Black Tech Layoffs Brought To Light In Letter Penned By Rep. Barbara Lee And CBC
Members
Tomas Kassahun
Wed, December 27, 2023
Rep. Barbara Lee | Photo: Paul Morigi via Getty Images
Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee is working with several Congressional Black Caucus members to speak up for Black tech employees who are being disproportionately laid off. In a letter to Julie Su, the acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor, Lee and her colleagues said they’re concerned about the high rate of Black employees losing their jobs in the tech industry.
“We write to express our concerns with recent reports highlighting the impacts of widespread layoffs within the tech industry and its disproportionate impacts on the African American community and women,” the advocates wrote, according to The Grio. “Tech companies who previously agreed to address bias and discrimination and create greater opportunities in the workforce are now quietly defunding diversity pledges.”
In 2015, the Congressional Black Caucus Diversity Task Force launched the CBC Tech 2020 Initiative, aiming to increase diversity in the tech industry.
“Technology has revolutionized our lives and continues to be a driving force in our economy. African Americans must be included in every aspect of this technological revolution — not just as end users or as a market share,” Lee said in a statement at the time.
The California Congresswoman now continues to demand for the tech industry to be held accountable.
“We’ve been fighting for justice and for economic parity and security as part of the mission of the CBC,” Lee told The Grio. “And so when we established Tech 2020, it was about equity and inclusion.”
According to the letter from the CBC, over 240,000 tech workers have been laid off since the start of 2023. That’s a 50% increase from the previous year. A majority of the employees that have been let go in 2023 are women and minorities, Lee said.
“Now with all the Supreme Court decisions and with all of the backsliding, especially by Republicans, it’s very important that we be very assertive in our fight for equity and justice within the private sector and public sector,” Lee said to The Grio.
The CBC is still waiting for a response from the Department of Labor.
“The letter was sent to the secretary of labor, and it’s the federal government’s job to conduct oversight and to answer these questions,” Lee said.
She continued, “I would hope that the tech companies would welcome this so that they can get their act together and make sure that they don’t disproportionately lay off African-Americans, which is occurring right now.”
Higher Education Wasn’t the Only Target of the Anti-Affirmative Action Movement
Brandon Tensley
Thu, December 28, 2023 at 5:00 AM MST·10 min read
The moment the U.S. Supreme Court wiped out affirmative action in higher education in June, civil rights advocates warned that the effects could stretch beyond colleges and universities.
Just months later, we can see that they were right.
A venture capital firm run by women of color is in a legal fight to protect the firm’s contest that grants $20,000 to Black women business owners. And a maternal health program based in San Francisco that gives pregnant Black and Pacific Islander residents $1,000 monthly stipends is being sued.
For more than half a century, affirmative action helped to remedy the country’s long and ongoing history of discrimination against marginalized groups, and in particular Black Americans. But it appears that the landmark ruling has become an opening for conservative actors to dismantle other efforts to level the playing field, and the stakes remain high.
Capital B spoke with several experts about the implications of the high court’s decision to turn back the clock for everything from voting rights to congressional funding opportunities for Black farmers to diversity efforts within police departments.
A vital health program becomes a target
When the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision came down, it was clear that it could affect the diversity of the health care workforce pipeline.
Immediately, health care experts raised concerns about what could happen at medical schools across the country — how shrinking the diversity of the student body could lead to a decrease in the number of Black doctors. Currently, just under 6% of physicians are Black, a disproportionately low percentage.
Read more: What’s Behind Black Women’s High Risk For Strokes
Among advocates, the argument for a diverse health care workforce is that it will reduce the number of health disparities that end Black lives early. There’s a growing body of research that shows that having a doctor who looks like their patients can positively influence outcomes.
Notably, some of the conservative pushback against affirmative action has broadened beyond medical school admissions and health care training to city programs designed to address persistent racial disparities in health outcomes.
San Francisco’s Abundant Birth Project is facing a lawsuit intended to shut it down. It’s given 150 pregnant Black and Pacific Islander residents $1,000 monthly stipends to support families who need help with things such as gas and food.
The pioneering program is intended to combat grim realities: Black folks are three to four times more likely than white folks to die from childbirth-related causes, and per infant mortality data, Black babies are two times more likely than white babies to die. In short, the program offers services to the most vulnerable. But the lawsuit claims that it’s racially discriminatory.
It’s unclear how much this argument will hold up in court, even with the June decision. The stakes are different when we’re talking about college admissions versus death or severe health complications.
Voting rights and the assault on democracy
Since the 2020 census, Louisiana, like a number of other states, has been involved in a legal dispute over a district map that civil rights groups say violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it dilutes the political power of Black voters. Louisiana is 33% Black, but Black voters can pick their candidate of choice in just one of the state’s six congressional districts.
In court documents filed only a week after the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action, Louisiana Republicans signaled their intent to use the decision to argue that considering race in map drawing ought to be illegal — a claim that could be embraced elsewhere in the U.S. and undermine the primary legislative achievement of the Civil Rights Movement.
Read more: A New Report Card Evaluates Voting Maps in Every State. How Did Your State Do?
Attorneys for the Republicans suggested that Section 2, which allows litigation in order to ensure equality at the ballot box, “is no longer necessary” because racial discrimination in voting isn’t the sort of menace today that it was when the Voting Rights Act was signed into law.
This was an extension of some of the logic advanced in the affirmative action case. The court “made clear that as statutes requiring race-based classification achieve their intended ends, they will necessarily become obsolete,” the attorneys insisted.
Such scheming exemplifies why advocates are concerned about the state of voting rights, even with victories such as the Supreme Court’s June decision that required Alabama to add a second majority-Black congressional district.
As Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, an independent organization focusing on political engagement, told Capital B earlier this year, “The assault on democracy is in full swing.”
Is environmental justice an outlier?
Advocates cautiously rejoiced when the Biden administration announced that climate and environmental issues would be a top policy priority. They had seen it before: Since the Carter administration in the 1970s and ’80s, every Democratic president has instituted environmental policies only for a conservative leader to come along and roll them back or ignore them.
Read more: Moving South, Black Americans Are Weathering Climate Change
Still, when the current administration announced its Justice40 program — a plan to ensure that at least 40% of federal investments related to climate adaptation and infrastructure would be delivered to “disadvantaged” communities — the support was loud and optimistic.
Then, however, the administration announced that it wouldn’t include race in its metrics for determining what a “disadvantaged” community is, despite the fact that race is the most reliable determinant of environmental and climate injustices. Seemingly every environmental justice group in the country released a statement against this decision, decrying it as another plain example of environmental racism.
Yet after this year’s affirmative action decision, it appears as if the administration knew precisely what it was doing. Because climate and environmental policies don’t mention race, they’ve avoided legal challenges from a Supreme Court that leans conservative.
But this doesn’t mean that everything’s fine. Since last year, the court has issued rulings that have defanged the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. And while the administration’s “colorblind” approach has, so far, staved off the total disruption of its climate goals, this strategy will make climate change adaptation less effective, more costly, and slower.
Black farmers remain on high alert
Black farmers fear that the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision might further diminish opportunities for them to receive congressional funding that could help them. They’ve faced discrimination at the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture before.
Consider the controversy over the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It created a $4 billion debt relief program for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, including Black, Native American, Latino, and Asian communities.
Read more: Resources for Black Families Fighting for Control of Their Land
But the program was quickly shut down. A judge issued a restraining order in response to a class-action lawsuit brought by white farmers who alleged that the program discriminated against them. The Inflation Reduction Act replaced the program with assistance for a broader group of “distressed borrowers.”
John Boyd, the founder of the National Black Farmers Association, told Capital B that this change “set a trap for affirmative action,” and will give conservative groups ammunition to sue or stop race-based programs — maneuvering that will disproportionately disadvantage Black farmers, who feel ignored by the Biden administration. Farmers are facing foreclosure and economic hardship because they can’t get access to government resources.
