Day: October 19, 2023

Drones and rockets targeted two military bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq on Thursday, sources and officials said, the latest in a series of attacks after Iraqi militants warned Washington against intervening to support Israel against Hamas in Gaza.

Rockets and drones were fired at Ain al-Asad air base, which hosts U.S. and other international forces in western Iraq, and multiple blasts were heard inside the base, two security sources said.

The Iraqi military said it closed the area around the base and started a search operation. It was not clear yet whether the attacks caused casualties or damage, said the sources.

Rockets hit another military base hosting U.S. forces near Baghdad’s international airport, Iraqi police said on Thursday, without providing further details.

A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said two rockets had been fired at U.S. forces at the airport. One was intercepted and the other hit an empty storage facility and there were no casualties, the official added.

The latest attacks take to four in the past 24 hours targeting Iraqi military bases that hosts U.S. forces in Iraq.

Last week, Iraqi armed groups aligned with Iran threatened to target U.S. interests with missiles and drones if Washington intervened to support Israel against Hamas in Gaza following the deadly incursions by Hamas militants that killed 1,400 people.

U.S. military forces in Iraq were targeted on Wednesday in two separate drone attacks, with one causing minor injuries to a small number of troops even though the U.S. military managed to intercept the armed drone.

The United States has 2,500 troops in Iraq, and 900 more in neighbouring Syria, on a mission to advise and assist local forces in combating Islamic State, which in 2014 seized swathes of territory in both countries.

Ain al-Asad air base is located in the western Anbar province.

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It’s a head-spinning time to be an educator in the United States. From the difficulties of teaching during a pandemic, to getting caught in the crosshairs of culture wars, to doing everything in their power to help students recover and thrive academically and emotionally—all while being underpaid, and often in inadequate learning and teaching conditions—teachers have gone from one challenge to the next. Now, educators are confronting a juggernaut that is swiftly revolutionizing education and society: generative AI. And they are largely figuring it out without any guidance, including from their schools and districts. The AFT is advocating for policies that will help maximize the benefits and limit the perils of AI, and we are offering educators tools and guidance to prepare their students for this new world. 

The possible uses of artificial intelligence systems are limitless. AI can be used to detect and treat cancer—or to deceive voters and disrupt elections. The range is broad in education as well. Potential benefits of AI in education include learning personalized to each student, data analysis to improve teaching methods, reducing onerous paperwork for teachers, and engaging students in learning in new and exciting ways. AI could lessen the burden of one of the most time-consuming tasks for teachers: giving meaningful feedback on students’ writing. Teachers who assign students to write papers can outsource correcting grammar and spelling to AI, saving the human touch to evaluate students’ arguments and analyses. 

But there are downsides. The COVID-19 pandemic shined a spotlight on America’s gaping digital divide, and without extensive changes to education funding, these new technologies will only deepen that divide. Racial and cultural bias is a well-documented problem in AI algorithms, and data privacy is a serious concern. AI raises thorny ethical issues around plagiarism and cheating, and it can exacerbate the already widespread loneliness and disconnection among young people. 

Teachers aren’t Luddites; they already embrace using technology in their craft. The recent AFT Surveys of Teachers and Parents on Educational Technology found that more than three-quarters of preK-12 teachers use education technology daily in communication (77 percent), planning and preparation (71 percent), and whole-class or large-group instruction (65 percent). But there is concern about students’ social media use. Three-quarters of teachers believe that students’ social media use has a negative impact on them, and a similar percentage of parents say it has a negative or mixed impact on their children.  

Social media platforms have failed to protect our young people from the nefarious practices of technology companies. And government officials have not done enough either. Social media, generative AI and machine learning models must be developed and employed ethically, with developers held accountable for any real-world harm. There are now virtually no checks on the power of generative AI models, but there is a broad consensus among corporations, governments and civil society that guardrails are needed. Governments must implement effective regulations protecting privacy, security and well-being. And social media and AI technologies must adhere to principles of equity, fair access and social accountability. 

We are working to help educators help their students develop critical-thinking and analytical tools, including discerning facts from falsehoods. The AFT has a new partnership with GPTZero, the leading AI identification platform, and we have strengthened our media literacy partnership with NewsGuard, an anti-misinformation tool, offering both as resources for classroom educators. Our goal is to promote media and news literacy, as well as to give educators robust assistance in using AI in their classrooms and helping their students use AI technology effectively. All AFT members will have priority access to a series of new tools developed for pedagogical AI teaching. Members will also be able to access codes to enable their students, colleagues and families to use both GPTZero and NewsGuard at no cost at newsguardtech.com/aft. It’s the latest in the AFT’s Real Solutions for Kids and Communities campaign. 

