Israel’s commitment of genocide in Gaza is well established and continues. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been assassinated in Gaza since a “ceasefire” was declared last October. It is becoming increasingly clear that Israel’s plan to exterminate or expel the Palestinians is moving on to the West Bank, the largely Palestinian territory conquered and occupied by Israel since 1967. More than half a million Jewish Israelis have moved into “settlements” in the West Bank, while an additional 250,000 have moved into East Jerusalem. The aspirations of Zionists over the decades has been to expel the Palestinian population and replace it with Israeli Jews.
The spear point of the Zionist effort to expel Palestinians from the West Bank are the so-called “settlers” (“squatters”) living in official settlements and unofficial encampments, often located close to Palestinian villages. A flash point in recent weeks has been the besieged Palestinian families of Qusra, as detailed in this short video from Aljazeera English. In a nutshell, dozens of “settler” thugs have been supported by Israel’s army to prevent food and other supplies from reaching the Palestinian families, whose water and electricity has also been cut. An update of their perilous situation can be seen in a short video broadcast today, “’Water and salt’: Qusra residents trapped in Israeli settler siege.”
With elections in October looming, Israel’s ruling elite has reason to play to their right-wing base, and is unlikely to let up on the siege not only of Qusra, but of all of the West Bank. According to UN numbers, Palestinians suffered more than 3,000 “settler” attacks between June 2025 and June 2026. Murders have gone unpunished and villages have been vacated. Even the US ambassador has referred to the “settlers” as “terrorists.” Yet few nations, including the United States and the Europeans, have taken steps to punish Israel for its attacks on Palestinians or cut off the supply of weapons, money, and markets that keeps the Israeli genocide going.
ESSAYS ILLUMINATING ISRAELI TERROR IN THE WEST BANK
The Siege of Qusra
By Jasper Diamond Nathaniel, InfiniteJaz [August 14, 2026]
[FB – Jasper Diamond Nathaniel has been producing excellent and important coverage of Israel’s terror against the Palestinian residents of the West Bank. Nathaniel is a native of Hastings. Check out his Substack to stay informed.]
---- How the IDF, settlers, and Israeli government worked together to besiege a Palestinian village while the New York Times ran interference. … On Sunday, August 9, a huge mob of settlers surrounded the hillside home I’d been staying in, along with two neighboring ones, and began setting up an outpost, trapping the Palestinians inside. This video is taken from inside the home as the settlers gathered around it… On Monday, my friend Andrey X, a journalist and activist, tried to reach the besieged homes. He was blocked by a combination of settlers and soldiers, who also blocked an ambulance trying to reach one of the homes to take a sick child to the hospital. As it turns out, the main besieged home—the one I stayed in—belongs to an American citizen. While his family was trapped inside, he watched live security-camera footage from Ohio, 6,000 miles away. As the story began making international headlines, the White House leaked that it was “fuming” and that Trump was “shocked.” (Yawn. How many times did we hear that Biden was “fuming” at Netanyahu before shipping him another cargo load of 2,000-pound bombs?) On Thursday, the IDF launched a massive military operation in Qusra, ostensibly to evacuate the settlers. Funny enough, the operation began by evicting several Palestinian families from their homes in the village itself—not on the besieged hill—and occupying those homes. [Read More]
‘Is this how our story ends?’ Palestinian refugees live in fear as Israel takes aim at West Bank camps
By Aseel Mafarieh, Mondoweiss [August 10, 2026]
---- Amid escalating raids and statements by Israeli officials promising a massive military operation against refugee camps in the West Bank, Palestinians in Ramallah-area camps say it’s not a question of whether their turn will come, but when. … What is unfolding in Qalandia, which is home to a population of roughly 15,000 Palestinians, is precisely what residents of the West Bank’s central and southern camps have feared for more than a year: that what happened in the Jenin and Tulkarem-area refugee camps in the north would no longer be an exception, but a template. … In Ramallah’s third refugee camp, al-Amari refugee, home to 10,000, – 12,000 people, Motassem Nassar, 36, head of the Fatah organization in the camp and director of the Amari youth scouts, describes a reality in the camp shaped by permanent anxiety, and similar frustration with Palestinian leadership. “In these times, people needed little explanation — they assumed, given the proximity, that their turn would follow,” he said, referring to the camp’s proximity to Qalandia refugee camp. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “How Did the IDF Become the Army of Wimpish Condemnations?” by Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz [Israel] [August 13, 2026] [Link]; “Huckabee Condemned ‘Settler Terror’ but He Was Defending Trump, Not Palestinians,” by Amira Hass, Ha’aretz [Israel] [August 14, 2026] [Link]; and “Settler attacks on Palestinians surge by 63 percent in occupied West Bank during first half of 2026,” from The Cradle [August 10, 2026] [Link].
