Ibrahim Hamdoun, 66, was attacked and severely beaten by Jewish settlers. (Photo: via WAFA)
April 29, 2021
A Palestinian shepherd was injured today after extremist Jewish settlers severely assaulted him northwest of the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, according to sources.
Ibrahim Hamdoun, 66, from the village of Mareeha, told WAFA that three settlers from the illegal Israeli settlement of Mevo Dotan severely beat him as he was grazing his stocking in his land, located near the illegal settlement.
Medical sources said that Hamdoun was admitted to the hospital due to being severely beaten, which caused him moderate injuries, bruises, and bleeding. His condition was reported to be stable.
Settler violence against Palestinians and their property is routine in the West Bank and is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities.
There are over 700,000 Israeli settlers living in colonial settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in violation of international law.
Muath Hamed claims to have been interrogated by an individual he believes to be an Israeli intelligence officer in Spain. (via Facebook)
Tamara Nassar -28 April 2021
A Palestinian journalist says that an agent of Israel’s international espionage and assassination agency Mossad questioned him in Spain.
The troubling incident raises questions about Spanish government complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights.
Muath Hamed, a journalist at the London-based Al Araby TV, left the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah to Turkey in 2014, where he spent five years.
He moved to Spain in March 2019, where he is seeking asylum.
He published an article in December 2019 at the website al-Araby al-Jadeed headlined, “With documents… this is how the Mossad targets Palestinians in European countries.”
It is about how Israel tries to recruit Palestinians living in Europe as collaborators. The article sheds light on a shady international recruitment network which involves front organizations and fake Islamic charities.
Although the piece had been written for a year, Hamed decided to wait until he was in Spain to publish it for safety reasons.
Questioned
It all started when Hamed was summoned for questioning in the city of Bilbao in the Basque Country by two officers from Spain’s Civil Guard, Nicolas and Javier, in December 2020.
He was only given these first names.
Hamed told The Electronic Intifada that he was asked some general questions about his work, but that he grew suspicious when Javier asked him an odd question.
Javier asked him what his reaction would be if he were to encounter the Israeli ambassador or an Israeli intelligence officer in Spain, Hamed recalled. He said he would do nothing.
In February, Javier called Hamed again, summoning him for questioning.
Javier asked Hamed to bring a Red Cross document confirming that Hamed had been jailed by Israel from April 2004 to July 2005 according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Hamed arrived at the Civil Guard headquarters in Spain’s capital on 11 February. The building’s front desk refused to check his identification card or register his name in the daily log as is the usual practice, Hamed told The Electronic Intifada.
Hamed said the building was mostly empty as this was after working hours. He said he was escorted by someone in plainclothes to a room where he found Javier with another man dressed in a suit.
Javier introduced Hamed to someone he said was a Belgian intelligence officer of Palestinian origin named Omar.
Hamed was taken aback, as he said he had never been to Belgium and did not understand why a Belgian official would be present.
When Omar started speaking in Arabic, Hamed immediately recognized a distinct accent that was common among Israeli intelligence and military personnel.
Having been imprisoned repeatedly by Israeli occupation forces, it was familiar to Hamed. It was immediately apparent to him that Omar was Israeli.
Hamed replied to Omar in Hebrew, asking him if he spoke the language.
Hamed recalls Javier’s face turning red. He told Javier that any Palestinian hearing this accent would immediately recognize it as Israeli, but Javier insisted Omar was not.
When Hamed asked the two men to show him their IDs, he said they refused.
Javier left the room after Omar asked him to grab coffee and water. He did not return until an hour later, Hamed estimates.
Then, for an entire hour, Omar questioned Hamed, during which Hamed recalls Omar admitting he was an Israeli.
Omar questioned Hamed regarding his contacts in Turkey, some of whom were linked to Palestinian political organizations, his journalistic work, as well as his finances and debts.
Omar also questioned Hamed about the al-Araby al-Jadeed article from December 2019.
Hamed told The Electronic Intifada that Omar appeared to know the identity of the Israeli agent who had been given the pseudonym Amir in the piece.
“He knew their real names and that makes me believe that they have hacked my cell phone,” Hamed told the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Omar concluded the conversation by saying he wants to see Hamed again, perhaps at the embassy.
