Michelle O’Neill now most popular leader in Ireland but Sinn Féin support drops to lowest level since 2021

Poll shows First Minister’s rating 16 points higher than Mary Lou McDonald

Voter uncertainty poses threat to referendums

Sunday Independent | Ireland Thinks Poll: State of the Parties

Michelle O'Neill is more popular than her party leader Mary Lou McDonald. Photo: PA
Hugh O'ConnellToday at 04:00

Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill is now more popular, by a wide margin, than any of the main political party leaders in Ireland – including her own leader in Sinn Féin, the party’s president Mary Lou McDonald.


This month’s Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks poll shows Ms O’Neill, who made history last month by becoming Northern Ireland’s first nationalist First Minister, has an approval rating of 55pc, putting her ahead of Tánaiste and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin on 47pc.

The Sinn Féin deputy leader is also significantly more popular – by 16 points – than Ms McDonald, whose approval rating has fallen back to 39pc.

Ms McDonald is now less popular than Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar, who has a 41pc approval rating.

Meanwhile, with just days to go before the family and care referendums, there has been a significant fall in the number of people who intend to vote Yes and a large increase in those who are either not sure or will not vote in the two referendums on Friday.

Support for a Yes vote in the family referendum has fallen five points to 42pc, with support for a No vote down six points to 23pc. However, the number of voters who are not sure or not voting has risen 12 points to 35pc.

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In the care referendum, support for a Yes vote has fallen 10 points to 39pc, while support for a No vote has fallen three points to 24pc. The number of respondents who were either not sure or will not vote is up 12 points to 36pc.

The findings will prompt alarm within the Coalition and the wider Yes campaign, with all of the mainstream political parties, except Aontú, calling for two Yes votes in what has been a largely lacklustre campaign.

While there is widely expected to be a low turnout on Friday, the poll finds that nearly two-thirds of those asked will definitely vote. Asked about their level of knowledge about the proposed constitutional changes, 24pc said they know a lot, 39pc said they know some, 25pc said they know a little and 12pc said they knew nothing.

Michelle O'Neill is more popular than her party leader Mary Lou McDonald. Photo: PA

Meanwhile, despite the strong approval rating for Ms O’Neill, Sinn Féin has slumped to its lowest level of support in nearly three years and is at 27pc, a two-point drop since last month and the lowest in these series of polls since April 2021.

Fine Gael is second on 20pc (up one) and Fianna Fáil on 18pc (up one). In a further boost to the Coalition, the Green Party is up one to 4pc.

However, the Greens trail the Social Democrats, who are up two points to 7pc. Labour is unchanged on 4pc, Solidarity-People Before Profit is down one at 2pc and Aontú is also down one at 2pc. Independents and others are down one to 17pc.

Ms O’Neill’s popularity with voters in the Republic comes after a month in which she was widely praised for an interview on the Late Late Show on RTÉ.

She also made headlines after her appearance last week at her first Northern Ireland international at Windsor Park, where she stood for the playing of God Save the King before the women’s team drew 1-1 with Montenegro.

The poll was carried out on Friday and yesterday, March 1 and 2, among a sample size of 1,083 people with a margin of error of plus or minus 3pc.

This article was first published in the Sunday Independent, which is published in the Republic of Ireland

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Kent's mining community recall strike 40 years on

By Liberty Phelan & Hamish Mureddu-Reid

BBC Politics South East

PA MediaMiners and police clash during a strike at Tilmanstone Colliery in Kent in September 1984

In 1984 Kent miners joined a national strike that was to become the biggest industrial dispute in post-war Britain.

Three Kent pits - Snowdown, Tilmanstone and Betteshanger - were in operation in 1984 when the 54-week dispute began.

Protests were held against plans by the National Coal Board, supported by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to shut 20 "unprofitable" pits nationwide.

The National Union of Miners' strike saw miners and police clash on the picket lines across the country.

Eventually the Kent miners returned to work but the pits were destined for closure. Betteshanger was the last to close in Kent in 1989.

Shaun Parry started working at Snowdown Colliery near Aylesham when he was just 16 years old.

He said: "It was 940m deep, and it was very, very hot. I think the nickname was Dante's inferno. I loved it."

PA MediaThe Coal Not Dole slogan was popular among those who argued subsidising unprofitable mines was less costly than paying benefits to unemployed miners

Mr Parry said he had been detained by police during the strike.

"I hadn't done anything. I was taken to the van and then they cable-tied you to a wire inside the van," he said.

"I was frightened. I was really frightened."

Wives' support

Kay Sutcliffe was married to miner Philip Sutcliffe and they lived in the pit village of Aylesham.

She said no-one in the village broke the strike and everyone in Aylesham was "organised and united".

For Mrs Sutcliffe, the strikes were a battle to save not just jobs, but a way of life.

BBC/Liberty PhelanKay Sutcliffe's speeches galvanised support from miners' wives during the year-long strike


After seeing TV reports of miners' wives in Nottinghamshire calling for a return to work, women in Kent, led by Mrs Sutcliffe and others, travelled north to boost support for the stoppage.

She penned poems which galvanized dozens of women to march in protest, while her speeches were heard by thousands.

Mrs Sutcliffe said: "I think we were the first women support group that actually publicly were noticed for doing an active thing like that.

