families
US declares Israeli units guilty of war crimes – but whitewashes them as ‘individual’ acts
US laws ban sale of arms if they might be used in war crimes – but there will be no pause
The US government has declared five Israeli army units guilty ‘gross violations of human rights’, according to the State Department.
However, while going through the motions of attributing guilt, the US has simultaneously whitewashed the IDF’s systematic genocide and war crimes by describing the crimes as “individual incidents of gross violations of human rights” against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank before the current genocidal onslaught – and claiming that the units in question have taken ‘remedial’ corrective measures.
No findings have been made against the IDF for its slaughter of more than 40,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza, mostly women and children and including summary executions and deliberate bombing of families, schools and hospitals – despite the recent discovery of mass graves in Gaza and the advice of senior government officials to the State Department that Israel is committing war crimes with US-made weapons.
State Department spokespeople have told journalist that it has found no evidence that Israel is committing war crimes in its slaughter since 7 October. The US government is currently trying to stop the International Criminal Court issuing international arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli ministers.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Israeli AI ‘using WhatsApp data’ to target Gaza families for bomb strikes
‘Lavender’ AI set to prioritise hitting targets at home with their families and is said to be using WhatsApp data for its process – but how is Israel getting hold of it?
Israel’s AI system for targeting people for murder in Gaza uses WhatsApp data among its targeting criteria, according to a report in the Israeli 972 magazine and analysis by Paul Biggar of Tech for Palestine.
The platform is marketed as encrypted ‘end to end’, supposedly offering complete security, and WhatsApp told Middle East Monitor that:
WhatsApp has no backdoors and we do not provide bulk information to any government. For over a decade, Meta has provided consistent transparency reports and those include the limited circumstances when WhatsApp information has been requested. Our principles are firm – we carefully review, validate and respond to law enforcement requests based on applicable law and consistent with internationally recognized standards, including human rights.
However, a 2021 Freedom of Information Request to the FBI revealed that WhatsApp’s owner provides ‘near real-time’ information to US authorities – not the content of messages in most cases, but of who is sending and receiving messages:
WhatsApp will produce certain user metadata, though not actual message content, every 15 minutes in response to a pen register [a special type of federal request], the FBI says. The FBI guide explains that most messaging services do not or cannot do this and instead provide data with a lag and not in anything close to real time: “Return data provided by the companies listed below, with the exception of WhatsApp, are actually logs of latent data that are provided to law enforcement in a non-real-time manner and may impact investigations due to delivery delays.”
This potentially fits with reports in Israeli media that Israel is using an artificial intelligence platform named ‘Lavender’ to identify thousands of human targets in Gaza and flag them for an airstrike, with WhatsApp data forming a key part of the AI’s decision process, based on the WhatsApp connections of supposed ‘militants’ – and that the system is designed to kill large numbers of civilians. One source told 972 that when Lavender identifies a target, Israeli forces:
bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.
But of course, people are in WhatsApp groups of all kinds of topics and for all kind of reasons – and merely being in a group which has a ‘militant’ member is no guarantee of any kind of ‘guilt’ – even if the right to resist occupation is disregarded, as Israel, the US and UK do.
This pattern raises the possibility that Israel is obtaining WhatsApp data, whether directly or from the US government. Another possibility is that Israel is accessing the data through the notorious ‘Pegasus’ hacking programme that has been shown to target WhatsApp users, hijacking their phones through WhatsApp even, in the later Pegasus versions, if they don’t open any suspicious links. Journalists, politicians, human rights activists and others are known to have been hacked by governments using the software, including its use by the Saudis against dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
So serious was the issue that in 2021 tech firm Apple sued NSO, the maker of Pegasus, for targeting Apple users. NSO claimed that the software is used only against ‘terrorists’ – as which Israel, the UK, US and some others have designated Palestinian resistance groups – but there is clearly no guarantee that the definition of ‘terrorist’ is not extended in practice to anyone targeted by Israel. Biggar has accused WhatsApp’s owners of breaking international law and violating human rights.
Facebook, which belongs to the same Meta parent group as WhatsApp, has been accused of shutting down the circulation of pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist posts and treating the term ‘Zionist’ as hate speech. In 2020, the company admitted changing its algorithms to filter out left-wing news and analysis from users’ feeds while allowing right-wing propaganda to flow unchecked.
However Israel is accessing the WhatsApp data it is said to be using to target Palestinians and their families, undoubtedly a war crime, the news that it is doing so is a warning for those who dissent from Establishment narratives and use ‘private’ messaging services to do so.
Meta continued its statement to Middle East Monitor:
Our principles are firm – we carefully review, validate and respond to law enforcement requests based on applicable law and consistent with internationally recognized standards, including human rights.
The US and UK governments, however, continue to insist that Israel is following international law and recognised human rights standards, even as it murders tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Former MP Smith quits Labour after suspension for refusing to vote for cuts
Labour under control freak Starmer has no respect or inclusivity, says former Crewe and Nantwich MP Laura Smith, who also cites Starmer’s Gaza stance as a driver for her decision
Former Crewe and Nantwich MP Laura Smith has quit the Labour party with a blistering attack on Labour’s lack of standards and inclusivity under Keir Starmer, after being suspended from the Cheshire East council Labour group for refusing to vote in support of a package of swingeing Tory cuts.
