Surviving State Violence:
The Case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui
and Incarceration in Women’s Prisons
Monday March 24, 2025
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM EDT
Online, YouTube
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Stagnant waters and poverty can be found all around in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.
Haiti Action Committee Condemns Trump’s Decision to End Temporary Protected Status for Haitians
Haiti Action Committee denounces the latest white supremacist attack by the Trump Administration directed at Haitians living in the US. The announcement that the US will end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians puts a target on the back of over 500,000 Haitians.
It is, quite simply, a plan for ethnic cleansing – and it must be opposed.
The US government has granted 17 countries Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which allows undocumented people from those countries to work and live legally in this country, but does not provide a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship. A country is designated for TPS when conditions there are so bad that it’s not safe or economically viable for people to return, for instance in case of hurricanes and other natural disasters or war and political instability. Haiti was granted TPS status after the horrific earthquake of 2010 that killed more than 300,000 people. This was followed by Hurricane Matthew that devastated Haiti’s southern peninsula in 2016 and the disastrous 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti in August 2021. By July of 2024, over 520,000 Haitians had been granted TPS, and they are now in the crosshairs of ICE and Homeland Security.
Many of the Haitians who are impacted by this inhumane ruling have been in the United States for years and have families with children who are US citizens. They own homes and businesses, and pay taxes. Deportations will break up families with the US-born children having the option to remain in the country (assuming birthright citizenship is not overturned), and their undocumented parents forced to return to a country called a “living hell” by those who live there.
The current conditions in Haiti are exactly what TPS was set up to address, and it’s unconscionable for the Trump administration to pretend otherwise. There are now no elected officials in Haiti, the result of years of rule by decree by imposed and illegitimate governments, installed by the US and its so-called Core Group of foreign occupiers in the wake of the coup d’etat that overthrew Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, in 2004. In the last year alone, over 5000 Haitians have been killed by paramilitary death squads, armed with weapons that enter the country illegally, mainly from the US. Over one million Haitians have had to flee their homes. Nearly half the population is facing acute hunger, as roads are blocked and markets attacked. Tens of thousands of children have been unable to attend schools. Gang rapes have become the norm as paramilitaries aligned with government and business elites escalate their attacks on opposition communities. The despised Haitian Army, disbanded by President Aristide in 1995, has been reconstituted, readying itself to commit yet more human rights violations.
Already there are lawsuits and protests to prevent mass deportations of Haitians. Haiti Action Committee will be doing all we can to advocate for ongoing TPS protection for Haitians in this country and for an end to the death squad terror in Haiti that has fueled Haitian migration. Please join us in this fight.
To contact us, please go to: action.haiti@gmail.com
For more information, please go to www.haitisolidarity.net or our facebook page athttps://www.facebook.com/HaitiActionCommittee
To support the vital work of Haiti’s grassroots movement, please donate to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund at www.haitiemergencyrelief.org--Haiti Action CommitteePO Box 2040Berkeley,CA 9470233 years of solidarity with the grassroots struggle for dignity, democracy and self-determination of the Haitian people! We Will Not Forget the Achievements of Lavalas in HaitiPlease donate to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund www.haitiemergencyrelief.org - all donations are tax-deductible and support Haiti's grassroots struggle for democracy
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URGENT STEP ONE:
Demand EMERGENCY MEDICAL TRANSFER & TREATMENT
FOR IMAM JAMIL
The Bureau of Prisons is denying medical treatment to Imam
Jamil Al-Amin, 81 years old, formerly known as H. Rap Brown.
He has a potentially life-threatening growth on his face, on
top of his multiple myeloma (cancer) & other significant
medical issues.
A civil and human rights leader, wrongfully imprisoned for
the past 24 years, he needs Your Help to avoid his
Death By Medical Neglect
CALL TUCSON COMPLEX 520-663-5000
EMAIL WARDEN Mark Gutierrez, mggutierrez@bop.gov
Give Name & Inmate Number: Jamil Al-Amin, #99974-555
Demand they grant Imam Jamil an EMERGENCY MEDICAL TRANSFER from United States Penitentiary (USP) Tucson to Federal Medical Center (FMC) Butner for his Immediate Medical Treatment NOW!!
***Deputy Director of BOP [Bureau of Prisons], (202) 307-3198
URGENT STEP TWO:
Tell his Congressional Delegation of his condition, Urge them to use their offices to inquire the BOP & demand that their constituent (Imam Jamil, West End Community Masjid, 547 West End Pl., SW, Atlanta) receive the emergency medical transfer, diagnosis & treatment.
- Email GA Cong. Nikema Williams PressGA05@mail.house.gov
- Email US Sen. Rafael Warnock press@warnock.senate.gov
- Email US Sen. Jon Ossoff press@ossoff.senate.gov
- Email Atlanta City Councilman Jason Dozier jdozier@atlantaga.gov
- Email GA State Rep Park Cannon park.cannon@house.ga.gov
- Email GA State Sen. Sonya Halpern sonya.halpern@senate.ga.gov
This is most urgent step before Step Three: campaigning for Medical Reprieve by the GA Bd. Of pardons & Parole, THE entity standing in the way of freeing Imam from his unjust conviction by granting a Medical Reprieve.
IMAM JAMIL ACTION NETWORK.ORG
216.296.4617
NATIONAL
347.731.1886
MEDIA
252.907.4443
SOUTHERN
347.731.1886
NJ/NY
202.520.9997
WASH., DC
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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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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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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) Gaza War Led to Deaths of More Than 3 Dozen Hostages, Officials Say
Israel’s leaders promised that their military campaign in Gaza would help save the lives of hostages. At least 41 have died in captivity, some killed by Hamas and others in Israeli airstrikes.
By Natan Odenheimer, Ronen Bergman and Gabby Sobelman, March 8, 2025
The reporters reviewed forensic reports and military investigations and interviewed Israeli officials and the relatives of slain hostages.
Itay Svirsky, 40, was a therapist who loved philosophy. Eden Yerushalmi, 24, was training to become a Pilates instructor. Alex Lobanov, 32, a father of three, never met his youngest child.
They are among the 41 hostages killed since being taken captive by Hamas and its allies during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to an analysis by The New York Times of forensic reports and military investigations into their deaths, as well as interviews with more than a dozen Israeli soldiers and officials, a senior regional official and seven relatives of hostages.
Some were killed by Hamas, some by Israeli fire, some their cause of death unknown. The losses — and most acutely, the scale of them — are now at the heart of an anguished debate within Israeli society about whether more people could have been brought back alive if a truce had been reached sooner.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has long contended that only military force could compel Hamas to free the hostages. Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents argued that the longer the war, the likelier that the hostages would be executed by Hamas or killed in Israeli strikes.
The debate has gained more resonance in recent days as the country faces the prospect of returning to war since the lapse of the recent truce. The Israeli government recently upended the process by proposing a new framework, immediately rejected by Hamas, that called for a seven-week extension during which the group would release half the living hostages and return the remains of half the deceased ones.
Of the 59 hostages still believed held in Gaza, the Israel government has said that only 24 are alive. The fear and uncertainty over their fates has been seared on the national psyche.
In late February, thousands of Israelis lined the streets along the funeral route of Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, who were kidnapped during the Hamas-led attack on Israel and killed in Gaza. Many held signs that read “sorry,” an apology for not doing enough to save them.
Of the 251 people abducted during the Hamas-led raid that ignited the war in October 2023, more than 130 have been exchanged alive for Palestinian detainees. The Israeli military has retrieved the corpses of more than 40 others, many of whom were taken dead into Gaza during the attack. Hamas has handed over eight bodies as part of the latest cease-fire agreement.
A few hostages were almost certainly killed in the first days of the war, before it was possible to seal a truce, according to two Israeli officials. But many others have died since the brief first cease-fire collapsed in November 2023 and the fighting continued in a war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
The soldiers and officials all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive findings.
Although Israel and Hamas neared another cease-fire deal in July, the talks collapsed, and it took another five months to strike an agreement, one largely similar to the one discussed in the summer. Mr. Netanyahu’s political rivals and some of the hostages’ relatives have said that the months of extra fighting, while degrading Hamas and its allies in Lebanon and Iran, led to the deaths of more hostages and ultimately failed to defeat Hamas.
“We could have brought home more hostages — earlier and for a smaller price,” Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister until November, said in a televised interview last month.
