By Tanka Dhakal
KATHMANDU, Sep 10 2024 – Small glacial lakes can cause destruction, which may impact the livelihoods of entire communities. Now this is the harsh reality that the community of Thame village in the Mt. Everest region of Nepal now faces as they rebuild after the August 16 disaster.

On that day a devastating flood struck Thame, a Sherpa village in the Khumbu region, damaging houses, local businesses, a school, a health facility, and the community’s means of livelihood. 

“Thame is one of the main villages that is important in terms of trekking attraction, and the flood swept away the entire village. That will definitely impact our livelihood,” said Pashang Sherpa, “Even though I am not from that village, I have been working as a trekking guide for the last 15 years, and villages like Thame are crucial to us.”

An assessment of the damage by the local government-Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality in the Solukhumbu district-reports that at least 18 properties have been destroyed, including seven homes, five hotels, one school, and one health post.

“Given the difficult geographical terrain, reconstruction efforts will be costly, and the local government’s budget will not be enough. That’s why we appeal for help from individuals and institutional sectors,” the rural municipality stated in an appeal for assistance.

What Exactly Happened

A view of glacial lake after the flood. Credit: Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality

Initially, the cause was unclear, but now things are becoming clearer: Thame village was hit by a flash flood caused by a glacial lake outburst. Thyanbo glacial lake, located upstream of Thame, burst, sending floodwaters mixed with sediment down to the village.

“It was the result of more than one event—ice/snow melt or an avalanche caused spills from one glacial lake, which then triggered an outburst flood from the lower Thyanbo glacial lake,” said Dr. Arun Bhakta Shrestha, Senior Climate Change Specialist at ICIMOD. “It’s not that both lakes burst, but rather that the overflow or spill of water from one lake caused the other lake to outburst.”

Leading up to the flood, multiple weather-related factors were at play. Recent rainfall and rising temperatures likely contributed to ice/snow melt, which in turn led to the outburst. According to the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), the area received relatively high rainfall in the week leading up to the event, and temperatures were also relatively high.

“That may have caused ice/snow melt or an avalanche at the upper lake, and the spilled water caused erosion, which ultimately triggered the lower lake to burst,” DHM said in a statement.

Experts are saying that this flood is the latest example of the causal impact of climate change and the level of impact that can be seen at the local level. Tenzing Chogyal Sherpa, ICIMOD’s Cryosphere Analyst—who also belongs to the mountain Sherpa community and is from the Khumbu region—views this event as both personal and a stark reminder of the climate crisis.

ICIMOD’s Cryosphere Analyst, Tenzing Chogyal Sherpa’s comment on X tells of the ‘heartbreaking reality’ of the flood. Credit: X

“Seeing the ancestral homes of Sherpa families in ruins was just numbing,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Every disaster tests our resilience, but it also strengthens it. We, the mountain community, will emerge united and determined to protect our homes and way of life. Now, more than ever, we must raise our voices to the global community. Our stories and struggles need to be heard.”

Small Glacial Lakes Are Also Dangerous 

According to satellite image assessments, the lake’s size was approximately 0.05 square kilometers just a few hours before the breach. “This lake was not on the list of potentially dangerous lakes that may cause GLOFs, and it wasn’t that big either. There are thousands of lakes like that,” Shrestha says. “This means even small lakes can cause vast destruction, and our river corridors are not safe.”

There are several lakes upstream of Thame, and satellite images show that these lakes’ sizes are constantly growing. However, they are not listed as potentially dangerous glacial lakes (PDGLs) like the nearby Tsho Rolpa. A glacial lake inventory report published in 2020 identified 47 PDGLs within the Koshi, Gandaki, and Karnali river basins of Nepal (21 in Nepal), the Tibet Autonomous Region of China (25 in China), and India (one in India).

This report identified other small lakes in the region, but they were not listed as PDGLs; there are more than 3,624 lakes in total. The report indicates that there are 2,214 lakes smaller than 0.02 square kilometers in size and 759 lakes ranging from 0.02 to 0.05 square kilometers in size.

