The Israel-Hamas War Is Making Americans Question Their Relationships

After Hamas killed around 1,400 people and took at least 200 hostage on Oct. 7, Marina, who spent much of her childhood in Israel but now lives in the U.S., heard from friends and family all over the world, expressing sorrow and concern for her relatives. But even as she posted videos and photos on social media, where she is not usually active, she did not hear from one of her dearest friends, with whom she usually communicated daily. The women had met through their husbands, who were best friends. They’d gone to each other’s weddings and taken holidays together. They had children roughly the same age and a decade of great memories. When Marina lost a family member, both members of the couple empathized in a way even some relatives did not. 

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Her friend is from a majority Muslim country, but that seemed to make the relationship richer. “These are educated, kind, beautiful people that we were so proud to be friends with,” says Marina. “This is why we’re in America because we are friends with everybody, every culture.” And yet for four days, she says, there was silence. (TIME is identifying several people in this story, including Marina, by first name only so they can speak freely about friends and family.)

Read More: How the Activist Left Turned on Israel

Eventually, the friend sent her a brief note saying that she was hurt by Marina’s posts, that they suggested all Muslims were terrorists. Marina was flabbergasted. “Nothing [I’m posting] is about Muslims and nothing is about the Arab culture,” she says. “I only talked about Hamas.” Things deteriorated from there. As Marina tells it, her friend said that she could not support the Israeli government’s actions, and Marina said this was not about politics–babies had been killed and her relatives’ lives were in danger. Eventually, her friend posted a story on her social media that Marina felt minimized the terror wrought by Hamas. “I just had a breakdown at work. I started crying,” says Marina. “This is a girl who I think is the most amazing, wonderful, has such social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and for her to put something that evil—it broke me, it completely destroyed me.” 

In the U.S., far from the frontlines of the war that has shaken the world in recent weeks, people are discovering an uncomfortable truth about friends and family members they thought they knew well: they feel very differently about the situation in Israel and Gaza. Having weathered the ruptures and family strife caused by differences of opinion over the Trump Administration, mask and vaccine mandates, and debates over gender, race, and the environment, relationships are being strained by a new 1,000-year-old sticking point: who’s the bad guy in the Middle East? 

To many, this dispute is more alarming than the political brawls that came before, because the people who are now arguing with them were supposed to be allies. “It feels more incomprehensible than disagreeing with somebody that you have 50 things you already disagree on,” says William Doherty, professor in the department of family social science and director of the Citizen Professional Center at the University of Minnesota. “So it’s ‘How could you? I thought you shared my values. How could you be so wrong on something so important?’” Having already painfully sorted themselves into teams, Americans, especially those on the left, are discovering that the bonds that hold their team together are not as sturdy as they believed.

Read More: Where to Seek Help if the Israel-Hamas War Is Impacting Your Mental Health

Some people point to the hundreds who were killed or taken hostage in the massacre and decry the lack of outrage. Others focus on the thousands of reported deaths in Gaza, the communications blackout, and the limited aid entering the country even as the people have nowhere to go. They too decry the lack of outrage. Claims of misinformation and disinformation are frequent, as well as accusations of betrayal and complicity.

Michally and her mother had tried to talk about Gaza even before the current conflict. “There was some shelling going on between Hamas and Israel and my mom and I got in a huge fight, like screaming at each other,” says Michally, who calls her upbringing “culturally Jewish.” Her mother’s family fled Europe for Israel on the first ship they could get on in 1948, but Michally was born and raised in the U.S. In her view, Israel is doing to others what the Nazis did to her family during the war: expelling them from their homes and corralling them into fortified areas. “I love her and that will never change,” she says of her mother. “But I don’t respect her opinion on this one. I think it’s coming more from trauma than it is from stepping back and looking at the situation.”

She used to feel she could tell her mother anything. After Oct. 7, that changed. They tried to talk about it. “It was so obvious, the road it was going to go down, that I just backed up, she backed up, and we realized it’s better just not to open the door,” says Michally. That reticence has bled into other areas of her life; she’s keeping some recent health issues from her mother. “I don’t like seeing my family in those lights,” she says. “I don’t like thinking that they’re being inhumane.”

While these arguments and the fissures they’re causing are similar in some ways to the ones America has seen before, there are some stark differences. Doherty, who co-founded Braver Angels, an organization that tries to encourage discussion between people of opposing political views, says these go beyond left and right. “This is close to home for a lot of people. This has to do with religion, ethnicity. It has to do with life and death, with atrocities,” he says. Unlike the largely policy-driven disagreements of the past decade or so, there are visual representations of this conflict, which inflame passions even more. “We are seeing on our social media and our TV corpses and houses demolished and interviews with the families of hostages and the families of the dead,” says Doherty. “The word existential is overused, but this feels more like that—the survival, the literal survival of groups of people.”

Read More: After Hamas, Then What? Israel’s Undefined Endgame in Gaza

Hailey, who’s studying Judaism with a mind to convert, is finding it difficult to find allies in her liberal queer community. She had been a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America but let her membership lapse because she found the organization too aggressive in its pro-Palestinian stance. One friend in particular, who has been sending her pro-Palestinian talking points, keeps inviting her to events that she usually enjoys, but she can no longer face them. When Hailey tried to talk to her mom on the phone about how reactions to the events in Gaza have revealed to her how antisemitic America is, her mother pushed back and Hailey hung up. Even her husband didn’t seem to feel the same way. “It just feels really lonely,” says Hailey.  

One of the reasons these conversations are straining relationships anew could be that it’s the first war of this scale in the social media age in which so many Americans disagree on the power dynamics. In the Russia-Ukraine war, for example, it’s clear which country is the more vulnerable. And in the light of national dialogue about being a good ally, they feel duty-bound to support the less-privileged publicly, even though online discussions are difficult to carry out with any nuance and often spiral quickly into name-calling. “It ties into the primary narrative that drives so much of the conversation in the United States right now,” says Doherty. “The issue of colonial oppression, the narrative of who’s an oppressor group and who’s a victim group.” Depending on the era being examined, each side can make the case that they are the victims, they are the people who were driven out of land that was originally theirs.

A lot of that discussion is in turn inflected by the lens through which people view history. As a Black feminist, Kiesha, a consultant from Washington State, believes that her demonstration of solidarity with the oppressed, who in her view are the Palestinians, is more important than any one relationship. She has had painful conversations with people she cares about and who have been supportive of her in the past. “I was like, ‘Oh, I know where this is going and this is actually going to hurt,’” she says of one such conversation. “This is a moment where your values are being stretched and being pushed to the edge. And personal loss is on the table for you. Are you going to stay with your values?’” 

Kiesha stuck to her position, despite the discomfort. “You have that pit in your stomach that says, I might be about to lose someone I care about. And it just hurts,” she says. “After that situation happened, I had a whole panic attack.” But she feels that if she chooses to make her friend feel better instead of standing by what she thinks is better for all humanity, “then I would become useless to that work.” She’s not sure of the fate of the friendship because of things that have been said. “We may not still have the relationship that we have now” in the future, she says. “And that’s like grieving something tentatively.”

For Elissa, a writer in Connecticut, the pain has arisen less from what people have said to her, and more from the silence. “More than anything else, I have just felt a profound amount of real visceral sadness not only over the events of Oct. 7—I have family in Israel—but also the events in response to Oct. 7. I was really struck by who I heard from and who I didn’t hear from.” 

One close friend never contacted Elissa—who says her position is pro-peace rather than one side of the other—to see if she and her family were OK but published several anti-Israeli posts online. The message Elissa has gotten from that combination of actions is the friend assumes that because Elissa’s Jewish, she’s stridently pro-Israel and “we can’t have a conversation about it. And ‘I do not care if you’re OK or not, because, you know, your people deserve this.’” 

 “It’s worse now than I’ve ever seen it,” says Doherty of the belief that even talking to someone with different beliefs is morally compromising. “We’ve confounded actions that would be morally compromising with conversation across differences. How do we have a democratic society if we can’t debate the most difficult things—if the very conversation and the very relationship is ethically, morally compromised?” 

