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Bernard Avishai | Hamas and Netanyahu Are Gambling Dangerously in Jerusalem
Bernard Avishai, The New Yorker
Avishai writes: "Forces in Israel and in Gaza are seeking to exploit the polarizing violence."
t 6:03 P.M. on Monday, right on time, air-raid sirens sounded over Jerusalem. Hamas’s normally secretive military head, Mohammed Deif, abetted by a spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, which Deif commands, had issued a warning. If, by 6 P.M., Israel did not remove its forces from the al-Aqsa Mosque, and, notably, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, in East Jerusalem, where Jewish settlers are trying to evict Palestinian families, Israel would pay a “heavy price.” His only means to exact a price were rockets, launched from Gaza.
Deif had inserted himself into a troubled moment. Last Friday, three days after he issued his statement, more than two hundred Palestinians were injured at the al-Aqsa Mosque, as police using stun grenades dispersed rock-throwing protesters, who were incensed, in part, by the presence of police during Ramadan. During the same period, the police violently dispersed hundreds of Palestinians and their Israeli-Jewish supporters who were demonstrating in Sheikh Jarrah, with tear gas and skunk water, a foul-smelling liquid developed for that purpose. By late afternoon on Monday, the city was bracing for a march by rightist youth, who typically taunt Palestinians with nationalist slogans, in celebration of Jerusalem Day. This event commemorates the Israeli conquest of the city in 1967, and its route passes through the Nablus Gate, itself the site of protests two weeks before, when police—unaccountably and, owing to the protests, temporarily—barred Palestinians from socializing on the steps of the gate’s plaza after breaking the Ramadan fast.
Few people living where I do, in the part of the city known as the German Colony, just a mile and a half from the Old City, scrambled to shelters when the sirens sounded. We reckoned that, as in 2012, Hamas rockets, not known for their accuracy, would land short. Indeed, of the half-dozen rockets launched at Jerusalem, one landed in Kiryat Anavim, a kibbutz nine miles to the west of the city, hitting a home; others went similarly astray. Nevertheless, and in spite of Israel’s provocations, Deif’s rockets were an obvious escalation. By morning, Israel had escalated further, with air strikes, reportedly killing twenty or more people, including at least nine children. By Thursday evening, more than seventeen hundred Hamas rockets, aiming to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome air defenses, and targeting the cities of Ashkelon, Lod, and Tel Aviv, among others, had killed seven Israelis, including a young boy. Israeli strikes in Gaza have now killed eighty-seven people, assassinated Hamas leaders, and levelled a multistory apartment block. Defense Minister Benny Gantz announced that the purpose of the strikes was to make Hamas “regret its decision.” Meanwhile, clashes in the cities of Lod and Ramla have led to more than twenty arrests, the burning of three synagogues, street attacks on Palestinians, and the trashing of homes in both communities. “We will not tolerate this. We need to restore calm,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, during a nighttime visit to Lod. “If this isn’t an emergency situation, I don’t know what is. We are talking about life and death here.” Other mixed Jewish-Arab cities also reported widespread violence.
Who benefits from this violence? Given how standard Deif’s and Netanyahu’s claims are, it may seem superfluous to ask. Palestinian grievances almost always attach the charge of Zionist displacement, such as that occurring in Sheikh Jarrah, to the fear of losing custodianship of the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, where al-Aqsa stands on the site of the ancient Jewish Temple. In 1920, Zionists began to purchase large swaths of land throughout Mandatory Palestine, in a process that often led to the eviction of tenant farmers; in May, 1921—exactly a hundred years ago—bloody attacks and counterattacks erupted in Jaffa, leaving scores dead on both sides. By 1929, when riots broke out in Jerusalem, it had become common wisdom among Palestinian leaders that supplanting the Palestinian poor was a prelude to supplanting Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Indeed, there are radicals studying in the Jewish Quarter a few hundred yards from al-Aqsa who are committed to building a “third” temple on the Temple Mount.
And Sheikh Jarrah, Deif knows, exposes the asymmetry of ordinary life under the occupation. Before 1948, Sheikh Jarrah was a mixed neighborhood, including the homes of leading Arab families, and some pietistic Jewish communities, drawn to the cave assumed to be the tomb of Shimon the Just, a priest from Hellenic times. In 1956, after Jordan and the United Nations had reached an agreement, twenty-eight Palestinian refugee families who had been displaced from their homes were housed in a residential compound in the neighborhood, some on land once owned or claimed by Jews—though the rights to at least a portion of the land were subsequently challenged by an Arab Jerusalem resident who claimed to have found documents proving long-standing title to it. In exchange for the small houses, the refugees were required to relinquish ration cards that had qualified them for material assistance from the U.N. Relief and Works Association. The property was controlled by Jordan, which promised, in effect, perpetual renewal, and, over time, families built onto their homes.