“Yes, lakes are getting bigger day by day because of snowmelt and glacier retreat. But these small lakes are also dangerous when it comes to the destruction they may cause to downstream communities,” Shrestha said.

He argues that it’s time to integrate potential danger into development plans and disaster risk reduction (DRR) mechanisms so that disasters like the one in Thame can be avoided. The Thame flood occurred in the afternoon, allowing locals to move to safety, which prevented human casualties. But if it had happened at night, the situation could have been much worse.

“We are getting multiple wake-up calls, but we haven’t woken up yet,” Shrestha said. “We need to consider glacial lake-related events from a watershed perspective, not from the viewpoint of individual lakes. A multi-hazard preparedness approach is needed to avoid larger destruction because there are thousands of lakes above the communities.”

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By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 10 2024 – It has been nearly one year since the commencement of Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip and living conditions for millions of children continue to grow more dire. The rampant spread of disease among children as well as the stagnant state of Gaza’s schooling system have been greatly aggravated by continued hostilities.

Polio, once thought to have been eradicated in the modern world, re-emerged in Gaza after a 25 year long absence. Infections were initially detected in sewage water samples in mid July from Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis. The middle of August was when the first known case of polio was observed in a ten month old child.

Three phases of a vaccination campaign have been launched by the United Nations (UN), focusing on the Central, Southern, and Northern sections of Gaza. The two of these orders, focusing on Central and Southern Gaza , have been completed, thanks to a seven day humanitarian pause, granted by Israeli authorities earlier this month.

“The initial round of the campaign is now almost 70 per cent complete – with more than 446,000 children vaccinated out of the 640,000 targeted during this first round of vaccinations – with the second round expected to start in four weeks’ time”, stated Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, in a September 9, 2024 press briefing at the UN Headquarters.

During the second phase of the vaccination campaign, over 256,000 children in Khan Younis and Rafah had been vaccinated. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the third phase is set to begin tomorrow in Northern Gaza, targeting approximately 150,000 children.

Despite initial vaccination efforts having run relatively smoothly, new evacuation orders have been announced for regions that have yet to be accessed by aid personnel. The continuance of hostilities threatens to leave thousands of children unvaccinated in the midst of a health crisis.

UNICEF has stated that at least 95 percent coverage is needed to prevent the spread of polio and reduce chances of re-emergence due to compromised health, water, and sanitation systems.

Furthermore, armed conflict, repeated evacuation orders, and routine bombardment have taken a significant toll on Gaza’s educational system, impacting over 625,000 children.

Following the eruption of the Israel-Hamas War, all of the schools in Gaza were shut down. Palestinian children have been out of school for almost one year. This is a severe concern for the development of Palestine as an entire generation is being deprived of a crucial period for cognitive development.

“Humanitarian workers say the extended deprivation of education threatens long-term damage to Gaza’s children. Younger children suffer in their cognitive, social and emotional development, and older children are at greater risk of being pulled into work or early marriage”, stated Tess Ingram, regional spokesperson for UNICEF.

Ingram adds that the longer a student is out of school, the less likely it is for them to ever return. Juliette Touma, Director of Communications for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), states children who have been pulled out of school have higher chances of being recruited into armed groups.

Jesus Miguel Perez Cazorla, a mental health expert with the International Committee of the Red Cross, adds that children who experience a lack of schooling, especially when compounded with exposure to violence, are far more likely to develop anxiety.

Additionally, routine bombardment has led to thousands of schools becoming inaccessible for students. According to UNICEF, as of August 2024, 564 schools had been hit or damaged by Israeli attacks. This equates to 85 percent of all schools in Gaza.

“Bombed out buildings and walls, collapsing ceilings, gaping holes opening on rows of school desks and what used to be classrooms filled with boys and girls. They now require reconstruction or major rehabilitation to be functional again”, stated UNRWA.

