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Planned layoffs of unionized employees at the Brooklyn Museum will be avoided under a deal struck between labor unions and museum leadership on Sunday, though the long-term future of their jobs remains unclear.
The museum will offer voluntary separation or retirement packages to workers who had been slated to be laid off, according to DC37, one of two unions representing museum employees. Those “separation packages” will include three weeks of pay for every year of service, a letter of reference from museum leadership, and four months of COBRA health insurance, paid for by the museum.
“We secured an agreement that is fair and results in no layoffs for our members,” said DC37 executive director Henry Garrido, in a statement. “The outcome of these negotiations is a testament to the power of union representation — when we fight together, we win. We will continue pushing for sustainable funding for the city’s cultural institutions.”
The package will only be offered to the 40 affected employees who were represented by either DC37 or UAW Local 2110; a museum spokesperson confirmed. A total of 47 workers were told they would be laid off, and the seven non-union employees were laid off effective Feb. 7.
Representatives from DC37 and UAW did not immediately return requests for comment.
The layoffs were announced last month, as director Ann Pasternak told employees the museum was facing a $10 million budget shortfall and would have to implement a number of cost-cutting measures.
Union leaders pushed back, claiming the museum had violated its contract by not providing enough advanced notice about the cuts. At a Feb. 28 oversight hearing at the City Council, Garrido said museum executives were unwilling to implement furloughs or other measures to avoid layoffs.
On March 6, three days before the cuts were to take effect, they were delayed to March 16 after the Council indicated it might give the museum millions of dollars in additional funding in the coming fiscal year. Almost all of the roughly $10 million the city gave the museum last year was used to cover the salaries of DC37 employees.
Even if the extra funding could not save all the employees, the delay would at least give the unions and the museum more time to find other sources of finding and figure out how to handle the deficit, UAW Local 2110 rep Maida Rosenstein told Brooklyn Paper last week.
In a statement, a Brooklyn Museum rep said the museum had “engaged in good faith negotiations” with DC37 and UAW since the layoffs were announced last month, and was “pleased” to have reached a the voluntary separation agreement.
“Offering this program does not change what we have previously shared about the Museum’s financial position,” the rep said. “Depending on the number of people who respond to the VSP, as well as any formal notification from the City about additional funds for the upcoming fiscal year, the Museum may still need to reduce its workforce.”
It was not clear Tuesday if the Council was still considering allocating the extra funding. On March 12, the body Committee on Finance is set to meet to approve “the new designation and changes in the designation of certain organizations to receive funding in the Expense Budget.”
Update 3/11/25, 2:53 p.m.: This story has been updated with comment from the Brooklyn Museum.
Update 3/11/25, 4:15 p.m.: This story has been updated with additional information regarding non-union employees.
A federal judge ruled Monday evening that Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is likely subject to legal disclosure obligations under the Freedom of Information Act.
It is a preliminary ruling which the government will almost certainly appeal, but a significant early victory for transparency when it comes to Musk and DOGE. So far, DOGE has ignored FOIA requests, including from The Intercept, on the grounds that it is immune from the statute entirely.
But Judge Christopher Reid Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia determined DOGE likely wields the kind of “substantial authority” that makes it a federal agency subject to FOIA. He reviewed DOGE’s structure, its rampage through the federal government in recent weeks, and how President Donald Trump and Musk have publicly described its work.
Cooper noted DOGE’s “decimation” of one federal agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, in particular, along with DOGE’s boastful termination of federal workers, grants, and contracts.
“From these reports, the Court can conclude that USDS likely has at least some independent authority to identify and terminate federal employees, federal programs, and federal contracts,” Cooper ruled, using the acronym for the U.S. DOGE Service, one of the initiative’s official names. “Doing any of those three things would appear to require substantial independent authority; to do all three surely does.”
“USDS’s power to override agency officials, swiftly gain access to agency systems, and impose job requirements on federal employees all further suggest substantial independent authority,” he added.
In the wake of more than a dozen lawsuits to challenge DOGE’s work, the Trump administration has tried to cast Musk and his crew as mere advisers to the White House and duly appointed Cabinet secretaries. Cooper found that such statements — which Trump has contradicted immediately — “cannot overcome all the other evidence of USDS’s substantial independent authority.”
The judge noted that government lawyers offered minimal pushback about DOGE’s authority, wondering in a footnote “whether this decision was strategic.” In response to other lawsuits, the government has argued that DOGE is, in fact, a federal “agency” for some purposes — but only “when it is convenient” rather than “burdensome” to be one, as another judge wrote in a February ruling, including “to escape the obligations that accompany agencyhood” such as accountability under FOIA.
Cooper ordered DOGE to process a FOIA request filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the watchdog group that filed the lawsuit, on an expedited basis.
“The rapid pace of USDS’s actions requires the quick release of information about its structure and activities,” he ruled. “That is especially so given the secrecy with which USDS has operated.”
CREW’s chief counsel and executive director, Donald Sherman, celebrated the ruling in a statement published online on Monday evening.
“Despite efforts and claims to the contrary, the government cannot hide the actions of the U.S. DOGE Service,” Sherman said. “We look forward to the expedited processing of our requests and making all the DOGE documents public.”
The government is expected to appeal the order. In the meantime, DOGE likely will not respond to other FOIA requests.