While Mr. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment, he has long blamed Hamas for the failure to reach a truce. “Only continued military pressure, until total victory, will bring about the release of all of our hostages,” the prime minister said last year.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the specific circumstances in which the hostages were killed but said in a statement that it has carried out operations with numerous precautions taken to protect the captives.
The statement added that it “expresses deep sorrow for every incident in which hostages were killed during their captivity and is doing everything in its power to prevent such occurrences.” The military also said that it regularly updates the families of hostages on the status of their loved ones.
Seven hostages were executed by their captors as Israeli soldiers drew near, and four others died in Israeli airstrikes, according to Israeli officials and the public findings of military investigations.
Three hostages were killed by Israeli soldiers who mistook them for Palestinian militants, the Israeli military said publicly; one was shot dead in crossfire. The circumstances surrounding the deaths of 26 others remain inconclusive.
In some cases, there are conflicting claims, such as in the case of the Bibas family. Hamas said that the three were killed in an Israeli strike, but the Israeli military said they were murdered.
Neither side has offered evidence for their conclusions. After examining the bodies, Dr. Chen Kugel, the director of Israel’s national forensic institute, said in a statement that there is no evidence they were killed in a bombing.
Some relatives of the hostages blame Hamas alone for these deaths. Nira Sharabi’s abducted husband was killed in an Israeli airstrike, according to a military inquiry. She said in an interview that Hamas was ultimately responsible “because they took him and put him there.”
Others believe that the government cared more about fighting Hamas than saving their loved ones.
“The government deceived the public by downplaying the risks the war posed to hostages,” said Merav Svirsky.
Her brother survived an Israeli airstrike only to be executed by his Hamas captor days later, according to three Israeli officials and Ms. Svirsky, who was briefed by military.
“The captor murdered my brother. But the reason he shot him was the military’s campaign,” Ms. Svirsky added.
Killed in Airstrikes
When Israel hit a subterranean Hamas command center in November 2023, the strike killed two Hamas commanders, including Ahmed al-Ghandour, a Hamas general who Israel said helped organize the October attack.
A month later, Israeli infantry scouring the site of the strike discovered the bodies of three unintended victims: an Israeli kidnapped from a music festival on Oct. 7 and two soldiers captured at a nearby military base.
The military has tried to prevent harm to hostages. Throughout the war, intelligence officers gathered information about each captive and maintained records of their last known location, according to more than 12 officials.
But the military couldn’t pinpoint the whereabouts of many hostages, especially in the first weeks of the war when information was scarce and aerial bombardments were at their most intense, according to three military officials. If there was no clear indication of a hostage’s location, the air force was able to strike, as in the attack on al-Ghandour.
After eventually concluding in March 2024 that the airstrike had killed hostages, the military didn’t inform their relatives for months, according to two defense officials. The military declined to comment on the incident.
In January 2024, the military allowed relatives to see a forensic report, later reviewed by the Times, that suggested the men may have been suffocated by noxious gases.
Maayan Sherman, the mother of one of the victims, soon began a public campaign to press the military to admit that the gases were emitted during an explosion caused by an Israeli missile.
It was not until September that the military acknowledged the men were killed in one of its own airstrikes. It has not disclosed the exact cause of death.
Executed by Hamas
In late August, Israeli commandos advanced through a town in southern Gaza, hoping to find Hamas’s top leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, according to five Israeli defense officials.
As they were hunting for Mr. Sinwar, the Israeli military assessed there were people potentially being held in tunnels in the same neighborhood. The commandos confirmed the presence of at least one hostage on Aug. 27, when they discovered a living captive, Farhan al-Qadi, an Arab Israeli, in a tunnel.
Fearing their presence might endanger other hostages, the forces initially suspended their mission, according to a military investigation.
The area was already previously marked as restricted for operations on military maps, which were reviewed by the Times. Three officials said that by operating in the area, the military risked their lives, since militants had been ordered to kill captives if cornered.
Ultimately the need to hunt Mr. Sinwar took higher priority, according to four defense officials.
After a daylong pause, the commandos pressed ahead on Aug. 28 with their search.
On Aug. 31, instead of Mr. Sinwar, the commandos discovered the bodies of six hostages who had been shot, killed and abandoned in a narrow tunnel.
Hamas issued conflicting messages shortly after the incident — one official blamed Israel for killing them, while another strongly suggested they were killed by Hamas fighters.
The military inquiry later concluded that they had been killed by their guards as the Israeli forces approached.
Mr. Sinwar was ultimately killed in another operation on Oct. 16.
Killed During Rescue Attempts
One night in December 2023, a squad of Israeli commandos thought they were on the cusp of rescuing a female hostage. The squad stormed a Hamas hide-out in Gaza, expecting to find an Israeli woman in a separate room from her captors, according to three Israeli officials.
Instead, they found themselves in a gun battle with Hamas militants. The woman was nowhere in sight. Without Israeli intelligence officers realizing, Hamas appeared to have swapped her for a male hostage, Sahar Baruch, according to the officials.
Soon, Mr. Baruch was dead — killed in crossfire that also injured Israeli soldiers, the officials said. It is unclear whether Mr. Baruch was killed by friendly fire or his captors; Hamas later released a video of his body.
Mr. Baruch’s remains are still in Gaza.
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting
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2) Self-Deportation Taught Me What I Know About This Country
By Jill Damatac, March 8, 2025
Ms. Damatac is the author of “Dirty Kitchen,” a forthcoming memoir of her two decades as an undocumented Filipino immigrant in the United States.
Lukas Schmitz
On Jan. 1, 2015, I self-deported from the United States, my home of more than 22 years, to return to the Philippines, where I was born and lived until the age of 9. At takeoff, sorrow overtook the terror I felt at check-in. The T.S.A. agent had scanned my passport — renewed in 2002, devoid of a visa — and waved me through. I froze in place: Where were the ICE agents?
That day, I found out that no one cares if an undocumented immigrant leaves America. Only my husband, waving from beyond the gate, cared. He would eventually meet me in London; I was to go to Manila first to apply for a British spouse visa, which I couldn’t do in the United States because I was an undocumented person.
America is home; it raised me. I came in 1992, the daughter of Filipinos who left their homeland — an economy drained by dictatorship — in search of a better life. I left in 2015 as a broken adult of 31, still in search of that better life. When I returned last month, I found a different country.
My decision to leave the United States seemed crazy, the resulting bar on returning for 10 years a self-inflicted wound. This view requires the belief that America is exceptional, the only nation capable of caring for its people and helping them achieve their potential. After a near-lifetime of being undocumented, I had stopped believing this.
In my experience, America had become a place to flee from, not to. At the time I lived in New York without papers, I couldn’t secure a license to drive, afford to go to college, start a career, get health care, vote, open a bank account or travel freely. My life was a struggle with domestic and sexual violence, financial hardship and suicide attempts. By self-deporting, I ended my American life to save what remained of my actual life.
In the years before I left New York City, in my 20s and early 30s, I worked, hoping to save for a bachelor’s degree I would never earn. On Craigslist, I found temp jobs that didn’t require proof of legality: street fund-raiser, receptionist, assistant, office manager. The city’s buoying energy saved me in those years. I convinced myself that hiding and surviving was enough, that I didn’t need papers.
For many undocumented immigrants, the only path to papers and citizenship is through marriage to an American citizen. I avoided this, even when romantic partners and friends offered. I believe in love. In 2012, two years after meeting one night on the Lower East Side, my now-husband and I married: me a Filipino and American at heart; he a white, working-class-raised British man on an H-1 visa.
Two years into married life in New York City, my undocumented status complicated everything — an apartment under both our names, a joint bank account, the thought of children. We decided to move to Britain, his homeland. The privilege of this choice wrenched me with guilt: Most undocumented immigrants, including my family, couldn’t do what I was doing, couldn’t go where I was going.
Acquiring a British spouse visa was straightforward, in my experience smoother than America’s processes. My new start in London was suffused with unfamiliar optimism. Freed from being undocumented, and even without a bachelor’s degree, I graduated with two master’s degrees, one from Cambridge University in creative writing.
In my decade of becoming British, I found self-fulfillment, leavened by ambivalence: Britain is far from good to refugees and migrants, to its working-class people and people of color. In late 2023, I became a British citizen. My certificate of naturalization and British passport are locked in a safe with other pieces of paper that also make me legible: my Philippine birth certificate, our New York City marriage license, my British voter registration.