After the 1967 war, however, Israel moved quickly to claim custodianship of Jordanian-administered land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including the land under these compounds. And, in 1972, the land was signed over to two Jewish trusts purporting to be the representatives of the dispossessed communities. Ten years later, they sued to evict twenty-three Palestinian families, who, owing allegedly to their attorney’s carelessness, were subsequently registered as recognizing the trusts’ ownership. Serial court cases were launched from there, with the trusts demanding rent, and filing for eviction of families who could be shown not to have fully paid it. The trusts, upping the ante, then sold the land for three million dollars to a wealthy settlers’ organization, which planned to move the families out. Finally, in 2008 and 2009, in the face of mounting protests by East Jerusalem Palestinians and sympathetic Jewish-Israeli activists, dozens of residents were forcibly evicted by police. A number of Jewish families and a few young zealots moved in. Now the settler organization is pressing for seventy more Palestinian residents to be thrown out of their homes. The settlers’ obvious hope is to do in Sheikh Jarrah what other settlers have done in the Hebron Casbah: empty it of Palestinian residents and businesses. In recent weeks, Netanyahu’s ultra-right allies in the Knesset, including the Kahanist Itamar Ben-Gvir, have made brazen, carefully publicized appearances outside the al-Aqsa compound and at the Nablus Gate and Sheikh Jarrah. (On Monday, coincidentally, the Supreme Court was scheduled to have heard, in effect, the residents’ appeals. The hearing was postponed.)
So, the case is complex, but the larger provocation is simple. After 1948, many Arab lands and residences on the Israeli side, including the house that I live in, were legally declared to have been abandoned, and thus available to the Israeli government to lease or sell to Israeli Jews. Jordan did the same regarding Jewish property on its side of the city. Israel is now in charge on both sides, and in recent years courts have allowed the enforcement of old Jewish claims, but not those of Arabs. Within blocks of my home are three houses once owned by the families of a friend, Yasir Barakat, an antiquities merchant in the Old City, who is now a resident of Sheikh Jarrah. Barakat told me, “My family, thank God, had the means to remake our lives after the war”—they had to leave their home in 1948—“and I don’t claim those houses, which I pass when I drive to yours. But now they throw these poor people out. And I could smell the stink from the police water cannons from my window.”
A Palestinian family flee from their house during Israeli airstrikes in the east of Gaza City early on Friday. (photo: Mohammed Saber/EPA)
Palestinians Flee Their Homes as Israel Launches Hundreds of Strikes Into Gaza
Oliver Holmes and Harriet Sherwood, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Israeli ground and air forces have attacked targets in Gaza, forcing residents to flee their homes, in a significant escalation in the worst bout of fighting for seven years."
Military says no troops currently operating inside territory as number of casualties continues to grow
Heavy artillery fire was aimed at what the Israeli military said was a large network of militant tunnels. The intense overnight bombardment came amid speculation that Israeli troops were preparing to enter Gaza on the ground.
Red flames illuminated the skies above Gaza in the early hours of Friday as the deafening blasts from the outskirts of Gaza City, which lies about a mile from the frontier, jolted people awake as their apartment blocks shook.
Palestinians living in areas close to the Gaza-Israel border fled their homes in pickup trucks, on donkeys and by foot. Some went to UN-run schools in Gaza City, carrying small children, household essentials and food.
Hedaia Maarouf, who left her home with her extended family of 19 people, including 13 children, said: “We were terrified for our children, who were screaming and shaking.”
In northern Gaza, Rafat Tanani, his pregnant wife and four children were killed after an Israeli warplane reduced a building to rubble, residents said.
The number of injured rose to 830 overnight, an increase of 200 in 10 hours, according to the Gaza health ministry. The death toll stood at 119, including 27 children, it said.
The UN said that more than 200 homes and 24 schools had been destroyed or severely damaged in the Gaza Strip in Israeli air raids in the past five days. It also warned that residents’ access to fresh water could be limited because of power cuts and damage to pipe networks.
Power supplies may also be cut further as a result of the military action. At the moment, most families have power for four or five hours a day, with hospitals and businesses relying on generators. But as fuel supplies run low, more blackouts are expected.
Hamas and other militant groups continued to fire rockets into Israel, with warning sirens sounding in towns and communities. The Israeli military said it had intercepted at least five drones carrying explosives launched from Gaza since Thursday.
Nine people have been killed in Israel, including a child and a soldier.
Shortly after midnight, the Israeli military issued a statement saying: “[Israel Defence Forces] air and ground troops are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip.”
It later clarified that there were no troops inside Gaza, suggesting it was not a ground invasion but artillery and tank fire from the border. “Clarification: there are currently no IDF ground troops inside the Gaza Strip. IDF air and ground forces are carrying out strikes on targets in the Gaza Strip,” the statement said.
It added that fresh airstrikes had been carried out against what it called a “number of Hamas launch sites and observation posts in Gaza”.
Shortly after the initial military announcement, in an apparent reference to the operation, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, tweeted: “The last word was not said and this operation will continue as long as necessary.”
Later on Friday morning, the IDF released a statement saying that an operation of 160 aircraft had “struck over 150 underground targets in the northern Gaza Strip” over the course of the night. The statement claimed that the purpose of the operation was to damage underground tunnels built by Hamas. Israel’s forces destroyed “many kilometres” of the tunnels during the attack, it claimed.
The Israeli military has drawn up plans for a possible ground operation in Gaza, telling its forces to “prepare for battle”. Thousands of reservists have been called up and leave for all combat units has been cancelled.
Israel was also hit by further communal violence for a fourth night with Jews and Arabs clashing in the town of Lod. A synagogue was torched overnight and 43 people were arrested, according to police.
