US jury orders Monsanto to pay $857m over chemicals in school

Los Angeles (AFP) – A US jury on Monday ordered chemical company Monsanto to pay $857 million to seven people at a school in the western state of Washington who said they were sickened by chemicals leaking from light fittings.

Issued on: 19/12/2023

The logo of German chemicals giant Bayer, which owns Monsanto, seen at its general meeting in Bonn, Germany in 2019 

© INA FASSBENDER / AFP/File
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The ruling is the latest legal setback for Monsanto, which is already grappling with hefty legal bills after losing court cases over its glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup.

The jury said the company, owned by German pharmaceutical giant Bayer, had sold the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) found in the fittings that the group of students and parent volunteers at Sky Valley Education Center in the town of Monroe in Washington state claimed had made them ill.

It ordered the firm to pay a total of $73 million compensation and $784 million in punitive damages to the plaintiffs in the case.

Lawyer Felix Luna, representing the plaintiffs, told the jury Monsanto had engaged in years of subterfuge to cover up what they knew about the harmful effects of PCBs.

"Monsanto... never warned anyone that (PCBs) would outlast whatever they're put in," Luna said in his closing argument, according to a transcript of the case.

"They never warned anyone that when it gets in the body that they're metabolites for life, that they're neurotoxic... a hazard, or (that) PCBs could lead to systemic poisoning."

The jury found the company negligent and ordered varying amounts of compensation to the seven plaintiffs, with each also being awarded $112 million in punitive damages.




A spokesperson for Monsanto said the firm would appeal the ruling.

"We disagree with the verdict and will pursue posttrial motions and appeals to get this verdict overturned and to reduce the constitutionally excessive damages awarded," a statement said.

"The objective evidence in this case, including blood, air and other tests, demonstrates that plaintiffs were not exposed to unsafe levels of PCBs, and PCBs could not have caused their alleged injuries."

Polychlorinated biphenyls are man-made chemicals that were mainly used as coolants and lubricants.

People exposed to them can experience respiratory irritation, and scientists say the chemicals may contribute to some cancers.

In decades past, PCB-based fire safety liquid was used in the ballasts that provide the energy surge to turn on fluorescent lights.

Monsanto says it ceased using the chemical in 1977, two years before the US federal government banned their production because of evidence they accumulate in the environment, including in fish and meat used for human consumption.

A company source said the school district responsible for fixtures at Sky Valley Education Center had been warned for several decades that light fittings at the school were in need of an update to bring them into line with federal and state rules.

A 2016 report by US Senator Edward Markey said PCBs were prevalent throughout the nation's school buildings, with as many as 14 million students potentially exposed.

The German group Bayer -- the maker of Aspirin -- acquired Monsanto in 2018, a blockbuster $63-billion deal that quickly turned sour.

Bayer inherited Monsanto's legal woes in relation to Roundup, and has since faced a wave of lawsuits in the United States over claims it causes cancer -- an accusation that Bayer contests.

Of the 160,000 cases brought against the group in relation to the weedkiller, 113,000 had been settled or dismissed, according to Bayer, which has put aside $16 billion to cover the legal risk.

© 2023 AFP

Senator pushes US to vote for UN Security Council resolution on Gaza

'The U.S. must vote YES,' Bernie Sanders says ahead of vote

Diyar Guldogan 

Update : 20.12.2023


WASHINGTON

Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders pushed the US to vote Tuesday for a UN Security Council resolution that seeks the suspension of hostilities in Gaza in order to deliver aid.

"Nearly 20,000 people have been killed in Gaza, 70% of whom are women and children. More than 50,000 have been wounded. The UN Security Council may soon vote on a resolution calling for a cessation of hostilities & the release of all hostages,” Sanders wrote on X. "The U.S. must vote YES."

His remarks came as the Security Council is preparing to vote on a resolution that demands the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access and urgent steps to a sustainable cessation of hostilities.

The US vetoed a Security Council resolution on Dec. 8 that demanded an immediate cease-fire to halt the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip as the death toll continues to mount.

UN vote illustrates how Starmer is at odds with international opinion on Gaza

“The UN vote… significantly shows the disconnect between the political establishment represented by Sunak & Starmer, & the majority of voters.”

By Fraser McGuire

Last week, an emergency session of the United Nations was convened to vote on a resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked the rarely used Article 99, which gives the Secretary-general the power to “bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”. UN General Assembly President Dennis Francis opened the emergency session by stressing the importance of the vote and protecting civilians, saying “We have one singular priority – only one – to save lives”.

The outcome of the vote demonstrates the strength of international opposition to Israel’s assault on Gaza, with 153 UN member states voting in favour of the resolution. Only 10 countries were opposed, and 23 nations, including the UK, abstained from the vote. While the vote is non-binding, it is indicative of a noticeable shift in international support for Israel, as 32 countries, including Canada, Denmark, and Japan, changed their vote from the previous month. Widespread coverage of Israeli targeting of civilians, as well as huge numbers of protestors taking to the streets globally to call for an end to Western complicity in Israel’s apartheid policies and war crimes, is increasingly leading to supporters of the Israeli state’s position being politically isolated at home and in the UN.

Israel’s attacks on Gaza, where nearly half the population is under the age of 18, has seen more than 18,000 civilians murdered, as well as the targeting of journalists, ambulances, humanitarian sites, and critical infrastructure, leading to fatal shortages of food, water, and other basic goods. The mounting human cost and the growing humanitarian crisis are making it impossible for all but the most uncritical supporters of Israel to defend the government’s policies and rhetoric, with the UN Secretary General saying that they “expect public order to completely break down soon, and an even worse situation could unfold including epidemic diseases and increased pressure for mass displacement into Egypt”.

As one of just 23 countries to abstain from the UN vote, the position of Rishi Sunak’s UK government is clearly out of touch with both the broad international consensus for a ceasefire and demands for the end of apartheid policies against Palestinians here in the UK less than a month after a million people took to the streets of London in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Not only does the UN vote highlight the extreme minority stance that the UK government has taken, but it significantly shows the disconnect between the political establishment represented by Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer, and the majority of voters – 76 percent of whom, polling shows, support a ceasefire. For all the rhetoric of the Labour Party being ‘a government in waiting’, the stance of Starmer and the Labour leadership is at odds with most of the international community and isolated even among the UK’s “historic allies”, many of whom have shifted their support following Israel’s lurch to the extreme right over the past year and the genocidal policies being pursued against the civilian population of Gaza.