We need more partnerships like this with educators, policymakers and industry leaders, and we must act now. While state education leaders and school districts are “studying” the issue, AI developers are moving full speed ahead. Education and government officials have an obligation to adapt with the fast-changing effects of technology on students, educators, teaching and learning. This will require new investments, high-quality professional development, accountability measures, safeguards, and acknowledgments that technology should supplement, not supplant, educators.

Like many others, I regard new technologies like generative AI with a mix of awe and apprehension. I am excited by how they could benefit health, science and the environment. I worry about the potential to undermine elections and democracy itself, as well as warnings from scientists and experts about the risk of human extinction from AI. Today’s students need to be equipped for all of this—to harness the good and prevent the harm of new and future technologies. We must support their teachers to help them navigate the complexity of their changing world. 

The post AI is a) powerful, b) perilous or c) both appeared first on The Forward.

Iran-backed groups blew up a gas pipeline in Syria’s Kurdish-controlled northeast near a U.S. base Thursday, a war monitor said, as regional tensions grew following Israel’s war with Gaza-based militants. 

Iran-backed groups “blew up the gas pipeline near the Conoco gas facility,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Observatory’s director, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP the blast had gone off close to a U.S. base. 

U.S.-led coalition forces, which entered Syria in 2014 to fight the Islamic State group, have set up several bases in Syria including in the Al-Omar oil field, the country’s largest. They are also deployed at the Conoco gas field, and both are in Kurdish-controlled territory. 

Flames rose from the site of the explosion, the British-based monitor with a large network of sources inside Syria reported. But it said there had been no casualties. 

On Wednesday, CENTCOM said it had shot down two drones and damaged a third in Iraq over the past 24 hours, with allied troops suffering “minor injuries” in one incident. 

It did not say who launched the drones, but pro-Iranian groups have threatened to attack American troops in Iraq because of Washington’s support for Israel in its war with Hamas. 

The attacks in Iraq and Syria come on the heels of an explosion at a hospital in Gaza that left hundreds dead on Tuesday. Hamas has blamed Israel for the blast, which in turn has said that another Palestinian armed group was responsible. 

The hospital explosion caused outrage across the region, with thousands taking to the streets in Arab capitals in support of Palestinians and condemning Israel.  

Gaza has been hit by a relentless barrage of Israeli fire in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas militant attack, which Israel says killed at least 1,400 people, most of them civilians. 

Some 1,500 Islamist fighters were killed in clashes before the army regained control, the Israeli military said.  

Israeli bombing of Gaza has since killed more than 3,700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the health ministry. 

Ukrainian troops are facing a new Russian onslaught in the largely destroyed eastern city of Avdiivka, while making some progress on their counteroffensive in the southern theatre, senior military officials said on Thursday.

General Valery Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, posted a video on Telegram in which he appeared to be conferring with officers in Avdiivka and in Kupiansk, a town further north where Russian forces have intensified attacks in recent weeks.

“The enemy is not relenting in attempts to break through our defences and surround (Avdiivka),” Zaluzhniy wrote in a commentary attached to the video.

“The enemy is actively bringing in assault units and large amounts of armoured equipment and using aircraft and artillery.”

Oleksandr Shtupun, spokesperson for the southern group of Ukrainian forces, told national television there was constant pressure on Avdiivka, about 20 km (12 miles) west of the Russian-held city of Donetsk.

“They regrouped and launched new assaults there,” he said.

Russian forces subjected Avdiivka to fierce attacks last week, but the shelling had tapered off in the last few days.

Avdiivka has become a watchword for Ukrainian resistance. The town, known for its large coking plant, held out in 2014 against Russian-backed separatists who secured swathes of eastern Ukraine and it.

And like Bakhmut to the northeast, captured by Russian forces in May, it has endured months of attacks since Russia’s full-scale February 2022 invasion. Officials say some 1,600 residents remain from a pre-war population of 32,000.

Kupiansk was recaptured by Ukrainian troops late last year in a lighting advance through the country’s northeast, but Russian forces have stepped up attacks in a bid to retake it.

Zaluzhniy said Ukrainian forces around Kupiansk were “maintaining their defence in the most difficult of conditions”.

