Larry Summers at the New Work Summit in Half Moon Bay, California, in 2019. Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former treasury secretary steps away to ‘rebuild trust’ after severe backlash but will continue teaching Harvard classes
The Harvard professor and economist Larry Summers said he would be stepping back from public life after documents released by the House oversight committee revealed email exchanges between Summers and the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who called himself Summers’ “wing man”.
Politico reported on Monday that Summers, a former treasury secretary, expressed deep regret for past messages with Epstein.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” he told Politico in a statement.
“I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr Epstein. While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.”
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Besides Summers, the emails released last week revealed how Epstein maintained contact with other business executives, reporters, academics and political players despite his 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.
“For decades, Larry Summers has demonstrated his attraction to serving the wealthy and well-connected, but his willingness to cozy up to a convicted sex offender demonstrates monumentally bad judgment,” Warren said to CNN.
Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifee were killed by Israeli forces on July 31, 2024. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
International outcry and a reporter’s pointed questions weren’t enough to get the State Department to denounce the killings of Al Jazeera journalists.
A Palestinian journalist on Thursday pressed a U.S. State Department spokesperson to characterize the killings of two Al Jazeera journalists by Israeli forces as summary execution.
The heated press briefing followed an airstrike on Wednesday that killed Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifee, and sparked global outrage. Israel’s military acknowledged targeting al-Ghoul, saying he was “eliminated” because he was a Hamas “terrorist,” an allegation the Qatar-based network said was “baseless.”
The death toll of Palestinian journalists and media workers now stands at least 108, including several intentionally targeted by Israel forces, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Said Arikat, the Washington bureau chief of Al-Quds, an Arabic-language newspaper based in Jerusalem, called the strike a “premeditated crime to kill a journalist for doing their job” and a “summary execution” in the press briefing, but State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to affirm the characterizations or condemn the airstrike.
.@SMArikat: Al Jazeera journalists were told to leave by the Israelis, they got in their car and moved and they were bombed, that is summary execution
Patel: We continue to engage with our partners in Israel
Al-Ghoul and al-Rifee were killed in northern Gaza after reporting from near the home of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader who was assassinated in Tehran earlier on Wednesday. They wore press vests and had signs on their vehicle identifying them as journalists; they had last contacted their news desk just 15 minutes before the strike, Al Jazeera reported.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) presented no evidence in a social media post claiming that al-Ghoul was a terrorist and Hamas operative. In March, al-Ghoul reported being stripped, handcuffed, and blindfolded during the course of a 12-hour detainment by Israeli forces; he had been covering an Israeli attack on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Witnesses said Israeli forces severely beat al-Ghoul at the hospital before arresting him.
Anas al-Sharif, another Al Jazeera reporter in Gaza, was on site at a different hospital on Wednesday when his colleagues’ bodies were brought in, and he spoke about the role al-Ghoul had played in the outlet’s war coverage.
“Ismail was conveying the suffering of the displaced Palestinians and the suffering of the wounded and the massacres committed by the [Israeli] occupation against the innocent people in Gaza,” he told his own news outlet.
“The feeling—no words can describe what happened,” he added.
In protest of the killings, Palestinian journalists gathered to throw off their press vests and vowed to continue showing the suffering of Gazans through their work, despite the dangers they faced.
Palestinian journalists in Gaza threw their press vests to the ground in protest against Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi. pic.twitter.com/Dmi4D1MoQ3
Condemnation of the killings of the two Al Jazeera journalists came not just from Gaza but all over the world.
CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement that she was “dismayed” by the killings and that journalists are civilians who should never be targeted.
Defending Rights & Dissent, a U.S.-based civil liberties nonprofit, also condemned the killing of al-Ghoul and said the reasons for it were clear.
“When you ‘eliminate’ journalists, it’s much easier to hide war crimes, it’s easier to spread lies, it’s easier to commit genocide,” Sue Udry, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
In response to the killing, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that journalists “must be protected, and we decry attacks against them.”
William Schomburg, head of the ICRC’s sub-delegation in Gaza, said in a statement that his team had just met with al-Ghoul the previous week to get an update on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. “Journalists in all wars play a central role in highlighting the plight of civilians and in speaking for the voiceless,” Schomburg said.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF, in French), a Paris-based nonprofit, wrote in unequivocal terms about the need for Israel to stop killing journalists.
