Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

From chatbots and understanding to appliance repair and statistical practice

Posted on August 6, 2022 

by Andrew

A couple months ago we talked about some extravagant claims made by Google engineer Blaise Agüera y Arcas, who pointed toward the impressive behavior of a chatbot and argued that its activities “do amount to understanding, in any falsifiable sense.” Arcas gets to the point of saying, “None of the above necessarily implies that we’re obligated to endow large language models with rights, legal or moral personhood, or even the basic level of care and empathy with which we’d treat a dog or cat,” a disclaimer that just reinforces his position, in that he’s even considering that it might make sense to “endow large language models with rights, legal or moral personhood”—after all, he’s only saying that we’re not “necessarily . . . obligated” to give these rights. It sounds like he’s thinking that giving such rights to a computer program is a live possibility.

Economist Gary Smith posted a skeptical response, first showing how bad a chatbot will perform if it’s not trained or tuned in some way, and more generally saying, “Using statistical patterns to create the illusion of human-like conversation is fundamentally different from understanding what is being said.”

I’ll get back to Smith’s point at the end of this post. First I want to talk about something else, which is how we use Google for problem solving.

The other day one of our electronic appliances wasn’t working. I went online and searched on the problem and I found several forums where the topic was brought up and a solution was offered. Lots of different solutions, but none of them worked for me. I next searched to find a pdf of the owner’s manual. I found it, but again it didn’t have the information to solve the problem. I then went to the manufacturer’s website which had a chat line—I guess it was a real person but it could’ve been a chatbot, because what it did was send me thru a list of attempted solutions and then when none worked the conclusion was that the appliance was busted.

What’s my point here? First, I don’t see any clear benefit here from having convincing human-like interaction here. If it’s a chatbot, I don’t want it to pass the Turing test, I’d rather be aware it’s a chatbot as this will allow me to use it more effectively. Second, for many problems, the solution strategy that humans use is superficial, just trying to fix the problem without understanding it. With modern technology, computers become more like humans, and humans become more like computers in how they solve problems.

I don’t want to overstate that last point. For example, in drug development it’s my impression that the best research is very much based on understanding, not just throwing a zillion possibilities at a disease and seeing what works but directly engineering something that grabs onto the proteins or whatever. And, sure, if I really wanted to fix my appliance it would be best to understand exactly what’s going on. It’s just that in many cases it’s easier to solve the problem, or to just buy a replacement, than to figure out what’s happening internally.

How people do statistics

And then it struck me . . . this is how most people do statistics, right? You have a problem you want to solve; there’s a big mass of statistical methods out there, loosely sorted into various piles (“Bayesian,” “machine learning,” “econometrics,” “robust statistics,” “classification,” “Gibbs sampler,” “Anova,” “exact tests,” etc.); you search around in books or the internet or ask people what method might work for your problem; you look for an example similar to yours and see what methods they used there; you keep trying until you succeed, that is, finding a result that is “statistically significant” and makes sense.

This strategy won’t always work—sometimes the data don’t produce any useful answer, just as in my example above, sometimes the appliance is just busted—but I think this is a standard template for applied statistics. And if nothing comes out, then, sure, you do a new experiment or whatever. Anywhere other than the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, the computer of Michael Lacour, and the trunk of Diederik Stapel’s car, we understand that success is never guaranteed.

Trying things without fully understanding them, just caring about what works: this strategy makes a lot of sense. Sure, I might be a better user of my electronic appliance if I better understood how it worked, but really I just want to use it and not be bothered by it. Similarly, researchers want to make progress in medicine, or psychology, or economics, or whatever: statistics is a means to an end for them, as it generally should be.

Unfortunately, as we’ve discussed many times, the try-things-until-something-works strategy has issues. It can be successful for the immediate goal of getting a publishable result and building a scientific career, while failing in the larger goal of advancing science.

Why is it that I’m ok with the keep-trying-potential-solutions-without-trying-to-really-understand-the-problem method for appliance repair but not for data analysis? The difference, I think, is that appliance repair has a clear win condition but data analysis doesn’t. If the appliance works, it works, and we’re done. If the data analysis succeeds in the sense of giving a “statistically significant” and explainable result, this is not necessarily a success or “discovery” or replicable finding.

It’s a kind of principal-agent problem. In appliance repair, the principal and agent coincide; in scientific research, not so much.

Now to get back to the AI chatbot thing:

– For appliance repair, you don’t really need understanding. All you need is a search engine that will supply enough potential solutions that will either either solve your problem or allow you to be ok with giving up.

– For data analysis, you do need understanding. Not a deep understanding, necessarily, but some sort of model of what’s going on. A “chatbot” won’t do the job.

But, can a dumb chatbot be helpful in data analysis? Sure. Indeed, I use google to look up R functions all the time, and sometimes I use google to look up Stan functions! The point is that some sort of model of the world is needed, and the purpose of the chatbot is to give us tools to attain that understanding.

At this point you might feel that I’m leaving a hostage to fortune. I’m saying that data analysis requires understanding and that existing software tools (including R and Stan) are just a way to aim for that. But what happens 5 or 10 or 15 years in the future when a computer program appears that can do an automated data analysis . . . then will I say it has true understanding? I don’t know, but I might say that the automated analysis is there to facilitate true understanding from the user.

More chatbot interactions

I played around with GPT-3 myself and I kept asking questions and getting reasonable, human-sounding responses. So I sent a message to Gary Smith:


As you know, GPT-3 seems to have been upgraded, and now it works well on those questions you gave it. Setting aside the question of whether the program has “understanding” (I’d say No to that), I’m just wondering, do you think it now will work well on new questions? It’s hard for me to come up with queries, but you seem to be good at that!

I’m asking because I’m writing a short post on chatbots and understanding, and I wanted to get a sense of how good these chatbots are now. I’m not particularly interested in the Turing-test thing, but it would be interesting to see if GPT-3 gives better responses now to new questions? And for some reason I have difficulty coming up with inputs that could test it well. Thanks in advance.

Smith replied:


I tried several questions and here are screenshots of every question and answer. I only asked each question once. I used davinci-002, which I believe is the most powerful version of GPT-3.

My [Smith’s] takeaways are:

1. Remarkably fluent, but has a lot of trouble with distinguishing between meaningless and meaningful correlations, which is the point I am going to push in my Turing test piece. Being “a fluent spouter of bullshit” [a term from Ernie Davis and Gary Marcus] doesn’t mean that we can trust blackbox algorithms to make decisions.

2. It handled two Winograd schema questions (axe/tree and trophy/suitcase) well. I don’t know if this is because these questions are part of the text they have absorbed or if they were hand coded.

3. They often punt (“There’s no clear connection between the two variables, so it’s tough to say.”) when the answer is obvious to humans.

4. They have trouble with unusual situations: Human: Who do you predict would win today if the Brooklyn Dodgers played a football game against Preston North End? AI: It’s tough to say, but if I had to guess, I’d say the Brooklyn Dodgers would be more likely to win.