NEWS NOTES
Delaney Hall in Newark is the nearest ICE “detention center” (concentration camp). Immigrants who are arrested in our neighborhoods are locked up in Delaney Hall until … whatever. Recently, for the third time, a prisoner at Delaney Hall died. In this week’s issue of the Rivertowns Dispatch, Amy Bochner describes a visit to Delaney Hall by Rep. George Latimer and the work of stalwarts from Indivisible CD16/15 in protesting at Delaney and raising awareness about both bad conditions and the injustice of ICE operations.
I think the Epstein files and possible prosecutions have the power to bring down Trump. Last Thursday a court hearing about releasing key files resulted in a warning from the judge that Justice Dept. lawyers (and perhaps Todd Blanche himself) would be held in contempt unless they produced certain documents – possibly very incriminating for Trump – pronto. Lawyer Katie Phang is the plaintiff in this case; listen to what she has to say on (video) “The Left Hook.”
Investigative reporter Kevin Gostola continues his 9/11 cinema project, with this week’s film being the 2004 remake of “The Manchurian Candidate.” Now it’s not “the Communist Menace” that stalks American, but the Muslim/corporate conspiracy. Check out this interesting stuff here.
Flock cameras can now track every car in America. Going to the store? To your dentist? To your boyfriend’s? Increasingly, your car/trip is on a computer that can be searched by police departments (and who knows who else) across the country. A map shows more than a dozen of these cameras in the Rivertowns. Who has access? Who pays for them? (You?) Read more in The New York Times here and here. An organization called “Deflock” has a national map of the cameras spotted so far. To see the map of cameras in our area, go here. (To light the map, click on the spot you want to see and then on “OSM.”)
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
REWARDS!
This week’s Rewards for stalwart Newsletter readers come to us from the Greek musical combo called The Speakeasies’ Swing Band. They have many tunes on-line; I think you will enjoy “Walkin’ Away Blues,” “Bright Lights Late Nights,” and “All of Me.”
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
REWARDS!
This week’s Rewards for stalwart Newsletter readers come to us from the Greek musical combo called The Speakeasies’ Swing Band. They have many tunes on-line; I think you will enjoy “Walkin’ Away Blues,” “Bright Lights Late Nights,” and “All of Me.”
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
(Video) Norm Finkelstein - Finally, mainstream
From Peter Beinart, Substack [August 16, 2026]
[FB – Please check out this amazing interview. Fireworks!]