“At President Trump’s direction, Elon Musk and DOGE are saving historic amounts of taxpayer money from being spent on unserious bureaucratic pet projects,” said a Justice Department spokesperson in an emailed statement. “This Department has already been fighting in court to vigorously defend President Trump’s agenda and will continue to do so, especially when it comes to waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars.”
There are currently two other federal lawsuits filed by government transparency groups against DOGE under FOIA, which are both still in early stages of litigation.
“This ruling ensures that the Trump administration and Elon Musk cannot hide behind bureaucratic sleight of hand to evade scrutiny,” said Chioma Chukwu, interim director of American Oversight, one of the other watchdogs suing DOGE, in an emailed statement on Tuesday. “Americans have the right to timely access to the truth about the Trump administration’s reckless and haphazard push to slash essential services that millions of Americans rely on and gain access to highly sensitive information on millions more without clear guardrails to prevent abuse.”
Update: March 11, 2025, 12:48 p.m. ET
The story was updated to include a comment from the Department of Justice received after publication.
The post DOGE Likely Can’t Evade Freedom of Information Law, Court Rules appeared first on The Intercept.
Mahmoud Khalil’s wife watched as agents from the Department of Homeland Security handcuffed her husband and whisked him away from their New York City apartment in an unmarked vehicle on Saturday evening.
Agents ignored the pleas of Khalil’s wife who tried to show them legal papers proving her husband was a green card holder. They wouldn’t heed her requests to share where they were taking him, according to court filings. Eventually, one of the agents offered a terse response: Check the local immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan.
By next morning, however, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee locator indicated Khalil was no longer in New York. Instead, it showed him at the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey. When Khalil’s wife visited the jail, she was turned away.
Without warning to Khalil’s wife or his immigration attorney Amy Greer, who the same morning had filed a petition to challenge her client’s arrest as a violation of his First Amendment free speech rights, ICE agents had transferred Khalil to a different facility. This time, they moved him thousands of miles south of his New York home to a facility in Louisiana. It wasn’t until Monday morning that Khalil’s exact whereabouts were updated in the ICE online system: the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana, a private jail operated by the GEO Group.
Attorneys for Khalil allege the move from the New York metropolitan area to Louisiana was a “retaliatory transfer” intended to restrict his access and to lawyers and family, and position what has grown into a closely watched First Amendment case in a jurisdiction more friendly to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies.
Three days after his detention, Khalil still has not been charged with a crime. The Department of Homeland Security has said it arrested Khalil, a lead negotiator for Palestine solidarity protesters at Columbia, for having “led activities aligned to Hamas.” President Donald Trump, who campaigned on deporting pro-Palestinian protesters, pledged that Khalil’s arrest is “the first arrest of many to come” and that his administration would continue to target for deportations “more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”
Although a Manhattan federal court ordered a temporary halt preventing the Trump administration from immediately deporting Khalil, attorneys remain concerned for his well-being and ability to access proper legal counsel. In a motion filed Monday evening by attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility project at the City University of New York School of Law, attorneys seek to reverse the ICE decision and to transfer Khalil back to New York.
“Now his wife can’t visit him, his attorneys will have a hard time visiting him, and his long-term immigration attorney can’t represent him in that jurisdiction.”
Attorneys accused ICE of deploying the transfer as a way to intentionally disrupt court proceedings in New York and his access to legal representation and his family. On Sunday, Greer had filed an initial petition for his release in hopes that it would be argued in New York where she could continue to represent her client.
“The government just willfully ignored it to disrupt the natural adjudication of that and sent him 1,000 miles away,” said Baher Azmy, the legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who helped draft the motion. “Now his wife can’t visit him, his attorneys will have a hard time visiting him, and his long-term immigration attorney can’t represent him in that jurisdiction.”
Khalil is instead in the Western District of Louisiana, a jurisdiction that more often sides with the government in immigration cases. Should Khalil’s case head toward appeals courts, he is now located in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where judges in January ruled against the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The LaSalle facility’s immigration court, which has minimal oversight, has also been used by the previous Trump administration as a site to fast-track deportations.
It is not uncommon for ICE to transfer individuals detained throughout the East Coast to larger facilities in the South. LaSalle, also known as Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, has been the center of multiple allegations of abuse, including beatings from guards, complaints of sexual assault, lack of access for lawyers, and wrongful death complaints of individuals incarcerated there.
Azmy, who called the case against Khalil “blatantly unconstitutional,” added that Greer was told by the Louisiana detention center that she must wait 10 days before she could speak to Khalil for a full legal call. Greer’s call with Khalil on Monday morning lasted only minutes before it was cut off, court filings said. His first call to his wife came more than 30 hours after he was taken into custody, court documents said.
Greer said in a statement that Khalil “is healthy and his spirits are undaunted by his predicament.” Local attorneys were expected to visit with him Monday and Tuesday.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.
Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian, became a permanent U.S. resident in 2023. He served as a negotiator and mediator between school administrators and student protesters during the Columbia University campus protests over Israel’s war on Gaza. Khalil graduated in December from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Calls for Khalil’s release have been widespread. An online petition advocating for his release gathered nearly 2 million signatures by Monday evening. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside a federal building in Manhattan to protest his arrest on Monday.