“While the grass is growing, the cows are starving,” Boyd said. “I’m disappointed in the president [and] in this administration for not keeping the issue where it should be, which is front and center. There’s no dialogue from the White House, and we haven’t received a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer [about whether we’ll be able] to meet.”
Harvey Reed, an agricultural consultant and the founder of the Louisiana Association of Cooperatives, said that he isn’t optimistic that the USDA or its agencies will do anything to move the needle. With the gutting of affirmative action, addressing historical injustices within the agency might not be a priority for the administration.
“For 90 years, the USDA’s Farm Service Agency has made promise after promise that it will compensate Black farmers, but as of yet, nothing has happened,” Reed said. “The secretary of agriculture has had 12 years or more — eight under Obama and 11 under Biden — and has not done anything.”
Tammy Gray-Steele, the CEO and founder of the National Women in Agriculture Association, told Capital B that she fears that the affirmative action decision will only intensify the challenges plaguing Black women, whose concerns the USDA and the White House overlooked until recently.
“I’m just hoping that they get new, younger people at the table who are honest and have some integrity really on behalf of Black farmers,” she said.
Keeping an eye on police department diversity
The Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision may have paved the way for government-funded agencies, including police departments, to ignore applications from racial and ethnic minorities and women.
The criminal justice system disproportionately affects Black and brown communities. And yet, those who investigate criminal activity are largely white. This disparity can lead to cultural misunderstandings, which can, in turn, derail investigations.
Read more: What Police Say Vs. What They Do on Tape
“Without that [affirmative action], we’re hopeful that people will do the right thing, but that [relying on agencies to voluntarily hire people of color] hasn’t always been to the advantage of minority individuals,” Rodney Bryant, the national president of the National Organization for Black Law Enforcement Executives, or NOBLE, told Capital B.
When President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925 in 1961, the order opened up job opportunities for people of color.
Affirmative action was later expanded to include anti-sex discrimination policies.
“The greatest beneficiary of affirmative action has been women. In law enforcement, they’re the minority. This is one of the areas we’ve been working very aggressively to [improve],” Bryant explained, referring to the 30×30 Initiative, a coalition of law enforcement professionals attempting to have women make up 30% of law enforcement staff by 2030.
He noted that, even with these kinds of initiatives, there’s no guarantee that agencies will proactively diversify their staff. And that’s concerning.
“We know that when you have a diverse agency, you function better in law enforcement or in corporate America. You function better because those people bring a level of value, which is a benefit to your agency or to the community you serve,” Bryant said.
The fallout for Black businesses
The Fearless Fund — whose founders say that it’s the first of its kind “built by women of color, for women of color” — has been in a legal battle since August.
A group run by Edward Blum, the conservative activist who’s been crusading against affirmative action for decades, filed a lawsuit against the venture capitalist firm. Blum, who brought the case that ended colleges’ use of race-conscious admissions policies, targeted the Fearless Fund’s contest that awards $20,000 to Black women business owners.
Read more: Texas’ College DEI Ban Is the Latest to ‘Turn Back the Clock on Racial Equality
Not only do companies led by Black women usually receive less than 1% of all venture capital funding, but in 2022, venture capital for Black entrepreneurs plunged by 45%, according to data. Yet conservative actors are seeking to quash programs that confront racial inequality.
The Fearless Fund’s contest, in Blum’s mind, violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was designed during the Reconstruction era to establish equal citizenship rights for newly emancipated people of African descent.
A federal appeals court in October temporarily paused the Atlanta-based firm’s program, saying that it’s “racially discriminatory.” The civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump has since filed an appeal on behalf of the firm. Oral arguments are scheduled to begin in January.
Blum’s legal machinations shine a light on a growing conservative pattern of weaponizing social justice-oriented tools against efforts to nourish racial equality in the private sector, The Washington Post reported in November.
Arian Simone, one of the Fearless Fund’s founding partners, has made plain the importance of this case.
“In the event we were to lose, what is at stake is anything that is race-based,” she said in a recent video. “If we win, we win — we are winning for everybody. But if we lose, then everybody’s affected by our loss. Everybody loses.”
Capital B staff writers Margo Snipe, Adam Mahoney, Aallyah Wright, and Christina Carrega contributed to this report.
The post Higher Education Wasn’t the Only Target of the Anti-Affirmative Action Movement appeared first on Capital B News.
WAR IS ECOCIDE
Takeaways from AP investigation into Russia's cover-up of deaths caused by dam explosion in Ukraine
SAMYA KULLAB and ILLIA NOVIKOV
Wed, December 27, 2023
Houses are seen underwater in the flooded town of Oleshky, Ukraine, June 10, 2023. An AP investigation has found that Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war in Ukraine - the flooding that followed the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)More
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war in Ukraine — the flooding that followed the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region.
The AP's reporting focused on Oleshky, one town in the vast area flooded by the dam. Health workers and others who were in Oleshky told The Associated Press that Russian authorities hid the true number of dead by taking control of the issuance of death certificates, immediately removing bodies not claimed by family, and preventing local health workers and volunteers from dealing with the dead, threatening them when they defied orders. Still afraid, many Oleshky residents and health workers declined to speak, fearing reprisal. The AP’s investigation is based on the accounts of those who did, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity or on condition only their first names be used, fearing reprisal from Russia on family members still in occupied territory.
Here are the key takeaways from the investigation:
HUNDREDS DEAD
In the critical first hours after the dam collapse on June 6, occupation authorities downplayed the consequences, leading many Oleshky residents to believe they would not be affected. This later contributed to the high death toll.
Russia said 59 people drowned in the territory it controls. The AP investigation found the number is at least in the hundreds in Oleshky alone, among the most populous in flood affected areas with around 16,000 residents at the time, according to Ukrainian officials.
Health workers said they believe 200-300 people died in the town. Many are still missing, their bodies likely still trapped in homes.
A volunteer, who feared reprisal and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she, her husband and two neighbors picked up at least 100 bodies during the floods. These were taken to the central cemetery in Oleshky and buried in graves 1 meter (3 feet) deep. The volunteer was later threatened by Russian occupation authorities and forbidden from collecting bodies.
Svitlana, a nurse at the Oleshky District Multidisciplinary Hospital, the city’s main primary health center, said she saw the flood waters rise toward her home the afternoon of June 6 as she was walking her dog. By the next morning, two-floor homes would be inundated, its residents trapped on the roof.
Chaos ensued as volunteers began rescuing people using their own resources. For the first three days, occupation authorities were nowhere to be seen, local residents, volunteers and health workers said. Many sought help from health workers in the hospital where Svitlana worked, which by that time had become a refuge for those forced out from flooded areas.
The dead began appearing. Bloated bodies were seen floating. As waters receded allowing residents to check on relatives, more were found trapped in the mud under collapsed homes.
CONTROL OVER CERTIFICATES
Health workers said occupation authorities returned around June 9, three days after the flooding. They came with strict orders prohibiting doctors in the hospital from issuing death certificates for drowning victims — but not for those who died of natural causes.
This was a departure from protocol followed by doctors since Oleshky was occupied by Russian forces in March 2022. Doctors were permitted to issue death certificates, and did so in Russian and secretly in Ukrainian to keep Kyiv’s records up to date.
By prohibiting doctors from issuing death certificates for the drowned, occupation authorities essentially took away doctors’ authority and ability to document the number of dead. Svitlana, who oversaw record-keeping for the drowned, said Russian police verbally issued the order, and did not provide an official written statement.
Police came to the hospital daily to copy the hospital's death certificates, making sure none were for drowning victims.
Those with dead relatives were told to go to forensic centers in other districts, where doctors selected by occupation authorities were responsible for signing death certificates. The bodies could not be buried without the document.
Residents and health workers were told to call police if they saw a dead body. Trucks belonging to the Russian state emergency service arrived to collect them and take them to the forensic centers. Those with no one to claim them were never seen again.
MASS GRAVES
Bodies were hurriedly buried in mass graves in the first days of the floods, residents and health workers said. The Associated Press was able to confirm the location of at least one located in the yard of the Orthodox Pokrovska Church in the center of Oleshky, and one man buried there, Yurii Bilyi, a TV repairman.