The Shin Bet security service said it was involved in tackling the violence in Jewish-Arab cities, which it described as “terror for all intents and purposes”.
It was using its “intelligence collecting capabilities” to learn about any plans to carry out attacks or engage in violent clashes and “to locate, arrest, investigate and put the perpetrators on trial”, it said in a statement.
“We won’t allow violent rioters to impose terror on the streets of Israel, either by Arabs or Jews,” said Shin Bet’s chief, Nadav Argaman.
Political leaders have said that violent street clashes between Jews and Arabs inside the country pose a bigger threat than the escalating military conflict with Gaza.
“We have no bigger threat now than these pogroms, and we have no choice but to restore law and order via determined use of force,” said Netanyahu on a visit to the town on Thursday.
Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, said a “civil war [would] be a danger to our existence, more than all the dangers we have from the outside”.
Intercommunal violence, including beatings, stabbings, shooting and arson, has this week been reported across the country, from Beersheba in the southern Negev to Tiberias and Haifa in the north.
Hundreds of people have been arrested, and border police have been redeployed from the occupied West Bank to towns inside Israel. “We’re in an emergency, the defence minister, Benny Gantz, said in a statement.
Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Melina Mara/AP)
Bernie Sanders Urges Biden Administration to Keep Jobless Benefits Flowing to Gig Workers on Verge of Losing Stimulus Aid in Red States
Juliana Kaplan and Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Business Insider
en. Bernie Sanders urged the Biden administration on Thursday to prevent the loss of jobless benefits for unemployed Americans in the 14 GOP-led states that are on the verge of ending their participation in federal unemployment benefits next month.
Governors in red states such as Georgia, Montana, and South Carolina have cited a so-called labor shortage as necessitating fewer benefits, so that unemployed residents will be compelled to return to work. As soon as next month, hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of workers will experience a sharp cut in their jobless benefits.
But Sanders is arguing that the Labor Department is mandated to provide Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) to all workers, even those in states that are moving to halt it. In a letter to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, Sanders said "it is critical that the Department of Labor does everything in its power to ensure that jobless Americans continue to receive this aid as the law intended."
PUA is a federal pandemic-era unemployment expansion that allows more workers — including gig workers and part-time workers — to become eligible for UI benefits. Sanders and other progressive lawmakers have argued that the widespread adoption of PUA by workers shows the need to permanently reform and expand UI eligibility.
"As Secretary, you are obligated to ensure this aid gets to workers," Sanders wrote in his letter to Walsh. "To ensure that obligation is met, I urge you to commit to holding states accountable for their role in administering PUA benefits."
If states end PUA, those newly eligible workers would lose all of their benefits, not just the additional $300 a week. Also at risk are workers on long-term benefits.
Sanders is joining lawmakers like Sen. Ron Wyden and progressive think tank National Employment Law Project (NELP) in calling on the Labor Department to step in. NELP sent a letter to the Labor Department outlining potential ways to continue the distribution of PUA benefits; the Labor Department told Insider it had received the NELP's memo and was reviewing it, but did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sanders' letter.
The action may not provide immediate aid to the unemployed — and instead spark a time-consuming legal battle with GOP-led states hostile to the federal government administering aid at the statewide level.
"A months-long process would not be surprising," Andrew Stettner, an unemployment expert at the left-leaning Century Foundation, told Insider. "We're still at the very beginning of this. There's been this shocking move by these 14 states and we're trying to push back and say they shouldn't have the authority here to end these benefits."
Stettner projected the step could provide jobless aid to at least 400,000 people on PUA in the affected states. He expressed concern that other states such as Florida and Texas may be next to terminate the federal coronavirus relief programs.
"Secretary Walsh and the Biden Administration have been doing all they can to take concrete action to prevent anyone from falling through the cracks as we know unemployment benefits have served as a vital lifeline for workers throughout the pandemic – to help them buy food, pay rent and remain healthy," Egan Reich, a Labor Department spokesperson, said in a statement to Insider.
Roberto, shown at his home in the Rio Grande Valley, has been working in agriculture all his life, first in Mexico, then in the U.S. (photo: Encarni Pindado/Guardian UK)
Meet the Workers Who Put Food on America's Tables - but Can't Afford Groceries
Nina Lakhani, Guardian UK
Lakhani writes: "Undocumented immigrants are doing the backbreaking farm work that keeps the US food system running but struggle to feed their families."
n the piercing midday heat of southern Texas, farmhand Linda Villarreal moves methodically to weed row after row of parsley, rising only occasionally to stretch her achy back and nibble on sugary biscuits she keeps in her pockets. In the distance, a green and white border patrol truck drives along the levee beside the towering steel border wall.
For this backbreaking work, Villareal is paid $7.25 per hour, the federal minimum wage since 2009, with no benefits. She takes home between $300 and $400 a week depending on the amount of orders from the bodegas – packaging warehouses which supply the country’s supermarkets with fruits and vegetables harvested by crews of undocumented mostly Mexican farmworkers.
Villarreal works six days a week, sometimes seven, putting food on Americans’ tables but earns barely enough to cover the bills and depends on food stamps to feed her own family.
Every day is a hustle: she gets up at 4.30am to make packed lunches for her colleagues, charging them $5 each for homemade tacos, before heading to the fields for a 7 o’clock start. She skips breakfast.