"'How is it gonna affect the miners in our community? How is it gonna affect their families if they can't get a job anywhere?' That's the kind of thing I was talking about," she told BBC Politics South East.

"And how much it meant to our communities to keep the pits going, and not just to our communities, but to the whole country."

German Journeys Part 24: Enlightenment, Habermas, and the European Union

Last in the series! German Journeys is based on a true story. Featuring as persona Alec in this series, the author writes about their cultural exploration of Germany as a narrative based on true events

by Peter Morris
03-03-2024 13:00
in Short story Sunday

Image credit: hyotographics/Shutterstock.com

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23

Berlin December 1784

“Enlightenment,” wrote the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in that month’s edition of the Berlin Monthly “is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another.

“This immaturity,” he continued, “is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore ‘Sapere aude!’ Have the courage to use your own understanding!”

Alec, of course, was not in Berlin to read Kant’s famous essay when it appeared. The dateline at the top of this final Part in the German Journeys series is not a mistake but the date of publication of Kant’s winning entry in a competition in the magazine to define enlightenment. Runner up was the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, grandfather of Felix.

It was in the summer of 2018 that Alec studied Kant’s essay at Berlin Free University as part of a course on “German Philosophy: Kant to Habermas,” already discussed in Part 22 in relation to the philosopher Hegel.

The more Alec reads and re-reads Kant’s essay, the more relevant it becomes to modern life. Laziness and cowardice, says the philosopher, are the reasons why so many people remain immature for life and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians, guiding their thoughts and actions. People in authority like government ministers, military officers and priests train ordinary citizens as if they were domestic animals, afraid to act or think on their own initiative.

Today’s guardians still include ministers and politicians, but now include mass and social media, celebrities, and so-called influencers as well. It’s so much easier, Kant argued, to be lulled into conforming to the views of such people than to think independently. The only way out of this immature dependence on others, he says, is for people to make public use of their reason.

While he conceded that people must follow lawful instructions at work, and pay their taxes, he argued that as private citizens they should challenge rather than conform. It is clear from his essay that he would have been in favour of peaceful protests.

Ultimately, Kant was an optimist: “Once the germ on which nature has lavished most care – man’s inclination and vocation to think freely – has developed within this hard shell [the discipline necessary for a secure society] it gradually reacts upon the mentality of the people, who thus gradually become increasingly able to act for themselves. Eventually it even influences the principles of governments, which find that they can themselves profit by treating man, who is more than a machine, in a manner appropriate to his dignity.”

Alec found himself in sympathy with Kant’s definition of enlightenment as the courage to think for oneself and encouraged that in western countries at least there are many people who are willing to protest and campaign.

But looking around Britain and the world he was far from certain that in more than 200 years since Kant’s famous essay humanity at large had freed itself from those who set themselves up as its guardians, particularly in the mainstream and social media, and especially doubtful that governments in many nations had advanced much, if at all towards treating their people with dignity.

Habermas and the European Union

2010

The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas brings this series of 24 reminiscences of travels and studies in Germany full circle with a discussion of the subject with which it started: the European Union (EU). The series started as a contribution to efforts to persuade the British Government to make it easier for school exchanges with Europe to take place. Such exchanges can have lifelong educational, cultural, and horizon-broadening benefits, as Alec hopes his own experiences have demonstrated. But exchanges have fallen off drastically since Brexit.

Habermas (born 1929) is perhaps Europe’s foremost public intellectual, applying philosophy to public policy. He is an opponent of populism and nationalism and a critical friend of the EU. But as he explained in a book published in at the time of the world financial crisis 2010, “The Crisis of the European Union: A Response” *, he wants to go much further than a more closely integrated and more democratic EU. He wants world government, but of a specific and limited type.

The United Nations, he believes, should be reorganised as a politically constituted community of states and (original emphasis) citizens, restricted to the core tasks of peacekeeping and the global implementation of human rights, with the necessary institutional means to fulfil these two tasks effectively and even-handedly.

For what he calls the pressing problems of a future global domestic (author’s emphasis) politics – the environment and climate change, the worldwide risks of large-scale technology, regulating financial market-driven capitalism, and especially the distributional problems that arise in the trade, labour, health, and transportation regimes of a highly stratified world society – there is the need for a negotiation system normatively integrated into the world community.

The EU, he believes, could fit seamlessly into such a world society. The EU must realise its democratic potential, according to the book cover, by evolving from an international into a cosmopolitan community. Under the right conditions, the chain of legitimacy could extend without interruption from national states via regional regimes such as the EU to the world organisation.

“These are fateful times,” wrote Habermas (in 2010, don’t forget, at the time of the euro crisis and before Brexit was heard of). “Our lame political elites, who prefer to read the tabloid headlines, must not use as an excuse that their populations are the obstacle to a deeper European unification. With a little political backbone, the crisis of the single currency can bring about what some once hoped for from a common European foreign policy, namely a cross border awareness of a shared European destiny.”
Conclusion

Looking back on Habermas’s ambitions for Europe and the world back in 2010, and all that has happened since, not least Brexit, Alec’s first thought was that they were Utopian. In particular, he thought, the UN could never be reformed in the way Habermas wanted. Russia and China, with their vetoes on the Security Council, would never allow it. And the EU, under the increasing influence of right-wing, populist, and nationalist parties, is struggling to co-operate in tackling problems like the influx of refugees.

