postwar Gaza, although Israel has rejected the idea.
While the authority has international backing, its control at home is widely unpopular and increasingly fragile. Many Palestinians see the body, which was established after Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the 1990s, as ineffectual and corrupt.
Palestinian militants now hold sway in parts of the northern West Bank where the authority’s control has eroded. Some are affiliated with well-established armed groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, while many others have joined new bands of local fighters who oppose both Israel and the authority.
Israeli officials sometimes point to militancy in the West Bank as evidence that the authority is incapable of running Gaza after the war. Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007 after a short and brutal civil war with the authority’s leaders.
Facing an incoming Trump administration and an emboldened Israeli right-wing government, Mahmoud Abbas, the authority’s president, was likely worried about being sidelined, said Tahani Mustafa, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group.
“Mahmoud Abbas is trying to show that he has everything under control, that they can crack down on resistance,” Ms. Mustafa said.
Israeli troops have seized Palestinian neighborhoods for days at a time, searching for suspected militants as bulldozers chew through roads looking for explosives. The Israeli military says its soldiers were compelled to conduct the deadly raids in order to quell the militants.
The cost for Palestinians has been high. At least 800 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 2023, according to the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry. The Israeli military says many were militants, but at least some were women, children and other civilians.
More than 35 Israelis, both civilians and combatants, have been killed in attacks by Palestinians or in combat so far this year, according to Israeli government figures.
Saturday’s raid focused on the Jenin refugee camp, a built-up neighborhood founded decades ago by Palestinian refugees displaced by the wars surrounding the establishment of Israel in 1948.
General Rajab said that Palestinian forces were continuing to make arrests and neutralize explosive devices in an attempt to “regain control of the Jenin camp from lawbreakers who ruin the lives of the citizenry.” He said it was not clear how long the operation would last.
Yazid Jaayseh, a local militant leader, was killed in the raid, he said. Hamas mourned Mr. Jaayseh, although it did not claim him as a member. Hamas said the authority’s crackdown was “absolutely identical to Israel’s aggression and criminality.”
Omar Obeid, 62, a resident of Jenin’s refugee camp, said he was huddled at home with family members. Gunfire between Palestinian security forces and the militants began around 5 a.m. and had yet to let up, he said on Saturday afternoon.
“None of this fighting should ever have happened,” Mr. Obeid lamented. “Violence isn’t going to get us anywhere. We need a bigger solution.”
Palestinian forces had already begun to deploy more aggressively in Jenin over the past week, before the operation was announced on Saturday. The heightened operations and clashes with militants have put civilians in the crossfire as well.
On Friday, the authority took responsibility for the killing of Rabhi Shalabi, 19, in Jenin two days after footage circulating on social media showed him being gunned down. Palestinian officials had initially blamed “lawbreakers” for Mr. Shalabi’s death.
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5) ‘They Had the Desire to Return’
Elated residents are trickling home to their shattered Syrian town, a rebel stronghold controlled until recently by the government.
By Carlotta Gall, Photographs by David Guttenfelder, Reporting from Tel Rifaat in northwestern Syria, Dec. 15, 2024
A man named Ali, with a cat, guarding a checkpoint on the main road leading into town.
The skies were quiet the other night in the northwestern town of Tel Rifaat, Syria, and relief was palpable among fighters and civilians who have lived for years under the constant threat of bombardment.
A man named Ali, 48, guarded the northern entrance to town, sitting in a chair on the road next to a wood stove at an old police post. He gave only his first name for security reasons. But there was no danger of attack, he said, and no bombing.
As night fell in the courtyard of a primary school, Syrian rebel fighters from the town — who helped recapture it from government-allied forces less than two weeks ago — knelt for the evening Muslim prayer. They were still elated by their victory, which ended their own lives of displacement, spent in tents, and those of many families from the town, who were already coming home.
“The people of Tel Rifaat really wanted to return to their town,” said Firas Alito al-Ageid, 40, commander of the rebel unit. “This was the most important thing. They had the desire to return.”
A farming town of some 50,000 people before the civil war that erupted in 2011, Tel Rifaat was first controlled by forces opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Russia this month. It was well known as a rebel stronghold — surrounded by many towns loyal to the government — and almost every family contributed fighters to the opposition.
But in 2016, Tel Rifaat was captured by Syrian Kurdish fighters who backed the Assad regime and who then jointly controlled the town with the government. Most residents fled their homes.
For the past eight years, rebel fighters had been trying to regain territory in this pocket of northwestern Syria, including in Tel Rifaat. Late last month they succeeded.
On Friday, rebel fighters and commanders — part of the opposition Syrian National Army, an umbrella group backed by Turkey that earlier was known as the Free Syrian Army — tried to explain how their lives, and their struggle against the government of Mr. al-Assad, had turned around so suddenly and unexpectedly.
“It was a surprise,” said Muhammad Alito, 33, one of the fighters. “It was impossible. It is from God that we are back in our land.”
Mr. Alito’s unit had entered the town at night and fought for just half an hour before victory came and the last fighters holding the city pulled out, he said. He showed a video he took on his cellphone as he and other fighters drove through the town’s dark, empty streets on Dec. 1.
The commander of Mr. Alito’s unit, Mr. al-Ageid, had another explanation. The rebel offensive was well prepared and benefited from a joint command that coordinated all the various rebel units, making the operation more effective than previous efforts, he said.
And, Mr. al-Ageid added, the rebels encountered fewer airstrikes than usual, and there was a new and notable weakness on the side of the Assad government. Its soldiers withdrew from their post in the town before the main fighting started, as they risked being encircled by the rebel advance, he said.