Ironically, the first person to contact Elissa after the attacks was a friend who is married to a Palestinian and has a Palestinian son. “She said, ‘I’m just checking in to see if you’re OK. You know, sorry. This is horrible,’” Elissa says. They’ve kept in touch. “I know that she is pro-peace as well,” she says. “This is an issue of humanity. That’s what this is.” 

For her part, Marina thinks it’s unlikely she and her best friend will ever be the same. “I don’t know this woman who posted this anymore,” she says. Her husband contacted his old friend to see if he could smooth out the situation. No dice. The two couples are no longer talking. “Betrayal is like having your arms broken,” Marina says, referring to a quote attributed to Leonid Tolstoy. “You know, you can forgive, but you can never hug again.”

source https://time.com/6329962/israel-hamas-personal-relationships-strain-us/

What to Know About Pakistan’s Deportation Deadline for Afghan Refugees

Moniza Kakar, a Karachi-based human rights lawyer, has been representing Afghan refugees in Pakistan’s courts since July 2022. In recent months, though, she’s noted a sharp increase in her caseload—in Karachi alone, more than 1,500 Afghans have faced arrest since September, 80% of whom were legally registered refugees. 

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The uptick in the city comes as Pakistan’s government has called for all undocumented migrants to leave the country by November 1 or face deportation. The decision largely stands to impact the 1.7 million Afghan refugees who live in the country without documentation, though experts tell TIME that many Afghans with proper documentation have found themselves swept up in the enforcement as well. 

The decision poses wide-reaching consequences, but it is not the first time the country has tried to crack down on the rights of refugees, says Hameed Hakimi, associate fellow at the Asia-Pacific Programme and Europe Programme at Chatham House. “To deflect blame from the challenges that the government or the country overall is facing, they always raised the issue of illegal immigrants chiefly from Afghanistan,” Hakimi says, noting that the blame game serves to “showcase that the country’s problem largely arises from neighboring countries instead of focusing internally on their own on their own government’s policies,” Hakimi says.

Read More: As Biden Responds to Iran-Linked Attacks With Air Strikes, Fears of a Wider War Grow

This especially rings true now, as the country is at a “historically low point,” Hakimi says. Pakistan is currently facing compounding crises— including dire economic prospects, humanitarian crises, and political instability, not to mention a recent wave of terrorism that experts say has been erroneously attributed to refugees.

“From a domestic socio-political and security environment point of view, this is the time for the state to show that it’s doing something about it. And the refugees seem to be a natural target of the state,” says Hakimi. 

Barriers to Entry

Pakistan has long hosted a large population of refugees from Afghanistan, dating back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. But 1.4 of the country’s 4 million Afghan refugees are undocumented—and the process of obtaining documentation is anything but easy, even for those who have long called the country home.

“These are families we have lived and struggled on both sides of the border. They have established their lives in Pakistan, they have their businesses and houses and their kids go to school there. Their children and grandchildren haven’t even seen Afghanistan, so they consider themselves blended Pakistanis now,” says Atta Nasib, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University. “But given that Pakistan doesn’t have a dual nationality law and Afghans mostly cannot receive Pakistani citizenship, they’re in a confused state at the moment.”

For refugees who recently arrived in the country following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, documentation of any kind is hard to come by—Pakistan failed to create a lasting plan for the 700,000 thousand Afghans who poured into the country “After the fall of Kabul, the UNHCR stopped issuing registration cards to Afghan refugees,” she says. “They only issued tokens which have no legal status in the courts of Pakistan.”

In a statement, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that the decision was compliant with the country’s domestic laws and was not targeted towards Afghans in particular or foreign nationals with legal residency. “The Government of Pakistan takes its commitments towards protection and safety needs of those in vulnerable situations with utmost seriousness. Our record of the last forty years in hosting millions of our Afghan brothers and sisters speaks for itself.”

In December 2021, a group of U.N. experts urged Pakistan to withhold from expelling undocumented Afghans until the country’s political situation allowed for safe return—an outcome that is still out of reach for many, including journalists, activists, and former government officials that are being targeted by the Taliban. 

“Hundreds of thousands of Afghans who entered Pakistan after August 2021 were only supposed to be there temporarily. Pakistan has never had a long-term plan or policy for its Afghan migrants, and making such pronouncements every few years is the flawed way it has dealt with them,” Madiha Afzal, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution told TIME in an email.

A ‘Human Rights Catastrophe’

The Pakistani government approved the creation of deportation centers in all provinces earlier this month and nearly 60,000 Afghans have already left the country ahead of the November 1 deadline. Pakistan is not a signatory of the Geneva Convention or the U.N. Refugee Convention, and the country’s ​Foreigners Act allows authorities to arrest, detain, and deport any foreigner that lacks proper documentation.

Read More: A Photographer Captures Death, Destruction, and Grief in Gaza

The UNHCR warned that the move could trigger a “human rights catastrophe.” Nasib notes that without support from international organizations, Pakistan does not have the resources to meet the demand. “How do you deal with like 4.4 million refugees without having some sort of monetary support from the international community, where you can provide them food, shelter, and medicine?” says Nasib. 

2,700 Afghans have been deported from Karachi alone since Kakar began working on refugee cases over a year ago. “They were human-rights defenders, school-going girls and they didn’t want to go back to Afghanistan,” she says, who says that the blanket claim of terrorism is unfair. “They are not criminals. They have a right to dignity,” says Kakar. Her female clients who have returned to Afghanistan have shared the challenges that come with being unable to attend school or work. “Families where the women were the bread earners are facing a lot of difficulty there.”

Despite Pakistan’s goal, the countries shared histories—and borders— mean that the two cannot be untangled. “You cannot separate Pakistan and Afghanistan, even in the future, because there’s so much history,” Nasib says. “It’s a love-hate relationship.”

—With reporting by Anna Gordon

source https://time.com/6330122/pakistan-afganistan-refugees/

How Prison Book Bans Dwarf All Other Censorship

On July 22, 2022 Texas prison authorities banned the second edition of Merriam-Webster’s Visual Dictionary, purportedly because there was an image of a weapon. This banned title was added to the 10,265 others that incarcerated people can’t read in Texas prisons.

Unfortunately, dictionaries aren’t the only kind of books banned by Texas corrections officials and their counterparts throughout the United States. As PEN America’s new report Reading Between the Bars shows, books banned in prisons by some states dwarf all other book censorship in school and public libraries.

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Prison censorship is rising steeply, robbing those behind bars of reading materials on everything from exercise and health to art and even yoga, often for reasons that strain credulity. One prime example of this is Clifton Collins, Jr. and Gustavo “Goose” Alvarez’s cookbook Prison Ramen, which is the most banned book in America and banned in 19 state prison systems. This cookbook contains stories before each recipe about the way the recipe was developed or a particularly meaningful time it was prepared and eaten. These stories detail what life is like inside and literature that affirms the realities of incarceration are widely censored. Similarly, Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power is the second most banned book in prisons. It’s a self-help book that explains power dynamics at play in interpersonal relationships and offers advice for how to manage them. The reason cited for the book’s ban is, “manipulation techniques.” Florida’s Department of Corrections has banned 11 of Greene’s books. Another book widely banned in prisons is The Art of War, a text written in 5th century BCE by Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, commonly banned for security concerns.

According to PEN America’s research, Florida ranks first in banning books in prisons, with 22,825 books banned (through this year). Kansas has censored 7,669 titles (up to 2021); Virginia 7,204 (up to 2022) and New York 5,356 (up to 2019). The ban on visual dictionaries is especially cruel, given they are designed to help people with basic or no literacy. Sixty percent of the U.S. prison population, roughly 720,000 people, are functionally illiterate. Learning to read from the dictionary is a time-honored tradition and dictionaries are the most sought books by incarcerated people. Malcolm X in his autobiography famously wrote about learning how to read from a dictionary while in prison. “I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary-to-study, to learn some words,” he explained. “I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened.”