It is essential to acknowledge that the significant shift in some country’s positions on the Israeli bombing of Gaza has not occurred in a vacuum and is very closely linked to actions and demonstrations across the world calling for an end to economic and military support for Israel’s far-right government. Just last week in the UK, major property management company, Fisher German, has severed all connections with Israeli weapons firm Elbit Systems, after widespread public pressure and a persistent and effective campaign of direct action.

The calls of many millions of people across the world for solidarity with the Palestinian struggle is having an impact on both governments and corporations, and seriously weakening the international support which Israel relies upon to continue its military assault on the people of Gaza.

Fraser McGuire is the Chair of East Midlands Unite Hospitality, Young Labour’s East Midlands representative and an organiser for Arise: A Festival Of Left Ideas. 

You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Featured image: demonstrators gathering by Hyde park with lots of Palestine flags on October 21st, 2023. Photo credit: Sam Browse, Labour Outlook.

Labour Outlook
Amplifying socialist voices, supporting frontline struggles, building international solidarity.

UN Security Council due to vote on delayed Gaza resolution

United Nations (United States) (AFP) – The United Nations Security Council was due to vote Wednesday on a much-delayed resolution calling for a pause to the Israel-Hamas war after members wrangled over wording while aid efforts in the Gaza Strip neared collapse.

Issued on: 20/12/2023 -

Members of the UN Security Council have grappled for days to find common ground on the resolution on a pause in the Israel-Hamas war 

© Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP/File

The humanitarian situation in Gaza was rapidly deteriorating, with a senior UN official saying Israel's steps to allow in aid were "far short" of mounting need.

Members of the council had grappled for days to find common ground on the resolution, a vote on which was pushed back several times throughout Tuesday, after being postponed Monday.

An official scheduling document said the 15-member body would finally vote on Wednesday.

Israel, backed by its ally Washington, a veto-wielding permanent Security Council member, has opposed the use of the term "ceasefire."

Richard Gowan, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, said that "everyone is basically stuck waiting to see what the US will decide to do."

"It looks like even US diplomats do not know how this saga will end," he added, after several United States diplomats gave non-committal answers when asked what would happen and why the vote had been delayed through Tuesday.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said he did not want to "get ahead of a resolution that hasn't been voted on yet."

This week's back and forth comes after an impasse earlier this month, when the United States, despite unprecedented pressure from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, blocked the adoption of a Security Council resolution on the war.

It had called for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire" in the Gaza Strip, where Israel continues its deadly strikes in retaliation for Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack.
'Human catastrophe'

Last week, the General Assembly adopted the same nonbinding resolution by 153 votes to 10, with 23 abstentions, out of 193 member states.

Bolstered by that overwhelming support, Arab countries announced the new attempt at the Security Council.

A draft text prepared by the UAE, obtained by AFP on Sunday, called for "an urgent and lasting cessation of hostilities to allow unimpeded access of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip."

Vetoes of UN Security Council resolutions on Palestinian territories 

© Corin FAIFE / AFP

The last version seen by AFP was, however, a modified text that seemingly sought to salvage a compromise.

It was less direct, calling for "the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities."

United Nations official Tor Wennesland said Tuesday that Israel's "limited" steps to allow aid into Gaza "are positive, but fall far short of what is needed to address the human catastrophe on the ground."

After the attack on October 7, which Israeli authorities say left around 1,140 people dead, most of them civilians, Israel vowed to "annihilate" Hamas.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says Israel's military response has killed 19,667 people, mostly women and children.

© 2023 AFP

US guts UN resolution as Palestinian death-toll exceeds 20,000

Plus: every day Israel carries out a vile crime that normally would be headline news

Joe Biden and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu

SOCIALIST WORKER

December 19, 2023

A Gaza “ceasefire” resolution that the United Nations Security Council is set to discuss on Wednesday has been systematically stripped of real content to satisfy the US government and its allies.

The Arab regimes scrabbling to put together a text are desperate that Joe Biden’s administration should not veto the motion. That’s what the US did over the call for a “humanitarian pause” on 18 October and for an urgent humanitarian ceasefire on 9 December.

The vote had been due on Monday—and then on Tuesday. But the US said it could not support a reference to a “cessation of hostilities”, but might accept a call for a “suspension of hostilities”.

In other words, whatever its fears about the anti-imperialist wave that Israel may be detonating, the US will still oppose a ceasefire of more than a few days. There might be a pause where the victims will be allowed a little food and water before the killing begins again.

And in any case UN resolutions—even Security Council ones that are deemed “legally binding”—are often ignored by the great powers and Israel.

The UN debates come as the number of Palestinians killed by Israel is officially about to exceed 20,000—and in reality, is already far more.

The Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday that Israeli troops have killed at least 19,453 Palestinians since 7 October and injured at least 52,286 people, Nearly 8,000 people are missing, many of them buried beneath the rubble of their homes, schools and hospitals.

The resolution tabled on Tuesday was expected to contain the language of a “sustainable ceasefire” that comes from an article in the Sunday Times by British foreign secretary Lord Cameron and German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock.

But that article underlines the continuing support for Israel. It says, “We do not believe that calling right now for a general and immediate ceasefire, hoping it somehow becomes permanent, is the way forward.


Full coverage of the struggle in Palestine

“Even before October 7, it was hard to imagine Hamas as a real partner for peace. After October 7, we can have no illusions. Leaving Hamas in power in Gaza would be a permanent roadblock on the path to a two-state solution.”

If the US and Britain wanted a ceasefire they would stop supplying arms to Israel and stop the billions in handouts that sustain the slaughter. Instead, on a visit to Israel, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin vowed on Monday to keep arming its ally.

“We’ll continue to provide Israel with the equipment that you need to defend your country including critical munitions, tactical vehicles and air defence systems,” Austin said.

He also announced the formation of a ten-nation coalition, including Britain, to fight militarily against attacks by the Houthi government in Yemen against Israeli-linked tankers, cargo ships and other vessels in the Red Sea.

But for all the Israeli cruelty, and the Western backing, the Palestinian resistance continues to fight back. Israel has not eliminated Hamas in northern Gaza which it invaded ten weeks ago, let alone in the South. Most Hamas leaders remain free.

The dissension inside Israel grows as the government kills their own hostages in Gaza rather than freeing them.

Hamas’ military spokesperson Abu Obeida said on 15 December, “It’s 70 days since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Flood battle, and our people are still engaged in this battle.

“Our brave fighters are fighting a heavily armed force equipped with lethal weapons, ammunition, supported by planes, warships, and armoured vehicles, under the cover of forces of oppression and aggression, led by the American administration.

