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    Israeli Attacks Kill Dozens in Gaza, Health Ministry Says

    Israel was keeping up its intense bombing campaign in the enclave, which has exacted a heavy price on civilians struggling to find safe places to shelter.The latest round of Israeli attacks in a renewed military offensive in Gaza has killed dozens of Palestinians, the territory’s health ministry said on Saturday.The ministry said that 92 dead and 219 wounded people had arrived at hospitals over the past 48 hours. Gaza health officials do not differentiate between civilians and combatants in casualty counts.Since the collapse last month of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, Israel’s military has embarked on a major bombing campaign and seized territory in Gaza. Israeli officials have said that the military is targeting militants and weapons infrastructure in a bid to compel Hamas to release more hostages held in the enclave.More than 1,700 people have been killed in Gaza since the cease-fire fell apart, and more than 51,000 people have been killed since the war began in October 2023, according to the health ministry.Israel’s renewed offensive has exacted a heavy price on civilians struggling to find places to shelter and reinforced a feeling among Palestinians in Gaza that nowhere is safe.On Friday, the Israeli military told The New York Times that Mawasi, a narrow strip of coastal land in southern Gaza, was no longer considered a “humanitarian zone.” Earlier in the war, the Israeli military repeatedly instructed Palestinians to go to Mawasi, which it had described at the time as a “humanitarian zone.”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 Strikes Area With Tent Camps for Displaced Gazans

    The attack on the Mawasi area of southern Gaza killed at least a dozen people, according to the emergency rescue service in the territory. Israel did not confirm the location of the attack.Gaza’s Civil Defense, the local emergency rescue service, reported that an Israeli strike overnight into Thursday in the Mawasi encampment area killed at least a dozen people, including children. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Nader IbrahimIsrael bombarded an area in southern Gaza with large tent encampments for Palestinians displaced by the war and killed at least a dozen people, including children, the Civil Defense emergency rescue service in the territory said on Thursday.The strike was part of the latest round of attacks on Gaza that killed more than 20 people overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, according to Palestinian officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants in death tolls.One of the strikes hit the coastal area of Mawasi near the city of Khan Younis, an area largely designated by the Israeli military as a “humanitarian zone” where tens of thousands of displaced people have been sheltering in tents.In video distributed by wire agencies, the strike appeared to ignite a fire that burned some tents and rescue workers attempted to douse the flames in the wake of the strike on Mawasi before driving off with the dead and wounded.Atef al-Hout, the director of the Nasser hospital, said in a telephone interview that the bodies of at least 14 people had arrived at the medical facility overnight on Thursday, including seven children. Most were believed to have been killed in the strike on Mawasi, he said.Inspecting damage at the site of an Israeli strike in an area of tent camps for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza on Thursday.Hatem Khaled/ReutersWe 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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    A Columbia Activist Sought Middle Ground on Gaza. The U.S. Detained Him.

    Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested at a citizenship interview in Vermont. He had spent a decade trying to understand the conflict that shaped his life, his supporters say.As Columbia University’s student protest movement careened toward the center of the nation’s political discourse last year, one of its most ardent leaders suddenly fell quiet.Mohsen Mahdawi had been a key organizer of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, but he said he walked away from that role in March 2024 — well before the rallies reached a fever pitch as students set up encampments and broke into a campus building.A fissure had been growing. By the fall of 2024 it had widened: Parts of the movement were becoming more radical, and some students were distributing fliers during a campus demonstration glorifying violent resistance. Mr. Mahdawi, meanwhile, was approaching Israeli students, hoping to find middle ground in the divisive Israeli-Palestinian conflict that, for decades, had unleashed horrors on both sides and in his own life.He told friends that he was being sidelined in part because he wanted to engage in dialogue with supporters of Israel, a stance many pro-Palestinian activists reject.His calls for compassion did not protect him from President Trump’s widening dragnet against pro-Palestinian student organizers on campus.At an appointment to obtain U.S. citizenship on Monday in Vermont, Mr. Mahdawi, who is expected to graduate next month from Columbia, was taken into custody by immigration police.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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    Gaza Medic Missing Since Israeli Attack Is in Israeli Custody, Palestinian Group Says