Hamed responded by invoking the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered and dismembered at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in October 2018.
Intimidation
Hamed thinks the goal was to intimidate him.
“The Israeli Mossad is known for one thing: assassinations and kidnappings,” Hamed told The Electronic Intifada.
“The purpose of this was basically to terrorize me, to let me know that I was being monitored, that they knew everything about me and that my political and journalistic activities were under the microscope.”
Since then, his family has been living in fear, his wife frightened of opening their door to anyone.
When asked if Omar made any threats or demands, Hamed said that “he threatened me in a direct and indirect manner.”
“Don’t go back to Palestine, stay here, don’t come back,” Hamed recalls Omar telling him.
Unusual phone activity
As of 2018, Hamed noticed unusual behavior on his phone, including an echo when he makes calls.
More recently, since January, Hamed noticed differences in his phone’s functioning after he received a suspicious call on Skype from a source he did not recognize, according to CPJ.
After that, Hamed said that his battery would drain quickly, that his phone was slowing down and heating up, and that it looked like something was always uploading.
He said he emailed the Canadian cybersecurity organization Citizen Lab requesting that they look at his phone, and was awaiting a reply.
After the story of his interrogation broke, Citizen Lab made contact with Hamed and his phone is being examined.
Roger Torrent, the president of Catalonia’s parliament, accused the Spanish government last year of using Israeli spyware to hack his phone.
Last year, the phones of a top Catalan politician and two other figures were reportedly infected with Israeli hacking malware, according to a joint investigation by The Guardian and El País.
The messaging service WhatsApp alerted Torrent that his phone had been hacked with Pegasus by exploiting a critical vulnerability to install spyware on phones.
Pegasus is a sophisticated cyber weapon produced by Israeli spy firm NSO Group. It allows its remote operators to hijack smartphones undetected and extract massive amounts of private data.
Given NSO Group’s insistence that it sells its software exclusively to governments, Torrent believes the Spanish government is the main suspect in the hackings.
Calls for an investigation
Hamed met with members of Spain’s national parliament Lucía Muñoz Dalda and Antón Gómez-Reino on 14 April to discuss being questioned by a possible Israeli agent.
The Committee to Protect Journalists put Hamed’s allegations to the Spanish interior ministry.
According to the group, the ministry’s spokesperson said that “the ministry has no knowledge of the meeting between Hamed and a suspected Israeli agent beyond the journalist’s allegations published in the press.”
The ministry also showed little enthusiasm about looking into it further, claiming, in the words of CPJ, that “that it was difficult to investigate such allegations because there are no official records.”
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate is calling on the Spanish government to provide immediate protection to Hamed and his family and ensure their safety.
The syndicate also demanded that Spain open a serious investigation into Hamed’s interrogation at the Civil Guard headquarters.
Hamed said his lawyer filed a complaint with UNRWA, the UN agency that serves Palestinian refugees.
Israeli forces at the Qalandiya checkpoint from Ramallah into Jerusalem with worshippers who want to attend the first Friday prayer of Muslim holy month of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, on 16 April 2021 [Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency]
The Palestinians mentioned apartheid in connection with Israel long before B'Tselem used the description. Now it is the turn of Human Rights Watch (HRW) to — rightfully, if belatedly — accuse Israel of apartheid in its latest report titledA Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution. Also belated, but still welcome, is HRW's recognition that the "temporary" nature of Israel's military occupation of Palestine is no longer an accurate depiction of an ongoing colonisation process that the international community has done nothing to halt.
HRW says that its apartheid definition comes not from comparisons with South Africa, but is based upon the systematic violence of demographic change, oppression and control of the Palestinian people. "When these three elements occur together, they amount to the crime of apartheid."
A US State Department spokesperson said that the Biden administration rejects HRW's report. "It is not the view of this administration that Israel's actions constitute apartheid," it announced, not surprisingly. The department no doubt wishes to shield its client state from the very serious apartheid allegation, and itself from equally serious complicity charges.
Israel, of course, is none too pleased at the renewed scrutiny of its policies and actions. With a pending investigation by the International Criminal Court which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected, and B'Tselem's January accusations of apartheid coming from within, so to speak, the democratic façade which has served the colonial state so well with the international community has been dented.