Healthcare is a major struggle for farmworkers: Villarreal takes diabetes medication a ‘legal’ friend buys from a cheap pharmacy across the border, rather than take time off to attend a nonprofit local health clinic. It’s the wrong dose, but better than nothing she reckons.
“I feel like I’m from here, my children are all American, but I don’t have the paperwork, and that makes everything hard,” said Villarreal, 45, wiping the sweat on her long sleeved hoodie which offers some protection from the harsh sun rays.
About half of the 2.5m farm hands in the US are undocumented immigrants, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), though growers and labor contractors reckon the figure is closer to 75%.
Even before the pandemic, farms were among the most dangerous workplaces in the country, where low paid workers have little protection from long hours, repetitive strain injuries, exposures to pesticides, dangerous machinery, extreme heat and animal waste. Food insecurity, poor housing, language barriers and discrimination also contribute to dire health outcomes for farmworkers, according to research by John Hopkins Centre for a Livable Future.
After long days in the fields, Villarreal sleeps on an old couch in the kitchen-lounge as part of the house was left uninhabitable by a fire and a hurricane. Her 11-year-old son, who has ADHD, sleeps on the other couch, while two daughters share a bedroom where water leaks in through the mouldy roof. The eldest, a 16-year-old who wants to be a nurse, and her six-month old baby sleep in a room with cindered walls. The house is a wreck, but there’s no spare money for repairs.
Many undocumented farmworkers have been toiling in the fields for years, pay taxes and have American children, yet enjoy few labor rights, have extremely limited access to occupational health services and live under the constant threat of deportation.
In truth, farmworkers here are never harassed while working in the fields, which advocates say suggests a tacit agreement with growers to ensure America’s food supply chain isn’t disrupted by immigration crackdowns. It’s everywhere else that these essential workers, who kept toiling throughout the pandemic, are not safe.
Last summer, Villarreal (and her three teenage daughters) contracted Covid-19, which left her struggling to breathe. Rather than risk going to an emergency room, a relative with legal immigration status crossed the border to Reynosa and purchased a small tank of oxygen. In the end, Villarreal was off work sick for a month without pay, used up all her savings and took out a loan.
“I should take better care of myself but I don’t have the time and I can’t afford to lose wages.”
Villarreal has lived in the Rio Grande Valley for 26 years and hasn’t stepped foot in Mexico for the past 19. She’s never had a mammogram or a pap smear.
A bountiful food desert
The Rio Grande Valley is a subtropical agricultural hub on the borderlands where the sun seems inordinately near as it rises and falls over the flat expansive landscape.
A canal system built during the early 20th century helped convert this ranching region into an important agricultural one which produces a wide variety of kitchen staples including kale, radishes, zucchini, watermelons, jalapeños, beets, avocados, cucumbers and tomatoes.
Latinos account for more than 90% of residents in the region’s four counties – Starr, Hidalgo, Cameron and Willacy – where, even before the pandemic, poverty rates hovered between 30% to 40%.
Most immigrants work in agriculture or construction. Most live in overcrowded houses or trailers on the outskirts of the main urban centres in neighbourhoods known as colonias, with limited access to basic services such as grocery stores, public transport, street lighting and health clinics.
A staggering 59% of residents in the Rio Grande Valley metropolitan belt (McAllen-Edinburg-Mission) are low income with limited access to nutritious food, making this agricultural heartland the worst so-called food desert in the country, according to the USDA.
The streets around the colonias are lined with fast food joints, dollar stores and makeshift stalls selling cheap homemade fried and sugary snacks. Diet related health conditions are very common: more than one in four adults has diabetes, three times the national rate, while about 80% of residents are obese or overweight.
The main shopping hubs are the pulgas or outdoor Mexican style flea markets, which sell everything from antibiotics, fruits and vegetables rejected by the supermarkets, cowboy hats and knock off DVDs.
The past few years have been particularly tough. In 2017, a new state anti-immigration law authorized police to act as de facto Ice agents and demand papers from anyone they suspected of being undocumented which fuelled terror among migrant communities, according to Ramona Casas, director of the migrant advocacy group Arise.
“We’ve seen a rise in depression and anxiety among people who are too scared to report serious crimes like domestic violence in case they are deported and lose their children. They live very restricted and stressful lives, scared to even go out to the shops or to exercise,” said Casas.
It was here in the valley that Trump made his final visit as president, stopping to admire new sections of the border wall which left some Mexican farmland marooned on the other side.
These fields still have to be tended. In February, Mario Azar, 35, was stopped by police on his way back from picking onions because of an outstanding ticket on the car he’d recently purchased. Azar, and the four colleagues he was giving a ride, were deported that evening, and his car sold off at a city auction.
The pandemic caused terrible hardship for immigrant families, who were excluded from most government aid, including the stimulus checks and unemployment benefits. Covid-19 also exacerbated existing health disparities, with high rates of infection and fatalities among farmworkers who travel to and from fields in packed vehicles, but struggle to access masks and tests. Some crews are still sharing cups for water.
Then came the big freeze in February which brought parts of Texas to a standstill, ruining many crops including acres of citrus orchards when farmworkers were just beginning to harvest the fruit. Citrus farmers will eventually be at least partially reimbursed by insurance companies and the USDA, but the farmhands lost about two months of work without compensation.
