Tuesday, May 07, 2024

Iraq snapshot

Tuesday, May 7, 2024.  Students around the world call for an end to the assault on Gaza as the government of Israel moves into Rafah and starts killing children.


As ALJAZEERA reports Massachusetts Institute of Technology students continue to demand an end to the assault on Gaza.



“I feel those students in America are our voice,” said Zahra al-Kurd, 19, a Palestinian medical student in Cairo.

“Even if the protests don’t change the situation for us now, we know that it will help us in the long run.”

[. . .]

Mohamad Abu Ghali, 22, recalls watching from his window as the Israeli army destroyed his college, the Islamic University.

He was supposed to graduate last semester with a physics degree, but the ceremony never happened due to the war.

“I was at home and it was very clear from my window what happened to the Islamic University. When [Israel] does mass bombing – or carpet bombing – it can be seen from everywhere,” he told Al Jazeera.

On April 25, Abu Ghali left Rafah to try and complete his education in Cairo. Since then, he has closely observed the demonstrations unfolding in the US.

He said he was moved by a viral video of Noelle McAfee, chair of the Philosophy Department at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who was arrested by police and zip-tied for trying to protect the students in the protest encampment.

Hundreds of other university professors across the US have been arrested for standing up to protect student protesters and heavily armed police squads.

At Columbia University in New York, professors even formed a human chain to protect the students, despite the threat of losing their jobs and careers for their actions.

Abu Ghali said the brave professors in the US remind him of his own instructors, many of whom lost their lives in what rights groups describe as an Israeli genocide. He particularly misses Sufyan Tayeh, president of the Islamic University, who was killed along with his family in the Jabalia refugee camp.

Tayeh is one of 95 university professors killed since October 7, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).



ABC NEWS notes, "Police entered an encampment at the University of Chicago early Tuesday and began dismantling it, according to WLS, ABC News’ Chicago station."  Kristina Betinis (WSWS) notes an attack on the School of Art Institute of Chicago:

In solidarity with dozens of campus encampments across the United States, and internationally, on Saturday morning, May 4, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) students and supporters established a small encampment of about 12 tents on the north garden of the Art Institute in downtown Chicago. They called the encampment “Hind’s Garden,” after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old girl murdered, along with her family and healthcare workers, by the Israel Defense Forces on January 29.

Shortly after the encampment was set up—which was greeted warmly by supporters and passersby—police were deployed to the school. Upon arriving, dozens of cops with the Chicago Police Department formed a line to separate those inside the encampment from supporters outside on Michigan Avenue, who chanted the demand, “Hands off our students!” and “Disclose! Divest! We will not stop; we will not rest!”

As protesters and their supporters peacefully chanted, more police officers were dispatched to the school. Within two hours of the encampments’ establishment, police issued warnings ordering demonstrators to move or disperse. By 3:30 p.m., an extraordinarily large Chicago police force, including SWAT and other tactical teams brought in from other districts, moved into the garden.

As a line of cops closed in on the encampment, demonstrators locked arms and attempted to block their entry. Police then moved in, shoving protesters violently to the ground, zip-tying their hands behind their backs and carrying them off as hundreds of police milled around the gardens.


CNN’s Cindy Von Quednow  adds, "A total of 64 people were arrested as police dismantled a protest encampment at the University of California, San Diego, campus on Monday, school officials said in an updated statement." Sophie Squire (UK SOCIALIST WORKER) reports of last week

University administration at Columbia University locked the campus down after it sanctioned the police to go in and break up the encampment earlier this week. More reports of police brutality have been coming out from those who occupied the universities’ Hamilton Hall. 

One student said, “They kicked us in the chest, in the guts, in the head, in the face. multiple people have concussions, lacerations, broken ankles. 

“I saw people in holding with wrapped wrists. One person had to go get stitches. All of those injuries were inflicted by the New York Police Department (NYPD).” 

It has been revealed that an NYPD officer fired a gun inside Hamilton Hall on Tuesday night. According to the NYPD, an officer “accidentally fired” into a wall. 

But students at Columbia have not been beaten by the attacks and are continuing to take action. Hundreds gathered outside the mansion house of university President Minouche Shafik on Thursday night and made as much noise as possible. 