Hezbollah and Iranian militias, which had supported the Syrian government and held frontline positions several miles from Tel Rifaat, had already reduced their presence in recent months.
Kurdish fighters remained in Tel Rifaat to the end but could not hold it, Mr. al-Ageid said. The rebels attacked from four directions, leaving an escape route open toward the east, and after three days of fighting, the Kurdish militias retreated.
No planes came to help them, he said.
“There were very few airstrikes,” Mr. al-Ageid said. “And when they did bomb, they hit civilian targets. They did not hit the front lines.”
The town is badly damaged from the years of fighting, with houses flattened in places from airstrikes by the government eight years ago when it recaptured Tel Rifaat. But civilian life is returning. Displaced families were clearing rubble and cementing a roof on Friday. Children played in alleyways as fighters embraced friends and relatives on the streets and sat in plastic chairs drinking coffee.
The northern part of the town is especially badly scarred because the Kurdish fighters had dug extensive tunnels under houses, leaving mounds of earth and stone behind. The tunnels provided safe routes to and from the front line.
A Syrian National Army fighter, Raed al-Nomer, 30, found one under his grandfather’s house and said that he went down it, discovering that it led to a school 500 yards away.
Fighters from Tel Rifaat have remained temporarily on duty, occupying a former Kurdish militia base in the primary school and guarding checkpoints on the edge of town. Few of the fighters carry rifles, and no heavy weapons or armored vehicles were visible.
The main fighting force moved on to other battlefronts as soon as the town was recaptured on the evening of Nov. 30, Mr. al-Ageid said. Rebels seized most of the city of Aleppo the same day and the city of Hama a few days later.
A family reunion was underway in one house as Asma Haj Ali, 54, welcomed two of her daughters and their children. After eight years of separation, the daughters had come from opposite parts of the country to see one another at last.
One daughter, Fatime Haj Ali, 30, lives in Aleppo, which was under Syrian government control until two weeks ago.
Another daughter, Rube Haj Ali, 33, an English teacher whose husband is a rebel fighter, was displaced to tented encampments near the Turkish border. “A lot of crying, a lot of feelings,” she said about their reunion.
Her sister Fatime struggled to find words: “It’s like I’m drunk.” She grimaced when asked how life had been in Aleppo.
Their mother had fled with Rube in 2016 but could not bear living in a tent and returned to Tel Rifaat. She lived among Kurdish fighters and displaced families just half a mile from the front line.
She said the Kurdish militia had maintained tight security but had not bothered the residents.
When the end came, there was no fighting inside the city, she said. The Kurdish fighters left without warning.
Then, also without warning, the rebels arrived, and soon after civilians came too, she said.
“I knew nothing until my son knocked on the door,” she said. She knew the exact moment. “It was 6 in the evening, Nov. 30,” she said.
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6) Israel Strikes Military Sites in Syria, Monitor Says
The Israeli military hit weapons depots and air defenses, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Israel has said it aims to keep military equipment away from extremists.
By Vivian Yee, Reporting from Cairo, Dec. 15, 2024
Israel has struck Syria over 450 times since the previous government’s collapse, according to a group monitoring the conflict. Credit...Ammar Awad/Reuters
Israel struck Syrian weapons depots and air defenses overnight, a group monitoring the conflict said Sunday, in what appeared to be part of an effort Israel says is aimed at depriving “extremists” of military assets after rebels seized power in Syria.
In all, Israel struck its neighbor 75 times in attacks that began Saturday night near the Syrian capital, Damascus, and the cities of Hama and Homs, according to the group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that has long tracked the conflict in Syria. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Israel has struck Syria more than 450 times since the collapse of the Assad regime a week ago, according to the Observatory, destroying Syria’s navy and dozens of air bases, ammunition depots and other military equipment.
Israel’s military has also seized and occupied an expanse of territory in Syria over the de facto border between the two countries, including on the Syrian side of the strategic Mt. Hermon. Israel has given no timeline for its departure, apart from saying that it would stay until its security demands were met.
The head of the group leading the rebel coalition that now governs Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, said in an interview on Saturday with Syria TV, a pro-opposition channel, that Israel was using pretexts to justify its “unwarranted” territorial seizures in Syria. Still, he said, Syria could not afford any further conflict.
“Syria’s war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations,” he said, adding that he was focused on diplomatic solutions. “The priority at this stage is reconstruction and stability, not being drawn into disputes that could lead to further destruction.”
The Observatory reported on Sunday that Israeli forces in Syrian territory had asked residents of the countryside in western Daraa Province to surrender their weapons, as they had done in other villages in the area Israel now occupies.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military about its latest strikes in Syria.
Neither the previous Syrian government, led by President Bashar al-Assad, nor the new authorities in Damascus have attacked Israel, and Arab countries and France have called on Israel to withdraw and respect Syria’s sovereignty.
Israeli officials, however, say that the raids are necessary to secure the border and to keep Syria’s weaponry from falling into the hands of extremists while the country remains unstable. American officials have echoed those statements, with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken saying on Thursday that Israel had told the Biden administration that its presence in Syria was “a temporary move” to ensure “that this vacuum isn’t filled by something bad.”
With the Assad regime ousted, some fear a security vacuum that could allow the Islamic State or other extremist groups to exploit the situation.
The group now in power in Damascus, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has long been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and other Western countries for its roots in extremist movements such as Al Qaeda.