Read More: The Extreme New Tactic in the Crusade to Ban Books

People who are functionally illiterate may be able to pronounce words as they read them on the page. They can sign their names to documents and they can read street signs or simple sentences. They can often read whole paragraphs but ask them what they just read and they won’t be able to tell you. Practice makes people better readers. The more your brain processes language, the faster you can process meaning, which is all the more reason for prisons to make books more widely and easily available.

The censorship becomes even more unfathomable when we consider how this process occurs. Books are banned in prisons by mailroom staff, tasked with skimming them and deciding which ones can be allowed or not. Fifty-four percent of American adults read below a sixth-grade level. Employment at correctional facilities requires a high school diploma which one third of employees have while an additional quarter have an associate degree. This means that staff empowered to censor books may have only basic literacy themselves.

Prisons are also targeting the written word by increasingly limiting access to any print literature. Missouri is the most recent state to begin censoring through a so-called “approved vendors only” policy that requires incarcerated people to purchase literature from a small list of businesses. This literally means incarcerated people in Missouri cannot receive books as gifts from family, a church, or a nonprofit. Policies like this have proliferated in recent years and severely limit how incarcerated people can access literature. Michigan, for example, has only five businesses where someone inside can purchase a book from.

Prison authorities cite the introduction of drugs into prisons through paper mail as the rationale for these policies, alleging that independent bookstores, publishers, and literacy nonprofits are either complicit in (and potentially even initiating) illicit drug smuggling. Incredibly, however, Departments of Corrections have so far not provided substantial and sustained evidence that the primary conduit of drugs into prisons. Most evidence actually points to staff as the primary conduit of contraband into carceral facilities. And yet, much more effort, time, and money is being devoted to censoring reading materials.

Censorship is oppressive and even leads to a decline in mental health. Martin Lizarragar, who is incarcerated in California, said that this type of oppression has not only hurt himself, but also his family and community. “It has even, on one occasion, broke me down to tears,” Lizarragar told PEN America. “This just isn’t right.”

We are right to ask whether the underlying rationale is aimed at foreclosing community, restricting potential interactions, and denying that incarcerated people are still members of society whose voices should be heard and merit access to information as we all do.

source https://time.com/6329800/prison-book-bans-censorship-essay/

Hurricane Otis Death Toll Rises to 43 in Mexico as Search and Recovery Work Continues

ACAPULCO, Mexico — At least 43 people died when Category 5 Hurricane Otis slammed into Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, the governor of hard-hit Guerrero said Sunday as the death toll continued to climb.

Gov. Evelyn Salgado said on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, that the number of missing also rose to 36 from 10 a day earlier. That increase came after authorities had raised the toll to 39 on Saturday.

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In Acapulco, families began to bury the dead on Sunday and continued the search for essentials while government workers and volunteers cleared streets clogged with muck and debris from the powerful Category 5 hurricane.

More resources were arriving as searchers recovered more bodies from Acapulco’s harbor and from beneath fallen trees and other storm debris.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Saturday that his opponents are trying to inflate the toll to damage him politically, but with hundreds of families still awaiting word from loved ones it was likely to keep rising.

Otis roared ashore early Wednesday with devastating 165 mph (266 kph) winds after strengthening so rapidly that people had little time to prepare.

Kristian Vera stood on an Acapulco beach Saturday looking out toward dozens of sunken boats, including three of her own, all marked by floating buoys or just poking out of the water.

Despite losing her livelihood in Otis’ brutal pass through Mexico’s over Pacific coast, the 44-year-old fisher felt fortunate. Earlier in the day, she watched a body pulled from the water and saw families coming and going, looking for their loved ones.

Many people rode out on boats what had started as a tropical storm and in just 12 hours powered up into a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane.

Vera took turns with four others swimming out with empty gas jugs for flotation to try to raise their sunken boats from the shallow harbor.

Leaning against a small wooden fishing boat like her own, tipped on its side on a beach strewn with trash and fallen trees, she explained that some of the people who died were either fishermen caring for their boats or yacht captains who were told by their owners that they needed to make sure their boats were OK when Otis was still a tropical storm.

“That night I was so worried because I live off of this, it’s how I feed my kids,” Vera said. “But when I began to feel how strong the wind was, I said, ‘Tomorrow I won’t have a boat, but God willing, Acapulco will see another day.’”

Military personnel and volunteers had worked along Acapulco’s main tourist strip Saturday and Salgado announced Sunday that the boulevard had been cleared of debris.

But on the periphery of the city, neighborhoods remained in ruins. Salgado also said that the national electric company reported restoring power to 58% of homes and businesses in Acapulco and 21 water tankers were distributing water to outlying neighborhoods.

Aid has been slow to arrive. The storm’s destruction cut off the city of nearly 1 million people for the first day, and because Otis had intensified so quickly on Tuesday little to nothing had been staged in advance.

The military presence swelled to 15,000 in the area. López Obrador had called on the armed forces to set up checkpoints in the city to deter looting and robbery.

The federal civil defense agency tallied 220,000 homes that were damaged by the storm, he said.

source https://time.com/6329737/hurricane-otis-death-toll-missing-mexico/

Palestinian Death Toll Passes 8,000 as U.N. Aid Warehouses Suffer Break-Ins

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Thousands of people broke into aid warehouses in Gaza to take flour and basic hygiene products, a U.N. agency said Sunday, in a mark of growing desperation and the breakdown of public order three weeks into the war between Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.

Tanks and infantry pushed into Gaza over the weekend as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a “second stage” in the war, which was ignited by Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 incursion into Israel. Israel also pounded the territory from air, land and sea.

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Gaza’s Health Ministry said the death toll among Palestinians has passed 8,000 — mostly women and minors. It’s a toll without precedent in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence, and it is expected to climb even more rapidly as Israel presses its ground offensive. Over 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during the initial Hamas onslaught.

Communications were restored to much of Gaza early Sunday after a bombardment described by Gaza residents as the most intense of the war knocked out most contact with the territory late Friday. The besieged enclave’s 2.3 million people were largely cut off from the world.

The Israeli military said Sunday it had struck over 450 militant targets over the past 24 hours, including Hamas command centers and anti-tank missile launching positions. It said more ground forces were sent into Gaza overnight, and officials circulated footage showing tanks and troops operating in open areas.

The warehouse break-ins were “a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza,” said Thomas White, Gaza director for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA. “People are scared, frustrated and desperate.”

UNRWA provides basic services to hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza. Its schools across the territory have been transformed into packed shelters housing Palestinians displaced by the conflict. Israel has allowed only a small trickle of aid to enter from Egypt, some of which was stored in one of the warehouses that was broken into, UNRWA said.

Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the agency, said the crowds broke into four facilities on Saturday. She said the warehouses did not contain any fuel, which has been in critically short supply since Israel cut off all shipments after the start of the war.

Israeli authorities said Sunday that they would soon allow more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, though details remained unclear.

Elad Goren, the head of civil affairs of COGAT, the Israeli defense body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, said Israel had established a “humanitarian zone” near the southern city of Khan Younis and recommended that Palestinians flee there.

But he provided no details on the exact location of the zone or how much aid would be available. He also said Israel has opened two water lines in southern Gaza within the past week. The AP could not independently verify that either line was functioning.

Meanwhile, residents living near Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, said Israeli airstrikes overnight hit near the hospital complex and blocked many roads leading to it. Israel accuses Hamas of having a secret command post beneath the hospital but has not provided much evidence. Hamas denies the allegations.

Tens of thousands of civilians are sheltering in Shifa, which is also packed with wounded patients.

“Reaching the hospital has become increasingly difficult,” Mahmoud al-Sawah, who is sheltering in the hospital, said over the phone. “It seems they want to cut off the area.” Another Gaza City resident, Abdallah Sayed, said the Israeli bombing over the past two days was “the most violent and intense” since the war started.

The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said another Gaza City hospital received two calls from Israeli authorities on Sunday ordering it to evacuate. It said airstrikes have hit as close as 50 meters (yards) from the Al-Quds Hospital, where 12,000 people are sheltering.