The Brooklyn Dodgers example reminds me of those WW2 movies where they figure out who’s the German spy by tripping him up with baseball questions.

Smith followed up:


A few more popped into my head. Again a complete accounting. Some remarkably coherent answers. Some disappointing answers to unusual questions:



I like that last bit: “I’m not sure if you can improve your test scores by studying after taking the test, but it couldn’t hurt to try!” That’s the kind of answer that will get you tenure at Cornell.

Anyway, the point here is not to slam GPT-3 for not working miracles. Rather, it’s good to see where it fails to understand its limitations and how to improve it and similar systems.

To return to the main theme of this post, the question of what the computer program can “understand” is different from the question of whether the program can fool us with a “Turing test” is different from the question of whether the program can be useful as a chatbot.This entry was posted in Miscellaneous Statistics by Andrew. Bookmark the permalink.

Scientist Involved in Putin’s Hypersonic Missile Project Arrested on Charges of Treason

By: News Desk
News18.com
Last Updated: AUGUST 06, 2022, 
Moscow


Russian scientist Andrei Shiplyuk who headed the top-secret hypersonic missile project of Vladimir Putin was arrested on charges of treason (Image: Reuters)

Shiplyuk is the third scientist after Anatoly Maslov and Dmitry Kolker to be arrested on charges of treasonFollow us:
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ARussian scientist, Andrei Shiplyuk, who may have been involved in Russian president Vladimir Putin’s top-secret hypersonic missiles was arrested for treason in Siberia, the Telegraph UK reported.

Shiplyuk was the chief of the hypersonics laboratory at the Novosibirsk Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. In recent years, he also coordinated research to develop hypersonic missile systems.

The Novosibirsk Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics is the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. He is the third top Russian scientist from Novosibirsk to be arrested in the past one and a half months.

The other two scientists who were arrested were - Anatoly Maslov and Dmitry Kolker. These two were accused of passing state secrets to China.

Dmitry Kolker was flown to Lefortovo interrogation centre in Moscow where he died two days later as he was receiving treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer in Novosibirsk.

Following the arrest of Shiplyuk, his apartment was searched by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Shiplyuk was a career scientist, who worked his way to the top. He was appointed director of the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute in Novosibirsk in 2015.

Vasily Fomin, head of the Institute, confirmed that Shiplyuk was arrested on charges of treason. “He was arrested. He is charged with the same thing as Maslov, treason,” Fomin said.

Reporters also found that Shiplyuk discussed on online forums coating for hypersonic missiles and also how to update the Russian military in its Army 2020 project. There was a photo where Shiplyuk was seen posing next to a tank.

Shiplyuk was transferred to Moscow’s Lefortovo prison like his other colleagues. Critics of Russian president Vladimir Putin accuse him of arresting scientists on the basis of unfounded paranoia.

Treason in Russia is punishable by twenty years in prison.

Russia’s war against Ukraine continues and Putin in a show of power has tested the new hypersonic Zircon anti-aircraft carrier missile. He claims it is unstoppable and also said that another missile, the Satan-2 armed with 14 warheads, is being developed. Putin claims it is the world’s most dangerous weapon.

Amnesty International’s claims of Ukrainian war crimes wrong, says group’s head of operation in the country

A firefighter works at a residential house destroyed by a Russian military strike in Kharkiv region. Photo: Reuters


Joe Barnes

August 06 2022 

The head of Amnesty’s Ukrainian operation has publicly discredited its international headquarters’ report into alleged war crimes by Kyiv’s armed forces.

Oksana Pokalchuk accused the campaign group of publishing “inadmissible and incomplete” evidence, and said her colleagues in the war-torn country had been shut out of the investigation.

In its report, published on Thursday, Amnesty International claimed Ukraine had endangered civilians by setting up military bases in residential areas, including hospitals and schools, in the Kharkiv, Donbas and Mykolaiv regions.

Its publication prompted anger in Kyiv, including from President Volodymyr Zelensky, with the Ukrainian government accusing the human rights organisation of siding with Russia.

In a social media post, Ms Pokalchuk, head of Amnesty Ukraine, said: “The Ukrainian office was not involved in the preparation or writing of the text of the publication.

"Our team’s arguments about the inadmissibility and incompleteness of such material were not taken into account.”

While looking into Russian attacks between April and July, Amnesty claimed it found evidence of Ukrainian forces operating out of civilian buildings in at least 19 towns and villages.

The organisation said Ukraine had committed “a clear violation of international humanitarian law” by operating military bases out of at least five hospitals.

It also claimed 22 out of 29 schools visited in the Donbas and Mykolaiv regions had been turned into military bases.

Amnesty said subsequent Russian strikes on the locations had resulted in multiple deaths and injuries. The report was criticised by some military analysts.

Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, wrote on Twitter that the report “demonstrates a weak understanding of the laws of armed conflict”.

Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said: “The findings... were based on evidence gathered during extensive investigations which were subject to the same rigorous standards and due diligence processes as all of Amnesty International’s work.”

 (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd)

Amnesty International scandal: Ukraine office head resigns

05.08.2022 

Amnesty International Ukraine Head Oksana Pokalchuk has decided to leave her post due to scandal over Amnesty International’s statement about the Ukrainian Army’s actions in the war with Russia.

The relevant statement was made by Amnesty International Ukraine Head Oksana Pokalchuk on Facebook, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

“It is painful to admit but I and the leadership of Amnesty International have split over values. Hence, I decided to leave the organization. I believe any work for the good of society should be done taking into account the local context and thinking through consequences. Most importantly, I am convinced that our surveys should be made thoroughly and with people in mind, whose lives often depend directly on the words and actions of international organizations,” Pokalchuk wrote.

In her words, the Ukrainian office tried to convey information about the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine to the leadership of Amnesty International.

“Even yesterday, I had a naïve hope that I would be able to fix everything. That we would hold even 200 meetings but explain, reach out and convey our opinion. And that text would be deleted, and another one would appear in its place. Today I have realized this will not happen,” Pokalchuk noted.

In her words, the press release issued by Amnesty International on August 4, 2022, should have considered two parties and taken into account the position of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. Amnesty International asked the ministry for a commentary but provided very little time to respond. Hence, the organization created material that sounded as support for Russian narratives. Seeking to protect civilians, that survey became an instrument of Russian propaganda instead.

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‘Into military targets’ How Russian propaganda utilized and distorted allegations by Amnesty International that Ukrainian troops endanger civilians

 August 6, 2022
Source: Meduza

On August 4, the human rights organization Amnesty International published a report titled “Ukrainian Fighting Tactics Endanger Civilians,” warning that “Ukrainian forces have put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas.” The report has provoked a strong backlash in the West, including criticism by President Volodymyr Zelensky and Amnesty’s own local office in Ukraine. The report proved immediately useful to the state media in Russia, where propagandists have insisted since the start of the war that the Ukrainian military uses civilians as “human shields.” Meduza reviews the reactions to Amnesty International’s controversial findings.

What does Amnesty International’s report actually say?