How far reaching the impact will be remains to be seen. The duality of calling Israel an apartheid state while emphasising its legitimacy is a contradiction that bolsters the settler-colonial entity's policies and practices. The same goes for the two-state compromise, which has facilitated Israel's apartheid by placing the burden upon the Palestinians to make concessions to their coloniser.
Predictably, Israel's Foreign Ministry accused HRW of an anti-Israel agenda, the same allegation levelled at the UN and its institutions despite the fact that the international organisation has played a major role in enabling the Zionist colonisation of Palestine. "The fictional claims that HRW concocted are both preposterous and false," bleated the ministry.
To call HRW out for having an anti-Israel agenda is absurd. Many human rights organisations, HRW included, have routinely given Israel the benefit of the doubt in the past, shifting the onus of blame upon Palestinians and using terminology such as "conflict" to evade the reality of settler-colonialism and related violence by a nuclear-armed state against a largely civilian population. Israel's "security" and "self-defence" narrative, after all, is so widely promoted by the UN and world leaders, that it is basically exempt from criticism. Moreover, the Israeli narrative has shielded it from accusations of war crimes and apartheid for decades, due to the international community's insistence on the Zionist state's "legitimacy", despite its contempt for international laws, conventions and institutions.
US President Joe Biden's approach to Israel's apartheid practices speaks volumes about Washington's insincere rhetoric about Palestinians enjoying equal rights with Israelis. It was only a few weeks ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged this to be rectified, within the context of the two-state paradigm which has contributed to the entrenching of Israel's apartheid system.
The joint US-Israeli expectation is that Israel will continue to commit apartheid and other crimes while the international community normalises and accepts them. Considering the military aid that Israel receives from the US — $3 billion every year — it is clear that Biden and his successors will need to alter US legislation, which precludes American aid going to countries guilty of human rights abuses, rather than admit that Israel is, indeed, an apartheid state.
Palestinians take part in a rally against apartheid in the West Bank town of Hebron on 14 September 2012 [Mamoun Wazwaz/Apaimages]
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for elections in January, the news was met with profound skepticism. Abbas has previously declared elections without going through with them, and under his 16-year rule, the Palestinian Authority has become more corrupt and authoritarian, shedding doubt over whether the elections would be free, fair, or democratic. Indeed, with the looming threat of losing seats, Abbas is expected to announce the indefinite postponement of legislative elections, originally set to take place on May 22.
Even if elections are canceled again, the limited political organization that has taken place since they were decreed underscores just how much Palestinian political space has shrunk in the last two decades. This is largely a result of the PA’s restrictions and abuses on the ground, including the intimidation and harassment of journalists and activists, as well as the arbitrary detention and systematic torture of Palestinians who are critical of their government.
More recently, the PA has been relentlessly clamping down on dissenters in yet another space: the internet.
Last Wednesday, Facebook said it had stopped a cluster of hackers associated with the PA’s Preventive Security Service, the internal intelligence unit set up by Yasser Arafat in 1994, that was targeting Palestinians in the occupied territories, including activists, journalists, and people opposed to Fatah’s leadership. According to Facebook’s detailed analysis of the network, the PSS relied on social engineering using “fake and compromised accounts to create fictitious personas posing primarily as young women, and also as supporters of Hamas, Fatah, various military groups, journalists and activists to build trust with people they targeted and trick them into installing malicious software.”
This operation gives us an alarming look into what Palestinian political participation means in the digital age: more surveillance of the Palestinian people, and more control for the factions already in power.
A Palestinian youth holds a phone displaying WhatsApp in front of a computer with Facebook in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on February 26, 2014. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
In another report published by Facebook in January on inauthentic coordinated behavior — which it defines as “coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal where fake accounts are central to the operation” — the social media giant said it had removed over 206 accounts, 78 pages, three groups, and 14 Instagram accounts primarily targeting Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The document didn’t specify the individuals or groups linked to the operation, but the content disseminated was critical of Abbas and supportive of his opponent, the exiled former security minister Mohammad Dahlan, who is based in the United Arab Emirates.