“Yet, our fighters are heroically fighting historical battles with light and pride. The whole world sees how our fighters destroy and burn the enemy’s armoured vehicles.”

As Israel’s crimes mount, it’s important to keep building solidarity with the Palestinians. The next national demonstration called by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War and others is not until 13 January. It’s important to keep building that.

But at a local level, actions continue. Around 70 people gathered outside Lambeth town hall in south London on Monday evening. The Labour council has refused to back a ceasefire and would not even discuss it on Monday.

Earlier in the day protesters in Hastings gathered outside the General Dynamics arms factory.

Simon Hester, chair of the trades council, told the protest, “We support all the activities, including this one over the war in Gaza. We oppose the Israeli settler state and the way Western governments are supporting Israel’s genocidal attack”

He attacked the Tories but also condemned Labour’s Keir Starmer for backing the killing. Hester then said the present horrors were rooted in “75 years of oppression” but had also seen “75 years of Palestinian resistance” and that he refused to condemn that resistance.

Around 800 people joined a march for Palestine in Portsmouth on Sunday and 1,000 in Liverpool. Sisters Uncut has called a protest in central London at 12 noon this Saturday, 23 December.

In a positive sign of wide support, a jury delivered a unanimous not guilty verdict for two Palestine Action supporters who in November 2022 defaced a statue of Tory foreign secretary Arthur Balfour’s statue in the House of Commons.

Balfour’s declaration in 1917 was a key step in imperialism’s backing for the Zionist expulsion of the Palestinian people.

The legal argument for the protesters included their belief that the public would consent to the action as a form of expression and if they were aware of the history, consequence and legacy of the Balfour Declaration.

New UN Security Council Ceasefire Resolution Delayed as US Aims to Weaken It


The US objected to the proposed call for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

By Jake Johnson , 

COMMONDREAMS

Published December 19, 2023

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield speaks during the UN General Assembly emergency special session on Israel's war at the United Nations headquarters on December 12, 2023, in New York City.MICHAEL M. SANTIAGO / GETTY IMAGES


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The United Nations Security Council on Monday delayed an expected vote on a new Gaza cease-fire resolution as the U.S. worked to weaken the measure’s language, objecting to the proposed call for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

Unnamed diplomats told The Associated Press that the wording will likely be changed to call for a “suspension” of hostilities or some other watered down phrasing amenable to the U.S., which used its veto power to tank a Security Council cease-fire resolution less than two weeks ago.

The veto drew international condemnation, and calls for a cease-fire have grown in the days since. In an overwhelming 153-10 vote on December 12, the U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution demanding an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire,” with the U.S. and Israel among the small number of opponents. Unlike those passed by the Security Council, General Assembly resolutions are nonbinding.

The 15-member Security Council is expected to vote on the new, potentially watered down cease-fire resolution as early as Tuesday morning.

Mary Robinson, chair of The Elders and former president of Ireland, said in a statement ahead of the vote that U.S. President Joe Biden’s “support for Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza is losing him respect all over the world.”

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One military expert, meanwhile, said that the “friendly fire” rate among the IDF is at an unprecedented level.

By Sharon Zhang , TRUTHOUTDecember 18, 2023

“The U.S. is increasingly isolated, with allies like Australia, Canada, India, Japan, and Poland switching their votes in the UN General Assembly to support an immediate humanitarian cease-fire,” said Robinson. “The U.S. cannot afford to be further isolated by vetoing this resolution.”

“But even if passed, such resolutions are not enough,” she continued. “UNSCR 2712, agreed last month, is not being fully implemented. It calls for the protection of civilians, the release of all hostages, and immediate humanitarian access. Only a cease-fire will allow for these calls to be met.”

Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch, wrote late last week that the U.S. “should consistently call for respect for international humanitarian law.”

“It says it has urged Israel to protect civilians, so it should support U.N. efforts to do the same,” Charbonneau wrote. “It should back the urgent adoption and implementation of a Security Council resolution that demands Israel and Palestinian armed groups end their laws-of-war violations that have cost thousands of civilian lives. And it should back efforts aimed at ensuring accountability for those responsible for war crimes, no matter who commits them.”

The latest Security Council vote will come as conditions in the Gaza Strip plunge to new depths by the hour as Israel’s U.S.-backed bombing, ground invasion, and suffocating blockade continue.

According to one human rights monitor, Israeli forces have killed more than 10,000 children in Gaza since October 7, when Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel. Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s emergency relief coordinator, called the humanitarian disaster in Gaza the worst he’s ever witnessed.

“People can’t leave… No family can plan for their future,” Griffiths told the Financial Times in an interview published over the weekend. “I see these things all over the world, but this is beyond my imagination. And it will get worse.”

Virtually the entire population of Gaza is at risk of starvation, the territory’s water and healthcare systems have collapsed, and infectious diseases are spreading due to contaminated water, overcrowding at makeshift shelters, and lack of medicine.

“The general conditions for most of these people are appalling: They live in temporary structures made of a few pieces of wood banged together and covered in plastic sheeting,” said Chris Hook, Doctors Without Borders’ medical team leader in Gaza. “They struggle to find enough water to meet their hygiene needs.”

At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Hook said, the emergency department is “completely full and new patients are being treated on the floor.”

“Doctors are stepping over bodies of dead children to treat other children who will die anyway,” he added.

On Sunday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus condemned Israeli forces’ “effective destruction” of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, noting that attacks on the facility caused the deaths of at least eight patients.

“Gaza’s health system was already on its knees, and the loss of another even minimally functioning hospital is a severe blow,” Tedros wrote on social media. “Attacks on hospitals, health personnel, and patients must end. Cease-fire NOW.”

Meta accused of mishandling Israel-Hamas war posts

AFP
Tue, December 19, 2023

An independent oversight board says Meta removal of posts related to the war in the Middle East could be eliminating evidence of human rights violations in the process (Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV)

Meta's independent oversight board on Tuesday criticized the social media titan of removing posts that showed human suffering in the Middle East conflict.

The board, set up by Meta in 2020 as a supreme court of sorts for the social media titan, overturned two post removal decisions, and urged the company to respond more quickly to changing circumstances in the war between Hamas and Israel.

One case involved the removal by Instagram of a video showing what appeared to be the aftermath of a strike on or near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City during a ground offensive by Israel.

The video showed Palestinians, including children, injured or killed, according to the board.

A second case involved Facebook's decision to remove a video of an Israeli woman begging her kidnappers not to kill her as she is taken hostage during Hamas raids on Israel on October 7, the board said.