The decision to return to America was possible because of the privilege of my husband’s career in international finance. As a natural-born British citizen, he has the freedom to readily meet his ambitions and his career’s demands.
At the American Embassy in London, we applied for my L-2 visa, attached to his L-1 employment visa. Vulnerable to the whims of the consulate employee that day, I was swiftly denied. I had to serve out the last three months of the immigration ban that began when I self-deported in 2015 — no exception granted despite my British citizenship and the career I built as a filmmaker and later a writer with a book deal.
On Jan. 1, 2025, the 10-year ban expired; on Jan. 6, I was approved for the L-2 visa. My husband and I could go to San Francisco. I was going home.
But first, a short stay in Manhattan, which felt to me less like where I once lived — a place of bodega owners, mom-and-pop shops and the kind neighbors who’ve lived next door since the ’60s. It now feels like a clenched fist. In tears of guilt, I remembered my parents, struggling in the ’90s to be legalized, fleeced by unscrupulous immigration lawyers until time ran out on their tourist visas.
I wished I could go to New Jersey to see my parents for dinner and join my sister for wine at her Hell’s Kitchen apartment. But my dad died of a heart attack in 2022, while preparing to self-deport with my mother. Mom self-deported to Manila just before the 2024 election, after 32 years away. My sister, who left in 2017, is now Dutch, a neuroscience Ph.D. living just outside Amsterdam.
My survival does not make me exceptional — undocumented people survive every day under worse circumstances. “All you did was marry a white British guy,” someone said to me last week. Relative to other undocumented immigrants, I am lucky: I grew up with good teachers who provided the care and encouragement I needed; my mother was accidentally given a Social Security card permitting her to work. No deportation, ICE or cages for my family.
My experience shows that undocumented immigrants are not a monolith: We are a patchwork of different oppressions and privileges, coming to America to escape economic depression, poverty, war, trafficking, persecution, famine.
Why was the luck of falling in love and my proximity to white and white-collar privilege required to lift me out of my struggle with undocumentation in the first place? Shouldn’t the United States, a country of immigrants that sees itself as a bastion of democracy, do more for immigrants like my family, who lived here for decades?
I’m probably expected to feel grateful to return to America. Instead, I feel survivor’s guilt and a sense of love for the place where I grew up, the kind that recognizes its flaws and strengths, but loves anyway. There is still work I want to do now that my time is no longer spent just surviving.
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3) Only a Worker’s United Front Against Capitalism Can Stop Fascism
By Bonnie Weinstein, March/April 2025
February 8, 2025—Time and again catastrophic events such as wars, ecological disasters, racism, drug overdoses, illnesses like cancer and heart attacks are blamed on “human weaknesses”—that all the evil that befalls humanity is the fault of the inferiority of the masses—and not the class-based structure of society that places the wealthy capitalist class above the poor and working class.
All of Trump’s dictatorial edicts such as annexing Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal, deporting hundreds-of-thousands of migrants, cutting funds to the Environmental Protection Agency, and his pick of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as his Health Secretary, in his first few weeks in office has certainly been outdone on February 4, 2025, with his, and Netanyahu’s plan to rid Gaza of all Palestinians, turn it into “The Riviera of the Middle East” and make it a U.S. territory.
The poor and working class are blamed for our very existence
It’s as if the economic and social structure of society has nothing to do with war—with genocide in Gaza—and the massively unequal distribution of wealth across the globe:
It is wars between capitalists for which workers shed their blood. It is the wanton polluting and pillaging of the environment for profit that causes ecological disasters. It is capitalism’s need to pit worker against worker that causes racism and bigotry.
It is the giant, hugely profitable, pharmaceutical industry that is to blame for opioid addictions and overdoses.
And it’s the giant junk food, cigarette, drug and alcohol industries with high-powered advertising that not only promotes all these unhealthy things but raises prices on healthy foods. They even keep the supermarkets that sell healthy food out of the poorest communities altogether.
The health insurance industry has made sure that healthcare is only available to those who can afford to pay—or who qualify for some kind of minimal healthcare plan—sometimes with impossibly huge deductibles.
It is the poor and working class who fight and die in war—who are the cannon fodder for wars that benefit only the capitalists. The U.S. war industry is the most profitable industry in the world, and it is paid for with our lives and livelihoods—the capitalists collect the cash.
These crises are not the result of weakness in human nature. They are not “human-caused” at all—they are capitalist-caused human disasters on a massive scale.
When labor takes the lead, peace, liberty and justice will prevail
It seems, at the moment, we are silenced by shock. There should be millions on the streets in outrage over Trump’s onslaught of ultra right-wing edicts and billionaire cronies at his beck and call. Not only has he dismantled U.S.A.I.D., but Trump is also halting all aid to South Africa claiming mistreatment of white landowners, while the fact is, “White South Africans, who make up seven percent of the population, own farmland that covers the majority of the country’s territory.”1
While it’s indisputable that our outrage is growing, the necessary leadership to harness this outrage has not yet coalesced. But there are some lights in this long, dark tunnel.
A statement by the General Executive Board of the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE), on January 31, 2025, renewed their call for a labor party,2 and student activists at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine have launched what is believed to be the first Palestine solidarity encampment since President Donald Trump took office.3 And thousands across the country have been protesting Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.4
Labor must take the lead
What is vitally needed is a reckoning among organized labor that it must break its allegiance to the Democratic and Republican Parties, and organize a massive, new party of the working class, completely independent of any capitalist party.
It is the only way to fight back against the ever-encroaching fascism that is the inevitable trajectory of capitalism in its final stages of destruction and decay.
Labor must take the lead in defense of all those who are being targeted by the capitalist class and its government.
Labor must organize massive protests in defense of immigrants, women and the LBGTQ community, students and children, all people of color, every unorganized and severely underpaid and oppressed worker in factories, Big-Box warehouses, farms, fields and wineries and service industries—people of all abilities—whose education opportunities and living standards have plummeted.
No matter how “liberal sounding” capitalist politicians are, they are, first and foremost, defenders of capitalism and their ownership and commanding control of the means of production whose system enslaves the working class.
It means breaking labor laws—organizing massive walkouts in defense of working people and our allies under assault by the government—including those under military assault by the U.S. across the globe.
Labor must claim our right to never cross a picket line again! To stand tall and firmly against injustice everywhere and to exercise our right to carry out the fight to end capitalism and take the ownership of the means of production in our own hands for the benefit of everyone.
The first step is for the U.S. labor movement, en masse, to sign on to the UE call for a labor party and get organized and ready to win the fight of our lives. Our very survival depends upon it.
1 “Trump halts all aid to South Africa, claiming mistreatment of white landowners.” By Michael D. Shear and John Eligon, February 7, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/08/us/trump-administration-news#trump-south-africa-aid-white-landowners
2 UE News, January 31, 2025
https://www.ueunion.org/political-action/2025/trump-government-of-billionaires-no-good-for-the-working-clas
3 “Bowdoin College Students Launch First Gaza Solidarity Encampment of Trump Era” Common Dreams, February 7, 2025, reprinted in this issue of Socialist Viewpoint.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/bowdoin-sjp
4 “Businesses close to support ‘Day Without Immigrants,’ amid Trump’s immigration crackdown”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/03/day-without-immigrants-businesses-close/78176470007/
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4) DHS Detains Palestinian Student from Columbia Encampment
By Prem Thakker, March 9, 2025
Mahmoud Khalil outside the gates of Columbia University’s campus on April 30, 2024. Photo by USA TODAY Network via Getty Images
On Saturday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers detained Mahmoud Khalil – a recent Columbia University graduate who helped lead the Gaza solidarity encampment – at his New York City home, an apartment building owned by the school, says advocates.
According to the advocates, at around 8:30 PM, Khalil and his wife – who is eight months pregnant – had just unlocked the door to their building when two plainclothes DHS agents pushed inside behind them. The agents allegedly did not identify themselves at first, instead asking for Khalil’s identity before detaining him.
The agents proceeded to tell Khalil’s wife that if she did not leave her husband and go to their apartment, they would arrest her too. The agents claimed that the State Department had revoked Khalil’s student visa, with one agent presenting what he claimed was a warrant on his cell phone. But Khalil, according to advocates, has a green card. Khalil’s wife went to their apartment to get the green card.
