Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
January 1, 2024
Hello All – The tens of thousands of people killed and injured in Gaza are being killed and injured by US-supplied planes, weapons, shells, and bombs. The US is not just a "supporter" of Israel; it is a partner with Israel in what many describe as genocide.
President Biden says he wants Israel to reduce the number of civilians being killed in Gaza. But his actions show that he is not sincere about this. Just yesterday, President Biden authorized sending $147.5 million worth of high-explosive artillery shells to Israel. Claiming there was an "emergency," the President exempted this sale from congressional review – the second time this (unusual) action has happened during the War on Gaza.
The number of civilian casualties in Gaza, the dead, injured, and missing under the rubble, is approaching 100,000. Almost two million people have been forced from their homes. Hospitals and healthcare institutions have been destroyed. The UN says more than half a million civilians are on the verge of starvation. Hundreds of thousands of people living in tents or sheltering in UN facilities have infectious diseases. Israel uses hunger, cold, and disease as weapons of war. This is genocide.
Last week the government of South Africa filed a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, accusing it of genocide. South Africa asked the Court to order Israel to stop this. (Please see the article linked below.) Our own government should be telling Israel to stop this also. By giving Israel $3.8 billion in military each year, and protecting Israel from condemnation at the UN, the US has the leverage to make a difference.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand supports Israel's war. Let's change her mind. Please call her at (202) 224-4451. Tell her you want her to support a Ceasefire. Thanks.
Featured Essays re: the War on Gaza
The Moral Injuries of Witnessing Genocide
By Michael Schwalbe, Counterpunch [December 29, 2023]
---- The primary victims of Israel's assault on Gaza are the Palestinians trapped there. Over 20,000 people, half of them children, have been killed so far; another 53,000 have been wounded. But even wider damage is being done, damage that extends far beyond Gaza. Around the world, people forced to witness this slow-motion genocide—while feeling unable to stop it—are being subjected to moral injuries that will reverberate for generations. Psychologists originally used the term "moral injury" to refer to the psychic trauma experienced by soldiers unable to reconcile their deeply held moral values with the immoral acts—abusing, maiming, and killing other humans—they committed or abetted as soldiers. This trauma is thought to underlie the high rates of depression and suicide observed among combat veterans. Moral injury later came be to seen as a possible result of witnessing atrocities committed by others, and feeling betrayed by authorities once thought trustworthy and legitimate. It is also now understood that moral injury is not limited to soldiers. [Read More]
(Video) "Utterly Illegal": U.N. Special Rapporteur Slams Netanyahu's "Voluntary Migration" Plan for Gazans
From Democracy Now! [December 29, 2023]
---- More United Nations workers have been killed in Israel's ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip than in any other conflict in the organization's history. As the death toll for U.N. workers ticks above 136, Israel has announced it will no longer grant automatic visas to U.N. workers, after accusing the organization of being "complicit partners" with Hamas after months of U.N. officials repeatedly calling for a ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, calls Israel's accusations "baseless" and part of a long pattern of smearing and obstructing the U.N.'s operations in Israel and Palestine. [See the Program] Also of interest is "The long history of Zionist proposals to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip," by Mouin Rabbani, Mondoweiss [December 28, 2023] [Link]. Also useful/important – "Industrial Killing of Civilians in Gaza Won't Defeat the Armed Insurgency," by Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept [December 20, 2023] [Link]; "The real 'Person of the Year' [Palestinian doctors and medical workers], by Belén Fernández, Aljazeera [December 29, 2023] [Link]; and (Video) "Labor Demands a Ceasefire: UAW, Electrical & Postal Workers Call for Israel's Assault on Gaza to End," from Democracy Now! [December 26, 2023] [Link].
CFOW Nuts and 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 the first Monday of the month (e.g. January 1) 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!
