Scientists warn against 'greenwashing' of global coastal developments

by Alan Williams, University of Plymouth

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The world's waterfront cities should not be deluged with apparently green developments because they still carry the potential to cause damage to the marine and coastal environment, scientists have warned.

Coastal urban areas all over the world have expanded at an increasingly fast pace in recent years, with developers innovating a variety of ways to try and minimise their impact on natural habitats.

However, an international team of scientists has said the artificial structures and reclaimed land that have resulted are often poor surrogates for the natural environment they replace.

They say that where societal and economic demand makes development inevitable, more attention must be paid to claims over biodiversity gain because a 'greened' development will always impinge on natural systems.

The calls are made in a commentary article, accepted for publication in the Journal of Applied Ecology and written by eco-engineers, ecologists and marine biologists from the UK, Italy and Malaysia.

Led by researchers from the University of Plymouth, it particularly focuses on the application of so-called integrated greening of grey infrastructure (IGGI).

Despite it already being implemented in many places, they believe there is considerable scope for it to be misused, leading to the 'greenwashing' of new developments including seawalls, breakwaters and artificial islands.

Instead, the scientists say it can undoubtedly be used to enhance previously-developed or degraded environments, and those projects should act as a testbed for where IGGI can have a positive—and, just as importantly, a negative—impact.

Dr. Louise Firth, Lecturer in Marine Ecology at the University of Plymouth, is the article's lead author. She said: "The artificialisation of the global coastline is driving humanity to develop novel solutions to halt biodiversity loss and enhance the marine built environment. While IGGI has demonstrated real promise in experimental trials and redevelopment projects, there are many limitations and unknowns and now is the time to have an open discussion about its risks and benefits.

"It is certainly true that when incorporated in redevelopment or regeneration, it can represent something of a laurel wreath with measureable benefits for humans and nature. However, in new developments, it could be viewed as a fig leaf covering up environmental damage or even worse, a Trojan horse deliberately causing harm."

In the article, the researchers do highlight a number of projects where existing structures or developments are being regenerated for environmental benefit. These include the Billion Oyster Project in New York, which is using artificial structures to install oysters with widespread success.

They also highlight areas which could be at risk of greenwashing, including disused oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, which may be supporting marine life now but may not continue to do so as their structures degrade.

Their article adds that over the last 30 years, Asia and the Middle East have experienced the greatest population and urban growth while constructing some of the most ambitious and iconic land reclamation projects. However, of the top 50 countries expected to experience the fastest population growth from 2020-2100, 86% are African and 72% of them are coastal.

These countries have some of the largest remaining stretches of 'unaltered' coastlines, but limited environmental protection policies, and as such are potentially the most vulnerable to future habitat loss and megadevelopment.Artificial coastal defences could be used to enhance marine biodiversity, study shows

More information: L.B. Firth et al, Greening of grey infrastructure should not be used as a Trojan horse to facilitate coastal development, Journal of Applied Ecology (2020). DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.13683

Journal information: Journal of Applied Ecology Provided by University of Plymouth 

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Boys' poor reading skills might help explain higher education gender gap

by Eric Stann, University of Missouri

David Geary is a Curators Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Missouri. Credit: University of Missouri

Researchers at the University of Missouri and the University of Essex in the United Kingdom found boys' poor reading skills in adolescence, combined with the social attitudes about women attending college, can help explain why fewer men than women enroll in higher education or other types of post-high school education.

Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Reading scores are important for both boys and girls, and we know that girls, on average, score better on reading tests," said co-author David Geary, a Curators Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science.

Geary said adolescent reading scores and social attitudes toward women attending college can predict the ratio of men and women attending college or other post-secondary education.

"Here, we studied a snapshot of reading achievements for boys and girls when they were 15 years old," he said. "And with an understanding of how social attitudes are in various countries about girls going to college, we can predict the ratio of men and women attending college five years later."

Geary and his co-author Gijsbert Stoet, a professor of psychology at University of Essex, analyzed three international databases: post-secondary education enrollment data between 2011-2017 from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development; national reading scores for 15- and 16-year-olds from the Program for International Student Assessment; and social attitudes toward women pursuing university education from the World Values Survey. Specifically, the researchers looked at one question in the World Values Survey that read, "A university education is more important for a boy than for a girl." In total, the data represents over 400,000 boys and girls in 18 countries.

Stoet explains why social attitudes should be considered along with reading scores.

