Demonstrations, Protests and Riots

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      Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir Draws Anger for Comments on Disputed Holy Site

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      Israel’s far-right national security minister has drawn outrage for agreeing that he would like to build a synagogue at a disputed holy site in Jerusalem that has long been a flashpoint between Jews and Muslims.In an interview on Monday on Israeli Army Radio, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, was asked if he would build a temple at one of the holiest sites for both Jews and Muslims, known as the Aqsa Mosque complex by Muslims and the Temple Mount by Jews. “Yes, yes, yes!” Mr. Ben-Gvir replied.The affirmation by Mr. Ben-Gvir, who has a long history of incendiary comments and actions, came amid heightened tensions in the region, with the war between Israel and Hamas expected to grind on with no end in sight. Four days of cease-fire talks in Cairo between senior Israeli and Hamas officials concluded on Sunday with no breakthrough.Almost immediately after the interview, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that there was no change to the status quo at the site, where two ancient Jewish temples once stood. Some religious Jews want to build a third Jewish temple, a move seen as offensive to Muslims.Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar quickly denounced the comments. In a joint statement, Jordan and Egypt added that a cease-fire was the only way to lessen the “grave escalation” in the region.The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it viewed Mr. Ben-Gvir’s statements as “an explicit and blatant call to demolish the mosque and construct the so-called Temple in its place.”Moderate Israeli officials distanced themselves from Mr. Ben-Gvir’s comments. Several Israeli leaders called on Mr. Netanyahu to discipline or control Mr. Ben-Gvir.“Challenging the status quo on the Temple Mount is a dangerous, unnecessary and irresponsible act,” Yoav Gallant, the defense secretary, wrote on X. “Ben Gvir’s actions endanger the national security of the State of Israel and its international status.”A complex agreement governs the site. Officially, Jews may visit the site, but not pray there, though Israel has quietly allowed them to do so. Jewish worshipers are supposed to pray at the nearby Western Wall.In one of a series of provocations, Mr. Ben-Gvir recently violated the agreement with a public demonstration, leading a group of about 2,000 supporters in prayers at the site. He claimed in the Monday interview that not allowing Jews to pray there was discrimination.In June Mr. Ben-Gvir joined a procession of tens of thousands of Jews through the heart of Jerusalem to celebrate Israel’s capture of the eastern half of the city in 1967.In the interview, Mr. Ben-Gvir was open about his goals — and his current limitations.“It’s not as if I do whatever I like in the Temple Mount,” he said. “If this were the case, the Israeli flag would have hung over the Temple Mount a long time ago.’’ More

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      Solingen, Germany, Becomes Reluctant Symbol of Migration Battles

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      After a stabbing attack that prosecutors say was committed by a Syrian who was rejected for asylum, the city of Solingen finds itself at the center of a longstanding debate.Two days after a deadly knife attack in the German city of Solingen, the youth wing of the far-right AfD party put out a call for supporters to stage a protest demanding the government do more to deport migrants denied asylum.The authorities had identified the suspect in the stabbing spree that killed three people and wounded eight others as a Syrian man who was in the country despite having been denied asylum and who prosecutors suspected had joined the Islamic State. The attack tore at the fabric of the ethnically diverse, working-class city in the country’s west.But even before the right-wing protests had begun on Sunday, scores of counterprotesters had gathered in front of the group home that housed the suspect and other refugees. They carried banners that read, “Welcome to refugees” and “Fascism is not an opinion, but a crime,” and railed against those who would use the attack to further inflame an already fraught national debate over immigration and refugees.The dueling protests — not unlike those recently in Britain — are emblematic of Germany’s longstanding tug of war over how to deal with a large influx of asylum seekers in recent years. The country needs immigration to bolster its work force, but the government often finds itself on the defensive against an increasingly powerful AfD.The party and its supporters are attempting to use the stabbing attack to bolster their broader anti-immigrant message, with some blaming the assault on “uncontrolled migration” even before the nationality of the suspect was known.“They are trying to use this tragedy to foment fear,” said Matthias Marsch, 67, a Solingen resident who was at Sunday’s counterprotest and worries about a rightward drift in society. “I’m here to stand against that.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Greenpeace Tries a Novel Tactic in Lawsuit Over Dakota Access Pipeline

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      The environmental group, which is being sued by the pipeline company in North Dakota, threatened to use new European rules to try to limit potential damages.The NewsGreenpeace recently unveiled a new strategy for fighting a costly lawsuit by an energy company that the group contends is designed to silence critics of the oil industry.The suit, first filed in federal court in 2017, alleged that Greenpeace had incited the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017, and it sought $300 million in damages.Greenpeace disputes the claims. It says the lawsuit is designed to essentially force the environmental group to go out of business with an expensive legal fight.Its new tactic, led by Greenpeace International in Amsterdam, would use the European legal system to try to minimize the financial consequences of a potential loss in United States courts. In a letter to the company last month, lawyers for the group cited a new European Union directive aimed at curbing SLAPP suits, or Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation. Those are defined as meritless suits that seek to shut down civil society groups.The letter called on the company suing it, Dallas-based Energy Transfer, to drop its suit against Greenpeace International, and to pay damages for its legal costs, or risk a countersuit under the new European rules.The BackgroundAfter the Dakota Access Pipeline was approved in 2016, it became the target of high-profile protests by Native American tribes and environmental groups. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe argued that the pipeline encroached on reservation land and endangered the water supply. Thousands of its supporters joined a nearly eight-month protest encampment near the reservation, and tribal leaders mounted their own legal challenge to the project.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Protesters Will Converge on Chicago. City Leaders Say They’re Prepared.