“He has a green card,” an agent apparently said on the phone, confused by the matter. But then after a moment, the agent claimed that the State Department had “revoked that too.”
Meanwhile, Khalil had been on the phone with his attorney, who was trying to intervene, asking why he was being detained, if they had a warrant, and explaining that Khalil was a green card holder. The attorney had circled back to demanding to see a warrant when the agents apparently instead hung up the phone.
Khalil was initially detained in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in downtown New York, pending an appearance before an immigration judge. His attorney then communicated that he had been moved to the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility in New Jersey.
A State Department spokesperson told Zeteo they cannot comment on individual visa cases, but "in general, the department has broad authority to revoke visas … under the Immigration and Nationality Act.”
The department “exercise[s] that authority when information comes to light at any time indicating that a visa holder may be inadmissible to the United States or otherwise ineligible for a visa,” the spokesperson added.
Columbia University did not answer Zeteo’s specific questions about the detention of Khalil and whether it had changed its policies regarding allowing immigration authorities on campus. In a public statement, the university said, “Columbia has and will continue to follow the law. Consistent with our longstanding practice and the practice of cities and institutions throughout the country, law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including University buildings.”
DHS and ICE did not immediately respond to Zeteo’s requests for comment.
Free Speech?
Khalil, who is Palestinian, served as a lead negotiator amid the campus’s Gaza solidarity encampment last spring. He had appeared in several media interviews, in the past telling outlets he had a student visa. Advocates say he had gotten his green card since.
The escalation comes amid several reports of ICE presence on the school’s campus this week. It also comes after a massive escalation by the Trump-Vance administration to crack down on speech. This week, Trump announced his intentions to jail, imprison, or deport students involved in protests. Then, reporting revealed that his State department was planning to use Artificial Intelligence to monitor online activity, and revoke visas for whomever they deem to be “pro-Hamas.”
On Friday, the Trump administration cut $400 million in grants to Columbia, claiming it has failed to take steps to address antisemitism, despite it having one of the most militant responses to student protestors.
In February – after Columbia president Katrina Armstrong met with Israel’s education minister, where they discussed taking firmer action on campus speech – Columbia’s Barnard College expelled three students for political activism for the first time since the 1968 protests. This week – as the school welcomed former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who once said, “I’ve killed many Arabs in my life, and there’s no problem with that,” to campus – NYPD arrested nine students involved in a campus sit-in.
All the while, Columbia is maintaining a shadowy process to discipline students who are critical of Israel, including, apparently for writing op-eds.
Khalil himself said he was accused of misconduct by the school just weeks before his graduation this December. “I have around 13 allegations against me, most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with,” he told the Associated Press last week. The school put a hold on his transcript and apparently threatened to block him from graduating. But, according to Khalil, when he appealed the decision with a lawyer, the school eventually backed down.
“They just want to show Congress and right-wing politicians that they’re doing something, regardless of the stakes for students,” Khalil told the AP. “It’s mainly an office to chill pro-Palestine speech.”
It is not yet clear if Columbia explicitly welcomed ICE and DHS onto its campus. But the school has recently issued guidance on “potential visits to campus” by ICE. While it encourages campus affiliates to contact the school’s public safety office if they see ICE activity on campus, it says faculty and staff “should not interfere” for instance in “exigent circumstances” where ICE agents seek access to university buildings or people without a warrant.
In at least one email seen by Zeteo, the guidance was emailed to some students on Saturday – the day Khalil was detained.
The school even accepting “potential visits to campus” by immigration officers, seem a far cry from Trump’s first term. In November 2016, the Columbia administration led by President and First Amendment scholar Lee Bollinger declared that the school would not allow immigration officials on campus without a warrant – nor share student information unless subpoenaed, ordered by the court, or authorized by the student.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with statements from the State Department and Columbia University.
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5) Chaos at the V.A.: Inside the DOGE Cuts Disrupting the Veterans Agency
Clinical trials have been delayed, contracts canceled and support staff fired. With deeper cuts coming, some are warning of potential harms to veterans.
By Roni Caryn Rabin and Nicholas Nehamas, March 9, 2025
At the Veterans Affairs hospital in Pittsburgh, researchers spent months preparing for a clinical trial of a new drug to treat advanced cancers of the mouth, throat and voice box.
They were ready last month to start enrolling patients — veterans whose cancer had spread to other tissue and who had run out of treatment options.
Then a problem arose.
The hospital was unable to renew the job of a key staff member involved in running the study, a typically routine process thwarted by a hiring freeze imposed under the government-cutting project led by President Trump and Elon Musk. Suddenly, the clinical trial was on hold.
“They were ready to enroll,” said Alanna Caffas, the chief executive of the Veterans Health Foundation, which administers the trials. “They had the lab kits on site. They had the drug to dispense. But they couldn’t get the clinical research coordinator renewed.”
While Trump administration officials have promised to preserve core patient services, initial cuts at the V.A. have nonetheless spawned chaotic ripple effects. They have disrupted studies involving patients awaiting experimental treatments, forced some facilities to fire support staff and created uncertainty amid the mass cancellation, and partial reinstatement, of hundreds of contracts targeted by Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The changes have shaken the veterans department, which stands out in the labyrinth of agencies and offices under siege by Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk.
It is in many ways a natural target for reform — a bureaucratic behemoth with roughly 480,000 employees, some 90,000 contracts and a documented history of scandals and waste. But it also treats 9.1 million veterans, provides critical medical research and, according to some studies, offers care that is comparable to or better than many private health systems. Even Project 2025, the conservative governing blueprint assembled by Trump allies, said the V.A. had transformed into “one of the most respected U.S. agencies.”
The V.A. is also one of the most politically sensitive departments in the government, serving a constituency courted heavily by Republicans, including Mr. Trump, who has made overhauling the agency a talking point since his 2016 campaign.
Now, with V.A. Secretary Doug Collins vowing a much deeper round of cuts — eliminating some 80,000 jobs and reviewing tens of thousands of contracts — some Republican lawmakers are warning that the tumultuous process risks undoing recent progress.
G.O.P. lawmakers questioned Mr. Musk about the cuts during a closed-door meeting last week, with Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, telling reporters afterward that, although improvements can be made, “we want to make sure veterans get the care they need.”
This account of the early days of DOGE-led cuts inside the V.A. is based on more than two dozen interviews with hospital administrators, current and recently terminated employees, heads of independent foundations that support the veterans’ health system, government contractors and research scientists. Many agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because they want to continue to serve veterans or hope to be reinstated in their jobs, and feared retribution from the Trump administration.
Among the 2,400 employees fired from the V.A. since Mr. Trump’s inauguration are workers who purchase medical supplies, schedule appointments and arrange rides for patients to see their doctors. Many are veterans themselves. All were “probationary” employees, meaning they were relatively new on the job and had fewer legal protections. Some may be reinstated, pending court action.
James Stancil, an Army veteran who stocked supplies for emergency and spinal injury care at a V.A. hospital in Milwaukee, said he and nearly half his shift of supply technicians lost their jobs last month.
“If you double the work, I can guarantee you’re going to have wrong things and wrong stuff in the wrong place,” said Mr. Stancil, a member of the American Federation of Government Employees, whose role in his hiring paperwork was described as “critical.”
V.A. officials said the system is fully committed to serving its patients, insisting that no patients were affected by the cuts and that all savings would be reinvested in veterans.
“V.A. will always provide veterans, families, caregivers and survivors the health care and benefits they have earned,” the agency’s press secretary, Peter Kasperowicz, said in a statement. “But we’re also making major improvements to strengthen the department, including redirecting billions of dollars from nonmission-critical efforts to health care, benefits and services that directly support V.A. beneficiaries.”
A day after The New York Times asked about delays in clinical trials due to the hiring freeze, the veterans agency moved to address the problem facing research staffers like the ones in Pittsburgh, who are often paid by outside groups running the research but still need time-limited, unpaid appointments at the V.A. to work on site.
On Friday afternoon, the V.A.’s acting chief of research and development emailed employees saying that those with certain appointments set to expire soon will be given 90-day exemptions. The email to employees did not specify what would happen after 90 days, even though most studies last for years, or how the decision would apply to those whose appointments had already expired. Mr. Kasperowicz said the extension would allow for a “comprehensive assessment of ongoing research initiatives to evaluate their impact on Veteran health care.”