"These decisions were very difficult to make," oversight board co-chair Michael McConnell said in a release.

"The board focused on protecting the right to the freedom of expression of people on all sides about these horrific events, while ensuring that none of the testimonies incited violence or hatred."

The board urged Meta to preserve any removed posts that might contain evidence of human rights violations.

Meta told the board that it temporarily lowered thresholds for automatic removal of posts with potentially harmful content after the Hamas-led attack on Israel, according to the overseers.

The use of automated tools for content moderation at Facebook and Instagram increase the likelihood of removing posts showing the harsh reality of what is happening in the conflict, according to the board.

"These testimonies are important not just for the speakers, but for users around the world who are seeking timely and diverse information about ground-breaking events," McConnell said.

"Some of which could be important evidence of potential grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law."

Content decisions by the oversight board are binding, but its recommendations are not, according to Meta.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas has claimed many lives and arouses intense emotions around the world.

Social networks have been flooded with violent imagery along with fabricated content intended to misinform, in a challenge to online platforms.

The European Union in October sent Meta a request for information about the dissemination of violent and terrorist content on its platforms.

Similar investigations are targeting TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, and X, formerly known as Twitter.


Meta Oversight Board overturns decisions on removal of Israel-Gaza videos

Clyde Hughes
Tue, December 19, 2023 

People walk by a sign on the Meta campus In Menlo Park, California on October 28, 2022. Meta's Oversight Board overruled Facebook's automated system on two videos connected with the Israel-Hamas conflict on Tuesday. File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI


Dec. 19 (UPI) -- Meta's Oversight Board ruled on Tuesday that its automated tools unnecessarily removed two videos posted on its social media platforms related to the Israel-Hamas war in its first expedited review ruling.

The Oversight Board, an independent organization that reviews Meta's content moderation decisions, overturned Meta's initial decisions to remove the posts from its platforms but approved its later moves to return the posts to the platforms with a warning screen.

The board said the first case involved a video posted to Facebook showing an Israeli woman begging her kidnappers not to kill her as she was taken hostage during the terrorist raids on Israel on Oct. 7. The second video posted to Instagram showed what appears to be the aftermath of a strike on or near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City during Israel's ground offensive where Palestinians, including children, were killed or injured.

Meta said because of an "exceptional surge" in violent and graphic content since Oct. 7, it temporarily lowered the confidence thresholds for the automatic classification systems that identified content for its violence, hate speech, bullying and harassment.

As a result, the board said, Meta used its automated tools "more aggressively" to remove content that may violate those policies.

"While this reduced the likelihood that Meta would fail to remove violating content that might otherwise evade detection or where capacity for human review was limited, it also increased the likelihood of Meta mistakenly removing non-violating content related to the conflict," the board said.

The Oversight Board said the Al-Shifa case specifically showed that "insufficient human oversight of automated moderation during crisis response" could lead to posts that may be of "significant public interest" being incorrectly removed.

"Both the initial decision to remove this content as well as the rejection of the user's appeal were taken automatically based on a classifier score, without any human review," the board said, noting the response may have been "exacerbated" by Meta's decision to lower the removal threshold following the Oct. 7 attacks.

Additionally, the board said that both cases led Meta to demote the content from being recommended to other Facebook and Instagram users "even though the company had determined that the posts intended to raise awareness."

In the hostage video case, the board agreed that Meta should make its "default approach" to protect the safety and dignity of hostages by removing such videos, it was justified in its later decision to allow the content with a warning screen for the purposes of condemning the actions depicted, raising awareness and news reporting or calling for release.

"Indeed, given the fast-moving circumstances and the high costs to freedom of expression and access to information for removing this kind of content, Meta should have moved more quickly to adapt its policy," the board said.

The board noted that Meta began allowing hostage-taking content to be shared on its platform on Oct. 20 from accounts on the company's "cross-check lists" and was later expanded to all accounts until Nov. 16 for posts shared after that date.

It said, however, the practice highlighted concerns about the cross-check "including the unequal treatment of users, lack of transparent criteria for inclusion and the need to ensure greater representation of users whose content is likely to be important from a human-rights perspective on Meta's cross-check lists.

"The use of the cross-check program in this way also contradicts how Meta has described and explained the purpose of the program, as a mistake prevention system and not a program that provides certain privileged users with more permissive rules," the Oversight Board said.

The case was the first expedited review taken by the board, and was completed in 12 days, less than half of the 30-day limit for a decision required by the expedited process.

Meta Oversight Board says Israel-Hamas videos should not have been removed

Tue, December 19, 2023 

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Meta Platforms' business group


By Sheila Dang

(Reuters) - Meta Platform's Oversight Board said on Tuesday that the social media company erred in removing two videos depicting hostages and injured people in the Israel-Hamas conflict, saying the videos were valuable to understanding human suffering in the war.

Since Hamas' attack in Israel on Oct. 7, social media platforms have seen renewed scrutiny over their content moderation practices due to a surge in misinformation and accusations that the companies have promoted certain viewpoints about the conflict.

The videos about the conflict are the first time that the Oversight Board, an independent body that reviews content decisions on Meta's Facebook and Instagram, examined cases on an expedited basis. The board announced the faster review process earlier this year to respond more quickly to urgent events.

One of the cases concerned a video posted on Instagram, which showed the aftermath of an airstrike near Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, including children who appeared injured or dead.

The second case involved a video of the Oct. 7 attack, which showed an Israeli woman begging her kidnappers not to kill her as she is taken hostage.

In both instances, after the Oversight Board selected the content takedowns for review, Meta reversed its decision and restored the videos with a screen that warned viewers before viewing, the board said.

The board said it approved of the move to restore the content, but disagreed with Meta's decision to restrict the videos from being recommended to users, and in a statement urged Meta to "respond more quickly to changing circumstances on the ground, which affect the balance between the values of voice and safety."

A Meta spokesperson said the company welcomed the board's decisions, adding no further action would be taken on the cases since the board did not make any policy recommendations.

(Reporting by Sheila Dang in Austin; Editing by Stephen Coates)



Meta's initial decisions to remove 2 videos of Israel-Hamas war reversed by Oversight Board

Associated Press
Updated Tue, December 19, 2023 

Meta's logo is seen on a sign at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Nov. 9, 2022. A quasi-independent review board is recommending that Facebook parent company Meta overturn two decisions it made this fall to remove posts “informing the world about human suffering on both sides” of the Israel-Hamas war. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)


MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) — A quasi-independent review board has ruled that Facebook parent company Meta should overturn two decisions it made this fall to remove posts “informing the world about human suffering on both sides” of the Israel-Hamas war.