"An important factor to consider is the degree to which people across the world believe that a college education is equally important for girls as it is for boys," Stoet said. "Although more and more girls have been going to college, girls are still more likely than boys to be at a disadvantage in terms of social attitudes; this is a bigger problem in some countries than in others."

Geary said the study paints a bleak picture for reducing this gender gap—unless reading skills are improved.

"The practical implication is that equity in college enrollment is well out of reach at this time," Geary said. "There is no good reason to expect that national reading levels for either gender will be sufficiently raised in the coming decade to change enrollment patterns. The way to counter that is to improve reading skills, but that improvement will have to start early in life. The reading gap between boys and girls is there from the very beginning of schooling, even in preschool."

The study, "Gender differences in the pathways to higher education," was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Girls lead boys in academic achievement globally

More information: Gijsbert Stoet et al, Gender differences in the pathways to higher education, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2002861117

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

Provided by University of Missouri 

Entire Roman city revealed without any digging

by University of Cambridge

Ground Penetrating Radar map of the newly discovered temple in the Roman city of rii Novi, Italy. Credit: L. Verdonck

For the first time, archeologists have succeeded in mapping a complete Roman city, Falerii Novi in Italy, using advanced ground penetrating radar (GPR), allowing them to reveal astonishing details while it remains deep underground. The technology could revolutionize our understanding of ancient settlements.

The team, from the University of Cambridge and Ghent University, has discovered a bath complex, market, temple, a public monument unlike anything seen before, and even the city's sprawling network of water pipes. By looking at different depths, the archeologists can now study how the town evolved over hundreds of years.

The research, published today in Antiquity, harnessed recent advances in GPR technology which make it possible to explore larger areas in higher resolution than ever before. This is likely to have major implications for the study of ancient cities because many cannot be excavated either because they are too large, or because they are trapped under modern structures.

GPR works like regular radar, bouncing radio waves off objects and using the 'echo' to build up a picture at different depths.* By towing their GPR instruments behind a quad bike, the archeologists surveyed all 30.5 hectares within the city's walls—Falerii Novi was just under half the size of Pompeii—taking a reading every 12.5cm.

Located 50 km north of Rome and first occupied in 241 BC, Falerii Novi survived into the medieval period (until around AD 700). The team's GPR data can now start to reveal some of the physical changes experienced by the city in this time. They have already found evidence of stone robbing.

The study also challenges certain assumptions about Roman urban design, showing that Falerii Novi's layout was less standardized than many other well-studied towns, like Pompeii. The temple, market building and bath complex discovered by the team are also more architecturally elaborate than would usually be expected in a small city.

In a southern district, just within the city's walls, GPR revealed a large rectangular building connected to a series of water pipes which lead to the aqueduct. Remarkably, these pipes can be traced across much of Falerii Novi, running beneath its insulae (city blocks), and not just along its streets, as might normally be expected. The team believes that this structure was an open-air natatio or pool, forming part of a substantial public bathing complex.

Even more unexpectedly, near the city's north gate, the team identified a pair of large structures facing each other within a porticus duplex (a covered passageway with central row of columns). They know of no direct parallel but believe these were part of an impressive public monument, and contributed to an intriguing sacred landscape on the city's edge.

Corresponding author, Professor Martin Millett from the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Classics, said:

"The astonishing level of detail which we have achieved at Falerii Novi, and the surprising features that GPR has revealed, suggest that this type of survey could transform the way archeologists investigate urban sites, as total entities."

Millett and his colleagues have already used GPR to survey Interamna Lirenas in Italy, and on a lesser scale, Alborough in North Yorkshire, but they now hope to see it deployed on far bigger sites.

"It is exciting and now realistic to imagine GPR being used to survey a major city such as Miletus in Turkey, Nicopolis in Greece or Cyrene in Libya", Millett said. "We still have so much to learn about Roman urban life and this technology should open up unprecedented opportunities for decades to come."

The sheer wealth of data produced by such high-resolution mapping does, however, pose significant challenges. Traditional methods of manual data analysis are too time consuming, requiring around 20 hours to fully document a single hectare. It will be some time before the researchers finish examining Falerii Novi but to speed the process up they are developing new automated techniques.

Falerii Novi is well documented in the historical record, is not covered by modern buildings and has been the subject of decades of analysis using other non-invasive techniques, such as magnetometry, but GPR has now revealed a far more complete picture.