But the group has installed a technocratic administration in Damascus and promised moderate, tolerant governance. That has led some countries to consider lifting the terrorist designation to establish relations with Syria’s new leaders.
Visiting Israeli troops in the Golan Heights on Friday, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Israel’s military chief of staff, insisted that his country was acting to secure its frontier and its citizens even as it crossed the lines established by a cease-fire agreement between Syria and Israel in 1974. Israel had no intention of interfering in the future of a post-Assad Syria, he said.
“There was a country here that was an enemy state, its army collapsed, and there is a threat that terrorist elements could reach here,” Lieutenant General Halevi said in remarks released by the military on Saturday.
“We moved forward so that these terrorist elements will not establish themselves — extremist terrorists will not establish themselves right next to the border,” he said. “We are not intervening in what is happening in Syria. We have no intention of managing Syria. We are unequivocally intervening in what determines the security of Israeli citizens here.”
The overnight airstrikes lasted for about eight hours, according to the Observatory, which said that weapons and ammunition depots as well as bases in the mountains and countryside outside Damascus had been struck.
It said Israel had also targeted warehouses in the countryside outside Homs, air defenses at the airport in Hama and other sites.
Other foreign powers were also maneuvering to preserve their interests in the post-Assad era, including Russia, which in previous years had helped Mr. al-Assad stay in power, partly to hold onto its two military bases in Syria — springboards for its expanding military presence in Africa.
While there were reports of Russian military planes leaving Syria, the Turkish defense minister, Yasar Guler, told reporters on Sunday that Russia was simply reshuffling its military assets within Syria.
“Right now, I don’t think they are going to leave,” he said in comments reported by Turkish media and confirmed by the foreign ministry. “They’ll do everything they can to stay.”
Russia was in talks with the new Syrian leadership in Damascus about its presence in the country, he added, and Turkey had offered to “provide necessary support to them in that process.”
Mr. al-Shara, who is better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, was equivocal in his Saturday interview about Russia’s future in Syria, saying only that the relationship should be re-evaluated “in a way that serves common interests.”
In Damascus, the authorities led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham said they were trying to re-establish security and public services that would enable the country to return to some semblance of normalcy.
The transitional administration announced on Telegram that all schools and universities were to start classes again on Sunday, and institutions in Aleppo, Idlib, Damascus and other provinces did so.
Questions remained about how the new authorities would handle sectarian tensions between Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, to which Hayat Tahrir al-Sham belongs, and minorities, including the Alawites, a Shiite Muslim offshoot sect that includes the Assad family and many of its strongest supporters. Scattered acts of retribution and threats against Alawites and Shiites continued to be reported in Syria, despite the new administration’s repeated calls for minorities to be respected.
On Saturday, without giving a reason, it announced that it was opening centers in Latakia Province, a former al-Assad stronghold, where people associated with the deposed regime would be required to register.
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem, Rania Khaled from Cairo and Safak Timur from Istanbul.
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7) Israel’s Military Strikes Northern Gaza After Days of Deadly Bombardment
Israel’s military said it carried out strikes and raids against Hamas targets in northern Gaza on Sunday. The actions followed days of deadly attacks across the territory.
By Hiba Yazbek, Reporting from Jerusalem, Dec. 15, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/15/world/middleeast/15-gaza-strikes-news.html
Destroyed buildings after Israeli airstrikes in Al Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza, on Friday. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
Israel’s military said it carried out strikes and raids in northern Gaza on Sunday after days of deadly bombardments across the territory.
The military said in a statement that it had targeted a “terrorist meeting point” in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, among other actions. Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, reported that Israeli forces had raided a school building in the town and forced displaced families sheltering there to evacuate in unsafe conditions, killing and wounding several amid bombardment and gunfire. Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since October, Israel’s military has conducted some of its most devastating attacks in northern Gaza in an effort to crush what it says is a resurgence of the Hamas militant group in the area. The military has called on civilians in much of northern Gaza to evacuate, but many feel they have nowhere safe to go and have not left. The United Nations has warned of dire conditions and the risk of famine for some 400,000 civilians there.
The raids and bombings on Sunday came after several days of intense bombardment across Gaza. Israel’s military said it struck a school building in Gaza City on Saturday, describing it as a command and control center where militants were operating and planning attacks. The Palestinian Civil Defense, the main emergency service in Gaza, said in a statement on Saturday that seven people were killed and 12 others were wounded when a school building sheltering displaced families was hit.
Late on Thursday, a deadly attack on a residential block in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed at least 31 people and wounded 90 others according to a spokesman for Al Awda Hospital near Jabaliya, a major medical center in northern Gaza, where the majority of the casualties were taken. Photographs taken by news agencies in the days after the strike showed people walking through the debris of severely damaged buildings. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike.
Israel’s military issued evacuation orders for parts of central and southern Gaza on Saturday, where it said that its forces were striking Hamas targets. The evacuation orders urged Palestinians in areas of central Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis to leave ahead of an imminent attack that it said was aimed at Hamas militants who were firing rockets from the area. The orders drove hundreds of people to flee on foot carrying few belongings, Wafa reported on Sunday.
Amid the violence, and after months of stalled negotiations, cease-fire talks appeared to have picked up some momentum. The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said last week that his goal was to be able to secure a deal this month between Israel and Hamas for a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of hostages who had been captured during the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting from Istanbul.
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8) After Impeachment, South Korea Is Left With No Elected Leader
The suspension of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s powers left a seasoned but unelected prime minister in charge of a country facing daunting challenges at home and abroad.