“Farmworkers have always been treated like second-class citizens, they are the ones who always get shafted because they have the least power,” said Mario Galvan, an outreach worker for more than 20 years helping migrants who suffer exploitation.
“The discrimination is not better, it’s worse. There’s a lot of abuse – wage theft, poor sanitation, sexual harassment – in the valley, but workers don’t say much because of fear,” added Galvan.
The most common complaint heard by the Guardian was casual wage theft – contratistas (harvesters, who are contracted by producers and sell to the bodegas) undercutting wages by an hour or two, or undercounting the filled boxes
‘We feed this country, but they don’t value it’
On a recent Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of cars lined up for groceries at the Iglesia Vino Nuevo, a church run by a Mexican pastor in a low income immigrant colonia. The staples – frozen meat, stale bakery goods and quarts of milk – were supplemented by bags of rotting cucumbers from Canada, tomatoes from Mexico and oranges from Florida. (Only 3% of citrus produced in Texas, stays in Texas.)
Even before the pandemic, one in four children in the valley did not have reliable access to sufficient nutritious food for a healthy active life. Last year, at the height of the economic crisis, demand for food aid was up sevenfold and even now the lines remain extraordinarily long.
“The daily disaster of hunger is a harsh reality here … our population never recovered from the Great Recession,” said Stuart Haniff, CEO of the Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley.
The valley produces enough food to feed more than double its population, according to Alex Racelis, an agroecologist at the University of Texas RGV, yet has the worst rate of obesity and food insecurity in the state.
Roberto Gomez, 58 and his wife Juana Sosa, 55, have relied on the pantry since the start of the pandemic when they stopped working at a local bodega, afraid of being stopped on their way home by police enforcing the lockdown.
After a year with no income, the couple owe $1,600 in property taxes – the first time they’ve been in debt since emigrating 20 years ago from Tamaulipas. “They keep calling, but we don’t have it, we have to pay the electricity and water,” said Sosa, wiping tears on her sleeve. “This year has been so hard, but this food helps, we don’t care if the bread is old.”
Thankfully, she said, the land on which they constructed their modest Mexican rancho style house where pigs, chickens, ducks and dogs roam free is paid off, as friends who got behind on payments recently lost their home.
Gomez recently started back at the same bodega, but lasted only a couple of days due to severe toothache: the right side of his face is swollen and tender, his gum red and inflamed, but the antibiotics from Reynosa (obtained without seeing a dentist) haven’t helped.
The following day, Gomez was confined to bed as the pain worsened. An extraction costs $100, but even if they could get the money, a dentist won’t operate until the infection and swelling gets better. He’s tearful, perhaps a symptom of the pain, while talking about their hard life in the US, and how he desperately wants to go home to spend time with his father before he dies.
In March, Congress passed immigrations bills which would unlock a gateway to citizenship for Dreamers and farmworkers. If these become law, everything would change for so many families in the Rio Grande Valley.
Some years back, the couple saved enough for an attorney to get conditional residency or so-called Dreamer status for one of their three Mexico born children, but couldn’t afford to pay for the others. The youngest, who was born in America, wants to join the army after graduating high school later this year, which Sosa hopes might eventually help the rest of the family get legal status.
But Gomez is tired of hustling.
“All we’ve done is work and work to make a better life for our children, we haven’t seen anything, we haven’t been anywhere. Even if I’m sick or injured, there’s no help, I can’t even afford a dentist. We feed this country, I’ve never seen a fucking gringo in the fields, but they don’t value what we do.”
Joe Manchin says he won't support extending the $300 federal weekly unemployment benefit from Biden's stimulus. (photo: Susan Walsh/AP)
Joe Manchin Says He Won't Support Extending the Federal Weekly Unemployment Benefit From Biden's Stimulus
Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Business Insider
Zeballos-Roig writes: "Sen. Joe Manchin said he won't back extending the federal unemployment benefit from President Joe Biden's stimulus, which could possibly torpedo the jobless measure once it expires on Sept. 6."
"I'll never vote for another extension as long as I know that with the vaccines, there's not an excuse for no one to be vaccinated," the West Virginia Democrat told Politico. "I understand there's millions of jobs in America that we can't fill right now. So we need people back to work. There's more and more people understanding they're in trouble."
Manchin's opposition highlights a rift among the Democrats over the extension of federal unemployment benefits later this summer. But some centrist Democrats are waiting to see how the economic recovery plays out before deciding on the issue.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire cited the low unemployment rate in her state, and told Politico "if that continues it probably should not be extended."
During Senate debate to approve Biden's $1.8 trillion stimulus law, Manchin withheld his support from a provision to put in place a $400 weekly federal jobless benefit that would expire at the end of September. After a spate of last-minute negotiations, he pushed to cut it to $300 per week with an early September expiration date.
Manchin's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment asking whether he supported terminating programs providing jobless benefits to gig workers, freelancers, and the long-term unemployed in September.
The recent April jobs report showed employers adding 266,000 jobs, a lackluster amount that prompted Republicans and business groups to increasingly argue the jobless aid is luring people away from the workforce.