Although Trump and his administration have taken credit for the arrest as a part of their crackdown on apparent “Hamas supporters,” authorities have not been forthcoming about the legal grounds for Khalil’s detention. Agents who arrested Khalil claimed to have had an administrative warrant, not a warrant signed by a judge, attorneys said in court papers. The agents, which included an ICE agent honored by Trump in 2019, also alleged that Khalil’s green card had been revoked. Such a decision, however, requires due process before revocation, attorneys noted.
Sabiya Ahamed, staff attorney with Palestine Legal, blasted the vague and broad legal statements of the Trump administration as a common Trump tactic meant to spread fear and to chill advocacy.
She said the massive show of support for Khalil, however, is a sign that the movement for Palestinian rights will persist.
“This is not something that can go unchecked — that is the message that students and activists and legal organizations are sending to the Trump administration and also to universities,” Ahamed said. “You cannot just throw your students under the bus in this way, and you cannot illegally revoke the lawful status of your students simply because of their advocacy for Palestine without any due process.”
Ahamed also called on Columbia and other universities to do more to protect their students from further attacks. She criticized Columbia’s responses to student protests that shook the campus last year in which administrators called police on students and proceeded to punish activists with lengthy hearings and suspensions, in some cases, with little due process.
The day before his arrest, Khalil had written an email to Columbia University’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, requesting assistance from administration in the face of growing pressure from an online doxxing campaign by pro-Israel groups. After graduation, Khalil, who was born in 1995, continued living in an apartment owned by the university. In the email, Khalil described “the vicious and dehumanizing doxing campaign against him — including people falsely labeling him a terrorist threat and calling for his deportation,” court filings said.
“He closed the email by saying he was not able to sleep fearing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), or other dangerous individuals would target him and his family and urging Interim President Armstrong to provide legal support and other protections,” the filing said.
After Khalil’s arrest, Armstrong pledged to support her community but added that she must also “follow the law.” She shot down speculation that suggested Columbia officials had requested ICE agents to come to campus. Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced last week that it would cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts to the university due to “persistent harassment of Jewish students.”
“It remains the long-standing practice of the University, and the practice of cities and institutions throughout the country, that law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including residential University buildings,” Armstrong said in a statement. However, the campus’s ICE policy says there are “exigent circumstances” where the university “may allow for access to University buildings or people without a warrant.”
Through attorneys, Khalil’s wife, who withheld her name, asked for sustained support to secure Khalil’s release. She described her husband as selfless, sharing that she had in the past asked him to sometimes “put himself first,” to which he replied, “People are made for each other, and you should always be willing to lend a helping hand.”
“It feels like my husband was kidnapped from home,” she said, “and at a time when we were supposed to be planning to welcome our first child into this world.”
The post ICE Secretly Hauled Mahmoud Khalil to Louisiana as Retaliation, Lawyers Allege appeared first on The Intercept.
A four-story commercial building that mixes orange brick, ornamentation, and round poles with a dramatic glass and steel top-story overhang is planned to fill a vacant corner lot on Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg, renderings show. The structure’s lower floors are reminiscent of a 19th century cast iron commercial building, but the upper stories appear more postmodern with their voids and glassy sections.
In a departure from nearly all post-war buildings, the structure features applied ornament. The Art Deco-ish rosettes and zig-zags worked in brick emphasize the building’s vertical and horizontal lines and tall windows.
A recent visit to the site at 83 Wythe Ave., on the corner of North 10th Street, revealed a rendering posted to the green construction fence (on top of which someone pasted a sticker of a Tom Fruin-style water tower). A new-building permit applied for in August has not yet been issued, and no work was taking place on the lot.
Jeremiah Zudiema of Archimaera Architecture PC (formerly Albo Liberis LLC) is the architect of record for the new building, that application shows. Past projects include the nearby William Vale Hotel.
A rendering of the front elevation on developer Double U Development’s website shows more clearly the ground floor’s large windows with rounded corners and decorative brickwork, as well as a landscaped terrace on a higher floor. Some of the second-floor windows appear to be screened by lattice-like open brickwork.
The permit application says the new build will be fully commercial and 84 feet high with 164 enclosed parking spaces. Uses will mix retail and recreation, signaling a sporty addition to the already active area that includes a climbing gym, ax throwing, a barre studio, and McCarren and Bushwick Inlet parks.
Michael Weitzman of Double U Development is listed as the building’s owner on the permit application. Double U’s other developments in the area include the controversial adaptive reuse project of the religious school at 70 Havemeyer St. and rental apartments at 1000 Lorimer St. that replaced Disco Ball Rite Aid in the former Meserole Theater.
In August 2024, Weitzman applied for a demolition permit for a two-story building at 83 Wythe Ave., currently occupied by a deli on the ground floor. The permit has not yet been issued.
City records show Weitzman bought 83 Wythe Ave. through an LLC for $20 million in 2022. The purchase came while former owner Cayuga Capital was attempting to sell the larger parcel that included 83 and 87 Wythe Ave. for $65 million. Cayuga Capital has previously pitched a Jenga-esque tower for the site at 83 Wythe Ave.
After failing to sell the larger site, city records show, Cayuga Capital sold 83 Wythe Avenue to Weitzman in 2022 and in late 2024 sold the commercial buildings at 87 Wythe Ave., which includes 79-97 North 10th Street, to BLDG Management through an LLC for $26.9 million.