UNRWA, which runs about half of Gaza’s schools, has turned the majority of the non-damaged educational facilities in Gaza into emergency displacement shelters. These shelters house thousands of displaced families.

In the interim of this nationwide educational crisis, humanitarian groups are providing recreational activities to children in shelters to supplement the lack of education. Although these activities are far less effective in developing social and cognitive skills in children than traditional schooling is, they keep the children engaged.

“Having safe spaces for children to gather to play and learn is an important step. Ultimately the children of Gaza must be able to return to learning curriculum from teachers in classrooms, with education materials and all the other support schooling provides”, Ingram said.

The UN is hopeful that a ceasefire is imminent so children can safely resume their education. However, even if conditions for a ceasefire are met, it will take decades to fully repair the damage that has been done to Gaza’s educational infrastructure.

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Sep 10 2024 – Hungarian-Swedish microbiologist George Klein, who in 1944 escaped from a train destined to Auschwitz, once wrote that his father jokingly used to say that he had caused World War I. While working as a medical doctor in Bosnia he had cured a young boy called Gavrilo Princip from a deadly disease. As an adult Gavrilo shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, presumptive heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, whose death became the immediate cause of World War I. Can a single person, knowingly or unknowingly, change the course of history? We talk about “Putin’s war” and “Trump’s USA”. Are individuals so important? Lev Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace that it was absurd to attribute historical events to acts of individuals. The French revolution could quite easily have produced another person like Napoleon. He insisted that the French emperor knew as little of what was happening in the battle of Borodino as the meanest soldier serving under him.

Yahya Sinwar

However, several historians claim the opposite – in times of chaos, and indecision a single leader might make a difference. Accordingly, Mikhail Gorbachev was a driving force in Russia’s and Eastern Europe’s transition from Communism. Had he in the early 1980s been assassinated, the history of Europe might have been quite different. In February 1933, shortly before his inauguration, Franklin D. Roosevelt narrowly escaped five bullets aimed at him. During his presidency, a severe financial crisis was amended and the US came a long way to become a social security state, without which the nation might have succumbed to one of the many demagogues who were then stalking the land. On the contrary, unparallelled oppression, torture, murder and other disasters can be laid at the doors of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot. Tragedies, which in the words of the political theorist Isaiah Berlin were “preventable human crimes, and whatever those who believe in historical determinism may think, they could have been averted.”

Yahya Sinwar, current leader of Hamas in Gaza, was in 1989 sentenced to four life sentences, of which he served 22 years. Before being jailed by the Israeli regime he had led a squad punishing, and often killing, Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel, or committing offenses against Hamas’ interpretation of Muslim morality, including homosexuality, marital infidelity, and the possession of pornography. Among others, Sinwar personally executed a barber who kept pornographic magazines in his barbershop and while in prison he arranged for the killing of a fellow prisoner’s sister, who had been unfaithful to his brother-in-law.

Sinwar regarded Israeli prisons as a place to learn Hebrew, as well as the psychology and history of his enemy. “Prison builds you. Especially if you are a Palestinian, because you live amid checkpoints, walls, and restrictions of all kinds. Only in prison do you finally meet Palestinians who have time for discussing and learning. You start thinking about yourself. About what you believe in, the price you are willing to pay.” In prison Sinwar wrote an autobiographical novel – The Thorn and the Carnation. In this novel Sinwar’s alter ego, Ahmad, is harassed by feelings of grief, shame, and humiliation: “Our dreams of returning to our homelands from which we were exiled began to crumble like the sandcastles we used to build as children.” Ahmad’s father dies as a “a martyr for freedom”, while his mother is described as an example of pious nobility. The Israeli Army dominates everything – there are curfews, interrogations, arrests, soldiers storming into houses and harassing people at will. Ahmed comes to the conclusion that only violence and terror can be used against the Israelis.

