North Carolina could ban face masks for medical reasons in public

Lauren Irwin
Wed, May 15, 2024 


The North Carolina state Senate voted along party lines Wednesday to ban anyone from wearing masks in public, even for health reasons.

Republican supporters of the ban said it would help law enforcement crack down on protesters who wear masks. They say demonstrators are abusing COVID-19 pandemic-era practices to hide their identities following a wave of pro-Palestine protests nationwide and at North Carolina universities.

The bill goes even further and repeals an exception that’s been state law since the early stages of the pandemic that allows people to wear masks in public for health and safety reasons.

Thirty senators voted in favor of House Bill 237, while 15 opposed it and five were absent.

Democrats raised concerns about the bill, particularly for those who are immunocompromised or those who may want to continue to wear masks during cancer treatments, WRAL News reported.

State Sen. Sydney Batch (D) is a cancer survivor and shared with her fellow senators how her family wore masks to protect her and her weakened immune system during treatment.

She and other Democrats proposed ways to amend the bill so police could still crack down on protesters but continue to have legal protections for health concerns, but they were shot down, the outlet reported.

GOP Sen. Buck Newton brushed off the concerns, saying no one saw “Granny getting arrested in the Walmart pre-COVID” and thinks law enforcement will use “good common sense” when applying the law, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

The AP noted that the state’s general statutes on masking date back to the 1950s in an attempt to curb Ku Klux Klan membership, when the state passed a public masking ban.

Under the bill, if a person is arrested for protesting while masked, it would elevate the classification of a person’s crime, either a misdemeanor or felony, to one class higher.

It now heads to Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk. Cooper, a Democrat, could veto the bill, but the North Carolina Republican Party has a supermajority and can override the expected veto.

Opinion

The party of ‘freedom’ wants to ban mask-wearing for health reasons in NC | Opinion

the Editorial Board
Wed, May 15, 2024 


The party of freedom doesn’t want to let you wear a mask to protect your own health in public.

Republican legislators have proposed a bill that would remove the health and safety exception to North Carolina’s existing ban on mask-wearing in public, which has been in place since the 1950s. That exception was added in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, but lawmakers say that it is no longer needed. Try telling that to immunocompromised people, or the elderly, or anyone else who might want to mask up to protect themselves or others.

GOP Sen. Buck Newton, the bill’s primary sponsor, suggested that those who choose to wear a mask in public for health reasons could still do so despite the law changing, because authorities have “good common sense.”

“This was not a problem pre-COVID,” Newton said in a committee hearing. “We didn’t see Granny getting arrested in the Walmart pre-COVID. Frankly, I don’t think we’re going to see that when we pass this legislation, and I think those that are suggesting otherwise are stoking fear.”

The intent of the bill, Newton said, is merely to crack down on those who may wear a mask to hide their identities while committing crimes in public, and it is not intended to punish anyone who wears a mask for the sake of their health.

That argument in itself is the sign of poorly crafted legislation. If lawmakers do not intend to make something illegal, they should not write a law that makes that thing illegal and then expect authorities, businesses and the public to obey some unwritten rule that the law should not be enforced as such. That creates ambiguity and confusion, and leaving it up to authorities to use their “common sense” to determine which mask wearers are potentially criminals and which are simply being conscious of their health opens the door to a whole host of other problems.

The bill is titled “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals,” and it’s likely not a coincidence that it comes after a wave of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses in North Carolina and across the country. Many of those protesters were wearing masks. The bill enhances penalties for those who are wearing a mask while committing a crime. In effect, that could mean that a protester arrested for vandalism or trespassing could receive a harsher punishment simply because they were wearing a mask while protesting.

This is, plain and simple, a ridiculous bill. It should make everyone uncomfortable, regardless of whether or not you personally wish to wear a mask in public. It may be true that this was not a problem before COVID, and nobody was arresting “Granny” or chemo patients for masking up in public. But the exception lawmakers crafted during COVID also hasn’t been a problem, certainly not enough to justify taking away people’s freedom of choice. Or is “freedom” only what Republican lawmakers want it to be?

North Carolina bill to stop protesters from using masks to hide identities advances without health exemption

Danielle Wallace
Thu, May 16, 2024 

North Carolina bill to stop protesters from using masks to hide identities advances without health exemption

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are pushing forward with their plan to repeal a pandemic-era law that allowed the wearing of masks in public for health reasons, a move spurred by anti-Israel demonstrations that have included masked protesters camped out on college campuses.

The legislation – House Bill 237 – cleared the state's Senate on Wednesday in a 30-15 vote along party lines despite several attempts by state Senate Democrats to change the bill. The bill, which would raise penalties for someone who wears a mask while committing a crime, including arrested protesters, could still be altered as it heads back to the House.

Opponents of the bill say it risks the health of those masking for safety reasons. Those backing the legislation say it is a needed response to the protests, including those at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that escalated to police clashes and arrests. The bill also further criminalizes the blockage of roads or emergency vehicles for a protest, which has occurred during anti-Israel demonstrations in Raleigh and Durham.

"It's about time that the craziness is put, at least slowed down, if not put to a stop," Wilson County Republican Sen. Buck Newton, who presented the bill, said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

An Anti-Israel protester seen wearing a mask and carrying a Palestinian flag on the University of North Carolina in Charlotte campus on April 24, 2024

"There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what this bill does and how the law operates, and it’s no wonder that so many folks are scared," Newton added, according to NC Newsline, questioning the motivations of those against the legislation. "I think some of us are wondering what the real motivations are of folks on the other side of the House, scaring the bejesus out of everybody and making them feel like if they have a need at times to wear masks because they’re immunocompromised somehow, they’re going to get arrested.

Most of the pushback against the bill has centered around its removal of health and safety exemptions for wearing a mask in public.

The health exemption was added at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic along largely bipartisan lines. This strikethrough would return public masking rules to their pre-pandemic form, which were created in 1953 to address a different issue: limiting Ku Klux Klan activity in North Carolina, the Associated Press reported, citing a 2012 book by Washington University in St. Louis sociology professor David Cunningham.

Democratic lawmakers repeated their unease about how removing protections for people who choose to mask for their health could put immunocompromised North Carolinians at risk of breaking the law. Legislative staff said during a Tuesday committee that masking for health purposes would violate the law.

"You're making careful people into criminals with this bill," Democratic Sen. Natasha Marcus of Mecklenburg County said on the Senate floor. "It's a bad law."

"Is it really that you find masked chemo patients that threatening? Something about them makes you really angry?" Marcus added, according to WRAL. "Or is this, more likely, a desire to score some political points with the anti-mask crowd during an election year, at the expense of vulnerable people?"

Anti-Israel protesters on the UNC Charlotte campus on April 25, 2024.

Simone Hetherington, an immunocompromised person who spoke during Wednesday's Senate Rules Committee, said masking helps her protect herself from illnesses and fears the law would prevent that practice.

"We live in different times and I do receive harassment," Hetherington said about her mask wearing. "It only takes one bad actor."

But Republican legislators continued to express doubt that someone would get in legal trouble for masking because of health concerns, saying law enforcement and prosecutors would use discretion on whether to charge someone. Newton said the bill focuses on criminalizing masks only for the purpose of concealing one's identity.

"I smell politics on the other side of the aisle when they're scaring people to death about a bill that is only going to criminalize people who are trying to hide their identity so they can do something wrong," Newton said.

Three Senate Democrats proposed amendments to keep the health exemption and exclude hate groups from masking, but Senate Republicans used a procedural mechanism to block them without going up for a vote.

Future changes to the bill could be a possibility, but it would ultimately be up to the House, Newton told reporters after the vote, according to the AP. Robeson County Republican Sen. Danny Britt also said during an earlier committee that he anticipated "some tweaking." House Rules Committee Chairman Destin Hall, a Caldwell County House Republican, told reporters before the Senate vote that the House planned to "take a look at it" but members wanted to clamp down on people who wear masks while committing crimes.

The masking bill will likely move through a few committees before hitting the House floor, which could take one or two weeks, Hall said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Repeal of health exemption from NC’s mask ban passes Senate, sending bill to House

Avi Bajpai
Wed, May 15, 2024




The North Carolina Senate voted to repeal a health and safety exception to the state’s longstanding ban on wearing masks in public, and enhance penalties for wearing a mask while committing another crime.

