الكاتب: kafej

Washington, DC – Anti-Palestinian sentiment is on the rise in the United States, with politicians from both major political parties backing Israel’s war in Gaza despite the mounting Palestinian death toll and growing accusations of war crimes.

Last week, the war in Gaza dominated the third Republican presidential debate, where competing candidates were unanimous in their support of Israel.

“I’m sick of hearing the media, I’m sick of hearing other people blame Israel just for defending itself,” one of those candidates, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, told the audience.

Such statements cropped up throughout the two-hour event, even when the candidates were discussing topics unrelated to the crisis. But Palestinians were barely ever mentioned, despite a death toll in Gaza that has ticked past 11,000.

In fact, the only time a candidate said “Palestinian” or “Palestine” was when DeSantis bragged about banning a Palestinian student advocacy group from state universities.

Advocates say this is indicative of a wider trend of US politicians — across ideological lines — justifying and denying Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

“There is a bipartisan effort to dehumanise the Palestinian people,” said Ahmad Abuznaid, the executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USPCR).

Abuznaid cited recent episodes in US politics that he said underscore hostility towards Palestinians. They include Democratic President Joe Biden voicing doubt over the accuracy of the Palestinian death count and attacks on Palestinian American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for her criticism of Israel’s military offensive.

“Whether they fail to mention Palestinians, question our death tolls, attack our students and protests, or censure the only Palestinian American representative in Congress, their attempts to silence us won’t work,” Abuznaid said.

“As much as they wish us to disappear, we are here and will be here, and they will be seeing much more of us moving forward.”

Hostility in Congress

At Wednesday’s debate, DeSantis and Nikki Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, used similar language to push Israel to take strong action in Gaza.

“Finish the job once and for all with these butchers, Hamas,” DeSantis said, referring to the Palestinian group that launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7.

Haley echoed that sentiment, saying, “Finish them. Finish them,” in response to a question about whether she would urge a “humanitarian pause” during the fighting.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie — another Republican presidential candidate — followed his appearance in the debate with a visit to Israel on Sunday, where he likewise rejected calls for ending the violence.

A bipartisan delegation of US congress members, including the top lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also made a solidarity trip to Israel this past weekend.

Ohio Republican Max Miller, who has faced outrage for saying that Palestine will be turned into a “parking lot”, accompanied key Democrats on that visit and posted a photo of the group with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew.

Here is my statement as I head home from #Israel.#StandWithIsrael pic.twitter.com/wcnnmLEp9I

— Congressman Max Miller (@RepMaxMiller) November 12, 2023

Advocates have warned that comments like Miller’s could be interpreted as a call for mass violence against the Palestinian people.

But Miller is hardly alone in his sentiments. Congressman Brian Mast suggested earlier this month that there are no innocent Palestinian civilians. “I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II,” he said on the House floor.

Such comments did not provoke a rebuke in the House of Representatives. However, the chamber did vote to censure its sole Palestinian American member, Tlaib, over her criticism of Israel.

Twenty-two Democrats, including the former chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Debbie Wasserman Schultz, joined Republicans in supporting the symbolic punishment, which passed 234 to 188.

Attacks against Tlaib have continued after the censure vote. On Sunday, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn baselessly accused Tlaib of having “alleged ties to Hamas” and “calling for a genocide against the Jewish people”.

Rashida Tlaib has alleged ties to Hamas.

Based on these allegations, it’s sadly not surprising she’s calling for a genocide against the Jewish people.

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) November 12, 2023

Tlaib is one of more than a dozen House Democrats to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, out of a chamber that contains 435 voting members.

Meanwhile, other congressional Democrats have voiced opposition to ceasefire efforts, similar to their Republican colleagues. Democratic Senator John Fetterman, for instance, waved an Israeli flag as he walked by protesters demanding a ceasefire on Capitol Hill last week.

To highlight the solid bipartisan support for Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been sharing videos of left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders expressing opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza.