Mr. Collins appeared to bring some of his concerns about the agency’s future to a Cabinet meeting last week, asking Mr. Musk to be strategic in his government-shrinking process, The Times previously reported.
In public, however, Mr. Collins has expressed enthusiastic support for the effort. He has also exempted about 300,000 “mission critical” workers from being cut , including medical professionals like doctors and nurses.
“But we will be making major changes,” he said. “So get used to it.”
Research Disruptions
Although the Veterans Affairs Department is better known for the health care it provides, conducting scientific research is one of the agency’s core missions, offering veterans early access to cutting-edge treatments that are still in clinical trials.
With 170 hospitals nationwide — and patients who tend to volunteer for studies at higher rates than civilians — the V.A. has pioneered studies that often seek to enroll large numbers of patients at multiple sites across the country.
Some of the agency’s research focuses on conditions that disproportionately afflict veterans like traumatic brain injury, spinal cord and blast injuries. But the V.A. is also credited with landmark discoveries such as aspirin’s ability to prevent heart attacks, the first cardiac pacemaker and the nicotine patch.
Mr. Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order freezing government hiring cut off many of the V.A.’s critical research staff midway through studies, said Rashi Romanoff, the chief executive of the National Association of Veterans’ Research and Education Foundations, an association that supports partnerships between the veterans department and nonprofits.
If their appointments are not renewed, “any work with the V.A. must be suspended; they can’t have contact with patients; they have no access to data,” Ms. Romanoff said.
Ms. Romanoff estimated that some 200 research staff members involved in 300 or more trials were at risk of being cut off during the first 90 days following the federal hiring freeze, threatening to disrupt trials providing treatment to some 10,000 veterans if no action is taken. Scientists are already considering moving trials to other institutions, which will mean veterans are no longer first in line for participation, and could cause millions of dollars in research funds to go to waste, she said.
In Pittsburgh, at least 20 research staff involved in more than a dozen studies have a specific type of appointment that comes without compensation from the V.A. The disrupted projects included three offering new drugs for lung and other cancers.
Mr. Kasperowicz said the 90-day extensions include research staff jobs in an effort to maintain “continuity of all research efforts” while the V.A. assesses the value of the research. He said the department would reach out to the Pittsburgh medical center “to ensure they understand this policy.”
Struggle Over Contracts
The V.A. has long struggled to maintain oversight over its spending, including a vast network of contracts worth some $67 billion per year, according to the agency. A report by the agency’s inspector general’s office noted “improper and unknown” payments totaling $3.2 billion in fiscal year 2023.
In an initial push in late February, the V.A. tried to cancel roughly 875 contracts. The list of cuts was “provided” by DOGE, according to emails reviewed by The Times, with a directive that “terminations should begin as quickly as possible.”
“No more paying consultants to do things like make Power Point slides and write meeting minutes!” Mr. Collins wrote in a social media post announcing the cuts.
But senior V.A. officials were soon making frantic appeals to roll some of them back.
In an email, one official wrote that the contracts on the termination list included over 100 that “were deemed to be mission critical,” adding that their cancellation would “lead to catastrophic mission failure for essential veteran programs or health care operations.” The email highlighted services like sterilizing medical equipment, maintaining boilers and generators, filling prescriptions and overseeing human clinical trials, some of which were previously highlighted by The Washington Post.
Within minutes, Dr. Steven Lieberman, the acting under secretary for health, underscored the message. “Please reconsider the decision being made,” Dr. Lieberman wrote in an email reviewed by The Times.
Early the next morning, the V.A. tried to pump the brakes.
“ALL — PLEASE HALT ANY CONTRACT TERMINATIONS THAT ARE IN PROGRESS,” another official wrote, highlighting his words in yellow.
But many contractors had already been notified that they were losing their work, emails show. By the next week, the V.A. had managed to walk back some of the terminations, saying it would cancel 585 of the original contracts.
One that was spared was a contract for maintaining imaging machines in a Midwest hospital, which would have had to halt all scans as soon as the machines came due for inspection.
The hospital fought successfully to reinstate that contract. But it is still pushing to rescind the cancellation of other service contracts, such as one for technicians who order medical supplies, an administrator at the hospital said.
Mr. Kasperowicz, the V.A. spokesman, said that the contracts that were canceled “were identified through a deliberative, multilevel review” involving senior department leaders and contracting officials.
So far the V.A. has refused to reinstate some contracts because the work does not involve direct interaction with patients or their families, emails shared with The Times show.
But one hospital administrator said many positions are critical even if they do not entail direct patient care — such as those who purchase medical supplies.
“Lots of people don’t understand how important these roles are,” the administrator said. “They are critical. They’re trained and certified. We can’t just replace them with random hospital employees.”
The firings last month of 2,400 probationary workers deemed nonessential have also complicated life in some facilities now forced to operate without support staff.
One such worker was Chante Duncan, who spent three months as an office manager at a mental health center for military veterans in Indianapolis. Sometimes Ms. Duncan found herself picking up the phone and talking to veterans in crisis, including one recently who was experiencing severe hallucinations.
“I kept him on that phone for over an hour until a therapist was available to him,” said Ms. Duncan, who said she was speaking in her capacity as a member of her union, the American Federation of Government Employees.
But on Valentine’s Day, amid a purge of thousands of workers across the government, she was fired, leaving no one but therapists to sit at the front desk and check in patients, Ms. Duncan said.
A sign posted on the door tells veterans to call their counselor and leave a voice mail message if the office is locked.
Jeremy Singer-Vine and Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
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6) Trump Pulled $400 Million From Columbia. Other Schools Could Be Next.
The administration has circulated a list that includes nine other campuses, accusing them of failure to address antisemitism.
By Stephanie Saul, Published March 8, 2025, Updated March 9, 2025
Harvard University is on a list of schools that the Trump administration said it would visit. Credit...Adam Glanzman for The New York Times
The Trump Administration’s abrupt withdrawal of $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University cast a pall over at least nine other campuses worried they could be next.
The schools, a mix that includes both public universities and Ivy League institutions, have been placed on an official administration list of schools the Department of Justice said may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty.
Faculty leaders at many of the schools have pushed back strongly against claims that their campuses are hotbeds of antisemitism, noting that while some Jewish students complained that they felt unsafe, the vast majority of protesters were peaceful and many of the protest participants were themselves Jewish.
The Trump administration has made targeting higher education a priority. This week, the president threatened in a social media post to punish any school that permits “illegal” protests. On Jan. 30, his 10th day in office, he signed an executive order on combating antisemitism, focusing on what he called anti-Jewish racism at “leftists” universities. Then, on Feb. 3, he announced the creation of a multiagency task force to carry out the mandate.
The task force appeared to move into action quickly after a pro-Palestinian sit-in and protest at Barnard College, a partner school to Columbia, on Feb. 26. Two days later, the administration released its list of 10 schools under scrutiny, including Columbia, the site of large pro-Palestinian encampments last year.
It said it would be paying the schools a visit, part of a review process to consider “whether remedial action is warranted.” Then on Friday, it announced it would be canceling millions in grants and contracts with Columbia.
Harvard University, whose former president Claudine Gay resigned last year following a bruising appearance before a House committee, is also on the list.
So are George Washington University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California.
The Trump administration’s moves to hobble university funding and target schools over claims that they tolerated antisemitism had already caused internal recalibration at schools across the country. Some have stepped up lobbying efforts, including hiring lobbyists with connections to Mr. Trump.
Many campuses had already cracked down on students over protest activity. More are dialing back or renaming efforts related to diversity, an effort to avoid the ire of Trump officials who have vowed to end such programs.
And a number have paused hiring and reduced the number of doctoral students admitted in response to the financial uncertainty.
Some school officials have said they face an “existential threat.” Still, many presidents have been silent or muted in their public statements about Mr. Trump’s moves against the sector, appearing to retreat in fear of the new administration.
In a statement Saturday, Harvard said it was “committed to ensuring our Jewish community is embraced, respected, and can thrive at Harvard, and to our efforts to confront antisemitism and all forms of hate.”
Several days after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the president, Dr. Alan M. Garber, posted a message to the university cowritten with other administration leaders.
“In these challenging times,” they wrote, “our efforts will be guided by our values and commitments: supporting academic excellence and the pursuit of knowledge; championing open inquiry, constructive dialogue, and academic freedom.”