In a public statement about her decision to resign, Smith said that she:
entered mainstream politics back in 2017 after years of activism in social justice
movements after growing up in a family of trade union and socialist values. I stuffed
leaflets In the Labour Party envelopes and served tea and biscuits at the meetings of the local group as a child, and some of my earliest memories were of Saturdays spent In the car with my dad as he drove Gwyneth Dunwoody, the MP at the time around the constituency. I knew my core values from a very early age and I knew from the feeling in the pit of my stomach that my fight was always going to be equality and social justice. I experienced many things growing up that further shaped my beliefs and that feeling only grew as I became an adult.Being supported by my local Labour party and then becoming an MP representing my home towns was something that I couldn’t ever have Imagined. As someone from a challenging background and always struggling to make ends meet, it wasn’t a future that I felt was possible. But it did happen In a whirlwind of political change and hope for an alternative in the snap general election of 2017. I was elevated into a position where I felt that I could make a difference and my motivation was always the same. Those same values that I had harboured since being a little girl.
That two and half years in Parliament was an experience that I will always cherish and struggle with, in equal measures. The stark reality of our political system is one that I cannot pretend hasn’t made me more cynical, less hopeful for a real alternative and unfortunately more worried for the future. When I was elected, I hoped that I could prove to young girls and women who had been just like me that their voices could be heard, that they could make a difference and that they could be the changemakers and creators of a better world. The sad reality is that the system itself hampers the opportunity for real progress.
I would love to say that politics is a safe space for women. It isn’t. I would desperately like to say that debate and conflict is healthy and respectful. It’s not. I wish I could say that the old tropes that politics is a dirty corrupt business were untrue. But sadly it is. And that is from the top of our system all the way down to local politics.
More than anything I would like to say that the Labour Party itself sets a standard of
inclusivity and respect but that would be untruthful in my experience. It has become a place where to have a thought in your head that differs to the Labour leadership and the officials behind the scenes is an offence that can lead to suspension or even expulsion. At a local level it is a space where judgment is felt because as a full-time working mother juggling multiple caring responsibilities as well as often working Saturdays, you can’t sit in meeting after meeting or knock on doors in your rare free hours. I have heard the tutting and watched the finger wagging and listened to the comments and I think that it unfortunately remains the case that to be valued in the party you need to have lots and lots of free time. Naturally that means being either retired, not have caring responsibilities, being healthy both physically and mentally, and more often then not financially secure. Equality right? This Is before even
touching on the factional aspects that rage through the party, manifesting Itself through bullying, belittling, a culture of fear and a general lack of respect.I am not perfect. I don’t have all of the answers. But one thing I am not is a hypocrite. It is for that reason, and after much consideration, I have decided to resign my membership of the UK Labour Party, rather than appeal my recent suspension letter by the local labour group at Cheshire East Council. I was suspended for not voting In line with the whip, but as I stated at the council meeting on the 27th of February I cannot support an austerity budget that places local councillors as the punching bag tor a Tory Government determined to destroy public services. This has not been an easy decision, but it is on balance the right one for me.
The reasons that I have stated combined with the position the Labour Party leadership is taking on international policy as well as domestic issues is now completely at odds with my personal beliefs and unfortunately, I feel that an alternative voice is no longer respected within the party structures. I would like to thank the great many friends that I have within the party who I hope will continue to value and respect me as I value and respect them. I will continue to serve my ward of Crewe South as an independent socialist councillor on the political values that I have always openly and honestly shared and was elected on.
I remain dedicated to fighting for true equality and Justice for the people in this country who quite simply are not receiving anywhere near the service and quality of life that they deserve. There is a complete void of honesty, decency, ambition and leadership from those with the true power to change things. Talk is cheap and the dishonesty that I have encountered on a daily basis in politics is something that I simply could not have imagined.
Bravery is required in desperate times, and democracy can only really work when fear and desire for power is not the driving force behind people’s motivations. It is our actions that define who we are and we owe it to ourselves to be true. I will be true to the little girl I once was and not allow my voice to be erased and my opinions silenced.
Smith was re-elected last year as councillor for Crewe South and will continue to serve, but as an independent.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Even BBC admits Israel lied about slaughter of starving Palestinians gathered for aid
Broadcaster’s ‘Verify’ analysis concludes the obvious
Even the BBC – usually the epitome of ‘both-sidesing’ and the minimisation of Palestinian deaths and suffering – has had to conclude that Israel lied when it claimed that it did not slaughter well over a hundred desperate Palestinians and wound as many as a thousand more who were gathered in a street waiting for an aid delivery.
BBC Verify says it “examined social media videos, satellite imagery and IDF drone footage to piece together what we know… about what happened” – and it concluded:
We have examined exclusive Al Jazeera video filmed close to that second location at the rear of the convoy, about half a kilometre south of the roundabout.
Volleys of gunfire can be heard and people are seen scrambling over lorries and ducking behind the vehicles. Red tracer rounds can be seen in the sky.
Mahmoud Awadeyah said the Israeli vehicles had started firing at people when the aid arrived.
“Israelis purposefully fired at the men… they were trying to get near the trucks that had the flour,” he said. “They were fired at directly and prevented people to come near those killed.”
