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Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.

1 Jun 2024

The Biden administration says Israel hasn’t crossed a red line on Rafah. This could be why.

by admin | posted in: News | 0

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Acknowledging only “an uptick” in Israeli military activity, the United States has gone to lengths to avoid any suggestion that Israeli forces have crossed a red line set by President Joe Biden in the deepening offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

In just the past week, Israeli strikes that hit displaced families sheltering in tents drew international condemnation and Israel confirmed that its forces were operating in the city’s center. Still, Biden administration officials say Israel has avoided massive attacks on what had been thickly crowded neighborhoods of Rafah and kept strikes more limited and targeted than earlier in its nearly 8-month-old war with Hamas.

That refrain underscores an increasingly isolated U.S. position.

Critics charge that Biden, who declared early last month that he would not supply offensive weapons if Israel launched an all-out assault on Rafah, has come up against a domestic red line of his own and decided not to cross it: challenging ally Israel, which has support from Republicans and many American voters, in an election year.

Administration officials “keep moving the goalposts when it comes to the Rafah operation, saying, ‘You know, we won’t let the Israelis do X, Y or Z,’” said Colin Clarke, an international security expert and research director at the Soufan Center, a research center. “And then somebody says, ‘Well, aren’t they doing that?’”

“So they’ve been playing semantics around what the Rafah operation constitutes,” he said. “I think if it weren’t an election year, you would see the president being a lot more forceful.”

Administration officials insist Israel has changed its tactics in an effort to reduce civilian deaths as the military sweeps through the city and targets Hamas operatives — even as humanitarian conditions worsen. Some 1 million Palestinians have fled the Rafah offensive and are sheltering in squalid tent camps, and aid is only trickling into the territory. The United Nations estimates as few as 200,000 to 300,000 people still remain.

“We have been clear about what this isn’t, which is not a major military operation,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said Thursday. He referred to Israeli strikes on the outskirts of the city and seizure of an adjoining border region with Egypt as an “uptick.”

Pressed on the question, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that there’s “no mathematical formula” to determining when and if the Rafah assault has gone beyond the conditions set by the Democratic president.

The U.S. would be looking at whether the operation was causing “a lot of death and destruction” or was “more precise and proportional,” Sullivan said.

Unlike earlier in the Israeli drive to cripple Hamas militants in Gaza, Israelis have conveyed their specific battlefield goals and plans for getting there in the Rafah offensive, a senior administration official said Friday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to brief reporters under ground rules set by the White House, said if those plans change and Israel goes back to earlier tactics, “that might be a different story.”

Israel launched its war in Gaza after attacks by Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7. More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed since then, many of them women and children. Fighting and Israeli restrictions on aid shipments through border crossings mean nearly all 2.3 million people in Gaza are facing severe hunger. U.N. officials say famine has already started in the north.

It was the Israeli operation against Hamas in Rafah that brought on the strongest warnings from Biden last month about how Israel was conducting the war and that the U.S. could cut its supply of offensive weapons. The population of Rafah had swelled to some 1.3 million as Israeli offensives to the north pushed Palestinian civilians south.

“If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons,” Biden told CNN on May 9. He indicated the red line as being an attack on “population centers” in the city.

At about the same time, U.S. officials confirmed that the administration had suspended a shipment of heavy bombs to Israel to ensure they were not dropped on Rafah.

Republicans’ condemnation of Biden’s move was fast and fierce. Soon after, the chief prosecutor for the world’s top war crimes court sought an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the top U.N. court ordered Israel to cease its operations in Rafah, increasing the political pressure on the U.S. and Israel.

Brian Finucane, a former State Department official who is now a senior adviser for the International Crisis Group, notes “changes in tone and tenor” in the administration’s public comments toward Israel from around that time. Biden said the effort for a Netanyahu arrest warrant was “outrageous.”

Administration warnings and threats to Israel over the Rafah campaign ebbed. Biden, un a White House address Friday to urge Hamas to accept an Israeli proposal for a cease-fire and hostage release, made only a passing mention of the operation there, noting widely circulated images of children killed in an Israeli strike last Sunday that burned some of 45 victims alive.