“The Ukrainian military’s practice of locating military objectives within populated areas does not in any way justify indiscriminate Russian attacks,” Amnesty International concluded in its report. After spending several weeks investigating Russian strikes in the Kharkiv, Donbas, and Mykolaiv regions, Amnesty’s researchers found that Ukrainian forces have “put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals, as they repelled the Russian invasion that began in February.”

Amnesty’s report states that “such tactics violate international humanitarian law and endanger civilians, as they turn civilian objects into military targets.”

Researchers noted that Russia also attacked residential areas without any Ukrainian military presence. In some areas of Kharkiv, for example, the organization “did not find evidence of Ukrainian forces located in the civilian areas unlawfully targeted by the Russian military.”

What has the United Nations said about fighting tactics and human rights in Ukraine?

On June 29, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report about the human rights situation in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as it stood between February 24 and May 15. Researchers found that both Russian and Ukrainian troops had occupied positions in residential areas and near civilian infrastructure without adequately protecting the civilians there.

For example, in the town of Stara Krasnianka, in the Luhansk region, Ukraine’s armed forces entered a care facility strategically located near an important road. The building was also home to older persons, people with disabilities, and support staff. Two days later, the soldiers exchange fire with “Russian affiliated armed groups.” On March 11, the invading forces attacked the care house with heavy weapons, apparently killing dozens of patients and staff. According to the UN report, Ukraine nevertheless failed to take measures required under international humanitarian law to protect the civilians present.

The UN report also describes the Russian military’s civilian endangerment, not just involving attacks on Ukrainian positions but also concerning the mistreatment of noncombatants in occupied areas. For example, also in March 2022, Russian troops in the Chernihiv region held 360 residents (including 74 children and five persons with disabilities) in the basement of a school, seeking “to render their base immune from military operations, while also subjecting them to inhuman and degrading treatment.” Ten older people died in these conditions.

How has the pro-Kremlin mass media used Amnesty International’s report?

Russia’s federal censor has blocked Amnesty International’s website since March 11, 2022, but the organization’s report on fighting tactics in Ukraine was major news in Russia on August and became a trending story on the Yandex News aggregator, which does not index the independent media. To examine how the report reverberated in the news media that isn’t technically blocked in Russia, Meduza looked at three groups: (1) the state media, (2) the formally independent and neutral media that still complies with the Kremlin’s wartime censorship and unspoken rules, and (3) the formally independent but pro-Kremlin media.

With little nuance, these media outlets reported on Amnesty International’s findings by focusing almost exclusively on the allegations that the Ukrainian military has endangered civilians and violated international humanitarian law. The coverage ignored Amnesty’s underlying conclusions that Russian and “Russian affiliated” troops are the ones firing on civilians, and that Ukrainian violations of humanitarian law do not in any way justify Russian strikes that kill and injure civilians.

What details from Amnesty’s report were missing from Russian media coverage?

• Reported by RIA Novosti, TASS, RBC, Kommersant, and Komsomolskaya Pravda: Ukraine has operated military bases in residential areas, including schools and hospitals, and opened fire from residential areas. Missing: “Such violations in no way justify Russia’s indiscriminate attacks, which have killed and injured countless civilians.”
• Reported by RIA Novosti: Ukrainian forces have endangered civilians by using weapons systems in populated areas, including schools and hospitals. Missing: “as they repelled the Russian invasion that began in February.”
• Reported by RBC: Establishing combat positions and firing from these areas makes them into military targets, leading to attacks that kill civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure. Missing: Russian forces are responsible for launching these attacks.
• Reported by RBC: In at least three towns, Ukrainian forces moved closer to schools after attacks against their previous positions. Missing: Russia’s military has attack numerous school buildings where Ukrainian troops had taken up positions. Ukrainian soldiers moving closer to schools have relocated to avoid attacks by Russia’s armed forces.
• Reported by RBC: On May 21, several nearby homes were damaged in an attack against a university building in Bakhmut that was being used as a military base. Missing: Russian soldiers carried out the attack, which killed seven people.
• Totally ignored: In some areas of Kharkiv, Amnesty did not find evidence of Ukrainian forces located in the civilian areas unlawfully targeted by the Russian military.
• Totally ignored: “International humanitarian law does not specifically ban parties to a conflict from basing themselves in schools that are not in session. However, militaries have an obligation to avoid using schools that are near houses or apartment buildings full of civilians, putting these lives at risk, unless there is a compelling military need.”
• Also totally ignored: “Many of the Russian strikes that Amnesty International documented in recent months were carried out with inherently indiscriminate weapons, including internationally banned cluster munitions, or with other explosive weapons with wide area effects.”

Reactions from Ukrainian officials

Ukrainian officials have denounced Amnesty International’s report as “absurd,” “offensive,” and “disrespectful” (according to Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk), and as an attempt to establish a “false equivalence between the villain and the victim” (said Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba). Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak even suggested that the allegations of international humanitarian law are meant to “undermine” Western support for supplying weapons to Ukraine.

Deputy Defense Minister Anna Maliar argued that Ukrainian troops establish positions in residential areas to defend civilians against Russian invasion. “While we wait around in a field for the Russian enemy, the Russians would occupy all our homes,” she reasoned. Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov warned that the Ukrainian government “will not allow our army and our defenders to be vilified.” (On August 5, journalist Tanya Kozyreva cited anonymous sources claiming that Ukraine’s military has already revoked the accreditation of Amnesty International staffers.)

Some of the harshest criticism has come directly from President Volodymyr Zelensky, who faulted Amnesty’s “immoral selectivity,” claiming that the organization ignores Russian attacks on civilians in Ukraine. “Everyone who grants amnesty to Russia and facilitates an informational context wherein some terrorist attacks are justified or rationalized cannot be unaware that this helps the terrorists,” Zelensky said on August 4.

Reactions from journalists and human rights activists in Ukraine

Numerous journalists and human rights activists in Ukraine have joined the government in criticizing Amnesty International’s report, accusing researchers of equating Ukraine’s self-defense with Russia’s invasion.

Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union Executive Director Oleksandr Pavlichenko says Ukraine’s legitimate combat mission includes the defense of populated settlements, arguing that Russia bears responsibility for any attacks against civilians in these areas. Pavlichenko also accused Amnesty International of omitting data about the use of civilian facilities by occupying troops in Ukraine.

In a post on Facebook, Public Interest Journalism Lab cofounder and war correspondent Nataliya Gumenyuk noted that militaries have the right to establish positions in residential areas so long as they warn the local population. (Amnesty’s report also states that militaries “should warn civilians and, if necessary, help them evacuate,” but researchers say they didn’t find evidence of this in the cases they examined.)

Gumenyuk says her own observations in the field and communications with both soldiers and noncombatants indicate that Ukraine’s armed forces are doing their best not to endanger civilians. She also noted that Amnesty neglected to highlight Russia’s use of excessive force against targets in populated areas, for example, by firing missiles into residential districts because a handful of Ukrainian soldiers were present.