By Choe Sang-Hun, Reporting from Seoul, Dec. 15, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/15/world/asia/south-korea-impeachment.html
Protesters outside the National Assembly in Seoul on Saturday. People danced in the streets outside the building after President Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached. Credit...Jun Michael Park for The New York Times
President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and suspension from office has left South Korea, one of the United States’ most important allies, without a strong elected leader to tackle challenges like a belligerent North Korea and a deepening political polarization at home.
By voting to impeach Mr. Yoon on Saturday, the National Assembly delivered a crushing vote of no confidence in a leader who had been unpopular through his term. Outside the legislature, people danced in the streets, celebrating Mr. Yoon’s peaceful removal from office less than two weeks after his declaration of martial law as proof of the resilience of the country’s democracy.
Yet, despite their euphoria, the political turmoil and uncertainty unleashed by Mr. Yoon’s botched attempt on Dec. 3 to place his country under military rule for the first time in 45 years remained unresolved.
His impeachment has created a political vacuum at the top. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the No. 2 official in the government hierarchy, has stepped in as the interim leader, but he has no electoral mandate. A new government cannot be born until the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or formally oust Mr. Yoon.
The court’s deliberations could take up to six months. When the court deliberated on the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye in 2016, it needed three months to reach its conclusion and remove her. This time, the nine-member court has the additional problem of having three vacancies to fill. In the coming days, the National Assembly is expected to name three justices, asking Mr. Han to formally appoint them. Only two of the existing six justices were appointed by Mr. Yoon’s progressive predecessor, Moon Jae-in.
If Mr. Yoon is formally removed, South Korea will need another two months to elect a new president.
Mr. Yoon said he would “never give up” the fight to return to office. But he also faces investigations by the police and prosecutors on charges including insurrection, which could lead to his arrest. Prosecutors said they asked Mr. Yoon to present himself on Sunday for questioning, but he did not show up. They said they would summon him again.
The impeachment bill accused Mr. Yoon of perpetrating an insurrection when he declared martial law, because he sent troops into the National Assembly to block it from voting down his martial law, as it is allowed to do under the Constitution, and to detain his political opponents. Senior officials in the government, police and military have been arrested on charges of helping him carry out an insurrection.
The political turmoil will make it harder for South Korea to navigate the uncertainty around the incoming Donald J. Trump administration. Mr. Trump has described the alliance with South Korea as a terrible bargain for the United States and said that he would get along well with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. Mr. Trump has threatened to make South Korea pay more for the 28,500 American troops based on its soil and to impose bigger tariffs on South Korean exports to the United States.
“We won’t have strong leaders who can actively negotiate with the Trump administration to sort these things out,” said Sung Deuk Hahm, a professor of political science at Kyonggi University, west of Seoul.
The challenge for Mr. Han, the interim leader, will be to keep the government functioning through this crisis. Though Mr. Han has been a career bureaucrat since the early 1970s, serving in posts that include trade negotiator, finance minister and ambassador to the United States, he lacks political clout because prime minister is not an elected post.
“The acting president’s role is to maintain the status quo,” said Lim Ji-bong, a professor of law and expert on the Constitution at Sogang University in Seoul. “Enforcing a significant new policy is considered beyond his power.”
Mr. Han and both the country’s finance and foreign ministers have faced questions over their roles in Mr. Yoon’s declaration of martial law, further limiting their mandate, according to some legal scholars and opposition lawmakers. Mr. Han said he and other ministers opposed Mr. Yoon’s martial law decree but could not persuade him out of it.
Mr. Han is viewed more as an even-keeled caretaker than as a charismatic leader, in some ways complementing Mr. Yoon, who has been criticized as impulsive and a braggart. When Mr. Yoon came under fire for inadequate preparations for the World Scout Jamboree last year that left hundreds ill from heat exhaustion, it was Mr. Han who traveled to the campsite to personally clean the public bathrooms there.
Such acumen served him well in his bureaucratic career. Now he will need to draw on all his skills to steer his country through a constitutional crisis and other intractable problems, including a widening income gap, mounting household debt and simmering gender and generational tensions.
One of the first things he did as acting president on Saturday was to call the National Security Council to check on the country’s military preparedness. On Sunday, he called President Biden to emphasize the importance of the alliance. Matthew Miller, spokesman of the U.S. State Department, said that the alliance remained “ironclad.”
“I consider this my last and most important mission in my long career in the public sector,” Mr. Han, 75, said about his new role. “I will do the best I can.”
The main opposition Democratic Party had at first threatened to impeach Mr. Han for his role in Mr. Yoon’s martial law. But on Sunday, the party retracted the threat and its leader, Lee Jae-myung, proposed establishing a consultative body comprising members of the political parties and the government to help stabilize the country. He also urged the Constitutional Court to reach its conclusion as soon as possible. Mr. Lee is favored to win if a presidential election were to be held now.
“The most urgent thing is to normalize the country,” Mr. Lee said at a news conference on Sunday.
In a defiant speech on Thursday, Mr. Yoon said he would “fight to the end” the attempt to unseat him — a message that political analysts said was a battle cry for his supporters and was expected to deepen political polarization. Mr. Yoon has die-hard supporters among right-wing South Koreans. A long line of wreaths and messages of support for him stretched along the street leading to his office.
Mr. Yoon had won plaudits in Washington and Tokyo by aligning his country more closely with the United States and Japan to deter China and North Korea. But at home, his two-and-a-half years in office have been marked by a near-constant clash with the opposition, allegations of corruption and abuse of power involving him and his wife, and accusations that he used state prosecutors to silence unfriendly journalists and political dissidents.