Police arrested more students at New York University, The University of Texas in Dallas, Fordham University, Tulane University in New Orleans and Portland State University. In total around 2,000 people have been arrested by the cops at campus protests.

The lengths that the US state will go to in order to suppress anti-war protests were on show once again when president Joe Biden attacked the students as violent. On Thursday he said, “Destroying property is not a peaceful protest.

“It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancelling of classes and graduations —none of this is a peaceful protest.”

Students shouldn’t take lessons in violence from a president who is complicit in the Israeli state’s murder of over 34,000 Palestinians.


Barry Grey (WSWS) reports:


Also on Saturday, dozens of riot police surrounded an encampment at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, sprayed the occupiers with a chemical irritant, and arrested 25 protesters. The police assault took place on the same city where, in 2017, thousands of neo-Nazis marched in the infamous “Unite the Right” rally, shouting, “Jews will not replace us!”

No police were mobilized against that fascist and genuinely antisemitic demonstration, which culminated in the murder of 32-year-old counter-protester Heather Heyer by a white supremacist. Then-President Donald Trump later said the neo-Nazi mob included “very fine people.”

As the police shoved the anti-genocide protesters off campus on Saturday, demonstrators shouted “What did you do when the KKK came to town?”


For those late to the party, Alisa Solomon (THE NATION) explains:


In late April, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had the chutzpah to post a video warning that “antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities” in the United States. It was a crudely inaccurate characterization—and from a man whose military campaign in Gaza has destroyed all the enclave’s universities. Nevertheless, as protests against the war spread on campuses across the country, news coverage presented the demonstrators as “pro-Hamas” hooligans—a line trumpeted by grandstanding politicians who have paraded through Columbia University, the epicenter of the student organizing, purporting to defend Jews. 

It is precisely this false framing, pushed by bad-faith political actors, that has propelled university administrations to crack down mercilessly against students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza. At Columbia, the crackdown began as far back as November, with the suspension of campus chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine—and it culminated last Tuesday night with a violent police raid on the campus, during which cops cleared Hamilton Hall of students who had occupied it and arrested more than 100. Each escalating step the university has taken to repress pro-Palestine speech has been based on mendacious portrayals of student activists, and each has predictably provoked the intensification of their tactics.

I am a professor at Columbia, a Jewish one at that, and I have watched with alarm as politicians have ginned up exaggerated charges of antisemitism to advance an ultraconservative agenda. The reality is that, while there have been some isolated cases of heinous and unacceptable antisemitism on campus (as well as more coming from non-community members outside the gates), these politicians are not helping to make the campus safe for Jews or anyone else; they are seeking to undermine faculty governance, academic freedom, and intellectually honest research and teaching. If anyone is trying to take over the university, it is these rightwing opponents of the critical thinking and learning that universities foster.
A list of some of the most vocal politicians is revealing. House Speaker Mike Johnson made a demagogic whistle-stop to Columbia on April 24 to denounce “lawless agitators and radicals” who had been allowed to spread “the virus of antisemitism.” (He was joined by Republican representatives Virginia Foxx, Nicole Malliotakis, Anthony D’Esposito, and Mike Lawler.) Around the same time, Senators Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton demanded that the National Guard be sent in to quell what Cotton hysterically called “nascent pogroms at Columbia.” Meanwhile, Representative Elise Stefanik—the star browbeater of the hearings on campus antisemitism called by the House Education and Workforce Committee—has been gunning forthe resignation of Columbia President Nemat (Minouche) Shafik (a matter that is not the purview of politicians, but of faculty, administrators, and trustees). 
These politicians are the same ones who have spent much of the last few years trying to quash critical academic engagement with topics like the history of slavery or the variable nature of gender. Now, they have declared criticism of Israeli behavior and of the ideology of Zionism off-limits. They have done so with increasing support from their Democratic colleagues, and with the aid of pro-Israel advocates, who have worked long and hard to silence Palestinian expression. Never mind that some of these same politicians have trafficked in white supremacist rhetoric and are hardly reliable friends of the Jews. (Ditto the headliners of a prayer rally near Columbia on April 25, led by Christian nationalist Sean Feucht, meant to protect Jews by bringing the love of Jesus.) They are exploiting exaggerated charges of antisemitism. And they are doing this with the full, if perhaps unwitting, complicity of university leadership itself.



AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

Graduation ceremonies have begun on college campuses across the United States as students continue their protests in solidarity with Palestine and calling on their schools to divest from Israel. On Friday, the student speaker at the University of Toledo’s graduate school commencement ceremony wore a keffiyeh hijab and a Palestinian flag over her graduation robe. This is part of the address by Maha Zeidan, a Palestinian American graduating law student, president of the Graduate Student Association.

MAHA ZEIDAN: I apologize that this is not a typical graduation speech, but there is nothing typical about the times that we are living in. There is nothing typical about 15,000 children live-streamed deaths being watched. And there is nothing acceptable about our institutional complicity, silence or the gross misuse of police force nationwide.

AMY GOODMAN: Maha Zeidan. Meanwhile, at the University of Michigan, students holding Palestinian flags briefly disrupted graduation ceremonies Saturday as a plane flew overhead holding a banner that read “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” Also on Saturday, at University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where in 2017 neo-Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us,” police in riot gear stormed a Gaza solidarity encampment and arrested at least 25 student protesters.

PROTESTER 1: Do not touch her!

POLICE OFFICER: Turn around and walk that way.

PROTESTER 2: Do not touch her Hey!

PROTESTER 1: Do not touch her!

AMY GOODMAN: The raid came after The Intercept’s Prem Thakker reported UVA, quote, “appears to have unilaterally changed policy on tents to help justify calling upon the police to arrest protesters.”

Police have now arrested more than 2,500 students at pro-Palestine protests across the U.S. in the past three weeks, which includes 133 arrests on Thursday at SUNY New Paltz alone, where police violently raided a student encampment with batons and dogs.

Well, we’re joined by three guests from these schools. We’re beginning in Southfield, Michigan, with Salma Hamamy, a student at the University of Michigan who just graduated this past weekend. Salma is president of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Michigan.

Salma, can you describe the graduation ceremony on Saturday?

SALMA HAMAMY: Hi. Yes. Thank you for having me.

So, the graduation ceremony on Saturday took place in the early morning with nearly hundreds and hundreds of students prepared to enjoy a celebratory moment. However, likewise, there are hundreds of students who are in the process of immense grief, given the ongoing genocide in Gaza and given the fact that the University of Michigan is funding a genocide. So, students took it upon themselves to engage in protest at the ceremony, with nearly a hundred students walking up and down the aisle trying to rally for the university to heed our demands, considering that they have entirely ignored us for the last seven months. As soon as the plane flew over with the banner, “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” students jumped out of their seats carrying the Palestinian flag, walked throughout the aisles. And eventually, the police pushed us towards the back and prevented further protesters from being able to join us in the graduation.

AMY GOODMAN: And the response of the overall crowd? I mean, there were tens of thousands of people there at University of Michigan graduation, Salma.

SALMA HAMAMY: Yeah, there were certainly tens of thousands of people there. The stadium is one of the largest in the world. And as soon the plane flew by with the banner calling for the university to divest, cheers erupted through the crowd. As students stood up and held their Palestinian flags, you could likewise hear a mix of cheers and some fellow students nearby calling for the police to immediately arrest us, cursing us out, throwing racial slurs. However, students continued on and held the Palestinian flag very high up and joined very quickly with one another and only got louder as both the cheers and boos continued.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Salma, I’m curious. At the same time, you have a Gaza solidarity encampment on campus. Police have not been called in to raid that?

SALMA HAMAMY: Yes. Surprisingly, police officers have not been called in to raid our encampment yet. We have faced quite a bit in regards to police brutality throughout the last seven months. And as of right now, our best guess is due to the fact that every single time police suppression continues on the rise, students’ power only grows in response. And so, considering that the university would probably be very fearful of what would happen on campus if they were to engage in police violence again, witnessing what has happened in the past, students would only exemplify and amplify their solidarity. So, it’s more so a preventative cause. They’re saying that they’re trying to allow students to peacefully protest; however, every single time we have tried peacefully protesting in the past demanding a meeting, they’ve arrested us several times, brutally beaten us to the floor, even ripping off students’ hijabs in the process. So, as of right now, the university, I think, is trying to wait it out and to wait for the students’ energy to die down. However, it’s only going to continue to grow.