Echoing government officials, Razumkov Center Foreign Policy and International Security Programs Co-Director Oleksii Melnyk warned that Amnesty’s report is “very convenient for Russian narratives.”

Reactions from other experts

Boyd van Dijk, the author of the recent book “Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions,” condensed the criticisms of Amnesty’s report in a thread on Twitter. According to the University of Melbourne historian, the “most important critique” of the work is that “the Ukrainians are fighting a just war against illegal aggression and alien occupation,” and that it would be “unfair to call out their relatively marginal [international humanitarian law] violations compared to grave breaches by [the] Russian aggressor.”

Explaining that holding victim states strictly accountable for observing humanitarian law has been controversial since the laws were first adopted in 1949, van Dijk also pointed out that the Soviet Union supported an initiative by Jewish survivors of World War II that rejected “belligerent equality” when it comes to fighting tactics used by aggressors and defenders. He says Amnesty’s allegations against the Ukrainian military mischaracterize the laws in question:

The point being here is that it would be better both analytically as well as normatively to embrace the richness of [international humanitarian legal] history, rather than framing it as a strict codebook with severe limitations for those fighting against aggression and/or genocide, as the Amnesty report does.

Human rights lawyer Kirill Koroteev, who oversees the Agora human rights group’s international practice, stresses that not all violations of humanitarian law constitute war crimes. For example, using human shields is a war crime, but occupying an empty civilian building is not. The former offense is directly subject to international prosecution, while the latter is treated as a violation of human rights treaties or the national norms in a particular country.

What does Amnesty International have to say about all this?

According to the organization’s own rules, Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Department is responsible for documenting violations and crimes during armed conflicts.

Amnesty’s Ukrainian office was not involved in creating the August 4 report, but staff protested the document’s publication, believing it to be one-sided and incomplete. The office refused to translate it into Ukrainian or publish it on their website. On August 5, Ukrainian branch chief Oksana Pokalchuk resigned in protest, stating in a Facebook post that her team’s work had “crashed against a wall of bureaucracy and a deaf language barrier.” She also faulted the organization’s “failure to understand the local context” and its decision to “ignore the position of the human rights community in Ukraine.”

In a widely criticized tweet after the report’s release, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard accused “Ukrainian and Russian social media mobs and trolls” of waging “war propaganda, disinformation, [and] misinformation” against her organization’s investigation. “This won’t dent our impartiality and won’t change the facts,” she added.

‘Slap in the face’ of US media as Chinese netizens express full support for govt’s countermeasures against US and Pelosi

By Wang Qi

Published: Aug 05, 2022

CHINA / DIPLOMACY

Screens at multiple 7-Eleven stores on the island of Taiwan are found showing the words "war monger Pelosi get out of Taiwan" on August 3, 2022. Photo: from website

Chinese netizens have swarmed to social media to express firm and full support for and confidence in the central government's measures to tackle the US after Chinese Foreign Ministry on Friday announced countermeasures against the US' provocation and sanctions against US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi due to her Taiwan island visit.

This is a slap in the face of some US media, which recently claimed that Chinese people are losing faith in the government amid the ongoing Taiwan Straits tension.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying on Friday afternoon announced sanctions on Pelosi and her immediate family in accordance with the law, for seriously undermining China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, trampling on the one-China principle, and threatening the peace and stability of the Taiwan Straits.

On the same day, China also announced countermeasures against the US, canceling or suspending bilateral cooperation in eight fields.

Though many netizens in the Chinese mainland expressed disappointment after Pelosi landed in Taipei on Tuesday, they came to understand and support the government's multiple countermeasures in the military, diplomatic and economic areas. The people have never lost confidence in the government, and China fully understands the importance of patience and calmness, observers said.

"Sanction Pelosi" soon became the top trending topic on Sina Weibo, with over 240 million reads and 36,000 comments within an hour after the announcement. Meanwhile, five other topics related to the fallout of Pelosi's visit were on the top 10 trending list, including the People's Liberation Army (PLA)'s missile launches during the drills.

"It was not honest to say I was not upset after Pelosi landed in Taiwan, but my heart revived after seeing our counterattack!" said a Weibo user.

"Now I understand that the great power game is a long-lasting one. I trust my country!" said another net user.

What comes will come, said a netizen, "'God of stocks of Capitol Hill' has come to her twilight."

Analysts said that netizens' full understanding and firm support of the central government has given the US media a "resounding slap in the face." Earlier on Friday, the Voice of America released a report with sarcastic tone, saying that Beijing was burned by its populist fire, as people were frustrated and angry that the government's responses were weaker than expected. The New York Times on Thursday also hyped netizen's anger about Pelosi's visit as the "perils of preaching nationalism."

"It is obvious that VOA faithfully performs the role of a propaganda tool managed by the US Agency for Global Media, and sets off a new round of a public opinion offensive against China, which is actually quite weak… while The New York Times report is just biased and unprofessional," said Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University.

"The Chinese government has exercised restraint based on reason and the value of peace," Shen said.

Wang Yu-ching, a Taiwan cross-Straits observer who lives in the mainland, told the Global Times that the US is trying to stir up internal tensions in the mainland by distorting exaggerated reports of "discontent."

Whether it is complaints, support or anger from netizens, there is one thing that is consistent with the central government: firmly defending China's territory and sovereignty and the reunification of the motherland, which has nothing to do with a backlash against the government and Party, as the US media said, experts said.

"During the Civil War, didn't people want a united and strong America?" Wang asked, "Chinese people today are fully aware that the central government will not sit idly by when facing Taiwan secessionists' and US politicians' provocation."

The PLA on Thursday commenced the second phase of its large-scale military exercises that completely locked down the island of Taiwan, and began to use live fire following the first phase of preparations. China's Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng summoned US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns overnight to protest against Pelosi's visit to Taiwan island.

After Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, Chinese netizens have become more mature in their understanding of complex national security issues, Shen said.

People have even more trust in the government and believe that China is playing a big game in the long run, he said.

Wang said the short-term mood swings of Chinese mainland netizens should be seen as a positive interaction between the people and the government in a democratic system.

Instead of piecing together material to attack China, the US media should reflect on the passive situation brought by Pelosi's visit to the island of Taiwan, especially when the mainland's military exercises send strong signals of deterrence and determination, Shen said.

Meet the Jews of color exploring what it means to be Black, Asian, Latino — and Jewish

New ADL fellowships fund films, programs and research on diversity, racism and intersectionality in Jewish communities


From left to right, ADL Collaborative for Change fellows Jared Chiang-Zeizel, Isaac de Castro, Deitra Reiser, Carmel Tanaka, Sara Yacobi-Harris. Courtesy of Kamollio Bennett (for Jared Chiang-Zeizel); Isaac de Castro; Deitra Reiser; @manoa1 (for Carmel Tanaka); Sara Yacobi-Harris.


By TaRessa Stovall

August 06, 2022

With the growing recognition of Jews of color in the broader Jewish community comes an increased understanding of the harm that racially diverse Jews all too often experience in mainstream Jewish spaces.