---- Our guest is Norman Finkelstein, the longtime critic of Israel, and critic of the way the memory of the Holocaust—which both his parents survived—has been exploited to justify Israel’s actions. He has written a new book, titled Gaza’s Gravediggers. I talked to Norman about what it’s like—after decades as a political outcast—to see his views becoming mainstream. I asked him about his concern, which I share, that legitimate fury at Israel is fueling conspiracy theories that exonerate the United States. And I asked about his friend and mentor, Noam Chomsky, and what he thinks Chomsky might have said in response to October 7 and the Gaza genocide. [See the Program]
Paper Tiger: The Failure of America’s Trillion-Dollar War Machine
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Code Pink [August 13, 2026]
---- According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States spent $21 trillion on its military between 2001 and 2024 (in constant 2024 dollars), equal to the combined military spending of the next eighteen countries. Iran barely made that list at all, spending only 2% of what the US did, and SIPRI estimated Iran’s 2025 military budget at only $7.5 billion. So how is Iran holding its own against the multi-trillion-dollar US war machine? A critical difference between the US war on Iran and previous US and allied bombing campaigns against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Gaza, is that the US and Israel have failed to destroy Iran’s air defense system and cannot fly warplanes over Iran without risking the loss of planes and pilots to enemy fire. Iran has wisely built its critical defense infrastructure underground, with arms factories, weapons stockpiles and launch sites sheltered safely beneath its impenetrable mountainous terrain. [Read More]
What’s Happening in Kansas Should Alarm Us All – [Anti-trans legislation]
By M. Gessen, New York Times [August 13, 2026]
---- Some of the words or expressions in this article may at first blush seem hyperbolic. One of them is “fascism.” That’s how [someone] characterized the process when we met in Lawrence in July: “It was soft fascism.” It was. Fascism usually begins with redefining the nation by excluding certain groups, which are branded threats to national health and unity. The Trump administration has fixated on two groups most of all — immigrants and trans people — in just this way, smearing us (I am a member of both groups) as predatory, sick, at once subhuman and terrifyingly powerful. Even before Donald Trump was elected for the second time, more than half the states had considered or passed legislation limiting the rights of trans people. The process has intensified in the last year and a half, and the law enacted in Kansas in February is one of the most restrictive pieces of anti-trans legislation passed in any state so far. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “The Genocidal Weapon and the Nuclear Exception,” by Eric Ross, Counterpunch [August 11, 2026] [Link]; “US War on ICC Isn’t New, Isn’t Just Coming From GOP, and Isn’t Just About Israel,” by Stephen Zunes, Truthout [August 7, 2026] [Link]; (Video) “Deep Unlearning”: Timnit Gebru on AI Hype, Ethics & Algorithmic Racial Bias,” from Democracy Now! [August 13, 2026] [Link]; and “The Real Cost of the Military’s Pacific Buildup,” by William D. Hartung, Tom Dispatch [August 10, 2026] [Read More]
THE US-ISRAEL WAR AGAINST IRAN
Navy Carrier’s Problems Are Tied to Attacks on U.S. Base Early in War
By John Ismay, The New York Times [August 14, 2026]
---- The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln’s supply problems began soon after the first day of the war, as Iranian missiles and attack drones fell on a Navy base in Bahrain. The Iranian attack, retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli assault on Tehran, destroyed much of the base. And as it went up in smoke, so did a major logistics hub that the Navy has relied on for decades. The Navy needed a Plan B to continue feeding the sailors working around the clock to keep warplanes flying strike missions, and later to maintain a blockade of Iran’s ports. With the threat of Iranian attacks at other ports in the region, the Pentagon looked to a base under British command on the island of Diego Garcia as its supply hub, which is south of the Maldives and roughly 2,200 miles from where two aircraft carrier strike groups have been operating in the Gulf of Oman. The loss of the hub in Bahrain has contributed to a host of reported problems on carriers supporting operations against Iran, as Democratic senators raise concerns about the Lincoln’s 5,000 sailors and their nearly nine-month deployment. [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
(Video) Gaza Tribunal Co-Chairs MP Jeremy Corbyn, Neve Gordon & Shahd Hammouri on U.K. Complicity in Genocide
From Democracy Now! [August 12, 2026]
---- From London, we revisit the Gaza Tribunal, an independent, nongovernmental inquiry into the United Kingdom’s complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The tribunal, held nearly one year ago, was chaired by our three guests: former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Israeli professor of human rights law Neve Gordon and Palestinian legal scholar Shahd Hammouri. Their new book is titled The Gaza Tribunal: Britain’s Complicity in Genocide. We discuss the recent apology from Prime Minister Andy Burnham over the Labour Party’s early support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, the United Kingdom’s crackdown on the Palestine Action protest group under counterterrorism laws, and whether British policymakers will face any accountability for participating in “one of the biggest crimes in humanity.” [See the Program]
Hamas Has No More Cards to Play
By Muhammad Shehada, New York Times [August 13, 2026]
---- After five months of daunting negotiations with President Trump’s Board of Peace, Hamas agreed last month to a road map under which it and other armed Palestinian groups would decommission their heavy weapons and give up security control in Gaza. Hamas also agreed to step down from governing Gaza and accept the deployment of an international stabilization force. In return, Israel would halt airstrikes, withdraw its troops from Gaza and allow the devastated enclave to be rebuilt. Hamas’s agreement represented a fragile opportunity to break out of an otherwise intractable deadlock. The rejection of the plan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Sunday is a setback for Israelis who want peace and security, and for Palestinians in Gaza who want relief from the cruel and painful conditions imposed by Israel. It is the latest example of Israel’s inability to say yes. … America’s political leaders should not indulge Mr. Netanyahu’s argument that he is constrained by Israel’s domestic politics. They should say: We, too, have our own domestic political calculations, regional interests and international standing to worry about, and we will not let you endanger them to save yourself from a reckoning with your people. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “The Israeli Jewish Public Is Supporting the Destruction of Palestinian Healthcare,” by Amira Hass, Ha’aretz [Israel] [August 13, 2026] [Link]; “Why Can’t We Hold Israel Accountable for Its Genocide in Gaza? It’s the Media…,” by Robin Andersen, Counterpunch [August 11, 2026] [Link]; and “Trump’s Gaza Plan Is a Blueprint for Permanent Subjugation,” by Imran Khalid, Foreign Policy in Focus [August 6, 2026] [Link].