The selection criteria for being on the list for visits is nebulous, but a number of the schools had been included in a report last October by the House Committee on Education and the Work Force, which claimed they had allowed antisemitic behavior by students and faculty.
The report criticized Harvard leaders, citing their initial failure to condemn the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023.
Northwestern and its president, Michael Schill, also had been under attack by the House committee, then led by Representative Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina. The committee report criticized the university for placing “radical anti-Israel faculty” in charge of negotiations with protesters.
The University of California, Berkeley, was identified in the House report for not disciplining students who took part in an encampment or disrupted a talk by an Israeli speaker.
Berkeley issued a statement on Saturday saying, “We are confident we have the right processes in place now to respond to any antisemitic incidents.” The statement cited an advisory committee the chancellor formed on Jewish student life and campus antisemitism.
While several of the schools have been focal points for campus protests, others are more of a surprise.
Richard Painter, a professor of law at Minnesota, was among those who filed a complaint about antisemitism at the university. He had chafed at incidents on campus, including anti-Israeli statements posted by faculty on official department websites.
Even so, Mr. Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, wondered if the school was targeted partly because it sits in the congressional district of Representative Ilhan Omar, a vocal critic of both Israel and Mr. Trump, and in the home state of Gov. Tim Walz, who ran on the ticket with former Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Part of it is political,” he said in an interview Saturday.
Officials at the University of Minnesota could not be reached for comment, but efforts are already underway to address the complaints. The Board of Regents is expected to vote next Friday on a resolution prohibiting individual departments from making political statements on issues of the day.
There was evidence suggesting that the administration’s action against Columbia was accelerated by last month’s sit-in at Barnard, which led to additional protests last week. The protests were sparked by Barnard’s decision to expel two students who interrupted a class on Israel.
On March 3, six days after the initial Barnard disturbance, the government sent a notice to Columbia that it would review $51 million in federal contracts, citing harassment of Jewish students.
The next day, Mr. Trump released a statement on Truth Social saying, in part: “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.”
In a news release Friday announcing the cancellation of $400 million in grants and contracts, the task force also accused Columbia of failing to respond to the earlier notice while antisemitic harassment continued on or near campus.
On Friday, Columbia said it was reviewing the administration’s announcement and that it pledged to work with the government.
Also on Friday, Linda McMahon, the newly installed secretary of education, met with Columbia’s interim president, Dr. Katrina Armstrong. Ms. McMahon issued a statement saying that schools “must comply with all federal anti-discrimination laws” to receive federal funding.
The task force’s list was released in late February amid a flurry of executive orders from the White House.
Members of the task force include Leo Terrell, a senior Justice Department lawyer. Efforts to reach Mr. Terrell were not successful on Saturday. It was also unclear if any of the campus visits had been scheduled.
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7) Chaos Sweeps Coastal Syria: ‘We Have to Get Out of Here’
Residents described shootings outside their homes and bodies in the streets in Syria’s worst unrest since Bashar al-Assad’s ouster. More than 1,000 people have been killed since Thursday, a war monitor said.
By Christina Goldbaum and Reham Mourshed, Reporting from Tartus on the Syrian coast, March 9, 2025
The gunfire began at dawn on Friday in the town of al-Haffa on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.
At first, Wala, a 29-year-old resident of the town, leaped off her bed to the corner of the room in her first-floor apartment, flattening herself as the rat-a-tat of gunshots sounded outside her bedroom window.
When the commotion grew louder, she said, she crept to the window and peeled back the curtain. Outside, dozens of people were fleeing down the road, many in their pajamas, as four men in forest green uniforms chased them. Then, the uniformed men opened fire. Within seconds, four of the fleeing people crumpled to the ground.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was terrified, terrified,” said Wala, who asked to be identified by only her first name for fear of retribution.
The attack in her town was part of the unrest that has shaken Syria’s coast over the last four days and has killed more than 1,000 people, the war monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said early Sunday. It was the bloodiest outbreak of violence since rebels ousted the longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad, in early December, then sought to assert their rule over a country fractured by nearly 14 years of civil war.
The violence broke out on Thursday when armed men loyal to Mr. al-Assad ambushed government security forces in Latakia Province, where al-Haffa is. The ambush set off days of clashes between Assad loyalists and government forces.
The Observatory, which is based in Britain and has monitored the Syrian conflict since 2011, said early Sunday that about 700 civilians were among the more than 1,000 dead, most of them killed by government forces.
At least 65 civilians were killed in al-Haffa, according to the Observatory.
Another war monitoring group, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, had not yet updated its figures on Sunday, but it reported on Saturday that government security forces had killed an estimated 125 civilians.
None of the claims of numbers killed could be independently verified.
Officials with the new government rejected accusations that its security forces had committed atrocities. But they said they were committed to investigating accusations and holding anyone who had harmed civilians accountable.
Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Shara, called for unity as he moved to reassure the nation after the deadly clashes.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace,” he said on Sunday at a mosque in Damascus, according to video that circulated online. “We call on Syrians to be reassured because the country has the fundamentals for survival.”
The violence has raised the specter of a larger sectarian conflict in Syria and stoked panic in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus. The region is the heartland of Syria’s Alawite minority, which dominated the ruling class and upper ranks of the military under the Assad government, and included the Assad family itself. The new government was formed from a coalition of rebels led by an Islamist Sunni Muslim group.
The Observatory said most of the civilians killed in recent days were Alawites.
On Saturday, the highway leading from the capital, Damascus, into Tartus was nearly empty as the authorities tried to seal off all traffic into the coastal region. Government security forces set up checkpoints along the main roads into and throughout Tartus city, the provincial capital, where most shops were closed and many residents were hunkering down in their homes.
Shadi Ahmed Khodar, 47, sat by the highway leading from Tartus north to Latakia, watching as the occasional ambulance or government vehicle sped by. The streets of his neighborhood had emptied as violence raged in recent days, turning Tartus into a ghost town, he said. He is an Alawite but, like many in the city, he said he does not support the Assad loyalists who have taken up arms against Syria’s new authorities.
But he was also terrified that security forces with the new government would no longer distinguish between armed Assad loyalists and people like him — a crane operator who had worked for the Assad government.
“Maybe they will just come here and say we are against them and kill us,” he said.
The country, he feared, was barreling toward more conflict. The violence had yet to subside by late Saturday afternoon and, down the road from where he stood, government forces at a checkpoint were warning drivers that gunmen were ambushing cars driving up the coast toward Latakia.
“We’re just in the shallow water,” Mr. Khodar said. “We haven’t reached the depths yet.”
In the nearby countryside of Latakia Province, armed Assad loyalists were holding dozens of government security personnel hostage after seizing control a day earlier, residents said. In other areas, local residents had taken up arms and stationed themselves outside their homes to protect their families, after hearing reports about government forces killing civilians.
In Baniyas, a town on the northern tip of Tartus Province, armed men who appeared to be with the government had stormed into the town’s predominately Alawite neighborhoods late Thursday night, according to four residents.
Ghaith Moustafa, a resident of Baniyas, said he had spent most of Friday and Saturday huddling with his wife, Hala Hamed, and their 2-month-old son behind their front door — the only place in their small apartment that was not near any windows.
Early Friday morning, he said he heard the patter of shooting grow louder as armed men reached his building. Then he heard men shouting, gunfire and screams coming from the apartment below his. He later learned that his downstairs neighbors had been killed.
“I was so scared for my baby, for my wife,” Mr. Moustafa, 30, said in a telephone interview. “She was so afraid. I didn’t know how to not show her that I was also afraid for us.”
When the gunfire subsided around 2 p.m. on Saturday, Mr. Moustafa said he and his family fled their apartment and sought shelter at a friend’s house in a nearby neighborhood that had been spared much of the violence. Driving away from home, he was horrified.
Every two or three meters, a body lay on the ground, he said. Blood stains were smeared across the pavement. Storefront windows were shattered, and many shops appeared to have been looted, he said.
The Syrian Observatory said on Saturday that at least 60 civilians, including five children, were killed in the violence in Baniyas.
“I’m shocked, I’m just shocked,” said Mr. Moustafa, a pharmacist. By Saturday evening, all he could think about was leaving. “We have to get out of here as soon as possible,” he added. “It’s not safe, not at all safe.”
Mr. Moustafa was among hundreds of people who fled Baniyas on Saturday, according to residents. Many sought shelter with friends who were not Alawite in the hope that their neighborhoods would avoid the brunt of any more violence.