Now, the Anti-Defamation League is seeking to remedy that – and putting money behind it – via Collaborative for Change fellowships for Jews of color. The fellows’ mission is to create multimedia stories about their diverse groups.

Understanding antisemitism and racism

Tema Smith, who was appointed as ADL’s director of Jewish outreach and partnerships in January, helped to create and heads the fellowship program. “My role at ADL is about building relationships in the organized Jewish world and beyond,” she said. “This fellowship program is an opportunity for funding from a legacy organization to support the work of Jews of color. In addition, the fellows’ work will help us at ADL to increase our understanding of the intersections of antisemitism and racism that Jews of color face.”

Smith, a Black Jewish woman based in Toronto, recently received the 2022 JPro Young Professionals Award in recognition of her work on Jewish inclusion and diversity initiatives. With extensive experience in community engagement, training, research and advocacy, she has served as director of professional development at 18Doors (formerly InterfaithFamily), and worked as a synagogue professional, most recently as the director of community engagement at Holy Blossom Temple, Toronto’s oldest synagogue. She is also a contributing columnist at the Forward, and has been published in MYJewish Learning, The Globe and Mail and other publications.

Smith explained that the Collaborative for Change fellowships provide funding to build upon the fellows’ existing work to strengthen their efforts on topics of concerns to Jews generally, and Jews of color particularly.


She welcomes the opportunity to work with and learn from “this multi-talented group, all of whom are approaching this topic from a lens that is different than mine. I’m also looking forward to being part of this community that is producing knowledge together, and to having a new field of experts to turn to.”

So, who are the fellows?

Jared Chiang-Zeizel: Exploring the lives of Asian American Jewish clergy women

Jared Chiang-Zeizel Photo by Kamollio Bennett

For his fellowship project, multi-hyphenate creative Jared Chiang-Zeizel will make a documentary film exploring the lives, rituals and experiences of four Asian American Jewish clergy women. “I want to share how these women navigate lives that seem to be getting more complicated by the day,” said Chiang-Zeizel, “along with the history of being Asian American and the intersection with the Jewish community over the years.”

The clergy women represent the connections between the communities, such as Jews who fled Europe during World War II and went to China. “I am drawn to the uniqueness of these women and their stories, and curious to talk to them about gender,” Chiang-Zeizel said, because of public perception that most rabbis are male.


Smith relates to Chiang-Zeizel’s vision. “So many Jews of color have grown up not seeing other Jews that look like them or who share their background,” she said. “His documentary will profile leaders to widen the lens of what a Jew — and a Jewish clergy member – looks like.”

Chiang-Zeizel grew up near Boston with a Jewish father and a multi-ethnic Asian American mother. “I was raised in a religious home,” he said. “I went to Hebrew school, had a bar mitzvah. My parents instilled pride in Jewish heritage. And it was important to my mom that we stayed connected to our Chinese heritage. Being mixed, sometimes you drift away from one half or the other — it was important to see them under one roof where we learned about and embraced both cultures.”

Now a Los Angeles resident, Chiang-Zeizel is a popular speaker on Asian and Jewish representation, mixed identity and lucid dreaming as a way to remember and reconnect with dreams. His writing and editing credits include work for Sony Pictures, Disney, Lucas Films, Netflix, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, NPR, NBC and others. He worked on “Lunar: The Jewish-Asian Film Project,” which featured about two dozen Asian American Jews, and received the David Chase Screenwriting Fellowship. He writes in several genres and his bestselling book, “A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming,” is available around the world in 11 languages.

His documentary will show that neither community is monolithic. “It’s rare that we hear about Asian rabbis and their struggles,” he said. “Both communities have a full multitude of individuals who cross over into both environments.”

Chiang-Zeizel emphasizes the power of role models. “We look to our religious leaders for guidance and understanding. They help people walk through their existence, understand the big questions, but also deal with things like what it feels like to walk into a space where you should belong, but you might feel like you don’t belong.”

Isaac de Castro: Exploring Jewish Latino voices in the Sephardi community

Isaac de Castro Courtesy of Isaac de Castro

Isaac de Castro, a Sephardic Jew, grew up in Panama and came to the U.S. for college. He is a Zionist, a journalist, the editor of Jewcy.com and an activist whose fight against antisemitism is woven throughout his work.

For his fellowship, de Castro is collaborating with the American Sephardi Foundation (ASF) Institute of Jewish Experience to interview people with Latino and Sephardic Jewish identities, in particular immigrants from Latin America, for an online and in-person exhibit of oral histories, images and testimonies about these often overlooked communities.

“I’m looking to explore the experience of coming into the United States speaking English as a second language, of being Latino immigrants coming into a majority Ashkenazi community – people who came into the U.S. from Colombia, Cuba and Venezuela for political asylum and related reasons,” he said.

The fellowship opportunity with ADL (which recently honored de Castro at its Concert Against Hate), appealed to his inclusive vision. “The Sephardi experience is wrapped up in so many diasporas — Spain, the Middle East, Latin America and the U.S,” he said. “There are varied experiences that deserve to be studied, talked about, written about and put on this platform.”

He says his project will strengthen connections. “I’m presenting new voices that not many Jewish communities have heard with that kind of specificity. I think they will benefit from learning more about the people whose stories we’ll share.”

Deitra Reiser: ‘Building Racial Stamina’ in Jewish communities

Deitra Reiser Courtesy of Deitra Reiser

As a Black Jew, Deitra Reiser has experienced how systems of oppression and history connect for both groups. While consulting in Jewish spaces on diversity, equity and inclusion, she founded Transform for Equity in 2021 – “an antiracist repair group” to raise awareness and create personal and professional transformation toward institutional and systemic antiracism.

Reiser then used her background as a school psychologist and educator to develop the “Building Racial Stamina” curriculum, which she used in her synagogue, and then with Jewish organizations across the nation.

She noted that “racism and antisemitism fit together” with as many as 8% of Jews describing themselves as having nonwhite heritage according to a Pew Research Center study from 2021. “I find that the deep learning and facilitated discussions in Building Racial Stamina provide people an antiracist lens to participate more fully in equity assessments, institutional policy change and a solid base for executives and leaders for coaching.”

Reiser and her partner, who live outside of Washington, D.C., are committed to raising their children to feel positive about both their Black and Jewish identities. Learning that “the racism in our Jewish community was a factor out of my control, and hearing the experiences of Jews of color, especially young folks, made me want to be more active in the larger community to ensure that my children would have spaces where they felt a sense of belonging,” she said.

Reiser saw the fellowship’s potential to examine solutions to the oppression of Jews, Blacks and other groups. “We need to dig deeper to understand how to talk together. Because if we are really going to make our Jewish spaces and our world more equitable, that is where our power lies — in connecting,” she said.

Her project will expand the Building Racial Stamina curriculum into three sessions for Jewish and non-Jewish groups to reflect on and learn about the connection between racism and antisemitism. “There is resistance in both spaces, but we are making gains,” she said. “I think everyone working in this space is optimistic, or we wouldn’t be able to keep doing this work in the Jewish spaces, and in the larger society.”