Bilyi was recognized by a municipal worker who dug his grave and later told Svitlana. Bilyi’s burial was recounted to his daughter, Anastasiia Bila, now in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. Her uncle told her the grave was doused with chlorine and a priest said a prayer.
It's unknown how many bodies were buried with Bilyi. Bila said her uncle did not offer a precise number. He is now living under occupation and did not respond to questions from the AP.
While several people interviewed referred to more mass graves than the one where Bila’s father was buried, the AP was unable to determine the precise number of such graves or how many people were buried in them.
Svitlana, the nurse, said the evidence is still hidden in Oleshky: documents detailing the dead, plots where they are buried, photos, the death certificates collected in secret.
AP: Russian occupation authorities deliberately undercounted victims of Kakhovka dam disaster
Dinara Khalilova, The Kyiv Independent news desk
Thu, December 28, 2023
Moscow-installed illegal administration in the Russian-occupied part of Kherson Oblast "vastly and deliberately" undercounted the victims of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant's destruction in June, an investigation by the Associated Press (AP) revealed.
Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka Dam on June 6 triggered one of the largest man-made environmental disasters in Ukraine's history. The southern Kherson Oblast has suffered catastrophic floods and a large-scale humanitarian crisis.
According to the United Nations' report, 29 people died as a result of the dam's destruction, and 28 were injured on the Ukrainian-controlled territory as of July 10.
While Russia has claimed that 59 people died in floods caused by the dam explosion in the territory it controls, the AP investigation discovered that in the Russian-occupied Oleshky alone, the number is at least in the hundreds.
The AP journalists talked to medical workers who kept records of the dead in Oleshky, a volunteer who buried the bodies, and Ukrainian informants who provided intelligence from the area to the Ukrainian Security Service as well as other residents, rescue volunteers, and recent escapees from the occupied area.
According to their accounts, Russian occupation authorities took control of issuing death certificates, promptly removing bodies that were not claimed by relatives, and preventing local medical workers and volunteers from dealing with the dead, threatening them when they did not follow orders.
Read also: ‘They are destroying us.’ People plea to escape flooded Russian-occupied areas
AP also found out that, following the disaster, mass graves were dug up in the Russian-occupied territory, and unidentified bodies were taken away to be never seen again.
"The scale of this tragedy, not just Russia, but even Ukraine doesn't realize," a nurse who initially supervised the process of collecting death certificates and later fled to Ukrainian-controlled territory told AP. "It's a huge tragedy."
While Russia has denied responsibility for the dam's explosion, its military has occupied the Kakhovka plant since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Intercepted communications from the night of the disaster further show that the Russians had planned "escape points" and were waiting on a "command" from their superiors.
According to the UN's report published on Oct. 17, Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka dam has caused almost $14 billion in damages to Ukraine.
Read also: Ukraine’s south threatened with long-term economic, agricultural decline after Kakhovka dam destruction
AP concludes at least hundreds died in floods after Ukraine dam collapse, far more than Russia said
SAMYA KULLAB and ILLIA NOVIKOV
Updated Thu, December 28, 2023
Water flows over the collapsed Kakhovka Dam in Nova Kakhovka, in Russian-occupied Ukraine, June 7, 2023. An AP investigation has found that Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war in Ukraine - the flooding that followed the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region. (AP Photo, File)
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine (AP) — They recognized the TV repairman.
The residents of Oleshky in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine could not identify many of those they buried after a catastrophic dam collapse in June sent water coursing through their homes and shattered their lives. The bodies were too bloated and discolored, volunteer rescuers and health workers said. They described seeing faces that resembled rubber masks, frozen in that last frenzied gasp for air. But to those secretly keeping count of the drowned, Yurii Bilyi was no stranger.
The cheerful 56-year-old was a town fixture. He had serviced many homes and spent his days working from a shop just across the street from the churchyard where he was buried, in a hurriedly dug mass grave, The Associated Press has learned.
Anastasiia Bila, his daughter, remembers his last words clearly over the unstable phone connection. “Nastya,” he affectionately called her, hoping to soothe her anxieties as flood waters rose quickly, inundating 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), submerging entire towns and villages along the banks of the Dnipro River, the majority in Russian-occupied areas. “I’ve seen worse under occupation.”
Over six months since the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region, an AP investigation has found Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war. Russian authorities took control of the issuance of death certificates, immediately removing bodies not claimed by family, and preventing local health workers and volunteers from dealing with the dead, threatening them when they defied orders.
“The scale of this tragedy, not just Russia, but even Ukraine doesn’t realize,” said Svitlana, a nurse who initially oversaw the process of collecting death certificates and later escaped to Ukrainian-controlled territory. “It’s a huge tragedy."
Russia, which didn't respond to questions for this article, has said 59 people drowned in the territory it controls, roughly 408 square kilometers (160 square miles) of flooded areas. But in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky alone, which Ukrainian military officials estimate had a population of 16,000 at the time of the flooding, the number is at least in the hundreds. An exact figure for the dead — in Oleshky, the occupied area's most populous town before the war, and beyond — may never be known, even if Ukrainian forces retake the territory and are able to investigate on the ground.
The AP spoke to three health workers who kept records of the dead in Oleshky, one volunteer who buried bodies and said she was later threatened by Russian police, and two Ukrainian informants passing intelligence from the area to the Ukrainian security service. According to their accounts, mass graves were dug, and unidentified bodies were taken away and never seen again.
Nearly a dozen interviews were conducted with other residents, rescue volunteers and recent escapees from the area. The AP also gained access to a closed Telegram chat group of 3,000 Oleshky residents who posted about bodies lying on the streets, bodies collected by police and the many missing.
Most spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity or, like Svitlana, on condition only their first names be used, fearing reprisal from Russia on family members still in occupied territory.
Together, these accounts reveal a calculated attempt by Russian authorities to cover up the true cost of the dam collapse, which the AP has found was likely caused by Moscow. Residents of Oleshky fear their enduring traumas risk being forgotten as the war grinds on, and their beloved once idyllic home is gradually depopulated.
A TOWN ABANDONED
The dam burst in the early hours of June 6, causing extensive flooding along the lower Dnipro River, submerging entire communities across the Ukraine-controlled right and Russian-occupied left banks in a matter of hours.
At first, the Russian-appointed administration in Kherson told residents not to be alarmed. In a post on its official Telegram channel, it stressed the “situation is not critical.” So most went about their normal day — walking dogs, going to work, staying at home. Choices that would later prove fatal.
By the afternoon the water levels were rising quickly, inundating two-story homes as the powerful current swept everything away. The elderly struggled to climb up to roofs, people clung to their chimneys waiting to be saved by local rescue crews, most of them civilians who owned boats.
For the first three days of the floods occupation authorities were nowhere to be found, locals said, having apparently fled, despite initially reassuring residents. Conspicuously absent were police and prosecutors, both Russian-appointed officials authorized to deal with the deceased.
Bodies were piling up and decaying in the summer heat, their stench wafted in the air. Wailing relatives approached the town’s medical workers, not knowing where to take the dead.
“A lot of people drowned,” said Svitlana, the head nurse at the Oleshky District Multidisciplinary Hospital, the city’s main primary health center, which later transformed into a shelter for people forced out of their homes. The putrefaction of flesh caused many corpses to inflate. “People were floating around the city like balloons.”
They needed to be buried. “We took the responsibility,” the nurse said.
They had the authority to issue death certificates both under Ukrainian law and Russian rule. The health center functioned as a main hospital for Oleshky residents after Russia occupied the town in March 2022, soon after Russia invaded Ukraine. Health workers continued to receive salaries from Ukraine, deposited electronically into their bank accounts, a crucial link tying them to their homeland as the occupation’s draconian laws began to transform everything else before their eyes.
Russian rubles replaced Ukrainian hryvnias in the market. Some residents accepted Russian passports to make life under occupation easier. Keeping record of the Ukrainian dead, largely caused by shelling before the floods, became a last vestige of Ukrainian control.