Wala, the al-Haffa resident who said she saw men in uniforms shooting at people as they fled, was taking cover with friends and family in her apartment when security personnel knocked down the front door, about an hour after government forces had entered her town. A friend visiting from the northwestern region of Idlib, where the rebels who overthrew Mr. al-Assad came from, pleaded with them not to shoot.
“She said, ‘I am from Idlib. All my family is from Idlib. Please don’t do anything to these people. They are peaceful family,’” Wala recounted in a phone interview.
The men demanded that the friend hand over her phone and yelled at Wala to open her safe, which she did. They demanded that Wala’s mother give them her gold necklace and earrings, Wala said.
Before they left, the men issued a stern warning: Don’t leave the house. She and her relatives rushed back to her bedroom, terrified.
But about an hour later, as the gunfire subsided, they defied that order to try to help someone they could hear pleading from the street.
Outside, Wala said she found two men who had been shot. One was covered in blood and asked her in a weak voice to lift his head a bit from the ground. The other, shot in the thigh, begged for water.
Before long gunfire rang out again and Wala ran back inside. By Saturday evening, she said, she did not know whether either man had survived.
Raja Abdulrahim contributed reporting.
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8) Trump’s Tactics Lead Americans to Question Role on World Stage
Among supporters and detractors alike, his transactional approach to foreign policy has upended old notions about the United States as a global leader.
By Katie Glueck, March 10, 2025
President Trump’s approach to foreign policy has been drastically different from that of his Republican predecessors. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Abraham Lincoln suggested the United States was “the last, best hope of Earth.” Ronald Reagan celebrated it as a “shining city on a hill.” George W. Bush argued that the nation was “the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.”
But to President Trump, America is the all-powerful player in a series of high-stakes transactions.
“You don’t have the cards right now,” he lectured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in their extraordinary Oval Office showdown.
Mr. Trump is radically different from his Republican predecessors in countless ways. But rarely is the contrast starker than in his approach to American leadership in the world.
While those Republicans sometimes spoke of global alliances in terms of good and evil, Mr. Trump joined with America’s adversaries to oppose a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and falsely suggested that Ukraine had started the war. While they championed free trade, he has started trade wars. And while they argued that American assistance abroad could fend off problems at home, he has moved to gut foreign aid.
Now, Mr. Trump’s nakedly transactional style is forcing Americans to reimagine how they see their country’s place in the world, according to interviews with roughly two dozen voters, foreign policy experts and current and former elected officials from across the country.
“I fear we are risking what made us great over the last 80 years, since the close of the Second World War,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a former ambassador to NATO and China. “Every president until now adhered to democratic principles and values, including the idea that America should be the standard-bearer for democracy around the world, to uphold the rule of law and defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each country.”
Here’s a snapshot of how Mr. Trump’s moves on the global stage have alarmed an ideologically diverse range of critics, left other Americans deeply torn and delighted his supporters.
The disillusioned idealists
The Oval Office dressing-down of Mr. Zelensky shocked America’s allies abroad. But it was especially distressing to some people in Pennsylvania.
The state is home to one of the nation’s largest populations of people of Ukrainian ancestry, and Mr. Zelensky visited an ammunition factory in Scranton last fall, where he thanked workers for manufacturing artillery shells to support Ukraine. Vice President JD Vance mischaracterized that trip as a campaign stop as he berated Mr. Zelensky at the White House.
In Scranton, some recoiled, said Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, a Democrat who noted that City Hall has displayed the Ukrainian flag.
“It’s really a personal affront here in Scranton, the idea that the American government would turn its back on Ukraine, and really turn its back on Europe,” she said.
She warned against taking American global strength for granted.
“I worry that the Trump administration, maybe some of the Americans who support this current administration, think that America, well, ‘we’ve always been so strong,’” she said. “They’re really playing with fire.”
Two hours south of Scranton, Karen Curry, 65, was having lunch at the Eagle Diner in Warminster, Pa., in politically competitive Bucks County. Ms. Curry, who said she voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but backed former Vice President Kamala Harris last fall, said the Trump administration was threatening America’s standing.
“My whole life, I felt like we were the leaders of the free world, that America was the moral compass,” said Ms. Curry, who said she was a registered Republican. “Now, we have a transactional president who’s more interested in padding his own pockets and his legacy, and really likes powerful dictators. If we continue down this path, I don’t think we’re going to be the leaders of the free world.”
The concerns go beyond issues of war and peace.
In Columbia, S.C., Mayor Daniel Rickenmann, a Republican, said he understood the Trump administration’s emphasis on promoting manufacturing in the United States.
“At the same time, we can’t isolate ourselves from the rest of the world,” he said, speaking in particular of trade policy. “I’m worried about that.”
Many Americans across the political spectrum have long been idealistic about the United States’ role as a global power, viewing the nation as a force for good and a champion of democracy, even if the historical record is far more complex.
Kristin Ortlieb, 51, of Buckingham, Pa., said she had always viewed America as a global leader with obligations to provide aid and work to advance “the greater good.”
“With Trump in office, in my view, we have lost that vision and that leadership,” she said. “If you look at leaders in other parts of the world, they have long memories, and they will remember when the U.S. abandoned them.”
Recent polling suggests that Americans largely disagree with Mr. Trump’s claim that Ukraine is the aggressor in its war with Russia, and are more inclined to sympathize with Ukraine than Russia.
The people reserving judgment
Mr. Trump won the election last year in part because he successfully cast himself — again — as a change agent.
And some Americans, even a few who backed Ms. Harris, say they are keeping an open mind about his norm-shattering approach at a time of protracted conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Alan Almonte, 34, a manager at a consulting firm in Philadelphia, said he was a political independent who voted for Ms. Harris, and worried about what he saw as Mr. Trump’s “bullying” tactics. But, he said, “the old methods are not working.”
“It’s unconventional,” he said, though he continued, “The way we’re doing things, I don’t feel is getting things done.”
State Representative Keith Harris, a Democrat from Philadelphia, said Mr. Zelensky “did deserve some respect.” But he agreed with Mr. Trump’s emphasis on ending the war.
“That’s one thing Trump may be right about,” he said. Mr. Zelensky, he added, “can’t keep asking for money when he can’t win.”
On Capitol Hill, Representative Mike Lawler, a New York Republican from a competitive district and a vocal supporter of Ukraine, said “we can agree or disagree at times on rhetoric.”
But he argued that to reach a settlement between Russia and Ukraine, “you actually have to get both parties to the table, which requires engaging those with which we disagree,” adding, “And in this case, it would be Russia.”
U.S. officials have also had talks with Hamas officials about Israeli American hostages taken to Gaza, and Mr. Trump has raised the possibility of reopening negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
“He’s strong enough to talk to adversaries or look them in the eye and make clear what America will stand for,” said Brian Hughes, a National Security Council spokesman. “President Trump’s approach is, there’s no greater force for peace and stability in the world than a strong American homeland.”
Asked about the view, widely held by his critics, that Mr. Trump is overly susceptible to flattery, Mr. Hughes replied, “I don’t believe any adversary anywhere in the world believes that flattery will diminish his exercise of America’s strength.”
The supporters who like the tough talk
Last week, Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan delivered the Democrats’ response to Mr. Trump’s address to Congress — and in many ways, she sounded more like a traditional Republican than he did.
“Trump would have lost us the Cold War,” she said from Wyandotte, Mich., arguing that his actions “suggest that, in his heart, he doesn’t believe we’re an exceptional nation.”
But on the ground in working-class Wyandotte, some voters argued that Mr. Trump’s combative approach to the world was what the country needed.
Carrying a box of meat as he left a Polish butcher shop, Jeff Zarenski, 59, a millwright from nearby Brownstown, said approvingly that the United States was “turning more into the bully.”
“Some people are getting pissed off at us,” said Mr. Zarenski, a Trump supporter. “I like it. It’s a show of strength.”
In affluent Brookhaven, Ga., an Atlanta suburb, Willie Candler, 28, a real estate agent and a self-described center-right Republican, was milder in tone, but said he, too, supported Mr. Trump’s foreign policy.
“It can be kind of in your face, or ruffle some feathers,” he said. “I’ve got a different style for the way I approach sales. But at the end of the day, if he gets the result that’s beneficial to America, then I think it’s good.”