…There have been reports of casualties being taken to several hospitals.
Dr Mohamed Salha, interim hospital manager at al-Awda hospital, where many of the dead and injured were taken, told the BBC: “Al-Awda hospital received around 176 injured people…142 of these cases are bullet injuries and the rest are from the stampede and broken limbs in the upper and lower body parts.
Israel has claimed that a ‘mob’ – otherwise known as desperate civilians starving because of Israel’s blockade of food, water, fuel and medical supplies – stampeded and attacked the aid convoy, but Israel’s own drone footage shows that this did not happen and any ‘stampede’ was caused by the Israeli gun and tank fire, despite the IDF editing out at least three sections of the video that can be taken to show the Israeli troops’ attacks.
A still from the IDF’s drone footage, which shows people gathered but not attacking or stampeding until troops started firing
Israel also contradicted itself, with various spokespeople saying the Israeli soldiers did not fire at all, that they fired ‘warning shots’ and that they ‘only’ shot at the legs of the crowd.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
UN human rights office ‘appalled’ at rape and execution of women and girls in Gaza
‘Credible’ reports of war crimes against Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers detailed in UN OHCHR statement – yet ignored by western ‘msm’
The horrific treatment of women and girls by Israeli soldiers – including rape and execution – has been condemned by the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights in a damning statement today from the ‘Special Procedures’ group of human rights experts, saying that the actions of the IDF are likely to amount to prosecutable war crimes.
The statement says that the group:
expressed alarm over credible allegations of egregious human rights violations to which Palestinian women and girls continue to be subjected in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Palestinian women and girls have reportedly been arbitrarily executed in Gaza, often together with family members, including their children, according to information received.
“We are shocked by reports of the deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought refuge, or while fleeing. Some of them were reportedly holding white pieces of cloth when they were killed by the Israeli army or affiliated forces,” the experts said.
The experts expressed serious concern about the arbitrary detention of hundreds of Palestinian women and girls, including human rights defenders, journalists and humanitarian workers, in Gaza and the West Bank since 7 October. Many have reportedly been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, denied menstruation pads, food and medicine, and severely beaten. On at least one occasion, Palestinian women detained in Gaza were allegedly kept in a cage in the rain and cold, without food.
“We are particularly distressed by reports that Palestinian women and girls in detention have also been subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers. At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence,” the experts said. They also noted that photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances were also reportedly taken by the Israeli army and uploaded online.
The experts expressed concern that an unknown number of Palestinian women and children, including girls, have reportedly gone missing after contact with the Israeli army in Gaza. “There are disturbing reports of at least one female infant forcibly transferred by the Israeli army into Israel, and of children being separated from their parents, whose whereabouts remain unknown,” they said.
“We remind the Government of Israel of its obligation to uphold the right to life, safety, health, and dignity of Palestinian women and girls and to ensure that no one is subjected to violence, torture, ill-treatment or degrading treatment, including sexual violence,” the experts said.
They called for an independent, impartial, prompt, thorough and effective investigation into the allegations and for Israel to cooperate with such investigations.
“Taken together, these alleged acts may constitute grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, and amount to serious crimes under international criminal law that could be prosecuted under the Rome Statute,” the experts said. “Those responsible for these apparent crimes must be held accountable and victims and their families are entitled to full redress and justice,
While Israel’s atrocity propaganda claiming ‘systematic’ use of rape as a weapon of war have been characterised by an absence of evidence and a demand to be believed regardless how lurid and unfeasible the claims have been, and have quickly collapsed under scrutiny – yet have been propagated by western media and governments anyway – the UN experts’ sober claims carry weight and a call for serious investigation, but has been entirely ignored so far by the UK and US ‘mainstream’ media:
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Protest planned in Tottenham as location of Starmer’s latest ‘pledge’ leaks
Starmer’s ‘equality’ promise is a farce after years of unpunished racism in the Labour right – and Starmer’s support for Israel’s genocide
Keir Starmer and local MP David Lammy will appear in Tottenham between 1pm and 3pm on Monday for what is expected to be Starmer’s announcement of his latest ‘pledge’ – this one promising equal pay protection for ethnic minority groups.
Starmer’s record shows that any ‘promise’ will be worth nothing and jettisoned as soon as convenient – but his decision to stage his blether in one of London’s most diverse boroughs, while he continues to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza and has not even mentioned the International Court of Justice’s binding orders on Israel to stop the slaughter, has prompted outrage and a planned protest:
Starmer’s regime has constantly ignored racism, misogyny and abuse from the right-wing faction that has destroyed the party as a meaningful opposition, often protecting alleged perpetrators – even paedophiles – and covering up even the most serious allegations, while doing nothing to act against perpetrators exposed by the Forde Report. His latest disposable pledge is clearly a feeble attempt to con diverse groups that he cares a jot about their best interests – and his decision to hold it at the centre named after Labour’s first Black MP, who would no doubt have regarded him with contempt, adds insult to injury.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
What Does Reproductive Health Have to Do With Climate Vulnerability?
When Gufasha Moureen was 13 years old, a severe drought hit her village in the Kayunga district of Uganda. All her family’s crops were destroyed, sending them into a financial crisis.