For health workers in the hospital, it was a matter of national necessity. After occupation authorities forbade the issuance of death certificates in the Ukrainian language on Jan. 1, health workers continued to do so in secret to ensure the Ukrainian medical database was up to date in Kyiv, the capital. Residents were given two certificates, one to satisfy their new occupiers, and the other to keep moored to their homeland. Health workers told residents to hide the latter.
The same procedure was followed immediately after the dam collapse.
In total, around 15 death certificates were electronically sent during the first week after the flood to Svitlana Serdiukova, the health facility’s medical director in exile, who was keeping track of the registry remotely in government-controlled Ukraine. Svitlana, the nurse in Oleshky, was in direct contact with her during this time.
The cause of death for all 15 was asphyxia by drowning.
RUSSIA CERTIFIES THE DEAD
Everything came to a halt on June 12.
The Russian state emergency rescue service workers were back in Oleshky by the afternoon of June 9, and three days later, they began reasserting control.
They brought large trucks and road-clearing equipment and offered to evacuate people first to Radensk, in Kherson region, and from there relocate them to Chelyabinsk and Tula in Russia. The residents refused to be taken that far, asking only to be taken to a dry patch in Oleshky.
They were refused. Many stayed put.
Russian authorities had strict orders for the hospital: Doctors were now forbidden from issuing death certificates for flood victims. They were still permitted to issue certificates for other causes of death, however. The new rule was issued verbally, said Svitlana and Yelena, a fellow nurse at the hospital.
From that moment on, they said, flood victims would have to be referred for autopsies in facilities elsewhere in Kherson region, in Kalanchak, Skadovsk, and Henichesk, where doctors approved by occupation authorities would be in charge of issuing the certificates after conducting forensic examinations. Relatives could not bury their family members without the crucial document.
Svitlana said she pressed the police for an official order proving the old policy in place since March had changed. They didn’t have it, and responded to her queries with threats, she said.
“They said: ‘You will suffer the consequences for doing this.’ I said, ‘Alright, I am ready, and the doctor, too.’”
The order deprived doctors of responsibility for flood victims. It also took away their ability to keep records of the dead for Kyiv.
Serdiukova’s record-keeping could go no further. The last Ukrainian death certificate she received was on June 14.
The police came to the hospital daily to make copies of death certificates issued by doctors, to ensure the rules were being obeyed. “You need to understand under what circumstances we worked there — under the FSB, police, prosecutors,” Svitlana said, using the acronym for the Russian security service that is the main successor agency of the Soviet-era KGB.
The hospital referred just under 50 bodies to the new autopsy centers, but this doesn’t reflect the total dead. Residents were given specific numbers to call police who dispatched workers to collect discovered bodies, circumventing the hospital altogether. Family members were charged 10,000 rubles (equivalent to about $108) as a service fee, a hefty sum for many under occupation. Those who couldn’t afford that begged doctors to write a different cause of death, such as “heart attack,” so they could be buried quickly, both nurses said.
Bodies without relatives to claim them were never seen again.
The rescue service also patrolled Oleshky’s streets to collect the dead.
On June 15, the hospital began giving vaccines against hepatitis A, dysentery and typhoid amid rising concerns of water-borne diseases. A worker from the town’s municipal “Pobut” service, responsible for cleaning streets, arrived visibly inebriated, Svitlana said.
Svitlana told him to return when he was sober. But the man, in his early 40s, replied, he could not but drink after what he had seen. He had been ordered to dig out the dead from under their collapsed homes, he said, and bury them in mass graves.
He recognized some.
“The TV guy has drowned, the ginger, Yura,” he told her, referring to his hair color, according to Svitlana’s account.
She knew him, too.
A FATHER BURIED
Anastasiia Bila, Yurii’s daughter, was in Lviv in western Ukraine, where she had fled before the invasion, when she spoke to her father for the last time. It was on June 6, at around 3 p.m.
He had refused to evacuate their family home. He had two German shepherds he could not abandon.
The connection was intermittent. She urged him to go to the second floor of the house if the water levels continued to rise. She tried to call again a half-hour later, but there was no reception.
She made a plea on the private Telegram chat: “Bilyi Yurii Anatoliyovych, does not get in touch for a second day," she wrote, adding his last known location, his home’s address: Dniprovska, 85. “Please help me find my father, maybe someone saw or knows his whereabouts, any information.”
On Sunday, five days later, Bila’s uncle was able to check on his brother by hiring a boat with his wife and son. They found Bilyi’s lifeless body. He told Anastasiia she could stop looking for her father.
The body was buried in a mass grave in the yard of the Orthodox Pokrovska Church in the center of Oleshky. It was not possible to bury him and others anywhere else, as most places were still flooded, Bila said.
Bilyi’s shop has been on the same street.
The grave was doused with chlorine, Bila’s uncle, who witnessed the burial, recounted to her, she said. The priest prayed over the dead.
Pobut workers, made up of local Ukrainians and acting on orders of occupation authorities, were responsible for collecting and burying the dead, according to health workers. They dug on a daily basis between June 10-20. The bodies were buried without coffins, not even bags to cover them.
As the unit was acting on orders of occupation authorities, the decision to bury people in mass graves likely came from those authorities, health workers said.
“The first bodies were buried in the city center (church), as 90% of the city was underwater,” said Bila. “Those bodies were not processed by a hospital, no autopsy or time of death, they were buried right away,” she said.
Serdiukova later confirmed Bilyi was not in Ukraine's registry. Officially he is considered a missing person.
The exact number of bodies in the grave where Bilyi was buried is not known. Bila said her uncle did not tell her a precise number. He is living under occupation and did not respond to questions from the AP.
But the hospital workers the AP interviewed estimate the number to be between 10 to 20. For a time, they tried to document who was buried where. They asked relatives to fill out forms detailing where bodies were found, how they were clothed, and later, which plot of which grave they were buried in.
“The bodies were collected and buried in a mass grave to ensure they don’t start decomposing on city streets. After de-occupation there will be an exhumation. That’s when we’ll be able to investigate everything,” said Serdiukova.
With the return of the Russian state emergency service, the process became more orderly. They arrived with trucks to carry bodies and a special rescue team.
The fate of unidentified bodies, those without relatives to claim them, carted away by the Russian rescue service is also not known. Yelena, the nurse, approached a truck driver and asked him what would happen to them.
He told her casually that the bodies with no relatives were buried in a mass grave, she said. Without caskets, in black bags.
While several people interviewed referred to more mass graves than the one where Bila’s father was buried, the AP was unable to determine the precise number of such graves or how many people were buried in them.
Bila considers herself lucky. At least her father is buried in the town he loved and refused to leave, even under the threat of death.
Like many, she’s waiting for Ukraine to liberate the town. Then, she said, “I’ll be able to re-bury him in a proper cemetery.”
THE THREAT
The volunteer was not afraid of dead bodies. When the floods inundated her neighborhood in Oleshky, the sight of the floating dead did not stir her like it did the others. She had witnessed her best friend’s death when she was a teenager.
“It’s the living that frighten me,” she said.
On June 7, she, her husband and three neighbors went about evacuating trapped residents inside homes. By June 9, she witnessed dead bodies for the first time. They were “bloated and partially decomposed. They were floating. I often couldn’t recognize a person,” she said.
Some were trapped under the sticky mud and had to be dug out. Those she knew, around 20, she took to the hospital with the hopes that relatives could claim the bodies. The rest were taken to another church in the city, blessed by a priest and buried in the town’s cemetery. She said she collected “more than 100” dead.
The health workers estimate 200 to 300 people drowned in Oleshky. “I’m even afraid to say it out loud,” said Yelena.
Many were older, unable to physically leave their homes or climb up to the roof, according to the accounts of rescue volunteers, residents who reported relatives dead, and health workers.
“I buried them with my own hands,” the volunteer said. There was no money to hire diggers, she said, but people volunteered to do it for free. The graves were dug shallow, 1 meter (3 feet) deep. Any more and they would flood. The volunteer said she used bedsheets to cover them. When those ran out, she said, she found plastic film.
