Concerned Families of Westchester
October 22, 2023
A tragedy unfolds in Gaza. Only the United States can stop it. In response to the killing of 1400 Israelis by Hamas, including more than 1,000 civilians, Israel is on course to kill tens of thousands of people in Gaza and the West Bank. This will be genocide, and our government must try to stop it. We must have an immediate ceasefire.
As of Saturday, Israel had killed 4,385 people in Gaza, including 1,756 children. Israel has shut off all food, water, medicine, and fuel deliveries to Gaza, according to the UN creating a "humanitarian catastrophe" for more than two million people. (Today's symbolic entry of 20 trucks of supplies into Gaza is described by all concerned as a "drop in the ocean.")
Across the world huge demonstrations are calling for an immediate ceasefire. Tens of thousands marched Saturday in London, Jordan, and elsewhere, and today in Brussels. In Washington, DC this week, Jewish organizations protested in support of a ceasefire, with 500 arrested. A powerful protest was held in White Plains on Thursday. And yesterday Concerned Families of Westchester, Jewish Voice for Peace, and others rallied in Hastings, also demanding a ceasefire.
Worldwide protests about Israel's imminent attack on Gaza reflect not only humanitarian concerns for civilian casualties, but also the likelihood that the war will expand beyond the borders of Israel/Palestine and become a regional war. As the New York Times wrote this morning, "As Israeli forces massed along the border with Gaza on Sunday ahead of an expected ground invasion of the enclave, escalating clashes on Israel's northern border with Lebanon along with strikes in Syria and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank intensified fears of a widening regional conflict." Similar concerns preoccupy Thomas Friedman, Israel's cheerleader at The New York Times, whose column in today's paper is titled "Israel is About to Make a Terrible Mistake." We have been warned. Once started, a regional war will not be easy to end.
Finally, our government is not a bystander in this war. It has sent massive amounts of military equipment to Israel, and has thousands of soldiers ready to intervene if called on,; and this week it vetoed a Resolution at the United Nations that would have installed a "humanitarian ceasefire." As a major supporter of Israel – giving $3.8 billion in military aid each year and preventing actions against Israel in the UN and other places – the US is in a position to tell Israel to stop the slaughter. It must do this. No more killing! Not in our name!
Demanding an immediate ceasefire
"13 House Democrats Call for Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza" [the number has now risen to 18], The Intercept [October 20, 2023].
"We Need an Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza," by Phyllis Bennis, Counterpunch [October 20, 2023].
"The Majority of Americans Agree: Ceasefire in Gaza" [the results of two national polls], by Michael Moore [October 21, 2023]
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.) A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil is held in Yonkers on Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. Another Facebook page 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 send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
At this very grim moment in world history, stalwart readers deserve something happy, a change of pace. So the Rewards this week are some recent offerings from Newsletter favorites, the New Orleans jazz band Tuba Skinny. Here are Hot Town and Dusting the Frets. And here is their full 2014 album, Pyramid Strut. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
Some comments and analysis on the Gaza War
Democracy Now!
Once again, the daily news program Democracy Now! has offered us some outstanding interviews and news segments this week. The program airs at www.democracynow.org Monday through Friday at 8 am, and is archived, so that it can be accessed anytime. Here is a selection from last week's programs:
(Video) "Divide and Rule": How Israel Helped Start Hamas to Weaken Palestinian Hopes for Statehood [October 20, 2023]
---- U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is urging Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, where the death toll from Israel's two-week bombardment has topped 4,100. Israel says a ground invasion may be imminent. "This isn't an effort to try to quell, to destroy Hamas specifically," says Tareq Baconi, Palestinian analyst and author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance. "This is an effort to pursue an ethnic cleansing campaign in the Gaza Strip and beyond the Gaza Strip, as we see the violence rising in the West Bank." [See the Program] Also of interest is "Before they vowed to annihilate Hamas, Israeli officials considered it an asset," by Alice Speri, The Intercept. [Link].
(Video) Annexation, Ethnic Cleansing & Genocide: Mustafa Barghouti Decries Israel's Deadly Campaign in Gaza [October 19, 2023]
---- As the death toll in Gaza nears 3,800 from two weeks of Israeli aerial bombardment, we go to the occupied West Bank to speak with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. "With the passage of each minute, more Palestinians are killed," says Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. "The game is clear: They want to ethnically cleanse, completely, the Gaza Strip." [See the Program]
(Video) Israeli Journalist Amira Hass: How Can the World Stand By and Witness Israel's Slaughter in Gaza? [October 19, 2023]
---- We speak with Amira Hass, Haaretz correspondent for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who is usually based in Ramallah and attended Wednesday's anti-occupation protest in Washington, D.C., organized by American Jewish peace groups. Hass is the only Israeli Jewish journalist to have spent 30 years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. She decries the marginalization and suppression of the Israeli left, as "extreme fascists" in the Netanyahu government have whipped the Israeli public into one that is "drunk with the will to take revenge." [See the Program] To see Part 2 of this interview, go here.