    Asaad al-Nasasra has not been heard from since the March 23 ambush by Israeli forces, which left 15 aid workers dead and drew international condemnation.A Gaza paramedic for the Palestine Red Crescent Society who has been missing since Israeli forces ambushed a group of ambulances and other aid vehicles in late March is in Israeli custody, the Red Crescent and the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Sunday.Israeli forces killed 15 other rescue and aid workers in the same attack, buried their bodies in a mass grave and crushed their ambulances, their fire truck and a United Nations vehicle — actions that have drawn international condemnation and scrutiny.Witnesses have said that Asaad al-Nasasra, 47, the paramedic who disappeared after the March 23 attack, survived but was detained and taken away by Israeli soldiers. But there had been no official word of his whereabouts until Sunday, when the Red Crescent said the I.C.R.C. had notified it that he was being held by Israel.The Red Cross said in a statement that it had received information that Mr. al-Nasasra was being held “in an Israeli place of detention.”Asked for comment, the Israeli military replied with a statement that it had released last week saying that it was still investigating the attack. It has said it will not comment further until the investigation is complete.The Israeli military has offered changing explanations for why its troops fired on the emergency vehicles, first saying that they had been “advancing suspiciously” without their lights on until a video of the attack contradicted that account. It initially said nine of those killed had been operatives from Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group, before saying, without providing evidence, that six operatives were killed in the attack.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 Strikes Hospital in Northern Gaza and Captures Key Part of South

    No one was killed but the attack hit the Ahli Arab Hospital, a mainstay of Gaza’s decimated health care system. Separately, Israel said its troops had expanded their occupation of southern Gaza.The Israeli military struck and destroyed part of a hospital in northern Gaza early on Sunday morning, shortly after telling patients and staff to evacuate the site. The attack came hours after the Israeli government announced that its troops fighting elsewhere in the territory had expanded their occupation of the southern Gaza Strip, severing links between two strategically located Palestinian cities.No one was killed in the attack on the Ahli Arab Hospital, but a child being treated for a head injury died because of the rushed evacuation, according to a statement released by the Anglican Church in Jerusalem, which oversees the medical center. The strike destroyed a laboratory and damaged a pharmacy, the emergency department and a church at the hospital compound in Zeitoun, the statement added. The scene outside of Ahli Arab Hospital on Sunday.Saher Alghorra for The New York TimesThe hospital had become one of the last mainstays of the health care system in Gaza, where medical centers have been frequently damaged and besieged during the war that began with the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel. The World Health Organization reported last month that 33 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals had been damaged during the war, and only 21 remained partly functional. The W.H.O. also warned on Saturday that hospitals in Gaza face a looming medicine shortage because Israel has blocked aid deliveries for six weeks.The Ahli Arab hospital compound was first hit less than two weeks into the war, when a missile hit a parking lot on the site where dozens of displaced families were sheltering. Hamas blamed the strike on Israel, before Israel said it was caused by an errant rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group allied with Hamas. U.S. intelligence officials later said they had “high confidence” in the Israeli account.The Israeli military acknowledged responsibility on Sunday for the latest strike on the hospital, saying without offering evidence that the site had housed a Hamas command center. Both the military and the Anglican Church said that Israeli soldiers had called the hospital to order its evacuation before the strike. Neither the hospital authorities nor Hamas responded to questions about whether the hospital had been used by Hamas fighters.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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    I’m a Jewish Israeli in the US standing up for Palestine. By Trump’s logic, I’m a terror supporter | Eran Zelnik