But then again, Alec thought, change had to start somewhere, and why not at the next UK general election. Could Keir Starmer’s Labour Party not be persuaded to be a little bolder, a little less lame, and put flesh on the bones of its vague aspirations for a closer relationship with the EU. That at least would be a step, if a tiny one, that the UK could take on the road to the peaceful, human-rights-based, cosmopolitan world that Habermas has argued for.

On a personal level, Alec hoped that his own experiences of one EU country, Germany, recounted in this series, would make people appreciate that there are educational and cultural pleasures and benefits to be gained from continental travel if they can. Travel, he was taught as a child growing up in Sunderland, broadens the mind.

Meanwhile, there is something all readers can do as well, if they wish: Sign the Parliamentary petition calling on the Government to make it easier for schools to organise European trips.

*Translated by Ciarin Cronin. Published by Polity.



Peter Morris
I am a semi-retired journalist with experience in North East newspapers dating back to 1964. I have worked on Tyneside, Wearside and Teesside, specialising in regional politics and local government before moving into newsdesk management. I have also worked in media relations for the government. Since retiring I have studied at university, gaining successively a BA (humanities with art history, MA (European Union studies) and PhD (economic geography).

UK environmentalists commend EU’s decision to criminalise ‘ecocide’


“That’s how it’s done."

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

LEFT FOOT FORWARD

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On February 27, EU lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to make the most serious cases of environmental damage a crime. The vote in the European Parliament saw 499 votes in favour a, just 100 against, and 23 abstentions.

Under the updated environmental crime directive, those responsible for the deliberate destruction of the ecosystem, including illegal logging and habitat loss, will face tougher penalties, including prison sentences.

The vote means that the European Union is the first international body to criminalise eco crimes. EU member states now have two years to bring the updated directive into national law.

The move was hailed by environmentalists across Europe. The EU is “adopting one of the most ambitious legislations in the world,” said Marie Toussaint, a French lawyer and MEP for the Greens/European Free Alliance Group.

“The new directive opens a new page in the history of Europe, protecting against those who harm ecosystems and, through them, human health. It means putting an end to environmental impunity in Europe, which is crucial and urgent,” she added.

In its latest assessment on environmental crime, Europol, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, warns how crimes against the environment threaten the survival of all living species. They also have a huge financial impact, which is set to increase further.

“Opportunities for high profits, legal discrepancies among countries, low risk of detection and marginal penalties make environmental crime a very attractive business for criminal entrepreneurs,” the assessment states.

The decision to criminalise ‘ecocide,’ that is the destruction of the natural environment by deliberate or negligent human action, was embraced by environment and pro-Europe groups in the UK.

“That’s how it’s done,” said Mike Galsworthy, chair of the European Movement UK, in reference to the vote.

“Bring it on,” wrote anti fossil fuel campaigners, Raw Foundation.

“An excellent start,” said Space4Wildlife.

“Finally,” said Victoria Johnson, an associate professor of political sociology.

In the UK, calls for making ecocide a crime are growing. In September 2023, Camden became the first UK council to call for the destruction of nature to be formally recognised as a crime. A motion urging for ecocide to be recognised as a crime that damages the environment and endangers the future of the planet, received cross-party support from councillors.

A group of lawyers were brought together by the Stop Ecocide Foundation, which argues ecocide should be added to the crimes considered by the International Criminal Court. In a speech at the time, Professor Philippe Sands KC, asked Camden Council to support the idea of making environmental breaches an international crime. He defined “ecocide” as the “unlawful or wanton acts committed with the knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”

He said the council’s move would “send a signal to councils around the world: to Mexico, to Columbia, to Bangladesh, Cameroon.”

“The motion before you is really to push international consciousness. Act global think local, think local act global,” he added.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward

Marx in the Anthropocene
Only recently are we realising that Marx was ahead of his time on the environment. Kohei Saito in a new book throws light on this theme.

by Bob Copeland
3 March 2024
in Book Reviews

The Marx-Engels monument in Berlin-Mitte (photo: Manfred Brückels)

This book is at times a challenging read, but the author shows how relevant Marx’s thinking is today in addressing the environmental and economic issues we face.

Based on work not published until the 21st century we learn that Marx knew about the dangers of over-production and the risk of environmental damage to human existence.

Oxford Languages defines the Anthropocene as

“the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.”

To many it is clear that capitalism is responsible for Global Warming….

“The capitalist system that aims for infinite accumulation on a finite planet is the root cause of climate breakdown” quoting Greta Thornbergp.2

But funded by capitalists our political class still seeks economic growth, denying both the environmental harm and the impossibility of perpetual growth.
The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital (1)

The Communist Manifesto has not been out of print since it was first published in the 1840s. Readers of the manifesto today will see that many of the concerns and issues the authors sought to address are still with us.

The young Marx saw that science had enabled humanity to exploit the Earth’s resources to produce whatever was needed for the good of everyone. The mythical Prometheus gave mankind the knowledge of fire, which mankind has used to build huge industrial power and become master of nature. Marx sought to address the human cost of workers being subjugated to enrich a few. The manifesto set out why people should take control of the means of production, distribution and exchange so industry could be used for the good of everyone.