This week's Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers are taken from newsletters of the now-past year of 2023. My "year in review" includes Anne Feeney "Have You Been To Jail For Justice?" [Link]; The Freedom Singers – "Woke Up This Morning" [Link]; The Specials – Freedom Highway" [Link]; Willie Nelson and Sinėad O'Connor, "Don't Give Up" [Link]; Resistance Revival Chorus, "Ella's Song" [Link] and "This Joy" [Link]; The Chicks, "March, March" [Link]; Tuba Skinny, "Over in the Gloryland," [Link]; and Frank Turner, "I Still Believe" [Link]. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
The CFOW Weekly Reader
The War on Gaza
The Jewish establishment's blindness to Palestinian slaughter also hurts U.S. Jews
By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [December 26, 2023]
---- The official Jewish community's indifference to genocide is not only hurting Palestinians but will hurt Jews. "The entire Jewish nation" is not at war. Israel is. A Zionist society that has totally lost its bearings out of a psychosis bred by Holocaust thinking and political impunity is at war with an impoverished people it has oppressed for generations. Let us celebrate all the young Jews who recognize these truths and have bravely called for ceasefire. They are the only future for the American Jewish community. As it is, Israel's racism against Palestinians has subsumed official Jewish life. American Jews have abandoned their best traditions out of deference to a militant state that exists in constant fear of those it subjugates. Israel will only be curbed when American Jews recognize that their own experience of a modern polity – an inclusive society based on equal rights for all and the expansion of civil rights – is the true model. [Read More]
There's No Way to 'Explain' the Degree of Death and Destruction in Gaza
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [December 28, 2023]
---- There is no way to "explain" Israel's conduct in the Gaza Strip. Destruction, killing, starvation and siege in such monstrous dimensions can no longer be explained or justified, even by an effective propaganda machine like Israeli public diplomacy (hasbara). The evil can no longer be hidden by any propaganda. Even the winning Israeli combo of victimhood, Yiddishkeit, chosen people, and Holocaust can no longer blur the picture. The horrifying October 7 events have not been forgotten by anyone, but they cannot justify the spectacles in Gaza. The propagandist who could explain killing 162 infants in one day – a figure reported by social media this week – is yet to be born, not to mention killing some 10,000 children in two months. [Read More] Also of interest – "Netanyahu Advocates Ethnically Cleansing Palestinians of Gaza: Believe him the First Time," by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [December 26, 2023] [Link], "Israel's War Spending," by Binoy Kampmark, Counterpunch [December 29, 2023] [Link]; (Video) "Axis of Resistance": Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis Challenge U.S. & Israeli Power Amid Middle East Tension, from Democracy Now! [December 27, 2023] [Link]; (Video) U.S. Complicit in "On-Air Genocide": Palestinian Amb. Husam Zomlot Slams 12-Week Gaza Assault," from Democracy Now! [December 29, 2023] [Link]; and "In unprecedented slaughter of Gaza civilians, US claims Israel is the "victim," by Aaron Maté [December 22, 2023] [Link].
Israel and Gaza in Historical Perspective
The Long War on Gaza
By Sara Roy, New York Review of Books [December 19, 2023]
---- Gaza is being devastated as we watch. A stated goal of Israel's assault, which has so far killed more than 19,400 people, is to "destroy Hamas" in retaliation for its attack that killed 1,200 in Israel's south in October. But a number of critics, such as the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, have argued persuasively that Israel's goal is less to vanquish Hamas—impossible in any case—than to finally expel Palestinians from Gaza without international censure or sanction. There is mounting evidence for their claims. … The current desecration of Gaza is the latest stage in a process that has taken increasingly violent forms over time. In the fifty-six years since it occupied the Strip in 1967, Israel has transformed Gaza from a territory politically and economically integrated with Israel and the West Bank into an isolated enclave, from a functional economy to a dysfunctional one, from a productive society to an impoverished one. It has likewise removed Gaza's residents from the sphere of politics, transforming them from a people with a nationalist claim to a population whose majority requires some form of humanitarian aid to sustain themselves. [Read More]
Gas, Gaza, and Western imperialism
By Tara Alami, Mondoweiss [December 20, 2023] [h/t RA]
---- The current assault on Gaza cannot be seen as separate from the theft of resources like fuel and the systemic destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure throughout Palestine. … On November 20, news broke that the U.S. was exploring plans to exploit the gas fields off the coast of Gaza as part of an "economic revitalization plan." While some took this to mean that these gas fields were an ulterior motive for the years of Zionist and U.S.-backed attacks on Gaza, the current assault should be understood as an escalation of an ongoing attempt to ethnically cleanse Gaza that is part and parcel of the Zionist settler-colonial and imperial project. [Read More] Also of interest – (Video) "Echoes of a Lost Gaza," by documentary filmmaker Mariam Shahin, Aljazeera [December 26, 2023] [Link]; and "Dead End: Israel Gets Lost in Gaza," by Daniel Beaumont, Counterpunch [December 29, 2023] [Link].