The Chamber of Commerce has called for an immediate end to the stimulus measure, and at least 10 GOP-led states are ending their participation in the federal program in June. Still, many experts say the federal unemployment benefit did not dissuade people from seeking jobs last year, and other factors like school closures, fear of the virus, and lack of access to childcare are playing larger roles keeping workers on the sidelines.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a press conference on Tuesday there was "overwhelming support" among Democrats to renew it. "Many more people are helped by this $300 extra," he said.
Other Democrats are warning about the end of enhanced unemployment insurance in many states. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, called for the Biden administration to step in and prevent workers from losing jobless aid in GOP-led states.
"Mothers without childcare are not going to be back on the job in just a few weeks' time, and they shouldn't face financial ruin for living in states run by Republicans," Wyden said in a Tuesday statement.
Flames and smoke rise after Israeli air strikes in the southern Gaza Strip, May 11, 2021. (photo: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)
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Digital Apartheid: Palestinians Being Silenced on Social Media
Omar Zahzah, Al Jazeera
Zahzah writes: "Social media companies, from Zoom to Facebook and Twitter, are reinforcing Israel's erasure of Palestinians."
n 1984, Palestinian American intellectual and Columbia University Professor Edward Said famously argued that Palestinians are denied “permission to narrate”.
More than 30 years later, in 2020, Maha Nassar, a Palestinian American Associate Professor at the University of Arizona, analysed opinion articles published in two daily newspapers – The New York Times and The Washington Post – and two weekly news magazines – The New Republic and The Nation – over a 50-year period, from 1970 to 2019. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she found that “Editorial boards and columnists seem to have been quite consumed with talking about the Palestinians, often in condescending and even racist ways – yet they somehow did not feel the need to hear much from Palestinians themselves.”
Nassar’s research, like many others before it, clearly demonstrates that more than three decades after the publication of Said’s landmark essay, the exclusion of Palestinian voices from mainstream media narratives in the West – and the attempts to erase the humanity of the Palestinians or whitewash Israel’s crimes against them – continue unabated.
Sadly, however, this unjust status quo has not only remained unchanged since Said brought it under the spotlight – it has deteriorated.
In recent years, social media became a lifeline for many who want to raise awareness about causes and struggles ignored or undermined by mainstream media outlets.
Yet tech companies are now actively working to exclude Palestinian voices from their platforms, thereby expanding the calculated erasure and silencing of the Palestinians to social media.
In April, for example, Zoom, Facebook and Youtube blocked the online academic event “Whose Narratives? What Free Speech for Palestine?” co-sponsored by the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies program at San Francisco State University, the Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUFCA), and the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI).
The event was to feature anti-apartheid activists from around the globe, including Palestinian resistance icon Leila Khaled and South Africa’s former ANC military leader Ronnie Kasrils.
This event was in fact a repeat of an open classroom co-organised by Dr Rabab Ibrahim Abudulhadi (AMED Studies) and Dr Tomomi Kinukawa (Women and Gender Studies) of San Francisco State University that Zoom initially censored in September 2020. Then, as now, Zoom and other social media companies said they decided to block the event from their platforms due to the planned participation of Leila Khaled. They claimed, as Khaled is affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a “US-designated terrorist organisation”, allowing the event to proceed would be in violation of US laws prohibiting material support for terrorism.
As repeatedly asserted by numerous legal experts, the argument put forth by the social media companies is without merit. It not only ignores all relevant legal precedents and falsely alleges violations of US law, but also amounts to an attack on academic freedoms.
Indeed, in an open letter to Zoom executives published in October last year, experts from Palestine Legal and other legal organisations stressed that Zoom’s censoring of the AMED event constitutes “a dangerous attack on free speech and academic freedom, and an abuse of your contract with our public university systems”. They added that “[Zoom’s] status as an essential public service does not give you veto power over the content of the nation’s classrooms and public events.”
These warnings, however, went unheeded, with Zoom and other social media companies completely ignoring the growing criticism of their biased policies and escalating their efforts to silence Palestinian speech on their platforms.
In April, after Zoom refused to host the “Whose Narratives?” event for the second time – following pressure from an Israeli government app and several right-wing Zionist organisations – Facebook not only took down publicity posts about the event, but also deleted the page of the AMED Studies program from its platform in its entirety, effectively erasing a vast archive of talks, discussions and documents on the Palestinian liberation struggle and its relationship to freedom movements from around the world. These materials were being intentionally shared and stored on Facebook for academics, activists, organisers and the community at large to be able to engage with them free of charge and without restriction.
Coming on the heels of Zoom’s repeated attempts to arbitrate what is and is not acceptable speech in academia, Facebook’s deletion of the AMED page made clear Big Tech’s modus operandi when it comes to Israel-Palestine: censor material related to the Palestinian struggle on Israel’s demand, and ignore any criticism of these unlawful and unjust actions.
Israel and its allies are not only pressuring Big Tech to silence the Palestinians from outside. Facebook’s oversight board, an independent body tasked with deliberating on the platform’s content decisions, includes former director-general of the Israeli ministry of justice, Emi Palmor. Palmor personally managed Israel’s Cyber Unit in the past, which successfully lobbied for the removal of thousands of pieces of Palestinian content from Facebook.