Facebook wallet for Libra digital coins renamed 'Novi'

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More information: L. Verdonck, A. Launaro, F. Vermeulen & M. Millett, 'Ground-penetrating radar survey at Falerii Novi: a new approach to the study of Roman cities', 9 June 2020. DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2020.82

*GPR is so effective because it relies on the reflection of radio waves off items in the ground. Different materials reflect waves differently, which can be used to create maps of underground features. Although this principle has been employed since the 1910s, over the past few years technological advances have made the equipment faster and higher resolution.

Journal information: Antiquity 

Provided by University of Cambridge

Deadly superbug could get a vigorous foe in repurposed antibiotic

by University of Southern California JUNE 9, 2020

Acinetobacter baumannii. Credit: Vader1941 / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0

USC researchers have discovered that an old antibiotic may be a powerful new tool against a deadly superbug, thanks to an innovative screening method that better mimics conditions inside the human body.

The antibiotic, rifabutin, is "highly active" in fighting multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, a significant cause of life-threatening infections in medical facilities, researchers found.

The study appears today in Nature Microbiology.

"Rifabutin has been around for more than 35 years, and no one has ever studied it for Acinetobacter infections before," said first author Brian Luna, assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Keck School of Medicine of USC. "Going forward, we may find many new antibiotics that have been missed over the last 80 years because the screening tests used to discover them were suboptimal."

Rifabutin is used to treat TB, especially in people with HIV/AIDS who can't tolerate a similar drug, rifampin. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the safest and most effective medicines needed in a health system.

Until now, it hadn't been tried against Acinetobacter baumannii, which emerged during the Iraq War as a troop-killing superbug in military treatment facilities. Acinetobacter causes pneumonia, meningitis and bloodstream infections; it tends to strike patients requiring lengthy hospital stays and invasive devices like catheters and ventilators.

Each year, Acinetobacter baumannii is responsible for about 2% of the 99,000 U.S. deaths from hospital-acquired infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One reason rifabutin's superpower against superbugs was overlooked is because of current screening techniques, researchers said. Since the 1940s, new or existing antibiotics have been tested against bacteria grown in "rich culture media," a nutrient-packed broth or gel which speeds up the process by making the bacteria to grow rapidly.

"But bacteria grow very differently inside the human body," said Brad Spellberg, chief medical officer at the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center and senior author of the study. So, the team designed a new type of "nutrient-limited" media that better mimics conditions inside the body. They hypothesized that the more realistic media might unmask antibiotics with hidden strengths.

They found that rifabutin was vigorously active against Acinetobacter baumannii grown in the nutrient-limited media (as well as in animal tissue) but not effective against bacteria grown in the more commonly used media.

The scientists discovered that rifabutin uses a unique, Trojan-horse strategy to trick the bacteria into actively importing the drug inside itself, bypassing the bacterial outer cell defenses. This "pump" that imports the drug is only active in the more human-like media. In traditional rich culture media, high levels of iron and amino acids suppress the pump's activity, researchers found.

"Rifabutin can be used immediately to treat such infections because it is already FDA-approved, cheap and generic, and on the market," Spellberg said. "But we would like to see randomized controlled human trials to prove its efficacy, so we know for sure one way or the other."Researchers immunize mice against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, report potential for future vaccine

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More information: B. Luna et al, A nutrient-limited screen unmasks rifabutin hyperactivity for extensively drug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, Nature Microbiology (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41564-020-0737-6

Journal information: Nature Microbiology 

Provided by University of Southern California 

Scientists lament 'Humpty Dumpty' effect on world's spectacular, rare wildlife

by Colorado State University

Some of the world's largest, most spectacular and unheralded mammals are silently slipping away, species like Tibetan wild yaks and Patagonia's huemul. Credit: Joel Berger/ Colorado State University

Some of the world's largest, most spectacular and unheralded mammals are silently slipping away, species like Tibetan wild yaks and Patagonia's huemul, Bhutan's takin and Vietnam's saola. Even Africa's three species of zebras and wildebeest have suffered massive reductions over the last several decades.

The reasons for these losses are more than disease and habitat fragmentation, deforestation or wildlife trade, according to researchers. Ultimately, the cause is rampant human population growth. And unless human behavior changes in unprecedented ways, these scientists warn that future communities of these mammals will never resemble those of the recent past or even today.

