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Families First in SAN FRANCISCO!
Saturday, July 26
11am – 12pm PDT
Ocean Beach, Stairway 7
Great Highway & Balboa Street
San Francisco, CA 94121
On July 26, Americans in every corner of the country will come together in peaceful marches, rallies, and actions to say: our families come first—not billionaires, not authoritarians, and not corrupt politicians.
From rural towns to major cities, Families First actions will bring people together to collectively demand an end to policies that harm children, seniors, and our families. We reject the Administration's actions that have gutted essential programs like Medicaid, FEMA, food stamps, school lunches, and more, all so a handful of billionaires can get tax giveaways.
We are coming together to say in unity: our families come first.
A core principle behind all Families First events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.
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A Trial Date Is Set on August 26 for Alejandro Orellana, Join the Call for National Protests to Drop the Charges!
https://stopfbi.org/news/a-trial-date-is-set-on-august-26-for-alejandro-orellana-join-the-call-for-national-protests-to-drop-the-charges/
A trial date of August 26 was set for immigrant rights activist Alejandro Orellana at his July 3 court appearance in front of a room packed with supporters. Orellana was arrested by the FBI on June 12 for protesting against ICE in Los Angeles. He faces up to 5 years in prison for two bogus federal charges: conspiracy to commit civil disorder, and aiding and abetting civil disorder.
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression is calling for a national day of protests on the first day of Orellana's trial, August 26th, to demand that the charges be dropped. To everyone who believes in the right to free speech, to protest ICE, and to say no to deportations, we urge you to organize a local protest on that day at the nearest federal courthouse.
Orellana has spent much of his adult life fighting for justice for Chicanos, Latinos, and many others. He has opposed the killings of Chicanos and Latinos by the LAPD, such as 14-year-old Jesse Romero, stood against US wars, protested in defense of others targeted by political repression, and has been a longtime member of the activist group, Centro CSO, based out of East LA. His life is full of examples of courage, integrity, and a dedication to justice.
In contrast, the US Attorney who charged him, Bilal Essayli, believes in Trump's racist MAGA vision and does a lot to carry it out. He defended Trump's decision to defy the state of California and deploy the California National Guard to put down anti-ICE protests. Essayli has charged other protesters, including David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California, who was held on a $50,000 bond.
Another Centro CSO immigrants rights activist, Verita Topete, was ambushed by the FBI on June 26. They served her a warrant and seized her phone. Orellana and his fellow organizers like Topete stand for the community that protested Trump last month. Essayli represents Trump’s attempts to crush that movement.
This case against Orellana is political repression, meant to stop the growth of the national immigrants rights movement. The basis for his arrest was the claim that he drove a truck carrying face shields for protesters, as police geared up to put down protests with rubber bullets. People of conscience are standing with Orellana. because nothing he did or is accused of doing is wrong. There is no crime in protesting Trump, deportations, and ICE. To protest is his - and our - First Amendment right. It’s up to us to make sure that Essayli and Trump fail to repress this movement and silence Orellana's supporters.
Just as he stood up for immigrants last month, we call on everyone to stand up for Orellana on August 26 and demand the charges be dropped. On the June 27 National Day of Action for Alejandro Orellana, at least 16 cities held protests or press conferences in front of their federal courthouses. We’ll make sure there are even more on August 26. In addition to planning local protests, we ask that organizations submit statements of support and to join in the call to drop the charges.
You can find protest organizing materials on our website, stopfbi.org. Please send information about your local protests and any statements of support to stopfbi@gmail.com. We will see you in the streets!
On August 26, Protest at Your Federal Courthouse for Alejandro Orellana!
Drop the Charges Now!
Protesting ICE Is Not a Crime!
Copyright © 2025 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
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Dear Organization Coordinator
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to invite your organization to consider co-sponsoring a regional proposal to implement Free Public Transit throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
This initiative directly supports low-income families, working people, seniors, youth, and others who rely on public transportation. It would eliminate fare barriers while helping to address climate justice, congestion, and air pollution—issues that disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
We believe your organization’s mission and values align strongly with this proposal. We are seeking endorsements, co-sponsorship, and coalition-building with groups that advocate for economic and racial equity.
I would love the opportunity to share a brief proposal or speak further if you're interested. Please let me know if there’s a staff member or program director I should connect with.
A description of our proposal is below:
sharethemoneyinstitute@gmail.com
Opinion: San Francisco Bay Area Should Provide Free Public Transportation
The San Francisco Bay Area is beautiful, with fantastic weather, food, diversity and culture. We’re also internationally famous for our progressiveness, creativity, and innovation.
I believe the next amazing world-leading feature we can add to our cornucopia of attractions is Free Public Transportation. Imagine how wonderful it would be if Muni, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, SF Bay Ferries, and all the other transportation services were absolutely free?
Providing this convenience would deliver enormous, varied benefits to the 7.6 million SF Bay Area residents, and would make us a lovable destination for tourists.
This goal - Free Public Transportation - is ambitious, but it isn’t impossible, or even original. Truth is, many people world-wide already enjoy free rides in their smart municipalities.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is promoting free transit, with a plan that’s gained the endorsement of economists from Chile, United Kingdom, Greece, and the USA.
The entire nation of Luxembourg has offered free public transportation to both its citizens and visitors since 2020. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has given free transit to its residents since 2013. In France, thirty-five cities provide free public transportation. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, offers free rides to seniors, disabled, and students. In Maricá (Brazil) – the entire municipal bus system is free. Delhi (India) – offers free metro and bus travel for women. Madrid & Barcelona (Spain) offer free (or heavily discounted) passes to youth and seniors.
Even in the USA, free public transit is already here. Kansas City, Missouri, has enjoyed a free bus system free since 2020. Olympia, Washington, has fully fare-free intercity transit. Missoula, Montana, is free for all riders. Columbia, South Carolina, has free buses, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has enjoyed free transit for over a decade. Ithaca, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, offer free transit to students.
But if the San Francisco Bay Area offered free transit, we’d be the LARGEST municipality in the world to offer universal Free Transit to everyone, resident and visitor alike. (Population of Luxembourg is 666,430. Kansas City 510,704. Population of San Francisco Bay Area is 7.6 million in the nine-county area)
Providing free transit would be tremendously beneficial to millions of people, for three major reasons:
1. Combat Climate Change - increased public ridership would reduce harmful CO2 fossil fuel emissions. Estimates from Kansas City and Tallinn Estonia’s suggest an increase in ridership of 15 percent. Another estimate from a pilot project in New York City suggests a ridership increase of 30 percent. These increases in people taking public transportation instead of driving their own cars indicates a total reduction of 5.4 - 10.8 tons of emissions would be eliminated, leading to better air quality, improved public health, and long-term climate gains.
2. Reduce Traffic Congestion & Parking Difficulty - Estimates suggest public transit would decrease traffic congestion in dense urban areas and choke points like the Bay Bridge by up to 15 percent. Car ownership would also be reduced. Traffic in San Francisco is the second-slowest in the USA (NYC is #1) and getting worse every year. Parking costs in San Francisco are also the second-worst in the USA (NYC #1), and again, it is continually getting worse.
3. Promote Social Equity - Free transit removes a financial cost that hits low-income residents hard. Transportation is the second-biggest expense after housing for many Americans. In the Bay Area, a monthly Clipper pass can cost $86–$98 per system, and much more for multi-agency commuters. For people living paycheck-to-paycheck, this is a significant cost. People of color, immigrants, youth, seniors, and people with disabilities rely more heavily on public transit. 55–70% of frequent transit riders in the Bay Area are from low-to moderate-income households, but these riders usually pay more per mile of transit than wealthy drivers. Free fares equalize access regardless of income or geography.
Free transit would help people 1) take jobs they couldn’t otherwise afford to commute to, thus improving the economy, 2) Stay in school without worrying about bus fare, 3) Get to appointments, child care, or grocery stores without skipping meals to afford transit.
To conclude: Free Public Transit should be seen as a civil rights and economic justice intervention.
The Cost? How can San Francisco Bay Area pay for Free Transit throughout our large region?
ShareTheMoney.Institute estimates the cost as $1.5 billion annually. This sum can acquired via multiple strategies. Corvallis, Oregon, has had free public bus service since 2011, paid for by a $3.63 monthly fee added to each utility bill. Missoula, Montana, funds their fare-free Mountain Line transit system, via a property tax mill levy. Madison, Wisconsin’s transit is supported by general fund revenues, state and federal grants, and partnerships/sponsorships from local businesses and organizations.
Ideally, we’d like the funds to be obtained from the 37 local billionaires who, combined, have an approximate wealth of $885 billion. The $1.5 billion for free transit is only 0.17% of the local billionaire's wealth. Sponsorship from the ultra-wealthy would be ideal. Billionaires can view the “fair transit donation” they are asked to contribute not as punishment or an “envy tax”, but as their investment to create a municipality that is better for everyone, themselves included. They can pride themselves on instigating a world-leading, legacy-defining reform that will etch their names in history as leaders of a bold utopian reform.
Our motto: “we want to move freely around our beautiful bay”
——
Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
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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) Children Among at Least 10 Killed in Israeli Strike in Central Gaza, Officials Say
Israel’s military said a “technical error” had caused munition to land dozens of meters from its target. The victims were gathered near a water distribution point, health workers said.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, July 13, 2025
Palestinians mourning a relative killed on Sunday in an Israeli strike in Gaza City. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
At least 10 people, including children, were killed on Sunday morning near a water distribution point in central Gaza, according to health officials in the enclave, as Israel pressed on with its military campaign there despite U.S.-led efforts to broker a truce.
Dr. Marwan Abu Nasser, the director of Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, said that the victims’ bodies and more than a dozen wounded people were taken to the hospital after the strike took place roughly a half-mile away.
People have frequently gathered each morning at the water point, according to Rami Al-Shrafi, another doctor at Al-Awda Hospital, because many Palestinians in the area are displaced and lack access to running water or plumbing.
“It seems the shell landed there and struck them directly,” Dr. Shrafi said.
When asked about the strike in Nuseirat, the Israeli military said that a “technical error” had caused an Israeli munition — intended for an Islamic Jihad militant — to land dozens of meters from its target. The military said in a statement that it was aware that casualties were reported as a result, adding that “the incident is under review.”
Hours later, in northern Gaza, a separate strike on a crowded junction in Gaza City killed at least 11 people and wounded dozens more, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense, an emergency rescue group under the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.
Fadel Naim, a doctor at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, said that the medical center had received a number of casualties from that attack. He added that Ahmad Qandil, also a doctor at the hospital, was among the dead.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports of the strike in Gaza City. In a separate statement on Sunday, the military said that its air force had attacked more than 150 targets across Gaza over the past 24 hours, including weapons storage facilities and sniper posts.
The deadly strikes came as recent efforts to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas have yet to yield results.