Senators approved the bill, which was introduced as a substitute to existing legislation last week and cleared two committees this week, in a 30-15 vote along party lines Wednesday afternoon.

A key point of contention over the bill has been the provision that removes an exception for health and safety from the law banning mask-wearing in public that dates back to 1953. Republicans have said the pandemic-era exception is no longer necessary, but Democrats have pushed back, arguing that lawmakers should just increase penalties for people who use masks to commit crimes, and leave the health exception alone.

There’s also been strong pushback from critics who say the bill is clearly an “anti-protest” measure that is a response to recent pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, where masks have been common.

In addition to repealing the health and safety exception, and increasing criminal penalties for those who are found to have worn a mask to hide their identity while committing another crime, the bill also imposes new penalties for participating in demonstrations that are intended to block traffic.

Speaking against the bill on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, Democratic Sen. Sydney Batch said that the bill, as it is currently written, would leave immunocompromised people at risk.

Amendments offered by Batch and two other Democrats, Sen. Lisa Grafstein and Jay Chaudhuri, were rejected by the GOP-controlled chamber.

Democratic Sen. Natasha Marcus, who said she, like other lawmakers, had heard from many people concerned about whether they would be able to continue wearing masks to protect themselves, said that Democrats are in favor of cracking down on people who conceal their identities to commit crimes, but also want to “protect the health of the people of North Carolina.”

During a meeting of the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday morning, GOP senators said that discussions were ongoing about potential changes to the bill once it arrived in the House. The changes would address the concerns raised by Democrats and others that taking out the health exception would make masking for that reason illegal.

Republicans pointed to the fact that for nearly 70 years, masking in public was illegal, but there were no incidents that came to mind of a person ever being arrested or prosecuted for wearing a mask for health reasons. Several people who wear masks because they are immunocompromised or have other medical problems that require them to wear one when in public, addressed committees this week with concerns about what the bill would mean for them.

House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters earlier in the day that he hadn’t read the bill yet, but echoed the argument that GOP senators had made: that the bill isn’t meant to target or penalize people who wear masks to protect their own health or the health of others, but rather, people who are “trying to willfully conceal their identity to engage in some sort of conduct that’s a problem.”

“If someone is going to come out and they’re going to protest, and they’re going to be in a public space out there, they ought to not be able to hide their identity, and I don’t care what cause it is they’re advocating for,” Moore said.

Asked about Proud Boys who have protested in public wearing different kinds of face coverings — an example that was raised earlier in the day during the Senate Rules Committee — Moore said: “I don’t care who it is, anybody who’s going to be out protesting should not be able to conceal their identity, period. I mean that just should not happen, whether it’s right, left, sane, insane — I don’t care.”

NC Senate approves bill making it a crime to wear a mask in public

Ahmed Jallow
Wed, May 15, 2024 

An airline passenger waiting for his flight looks at his phone while wearing a protective face mask. Legislation making its way through the North Carolina legislature would make mask wearing in public illegal. (Photo by Carol Coelho/Getty Images)

The North Carolina Senate approved an amended version of House Bill 237 on Wednesday evening that would prohibit the wearing of masks in public.

The controversial bill, which would also increase criminal penalties for those who commit crimes while wearing a mask in public, comes in the wake of protests that have erupted on college campuses across the country in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

If it becomes law, the bill will also create a new offense for blocking traffic, a tactic used in some recent protests. The votes were cast 30 to 15 along party lines and it now heads back to the house for concurrence.

Sen. Buck Newton (R-Greene, Wayne and Wilson), who sponsored the Senate “committee substitute” for the bill, said it aims to reinstate a law that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Senate rejected three amendments to the bill proposed by Wake County Democratic Senators Sydney Batch, Lisa Grafstein and Jay Chaudhuri.

Amendments offered by Batch and Grafstein would have reinstated a health reason exemption and allowed mask-wearing unless the wearer was using the mask for criminal purposes.

Batch said as someone who was immunocompromised during medical treatment, she opposes any provision that makes mask-wearing more difficult for people with health concerns. “We are now trying to turn back time and ignore science and allow individuals who want to protect themselves or to protect their loved ones from wearing a mask,” said Batch.

“We talk a lot about freedoms in this chamber, I hear it all the time. I should have the freedom, my children should have the freedom and my husband should have the freedom to wear a mask in order to protect and save my life without fear of being arrested and charged with a class one misdemeanor, which is exactly what this bill would do.”

“There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what this bill does, and how the law operates and it’s no wonder that so many folks are scared,” said Newton, questioning the motivations of those opposed to the bill.

“I think some of us are wondering what the real motivations are of folks on the other side of the house, scaring the bejesus out of everybody and making them feel like if they have a need at times to wear masks because they’re immunocompromised somehow, they’re going to get arrested.”

Laws dating back to the 1950s that were enacted, at least in part, as responses to groups like the Ku Klux Klan, prohibit wearing a mask in public in North Carolina, with exceptions. Those exceptions were expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic to include people wearing masks for health reasons. Newton’s bill would remove that specific exception.

Newton said a Senate committee investigation found no documented arrests or prosecutions for wearing masks solely for health reasons under the previous law.

Senate Democratic leader Dan Blue of Wake County expressed concern that law enforcement could use the law as a pretext to pull over drivers. “If you got the mask on and it’s against the law to be wearing a mask, you’ve created probable cause for any police officer to stop you,” Blue said.

Advocates and organizations including Disability Rights NC, Emancipate NC, and the ACLU of North Carolina spoke out against the bill at a Tuesday committee hearing, criticizing both the mask ban and provisions that target protesters.

“This bill is part of a broader attack on democracy we are seeing at the state legislature, while lawmakers who support these attacks on the right to protest are also leading efforts to make it harder to vote and to participate in the legislative process,” said Elizabeth Barber, the policy director of the ACLU of North Carolina.

In a statement released Tuesday, the North Carolina NAACP decried the measure as “a dangerous bill that threatens the fundamental right to protest in North Carolina.”

“This legislation seeks to impose severe penalties on protesters, particularly targeting those who block traffic or wear masks,” the statement read. “By criminalizing these protest tactics, the bill aims to silence marginalized communities and stifle legitimate expressions of dissent.”

The bill now returns to the House for concurrence in Senate changes.

NC Senate passes bill restoring mask restrictions

Michael Hyland
Thu, May 16, 2024 a

NC Senate passes bill restoring mask restrictions

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – The state Senate on Wednesday passed a bill that would bring back pre-COVID restrictions on wearing masks.

The bill, titled “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals,” passed along party lines by a margin of 30-15 and comes amid recent protests on college campuses. Republicans say the aim is to stop people from wearing masks to conceal their identities while committing crimes.

However, the bill goes further than that and would repeal an exception that’s been in state law since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic that allows people to wear masks for health and safety reasons. Doing so would become illegal again.

“If I were not permitted to wear a mask in public, it would greatly limit which spaces I could visit. And, for me, this is an access issue,” Quisha Mallette, of the North Carolina Justice Center, told lawmakers as she urged them to oppose the measure.

During debate on the Senate floor, Democrats raised concerns about the impact on people who are immunocompromised who may want to continue to wear masks.

Sen. Buck Newton (R-Wilson) accused Democrats of trying “to scare the bejesus out of everybody.”

Referencing the recent protests, he said, “There’s a whole crowd of people running around out there taking advantage of this mask hangover from the pandemic.”

Republicans voted down three amendments Democrats offered, including one by Sen. Sydney Batch to allow an exception to wear masks for preventing the spread of contagious diseases.

“You’re plowing down this field without really knowing what all the implications are,” said Sen. Dan Blue (D-Wake).

The bill contains other provisions including increasing penalties for people who wear masks while committing other crimes and could lead to people who block streets or highways more than once being charged with a felony. It also makes protest organizers liable if people block streets and prevent emergency vehicles from getting to someone in need, resulting in injury or death.

The bill goes to the House next.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

5 Israeli soldiers killed by friendly fire in northern Gaza

MAJORITY OF BATTLEFIELD DEATHS 

TANKS ROLL OVER INFANTRY

Mithil Aggarwal
Updated Thu, May 16, 2024 


The Israeli military said Thursday that five soldiers were killed and seven others were injured in a friendly fire incident in northern Gaza amid renewed battles in the area against regrouped Hamas militants.

The Israel Defense Forces said it had opened an investigation into the deadly incident, which it said happened when the soldiers were hit by tank crossfire in Jabalia.