Far more important than whether the U.S. scolds or only echoes Israeli talking points, Finucane said, is “what the administration actually does in terms of policy … to bring about a shift in what’s actually happening on the ground in Gaza.”

___

Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.

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1 Jun 2024

MN Legislature: Classroom cellphone restrictions, a ban on book bans passed this session

by admin | posted in: Adventure | 0

A plan to curb student cellphone use in classrooms, a “ban” on book bans, and protections for student journalists are just a few of the new education policies the Minnesota Legislature passed this year.

Those policies will affect Minnesota schools soon, but past that, this year’s education bill won’t have a big impact on school funding, as lawmakers already passed the state budget last year, which boosted spending by $2.3 billion — an 11% increase.

However, tens of millions in additional state dollars will go toward Minnesota schools, mostly to help fund new training mandates created by bills passed last year. Much of the boost will help to fund a new literacy initiative.

Here are some of the changes lawmakers approved that have already been signed into law by the governor:

Cellphone use

School administrators this year asked the Legislature to help address the issue of cellphones distracting students from class.

A provision in the education bill requires Minnesota schools to adopt a policy on student cellphone use by next spring. It had backing from both Democrats and Republicans as a stand-alone proposal but didn’t get bipartisan backing when passed as part of the education package.

The Minnesota Elementary School Principals’ Association and the Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals will have to develop a “model policy” on cellphone use in schools which school districts and charter schools will have to adopt in May 2025.

Book-ban ban

Under a provision billed by backers as a “ban on book bans,” public libraries aren’t allowed to remove materials based on the viewpoints or ideas they convey.

Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmakers and DFL Gov. Tim Walz supported the measure in response to school districts elsewhere in the U.S. banning materials touching on topics related to LGBTQ+ topics.

No school district or library in Minnesota has pursued similar bans, though a conservative group has pushed for bans on books in Bloomington.

Libraries and school libraries will still be able to ban books when there is a concern about materials when they have “legitimate” concerns about “potentially sensitive topics” for the library’s intended audience or the work causing substantial “disruption of the work and discipline of the school.”

Public libraries and school libraries also have to adopt policies around selections, challenges and reconsideration of library materials. They’ll also have to produce reports on the challenges and send them to the Minnesota Department of Education that include their decision.

Student press freedom

Student journalists working for school-sponsored media like newspapers and broadcast programs will now have their press freedom specifically protected in state law. Discipline or retaliation for content by school officials against students will be prohibited.

The law will shield student journalists from school interference in determining the news, opinion or feature content and advertising of school-sponsored media or disciplining students for exercising press freedom. It also offers protection for the expression of political viewpoints.

There are limits to student press freedom in the new law. Content that causes a “material and substantial disruption of school activities” or “is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action on school premises or the violation of lawful school policies or rules” is not covered. Nor is defamatory content, unwarranted invasions of privacy, or content violating state or federal law

Literacy funding

Much of the money in the education bill will go toward funding new mandates for teacher training. This year’s bill puts about $37 million more toward the Read Act, which requires new training for teachers on literacy instruction. It also gives more flexibility for how districts use the money put toward the program last session.

Backers say the Read Act, which originally passed in 2023, mandates an evidence-based approach that will improve reading outcomes among students. Training in that approach requires additional prep time for teachers.

While the state approved more funding for school districts last year, some of that came with mandates, including the additional training for teachers who have to take extra courses outside of instruction time. The additional funding will in part help pay for substitute teachers while full-time teachers get training, backers say.

Chronic absenteeism

A pilot program aimed at addressing chronic absenteeism in schools is on its way to being established under this year’s education bill. Rates of chronic absenteeism have risen in the years since the pandemic, according to the Minnesota Alliance With Youth.

School districts including Minneapolis and Burnsville are part of the program to combat the trend.

The state is requiring districts to figure out new practices to prevent chronic student absenteeism that could include personalized outreach such as home visits and connecting with students in public areas.

Schools are also expected to figure out strategies to keep students in school, like boosting their sense of belonging in the school community.

Pre-K

Funding for voluntary pre-kindergarten programs will be expanded to accommodate more than 5,000 new seats next year, bringing the total to more than 12,000.

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