Being the eldest daughter of five children, she had to leave school and help her mother at home with fetching water, cooking and childcare. One day, an elderly man visited their home and told Moureen’s father that he wanted to marry her.
Her father, who was in desperate need of money and saw no other option for Moureen, agreed. Moureen married, got pregnant and died the same year during a complicated childbirth.
The Gufasha Girls Foundation works to educate girls about family planning. Credit: Joan Kembabazi
“That is just one of many devastating stories of how climate change affects young girls worldwide. Had the drought not hit her village, Moureen could have stayed at school and her life could have been different,” says Joan Kembabazi, Moureen’s best friend and founder of Gufasha Girls Foundation, a community-based nonprofit that advocates against child marriage and promotes girls’ education.
In Uganda, young girls and women face multiple challenges. Not only are they disproportionately affected by climate change but they also have limited access to modern contraceptive methods and have no comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education at schools (it was banned by the Parliament in 2016), which makes them even more vulnerable.
Kembabazi sees family planning as an essential tool for climate resilience. That’s why she’s committed to empowering girls and women with education and contraception. “I myself come from a big family and I know how hard it is for my father to provide for his 24 kids,” says the young Ugandan feminist activist. “If he had two or three, it would be much easier.”
Gufasha Girls Foundation is one of many organizations worldwide working to address the ways that poverty, food insecurity, climate change and family planning are linked — and the need to empower girls and women through education and family planning.
Healthy communities, healthy environment
In the Philippines, the PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc. (PFPI) has pioneered an approach that addresses population, health and the environment. When it started in the 1990s as a public health organization raising awareness about the prevention of HIV and AIDS, the foundation worked with young girls who moved to cities to work in the sex industry to support their families at home.
The PATH Foundation Philippines designated areas where fishermen could fish and areas where fishing was prohibited to give the fish stocks time to regenerate. Credit: Ellen Gallares
PFPI staff understood that if they wanted to help prevent young girls from contracting HIV, they would have to look at the root causes that led them to this line of work. They went to the poor fishing communities where the girls came from (namely the Danajon Bank and Verde Island Passage, which are extremely rich in marine biodiversity) and learned that fishermen there were facing pressure to catch more fish to sustain a growing population.
But since the fish stocks did not have time to regenerate, there were fewer fish every year. This meant that the families had less food and income and were more inclined to send their daughters away to contribute to the budget.
Between 2008 and 2013, PFPI worked with other organizations and the local community to improve the management of 2,000 hectares of marine protected areas. They designated areas where fishermen could fish and areas where fishing was prohibited to give the fish stocks time to regenerate.
Crushed by negative news?
Sign up for the Reasons to be Cheerful newsletter.
[contact-form-7]
Over the course of five years, the fish stocks increased and the food security and economic situation improved. The fishermen also started branching out into other ways to make money, such as selling produce from vegetable gardening, livestock and fowl keeping, running small businesses and tourism.
Besides sustainable management of resources, PFPI also addressed the health needs of the communities. In these isolated rural areas where access to contraceptives was limited to only a few health clinics, it partnered with small convenience stores that started selling condoms and birth control pills in every village.
The PATH Foundation Philippines has pioneered an integrated approach that addresses population, health and the environment. Credit: PATH Foundation Philippines
The foundation worked with local leaders — mainly youth, couples, women and fishermen — who then educated their peers about the benefits of family planning, HIV prevention, water and sanitation and malnutrition. Through these peer educators and educational shows on local TV and radio, PFPI was able to reach 1.5 million people. As a result, the rate of contraceptive use among married women of reproductive age increased from 31 percent to 45 percent.
Following its success in the Philippines, PFPI has been advocating for this integrated approach to address climate change, food insecurity and public health in other places in need around the world.
A lack of recognition
On the local level, this approach has been replicated in many parts of the world, including in Venezuela, Colombia, Madagascar, Uganda and Nepal). But on the national level, securing climate and gender justice is not always high on policy makers’ priorities.
At last year’s COP28 in Dubai, representation of women was staggeringly low: only 15 out of 133 world leaders present were women. “When it comes to decision-making power, you can’t make decisions that have the whole world in mind when half the population is not represented in the room,” says climate and community development expert Carissa Patrone Maikuri.
Young girls and women in Uganda have limited access to modern contraceptive methods and no comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education at schools. Credit: Joan Kembabazi
According to the Feminist Climate Justice report, by 2050, up to 158 million more girls and women might be pushed into poverty due to climate change. And yet, many countries’ adaptation plans still don’t mention sexual and reproductive health and rights or universal education as essential human rights or as important adaptation strategies.
Presently, more than 218 million women in low- and middle-income countries want to avoid pregnancy but are not using a modern method of contraception. Globally, nearly half of all pregnancies are unintended.
Turning the tide
It makes sense that, when women are able to choose whether, when, with whom, or how many children to have, they can further pursue their education, tend to have better access to work opportunities, and can improve their own health and that of their families. But the connection to climate change can be harder for people to make.
Patrone Maikuri is among those working to spread the message that family planning can boost women’s resilience to environmental and climatic shocks and stressors. “Many climate folks don’t understand how sexual and reproductive health and rights [are] connected to climate resilience, and as a result, they shy away from the conversation,” she says. “But in the past few years, there has been a small movement that is looking at climate action in a more holistic and intersectional way.”