A powerful censorship tool
The last time Palestinians went to the polls was in 2006, before the age of social media and the online ecosystems as we know them today. Since then, digital platforms have become increasingly popular among Palestinians, providing them with a space to exercise their right to freedom of expression and opinion, to organize politically, and to criticize not only the oppression of the Israeli regime but also that of the Palestinian leadership.
Inspired by the 2011 Arab uprisings, one of the earliest uses of social media for political organizing was done by the short-lived 15 March movement, which called for mass protests across the Palestinian territories and in refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, in order to unite Palestinians and end the political division between Fatah and Hamas. Many other activist blogs and Facebook pages ensued.
With the advent of this criticism, though, the PA sought ways to censor and shut down dissent online. The first act of online censorship occurred in 2008, when the PA blocked a Gaza-based news site called Donia al-Watan for publishing a report on the PA’s corruption. In 2012, the PA instructed internet service providers (ISPs) in the West Bank to block eight websites, most of which were affiliated with Abbas’ opponent Dahlan. Then in 2017, two weeks before Abbas secretly decreed his controversial cybercrime law, the PA shutdown another 29 websites. Most recently, in October 2019, a court in Ramallah ordered the blocking of 59 more Palestinian websites opposing the PA and Abbas.
Palestinian security forces guard a checkpoint at the entrance to the West Bank city of Hebron, Dec. 10, 2020. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)
The draconian 2017 law against cybercrimes came to legitimize these acts of censorship. Its vague provisions allow the PA to surveil citizens, block websites within 24 hours, and force ISPs to retain people’s data. The law also criminalizes online speech that threatens “national security,” violates “public decency” and “family values,” harms “national unity,” or incites “civil strife.” These ambiguous and overbroad terms give the Palestinian public prosecutor incredible power and liberty to prosecute anyone over their online speech, and the cases are plenty.
Even though the law was amended in 2018 following strong pressure from Palestinian and international civil society, it remains a powerful censorship tool that the PA can use on command. Between January 2018 and March 2019 alone, the PA detained 752 Palestinians for their social media posts, and Hamas detained 66 people for similar causes.
Multiple layers of surveillance
In addition to Fatah’s monopoly in the West Bank and Hamas’ stronghold in Gaza, social networks are lending a hand to the restriction of civic and political space available to Palestinians.
For one, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are both listed in the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Accordingly, under its policy of “dangerous individuals and organizations,” Facebook does not allow them to have a presence on its platform, and the company will actively remove content that supports or praises factions or individuals connected to them. As such, if legislative elections were to take place, candidates affiliated with Hamas or the PFLP would have found it impossible to run their campaigns on social media.
The platform’s ban of an event last year in which PFLP member Leila Khaled was set to speak is only one recent example. For years now, Facebook has disproportionately and systematically censored Palestinian speech through tailored content moderation policies, at the behest of the Israeli government.
Israeli activists deliver a petition signed by 50,000 people to Facebook’s Head of Israel Policy, Jordana Cutler, demanding the company refrain from changing its hate speech policy to include the word “Zionist” as antisemitic, Tel Aviv, February 26, 2021. (Heidi Motola/Activestills.org)
Their “shaheed policy,” for instance, considers the use of the word shaheed (meaning “martyr” in Arabic) a glorification or praise for terrorism, which disregards and vilifies the political, social, and religious use of this word in Palestine and the wider Arab world. Most recently, Facebook has been mulling over adding the word “Zionist” as a protected group under its hate speech policy, which would further silence Palestinians and allies when discussing their lived realities and holding the Israeli regime accountable for its human rights abuses.
Palestinians living under Israel’s military rule are thus subjected to multiple layers of surveillance. Israel, a world leader in cyber security and surveillance tech, spares no effort in deploying its invasive tools to spy on the most intimate details of Palestinian life, including their relationships, sexual orientation, financial status, and health conditions, as it has been doing since its creation. Now, Palestinian leaders are attempting to control their subjects using similar invasive technologies, albeit more primitive ones.