“RSF is deeply disturbed to see the Israel Defense Forces using social media to justify their targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul,” the organization wrote on social media. “Journalists are not terrorists. This campaign of violence against media in Gaza must stop now.”
The Freedom of the Press Foundation also responded forcefully to the IDF’s claim about al-Ghoul.
“Documenting a war isn’t terrorism, it’s journalism,” the group wrote on social media. “If the IDF can prove al-Ghoul was working for Hamas’ military, it should do so immediately. If not, this looks like a flimsy excuse for intentionally murdering a journalist from an outlet Israel dislikes.”
Israeli forces have killed at seven journalists or media workers affiliated with Al Jazeera during the war, and Israel shut down the network’s local operations in May, citing a security threat, though critics said it was a case of censorship—an attempt to hide the brutality of the assault on Gaza.
In total, 113 journalists and media workers have died since the war began, including two Israelis and three Lebanese, according to CPJ, which says this has been the deadliest period for journalists anywhere in the world since it began collecting data in 1992.
The international outcry over all of the killings has ramped up pressure on the U.S.—which has backed the Israeli assault with weapons and diplomatic support— to condemn them, and Wednesday’s strike on al-Ghoul and al-Rifee has only increased that pressure. Still, Patel, the spokesperson, wouldn’t issue any such condemnation on Thursday.
Arikat also pressed Patel to call for the release of Palestinian journalists being held in Israeli detention centers without charges, but Patel didn’t do so.
As part of its genocidal onslaught on Gaza, Israel is killing media workers at an unprecedented rate, seemingly to prevent the world from seeing the unspeakable atrocities it carries out.
Relatives, colleagues and loved ones of Palestinian journalists Sari Mansour and Hasona Saliem, who were killed while working, mourn during funeral ceremony in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on November 19, 2023. Photo: Anadolu Ajansı / Ali Jadallah
Israel is intentionally assassinating journalists in Gaza. As it wages its genocidal onslaught on the enclave, having murdered at least 13,000 Palestinians so far, Israel is simultaneously killing media workers in order to prevent the world from seeing the unspeakable atrocities it carries out.
“We have never experienced anything like this and we are overwhelmed,” admitted Nasser Abu Bakr, head of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, a Ramallah-based trade union representing Palestinian media workers. “We are losing colleagues and friends every day as a result of the ongoing Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people and the policy of targeted killing against journalists.”
“We can’t keep up with the number of attacks against our journalists,” Abu Bakr continued. “We are receiving more calls and information about … incidents than we can process. Our journalists have always been a target for the Israeli military, but Israel moved from killing [an average of] one Palestinian journalist a year before October 7 to killing [over] one a day.”
And it’s not just Palestinian reporters the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is attacking—any journalist who may potentially disseminate information critical of Israel is a potential target.
Among the long list of reporter casualties is Reuters photojournalist Issam Abdallah, who was killed by an October 13 Israeli strike on the Lebanese border while covering clashes between Hezbollah and the IDF. According to an independent investigation by Reporters Without Borders (RWB), Abdallah was explicitly targeted by Israeli forces—he was clearly identified as a journalist through his press helmet and vest, and he was standing next to a vehicle marked “press” on its roof. Immediately before the attack, other journalists in the area had witnessed an Israeli helicopter flying overhead, so the military was able to clearly see that Abdallah was a non-combatant. According to ballistic analysis done by RWB, the missiles were launched from the side of the Israeli border and “two strikes in the same place in such a short space of time (just over 30 seconds), from the same direction, clearly indicate precise targeting.”
Not even the families of journalists are safe from Israeli retaliation. After learning on air that an Israeli air raid had killed his wife, son, daughter, and grandson, Gaza Al Jazeera bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh rushed to the hospital, followed by press cameras. Upon finding his son there, he knelt over his lifeless body and lamented, “They take revenge on us with our children.”
Just as it has claimed that Hamas was hiding in Gaza hospitals, near schools, and in ambulance convoys in order to justify its bombing and killing of civilians, Israel has peddled the same predictable excuses for these targeted assassinations of journalists. In a chilling November 2 article that effectively doubles as a hit list, the Jerusalem Post spotlighted several independent Palestinian journalists who had been reporting from Gaza and smeared them as part of “Hamas’s propaganda team.”
Then, pro-Israel media watchdog group HonestReporting released a report on November 8 claiming—with little evidence—that the Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times, and Reuters freelance photographers in Gaza knew in advance of the October 7 Palestinian Resistance counter-offensive and even collaborated with Hamas in order be on location to get their shots during the operation.