Israel ordered the hospital to evacuate more than a week ago, but it and other medical facilities have refused, saying evacuation would mean death for patients on ventilators.

“We reiterate — it’s impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without endangering their lives,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media.

There was no immediate Israeli comment on the latest evacuation order or the strikes near Shifa.

Israel says most residents have heeded its orders to flee to the southern part of the besieged territory, but hundreds of thousands remain in the north, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones.

An Israeli airstrike hit a two-story house in Khan Younis on Sunday, killing at least 13 people, including 10 from one family. The bodies were brought to the nearby Nasser Hospital, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene.

The escalation has ratcheted up domestic pressure on Israel’s government to secure the release of some 230 hostages seized when Hamas fighters from Gaza breached Israel’s defenses and stormed into nearby towns, gunning down civilians and soldiers in a surprise attack.

Desperate family members met with Netanyahu on Saturday and expressed support for an exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Hamas says it is ready to release all hostages if Israel releases all of the thousands of Palestinians held in its prisons. Israel has dismissed the offer.

Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel is determined to bring back all the hostages, and that the expanding ground operation “will help us in this mission.”

“This is the second stage of the war, whose objectives are clear: to destroy the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home,” he said in a televised address.

The Israeli military said it was gradually expanding its ground operations inside Gaza, while stopping short of calling it an all-out invasion. Casualties on both sides are expected to rise sharply as Israeli forces and Palestinian militants battle in dense residential areas.

When asked about Israel’s military escalation, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told ABC’s “This Week”: “Ultimately, these are their decisions. This is their action, and they’re best postured to be able to answer questions about how it’s proceeding.” On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” he said the U.S. believes “there should be humanitarian pauses to get hostages out, potentially to get aid in.”

Despite the Israeli offensive, Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, with the constant sirens in southern Israel a reminder of the threat.

Israel says its strikes target Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate among civilians, putting them in danger. An estimated 1,800 people remain trapped beneath the rubble, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which has said it bases its estimates on distress calls it received.

More than 1.4 million people across Gaza have fled their homes, nearly half crowding into U.N. schools and shelters, following repeated warnings by the Israeli military that they would be in danger if they remained in northern Gaza.

Gaza’s sole power plant shut down shortly after the start of the war, and Israel has allowed no fuel to enter, saying Hamas would use it for military purposes.

Hospitals are struggling to keep emergency generators running to operate incubators and other life-saving equipment, and UNRWA is also trying to keep water pumps and bakeries running to meet essential needs.

At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, emergency director Dr. Mohammed Qandeel said about 20,000 civilians were sheltering there. “I brought my kids to sleep here,” said one displaced resident who gave her name only as Umm Ahmad. “I used to be afraid of my kids playing in the sand. Now their hands are dirty with the blood on the floor.”

source https://time.com/6329691/gaza-palestinian-death-toll-aid-warehouses/

Brazil’s Minister of Indigenous Peoples on Land Rights, the Climate Emergency and Empowering Women

It’s been a busy few weeks for Sônia Guajajara. When Brazil’s first ever minister of Indigenous peoples met with TIME in September, she was speaking on a panel at iconic London private members club Annabel’s alongside activist Txai Suruí, having just been in New York for Climate Week. The Indigenous Voices panel was facilitated by The Caring Family Foundation, a big backer of reforestation efforts in Brazil.

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Guajajara, 49, appeared rejuvenated by the biggest win for Indigenous rights since her appointment in January by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In September, nine of 11 justices on Brazil’s supreme court voted to block efforts to place a time restriction on Indigenous peoples’ claim to ancestral lands. “Marco temporal” (time marker) is an agribusiness-backed notion that would require groups to prove they physically occupied lands up until Oct, 5. 1988 to stake a legal claim to it.

Speaking before attendees, Guajajara described the landmark ruling as a huge victory. “The Brazilian Supreme Court decided against this thesis of the time frame ruling. A thesis that was very frightening to us,” said Guajajara. “It was an attempt to prevent the demarcation of Indigenous lands in Brazil,” she added, referring to the process by which protective boundaries are laid out in the rainforest to prevent illegal logging. 

Days after the event in London, Brazil’s Senate moved to approve the bill anyway, and on Oct. 20 the President used his veto on core aspects of the bill.

“President Lula is very much on the side of Indigenous peoples’ rights,” says Guajajara. “Now, instead of going back we can move forward.”

Read More: Lula Talks to TIME About Ukraine, Bolsonaro, and Brazil’s Fragile Democracy

It’s a stark difference to Brazil’s path under the previous administration. Within eight months of her historic appointment, Guajajara says, her ministry was able to sign and demark more land than in the past 8 years, which included right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro’s four year term. Guajajara also noted that tackling illegal cattle farming and gold mining are an essential part of the climate emergency. “It’s not enough just to protect, we have to return to the forest everything we took from it,” she told attendees. This includes the protection of the Yanomami peoples who are facing a humanitarian and health crisis which has left many, including young people, susceptible to disease. The indigenous reserve the Yanomami population live on—located between Brazil and Venezuela—has long been a target for illegal gold miners, which led to soaring malaria rates. It has also left the Yanomami culture and way of life at risk.

Guajajara’s career is defined by a number of remarkable firsts. Born to illiterate parents on Araribóia land in the Amazon, in the northeastern Brazilian state of Maranhão, Guajajara left her city to study and earned a degree in literature and nursing. Since then, she became a symbol of resistance against the oppression of Indigenous people, and in 2018, she became the first Indigenous woman in Brazil to appear on a presidential ticket. 

Guajajara spoke to TIME through a translator about the new ministry’s progress so far, and what her priorities are looking ahead. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You were appointed Brazil’s first-ever minister for Indigenous peoples at the start of this year. What did this milestone mean to you and what are your priorities in this role?

Being minister is a great opportunity for the Indigenous peoples to really participate in political debate but also it’s also a window into being open to break with preconceived ideas, with prejudice, and to be able to help. In terms of priorities, first of all to secure the territories of the Indigenous people. To protect the territories as well as the environment, and to make sure that there is security for the Indigenous peoples within the territories and to manage the practices that we already have in place.

What has it meant to Indigenous communities to see increased representation at a political level?

Today we have the maximum possible representation that we could have wished for in the instances of power. And I really feel that this recognition that people speak about and believe in it. So this creates good expectations in terms of actually being able to implement all rights.

Has it been a fight for you and other Indigenous figures to be taken seriously in political spheres? Do such barriers still exist?

These sort of barriers to Indigenous participation have always historically existed and we are working on taking them down and increasing participation in different spaces. But it doesn’t mean that it’s easy, there’s still a lot of resistance and lack of understanding, particularly by the decision makers. The participation process is a struggle, it still encounters a lot of resistance. A lot of people don’t understand the importance of Indigenous peoples as an alternative as a solution to the climate crisis. We may have a ministry in Brazil, but not all countries do. We’re trying to work towards that as well—to have a role in other parts of the world—so that we can really drive home the importance of Indigenous peoples and territories as a solution for the climate crisis.

As we know, you’re connected with the Caring Foundation, what role does outreach with wider organizations play in your work?

This sort of support is very important for actions in civil society as a whole and also for the Indigenous movements. And it means that actions that are right on the front line can be supported. The villages can be supported and this is seemingly like a small amount of support, but that can make a real direct difference.

What is the new ministry doing to raise awareness and address the human cost of the climate crisis?

We’re really promoting a core amongst Indigenous women, and getting Indigenous women to organize and mobilize to really provide elements to the fight against climate change. We’re seeing a lot of sort of protagonism in this regard, but also amongst the youth. And we’re carrying on with this debate, as well, within the context of Congress, and really clarifying and informing society about the cost of the climate crisis to all of us. 

Can you tell me about the public health emergency affecting the Yanomami peoples?

The Yanomami were in a various serious state in terms of their health crisis, not just because of the lack of support, but also because of the invasion by illegal miners, the gold prospectors. This has resulted in grave damage to the waters in the territory because now they’re contaminated with mercury.