The findings are based on a new study, "Disassembled food webs and messy projections: modern ungulate communities in the face of unabating human population growth," published June 9 in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Joel Berger, lead author of the study and a professor at Colorado State University, said that the time for action is now, and that touting past conservation achievements does little to better humanity's future.

"We all must realize we're members of a broad, beautiful and living planet, and we must find ways to subsist in this together or suffer more severe consequences than what we already see," said Berger, also a senior scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). "For many assemblages of animals, we are nearing a moment in time, when, like Humpty Dumpty, we will not be able to put things back together again." Berger is also the Barbara Cox Anthony University Chair of Wildlife Conservation at CSU.

Analyzing ecological, human disruptors

In this study, the research team—which also included Alejandro Vila, the director for Science for WCS's Patagonia Program; Cristobal Briceno, a professor and veterinarian at University of Chile; and Joanna Lambert, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder—analyzed direct and indirect disruptions that lead to the changing roles of mammals in global ecosystems and noted how the nature of ecological interactions has changed and will do so, on an even larger scale, in coming decades.

More specifically, they looked at what has transpired with the huemul in Patagonia, takin in Bhutan, wild horses in deserts, wolves and coyotes in North America, and the inevitability of change in big ecosystems as large carnivores are extirpated.

Scientists said this is happening as the human population increases it footprint on land.

"Even in the remote reaches of the Himalayas, stray and feral dogs, a direct result of human intrusions, wreak havoc on wild and domestic species of high economic value and cultural importance," said Tshewang Wangchuk, a study co-author, conservation biologist and president of the Bhutan Foundation.

"I try to be a voice for these species that are unknown," said CSU Professor Joel Berger. He carries photos of rare species, including the takin, a member of the camel family, in his wallet. Credit: Joel Berger/ Colorado State University
Humans only recently colonized parts of the Himalayas, areas where ice has receded due to warming temperatures. Yet, the authors also point to human population change at a global scale. In 1830 when Vice-Admiral Robert Fitzroy captained his ship, the Beagle, through the Magellan Straits of South America, fewer than 1.2 billion people inhabited Earth. By Earth Day in 1970, there were more than 3.5 billion.

Today, only 50 years later the world's population approaches eight billion. Livestock and humans now constitute a staggering 97 percent of the planet's mammal biomass.

Food webs irretrievably altered

The research team said worldwide food webs have become irretrievably altered by humans, with little hope to reconstitute even recent past conditions or to put back the ecological functions once created by native species.

Feral pigs, for instance, exist today on every continent except Antarctica, and in 70 percent of the states in the United States. These animals disrupt fish, reptiles, birds and other small mammals, plants and soils. In addition, climate change warms the oceans, which in turn foments marine algal blooms, reducing fishery catches. With less demand for fish, a consequent uptick in wildlife poaching on land occurs.

The scientists also documented how an appetite for fashion like cashmere increases imports to the west from Mongolia, India and China, resulting in economic incentives for desert pastoralists to produce more domestic goats in central Asia. These goats compete for food with native species and are in danger due to increasing numbers of dogs in these areas. The dogs are not only predators but also carry diseases, which jeopardizes endangered species like snow leopards, kiang and Przewalksi's gazelle.

Use 'ecological grief' to implement action

Berger and the study authors suggest that despite the grim findings, all is not yet lost.

The world has remarkable protected areas including: Serengeti and Kruger National Park in Africa, Yellowstone and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve in North America, Madidi National Park in Bolivia, the Patagonia Ice Fields of Chile and Argentina, Chang Tang Nature Reserve in China, and Northeast Greenland National Park, the world's largest national park.

And although food webs with large mammals will be different from those of the past and operate differently today, there are options to shape the future.

"It is not too late and we simply do not have the luxury of time to mourn what we have lost," said Lambert. "We need to use our ecological grief to implement action and honor the exceptional biodiversity that remains. This can be done by protecting large tracts of the planet's wild places."