While it is only logical to assume Palmor’s presence on the oversight board is contributing to Facebook’s anti-Palestinian actions, Big Tech’s routine silencing of Palestinian voices cannot be blamed on such overtly pro-Israeli actors in its higher echelons alone.
Since the very beginning, social media companies have gravitated towards and aligned with centres of power in the US capitalist and imperialist structures. They even partnered with the US Department of Defence, coordinating surveillance and big data analysis. So it is not that a few powerful pro-Israeli voices are coopting social media companies into silencing dissent; the industry itself is rotten to its core. Let us not forget how Big Tech executives and employees have orchestrated a huge land grab and gentrification in the San Francisco Bay Area, displacing thousands of working-class and poor communities of colour.
The AMED Studies Facebook page has not been restored. But as the event organisers have also rightfully noted, the problem is not only Big Tech censorship: after the censoring of the AMED event, university officials refused to offer alternative platforms for the event to take place and engaged in messaging and programming that effectively delegitimised it.
Universities are far from being neutral arbiters in this story: by conceding to the monopoly of tech companies over pedagogical programming and by normalising anti-Palestinian rhetoric, they are complicit in these companies’ overreaching erasure of Palestine and Palestinians from the curriculum.
And the repression of Palestinian voices on social media extends far beyond academia. In recent days, many individuals documenting Israeli settler and state violence against Palestinian families in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah reported that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (owned by Facebook) has been “systematically censoring” their content.
In the latest chapter of Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the Palestinian families of Sheikh Jarrah face imminent forced removal from their homes and are contending with violent repression that is sanctioned and enabled by all levels of the Israeli state.
Last Friday, more than 200 people were wounded when Israeli police shot rubber bullets and threw stun grenades at Palestinians in Al-Aqsa mosque. Israeli forces tried to prevent medics from treating the injured and at least three Palestinians lost an eye as a result of the attack. On Monday, Israeli occupation forces again fired at Palestinians, who had gathered at Al-Aqsa to pray and protect the site from settler violence, with rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas; reporters, journalists and medics were among the wounded. In the latest act of collective punishment, Israel began a ruthless bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip on Monday night, flattening civilian infrastructure and media offices. The current death toll is estimated to be at least 65, 16 of whom are children, with 365 wounded, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. On Wednesday night, settler and police violence against Palestinians in the city of Lydd (also known as Lod) peaked as hundreds of Israelis stormed the city, attacking Palestinian protesters following the murder of 33-year-old Palestinian man, Musa Hassouna. Israeli Border Forces were eventually transferred to Lydd from the West Bank. Furthermore, fascist Israelis participated in an attempted lynching of a Palestinian man in Bat Yam, forcibly removing him from his car and beating him unconscious.
The Israeli Supreme Court has since delayed the Sheikh Jarrah forced removals for 30 days, but activists have identified this as a stalling tactic meant to diffuse momentum and support for the Sheikh Jarrah residents.
In a recent CNN interview, Mohamed El-Kurd, a Palestinian poet and activist from Sheikh Jarrah, powerfully turned the age-old media trope of Palestinians being inherently “violent” on its head by responding to the reporter’s leading question with one of his own: “Do you support the violent dispossession of me and my family?” As usual, US mainstream media organisations attempt to hide the asymmetrical nature of Israel’s aggression by defining its latest and ongoing attacks on the Palestinian people as “clashes” or a “conflict”.
Mainstream media’s ongoing efforts to whitewash Israel’s deadly occupation, coupled with the dire and rapidly escalating situation of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah as well as all Palestinians resisting in support of them, make unrestricted access to social media especially crucial for Palestinians and their allies.
But rather than amplifying the righteous struggle of Palestinians resisting violence and displacement, social media companies are furthering the interests and agenda of the very government attacking them.
This latest round of social media censorship of Palestinian posts about Sheikh Jarrah is part of a larger pattern of repression, given the long and well-documented complicity between Israel and social media companies in regulating and censoring Palestinian content and accounts. Instagram officially attributed these latest deletions to a “global technical issue”. Twitter likewise claimed the restriction of the account of Palestinian writer Mariam Barghouti, which was subsequently reinstated following a huge social media outcry, was an “accident”. Activists and watchdog organisations have expressed doubts about such explanations, given the targeted nature of the removals and censures.
Decades after Edward Said’s criticism of the US media’s insistent refusal to allow Palestinians to narrate their own stories, the voices in support of the Palestinian liberation struggle are being silenced not only by mainstream media organisations but also social media companies.
But we must not give in. Despite efforts by social media companies and media organisations to silence Palestinians, those who truly believe in equality, justice and freedom should continue to endorse and amplify the calls to save Sheikh Jarrah, stop the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements, end all military funding for Israel, and bring an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and state-sanctioned discrimination against Palestinians. We should also support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, until Israel agrees to cease its colonial and apartheid practices for good. Media organisations and social media companies can try to control and distort narratives about Palestine, but they cannot hide the truth and silence Palestinians’ righteous calls for justice forever.
This does not mean we should not try and expose the unethical and unlawful practices by these companies and organisations. We must fight the targeted, cross-platform censorship that echoes and reinforces the Israeli state’s ongoing structural oppression of Palestinians and systematic erasure of Palestinian voices. By engaging in such behaviour, social media companies are practicing digital apartheid. We can not sit idly by. Now more than ever, we need to continue to expose and resist this discriminatory silencing as part of the larger fight for Palestinian freedom and liberation.