AMY GOODMAN: Salma is joining us from Michigan. We’re going now to Cady de la Cruz, an undergraduate student at University of Virginia in Charlottesville, arrested Saturday for participating in the pro-Palestine encampment, a senior scheduled to graduate in two weeks. Now, let’s place this again. This is Charlottesville, where in 2017 scores of white men, mainly men, marched, saying, “Jews will not replace us.” This is during the Trump administration. If you can describe the arrests that took place, Cady, police arresting 25 protesters? What happened?

CADY DE LA CRUZ: Hi. Good morning.

Yeah. So, as you noted, the tent policy changed without notice at 11 a.m. on Saturday. And at noon, they deployed state troopers in riot gear. We immediately linked arms. We knew why we were there. We knew we weren’t going to leave until they met our demands, and we felt strong. They stalled for two hours. The state police, the city police, the county police, the university police were all there, at least a hundred cops. And we danced. And a huge crowd gathered around the encampment, supporting us, as police tried to keep them from getting in, but people kept running actually past the cops to join us. There was so much solidarity. The crowd outside was almost louder than us.

Eventually, the state troopers in riot gear did close in on us, a line of at least 40 of them, just a little bit longer than us, with shields. We were able to hold our ground until they started to spray huge clouds of chemicals at close range. When we ran back into the encampment to flush out our eyes and our throats, it was when we were separated and on the ground that they started to beat me down with their shields, drag my body by my clothes, and they sprayed us at close range with the chemicals. I saw the can close to my face. I had a friend who they ripped her goggles off and sprayed her. They took us somewhere where they had no medics and no water, while we screamed in pain. They detained 26 of us for almost nine hours with the chemicals still burning on our skins.

I’m now banned from campus. They’ve given us no chance to get our belongings. I have no phone, no laptop, no wallet. I’m purely getting by on the generosity of my friends. And like you said, this is the same campus that knew that men with rifles, Nazis, white supremacists were coming, and did not stop them. And none of those white supremacists are banned from campus.

AMY GOODMAN: Cady, you’re supposed to graduate in two weeks?

CADY DE LA CRUZ: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re risking so much to have protested right before, spending years getting your degree. Why did you do it?

CADY DE LA CRUZ: We had spent so many months pushing for divestment. We had had walkouts, like Salma was saying. Like, we had had walkouts. We had done so, so much. We had passed a referendum that got more votes in favor than even our entire student council election. And our administration refused to even comment on divestment.

And even though I only have two weeks before I’m supposed to graduate, I actually started the encampment on my last day of classes, and I ended up missing my classes. But even with two weeks left, I still — all of us there felt like we have more time on our hands left on our timeline than the people in Gaza, as we’re watching them bomb Rafah. We had a vigil the night before they raided our encampment. And again, we felt so much strength —

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.

CADY DE LA CRUZ: — in our escalation. We knew why we were there. We linked arms. We felt strong. We danced in front of that riot gear. We would hold it down for anything.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us, Cady. And I want to now go to New York to Rae Ferrara, who is with SUNY New Paltz — that’s State University of New York at New Paltz — at the Gaza solidarity encampment. Rae Ferrara, can you describe — I mean, you had a large number of students arrested. Over 130?

RAE FERRARA: The closest thing to an accurate number we have is 133, but it is most definitely more than that. That’s the number that the DA is giving. But just our jail support resources have made it even more than that. We had about that many people at the encampment.

AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly, since we only have about 40 seconds, can you describe what happened? You had just put the encampment up, when police moved in?

RAE FERRARA: No, we set up our encampment at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, and it wasn’t until about 10:40 p.m. on Thursday that the police raided us. This was after several failed attempts to negotiate with the university. Police raided us for over three hours. They knocked my friend unconscious. He had a concussion. They knocked an 82-year-old woman unconscious. All of my friends have bruises. They have red marks on their hands from the zip ties. And then, afterwards, they bulldozed all of our things.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Rae Ferrara, SUNY New Paltz Gaza solidarity camp participant and student at SUNY New Paltz; Cady de la Cruz, speaking to us from the University of Virginia; and Salma Hamamy at the University of Michigan, graduate, just graduated, president of SJP. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.