New study reveals dangers to biological diversity from global cashmere garment industry

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More information: Joel Berger et al, Disassembled Food Webs and Messy Projections: Modern Ungulate Communities in the Face of Unabating Human Population Growth, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (2020). DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2020.00128

Provided by Colorado State University 

Titan is migrating away from Saturn 100 times faster than previously predicted

by Lori Dajose

Artwork of Saturn, Titan, and the Cassini spacecraft. Credit: Francesco Fiori, Radio Science and Planetary Exploration Lab

By Earthly standards, Saturn's moon Titan is a strange place. Larger than the planet Mercury, Titan is swaddled in a thick atmosphere (it is the only moon in the solar system to have one) and covered in rivers and seas of liquid hydrocarbons like methane and ethane. Beneath these is a thick crust of water ice, and beneath that may be a liquid water ocean that could potentially harbor life.


Now, decades of measurements and calculations have revealed that Titan's orbit around Saturn is expanding—meaning, the moon is getting farther and farther away from the planet—at a rate about 100 times faster than expected. The research suggests that Titan was born much closer to Saturn and migrated out to its current distance of 1.2 million kilometers (about 746,000 miles) over 4.5 billion years.

The findings are described in a paper that appears in the journal Nature Astronomy on June 8.

"Most prior work had predicted that moons like Titan or Jupiter's moon Callisto were formed at an orbital distance similar to where we see them now," says Caltech's Jim Fuller, assistant professor of theoretical astrophysics and co-author on the new paper. "This implies that the Saturnian moon system, and potentially its rings, have formed and evolved more dynamically than previously believed."

To understand the basics of orbital migration, we can look to our own moon. Earth's moon exerts a small gravitational pull on the planet as it orbits. This is what causes tides: the moon's rhythmic tugs cause Earth's oceans to bulge from side to side. Frictional processes inside the earth convert some of this energy into heat, distorting the earth's gravitational field so that it pulls the moon forward in its orbit. This causes the moon to gain energy and gradually move farther away from the earth, at a rate of about 3.8 centimeters per year. This process truly is gradual, though; Earth will not "lose" the moon until both the earth and moon are engulfed by the sun in roughly six billion years.

Titan exerts a similar pull on Saturn, but the frictional processes inside Saturn are usually thought to be weaker than those within Earth because of Saturn's gaseous composition. Standard theories predict that, because of its distance from Saturn, Titan should be migrating away at a sluggish rate of at most 0.1 centimeters per year. But the new results contradict this prediction.

In the work detailed in the Nature Astronomy paper, two teams of researchers each used a different technique to measure Titan's orbit over a period of 10 years. One technique, called astrometry, produced precise measurements of Titan's position relative to background stars in images taken by the Cassini spacecraft. The other technique, radiometry, measured Cassini's velocity as it was affected by the gravitational influence of Titan.

"By using two completely independent data sets—astrometric and radiometric—and two different methods of analysis, we obtained results that are in full agreement," says the study's first author, Valéry Lainey formerly of JPL (which Caltech manages for NASA), now of Paris Observatory, PSL University. Lainey worked with the astrometry team.

The results are also in agreement with a theory proposed in 2016 by Fuller, who predicted that Titan's migration rate would be much faster than standard tidal theories estimated. His theory notes that Titan is expected to gravitationally squeeze Saturn with a particular frequency that makes the planet oscillate strongly, similarly to how swinging your legs on a swing with the right timing can drive you higher and higher. This process of tidal forcing is called resonance locking. Fuller proposed that the high amplitude of Saturn's oscillation would dissipate a lot of energy, which in turn would cause Titan to migrate outward away from the planet at a faster rate than previously thought. Indeed, the observations both found that Titan is migrating away from Saturn at a rate of 11 centimeters per year, more than 100 times faster than previous theories predicted.

"The resonance locking theory can apply to many astrophysical systems. I'm now doing some theoretical work to see if the same physics can happen in binary star systems, or exoplanet systems," says Fuller.

The paper is titled "Resonance locking in giant planets indicated by the rapid orbital expansion of Titan."


A study of Saturn's largest moon may offer insights for Earth

More information: Valéry Lainey et al. Resonance locking in giant planets indicated by the rapid orbital expansion of Titan, Nature Astronomy (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1120-5
Journal information: Nature Astronomy

Part of China's Great Wall not built for war: study

JUNE 9, 2020

Israeli, Mongolian and US researchers have mapped the Northern Line of the Great Wall of China, in the Mongolian steppe, for the first time

The northern segment of the Great Wall of China was built not to block invading armies but rather to monitor civilian movement, an Israeli archaeologist said Tuesday.

When researchers fully mapped the Great Wall's 740-kilometre (460-mile) Northern Line for the first time, their findings challenged previous assumptions.