Israeli officials and President Trump had projected high optimism for an agreement ahead of a visit last week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to Washington. But the talks appear to have stalled for the time being amid gaps between the two sides.
In the meantime, Israeli forces have continued to attack in Gaza, part of a 21-month war that began after the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed around 1,200 people and saw roughly 250 people taken to Gaza as hostages.
Since then, more than 58,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the health ministry there. The ministry’s casualty lists do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but they include thousands of children.
Over the past month, more than 20 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza, according to the Israeli military, including five who were killed in a roadside ambush last week.
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2) Plan to Indefinitely Displace Palestinians Threatens to Derail Gaza Truce
An Israeli proposal to force much of Gaza’s population into a small enclave is now overshadowing negotiations over a truce.
By Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, July 14, 2025
A tent camp housing displaced Palestinians in Rafah, southern Gaza, last year. Credit...Hatem Ali/Associated Press
Israel’s defense ministry has promoted a plan to force much of Gaza’s population into a small and largely devastated zone in the territory’s south, a proposal that threatens to derail the latest efforts to forge a truce between Israel and Hamas.
In recent weeks, Israeli officials have briefed journalists and foreign counterparts on a loose plan to force hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians into an area controlled by Israel’s military close to the Gaza-Egypt border. Legal experts have warned that the plan would violate international law because the civilians would be barred indefinitely from returning to their homes in other parts of Gaza, a restriction that would constitute a form of ethnic cleansing.
While the Israeli government has yet to formally announce or comment on the plan, the idea of a new encampment in southern Gaza was first proposed last week by Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister. He discussed it at a briefing with Israeli correspondents who focus on military affairs, and The New York Times reviewed readouts of the briefing written by its attendees. Several attendees also wrote articles that attracted widespread attention among both Israelis and Palestinians.
A spokesman for Mr. Katz declined to comment on the reports, as did the office of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister.
Now, Hamas has cited Mr. Katz’s proposal as one of the latest obstacles to a new truce. During a cease-fire, in exchange for releasing roughly 25 hostages, Hamas wants Israeli troops to withdraw from much of Gaza. The new Israeli plan makes such an outcome far less likely, since it would ensure that Israeli troops remained in charge of a large area over which Hamas seeks to reestablish control.
Husam Badran, a senior member of Hamas, described the establishment of the encampment as a “deliberately obstructive demand” that would complicate the fraught negotiations.
“This would be an isolated city that resembles a ghetto,” Mr. Badran said on Monday in a text message. “This is utterly unacceptable, and no Palestinian would agree to this.”
Hopes for an imminent truce rose last week after Mr. Netanyahu went to Washington for meetings with President Trump that many expected would result in an Israeli compromise. Instead, Mr. Netanyahu — who has previously slow-walked negotiations for personal and political reasons — returned to Israel without a breakthrough.
The negotiations remain stuck on issues including the permanence of any truce: Israel wants to be able to return to war, while Hamas wants guarantees that any cease-fire would evolve into a full cessation of hostilities. Israel also wants Hamas to commit to disarmament, an idea that the militant group has rejected. There are also disagreements over how aid will be delivered during a truce.
According to some of the readouts of the briefing by Mr. Katz, the defense minister described the proposed new encampment as a “humanitarian city” that would, at first, house at least 600,000 Palestinians. Mr. Katz said it would later hold the entire population of Gaza, or roughly 2 million people, according to the readouts and reports. Israeli critics likened it to a modern-day “concentration camp” because its residents would not be allowed to leave the area’s northern perimeter in order to return home.
That could constitute “forcible transfer,” a crime under international law, according to a group of Israeli international law experts who wrote an open letter on the matter to Mr. Katz and the head of Israel’s military, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir.
If implemented,“the plan would constitute a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and under certain conditions, could amount to the crime of genocide,” the letter said.
Israel’s military declined to comment on whether it had been ordered to implement the plan.
Because the plan has yet to be formally detailed or announced, some Israelis have speculated that it is mainly a negotiating tactic aimed at either persuading Hamas to make more concessions in truce talks, or at convincing Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition allies to support a cease-fire.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right minister who supports the depopulation of Gaza and opposes a permanent truce with Hamas, said in a statement that the displacement plan was unlikely to be enacted and had simply been publicized by his colleagues to make it easier for him to stomach a cease-fire deal.
“The debate around establishing a humanitarian city is basically spin aimed at hiding the deal being cooked up,” Mr. Ben-Gvir said. “Spin is not a substitute for absolute victory,” he added.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel.
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3) Nothing Good Happens When People Become ‘the Other’
By Linda Greenhouse, July 14, 2025
Ms. Greenhouse, the recipient of a 1998 Pulitzer Prize, reported on the Supreme Court for The Times from 1978 to 2008.
Etienne Laurent/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Fifteen years ago, when Arizona enacted a notorious anti-immigrant “show me your papers” law, I wrote an essay in The Times that began, “I’m glad I’ve already seen the Grand Canyon. Because I’m not going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state, which is what the appalling anti-immigrant bill that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law last week has turned it into.”
The essay provoked a variety of reactions, most supportive but some vituperatively negative. One angry reader, noting that the newspaper identified me as teaching at Yale Law School, wrote to the school’s dean to demand that he fire me. The dean and I had a good laugh over that letter. But rather than dismiss it as the product of an eccentric crank, I realize now that I should have understood the letter as a window on the toxic brew of anti-immigrant sentiment that led a state to pass such a law.
The Obama administration challenged Arizona’s law, and after the Supreme Court invalidated most of it in 2012, the harsh anti-immigrant wave subsided. But now my letter writer and like-minded people have a friend in the White House. Or friends, actually — among them, Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff, appears to be giving President Trump his marching orders for the arrests and deportations now shredding the civic fabric of communities across the country.
I have a home in the Los Angeles area, and my recent weeks there encompassed the deployment of the Marines and the federalization of California’s National Guard. I steeled myself every morning to read the granular reporting in The Los Angeles Times of scenes that I could never have imagined just months ago: people snatched up while waiting at a bus stop in peaceful Pasadena; the undocumented father of three Marines taken at his landscaping job, pinned down and punched by masked federal agents before being thrown into detention. People whose quiet presence among us was tolerated for decades as they paid their taxes and raised their American children are now hunted down like animals, so fearful of even going grocery shopping that Los Angeles nonprofits have mobilized to deliver food to their doors.
I was taking an early-morning walk in my neighborhood when a black SUV with tinted windows slowed to a stop a half block ahead. I considered: If this is ICE coming to take someone, should I intervene? Start filming? Make sure the victims know their rights? Or just keep walking, secure in the knowledge that no one was coming for me? The car turned out to be an airport limo picking up a passenger, and I was left to ponder how bizarre it was to feel obliged to run through such a mental triage on a summer morning on an American city street.
Something beyond the raw politics of immigration lies behind the venomous cruelty on display, and I think it is this: To everyone involved, from the policymakers in Washington to the masked agents on the street, undocumented individuals are “the other,” people who not only lack legal rights as a formal matter but who stand outside the web of connection that defines human society. Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, refers to undocumented immigrants as “the gotaways,” the ones we didn’t catch.
In a lecture at Loyola University Chicago in April, Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso observed that the current immigration crisis “is driven by the deeper crisis of public and social life.” He continued: “On a fundamental level, these are signs that we are losing the story of who we are as a country. This is a crisis of narrative. Are we no longer a country of immigrants? Are we no longer a country that values the dignity of the human person, individual liberties, and with a healthy regard for checks and balances?”
An adaptation of Bishop Seitz’s powerful lecture was published by the Catholic magazine Commonweal, which is where I read it. (Another bishop, Alberto Rojas of San Bernardino, Calif., 60 miles east of Los Angeles, took the rare step of telling the 1.6 million worshipers in the diocese by letter last week that they were excused from attending Mass if they were afraid of immigration enforcement if they came to church.) The Catholic Church has distinguished itself by the moral clarity of its critique of the president’s deportation obsession.
I wish I saw the same powerful advocacy from major Jewish organizations, which I’d argue have a particular responsibility and interest in addressing this issue. Aren’t antisemitism and anti-immigrant cruelty two sides of the same coin? Both spring from viewing members of a group as “the other.” The focus of these organizations, naturally enough, is antisemitism, and the Trump administration’s exploitation of the real problem of antisemitism for its own purposes seems to have thrown some of them off-kilter.
I’ve been wondering when the moment will come when ICE will go far enough to persuade more people outside Los Angeles that it must be reined in. Maybe it will look something like the military invasion of the city’s MacArthur Park the other day, when soldiers and federal agents on horseback and in armored vehicles swept in for no obvious purpose other than to sow terror. “It’s the way a city looks before a coup,” Mayor Karen Bass, who rushed to the park, said later.
Can New Yorkers envision such a scene in Central Park? Is anywhere safe now for someone who can’t show the right papers?
People of a certain age might remember the songwriter Jimmy Webb’s weirdly compelling “MacArthur Park,” with its refrain that begins, “MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark.” Growing up in the east, I had never heard of MacArthur Park when the song hit the charts in 1968, and I wasn’t sure it was a real place. All these years later, something real is melting for sure. It is the glue that holds civil society together.
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4) For Big Banks, the Trump Era Is Proving Profitable Thus Far
JPMorgan’s chief, Jamie Dimon, lauded the “resilient” U.S. economy as his bank reported bumper quarterly earnings.
“JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the country, exceeded forecasters’ expectations for the second quarter, earning about $15 billion. … JPMorgan’s stock has gained about 20 percent this year, far outperforming the S&P 500, which has risen 6.5 percent. Citi and Wells Fargo also reported earnings on Tuesday [July 15, 2025]. Wells Fargo announced a profit of $5.5 billion, up 12 percent from a year ago. …The bank intends to increase its dividend by 12.5 percent next quarter.”
By Rob Copeland and Stacy Cowley, July 15, 2025
JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, suggested a greater degree of optimism in his prepared remarks accompanying the bank’s latest earnings. Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times
For years, Wall Street’s top bankers have watched with a mix of envy and exhaustion as power, profits and the popular imagination shifted westward to Silicon Valley.
Being out of the spotlight, however, is proving profitable in the second Trump era. While many industries have been upended by the president’s topsy-turvy trade and immigration policies, Wall Street is quietly humming along just fine.
Some of the biggest lenders in America reported strong quarterly earnings on Tuesday along with increasing — if tentative — optimism that the U.S. economy has more room to run. The reports were a reminder that in the world of high finance, uncertainty is often a chance to make money.
JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the country, exceeded forecasters’ expectations for the second quarter, earning about $15 billion. Importantly, its haul from advising on corporate deal making rose, defying expectations for a decline amid uncertainty over global trade. The bank credited a shift in momentum as the most extreme of President Trump’s tariffs were repeatedly delayed, as well as the extension of corporate tax breaks.
JPMorgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, whose words are carefully parsed on Wall Street, suggested a greater degree of optimism in his prepared remarks. While his remarks in the first quarter called out “considerable turbulence (including geopolitics)” in the economy, he flipped on Tuesday, saying that the economy was “resilient” and that “the finalization of tax reform and potential deregulation are positive for the economic outlook.”
The bank’s chief financial officer, Jeremy Barnum, summed up the mood among the bank’s clients on a call with reporters: “The corporate community has sort of accepted that they just have to get through this.”
JPMorgan’s stock has gained about 20 percent this year, far outperforming the S&P 500, which has risen 6.5 percent.
Citi and Wells Fargo also reported earnings on Tuesday. Wells Fargo announced a profit of $5.5 billion, up 12 percent from a year ago. Last month, the Federal Reserve freed Wells Fargo from the asset cap that had constrained it for seven years — a penalty regulators imposed in response to the bank’s sham accounts scandal and other misdeeds.
Wells Fargo’s chief executive, Charles W. Scharf, forecast good conditions ahead for the bank. After a brief nod toward economic risks, he said customers were staying active and keeping up with their debts. The bank intends to increase its dividend by 12.5 percent next quarter.
Asked on a call whether tariffs were affecting Wells Fargo’s customers, Mike Santomassimo, the bank’s finance chief, said it was too early to judge. “I think it’s causing some clients to be a little cautious about borrowing or big investments they may want to make,” he said.
Big banks’ results are closely followed by investors, both because they traditionally kick off the quarterly earnings season as well as provide a window into consumer spending. That data was a mixed bag on Tuesday: Citi, which beat profit expectations, flagged a worsening macroeconomic environment compared with a year ago, but JPMorgan said it no longer believed it needed to set aside as much money to cushion against future loan losses.
“Frankly,” said Mark Mason, Citi’s chief financial officer, “the impact of tariffs and how that might show up in inflation and what some of the other unintended consequences might be is still unknown.”
More lenders, including the investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, are expected to report earnings on Wednesday and anticipated to shed further light on the status of mergers and acquisitions, among other corporate activities.
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5) Another Casualty in the Tariff Wars: The Always-in-Season Tomato
The Trump administration is adding a 17 percent tariff to a year-round grocery store staple, while funneling more business to domestic tomato growers, largely in Florida.
By Ana Swanson, July 14, 2025
“The tariffs will add to the price of a year-round grocery store staple for many Americans, while funneling more business to domestic tomato growers, largely in Florida. The levies stem from a nearly 30-year-old trade case that found Mexican tomato growers to be selling their products in the United States at unfairly low prices. The U.S. tomato industry brought a case against their Mexican competitors in 1996, arguing that Mexican tomatoes dumped into the United States were injuring American growers. A U.S. trade court agreed with them, and ordered tariffs to be imposed. But on five occasions since then — in 1996, 2002, 2008, 2013 and 2019 — the United States agreed to suspend the tariffs, as long as Mexican growers would keep their prices above a certain minimum level. … Robert Guenther, the executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Exchange, said that the previous five agreements with Mexico had failed, and that strong enforcement of U.S. trade laws was needed to protect ‘the stability [high-price stability] of our food supply chain.’”
Ana Swanson covers international trade and reports from Washington.
The levies stem from a nearly 30-year-old trade case that found Mexican tomato growers to be selling their products in the United States at unfairly low prices. Credit...Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The Trump administration announced Monday that it would impose a 17 percent tariff on most imports of tomatoes from Mexico, as it withdrew from a decades-old trade agreement that had prevented those levies from snapping into place.
The tariffs will add to the price of a year-round grocery store staple for many Americans, while funneling more business to domestic tomato growers, largely in Florida.
The levies stem from a nearly 30-year-old trade case that found Mexican tomato growers to be selling their products in the United States at unfairly low prices. The U.S. tomato industry brought a case against their Mexican competitors in 1996, arguing that Mexican tomatoes dumped into the United States were injuring American growers. A U.S. trade court agreed with them, and ordered tariffs to be imposed.
But on five occasions since then — in 1996, 2002, 2008, 2013 and 2019 — the United States agreed to suspend the tariffs, as long as Mexican growers would keep their prices above a certain minimum level. The United States and Mexico had been in recent talks about entering into a new agreement.
“Mexico remains one of our greatest allies, but for far too long our farmers have been crushed by unfair trade practices that undercut pricing on produce like tomatoes,” Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, said in a statement. “That ends today. This rule change is in line with President Trump’s trade policies and approach with Mexico.”
The 17 percent duty is calculated to measure the percentage by which Mexican tomatoes have been sold in the United States at unfair prices, the Commerce Department said. The United States imported $2.8 billion of tomatoes from Mexico in 2023, according to data from the World Bank, representing more than 85 percent of American imports.
The Fresh Produce Association of the Americas, which represents companies that import and sell produce and flowers, said it was “disappointed” in the decision. It said that its members distributed vine-ripened, greenhouse-grown tomatoes from Mexico that are not replaceable by tomatoes grown in Florida and the Southeast, most of which are grown in an open field, picked green and gassed to induce a color change.
“As an industry, we are saddened that American consumers will have to pay a tomato tax, or duty, for a reduced selection of the tomatoes they prefer,” the group said.
Robert Guenther, the executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Exchange, said that the previous five agreements with Mexico had failed, and that strong enforcement of U.S. trade laws was needed to protect “the stability of our food supply chain.”
“This decision will protect hardworking American tomato growers from unfair Mexican trading practices and send a strong signal that the Trump administration is committed to ensuring fair markets for American agriculture,” he said.
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6) Israel and Iran Usher In New Era of Psychological Warfare
The 12-day conflict was marked by a flurry of propaganda, disinformation and covert operations aided by artificial intelligence and spread by social media.
By Steven Lee Myers, Natan Odenheimer and Erika Solomon, July 15, 2025
One fabricated video showed devastation at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel that had not occurred.
In the hours before Israeli forces bombed Evin prison in Iran’s capital on June 23, posts appeared on social media in Persian, foreshadowing the attack and urging Iranians to come free the prisoners.
Moments after the bombs struck, a video appeared on X and Telegram, purporting to show a blast at an entrance to the prison, which is notorious for holding political prisoners. One post on X included a hashtag, in Persian: “#freeevin.”
The attack on the prison was real, but the posts and video were not what they seemed. They were part of an Israeli ruse, according to researchers who tracked the effort.
It was not the only trickery during the conflict. Over 12 days of attacks, Israel and Iran turned social media into a digital battlefield, using deception and falsehoods to try to sway the outcome even as they traded kinetic missile strikes that killed hundreds and roiled an already turbulent Middle East. The posts, researchers said, represented a greater intensity of information warfare, by beginning before the strikes, employing artificial intelligence and spreading widely so quickly.
Information warfare, often called psychological operations, or psyops, is as old as war itself. But experts say the effort between Israel and Iran was more intense and more targeted than anything that had come before, and seen by millions of people scrolling on their phones for updates even as bombs fell.
The reason is that today’s technology — the ubiquity of social media and the advent of generative A.I. — has transformed the ability of countries to respond to events and to speak directly to citizens and others in real time in ways that are more believable than ever before.
Iran, for example, sent alerts in Hebrew to thousands of Israeli mobile phones warning recipients to avoid bomb shelters because militants planned to infiltrate them and attack those inside, according to researchers and official statements. A network of accounts on X attributed to Israel spread messages in Persian trying to erode confidence in Iran’s government, including ones narrated by an A.I.-generated woman.
Video messages in Persian, delivered by an A.I.-generated woman, have been attributed to Israel as part of a plot to erode confidence in Tehran’s government. She falsely portrayed things in Tehran as normal, with people going about their lives. In truth, the the city was mostly evacuated at the time.
“It’s certainly a new era of influence warfare,” said James J.F. Forest, a professor of security studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, who has written extensively on the subject. “There’s never really been a previous corollary in history where you had the ability to go to scale with this kind of propaganda.”
The Israeli Defense Forces declined to respond to questions about psychological operations. So did an official from the Iranian delegation to the United Nations in New York.
The torrent of propaganda and deception offers a preview of what the United States or other nations would almost certainly face if war erupted. False images of destroyed B-2 bombers appeared online when President Trump ordered strikes on Iran’s deeply buried nuclear sites.
Some question how prepared the United States is, especially with Mr. Trump’s administration cutting efforts to combat foreign influence operations. American military strategy embraces information operations — which have been known in the Pentagon since 2010 as Military Information Support Operations — but they have often been treated as little more than a supporting role.
Russia, followed by China, is regarded as the most assertive adversary when it comes to influence campaigns. It has waged a furious information war against Ukraine and its allies since launching a full invasion of the country in 2022. By some accounts, it has undercut support in some countries, including the United States.
“I think what most people would say is that we are not prepared in the military for the kind of information operations or psychological operations that might become mainstream in this century,” said David Millar, a former intelligence officer who until recently taught at the Foreign Service Institute, the State Department’s diplomatic training academy.
Israel and Iran both followed Russia’s playbook, trying to shape public opinion at home and abroad, but with the added ability to integrate widely available A.I. tools into their campaigns.
“If you go back to the early days of Ukraine, we saw disinformation campaigns from Russia, but they were pretty primitive as compared to what we saw in the early days of Gaza,” said Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a co-founder of GetReal Security, a company that first flagged the manipulated video of Evin prison. “That’s nothing,” he added, “compared to what we’re seeing in Iran.”
Actors on both sides of that conflict flooded the internet with manipulated or fabricated photographs and videos, seeking to demoralize and demonize the other.
The content included images from previous conflicts and obvious fabrications of Iran’s supreme leader and Israel’s prime minister. More subtle ones, like the video at Evin, were initially reported on as real by some news organizations, including The New York Times.
Mr. Farid contrasted today’s information warfare with efforts in World War II, when warring nations communicated with leaflets dropped from airplanes or by radio.
“With radio you had one message and you sent it out,” he said. “Now you have a million messages that you send out to a million individuals. That is obviously very, very different.”
The effect in the current conflict can be hard to measure with certainty. Citizens often rally behind their leaders when at war, viewing obvious propaganda with skepticism or derision. Even if psychological warfare does not change the course of a conflict, analysts say, it can shape public perceptions of it.
“There are certainly people who believe that it’s the narrative win that carries the day,” Mr. Millar said.
Iran’s efforts appeared aimed at a domestic and regional audience as much as Israel itself, said Ari Ben-Am, a co-founder of Telemetry Data Labs, a digital analytics company in Tel Aviv. That reflected “their desire to maintain a regional reputation,” he added.
One fabricated video showed devastation at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel that had not occurred. Photographs and video of wreckage of Israeli — and later American — aircraft appeared on accounts that researchers traced to Iran and its state media.