Become a sustaining member today!
Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can.
A growing number of international organizations have been advocating for gender equality and women’s and girls’ reproductive rights to be embedded into climate solutions and climate justice. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted voluntary and rights-based family planning as a climate adaptation strategy in its 2014 assessment report. And in 2023, the UN Women called for a new feminist climate justice approach.
The tide is turning, according to Carina Hirsch, head of advocacy and policy at the nonprofit Margaret Pyke Trust. She points to the growing alliance of health-focused organizations that are advocating at a national level with both climate and conservation sectors as well as growing interest from donors to fund this kind of work.
A Local Adaptation Plan of action review workshop in Nepal. Credit: Ipas Nepal
For her, one of the most exciting recent developments was the announcement at COP28 that the UK will provide £16 million in funding focused on the importance of reproductive choice as part of climate resilience building.
Khusbu Poudel, the program coordinator at reproductive rights nonprofit Ipas Nepal, sees this as a welcome change. Nepal is one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world, and Ipas Nepal helped local governments prepare Local Adaptation Plans for Action, which integrate gender, climate and sexual and reproductive health and rights. “Investing in women, children and adolescents is one of the most impactful climate actions a country can make,” says Poudel, who participated at COP28.
The urgency, Hirsch notes, is clear: “We cannot wait. Climate change is coming no matter what and we know it,” she says. “The least we can do is to make people, particularly women and girls in remote rural communities, that are being hit hardest by climate change, more resilient.”
The post What Does Reproductive Health Have to Do With Climate Vulnerability? appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
Why Schools Are Welcoming Intergenerational Tutoring
This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.
At a desk wedged between a hallway vent and a classroom door, Marge Mangelsdorf coaxed Harlan to write down what he remembered.
The two had just finished reading Hi! Fly Guy, a popular children’s book about a boy and his pet bug. Now it was time for Harlan, a first grader at Bayless Elementary School in St. Louis County, to review the plot and characters with his tutor. But while his vocabulary was improving, he appeared hesitant about speaking and writing prompts like these.
“In the beginning, there was a fly,” said Marge. Clad in white sneakers and a floral print shirt on a sunny November morning, she gave off the air of a gentle but insistent grandparent. “And then he was caught, where — in a jar? And then what happened?”
For a moment, Harlan grimaced. Then, gripping a pen topped with an electric light, he began writing in an unsteady script.
Marge Mangelsdorf, a 22-year Oasis veteran, working with first grader Harlan. Credit: Kevin Mahnken
Mangelsdorf spends several days each week in empty classrooms and corridors like these, working with kids through Oasis Intergenerational Tutoring. The program, which pairs volunteers with students for 30–45 minutes each week, is overseen by the Oasis Institute, a St. Louis-based nonprofit that promotes healthy aging through a mix of community involvement and continuing education. According to the Institute’s leadership, intergenerational tutoring has spread to 15 states, though its greatest concentration is in Missouri, where it began 35 years ago.
Participating students between kindergarten and the third grade are identified by their teachers as needing academic or social-emotional support. And while some skew younger, the average volunteer is around 72 years old, with many resembling Mangelsdorf, a mother of three grown children who has lived in nearby Affton for her entire life. After 22 years tutoring in Bayless Elementary and other schools, Oasis has become her later-life mission.
It’s a form of service that addresses critical needs arising from the educational catastrophe of Covid-19. Harlan and his classmates were toddlers when schools began to close in March 2020. Nearly four years later, standardized testing results indicate that elementary schoolers around the country lost the equivalent of years of learning, with students in the St. Louis area still reading and doing math at a lower level than they did before the pandemic. Driven by desperation, and financed by millions of dollars in federal funds, states and districts have built up their own tutoring efforts or contracted with existing ones.
Crushed by negative news?
Sign up for the Reasons to be Cheerful newsletter.
[contact-form-7]
Oasis’s model holds a unique appeal. Its workforce of largely retired volunteers cost districts a comparative pittance in fees, making their continuing presence sustainable even after Covid recovery grants expire this year. What’s more, their time in schools yields a secondary benefit to the tutors themselves, who remain engaged in the wider world rather than receding into inactivity. Some spend over a decade in the program, building friendships with school staff and their fellow tutors, said Paul Weiss, Oasis’s president.
“The theme is: How do we connect older adults with each other, ideas, and activities in ways that increase the footprint of their lives?” said Weiss. “And how do we position older adults to be more than a population that’s served, but to be a population that is a vital part of American life?”
For her part, Mangelsdorf said she appreciates the opportunity to watch local kids grow throughout the school year. At the end of her session with Harlan, she announced that she would ask that his teacher bump up the difficulty level of his reading materials. Reaching into her bag, she produced a handful of seasonal stickers — accumulated over the years along with an array of children’s books that she awards as prizes — and let him choose between pumpkins and Pilgrims.
“You really did pretty good, okay? And you tried.”
A nationwide experiment
Mangelsdorf, and thousands like her, are participating in a kind of nationwide experiment in high-dosage tutoring, which has raised the hopes of both families and policymakers over the last few years of hampered learning.