In the face of this corporate censorship and Israel’s pervasive surveillance, it’s preposterous that the PA is gearing its limited resources toward spying on and silencing its people instead of protecting them. If Abbas and the PA were ever serious about holding truly democratic and representative elections, inclusive of all Palestinians around the world, they could have harnessed technology in creative ways to overcome the geographical separation of Palestinians. However, at this juncture, the PA is proving once again that it has no interest in serving its people, only in entrenching its power.
The crisis engulfing India is deepening as the country records more than 370,000 new infections and over 3,500 deaths in the last 24 hours, but the true figure could be many times that.
As families search for life-saving oxygen for their sick relatives, the UK is among over 40 countries sending medical equipment.
The Indian army says it will open its healthcare facilities to civilians. Only nine percent of India’s population of around 1.4 billion people have been vaccinated so far, while funerals for the dead continue day and night.
Warning: Some of the images in this report are distressing.
As India faces 1 million new COVID-19 infections every three days, we look at how more infectious variants have been linked to a spread in cases. The so-called India variant has now been detected in at least 19 countries. “This virus behaves differently now, in that it’s much more infectious,” says Dr. Priya Sampathkumar, an infectious disease physician at the Mayo Clinic.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, as we turn now, to continue with India, to look at the devastating situation there, looking at the reasons behind this lethal second wave and what can be done to help bring it under control. As in other countries, more infectious COVID-19 variants have been linked to a spread in cases. The so-called India variant has now been detected in at least 19 countries.
To explain this, we’re joined by Dr. Priya Sampathkumar, an infectious disease physician at the Mayo Clinic.
Doctor, welcome to Democracy Now! Thank you so much for coming on. Explain these variants in India and how they’ve contributed to this COVID storm.
DR. PRIYASAMPATHKUMAR: So, India did very, very well with the first wave last year, compared to many other countries. And cases peaked and then came down fairly quickly, and then there’s been a plateau. So, cases have been occurring at a low level for several months. And the coronavirus has done what all viruses do. These viruses tend to mutate over time. And if they have, they accumulate enough mutations, they then behave differently, giving rise to what’s called a variant.
So, the India variant is now widely reported as being present in many parts of the country. And the other variant that’s also circulating in India is the U.K. variant. And between them, these two variants probably make up the majority of the virus that’s circulating. This virus behaves differently now, in that it’s much more infectious. And it’s still not known whether it’s also perhaps causing more severe disease, causing disease but presents in different ways, and whether it is causing more deaths, simply because there’s not enough information. We need a lot more testing than is happening now, and not just regular testing of individual cases, but sequencing, to understand how the virus is mutating.
NERMEENSHAIKH: So, could you talk about, Dr. Priya, why it is that you think the death rate has gone up so exponentially, not to mention the infection rate? We don’t know, as you said, whether the variants are responsible for deaths. Talk about the absence of crucial medical supplies and what else you think — what the reasons are for why the second wave is so widespread.
DR. PRIYASAMPATHKUMAR: So, there’s several reasons why the second wave is so widespread. First is, the variants are much more infectious. So, when there’s one case, there are many more people infected from that one case than from the original strain of the virus. The second thing is behaviors. People have completely relaxed their guard. In the last few months, there has been really very little masking in India and huge, huge gatherings. So, these have essentially been superspreader events, and the virus is now just raging across the country. So those are the two really big reasons.
As far as the death rate, even if this variant strain was not causing more deaths than before, the previous strain of the virus, the medical system is now completely overwhelmed. We know, from our own experiences in the United States, which is really, really resource rich compared to India — but when we had the surge in New York, what happened was there was a huge influx of cases into the hospitals. Hospitals are at their best when things are controlled and nurses and doctors can do everything they’ve been trained to do to take care of patients. When the numbers of patients coming in overwhelms the system, everything breaks down, despite the best of intentions. Even if you have medications, even if you have ventilators, even if you have oxygen, you can’t have enough staff to take care of all these people. You don’t have enough triage facilities to ensure that the sickest people get care immediately. So, even in the absence of a variant, this kind of devastating death toll is inevitable when you overwhelm medical systems.
AMYGOODMAN: Dr. Priya Sampathkumar, we want to thank you for joining us, from the Mayo Clinic, infectious disease physician there.