Israeli Dissent Against the War on Gaza(Video)
What struggles are Israeli activists facing in their anti-war movement?
From Aljazeera ["The Stream"] [December 28, 2023]
---- While most Israelis have rallied behind their government's war on Gaza, some still call for peace. The Hamas attack on October 7 sent shockwaves through Israeli society. The killing of more than 1,100 people, mostly civilians, has fuelled hyper-nationalism and created a climate in which those who express solidarity with Palestinians risk being called traitors or terrorist sympathisers. But even at a time when most Israelis support their government's war effort, there are Israeli activists who, despite the abuse, continue to pursue peace. [See the Program]. Also of interest is "Israeli Teen Jailed for Refusing to Take Part in Army's 'Criminal Attack' on Gaza," Common Dreams [Link].
South Africa Appeals to the International Court of Justice
South Africa appeals to the International Court of Justice: Stop Israel's genocide in Gaza
By Robert Herbst, Mondoweiss [December 31, 2023]
[FB – Robert Herbst is a member of JVP-Westchester and a CFOW stalwart.]
---- On Thursday, December 28, South Africa filed an Application Instituting Proceedings at the International Court of Justice to commence proceedings in a legal forum against Israel for its genocide in Gaza, and to press for "provisional measures" – a preliminary order requiring the Israel Government and military to cease their genocidal acts in Gaza pending a full hearing by the court. South Africa's Application is 84 pages long and devastating – to the State of Israel, to its Jewish political and military leaders and personnel committing the genocidal acts and speaking openly of their genocidal intent, to those in Israel, America, and Europe standing so firmly in support of them, and to the Jewish people in whose name Israel purports to act. [Read More]. Also of interest – "South Africa Charges Israel with Genocide at Int'l Court of Justice, as Global South charges West with Hypocrisy," by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [December 30, 2023] [Link]; and "This is the letter that the ICJ issued in recognition of the South African claim," [December 29, 2023] [Link].
The Role of the (Mainstream) Media
The Impossibility of Reporting the Story of Gaza
By Afnan Abu Yahia and Lila Hassan, The Nation [December 29, 2023]
---- Since the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza, which has now killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, journalists have been on the front lines, both as witnesses and victims. For more than two months, as Israel has rained bombs on Gaza, they have rushed from refugee camps to hospitals, and from hospitals to schools and back, trying to stay safe while covering what they describe as their own genocide. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 68 journalists have been killed in Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon since October 7, making this the deadliest conflict since the CPJ began tallying press fatalities. … s the stories of murdered journalists have mounted, many in Gaza have come to suspect that Israel is deliberately targeting the press. [Read More].
(Video) Genocide in Gaza: The coverage of Israel's war
From Aljazeera [December 30, 2023]
---- In this special edition, we compile our reporting on Israel's war on Gaza – documenting the information war as it has played out since October 7. In 17 years of The Listening Post, we have never seen a story anything like Israel's war on Gaza. It has been a turning point for the world order as we know it and its media ecosystem – which is why, since October 7, we have covered nothing else. In this special edition, we compiled our reporting on the Gaza war over the past 12 weeks. The extent of the brutality, a genocide unfolding in plain sight; the sheer volume of disinformation, designed to defend the indefensible; and the complicity of so many Western news outlets – repeatedly exposed for failing to question Israeli propaganda, then spreading it. [See the Program].