Cayuga Capital had already demolished the single-story red brick building that took up most of the site at 83 Wythe Ave. in 2018 before it was sold to Weitzman.
This story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site amNewYork.
On November 20, 2024, Forward Defense senior fellow Robert Soofer gave remarks at a symposium on “Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy in the Second Trump Administration: What to Expect and What Should be Done” hosted by the National Institute for Public Policy. In the published notes from the symposium, Soofer was quoted on the unique challenges and opportunities the Trump administration faces, with respect to nuclear and missile defense policy.
Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.
The post Soofer quoted at National Institute for Public Policy symposium on nuclear and missile defense policy appeared first on Atlantic Council.
On March 8, Forward Defense distinguished fellow Kevin P. Chilton was interviewed on The Aerospace Advantage podcast by The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. In the episode, Chilton spoke on the realities of the “Golden Dome,” saying, “I’m 100 percent for it for the United States of America but I would say first things first. It would be nice if we could defend an area as long as Israel as effectively as they just defended against Iran and I’m not convinced we can today.”
Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.
The post Chilton interviewed about the “Golden Dome” on Aerospace Advantage Podcast appeared first on Atlantic Council.
As the so-called Secrecy Czar in the George W. Bush administration, I have been a long-time critic of how federal government officials abuse the ability to restrict government information and who can access it. Yet, in a professional career dealing with government secrets dating back to the administration of Richard Nixon, I have never witnessed the personal security clearance process personally weaponized by a president to the extent as it has been in the past several weeks simply to attack perceived partisan enemies. As a result, the security of the American people has been needlessly and recklessly weakened.
The ability to restrict access to information that, if subject to unauthorized disclosure, could result in damage to the national security is a critical tool in protecting our nation and its citizens from harm by foreign actors. Most federal government information that falls into this category is regarded as classified national security information. The rules governing the designation of classified national security information and who can access it are set forth in two executive orders (Executive Order 12968, Access to Classified Information and Executive Order 13526, Classified National Security Information).
That this critical national security tool is set forth in executive orders is a reflection of the president’s Article II section 2 constitutional authority as “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” and his responsibility for foreign policy. While the governing executive orders make it clear that no one has a “right” to a security clearance, even the Supreme Court in the landmark decision Department of the Navy v. Egan has taken note that the process for granting authorization to access classified national security information includes due process provisions in the event of a denial. These include the receipt of notice as to the reasons for the proposed denial, an opportunity to inspect all relevant evidence, a right to respond, a written decision, and an opportunity to appeal.
For the security clearance process to remain an effective tool in keeping our nation and its citizens safe, it must be implemented in a fair and consistent manner. Should individuals who do not meet the adjudication standards for security clearances be granted access, information that can harm our nation can end up in the hands of adversaries. Likewise, should individuals who otherwise meet the standards be summarily denied or stripped of their security clearance in defiance of longstanding processes, the resulting uncertainty that spreads throughout the system can severely impact the effectiveness of our military, intelligence and diplomatic capabilities to deter or otherwise respond to our nation’s adversaries. We are currently witnessing this very uncertainty take hold in our national security capabilities because of numerous personal security clearances recently suspended or revoked, apparently at the specific direction of the president. These actions appear not to be taken in the interest of national security but rather, in the president’s own framing, to punish the affected individuals. Arbitrarily suspending or revoking security clearances from federal employees will only serve to embolden our nation’s adversaries and make Americans less secure.
How to Reform the System
For the sake of the safety of the American people, it is imperative for Congress to step forward as a co-equal branch to the Executive and ensure that the critical national security tools governing access to classified national security information cannot be used to “punish” individuals for purely partisan purposes.
The Egan Court’s decision is often used to assert unchecked presidential authority over classified information. However, at its core, the Egan decision was primarily an interpretation of congressional statutory intent arising out of a dispute between two executive branch entities. While the decision was in consonance with the traditional deference the courts have extended to the Executive in military and national security affairs, the Court appeared to leave open the role of Congress in establishing processes and setting standards for access to classified information. As noted by constitutional law scholar Louis Fisher in a legal analysis written for the Law Library of Congress, the Egan Court appeared to deliberately limit its deference to the Executive by explicitly stating, “unless Congress specifically has provided otherwise.”
The ability of Congress to insert itself in matters of classification is not without precedent. Pre-Egan, Congress very much involved itself in classification matters with passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Post-Egan, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which included the establishment of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) to consider and render decisions when a U.S. government agency sought to postpone the disclosure of classified or otherwise sensitive assassination records. Finally, in 1994, Congress created the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy (also called the “Moynihan Commission,” after its chairman, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan). The very first recommendation of this bipartisan panel was for Congress to enact a statute “to improve the functioning of the secrecy system and implementation of established rules.”
It’s incumbent upon Congress to step up to its role in this matter as envisioned by Senator Moynihan over 30 years ago. Protecting our nation from actual and potential adversaries is not a partisan issue. In an increasingly dangerous world, critical national security tools such as personal security clearances and safeguarding classified national security information must be free of partisan considerations.
IMAGE: Low angle view of a dome, Capitol Building, Washington DC (Getty Images)
The post Congress Must Stop the Weaponization of Personal Security Clearances appeared first on Just Security.