Smith said Reiser’s experience makes her “the perfect person to engage in these conversations, which have sometimes become fraught as we reflect on the Jewish experience of oppression more broadly. Deitra’s focus on developing a space for reflection and building the emotional tools to stay in the conversation about how race and racism can show up in Jewish spaces is so important.”

Reiser said “that our Jewish values call us to do this work. Our Jewish community will not thrive if we’re not creating spaces of belonging. For us to really make gains towards an equitable society, we must work together to eliminate both antisemitism and racism. We cannot let this divide us.”

Carmel Tanaka: Telling Jewish Japanese stories across borders

Carmel Tanaka Photo by @manoa1

Carmel Tanaka is a founding member of the Jewpanese community — people with Jewish and Japanese heritage. Her Ashkenazi Israeli mother is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Her third-generation Japanese Canadian father’s family was interned during World War II. “I grew up with this very public awareness of ‘never again,’ and this tug of wanting to make sure that these injustices don’t continue to happen,” she said.

For her fellowship project, Tanaka, a queer Jewish Japanese woman based in Vancouver, British Columbia, will conduct 20 oral history video interviews with members of the Jewish Japanese community in the U.S., Canada, Japan and Israel. She will focus on their lived experiences and intergenerational trauma related to the Holocaust, Japanese Canadian internment and Imperial Japan, and will make the interviews available online.

“Carmel’s project highlights overlapping identities and histories of oppression, and the experiences of mixed people in navigating sometimes contradictory cultural norms,” Smith said. “I’m really excited about the global reach of her project, which will shed light on how context can shape personal narratives in rich and nuanced ways.”

Tanaka is a community engagement leader and a sought-after speaker and consultant. She has founded several leadership initiatives including JQT Vancouver, Genocide Prevention BC and Cross Cultural Walking Tours.

Her work fosters a sense of belonging. “Beyond our siblings, we often navigated both the Jewish and Japanese communities alone. We want people with other intersectional identities — Jewish and Chinese, Jewish and Black, and others — to feel inspired to collect stories from their own communities.”

“I didn’t coin the term Jewpanese,” she said, “but it made me think about the intersectionality of my identity.” She connected with other Jewish Japanese people around foods like green matcha cheesecake or miso maple trout for Jewish holidays. In May 2020, they began monthly Zoom calls that sparked close friendships.

“As the pandemic increased both anti-Asian racism and antisemitism, the online gatherings became a safe space for participants to share what they face in both communities and ask questions that we wouldn’t dare ask in our respective separate communities,” she said.

Tanaka has already completed the East Coast portion of her project and is now working elsewhere to show the increased mixing of families and cultures, and the challenges for those with blended identities. “It hasn’t always been a smooth ride for many of us,” she said. “We sometimes have to jump through hoops and obstacles to feel we belong, and some of us are only now reconnecting with language and culture.” Her interviews and social gatherings have connected Jewpanese people, couples and families regionally. “This intergenerational piece is important – representation matters.”

She says this project can be “relatable to a lot of people who are on the periphery of the Jewish community. Getting stories and personal accounts is the best way to bring change.” Follow the journey on Instagram: @JewpaneseProject.

Sara Yacobi-Harris: Toward a more holistic definition of Jewishness

Sara Yacobi-Harris Courtesy of Sara Yacobi-Harris

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in neighboring Minnesota, Sara Yacobi-Harris formed No Silence on Race in Ontario in June 2020. She began with an open letter inspired by the flurry of Floyd-related community dialogues and panels with Black Jews in Canada, describing the discrimination they’d faced in Jewish spaces. Her letter asked Jewish organizations what it meant to shift the culture, and offered a nine-pillar template to help them increase racial diversity and inclusion.

In response, the Ontario Jewish Archives asked Yacobi-Harris and her team to create a portrait series titled “Periphery,” featuring Jews of color. “This was an opportunity for us to shift our focus to creating our stories in a Jewish canon where our voices and images were included,” she said.

Then Yacobi-Harris, alongside No Silence on Race and the Ontario Jewish archives, directed and produced a short documentary film, also titled “Periphery,” broadening stories of the multi-ethnic Jewish experience to include sexual orientation, geography and Jewish observance among Jews of color in Toronto. “That gave us an opportunity to expand the narrative of who is a Jew in our community, reimagining Jewish life for people like us,” she said.

“Periphery” opened doors and raised awareness. “We were having conversations with people we hadn’t met or been in community with before — those who hold prominent roles of leadership,” Yacobi-Harris said. “We were able to put our agenda forward, inquire how it aligned with theirs, and ask how we could put our agendas together.”

Smith, who was included in Yacobi-Harris’ film and photo exhibits, said she was thrilled when external reviewers selected the project for funding. “The curriculum she is developing will allow countless communities, from teens to adults, to explore issues of Jewish identity, culture and race through the personal narratives of the subjects of the film. Sara’s work will give audiences a glimpse into the ways in which Jews of color navigate their multiple identities, family dynamics, and community contexts,” Smith added.

Yacobi-Harris, an artist of Jamaican and Georgian ancestry, as well as a filmmaker, media professional and community organizer, has worked on several television and digital productions at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She has led equity, inclusion and anti-racism strategy and policy implementation, along with community outreach, talent development and festival partnerships at the CBC.

In 2017, she produced and directed the documentary film, “Who is a Jew?” exploring the roots of cultural and ethnic identity and the experience of Black Jews and Jews of color in Toronto. She has worked with the Ontario Jewish Archives, Toronto Jewish Film Foundation and Hillel Ontario, and spoken at Jewish conferences, seminars, and events including Canada’s National Summit on Antisemitism.

She’ll use the fellowship to expand “Periphery” with two sets of curricula, as Reiser is doing: one for Jewish audiences, and one for non-Jewish audiences, with versions for grades eight to 12 and for adults. “This educational supplement is a screening guide to help facilitate conversations that foster greater awareness and understanding of who Jewish people are, and the diversity and intersectionality in Jewishness,” she said.

“The supplement, which will include relevant Torah elements, is digitized and used in classrooms in and outside of Jewish community spaces, multifaith spaces, and university spaces throughout Canada to combat stereotypes and prompt conversations about who Jewish people are locally and globally.”

Yacobi-Harris is buoyed by responses to the “Periphery” film. “People have reached out to tell us how it changed their perception. It’s shifting the way people think about being Jewish. That’s what drives me. That’s the goal.”

Check out and download the curriculum here.
TaRessa Stovall is an Atlanta-based writer specializing in intersectional identities. Her most recent book is a memoir, “SWIRL GIRL: Coming of Race in the USA.” Follow her on Twitter @taressatalks or email editorial@forward.com.

Pro-golfers dirty themselves by taking blood money from Saudi Arabia

LIV Golf is a scam that’s entirely financed by the brutish family of petro-royals who ruthlessly rule Saudi Arabia

Jim Hightower / August 4, 2022 / 

The new Saudi-financed LIV Golf series has been fraught with controversy. 