Iran claimed to have downed at least three Israeli F-35s, though. Israel’s military officials denied that it had lost any aircraft in the fighting, and no evidence has emerged to suggest otherwise. One image showed an implausible afterburner in the exhaust of one wrecked plane.
Iranian media even claimed to have captured an Israeli pilot, identified as Sarah Ahronot, but NewsGuard, a company that monitors disinformation in media, traced the photograph to one of a Chilean Navy lieutenant taken in 2011.
NewsGuard documented 28 false claims by Iran, which relied “on a mix of official state media sources, anonymous websites and accounts, and proxy influencers to distribute propaganda” on YouTube, Facebook, X, Telegram and TikTok.
Although often debunked, the images and videos have been viewed millions of times, and many remain online. A.I. can now not only generate translated content, but do so with nuance. “The fake profiles are more convincing,” said Achiya Schatz, referring to Iran’s efforts. He is the executive director of FakeReporter, an organization in Israel that tracks disinformation campaigns.
“The Hebrew is more persuasive, and the content is more professionally tailored to target audiences,” Mr. Schatz said. “The volume of material — texts, images, videos — is unprecedented.”
Israel’s campaign against Iran focused on the damage it inflicted as much as the potential political dissent it stirred.
A report by Horizon Intelligence, a threat assessment company in Brussels, cited social media accounts linked to Israel showing old footage of protests to suggest unrest against the government. A new video generated by A.I. purported to show Iranians chanting, “We love Israel.”
Darren L. Linvill, a co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, said the video purporting to show a blast at Evin prison appeared almost immediately on accounts on X and Telegram and then spread on a coordinated network of inauthentic accounts that pushed anti-Iranian content, reaching millions of people. He called it a striking example of “the coordination between kinetic and psychological warfare.”
The psychological war continued even after the bombings stopped on June 24. The day after the two countries agreed to a truce, a new account appeared on X claiming to be the Persian-language spokesman for Israel’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad. Posts on the account offered financial and medical assistance to Iranians who revolted.
The account includes video messages from Menashe Amir, an octogenarian Israeli Iranian journalist, well known as a Persian-language broadcaster for Israeli media.
Mr. Amir confirmed to The Times that he had been called by a group of people he did not know, who later came to his house with filming equipment and provided him with a series of Hebrew messages they wanted him to read on camera in Persian.
He was convinced the visitors were from the Mossad, which declined to respond to questions about the account. Iran’s health ministry took the account seriously enough that it put out a warning to Iranians to ignore Mossad’s offers of assistance, according to a report by the official state news agency.
The account weighs in on debates or memes spreading on Iranian or Israeli social media, such as a sly response to a video, called “Our Man in Tehran,” that spread widely online during the conflict.
The video portrays Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Army’s Quds Forces, as a Mossad agent at the heart of several covert Israeli operations. The music playing in the background of the video comes from the theme song of an Israeli television series called “Tehran,” about a Mossad agent operating inside Iran.
An Israeli filmmaker, Evyatar Rosenberg, later appeared on Israeli media to say he had used artificial intelligence to create the clip.
Not long after the video spread, the account on X claiming to be the Mossad responded. It posted that, in fact, “Ghaani is not ours.”
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7) Israel Targets Syria and Lebanon in Wave of Airstrikes
In Syria, Israel launched rare attacks on forces of the new government, while in Lebanon it took aim at the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
By Euan Ward, Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, July 15, 2025
Military forces with their guns in the air enter a city in the beds of pickup trucks, with smoke in the background.
The Israeli military carried out a wave of airstrikes on Tuesday that targeted government forces in Syria and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, escalating what it said were efforts to secure Israel’s northern border.
The strikes in Syria were a rare attack on forces of the new government, which is led by Islamist former rebels who toppled the dictator Bashar al-Assad in December. Israel intervened after days of deadly sectarian clashes in the southern region of Sweida, which began with fighting between Bedouin groups and militias from the Druse minority.
The Syrian government said it had sent forces to try to calm the violence in Sweida, the heartland of Syria’s Druse minority. But those forces became embroiled in clashes with local Druse fighters, leading Israel to respond with two consecutive days of airstrikes on government fighters.
Israel’s government has close ties with the country’s own Druse minority, and it has pledged to protect Druse people in nearby Syria.
The clashes, which left dozens dead, were the latest flare-up of sectarian violence to hit Syria, where tensions linger from a nearly 14-year-civil war.
The government and local Druse figures reached an agreement on Tuesday to quell the violence.
But an influential Druse leader, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, accused Syrian government forces of bombarding the city of Sweida, the provincial capital. He called on local fighters to confront the government security forces.
Syria’s defense minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra, later declared that a full cease-fire was now in place.
Since the Assad regime fell seven months ago, Israel has staged hundreds of airstrikes on Syria and has captured Syrian territory in ground operations, saying it wants to prevent any hostile forces from entrenching near its borders.
The Syrian government recently opened diplomatic contacts with Israel aimed at curbing tensions and attacks with the help of U.S. mediation.
In Lebanon, Israel’s wave of airstrikes targeted what it said were Hezbollah positions in the Bekaa Valley, a bastion of support for the Iran-backed group. They were the latest in a series of intensifying assaults against the group in what Lebanese officials and diplomats say is an attempt to pressure it to disarm.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement on Tuesday that the attacks were “a clear message” to both Hezbollah and the Lebanese government that Israel would respond with “maximum force” to any attempt by the group to restore its military capabilities.
Hezbollah is facing mounting U.S. and Israeli pressure to disarm — a core requirement of an increasingly fragile cease-fire agreement signed in November that ended Lebanon’s deadliest and most destructive war in decades.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
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8) College Hearing Live Updates: 3 University Leaders Face Questions About Antisemitism
The heads of Georgetown, the City University of New York and the University of California, Berkeley, were immediately pressed to define antisemitism.
By Vimal Patel, July 15, 2025
Here’s the latest.
The heads of three universities are testifying in Congress, the latest batch of leaders Republicans have called to Washington over allegations of campus antisemitism.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce called the leaders — from the City University of New York, Georgetown University and the University of California, Berkeley — to Washington to speak about “the role of faculty, funding and ideology” in antisemitism.
The Republican-led hearings on Tuesday are the latest in a series that began before the second Trump administration, months after the start of a brutal war in Gaza set off by a deadly Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Earlier hearings with Ivy League university leaders, turned into a disastrous spectacle for the educators.
Since then, Republicans have widened their lens to other kinds of institutions, which they say also failed to keep Jewish students safe when pro-Palestinian protests swept campuses around the country.
Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican and the committee’s chair, blamed campus antisemitism on series of factors Republicans have long railed against, including Middle East studies centers, faculty unions, foreign funding and diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
“The D.E.I. ideology embraced by so many university bureaucrats categorizes Jews as white oppressors and therefore, excuses, or even justifies, antisemitic harassment,” he said.
The committee’s ranking member, Representative Robert C. Scott, a Virginia Democrat, rejected that analysis. “Since this committee’s first antisemitism hearing on December 2023,” he said, “we’ve not held a single hearing addressing racism, xenophobia, sexism, Islamophobia or other challenges affecting other student groups on American college campuses.”
Mr. Walberg’s comments echoed those of President Trump, who campaigned on punishing universities that he said had not done enough to curb antisemitism. The Trump administration has taken away major sums of money — billions in Harvard’s case — from top universities. A federal task force on antisemitism has singled out many institutions for investigation, and federal agents have detained international students who were involved in pro-Palestinian activism.
Critics of the Republican efforts say the hearings are not sincere efforts to protect Jewish students, but are instead designed to silence speech that supporters of Israel do not like.
The three universities at Tuesday’s hearing have all seen pro-Palestinian activism on their campuses.
· University of California, Berkeley: Students for Justice in Palestine, a student activist group, was founded at the university in the early 1990s. In 2024, pro-Palestinian demonstrators erected scores of tents on the campus and occupied a building, and an event featuring an Israeli speaker was canceled after protesters smashed doors. The chancellor at the time called it “an attack on the fundamental values of the university.”
· CUNY: At the City University of New York, one of the nation’s largest public university systems, the law school is particularly known for outspoken pro-Palestinian activists among its graduates. Protests at CUNY campuses in 2024 led to mass arrests. After an investigation, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights said last year that the university had mishandled a number of complaints of antisemitism and other forms of bias since 2019.
· Georgetown: The university, in Washington, D.C., has vocally opposed the Trump administration’s moves against colleges. In March, the U.S. attorney for the district threatened to bar Georgetown graduates from federal jobs because of the university’s diversity programming. The law school dean, in a strongly worded response, called the threat unconstitutional.
Sharon Otterman and Alan Blinder contributed reporting.
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9) Blazes in Northern Ireland Recall an Old Message: You Are Not Welcome Here
A bonfire topped with an effigy of a migrant boat. Homes set alight. During the Troubles, similar tactics were used to target Irish Catholics in the territory.
By Ali Watkins, July 15, 2025
Ali Watkins reported from Ballymena, Belfast and Portadown in Northern Ireland. She has written a book, “The Next One Is for You,” about the decades-long sectarian conflict known as the Troubles.
A bonfire with an effigy of migrants in a boat before it was set on fire this month in Moygashel, Northern Ireland. A tide of anti-immigrant sentiment in the territory has evoked darker moments in Northern Irish history. Credit...Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters
An effigy of a boat filled with migrants, placed on top of a bonfire and set alight. Homes set on fire during a spasm of riots. Displaced families fleeing as angry mobs hurled Molotov cocktails.
This drumbeat of anti-immigrant episodes has taken place over the last five weeks in Northern Ireland. But the images have also brought to mind darker moments in the history of the territory, where fire was long used to intimidate and force out people seen by some as outsiders.
The target of this most recent wave of violence is different from those of the sectarian attacks that defined this land during the Troubles. That decades-long conflict was between the region’s hard-line Protestant Loyalists, who believed Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom, and Irish Catholic nationalists, who wanted the territory to become part of the Republic of Ireland.
But the violence shares a common message: You are not welcome here. If you won’t leave, we may make you.
“Territorialism in Northern Ireland is still embedded — and not only embedded, it’s being patrolled by armed groups,” said Duncan Morrow, a politics professor at Ulster University in Belfast. “Northern Ireland as a society escalates extremely rapidly, because so much of this is already in the whole way society’s organized.”
The town of Ballymena, about 30 miles from Belfast, is sometimes called the “buckle” of Northern Ireland’s Protestant Bible Belt. The most recent violence erupted there after two 14-year-old boys were charged with the attempted oral rape of a local girl on June 7. The two boys, who the BBC reported spoke in court through a Romanian translator, denied the charges.
The night after the boys appeared in court, a peaceful vigil for the girl in Ballymena spiraled into a riot, targeted at members of the Roma community in the Clonavon Terrace area. For six consecutive nights, more violence broke out across the region.
