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Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian Israeli Leader for Peace in the January 25 For Immediate Release: January 18, 2016 Press Contacts: Natalie Raabe, (212) 286-6591 Molly Erman, (212) 286-7936 Adrea Piazza, (212) 286-4255 Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian Israeli Leader for Peace In the January 25, 2016, issue of The New Yorker, in “Seeds of Peace” (p. 24), David Remnick reports from Jerusalem and profiles Ayman Odeh, the foremost leader of Israel’s Palestinian citizens, who is preaching the coëxistence of Arab and Jew in a time of dashed hopes, ongoing violence, and regional chaos. Last March, Odeh, who is forty-one and from the Israeli city of Haifa, emerged from provincial obscurity amid an unexpected upheaval in Israeli politics. The small political parties that represent the Arab population in Israel—1.7 million out of more than eight million—reacted to a stringent new election law designed by the right wing to limit their presence in the Knesset, the national legislature. Submerging their ideological differences, they formed a coalition, called the Joint List. It, with Odeh at the helm, became the third-largest bloc in the Knesset, behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and the centrist Labor Party-led Zionist Union. “I thought of his election as a wonder of democracy—though I’m sure that Ayman sees it as something a little different,” Yaakov Peri, a member of the Knesset, tells Rem- nick. “This is true,” Remnick notes, adding, “To be a Palestinian in the Israeli Knesset is infinitely more complex than being a member of, say, the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus.” Odeh, who speaks in depth about his evolved relationship with Israeli Jews, preaches a message that “is built around the rarest commodity in the desert after water: hope,” Remnick writes. “At a time when everyone speaks of a ‘one-state reality’ and ‘no partner for peace,’ Odeh refuses to give in to the region’s default positions of despair and suspicion.” Remnick, who speaks to several members of the Knesset, notes that the mainstream attitude toward Odeh among his colleagues is often one of patronizing skepticism. “I don’t know how much time he has,” Michael Oren, the former Ambassador to the U.S. and a center-right member of the Knesset, says. “Martin Luther King was supportive of the Constitution and the American right to exist. Would Ayman say the same things about the Jewish state? . We have a problem in this country with loyalty.” In response, Odeh says, “What does Oren mean about being loyal to the essence and the assumptions of the state? Does that include the nakba and the expulsion of my people? Does it in- clude military law and land confiscations in the first years of the state? I am loyal to universal values. I can throw it back at him and say the government is not loyal, because it is leading the state to disaster.” Odeh’s wife, Nardin Asleh, tells Remnick that she, too, feels pessimistic. “I’m afraid that things will crash down on him,” she says, adding, “I say to him, ‘Are you going to free Palestine? Because, if you aren’t going to free Palestine, is it worth missing your kids’ childhood? You might pass a law here or there, but is it really worth it?’ ” Odeh tells Remnick, “The thing I fear the most is that the Palestinians will grow so desperate about the impossibility of two states that they ask for one state.” The Billionaire Koch Brothers Are Championing Criminal-Justice Reform. But Has Their Formula Changed? In “The New Koch” (p. 38), Jane Mayer investigates the billionaire Koch brothers’ recent efforts on behalf of criminal-justice reform—and whether or not a campaign to improve their public image is the driving motivator behind them. Charles and David Koch, the politically polarizing owners of Koch Industries, sit at the center of a network of “pro-business” donors and advocacy organizations which has become one of the most powerful political forces in the country. In the lead-up to the Presidential election, “as the Kochs embark on the most ambitious political effort of their lives, they appear to be undergoing the best image overhaul that their money can buy,” Mayer writes. David Axelrod, the former political adviser to President Barack Obama, tells Mayer that the Kochs are in the midst of “an extraordinary exercise in rebranding.” He points to a series of public-policy initiatives launched recently by the Kochs, all of which counter their plutocratic image by showcasing a concern for the poor. “In the past year, Koch Industries has become one of the leading backers of a bipartisan coalition for criminal-justice reform, supporting legislation that aims at reducing prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom are poor people of color,” Mayer writes. The Kochs have also launched a nonprofit group, the LIBRE Ini- tiative, whose aim is to “equip the Hispanic community with the tools they need to be prosper- ous.” Other organizations controlled