Pits were dug for each person, but sometimes for up to three, the volunteer said.
But this work was put to a stop when the Russian rescue service returned. Occupation authorities prohibited volunteers from collecting or burying the dead, telling them this was a job for the police only.
Russian emergency service trucks arrived. Workers in white bodysuits put the dead in black bags, witnesses said. One driver told the volunteer they were destined for autopsies in Henichesk, an occupied port city about three hours away.
Some days later, several police officers came to the volunteer’s home. She said they told her that an informant had told them she had been involved in burying people without death certificates. They interrogated her about why she had transported bodies, and how many she had recovered. She explained there was no other option, the bodies were smelling.
They reprimanded her, telling her she did not have the right to collect bodies and eventually forced her to sign a document promising she would stop collecting the dead because she didn’t have the right qualifications, she said.
“They told me that if I continue doing so they’ll ‘cage me’, That’s when I stopped,” the volunteer said. “I was scared for myself and my family.”
The police visited her home almost every day after that, she said.
“They had video journalists coming here to show how Russia helps here. They wanted to conceal the consequences of the dam explosion, so that people don’t talk about how many people suffered and how many needed help. They wanted to hide it,” she said. “That’s why they prohibited us.”
WORLDS APART
The evidence is still hidden in Oleshky: documents detailing the dead, plots where they are buried, photos, the death certificates collected in secret.
“I hid all these papers behind closed doors so that no one knew,” Svitlana said. “With time everything is forgotten, some people might leave, their life will change, but with those papers — no one will forget. It was important to save them.”
She is waiting for Ukraine to liberate the territory so the truth can come to light. She cleared her phone and left documents behind to keep them out of the hands of Russians who routinely stop Ukrainians leaving occupied areas and conduct thorough security checks.
Residents, speaking to the AP after they returned to Ukraine-controlled territory, said most of the town is no longer habitable. Many remain missing since the floods, while battles inch closer. Ukrainian forces are reportedly advancing near the Krynky area, which lies 40 kilometers (24 miles) from Oleshky. There was a pause during the flooding from shelling, which resumed with ferocity, residents say.
Both Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for bringing down the dam, but analysts agree that Russia had motive. The dam’s collapse occurred right as Ukraine launched what would develop into a disappointing counteroffensive. The flooding altered the geography of the Dnipro River, complicating plans set out by Ukrainian military leaders.
Now, two-thirds of Oleshky is gone, entire districts and homes are destroyed, according to the accounts of half a dozen residents who left.
“There are two Ukraines,” said Svitlana. “One is at war, in tragedy, many people are left homeless. And the other is living life well and flourishes.”
In Oleshky, divisions between the townspeople have deepened, sometimes within members of a single family. The volunteer’s sister moved to Russia. Bila’s uncle and his family are estranged from hers because he harbors pro-Russian views, she said.
Svitlana said colleagues still in Oleshky told her that her office was ransacked after she left in August. But she is confident the documents are still hidden.
“It’s a durable book,” she said.
___
Novikov reported from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Google agrees to settle $5 billion lawsuit accusing it of tracking Incognito users
The complaint said Google deceived people into thinking they could control what information they share.
Mariella Moon
·Contributing Reporter
Thu, December 28, 2023
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In 2020, Google was hit with a lawsuit that accused it of tracking Chrome users' activities even when they were using Incognito mode. Now, after a failed attempt to get it dismissed, the company has agreed to settle the complaint that originally sought $5 billion in damages. According to Reuters and The Washington Post, neither side has made the details of the settlement public, but they've already agreed to the terms that they're presenting to the court for approval in February.
When the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit, they said Google used tools like its Analytics product, apps and browser plug-ins to monitor users. They reasoned that by tracking someone on Incognito, the company was falsely making people believe that they could control the information that they were willing to share with it. At the time, a Google spokesperson said that while Incognito mode doesn't save a user's activity on their device, websites could still collect their information during the session.
The lawsuit's plaintiffs presented internal emails that allegedly showed conversations between Google execs proving that the company monitored Incognito browser usage to sell ads and track web traffic. Their complaint accused Google of violating federal wire-tapping and California privacy laws and was asking up to $5,000 per affected user. They claimed that millions of people who'd been using Incognito since 2016 had likely been affected, which explains the massive damages they were seeking from the company. Google has likely agreed to settle for an amount lower than $5 billion, but it has yet to reveal details about the agreement and has yet to get back to Engadget with an official statement.
UPDATED
Amnesty confirms Apple warning: Indian journalists' iPhones infected with Pegasus spyware
Manish Singh
Updated Thu, December 28, 2023
Apple's warnings in late October that Indian journalists and opposition figures may have been targeted by state-sponsored attacks prompted a forceful counterattack from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. Officials publicly doubted Apple's findings and announced a probe into device security.
India has never confirmed nor denied using the Pegasus tool, but nonprofit advocacy group Amnesty International reported Thursday that it found NSO Group's invasive spyware on the iPhones of prominent journalists in India, lending more credibility to Apple's early warnings.
“Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation,” said Donncha Ó Cearbhaill,hHead of Amnesty International’s Security Lab, in the blog post.
“Despite repeated revelations, there has been a shameful lack of accountability about the use of Pegasus spyware in India which only intensifies the sense of impunity over these human rights violations.”
The Washington Post separately reported Thursday that Apple faced heat from senior officials from Modi's administration, who behind closed doors, earlier demanded Apple soften the political impact of the warnings. Senior officials summoned Apple representatives to insist they provide alternative explanations, even flying in an Apple security expert to meet with ministry leaders, the report adds.
The pressure campaign by Indian officials to soften the impact of the warnings disturbed Apple executives in California but achieved limited results, The Washington Post added. While Apple India officials initially helped cast doubt on the alerts -- issuing a statement that in part said it was possible some notifications may be false alarms -- the company issued no follow-up statement placating authorities after the expert's visit.
The report adds:
The recent episode also exemplified the dangers facing government critics in India and the lengths to which the Modi administration will go to deflect suspicions that it has engaged in hacking against its perceived enemies, according to digital rights groups, industry workers and Indian journalists.
Many of the more than 20 people who received Apple’s warnings at the end of October have been publicly critical of Modi or his longtime ally, Gautam Adani, an Indian energy and infrastructure tycoon. They included a firebrand politician from West Bengal state, a Communist leader from southern India and a New Delhi-based spokesman for the nation’s largest opposition party.
For Apple, maintaining its commitment to user security took priority over risks to its growing India business. Apple, which opened two official stores in India this year, plans to move 25% of iPhone production to India by 2025, according to JP Morgan analysts. But the showdown revealed Modi's willingness to turn the screws on Big Tech.
India targeting high-profile journalists with spyware: Amnesty
AFP
Wed, December 27, 2023
Created by Israeli firm NSO Group and sold to governments around the world, Pegasus software can be used to access a phone's messages and emails, peruse photos, eavesdrop on calls, track locations and even film the owner with the camera (JOEL SAGET)
India's government has recently targeted high-profile journalists with Pegasus spyware, Amnesty International and The Washington Post said in a joint investigation published Thursday.
Created by Israeli firm NSO Group and sold to governments around the world, Pegasus software can be used to access a phone's messages and emails, peruse photos, eavesdrop on calls, track locations and even film the owner with the camera.
Amnesty said journalists Siddharth Varadarajan of The Wire and Anand Mangnale of The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project had been targeted with the spyware on their iPhones, with the latest identified case occurring in October.
"Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation," said Donncha O Cearbhaill, Head of Amnesty International's Security Lab.
India's government did not immediately respond, but it denied similar accusations in 2021 that it used Pegasus spyware to surveil political opponents, activists and journalists.
Indian media reported last month that the country's cyber security unit was investigating allegations by opposition politicians of attempted phone tapping after they reported receiving Apple iPhone warnings of "state-sponsored attackers".
In that case, Ashwini Vaishnaw, the information and technology minister, said the government was "concerned" by the complaints.
