Up First Briefing: Truce in Gaza extended for 7th day; Henry Kissinger dies at 100″ — An Update on Israel and Hamas
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Israel and Hamas agreed to extend their truce for a seventh day, allowing for more aid for Gaza and exchange of hostages and prisoners. The extension came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the area for his third trip since the Hamas attacks.
Sikh anti-Arab hate crimes are uniquely complicated: How Linah Mohammad first learned tatreez, and how she later learned to take care of her art
Kissinger was a huge figure in U.S. foreign policy. “I sought Kissinger’s advice many times over the years, but a month ago,” he said. Kissinger was the national security adviser to both Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He played a major role in U.S. relations with Russia, formerly known as the Soviet Union, China and major Arab nations. It is expected that the House will vote to expel GeorgeSantos. He’s currently facing more than 20 federal criminal charges, including fraud, money laundering and conspiracy, according to a House Ethics Committee report.
The Justice Department announced charges yesterday against an Indian national for allegedly taking part in a murder-for-hire scheme on U.S. soil. The alleged plan involved the assassination of an American citizen who is a leader in the Sikh separatist movement. Court documents do not specify the intended victim, but Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the general counsel for the advocacy group Sikhs for Justice, said on X that he was the target.
The families of the three men of Palestinian descent who were shot in Vermont do not believe that the shooting was hate-motivated. But investigators say they don’t have enough evidence to determine a motive. NPR’s domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef explains why tracking anti-Arab hate crimes is uniquely complicated:
All Things Considered producer Linah Mohammad was 9 or 10 years old when she first learned the centuries-old Palestinian embroidery art form called tatreez. She practiced with her grandma in her home in Jordan. During his time in Washington, D.C., Mohammad became familiar with the art. She writes that tatreez leads her back home, and that it connects her with a lot of women who paved the way before her.
An Analysis of the Chittenden County Sheriff’s Office Action against a Sikh Man’s Attack on a UCR Code 31
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“Although we do not yet have evidence to support a hate crime enhancement, I do want to be clear that there is no question that this was a hateful act,” said Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George during a press conference on Monday.
Nonetheless, the men’s families are pushing to have the attack prosecuted as a hate crime. Kinnan Abdelhamid, one of the victims, left the hospital on Monday. In a statement, his parents said their son is “still shaken from this horrific attack” and worried about his friends, Hisham Awartani and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, who remain hospitalized.
According to an analysis by the AAI, several states continued to collect data tracking anti-Arab hate crimes under the original UCR code known as “Bias Code 31.” These were converted to anti-Other Ethnicity/national Origin bias incidents when they were submitted to the federal database.
“The Anti-Arab category is, frankly, a newer one,” said Maya Berry, executive director of the AAI. It creates a very real challenge for accurate data about us that way.
The omission of the category meant that even during periods when it was known that anti-Arab sentiment was high, such as during the period after the 9/11 attacks, there was no measurement of the scale of the backlash. Berry said it also carried troubling implications for whether law enforcement was sensitized to anti-Arab bias.
“It also impacts the training that local law enforcement is going to receive about how to engage in local communities,” she said. They may not be able to correctly identify a hate crime if they don’t receive it in their training.
In 2015, Bias Code 31 was introduced in the national reports after a terrible attack on a Sikh house of worship. In 2012, a white supremacist opened fire at a Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisc., killing six people. The incident prompted several organizations to push for a broadening of bias motivation categories in the UCR system. Along with the anti-Arab Bias Code 31, codes were also added to document anti-Mormon, anti-Jehovah’s Witness, anti-Eastern Orthodox, anti-Other Christian, Anti-Buddhist, anti-Hindu and anti-Sikh crimes.
“Anti-Muslim hate crimes pose a real difficulty because of an attenuated relationship with law enforcement, with immigration authorities, language barriers among other things,” said Brian Levin, former founding director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
Levin said that post-9/11 surveillance programs undermined the trust that Arab and Muslim communities otherwise might have built with local and federal law enforcement.
Source: For years, the FBI quietly stopped tracking anti-Arab violence and hate crimes
What Is Underreported in New Zealand and Where Is It Coming From? A Toy Model of the Insignificance of Unreported Activity
“So I really think when we’re looking at this, we have to remember that there are certain communities where underreporting, I believe, is far more rampant than in other communities,” he said.