THE WAR ON UKRAINE
Mutual Delusion
By Anatol Lieven, New Left Review [August 7, 2026]
---- Hardliners on both sides in the Ukraine war are pursuing a chimera in the hope of a miracle. Moscow appears to believe that in the near future, the Ukrainian defences that have held the Russian advance to a bloody crawl for years will miraculously collapse, or that the European money and arms that have enabled those defences will suddenly vanish. A large part of the Western commentariat (and some, though by no means all Ukrainian security experts) appear beholden to a symmetrical fantasy. Drones and satellite intelligence have made the accumulation of combat power for a Russian breakthrough impossible, enabling the Ukrainian army to fight Russia to a near-standstill. Yet Western observers seem to believe that these technologies will miraculously not allow Russia to do exactly the same to the Ukrainian army. [Read More]
THE WAR AGAINST CUBA
Cuba after Six Months of the Oil Blockade: Crisis and the Road to Recovery
By Vijay Prashad, Counterpunch [August 14, 2026]
---- For more than six decades, the United States has attempted to make the Cuban people pay for their decision to pursue an independent, socialist path. The latest phase of this economic war has targeted the island’s most vulnerable artery: its energy supply. Six months after Washington intensified pressure on countries and companies supplying oil to Cuba, the policy has not produced democracy or improved the lives of ordinary Cubans. It has produced darker homes, immobilised buses, interrupted hospitals, and greater difficulty in moving food from farms to cities. The immediate task is to prevent a humanitarian disaster. The larger task is to replace coercion with sovereign cooperation and to help Cuba build an energy system that cannot again be strangled by a foreign power. [Read More] - ALSO OF INTEREST - ‘The CIA Targets Cuba… Again,” by Peter Kornbluh, The Nation [August 13, 2026] [Link].
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
We Can’t Surrender to Climate Destruction
By Sarah Lazare, The Nation [August 13, 2026]
---- The message from our political and media class is unmistakable: Climate destruction, while perhaps not desirable, is the new normal, an inevitability. This message is obviously unacceptable, but the explanation for its growing prevalence cannot be reduced to platitudes about mass complacency or human adaptability. It is imposed by an elite that is institutionally unwilling to grapple with the stakes of what is happening. … On the political level, the Republican Party remains outright denialist, while Democrats as a whole are talking about climate change less. A slew of Democratic Party–aligned think tanks, meanwhile, is encouraging politicians to adopt an even lighter touch. The billionaire-backed Searchlight Institute, for instance, recommended precisely that in a 2025 memo, “The First Rule About Solving Climate Change: Don’t Say Climate Change.” It doesn’t have to be this way. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Heat Is Hammering Europe, Again. Here’s What That Looks Like,” by Lynsey Chutel, New York Times [August 14, 2026] [Link]; and “The U.S. just had its hottest Month in recorded History, surpassing Dust Bowl Record,” by Jeff Masters and Bob Henson, Yale Climate Connections [August 11, 2026] [Link].