An Israeli prison dentist, Yuval Bitton, came to know Sinwar as a straightforward man, characterised by no nonsense, no rhetoric, a calculating and very cunning man. However, Sinwar was extremely ruthless, “ready to sacrifice twenty thousand, thirty thousand, a hundred thousand.” A man acquainted with cold-blooded executions, but “so far he did not have Jewish blood on his hands – only Palestinian.” Bitton found that imprisoned Hamas members had better teeth than other prisoners, due to their fervent religiosity they isolated themselves from other prisoners and did not smoke, while being careful about what they ate. Like George Klein’s father, Bitton assumed that if he had not followed his own strict morals, he could have changed the course of history. When he observed the Muslims praying, Bitton found that every time Sinwar rose up he staggered in a peculiar manner. He sent Sinwar to hospital, where he underwent an examination resulting in immediate brain surgery to remove a life-threatening tumour.

Bitton emphasized Sinwar’s appreciation of Jewish intellectuals: “He said that the Jews had once been people like Freud, Einstein, Kafka. Experts in mathematics and philosophy. However, they had declined to become experts in drones and extrajudicial executions.” Sinwar mirrored the opinion of other Hamas leaders, who in their propaganda did not refrain from using the notorious forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purported to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. At a conference in 2021, the Hamas leadership expressed its intentions towards the Jewish, Israeli population, after a so far imaginary victory – “Educated Jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology, and civilian and military industry should be retained for some time and should not be allowed to leave and take with them the knowledge and experience that they acquired while living in our land and enjoying its bounty, while we paid the price for all this in humiliation, poverty, sickness, deprivation, killing and arrests.”

Until 1948, Sinwar’s family lived in Tel Ashkelon, which is now part of southern Israel. During the war against the newborn state of Israel, they all fled south into the Gaza Strip. Born in 1962, Sinwar grew up in the Khan Younis refugee camp. As a young man he met with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a charismatic member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The sheik was almost blind, confined to a wheelchair and venerated as a religious and political leader. While studying Arabic at the Islamic University of Gaza, Sinwar grew increasingly close to Yassin and eventually became his personal aide-de-camp. In December 1987, an uprising was sparked after an Israeli vehicle had struck and killed four Gazan men. The day after, Yassin assembled a group of associates and founded Hamas, Ḥarakah al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah, the Islamic Resistance Movement (in Arabic hamas means zeal, strength, or bravery). Sinwar was chosen to be Hamas’ commander in southern Gaza

The Israeli government held Sheikh Yassin responsible for giving his approval for the launching of rockets against Israeli cities, as well as for terrorist bombings and suicide operations. In 2004, the sheikh was killed when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired a missile at him while he was wheeled out from a mosque in Gaza City. The attack radicalized Sinwar, still in an Israeli prison, even further and after his release his grip over southern Gaza turned into a reign of terror, fuelled by religious fervour. Sinwar was respected in some quarters and feared in others. He reportedly carried out his duties with icy efficiency and without a trace of regret. In 2017, Sinwar was elected to be over-all chief of Hamas in Gaza and his military tactics became more aggressive, while he fostered a messianic style of leadership. Several Palestinian opponents declared that Sinwar’s effort to create myths around himself, while indicating he was chosen by God, was a dangerous move from logic to irrationality.

Sinwar’s policies were reinforced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “conception tactics”, intended to contain Hamas while weakening the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. He allowed Qatar to funnel billions of dollars into Gaza, supposedly for civic projects and governance, though with full knowledge that Sinwar was siphoning much of the money to buy arms, while expanding the Gaza metro, the system of tunnels and bunkers. Sinwar’s anger and general prestige soared when Trump’s son-in-law and special envoy, Jared Kusner, helped drafting the Abraham Accords, aiming at normalizing relations between Israel and Sunni-ruled states, sidelining Palestinian and Iranian leaders, who as a result intensified their cooperation, in spite of the fact that most Palestinians are Sunni Muslims, while Iran’s rulers are Shiites.

