Demonstrations, Protests and Riots

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      Israeli Protests Against Netanyahu Intensify as Cease-Fire Talks Resume

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      Thousands have taken to the streets of Israel to demand that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be replaced.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced growing challenges to power on Sunday as thousands gathered outside Parliament to call for early elections in what were shaping up to be one of the largest demonstrations against the government in Israel since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip.Some protesters carried signs calling for Mr. Netanyahu’s “immediate removal.” Others wielded posters calling for elections, saying “those who destroyed can’t be the ones to fix.”The protest came a day after thousands took to the streets of Tel Aviv, waving flags and carrying pictures of the Israeli hostages with signs reading “Hostage deal now.”Elad Dreifuss, a 25-year-old university student demonstrating in Jerusalem on Sunday, said that protesting against the government at a time of war was a difficult decision, but that “if the government can’t live up to its responsibility, something has to change.”Protesters rallying in front of Israel’s Parliament called for early elections to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.Ilan Rosenberg/ReutersThe protests in Jerusalem, which were planned to continue through Wednesday, came as in-person talks resumed in Cairo concerning a possible cease-fire and the release of hostages held by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. Bassem Naim, a spokesman for Hamas, said the group had not sent a delegation there.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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      Israel and Hezbollah Trade Fire, With Deaths Reported on Both Sides

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      The exchange came as a U.N. cease-fire demand appeared to be having little effect on the war in Gaza, and pressure increased on neighboring Jordan to sever ties with Israel.Hezbollah militants fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel from Lebanon on Wednesday, in what they said was retaliation for an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon overnight.The militants’ barrage came as pro-Palestinian protesters turned up the pressure on the government in neighboring Jordan to sever ties with Israel. It also came as the United States said a previously canceled meeting with an Israeli delegation in Washington to discuss a planned offensive into the southern Gazan city of Rafah would be rescheduled.For months, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed group based in Lebanon, has traded fire with Israeli forces across the border, and on Wednesday, the Israeli military said its forces had targeted a “significant terrorist operative” near the town of al-Habbariyeh in southern Lebanon.Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, which said the Israeli strike had hit an emergency medical center and killed seven paramedics, denounced it as “unacceptable.”Hezbollah’s response was swift: An Israeli government spokesman said 30 rockets were launched into Israel. The strikes included a direct hit on a building in the city of Kiryat Shmona that killed a 25-year-old person, according to the Israeli authorities.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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      Long Lines of Russian Voters Signal Discontent With Vladimir Putin’s Rule

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      Many appeared to be heeding a call by the opposition to express frustration by showing up en masse at midday. “We don’t have any other options,” said one woman.Long lines of voters formed outside polling stations in major Russian cities during the presidential election on Sunday, in what opposition figures portrayed as a striking protest against a rubber-stamp process that is certain to keep Vladimir V. Putin in power.Before he died last month, the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny had called on supporters to go to polling stations at midday on Sunday, the last day of the three-day vote, to express dissatisfaction with Mr. Putin, who is set to win his fifth presidential term in a vote that lacks real competition.Mr. Navalny’s team, which is continuing his work, and other opposition movements reiterated calls for the protest in the weeks leading up to the vote. Simply appearing at the polling station, for an initiative known as Noon Against Putin, they said, was the only safe way to express discontent in a country that has drastically escalated repression since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.The opposition leaders said showing solidarity with like-minded citizens by mere presence was more important than what the voters chose to do with their ballots, because the election lacked real choice.“This is our protest — we don’t have any other options,” said Lena, 61, who came to a polling station in central Moscow before noon with the intention of spoiling her ballot. “All of us decent people are hostages here.” Like other voters interviewed, she declined to provide her last name, for fear of reprisal.Alissa, 25, said she came because she is against the war. “It is so important to see people who think like you, who don’t agree with what is happening,” she said.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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      Dorie Ladner, Unheralded Civil Rights Heroine, Dies at 81