While battles raged in the north, Israel's defense minister said more troops would join the ground operation in Rafah, where an intensifying assault has sent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing the southern Gaza city where they had sought refuge.


"An initial investigation into the deaths of five IDF soldiers reveals that IDF tanks, located dozens of meters away, identified a weapon and fired shells at an IDF force nearby," the IDF said in a statement.

"This force had entered the northern part of Gaza and occupied buildings along a logistic route. The tanks fired two shells for unclear reasons, resulting in seven more soldiers being injured, three severely."

The statement added that the IDF "is probing why the shells were fired and if the soldiers were mistaken for armed militants." The troops were members of the 202nd Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade.

Seven months into its war aimed at eliminating Hamas, Israeli forces are again engaged in intense fighting in areas of northern Gaza that the IDF said earlier had been cleared, renewing doubts over the government's strategy in the war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under growing pressure from the U.S. to lay out a plan for postwar Gaza, and on Wednesday he faced rare public criticism over the issue from within his own War Cabinet.

In a nationally televised statement, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant challenged Netanyahu over what he said was his refusal to discuss the issue. He said that would lead to Israel’s being forced to rule over the Palestinian enclave again, which he said he opposed. "We must make tough decisions for the future of our country, favoring national priorities above all other possible considerations, even with the possibility of personal or political costs," Gallant said.

Still, Netanyahu insists the focus must be on invading Rafah, where his troops have intensified operations since Israel called on residents of the city's east to evacuate last week.

After he conducted an assessment Wednesday on the Gaza border near Rafah, Gallant said that “additional troops will join the ground operation in Rafah."

“This operation will continue as additional forces will enter" the area, he said, according to a transcript his office provided a day later. "Several tunnels in the area have been destroyed by our troops and additional tunnels will be destroyed soon. This activity will intensify.”

At least 600,000 people fled parts of Gaza's southernmost city, where more than 1 million Palestinians sought shelter, according to the United Nations, with 100,000 more people displaced in northern Gaza.

The U.N.’s top court opens two days of hearings Thursday into South Africa's call to halt Israeli operations in Rafah.

The slow increase in the flow of aid into the strip over recent months could also be wiped out by Israel's assault on Rafah, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday, with one critical aid crossing shut and another restricted.

U.S. Central Command said early Thursday it had successfully anchored a temporary humanitarian pier to a beach in Gaza to increase the flow of aid.

“Trucks carrying humanitarian assistance are expected to begin moving ashore in the coming days,” it said in a post on X.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

5 Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza by their own army's tank fire

Haley Ott
Updated Thu, May 16, 2024

5 Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza by their own army's tank fir


The Israel Defense Forces said five of its soldiers, all between 20 and 22 years old, were killed by Israeli tank fire in northern Gaza on Wednesday evening. An initial internal investigation found that two tanks fired at a building in the Jabalia refugee camp where the soldiers had gathered. The building was being used by the deputy commander of the battalion, according to an IDF statement.

"It appears that the tank fighters, from the ultra-Orthodox paratrooper company 'Hatz,' identified a barrel of a weapon coming out of one of the windows in the building, and directed each other to shoot at the building," the IDF statement said.

"This is a very difficult incident, the work environment is under very complex operational stress and in a very crowded area," IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said on Thursday. "We are in the middle of the investigation, we will learn the lessons. Maintaining the security of our forces is a central task."

The incident came as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, after a situational assessment at the Gaza border in Rafah, said more Israeli troops would be entering Gaza.

"Several tunnels in the area have been destroyed by our troops and additional tunnels will be destroyed soon," Gallant said Wednesday. "This activity will intensify – Hamas is not an organization that can reorganize, it does not have reserve troops, it has no supply stocks and no ability to treat the terrorists that we target. The result is that we are wearing Hamas down."

Israeli defense chief calls for "day after" plan in Gaza

As IDF operations continued, Gallant publicly challenged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week about his post-war plans for the Gaza Strip.

In addition to military action, Gallant said in a televised statement that "the establishment of a governing alternative in Gaza" in the wake of almost 20 years of Hamas rule was also crucial to Israel's stated objective of dismantling the group. "In the absence of such an alternative, only two negative options remain: Hamas' rule in Gaza or Israeli military rule in Gaza."

Gallant said he would oppose the latter scenario and urged Netanyahu to formally rule it out.

Israel plans to "destroy Hamas." If that happens, who will lead the Palestinians in Gaza?

He said he had been trying to promote a plan to create a "non-hostile Palestinian governing alternative" to Hamas since October, but that he'd received no response from the Israeli cabinet.

Gallant has previously suggested the Palestinian Authority (PA), which administers the Israeli-occupied West Bank, could have a role in governing Gaza after the war. Netanyahu has dismissed that suggestion, also floated by the United States, as have various members of the PA.

On Tuesday, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari was asked if the lack of a post-war strategy for Gaza was hindering military operations there.

"There is no doubt that an alternative to Hamas would generate pressure on Hamas, but that's a question for the government echelon," he said.

Palestinian Students Covering University Protests Are Underpaid and Undervalued

Samaa Khullar

THE RADICAL FEMINIST; TEEN VOGUE

Wed, May 15, 2024 

The Washington Post/Getty Images

In the early hours of May 1, I returned home after an exhausting night of covering the police raid at Columbia University and got a text that devastated me.

At 2:49 a.m., one of my colleagues at the Graduate School of Journalism, who had been trapped in Pulitzer Hall all night, sent an image of four police officers sitting under the memorial wall of images we had set up to honor our fallen colleagues. We created these posters to remember all of the brave journalists, most of whom were Palestinian, who had been killed trying to cover the war in Gaza.


Seemingly unaware of the significance of this memorial, officers rested their batons and helmets on the benches below it.

(Image courtesy of Meghnad Bose)

I couldn’t stop thinking about how, after a long night of arresting students at Hamilton Hall, these officers had walked into our campus building, which was otherwise closed, to rest their legs and check their phones. That picture, and all it represents, is what finally broke me.

Though my Columbia Journalism School professors have offered unwavering support — some have even slept in their offices to make sure we have food and other resources necessary to do nonstop reporting — there’s little they could have done to prepare us for the emotional toll of reporting on these encampments.

It seems to me that the Columbia administration, outside of the journalism school, does not care about its Palestinian students. This is part of why we Arab journalists at the school decided, in October, to put all our other reporting on hold and focus solely on this issue. We wanted the students to get the coverage they deserve. But as we approach the end of the school year, this reporting has broken us down in more ways than one.

I am one of three Palestinians at the journalism school. I used to think we were isolated, but after seeking out other Palestinian student journalists to talk with at dozens of schools around the country, I realized that our school has more representation than most.

I looked up the student newspaper mastheads of almost every university that has an encampment and could barely find any Arab students on staff at most of them, let alone Palestinian reporters. Of the few I could track down, some wanted to speak to me but feared possible professional repercussions. By the end of my search, I was able to talk to only three students: Jude Taha, a Palestinian Jordanian colleague at Columbia Journalism School; Layth Handoush, a Palestinian American writer for The Daily Bruin at UCLA; and Basma, a Palestinian American student who writes for the newspaper at a large public college in Texas (and asked to use a pseudonym for safety reasons).

On April 30, amid arrests of our fellow students, Jude and I were both pushed outside the Columbia campus and onto West 114th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, where we remained trapped in the cold for almost an hour and a half. When we finally reflected on the night, a few days later, she expressed the heartbreak of wanting to accurately represent what was happening but feeling stripped of that choice by the police.

On the same night, on the other side of the country, Layth watched as dozens of masked young men infiltrated the UCLA encampment, taunting and attacking student protesters, as the Daily Bruin reported. (Some 100 counterprotesters were detained.) Layth was not one of the four Daily Bruin writers who got attacked, but he did watch as officers from the Los Angeles Police Department arrested one of his friends. “That was probably one of the hardest nights of my life," Layth recalls. "I don’t think anyone present there is the same.”

Layth works at Prime, The Daily Bruin’s magazine section, where, in the fall, he wrote an op-ed criticizing mainstream media’s biased coverage on the war in Gaza, and explaining how misinformation and use of passive voice in headlines has contributed to the dehumanization of Palestinians on a massive scale. It was the first time he had written so openly about his identity as a journalist and a Palestinian, and it garnered lot of attention for him within the student newsroom.