The excitement emerged from a remarkable empirical consensus, which shows one-on-one and small-group tutoring to be among the most effective educational reforms that schools can use to lift student achievement. A 2020 research review, gathering the results of 96 randomized controlled trials, showcased the wide scope of tutoring offerings that deliver significant learning advantages, including both reading- and math-focused programs that employed either professional educators or community volunteers.
Oasis tutors’ support for students often goes beyond schoolwork. Some stay in touch with their pupils for years afterwards. Credit: Kevin Mahnken
Advocates quickly embraced tutoring as a solution to students’ clear backsliding during the transition to virtual learning. But questions remained about whether the approach could be successfully scaled up.
To reach the tens of millions of kids who fell behind during COVID, districts needed to recruit an army of educators at a moment when most adults were still concerned about the danger of stepping into schools. Teachers and paraprofessionals, generally found to be the most effective tutors, were experiencing historic levels of burnout, while both private- and public-sector employers struggled to fill openings.
States did what they could to fill the gap, with one analysis of pandemic spending plans showing that districts planned to commit $3 billion to tutoring initiatives. With nearly $200 billion in federal ESSER money expiring next year, however, schools are already feeling a pinch in core academic programs, let alone supplemental offerings.
Access to Oasis tutors costs districts and schools a nominal fee, which Weiss estimates supports roughly six percent of the program’s total price tag. Offerings include reading material and workbooks, summer training for tutors, further coaching during the school year and sometimes help with building program-specific libraries. In cases where those costs are prohibitive, the program sometimes offers discounts. And the Oasis Institute, which operates physical locations in eight hub cities, has recently introduced tutoring programs in southeast Alabama, upstate New York, and the San Antonio area.
Tutors don’t typically bring prior instructional experience to their work (though most are former parents, and many volunteer in a variety of school settings outside of Oasis), but their involvement generally adheres to the guidelines for successful tutoring programs laid out in prior research: It is principally geared toward honing elementary reading skills, conducted at regular intervals and delivered during the school day.
Though Oasis hasn’t yet undergone a rigorous study, the terms of one of its federal grants require the organization to provide proof of its effectiveness. In a sample of 300 students, 97 percent of students working with an Oasis tutor showed improvement in reading performance on a range of standardized exams. In a 2023 survey of educators in schools where Oasis works, 80 percent of classroom teachers said they’d seen improvement in their students’ reading skills, and 67 percent said they’d perceived an improvement in those students’ attitudes at school. Virtually every administrator polled said they would continue to welcome Oasis tutors in their schools.
Jason Sefrit. Courtesy of the Oasis Institute
Jason Sefrit is one of the program’s loudest advocates. The district superintendent in the city of St. Charles — a northwestern suburb of St. Louis, and one of Missouri’s largest cities — said the assistance offered through Oasis provided a sorely needed asset as his schools worked to bring children back to pre-pandemic levels of achievement. In his daily visits to district campuses, Sefrit said, he often walks past half a dozen Oasis tutors huddling with pupils in the halls.
“It’s not a want, it’s a necessity,” he remarked. “These kids rely on their tutors each week to support them.”
That support goes beyond schoolwork. Though tutors are typically assigned to different students each year, they often cultivate deep ties with children by learning their interests and listening to their stories. Some students come from unstable families, while others are simply grateful to have a regular, unfiltered interaction with an adult who isn’t a teacher or family member.
Stacy Butz said that academic gains are cemented by familiarity and mutual trust between adults and students. A reading specialist who has spent 28 years in schools, she also coordinates Oasis’s tutoring efforts at her St. Louis County school district of Ladue. Even before taking on that role, she was impressed by how close students grew to their tutors.
“In a half-hour, they’re able to make gains in reading, writing, and communication skills and develop this beautiful relationship along the way,” said Butz. “A lot of surrogate grandparents are developed because of the connections that are made.”
Become a sustaining member today!
Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can.
Over nearly a quarter-century working as a tutor, Mangelsdorf said her students confided so much to her about their home lives and families that she sometimes feels “like a confessor.” The intimacy she forms with kids like Harlan doesn’t just provide immense personal satisfaction. It’s a necessary component to helping them advance.
The fulfillment she gets from that challenge is distinct from what she experienced in her days as a small business owner — or even from her work as an advocate for disabled adults, which she began after raising a child with special needs. One of her daughters, a teacher, also spends her life helping kids; but the interpersonal effects of one-on-one tutoring differ even from those of classroom instruction.
“It’s got to come from within the tutor, and it’s got to draw out of the kid what they need,” she reflected. “I know a lot comes from the teachers, so I’m not taking anything away from any teacher. But maybe my little bit of input pushes a student past where they already were.”
‘Older adults don’t get looked at’
Whatever the effects of tutoring on young kids, Oasis’s work is also meant to help their volunteers.
Gerontologists have long observed the dangerous tendency of seniors to become disconnected from the world outside their homes. The loss of job and social responsibilities, as well as declining physical mobility, has been linked in research studies to higher levels of mortality and severe health problems, including dementia.
More than one-quarter of American seniors live by themselves — far more than similarly aged people in other countries, and more than the combined numbers of those living with their adult children or extended relatives. In a poll conducted earlier this year by the University of Michigan, one in three Americans between the ages of 50 and 80 said they only infrequently had contact with family, friends or neighbors, a significant jump from 2018.