Sanders is usually one of AIPAC’s most vocal critics, often rebuking the pro-Israel lobby group for spending millions of dollars on election campaigns to undermine progressive candidates.

‘All of them’

Anti-Palestinian sentiment is also appearing in US politics at the state level. In Florida last week, when State Representative Angie Nixon questioned how many dead Palestinians would be enough to end the violence, her fellow lawmaker Michelle Salzman responded by saying, “All of them.”

Nixon had introduced a resolution urging a ceasefire but the measure failed in a 104-2 vote.

Rasha Mubarak, a Palestinian-American organiser from Florida, called Salzman’s comments “vile” and “disturbing”.

“It’s interesting because when the only Palestinian member of Congress calls for an end to the violence and a ceasefire, she’s literally censured,” Mubarak told Al Jazeera, referring to Tlaib.

“And then we have people in the Florida Legislature, but also people in Congress, who have called for the erasure of the Palestinian people.”

Mubarak said support for Israel appears to unite the US political spectrum — with the exception of a minority of lawmakers who are “connecting the dots” between Palestinian liberation, global human rights and injustices at home.

But Mubarak added that Palestinian rights supporters are not discouraged by the pro-Israel consensus in US politics. She noted the growing protests across the country in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

“The movements and the masses of people — and the rare people who are serving in Congress and in state, local, federal positions — are trying to interrupt and disrupt the status quo,” she said, referring to Palestinian rights supporters.

Mubarak also warned that Democrats are ignoring and alienating certain members of their base with their stance towards Israel’s military offensive.

“What we’re seeing is people committing to not voting for Biden, not voting down ballot, not voting for Democrats that weren’t right on this issue,” she said. “I don’t think this time around people are going to forget. People remember.”

Abuznaid, of the USPCR, echoed Mubarak’s comments, saying that unwavering support for the Israeli government could fracture the political left and estrange the Palestinian rights movement.

“The bipartisan support is a challenge for the movement, but the cracks in the system are deepening,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Our movement is larger than ever and growing daily. US complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians will be another lasting stain in this nation’s troubled history. Palestinian Americans remain undeterred and will push until there is a ceasefire and a free Palestine.”

Indian activists have slammed the authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir for putting a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracker on the body of a man facing “terrorism” charges – the first such use of electronic monitoring reported in the South Asian country.

For more than a week now, Ghulam Muhammad Bhat, a 65-year-old resident of the region’s main city of Srinagar, has been walking with the tracker around his ankle, which officials said has been introduced for prisoners out on bail.

The officials said the device will allow security agencies to maintain round-the-clock surveillance on defendants.

Bhat, a lawyer, was a close associate of Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Kashmir’s top separatist leader, who, until a year before his death in 2021, presided over the Hurriyat Conference, the leading separatist group in Indian-administered Kashmir, a region also claimed by neighbouring Pakistan.

Bhat was arrested at his Srinagar home in 2011 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for allegedly financing the activities of the Hurriyat Conference. He was held in a jail in New Delhi and denied bail several times until last week when it was finally approved.

‘Imprisonment by other means’

As part of Bhat’s bail conditions, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in the southern city of Jammu ordered authorities to track his activities 24 hours a day. The court also asked him not to change his residence while he is released on bail.

“The Superintendent of Police, Srinagar shall keep the mobility of the applicant on track so as to notice the activities of the applicant time and again,” the court order said.

A police officer in Indian-administered Kashmir told Al Jazeera the GPS device will help authorities track real-time locations of defendants to ensure they comply with their bail conditions.

“It is GPS- and SIM-based, and it alerts the control room if a person tries to remove it,” the official said on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

But rights activists said the black, square-shaped, water-resistant gadget is a form of “virtual imprisonment” and compromises the privacy of an individual who is facing trial but not convicted.