But that was seven months ago, and the exhaustion from constantly reporting on the trauma in his community has started to catch up to him, just as it has for Jude and me. It’s relatively easy to write an article or two about a topic you have no connection to, but when every day is filled with scrolling through gruesome images and listening to the screams of your people, having to report on it and defend yourself in the newsroom starts to break you down.

Basma, who is majoring in journalism at her school, is happy to explain context and history; she says it’s her responsibility as a diaspora Palestinian. But there is a stark change from the conversations she used to have in Egypt, where she grew up. There, people knew the terminology, were aware of important dates, and what the Nakba meant — her labor as a journalist was to report on unfolding developments. Now she has to fight to provide context for every story.

“Especially around October 7, when everything first happened, I felt very alone in my grief,” Basma says. “None of my American friends really knew anything about it. It felt like they had to go through a whole cycle of learning that I had been raised on to reach the understanding that I already had.”

In addition to sometimes being consulted the way one uses a dictionary, we have also started to be used as “fixers” for news agencies. Publications contact Jude to ask for sources at Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine or Jewish Voice for Peace.

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan complained in her column that student protesters are “marching past her” and refusing to talk, but journalists like Noonan haven’t built the same trust as people like Jude, who spent the year covering almost every major protest and fostering essential relationships with sources. These requests of us come as we see how poorly legacy media has been reporting on student encampments.

Of the dozen news outlets that have contacted Jude, only two have offered to pay her for her work, she says. One was for an op-ed, the other for general coverage. Others who make requests treat her as if she is a witness to an event: “I’m not a journalist to them," she says. "I’m just a source.”

Jude continues, “The assumption that I am pro-Palestinian is kind of crazy when I am Palestinian. It’s like asking someone if they’re pro living their life.”

Some of us have been reporting on the encampments 24/7, with context, using precise language. Columbia's student radio station WKCR, undergraduate newspaper The Spectator, and journalism school students have been welcome to photograph and report inside the encampments because we have respected students’ boundaries for the sake of their safety and security.

Around the country people have also started recognizing the integral role of student journalists, those who are allowed access the outside media often can’t get because of our deep relationships and the trust we’ve built. Even the Pulitzer Prize Board issued a statement praising our “extraordinary real-time reporting… in the face of great personal and academic risk.” It is jarring, then, when we’re treated as just sources or the national media drops in and reports without context.

“I feel like the external media don’t have the same kind of courtesy towards what people our age may want,” Layth says. “They’re there for the scoop.” Layth adds that he’s seen very few news outlets operate with respect at UCLA: “I’m afraid I’ve lost a lot of respect for a lot of conglomerates because of how they’ve been reporting.”

What’s most hurtful is that many of us have never been trusted as reporters on this topic and, likely, will still be attacked with charges of bias for anything we write about it. Basma says her identity is often looked down on in newsrooms. “Why would my identity as a Palestinian get in the way of my reporting?” she asks.

In part, it's a problem with the concepts of “bias” and “objectivity,” in general. Basma adds, “It’s an odd experience, for sure, working within an industry that doesn’t look to center your perspective. You kind of have to play to the system while also trying to talk about things that not every news outlet wants to publish.”

Palestinian student journalists have to be perfect, because if we’re not, it feels like our career will be over before it starts. Making our reporting as bulletproof as possible is something we are all taught as journalists, but it’s also something that is drilled into our heads as Palestinians. We worry about being accused of having an agenda.

Then there’s the guilt that comes from finally getting recognition for our reporting, but only because something horrible happened to our community. Journalists will tell you, there's a weird rush that comes from finally getting a story out into the world and getting praise from other writers. In the past two weeks, though, that euphoric feeling for me has lasted all of five seconds before the discomfort sets in.

None of this is fair. I never wanted recognition or bylines this way. Outlets I’ve dreamed of writing for are suddenly reaching out, but I don’t know what to do with all the guilt that comes with these accomplishments. I keep repeating: This is never how I wanted to make my name in this industry. Even writing this article feels self-indulgent and wrong.

Layth feels the same emptiness. After he first published his op-ed at the Daily Bruin, he felt an outpouring of love on Instagram from Palestinians and Jewish students on campus who praised him for his articulate, empathetic writing. “It felt like the moment that I officially became a journalist, in a sense,” he says. “But with that, I was like, Did I just establish myself in this industry through this terrible situation?”

There’s also frustration among many of us that the industry has lost focus on the point of these protests in the first place. On the morning of May 6, I had two breaking news reports on my phone: “Columbia University cancels commencement ceremony following student protests,” and “Palestinians evacuate eastern Rafah ahead of expected Israeli assault.”

Later in the night, half of my Instagram feed was posting Met Gala outfits, and the other half was censored content because first responders were cleaning up the body parts of a victim who was blown up in Rafah. In moments like these, I go numb. Words feel empty and meaningless. I don’t see how anything will fix this situation, how we will ever grieve this catastrophic loss.

Says Layth, he isn’t able to focus on anything at all: “It’s just debilitating. It feels like what I’m currently doing does not matter compared to what’s going on in the world. And in a sense, that’s true,” he explains. “I feel guilty a lot of the time because I’m not the person being physically attacked — like, physically, I’m fine.”

All of us want to keep the focus on Gaza. “I think it’s important to keep centering what all of these protests and encampments are for,” says Basma. The police response and issues of free speech and police brutality on campus are important, but they are indicative of a much bigger problem, she notes. “It does feel like a distraction.”

When Basma thinks of her future career, her only hope is to work for a place that will allow her to do the most for her community in Palestine. It’s difficult for her to swallow working at places that don’t use precise, active language. “Why are you trying to make your headlines 10 words longer just to avoid saying one word?” she asks. “Just say it as it is.”

Says Layth, “It’s incredibly disappointing as a young person trying to make their way in this industry to see the people that you’re supposed to aspire to act in this way.”

But Layth also believes that writing off outlets with reporting they see as lacking will not solve our industry’s problems — and that we can slowly start changing things from the inside. “You can kind of do one of two things," says Layth. "You could be very disheartened and remove yourself from being in the media, which is a completely valid thing to do at this time” or “you can use your writing to correct those errors.”

As for me, I don’t know what the future holds. I chose to pursue this career to make a difference for my people. I wanted to tell their stories. But seven months of reporting on the death and destruction of my homeland has taken a toll on me that feels somewhat irreversible. Pictures like the one of the cops sitting under the memorial wall make me feel as if everything we’ve done is for nothing, that state violence will always win, and that we, as Palestinian journalists, will constantly be disrespected and forgotten.

But then I’m reminded of my conversations with journalists in Gaza. Amid invasions and threats to their physical safety, they message me on Instagram about the encampments, how far they are spreading, and whether this student-led movement means America has woken up to Palestinian suffering. I tell them, yes, I do believe something has fundamentally shifted. I send them pictures of journalists killed in Gaza, like Mustafa Thuraya and Hamza Al-Dahdouh, sitting high on our walls to remind them that we, as aspiring reporters, see the journalists of Gaza as our role models. Their responses fill me with gratitude and the motivation to keep going.

“Thank you for doing this,” Hazem Rajab, a journalist from Gaza, texted me in Arabic after I sent him a picture of the walls. “I am happy there are Palestinian journalists like you in this place [Columbia University]. Thank you for being so interested in us, for honoring them, and for showing that they were not just numbers.”

We as Palestinian journalists will be forever changed by this year, but I refuse to be hardened by these experiences, and I reject efforts by the police and university administration to crack down on our coverage. I don’t have the privilege of giving up.

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue

NAKBA 2.0

As Israel Invades Rafah, People Flee Gaza’s Last Standing City Into Rubble

Jesse Rosenfeld
Thu, May 16, 2024 


“Rashed Saber” was thrown from bed and concussed last Wednesday when an Israeli drone missile crashed through his family’s home in eastern Rafah at 5:30 a.m. He doesn’t know how he survived the attack.

The young doctor, who fled Israel’s invasion of Gaza City and has spent most of the war working in emergency rooms to save as many of Gaza’s 79,000 wounded as possible, grabbed what he could carry and ran with his family. Now, on a packed beach next to the shattered city of Khan Younis, Saber and his family are some of the estimated six hundred thousand Palestinians who escaped the Israeli onslaught in Rafah to seek safety in the rubble that Israel left behind.