Indian government pressed Apple to soften hacking warning: Report
Julia Shapero
THE HILL
Thu, December 28, 2023
The Indian government privately pressed Apple officials to soften their warnings to Indian journalists and opposition politicians that state-sponsored attackers could be targeting their phones, according to The Washington Post.
Senior officials in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration reportedly called Apple India’s managing director, Virat Bhatia, after reports emerged about the notifications in late October and asked the tech giant to withdraw the warnings.
Soon after, Apple India sent out emails saying the notifications are based on “threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete” and began privately asking Indian tech journalists to note the warnings could be false alarms and had been issued to users in 150 countries, the Post reported.
A memo from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) similarly noted users in other countries received notifications and that Apple’s systems contained vulnerabilities, according to the Post.
Government officials also told Indian news outlets they suspected the warnings were the result of an “algorithmic malfunction,” and the deputy minister of electronics and information technology announced a probe into the notifications.
In November, an Apple security official from outside India reportedly flew to New Delhi to meet with government officials and defended the company’s work, according to the Post.
Many of the people who received Apple’s warnings in late October had been critical of Modi or Indian energy and infrastructure tycoon Gautam Adani and his relationship with the Indian prime minister, the Post noted.
Journalist Anand Mangnale reached out to Adani for comment in late August on a story alleging his associates secretly traded in the Adani Group’s public stock in potential violation of Indian securities law.
Mangnale had Pegasus spyware planted on his phone within 24 hours of the inquiry, according to a forensic analysis of his phone conducted by Amnesty International and reported by the Post.
Mahua Moitra, a former member of Parliament who criticized Modi’s relationship with Adani, also received a warning from Apple in late October. An examination of her phone by the security firm iVerify also indicated it had been hacked, according to the Post.
Moitra was expelled from Parliament in December over allegations that she was receiving bribes from a business rival of Adani’s to ask questions about his relationship with the prime minister. She has denied the accusations.
Apple reportedly faces pressure in India after sending out warnings of state-sponsored hacking
India's government is 'really angry' at Apple for warning its known critics, The Washington Post says.
Mariella Moon
·Contributing Reporter ENDGADGET
Thu, December 28, 2023
REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas
Indian authorities allied with Prime Minister Narendra Modi have questioned Apple on the accuracy of its internal threat algorithms and are now investigating the security of its devices, according to The Washington Post. Officials apparently targeted the company after it warned journalists and opposition politicians that state-sponsored hackers may have infiltrated their devices back in October. While Apple is under scrutiny for its security measures in the eyes of the public, the Post says government officials were more upfront with what they wanted behind closed doors.
They reportedly called up the company's representatives in India to pressure Apple into finding a way to soften the political impact of its hacking warnings. The officials also called in an Apple security expert to conjure alternative explanations for the warnings that they could tell people — most likely one that doesn't point to the government as the possible culprit.
The journalists and politicians who posted about Apple's warnings on social media had one thing in common: They were all critical of Modi's government. Amnesty International examined the phone of one particular journalist named Anand Mangnale who was investigating long-time Modi ally Gautam Adani and found that an attacker had planted the Pegasus spyware on his Apple device. While Apple didn't explicitly say that the Indian government is to blame for the attacks, Pegasus, developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, is mostly sold to governments and government agencies.
The Post's report said India's ruling political party has never confirmed or denied using Pegasus to spy on journalists and political opponents, but this is far from the first time its critics have been infected with the Pegasus spyware. In 2021, an investigation by several publications that brought the Pegasus project to light found the spyware on the phones of people with a history of opposing and criticizing Modi's government.
India's govt demanded Apple soften impact of hack warnings -Washington Post
Reuters
Wed, December 27, 2023
Apple iPhones are seen inside India's first Apple retail store, a day ahead of its launch, in Mumbai
(Reuters) - Apple's warnings in October to Indian opposition politicians that government hackers may have hacked their phones prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration to quickly demand the U.S. firm soften its message, the Washington Post reported.
Apple's India representatives were called by administration officials who demanded that company help weaken the political impact of the warnings, the newspaper said citing three unidentified sources.
An Apple security expert was also summoned from outside the country to a meeting in New Delhi and the expert was pressed to come up with alternative explanations for the warnings, it said.
Apple and India's Ministry of Electronics and Information did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Indian opposition has accused Modi's government of trying to hack the phones of senior opposition politicians who said they had received warning messages from Apple.
At the time, some of the lawmakers shared screenshots on social media of a notification quoting the iPhone manufacturer as saying: "Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID".
Apple has previously said it did not attribute the threat notifications to "any specific state-sponsored attacker".
(Reporting by Chandni Shah and Baranjot Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
Opinion: What does it feel like to be dehumanized? Just ask any Palestinian
Emad Moussa
Los Angeles Times
Thu, December 28, 2023
Palestinians take shelter in a U.N.-run school from the ongoing Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip in Nuseirat refugee camp on Oct. 14. (Hatem Moussa / Associated Press)
For the past 11 weeks, we Palestinians have seen enough tragedies to fill several lifetimes.
More than 20,000 of us in the Gaza Strip have been killed by Israel. An analysis found that’s proportionally higher than the average civilian death toll in conflicts from World War II till the 1990s. Two million Gazans are now displaced inside this narrow and impoverished piece of land — crammed into homes, schools or in tents on the rubble that once was our homes. The majority are on the verge of starvation.
Read more: Opinion: Gaza's techies were dreamers and builders. After Israel's bombs, their stories shatter my heart
The soaring numbers may no longer shock you. Your becoming inured to our suffering is part of the dehumanization that we Palestinians must endure.
But we are not merely horrific statistics. I am from Gaza and to me, these figures have faces, names and stories of and about people whom I love and know.
Read more: Opinion: What Biden's staunch support for Israel's war in Gaza will cost America
As a fellow Palestinian and friend here in the U.K. put it recently, banging the table: “They killed Gaza’s intellectual and professional elite, destroyed libraries, ancient mosques and churches, and cultural centers throughout the strip. What have the libraries done to them?”
The general impression among us Palestinians — whether at home or abroad — is that as Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza, what the soldiers saw contradicted their worldview of the inferior, subhuman Palestinian. They had to destroy all and re-create an image of Gaza that matched their imagined worldview. As if to say, dehumanize to facilitate and justify the culling.
Read more: Opinion: When libraries like Gaza's are destroyed, what's lost is far more than books
This realization is so upsetting that it overwhelms one with an uncontrollable urge to prove one’s humanity. There is also an urge to communicate, to externalize that feeling.
To ask ourselves, and to ask you: What does it feel like to be dehumanized?
Read more: Opinion: Not far from Bethlehem, the plight of pregnant women in Gaza evokes a biblical story
We have been denied agency, as a people and as individuals. And, with the loss of agency, whatever aspirations for justice and self-determination we have — the basics you take for granted — became meaningless.
Some of you are finally starting to pay attention, although we remain outraged that this had to come at the expense of 20,000 lives. But you may still not know what it feels like to be dehumanized. So, please, allow me to take you into our Palestinian circle.
Perhaps the hardest part is processing the dehumanization, which triggers three negative emotions: a burning but incomprehensible sense of humiliation, guilt and rage. Each one of these emotions feeds into the other to create the perfect psychological storm within one’s soul.
“I feel guilty about feeling humiliated, but I am also shaking with a raging how-dare-you, you force me to justify my humanity?” another friend, a university lecturer in the U.K., told me.
I see where she is coming from. On the receiving end of dehumanization, you are stripped of your moral worth. It feels like others have no obligation to grant you the moral standards that are generally reserved for those whom they consider fully human. That typically leads to distorted self-awareness and a sense of dissociation from reality.
My friend’s words raise the question: Why do so many of us, in Gaza and abroad, feel ragingly humiliated by the loss of our loved ones?
Is it helplessness? Or because we did not have the chance to say goodbye? Or because we have yet to process the loss and grief?
I think it may be the randomness and pointlessness of the deaths, the horrifyingly quick and undignified burials, or worse, the scenes of decomposed bodies on the streets. Is this what it comes down to?