“We know from other contexts where this technology is used that GPS tracker is imprisonment by other means. Given that it is used against undertrial accused, it relies on the logic that one is guilty until proven innocent. That is injustice,” Mohamad Junaid, a Kashmiri and assistant professor of anthropology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the United States, told Al Jazeera.

Junaid said the worst part is that any form of political dissent can now be seen as a violation of bail conditions. “That makes this new process mind and mobility control, a true techno dystopia,” he said.

Officials defend move

In September, a parliamentary panel recommended the use of GPS trackers on inmates to reduce the stress on India’s notoriously overcrowded jails.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there are 554,034 prisoners in Indian jails and 427,165 of them – 76 percent – are awaiting trial. In Indian-administered Kashmir, where a crackdown on pro-freedom groups has seen thousands of arrests, that number is 91 percent.

Earlier this month, RR Swain, the director general of police in the region, told reporters there was no mechanism to ensure the bail conditions of a suspect freed on bail are being followed. He said real-time monitoring of the accused is necessary.

“So we had to think of something that would address it. We came up with a tracker that is widely used in Western countries. We are happy that we have fixed the first tracker on an accused person,” Swain said.

“I have been told that this person [Bhat] was carrying 5 million Indian rupees [$60,000] in a gas cylinder for terrorists and separatist financing when he was arrested. With the help of the tracker, we can monitor his movements as directed by the court. We are the extended arms of the court,” he said.

Ajai Sahni, a security analyst at the Institute for Conflict Management, a New Delhi-based think tank, told Al Jazeera the GPS tracker is a condition for defendants to get bail.

“Otherwise, for most of these people, it would be difficult to get bail. … It makes things much easier for both the undertrials, so that they can be given bail under greater confidence and for the police so that these people do not get into mischief,” he said.

Sahni said the device is used across the world, especially when an accused faces serious charges.

“In that case, some restrictions can be expected. Invasion of privacy is there till the moment you are arrested. The moment you are accused of a crime, most of your rights are diluted unless they are proven innocent. They [the accused] will go through one restriction or the other, and this [tracker] is better than being in jail,” he added.

However, Ravi Nair, executive director of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, argued that electronic tagging fitted to the body of a person may raise issues of fundamental liberties, such as freedom of movement or a person’s right to privacy.

“The state through tagging seeks to maintain public security, but on the other hand, those subjected to it must be accorded their fundamental rights,” he told Al Jazeera.

He said the use of electronic monitoring raises a number of ethical, legal and practical issues.

“The surveillance potential creates concerns of overregulation and infringement of human rights. The necessity for ensuring informed consent of those chosen to be subject to monitoring should be guaranteed and effective procedures established to deal with unethical or illegal practices,” he said.

The fact that a private firm manufactures the GPS trackers is also a major concern, Nair said.

“It is also important to ask whether the security establishment has developed any standards and ethics in electronic monitoring, or are we creating a new security creep?”

Medan, Indonesia – Ade Andrian, operational manager of the Medan branch of the humanitarian organisation Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C), used to visit McDonald’s at least once a month with his family.

“My favourite order was the family meal,” Andrian told Al Jazeera. “Or if I went to the drive-through, I would always order ice cream.”

But since last month, Andrian has heeded calls across Indonesia to boycott the Golden Arches, along with all Israeli products and goods from Israel’s allies.

“I have not been to McDonald’s since we found out that McDonald’s Israel had been providing assistance and discounts to the Israeli military,” he said. “What is happening here?”

Indonesians began boycotting McDonald’s and other businesses in mid-October after McDonald’s Israel announced on social media that it had handed out thousands of free meals to the Israeli military amid its war with Hamas.

The announcement prompted several Indonesian organisations, including Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), the United People Front (FUB) and the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), to call for a boycott of McDonald’s and other businesses perceived to be pro-Israel, including Starbucks and Burger King.