“Water is costly and mostly polluted. Sewage is everywhere,” Saber says about the improvised Al Mowasi beach camp that is now home. Amid rats and outbreaks of hepatitis A, he is stunned by the squalor that people are forced to pitch their tents in. “It’s just not human.”

A Palestinian child sits near makeshift tent in Rafah, Gaza, on Feb. 14, 2024.


Saber is not his real name — he insists on using a pseudonym out of fear of Israeli reprisal. Surviving a war where hospitals have been systematically targeted by the Israeli military, where doctors have been stripped and marched through Gaza’s streets before disappearing into a detention system rife with stories of torture, he feels like a target.

So far, Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians of all ages, and most of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents have been displaced. Israel launched its assault after the Oct. 7 attacks, when Gazan fighters led by Hamas killed an estimated 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers while taking another 250 captive, in a grizzly series of massacres.

As Israel turned 76 this week, again at war and invading a Palestinian city, Rafah’s Palestinians have felt a repeat of history. For them, May 15 is the Nakba, or Catastrophe, when 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes and land by the emerging Israeli State, and again they are on the run. While most of their grandparents arrived in Gaza seeking safety from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, most of those fleeing Rafah have already been displaced multiple times in a war that has triggered the worst Palestinian existential crisis since they were exiled from their homeland.

Long dreaded by Rafah’s residents and the estimated 1.2 million Gazans desperately seeking sanctuary there from Israeli invasions in the rest of the strip, this invasion of a city full of people with nowhere left to go was supposed to be a red line for the Biden administration.

President Joe Biden warned Israel on CNN last week: “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gone in Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, that deal with that problem.”

Despite the tough talk that presents what people in Rafah are experiencing now as a future possibility, the Biden administration has only held up one shipment of bombs and guidance systems — and just allowed another $1 billion weapons deal with Israel to proceed, even after the Biden State Department acknowledged that American supplied weapons were “likely” used in potential war crimes.

Following the Israeli army’s ground incursions into certain neighborhoods east of Rafah, Palestinians residing in the area migrate toward Khan Younis on May 9, 2024.

Holding fast on his assertion Israel will fight alone if necessary, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted the risk of losing American diplomatic cover and billions of dollars in military aid won’t stop Israel’s invasion. Nervous about the perception of losing American support, however, the Israeli military’s top spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, has made televised statements boasting about America’s “unprecedented” arms support in seven months of war and the close coordination between both countries’ militaries.

Saber is outraged that U.S. weapons and backing for Israel’s war is enabling the complete destruction of Palestinian society in Gaza. With nothing apart from what he could carry as he fled, he feels Palestinains have been abandoned by the world while taking some solace in the American students leading a mass movement to change that. “The new generation of Americans are fed up,” Saber believes optimistically. “They saw what was happening and acted upon it.”

With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejecting Biden’s red line, Israel has smashed into the eastern part of Rafah and simultaneously reinvaded northern Gaza in what Netanyahu says is part of his hardline nationalist government’s effort to destroy Hamas. Both Israeli and Biden administration officials have attempted to portray the operation as “limited.” For Palestinians trapped in an indiscriminate war — where the International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel has plausibly committed acts of genocide — there is nothing limited about the new displacement and destruction. Rather, it feels like the first stages of a drawn out, full-scale assault on the besieged strip’s last standing city.

It’s a concern that has pushed Egypt, which has helped Israel maintain its 16-year blockade of the besieged strip on its northern Sinai frontier, to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ. South Africa has issued a new emergency appeal to the world’s top court, asking it to order Israel halt its Rafah invasion. Once the closest to its Israeli ally of any leadership since its 1979 Peace Treaty, Abdel Fatah Al Sisi’s regime has frantically opposed Israel’s Rafah operation, fearing it could push Gazans across its border. It has even built walled off areas just inside northern Sinai to hold any Palestinian refugees that cross. After Israel seized control of the Rafah border crossing on May 6 — and closed the main access point for the trickle of aid that has made its way to a people the UN says are facing famine — Egypt decried it as a violation of its peace treaty with Israel.

Feeling increased shelling as her home in central Rafah shook and Israel ordered Gazans in eastern Rafah to flee in advance of its ground invasion last Monday, Dorotea Gucciardo was coordinating with foreign and local medical teams in some of the last vestiges of Gaza’s health system as things began to collapse. One of a handful of foreign aid workers in Gaza, the director of development for the Glia Project was supposed to be finishing her second Gaza visit since the war when the border was occupied.

The next day, as the Mohammed Yousef El-Najar Hospital in eastern Rafah was evacuated, Gucciardo started hearing stories from doctors who had seen the worst of war going into complete panic. “No one wants a repeat of Shifa [and] Nasser,” she says, referring to the bloody assaults that destroyed Gaza City’s Al Shifa Medical complex and Khan Younis’ Nasser hospital.

After Israeli troops withdrew from the two hospitals, civil defense workers unearthed mass graves where bodies were reportedly stripped and hands tied, displaying signs of torture and indicating mass executions. Already investigating Israel for its systematic attacks on hospitals, the gruesome discovery prompted the United Nations and human rights groups to demand fresh war crimes investigations.

With fuel running out and Israel issuing further evacuation orders, Gucciardo says many of the last hospitals of Rafah are closing wings and evacuating. “After notices of orders to move were sent, the majority of staff didn’t show up,” she says of Rafah hospitals in the path of Israel’s advance. “All hospitals are planning to evacuate if there is an order to.”

Doctors operate at the United Arab Emirates Field Hospital, which continues to provide treatment services to injured and sick Palestinians despite Israel’s attacks and the operation in the eastern regions of Rafah, May 11.

Watching Rafah steadily empty until she was relocated to a safer house in Al Mowasi — declared a safe zone by Israel despite nearby fighting and a basic lack of resources — Gucciardo sees the invasion as trapping Gazans in a widening killing field. With Israeli shells pounding the city from air, land, and sea as street fighting grows closer, it is not only those from Rafah’s east sent scrambling for their lives.

Gucciardo describes waking up on Monday, after Israel issued new evacuation orders, and looking out her window in central Rafah at what had been an impromptu tented refugee camp of thousands the day before to find it nearly empty, with those left packing up their tents. “What’s left are the remnants of life,” she says.

Fleeing Gaza City with his family under Israeli evacuation orders and aerial assault in October, Mohammed Rajab arrived in Al Mowasi via a UN shelter in Khan Younis, months ahead of those fleeing Rafah. The 40-year-old driver, translator, and logistics manager for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is one of the few people still driving in Gaza.

Shuttling staff between hospitals in the bombarded central Gazan town of Deir Al Balah and Rafah, he now watches a constant flow of war-weary people arrive in Al Mowasi becoming ill and forced to rely on poorly-equipped health tents on the beach. “Israel is not even giving people a chance to be injured,” he says of people consistently dying from wounds that could be treated if Israel wasn’t restricting access to medicine and equipment.

Out of options and without anywhere safe in Gaza to go, Rajab is worried his family and him could still become a target: “The future feels very dangerous.”

#BDS 

UWindsor president says they plan to meet with pro-Palestinian encampment organizers

CBC
Wed, May 15, 2024 

A pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Windsor, Ont., started May 10. (Jennifer La Grassa/CBC - image credit)


The University of Windsor's president says the school has reached out to arrange a meeting with the organizers of a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus.

At an unrelated news conference Wednesday morning, president Robert Gordon told reporters that the school in southwestern Ontario reached out Tuesday morning and hopes to talk to the group in the coming days. There is no set date at this time.

Gordon said the school hopes to talk about what the group "would like to see done, but also for us to just be able to listen and learn to get a better context of what are the broader issues they expect the university to consider moving forward."


The pro-Palestinian encampment first started as a protest on May 9, among many in Canada and the U.S. that have sprung up related to the months-long Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The student movement began at Columbia University in New York City on April 17 before protesters were forcefully cleared by police at the request of administrators.

In Canada, encampments have also sprung up at Montreal's McGill University, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia and McMaster University in Hamilton.

University of Windsor president Robert Gordon told reporters Wednesday that the school plans on meeting with encampment organizers in the next few days.

University of Windsor president Robert Gordon told reporters Wednesday that the school plans on meeting with encampment organizers in the next few days. (Jennifer La Grassa/CBC)

A day later, more than 20 students set up about 15 tents on the southwestern Ontario university's grounds and have been sleeping on the lawn across from Dillon Hall to get the attention of school administration.