Russia’s accounts of the fighting said its forces had destroyed a command point near Avdiivka and repelled 11 Ukrainian attacks near Kupiansk.

Spokesperson Shtupun said Ukrainian troops engaged in the country’s four-month-old counteroffensive had made a degree of headway in the southern theatre, where they are trying to advance to the Sea of Azov to sever a land bridge linking Russian positions in the east and south.

He said troops had advanced 400 metres (a quarter mile) to the southwest of the village of Verbove in Zaporizhzhia region.

Verbove is a few kilometres east of Robotyne, a village recaptured by Ukraine last month in the southward drive.

The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank and non-profit research group, said Ukrainian forces appeared to have broken through on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in the southern Kherson region. Kyiv did not comment on the report.

When Ukrainian troops retook parts of Kherson region last year, Russian forces abandoned its biggest city, also called Kherson. They now shell the city from the opposite bank.

Hundreds of demonstrators rallied in New York City’s Times Square on Thursday to demand the release of hostages taken by Hamas, as President Joe Biden faces mounting pressure to leverage every diplomatic tool to secure the freedom of American captives.

Billboards showed the faces of people believed to be held hostage, including babies and elderly people, as the crowd chanted, “Bring them home.”

Speakers at the rally included Ronan and Orna Neutra, whose 22-year-old son, Omer, is thought to be held captive. They described him as a natural leader and avid athlete who captained the basketball, volleyball and soccer teams at his school.

The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Omer Neutra postponed his college plans to move to Israel, where he joined the Israel Defense Forces. The night before the attacks, Neutra spoke with his parents by phone, telling them he was looking forward to a quiet weekend after a month spent patrolling the border, his father recounted.

“We are heartbroken. We are worried,” his mother said. “But we are focused and resolute in doing everything within our power to bring Omer back.”

U.S. officials have said Hamas is holding some 200 people hostage after the Palestinian group’s Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel, when militants killed about 1,400 Israelis.

While there is no official list of Americans in captivity, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jim Risch, told reporters on Wednesday that 10 of the hostages were American.

“It is the highest priority here. We want those people out,” Risch said.

Thursday’s protest in Times Square was organized by the nonprofit Israeli American Council, which represents Israeli Americans in the U.S.

Speakers, including U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, the first Jewish Senate majority leader in history, vowed to stand with Israel and fight back against Hamas.

“We no longer can be the Jews trembling in the shadows,” actor and activist Yuval David, a dual Israeli and American citizen, told the crowd. “We know what happened to us then, and we know what is happening to us now.”

Americans across the U.S. are taking to the streets on a near-daily basis to protest on behalf of Israel or the Palestinian people, with bitter divisions re-emerging over the decades-long conflict in the Middle East.

A pro-Palestinian rally was planned for Friday outside the main branch of New York City’s public library to call for a ceasefire. On Wednesday, hundreds of protesters demanding a ceasefire were arrested while occupying the rotunda of the Cannon House office building at the U.S. Capitol.

“Ceasefire is the only way for the deaths to stop. Ceasefire is the only way to bring hostages home,” organizers of Friday’s New York rally said on their event page.

Biden visited Israel this week to reiterate his support and urge the country’s leaders to avert a humanitarian disaster as it prepares a ground invasion into the Gaza Strip.

His administration must walk a fine line. The task of securing the hostages’ release may require negotiating assistance from countries in the region, including Qatar, that have no diplomatic ties with Israel.

Rachel Goldberg, the mother of 23-year-old hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a dual Israeli and U.S. citizen, said the last messages she had received from her son were sent on the morning of Oct. 7, when he wrote, “I love you guys. I’m sorry.” She said police confirmed the last signal from her son’s phone showed it in Gaza that morning.

“I don’t know that he’s alive, I don’t know that he made it,” Goldberg said in an interview in Jerusalem.

U.S. officials have not released names of the Americans believed to be held hostage. But media reports have identified several missing people with American citizenship, including Goldberg-Polin; a 66-year-old nurse, Adrienne Neta; 35-year-old Sagui Dekel-Chen, a father of two with a baby on the way; and Itay Chen, who serves in the Israel Defense Force.

Donald Trump does not have immunity from criminal charges for trying to reverse his 2020 U.S. presidential election loss, federal prosecutors said Thursday, opposing his bid to dismiss the case.

“No constitutional provision or historical practice supports conferring absolute immunity from criminal prosecution on a former president,” Washington prosecutors said in a court filing.

Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has claimed in legal filings that he has sweeping immunity from criminal charges for actions he took while serving as president from 2017 to 2021.

He was charged in August by U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith with four felony counts for attempting to interfere in the counting of votes and to block the certification of the 2020 election, which he lost to Democratic President Joe Biden.

In an Oct. 5 court filing, Trump’s lawyers said he cannot be prosecuted for his efforts to ensure “election integrity” because they were “at the heart of his official responsibilities as President.”

The case is one of four criminal prosecutions Trump, 77, faces as he seeks to retake the White House.

Jewish allies of Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat, are pushing back against an effort by local rabbis and pro-Israel groups to paint the progressive incumbent as hostile to Israel and remove him from office. 

Centrist Democrats, Jewish activists and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have mounted a campaign to encourage George Latimer, Westchester’s popular county executive, to challenge Bowman in next year’s primary — and he has indicated that he’s considering it.

Their efforts intensified in recent days after Bowman joined a number of his colleagues to denounce Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Israel’s response to Hamas — which killed more than 1,400 Israelis and kidnapped more than 200 — sparked a war. The death toll is mounting fast. More than 3,500 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced in what aid groups call a humanitarian crisis.

A group of more than 40 rabbis affiliated with the Westchester Board of Rabbis signed a statement this week expressing “frustration and anger” over the congressman’s positions on Israel and called on him “to exercise better leadership.” Additionally, more than two dozen rabbis in New York’s 16th District, Southern Westchester County, issued a letter to Latimer urging him to announce his candidacy. 

Bowman’s stance on Israel could become an issue in a competitive primary. The two-term congressman won the 2022 Democratic primary with just 54% of the vote against two rivals in the deep blue district.

But Bowman also has many Jewish supporters.

Jewish activists, calling themselves “Jews for Jamaal,” wrote an open letter to Latimer on Thursday, discouraging him from running. “A primary between the two of you would be needlessly wasteful and terribly divisive,” the signatories wrote, “especially at a time when all Democrats need to stand united against the rise of MAGA demagogues and authoritarianism.”

Calling him “a Democratic champion throughout your career,” they implored Latimer to “resist any temptation to unseat Congressman Bowman, who is also a popular Democrat who is clearly aligned with the voters on so many issues.” 

The county executive didn’t immediately reply to an inquiry about whether he’s leaning toward a run and when he expects to make a decision.

A nuanced approach to Israel 

Bowman, 47, has had a strained relationship with some Jewish leaders in his district since he beat longtime Jewish Congressman Eliot Engel, a staunch supporter of Israel, in 2018. Bowman has aligned closely with the four congresswomen — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — known as “The Squad.” Each of the four has made particularly pointed critiques of Israel.

But Bowman has also faced pressure from the left for traveling to Israel and his more nuanced approach to the conflict.

Following the Hamas attack, Bowman issued a strong condemnation of the terrorist group, called on Israel to de-escalate, and advocated for an immediate ceasefire. He also condemned those who celebrated the attacks on Israel at a demonstration in New York “in the strongest possible terms.” 

He nonetheless drew the ire of the Westchester rabbis for blaming Israel for the blockade of Gaza and co-sponsoring a ceasefire resolution. They charged Bowman with drawing a false equivalence between Hamas’ killings of Israelis and the death of  Palestinians used “as human shields” by Hamas in Gaza.

Pushing back against the critics 

Bowman’s Jewish supporters counter that his critics distort his record and unfairly assert that he blamed Israel for the attack against it.

Bowman said in an emailed statement that he’s “grateful” for his supporters “as we continue our work to bring peace, love, and justice to all people.” While he didn’t specifically address the situation in Israel and Gaza – he called it “an extremely difficult time for so many in the district and around the world.

“It is more important than ever for us to continue to connect, learn, and grow together even when we disagree.” 

He added that it’s an honor to represent one of the most diverse districts in the country, which includes “the beautiful diversity within the Jewish community” and asked his critics to “fight the urge to allow division to overcome us.”

The post Jamaal Bowman’s Jewish allies counter efforts to unseat him over his stances on Israel appeared first on The Forward.

The announcer at Friday’s opening game of the Coachella Firebirds, a minor league hockey team in the Southern California desert, began by asking the crowd to observe a moment of silence for the state of Israel.

A Jewish friend who happened to be in attendance said it was as incongruous as it was heartwarming. “How long do you think that’s going to last?” he asked.