The recent 60 Minutes segment on Israel’s pager operation in Lebanon contained an 8-second video clip of a pager exploding on the person of a Hezbollah operative standing in the fruit section of a store. At the moment of the explosion, twelve adults and two children are seen nearby, two adults within a foot or so of the target. Upon detonation, one of them ran away while the other stayed in place. Other than the intended target – the holder of the pager – no one in the area of the blast was injured nor did it cause any damage in its vicinity.
According to 60 Minutes about 3,000 pagers exploded simultaneously on September 17 resulting in some 30 deaths, of which 12 were civilians, including 2 children. Accordingly, approximately 1% of the explosions resulted in deaths, of which 0.4% were civilian deaths, or, 99.6% of the attacks did not kill civilians. There is little data about civilian injuries, most likely indicating a low number of them. And, extrapolating from the ratio of combatant to civilian deaths, it is reasonable to assess that the number of civilian injuries from this attack is similar to a fraction of the 1% death rate. In other words, over 99% of the killed or injured in pager attack were the intended targets of the operation, Hezbollah operatives.
The low civilian death and injury rate is explained by reports that Israel inserted 1-3 grams of explosives in each pager. The pressure of a blast of 3 grams or less of explosives is very low, even at a close distance. Energy or forces decreases from its source according to the inverse square rule , as explained here, “the energy twice as far from the source is spread four times the area, hence one-fourth the intensity (see also here). As , the greater the distance from the source, the larger the area and lower the pressure.
However, as opposed to other forms of energy, the blast from an explosion begins with the movement of the blast away from the detonation faster than the speed of sound resulting in its initial stages in higher pressure closer to the blast and a sharper decrease in pressure in its initial movement from the blast. Even still the attack’s success rate was 99%.
Hence empirically, as seen from the video clip, and mathematically, it was foreseeable that there would be little or no danger to people in the immediate vicinity of each blast and even less danger at a somewhat larger distance, making the question of whether these detonations were indiscriminate a moot point. The 60 Minutes segment contained a section describing how Israel tested the pagers “to calibrate the grams of explosives needed to be just enough to hurt the fighter but not the person next to him.”
Nevertheless, beginning the day after the pager attack, commentators began ascribing legal fault to the operation’s planners for executing an attack that was indiscriminate and hence a violation of international humanitarian law.
Mapping the Widespread Criticisms under the Law of Armed Conflict
The day after the Israeli pager attack former State Department attorney and senior advisory at the International Crisis Group Brian Finucane questioned in Just Security, “What were the anticipated effects in terms of blast strength and radius of the exploding pagers? Was it anticipated that they would injure or kill their holders? Others in their vicinity?” Finucane answered his own question the next day: “Israel, or whoever was launching this attack, didn’t know where these people were going to be located at any given time, so it makes it really tough to assess proportionality or other precautions.”
In a Deutsche Welle interview, Professor Janina Dill argued that the “proportionality calculation for each of these explosions,” would be “very hard to achieve” absent “intelligence where the pagers would be at the time of explosion;” hence it “wasn’t possible for the attacker to anticipate civilian harm therefore meaningful proportionality calculation wouldn’t have been possible.” Professor Dill argued that “with hundreds of similar small bombs going off at the same time the attackers wouldn’t know in advance whether there would be civilians surrounding these attacks” or “when the attacks should go off in order to minimize civilian harm” and concluded that Israel’s pager attack “is almost impossible to reconcile with international law.”
Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch published: “The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction.” Likewise, Amnesty International said: “The evidence indicates that those who planned and carried out these attacks could not verify who else in the immediate vicinity of the devices would be harmed at the time of the explosion, or even whether only fighters had been given the pagers and radios. Therefore, the attacks were carried out indiscriminately, would be unlawful under international humanitarian law and should be investigated as war crimes.”
On Nov. 7, the International Bar Association published a statement quoting several of their committee members. Sara Elizabeth Dill, Co-Vice Chair of its War Crimes Committee said: “The simultaneous nature of the attacks makes distinction of civilian targets or any proportionality analysis essentially impossible.” According to Markus Beham, Co-Vice Chair of its Human Rights Law Committee, “it is hard to see how [the principle of distinction] was not violated by these attacks.” Toby Cadman, a member of the IBA War Crimes Committee Advisory Board said: “Imagine for a moment that a number of those targets had unknowingly boarded commercial jets carrying explosive devices and imagine they boarded those flights with the explosive devices undetected … That could have resulted in countless civilian casualties,” a concern that did not materialize as the operation’s planners might have taken that into account. The IBA statement also quoted Professor Craig Martin: “If you don’t know where each of these explosives are, and who – in fact – is going to be injured, it’s hard to see how a very granular assessment of proportionality could have been undertaken, either collectively or in relation to each of these individual attacks.”
In a statement issued by a group of 22 U.N. special rapporteurs, after referring to the pager operation as a “terrifying violation of international law” and expressing their “deepest solidarity to the victims of these attacks,” the signatories argued that the attack “would inevitably violate humanitarian law, by failing to verify each target, and distinguish between protected civilians and those who could potentially be attacked for taking a direct part in hostilities” and recommended that the matter be investigated “to establish the truth and enable accountability for the crime of murder.”
The Security Council held a meeting on the pager attack on September 20, where U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said that the attack violates international law since the planners were “without knowledge as to who was in possession of the targeted devices, their location and their surroundings at the time of the attack.” Turk added: “If the attacker is unable to assess the compliance of the attack with binding rules of international law, notably the likely impact on civilians, then the attack should not be carried out.”