After all, many of us feel we are being culled, usually a term reserved for animals. Israeli leaders have called us “human animals,” treated us for decades as such, and now their bombs are eliminating evidence that contradicts their view of us.
Some people in Gaza spoke to me about apathy, numbness and desensitization, as if the lack of feeling is their coping mechanism to sever themselves from their natural emotionality, and to preserve what is left of their sense of self and dignity.
My mother did this by going out to visit my aunt who sheltered in a UNRWA school at the Nuseirat refugee camp, not caring for the potential Israeli snipers on top of the nearby buildings.
“I did not care, I even walked in the middle of the street,” she said, to my absolute horror.
She was seeking meaning in seeing her sister, and re-establishing her sense of free will and self-worth that often came out of her social life.
I wonder, to external eyes, are the dead and injured we see pulled from the rubble covered in blood viewed as victims, or does their roughed-up state lessen their humanity?
We Palestinians do not choose to be roughed up. How can we prove to you that we are worthy humans?
To tell you that Gaza — where people now line up for hours to get some water — has one of the world’s lowest illiteracy rates and highest rates of PhD holders per capita?
Or perhaps I can tell you about my cousin’s wife, Iman, the mathematical genius, who was killed with her kids last week.
Maybe you want to hear about my friend Jehad, the calligrapher, and the most generous, funniest man you could ever meet. They killed him and his family as they slept in his home in Shujaiya in eastern Gaza City.
How about Mahmoud, the doctor, who was killed by an Israeli sniper at Awda Hospital in northern Gaza?
It is painful to think of their former existence as irrelevant. It is even more painful to think of their death as meaningless.
Against all odds, they persevered and achieved highly. If anything, they were a special kind of human.
I wish you could have met them.
Emad Moussa is a Palestinian-British researcher and writer specializing in the political psychology of inter-group and conflict dynamics.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Opinion
Letters to the Editor: Israel is making Gaza uninhabitable. The Oct. 7 attack doesn't justify this cruelty
Los Angeles Times Opinion
Thu, December 28, 2023
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, visits soldiers in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday. (Avi Ohayon / Associated Press)
To the editor: The headline, "Egypt floats plan to end Israel-Hamas war. The proposal gets a cool reception," says it all. Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu don't care about casualties.
Specifically alarming, before starting the bombing of Gaza, Israel acted as if it knew where Hamas' leadership was hiding, implying a quick end to any conflict. The truth has emerged: Israel knew the location wasn't really specific, but just somewhere or everywhere in Gaza.
That justified Israel's battle plan of flattening Gaza and withholding most of life's necessities. Israel isn't targeting Hamas as much as it is creating an uninhabitable Gaza.
Not all Israelis support Netanyahu and his scorched-earth Gaza massacre, but they seem powerless to stop it. The U.S. is failing to seriously limit the carnage as we continue to provide weapons to Israel.
Hamas has no excuse for its Oct. 7 attack, and Israel has no excuse for obliterating civilian Gaza.
Mark Davidson, Santa Ana
After dozens of relatives were killed in Gaza, Arizonan seeks help for family still there
Daniel Gonzalez, Arizona Republic
Wed, December 27, 2023
Mohamed El-Sharkawy has lived in the U.S. for 37 years.
But like many Palestinian Americans, El-Sharkawy, 63, still has relatives living in Gaza, including four nieces and their families. Now, El-Sharkawy said, those relatives are battling to stay alive amid Israel's bombardment and siege of the territory in response to the Oct. 7 deadly rampage by Hamas.
El-Sharkawy, a Phoenix resident and aviation engineer, is trying to secure safe passage for relatives from Gaza with help from members of Arizona's congressional delegation. A nephew and a niece were able to come to the U.S. in November with help from the office of U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz.
For now, many of El-Sharkawy's relatives remain in Gaza, living in deplorable and dangerous conditions due to limitations on who the federal government can help leave Gaza to come to the U.S., according to El-Sharkawy and Stanton's office.
El-Sharkawy said he is among many Palestinian Americans in Arizona and other parts of the U.S. who have sought help from the U.S. government to get relatives out of Gaza since the war started.
Some family members of U.S. citizens have complained that guidance from the federal government has been inadequate, according to USA TODAY.
In December, two Palestinian American families sued the Biden administration, saying the U.S. government has not done enough to help evacuate U.S. citizen relatives stuck in Gaza.
In El-Sharkawy's case, the relatives in Gaza are not U.S. citizens, which further limits the role the U.S. can play in helping them secure safe passage.
Arizonans concerned for relatives living in Palestinian territories
About 134,000 to 175,000 people in the U.S. in 2020 identified as being of Palestinian descent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Many still have relatives in the Palestinian territories.
Phoenix residents and sisters Lina Bearat, 33, and Hanin Bearat, 39, have relatives in the West Bank, including their parents.
As Palestinian Americans, watching news coverage of Gaza has taken a huge emotional toll, they said.
"To see how we've been dehumanized," Lina Bearat said. "A Palestinian life doesn't matter as much. And so this is what really hurts as a Palestinian American."
Palestinian American sisters Hanin and Lina Bearat from Phoenix.
They also are concerned about relatives in the West Bank. Since the war began, increased violence in the West Bank has forced their families to stop tending their olive groves, which they depend on for economic survival. Their younger cousins also have stopped going to school.
"All these things are impacting our family in the West Bank," Lina Bearat said. "That's not really getting as much coverage because of just the scale of what's going on in Gaza."
'Hungry, cold and scared': Arizonan describes his relatives' lives in Gaza
Israel's air and ground assault began after Hamas launched attacks from Gaza across the border into southern Israel. The attacks killed 1,200 people, including 33 children, and injured thousands. Hamas also took about 240 people hostage.
The air and ground assault by Israel against Hamas prompted by the Oct. 7 attacks has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, a large share of them children, and displaced most of the Hamas-controlled territory's 2.3 million people, according to USA TODAY.
About 50 members of El-Sharkawy's extended family have been killed in Gaza, including an entire family killed when a bomb destroyed an apartment building in Gaza City where they were living in early November, he said. Those killed in the blast were the family of the husband of one of his nieces living in Gaza City, El-Sharkawy said.
His niece's husband's family "were all wiped out — everybody," El-Sharkawy said. She lost "her father-in-law and mother-in-law, all of the kids," El-Sharkawy said.
It is common for entire extended families in Gaza to live in a single compound, El-Sharkawy said, explaining why so many members of the same family were killed in the blast.
El-Sharkawy said two of his nieces in Gaza are the daughters of a sister who lives in Jacksonville, Florida. The other two are daughters of a sister in Spain.
El-Sharkawy said his four nieces and their immediate families still in Gaza have all been displaced from their homes in northern Gaza. The families include 10 children, among them a 1-year-old.
"These kids are hungry, cold and scared," El-Sharkawy said.
El-Sharkawy said the neighborhood where he grew up in Gaza City has been reduced to rubble by the shelling.
Some of El-Sharkawy's relatives were living in Jabalia, in the northern part of Gaza. But when the bombardment started, they fled to nearby Gaza City. The four nieces and their families are now living in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza near the border with Egypt, El-Sharkawy said. Hundreds of thousands of people who also fled the bombardment are starving in crowded, squalid conditions, according to media reports.
El-Sharkawy said three of his nieces and their families live in tents with little to eat. The fourth niece and her family are living in a U.N.-run school providing shelter to displaced Palestinians. The school also has been hit by Israeli airstrikes, according to media reports.
Photographs that El-Sharkawy shared show one niece, 36-year-old Doaa Nijim, frying tomatoes and onions on a wood stove, and washing clothes in a plastic paint bucket. Another photo shows Doaa Nijim's son, 12-year-old Rezeq Nijim, curled up asleep on a thin mat on the floor.
A spoon of sugar is sometimes all Doaa Nijim has to feed her children as a sweet, El-Sharkawy said.