In both cases, Meta ended up reinstating the posts — one showing Palestinian casualties and the other, an Israeli hostage — on its own, although it added warning screens to both due to violent content. This means the company isn't obligated to do anything about the board's decision.

That said, the board also said it disagrees with Meta's decision to bar the posts in question from being recommended by Facebook and Instagram, “even in cases where it had determined posts intended to raise awareness.” And it said Meta's use of automated tools to remove “potentially harmful” content increased the likelihood of taking down “valuable posts” that not only raise awareness about the conflict but may contain evidence of human rights violations. It urged the company to preserve such content.

The Oversight Board, established three years ago by Meta, issued its decisions Tuesday in what it said was its first expedited ruling — taking 12 days rather than the usual 90.

In one case, the board said, Instagram removed a video showing what appears to be the aftermath of a strike on or near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The post shows Palestinians, including children, injured or killed. Meta's automated systems removed the post saying it violated its rules against violent and graphic content. While Meta eventually reversed its decision, the board said, it placed a warning screen on the post and demoted it, which means it was not recommended to users and fewer people saw it. The board said it disagrees with the decision to demote the video.

The other case concerns video posted to Facebook of an Israeli woman begging her kidnappers not to kill her as she is taken hostage during the Hamas raids on Israel on Oct. 7.

Users appealed Meta's decision to remove the posts and the cases went to the Oversight Board. The board said it saw an almost three-fold increase in the daily average of appeals marked by users as related to the Middle East and North Africa region in the weeks following Oct. 7.

Meta said it welcomes the board's decision.

“Both expression and safety are important to us and the people who use our services. The board overturned Meta’s original decision to take this content down but approved of the subsequent decision to restore the content with a warning screen. Meta previously reinstated this content so no further action will be taken on it,” the company said. “There will be no further updates to this case, as the board did not make any recommendations as part of their decision.”

In a briefing on the cases, the board said Meta confirmed it had temporarily lowered thresholds for automated tools to detect and remove potentially violating content.

“While reducing the risk of harmful content, it also increased the likelihood of mistakenly removing valuable, non-violating content from its platforms,” the Oversight Board said, adding that as of Dec. 11, Meta had not restored the thresholds to pre-Oct. 7 levels.

Meta, then called Facebook, launched the Oversight Board in 2020 in response to criticism that it wasn’t moving fast enough to remove misinformation, hate speech and influence campaigns from its platforms. The board has 22 members, a multinational group that includes legal scholars, human rights experts and journalists.

The board’s rulings, such as in these two cases, are binding but its broader policy findings are advisory and Meta is not obligated to follow them.

Meta removed two Israel-Hamas videos unnecessarily, Oversight Board says

Clare Duffy, CNN
Tue, December 19, 2023



Facebook-parent Meta’s automated tools to police potentially harmful content unnecessarily removed two videos related to the Israel-Hamas war, the Meta Oversight Board said in a statement Tuesday. The moderation technology may have prevented users from viewing content related to human suffering on both sides of the conflict, it said.

The comments are the result of the Oversight Board’s first “expedited review,” highlighting the intense scrutiny facing social media companies over their handling of content related to the conflict.

The board overturned Meta’s original decision to remove two pieces of content. As part of the decision, the group urged Meta to respect users’ rights to “freedom of expression … and their ability to communicate in this crisis.”

“The Board focused on protecting the right to the freedom of expression of people on all sides about these horrific events, while ensuring that none of the testimonies incited violence or hatred,” Michael McConnell, a co-chair of the board, said in a statement. “These testimonies are important not just for the speakers, but for users around the world who are seeking timely and diverse information about ground-breaking events.”

In response to the board’s decision, Meta said that because it had already reinstated the two pieces of content prior to the board’s decision, it would take no further action. “Both expression and safety are important to us and the people who use our services,” the company said in a blog post.

Meta’s Oversight Board is an entity made up of experts in areas such as freedom of expression and human rights. It is often described as a kind of Supreme Court for Meta, as it allows users to appeal content decisions on the company’s platforms. The board makes recommendations to the company about how to handle certain content moderation decisions, as well as broader policy suggestions.

The board said earlier this month that it decided to take up a faster review in this case because content decisions related to the war could have “urgent real-world consequences.” In the weeks after the Israel-Hamas conflict broke out, the board said it saw a nearly three-fold increase in daily average user appeals of decisions on content “related to the Middle East and North Africa region.”

Meta told CNN in October that it had established “a special operations center staffed with experts, including fluent Hebrew and Arabic speakers, to closely monitor and respond to this rapidly evolving situation,” and that it was coordinating with third-party fact checkers in the region.

The Oversight Board said Tuesday that following the conflict’s outbreak, Meta put in place temporary measures to address potentially dangerous content, including lowering the thresholds for automatic removal of content that could violate its hate speech, violence and incitement, and bullying and harassment policies.

“In other words, Meta used its automated tools more aggressively to remove content that might be prohibited,” the board said, adding that the company took those steps to prioritize safety but that the move also “increased the likelihood of Meta mistakenly removing non-violating content related to the conflict.” The board said that as of December 11, Meta had not returned the content moderation thresholds for its automated systems to normal levels.

The board’s review looked at two pieces of content: a video posted to Instagram that appeared to show the aftermath of a strike outside the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and another video posted to Facebook showing two hostages being kidnapped by Hamas militants.

The first video appeared to show “people, including children, injured or dead, lying on the ground and/or crying.” A caption under the video in Arabic and English referenced the Israeli army, stating that the hospital had been “targeted by the ‘usurping occupation,’” the board said.

Meta’s automated systems initially removed the post for violating its rules on graphic and violent content. A user appealed the decision, asking for the video to be restored, which was automatically rejected by Meta’s systems after they determined with “a high confidence level” that the content violated its rules. After the board decided to take up the case, Meta made the video viewable with a warning that the content is disturbing; the warning also prevents the video from being viewed by minors and from bei ng recommended to adult users.

The Oversight Board said Tuesday that the video should not have been removed in the first place, and criticized Meta’s move to limit the video’s circulation, saying it “does not accord with the company’s responsibilities to respect freedom of expression.”

The second video reviewed by the board showed a woman on a motorbike and a man being marched away by Hamas militants, with a caption urging people to watch to gain a “deeper understanding” of the October 7 attack on Israel.