"Prior to our research, most people thought the wall's purpose was to stop Genghis Khan's army," said Gideon Shelach-Lavi from Jerusalem's Hebrew University, who led the two-year study.

But the Northern Line, lying mostly in Mongolia, winds through valleys, is relatively low in height and close to paths, pointing to non-military functions.

"Our conclusion is that it was more about monitoring or blocking the movement of people and livestock, maybe to tax them," Shelach-Lavi said.

He suggested people may have been seeking warmer southern pastures during a medieval cold spell.

Construction of the Great Wall, which is split into sections that in total stretch for thousands of kilometres, first began in the third century BC and continued for centuries.

The Northern Line, also known as "Genghis Khan's Wall" in reference to the legendary Mongolian conqueror, was built between the 11th and 13th centuries with pounded earth and dotted with 72 structures in small clusters.

Shelach-Lavi and his team of Israeli, Mongolian and American researchers used drones, high-resolution satellite images and traditional archaeological tools to map out the wall and find artefacts that helped pin down dates.

According to Shelach-Lavi, whose findings from the ongoing study were published in the journal Antiquity, the Northern Line has been largely overlooked by contemporary scientists.


Explore furtherDig near Jerusalem's Western Wall yields 'puzzling' chambers
Journal information: Antiquity

Fatal police shooting of autistic Palestinian sparks outrage

The uproar over the fatal shooting of an autistic Palestinian man by Israeli police has drawn parallels with anti-police brutality protests in the US. Israeli PM Netanyahu has broken his silence to say he's "sorry."


Almost every morning, Iyad Halak walked through the small alleyways of East Jerusalem's Old City to the Elwyn El Quds Center — a school for people with special needs. He was a trainee at the institute's kitchen, aspiring to become a chef's assistant. For the 32-year old man with severe autism, walking on his own was important for him to feel independent, his family says. But on the final Saturday of May, it all came to a sudden end.

Shortly before 8 a.m., Israeli police released a statement that a suspect was "neutralized' in the area of Lion's Gate, a description usually used by Israeli security forces to describe the death of a suspect.

The statement added that officers "spotted a suspect with a suspicious object that looked like a pistol." The border police officers "chased after him on foot" after they claimed he failed to obey orders to stop, and opened fire.

One of Halak's teachers, who was nearby, told an Israeli TV channel later that she had tried to alert the officers in Hebrew that he was disabled — but to no avail. Iyad Halak was shot dead behind a garbage bin, where he had apparently sought shelter.

Police later said no weapon was found.

The details of how the fatal shooting happened are now part of an ongoing investigation by Israel's Justice Ministry, according to a police spokesperson. Two border police officers have been placed "off duty."

The fatal Israeli police shooting of Iyad Halak has sparked protests across several cities, including in Haifa, Israel

'Seems very easy for these people to kill'

Days after the deadly incident, staff from the Elwyn El Quds Center are still in shock and grief. "It broke our hearts," says Diaa Seider, a social worker and one of Halak's caregivers.

"For an autistic person like Iyad, it is not easy to deal with people or any new situation, he only dealt with people he knew and trusted. It would be difficult for anybody on the street who tried to contact him."

Imad Muna, a parent who accompanies his daughter every morning to the center, says: "It seems very easy for these people to kill, it's frightening. It is easy to kill a Palestinian."

While people in occupied east Jerusalem have grown accustomed to news of police violence, many were shocked by how an innocent person with disabilities was killed. Some see it as a more casual decision for Israeli forces to eventually use lethal force when dealing with Palestinian suspects.

The incident has drawn comparisons to the death of George Floyd in the US and to protests against police brutality. A series of small protests demanding justice were held by Palestinians in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, and in Jerusalem — as well as by some Israelis in Tel Aviv-Jaffa and other cities. Some protesters held photos of Iyad Halak and George Floyd, and signs reading "Palestinian Lives Matter" in reference to the "Black Lives Matter" movement in the US.

Halak's death evoked the longstanding criticism by Palestinian and Israeli Human Rights organizations of excessive use of force by Israeli security towards Palestinians and lack of accountability.