The boycott comes despite McDonald’s Indonesia, which is owned by PT Rekso Nasional Food, last week announcing that it had “deployed humanitarian assistance valued at IDR [Indonesian rupiahs] 1,5 billion [$96,000]” to support Palestinians.

While McDonald’s is synonymous with the United States, most of its restaurants worldwide are locally owned, and franchisees in numerous Muslim countries have expressed support for Palestinians and pledged money to support relief efforts in Gaza.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, has long been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and does not have an Israeli embassy.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has pressed US President Joe Biden to do more to end “atrocities” in Gaza, and the enclave’s Indonesia Hospital was built in 2011 with donations from Indonesians following a funding drive by MER-C.

On Sunday, tens of thousands of Indonesians, including Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi and the former Jakarta governor and presidential hopeful Anies Baswedan, gathered at the National Monument in Jakarta to express solidarity with Palestinians and call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Due to security fears, several McDonald’s and Starbucks branches near the monument were closed on the day of the demonstration.

Last week, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), Indonesia’s top Muslim clerical body, issued a fatwa making it haram to “support Israeli aggression against Palestine or parties supporting Israel, either directly or indirectly”.

While the extent of public support for the boycotts is unclear, a branch of McDonald’s in Medan that usually does a roaring trade appeared much quieter than usual when visited by Al Jazeera on Tuesday and Thursday.

Staff there told Al Jazeera they had not been experiencing the usual lunchtime and evening rushes and they suspected the boycott calls were to blame.

It is not only McDonald’s that appears to be experiencing a drop off in business.

A Starbucks located at Focal Point Mall in Medan, where staff are usually rushed off their feet, has been almost deserted in recent weeks, an employee told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

“We have noticed that it has been much quieter than usual, although we can’t say for sure why that is,” the employee said. “It could be because of a range of factors like the fact that we don’t have any promotions on at the moment. We don’t know, but no customers have asked us about the boycott yet.”

Starbucks, which operates a similar franchise model as McDonald’s, last month criticised its union for posting “Solidarity with Palestine” on social media above an image of a Hamas bulldozer knocking down a fence during the group’s October 7 attacks on Israel. Starbucks Indonesia did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement to Al Jazeera, McDonald’s Corporation, which is based in the US state of Illinois, said that it was “dismayed by the disinformation and inaccurate reports regarding our position in response to the conflict in the Middle East”.

McDonald’s said it does not fund or support any governments involved in the conflict and any actions by local business partners were made independently without the fast food giant’s consent or approval.

“Our hearts are with all of the communities and families impacted by this crisis,” the company said.

“We abhor violence of any kind and firmly stand against hate speech, and we will always proudly open our doors to everyone. We are doing everything we can to ensure the safety of our people in the region while supporting the communities where we operate.”

McDonald’s Indonesia told Al Jazeera in a statement that it was “unwavering in its commitment to uphold the values of humanity and wants to take an active role in relief efforts in Gaza”.

“We at McDonald’s Indonesia hope for a swift achievement of peace so that there will be no more casualties, especially among children and women, as a result of this conflict,” the company said.

For Indonesians like Andrian, though, spending money on brands associated with Israel remains out of the question.

“We need to ask ourselves who businesses are supporting,” he said. “I support the freedom of Palestine and humanitarian assistance to Palestine.”

Early one morning in the spring of 1969, Jeremy Nobel went downstairs to the living room of his family home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to get ready for school.

There, he found his father sitting on the sofa, looking as white as a sheet and clearly in pain. He instructed Nobel, who was 15 years old at the time, to wake his mother and have her call for help.

The police soon arrived. They slipped an oxygen mask on his father’s face, loaded him onto a stretcher and whisked him off to the local medical centre.

That was the last time Nobel saw his father alive. He died of a heart attack at 47 years old.

After his father’s death, Nobel felt despondent, rudderless. Though he kept up with his school activities and friends, Nobel experienced what he calls spiritual or existential loneliness. He questioned his self-worth and how he could lead a safe and secure life.