The American students protests inspired similar actions in France and Australia.  And the movement continues to spread.  BBC NEWS reports:

Trinity College Dublin (TCD) has met with student protesters and outlined a range of measures which it hopes will end an encampment on its campus.

However, students have said they will continue their protest until all of their demands have been met.

On Friday, dozens of students erected tents, calling on the university to end all business and academic links to Israel due to the war in Gaza.

In a statement on Monday evening, TCD said it was in "solidarity with the students in our horror at what is happening in Gaza".


Arpan Rai (INDEPENDENT) adds, "Students at Oxford and Cambridge have set up camps on their university campuses to protest Israel’s war on Gaza, mirroring similar protests across American universities and France’s prestigious Sciences Po University in Paris."  ALJAZEERA offers a photo essay of students in the Netherlands and Belgium protesting the ongoing assault on Gaza and the news outlet reports, "An encampment has now been set up on a lawn located in the centre of Italy’s University of Naples Federico II, one of the world’s oldest academic institutions."


As the world calls for an end of the assault, War Criminal Benjamin Netanyahu rushes to kill more civilians.  AP notes, "Israel brushes off allies’ warnings and moves into Rafah."  Heba Farouk Mahfouz
and Annabelle Timsit (WASHINGTON POST) report, 'Egypt “vehemently' denounced Israel’s overnight military operation to take control of the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing at Egypt’s border, adding to the chorus of international condemnation of the move by Israeli forces to close in on the southern Gazan city."  NBC NEWS adds, "On Sunday, Cindy McCain, head of the U.N. World Food Program, warned in an interview with NBC’s 'Meet The Press' that northern Gaza has already entered "full-blown famine," with the south at risk of following suit." THE NATIONAL points out, "UN agencies said on Tuesday that the two main crossings into the southern Gaza Strip remain shut, virtually cutting off the enclave from outside aid as Israel invades the last refuge for more than a million displaced Palestinians."  Helen Regan, Abeer Salman, Tareq Al Hilou, Tim Lister and Lauren Said-Moorhouse (CNN) report:


Palestinian civilians told to evacuate eastern Rafah by the Israeli military have described their fear and despair at being uprooted from their homes and shelters, as Israel airstrikes hit Gaza’s southernmost city.

There were hopes that the Rafah offensive would not go ahead after Hamas accepted a ceasefire proposal on Monday, but those were quickly dashed after Israel said the terms were “far from Israel’s necessary requirements” and it would continue “in order to exert military pressure” on the militant group.

By Tuesday morning, Israeli airstrikes on Rafah had killed 23 people, including a child, according to hospital officials in southern Gaza.     


Australia's ABC offers this analysis:

We're hearing more from our Middle East correspondent Allyson Horn in Jerusalem.

She tells ABC News Channel the invasion's significance "cannot be underestimated".

"This is because for the first time in the war Israeli troops are on the ground in Rafah," she says.

"The area that they declared as a safe zone."

Within the last 24 hours, the US has reiterated it does not support a Rafah ground invasion.

This is why Israel is using such specific wording to label the invasion, Horn says.

"Israel would face massive isolation on the international stage if it didn't have US backing to pursue a further ground invasion, which I think is why we're seeing the language that we are at the moment—saying this isn't an invasion, this is a small and limited operation in two specific areas." 

 

Gaza remains under assault. Day 214 of  the assault in the wave that began in October.  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence."   CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund."  ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them."  NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza."  The slaughter continues.  It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service.  Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide."   The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher.  United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse."  Yesterday, THE NATIONAL noted, "Gaza's death toll rose to 34,735 on Monday, the enclave's Health Ministry announced, after 52 people were killed in the previous 24 hours.  Another 90 people were wounded, taking the total number of injured to 78,108. Thousands of people are also missing, believed to be under the rubble of destroyed buildings." Months ago,  AP  noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing."  February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home."  February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:

 

 
April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons.  In a report released last month, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."
 

As for the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."
 



The following sites updated:



Posted by at