Israel-Gaza War (2023- )

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    For American Jews, Biden’s Speech on Antisemitism Offers Recognition and Healing

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    While his message resonated with many Jewish leaders, the president’s remarks drew criticism from Republicans and supporters of Palestinians on the left.President Biden, standing in front of six candles symbolizing the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust, delivered on Tuesday the strongest condemnation of antisemitism by any sitting American president.For Jews monitoring a spike in hate crimes and instances of antisemitic rhetoric amid pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, Mr. Biden’s speech at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony at the Capitol was both fiercely necessary and fiercely appreciated. The Anti-Defamation League, which has been tracking antisemitic incidents since the 1970s, says the number of such episodes has reached all-time highs in four of the last five years.“In an unprecedented moment of rising antisemitism, he gave a speech that no modern president has needed to,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. “There has not been a moment like this since before the founding of the state of Israel. We have said it will never get worse, but then it has.”Still, if the president thought he might change minds with his emotional and deeply personal speech — recalling his father’s discussions about the Holocaust at the dinner table and taking his grandchildren to former concentration camps — there were few signs he had caused many to reconsider their views. Instead, initial reactions fell along ideological lines.Republicans dismissed his comments as meek, while supporters of Palestinians on the left attacked him for conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.Warren David, the co-founder of the Arab America Foundation, an advocacy group, said it was disappointing that Mr. Biden has not spoken more forcefully against anti-Arab racism and the death toll in Gaza.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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      In Europe, Police Arrest Protesters and Clear Encampments at Universities

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      Clockwise from top left, pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Oxford University, Cambridge University, the Free University in Berlin and the University of Amsterdam.In countries across Europe, students have staged their own pro-Palestinian sit-ins and protests on the lawns of their universities. And in several instances, the authorities are taking a similar approach to their U.S. counterparts: shutting them down.At the University of Amsterdam on Tuesday, the police arrested about 125 students who had fortified their protest camp with wooden barricades. And in Berlin, the German police cleared a similar encampment at the city’s Free University, which included several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters. Both demonstrations had begun on Monday, days after mass arrests swept through protests at U.S. campuses.In Amsterdam, university officials said the demonstration had begun peacefully, but devolved into “an unsafe and grim situation” overnight, when fireworks were launched, physical attacks took place and an Israeli flag was burned. The city’s public prosecutor and mayor made the decision to deploy the police, university executives said in a statement. “We deeply regret that it had to turn out this way,” they said. Many demands coming out of European universities reflect common cause with protesting students in the United States. Among them: for universities to disclose their investment streams and divest from those that support Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza.Tent cities, similar to those in America, have appeared in Britain at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, where protesters have declared “liberated zones” on campus; demonstrations have also been held in Bristol, Leeds and Manchester. At France’s Sciences Po, one of the country’s most elite universities, students occupied a campus building last week and refused to leave. Dozens of them were removed by the police on Friday.In Ireland, at Trinity College, Dublin, a student encampment prompted the university to close its popular exhibition on the Book of Kells, the medieval illuminated gospel manuscript that is one of the most famous works of its kind, on the eve of a busy tourist season. After talks with student protesters this week, Trinity officials said they would begin the process of divesting from certain companies that operate in the “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” More

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      Inside the White House Scramble to Broker a Deal in Gaza

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      The flurry of actions underscores how fluid the situation in the region is as President Biden and his team try to ultimately end the war that has devastated Gaza.Over the course of a few hours, the news from the Middle East came into the White House Situation Room fast and furious.Israel orders 100,000 civilians out of Rafah in prelude to invasion.Hamas “accepts” cease-fire deal, potentially precluding invasion.Israel conducts strikes against Rafah, possibly opening invasion.The war-is-on-off-on-again developments on Monday left White House officials scrambling to track what was happening and what it all meant. At the end of the day, they came to believe, each of the moves signaled less than originally met the eye, but reflected efforts to gain leverage at the negotiating table with a clear resolution not yet in sight.In fact, Hamas did not “accept” a cease-fire deal so much as make a counteroffer to the proposal on the table previously blessed by the United States and Israel — a counteroffer that was not itself deemed acceptable but a sign of progress. At the same time, Israel’s strikes in Rafah evidently were not the start of the long-threatened major operation but targeted retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks that killed four Israeli soldiers over the weekend — and along with the warning to civilians, a way to increase pressure on Hamas negotiators.The flurry of actions underscored how fluid the situation in the region is as President Biden and his team try to broker a deal that they hope will ultimately end the war that has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of combatants and civilians, inflamed the region and provoked unrest on American college campuses. Over the last few days, the talks went from high hopes that a deal was close, to a fresh impasse that seemed to leave them on the verge of collapse, to a renewed initiative by Hamas to get them back on track.“Biden is continuing all efforts to thread multiple needles at once,” said Mara Rudman, a former deputy Middle East special envoy under President Barack Obama who is now at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. The president is still warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that a “Rafah ground invasion is a terrible idea,” she said, while also “pressuring Hamas in every way possible to get hostages out and more humanitarian aid in.”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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      Officials Describe Pact Hamas Has Embraced as U.S.-Israel Proposal With Small Changes