Most South Koreans would rather live with the temporary political uncertainty than keep in office the unpopular president whom they see as having hurt their country’s image as a vibrant Asian democracy with global cultural appeal.
Mr. Yoon’s misjudged martial law also damaged his image abroad by creating questions about the South Korean conservative elites’ commitment to democratic norms and the integrity of the country’s military, analysts say.
“He blew away his foreign policy achievements — which could have been his most important legacy — through his self-destructing terror,” said Prof. Hahm.
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9) Why America’s Kurdish Allies Are Under Threat in a New Syria
The Kurds helped the United States contain the Islamic State. Now they fear a resurgent Turkey that has long considered them an adversary. Here’s a guide.
By Lara Jakes, Lara Jakes writes about global conflicts and diplomacy, Dec. 16, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/world/middleeast/kurdish-forces-syria-turkey-isis-america.html
A funeral on Saturday for five fighters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces who were killed in Manbij, Syria, during clashes with Turkish-backed opposition factions. Credit...Delil Souleiman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The 13-year civil war between Syria’s government and rebel fighters has ended. But the peril is not over for Syria’s Kurdish minority.
A number of armed factions are still jostling for control after the collapse of the Assad regime. They include the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which have allied with the United States to combat the extremist Islamic State, and the Syrian National Army, a militia backed by Turkey, which is hostile to the Kurdish forces.
For more than a decade, the Kurdish-led soldiers have been America’s most reliable partner in Syria, liberating cities seized by the extremist group and detaining around 9,000 of its fighters.
But Turkey, which shares a border with Syria, has long considered the Kurdish group to be its enemy. The Turkish government believes the Kurdish fighters in Syria are allied with the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which has fought the Turkish state for decades.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who backs the rebel groups that toppled the Assad regime, appears eager to seize the opportunity created by the momentous political shift in Syria to pursue his own agenda against the Kurdish fighters.
Turkey’s new dominance leaves the Kurds exposed
The shape of the new Syrian government, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is still being determined. But American officials and Middle East analysts agree: Turkey will have an outsized influence.
That means Kurdish groups’ foothold in the northeast looks increasingly “tenuous,” said Wa’el Alzayat, a Syria expert and former American diplomat. Turkey “will have the biggest leverage in what’s happening, and will happen, in Syria for the foreseeable future,” he said.
As Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies seized control from President Bashar al-Assad, “they brought with them a tide of Turkish power and influence over the future of Syria,” said Nicholas Heras, a senior analyst at the New Lines Institute.
The high stakes for the Kurds, and for Western forces determined to prevent a renewed ISIS threat, were illuminated earlier this past week. Even as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies took over, Turkish-backed rebels attacked the Syrian Democratic Forces, supported by Turkish airstrikes and artillery fire.
The commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Gen. Mazloum Abdi, told The New York Times he had to divert fighters who were defending the prisons that house accused ISIS members to fight off the Turkish-backed militants.
Now, Mr. Heras predicted, Arabs who had joined the Syrian Democratic Forces to fight the Islamic State could disband or defect to other rebel groups, under pressure from Turkey and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. That would further weaken the Kurdish forces.
A best-case scenario for the Kurds, officials and experts said, might see them receive enough support from the United States to secure the territory they hold in northeast Syria. That could give them leverage with the new government in Damascus to pursue a fully autonomous state, something minority Kurds in Syria have long sought.
At worst, the Kurds could face an inflamed conflict with Turkish-backed fighters, be forced to cede control of at least some of their oil-rich territory and, if President-elect Donald J. Trump decides to withdraw U.S. troops, lose vital help on the ground.
America’s role will be pivotal
“There really needs to be some kind of cease-fire/peace agreement between the Turks and the Kurds that both sides can agree with,” said Natasha Hall, a Syria expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The Biden administration is racing to negotiate just that before it leaves office next month.
Following meetings in Turkey last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Saturday that “making sure that ISIS was in a box” remained an urgent priority in Syria. He said the Kurdish fighters were “playing a critical role in pursuing that mission.”
But the diplomatic balancing act he faced was clear: His meetings in Turkey included talks with the foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who earlier last week said that “any P.K.K. extension in Syria cannot be considered a legitimate partner.”
And on Friday, Mr. Fidan pointedly cited the P.K.K. as he described efforts to keep terrorist organizations from exploiting the political chaos in Syria.
Yet there are signs that American diplomacy is having an impact. Last week, an American commander, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, visited northeast Syria, where 900 American troops are stationed. Hours later, a cease-fire between the Kurdish forces and a Turkish-backed rebel group known as the Syrian National Army was announced in the northern city of Manbij, where the two sides have frequently clashed.
General Abdi, the Kurdish commander, said on X that the cease-fire was brokered with American help. Under the agreement, he said, Kurdish forces would withdraw from Manbij, a majority Arab city which they seized from the Islamic State in 2016 but that has since become a flashpoint among battling factions for control. But he and other Syrian ethnic Kurds are increasingly worried that their retreat from Manbij is just the beginning.
The city of Kobani could be the next flashpoint
Last Tuesday, a senior Hayat Tahrir al-Sham officer said that local tribes allied with his group had wrested control of the eastern city of Deir al-Zour from Kurdish fighters who had taken over as Mr. al-Assad’s forces collapsed just days earlier.
And in the days since, the Turkish-backed rebels have repeatedly battled with Kurdish forces in the region around the Euphrates River.