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      She risked arrest and worse in pursuit of her goals of integration and voting rights from the time she was a teenager.Dorie Ann Ladner, a largely unsung heroine on the front lines of the 1960s civil rights movement in the South, a crusade that shamed the nation into abolishing some of the last vestiges of legal segregation, died on Monday in Washington. She was 81.She died in a hospital from complications of Covid-19, bronchial obstruction and colitis, said her older sister and fellow civil rights activist Joyce Ladner, who called her a lifelong defender of “the underdog and the dispossessed.”Born and raised in racially segregated Mississippi by a mother who taught her to take no guff, Ms. Ladner joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as a teenager; left college three times to organize voter-registration campaigns and promote integration; packed a gun on occasion, as some of her prominent colleagues were shot or blown up; befriended the movement’s most celebrated figures; and participated in virtually every major civil rights march of the decade.Ms. Ladner carried an American flag when she attended the funeral of the four girls killed in a church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963.Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos“The movement was something I wanted to do,” she told The Southern Quarterly in 2014. “It was pulling at me, pulling at me, so I followed my conscience.”“The line was drawn in the sand for Blacks and for whites,” she said in an interview for the PBS documentary series “American Experience” the same year. “And was I going to stay on the other side of the line forever? No. I decided to cross that line. I jumped over that line and started fighting.”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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      Dancing and Jumping Over Fire, Iranians Use Holiday to Defy Rules

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      Large crowds packed the streets to celebrate the tradition of Chaharshanbeh Suri. Iran has banned dancing in public, which has also been a way to protest.Iranians have looked for opportunities in recent months to display defiance against the rules of the clerical government. In Tuesday night’s annual fire festival, many found a chance.Across Iran, thousands of men and women packed the streets as they danced wildly to music and jumped joyfully over large bonfires, according to videos on social media and interviews with Iranians. The police said the crowds were so large in Tehran and other cities that traffic came to a standstill for many hours and commuters had difficulty reaching public transportation, according to Iranian news reports.Dancing, especially for men and women together, is banned in public in Iran and has long been a form of protest.In many places, the gatherings turned political, with crowds chanting, “Freedom, freedom, freedom,” “Death to the dictator” and “Get lost, clerics,” according to videos and interviews with participants. In the city of Rasht in northern Iran, a crowd booed security officers who drove by in motorcycles, videos showed.A man in Tehran celebrating Chaharshanbeh Suri. This year, the celebration became another example of how many Iranians have moved away from the ruling clerics.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesIranians were celebrating the ancient Persian tradition of Chaharshanbeh Suri before the coming new year, Nowruz, which is on the first day of spring. In a ritual on the eve of the last Wednesday of the year, people jump over fire to cleanse the spirit from malaise of the old year and take on the glow of the flames in preparation for the new year.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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      Washington State and ‘Uncommitted’ Will Test Biden Again Over Gaza War

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      Washington State’s primary voters will offer the next glimpse of how many Democratic voters oppose President Biden’s policy toward Israel’s war in Gaza, though it may be days before a full picture of the results is clear.The state’s primary on Tuesday comes after noteworthy numbers of Democratic voters in other states chose “uncommitted” in apparent protest of Mr. Biden’s position, including 13 percent in Michigan, 19 percent in Minnesota and 29 percent in the little-watched Democratic caucuses in Hawaii, where the antiwar advocacy groups that organized elsewhere did not have a presence.Washington’s brand of anti-establishment Pacific Northwest liberalism has the potential to be a good fit for the “uncommitted” vote that has won increasing slices of the Democratic electorate in recent weeks.And it is unlikely Mr. Biden’s forceful performance in his State of the Union address last week would have a strong impact on the results in Washington, which votes entirely by mail. More than 512,000 Democratic primary ballots had already been received by Thursday, when he delivered the speech, according to data from the Washington secretary of state’s office.Stuart Holmes, the director of elections for the secretary of state, said to expect about half the state’s ballots to be counted and reported when polls close on Tuesday night. The rest of the ballots will be tabulated and reported once a day until all votes are counted, with the vast majority of the counting expected to be complete by the end of this week, Mr. Holmes said.Shasti Conrad, the chairwoman of the Washington State Democrats, said the party would support Mr. Biden.“We know President Biden and Vice President Harris are working tirelessly toward an end to the violence and a just, lasting peace in the Middle East,” Ms. Conrad said. “Voters in Washington understand the tremendous progress Democrats have made.”“Uncommitted” backers have offered a low bar for success in each of the preceding states where they have been active.Larry Cohen, the chairman of Our Revolution, the political organization begun by supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders that is backing “uncommitted,” put the goal for success in Washington State at 10 percent — far less than previous states but more than “uncommitted” received in 2020, when 6,450 people, about 0.4 percent of Democratic primary voters, chose “uncommitted.”The state canceled its presidential primaries in 2012, the last time an incumbent Democratic president was seeking re-election. The parties held nominating caucuses instead. More