    To Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation:Given recent patterns, the FBI might need to take a hard look at my actions over the years. If Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Yunseo Chung, Badar Khan Suri and other recent Ice detainees are considered threats to national security, then so am I.I have committed the same acts they have committed, including publishing an article that calls the war in Gaza a genocide, participating in a protest against the genocide in Gaza, speaking and protesting in favor of BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions against Israel), participating in a sit-in at UC Davis about 10 years ago, and being vocal in general about the atrocities committed by Israel against the people of Gaza and Palestinians.Let me tell you a little more about myself and all the additional reasons you might want to investigate and perhaps arrest me. I was born in Israel and became a naturalized US citizen through my American mother. Given the administration’s recent challenges to the 14th amendment, which provides birthright citizenship, you might proceed from detaining legal residents to revoking the rights of naturalized citizens. Like other fascist regimes before you, you’ve been testing how much resistance you face in your effort to turn the United States into a fascist country. You start with the most marginalized, sending incarcerated trans women to men’s prisons, Venezuelans accused of gang affiliation to El Salvador, and detaining Arab and Muslim legal residents. But if the past is any indication, your next target might well be children of undocumented immigrants or naturalized citizens. Of course, as every student of fascism well knows, the ultimate goal is to apprehend all the supposed enemies of this administration, regardless of their legal status.Furthermore, I must confess to using academic concepts that have come under scrutiny as antisemitic by the Department of Justice taskforce for antisemitism. As a former member of the Israel Defense Forces, I have come a long way. It took me many years of soul-searching to realize that I was complicit in a settler-colonial occupation force and that my best recourse to make amends for that was to be outspoken about my country’s atrocities. As I tried to better understand the terrible tragedy of Zionism – a nationalist ideology that sought to free Jews from oppression only to end up as oppressors in Palestine – I confess to describing concepts such as apartheid, settler colonialism, ethno-nationalism and more. Perhaps even more disturbing from your perspective, I recently employed such concepts as genocide, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing in a book I wrote about early American history.I also confess that in the past I have targeted white supremacist allies of this administration in my community of Chico, California. Clearly employing extralegal militias is part of this administration’s fascist playbook, as Trump already proved during the events of 6 January 2021. For instance, when my house was a target of antisemitic leafleting, I sought the help of a colleague and a local investigative journalist to make this very real form of antisemitism known to authorities. In the process the journalist uncovered troubling information that there is an armed white supremacist in our community who holds deep antisemitic convictions and now knows where I work. Had you really been interested in investigating antisemitism, you might have looked into the whereabouts of that individual. But since you want people like him around so that they can be activated when needed, and since all you really want is to cynically weaponize antisemitism, you might want to arrest me instead. After all, according to your standards, I – a Jew targeted by white supremacists – was all along the biggest threat to Jews in my own community.I have long heard stories about the rise of fascism in Europe from my grandparents, all of whom fled Europe and were refugees from antisemitism. The similarities between the actions of this administration and what my grandparents have lived through are unmistakable. I tell them here so that before you choose to arrest me, you will have one more opportunity to decide whether you will go down in history as aiding and abetting the rise of a fascist regime or as someone who refused to be part of another dark episode in this country’s history. Be forewarned: even if you yourself never directly suffer for your crimes, history will judge you.My dear grandfather, Otto, may his memory be a blessing, escaped Austria by the skin of his teeth when he was only 13 after the Nazi takeover of the country. Having witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht in November of 1938 – the night when local mobs violently rioted against Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses across much of Germany and Austria and arrested 30,000 citizens just for being Jewish – his parents made the decision to flee to Shanghai, the only port that would accept them. Clearly, our current president’s rhetoric regarding enemies of the American nation from within and without, against immigrants, trans people and people deemed un-American in their political commitments (like myself), are eerily reminiscent of the stories my grandfather told me about the scapegoating of Jews.As I consider the memory of dear grandmother Rachel, may her memory be a blessing, who grew up in Poland and survived the Holocaust, including enduring a harrowing year in Auschwitz and the death march to Germany, I cannot shake the sense of another parallel. As Hitler and the Nazi party were consolidating power, they appointed sycophants like yourself and so many others to positions of power in the Nazi administration. The most important criterion for Hitler was not that the people in positions of power were competent or even knowledgeable, but that they would be spineless and loyal to him.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to the historian Ian Kershaw, this type of leadership, where all bow to the great leader, led to the Holocaust, as the people surrounding Hitler constantly sought to outdo each other in their loyalty to the Führer. Knowing Hitler’s hatred for Jews, they constantly tried to curry favor by suggesting the most radical and far-reaching policy ideas towards Jews. This dynamic, which Kershaw called “working toward the Führer”, ultimately led Hitler and the people surrounding him to decide on the “Final Solution”, the plan to exterminate all the Jews in the world on an industrial scale in death camps. This idea of working toward the leader is upon us today, as we see institutions and even some in the Democratic party bowing before the great leader and his will. Instead of standing up to the administration at every turn, institutions, businesses and politicians across the country prefer to anticipate the administration’s wrath and eliminate any behavior or materials that might come under scrutiny. Meanwhile, Republicans rush to outdo each other in flattering the great leader, as American society seems frozen with fear in face of the rising tides of fascism.So, Kash Patel, do you want to arrest me and help bring about fascism?