State delegates made similar statements at a Security Council meeting. Guyana said the “attacks were apparently aimed at specific targets, but ultimately were indiscriminate in their effect, as many of the detonations occurred in crowded areas.” According to Algeria, “Those acts of aggression amount to war crimes” as they were “deliberate and indiscriminate” in nature, targeting “densely populated areas.” China claimed that “[t]he explosions caused thousands of civilian casualties.” Sierra Leone claimed the attacks “occurred in populated areas” while Iran said the operation “target[ed] thousands of people.” According to Syria, the operation was designed to “kill some of those who hold them [the pagers] without discrimination and cause serious injuries to others.” Russia said that those behind the attack “have deliberately sought to incite a large-scale armed confrontation in order to spark a new major war in the Middle East.”
And, in a February 26, 2025 letter submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Association of Iranian Jurists Defending Human Rights claimed that the pager attack “specifically targeted Lebanese civilians.”
According to David Sanger of the New York Times: “And while the target was Hezbollah fighters, the victims were anyone standing around, including children.” Michael Walzer, author of Just And Unjust Wars (1977) wrote in an opinion piece entitled Israel’s Pager Bombs Have No Place in a Just War that the pager operation was “very likely war crimes” as “[n]o similar claim of minimizing risk to civilians can be made for the decision to explode the devices.”
But on What Basis? Assessing the Criticisms
Over five months have passed since the pager operation and no evidence or data of civilian injury or death has emerged beyond what was reported immediately following the operation. Similarly, neither has any indication emerged to refute the proposition that Israel knew that the pagers were on the person of Hezbollah operatives. Reports of the Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon’s eye and hand injuries (here and here) indicate he was holding and reading the pager’s message when it exploded; in other words, he presumably had some involvement with Hezbollah’s operational activity. Unlike cell phones that people may lend to others, it is likely that Hezbollah required their operatives to always have their pagers readily accessible. One of the two children killed in the operation was bringing her father’s beeping pager to him when it exploded, apparently the only known example of such an occurrence.
Though Michael Walzer wrote in his opinion piece that Israel “had to know that at least some of the people hurt would be innocent men, women and children,” international law prohibits the “incidental loss of civilian life” and “injury to civilians” only if the attack is excessive to the military advantage anticipated (API Article 51; API Article 57; IHL Rule 14).
In an article on Israel’s 2014 campaign in Gaza, Mark Ellis, the executive director of the International Bar Association, explained, “No matter how appalling, the death of civilians during armed conflict does not in itself constitute a war crime.” Ellis however argued that “Israel’s Iron Dome defense shield has largely neutralized Hamas rockets” and that “[b]y its own admission, the Israeli government says that it intercepts roughly 90 percent of all rockets fired into Israel from Gaza. The Iron Dome shield has essentially rendered useless” rockets launched by Hamas. Ellis concluded that this dynamic makes Israel “quasi-unassailable,” hence Israel “has a greater legal duty to adhere to a higher proportionality standard.”
Beyond the conceptual issues raised by Ellis’s argument that a country’s legal authority to exercise its right to self-defense decreases as its military capability to do so increases, Ellis does not consider two essential facts. First, the warning time to find shelter for Israeli civilians living in southern Israel, meaning close to Gaza, is 15 seconds while for the Tel Aviv region, or central Israel, it is 90 seconds. The Iron Dome’s kill rate in a 15 second window is expectedly lower than in a 90 second window, hence the 90% interception of Hamas rockets may not reflect the actual danger to Israelis in the south. More importantly, because of falling debris from intercepted rockets, Israel instructs Israelis to stay in shelters for 10 minutes after the warning sirens end (here and here). In other words, were the Iron Dome’s interception rate to be 100% Israelis would still need to take shelter because of incoming Hamas rockets, an untenable situation requiring an appropriate military response.
Falling debris is a known risk in warfare. Operation Desert Storm, or the first Gulf war, ended on Feb. 28, 1991. See Patriots Stop Scuds but Israeli Man Is Killed by Debris, New York Times, January 26, 1991: “American Patriot missiles intercepted seven Iraqi Scuds that were fired at Haifa and Tel Aviv this evening. But at least one person was killed and 42 were wounded when the midair explosions spewed heavy, burning shrapnel onto residential areas below. … Thousands of people in Tel Aviv watched, horrified and fascinated, as a shower of deadly debris plummeted toward them”; Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1991: “Flaming debris from an Iraqi Scud missile slammed into a makeshift barracks full of U.S. troops near here Monday night, killing at least 27 soldiers and injuring 98.”
Perhaps some pattern can be seen in commentaries not considering the risk of falling debris from intercepted rockets or the pressure of a blast of 3 grams of explosives even at a short distance. Legal arguments should not ignore factual reality.
Facing Up to the Strategic Purpose
In addition to the claims that Israel’s pager operation was an indiscriminate attack, David Sanger wrote, “The explosions had little strategic purpose,” citing “one Western diplomat with long experience dealing with the Middle East said, they were hardly about to force Hezbollah’s leaders to give up a cause they have battled over for four decades.” Michael Walzer similarly wrote, “A catastrophic war with Lebanon is now the greater danger.” At the Sept. 20 Security Council meeting, U.N. Under-Secretary-General of the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo informed the Security Council that Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah said that “Israel exceeded all limits, laws and red lines” regarding the pager operation and said Hezbollah would “exact a heavy price and a fair punishment.” She added that Nasrallah “reiterated that the Lebanon front would stop only once the aggression on Gaza ended.”