by the Kochs are offering “healthy life style” tips to low-in- come Americans. “It’s all part of a very well-conceived strategy to change the image of the Koch brothers as dark and plotting oilmen ideologues,” Axelrod says. Norman Reimer, the executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, JOHN CUNEO tells Mayer that the Kochs’ long-standing support for criminal-justice reform “is deeply principled and not window dressing.” But, Mayer notes, the Kochs, as hard-line libertarians, have had quite different goals than many of their liberal allies. “Their distaste for the American criminal-jus- tice system is bound up in distrust of government and preference for private enterprise,” she writes. “Until recently, the criminal-justice victims the Kochs focussed on were businessmen who had run afoul of the modern regulatory state—that is, people like them.” Mark Holden, the general counsel of Koch Industries, who has overseen Koch Industries’ criminal-justice-reform work, has gone to the White House four times to discuss the issue with Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. The Kochs’ campaign has earned praise both from her and from the President. Jarrett tells Mayer, “From my first meeting with Mark, he’s been accessible 24/7,” adding, “He’s been extremely constructive.” Theirs, Mayer writes, is one of the strangest friendships in American politics. Among the most surprising of the Kochs’ new allies is Van Jones, the head of a criminal-justice-reform group called #cut50. In an inter- view with Mayer, Jones defended his partnership with the Kochs on sentencing reform. “Everyone has his eyes wide open about the Kochs’ politics and their ultimate agenda,” he says. “But if you’re sitting in prison right now you’re not praying that the Koch brothers won’t help.” Jones believes that the Kochs’ embrace of the issue is driven by their strong libertarian convictions. “It’s not part of presenting the com- pany in a new light,” he says. “It doesn’t make sense to mix their criminal-justice-reform work with their corporate advertising. The Koch brothers have a despicable record on everything under the sun, from campaign finance to poisoning the planet, but they have been on this issue for years. Mass incarceration is the opposite of liberty and justice. There are very deeply held principles for both sides.” David Uhlmann, the former head of the Justice Department’s environmental-crimes section, tells Mayer, “The Koch brothers are not in- terested in criminal-justice reform because they suddenly became interested in the number of poor and minority Americans who are in prison,” continuing, “they and their allies want to take us back to 1970, before the regulatory state.” A Paraplegic Undergoes Pioneering Surgery In “One Small Step” (p. 48), D.T. Max travels to Poland to explore the story of Darek Fidyka, a paraplegic who, following an experimen- tal procedure, has regained some control of his legs—and who could be the first person confirmed to have had spinal paralysis reversed by an operation. In 2012, Fidyka, who was paralyzed in 2010 after his spine was nearly severed during a stabbing, volunteered for a proce- dure that had never been attempted on a human being before. During an operation that lasted a total of ten hours, surgeons removed some of the cells surrounding the nerves that run from Fidyka’s nose into his brain and injected them into the gap that the knife wound had left in his spine. As Max explains: “Our nasal passages are exposed to a lot of abuse—from pollution to viruses—and the neurons within them die and are reborn constantly,” adding, “This regrowth is managed by supporting cells, called olfactory ensheathing cells, which form tun- nels that neurons thread their way through.” Fidyka’s doctors—led by a British researcher named Geoffrey Raisman, the head of neuro- logical repair at the Institute of Neurology at University College, London—believed that, if ensheathing cells were injected into his spi- nal cord, they would guide injured neurons across the wound, healing his spine. The gamble posed by the surgery appears to be paying off. Within months of the surgery, Fidyka began to experience small signs of muscle activity. “Electrical-muscular studies and M.R.I. scans suggest that neurons in Fidyka’s spinal cord above and below the wound have sprouted extensions again; some may even have crossed the half-inch wound to reconnect with one another,” Max writes, adding, “Fidyka is now ambulatory, with the help of high leg braces and a walking frame.” Raisman describes Fidyka’s condition thusly: “He can walk, but he’s not dancing.” Max writes, “in this world, there are no Lazarus stories,” adding, “But this is a field where even small gains have eluded surgeons for decades.” Some researchers have raised doubts about the procedure that seemingly got Fidyka on his feet, noting that a surgery that is effective for a cut spinal cord may not work for the far more common problem of a compressed or fractured cord.
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