The group has six demands it wants the university to meet: disclose investments that benefit Israel, divest of those investments, declare a stance in the war, defend and support students and boycott academic institutions with ties to Israel.

The University of Windsor says it appreciates the way students are protesting in a peaceful and safe manner on campus.

The University of Windsor says it appreciates the way students are protesting in a peaceful and safe manner on campus. (Jennifer La Grassa/CBC)

Co-organizer of the encampment, Jana Jandal Alrifai, told CBC News she's "not optimistic that administration is going to come into this meeting with concrete steps or concessions that they are willing to make.

"I am hoping and imploring that that's what they do, because if they don't want us here, they don't want us sleeping here, then we're not just using empty words or statements or promises, that is not what we are looking for," she said.

Broadly speaking, the protesters at the campus encampments are demanding that their universities disclose their stakes in and divest from investments they say support Israel's actions against Palestinians, such as weapons manufacturers and the defence industry more generally.

University plans to 'listen,' 'get context' from meeting

The group has claimed that the university has about $900 million invested in funds that indirectly go to Israel's military industries.

When asked to confirm whether this is the case, Gordon said he hopes to clarify where the group got that number from.

Jana Jandal Alrifai is a co-organizer of the encampment on campus. She says they want the university to have a plan to meet their demands.

Jana Jandal Alrifai is a co-organizer of the encampment on campus. She says they want the university to have a plan to meet their demands. (Jennifer La Grassa/CBC)

"I think there is a little bit of confusion of how that number was arrived at," he said.

"The intentions I think are with this first meeting to listen, to just get better context how some of these numbers have been established."

As for whether the university will take a stance and support Palestinians — another demand from the group — Gordon said they are "happy to have conversations."

"These are complex geopolitical issues that we are doing our best to try to make sure that we are first and foremost supporting our university community," he said.

Students have been camped on the University of Windsor campus since Friday. Students say they will stay until University of Windsor officials meets with them about their demands for divestments.

Students have been camped on the University of Windsor campus since Friday. Students say they will stay until University of Windsor officials meets with them about their demands for divestments. (Jennifer La Grassa)

But Jandal Alrifai said she wants to see the university come to the table seriously considering their demands and a plan for when and how the school will implement them.

"The assumption is that we got this meeting, we're going to quiet down for a little bit, but that's not true," she said.

"The meeting is only one part of what we're trying to achieve here."

A total of 253 hostages were seized in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which about 1,200 Israelis were also killed, according to Israeli counts. Israel's offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians over the last seven months, mostly women and children, health officials in Gaza said.

For the children of Gaza, war means no school — and no indication when formal learning might return

WAFAA SHURAFA and SAM MEDNICK
Thu, May 16, 2024 




Children play near their family's tent in Deir al Balah, on Saturday, April 20, 2024. Since the war erupted Oct 7, all of Gaza's schools have closed, and aid groups are scrambling to keep children off the streets and their minds focused on something other than the war.

 (AP Photo/Abdel Kareen Hana)


DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza (AP) — Atef Al-Buhaisi, 6, once dreamed of a career building houses. Now, all he craves is to return to school.

In Israel's war with Hamas, Atef's home has been bombed, his teacher killed and his school in Nuseirat turned into a refuge for displaced people. He lives in a cramped tent with his family in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where he sleeps clinging to his grandmother and fears walking alone even during the day.

Since the war erupted Oct. 7, all of Gaza's schools have closed — leaving hundreds of thousands of students like Atef without formal schooling or a safe place to spend their days. Aid groups are scrambling to keep children off the streets and their minds focused on something other than the war, as heavy fighting continues across the enclave and has expanded into the southern city of Rafah and intensified in the north.


“What we’ve lost most is the future of our children and their education,” said Irada Ismael, Atef’s grandmother. "Houses and walls are rebuilt, money can be earned again ... but how do I compensate for (his) education?”

Gaza faces a humanitarian crisis, with the head of the U.N.'s World Food Program determining a “full-blown famine” is already underway in the north. More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures. About 80% of Gaza’s population has been driven from homes. Much of Gaza is damaged or destroyed, including nearly 90% of school buildings, according to aid group estimates.

Children are among the most severely affected, with the U.N. estimating some 19,000 children have been orphaned and nearly a third under the age of 2 face acute malnutrition. In emergencies, education takes a back seat to safety, health and sanitation, say education experts, but the consequences are lasting.

“The immediate focus during conflict isn’t on education, but the disruption has an incredibly long-term effect,” said Sonia Ben Jaafar, of the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation, a philanthropic organization focused on education in the Arab world. “The cost at this point is immeasurable.”

Before the war, Gaza was home to more than 625,000 students and some 20,000 teachers in its highly literate population, according to the U.N. In other conflicts, aid groups can create safe spaces for children in neighboring countries — for example, Poland for shelter and schooling during the war in Ukraine.

That's not possible in Gaza, a densely populated enclave locked between the sea, Israel and Egypt. Since Oct 7, Palestinians from Gaza haven't been allowed to cross into Israel. Egypt has let a small number of Palestinians leave.

“They’re unable to flee, and they remain in an area that continues to be battered," said Tess Ingram, of UNICEF. "It’s very hard to provide them with certain services, such as mental health and psychosocial support or consistent education and learning.”

Aid groups hope classes will resume by September. But even if a cease-fire is brokered, much of Gaza must be cleared of mines, and rebuilding schools could take years.

In the interim, aid groups are providing recreational activities — games, drawing, drama, art — not for a curriculum-based education but to keep children engaged and in a routine, in an effort for normalcy. Even then, advocates say, attention often turns to the war — Atef's grandmother sees him draw pictures only of tents, planes and missiles.

Finding free space is among the biggest challenges. Some volunteers use the outdoors, make do inside tents where people live, or find a room in homes still standing.

It took volunteer teachers more than two months to clear one room in a school in Deir al-Balah to give ad hoc classes to children. Getting simple supplies such as soccer balls and stationery into Gaza can also take months, groups report.

“Having safe spaces for children to gather to play and learn is an important step," Ingram said, but “ultimately the children of Gaza must be able to return to learning curriculum from teachers in classrooms, with education materials and all the other support schooling provides.”

This month, UNICEF had planned to erect at least 50 tents for some 6,000 children from preschool to grade 12 for play-based numbers and literacy learning in Rafah. But UNICEF says those plans could be disrupted by Israel's operation there.

Lack of schooling can take a psychological toll — it disrupts daily life and, compounded with conflict, makes children more prone to anxiety and nervousness, said Jesus Miguel Perez Cazorla, a mental health expert with the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Children in conflicts are also at increased risk of forced labor, sexual violence, trafficking and recruitment by gangs and armed groups, experts warn.

“Not only are children vulnerable to recruitment by Hamas and other militant groups, but living amid ongoing violence and constantly losing family members makes children psychologically primed to want to take action against the groups they consider responsible,” said Samantha Nutt of War Child USA, which supports children and families in war zones.

Palestinians say they've seen more children take to Gaza's streets since the war, trying to earn money for their families.

“The streets are full of children selling very simple things, such as chocolate, canned goods,” said Lama Nidal Alzaanin, 18, who was in her last year of high school and looking forward to university when the war broke out. "There is nothing for them to do.”

Some parents try to find small ways to teach their children, scrounging for notebooks and pens and insisting they learn something as small as a new word each day. But many find the kids are too distracted, with the world around them at war.

Sabreen al-Khatib, a mother whose family was displaced to Deir al-Balah from Gaza City, said it's particularly hard for the many who've seen relatives die.

“When you speak in front of children," al-Khatib said, "what do you think he is thinking? Will he think about education? Or about himself, how will he die?”

On Oct. 7, 14-year-old Layan Nidal Alzaanin — Lama's younger sister — was on her way to her middle school in Beit Hanoun when missiles flew overhead, she said. She fled with her family to Rafah, where they lived crowded in a tent. Since Israel ordered evacuations there, she fled to Deir al-Balah.

“It is a disaster," she said. “My dreams have been shattered. There is no future for me without school.”

___

Mednick reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.

#BDS CEASEFIRE NOW!