Rioters in Ballymena burned several homes, many of them belonging to immigrant families. Masked gangs in Larne, about 20 miles east, set fire to a leisure center that had been temporarily used as a shelter for those who had been displaced. And angry mobs bore down on immigrant housing in Portadown in County Armagh, where landlords urged residents to temporarily relocate until the threat had quieted.
Since then, 21 families have been placed in temporary housing for shelter and safety as a result of the attacks, according to the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.
A vast majority of those who live in Northern Ireland do not endorse violence. Still, last month’s harrowing scenes were a reminder that the area’s embers of riot and tribalism are still flammable.
Not far from the facades of charred homes in Ballymena is the former site of a Catholic primary school, which was set alight in a 2005 attack that the police described as sectarian. Nearby, Our Lady of Harryville Catholic Church, since demolished, was a lightning rod for arson attacks both before and after the Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 peace deal that largely ended the Troubles.
In recent years, a relatively modest trickle of immigrants has become the subject of hostility both in the Irish Republic and in Northern Ireland, which remains the least diverse area of the United Kingdom by a significant margin. On an island that was defined for centuries by outward emigration, the demographic shift has been highly visible, especially in poorer, working-class communities where many immigrant families land.
“The geography of it is, if you like, a little bit more like 1969 when you had odd Catholics living on the streets,” said Dominic Bryan, a professor at Queens University in Belfast who studies conflict.
In August 1969, Loyalist mobs attacked and burned Catholic homes in Belfast and Derry, forcing thousands of families to flee. Today, Professor Bryan said, immigrant families are obvious minority targets on the otherwise largely homogeneous streets of the North.
“They’ve become very exposed,” he said.
Further agitating the scene are various criminal and paramilitary elements on its periphery. Ballymena remains a locus for dissident, Loyalist paramilitaries, some of whom have regrouped as criminal syndicates. Court cases indicate the town is also believed by the police to have been used as a base for a Romanian organized crime gang, which traffics in drugs and prostitution.
The police have long accused Loyalist paramilitary groups of fomenting unrest. Last summer, officials in Northern Ireland and the Republic blamed those actors for facilitating widespread anti-immigrant violence in Dublin, as well as in Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland.
Officials have not pinned the arson attacks in June on Loyalist gangs, but they said they were probing possible connections. Experts say much of the recent disorder was organized online, where some Loyalist factions have adopted far-right, anti-immigrant language in recent years.
Last Thursday, overlapping ideologies were visible in the effigy of the migrant boat set alight on top of a celebratory bonfire for the Twelfth of July, an annual Unionist commemoration of a Protestant king’s military victory over a Catholic king. Banners on the bonfire read “Stop the boats” and “Veterans before refugees.”
This kind of nativist sentiment has historically found fertile ground in Ballymena, the land of Ian Paisley, the firebrand Protestant preacher who shaped the hard-line politics of contemporary Unionism, the movement to remain part of the United Kingdom. As paramilitary groups have retreated into more entrenched, isolated corners, they have maintained a cultural and social hold, particularly on disenfranchised youth.
“Soft-power paramilitarism is huge in these areas,” Professor Morrow said. “Most of the time they operate through their more nebulous social control, with young people and the whole cultural thing. That’s why it becomes so difficult to pinpoint.”
To walk the streets last month around Clonavon Terrace in Ballymena — an interface between what were the traditionally Protestant and Catholic areas of the town — was to rewind Northern Ireland’s clock. Union Jacks and red-and-white Ulster flags were ubiquitous, plastered against doors, flying out of windows or draped as garden ornaments.
When a photographer and I stopped outside a home, draped in British and Ulster memorabilia, a young man stuck his head out of a window, demanding to know who we were, what we were doing and why. Further down the block, I glanced back and saw that the man had stepped outside into his garden and was silently watching us until we turned the corner.
The suspicion toward outsiders was palpable at riots in Ballymena on June 11 and on the following day in Portadown, where protesters demanded the identification cards of journalists and confronted strangers about their politics. In Portadown, a peaceful protest slowly dispersed, but spectators lingered, expecting violence. Sure enough, small groups of masked youth began lobbing bricks at the many police officers on site.
Earlier, a man in a neatly pressed shirt and dark trench coat had watched the crowd. “There’s serious concerns around uncontrolled immigration and indeed illegal immigration,” said the man, Jonathan Buckley, an assemblyman with the Democratic Unionist Party from Portadown. But, he added, “violence is completely intolerable.”
Intolerable, perhaps — but also a shared spectacle. Across Northern Ireland’s tumult, from the Ballymena riots to the burning of migrant effigies and bonfires last week, one constant was the throngs of onlookers. Tucked behind and among police lines, they came with beer cans and with their children, eager for nightfall.
In Ballymena last month, a group pointed out cues, as if watching a stage play they had seen before. The police would charge here; the crowd would move here; the unmarked van would move here; the Molotov cocktails would come from here.
The night progressed accordingly. As the sun began to set over the Harryville Bridge, the pregnant tension exploded with a single bottle, hurtling across the sky and smacking against a police riot shield.
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10) Defining Antisemitism Is the Subject of Bitter Debate
There’s no consensus about what, precisely, constitutes antisemitism.
By Vimal Patel, July 15, 2025
A discussion at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in February of last year. Credit...Nic Antaya for The New York Times
Many donors, politicians and Jewish students have pressured their colleges to confront antisemitism more forcefully. But one challenge can make the exercise feel like quicksilver.
There’s no consensus about what, precisely, constitutes antisemitism.
University administrators and federal officials alike have considered one contentious definition that has gained traction in recent years, put forward by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
The definition itself is not the source of controversy. It states that antisemitism is a “certain perception of Jews that may be expressed as hatred” toward them. But the alliance also includes with the definition a series of examples that alarm many supporters of free expression.
They include holding Israel to a “double standard” and claiming Israel’s existence is a “racist endeavor.” Supporters of the Palestinian cause say those examples conflate antisemitism with anti-Zionism and are intended to protect Israel from criticism.
Supporters of the alliance’s definition say that it helps press colleges to stop tolerating behavior against Jews that would be unacceptable if it were directed at racial minority groups or L.G.B.T.Q. students.
Debates over how to define antisemitism have intensified on college campuses since the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023 and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza. The definition has been invoked in debates over whether to cancel controversial speakers, events and panels on the ground that they are antisemitic.
Donald Trump campaigned on punishing universities that did not do enough to curb antisemitism. His administration has threatened significant amounts of funding to institutions like Harvard, saying they did not do enough to keep Jewish students safe.
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11) As Iran Deports a Million Afghans, ‘Where Do We Even Go?’
Afghans being forced out of Iran are grappling with an uncertain future in Afghanistan, where widespread poverty and severe restrictions on women and girls await.
By Elian Peltier, Farnaz Fassihi and Yaqoob Akbary, Visuals by Jim Huylebroek, July 16, 2025
Elian Peltier, Yaqoob Akbary, and Jim Huylebroek reported from the Islam Qala border crossing between Afghanistan and Iran; Farnaz Fassihi has reported on Iran and Afghanistan for more than two decades.
Afghans expelled from Iran arrived at a processing center in the border town of Islam Qala, Afghanistan, last week.
At the sand-swept border between Iran and Afghanistan, nearly 20,000 are crossing every day — shocked and fearful Afghans who have been expelled from Iran with few belongings in a wave of targeted crackdowns and xenophobia.
More than 1.4 million Afghans have fled or been deported from Iran since January during a government clampdown on undocumented refugees, according to the United Nations’ Refugees agency. More than half a million have been forced into Afghanistan just since the war between Israel and Iran last month, returned to a homeland already grappling with a severe humanitarian crisis and draconian restrictions on women and girls, in one of the worst displacement crisis of the past decade.
They are being dumped at an overcrowded border facility in western Afghanistan, where many expressed anger and confusion to New York Times journalists over how they could go on with few prospects in a country where some have never lived, or barely know anymore.
“I worked in Iran for 42 years, so hard that my knees are broken, and for what?” Mohammad Akhundzada, a construction worker, said at a processing center for returnees in Islam Qala, a border town in northwestern Afghanistan, near Herat.
The mass expulsions threaten to push Afghanistan further toward the brink of economic collapse with the sudden cutoff of vital remittance money to Afghan families from relatives in Iran.
The sudden influx of returnees also piles on Afghanistan’s already grim unemployment, housing and health-care crises. More than half of Afghanistan’s estimated population of 41 million already relies on humanitarian assistance.
With a cane by his side, Mr. Akhundzada was waiting with his wife and four children, all born in Iran, for a bus to take them to Kabul, the crowded Afghan capital. He was hoping that some relatives could host them, despite the lack of spare rooms.
“We don’t have anything,” said Mr. Akhundzada, 61, “and we have nowhere to go.”
Driven Out by Abuse and Suspicion
Iran hosts the world’s largest refugee population, and about 95 percent — estimated to be around four million — are Afghans, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency. Iran says the real number is closer to six million, after decades of war and upheaval in Afghanistan.
Tehran limits where Afghans can live and work — only in 10 of the country’s 31 provinces — and they are usually allowed only arduous, low-skill work.
Iran’s government has said that it can no longer absorb Afghan refugees given its own economic crisis and shortage of natural resources, including water and gas.
In March, the government said undocumented Afghans would be deported and set a July 6 deadline for voluntary departures. But after last month’s 12-day conflict with Israel, the crackdown intensified.
Security forces have raided work places and neighborhoods, stopped cars at checkpoints set up throughout big cities, and detained scores of Afghans before sending them to overcrowded deportation centers in sweltering heat.
Officials and state media, without providing evidence, have claimed that Afghans were recruited by Israel and the United States to stage terrorist attacks, seize military sites and build drones.
Kadijah Rahimi, a 26-year-old cattle herder, echoing many Afghans at the border crossing, said that when she was arrested in Iran last month, the security agent told her, “We know you’re working for Israel.”
Abolfazl Hajizadegan, a sociologist in Tehran, said Iran’s government was using Afghans as scapegoats to deflect blame for intelligence failures that enabled Israel to infiltrate widely within Iran.
“Mixing Afghan deportations with the Iran-Israel conflict underscores the regime’s reluctance to acknowledge its security and intelligence shortcomings,” Mr. Hajizadegan said in an interview.
Surge in Hate Crimes
The spying accusations have fueled racist attacks on Afghans in Iran in recent weeks, according to interviews with more two dozen Afghans living in Iran or those who have recently returned to Afghanistan, reports by aid and rights groups, and videos on social media and news media.
Afghans have been beaten or attacked with knives; faced harassment from landlords and employers who are also withholding their deposits or wages; and have been turned away from banks, bakeries, pharmacies, schools and hospitals.