Meta initially removed the post for violating its dangerous organizations and individuals policy, which prohibits imagery of terror attacks on visible victims even if shared to raise awareness of such an attack. (Meta designates Hamas as a dangerous organization under its policy and labeled the October 7 attack as a terrorist attack.)

The company reinstated the video with a warning screen after the board took up the case, part of a larger move to allow limited exemptions to its dangerous organizations and individuals policy in cases where content was meant to condemn, raise awareness for or report on the kidnappings, or to call for the release of the hostages. Like with the other video, the warning screen restricted the visibility of the video for minors and prevented it from being recommended to other Facebook users.

As in the case of the first video, the board said the content should not have been removed and said that preventing the video from being recommended puts Meta out of compliance with its human rights responsibilities.

Meta said Tuesday that it would not change its limits on recommending both videos reviewed by the board, because the board disagreed with the limits but did not make a formal recommendation about how they should be handled.

“The Board finds that excluding content raising awareness of potential human-rights abuses, conflicts, or acts of terrorism from recommendations is not a necessary or proportionate restriction on freedom of expression, in view of the very high public interest in such content,” it said in its decision.

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The bipartisan attack on Palestine solidarity is higher than ever

BY MITCHELL PLITNICK 

DECEMBER 15, 2023  

MONDOWEISS

REP. ELISE STEFANIK QUESTIONING UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS IN CONGRESSIONAL HEARING ON ANTISEMITISM, DECEMBER 5, 2023. (PHOTO: SCREENSHOT FROM C-SPAN YOUTUBE CHANNEL)

The campaign to delegitimize and even illegalize any support for Palestinian rights has reached a new level of Orwellian thought policing. Any statement of support for the basic rights of Palestinians is now being defined as antisemitism, with often devastating consequences, and if recent events are any indication, pro-Israel forces are just getting started.

While the campaign is being led by Republicans who have repeatedly demonstrated their hatred for both Muslims and Jews, it is being enthusiastically supported by Democrats, especially the White House.

On December 6, in a scene that demonstrates the absurdity of American politics, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik mercilessly interrogated three university presidents to gauge whether they were sufficiently loyal to Israel. Stefanik employed the cynical tactic of presenting her questioning as protecting Jewish students on the campuses the three witnesses headed — Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania — from the antisemitism that she claims has swept their campuses.

What made the scene so absurd is that it was Stefanik holding the pitchfork against the three women she was trying to burn at the stake. Stefanik has espoused perhaps the most notorious of contemporary antisemitic conspiracy theories, the so-called Great Replacement Theory, which claims that Jews are bringing immigrants of color into the U.S. to displace white people. If she were not concerned about the political effects on her career, Stefanik would have been perfectly comfortable with the tiki-torch carrying neo-Nazis at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville six years ago.

Yet leading Democrats supported her witch hunt. That included the White House, which issued a statement after the hearing where the three university presidents were pilloried, that read, in part, “It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: Calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country.” It also included Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who said, “I’ve said many times, leaders have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity, and Liz Magill failed to meet that simple test.” Under this pressure, UPenn President Magill — who had been under intense pressure since she refused to cancel the “Palestine Writes” literature festival in September — finally gave in and stepped down as the university’s president.

Stefanik, in classic McCarthy-esque style, was trying to force the university presidents to condemn what she referred to as calls for the genocide of Jews by students supporting Palestinian rights. But the rhetoric she was referring to was nothing of the kind. She focused on the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and the term “intifada.”

The university presidents did themselves no favors by deciding not to contest the basic factual error in Stefanik’s questioning — that these phrases are not in any way genocidal, but refer to a vision of freedom in all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, a condition which obviously does not exist today; and, with “intifada,” refer to a call for resistance which need not necessarily mean armed resistance (to which Palestinians have a right under international law), and, in any case, is a call for Palestinians to struggle to attain the rights Israel denies them. In no way is it a call for genocide, but for liberation.

Instead, the three presidents talked about the “context” of calls to genocide, implicitly ceding the warped definitions that Stefanik was sticking them with. Still, that is a tactical error, hardly one that should cost anyone their job.

So far, only Magill has been forced out, but the pressure on one of the other two — Claudine Gay of Harvard — has been intense, although Harvard’s administration and faculty have supported her. Thus far, Sally Kornbluth of MIT has not faced similar pressures.

Still, Stefanik celebrated Magill’s ouster, stating “one down, two to go,” and was echoed by Donald Trump. The antisemitism and anti-Palestinian hate from these people is visible now and has been since they’ve been in the public eye. Yet these are the people Democrats, including the White House, are willing to be led by on the issue of antisemitism and free speech.
Attacking CAIR

But while Stefanik’s hearings grabbed the headlines, another controversy bubbled up which might have equally important effects in the long run. It stems from a speech given by the National Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group that has long been a target of right-wing smear campaigns.

In that speech, CAIR’s director, Nihad Awad, expressed his satisfaction at seeing Palestinians break free of the open-air prison that is the Gaza Strip. “The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on Oct. 7. And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not allowed to walk in.”

“And yes,” he also said, “the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense.”

These remarks were distributed without the broader context in which Awad had placed them in his actual speech. That bit of convenient distortion was done by the notorious Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a pro-Israel propaganda group that has a long history of misleading and decontextualized translations.

In another part of the speech, Awad said, “The hatred, the prejudice, the violence, the discrimination against Jews because of their faith or their life or their religious practices is a hateful mindset, behavior and action. We as human beings, as Muslims, as Palestinians, see it as evil the way it is, and [it] should be condemned because antisemitism is a real phenomenon, a real evil, and it has to be rejected and combated by all people regardless of their faith tradition, ideology, or those people who have no ideology. It is an attack on humanity and should be clearly condemned by all people.”

Unsurprisingly, these words were not included in the video that MEMRI circulated. And how could they be? The purpose of the video is to once again twist Palestinian yearning for the basic rights we take for granted into an irrational hatred of Jews, not because of dispossession or occupation, but because we are Jews.

Awad made two statements that cannot be tolerated by the contemporary Zionist narrative, whether from MEMRI or the White House. The first is that he expressed joy at the breaching of the Gaza barrier. It was not joy at the attack on civilians, as he made clear, stating that “Ukrainians, Palestinians and other occupied people have the right to defend themselves and escape occupation by just and legal means, but targeting civilians is never an acceptable means of doing so, which is why I have again and again condemned the violence against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7th and past Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, including suicide bombings, all the way back to the 1990s—just as I have condemned the decades of violence against Palestinian civilians.”