Shelley Martin, a Manhattan accountant, was in her mid-60s when she learned after a routine colonoscopy that she had Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory disorder characterized by abdominal pain and diarrhea. She said when friends learned of her diagnosis, several said “How can that be? Crohn’s starts in childhood.”
Actually, this often debilitating disease, which typically affects the area where the small intestine joins the colon, can occur at any age. “If you’re born with the right genetics, it can first appear in young kids to people in their 80s or 90s,” said Dr. Joseph D. Feuerstein, gastroenterologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “It’s rising in incidence and prevalence throughout the world,” he said, and gastroenterologists are still trying to figure out why it shows up when it does in different people.
Crohn’s disease was first described in 1932 by Dr. Burrill B. Crohn and colleagues and is one of two chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (ulcerative colitis is the other) that have no specific cause. Together, they afflict about three million people in the United States. Crohn’s in adults starts on average at age 30, with peak incidence between ages 20 and 30 and a second peak around age 50. The disease tends to run in families, but the genetic risk is not large. One in 10 to one in four patients have a close family member who is affected, and only half of identical twin pairs get it.
In decades past, Crohn’s was thought to primarily afflict people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, but “we’re now seeing it everywhere — in Asia, Latin America, all over the world,” said Dr. Feuerstein.
Experts speculate that its rise is somehow linked to industrialization and a Western-style diet rich in meats and processed foods. Some suggest a link to living in an overly hygienic environment that may prompt the immune system to attack the body’s healthy tissues instead of infectious organisms.
And even though the bowel is the disease’s most prominent target, “it can also involve the eyes, joints, liver, skin,” said Dr. Gary R. Lichtenstein, gastroenterologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “It’s not one distinct disorder — over 200 genes have been identified as associated with Crohn’s. It results from a complex interaction between the environment and genetics” and can be initiated by an individual’s response to exposures ranging from infectious agents to medications.
Two well-established instigators are the frequent use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), like ibuprofen and naproxen, and cigarette smoking. Both can trigger onset of the disease or cause flare-ups in those who already have it, Dr. Lichtenstein said. In fact, he said, smoking not only creates a greater risk of developing Crohn’s, it can also result in a more virulent course of the disease.
Unlike Ms. Martin, who had no inkling anything was wrong until her routine colon exam, most people with Crohn’s have unexplained symptoms for many months or even years before the correct cause is determined. Following the diagnosis, she said she developed “mild but annoying diarrhea,” but she considers herself relatively lucky given the potential complex of symptoms associated with Crohn’s.
In addition to abdominal pain and diarrhea that can be bloody, possible signs and symptoms include unexplained weight loss, anemia, fever, fatigue, nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, eye and joint pain and tender, red bumps on the skin. In children, the disease can result in a failure to grow.
Prompt diagnosis and appropriate therapy to suppress inflammation in the digestive tract are extremely important because a delay can result in scar tissue and strictures that are not reversed by medication, Dr. Feuerstein said. Another possible serious complication is development of a fistula — an abnormal connection between different organs, like the colon and bladder, requiring surgical repair that, in turn, can cause further intestinal damage.
Understandably, considerable stress, anxiety and depression can accompany the disease and may even cause a worsening of symptoms. Last summer, when Ms. Martin’s disease suddenly raged out of control after she was treated with a drug to keep breast cancer at bay, severe diarrhea kept her tied to the bathroom in her Manhattan apartment. Dr. Lichtenstein said the class of drugs Ms. Martin took, called checkpoint inhibitors, is especially challenging to Crohn’s patients who may have to choose between trying to prevent a recurrence of cancer and suppressing their intestinal disease because the cancer drugs can sometimes cause an inflamed colon.
If severe inflammation and debilitating symptoms are present when Crohn’s is diagnosed, patients are usually treated with steroids to bring the disease under control before they are placed on medication specific for the condition. “Steroids,” Dr. Feuerstein said, “are a Band-Aid to arrest the inflammatory process, but then we have to do something to suppress the disease and allow the body to heal.”
There are now multiple drug options for treating Crohn’s, although keeping symptoms under control often involves trial and error. For example, following Ms. Martin’s diagnosis five years ago, the specialist she consulted told her there were four possible oral drugs to try in succession. Each worked for several months, but after the fourth drug no longer relieved her symptoms, she was given an infusion of a remedy called Entyvio, which she said “worked immediately like a miracle.”