He did not talk at all about his father’s death with his friends. “The loneliness was below the surface,” he said.

Looking back, Nobel sees that day in 1969 as pivotal to who he is today: a primary-care physician, public health practitioner and faculty member at Harvard Medical School. But he wishes he had received guidance at the time to help him cope with the loneliness he felt.

Now, more than 50 years later, he has written a book to do just that for others. Published last month, Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection aims to unravel how loneliness can affect physical and mental health — and how it can be addressed.

A national epidemic

The book comes at a time when health experts are raising the alarm on loneliness. In May, the United States Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, released an advisory highlighting loneliness as an “epidemic” and a public health “crisis”.

The advisory defined loneliness as a “distressing experience” arising from “perceived isolation or inadequate meaningful connections”. It added, however, that loneliness is subjective, happening when there is a discrepancy between “an individual’s preferred and actual experiences”.

Still, the Surgeon General said loneliness is “more widespread than other major health issues in the US”, including diabetes and obesity.

Even before COVID-19, about half of American adults said they were experiencing loneliness, the advisory explained. The situation only got worse during the pandemic, when many people were cut off from friends and family and lost work or loved ones.

Though most people feel lonely sometimes, a chronic sense of isolation can have vast health ramifications, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety and premature death.

A Meta-Gallup poll from October indicated that the problem was worldwide. Nearly one in four people, surveyed from across 140 countries, identified as “very” or “fairly lonely”.

“Loneliness is not an illness or a disease. It’s a brain state, it’s a mood, it’s an emotion,” Nobel said.

“The human experience of loneliness can be perhaps best viewed as a biologic signal that there’s something you need, just as thirst is a biologic signal that you need hydration. It’s very good that we’re thirsty, and yet if you become toxically thirsty or dehydrated, you could die from that.”

Nobel has studied loneliness for almost 20 years. He even developed a course on the subject, entitled Loneliness and Public Health, and founded and leads a nonprofit that helps address loneliness through community programming.

His interest in social isolation began in the early 1980s when he was working as a primary care physician in Boston.

As he treated patients of different ages and backgrounds, he started to notice how loneliness can have direct effects on other aspects of their healthcare. They skipped taking their prescribed medications, for instance, or did not schedule follow-up visits.

“Loneliness changes how we behave,” Nobel said. “Our motivation for self-care, taking medications in a timely and appropriate way, partnering with the healthcare delivery system in effective ways — that ability and the motivation to do that becomes weaker as people become lonely.”

While many experts agree that loneliness is a serious health problem, some question calling it an epidemic.

Eric Klinenberg, a sociology professor at New York University, said that “epidemic” implies a significant spike in loneliness. He explained there is not strong enough evidence to support that claim.

“Studies of loneliness are all over the map, and the trends over time are hard to assess,” he said.

“If we call it an epidemic, we signal that it requires extra attention and also that it requires less attention when it ebbs. I think it’s more accurate, and more helpful, to define it as a durable health problem, one that is tied up in modern life and has been for ages.”

Creativity fosters connection

However loneliness is labelled, organisations and individuals are adopting different strategies to tackle it.

The Surgeon General’s report outlines a framework to advance social connections. It includes strengthening community infrastructure like parks and libraries, educating healthcare providers and reducing the potential harms of socialising online.

For Nobel, part of the solution lies in the arts. His interest in that approach was piqued after visiting a 2002 art show. The pictures on display were from children in New York City, depicting what they had experienced during the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Nobel noticed that even if the young artists could not discuss their feelings, they could talk about their art. Studies show that creativity can help foster social connections.

“One of the ways creative arts can be healing is because it allows people to re-explore various things consciously and unconsciously that may be holding them back and causing loneliness,” Nobel said.

After the art show, he felt a renewed passion to explore his creative side, including through poetry. Art allowed him to identify and shape his own story. “I couldn’t have told this story about my dad as few as 10 years ago, but you write it enough, you explore it enough.”