Marx saw industry as the foundation of a society for all to enjoy, and believed that Europeans should take it to the world, but by the time the first volume of Das Kapital (Capital) was completed, Marx was already questioning these Promethean and Eurocentric views. Volumes 2 and 3 were left unfinished for Engels to complete after Marx’s death. Marx himself devoted the last two decades of his life to the study of Natural Science and Pre-capitalist societies.

“Marx aimed at comprehending how disharmonies in the material world emerge in modification to the universal metabolism of nature by the reified power of capital ”p.62
Metabolic rift

Marx sought to understand the universal metabolism of nature and came to see Society and Nature as an inseparable complex metabolism. Even in the 19th century it was known that deforestation led to changes in the local climate (p.62). The reader is introduced to the three dimensions of metabolic rift: technological, spatial and temporal. The impact of capitalism on each is examined and argued as the author explains why Marx turned away from his Promethean view, and started to consider how to heal the rift. Engels, on the other hand, believed, and many still believe, that technology has the solution.

In looking at what a sustainable post-capitalist society might look like, Marx turned to history and in particular to non-European society. He looked at rural communes in India, and also at how agriculture was organised in different parts of the Roman Empire. He saw how some societies grew and consumed what was needed, rather than over-producing and becoming dependant on trade. He saw that where the public wealth such as forest and pasture were held in common, stable sustainable low growth economies were possible.

In Das Kapital (1) Marx explained the violence of separating people from the means of subsistence, which David Harvey summarised as follows:


“taking land, say, enclosing it, and expelling a resident population to create a landless proletariat, and then releasing the land into the privatised mainstream of capital accumulation”p.218

In England the Enclosure Acts took away access to common land, in Scotland the best agricultural land was enclosed for sport (p. 224), in India he recognised how the British destroyed communal agriculture causing famine (p. 196). We read about Lauderdale’s rule that shows how public wealth declines as private wealth increases (p. 225).
The shadow of Marxism on the 20th Century

The Tomb of Karl Marx, Highgate Cemetery, London 

(Photograph – Bob Copeland)

Engels paid little attention to Marx’s research, so it went unnoticed for a century.

“Engels made Marx available and accessible – enabling Marxism as a doctrine of scientific socialism to have an enormous influence throughout the 20th Century.”p.175

Different strands of Marxism emerged. Traditional Marxism sought the mechanistic exploitation and domination of nature, responsible for the ecological disasters of the Soviet Era. Western Marxism criticised Engels blaming him for the terror of Stalin, but continued to exclude nature from Marx’s social philosophy (p. 47-48). Today many will use “Marxist” as a pejorative term without knowing what Marx believed.

A new enlightenment

Marx saw that capitalism was destroying the planet, his last vision of a post capitalist society was of de-growth communism, the opposite of his earlier Prometheanism.

“Only after Marx completely abandoned productivism and Eurocentrism was he able to fully integrate the principle of a steady state economy as the foundation of the future society.”p. 209

The final chapters outline a world where common ownership progressively replaces private ownership, production is co-operative, the Earth’s natural resources are cared for in the interest of future generations. In such a world common wealth would be managed sustainably and democratically for the benefit of all.

At our book club a retired teacher bemoaned the demise of History and Economics taught as a single subject, “to understand events you need to understand the economics that drive them”. For Marx history was a key to understanding how economies were sustained without growth, a lesson now shared by others such as Michael Hudson in The Destiny of Civilisation and Tim Jackson Life after Capitalism.

Marxists, it seems, have much to offer as we try to avert the environmental and economic catastrophe that we are facing.

Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene; Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2023), 292 pp, £29.99

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Bob Copeland

Bob Copeland BSc. MBCS CEng CITP Bob has been an active member of the community in the village of Kingswood, Gloucestershire for over 30 years, he has helped to set up Churches Together in Kingswood and is currently part of a team working to establish a community hub there. Bob also hosts a Socialist book club, and has reviewed many of the books the group has read for Bylines. Professionally he is a Director of a business developing software for the transport and logistics industry. He enjoys the outdoor life, walking, cycling and camping, and has been writing for West England Bylines since 2021.

Mystery of missing Malaysia MH370 flight: Fresh hope kindles as govt plans to renew search

It has been 10 years since the flight's disappearance

Web Desk Updated: March 03, 2024 

Families of passengers from both China and Malaysia, who were aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, are seen during a remembrance event commemorating the 10th anniversary of its disappearance, in Subang Jaya, Malaysia 

Ten years after the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines MH370 flight, the government on Sunday said it has plans to renew the search after a US technology firm proposed a fresh hunt in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is believed to have crashed.

While speaking at a remembrance event to mark the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of the flight, Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the government is keen to locate MH370.

Texas-based Ocean Infinity has proposed another no find, no fee basis to scor the seabeds as an expansion from where it first searched in 2018.

He said he invited the company to meet and evaluate the new scientific evidence.

"If it is credible, will seek Cabinet's approval to sign a new contract with Ocean Infinity," he added.

The Boeing 777 plane carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing vanished from radar shortly after taking off on March 8, 2014.

Since then all the searches by the government failed to unravel the mystery behind its disappearance.

Ocean Infinity-led searches before had found no clues, however, its proposed new search plan was delayed last year.

The government is yet to finalise the deal as the fee negotiation is not yet over. He said financial cost is not an issue and that he doesn't foresee any hindrances for the search to proceed if all goes well.