Mr. Heras, the New Lines analyst, said he thought those skirmishes could be military preparations for an invasion of Kobani, a majority Kurdish city.
The city, just south of the Turkish border, holds deep emotional significance for the Kurdish forces, who fought with American troops to reclaim it after a four-month Islamic State siege that began in late 2015.
General Abdi now appears to be bracing for a possible invasion by Turkey’s allied fighters. Mr. Heras said residents were fleeing Kobani by the thousands despite a shaky truce agreement this past week that aimed to buy time for negotiations.
“Turkey is taking advantage of the crisis in Syria to destabilize the region and seize our land, while claiming they are fighting terrorists,” said Sinam Sherkany Mohamad, the head of the Kurdish fighters’ political wing in Washington, in a statement. “But we are not terrorists, we are democratic U.S. allies.”
James F. Jeffrey, a former American ambassador to Turkey who was a chief Syria envoy during Mr. Trump’s first administration, said any invasion of Kobani would violate a 2019 agreement that the U.S. negotiated for a détente, “and whether by the Turks, or Syrian forces associated with the Turks, it makes no difference.”
In the meantime, General Abdi has sought to shore up the Kurdish fighters’ relationship with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, saying he is seeking direct relations with the group’s leaders.
Officials and experts said Turkey may wait until its interests are locked in with the new Syrian government before deciding whether to launch a full-bore military offensive against the Kurdish forces. It may also watch to see whether Mr. Trump withdraws American troops, and how his administration deals with Mr. Erdogan, a like-minded strongman whose relationship with the United States has often been tempestuous.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, warned in a statement on social media that he was prepared to push for economic sanctions against Turkey if it attacked the Kurdish forces, which he said would “set in motion an ISIS jailbreak.” He added: “If Turkey takes military action against Kurdish forces in Syria, it will jeopardize America’s interests dramatically.”
Safak Timur contributed reporting from Istanbul.
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10) Israel Carries Out Heavy Strikes on Syria’s Coast, Monitor Says
Overnight strikes targeted former army positions, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor. Israel has said it aims to keep military equipment away from extremists.
By Euan Ward, Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, Dec. 16, 2024
The fragment of a missile at the site of a Syrian army weapons depot that was hit by overnight strikes in Tartus, western Syria, on Monday. Credit...Bakr Alkasem/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israel carried out a heavy wave of airstrikes overnight on Syria’s coastal region, a war monitor said early on Monday, as the Israeli military continued to pound Syria in a bid to destroy the country’s military assets after rebels seized power.
The overnight strikes targeted former Syrian Army positions including air defense sites and missile warehouses, according to the war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization based in Britain that has long tracked the conflict in Syria. Earlier in the day, an Israeli airstrike also targeted radars in Deir al-Zour’s military airport in the country’s east, the Observatory said.
The “successive strikes” along the Syrian coast — home to Russian naval bases — amounted to “the most violent strikes in the area” since 2012, according to the Observatory. It said there were 18 airstrikes, which were particularly powerful because they were consecutive and detonated missiles in warehouses, leading to secondary explosions.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the strikes. Israeli officials have previously said that the campaign in Syria is an effort to keep military equipment out of the hands of “extremists,” after an alliance of rebel groups ousted the Assad regime earlier this month. There were no immediate reports of casualties from the latest strikes, the Observatory said.
Israel has struck Syria more than 450 times since the collapse of the Assad government, according to the Observatory, destroying Syria’s navy and dozens of air bases, ammunition depots and other military equipment.
Israel’s military has also seized and occupied an expanse of territory in Syria over the de facto border between the two countries, including on the Syrian side of the strategic Mt. Hermon. Israel has given no timeline for its departure, apart from saying that it would stay until its security demands were met.
On Sunday, the Israeli government unanimously approved plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expand settlements in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, part of an $11 million scheme to double the population in the area. The move was necessary, the prime minister’s office said, because a “new front” had opened up on Israel’s border with Syria after the fall of the Assad government.
Israel seized the Golan Heights during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and it is considered illegally occupied under international law.
The head of the group leading the rebel coalition that now governs Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, said in an interview on Saturday with Syria TV, a pro-opposition channel, that Israel was using pretexts to justify “unwarranted” territorial seizures in Syria.
Still, he said, Syria could not afford any further conflict and was instead focused on diplomatic solutions.
“Syria’s war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations,” Mr. al-Shara said. “The priority at this stage is reconstruction and stability, not being drawn into disputes that could lead to further destruction.”
Gabby Sobelman and Vivian Yee contributed reporting.
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11) German Government Collapses at a Perilous Time for Europe
Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote, deepening the political turbulence in one of the continent’s most powerful economies.
By Christopher F. Schuetze and Jim Tankersley, Christopher F. Schuetze reported from Berlin, and Jim Tankersley from Washington, Dec. 16, 2024
The German government collapsed on Monday as Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in Parliament, deepening a crisis of leadership across Europe at a time of mounting economic and security challenges.
The war in Ukraine has escalated. President-elect Donald J. Trump is set to take office in the United States, raising new questions over Europeans’ trade relations and military defense. And France’s government fell this month.
Now, Europe’s largest economy is in the hands of a caretaker government, ahead of elections early next year.
German lawmakers voted to dissolve the existing government by a vote of 394 to 207, with 116 abstaining.
The collapse of the government, just nine months before parliamentary elections had been scheduled, was an extraordinary moment for Germany. The elections, now expected on Feb. 23, will be only the fourth snap election in the 75 years since the modern state was founded, reflecting a new era of more fractious and unstable politics in a country long known for durable coalitions built on plodding consensus.