It’s a good question, and here’s the answer: It’s up to Israel.

American support — the kind that prompts the president of the United States to fly to Tel Aviv and deliver a heartfelt, no-holds-barred endorsement of Israel’s right to self-defense — has a shelf life.

In a SSRS poll published Sunday, 96% of Americans said they sympathize with Israel and 71% said Israel’s response to the Hamas attack is justified. A separate ABC News survey the same day found that 63% of Democrats and 52% of Republicans think the U.S. has a responsibility to protect Israeli citizens.

That was before the explosion at a Gaza City hospital, before Israeli airstrikes hit people as they were following the IDF’s directive to flee south, before the Palestinian death toll, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, topped 3,700. The war will be long, casualties and destruction will continue to mount, the cost will be enormous — and the aftermath will be tortuous. Keeping support up is not just a matter of hasbara, it is essential to Israel’s national security.

We should be mindful that yet another poll, by Reuters/Ipsos and published on Monday, showed 81% of Americans agreeing with the statement, “Israel should avoid killing civilians in its retaliatory strikes against Hamas.”

The message of that poll, not to mention common sense, is clear: Harming innocent Palestinians harms Israel. There is no blank check for retaliation, or even deterrence.

“Israel shot itself in the foot with its initial hawkish position that it would allow no food, water, or medicine into Gaza,” Michael Koplow, a scholar at the Israel Policy Forum blogged Monday.

Koplow pointed out that Israel was bound to reverse the decision anyway, as it did when on Wednesday it announced it would allow humanitarian aid to enter through the Rafah checkpoint.

But by then the damage was done. A sympathetic American media and a full court press by pro-Israel commentators cannot overcome the simple moral calculus that if killing or hurting Israeli children is bad, so is killing or hurting Palestinian children. Israel’s supporters can’t argue, as they rightly do, that Hamas is to blame for the misery in Gaza, and then punish the victims.

“If you say you do not want innocent people on your side to be killed,” Avrum Burg, the former speaker of the Knesset, said during a Zoom talk hosted by Peter Beinart last week, “you’re not allowed to kill innocent people on the other side.”

American sympathy for the Palestinian cause is low, just 2% according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published Monday. But that doesn’t mean, again, Americans want to see innocent Palestinians suffer. In 2014, the last time Israel launched a ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza — during a 51-day conflict that killed some 2,300 Palestinians — only 22% of Americans supported Israel’s position.

An annual Quinnipiac poll that measures American support for Israel found that support dipped to its lowest level in 20 years in May 2021—the month Israel attacked Hamas positions in Gaza, killing 66 children.

That should be a warning. For years, Israel’s supporters have been saying that the country’s bond to America is founded not just on shared interests, but on shared values. Democracy is one of those values, along with human rights and the rule of law. A terror attack, even the most vile, doesn’t suspend those values; it tests them.

To defeat Hamas and deter further attacks, Israel may choose to follow what the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman calls “Hama rules.” It refers to former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad’s 1982 decision to root out the Muslim Brotherhood by flattening the Syrian town of Hama, killing 20,000 of its residents in the process.

The bloodlust and revenge coursing through the veins of Israel and her supporters make obliteration look enticing. Photoshopped images of northern Gaza as a parking lot have begun to crop up on my social media feed.

But “Hama Rules” come with a codicil: Behave like Assad, get treated like Assad. How much U.S. aid did his regime get? How many pro-Syria votes did Assad have in Congress? The correct answer is zero.

One cautionary note comes when you look a little closer at the Ipsos/Reuters poll showing strong American support for Israel. It turns out that when you break it out by age, double the percentage of adults under 40 say that the U.S. should be a neutral mediator in the conflict compared to adults over 40. The next generation’s support is not a given. How Israel reacts now will matter for its future support.

But that’s not fair, you say. America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and its drone strikes in Pakistan killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, close to a Gaza Strip’s worth of dead, wounded and displaced — and Congress and the president didn’t express concern over the “humanitarian crisis” — they voted for it. But that’s the prerogative of a superpower, which funds 16% of Israel’s military budget, and has already said it will give more — provided Israel remains a cause Americans support.

When I did a little digging into why a second-tier hockey game in a small American county would begin its season opener with a prayer for Israel, I found that the Acrisure Arena’s co-owner is Irving Azoff, the Jewish music executive who this week signed an open letter calling for the music industry to stand by Israel.