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      The proposal for a hostage-prisoner exchange and cease-fire that Hamas said on Monday that it could accept has minor wording changes from the one that Israel and the United States had presented to the group recently, according to two officials familiar with the revised proposal.The officials said that the changes were made by Arab mediators in consultation with William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, and that the new version keeps a key phrase, the eventual enactment of a “sustainable calm,” wording that all sides had said earlier they could accept.The two officials said the response from Hamas was a serious one, and that it was now up to Israel to decide whether to enter into an agreement. The proposal, they said, calls for Hamas to free hostages — women, the elderly and those in need of medical treatment — in return for a 42-day cease-fire and the release of a much larger number of Palestinian prisoners. Israel had sought 33 hostages, but it is not clear how many women and elderly are still alive, and the first tranche could end up including remains.That would be the first of three phases of reciprocal actions from each side. In the second phase, the two sides would work toward reaching a “sustainable calm,” which would involve the release of more hostages, the officials said. Both officials acknowledged that the warring parties would likely clash over the definition of “sustainable calm.”One of the officials, in the Middle East, said that Hamas viewed the term as an end to the war, with Israel halting its military actions and withdrawing troops from Gaza. The officials said that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was expected to push back against that definition.One official said that the negotiating parties agreed to the term “sustainable calm” weeks ago, after Israel objected to any reference to a “permanent cease-fire.” Israeli officials have consistently said they oppose any agreement that explicitly calls for that or for an end to the war.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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      Maersk Says Expanded Houthi Attacks Are Forcing More Delays

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      The shipping company said the militia had recently tried to attack ships further from the shores of Yemen, putting more strain on logistics.Global shipping lines have become increasingly strained as the Houthi militia in Yemen broadens its attacks on cargo vessels, one of the largest companies in the industry warned on Monday.“The risk zone has expanded,” Maersk, the second-largest ocean carrier, said in a note to customers, adding that the stress was causing further delays and higher costs.Since late last year, the Houthis have been attacking ships in the Red Sea, which cargo vessels from Asia have to travel through to reach the Suez Canal. This has forced ocean carriers to avoid the sea and take a much longer route to Europe around the southern tip of Africa. But in recent weeks, the Houthis have been trying to strike ships making that longer journey in the Indian Ocean.Because going around Africa takes longer, shipping companies have had to add more vessels to ensure that they can transport goods on time and without cutting volumes.The threat to vessels in the Indian Ocean has only added to the difficulties. “This has forced our vessels to lengthen their journey further, resulting in additional time and costs to get your cargo to its destination for the time being,” Maersk said.The company estimated that putting extra ships and equipment onto the Asia to Europe route would result in a 15 percent to 20 percent drop in industrywide capacity in the three months through the end of June.That said, shipping companies have plenty of capacity available because they have ordered many new ships in recent years.Maersk said on Monday that customers should expect to see higher surcharges on shipping invoices as a result of the higher costs borne by the shipping line, which include a 40 percent increase in fuel use per journey.The cost of shipping a container from Asia to a northern European port was $3,550 last week, according to Freightos, a digital shipping marketplace, down from a recent high of $5,492 in January, and well below rates that climbed above $14,000 when global shipping became snarled during the coronavirus pandemic.The Houthis, who are backed by Iran, have said that their attacks were in response to Israel’s war in Gaza. More

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      4 Children From Gaza Arrive in U.S. for Medical Treatment

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      The children, who were injured or suffered malnutrition, were greeted at Kennedy Airport with toys and balloons. “These are their first memories here,” one supporter said.The four children had survived horrors in Gaza.But on Sunday morning, they reached the end of an arduous journey out of the conflict zone and into American hospitals to receive urgent medical care. They flew from Cairo to Kennedy Airport, where they were greeted with much fanfare by a crowd of about 50 people carrying plush toys, flowers and bobbing balloons.Among the children was Fadi Alzant, 6, a gaunt boy with pale skin and strawberry blond hair who appeared dazed as the crowd rushed around his wheelchair. An airport employee grew agitated and shouted at people to disperse and to put away their cameras.Fadi, who has cystic fibrosis and weighs about 25 pounds, is suffering from severe malnourishment caused by famine, according to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which coordinated the children’s journeys with assistance from the World Health Organization.He will be treated at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in Queens. Paramedics lifted the tiny, wide-eyed child out of his wheelchair and onto a gurney that dwarfed him even further. Then, they carried him to an ambulance bound for the hospital.Supporters from various aid organizations waited to greet the children.Anna Watts for The New York Times“We love you!” said a woman in the crowd, who was dabbing her eyes.“Let’s not overwhelm them, guys,” someone else said. “Did they get water?”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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      Cease-Fire Talks Between Israel and Hamas Again at an Impasse