Mr. Scholz had little choice but to take the unusual step of calling for the confidence vote after his three-party coalition splintered in November, ending months of bitter internal squabbling and leaving him without a parliamentary majority to pass laws or a budget.
The country’s political uncertainty could last for months, with a new permanent government potentially not forming until April or May.
Seven parties will go into the campaign for Parliament with a realistic chance of gaining seats, and some on the political fringes — especially on the right — are poised for strong showings, according to polls. Mr. Scholz is widely expected to be ousted as chancellor. Polls currently suggest the conservative Christian Democrats are poised to finish first.
The campaign is likely to be dominated by several issues that have roiled Europe in recent years. Germany and France, traditionally the two most influential countries in the European Union, are mired in debates over how best to revive their struggling economies, breach growing social divides, ease voter anxieties over immigration and buttress national defense.
They and their E.U. partners are looking warily toward Russia, where President Vladimir V. Putin has escalated threats about the use of nuclear weapons amid Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
They are also vexed by their economic relationship with China, which has grown into a formidable competitor for many of their most important industries but has not become the booming consumer market for European products that leaders long envisioned.
And they are bracing for the start of the new presidential term for Mr. Trump, who has threatened a trade war and the end of the United States’ commitment to the NATO alliance that has guaranteed Europe’s security for 75 years.
The combination of challenges has proved politically unsettling. President Emmanuel Macron of France on Friday named his fourth prime minister in a year and is under mounting pressure to resign. Mr. Macron says he will stay in office and try to repair the deep fissures in his government over the 2025 budget.
Mr. Scholz’s government faced similar budget challenges, along with growing concerns about how to rebuild the German military in the face of a belligerent Russia and Mr. Trump’s criticism of NATO.
It is an inopportune time for Germany to be plunged into a grueling winter election campaign and a political freeze that could last until a new government takes power.
“The timing is absolutely terrible for the E.U. — basically, these multiple crises are hitting the E.U. at the worst possible time, because the bloc’s traditional engine is busy with itself,” Jana Puglierin, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said, referring to Germany and France.
The war in Ukraine and the need to bolster Germany’s military — and what that will cost — will be among the urgent issues likely to dominate the election campaign, along with the floundering economy, failing infrastructure, immigration and the rise of the political extremes.
Badly behind in the polls, Mr. Scholz is planning to highlight his caution when supplying Ukraine with weapons, especially sophisticated offensive hardware.
Under Mr. Scholz’s watch, Germany became the biggest European donor of weapons to Ukraine, according to a ranking by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a research organization in Germany. But he prefers to point to his decision not to export the long-range missile system Taurus. Many in Berlin saw the chancellor’s phone call with Mr. Putin in November as a way to attract those voters who are nervous about Germany’s passive involvement in the war.
During what was billed as his first campaign speech last month, Mr. Scholz criticized his main opponent, Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democratic Union, accusing him of provoking Russia with remarks that suggested he would provide Kyiv with more military aid if Russian forces continued bombing civilian infrastructure.
“I can only say: Be careful! You shouldn’t play Russian roulette with the security of Germany,” Mr. Scholz said.
The strategy appears to be working. Since the end of the three-party coalition, Mr. Scholz’s personal approval ratings have risen somewhat. But his party is still polling at around 17 percent, about half of what the conservatives are projected to win.
Mr. Scholz will have to fight hard to persuade voters to give him another chance. For now, it is Mr. Merz, a longtime figure on the political stage, who is widely expected to be the next chancellor, given his party’s strong lead in polls.
The three other mainstream parties are also led by well-known politicians, two of whom held important posts in the government: Christian Lindner, leader of the pro-business Free Democrats, whose falling out with the chancellor helped precipitate the collapse of the coalition; and Robert Habeck, the economic minister and lead candidate for the left-leaning Greens.
But in Germany’s fractious political landscape, no single party is likely to win an outright majority, leading to potentially tricky negotiations to build a coalition more functional and durable than the one that failed.
That necessity probably means that opponents cannot be criticized too heavily because they are all potential coalition partners. But it may also present mainstream parties with difficult decisions about whom they chose to work with.
All of the mainstream parties have said they would refuse to partner with the far-right Alternative for Germany, parts of which are being monitored as a threat to the Constitution by the domestic security services. Nonetheless, the party — which is known as the AfD and is polling at about 18 percent — appears to be gaining ground.
In closely watched state elections in September, both the AfD and a newer, extreme-left party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, had their best showings ever. But mainstream parties still consider them an anathema, making it hard to form governing coalitions in those states.
The results could portend equally messy coalition haggling in Berlin after a national vote, though the political fringes are less popular nationally than they are in those eastern states.
But given the likely vote tally, many political watchers predict a return of the grand coalition of the center between the Christian Democrats and the progressive Social Democratic Party, which governed Germany for 12 of the past 20 years.
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12) Amazon Disregarded Internal Warnings on Injuries, Senate Investigation Claims
A staff report by the Senate labor committee, led by Bernie Sanders, uncovered evidence of internal concern about high injury rates at the e-commerce giant.
By Noam Scheiber, Noam Scheiber has covered working conditions at Amazon for more than five years, Dec. 16, 2024
For years, worker advocates and some government officials have argued that Amazon’s strict production quotas lead to high rates of injury for its warehouse employees. And for years, Amazon has rejected the criticism, arguing that it doesn’t use strict quotas, and that its injury rates are falling close to or below the industry average.
On Sunday, the majority staff of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which is led by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, published an investigation that found that Amazon itself had documented the link between its quotas and elevated injury rates.