Ebrahim Qaderi was riding his bicycle to work to a cardboard factory in Tehran one morning last month when two men stopped him. They shouted “Dirty Afghan” and demanded his smartphone. When Mr. Qaderi refused, they kicked him in the leg and slashed his hand with a knife, he recounted at a relocation center in Herat. His mother, Gull Dasta Fazili, said doctors at four hospitals turned him away because he was Afghan, and that they left Iran because of the attack.
In Iran, many Afghans said they lived in constant fear and were staying home. Farah, 35, a computer engineer, in Tehran said in a telephone interview that neighborhood youth attacked her and her 4-year-old son as they were walking home one day last week and repeatedly kicked the child.
Last week, Farah, who like others interviewed by The Times asked that her last name not be published out of fear of retribution, saw an Afghan woman being beaten while riding the metro. “I sat there paralyzed and shaking because I knew if I said a word I would be also beaten,” she said.
Even Afghans who are legal residents say security guards have ripped their documents and deported them anyway. Ali, a 36-year-old who said he had been born and raised in Iran and had legal status, was stopped at a checkpoint along with an Iranian friend recently.
“He told me, ‘I’m going to tear up your residency card, what are you going to do? You are going to a deportation camp,’ ” Ali said. “I was shaking with fear. I begged and argued with them, saying all my life I have lived in Iran, please don’t do this to me.”
Struggling to Meet the Need
Jawad Mosavi and nine of his family members stepped off the bus from Iran last week, scrambling under the sweltering heat of Islam Qala to gather his thoughts and the family’s dozen suitcases, rugs and rucksacks.
“Where do we even go?” he called out.
His son Ali Akbar, 13, led the way to the building where they could get their certificates of return. His half-open backpack carried his most precious belongings — a deflated soccer ball, a speaker and some headphones to listen to his favorite Iranian hits, in Persian. “The only kind of music I understand,” he said.
Like the Mosavi family, between 20,000 and 25,000 people were left to navigate a maze of luggage, tents and fellow returnees every day last week, trying to find their way through crowded buildings and warehouses run by Afghan authorities and U.N. agencies.
Mothers changed their babies’ diapers on filthy blankets amid relentless gusts of wind. Fathers queued for hours to get their fingerprints taken and collect some emergency cash under temperatures hovering over 95 degrees. Outnumbered humanitarian workers treated dehydrated returnees at a field clinic while others hastily distributed food rations or dropped off large cubes of ice in water containers.
Afghanistan was already grappling cuts in foreign aid from the United States and other donors before Iran began expelling Afghans en masse. Even before then, nearly a million Afghans had been ejected or pressed to leave from Pakistan. Organizations have been able to fund only a fifth of humanitarian needs in the country this year, and more than 400 health care centers have been shut down in recent months.
Uncertain Futures, Especially for Girls
Afghan officials have pledged to build 35 townships across the country to cope with the influx of returnees, many of whom have been deported without being allowed to collect belongings or cash from the bank.
Afghanistan’s prime minister, Muhammad Hassan Akhund, has urged Iran to show restraint in the deportations, “so as to prevent the emergence of resentment or hostility between the two brotherly nations.”
“We have to recognize that Iran has accommodated lots of Afghans and has the right to decide who can stay and who cannot,” said Miah Park, the country director for the U.N. Migration agency in Afghanistan. “But we demand that they be treated in a humane and dignified manner.”
In Islam Qala, many Afghans said they were coming back to a country they hardly recognized since the Taliban took control and imposed strict rule in 2021.
Zahir Mosavi, the patriarch of the family, said he dreaded having to halt education for his four daughters because the Taliban have banned girls’ education above sixth grade.
“I want to keep them busy, I want them to learn something,” he said.
One daughter, Nargis, was in eighth grade in Iran. Now, she said she would try to focus on the tailoring skills she had learned. “I’m not good at it, but at least there’s that,” she said.
That evening, after a day at the processing facility in Islam Qala, the family boarded a van bound for Herat, the largest city in western Afghanistan, 70 miles away from the border.
Ali Akbar, the boy with the deflated soccer ball, cried throughout the trip when he realized he had lost his phone, and with it the only way to listen to his favorite Iranian music.
The family dropped off their suitcases at 1 a.m. in a public park that had been transformed into a tent city hosting 5,000 people. Single men slept outside, using tree trunks as pillows. The family’s women and children received two tents.
A journey of hundreds of miles still lay ahead, to their home province of Helmand, in the rural south. Few opportunities were there, but they decided it was all they could afford.
Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting from Brussels, and Safiullah Padshah from Kabul, Afghanistan.
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12) At Least 20 Killed in Stampede Outside a Gaza Food Site, Aid Organization Says
There were conflicting accounts from Palestinian and aid officials over what happened at the food distribution hub run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
By Lara Jakes and Nader Ibrahim, July 16, 2025
Casualties are brought into Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza on Wednesday after a stampede at a food distribution site. Credit...Hatem Khaled/Reuters
A stampede outside an aid distribution center in southern Gaza killed at least 20 people who were waiting for food on Wednesday, according to Palestinian and aid officials, the latest in a string of deadly episodes around sites run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
The deaths bring the number of people killed while trying to get food from the organization to about 700 since late May, according to data provided this week by the United Nations.
There were conflicting reports about the melee, which started on Wednesday morning on the outskirts of Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza.
The Gaza Health Ministry said tear gas was fired into a crowd gathered at the distribution site, causing a stampede. It said 21 people were killed, 15 of whom suffocated.
The aid organization said that 20 people were killed after armed agitators among a gathering crowd at its Khan Younis distribution site created a “chaotic and dangerous surge.” Nineteen of the victims were trampled and one was stabbed, the organization said in a statement, adding that it was “heartbroken.”
It was not immediately possible to explain the discrepancy in the death toll.
In the statement, the aid organization asserted there was “credible reason to believe that elements within the crowd — armed and affiliated with Hamas — deliberately fomented the unrest.” Those claims could not be independently verified.
In a follow-up message to The New York Times, the aid group called claims that it had shot tear gas into the crowd “completely false.” It said it had used a “limited” amount of pepper spray, but “only to safeguard additional loss of life.” At one point, it said, an American worker had to enter the crowd to rescue a child from being trampled.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the episode and referred questions to the aid organization.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was created to distribute food in Gaza as Israel faced widespread international condemnation for a two-month aid blockade that brought the enclave to the brink of famine. Israeli officials had said the blockade was an attempt to force Hamas to surrender and release the remaining hostages held in Gaza.
Since the organization started operations in late May, thousands of desperate and hungry Palestinians have come to its four aid sites early each morning hoping to obtain food. Hundreds have since been killed by gunfire that eyewitnesses and Gaza health officials have blamed on Israeli forces shooting into the crowds.
On Wednesday, Gaza’s Health Ministry described the distribution sites as “death traps” in a statement that blamed Israel and the United States for “deliberately committing massacres in a systematic manner and using various methods against the starving people.”
Video footage posted by local journalists on social media and verified by The New York Times showed people rushing several men in the back of a vehicle, some appearing lifeless, to the emergency entrance at the Nasser Medical Complex, the main medical facility in Khan Younis.
“Let the world see!” one man shouted in the video as the vehicle sped toward the hospital.
In another video, also verified by The Times, a man, who could not be independently identified, said aid workers at the Khan Younis site had refused to open the gates for the people who had gathered at the distribution center and were overcrowded as they waited. Some people then climbed over the gate to get to the aid, according to the man, who was covered in dust and helping carry a man who he said had suffocated to death to the hospital.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said this week it has distributed more than 76 million meals since May. But the group said false information circulating online about access to some of its sites have driven large crowds to closed centers, fueling confusion and disorder.
Many Gazans have had to walk for miles and cross Israeli military cordons to obtain aid from the group’s distribution sites, most of which have not been operational on most days. The sites are in southern and central Gaza, which critics said would help Israel’s attempts to displace residents from the northern part of the territory.
The United Nations has said the group’s supplies constitute a mere trickle of assistance compared with the needs of a population of about two million people at risk of famine.
Some U.N. aid trucks are still making their way through a single border crossing into southern Gaza. But U.N. officials say that distribution to warehouses and bakeries inside Gaza has been hampered by the lack of secure routes, and that negligible quantities of food are reaching the people who need it.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that U.N. trucks carrying medical supplies were expected to enter the territory on Thursday, and called on the public to protect them from attacks and ensure their safe passage to hospitals.
Not far from the site of the stampede, the Israeli military said it had opened a new security corridor to divide the city of Khan Younis into eastern and western sectors to isolate Hamas units. Some areas of the city have been evacuated several times, displacing thousands of people and pushing them into crowded zones near the Egyptian border.
Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.
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13) Migration Fears Turn Europe’s Borderless Dreams Into Traffic Nightmares
Germany’s new government-imposed border checks to demonstrate toughness on migration, though crossings started slowing years ago.
By Jim Tankersley and Christopher F. Schuetze, July 16, 2025
Reporting from the twin border towns of Slubice, Poland, and Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany
German border guards stop cars crossing from Poland last week. Credit...Lena Mucha for The New York Times
The No. 983 bus braked shortly after it crossed the Oder River from Poland into Germany, easing inside a large tent and stopping. German police officers boarded, pulled off a man with gray hair and stuffed luggage for further inspection, then sent the driver on his way.
The delay took about eight minutes. It was an example of a headache that has quickly become routine for people crossing between the two countries as Germany makes a public show of cracking down on migration.
Amid a voter backlash over the millions of asylum seekers who entered the country over the past decade, German officials have thrown up checkpoints to search vehicles crossing their borders from all sides. Neighboring countries have followed suit, including Austria and, starting last week, Poland.
The checkpoints are beginning to undermine the ideal of free movement in the European Union. In a series of agreements beginning 40 years ago, members of the European Union effectively declared they would allow each other’s citizens to cross without having to clear border security.
But the pacts allow countries to temporarily reimpose border controls “as a last resort” in the event of a serious threat to national security or public policy. Germany, Poland, Austria, France, Italy and the Netherlands have all cited immigration concerns when reinstating border checks this year.
Enhanced checks have stopped 110 migrants per day on average from entering Germany since early May, when the new government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz tightened border security procedures, interior ministry officials said. That’s up from 83 per day in the first four months of the year.
The increased checks are snarling traffic and annoying commuters, long-haul truckers and other travelers. They are squeezing, at least temporarily, the tendrils of commerce that have grown between towns like Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, and Slubice, Poland, which lie on opposite banks of the Oder River.
The additional security has spawned protests, often from citizens angry that the Germans are searching cars coming in from their countries. Police union leaders complain checks have diverted officers elsewhere. Dutch citizens acting as vigilantes have stopped cars on their way in from Germany to check them for migrants. In Poland, right-wing groups have vowed to turn back any migrant that Germany rejects at its border.