Photo courtesy Front Office Sports.

When a golfer hits an errant shot that might bonk an unsuspecting spectator on the head, the proper cry of warning is: “Fore!” But what do they shout when they hit a bad shot that boomerangs right back and bonks the golfer on the noggin?

In the polite world of golf—where there’s a rule of etiquette to cover every contingency—this boomerang shot has rarely if ever occurred, so there’s been no need for a clubhouse dictum to govern proper warning shout. Until now. This spring, a small group of professional golfers—led by former Big Name superstars Greg Norman and Phil Mickelson—decided to turn the game that has made them fabulously rich into an unsporting game of SleazeBall.

They say they want to set up an independent series of global tournaments, called LIV Golf, to compete with the PGA, the Professional Golfers Association. Fine—at its best, pro sports should be about top-quality, honest competition. But there’s the rub: The LIV series is not honest, not a sporting competition and not even about golf. It is entirely about money—more specifically about callous greed.

Indeed, LIV Golf is a scam that’s entirely financed by the brutish family of petro-royals who ruthlessly rule Saudi Arabia. The family’s grotesque abuse of the kingdom’s own citizens has made the oil-rich regime a global pariah. Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince who is the mastermind behind this multimillion-dollar golfing scheme, is the same fellow who ordered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi murdered in 2018. But simply killing Khashoggi wasn’t enough. The prince had him cut into small pieces, packed in suitcases and tossed away. Now, his golf gambit is a blatant case of “sportswashing”—he is spending obscene sums of his family’s oil loot to buy the marquee names of a few dozen recognizable golfers to concoct a sports spectacle, in hopes of distracting attention from his government’s depravity. Hitler tried this by staging the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany, but it didn’t wash.

Likewise, the Saudi golf association won’t wash off the regime’s indelible ugliness. But—Fore!—it will boomerang on the money-grubbing golfers selling their once-good names to it. If you sell out your personal integrity in a vain attempt to give a patina of integrity to some notorious scoundrels, what have you gained?

Depends on your sellout price, chortle the ethically stunted professional golfers who’ve peddled both their honor and honesty to the murderous, moneyed monarchs. The golfing elites madly rushed to grab money thrown at their feet by the royal kingdom in a crude PR ploy that’s meant to buff up its public image by making them seem like generous benefactors bringing sports to the masses. Of course, a golf tournament needs golfers, but the Saudis had none of note, so they simply bought a batch. Right away, former stars Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman signed away their integrity to join, taking at least $200 million apiece. Then Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau took $150 million each from Team Saudi, and the likes of Brooks Koepka, Sergio Garcia and others quicky scrambled to get theirs.

Worse than the golfers’ unsightly money grubbing, however, is their insufferable dishonesty, trying to whitewash their taking of what is literally blood money. Mickelson faked moral outrage at the Kingdom’s rulers, gingerly calling them “less-than-savory individuals” and piously proclaiming that he did not condone “human rights violations.” But he certainly has condoned (and cashed) the checks written to him by the violators.

But Greg Norman, the former pro who led recruitment of golfer talent for the Saudis, offered the most pathetic moral excuse for selling out to such a villainous kingdom. Asked how he could link arms with a potentate so barbarous as to have had a critic of the regime murdered and chopped into pieces, Norman said: “Look, we’ve all made mistakes.”

There’s a word that describes what these golfing multimillionaires are doing: “Disgusting.” The good news is that most pros—including bigger-name stars like Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas—have some values that they refuse to trade for dollars.


Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the books Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow (2008) and There’s Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of Political Subversion (1998). Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be—consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

Eli Lilly Says Indiana Abortion Law Forces Hiring Out-of-State

Ian Fisher, Bloomberg News  

(Bloomberg) -- Eli Lilly & Co., one of Indiana’s largest employers, said the state’s freshly passed restrictions on abortion would force the drug maker to “plan for more employment growth outside our home state.”

A growing list of companies, including Citigroup Inc., Apple Inc., Bumble Inc. and Levi Strauss & Co., are offering benefits for reproductive-care services in states that have imposed restrictions. But Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly’s announcement marks a swift escalation by a multinational that employs 10,000 people in Indiana, where the drug maker was founded in 1876.

Indiana on Friday became the first US state to pass anti-abortion legislation since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. About a dozen other states had so-called “trigger laws” pre-approved by legislatures to go into effect in the event that Roe was struck down. 

Lilly recognizes “that abortion is a divisive and deeply personal issue with no clear consensus among the citizens of Indiana,” the company said in a statement Saturday. “Despite this lack of agreement, Indiana has opted to quickly adopt one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the United States.” 

“We are concerned that this law will hinder Lilly’s -- and Indiana’s -- ability to attract diverse scientific, engineering and business talent from around the world,” according to the statement. “Given this new law, we will be forced to plan for more employment growth outside our home state.”  

Eli Lilly reported $6.5 billion in second-quarter revenue and employs more 37,000 people worldwide. 

Indiana’s abortion ban goes into effect on Sept. 15 with some exceptions, including in cases of rape or incest and to protect the mother’s life or physical health. 

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre called the Indiana legislature’s decision “devastating.” 

“It’s another radical step by Republican legislators to take away women’s reproductive rights and freedom, and put personal health care decisions in the hands of politicians rather than women and their doctors,” she said in a statement. 

Polls consistently show a majority of Americans support abortion rights, and some Republican Party strategists are urging less restrictive local laws amid signs of voter backlash. Voters in Kansas, a state won by Donald Trump by nearly 15 percentage points in 2020, rejected amending the state constitution to allow the state legislature to restrict abortion.

President Joe Biden’s Democrats, facing voter anger over inflation, are seeking to put abortion at the center of difficult midterm elections this fall.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

ZIONISM IS CHILD ABUSE

"Help me get out”: Ahmad Manasra appeals to the world from solitary confinement

Ahmad Manasra's childhood was stolen from him by Israeli military courts. His life mirrors those of thousands of Palestinian children who have been targeted by Israel since birth.

BY MARIAM BARGHOUTI 

AUGUST 5, 2022 8

AHMAD MANASRA, 13-YEARS-OLD AT THE TIME, BEING LED BY ISRAELI AUTHORITIES IN A DETENTION FACILITY (SOURCE: TWITTER)

After months of appealing to Israeli authorities, Ahmad Manasra was permitted to meet with an Arabic-speaking psychiatrist for the first time on Sunday, July 31. Manasra has been illegally held in solitary confinement at Eshel Prison since November of last year, by decree of the Israeli Prison Services.

The 20-year-old boy’s access to an Arabic-speaking psychiatrist is a major development, offering a ray of hope for Manasra, whose mental well-being has continued to deteriorate at the behest of the Israeli Prison Services (IPS) and judicial courts.

According to psychiatric doctors from the Palestinian Global Mental Health Network (PGMHN), Manasra was communicative and displayed hope at the mobilization calling for his release. “Help me, help me get out of here, because I am being driven insane,” Manasra reportedly told the doctors.