Internal company documents collected by Mr. Sanders’s investigators show that Amazon health and safety personnel recommended relaxing enforcement of the production quotas to lower injury rates, but that senior executives rejected the recommendations apparently because they worried about the effect on the company’s performance.
The report also affirmed the findings of investigations undertaken by a union-backed group showing that injury rates at Amazon were almost twice the average for the rest of the industry.
“The shockingly dangerous working conditions at Amazon’s warehouses revealed in this 160-page report are beyond unacceptable,” Mr. Sanders said in a statement. “Amazon’s executives repeatedly chose to put profits ahead of the health and safety of its workers by ignoring recommendations that would substantially reduce injuries.”
Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the internal studies and recommendations that Mr. Sanders’s report cited were later found by the company to be invalid. “Senator Sanders’s report is wrong on the facts and weaves together out-of-date documents and unverifiable anecdotes to create a preconceived narrative,” she said.
She noted a recent ruling by a judge in Washington State that rejected a regulator’s allegations that Amazon required employees to work at an unsafe pace, and said the injury rates had recently improved. “The facts are, our expectations for our employees are safe and reasonable,” Ms. Nantel said.
In an internal study known as Project Elderwand, which Amazon began in 2021, Amazon health and safety personnel identified an upper limit on the number of repeated motions a worker could make while picking items from robotic shelving units before injury rates increased substantially. That limit was equivalent to picking about 216 items per hour over a 10-hour shift. They found that Amazon workers, responding to productivity quotas, typically went well over that limit — picking more than 266 items per hour.
The study recommended that Amazon use software to track workers’ pace and require additional breaks to limit the number of repeated motions and keep workers under the threshold.
In another internal study, known as Project Soteria, which began in 2020 and continued through 2022, Amazon investigators found evidence that a faster pace of work led to a higher rate of injuries. The study recommended that Amazon suspend discipline for employees who failed to meet their productivity targets and that it give employees more time off from work, both of which appeared to reduce injury rates.
But Amazon executives ultimately rejected the recommendations of both reports, according to documents uncovered by Mr. Sanders’s office. The Senate labor committee staff found evidence suggesting that executives were concerned that carrying out the recommendations could lower productivity at Amazon’s warehouses or hurt the “customer experience.”
Mr. Sanders’s report also uncovered a third internal Amazon study that took issue with Project Soteria. In it, another team of Amazon researchers disputed the idea that there was a link between the pace of work and the risk of injury. It concluded that some workers were inherently more prone to getting injured.
Amazon said on Sunday that Project Soteria was an example of its practice of assigning multiple teams to study safety: One team explored a potential link between speed and injuries, and another evaluated the methodology and findings and concluded that they were flawed.
The findings in the Senate report are consistent with investigations conducted by state and federal regulators in recent years. Last year, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited more than half a dozen Amazon warehouses for exposing workers to high risks of joint and soft-tissue injuries, including back injuries.
The agency has said the elevated injury risks were related to the high frequency with which workers lifted items, the heavy weight of the items, the awkward body movements required to lift the items and the long hours that employees worked. OSHA proposed fines of more than $100,000 across the warehouses it cited; Amazon has appealed the citations.
In California, regulators fined Amazon nearly $6 million this year for violating a law that requires companies to provide written disclosures of quotas, and which forbids quotas that prevent employees from following health and safety laws or taking state-mandated breaks. Amazon said it appealed the citations.
Regulators in Washington State cited Amazon for safety violations earlier this decade, but a state judge threw out several citations this year after a monthslong trial. The state regulator referred to Project Soteria in its case, but the judge found that the state did not sufficiently establish a relationship between the pace of work and injury rates. The regulator is appealing the decision in state court.
Amazon has said that it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars improving safety in recent years, and that injury rates have declined as a result, including a large drop for the most serious injuries. The company has long maintained that it doesn’t have strict or “fixed” quotas. It says it has performance targets that are evaluated over longer periods and that take into account factors beyond sheer productivity, like an employee’s experience level and how other workers at the site are performing.
But employees have said for years that they are subject to warnings or disciplinary action if they fail to complete a certain number of actions per hour, and interviews conducted by Mr. Sanders’s office affirm this. Amazon workers told investigators that they could be disciplined for failing to pick items from shelving units at target rates in the hundreds per hour.
The report also identifies what it says are flaws in how Amazon compares its own injury rates with the rest of the industry. While Amazon says its injury rates are roughly average for large warehouses, Mr. Sanders’s team argued that this calculation was heavily skewed by including Amazon in the overall data set, which drives up the average. Amazon also tends to restrict the comparison to warehouses with 1,000 or more employees even though it operates many smaller warehouses.
When Amazon is removed from the average and compared with other companies, and when the analysis includes warehouses of any size, its injury rates were more than 1.8 times that of other companies in each of the past seven years, Mr. Sanders’s report concludes. The findings are similar to those of a union-backed group.
Amazon defended its methodology, saying that benchmarking against the overall industry average was standard practice.
Mr. Sanders’s report also found that Amazon made it difficult for workers to receive appropriate medical care when injured. It found that Amazon often discouraged workers from seeking medical attention outside their warehouse and sent them to an internal health facility that was not equipped to provide more than first aid, even when they had potentially serious long-term injuries. It said the company frequently denied workers the accommodations they needed to deal with injuries sustained on the job.
Amazon has denied discouraging workers from seeking outside medical attention and has said its accommodations policies meet or exceed state and federal requirements.
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