Federal government officials in Germany and elsewhere have embraced the checks. This week, Germany will convene a summit with ministers from Poland, France and elsewhere to discuss plans for stricter migration policies. And immigration enforcement is set to be a key point of discussion when Mr. Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are expected to meet in London on Thursday.
German officials say their enhanced controls signal to potential migrants that Germany’s border enforcement is much stricter, though migration levels have been falling steadily for two years, well before many of the checkpoints were installed.
“The policy shift has begun,” the interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, said in a speech to Parliament last week, in which he claimed credit for plunging migration numbers. “And it’s working.”
In the twin cities on the Oder River, many locals disagree.
“We do not have a migration crisis here,” Tomasz Stefański, Slubice’s deputy mayor, said in an interview. “The idea of the European Union is really quite shaky at the moment, as is freedom of movement across borders.”
The city’s migrant population is largely Ukrainian refugees, Mr. Stefański said, and few others are attempting to enter or leave via the bridge to Germany. But the heightened checks are stressing economic activity between the towns, according to interviews with shop owners and city officials.
Officials from the German interior ministry did not respond to questions about the economic effects of border controls.
The bridge is the main cord that connects Slubice and Frankfurt an der Oder, which before the end of World War II were a single German city. After Poland joined the E.U.’s free-movement zone in 2007, officials removed the border installations that had stood on the bridge. The cities grew so economically interwoven that locals now call them “Slubfurt.” One of the few reminders that the river is a border is the price of cigarettes, which are much cheaper on the Polish side.
“Although they speak two different languages, the cities are like two organisms that have become completely entwined,” said Marek Poznanski, the Polish-born director of a logistics hub on the German side of the river.
Mr. Stefanski, the deputy mayor, first came to Slubice to attend university on the German side. When he had children, he sent them to day care on the German side, a common practice.
Nearly a quarter of Slubice’s 16,000 residents commute to Germany to work, and roughly half of the town’s income comes from cross-border shopping and services, Mr. Stefanski said.
Local shops appear to be suffering from the traffic jams caused by border checks. The city says its businesses have lost about 20 percent in revenue from the checks.
Mr. Poznanski said controls are eating into his logistics business.His drivers spend hours waiting to cross the border into Poland, so trips that used to take two hours, he said, now take five.
On a recent afternoon, Polish soldiers briefly stopped the sedan we were driving, with German license plates, to check our identification. On the return trip, German border police simply waved the car through. Driving toward Berlin, we passed a line of cars and trucks stretched for miles on the other side of the road, stalled by the Polish checks.
Germany started patrolling its border with Poland in October 2023, in a previous government’s effort to signal it was in control of migration. The checks increased significantly under Mr. Merz, who had campaigned on deterring migration. The Merz government has vowed to turn away asylum seekers who entered Europe somewhere outside Germany.
This past week, Poland followed suit. After weeks of protests by far-right activists along the border, Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland ordered his own checks on the Polish borders with Germany and Lithuania.
“Border controls are a popular political tool for signaling to the population that they are safe,” said Norbert Cyrus, an expert on the German-Polish border region at the European University of Viadrina at Frankfurt an der Oder. “But in practice,” he added, “the desired effects cannot actually be proven.”
Mr. Tusk was spurred to order border checks in part by a group known as Ruch Obrony Granic, the Civic Border Defense Movement. The group’s members are both protesters and vigilantes. They have vowed to turn back what they believe to be large numbers of migrants being pushed by German authorities into Poland, citing fabricated news reports and videos circulating online.
A handful of them, clad in Day-Glo yellow warning vests, still stood at the crossing in Slubice last week, days after official Polish border guards took their post.
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14) Trump’s National Guard Troops Are Questioning Their Mission in L.A.
Thousands of National Guard members have served in the L.A. region since last month. Six soldiers spoke in interviews about low morale over the deployment.
By Shawn Hubler, July 16, 2025
Members of the California National Guard have protected federal buildings and accompanied agents on immigration raids in the Los Angeles region. Mark Abramson for The New York Times
When the California National Guard rolled into Los Angeles to respond to devastating wildfires in January, Southern Californians largely hailed the troops as heroes. Celebrities thanked them for their service in Pacific Palisades. Suburban homeowners competed to chat them up at traffic checkpoints in Altadena.
Seven months later, much of that good will is gone.
Protesters jeer the troops as they guard federal office buildings. Commuters curse the behemoth convoys clogging freeways. Family members grill members with questions about whether they really have to obey federal orders.
The level of public and private scorn appears to have taken a toll on the National Guard deployment to Los Angeles that President Trump announced last month, citing protests over immigration raids. Interviews with nearly two dozen people — including soldiers and officers as well as officials and civilians who have worked closely with the troops — show that many members of the Guard are questioning the mission. The deployment’s initial orders to quell scattered protests have given way to legally disputed assignments backing up federal immigration agents.
“They gave Disneyland tickets to the people who worked in the wildfires,” one soldier said. “Nobody’s handing out Disneyland tickets now.”
Six members of the Guard — including infantrymen, officers and two officials in leadership roles — spoke of low morale and deep concern that the deployment may hurt recruitment for the state-based military force for years to come. Those who were interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity, because military orders bar Guard personnel from publicly discussing the federal deployment and they feared retribution for talking to the media.
All but one of the six expressed reservations about the deployment. Several said they had raised objections themselves or knew someone who objected, either because they did not want to be involved in immigration crackdowns or felt the Trump administration had put them on the streets for what they described as a “fake mission.”
The New York Times reached out to a broad pool of soldiers seeking interviews about the deployment. While a small sample, the six soldiers’ comments aligned with other signs of poor morale.
At least 105 members of the deployment sought counseling from behavioral health officers, and at least one company commander and one battalion commander who objected to the mission were reassigned to work unrelated to the mobilization, the Guard officers said. Some troops became so disgruntled that there were several reports of soldiers defecating in Humvees and showers at the Southern California base where the troops are stationed, prompting tightened bathroom security.
The California National Guard had 72 soldiers whose enlistment was set to expire during the deployment. Of those 72, at least two have now left the Guard and 55 others have indicated that they will not extend their service, according to the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is fighting Mr. Trump’s deployment in court. That number, if troops act on it, would amount to a 21 percent retention rate, far lower than the Guard’s typical 60 percent rate, officials said.
“The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring,” one of the two Guard officials said. “This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all.”
The six soldiers are a fraction of the thousands of troops who have been deployed to Los Angeles. Many members of the Guard have had no trouble taking part in the operation and have voiced no personal conflicts or concerns. It’s not uncommon for soldiers in Guard deployments to complain about their assignments, question the reasons they were called up or seek counseling during deployments. Earlier this year, after National Guard soldiers were called in to keep order in the New York State prison system after corrections officers went on strike, some troops described feeling unprepared and took issue with not being provided pepper spray or other means of protecting themselves.
Officials with the military’s Northern Command, which is overseeing the president’s military response in California, said the deployment was more organized than the interviewed soldiers suggested. The officials declined to comment on the morale of the troops, their behavioral health, the reassignments or the deployment’s impact on re-enlistment.
Mr. Trump began deploying thousands of troops on June 7 to Southern California, making the case that the state’s Democratic leaders were failing to protect federal agents and property after immigration raids sparked protests. The president commandeered a total of 4,100 California National Guard members who ordinarily are controlled by Mr. Newsom, and dispatched an additional 700 Marines.
Since then, the military presence in California has been a flashpoint of debate, as armed soldiers have faced down protesters outside federal buildings and accompanied federal agents conducting raids in the Los Angeles region. Several operations have drawn intense backlash, including a show of force in MacArthur Park and an immigration raid on a cannabis farm in Ventura County where a fleeing farmworker fell from a greenhouse and later died.
The deployment has started scaling back. On July 1, the president agreed to release about 150 Guard troops in a specialized wildfire fighting unit, and on Tuesday, the Pentagon announced that 1,990 members of the Guard’s 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team begin demobilization. It was unclear if the president would end the mission after 60 days, as his order initially suggested. The other half of the deployment — 1,892 members of the 49th Military Police Brigade — remains.
The six soldiers said that even though they are receiving higher pay and more benefits on a federal mission than they would under a state activation, they are eager to go home. The National Guard is ordinarily a part-time commitment, and many members have been on almost continuous duty since Mr. Newsom summoned them after the fires to assist local authorities.
The new mission has put them at odds with communities and families, several soldiers said. Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown has spread fear and panic in Hispanic immigrant communities in the Los Angeles region. A majority of the California National Guard’s 18,000 members are based in Southern California, and roughly 40 percent of them are of Hispanic heritage.
Not all the Latino soldiers who spoke with The Times objected to the mission. One Hispanic commander from the Central Valley said that his grandparents came to the United States legally and that he felt no conflict. He noted, however, that National Guard soldiers must obey orders either way.
Other Latino soldiers have raised formal and informal objections.
In one incident that several soldiers said occurred early in the deployment, 60 troops were awaiting transport to planned immigration raids in Ventura County when a Latino soldier approached officers in charge of the mission. He told them that he strongly objected, and he offered to be arrested rather than take part in the operation. Eventually, they said, he was reassigned to administrative tasks. Officials at the military’s Northern Command declined to comment about the incident.
Missions have come under intense scrutiny for potential constitutional violations. California authorities have challenged the legality of the deployment, citing a 19th-century law, the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for law enforcement on domestic soil unless there is an insurrection.
Trump administration officials and Justice Department lawyers have argued that troops are “not engaged in law enforcement” but are merely protecting federal agents. Civil liberties groups have disputed that portrayal, pointing to the temporary detention of one man by Marines early in the deployment.
A federal judge has set a trial for August to determine whether the use of the National Guard and Marines has violated federal law.
Most troops have been stationed at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, a federally-owned facility operated by the California National Guard near Long Beach. The soldiers said breakfasts are hearty — eggs, hash browns, sausage, pancakes — and accommodations are comfortable. Despite efforts to keep them busy, however, they reported long stretches of downtime and frustration with missions that leaked or were canceled by the time lumbering convoys reached their destinations.
MacArthur Park was all but empty on July 7 when federal agents arrived to show that they could “go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles,” as one immigration official told Fox News. About 80 National Guard members who arrived for backup mostly stayed in their trucks.
On the base, soldiers said, they received riot training, reviewed battlefield maneuvers and drilled to leap from their cots and gear up at a moment’s notice. But mostly, they said, they lounged in warehouse-sized tents, listening to music and playing games on their cell phones. Only about 400 of the 3,882 deployed Guard members had actually been sent on assignments away from the base, Guard figures showed.
A spokeswoman for the Northern Command’s U.S. Army North component said that the routine for service members “varies on a day-to-day basis.” Many assignments on the base involve “practicing de-escalation and crowd control techniques and fulfilling annual training requirements, all while maintaining cycles of rest and recuperation,” she added.