But Awad did express joy at seeing Palestinians entering that part of historic Palestine on the other side of Israel’s wall. That might displease Israel’s supporters, but it is a far cry from a call to genocide or support for Hamas’ brutality against civilians on October 7.

Awad also stated that Israel does not have the right to self-defense against the people it occupies. This is a plain statement of international law. To be clear, Israel certainly does have the right to protect its citizens from violence. But “self-defense” in international law refers to defending the country from outside invaders, a principle which does not apply to people under that country’s belligerent military occupation. Israel’s responsibility to protect its citizens includes a responsibility to protect those under its occupation. It can use force to do this, such as one sees with police or a national guard, but it cannot act against those people as it would an invading enemy state. I explored this point some months ago in a piece that drew heavily from the excellent work on the subject by Prof. Noura Erakat.

At this point, expecting Joe Biden or his aides to respect, or even know the principles of international law is futile. And their reaction to MEMRI’s deceptive video is fully in step with Biden’s repeated parroting of Israeli falsehoods around Gaza, even those that Israel itself has given up on trying to convince people of. But this will have other unfortunate effects.

While CAIR hardly had the kind of access to the White House or other parts of the U.S. government as AIPAC or other pro-Israel lobby and advocacy groups, it did have more such access than most Muslim American groups. That is going to change drastically as the White House has completely cut them off, which will impede access to Congress and other parts of the government.

Worse, one of the few positive aspects of Biden’s plan, revealed earlier this year, to combat antisemitism was that CAIR was one of the groups involved to make it an interfaith effort. This represented real progress in bringing Muslim groups into this discussion. Indeed, in a recent report on how Islamophobia influences U.S. policy toward Palestine that I authored with Prof. Sahar Aziz, such inclusion was a key demand. That will not happen now, and the potential destructiveness of the Biden plan has now grown.

Taken together with the witch hunt against free speech on campus that we saw in Congress, this attempt to discredit one of the country’s most important and influential Muslim groups is a significant step toward the criminalization of any support for Palestinians, let alone any public advocacy for their rights. As long as the United States remains — as it is likely to for the foreseeable future — the most important outside player in Israel and Palestine, this is a threat that must be confronted publicly, loudly, and with all the energy and resources we can muster.

Mitchell Plitnick

Mitchell Plitnick is the president of ReThinking Foreign Policy. He is the co-author, with Marc Lamont Hill, of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. Mitchell's previous positions include vice president at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Director of the US Office of B'Tselem, and Co-Director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

You can find him on Twitter @MJPlitnick.

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Shame on Israel for exploiting the Holocaust to justify genocide

My grandparents' story of surviving the Holocaust taught me what genocide is, and it is how I know to condemn what Israel is doing to Gaza right now. How dare Israel exploit my family's suffering to try to justify its genocide in Gaza.

BY SIG GIORDANO  

MONDOWEISS

DECEMBER 18, 2023 6
PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF ISRAEL, GILAD ERDAN, AT THE UN WEARING A YELLOW STAR. (PHOTO: SCREENSHOT FROM VIDEO ON THE TELEGRAPH YOUTUBE CHANNEL)


If my grandparents were alive today, this October would have marked the 80th anniversary of their meeting. In 1943, my grandparents, Isidor and Marianne, met in Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in what was Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. I was quite close to my grandfather, Isi, who outlived my grandmother. Among some of his things, he entrusted me with a yellow cloth “Jewish” star he was made to wear in the camp, with the word “Jude” on it.

At a United Nations (UN) meeting, on October 31, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s UN Ambassador, put on a Jewish star reminiscent of my grandfather’s. Addressing the UN Security Council, he said the reason he wore the star was to denounce their silence regarding the October 7 attack on Israel. Erdan compared this silence to the silence that allowed for the Holocaust to happen. In response to Erdan, Dani Dayan, the director of Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial museum, quickly called out this misuse of the star, arguing that Erdan was “disgrac[ing] the victims of the Holocaust as well as the state of Israel.”

Dayan was absolutely right to call attention to how offensive it was for Erdan to don the yellow star. Dayan’s reasons, however, are entirely wrong. To make his point, Dayan argued that the yellow star symbolizes the weakness of the Jewish people during the Holocaust, continuing a disturbing and false historical narrative.

Zionists have long sought to paint Holocaust victims as weak to make the case for the founding and then maintenance of the state of Israel. These moves began even before the Holocaust when some Zionists aligned themselves with the eugenic racial science of the day, arguing that Jews must purify their own race creating their own strong breed. Arthur Ruppin, a leading social scientist and head of the World Zionist Organization’s Palestine office in the early 20th century, promoted the settlement of Palestine as the answer to the dangerous results of “racial-mixing” for European Jews. He was not alone, as many Jewish intellectuals argued that forming the Zionist state would allow Jews to “regenerate their own bodies” which were degenerated by the conditions of both assimilation and oppression in Western and Eastern Europe, respectively.

Once Israel was founded, Holocaust victims were regularly treated as weak and as examples of the opposite of what the Zionist state represented, leading to poor treatment for those survivors who became Israeli citizens. As Dayan, himself reiterated, the Holocaust represents a cautionary tale about the weakness of Jews in the diaspora to be juxtaposed with the strength of Jews in the State of Israel.

Despite their disagreement, Israeli leaders like Erdan and Dayan regularly make use of the Holocaust to defend state violence against Palestinians. Unlike Erdan and Dayan, learning about the genocide against my ancestors has allowed me to understand that what is happening today in Palestine is genocide. To know a genocide is happening is painful in and of itself. To know a genocide is being carried out supposedly in one’s name (as a Jewish person) is extra painful. But, to know a genocide is being justified through an appropriation of my family’s suffering, is infuriating. I am furious. How dare the state of Israel insult my family’s history.

The horrors that my family endured are unimaginable to most. My grandmother and grandfather, teenagers when they met at the camp, were the only surviving members of their families. My grandfather was part of a resistance in the camp, hiding people who were on lists to be transported to Auschwitz. My grandfather literally saved my grandmother’s life. This is not a story of weakness. However, it is a story from which I have learned many lessons about the conditions that allow for genocide.

I remember being 8 or 9 years old, sitting at the kitchen table for breakfast while my mother cooked. The radio was on as it was every morning listening to 1010 WINS news, “You give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world.” In the headlines, a resistance group claimed responsibility for a bombing somewhere outside of the U.S. I asked my mom, ‘What is a resistance group?” She explained the idea of resistance by talking about the Holocaust and her father’s struggle to fight back. While not every person claiming to resist is automatically righteous, I realized when I was older that how one views resistance in any given situation is based on their vantage point. That may seem obvious, but in Western media, politics, and educational contexts, we regularly see an association made between resistance groups and terrorism which creates a taken-for-granted right and wrong side.