The announcement of the renewed search has sparked hope in at least some family members. "We have been on a roller coaster for the last 10 years... If it is not found, I hope that it will continue with another search," Jacquita Gomes, whose flight attendant husband was on the plane, was quoted by the Associated Press.

She also added that it will pave for a full closure.

Family members of passengers from Malaysia, Australia, China and India paid tribute to their loved ones during the event, lighting a candle on stage to remember them.

MY THEORY 

'They wanted to humiliate us.' Palestinian women detained by Israel allege abuse in Israeli custody

JULIA FRANKEL
Fri, March 1, 2024

Nabela, who was detained by Israeli forces, poses for a portrait at the U.N. school where she is sheltering in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Friday, Feb. 23, 2024. Like many Palestinians in Gaza, Nabela thought she had found a safe place to shelter in a U.N. school. Then, the Israeli army arrived. She says soldiers stormed the school, ordering men to strip to their underwear and hauling women to a nearby mosque for strip searches. So began six harrowing weeks in Israeli custody that she says included repeated beatings and interrogations. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)More


JERUSALEM (AP) — Nabela thought the United Nations school in Gaza City was a safe haven. Then, the Israeli army arrived.

Soldiers stormed the place, ordering men to undress and hauling women to a mosque for strip searches, she said. So began six weeks in Israeli custody that she says included repeated beatings and interrogations.

“The soldiers were very harsh, they beat us and screamed at us in Hebrew,” said the 39-year-old from Gaza City, who spoke on condition that her last name not be used for fear of being arrested again. “If we raised our heads or uttered any words, they beat us on the head.”


Palestinians detained by Israeli forces in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war have alleged widespread physical abuse and neglect. It's not known how many women or minors have been detained.

Nabela said she was shuttled between facilities inside Israel in a coed group before arriving at Damon Prison in the north, where she estimated there were at least 100 women.

Rights groups say Israel is “disappearing” Gaza Palestinians — detaining them without charge or trial and not disclosing to family or lawyers where they’re held. Israel’s prison service says all “basic rights required are fully applied by professionally trained prison guards.”

Israel declared war after Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people and took roughly 250 others hostage on Oct. 7.

Since then, ground troops have arrested hundreds of Palestinians to search for suspected militants and gather intelligence. Images of blindfolded men kneeling, heads bowed and hands bound, have sparked worldwide outrage. In northern Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis, troops rounded up dozens at a time from U.N. schools and hospitals, including medical personnel.

The military said it makes detainees undress to search for explosives, bringing detainees into Israel before releasing them back into Gaza if they're deemed innocent.

For Nabela, that process took 47 harrowing days.

Despite Israeli evacuation orders, Nabela and her family had decided not to leave Gaza City, believing nowhere in Gaza was safe. Troops entered the school where they sheltered on Dec. 24.

“I was terrified, imagining they wanted to execute us and bury us there,” she said.

Forces separated Nabela from her 13-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son and loaded her onto a truck bound for a facility in southern Israel. According to the Israeli group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, or PHRI, all detainees in Gaza are first brought to the Sde Teiman military base.

“We were freezing and forced to remain on our knees on the ground,” Nabela told The Associated Press from a school-turned-shelter in Rafah where she's staying with other recently released female detainees. “Loud music, shouting and intimidation — they wanted to humiliate us. We were handcuffed, blindfolded, and our feet were tied in chains.”

Moved between several prisons, Nabela said she was subjected to repeated strip searches and interrogations at gunpoint.

Asked about her connection to Hamas and knowledge of the militants’ extensive underground tunnel network, she maintained her innocence, telling interrogators she was a housewife and her husband worked for Hamas’ rival, the Palestinian Authority.

‘AN APPARATUS OF RETRIBUTION AND REVENGE’

One woman detained from Gaza, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of another arrest, told the AP that during a medical check before she was moved to Damon Prison, Israeli forces ordered her to kiss an Israeli flag. When she refused, a soldier grabbed her by the hair, smashing her face into a wall, she said.

In a report by PHRI, former detainees from Gaza alleged similar mistreatment.

One, whose name was redacted, said he was urinated on by guards at Ketziot Prison in southern Israel, and witnessed strip searches where guards forced naked detainees to stand close to each other and inserted search devices into their buttocks.

PHRI described Israel’s prisons, also housing Palestinians from the West Bank and east Jerusalem held on security-related charges, as “an apparatus of retribution and revenge." It alleged the prison service and military “have been granted free rein to act however they see fit.”

At the beginning of the war, prisons entered “lockdown mode,” confining detainees to their cells for two weeks, the report said. Under wartime emergency measures, Israel's parliament in October suspended normal cell capacity requirements. Since then, inmates have slept on mattresses in overcrowded cells.

Phone privileges have been completely suspended, the report said. At some facilities, security wings were disconnected from electricity and water, plunging detainees into darkness for most of the day and rendering showers and sinks unusable.

During eight days at an unknown facility in southern Israel, Nabela said she did not shower and had no access to menstrual pads or toiletries. Food was scarce. Once, Nabela said, guards threw down the detainees' meals and told them to eat from the floor.

The military said each detainee receives clothing, blankets and a mattress. It denied that cells were overcrowded, saying detainees had sufficient access to toilets, food, water and medical care.