The link between arts and health also intrigued student Diana Shaari, currently a senior at Harvard College.

Shaari experienced loneliness firsthand during her first year of college in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic moved classes online, restricted campus visitors and closed most school buildings.

As a freshman, she knew no one on campus, and it was her first time living away from her parents. It was a solitary experience for Shaari, who describes herself as someone who thrives on social interaction.

“Every day you would wake up by yourself. You wouldn’t run into kids going to and from class. If I wanted to, I could spend an entire week or even more without seeing anyone,” Shaari said. “That all contributed to these overall feelings of loneliness. Also, just being with your own thoughts for too long is never great.”

To counter the social isolation she and her fellow students were facing, Shaari teamed up with Nobel and others to pilot a workshop at Harvard College in 2021 called Colors & Connection.

It was the first in-person event she was able to attend since starting college and her most memorable, she said. The workshop combines art-making and conversations to bring people together. It has since expanded to 31 campuses across the country.

“It was almost therapeutic,” she said. “There are certain universal elements to art and artistic expression that are really key in allowing people to connect and to feel connected with others.”

The pandemic may have exacerbated loneliness, but Nobel said there is a bright side.

Loneliness often comes with shame and stigma, which can prevent people from seeking help. But during the pandemic, loneliness was ubiquitous, Nobel said — allowing people to speak up about it more easily.

“We had a common experience of isolation. We were lonely together,” Nobel said. “That opened the window to talk about loneliness in a very healthy way.”

A five-year-old girl whose body was found encased in concrete in the US 35 years ago has finally been identified, police say – and her mother and a live-in boyfriend have been charged with her murder.

DNA tests and a crucial tip given earlier this year finally gave officers the breakthrough they needed, as they named the young victim – known for decades as Baby Jane Doe – as Kenyatta Odom.

She was killed in her hometown of Albany, Georgia, before her body was dumped 110 miles away outside the city of Waycross, Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Jason Seacrist said.

The little girl was discovered among broken furniture and other rubbish left in woods on 21 December 1988, by a man who stumbled upon a TV cabinet filled with concrete.

He called the Ware County Sheriff’s Office, with officers arriving on the same day and starting an investigation that would remain largely stalled for more than three decades.

“Baby Jane Doe is no longer unnamed, is no longer unknown,” Mr Seacrist said.

“The baby that was thrown out into a trash pile has been identified, and we’re working to bring justice to her.”

The girl’s mother, 56-year-old Evelyn Odom, and Ulyster Sanders, her boyfriend at the time, were arrested on Thursday and remained in custody on Monday.

A grand jury indicted both on charges of felony murder, first-degree cruelty to children, concealing a death and other counts.

Sheriff Carl James, who was one of the detectives sent to the scene that day, said he “really was not prepared for what we were about to find”.

Officers discovered a box concealed in the concrete with a duffle bag. Inside that bag was a child’s body wrapped in a blanket.

Mr James said the case always held a special interest for him and that, over the decades, investigators followed hundreds of leads and tips, most of them leading nowhere.

Decades passed with authorities unable to match the remains to any missing children and only a copy of The Albany Herald newspaper found nearby giving a clue to the child’s origins.

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In December last year, officers once again made a public appeal for any information, with a reward offer of $5,000 (£4,070) from an anonymous donor.

Then a woman called in January this year with a critical tip.

“She knew that there had been a child who had gone missing and that her mother said that the child had gone to live with her father,” Mr Seacrist said.

“This person never really believed that story.”

That tip helped investigators to finally identify young Kenyatta and bring charges in her death.

He wouldn’t comment on a possible motive or how the girl died, although news outlets reported the indictment said the child died after her feet and legs were submerged in hot water.

District Attorney Greg Edwards said: “We believe that there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that will lead to justice being found for Kenyatta.”