We had a public health system specifically geared towards Indigenous peoples, but there wasn’t enough of a budget in order to ensure healthcare for them. So what happened a lot of the time was that Indigenous peoples were going into the cities to seek health care, and then not being able to come back. So we’re working in order to improve the budget and make sure that it’s sufficient for this to actually work. 

We are constantly carrying out actions to promote health and assist them in any way we can. We have laws that forbid the entry of other people to Indigenous lands. There is no [legal] permission for mining and no permission for gold prospecting [but] it’s being done. 

From the use of radioisotopes to monitoring drones, what role is technology playing in the protection of the Amazon?

There’s a lot of roles that technology plays, and we are actually working in tandem with the Ministry of Communications to ensure Internet access in all the different villages. This helps with monitoring the territories, denouncing invasions, and it helps with distributing information. So information technology is very important for monitoring and protecting the territory in general. 

What is the legacy of the Bolsonaro administration, particularly as it pertains to the treatment of Indigenous peoples, and what has changed since Lula’s appointment?

The legacy of Bolsonaro was tragic. Tragic, not just for us, but for the environment and human rights. It was an administration that incited hatred, violence, attacks, and invasions in Indigenous territories. And what we’re seeing now is a change in monitoring and inspection of territories. There has been a 46% reduction in deforestation until the end of the month of July, in the Amazon in particular. So this is just during this administration, and demarcations of Indigenous lands have already moved forward in the Lula government. So in eight months, we’ve achieved the equivalent of what we could achieve perhaps in eight years. So it’s, it’s really moving forward. We’ve been trying to work out a better budget for health care and a couple of different initiatives have been restarted. We now have a national policy for territorial environmental management. And we also have a national Indigenous Council and these are spaces in which we can move forward within an Indigenous policy.

How has the threat of violence and other barriers prevented effective reporting on the human and environmental issues facing the Brazilian Amazon and its communities?

Obviously the threat of violence caused a lot of fear. So people were making less complaints and manifesting themselves a lot less. People sometimes complain but they didn’t have the courage to take it forward because of reprisals and the repression that was taking place. So the number of complaints massively dropped and now it’s really shot up but it’s not because there’s been more violence or more illegal activity—it’s been because there’s an environment now where this can be made.

[Murdered journalist] Dom Phillips and [Indigenous expert] Bruno Pereira, they had suffered threats already. But they are only a couple amongst a number of people who were forbidden from speaking out, and now people feel more at liberty to speak because that’s what democracy is. There’s a bigger environment for opposition and for other points of view, so it may seem that things have got worse because, in terms of complaints, the number has gone up but it’s really a result of just having more freedom because we have just gone through a very dangerous period.

Looking forward then what are your hopes and aims for COP this year?

We’re working on a process with COP30 [which will be hosted by Belem, Brazil in 2025] in mind, and we want to really increase Indigenous participation in decision making spaces. But we particularly want to increase the participation of women thinking specifically of the COP 28 [this year] in Dubai. Next year, we would also like to hold a women’s meeting—including women from several different parts of the world—and to hold a pre-COP debate on Sept. 5, 2024. This would be for women, by women, and in preparation of a greater call by Indigenous women to have to have a debate with women from all over the world for COP30. 

source https://time.com/6320891/sonia-guajajara-interview-leadership/

Israel’s Vow to ‘Eliminate Hamas’ Is Unrealistic. Here’s What Netanyahu Must Acknowledge

As Saturday morning dawned in the Middle East, an obvious expansion of Israeli air strikes and incursions into Gaza appeared hard to define. Was this the major invasion that’s been expected for three weeks? It was not, but Israel’s official spokespeople were seemingly being intentionally vague. They were not going to reveal anything to Hamas, and shutting down nearly all of Gaza’s phone and internet communications was aimed at sowing confusion.

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The surprise of the week was that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet had decided in recent days—much to the relief of many Israelis—to hold off on waging all-out war. Netanyahu felt public pressure at home to allow more time for negotiations that might free Israeli hostages. Israel also had to pay attention to President Joe Biden, who has been highly supportive since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7. Biden publicly urged Israel not to act out of “rage,” to be cautious, and to permit more aid to reach Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

With over 1,400 Israelis killed by Hamas terrorists and more than 220 taken hostage, the anger and anguish in Israel has not diminished in three weeks. Yet the Netanyahu team came to their senses, deciding to keep delaying a full-scale ground incursion into Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It wasn’t just pressure from Biden and other Western leaders who have visited Israel since the Hamas attack. It wasn’t just the tears and anger of desperate families of the Israeli hostages hidden in Gaza, many heartbroken because their country failed to protect its citizens—and wondering if the same political, military, and intelligence leaders can be trusted to wage a war in response.

Rather, Netanyahu and his advisors had the self-realization that an all-out invasion would be very hard to justify, when almost all Israelis are viscerally tied in knots over the hostage crisis, seeing photographs of the defenseless civilians kidnapped by the terrorists. On the morning of Oct. 28, hundreds of relatives of hostages gathered in a square in Tel Aviv. Showing a united front, they called for the Israeli government to put the return of their loved ones ahead of military objectives. If rescuing hostages is the highest priority, the IDF has a huge weight on its shoulders; and an unrelenting assault to defeat and remove Hamas might well seem immoral. The terrorists are not only hiding behind their own Palestinian civilians, Hamas is also hiding behind kidnap victims.

Among the clearest voices saying the hostages’ welfare must come first is that of Tamir Pardo, a former head of the Mossad who was himself an IDF commando soldier. Known for thinking outside the box, he expressed to us that military rescues—even with the well-practiced expertise of Israel’s most elite fighters—would be impossible, with hostages divided into many groups in perhaps unreachable underground lairs. Pardo, and now many others in the security establishment, have reached the conclusion that negotiations are the best route to save hostages’ lives. Using Egypt and especially Qatar as mediators, four women were set free in the first releases.

We have come to learn that top Israelis have reluctantly concluded that a huge prisoner swap would be the best way to bring the hostages home. That would likely mean the release of thousands of Palestinians held by Israel, even many convicted of murders and bombings. Terrorists “with blood on their hands,” as Israel puts it, have been freed in the past—painful deals even to recover just one soldier or corpses. Hamas would hail that as a victory. Israel needs to swallow its pride and put aside the standard rhetoric of refusing to make deals with terrorists. The great news would be that hostages from 25 nations, including U.S. citizens, would be safe at home. And only then, could the IDF strike Hamas hard with a clear conscience. Israel could proceed with its post-October 7 goal of eliminating that radical Islamic faction from power in Gaza, once and for all.

Still, a ground invasion will be very costly: not just to Hamas, and Gaza civilians already suffering mightily from the air strikes, but also to Israeli troops. The invasion has to be cautious and gradual, a block-by-block search for terrorists and their infrastructure, rather than trying to take all of the Gaza Strip at once. American generals, led by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin who experienced the war in Iraq, know very well how difficult it is to conduct urban warfare. And they have been telling the Israelis, in person, along with concrete advice. Austin was in Tel Aviv a few days after the Oct. 7 shock to Israel, outlining to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant how to move slowly and carefully. Gaza, with over 2.2 million people, is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Hamas dug a labyrinth of dozens of miles of underground tunnels, bunkers, war rooms, and rocket depots, and the terrorists are highly practiced at popping up for hit-and-run operations.

Now that Israel has expanded its ground operation in Gaza, it would be advisable to conquer some parts of the northern sector first, establishing a bridgehead to be used as a launching pad for further pushes toward Hamas strongholds—including precise in-and-out commando raids. And that is exactly what Israel appears to be doing, as the IDF posted an “urgent message for the residents of Gaza” on Oct. 28, instructing all residents of Northern Gaza and Gaza city to “temporarily relocate South immediately.”

Israel is putting aside the intelligence failures that made Oct. 7 possible and is amassing excellent information on the hideouts sheltering Hamas leaders. That will give the IDF the opportunity to inflict strong psychological blows, by eliminating top terrorists and publicizing those wins.