Representatives from Acrissure did not respond to my repeated inquiries this week, so I’m not sure whether Azoff played any role in the announcement.

So far, Americans are standing by Israel as it defends itself against a group that slaughtered its citizens. But if history is any guide, keeping that support depends on Israel following a very simple — if seemingly hypocritical — rule: Spare the innocent.

The post Will Hamas say ‘Uncle!’ before America says ‘Enough!’? appeared first on The Forward.

This was originally published as a newsletter from Ryan Grim. Sign up to get the next one in your inbox.

Stick with this one, it’s worth the ride. I know there isn’t really any oxygen for news outside of the assault on Gaza, but we didn’t want to hold this story any longer, particularly as things in the Middle East look like they might spiral out into a regional war. 

Back in March, you might remember, Neha Wadekar and I published an investigation called “A Is for Abuse,” about a slick tech firm that purports to be disrupting education in Africa and turning a profit while doing it. It’s the kind of “doing well by doing good” ethos that has become common in our benevolent oligarch era, and Bridge International Academies quickly became a darling of Silicon Valley and its associated billionaires, like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and our very own Pierre Omidyar (he was the founding donor of The Intercept, but has since stepped back), as well as international financial institutions like the World Bank, all of which kicked in millions to get the operation off the ground. 

The play, as Bridge saw it, was to cut costs dramatically by using technology rather than expensive teachers, and to scale rapidly throughout informal settlements in Africa and South Asia. You may already have spotted the risk with that business plan: Who are you putting in the classrooms, and how are you making sure the kids are safe at that scale? 

Our March investigation zeroed in on a case of serial child sex abuse that had, to put it gently, not been handled well by the company or by its main investor, the World Bank. The Bank’s internal investigation unit uncovered the abuse, yet, years later, it had yet to be revealed publicly, until our article. 

Neha and I thought we had produced a hell of a piece of journalism — but we didn’t know the half of it. Since then, we learned that top executives at the World Bank joined a conference call with the founders of the company. On the call, they discussed a plan to bury the sex abuse allegations until they had finished a new round of financing, and along the way to “neutralize Adler”: a reference to the World Bank investigator leading the probe into the company. And they took notes while on the call — notes we obtained, along with a cache of other documents. The story’s almost too much to believe. 

You can find it here. As always, thanks for reading.

The post World Bank Whistleblower Exposes Cover Up of Child Sex Abuse at For-Profit School Chain appeared first on The Intercept.

The State Department issued an alert Thursday warning U.S. citizens overseas to exercise caution amid “increased tensions” around the world.

“Due to increased tensions in various locations around the world, the potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests, the Department of State advises U.S. citizens overseas to exercise increased caution,” the alert said.

The department had several recommendations for U.S. citizens who are abroad. It said to stay alert in busy tourist locations, follow the department on social media and enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), which sends alerts and helps locate people in times of emergency.

The alert is the latest warning from the State Department amid the war between Israel and Hamas.

The State Department urged Americans in Lebanon on Thursday morning to make plans to leave “as soon as possible,” elevating an earlier warning that advised people not to travel to the country. The alert recommended U.S. citizens to leave the country as soon as they could and “while commercial options are still available.”

Demonstrations and violence have erupted in Lebanon amid the Israel-Hamas war. The advisory outlined that Americans in Lebanon should have plans to depart the country that do not rely on the U.S. government.

Last week the U.S. government announced that it would be chartering flights for Americans that were stuck in Israel when the war began. Flights began taking off from Tel Aviv and stopping in Europe before making arrangements to bring U.S. citizens home.

Hamas launched the surprise attack against Israel on Oct. 7, causing many commercial airlines to pull out of the area.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to destroy Hamas, resulting in a deadly counterattack that has increased international tensions.

Protests have erupted across the U.S., resulting in arrests. Outside Chicago, a 6-year-old Muslim boy was fatally stabbed and his mother was seriously injured, in a hate crime responding to the war.

In recent days, police have been on high alert for violence driven by antisemitic or Islamophobic sentiments. FBI officials have reported an increase of hateful rhetoric since the war broke out.

Airstrikes from Israel have hit Gaza, including areas declared as “safe zones.” More than 1 million Palestinians, roughly half of Gaza’s population, have been forced to flee after Israel told them to evacuate.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said 3,785 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 12,500 others have been wounded. More than 1,400 people in Israel were killed in the initial surprise attack.