Read more: Palestinians, Israelis protest against Israel's decision to annex parts of the West Bank


Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu broke his silence a week after Halak's death

Netanyahu: From silence to 'sorry'

The reactions from Israeli commentators and politicians carried rare expressions of sorrow by some. "We are really sorry about the incident," said Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who is also the "alternate" prime minister, during a cabinet meeting the day after the shooting. "We share in the family's grief," he added.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained silent until the following week, saying he was "truly sorry."
"What happened with Iyad Halak is a tragedy," Netanyahu said during his cabinet meeting Sunday. "This was a man with a disability — autism, who was suspected — we know without justification — of being a militant in a highly sensitive area."

Israel's Public Security Minister Amir Ohana has promised an investigation and vowed to introduce new policing guidelines to better identify individuals with disabilities. But he also said police officers were often required to make "fateful decisions in seconds" in situations where there is "constant danger to their lives." In recent years, lone Palestinian attackers have carried out a series of stabbings and shootings in the Old City.


Iyad Halak's parents (center and right) say the pain of losing their son is indescribable

A devasted family

Throughout the past week, the family received condolences at their home in a residential neighborhood of East Jerusalem. But for Halak's father, nothing will bring back his son.

"He lived [cherished] to go to that center," says Iyad's father, Kheiri Halak, adding how important it was for his son to go there on his own for the past six years. "In the beginning, his teacher accompanied him for a month and taught him the way," Halak recalls. Iyad's teacher also explained to him that there could be checkpoints and border police forces along the way.

Israeli security forces are usually present around the area of Lion's Gate; it is one of the main pathways that lead to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. "It was all ok, until now," says Kheiri, as he struggles to speak about his son.

"Iyad was 32 years old, but he can't be independent, he is like a boy who is 8 years old." The family's pain, he adds, is indescribable knowing that Iyad was shot by police over nothing.

At the Elwyn El Quds Center in the Old City, caregivers, students and parents are now facing the question of how to keep their loved ones safe in the future. Most do not count on the police for protection.

Imad Muna, a father, says he will stop letting his 21-year old daughter walk the last few hundred meters on her own.

"I wanted to give her some independence and watched her walking from afar," he says. "But since this happened I won't do that again for a while I will walk her to the door."


AUDIOS AND VIDEOS ON THE TOPIC

Palestinians in Jericho on edge over Israeli annexation

Date 08.06.2020
Author Tania Kraemer
Related Subjects Israel, Palestine, Fatah
Keywords Israel, Palestine, police shooting, Middle East, Iyad Halak

Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3dPo2

From Black Lives Matter to the climate crisis: Banksy's political artworks

Elusive UK artist Banksy's new painting honors the Black Lives Matter movement. Here are more of his works commenting on the state of the world.

A statement on systemic racism
A vigil candle sets fire to the US flag: Banksy has revealed on Instagram a new painting commenting on George Floyd's killing and honoring the Black Lives Matter movement. "People of color are being failed by the system. The white system," the artist wrote. "This is a white problem. And if white people don't fix it, someone will have to come upstairs and kick the door in," he added.  MORE PHOTOS 12345678910111213

Black Lives Matter activists were perfectly positioned to expose Trump

June 8, 2020 By Amanda Marcotte, Salon- Commentary

“Noobs are forever.” That’s what my partner jokingly said to me this weekend, after the two of us attended the strikingly huge Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest in Philadelphia on Saturday.

We were talking about the phalanxes of newcomers to the movement — often identifiable by their well-meaning but tone deaf signs — who had joined with more seasoned BLM protesters who have been at this for years. We’d both been to BLM protests before, most notably an enormous one in New York in 2014, after an NYPD officer choked Eric Garner to death. But there’s no question that something has shifted, and lots of people who had previously stayed out of the movement now felt compelled to pick up signs and march in the streets against police brutality.





The result is not just that protests seem bigger, but almost more numerous, spreading out not just to every large city but also the suburbs and small towns of America. (The Texas town where I went to high school, which has a population of 6,000, saw a protest on Saturday that drew hundreds of attendees.) There have been many and varied protest movements in the era of Donald Trump, with some — like the Women’s March or the climate strikes — being more successful than others. But BLM seems to be rising above, becoming the protest movement that is doing the best at harnessing the larger anger out there about Trump and his supporters and enablers.
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Black Lives Matter is capturing those who have just woken up and, more than any other progressive movement, is turning that noob energy into action.