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      The latest round of negotiations between Israel and Hamas hit an impasse on Sunday as mediators struggled to bridge remaining gaps and a Hamas delegation departed the talks in Cairo, according to two senior Hamas officials and two other officials familiar with the talks. An Israeli official also confirmed the negotiations had stalled and described them as being in “crisis.”For months, the negotiations aimed at achieving a cease-fire and a release of hostages have made little progress, but signs the two sides were coming closer to an agreement appeared over the last week. Israel backed off some of its long-held demands and a top Hamas official said the group was studying the latest Israeli offer with a “positive spirit.”But the setback over the weekend meant Palestinians living in miserable conditions in Gaza would not experience an imminent reprieve and the families of hostages held by militants would have to wait longer for the freedom of their loved ones.The main obstacle in the talks was the duration of a cease-fire, with Hamas demanding it be permanent and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel expressing openness to only a temporary halt in the fighting.Hamas blamed the lack of progress on Mr. Netanyahu, who vowed again in recent days that the Israeli army will invade Rafah, the southernmost town in the Gaza Strip, with or without an agreement.“We were very close, but Netanyahu’s narrow-mindedness aborted an agreement,” Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, said in a phone interview.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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      Police Clear a Pro-Palestinian Encampment at USC for a Second Time

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      The Los Angeles Police Department removed a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Southern California early Sunday morning, pushing several dozen people out of the campus gates in the latest crackdown on student protesters there.The encampment had sprouted up nearly two weeks ago in Alumni Park, a central quad on U.S.C.’s campus in Los Angeles. Shortly after it did, the university called the police to the campus, where they arrested 93 people, but the protest returned soon after. Los Angeles police said on Sunday morning that they had made no arrests while clearing the encampment for the second time.The university has been in turmoil for several weeks following its decision not to allow its valedictorian, who is Muslim, to speak at graduation. The university cited security concerns, but the valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, said she believed she was being silenced. U.S.C. later canceled its main graduation ceremony altogether, though it will hold a modified celebration this week.On Sunday, police officers in riot gear entered the campus before dawn, pushing about 25 protesters out of the campus’s metal gates. After the police sweep, the quad was littered with blankets, sweatshirts, coolers, snacks and overturned canopies. Only a few of the tents were still standing, barricaded by wooden pallets and decorated with messages and Palestinian flags. Signs taped to trees carried messages such as, “every Palestinian has a right to live just like you and I,” and “disclose, divest, defend.”In recent days, officials had tightened security around the private campus, allowing in only those with a university I.D.Carol Folt, the U.S.C. president, said in a message to students and others on Friday that “there must be consequences” when people flout campus rules. She said the university had started the disciplinary process for people who had violated laws or campus policies.Ms. Folt said that although the university valued freedom of expression, the protest had reached a tipping point.“Free speech and assembly do not include the right to obstruct equal access to campus, damage property, or foment harassment, violence and threats,” Ms. Folt wrote. “Nor is anyone entitled to obstruct the normal functions of our university, including commencement.”Protesters viewed the police operation on Sunday as an unnecessary escalation. Among the demonstrators’ demands are that the university call for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas, detail its investments and divest from companies that they view as enabling “Israel and U.S. colonialism, apartheid, genocide and violence.”U.S.C.’s move to clear the protest encampment comes as the University of California, Los Angeles, continues to face scrutiny over its handling of protests. Police officers did not intervene for hours at that campus last week last week as a group of counterprotesters — many of whom wore pro-Israel slogans on their clothing — attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment. The next night, the police arrested about 200 people at the protest there. More

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      Police Arrest Dozens in Protest at Art Institute of Chicago

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      The police forcibly dismantled a pro-Palestinian encampment at the Art Institute of Chicago on Saturday and arrested dozens of protesters, hours after demonstrators had gathered in a garden at the institute and set up tents.Some of the demonstrators were students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which is affiliated with the institute, the school said in a statement.The Chicago police said on social media that officers had removed the protesters at the school’s request. A Chicago Police spokesman said Sunday that 68 people had been arrested and charged with trespassing.The protesters set up the encampment in the North Garden, which is part of the Art Institute of Chicago museum, at about 11 a.m. on Saturday, the police said. While encampments at some other U.S. schools during the recent wave of pro-Palestinian protests have stood for days or even weeks before police action, in this case the police said that officers “immediately responded” to maintain the safety of the protesters and the public.The People’s Art Institute, the organizers of the protest, said on social media that the demonstrators’ demands included that the institute formally condemn Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, remove any programs that legitimize the “occupation of Palestine” and divest from any individuals or entities that support Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Photos that the group uploaded to social media showed a sign in the encampment that read “Hind’s Garden,” a reference to Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed this year in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza..The school said that it had offered protesters an alternate venue and promised students that they would not face academic sanctions or charges if they relocated there.The statement added that some protesters “surrounded and shoved a security officer and stole their keys to the museum, blocked emergency exits and barricaded gates.”After about two hours of negotiations, the school asked officers to remove the protesters, the police said. Officers issued warnings and eventually removed and arrested protesters, the police said.Videos posted by the organizers showed police forcibly pulling demonstrators out of the human chain they had formed outside the garden while some of the protesters chanted, “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?” More