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      As delegates arrive in Chicago on Sunday ahead of the Democratic National Convention, protesters plan to march along Michigan Avenue. On Monday, as the political show begins inside the United Center, demonstrators say they will gather by the thousands outside. And as the convention goes on, activists say, so too will the protests, every single day, showcasing divisions on the left during a week when Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to project Democratic unity and enthusiasm.From the moment the Democrats chose Chicago as the site for their nominating convention, it was a foregone conclusion that protesters would show up in large numbers. The city has a long tradition of left-wing activism, and nominating conventions tend to attract demonstrations. But as the war in Gaza left tens of thousands dead and divided the Democratic Party, expectations for large protests heightened, as did the memories of protests devolving into clashes with the Chicago police outside the party’s 1968 convention.City officials have argued in recent days with activist groups over protest details, including the length of a march route and whether a sound system will be allowed. Still, the city, long led and dominated by Democrats, has sought to convey an openness to the demonstrations and confidence that everything will go smoothly.Security Perimeters and Chicago’s Proposed Route for the Coalition to March on the D.N.C. More

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      Abortion Rights Advocates Hit the D.N.C.: Free Vasectomies and an Inflatable IUD

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      This convention is likely to be a head-on display of a new, unbridled abortion politics.While delegates are in Chicago for next week’s Democratic National Convention, they will engage in the typical pageantry and traditions: They’ll vote for their nominee, pose for photos with elected officials, and show off their state with cool buttons or themed hats.They will also have the option of getting a free vasectomy or a medication abortion just blocks away.A mobile health center run by Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, which serves much of Missouri and part of southern Illinois, plans to park itself near the convention and offer those services early next week to anybody who makes an appointment, delegate or not. (There is so much interest in the vasectomy appointments, I’m told, there is already a waiting list.)It’s a way of showcasing how reproductive health care providers have had to get creative when operating in or near states like Missouri, which borders Illinois and has a near-total abortion ban.But it also underscores the way this convention, more than any other, is going to be a head-on display of a new, unbridled abortion politics.For years, many Democrats believed too much talk about abortion rights might drive away moderate or religious voters. Four years ago, at the Covid-dampened convention of 2020, President Biden did not utter the word abortion in his speech. Neither did Vice President Kamala Harris (although she did refer briefly to racial injustice in “reproductive and maternal health care.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harris Must Persuade Gaza Protesters, Not Dismiss Them

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      At a campaign rally in the Detroit area on Wednesday, Kamala Harris was speaking about the threat of Project 2025 and the Trump agenda when a small group of protesters interrupted her. I couldn’t make out their words, but it was reported that they were shouting something about Gaza. Harris reacted with her trademark “I am speaking now.” The protesters persisted. Harris’s tone grew stern. “You know what?” she said. “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” She continued, to cheers from the crowd. The protesters were escorted out.When I watched a video of this scene, my heart sank. It reminded me of another interruption, at a Democratic fund-raiser at a nightclub in New York, 32 years ago. Bill Clinton was speaking when Bob Rafsky, a member of the AIDS activist group ACT UP, stood up to challenge him on his plans to deal with the AIDS epidemic. “We’re dying,” Rafsky said. Clinton engaged at first, saying he was running for president “to do something about it.” Rafsky continued to shout. Clinton became angry. “Would you just calm down?” he said.I knew Rafsky. I was a member of ACT UP, and a journalist covering AIDS in the gay press. When Clinton said, “Calm down,” I heard, Some things are more important than your life. In campaign math, this was probably true: Only a fraction of a percent of Americans were living with AIDS. Clinton had statistically bigger issues to address.Yes, before her Detroit speech, Harris met very briefly with a group of pro-Palestinian activists. But at the rally, I heard the same steely political calculus in Harris’s admonition to the protesters: She has to focus on beating Trump, not on a genocide occurring 6,000 miles away and affecting about two million people, some of whom are related to or have close ties with a small fraction of the American electorate for which the war in Gaza is a decisive issue in this election. And, like people confronting AIDS in 1992, Palestinian Americans and others who want an end to Israel’s war should know that the other candidate would be even worse.Such reasoning is as statistically sound as it is tone-deaf and emotionally blind. It appears that at least one of the protesters at the rally is of Palestinian descent. And given the demographics of the Detroit area, it is quite likely that others in the crowd were Palestinian Americans, very possibly with family and friends in Gaza who are at risk of being killed, whether by bombing, disease or starvation in the coming months, if they are not dead already.Rafsky died in February 1993, one month into the first Clinton administration. In November 1992, on the eve of the presidential election, he gave a speech standing by the coffin of another ACT UP member, Mark Fisher, who had asked that his body be carried through the streets of New York in protest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      UK Riots and How Online Hatred Spurs Real-World Violence

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      On New Year’s Day, a Telegram user in Portugal posted an ominous message that the wait was over. This was the year to stop the “Population Replacement” — a conspiracy theory that immigrants of color are taking over. In the days and weeks that followed, thousands more posts like it appeared on Telegram, X, YouTube […] More