“The violent and antagonistic treatment of detainees described in the allegations is prohibited," the military said in response to an AP request for comment. “Cases of inappropriate behavior will be dealt with.”

It referred questions about Ketziot and Damon prisons to the Israeli Prison Service, which did not comment on the allegations beyond saying it was uninvolved in the arrests and interrogation of Palestinians from Gaza.

‘UNLAWFUL COMBATANTS’

Nabela said she never spoke with a lawyer or a judge.

Under a wartime revision to Israeli law, all detainees from Gaza can be held for 45 days without charge or trial.

Designated “unlawful combatants,” they aren't granted the same protections under international law as prisoners of war. Their appearance before a court can be delayed and access to an attorney withdrawn, according to PHRI. The Israeli rights group HaMoked said there are 600 people from Gaza held as unlawful combatants in Israeli prisons, and more could be held in military facilities.

Palestinian detainees told PHRI that adequate medical care was rare, even for those needing insulin or chemotherapy treatments.

An official document obtained by the AP, laying out operations at the Sde Teiman military medical facility, specified that unlawful combatants be treated handcuffed and blindfolded.

Medical staff's names were kept anonymous “to maintain the safety, well-being and lives of the caregivers,” it said. It did not require patient consent for medical procedures and said confidential medical information could be passed to detention center staff.

The military said the handcuffing of detainees was “done in accordance with their assessed level of danger and medical state.” Israel’s Ministry of Health did not respond to requests for comment.

Eleven Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody since Oct. 7, according to the advocacy group the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, and the most recent was just this week. At least five had chronic health conditions, which PHRI says raises concerns that they died because of medical neglect.

The Israeli military said it would examine the deaths.

‘BETTER THAN GAZA’

Nabela’s fortunes improved when she arrived at Damon. There, she met Palestinian women detained from the West Bank.

She said the women were kind. She had electricity and warm showers. Her interrogator wondered aloud why Nabela was detained.

A month and a half after her arrest, a prison administrator announced Nabela would be released with about 20 other women. Israeli buses brought them to a Gaza crossing, where they made their way to U.N. shelters in the southern city of Rafah, full of displaced Palestinians. She cannot travel to Gaza City, where her family remains.

Nabela, her face bruised, recalled one of her final interrogations. She had begun to weep, and her interrogator told her:

“Don’t cry about it. You’re better living here than Gaza.”

Israeli protest march demands hostage release 'now'

Robbie Corey-Boulet
Sat, March 2, 2024

The Israeli government faces mounting calls to bring home the remaining captives held in Gaza (GIL COHEN-MAGEN)

Thousands of Israeli demonstrators thronged a Jerusalem square on Saturday, concluding a four-day march from the Gaza border intended to pressure the government to free hostages held in the Palestinian territory.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has faced mounting calls to bring home the 130 captives Israel says remain in the Gaza Strip -- including 31 who are presumed dead.

They are among the 250 Israelis and foreigners abducted during Hamas's October 7 attack that triggered the ongoing war.

The unprecedented attack on southern Israel also resulted in the deaths of around 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

In almost five months of war since then, at least 30,320 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-ruled territory's health ministry.

Protesters in Jerusalem waved flags and raised posters with the hostages' pictures or slogans calling for their release.

Organisers said 20,000 people participated in either the march or Saturday's rally.

"Now, now, all of them now," the crowd chanted during the rally which also featured prayers, songs and remarks from relatives.

"I was scared because I thought people are starting to forget or starting to get indifferent" about the captives' fate, said 50-year-old protester Daphna Keidar.

"But this is different" from past rallies, she said. "This is bigger."

As the rally was underway in Jerusalem, a senior US official said a truce deal which may see hostages freed could be within reach.

Mediators have scrambled to lock in a new truce before the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan begins later this month.

The US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Saturday that Israel had "more or less accepted" a ceasefire deal and that "the ball is in the camp of Hamas".

Also on Saturday, thousands of anti-government protesters gathered in Tel Aviv to call for early elections.

In Jerusalem, a relative of one of the hostages still in Gaza said he hoped the rally would signal to officials that freeing the hostages must be their top priority.

"They must seal this deal no matter what," said Eyal Kalderon, cousin of hostage Ofer Kalderon.

"I don't know if they will have another chance. It's now or maybe never."

Reut Diamant, a 53-year-old demonstrator, told AFP that all Israelis "should be marching and should be coming to these events in order to show how important it is".

"I don't know anyone personally" who was abducted, she said.

"But it could have happened to my kids who are in the army, or to anyone else that I know."

Pressure mounts for inquiry into Israeli troops firing on Gazans waiting for aid

Updated Fri, March 1, 2024 
By John Irish and James Mackenzie

PARIS/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Pressure mounted on Israel on Friday over the deaths of dozens of Palestinians during a confused incident in the Gaza Strip in which crowds surrounded a convoy of aid trucks and soldiers opened fire, with several countries backing a U.N. call for an inquiry.

Gaza health authorities said Israeli forces had killed more than 100 people trying to reach a relief convoy near Gaza City early on Thursday, with famine looming nearly five months into the war that began with a Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

Israel blamed most of the deaths on crowds that swarmed around aid trucks, saying victims had been trampled or run over. An Israeli official also said troops had "in a limited response" later fired on crowds they felt had posed a threat.