After spending a lot of time in the quiet reflection that marching while people chant around you offers, I have a theory about why this happened: BLM, more than any other progressive movement in this country, represents an understanding of the democratic crisis in this nation. Activists against police brutality saw firsthand how the forces of authoritarianism organized themselves in a way to gut democracy from the inside out. They were fighting that fight while much of the country lived in blissful ignorance under Barack Obama. BLM has the tools to lead the rest of the country in the fight to save democracy — or, honestly, to restore it — before Trump annihilates it completely.

Even before Trump, BLM activists have been fighting against the efforts of authoritarians to amass power that is outside the grip of democratic control, with police departments as the instrument. Aided by powerful police unions, police have become an autonomous social institution that holds city, county and state governments in its thrall. Police departments remain largely unaccountable to the forces of democracy. Even Democratic mayors have succumbed to the same poisonous push to redirect more taxpayer funds away from education and social services and towards the vampiric police departments that wield ever more authoritarian power over people’s lives, especially people of color.

As the public has seen in recent weeks, and as BLM has long understood, when the cops decide to start cracking skulls, those Democratic mayors may protest but often have little power to rein them in.




This increasing police power exemplifies what Trumpism is all about, which is making sure that the power of white supremacy and unchecked capitalism are outside the reach of democratic reforms. To say that the police are a fascistic organization no doubt sounded like hyperbole to a lot of people during the Obama administration. Now it’s becoming clear that it’s just a fact.

Under the Obama administration, BLM had made some progress toward establishing some democratic control over police power. The protests that grew out of Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere successfully raised public awareness of police brutality and created pressure on Democratic officials to act. While that progress was slow-moving, BLM had persuaded the Obama administration to direct the Department of Justice towards holding local police departments accountable, a decision the Trump administration, to no one’s surprise, has rolled back.

It’s safe to say that Trump’s election was, in no small part, fueled by a panicked reaction from right-wing America toward Black Lives Matter. To put it bluntly, Republican voters saw that BLM activists were successful at harnessing the power of democracy to push for greater racial equality and a fairer justice system. Given the stark choice between defending democracy or defending white supremacy, Republican voters went with the latter, in the form of the Great Orange Nemesis in the White House, who hasn’t been exactly subtle about his fascist yearnings.




There’s a famous quote from George Orwell’s “1984,” a book that flew off the shelves after Trump was elected: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

(The quote isn’t actually a genuine prediction from Orwell, as it’s often depicted, but a declaration by O’Brien, an official of the totalitarian government who functions as the mouthpiece for the aspirations of authoritarians.)




O’Brien’s metaphor became almost literally manifested in the image that kicked off what has now been two weeks of expanding protests: Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, squeezing the life out of him while a crowd of ordinary citizens, desperate but powerless, pleads with Chauvin to stop.

A novelist honestly couldn’t come up with a more apt metaphor for the moment, when the majority of Americans oppose Trump and Trumpism, but have largely felt powerless to stop the march of authoritarianism in our country.

Yet instead of giving up and giving in, people are hitting the streets, determined to fight back. All credit for that goes to Black Lives Matter, a grassroots movement that never underestimated the power of authoritarianism.




“Too many citizens prefer to cling to brutal and unjust systems than to give up political power, the perceived benefits of white supremacy and an exploitative economic system,” civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander wrote in a powerful New York Times op-ed on Monday. “Our nation suddenly caught a glimpse of itself in the mirror and people of all races poured into the streets to say ‘no more.'”

Not to be overly optimistic, but — it just might be working. Police freaked out and started assaulting peaceful protesters in city after city, exposing exactly what BLM activists have been saying for years, that police function more like an occupying army than like a law enforcement organization accountable to democratic rule. Right-wing vigilantes have attacked protesters in some places as well, which is telling.

People who are not ordinarily “political” are making a direct connection between police and vigilante authoritarianism and Trump’s efforts to gut democracy. This realization has been aided by Trump’s public longing for violent repression and his orders to tear-gas a peaceful crowd to clear the way for a meaningless photo-op. His poll numbers are falling, and even though his strategy all along has been to win another election without winning the popular vote, there’s an increasing chance that he can’t win in November even with vigorous voter suppression.

Defeating not just Trump but Trumpism required a mass movement of people, including lots of “noobs,” gathered under one banner. BLM that was able to step forward and meet the moment. What’s happening now is a neat illustration of the aphorism that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.




It’s not happenstance that Black Lives Matter became the vehicle for this larger anti-Trump movement. That’s a direct result of activists putting in the hard work for years: When the right moment came along, they were ready.