However, the night before the pager operation, the Israeli cabinet approved a decision to include the return of its displaced citizens in the north, evacuated because of the Hezbollah rocket attacks. On Israel Channel 12 evening news on the day of the attack, veteran Israeli Arab affairs correspondent Ehud Yaari said, “tonight Hezbollah is asking itself if the operation we saw today is preparation” for something else and explained that the operation compromised Hezbollah’s command system which was based on contacting its operatives through pagers which it can no longer do. Two days later the Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel is in a “new phase” of its war and that Israel’s “sequence of military actions will continue.” The day after the pager attack Guy Barak published in Axios that “[a] former Israeli official with knowledge of the operation” said Israel the pager operation was “a surprise opening blow in an all-out war to try to cripple Hezbollah.” Yossi Melman reported that Israel’s codename for the pager operation was “Opening Blow.”
The days after the pager attack, Israel executed a similar attack in Lebanon, exploding hundreds of Hezbollah walkie-talkies. On Sept. 20, Israel killed Hezbollah senior commander Ibrahim Aqil along with several other Radwan force commanders. Aqil was a principal member of the Hezbollah cell that claimed responsibility for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut, killing a total of 304 people. On Sept. 27, Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and continued to destroy Hezbollah rockets and tunnels (here, here, and here). On Nov. 27, Israel and Hezbollah signed a ceasefire agreement. Several weeks later commentators reported on the affect Israel’s attack on Hezbollah had on the fall of the Assad regime (here, here and here). On February 28, 2025, Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV based in Lebanon aired an interview with Hassan Nasrallah son and daughter who spoke about how Israel’s pager operation depressed their father given the significant effects of the attack.
Israel’s actions against Hezbollah and Syria weakened Iran. In a Jan. 17, 2025 NPR interview, Amos Hochstein, then U.S. Special Envoy who helped negotiate the ceasefire, was asked the question why Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas “came together now.” He answered: “The real game changer was the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah … When Hezbollah did the deal, it meant a few things. Suddenly, Israel was fighting a one front war, not a two front war, and that was very bad for Hamas. The second was the sense of betrayal. Hezbollah betrayed them. Iran betrayed them. They signed a deal without them. And so, suddenly, the whole world changed on them.”
Finally, in a Feb. 6, 2025 interview on Israel’s Channel 12, then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the Israel found Hamas hard disks in Gaza several months after October 7 that clearly indicated that Hamas expected Hezbollah to join its attack on Israel (here at 3:29).
Israel’s pager operation was not an indiscriminate attack. It was a strategic operation that achieved its objective.
IMAGE: People and first responders gather at the scene of a reported device explosion in Saida in southern Lebanon on September 18, 2024 (Photo by Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP via Getty Images)
The post Israel’s Pager Operation: Not an Indiscriminate Attack But a Strategic Success appeared first on Just Security.
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A curated weekday guide to major news and developments over the past 24 hours. Here’s today’s news:
SYRIA
Syria’s Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have agreed to integrate into state institutions of the new Syrian government, interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa announced yesterday, adding that the landmark deal would also recognize Syria’s Kurdish community as an integral part of the state. Eyad Kourdi and Kareem El Damanhoury report for CNN.
Armed men attacked a position held by Syria’s government security forces in Damascus yesterday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, with the overnight skirmish raising concerns that the unrest sweeping Syria’s coastal regions could spread. It is unclear if anyone was injured, the war monitor added. Euan Ward reports for the New York Times.
The Israeli army today said it had struck military headquarters and sites housing weapons and equipment in southern Syria overnight. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Reuters reports.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR — U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE
Ukraine will have to make concessions over land that Russia had taken since 2014 in an agreement to end the war, with the resumption of U.S. support to Ukraine contingent on progress made during today’s U.S.-Ukraine meeting in Saudi Arabia, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday. Alan Rappeport reports for the New York Times; Michael R. Gordon reports for the Wall Street Journal.
Military officials from more than 30 countries will take part in Paris talks today on creating an international security force for Ukraine, a French military official said yesterday. John Leicester reports for AP News.
President Trump’s Middle East special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is planning to visit Moscow this week to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, sources said yesterday. Annmarie Hordern and Jenny Leonard report for Bloomberg News.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR
Ukraine today attacked Moscow with its largest long-range drone bombardment of the war, Moscow’s mayor said. According to the Russian authorities, at least two people were killed and 14 injured in the attack, which also forced four airports in the area to temporarily suspend flights. Marc Santora and Ivan Nechepurenko report for the New York Times.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy yesterday met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, ahead of today’s planned Washington-Kyiv talks in Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah. Tim Balk reports for the New York Times.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
Hamas has offered to hand over the governance of Gaza in exchange for a five-to-10-year truce in its war with Israel, Trump’s hostage envoy Adam Boehler said on Sunday. Laura Kelly reports for the Hill.