While Netanyahu and the army promise to “eliminate Hamas,” that is not realistic. Hamas is an extreme Islamic ideology, a set of ideas—including total refusal to accept a Jewish state right alongside—that cannot be wiped out. But their quasi-government in Gaza can be shut down. Of course, there will then be the challenge of finding someone to govern that poverty-stricken areas needing reconstruction and a new, hopefully more positive, beginning.

The best way to end the war would be to combine IDF military successes with substantial international pressure to force Hamas leaders and terrorists to lay down their weapons—in return for free passage out of Gaza, to be relocated in Arab countries that don’t border Israel.

That is exactly how the 1982 war in Lebanon ended, when the Israeli invasion force permitted the PLO—led by Yasser Arafat—to sail away from Beirut to far- off Tunisia and Yemen.

source https://time.com/6329637/israels-hamas-war-netanyahu-strategy/

Former Vice President Mike Pence Ends His Campaign For the White House

NEW YORK — Former Vice President Mike Pence is dropping his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, ending his campaign for the White House after struggling to raise money and gain traction in the polls.

“After much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today,” Pence said at the Republican Jewish Coalition gathering in Las Vegas. “We always knew this would be an uphill battle, but I have no regrets.”

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Pence becomes the first major candidate to leave a race that has been dominated by his former boss-turned-rival, Donald Trump.

The decision, more than two months before the Iowa caucuses that he had staked his campaign on, saves Pence from the embarrassment of failing to qualify for the third Republican primary debate, Nov. 8 in Miami.

But the withdrawal is a huge blow for a politician who spent years biding his time as Trump’s most loyal lieutenant, only to be scapegoated during their final days in office when Trump became convinced that Pence somehow had the power to overturn the results of the 2020 election and keep both men in office — not something a vice president could do.

While Pence averted a constitutional crisis by rejecting the scheme, he drew Trump’s fury, as well as the wrath of many of Trump’s supporters who believed his lies and still see Pence as a traitor.

Among Trump critics, meanwhile, Pence was seen as an enabler who defended the former president at every turn and refused to criticize even Trump’s most indefensible actions time and again.

As a result, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research from August found that the majority of U.S. adults, 57%, viewed Pence negatively, with only 28% having a positive view.

Throughout his campaign, the former Indiana governor and congressman had insisted that while he was well-known by voters, he was not “known well” and set out to change that with an aggressive schedule that included numerous stops at diners and Pizza Ranch restaurants.

Pence had been betting on Iowa, a state with a large white Evangelical population that has a long history of elevating religious and socially conservative candidates such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Rick Santorum. Pence often campaigned with his wife, Karen, a Christian school teacher, and emphasized his hard-line views on issues such as abortion, which he opposes even in cases when a pregnancy is unviable. He repeatedly called on his fellow candidates to support a minimum 15-week national ban and he pushed to ban drugs used as alternatives to surgical procedures.

He tried to confront head-on his actions on Jan. 6, 2021 , explaining to voters over and over that he had done his constitutional duty that day, knowing full well the political consequences. It was a strategy that aides believed would help defuse the issue and earn Pence the respect of a majority of Republicans, whom they were were convinced did not agree with Trump’s actions.

But even in Iowa, Pence struggled to gain traction.

source https://time.com/6329632/mike-pence-ends-white-house-campaign/

Gazans Are Confronted With Mass Graves, Unclaimed Bodies, and Overcrowded Cemeteries

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — It was neither the place nor the time for a proper goodbye, said Omar Dirawi. Not here, in this dusty field strewn with dead people wrapped in blankets and zipped up in body bags. And not now, as Israeli airstrikes crashed around him for the third week, erasing more of his neighborhood and sundering hundreds of families and friendships.

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Yet on this October week in Gaza’s central town of Zawaideh, the 22-year-old Palestinian photojournalist buried 32 members of his family who were killed in Israeli air raids last Sunday.

Dirawi’s aunts, uncles and cousins from Gaza City had heeded Israeli military evacuation orders and taken refuge in his home farther south. Days later Dirawi was unloading their bodies from the back of a truck, digging a narrow trench partitioned with cinder blocks and reciting abbreviated funeral prayers before nightfall, when Israeli warplanes screeched and everyone ran indoors.

“There’s nothing that feels right about this,” Dirawi said of the mass burial. “I haven’t even grieved. But I had no choice. The cemetery was full and there was no space.”

Palestinians say this war is robbing them not only of their loved ones but also of the funeral rites that long have offered mourners some dignity and closure in the midst of unbearable grief. Israeli strikes have killed so many people so quickly that they’ve overwhelmed hospitals and morgues, making the normal rituals of death all but impossible.

And along with everything else stolen by the bombardments, Palestinians on Saturday added another loss: cellular and internet service. A few in Gaza who managed to communicate with the outside world said people could no longer call ambulances or find out if loved ones living in different buildings were still alive.

Since Oct. 7, when Hamas mounted a bloody and unprecedented attack on Israel, the Israeli military’s response has left over 7,700 Palestinians dead, said the Gaza-based Health Ministry. Of the dead, it added, nearly 300 have not been identified. Fear and panic were spreading Saturday as Israel expanded its ground incursion and intensified bombardment.

An estimated 1,700 people remain trapped beneath the rubble as Israel’s air raids impede and imperil civil defense workers, one of whom was killed during a rescue mission Friday. Sometimes it takes days for medics to recover bodies. By then corpses are often too swollen and disfigured to be recognizable.

“We have hundreds of people being killed every day,” said Inas Hamdan, a Gaza-based communications officer for the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency. “The whole system in Gaza is overwhelmed. People are dealing with the dead however they can.”

Overcrowded cemeteries have compelled families to dig up long-buried bodies and deepen the holes. That’s how survivors interred Bilal al-Hour, a professor at Gaza’s Al Aqsa University, and 25 of his family members killed Friday in airstrikes that razed their four-story home in Deir al-Balah.

Al-Hour’s brother, Nour, exhumed his family’s old plots in the local cemetery Friday to place the newly deceased inside. His hands dark with grave dirt, he became breathless listing each relative being lowered into the ground.

“There’s Bilal’s son with his wife and children, his other younger son and of course his daughter who finished high school last year and was supposed to be a doctor,” he said before trailing off and quoting the Quran. “To Allah we belong, and to him is our return.”

Overflowing morgues have compelled hospitals to bury people before their relatives can claim them. Gravediggers have laid dozens of unidentified bodies side by side in two large backhoe-dug furrows in Gaza City now holding 63 and 46 bodies, respectively, said Mohammed Abu Selmia, the general director of Shifa Hospital.

The nightmare of ending up as an anonymous body piled up in a morgue or chucked into the dirt has increasingly haunted Palestinians in Gaza.

To increase the chances of being identified if they die, Palestinian families have begun wearing identification bracelets and scrawling names with marker on their children’s arms and legs.

In some cases, bodies have decomposed so much they are unrecognizable even to their kin. In other cases, not a single family member may survive to claim the dead.

“We often find this during our work, even just (Thursday) night in Gaza City when 200 people were killed, there were names and ID numbers written in ink on the children’s bodies,” said Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson of the Palestinian Civil Defense. “It’s a pain I can’t describe, to see that.”

Gaza’s Awqaf ministry, which is in charge of religious matters, now urges hasty burials and authorizes the digging of mass graves due to the “large numbers of people killed and the small amount of space available.” Each Gaza governorate has at least two mass graves, authorities say, some holding over 100 people.

In the crowded Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on Wednesday, a fierce barrage of Israeli airstrikes leveled an entire block — some 20 multi-story buildings — killing 150 people and trapping more beneath the ruins, residents said. Shell-shocked survivors staggered out of the hospital, not knowing what to do with the dead.

“We have no time to do anything and no space anywhere,” said 52-year-old Khalid Abdou from the camp. “All we can do is dig a big hole with our hands. Then we throw bodies inside.”

Residents of Nuseirat peered into dozens of blood-smeared body bags arranged outside Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital on Thursday, searching for familiar faces, Abdou said. Workers labeled some body bags “unknown” before shoveling them into mass graves. Families were buried together.