Paul Weiss. Courtesy of the Oasis Institute
Weiss said that pervasive isolation was what motivated Oasis Institute founder Marylen Mann to look for more opportunities for older adults to contribute. In visits to senior living facilities in the early 1980s, he said, Mann saw residents’ basic needs being attended to, but lamented that their wisdom and life experience were being allowed to wither.
“One of the things that’s hardest is that older adults don’t get looked at,” Weiss said. “They don’t get touched, they don’t get engaged with.”
But when given the chance to be active and help others, seniors’ quality of life can dramatically improve. A 2020 Harvard University study found that adults over 50 who volunteered at least two hours per week were less likely to express loneliness, depression and hopelessness and more likely to be optimistic and purposeful. Putting them in direct contact with school-aged children might be the best way to leverage their talents, especially given America’s growing number of seniors; by the 2030s, the US Census estimates, people over the age of 65 will outnumber those under 18.
Butz said that the benefits of tutoring could be measured in the ties strengthened between local community members. Volunteers often encounter their pupils around their neighborhoods and attend milestone events like elementary school graduations.
Asked to name memorable tutors from her years of working alongside them, she recited a litany of Silent Generation names: Thelma, who stayed with Oasis until she turned 90; Bernard, who spread a love of chess through his students to the rest of their elementary school; Ray, who taught his student to ride a bike in the school parking lot.
“They are taxpayers, and the more opportunities they have to come into our buildings and volunteer their time, the better,” Butz said. “Many of our tutors are previous parents as well — their kids went to our elementary schools, and now they’re giving back.”
‘More positive than playing checkers’
Nick Hall has tutored for nearly a decade in the Ferguson-Florissant School District, where he, his father, children and grandchildren all attended. The former sales executive was initially hesitant to be paired with young children, but his reservations evaporated upon contact with his first student: Kanye, a first-grader who was capable of excelling academically but struggled at times with classroom behavior.
The two forged a bond, in part because Hall himself dealt with disciplinary problems in school. “There are teachers all over the St. Louis area spinning in their graves about the idea of me having anything to do with kids learning anything,” he said.
As he moved through the rest of his elementary years, Kanye would bump into Hall around his elementary school, stopping to crack jokes or occasionally play basketball. Courtside banter sometimes turned to friendly advice on how to stay out of trouble.
Tutor Nick Hall with his former student, Kanye. Courtesy of Nick Hall
Hall kept up his school visits, but the two lost touch as Kanye advanced through middle and high school. Hall said he asked after his former pupil, hoping for good news about his academic and social progress. But the pandemic made it impossible to connect.
This fall, after working with district officials to arrange a visit during the school day, Hall surprised Kanye in the middle of a class period. He hardly recognized the high school junior, who has sprung up well over six feet. Now Hall hopes they can occasionally meet for lunch as the transition from K–12 approaches.
Not every tutor-pupil pairing sparks the same magic, he acknowledged, and a disappointing experience of online tutoring during the pandemic was much less productive than face-to-face interactions. But Hall said he’ll keep working in schools for at least a few more years, perhaps until he reaches the 12-year mark. He likes the symmetry of the dozen years he spent as a student in Ferguson and a subsequent dozen spent working with students.
“It gives people like me — who are looking for something to do that’s more positive than just playing checkers in the afternoon at the senior center — something to do and a place to do it,” he concluded. “It gives you more than a little bit of satisfaction about how you spent your afternoon when you get done with one of these sessions.”
This story was produced by The 74, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on education in America.
The post Why Schools Are Welcoming Intergenerational Tutoring appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
Israeli families demand investigation as truth about mass ‘friendly fire’ deaths starts to percolate
‘Immense’ Israeli death toll from IDF shells, missiles and bullets is already on record – now Israeli families demand immediate investigation
Furious Israeli families have demanded an immediate investigation into the deaths of their loved ones caused by Israeli military fire during the 7 October Hamas raid.
The fact of ‘immense’ deaths to so-called ‘friendly fire’ has already been very quietly admitted by the IDF and reported by Israeli media, but has been ignored by western ‘mainstream’ media – including the UK’s – and have been slow to percolate into the awareness of ordinary Israelis, but the evidence is overwhelming that many and probably most of those killed during that day were killed by IDF weapons, fired either in panic and incompetence or as part of the military’s ‘Hannibal directive‘ to kill potential captives rather than allow them to be taken.
Ynet’s report of the IDF’s claim it would be wrong to investigate deaths because the number of deaths is ‘immense’
But awareness and outrage appear to be growing. Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that:
Family members of Israelis who were killed on October 7 after a standoff between Hamas terrorists and the Israeli army led to the army firing a tank at a house where the civilians were held hostage are demanding that the military probe its actions that day.
According to the paper, the families are insisting that the investigation take place right now and not, as the regime has proposed, after the ‘war’.
As journalist Jonathan Cook noted:
Their concerns have been heightened by the recent admission from an Israeli commander that he ordered a tank to fire a shell into a house where 14 Israelis had been taken hostage by Hamas in Be’eri. Many of those hostages were incinerated by the shell, along with the Hamas fighters. Nonetheless, Israel cited the charred bodies as proof of Hamas’ barbarity, and justification for its subsequent genocidal campaign in Gaza – rather than as evidence of its own scorched-earth policy, one indifferent to the lives of its own civilians.