In the days after September 11, 2001, as a U.S. citizen living in the United States, I was reminded when I challenged the drive to invade Afghanistan, that I was either with “us” or “against us.” To me, the forced nationalism reminded me of the studies I had taken up during college about the Holocaust. The creation of the “Us vs. Them” mentality to protect Germany was a key part of bringing on board large segments of non-Jewish Germans to the fight against Jewish people.

Resistance takes place against those in a place of power. Also, oppression, by definition, is about being on the losing side of a power dynamic. Then, how is it that, Israel, a country with one of the most powerful militaries in the world, supported by the most powerful military and economic power in the world, the United States, has tried to paint itself as champion of an oppressed people who must fight against Palestinian resistance movements?

Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), published an opinion piece in Time magazine after the October 7 attack, arguing that there is no way to understand Hamas’ attack except as “hate” and “toxic intolerance in its purest form.” Instead of exceptionalizing Jewish experience so that the Holocaust becomes one example in thousands of years of Jewish hatred, what would it look like to pay attention to the real lessons we can learn from the horrors of the Holocaust? The lesson we need is not that Jewish people have always been and always will be hated. The lesson of the Holocaust is that those with economic and political power used nationalism and the idea of so-called inferior types of people being a threat to the nation-state to justify genocide. Many Jewish and non-Jewish people resisted as much as they could. The problem was not a weak resistance, the problem was the strength of nationalist, eugenic narratives.

The good news is that millions of Jewish people and others are undertaking critical study of the situation and pushing against the messages being brought to us by the most powerful Israeli and U.S. leaders. We are standing in solidarity with Palestinians who are fighting for their right to existence and self-determination. We see changes in public opinion polls, and the number of Jewish-led and supported actions against the current genocide is greater than ever before. Many are speaking out and saying loudly, Never Again means Never Again for Anyone.

Sig Giordano

Sig Giordano, is an anti-Zionist Jewish person and the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. They have been active with various Palestine solidarity efforts for over 20 years. They are an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Kennesaw State University, most recently working on a project focused on the relationship between Science and anti-Semitism.

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Poll: Nearly three quarters of young voters oppose Biden’s Gaza policy

A new poll found that nearly three quarters of voters aged 18-29 oppose the Biden administration’s Gaza policy.

BY MICHAEL ARRIA 

DECEMBER 19, 2023 

U.S PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN MEETING WITH ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU ON OCTOBER 18, 2023. (PHOTO: HAIM ZAH, GPO)

U.S. voters broadly disapprove of President Biden’s Gaza policy, according to a new poll. Young Americans are particularly critical, with nearly three quarters of those aged 18-29 saying they oppose the administration’s approach.

The data comes from a recent New York Times/Siena poll, which found that 33% of voters approve of Biden’s policy, while 57% disapprove. Roughly a third of those polled said Biden too supportive of Israel and slightly less than a third said it was too supportive of Palestinians. 39% said the current level of support for both sides was “about right.”

44% of Americans, including 59% of Democrats, support a ceasefire. 49% of Democrats say Israel is not seriously interested in a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The poll also indicates that young people’s opposition to Israeli policy transcends the current president. 46% of those aged 18-29 said they sympathize with the Palestinians, while just 27% said they sympathize with the Israelis.

This is yet another survey depicting a massive generation gap on the issue, as support for Israel grows with the age of those polled. Just 11% of voters over the age of 65 sympathize with the Palestinians, while 63% of them sympathize with the Israelis.

“I’d like him to show some compassion for the Palestinian families and the Israeli families that are receiving the main blow of it all in Gaza,” Temple University student Lyndsey Griswold told the New York Times. “This country has plenty of money to send to the civilians who are being actively harmed by this conflict.”

NYT political analyst Nate Cohn contextualizes some of the data in his newsletter and it explains why it’s another bad sign for Biden’s reelection chances.

“Overall, Mr. Trump is winning 21 percent of young Biden ’20 voters who sympathize more with Palestinians than Israel, while winning 12 percent of other young Biden ’20 voters,” writes Cohn. “In an even more striking sign of defections among his own supporters, Mr. Biden holds just a 64-24 lead among the young Biden ’20 voters who say Israel is intentionally killing civilians, compared with an 84-8 lead among the Biden ’20 voters who don’t think Israel is intentionally killing civilians.”

“It’s possible that the kinds of young voters opposed to Israel already opposed Mr. Biden back before the war,” he continues. “That can’t be ruled out. But it’s still evidence that opposition to the war itself is probably contributing to Mr. Biden’s unusual weakness among young voters.”

The Siena survey was released shortly after a Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) poll that half of U.S. voters aged 18 to 24 support Hamas over Israel. The findings of that study were immediately denounced by right-wing outlets and politicians. “These individuals siding with evil over democracy should be a wake-up call,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) told The New York Post. “Ideological rot among young Americans, driven by woke values and victim culture, has gotten so bad they’ve convinced themselves to sympathize with actual terrorists who hate America.”

Majority of registered voters disapprove of Biden's handling of Israel-Palestinian conflict: Poll

The poll showed that 57% of voters were dissatisfied with Biden's approach to the war, while and 33% supported it.

By Charlotte Hazard

Published: December 19, 2023 

Anew poll shows a majority of registered voters disapprove of President Joe Biden's handling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The New York Times-Siena College poll published Tuesday found 57% of those surveyed disapprove, while 33% approve.

The polls also found 46% of respondents trust 2024 GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump would "do a better job," compared to 38% for Biden. 

The conflict started when the Palestinian-affiliated militant group Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, which resulted in Israel declaring war on Hamas. 

Younger Democrats appear to be more pro-Palestinian that pro-Israel.

In addition, there has been a more general concern about the number of civilian casualties in the war and a push to get hostages in Gaza, where the fighting is occurring, to safety.

Critics of the Biden administration's foreign policy on the matter say the president could do more publicly to get the Israel government to limit casualties, or risk losing international support.

Last week, Biden administration staffers called for a ceasefire in Gaza during a vigil outside of the White House.

The poll surveyed 1,016 registered voters from Dec. 10-14. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3.5%.

URANUS HAS RINGS

The newly enhanced versions of imagery depicting Uranus were originally obtained earlier this year by the James Webb Space Telescope

 

(Credit: NASA/ESA/JWST).