When trying to sleep, Abdou said he hears sounds from that night — the thunder of the blast mixing with screams of shock and the cries of children.

But what keeps him up most, he said, is the thought that no one washed the bodies of the dead or changed their clothes before burial. No one lovingly shrouded their bodies, as is customary in Islam, or held a poignant service.

And certainly no one served the traditional bitter coffee and sweet dates to friends and relatives paying condolences.

“In Islam we have three days of mourning. But there’s no way can you observe that now,” Abdou said. “Before the mourning ends you’ll probably be dead, too.”

source https://time.com/6329616/israel-hamas-war-gaza-mass-graves-deaths/

The Meaning Behind Taylor Swift’s 1989 Vault Track ‘Slut!’

In September, when Taylor Swift announced that one of the vault tracks off of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) would be called “Slut!,” it immediately became the most anticipated song from the re-release.

Released Friday along with the rest of the re-recorded 1989, “Slut!” sees Swift boldly reclaiming a word that was often hurled at her, especially in her early years as a singer. Swift is known for her searing, honest lyrics—especially in songs like “All Too Well” to “Dear John”—which many fans have connected to specific relationships in her life. But critics have used that to turn her into the punchline of sexist jokes, even as recently as 2021 when the Netflix show Ginny and Georgia made a joke at Swift’s expense. (In response, Swift called the joke “deeply sexist”).

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In “Slut!”, Swift embraces the word. “But if I’m all dressed up they might as well be lookin’ at us. And if they call me a slut, you know it might be worth it for once.” She goes on to sing about the public’s perception of her as a “rose with thorns.” “Love thorns all over this rose. I’ll pay the price, you won’t.”

“Slut!” isn’t the first time Swift has addressed the media’s coverage of her relationships; two of her most popular songs from 1989 did just that. On “Shake It Off,” she sings, “I go on too many dates, but I can’t make them stay; at least that’s what people say.” And on “Blank Space,” “Got a long list of ex-lovers, they’ll tell you I’m insane.”

Swift rarely speaks publicly about her relationships. Still, fans who purchased a physical copy of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) could glean some more insight into her songwriting process while making the album from a letter she included. Swift writes about wanting to silence “the voices that had begun to shame me in new ways for dating like a normal young woman.”

the 1989 taylor’s version prologue 🥹🥹🥹🥹

taylor alison swift i love you.#1989TaylorsVersion pic.twitter.com/xccKrSswhU

— jake (taylor’s version) (@taylorsrep13) October 26, 2023

“In the years preceding this, I had become the target of slut shaming — the intensity and relentlessness of which would be criticized and called out if it happened today,” she writes. Swift calls out the jokes about the number of boyfriends she had and the way her songwriting was portrayed as “a predatory act of a boy crazy psychopath.” She writes that this was taking a toll on her, so she needed to write to get through it. “So I swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting, or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian era.”

The pop star attempted to redirect the attention to her female friendships and how she felt that would’ve been a foolproof way to change the narrative, but that didn’t seem to be the case. “If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that — right? I would learn later on that people could and people would.”

The song itself is an indication of what was going through Swift’s mind during this time in her life and how she had to assuage the negative feelings that arose when, no matter what she did, the public theorized that she was a boy-crazy psychopath who couldn’t keep a man. In fact, she was just a woman who could convey her feelings through song expertly, and sometimes, they happened to be about a specific man. If that makes her a “Slut!” then she’s OK with it.

source https://time.com/6329228/taylor-swift-1989-slut-song/

Settler Violence in the West Bank Undermines Israel’s Security

For the past few weeks, in the wake of Hamas’ brutal massacre of 1,400 Israelis and kidnapping of over 200 more, Israel has been teetering on the brink of a multi-front war. The threats are easy to grasp, as they typically take the form of Iran-backed terror organizations. But falling under the radar are events in the West Bank, arguably the most complex sphere of the ongoing conflict, and certainly one of the most consequential.

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The West Bank has seen a significant increase in violence since Oct. 7 in what has already been the deadliest year since the Second Intifada. Since the outbreak of the war, at least 100 Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed in the West Bank. From Israel’s perspective, the most obvious threat emerging from the West Bank is Palestinian violence—including terror attacks against Israeli civilians—which had already claimed the lives of over 30 Israelis between January and September 2023. The Israel Defense Forces claims to have foiled several Palestinian attacks in the past three weeks through raids and even drones and other aerial strikes on militant cells in Palestinian cities.

Read More: As War Rages in Gaza, Violence Surges in the West Bank

It’s easy to see Israel’s challenge in the West Bank as merely an extension of Israel’s fight against terror organizations in both Gaza and in Lebanon, where the IDF and Hezbollah are engaging in clashes that have reportedly killed over 50 Hezbollah militants and 8 Israelis so far. But that is only part of the picture. The ongoing war has emboldened far-right Israeli settlers in the West Bank, who have escalated their attacks and provocations against Palestinian civilians.

Perhaps the most shocking and sickening example of this phenomenon occurred in the West Bank village of Wadi as-Seeq, located near Ramallah. In Haaretz, Hagar Shezaf recounted the unrelenting abuse and torture three Palestinians there endured from several IDF soldiers and settlers on Oct. 12. The Israelis handcuffed, beat, stripped, and photographed them, and subsequently urinated and extinguished cigarettes on them. One soldier reportedly attempted to insert an object into one of the victims’ rectum. The perpetrators also handcuffed and threatened to kill leftist Israeli activists present at the scene, including a minor.

According to the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, settlers attacked Palestinians in the West Bank on 100 different occasions and in at least 62 locations from Oct. 7 to 22 alone. Settlers have killed at least six Palestinians during this period. In particular, Palestinian shepherding communities have borne the brunt of these attacks, which have caused them to flee their homes in Wadi as-Seeq, nearby Ein ar-Rashash, Ein Shibli in the Jordan Valley, and other communities. Settler extremists have themselves adopted shepherding and farming as a method of taking over large swaths of land.

While threats and attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank have spiked this month, they are hardly new. According to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 12% of Palestinian herding communities had fled their homes as of September, primarily due to Israeli settlers attacking them and preventing them from accessing their land. An average of three incidents of settler violence occurred per day during the first eight months of 2023, an uptick from two per day in 2022. This rise can at least be partially attributed to far-right figures ascending to power in Israel, including Bezalel Smotrich, who has defended setters who commit violence, and Limor Son Har-Melech, who railed against security officials who speak out against the settler movement. Violently driving Palestinians to flee their homes is a tactic in the so-called war for Area C—the 60% of the West Bank under direct Israeli administration—where many of the small Palestinian hamlets facing the most acute threats are located.

IDF soldiers rarely act to prevent these attacks, and, according to that recent Haaretz report, sometimes even collaborate in them. Soldiers serving in the West Bank are often themselves settlers, a trend heightened by the recent IDF reservist mobilization. Many settlers also receive arms reputedly for self-defense, especially in far-flung, hardline settlements that see frequent friction with Palestinians. All of this sends the message that they can violate the law with impunity—whether by building illegal outposts or targeting their Palestinian neighbors. The IDF often opens investigations into high-profile incidents of settler violence, as it did for the Wadi as-Seeq case, but rarely do the perpetrators face legal consequences.

While Israel is focused on their justified fight against Hamas in Gaza, it cannot neglect addressing what is happening in the West Bank, where settler violence threatens the integrity of Israel’s democracy and security. A responsible Israeli government would approach Israel’s challenge in the West Bank as the two-front battle that it truly is: against Palestinian and Jewish violence alike.

But this problem transcends Israel’s current political reality. Just as this war is prompting Israelis to question long-held assumptions about how Israel should navigate the challenges posed by Hamas in Gaza, it should also spur a reckoning about the unnecessary and avoidable security burden posed by the settlement movement. 