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      Navalny’s Heirs Seek a Political Future in Russia

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      Aleksei Navalny’s team has found a new leader in the opposition leader’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya. But Navalny’s death has so far brought little change to their insular tactics.Aleksei A. Navalny built Russia’s largest opposition force in his image, embodying a freer, fairer Russia for millions. His exiled team now faces the daunting task of steering his political movement without him.The movement has found a leader in Mr. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who has presented herself as the new face of the opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin. Ms. Navalnaya, 47, is aided by a close-knit team of her husband’s lieutenants, who took over running Mr. Navalny’s political network after his imprisonment in 2021.Maintaining political momentum will be a challenge. Few dissident movements in modern history have managed to stay relevant, let alone take power, after the death of a leader who personified it. And so far, Mr. Navalny’s team has made little attempt to unite Russia’s fractured opposition groups and win new allies by adjusting its insular, tightly controlled ways.A spokeswoman for Mr. Navalny’s team, Kira Yarmysh, did not respond to questions or interview requests; nor did several of Mr. Navalny’s aides.In their public statements, Mr. Navalny’s top aides have said their movement will have to change to continue confronting Mr. Putin without its leader, though it is unclear what the new strategy might be.Even from prison, Mr. Navalny had “managed to support us, to infect us with optimism, to come up with projects, come up with cool political ideas,” Leonid Volkov, Mr. Navalny’s chief political organizer, said in a video published on social media last month. “Without Aleksei, things will not be as before.”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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      Many Iranians Boycott Elections, Despite Pleas and Roses

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      Ordinary Iranians, fed up with a faltering economy and the government’s oppressive rules and violent crackdowns on peaceful protests, heeded calls to stay home.Iran held parliamentary elections on Friday, but despite officials’ last-minute attempts to increase voter turnout with pleas on social media and roses at polling stations, many people stayed away from the ballot in an act of protest against the government, according to witnesses, interviews and news reports.In the capital, Tehran, the turnout was estimated at 11 percent, the hard-line parliamentary candidate Ali Akbar Raefipour said in a post on social media, and across the country, turnout was around 40 percent, according to IRNA, the official Iranian news agency — even with polls extending their opening hours to 10 p.m. from 8 p.m.The current speaker of the Parliament, Gen. Mohammad Ghalibaf, a commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps who is running for re-election on the conservative ticket, took to the social media platform X on Friday to plead with people to call at least 10 others and urge them to vote.“It’s not just winning the elections that matters, increasing participation is also a priority,” General Ghalibaf said in his post.For many ordinary Iranians fed up with a faltering economy — and with the government’s oppressive rules and violent crackdowns on peaceful protests — their demands for change extend far beyond what is offered by the existing political parties, with their reformist and conservative factions.Ahead of the vote, calls for a widespread boycott of the election had gained steam, with prominent activists and dissidents encouraging Iranians to turn the occasion into a protest against the government. The jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi said in a statement that boycotting the vote was a “moral duty.”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