The entire population of the Gaza Strip is facing acute food insecurity, and more than half of a million people in the Gaza Strip are starving due to the war, according to an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report.
"They are crying day and night, not knowing if they will make it the next day," said El-Sharkawy during an interview at a restaurant in Ahwatukee Foothills, where he lives. "The hardest part is their kids crying, and they can't comfort them. They cannot tell them tomorrow will be better."
Nephew makes asylum claim, placed in detention after US arrival
El-Sharkawy said he called the offices of Stanton and U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., to ask for the U.S. government's assistance in evacuating his relatives in Gaza.
El-Sharkawy came to the U.S. in 1986 after earning an engineering degree in Cairo. He founded the Arizona Muslim Police Advisory Board. The board's goal is to facilitate communication between law enforcement agencies and the Muslim population, he said.
Palestinian American Mohamed El-Sharkawy poses for a portrait in his home on Dec. 21, 2023, in Phoenix. He looks down at a framed photograph of his four nieces who are currently in Gaza with their homes destroyed.
Through his work with the board, El-Sharkawy said, he has had a long relationship with Stanton, the former mayor of Phoenix, which is why he reached out to him now. El-Sharkawy said he also became acquainted with Kelly's wife, former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, through his work with the board.
Representatives from Stanton and Kelly's offices confirmed that El-Sharkawy had requested help bringing relatives to the U.S. from Gaza.
Kelly spokesman Alex Wood said Kelly's constituent services team is assisting El-Sharkawy, but he declined to share details of the communications for privacy reasons.
Stanton spokesperson Allison Childress said El-Sharkawy first contacted Stanton's office on Oct. 13 about a niece and nephew trying to leave Gaza.
The U.S. government does not provide departure assistance for noncitizens, Childress said. But the niece and nephew managed to cross from Rafah into Egypt, where they received 72-hour temporary visas, Childress said.Representatives from Stanton's office contacted the U.S. Department of State and the Egyptian government about extending the temporary visas, Childress said. Stanton raised the case directly with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf on Nov. 8., Childress said.
"We worked to move the niece and nephew’s appointment from November 19 up to November 13 at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo for them to interview for visas," Childress said in an email.
On Nov. 14, the nephew’s student visa and the niece’s 60-day visitor visa were approved. They flew to the U.S. shortly after, Childress said.
The niece and nephew are both now on U.S. soil, Childress said.
However, because the nephew arrived more than 60 days before the start of classes in January at Florida State College, where he plans to attend school, he was denied entry at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, Childress said.
The nephew then claimed asylum, Childress said. He is in detention awaiting adjudication of his asylum case, Childress said. Stanton's office informed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the State Department about the ongoing case.
"They have retained legal counsel, at our recommendation," Childress said.
Stanton's office also has contacted the State Department about El-Sharkawy's other nieces and their young children. They missed a travel visa appointment in Jerusalem due to the conflict, Childress said.
They are attempting to move the appointment to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Childress said.
"But at this point our office is only able to assist once the family has moved to a third country with a U.S. Embassy in it," Childress said.
Helping out: Arizona volunteers' donations are meant to bring warmth to war-torn Gaza
The U.S. government is only able to assist U.S. citizens in Gaza and their immediate family members, defined as parents, spouses, unmarried children and siblings under 21, to get on published lists of people approved to depart from Gaza, Childress said. The published lists are posted on the Facebook page of the Palestinian General Authority for Crossings and Borders.
"The situation in Gaza remains fluid, and there have been delays and periodic, unexpected closures of the Rafah crossing. The U.S. does not control the crossing, and every day, it's a series of negotiations and discussions about process, procedure, and security vetting," Childress said in the email. Childress said Stanton's office "is exploring all available options" to help El-Sharkawy and his family in Gaza.
Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix resident seeks help getting relatives out of Gaza
Some Muslim American advocates hesitant to work with White House on Islamophobia
Willie James Inman
Updated Thu, December 28, 2023
The White House's push to create a strategy to counter Islamophobia is facing reluctance amid a spike in hate-fueled incidents against Arab and Muslim Americans since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
CBS News spoke with several Muslim and Arab American advocates who voiced frustration with the Biden administration's response to the situation in Gaza, citing the increasing number of civilians that have been killed and President Biden stopping short of calling for a cease-fire.
Muslim American advocate Salam Al-Marayati has worked with the Biden White House in the past. But despite the Biden administration's efforts to craft a strategy to counter Islamophobia in the U.S., he's skeptical about working with them in the future.
"At this moment in time, it is very hard to even imagine how a national strategy to counter Islamophobia will work, Al-Marayati, the president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which is also a member of the American Muslim Community Coalition, told CBS News. "American Muslims here in the United States feel unsafe and unsupported as they witness the horrific attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. Muslim families, students, and employees are afraid to speak out for fear of retribution as many who have spoken out have faced retaliatory action including loss of employment, suspension, censorship, trolling, bullying, and targeted violence."
President Joe Biden walks to the South Lawn before boarding Marine One and departing the White House on December 05, 2023 in Washington, DC. / Credit: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images
The White House announced on Nov. 1 plans to develop a national strategy to counter Islamophobia, led by the Domestic Policy and National Security Councils. The proposal follows an announcement in May marking the federal government's first-ever National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. Conversations and meetings on the development of the Islamophobia strategy date back a year, according to a senior administration official who said engagement with stakeholders in the community is ongoing with additional meetings scheduled for early next year. The effort is part of a White House interagency policy committee created in Dec. 2022 that focuses on countering antisemitism, Islamophobia and related types of discrimination.
"[The development of the strategy] should be really welcome news. I think the challenge is given what's going on and especially with the death toll and destruction rising and rising, people are understandably very hurt, angry, shocked [and] frustrated at America's involvement in this," said another source close to the discussions surrounding the development of the strategy. "And so the timing of these two different things overlapping even though they are totally separate is really challenging. And unfortunately I don't know what will happen with the islamophobia strategy as a result."
While some have expressed doubts, others say it is important to continue work on ways to counter hate and solve systemic discrimination problems that have targeted the Arab and Muslim communities for decades.
"We recognize, as do most other communities, that engaging on one issue doesn't mean that you are endorsing or accepting the White House's policies on that issue or any other issue," said Arsalan Suleman, who is board chair and co-founder of America Indivisible, a nonprofit dedicated to combating Islamophobia. "So while I and many other community members have very strong criticisms of the current policy on Gaza, we certainly want to engage with the White House on the Islamophobia strategy, given its importance," Suleman added.
Advocates say a plan to counter Islamophobia in the U.S. is necessary after a spike in anti-Muslim sentiment following Hamas' Oct. 7 attack in Israel. But some question how effective the strategy could be and hesitate to take part in its development. A White House official told CBS News that administration officials are "listening" to the community and that the Biden administration remains committed to the development of a strategy.
"We've had engagements where community members have engaged on the strategy and have also been able to make their points clear about their positions on what's happening overseas in the course of those engagements while they've been focused primarily on the strategy," a senior administration official said. CBS News spoke to the staffer on background to talk candidly about the ongoing development of the strategy. "We want to make sure that we are listening [and] so as a part of their communication with us, when they raise those issues, of course, we're listening to them. And many have made the point that what's happening overseas has an impact on what's happening in the United States in terms of Islamophobia," the official said.
The official insisted that support within the Arab and Muslim American community is strong, citing a letter from the American Muslim Community Coalition applauding the early November announcement.
"We commit to participating actively in the process of supporting the development of the strategy, and look forward to a comprehensive approach that addresses the various drivers of Islamophobia, including deep-rooted institutional manifestations that have plagued our communities for decades," the letter reads.
The White House hopes to complete its work on the strategy in late winter or spring.
The senior administration official also responded to criticism about the timing of the announcement explaining that the White House had planned to announce the development of the strategy well before the Hamas attack in October. Months of conversations and meetings with dozens of Muslim and Arab American groups pre-dated the attack, the official said. An increase in hate-fueled anti-Muslim incidents in the United States — including the deadly stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in the Chicago area — created a need to move forward with announcing the strategy, the official added.