In Los Alamitos, a coastal suburb of about 12,000 people, the troops have crowded into a two-square-mile facility that is shared with other government agencies, which have balked at the encroachment. In emails obtained through a public records request, workers in a joint program to eradicate the Mediterranean fruit fly complained that troops shaving and brushing their teeth are crowding the bathrooms and that scientists are unsettled by nearby trucks full of explosives.
Soldiers meander down new walkways between a huge tent city and new semi-permanent buildings. “I’ve lived here 33 years and this is the first I’ve seen anything like this,” the mayor of Los Alamitos, Shelley Hasselbrink, said. “We call it the circus — they look like big circus tents.”
Two Democratic officials who were granted brief access to the base — Josh Fryday, a Navy veteran who leads community engagement for the governor’s office, and Representative Derek Tran, an Army veteran who represents Los Alamitos — said the massive military presence, which has been projected to cost $134 million, seemed excessive and extreme.
“If they can do this here,” Mr. Fryday said, “they can do it in any community.”
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15) The U.K. Plans to Lower the Voting Age to 16. Here’s What to Know.
The plan has been described as the largest expansion of voting rights in Britain in decades.
By Stephen Castle, Reporting from London, July 17, 2025
The British government said on Thursday that it would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote, in what it called a landmark moment for democracy and some of its opponents decried as an attempt to tilt the electoral playing field.
Britain has more than 1.6 million people of age 16 or 17, in a total population of roughly 68 million, and the plan has been described as the country’s largest expansion of voting rights in decades. The last nationwide reduction in voting age, to 18 from 21, came more than 50 years ago.
“Declining trust in our institutions and democracy itself has become critical, but it is the responsibility of government to turn this around and renew our democracy, just as generations have done before us,” the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, wrote in an introduction to a policy paper that included the announcement.
The plan also includes promises to tighten laws on foreign donations to political parties, and to simplify voter registration.
Here’s a guide to the change and its implications.
Do many places give 16-year-olds the vote?
Several nations do, including Austria, Malta and Brazil, while in Greece the voting age is set at 17. Others allow 16-year-olds to participate only in some elections: In Germany and Belgium, they can help choose members of the European Parliament, but they cannot vote in federal elections. Britain has been in that category: Elections for the separate parliaments that control many policy areas in Scotland and Wales already had a voting age of 16.
Is this change a surprise?
No. The center-left Labour Party has backed votes for 16-year-olds for some time, and the idea was part of the official platform on which it won last year’s general election.
Will it definitely happen? How long will it take?
The move requires a law, which will have to get through both houses of Parliament, so this change is some way off. But Labour has a large majority in the elected House of Commons, and the appointed House of Lords traditionally restrains itself from interfering with election promises. There’s plenty of time, too: The next general election is not expected until 2029.
Is 16 a standard age limit in Britain?
The government points out that 16-year-olds in Britain can leave school, work, pay taxes and join the military. Critics of the voting age change note that 18 is the legal minimum age to run as a candidate in an election, to take part in armed combat in the military, to marry and to buy alcohol or a lottery ticket.
Does Britain need to worry about participation in elections?
There are some worrying signs. Turnout at the 2024 general election was 59.7 percent — the lowest since 2001 and 7.6 percentage points lower than in the previous general election in 2019. “Our democracy is in crisis, and we risk reaching a tipping point where politics loses its legitimacy. The government has clearly heard these alarm bells,” said Harry Quilter-Pinner, executive director of the left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research.
Who would 16-year-olds vote for?
Polls in Britain have long showed younger voters skewing left. So Prime Minister Keir Starmer will hope that his center-left party benefits — while the Greens might also expect a lift. Paul Holmes, a senior lawmaker for the main opposition Conservative Party, described the plans as a “brazen attempt by the Labour Party, whose unpopularity is scaring them into making major constitutional changes without consultation.”
But some recent polling has found growing support among young people for Reform U.K., a new right-wing populist party led by Nigel Farage that is strongly anti-immigration. One survey earlier this year showed almost one in five of 18-to-24-year-olds favored Reform, although Labour was still ahead with this age group. Far-right parties in some other European countries, notably France, have claimed growing support among young people.
Also worth noting: The last cut in voting age, in 1969, was also implemented by a Labour government — which then lost the subsequent election.
How else could the plans increase voter participation?
The government says it will create a more automated voter registration system, reducing the need to provide personal details to access different government services. It will also expand the range of documents that voters can use as proof of identity to include payment cards issued by British banks.
Why does the government want to restrict foreign political donations?
There was speculation late last year that the technology billionaire Elon Musk might donate to Reform U.K., though he then cooled on Mr. Farage. But that episode raised concerns with some lawmakers about foreign interference in British elections. In the proposals outlined on Thursday, the government said it would tighten checks on some donations and prevent a foreign donor from setting up a shell company in Britain to channel cash to a political party.
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16) Handshakes or Airstrikes: What Does Israel Want in Syria?
For weeks, Israel has engaged in back-channel talks over a diplomatic agreement with the Syrian government. Its strikes on Damascus this week highlight a lack of strategic clarity.
By Patrick Kingsley, Reporting from Jerusalem, July 17, 2025
An Israeli airstrike damaged the entrance to Syria’s defense ministry headquarters on Wednesday. Ali Haj Suleiman/Getty Images
For weeks, Israel and Syria have engaged in secret back-channel talks, searching for a diplomatic resolution to decades of tensions, mainly over territory captured by Israel from Syria during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.
The Israeli news media has been awash with optimistic predictions of a limited non-aggression pact, or even a landmark peace deal between the Jewish state and the former jihadists who seized control of Damascus last December.
Israel’s brazen strikes this week on Syrian government forces and infrastructure, including in the capital, Damascus, have highlighted the premature nature of such expectations in such a fluid geopolitical context. It has also exemplified how Israel, still traumatized by the surprise of Hamas’s attack in October 2023 but buoyed by its more recent successes against Hezbollah and Iran, is now more likely to use force to pre-emptively address perceived threats — even if it derails diplomatic efforts to achieve the same goal.
“It seems very discordant,” said Itamar Rabinovich, an Israeli historian of Syria who led Israel’s negotiations with Syria during the 1990s. “It runs against the effort to negotiate.”
The strikes reflect Israel’s post-2023 military doctrine, which combines, Mr. Rabinovich said, “a very strange mixture of paranoia following Oct. 7 and a sense of power following the success in Lebanon and in Iran. And the result is this preference for using force rather than diplomacy.”
The specific spur for Israel’s actions this week was the Syrian government’s deployment of forces to southwest Syria to contain fighting between Bedouin tribesmen and Syria’s Druse minority. Though much of Syria’s arsenal was decimated by scores of Israeli strikes last winter and years of civil war, the Syrian government was able to send a column of outdated tanks and troops in pickup trucks.
For Israelis, that posed two challenges. The first was a perceived security threat in southwest Syria, where Israel wants to prevent the buildup of potentially hostile forces, including Islamist former rebels in the Syrian military. The second: domestic unrest among members of Israel’s own small but influential Druse community, who held protests, blocked roads and in some cases forced their way into Syria after reports, unconfirmed by The New York Times, of extrajudicial killings there.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has demanded for months that southern Syria “must remain a demilitarized zone,” said Carmit Valensi, an Israeli expert on Israel-Syrian affairs at the Institute for National Security Studies, a research group in Tel Aviv. “So, when Syrian tanks began advancing into the area, Israel acted not only to defend the Druse but also to enforce its demand to keep the region demilitarized,” she added.
For now, it is unclear how committed Israel is to a prolonged military campaign in southern Syria, or if its strikes were mainly a short-term attempt to quell the fury of Israeli Druse. Roughly 150,000 Druse live under Israeli governance, including some 20,000 in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 and later annexed. Unlike other Arab groups in Israel, the Druse usually serve in the Israeli military. Some of them have reached the rank of general and others died in combat during the Gaza war.
That has helped to forge a bond between Jewish and Druse citizens of Israel, even after a contentious law passed in 2018 angered many Druse because it undermined their status within the Jewish state.
Rafik Halabi, the mayor of Daliyat al-Karmel, one of the biggest Druse towns in Israel, said the Druse protests had put pressure on the Israeli government to act, particularly after roughly 1,000 Israeli Druse men reportedly crossed into Syrian territory. But Mr. Halabi said he remains unconvinced that the government wants to repeatedly intervene, particularly after meeting and speaking in recent days with Israeli generals and political leaders, including Mr. Netanyahu.
“Does Israel really want to interfere in the Syrian situation? I am not sure,” Mr. Halabi said in a phone interview. “As far as I could understand, they want to be in, and at the same time they want to be out.”
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17) Israeli Strike on a Gaza Church Kills Three
As cease-fire talks stalled, a deadly strike on a Catholic church in Gaza City prompted Pope Leo XIV to call for an immediate end to the fighting.
By Natan Odenheimer, Reporting from Jerusalem, July 17, 2025
Transporting a person who was injured in the strike on the Holy Family Catholic Church to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on Thursday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An Israeli strike hit a Catholic church in Gaza City on Thursday, killing three people and injuring at least six others, including the parish priest, according to church officials.
Several hundred Palestinians were sheltering at the Holy Family Catholic Church compound when the church roof was hit around 10:10 a.m., sending shrapnel and debris flying. Farid Jubran, a spokesman for the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said it was unclear whether the munition that struck was dropped from an airplane or fired by a tank.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on its official X account that Israel “expresses deep sorrow over the damage to the Holy Family Church in Gaza City” and that the Israeli military was “examining this incident.”
After the attack, Pope Leo XIV called for “an immediate cease-fire” in Gaza in a statement.
There has been no significant progress this week in the Israel-Hamas negotiations over a new U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal. Israel has continued its relentless assault on the Gaza Strip, which it says is aimed at incapacitating Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that has long ruled the enclave.
More than 7,750 Palestinians have been killed since the previous cease-fire collapsed in March, with around 100 confirmed dead in hospitals across the territory in just the past few days, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its casualty counts. Some were killed while searching for food at distribution sites.
In total, more than 55,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war that began with a Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The fighting has created a dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where hunger is widespread and many residents are struggling to find food, water and shelter.
After the strike on the church in Gaza City, Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called the Israeli attacks on civilians in the strip “unacceptable,” adding that “no military action can justify such conduct.”
Among those injured in the strike was the church’s parish priest, Gabriel Romanelli, who regularly updated Pope Francis on events in Gaza — almost every evening during the pontiff’s final year, according to Mr. Jubran.
Saad Salameh, 60, the church’s janitor, was said to be in the yard when the strike hit, and Fumayya Ayyad was in a tent within the compound, according to Caritas Jerusalem, a Catholic aid organization operating at the church. Both died within hours.
The other person killed was identified as Najwa Abu Daoud.
Ameera Harouda and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
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