Also of interest – "Israel is provoking the U.S. into a conflict with Iran — but the media ignores the danger," by James North, Mondoweiss [December 30, 2023] [Link]; and "Watching the watchdogs: US media reporting from Gaza," by Rami G Khouri, Aljazeera [December 31, 2023] [Link].
Civil Liberties in War Time
(Video) Palestine Exception: U.S. Colleges Suppress Free Speech, Academic Freedom for Students & Professors
From Democracy Now! [December 27, 2023]
---- We look at the "Palestine exception to free speech" on U.S. college campuses, where students and faculty face backlash and professional retribution for speaking up in defense of Palestinian rights amid the Israeli war on Gaza. We hear from Safiya O'Brien, a Barnard College student and organizer with the Columbia University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, and speak with Barnard College professor Premilla Nadasen, who describes an organized campaign "to censor student and faculty speech and curtail academic freedom." {See the Program]
How a Leading Definition of Antisemitism Has Been Weaponized Against Israel's Critics
By Jonathan Hafetz and Sahar Aziz, The Nation [December 27, 2023]
---- While attempting to define antisemitism is a laudable goal, the IHRA's version includes two examples, out of 11, that have been exploited to censor speech. Specifically, the first example is "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination; e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor"; and the second is "applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation." … The ability to criticize states and their policies—whether at home or abroad—is central to democratic governance. Weaponizing criticism of Israel as necessarily antisemitic not only devalues the term's meaning, to the detriment of all Jews, but also threatens Americans' free speech rights. [Read More] Also of interest – "Palestine Solidarity Crackdown: Challenges in the US and Europe," by Layla Kattermann and Diala Shamas, Al-Shabaka [December 26, 2023] [Link]; "'Material Support" in the Form of Speech Can Be Criminalized," by Janine Jackson, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in the Media] [December 29, 2023] [Link]; and (Video) "Who Funds Canary Mission? James Bamford on Group That Doxxes Students & Profs for Palestine Activism," from Democracy Now! [December 27, 2023] [Link].
Some other topics of concern for CFOW
The War in Ukraine
Ukraine Needs a Cease-Fire, Not Biden's $50 Billion Escalation
By Richard Eskow, Common Dreams [December 30, 2023]
---- It's clear that Ukraine needs more support. What isn't clear is why the latest White House spending package includes $50 billion in additional military funding, which is more than Ukraine has received from the United States since the war began in early 2022. This could a very dangerous escalation of the risk of nuclear war, at a time when the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock already stands closer to "midnight" than ever. There's a better way. The United States can take an active role in organizing a cease-fire, to be followed by negotiations toward a permanent settlement.[Read More]
The Climate Crisis
The Most Important Thing That Happened This Year Was the Heat
By Bill McKibben [December 31, 2023]
---- The world—its politics, its economy, and its journalism—has trouble coping with the scale of the climate crisis. We can't quite wrap our collective head around it, which has never been clearer to me than in these waning days of 2023. Because the most important thing that happened this year was the heat. By far. It was hotter than it has been in at least 125,000 years on this planet. Every month since May was the hottest ever recorded. Ocean temperatures set a new all-time mark, over 100°F. Canada burned, filling the air above our cities with smoke. And yet you really wouldn't know it from reading the wrap-ups of the year's news now appearing on one website after another. We're programmed—by evolution, doubtless, and in the case of journalism by counting clicks—to look for novelty and for conflict. Climate change seems inexorable, which is the opposite of how we think about news. [Read More]
Also of interest – "A Natural Gas Project Is Biden's Next Big Climate Test," by David Gelles, et al., New York Times [December 26, 2023] [Link]; and "Big Oil Is Greenwashing the Planet," by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [December 26, 2023] [Link].