Police dismantle pro-Palestinian encampment at DePaul University in Chicago

TERESA CRAWFORD
Updated Thu, May 16, 2024

CHICAGO (AP) — Police began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment early Thursday at DePaul University in Chicago, hours after the school's president told students to leave the area or face arrest.

Officers and workers in yellow vests cleared out tents at the student encampment as front-loaders removed the camping equipment.

Across the street from where the encampment was spread across a grassy expanse of DePaul’s campus known as “The Quad,” a few dozen protesters stood along a sidewalk in front of a service station, clapping their hands in unison as an apparent protest leader paced and spoke into a bullhorn.

All the protesters at the encampment “voluntarily left” the area when police arrived early Thursday, said Jon Hein, chief of patrol for the Chicago Police Department.

“There were no confrontations and there was no resistance,” he said at a news briefing.

Hein said two people were arrested outside of the encampment “for obstruction of traffic.” One of those arrested is a current DePaul student and the other a former student, DePaul President Robert Manuel said in a statement.

The move to clear the campus comes less than a week after the school's president said public safety was at risk. The university on Saturday said it had reached an “impasse” with the school’s protesters, leaving the future of their encampment unclear. Most of DePaul’s commencement ceremonies will be held the June 15-16 weekend.

In a statement, Manuel and Provost Salma Ghanem said they believed that students intended to protest peacefully, but “the responses to the encampment have inadvertently created public safety issues that put our community at risk.”

Efforts to resolve the differences with DePaul Divestment Coalition over the past 17 days were unsuccessful, Manuel said in a statement sent to students, faculty and staff Thursday morning.

“I understand that the last 17 days have been stressful for many, not only within our campus, but also for those who live and work in our neighboring community," Manuel said later Thursday in a statement. “We are saddened that the situation came to the point where law enforcement intervention was necessary to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all — both within and outside the encampment.”

Students at many college campuses this spring set up similar encampments, calling for their schools to cut ties with Israel and businesses that support it, to protest lsrael’s actions in the war in Gaza.

Separately, 47 people were arrested at University of California, Irvine on Wednesday, university spokesperson Tom Vasich said in an email Thursday evening. The school previously said 50 people had been arrested.

A few were arrested for trespassing, but a majority were arrested for failure to disperse after a direct police order, Vasich said.

Chancellor Howard Gillman issued a statement Wednesday saying he was planning to allow the peaceful encampment to remain on campus even though it violated university policies, but the school called in police after a small group barricaded themselves inside a campus lecture hall, supported by a large group of community members rallying outside.

He said the group transformed what had been a manageable situation into one that required police response and demanded to oversee many elements of university operations.

“Most importantly, their assault on the academic freedom rights of our faculty and the free speech rights of faculty and students was appalling,” Gillman said in the statement.

Also Wednesday, 11 members of a group protesting at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville who did not vacate the area despite repeated warnings were arrested for trespassing, the university said in a statement. Those arrested included three students and eight people who are not affiliated with the university.

“The University of Tennessee respects individual’s rights to free speech and free expression and is committed to managing the campus for all,” the university said in the statement. “We will continue to be guided by the law and university policy, neutral of viewpoint.”

An independent journalist on Thursday confirmed his Wednesday arrest at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque as authorities removed encampments and arrested seven people, including two students.

Bryant Furlow, a frequent contributor to nonprofit news outlet New Mexico In Depth said in a statement that he was arrested along with wife and photographer Tara Armijo-Prewitt. In the statement released by New Mexico In Depth, Furlow said he and Armijo-Prewitt were charged with criminal trespass and wrongful use of public property and detained for 12 hours before release.

“We at all times followed instructions we received from police and stayed behind the yellow police tape,” Furlow said. “We were arrested while photographing the operation and shortly after asking an NMSP (New Mexico State Police) officer for his badge number and name. As I was being arrested, I said I was a member of the press repeatedly and loudly.”

At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the school’s Board of Regents held a regularly scheduled meeting Thursday, a day after protesters showed up at the homes of some board members.

Sarah Hubbard, chair of the university’s governing board, said tents and red-stained sheets intended to resemble body bags with corpses were left on her lawn.

“This conduct is where our failure to address antisemitism leads literally — literally — to the front door of my home,” said board member Mark Bernstein. “When and where will this end? As a Jew, I know the answer to these questions because our experience is full of tragedies that we are at grave risk of repeating. Enough is enough.”

Protesters have been allowed to maintain an encampment on campus. They want the university to get rid of investments in companies linked to Israel, though school officials insist there are no direct investments, only a relatively small amount of endowment money in funds that might invest there.

The student-led DePaul Divestment Coalition, who are calling on the university to divest from Israel, set up the encampment April 30. The group alleged university officials walked away from talks and tried to force students into signing an agreement, according to a student statement late Saturday.

Henna Ayesh, a Palestinian student who’s a member of the coalition, criticized the police removal of the encampment as “shameful” in a statement sent Thursday by the group.

“It is shameful that DePaul chose violence rather than allowing students the right to protest our tuition money funding a genocide that is directly killing and displacing our families,” Ayesh said.

The Associated Press has recorded at least 80 incidents since April 18 where arrests were made at campus protests across the U.S. More than 2,960 people have been arrested on the campuses of 60 colleges and universities. The figures are based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.

___

Associated Press reporter Christopher L. Keller contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico

Antiwar protesters rallied at DePaul University in Chicago, Thursday evening, May 16, 2024, after an encampment at the campus quad had been taken down by university police early in the morning.

 (AP Photo/Melissa Perez Winder)

American doctors uncertain how they will leave Gaza: A day in their life

ZOE MAGEE and RUWAIDA AMER
Thu, May 16, 2024 

As the Israeli military intensifies its fight against the militant group Hamas in and around the southern Gaza city of Rafah, thousands are being forced to evacuate and several U.S. citizens are caught up in the confusion after the Israeli military took over the Rafah Crossing on May 7.

Among those uncertain how they will get out of Gaza are a group of medics, who were volunteering with the Palestinian American Medical Association, working at the European Hospital in Khan Younis.

"The U.N. have been working to try to secure a safe passage," Monica Johnston, a burns nurse from Portland, told ABC News in an interview.

"We just don't know when that will be. We keep getting told tentative dates and it keeps getting pushed back. We have a team in Cairo waiting to come and relieve us."

Johnston and 18 other colleagues were meant to leave on Monday, but with the Rafah Crossing closed and Israel Defense Forces activity in the area increasing, the route out was deemed too dangerous.

Johnston told ABC News she didn’t want to leave until the replacement team had arrived. "I want to continue to provide help because I don't want these people abandoned," Johnston said, visibly upset.

"I want the world to know that there are so many innocent people being affected," Johnston told ABC News.

MORE: Protesters in Israel arrested after attacking Gaza aid trucks

PHOTO: A view of Yafa hospital damaged by Israeli strikes, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, Dec. 8, 2023. (Stringer/Reuters, FILE)

She explained that the longer this team has to wait for their replacements, the harder it is for them to do their jobs as the hospital is running so low on supplies.

"They need to come in, and they need to have their supplies as well," Johnston said, explaining that she is struggling to suitably treat patients as the hospital is running out of basics like soap, hand sanitizer, paper towels, medicines and equipment.

"We’re running out of medications, life sustaining medications that keep the heart running, the blood pumping. Pain medications we have to ration that and that in my position is extremely hard," she said.

"There’s such a lack of infection control. There’s bugs and flies and dirty linen everywhere. Most dressings should be changed daily ... some we are spreading out to every other day. We find that the wound is very contaminated – sometimes they have maggots," Johnston said.

The Rafah Crossing into Egypt has been the main access point for the Gaza Strip since this conflict began when Hamas militants stormed Israel on Oct. 7, killing at least 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping over 250.

On May 7, Israeli tanks entered the crossing and the IDF now control it. They are not allowing any access as they step up their efforts to confront Hamas in the area.

Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant was in Rafah Thursday and announced a ramping up of troops there. "Additional troops will join the ground operation in Rafah," Gallant said.

MORE: Humanitarian workers, doctors describe 'horrific' situation in Rafah as Israel intensifies strikes

PHOTO: A delegation of American and European doctors performs complex surgeries on injured Palestinians at the European Hospital, Dec. 31, 2023, Gaza Strip. (Abed Rahim Khatib/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)

This increase in military activity has meant the journey in and out of for the PAMA teams is now far more complicated and potentially dangerous.