Although the accounts of what happened differed sharply, the incident has underscored the collapse of orderly aid deliveries in areas of Gaza occupied by Israeli forces, with no administration in place and the main U.N. agency UNRWA hamstrung by an inquiry into alleged links with Hamas.

"We've asked the government of Israel to investigate, and it's our assessment that they're taking this seriously," U.S. national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Friday.

"They are looking into what occurred, so as to avoid tragedies like this from happening again." He said the Biden administration trusted Israel to complete its own investigation, adding that "we don't have enough information" to verify its account of what happened.

The Hamas attack on Oct. 7 killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and involved the seizure of 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's military campaign has since killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave say.

With a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, many countries have urged a ceasefire, but U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday's incident will complicate talks for a deal involving a truce and hostage release.

India said it was "deeply shocked" at the deaths and Brazil said the incident was beyond "ethical or legal limits."

South Africa, which has brought a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, condemned the deaths. Israel denies genocide.

France and Germany have backed a call for an international inquiry. French President Emmanuel Macron voiced "deep indignation" and the "strongest condemnation of these shootings". Germany said "the Israeli army must fully explain how the mass panic and shooting could have happened."

In Israel, ultra-rightwing security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir urged "total support" to Israeli soldiers who had "acted excellently against a Gazan mob that tried to harm them".

A columnist in the biggest daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said the incident would "create a turning point in the war" and could "exert international pressure that Israel will not be able to withstand, including from the White House."

AID DELIVERY ROW

A humanitarian disaster is unfolding in the Gaza Strip, particularly the north, after nearly five months of an Israeli air and ground campaign that has ruined swathes of the crowded coastal enclave and pushed it to the edge of famine.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who also called for an inquiry, said Israel had a responsibility to ensure more aid reached Gaza by opening more crossings and removing bottlenecks and bureaucratic obstacles.

"This must not happen again," he said in a statement. "We can't separate what happened yesterday from the inadequate aid supplies."

With people eating animal feed and even cactuses to survive, and with medics saying children are dying in hospitals from malnutrition and dehydration, the U.N. has said it faces "overwhelming obstacles" getting in aid.

The U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA said obstacles included "crossing closures, restrictions on movement and communications, onerous vetting procedures, unrest, damaged roads and unexploded ordnance."

Last week the U.N. said aid flows into Gaza were drying up and it was becoming increasingly hard to distribute aid within the enclave because of a collapse in security, with most residents hemmed into makeshift camps.

Israel has said there is no limit on humanitarian aid in Gaza and has said the quantity and pace of delivery was down to the U.N.

Israel's military said Thursday's delivery was operated by private contractors as part of an aid operation it had been overseeing. It gave no details on how the aid was intended to be distributed.

(Reporting by John Irish in Paris, James Mackenzie in Jerusalem, Rachel More in Berlin, Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber in Geneva, Angus McDowall, James Davey in London and Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Rosalba O'Brien)

Aid Groups Question U.S. Airdrop Plans for Gaza

Vivian Nereim
Updated Sat, March 2, 2024 

 (AP Photo/Mahmoud Essa, File)

International aid groups are criticizing a Biden administration plan to airdrop food to desperately hungry Palestinians, saying that such a move would be ineffective and would distract from more meaningful measures like pushing Israel to lift its partial siege of the Gaza Strip.

“Airdrops do not and cannot substitute for humanitarian access,” the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based aid organization, said in a statement Saturday. “Airdrops are not the solution to relieve this suffering, and distract time and effort from proven solutions to help at scale.”

Egypt, France, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have participated in aid airdrops to Gaza, but experts say they are inefficient, expensive and provide woefully small amounts of aid compared with the level of need in Gaza, which aid groups warn is on the brink of famine.

Given those drawbacks, airdrops are typically a measure of last resort. In addition, there is the difficulty of ensuring that the aid is distributed safely and fairly. Governments often organize airdrops over territory controlled by hostile entities, rather than allies.

Robert Ford, a fellow at the Middle East Institute and a retired American ambassador to Syria and Algeria, said the decision to turn to airdrops in Gaza represented a “humiliation” of the U.S. by its ally Israel. American officials had repeatedly tried to get Israel to allow a greater flow of aid into the territory.

“There is an obvious absurdity that we have to use our own military to undertake airdrops to deliver humanitarian aid because the military of the top American aid recipient, and our special ally in the Middle East, is blocking this same humanitarian aid,” Ford said. “It gives the image of an American aid recipient that acts with impunity because there is no American pressure applied, beyond verbal pleading.”

The International Rescue Committee, in its statement, said the United States and other countries should instead focus their efforts on “ensuring Israel lifts its siege of Gaza” and getting Israel to reopen border crossings to allow the unimpeded movement of fuel, food and medical supplies.

The committee also stressed the urgency of pushing for a cease-fire in a war that has lasted nearly five months — since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel by the Palestinian armed group Hamas — trapping more than 2 million Palestinians under Israeli bombardment with limited access to food, water and electricity.

Israel denies that it is blocking aid. On Saturday, Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesperson, blamed distribution difficulties on the Gaza side and said that “Hamas is hijacking aid, and the U.N. is covering that up.”