Ryan Patrick Hooper contributed reporting from Wyandotte, Mich., Johnny Kauffman from Brookhaven, Ga., JoAnna Daemmrich from Warminster, Pa., and Joel Wolfram from Philadelphia.
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9) Everyone Has a Plan for Gaza. None of Them Add Up.
Since President Trump suggested expelling the territory’s population, Middle East leaders have rushed to propose options for postwar Gaza. Each is unacceptable to either Israel or Hamas, or both.
By Patrick Kingsley, Reporting from Jerusalem, March 10, 2025
Displaced Palestinians living in a school run by UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency for Palestinians, west of Gaza City on Sunday. Credit...Jehad Alshrafi/Associated Press
Under President Trump’s plan, the United States would govern Gaza and expel its residents. Under the Arab plan, Gaza would be run by Palestinian technocrats within a wider Palestinian state. By one Israeli proposal, Israel would cede some control to Palestinians but block Palestinian statehood. By another, Israel would occupy the entire territory.
Since the opening weeks of the war in Gaza, politicians, diplomats and analysts have made scores of proposals for how it might end, and who should subsequently govern the territory. Those proposals grew in number and relevance after the sealing of a cease-fire in January, increasing the need for clear postwar plans. And when Mr. Trump proposed to forcibly transfer the population later that month, it fueled a push across the Middle East to find an alternative.
The problem? Each plan contains something unacceptable to either Israel or Hamas, or to the Arab countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia who some hope will fund and partially oversee Gaza’s future.
“The devil is in the details, and none of the details in these plans make any sense,” said Thomas R. Nides, a former United States ambassador to Israel. “Israel and Hamas have fundamentally opposed positions, while parts of the Arab plan are unacceptable to Israel, and vice versa. I’m all for people suggesting new ideas, but it is very hard for anyone to find common ground unless the dynamics change significantly.”
The central challenge is that Israel wants a Hamas-free Gaza whereas the group still seeks to retain its military wing, which led the October 2023 attack on Israel that ignited the war.
Mr. Trump’s plan would satisfy many Israelis, but it is unacceptable both to Hamas and to the Arab partners of the United States, who want to avoid a process that international lawyers say would amount to a war crime.
The Arab alternative — which was announced last week in Egypt — would allow Palestinians to stay in Gaza, while transferring power to a technocratic Palestinian government. But it was hazy about how exactly Hamas would be removed from power, and it was conditional on the creation of a Palestinian state, which a majority of Israelis oppose.
The upshot is that, despite the flurry of proposals since January, Israelis and Palestinians are no closer to an agreement about Gaza’s future than they were at the start of the year.
In turn, that raises the risks of renewed war.
The cease-fire agreed to in January was technically meant to last just six weeks, a period that elapsed at the start of March. For now, both sides are maintaining an informal truce while they continue negotiations — mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States — for a formal extension.
But that goal seems distant because Hamas wants Israel to accept a postwar plan before releasing more hostages, whereas Israel wants more hostages released without an agreement over Gaza’s future. While some Israelis could accept any deal that secures the return of 59 hostages still held in Gaza, of which 24 are said to be alive, key members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government would not.
For now, all sides are projecting a sense of momentum.
A Hamas delegation visited Egypt over the weekend to discuss Gaza’s future. An Israeli delegation was set to arrive in Qatar on Monday for further mediation. And on Sunday night, Israeli networks broadcast interviews with Adam Boehler, an American envoy, in which he reported “some progress” from a “baby-steps perspective.”
Mr. Boehler, who has broken with years of U.S. policy to negotiate directly with Hamas, said some of the group’s demands were “relatively reasonable” and that he had “some hope about where this could go.” Mr. Boehler also conceded that any breakthrough was still weeks away.
A senior Hamas official, Mousa Abu Marzouq, said in a recent interview with The New York Times that he was personally open to negotiations about Hamas’s disarmament, a move that would increase the chances of a compromise. But the Hamas movement quickly distanced itself from his remarks and said they had been taken out of context.
The longer the impasse lasts without any hostages being released, the likelier it is that Israel will return to battle, according to Israeli analysts.
Absent a breakthrough, Israel would either have to accept Hamas’s long-term presence — an outcome that is unacceptable to many ministers in the Israeli government — or return to war to force Hamas’s hand, said Ofer Shelah, a former lawmaker and a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a research group in Tel Aviv.
“Given the current situation, we are on a path leading to an Israeli occupation of Gaza, making Israel responsible for the fate of two million people,” Mr. Shelah said. That would have lasting consequences not only for the Palestinians in Gaza, he said, but also for Israel itself, which would probably get bogged down in a costly war of attrition in order to maintain its control of the territory.
Lia Lapidot contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
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10) Israeli Energy Minister Cuts Off Electricity to Gaza
The move, which will mainly affect a single wastewater treatment plant, appeared intended to put pressure on Hamas.
By Ephrat Livni, March 9, 2025
Israel’s energy minister said on Sunday that he was immediately cutting off electricity to the Gaza Strip, a move that may have limited impact in Gaza, given restrictions already in place, but that comes as Israel tries to pressure Hamas amid talks over their fragile truce.
“We will employ all the tools at our disposal so that all the hostages are returned, and we will ensure that Hamas does not remain in Gaza in the ‘day after,’” Eli Cohen, the Israeli energy minister, said in a statement on Sunday about his decision.
Both the fate of the approximately five dozen living and dead hostages remaining in Gaza and the enclave’s future governance are major sticking points in the cease-fire talks. Israel is insisting that Hamas can play no role in Gaza’s future; Hamas has said it may be willing to give up civilian governance, but has firmly rejected dissolving its military wing.
Mr. Cohen’s announcement came as negotiators and mediators prepared to discuss the cease-fire this week in Qatar. It follows Israel’s decision earlier this month to cut off humanitarian aid and supplies to Gaza after the first stage of the original phased cease-fire expired.
How meaningful the latest pressure on Hamas will be is unclear, given the severe restrictions that have already been placed on electricity supply to Gaza since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel that ignited the war in the Palestinian enclave, and in light of Gazans’ longstanding reliance on alternative energy supplies because of prewar restrictions.
The decision’s clearest effect was the disconnection, once again, of a wastewater treatment plant in the enclave that had recently been operating on Israeli power.
The Israel Electric Corporation said on Sunday it was ordered to cut off the supply to that plant.
Israel will send a delegation to Qatar on Monday to advance cease-fire negotiations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Saturday. President Trump’s nominee as special envoy for hostage affairs, Adam Boehler, participated in talks last week with Hamas officials, focused on securing the release of Israeli Americans who were kidnapped and taken to Gaza. Only one of five Israeli Americans still held there is thought to be alive.
U.S. officials are expected in the region this week to continue talks that have also been mediated by officials from Egypt and Qatar. A Hamas delegation also met in recent days with Egyptian mediators.
In mid-January, after 15 months of devastating war, Israel and Hamas agreed to a complex, phased truce intended to free hostages taken from Israel and held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israel, and to build momentum toward a comprehensive cease-fire.
But after the first phase ended on March 1 without an agreement on the next stage, Israel suggested another temporary extension of the cease-fire and exchange of hostages.
The Israeli government’s decision to cut off the extremely limited supply of electricity it had been providing to the Gaza Strip could affect the continuing discussions.
Izzat Al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, condemned Israel’s decision to cut off electricity in a statement on Sunday, calling it a “waste of time.” He accused Mr. Netanyahu of trying to disrupt the cease-fire agreement and endangering the hostages, saying there is no way forward “but to commit to implementing the terms of the agreement and start negotiations for the second phase.”
As it stands, Palestinians in Gaza have been living in what is essentially a blackout since the war began. Before the war, years of conflict and an Israeli and Egyptian economic blockade imposed to weaken Hamas had left Gaza’s electrical grid weak, providing only limited hours of power each day. The territory had relied on a makeshift system, according to a 2023 report by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, an Israeli think tank at Bar-Ilan University. Half of the electricity was generated in Israel and half in Gaza from various sources, including a diesel-fueled power plant and private generators, as well as solar panels.
Since the war began, some Palestinians have been able to turn to generators or solar power, but fuel for generators is also in very short supply and restricted by Israel. Israel has said that Hamas has stockpiled the fuel that has entered the territory for its own purposes, including for launching missiles.
Contributing reporting were Adam Rasgon, Johnatan Reiss, Abu Bakr Bashir and Liam Stack.
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