    Eran Zelnik grew up in Israel and came to the US 15 years ago to complete his PhD in history. He now lives and teaches in Chico, California More

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    Israeli Airstrike in Gaza City Leaves Many Dead, Health Officials There Say

    An Israeli airstrike on a home in a neighborhood in Gaza City left a heavy death toll on Wednesday and others missing, with rescuers struggling to pull people out of the rubble with little equipment, Gaza’s civil defense service said.The Israeli military said it had been targeting a Hamas operative who it said was responsible for planning attacks. It did not name the operative or give further details.A spokesman for the Gazan civil defense service, Mahmoud Basal, said that rescuers had pulled 23 bodies from the destroyed buildings, including those of eight children, with about 20 people still missing. He said the strike had completely destroyed eight homes in Shajaiye, an already hard-hit neighborhood where Israel last week called for evacuations and which housed families who had been displaced from elsewhere in Gaza. Additional airstrikes had targeted other parts of the neighborhood on Wednesday, Mr. Basal said, but rescuers had not yet been able to respond to those strikes.The service’s figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.The site of the airstrike in Shajaiye on Wednesday. Israel last week called for evacuations from the neighborhood, which had already been pummeled.Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Israeli military says Hamas operatives embed among civilians. On Wednesday, it said that it had taken “numerous steps” to reduce harm to civilians before striking, using aerial surveillance, “other intelligence” and precise weaponry. A New York Times investigation has found that the Israeli military has loosened its rules on how many civilians it can endanger with each airstrike, and experts on international law note that Israel still has an obligation to protect civilians.The Gazan civil defense said that its crews were having difficulty pulling out survivors because they lacked heavy equipment to sift through the debris. 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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    Death of Palestinian American Boy in West Bank Sparks Outcry

    Amer Rabee, 14, was fatally shot Sunday by Israeli forces in the West Bank, according to his family. On Tuesday, community leaders gathered in New Jersey to demand justice.Members of northern New Jersey’s Palestinian community gathered on Tuesday to condemn the recent killing of a Palestinian American boy by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.The boy, Amer Rabee, 14, was shot and killed in the town of Turmus Aya on Sunday, his family said. Two other Palestinian American teenagers who were with Amer at the time were shot and injured by the soldiers, the family said.Amer, who was originally from Saddle Brook, N.J., moved with his family to the West Bank around 2013. The family said that since then, it had divided its time between the West Bank and New Jersey.At a news conference on Tuesday, community leaders stood at a small wooden lectern at the Palestinian American Community Center in Clifton, N.J., to decry Amer’s death and call on the U.S. government to investigate the shooting. They were joined by Rami Jbara, an uncle of Amer’s, and by Amer’s father, Mohammed Rabee, who called in remotely from the West Bank.“We cannot let this horrific crime be swept under the rug,” said Rania Mustafa, the center’s executive director.“Our stories are consistently ignored,” she added. “Our people are consistently dehumanized. Our deaths are repeatedly ignored.”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