President Joe Biden said Friday that the United States would begin airdropping relief supplies after dozens of Palestinians were killed a day earlier as Israeli forces opened fire near an aid convoy in Gaza City. The number of aid trucks entering Gaza dropped significantly in February, data show, even as aid agencies said that some people had resorted to eating birdseed and leaves.

The decline reflects, in part, Israel’s insistence on inspecting every truck at the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel, which has acted as the main gateway since it was reopened in December. In addition, the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, has joined UNRWA, the U.N. agency that serves Palestinians in Gaza, in stopping aid shipments to the north, citing lawlessness in the area.

John Kirby, a senior National Security Council official, said that the first U.S. airdrops would focus on food, followed by water and medicine. The United States has also asked Israel to open more border crossings and is examining ways to create a temporary port that would allow aid to be brought in by sea.

Kirby acknowledged that there were limits to what can be brought in by military cargo planes, saying it was a supplement, not a replacement, for aid trucks.

An official at another aid group, Oxfam, said this past week that it also did not support U.S. airdrops, “which would mostly serve to relieve the guilty consciences of senior U.S. officials whose policies are contributing to the ongoing atrocities and risk of famine in Gaza.”

Not everyone agrees. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian American political analyst who had previously called for airdrops, said that they were a necessary supplemental option amid dire conditions.

“The situation is so desperate. Any food, any aid that makes it in, is incredibly helpful to the people on the ground,” said Alkhatib, who has family in Gaza and said he was frustrated by the aid groups’ critiques.

“As someone with skin in the game, I’ll take whatever we can get,” he said.

c.2024 The New York Times Company


Israel-Gaza war: US carries out its first aid airdrop in strip

Henri Astier - BBC News
Sun, March 3, 2024 

The US has carried out its first airdrop of humanitarian aid for Gaza, with more than 30,000 meals parachuted in by three military planes.

The operation, carried out jointly with Jordan's Air Force, was the first of many announced by President Joe Biden.

The head of a well-known aid organisation told the BBC he thought there was a famine in northern Gaza.

At least 112 people were killed as crowds rushed to an aid convoy outside Gaza city on Thursday.

Hamas has accused them for the killing. Israel denies this and says it is investigating.

The first US airdrop comes as a top US official said the framework of a deal for a six-week ceasefire in Gaza was in place.

The Biden administration official said on Saturday that Israel had "more or less accepted" the deal.

"It will be a six-week ceasefire in Gaza starting today if Hamas agrees to release the defined category of vulnerable hostages (...) the sick, the wounded, elderly and women," the unnamed official said.

Mediators are due to reconvene in Cairo on Sunday, and Egyptian officials said delegations from both Hamas and Israel were expected to arrive for the negotiations.

One official said certain technical issues around a possible deal still needed to be resolved, such as how many Palestinian prisoners would be released by Israel in exchange for hostages held by Hamas.

On Saturday C-130 transport planes dropped more than 38,000 meals along the Gaza coastline, US Central Command said in a statement.

"These airdrops are part of a sustained effort to get more aid into Gaza, including by expanding the flow of aid through land corridors and routes," it added.

Other countries including the UK, France, Egypt and Jordan have previously airdropped aid into Gaza, but this is the first by the US.

Jan Egeland, head of aid organisation the Norwegian Refugee Council, has just returned from a three-day visit to Gaza.

"I was prepared for nightmare, but it is worse, much worse," Mr Egeland told the BBC on Sunday.

"People want to take your hand... saying 'we are starving, we are dying here'.

"I think there is famine in the north," he said, adding that there had been no aid for 300,000 people living in ruins, with Israel not allowing any through.

US administration officials said that Thursday's "tragic incident" had highlighted "the importance of expanding and sustaining the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza in response to the dire humanitarian situation".

Dozens of people are being treated at al-Shifa Hospital following Thursday's tragedy

Aid agencies have said that airdrops are an inefficient way of delivering aid.

"Airdrops are expensive, haphazard and usually lead to the wrong people getting the aid," Mr Egeland said.

Displaced Gaza resident Medhat Taher told Reuters news agency that such a method was woefully inadequate.

"Will this be enough for a school? Is this enough for 10,000 people?" he said. "It's better to send aid via crossings and better than airdropping via parachutes."

In his statement on Friday, President Biden said the US would "insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need".

US Vice-President Kamala Harris will meet Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz in Washington on Monday to discuss a truce and other issues, Reuters quotes a White House official as saying.

In Thursday's incident, 112 people were killed and more than 760 injured as they crowded around aid lorries on the south-western edge of Gaza City.

Israel said most died in a crush after it fired warning shots.

Giorgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza sub-office of the UN Co-ordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told the BBC that he and a team sent to al-Shifa hospital had found a large number of people with bullet wounds.

Hamas meanwhile said an Israeli bombardment had killed at least 11 people at a camp in Rafah in southern Gaza on Saturday. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the attack "outrageous". The Israeli army said it had carried out a "precision strike" against Islamic Jihad militants in the area.

The UN's World Food Programme has warned that a famine is imminent in northern Gaza, which has received very little aid in recent weeks, and where an estimated 300,000 people are living with little food or clean water.

The Israel military launched a large-scale air and ground campaign to destroy Hamas after its gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on 7 October and took 253 back to Gaza as hostages.

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says more than 30,000 people, including 21,000 children and women, have been killed in Gaza since then with some 7,000 missing and at least 70,450 injured.