Beyond these entreaties, and despite having faced the trials and difficulties of solitary confinement and torture, Manasra also made a point to extend his thanks and gratitude to all those that have continued to advocate for his release, his psychiatric team shared with Mondoweiss.

On August 6, Manasra, whose entire teenage years were spent in prison under abusive conditions, is scheduled to have another court hearing, where his defense team persists in demanding for his release.
International outcry to save a tortured child

Since March of this year, the PGMHN launched a campaign demanding the release of Manasra. The campaign garnered world-wide support and momentum with almost half a million signatories.

Yet despite these appeals to safeguard Manasra’s precarious mental health and prospects for a healthy future, Israeli authorities have been adamant in refusing the appeals to remove Manasra from high security isolation, which he has been kept under since last year.

Moreover, in June of this year, the Israeli Parole Board denied Manasra early release despite evidence of the harm that solitary confinement and imprisonment has caused to his health. Manasra has only 2.5 years left on the sentence he received when he was merely 14 years old in 2015.

“It’s quite telling that in order to rile people up for Ahmad Manasra we have to create a campaign and that’s such a high effort…It tells you how normalized oppression and the ‘un-childing’ of Palestinian children has become. It shouldn’t be this normal.”Mohammad El-Kurd

“It shouldn’t take a village to rally for Ahmad Manasra,” Mohammad El-Kurd, a writer and journalist from Jerusalem told Mondoweiss.

Indeed, Manasra’s case has long ceased to be an issue of one child and family, becoming a blatant testament of the extent to which state-sponsored crimes against children will be tolerated, supported, funded, and permitted by the global community.

Israel’s exemption from accountability sets a dangerous precedent for the harm of children across the globe, especially in light of the growing awareness that solitary confinement is considered de facto torture under international law. Manasra was subjected to violent and illegal interrogation by Israeli intelligence at the young age of 13 and 14 — without the presence of lawyers or guardians, and with total disregard to the head injury from which he was still recovering.

“It’s quite telling that in order to rile people up for Ahmad Manasra we have to create a campaign and that’s such a high effort,” El-Kurd told Mondoweiss. “It tells you how normalized oppression and the ‘un-childing’ of Palestinian children has become. It shouldn’t be this normal.”

“Systematically targeted for your own childhood”

Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who is a Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as the Global Chair in Law at Queen Mary, University of London, has been following Manasra’s case attentively, and her coining of the term “un-childing” has become synonymous with it.

“What is happening to Ahmad is a prototype, a reflection of the criminality of the state.”Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

“What is happening to Ahmad is a prototype, a reflection, of the criminality of the state,” she explained to Mondoweiss. “If you go back to the protocol of the Knesset when they changed the law, you can see clearly how our kids are not considered kids, but terrorist adults.”

Indeed, Manasra continues to be held in solitary confinement and imprisoned under a “terrorism” clause within Israel’s legal framework. However, the legitimization of incarcerating a child who was interrogated under duress was a result of a legal clause specifically evoked by Israeli law-makers and authorities during the Manasra trials. This allowed for creating a legal explanation to justify the imprisonment and torture of Palestinian children as young as 12.

The concept of “terrorism” is intentionally manipulated to legitimize the torture that Manasra endured and to which he continues to be subjected. It was that same justification under the pretext of fighting “terrorism” that allowed for Manasra, then as a 13-year-old child, to lie bleeding on the ground from a brain injury brutally inflicted upon him by Israeli settlers that continued to scream “die, you son of a whore, die!”

It was that same justification that allowed Manasra to continue to be terrorized after that incident through the physical distress and psychological warfare he suffered at the hands of Israeli security personnel during his interrogation, where Manasra was threatened that “they will kill him, demolish his house, and imprison him,” according to his former lawyer, Tareq Barghouth.

STILL OF FILM SHOWING 13-YEAR-OLD AHMAD MANASRA’S INTERROGATION LEAKED BY MA’AN (SOURCE: TWITTER)

“The Israeli government…they think of us as fertile ground for terrorism,” El-Kurd explains while recollecting his own childhood in Jerusalem, the city where Manasra was born and spent 13 years before his imprisonment. “They call our resistance terrorism, and so they start trying to disarm us at a young age.”

In 2013, just two years before Manasra was taken into prison, Israeli authorities detained 931 Palestinian children. The Israeli army and police continue to target Palestinian children, including strip searching them at checkpoints, calling minors and attempting to recruit them as informants for the Israeli Police and intelligence units, and employing them as pressure points to threaten and coerce Palestinian political detainees in order to coerce confessions out of them.

In reflecting on the dynamics and processes by which the Israeli state operates, Shalhoub-Kevorkian further elaborates: “Ahmad had the best lawyers, and the lawyers tried to stress the context of Ahmad.”

In a harrowed tone, she continued: “by complicating and contextualizing, the judges became more stubborn and they wanted to teach all the kids in Jerusalem a lesson.”

El-Kurd echoes a similar sentiment as he calmly recalls his childhood: “to grow up a child in Jerusalem is to be systematically targeted for your own childhood.”
Palestinian kids in Jerusalem: a life made impossible

Manasra was subjected to conditions that would destroy the physical and mental well-being of any adult, let alone a child in a vulnerable position. The practices inflicted on him showcase a collective judicial, military, and civilian network that publicly enforce state-sponsored child abuse.

“To be an eight-year old in Jerusalem is to be a 22 year-old in White suburbia America, you see this in the way children behave and operate in this country,” El-Kurd opined.

Mulling over that observation, he continued: “they don’t necessarily behave as children, they behave like people who have been tasked with obligations and responsibilities that are too hefty for them to bear.”

Almost half of the Palestinian population are children under the age of 18. Within this context, Israel’s targeting of children is also seen as a direct assault on a large stratum that represents the future of Palestinians. The infliction of long-term traumatic experiences, coupled with the prolongation of Israeli military rule, must therefore not be seen solely as a string of present crimes, but as a tactic to arbitrate the future fate of an entire generation.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian emphasized the importance of taking children’s contexts into account, emphasizing that in Manasra’s case: “You need to take into consideration that it was 2015, a year packed with child arrests, packed with the abuse of children. A year when Mohammad Abu Khdair was burned alive.”

Indeed, in 2014 three Israeli settlers kidnapped and burned alive 16-year-old Mohammad Abu Khdeir in Jerusalem as they chanted “mangal,” which means grill. That same year, an Israeli border policeman, Ben Deri, was found guilty of killing 17-year-old Nadeem Nuwwara near Ofer Military camp, and was sentenced to only nine months by the Israeli courts.

“Israeli society and the Israeli government views Palestinian children as projects for de-fanging, for de-clawing,” El-Kurd said.

“You find yourself as a child in Jerusalem constantly confronting military presence and police presence that is created to entrap you,” he continued. “It’s not only the tension and the suffocation of growing up in Jerusalem, but it’s also by design.”


Mariam Barghouti is the Senior Palestine Correspondent for Mondoweiss.