Entyvio, the trade name for vedolizumab, is what’s known as a biologic, a drug made from living cells that is typically given by infusion or injection, one of several such drugs now available for Crohn’s. It acts specifically on the gut to counter inflammation, and with her colon still inflamed, Ms. Martin needs to be treated with the drug every four weeks. If this one stops working, she can try one of the others.
Ms. Martin knows, however, that Crohn’s is not curable and most patients have to stay on medication indefinitely. That can create yet another stumbling block. The biologics are very costly, averaging over $100,000 a year, and although they are usually covered by insurance, there is a steep co-payment. To afford the therapy, many patients depend on co-pay assistance programs administered by the drug companies, Dr. Feuerstein said.
However, as Ms. Martin recently learned, Medicare will cover the expense if she gets the infusion in a hospital or if her doctor can arrange for a nurse to come to her home to administer the drug.
Two US officials experienced symptoms similar to ones suffered abroad that were probably result of directed energy device
One incident took place in November last year near the Ellipse, the large oval lawn on the south side of the White House, in which an official from the national security council suddenly fell sick. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
Julian Borger in Washington-Thu 29 Apr 2021
The White House has said it is investigating “unexplained health incidents” after a report that two US officials in the Washington area experienced sudden symptoms similar to the “Havana syndrome” symptoms suffered by American diplomats and spies abroad.
The wave of mysterious brain injuries, beginning in Cuba in 2016, are deemed by the National Academy of Scientists to be most likely the result of some form of directed energy device, and the CIA, state department and Pentagon have all launched investigations.
CNN reported on Thursday that two possible incidents on US soil are part of the investigation. One took place in November last year near the Ellipse, the large oval lawn on the south side of the White House, in which an official from the national security council suddenly fell sick.
The other was in 2019 and involved a White House official walking her dog in a Arlington suburb of Washington. That incident was reported in GQ magazine last year.
That account said the incident happened after the staffer went past a parked van and a man got out and walked past her.
“Her dog started seizing up. Then she felt it too: a high-pitched ringing in her ears, an intense headache, and a tingling on the side of her face,” the report said.
Officials cautioned that the investigations into these and other incidents have not reached a conclusion.
“The health and wellbeing of American public servants is a paramount priority for the Biden administration. We take all reports of health incidents by our personnel extremely seriously,” a White House spokesperson said.
“The White House is working closely with departments and agencies to address unexplained health incidents and ensure the safety and security of Americans serving around the world. Given that we are still evaluating reported incidents and that we need to protect the privacy of individuals reporting incidents, we cannot provide or confirm specific details at this time.”
The symptoms of the Havana syndrome attacks include hearing strange sounds followed by dizziness, nausea, severe headaches and loss of memory which in some case can go on for years. There are dozens of victims, most of whom were stationed in Cuba and China with a handful of cases elsewhere.
Most of those affected, as well as many officials and experts, believed they were attacked by a foreign power with some form of microwave energy device. But they fought an uphill struggle, before the National Academy of Sciences study in December, convincing their employers that their brain injuries were the result of an attack while they were on assignment.
The CIA set up a taskforce in December, and the new CIA director, William Burns, has appointed a senior official to coordinate both care of those affected and to investigate the origins of the attacks.
While the inquiries are continuing, the administration has not confirmed whether the injuries suffered were the result of a weapon, the national security council senior director for the western hemisphere, Juan Gonzalez, referred to microwave attacks in Cuba, in an interview with CNN Spanish language service earlier this month.
![Israeli forces at the Qalandiya checkpoint from Ramallah into Jerusalem with worshippers who want to attend the first Friday prayer of Muslim holy month of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, on 16 April 2021 [Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Passing-through-Qalandiya-checkpoint-for-the-first-Friday-prayer-of-Ramadan_21.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1)
![Palestinians take part in a rally against apartheid in the West Bank town of Hebron on 14 September 2012 [Mamoun Wazwaz/Apaimages]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/2012_9-14-protet-against-ApartheidMW00-6-.jpg?resize=933%2C622&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1)