Sinwar became the main designer of the unleashing of the Al-Aqsa Flood, the most devastating attack on Israel in half a century and the cause of senseless destruction and the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent civilians. He is still hiding with his fighters in bunkers and tunnels in Southern Gaza. Sinwar’s adversary is Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest serving prime ministers in Israel’s history. Netanyahu was born in Jerusalem 1949, but between 1956 and 1958, and again from 1963 to 1967 he lived in the US, attending high school there. Between 1967 and 1973 he served in a special forces’ unit. After leaving the military, Netanyahu returned to the US, studying architecture and political science at MIT, but his PhD studies were broken up by the death of his brother in the 1979 Entebbe raid, and he returned to Israel.

Between 1984 and 1988 Netanyahu was Israeli ambassador to the UN and became close friends with Fred Trump, father of Donald Trump. He was also influenced by Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, by many of his followers believed to have been the awaited Messiah. According to Netanyahu, Rabbi Schneerson was “the most influential man of our time”. Like his religious role model, Netanyahu is convinced that Isarel is a bulwark against “anti-Western nations”. He has been opposing peace negotiations with the Palestinians, stating that he would accept a Palestinian state if Jerusalem remains the capital of Israel, the Palestinians are disarmed and if they give up their demands for a right to return. He is also actively supporting Jewish settlements in occupied territories, stating that he approves of their “natural growth”. After winning the elections in 2023, Netanyahu’s government legalized nine new settler outposts in the occupied West Bank and in six months 13,000 housing units were constructed in the settlements, almost triple the amount advanced in the whole of 2022.

After the Hamas lead attacks on Israel in October 2023, Netanyahu has threatened to “turn all the places where Hamas is organized and hiding into cities of ruins”. He has been using a religious rhetoric by comparing Hamas to Amalek – “You must remember what Amalek has done to you … And we do remember.” In the Bible (for example in Deuteronomy 25) are Amalkites described as the Israelites arch enemies and they are by God commanded to “blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven”. In 1 Samuel 15, God orders the Israeli King Saul to destroy the Amalkites, by “killing man, woman, infant and suckling.” The religious rhetoric used by both Sinwar and Netanyahu, identifying opposing groups with an entire people – men, women and children – have throughout history had horrible consequences. It could suffice to remind about horrors befalling the Jewish people. As an example – a Polish youngster, Herschel Grynszpan, did in November 1938 shot and kill a German diplomat in Paris, out of frustration after the Nazi regime had dumped 18,000 Jews, among them his parents, on the Polish side of Germany’s border. As a revenge the Nazis incited German citizens to burn down 177 synagogues, severely damage some 8,000 Jewish business premises, while killing 100 Jews and send 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps. It became much worse when war had broken out, with thousand of examples of mass killings triggered off as revenge for acts committed by a few opponents. One example of many – when 43 German and Romanian soldiers had been attacked and killed in Odessa in October 1942, between 18,000 and 20,000 Jews were rounded up and shot just outside the town, while a further 20,000 were massacred in nearby Dalnik.

To let hostile actions of opponents lead to the death of tens of thousands of innocent people. To equal a group of enemies with an entire ethnic population, have accordingly had horrendous consequences, damaging both perpetrators and victims. Sinwar and Netanyahu seem to be obsessed by ideas characterized by ethnic cleansing and a desire for revenge. If one, like Isiah Berlin, assumes that human crimes can be averted, how do you then stop individuals like Sinwar, Netanyahu, and Putin from inciting and carrying out their destructive schemes? Maybe it is impossible – a proverb says “you can’t teach old dogs to sit” – though human empathy, logic and decency require that we have to try to make sense prevail.

Main sources: Berlin, Isaiah (2014) “The misguided search for a single, overarching ideal,” The New York Review of Books, October 23. Klein, George (1992) The Atheist and the Holy City: Encounters and Reflections. Chicago: MIT Press. Remnick, David (2024) “Notes from Underground: The life of Yahya Siwar, the leader of Hams in Gaza,” The New Yorker, August 12. Stone, Dan (2024) The Holocaust: An unfinished History. London: Penguin Books.

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