Israeli officials quickly jumped on the story to vindicate their assassination campaign against Palestinian reporters.
In response to the report, former Minister of Defense and current member of Israel’s war cabinet Benny Gantz said, “Journalists found to have known about the massacre, and [who] still chose to stand as idle bystanders while children were slaughtered, are no different than terrorists and should be treated as such.”
Danny Danon, Israel’s representative to the United Nations, went so far as to declare that these reporters would be put on a hit list, stating on X, “Israel’s internal security agency announced that they will eliminate all participants of the October 7 massacre. The ‘photojournalists’ who took part in recording the assault will be added to that list.”
Gil Hoffman, executive director of HonestReporting, later admitted that he had no evidence to substantiate the claims made, but was just “raising questions.” According to Hoffman, he and HonestReporting “don’t claim to be a news organization.”
Not only is the IDF killing Palestinian journalists on the ground, but the Israeli government is actively denying access to foreign press into Gaza. The only reporters allowed into the strip are those embedded within the IDF, and media outlets such as NBC and CNN have confirmed that in exchange for access, they must submit all materials to the Israeli military prior to broadcast for review and approval.
Additionally, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate reported that as many as 50 media outlets in Gaza have been partially or entirely destroyed by Israeli air strikes since October 7. If Israel is not outright bombing news outlets, then they are actively trying to repress the flow of information coming out. In late October, the Israeli government approved regulations that would allow it to shut down any foreign news channel if it believed the outlet posed a threat to national security. This regulation was then used to block the programming and website of Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen, because of its “wartime efforts to harm [Israel’s] security interests and to serve the enemy’s goals,” according to a statement released by the Israeli security cabinet.
In the absence of foreign press bearing witness to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, Palestinian civilians have taken to documenting the horrors themselves and sharing them on social media sites such as X and TikTok for the outside world to see.
Even before its current war on Gaza began on October 7, Israel had a long history of targeting reporters and news networks. During its 2021 military incursion on Gaza, Israel was accused of “silencing” journalists by press freedom advocates after it bombed the offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press. This occurred just days after it had bombed another building that housed a number of other news outlets, including Al Araby TV, Al Kofiya TV, and Watania News Agency, among others.
According to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, Israel killed 55 journalists from 2000 to 2022, either by live fire or bombardment. This figure includes Shireen Abu Akleh, the beloved Palestinian-American journalist and longtime Al Jazeera correspondent who was shot by Israeli forces while reporting on IDF raids in Jenin, as well as Yaser Murtaja, a cameraman for Palestinian network Ain Media, who was shot and killed by the IDF while covering the 2018 Great March of Return.
Like so many other Palestinian journalists Israel murdered on the job, Abu Akleh and Murtaja were both wearing their press vests at the time of their killings. Immediately after his death, Israel predictably—with no evidence—rushed to accuse Murtaja of being a Hamas fighter in order to cover its tracks.
The day after Murtaja’s killing, Israel’s then-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman bluntly stated, “In the march of terror, there were no innocent civilians. They were all Hamas.”
Israel is losing the information war
Israel relies on its advanced military weaponry and billions of dollars in funding from the US to carry out its genocidal violence against the Palestinian people across Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Its Hasbara and “Brand Israel” campaigns work around the clock to justify its war crimes through outright lies and disinformation.
However, Israel has suffered significant losses in the information war as reports and images of the atrocities have reached millions across the world, many of whom have joined the mass mobilizations in support of the Palestinian cause. On the international stage, Israel is further politically isolated, with more and more countries cutting ties or recalling their diplomatic staff.
This battle of ideas cannot be won through sheer force and US-backed military superiority. Israel cannot prevent information about its atrocities from leaking out, especially in an age of social media in which ordinary Palestinians are emboldened to act as citizen journalists, documenting what they are living through in Gaza for the world to see. As Israel escalates its assassination campaign against media workers, support for the Palestinian Resistance continues to grow.
Grim as the current situation may seem, it speaks to the reality at hand: The people of the world are waking up to the atrocities carried out by the Zionist state and refusing to allow it to continue.
And that speaks to another reality: Israel is living on borrowed time, and that time is running out.
Amanda Yee is a journalist and organizer based out of Brooklyn. She is the managing editor of Liberation News, and her writing has appeared in Monthly Review Online, The Real News Network, CounterPunch, and Peoples Dispatch. Follow her on X @catcontentonly.