CIVIL LIBERTIES
US conducted ‘mass spying campaign’ against leftwing groups and anti-ICE protesters, records reveal
By Sam Levin and Rachel Leingang, The Guardian [UK] [August 13, 2026]
---- Newly disclosed records reveal the US government extensively spied on prominent leftwing organizations and on protesters as part of a vast operation into groups opposing the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year. Internal investigative reports show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York City, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records of mainstream unions and left-leaning non-profit groups. Nearly 30 internal law enforcement reports were released on Thursday as part of a criminal case the Department of Justice (DoJ) has filed against 15 Minneapolis protesters. The defendants are accused of a “conspiracy” to “impede” US immigration officers during the Trump administration’s surge in the region. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Never Underestimate a Cornered Rat: Trump’s Election Plot Is Taking Shape
By Thom Hartmann [August 12, 2026]
---- People old enough to remember how the GOP gamed this in Florida in 2000 know what I’m talking about; Republican congressional staffers flew down to Florida (along with John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett) to pound on counting center windows and demand the election Al Gore won be given to the “rightful winner,” George W. Bush. While Trump can’t legally cancel the election, the more he and his toadies can cast doubt on its legitimacy, the more likely it is that they can pull off the same type of coup as Republicans did in 1968, 1980, and 2000. For over a decade now, close races immediately produce Republican claims of fraud: lawyers, election officials and communications systems must be fully prepared to deal with lies and propaganda long before November. [Read More]
The Fifth Estate – [American universities]
By Daniel Bessner, The Nation [August 10, 2026]
---- {Lee] Bollinger wrote University: A Reckoning because he was aghast at the feeble way that universities have responded to the Trump administration’s assaults. He was especially disappointed by Columbia, which paid the federal government $221 million in settlements and agreed to implement the various reforms that Trump demanded. In effect, he hopes University: A Reckoning will provide the intellectual basis on which the managers of higher education can “confront the crisis and reimagine who we are now and for the future.” According to Bollinger, “the fundamental purpose of the university” is “to preserve and advance human knowledge about the human condition, about life and about the natural world, and to pass human knowledge and the capacities to pursue it on to succeeding generations.” Already with this statement, fundamental problems with Bollinger’s rescue mission begin to emerge. His identification of higher education with the modern research university ignores the millions of students who attend non-research institutions, such as community and other two-year colleges. Furthermore, Bollinger’s framing completely ignores the degree to which the university system has essentially become a credentialing mechanism geared toward producing workers for the American market and, at its most rarefied levels, reproducing the extant—and increasingly oligarchical—class structure. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “How to Close a Camp,” by John Washington, Texas Observer [July 21, 2026] [Link]; “Medicare for All Would Save Over 114,000 Lives and $1 Trillion a Year,” by Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams [August 13, 2026] [Link]; “D.C. Under Siege: One Year of Military Occupation,” by Olivia DiNucci, Code Pink [August 11, 2026] [Link]; and “Insurgents Are Revitalizing the Democratic Party,” by Katrina vanden Heuvel and John Nichols, The Nation [August 10, 2026] [Link]
OUR HISTORY
(Video) Bryan Stevenson on the “Enduring Evil of Slavery” and Trump’s Attempt to Rewrite History
From Democracy Now! [August 11, 2026]
---- We spend the hour with civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. In 2018, the organization opened the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, to tell the history of millions of enslaved Africans who were abducted and trafficked across the Atlantic to the Americas by European powers, and to chronicle the legacy of slavery, racism, lynchings and segregation in the United States. The Legacy Museum has just opened its first international exhibition as part of the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland. “In putting together the content we have at the Legacy Museum, you begin to appreciate just how global the institution of slavery was,” Stevenson tells Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman in Edinburgh. “We were eager to have an opportunity to present this content on this continent, which … hasn’t done very much to acknowledge this history.” [See the Program]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “The pro-Israel lobby has swayed US presidents since Truman. It must end with Trump,” by Ian Lustick and Eli Clifton, The Guardian [UK] [August 2, 2026] [Link]; and “How Occupy Wall Street Still Explains Politics Today,” by Yotam Maromy, The Nation [August 12, 2026] [Link].