Any further delay in Israel’s reversal of its block on the supply of aid and electricity to Gaza will “further reverse any progress we have managed to achieve during the ceasefire,” the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, Muhannad Hadi, said yesterday. Separately, the head of the U.N. aid agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, has accused Israel of “weaponizing humanitarian aid” with the blockade. The Washington Post reports; Robert Greenall and Imogen Foulkes report for BBC News.
U.S. FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The Trump administration is canceling 83% of programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and intends to fold the remaining programs into the State Department, Secretary Rubio announced yesterday. Jennifer Hansler and Kit Maher report for CNN.
Iran is open to talks about its nuclear program with the United States if they are restricted to military concerns, Iran’s mission to the U.N. said in a social media post on Sunday. Matthew Mpoke Bigg reports for the New York Times.
The United States is withdrawing from the landmark international climate Loss and Damage Fund, a Treasury spokesperson said in an email yesterday. AP News reports.
OTHER GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS
The Philippine government today arrested former President Rodrigo Duterte after receiving an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity, according to a statement from the Presidential Communications Office. Kathleen Magramo reports for CNN.
Uganda has deployed an unknown number of troops to South Sudan to support the country’s fragile government amid concerns over a looming civil war, a spokesperson for the Ugandan military has said. Rodney Muhumuza reports for AP News.
Greenland residents are voting today in an election dominated by concerns about Trump’s interest in taking control over the mineral-rich island. Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen reports for Reuters.
Activist groups from Myanmar are calling for the U.N. to investigate its special envoy to Myanmar, Julie Bishop, over her consulting company’s alleged links to Chinese mining and construction companies. David Rising reports for AP News.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ACTIONS
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard yesterday said she has stripped security clearances from dozens of former national security officials and others, including former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Gabbard added that the daily presidential intelligence briefing would also not be shared with former President Biden. Dan De Luce reports for NBC News.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has cut about $10 million in annual funding for two cybersecurity initiatives housed within the nonprofit Center for Internet Security, including an initiative dedicated to helping state and local election officials, a CISA spokesperson said in an email yesterday. Christina A. Cassidy reports for AP News.
The Trump administration will reverse the Biden administration’s “myopic” focus on climate change in energy policy, Energy Secretary and former fracking executive Chris Wright told the largest U.S. gathering of the energy industry yesterday. Brad Plumer reports for the New York Times.
NASA is eliminating its chief scientist and 19 other roles amid efforts to pare back staff numbers by abolishing the Office of the Chief Scientist and the Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy, according to a notice to Congress the Trump administration sent yesterday. Kenneth Chang reports for the New York Times.
DOGE’s efforts to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have been somewhat reined in by the Trump-appointed agency leadership in recent weeks, Adam Martinez, the CFPB’s chief operating officer, testified in court yesterday. Tierney Sneed reports for CNN.
OTHER U.S. DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS
Trump aims to build minerals refining facilities on U.S. military bases inside the United States in a bid to boost domestic production of critical minerals and counter China’s control of the sector, two senior administration officials said. Ernest Scheyder and Jarrett Renshaw report for Reuters.
The inspector general for the Office of Personnel Management on Friday told lawmakers he is investigating the use of an OPM data system that DOGE used to email federal workers. Rebecca Beitsch reports for the Hill.
The Senate yesterday voted 67-32 to confirm Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) to lead the Department of Labor. Al Weaver reports for the Hill.
The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating 60 universities over allegedly failing to comply with obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students, according to letters sent yesterday. Lexi Lonas Cochran reports for the Hill.
Ruth Marcus, a long-standing Washington Post columnist, resigned yesterday, citing the newspaper management’s decision to not run her commentary critical of owner Jeff Bezos’ new editorial policy. David Bauder reports for AP News.
A Saudi prisoner accused of plotting Al Qaeda’s 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole warship has signed a guilty plea offer to avoid a death penalty trial, his lawyer announced yesterday. Carol Rosenberg reports for the New York Times.
Perkins Coie, the law firm targeted by Trump last week for its role in the 2016 election, has hired an elite Washington firm, Williams & Connolly, to fight the order, sources say. Michael S. Schmidt and Kenneth P. Vogel report for the New York Times.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION LITIGATION
A federal judge yesterday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, setting a court hearing in the case for tomorrow. Khalil has been moved to a federal jail for migrants in Louisiana to await deportation proceedings, according to his lawyers and a detainee database. Jonathan Allen and Luc Cohen report for Reuters.
DOGE is likely subject to the Freedom of Information Act disclosure obligations, a federal judge ruled yesterday, with the preliminary decision handing a major win to watchdog groups and others seeking to scrutinize the Musk-led initiative. Tierney Sneed reports for CNN.
Trump’s pardons of Jan. 6 rioters do not extend to the separate crimes of a rioter who plotted to murder the law enforcement agents who investigated him, a district judge ruled yesterday. Ryan J. Reilly reports for NBC News.
A federal judge yesterday ordered the Trump administration to release foreign aid payments owed under certain existing contracts while declining to invalidate the mass contract cancellations by USAID and the State Department. Ella Lee reports for the Hill.
The Trump administration has improperly frozen a nearly $7 billion “green bank” climate grant, a coalition of three nonprofit groups alleged in a lawsuit filed yesterday. Michael Phillis and Matthew Daly report for AP News.
Did you miss this? Stay up-to-date with our Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions
The post Early Edition: March 11, 2025 appeared first on Just Security.