"The situation since May 7 has gotten even more dire than you can imagine," Johnston said, explaining that many hospital staff have fled the area after the Israeli military instructed the evacuation of nearby Rafah, adding a further burden onto the already over-stretched staff and volunteers who have remained.

"There have been lots of fights amongst people here ... over things like the use of water," Johnson explained. "I am concerned I don’t know how much longer our bottled water supply is going to last."

Tension is running high in the hospital among both patients and staff, Johnston said. "I was leaving the ICU last night and was quickly ushered out as there was a gun fight and a knife fight in the ER. I don’t know what it was over, but you feel the tension, you feel the stress, you feel the anxiety increasing in everyone here."

Johnston has not worked in conflict zones before but her colleague, Dr. Adam Hamawy, has. He was an army medic and served in Iraq where he was responsible for saving the life of Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

Sen. Duckworth has been in regular contact with Hamawy, posting to X (formally known as Twitter) on May 14, "I'm in direct contact with Dr. Hamawy and am working hard to secure his group's immediate evacuation. Aid workers and innocent civilians should always be protected. The Netanyahu admin must work to open the Rafah crossing, support evacuations and allow much more aid in."

MORE: Northern Gaza experiencing 'full-blown famine': UN official

PHOTO: A general view shows a field hospital operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 10, 2024. (ICRC/via Reuters)

Despite being no stranger to conflict, Hamawy said he is distressed by what he has seen in Gaza. "Every patient I have has a story. Every patient I have has been suffering for months. Every patient I have has lost family members. Many of my patients are children that are now orphans because they have lost both their parents," Hamawy told ABC News.

"And it’s not just the patients. It’s everyone that is here in the hospital. It’s the nurses, it’s the doctors, it’s the staff," Hamawy said. "This morning I was talking to one of the nurses that I met when I first came here," Hamawy said, explaining that this man looked exhausted.

"As soon as I asked him how he was and where he had been he collapsed and started weeping, telling me the ordeal he has been through," Hamawy said.

That nurse had evacuated his family out of Rafah, taking his wife and two young daughters to where the Israelis had indicated was safe.

"This place had nothing. It was basically desert. There was no water. There was no food, no shelter, no tents, no bathrooms. He said they lived like animals. When they had to use the facilities, they had to dig a hole. He said at night it was freezing and during the day he was extremely hot,” Hamawy said.

Both Hamawy and Johnston said they are filled with empathy and admiration for the patients they have treated and the Palestinian colleagues they have worked with.

"I feel very grateful to be here and provide that little level of comfort and safety for them," Johnston said, adding, "The amount of trauma that everybody has suffered here and the triggers that are going to happen lifelong is heartbreaking."

US working to get trapped American doctors out of Gaza, White House says

Reuters
Updated Wed, May 15, 2024 


US working to get trapped American doctors out of Gaza, White House says
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre holds a briefing in Washington

(Reuters) -The Biden administration is working to get a group of U.S. doctors out of Gaza after Israel closed the Rafah border crossing, the White House said on Wednesday.

The State Department said earlier this week that the government was aware that American doctors were unable to leave Gaza, after the Intercept reported that upwards of 20 American doctors and medical workers were trapped in Gaza.

The Palestinian American Medical Association, a U.S.-based non-profit, said on Monday that its team of 19 healthcare professionals, including 10 Americans, had been denied exit from Gaza after a two-week mission providing medical services at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, a city near Rafah in southern Gaza.

Israel seized and closed the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on May 7, disrupting a vital route for people and aid into and out of the devastated enclave.

"We're tracking this matter closely and working to get the impacted American citizens out of Gaza," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday.

Jean-Pierre said the United States was engaging directly with Israel on the matter.

The Biden administration has been warning Israel against a major military ground operation in Rafah, but Jean-Pierre said efforts to get the doctors out are continuing regardless of what happens there.

"We need to get them out. We want to get them out and it has nothing to do with anything else," she said.

Israeli troops battled militants across Gaza on Wednesday, including in Rafah, which had been a refuge for civilians, in an upsurge of the more than seven-month-old war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Gaza's healthcare system has essentially collapsed since Israel began its military offensive there after the Oct. 7 cross-border attacks by Palestinian Hamas militants on Israelis.

Humanitarian workers sounded the alarm last week that the closure of the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings into Gaza could force aid operations to grind to a halt.

The Israeli assault on Gaza has destroyed hospitals across Gaza, including Al Shifa Hospital, the Gaza Strip's largest before the war, and killed and injured health workers.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose; Writing by Brendan O'Boyle; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Eric Beech)

Opinion: 

I'm an American doctor stuck in Gaza. As Israel moves into Rafah, where will physicians and our patients go?

Mahmoud Sabha
Wed, May 15, 2024 

Smoke rises from a fire in a building caused by Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 10. (AFP via Getty Images)


As an American doctor, I felt called to help Palestinians who have faced a collapsing healthcare system in Gaza. My first trip was in March and I returned for another mission earlier this month, before the Israeli military assault on Rafah, in southern Gaza, which has been catastrophic. Now we have no way out.

Israel’s seizure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt has complicated our medical team’s departure from Gaza, which was coordinated with the World Health Organization and scheduled for Monday.

Read more: Opinion: Do campus protests show Americans' support for Palestinians has reached a turning point?

We have been at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, near Rafah. If we leave, and no new mission can get in, the patients here will be abandoned and terrified. More than 1 million people had taken refuge in Rafah during the Israeli bombardment of northern Gaza, and hundreds of thousands have now been forced to flee the area amid Israel’s offensive here.

Our patients ask me where they should go, to which hospital. They tell me that some facilities are still open and ask my opinion of them. What do I say? The patients know full well about the destruction of the Al Shifa and Nasser hospitals. They know patients have been killed with IV lines and catheters still inside, and they believe that will be their fate as well if they are left alone and vulnerable to the Israeli forces.

Read more: Granderson: Biden is right to nudge Israel toward protecting civilians in Rafah

Meanwhile, limited humanitarian aid is getting in. The medical supplies entering Gaza often come in with new volunteers. I brought eight pieces of checked luggage, full of wound-care supplies for this mission. We get patients with wounds over 60% to 80% of their bodies, but we don’t even have absorbent pads to keep their wounds dry, which is necessary to prevent hypothermia.

The Rafah invasion is also worsening the displacement of both the patients’ and the medical staff’s families. Given the hospital’s staffing shortages, families are doing half the work of the nurses. They help turn patients. They help change their diapers. They transfer them to the clinic and back to the ward. They feed them. The patients would be nowhere without their families.

Read more: My family in Gaza faces starvation. How do I find solace this Ramadan?

If the hospital were abandoned or their families were forced to evacuate, I have no clue how these patients would survive, especially those with amputations restricting their movement. I imagine the patients saying a final goodbye to their loved ones.

Some doctors and nurses have been volunteering here for a long time. Some of us have been to Gaza several times. Yet we continue to be shocked by the cruelty. We are not used to this degree of carnage. Even the local staff continues to be shocked.

Read more: Opinion: I'm an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn't war — it was annihilation

The local medical staff have avoided telling the patients that our team may have to evacuate before the next set of aid workers can arrive, for fear it would cause a massive panic. Nobody likes talking about evacuation. I can tell they don’t even like to use the word. Even if as doctors, we can’t save people given the limited resources, at least as foreigners, we can provide some protection, standing as a shield against a potential massacre of the patients.

We are still working with the WHO to leave safely, despite the Rafah border closing. Though, it is disturbing that on our planned exit date, a United Nations-marked vehicle was shot at and a foreign aid worker killed.

In the meantime, we will continue to see our patients and provide medical care for as long as we are here. Our organization’s next team is waiting in Cairo, hoping to start their mission.

I remain inspired by the fortitude of the people I’ve met. When some of my patients are under conscious sedation for their dressing changes, their inner selves come out, and many of them call to God. One patient repeated the shahada — the Muslim testimony of faith. Another whose voice I hadn’t heard before raised his hands to the air as he woke, making dua, a prayer of supplication to God.

I hope that the border crossing will reopen and that a new team with more resources will arrive. I hope for a cease-fire to end this man-made humanitarian disaster. For now, as long as I am able to testify to the strength of people in Gaza and share that with the world, I am honored to be among these individuals, who have given me more than I have given them.

Mahmoud Sabha is a wound care physician from La Palma, Calif., residing in Dallas.