Similarly, the incinerated bodies of Israelis found in cars at a rave near the kibbutz and near the Gaza border were caused by weapons that Hamas does not have – and released hostages have testified that they were protected and treated well by Hamas fighters but were fired on by Israeli helicopters and plans as their captors took them across the border, killing many.
So intense was this firestorm that for weeks the Israeli regime thought that some two hundred bodies it initially thought were Israelis were in fact Palestinians – and clearly Hamas did not incinerate them. Israeli police have also confirmed that many killed at the rave were in fact shot by Israeli helicopters.
The Israeli mainstream media have in fact been more honest than their UK and US counterparts in reporting these facts. Now that the families are demanding action, will UK papers and broadcasters finally start to cover them? Don’t hold your breath.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Israeli government ‘ordered assassination’ of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer
Netanyahu cabinet approved murder of Palestinian poet who mocked discredited atrocity propaganda, says Tikkun Olam security site
The Netanyahu government officially approved the murder of Palestinian poet, academic and activist Refaat Alareer, according to a website known for its sources inside the Israeli security apparatus.
Tikkun Olam, a news site run by writer Richard Silverstein, whose title refers to a concept in Judaism of healing the world, has broken a string of firsts since its creation in 2003 – and it has this to say about the assassination of Prof Alareer, who had mocked Israel’s now thoroughly-discredited atrocity propaganda about the murder and dismemberment of babies during the 7 October Hamas kibbutz raid:
Israel ordered Refaat Alareer’s assassination after derided Israeli claim of babies burned in an oven as hoax. He was right, but died for it.
Refaat was a Palestinian poet and professor. It’s rare that countries assassinate poets. Not just murder them in wartime, but intentionally assassinate them…
But Refaat was an unusual combination of teacher and activist. He not only taught his students Palestinian poetry. He also taught them Hebrew poetry. For this, he was profiled in the New York Times: In Gaza, a Contentious Palestinian Professor Calmly Teaches Israeli Poetry. And the Times published an op-ed by him as well: My Child Asks, ‘Can Israel Destroy Our Building if the Power Is Out?’
Unlike Israel’s educational system, which promotes a triumphalist ideological indoctrination, Alareer’s teaching of Hebrew poetry analyzed and appreciated the beauty of the language, but critiqued that ideology underpinning it. This clearly unnerved the Times editors, presumably pressured by one of alphabet soup of pro-Israel media watchdog groups (CAMERA, MEMRI, Honest Reporting, etc), and published a “correction” to the profile.
He responded to them (unfortunately they did not offer a full quotation of what he wrote):
…He denied that there was a “substantial change” in his teaching and said that showing parallels between Palestinians and Jews was his “ultimate goal.” But he said that Israel used literature as “a tool of colonialism and oppression” and that this raised “legitimate questions” about Mr. Amichai’s poem.
Apparently, this sort of social-political-ideological analysis of literature, a method taught at almost all educational institutions, troubled these editors. Instead, their correction implied he was a propagandist, rather than an academic professor…
I broke the story here about Israel’s security cabinet issuing the Amalek Directive to assassinate six senior Hamas leaders and their families. It also similarly targeted specific journalists and their families. The IDF has murdered 80 journalists suggesting that it is deliberately targeting them for execution. This is a war crime.
An Israeli security source confirms my suspicion that the cabinet ordered Refaat’s execution, because his joke marked him as being a member of the tribe of Amalek. An eternal enemy of the Jewish people. He was no such thing of course.
He was a poet, a teacher who loved literature. He was also a champion of his people. He was an implacable enemy of injustice. For that he died. Along with him, Israel killed his brother, sister and their four children. It knew it would them along with the intended target. But killing entire families is now the Israeli modus operandi...
Refaat was displaced multiple times during this war and ended up at his sister’s home along with his parents, wife and children. A few days ago, Refaat moved with his wife and children to an UNRWA school in al-Tufah neighborhood in Gaza according to his family.
However, a close friend of Refaat’s told Euro-Med Monitor that he had received an anonymous phone call from someone who identified himself as an Israeli officer and threatened Refaat that they knew precisely the school where he was located and were about to get to his location with the advancement of Israeli ground troops.
While the credibility of the threat itself is unclear, it contributed to prompting Refaat to move back to his sister’s apartment, believing it was more concealed than an open and overcrowded school where it would have been difficult to hide.
For weeks since the start of this war, Refaat has been receiving numerous death threats and hateful messages from Israeli accounts on social media after prominent public figures [Bari Weiss, among others] singled him out for harassment and incitement.
In 2014, Israel bombed Refaat’s home in Shejaiya and killed over 30 of his and his wife’s families.
Read the full story, including details of how Refaat Alareer was stalked, threatened and ultimately murdered, and details of how Silverstein’s attempts to spread the news on social media were censored, here.
Many if not most of the Israeli victims of the Hamas raid are now known to have been killed by Israeli forces as part of the so-called ‘Hannibal doctrine’. Despite the abundance of evidence, the UK and other western media continue to ignore it.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.