When the war broke out on Oct. 7, 70% of standing IDF troops were stationed in the West Bank, and most of that 70% were protecting isolated settler enclaves in overwhelmingly Palestinian areas, not keeping Israelis safe within the country’s sovereign borders. Military operations against militant Palestinian cells is a partial and woefully incomplete remedy for Israel’s chronic West Bank migraine. While now may not be the time for more substantive political conversations about the future of the settlement movement and the West Bank in general, the first step is to uphold and enforce the rule of law for West Bank settlers, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

source https://time.com/6329142/west-bank-settler-violence-israel-security/

Why America’s Reagan-Era Approach to Terrorism Could Hold Back Progress on Hamas

Since the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7 that have now killed around 1,400 Israelis, a fierce debate has been raging in the United States. An outspoken minority on the left has portrayed the attack as an inevitable response to oppression. But the majority viewpoint among Democrats and Republicans alike has been revulsion against Hamas and support for Israel’s right to self-defense.

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The majority position fits with Americans’ longstanding views on terrorism, which has been informed by a strong desire for “moral clarity” in every situation. Terrorism is 100% wrong in every situation and stems not from complex historical contexts and legitimate grievances, but from hatred and radical ideologies.

But while condemning terrorism should be a no-brainer, moral clarity has not guaranteed sound U.S. counterterrorism policies over the last half-century. This history shows that moral absolutism can obscure the compromises required to fight terrorism. It also encourages a self-righteousness that inhibits understanding of terrorism’s complex roots—which is necessary to best prevent it.

The modern U.S. struggle with terrorism began in the 1970s and 1980s, as nationalists like the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), extreme leftists like the German Red Army Faction, and state sponsors like Libya targeted the U.S. and its allies.

Read more: How the Activist Left Turned On Israel

The concept of “moral clarity” emerged in the 1980s as the Reagan Administration made terrorism a priority, believing that Jimmy Carter had focused too much on human rights and not enough on foreign threats. Advocates of moral clarity sought to discredit arguments that terrorism stemmed primarily from the legitimate grievances of dispossessed peoples suffering under racist and imperialist regimes—many of which were U.S. allies. Moral clarity enabled them to explain terrorism’s roots in a way that exempted the U.S. from any responsibility and cleared the path for a forceful response.

For example, in 1984 Secretary of State George Shultz criticized the idea that U.S. policies, such as support for Israel, were the root cause of terrorism. He described this view as “moral confusion” and argued: “We have been told that terrorism is in some measure our own fault, and we deserved to be bombed.” But Shultz dismissed such thinking. Terrorists were would-be totalitarians whose radical ideologies drove them toward absolute goals like the destruction of Israel. Caving to them on particular issues or changing American policy wouldn’t end their violence. It would only fuel it. Terrorists struck the U.S., Shultz claimed, “not because of some mistake we are making but because of who we are and what we believe in.”

Read more: What the World Can Learn From the History of Hamas

Moral clarity resonated with U.S. policymakers in this period for practical as well as ethical reasons. Many post-colonial states at the United Nations, such as Algeria and Tanzania, tried to exempt “national liberation” movements like the PLO from the label of terrorism despite their repeated attacks on civilians. Furthermore, some U.S. allies attempted to reduce the risk of terrorism by releasing suspects or refusing to extradite them. American policymakers hoped that by drawing stark moral lines, they could harden international resolve and isolate terrorist groups and their sponsors.

In 1990s, the intensifying culture wars roiling American society increased conservatives’ reliance on moral clarity as a principle, including against terrorism. While the culture wars largely affected domestic policy, conservatives saw a foreign policy connection. Restoring moral absolutes was the only way to repair what they viewed as a relativistic and decadent society—one that lacked the self-confidence needed to counter foreign threats.

Conservatives only became more certain of the need for moral absolutes after 9/11. The prolific culture warrior and former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett founded “Americans for Victory against Terrorism” to counter leftist anti-war sentiment on college campuses. He described 9/11 as “a moment of moral clarity…when we began to rediscover ourselves as one people even as we began to gird for battle.” Total certainty in America’s virtue was necessary to unite the country around an expansive war against terrorism and the renewal of order and tradition at home. 

President George W. Bush echoed these principles, asserting that “Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place.” Bush declared of Islamist extremists: “They hate our freedoms-our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree.”

Moral clarity, however, didn’t produce good policy decisions in the War on Terror. It encouraged Bush and his team to assume that the universality of liberal democracy would enable the transformation of internally riven societies that had never been democratic. These dreams collapsed in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Moral clarity also inhibited Bush from thinking through the difficult ethical trade-offs of counterterrorism policy. Even as he championed democracy as a means of moderating the anger that drove many to extremism, his administration worked with and even bolstered autocratic partners like Russia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia to combat Al Qaeda. To facilitate operations in Afghanistan, for example, the Bush administration expanded its support of Islam Karimov’s regime in Uzbekistan. This dictatorship jailed and tortured opponents, helping radicalize Uzbek Islamists.

Because the U.S. was demanding cooperation against Al-Qaeda, Bush was in no position to push dictators to risk their own survival by instituting real reforms. Moral clarity proved elusive where the U.S. needed help from autocratic partners, even as those autocracies exacerbated the problem of extremism in the long run.

Finally, moral clarity prevented Bush from digging into the role American policy may have played in creating the grievances driving Al Qaeda. It is impossible to explain the rise of the terrorist group without reference to U.S. policies like its partnership with the Saudi government or its stationing of troops in the Persian Gulf in the 1990s. While none of these factors provided justification for the heinous attacks on 9/11, reevaluating U.S. policy could have helped forestall further extremism. 

While Bush’s failures in Iraq and Afghanistan made a new breed of Republicans increasingly open to an America First, anti-interventionist foreign policy, they did not destroy the belief on both sides of the aisle that terrorism demanded moral clarity.

That has been clear since Oct. 7. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others have praised President Biden for “the moral clarity that you have demonstrated from the moment Israel was attacked.” Secretary of State Tony Blinken stated, “This is—this must be—a moment for moral clarity. The failure to unambiguously condemn terrorism puts at risk not only people in Israel, but people everywhere.”

Biden and Blinken are right that moral clarity provides a useful counterweight to those who have excused Hamas’ actions. It affirms that no cause, ideology, or set of real or imagined grievances can justify the deliberate slaughter of civilians. It also refutes the canard that “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.” Hamas, like most terrorist groups, is not fighting for freedom or democracy, but only to solidify its power and impose its radical ideology.

Yet, as the War on Terror demonstrated, moral clarity has significant limitations and drawbacks. It can lead policymakers astray while failing to prepare them for the necessary trade offs that fighting terrorism requires. Moral clarity is also not a useful lens for understanding the roots of the extremism fueling terrorism, which is a necessary step for finding long-term solutions.

Learning this history can improve our response to the current situation. Denouncing terrorism unambiguously, as Biden has done, is a must. But the U.S. is now backing a far-right Netanyahu government that is eroding the rule of law in Israel, bolstering extremist groups, and making a resolution to the conflict unfeasible by supporting settlements in the West Bank. 

Once this crisis recedes, the U.S. should not let its rightful condemnation of Hamas prevent reconsideration of whether it needs to push Israel to take more steps—like ending the blockade of Gaza or stopping new settlements in the West Bank—that might produce peace by addressing Palestinian grievances.

Halting settlements will not lessen Hamas’ determination to destroy Israel. However, it may intensify many Palestinians’ growing disillusionment with Hamas by undermining its false claim to legitimacy as a resistance organization. If the U.S. cannot convince Israel to change course, this conflict will continue.

It’s true that terrorists, including Hamas, are radicals undertaking evil actions. Moreover, the horror of terrorism understandably prompts humane people to demand moral clarity. Yet, by explaining terrorism exclusively in these terms, moral clarity can hamper our capacity to address the problem. It can also feed a self-righteousness that, in the War on Terror, led to overreaction and self-inflicted blunders. Accepting the inevitability of some moral murkiness, therefore, is an unpleasant but important step.

Joseph Stieb is a historian and an assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here.

source https://time.com/6328097/hamas-terrorism-moral-clarity/