(Video) Rashid Khalidi on Biden's "Israel-First Approach" & Growing Outrage over Gaza Across the Middle East [October 18, 2023]
---- President Biden is in Israel to show more support for its relentless assault on the Gaza Strip, which has reduced much of the territory to rubble, killed at least 3,300 Palestinians and displaced more than a million people. Israel also continues to maintain a complete siege, refusing to let in food, water, fuel, medicines and other necessities. Meanwhile, international outrage is growing over a massive explosion at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital that killed hundreds of people on Tuesday. …Palestinian American historian Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University. [See the Program]
(Video) "A Textbook Case of Genocide": Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel's Assault on Gaza [October 16, 2023]
---- Raz Segal, an Israeli expert in modern genocide, calls Israel's assault on Gaza a textbook case of "intent to commit genocide" and its rationalization of its violence a "shameful use" of the lessons of the Holocaust. Israeli state exceptionalism and comparisons of its Palestinians victims to "Nazis" are used to "justify, rationalize, deny, distort, disavow mass violence against Palestinians," says Segal. [See the Program]
Also of interest about genocide - "On The Crime Of Genocide: 'I Do Not Exclude It At All,'" by Francesca Albanese and Kristina Božič" [Link]. (Francesca Abanese is the UN's Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967); Raz Segal's article in Jewish Currents, "A Textbook Case of Genocide," [Link]; and "Israeli and US Leaders Must Be Held Accountable for the Genocide of Palestinians," by Marjorie Cohn [former president of the National Lawyers Guild], Truthout [October 20, 2023]
Fairness and Accuracy in the Media (FAIR)
The way that the mainstream media presents facts and interpretations about the war is of great significance, especially in the United States. Starting with Manufacturing Consent [1988] by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, dozens of books have analyzed the nature and sources of media bias in news reporting. We are fortunate to have the news-analysis site FAIR, which applies basic lessons of media analysis to current events, in this case the Gaza War. Here are several examples from this week's offerings that re-frame the War from the versions offered in the mainstream media.
· "Unconfirmed 'Beheaded Babies' Report Helped Justify Israeli Slaughter," by Saurav Sarkar [October 20, 2023] [Link].
· "Israeli Attacks on Journalists Stifle Reporting on Gaza Horrors," by Ari Paul [October 19, 2023] [Link].
· "In Gaza, 'We Have to Do the Hard Work of Looking at Context,'" CounterSpin interview with Phyllis Bennis on Gaza [October 17, 2023] [Link].
· "NYT Ignores Dissent to Convey Image of Jewish Unanimity," by Ari Paul [October 17, 2023] [Link].
Also of interest regarding the media and "disinformation" is "We Must Not Let the Truth Become a Casualty of This War," by Musa al-Gharbi, The Nation [October 16, 2023] [Link].
Western Journalists Have Palestinian Blood on Their Hands
By Mohammed El-Kurd, The Nation [October 20, 2023]
---- The industry standard is to dehumanize Palestinians. Our grief is negligible; our rage is unwarranted. Our death is so quotidian that journalists report it as though they're reporting the weather. Cloudy skies, light showers, and 3,000 Palestinians dead in the past ten days. And much like the weather, only God is responsible: not armed settlers, not targeted drone strikes. … On October 13, the Center for Constitutional Rights asserted that the Israeli regime, by taking actions "to destroy a group in whole or in part, including by killing or by creating conditions of life to bring about the group's destruction," is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. [Read More]
Save the Israeli Hostages. Release Palestinian Prisoners, Quickly
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [October 22, 2023]
---- Anyone wishing to see the 210 hostages released – and who doesn't? – must fight now with all their might against a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, at the same time exerting every possible pressure on the government so that it reaches a deal for releasing thousands of Palestinian prisoners. There is no point in discussing the real or imaginary risks that may result from the release of such massive numbers – there will be no release of hostages without it. Anyone opposing the release of thousands of prisoners is in fact opposing the release of the hostages. Their blood will be on the hands of such people as well. Anyone in favor of hostage release must now say loudly and clearly: Stop the invasion; there is no deal with an invasion. [Read More]
(Video) Israel-Gaza: When will the world say 'Enough'?
By Marc Lamont Hill, "Up Front," Aljazeera [October 20, 2023]
---- As Israel's siege and bombing of Gaza continues, we look at how the war is presented and ask if a ceasefire is possible. In an UpFront special, Marc Lamont Hill speaks to the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Lara Friedman; human rights lawyer Noura Erakat; and executive director of +972 Magazine, Haggai Matar, to discuss the implications of the Israel-Gaza war. [See the Program]
The Only Way Forward
By Helena Cobban, Boston Review [October 17, 2023]
[FB - Helena Cobban writes on global affairs. Her books include The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power and Politics and The Making of Modern Lebanon.]
---- At this point, little is clear about the scale or direction of Israel's future military operations. What is clear is that relationship between Israel and Palestine—and between the nations arrayed on either side of the conflict—has entered a new, dangerous phase. The only way forward is to try to understand how a negotiated peace can be carved out of the wake of the past week's violence. And doing so demands a much fuller picture of Hamas than has been offered in U.S. corporate media—including as clear an understanding as possible of the goals of the October 7 operation and of the organization's longer-term political vision and capabilities. [Read More]
On the Occupation and the Palestinian Resistance: 2008 Interview With Hamas' Khaled Meshal
Some News Notes on the War
State Department official resigns over Gaza policy
By Michael Arria, Mondoweiss [October 19, 2023]
---- State Dept. official Josh Paul resigned over the Biden administration's Gaza policy. In a statement announcing his departure he called U.S. policy, "shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse." … "It is my firm belief that in such conflicts, for those of us who are third parties, the side we must pick is not that of one of the combatants, but that of the people caught in the middle, and that of the generations yet to come," wrote Paul in a Linkedin post announcing his departure. [Link].
CUNY faculty and staff: We reject the Palestine Exception to free speech at CUNY
An "Open Letter," [October 19, 2023]
---- This statement, published on October 17 2023, was drafted by an ad hoc group of faculty and staff at the City University of New York (CUNY). As of October 18, it has been signed by more than 100 CUNY staff and faculty. . [Read More]
An Open Letter on the Situation in Palestine
From The London Review of Boos – 750 artists and writers "are speaking out to demand an end to the violence and destruction in Palestine." [October 18, 2023] [Link].
Also of interest is this 17-minute video, "How Palestinians were expelled from their homes," about the 1948 Nakba [Link].