The border wall runs several miles through a rural area east of Brownsville, Texas, in an effort to control the flow of migrants crossing the Rio Grande River from Mexico. (photo: Robert Daemmrich/Getty)
DHS Says Donald Trump's Border Wall Construction 'Blew Large Holes' in Flood Protection Levees
Meghan Roos, Newsweek
Roos writes: "Officials are working quickly to fix levees that were damaged during construction of the border wall in the Rio Grande Valley as the clock ticks down to the next hurricane season."
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release last month warning about damage to flood barrier systems in Texas' Hidalgo County, which the DHS attributed to construction undertaken during former President Donald Trump's administration to build the physical border separating the U.S. and Mexico.
Construction efforts "blew large holes" in the flood barrier system of the Rio Grande Valley, which the DHS said could pose flooding risks to local residents.
"The flood barrier system had long provided low-lying regions of Hidalgo County, Texas, protection from catastrophic flooding, and these breaches have threatened local communities," the DHS wrote.
The DHS said at the time that officials would "quickly" address the immediate problems posed by the damaged flood barrier systems and present a plan regarding how it will respond to additional damages caused by the wall's construction.
Alex Mayer, a civil engineering professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, told Newsweek the federal government must act quickly to protect communities in the area that are vulnerable to flooding triggered by hurricanes. Hurricane season officially begins on June 1, though the season's stronger storms typically occur in the late summer and fall.
"I think they should rebuild the levees in the places where it's been breached right away," Mayer told Newsweek. "This is pretty important."
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), efforts are already underway to fix the gaps in the levees. Brig. Gen. Christopher Beck, the commander of the USACE's Southwestern Division, told Newsweek the gaps are expected to be fixed within the next six weeks, though efforts to address about 13 miles of levees partially excavated during border wall construction will continue over the next six to nine months.
"We have now been able to mobilize our contractors back onto sites" as a result of the DHS announcement, Beck said. "They are starting work immediately, and that also increases their resources to execute emergency flood protection plans."
In the meantime, Beck said the levees as designed should be able to handle sudden flooding. He said all of the contractors the USACE works with are required to have emergency flood protection strategies in place.
"It's important to understand that those partially excavated levee segments are designed to receive flood loading," Beck told Newsweek. "They still have the capacity to support flood loading."
As efforts to address the gaps in the levees continue, Beck said the USACE is in communication with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the DHS, the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) and local community leaders to assess concerns as they arise.
"We work with the IBWC, as the federal levee owner, to ensure that their overall emergency action plan for the Rio Grande Valley levee systems is executed efficiently and mitigates the risk to the local community," Beck said.
"We continue, through those emergency flood protection plans, to evaluate based on the threats and the risks to be sure that we understand those high-risk areas in all cases—and if the work is not yet completed, to mitigate those appropriately," he added.
Efforts to expand the physical southern border of the U.S. have been hotly debated since Trump made the border wall one of his primary campaign promises ahead of his win in the 2016 presidential election. While wall proponents argued physical barriers act as discouragements to migrants who may attempt to cross into the U.S. illegally, immigration experts raised concerns about the practicality of a wall that can be climbed over or tunneled beneath, while environmental experts warned about the impacts such construction projects would have on nearby habitats.
Opinions on Trump's proposed border wall expansion were also split among farmers and ranchers in the border states, some of whom supported stricter migration deterrents while others confronted requests from the federal government to physically divide their property with portions of the wall.
Border wall construction efforts continued throughout Trump's time in office, with former DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf announcing the 450th mile of border wall completed in early January, a couple of weeks before Trump left office.
On the day of his inauguration, President Joe Biden announced he was halting construction so his administration could assess the legality of funding designated for the border wall. Biden's proclamation added a caveat that some exceptions could be made when funding for the construction was specifically appropriated by Congress and "for urgent measures needed to avert immediate physical dangers."
Three months after Biden ordered the construction to stop, the DHS acknowledged the threats of flooding that remained in its aftermath in the Rio Grande Valley.
Ahead of the DHS' announcement, Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez posted a statement on social media that said the federal government "does not seem to have the same sense of urgency that I have" to address the flooding risks. A few hours later, after the DHS announced its intention to quickly fix the levee gaps, Cortez posted another statement celebrating the "welcome news."
"This move to repair the four major breaches and any other damage to our levee system alleviates significant concerns about safety as we approach the beginning of the hurricane season on June 1," Cortez's second statement said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has not yet released its predictions for this year's hurricane season—the agency is expected to do so later this month—but Cortez and other local leaders have already begun reminding their communities to prepare for storms in case the hurricane season begins earlier than expected. Last year, the first named storm of the season began forming in mid-May.
"When it comes to flooding, it's sort of like rolling the dice," Mayer said. "It could be that, this summer, there would be a big enough flood along the Rio Grande to go through those openings and flood those communities—or maybe this summer there won't be as many tropical storms or hurricanes."
Regardless of how the hurricane season plays out in 2021, Mayer said fixing the levee damages is "something that needs to be done" to protect the people of the Rio Grande Valley communities and their land.
"This is about protecting hundreds of thousands of people," Mayer said.
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