Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
March 31, 2024
Hello All – Last week the United Nations Security Council called on Israel to implement a ceasefire in Gaza for the period of Ramadan, a period of Muslim fasting and prayer extending through April 9th. The US representative at the Security Council, while abstaining rather than vetoing the Resolution, said that it was "not binding." Totally false; yet so far Israel has totally ignored the Resolution, continuing to bomb civilian populations, hospitals, and aid-distribution centers in Gaza, without a peep of disapproval from the Biden administration.
Also this week, the International Court of Justice told Israel that it had to take further steps to cease its "plausible genocide" against Gaza, and allow increased amounts of food and humanitarian aid to reach starving people. As with the UN Security Council resolution, Israel has paid no attention to the order by the ICJ, and has announced that Israel will go ahead with its attack on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite warnings from the US and many others that it would cause tens of thousands of civilian casualties.
Moreover, this week Biden people responded to the legally required affirmation by Israel that it was not using US weapons to commit war crimes, and that it was not interfering with the distribution of US humanitarian assistance, by claiming that Israel was in compliane. The US State Department now has until May 8th to provide Congress with a report showing that this incredible assurance that Israel was acting with US law was somehow OK. Illuminating the Biden team's mendacity, a former UN official spoke on Democracy Now! this week about the damage that the US tolerance of Israel's BS is doing to international law and the ability of the UN to act as the world's peace keeping agency. (For a useful documentary film on Israel's contempt for international law, go here.)
The Biden administration responded to Israel's defiance on Friday in its customary fashion, by authorizing the delivery of $2.5 billion in further military aid to Israel, including 25 F-35A fighter jets (the most advanced in the world) and 2,300 giant bombs, capable of leveling city blocks. The announcement of this mammoth delivery of planes and bombs followed by just a few days the issuance of a report by the UN's human rights body entitled Anatomy of a Genocide.
The Biden administration's actions this week show that, while it expresses "concerns" and talks about "red lines" regarding Israel' war on Gaza, in reality the US is a co-partner in Israel's genocide. Outside of Israel itself, the US has no allies in their support for Israel. We, too, must reject this war on moral and legal grounds, and do all we can to bring about a lasting cease fire.
Other voices on current events
UN Security Council's Gaza Cease-Fire Resolution Is Not Enough—But It's a Start
By Phyllis Bennis, Common Dreams [March 25, 2024]
---- Five and half months into Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza with more than 32,000 Palestinians already killed, six weeks after the International Court of Justice found Israel plausibly committing genocide and ordered it to stop, and after four earlier tries, the UN Security Council on Monday finally passed a resolution submitted by all ten elected members aiming to stop the slaughter. The resolution has lots of weaknesses and shows the effects of U.S. pressure—but it demands an end to the bombing and a massive influx of food and medicine. And that means the possibility of saving lives. [Read More]
As Israel Blocks More U.N. Aid, Gaza Is on the Brink of "Most Intense Famine" Since WW2
From Democracy Now! [March 25, 2024]
---- In Gaza, millions of Palestinians are starving after five months of U.S.-backed attacks by Israel, while Israel continues to prevent the delivery of essential provisions. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini wrote on social media, "This man-made starvation under our watch is a stain on our collective humanity." The head of the World Health Organization says children in Gaza are already dying of malnutrition. "This is fundamentally a political crisis," says Alex de Waal, the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine, who explains that even with a ceasefire and humanitarian aid, "a crisis like this cannot be stopped overnight," and that "This will be a calamity that will be felt for generations." [Read More]
Why do Israelis feel so threatened by a ceasefire?
By Meron Rapoport, +972 Magazine [March 29, 2024]
---- The American decision not to veto a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — the first time since the beginning of the war that it had allowed such a resolution to pass — sent shock waves through Israel. … So if the view that Netanyahu is continuing the war for personal interests is growing; if the futility of continuing the war is becoming clearer, with regard to both toppling Hamas and releasing the hostages; if it is becoming obvious that continuing the war is liable to damage relations with the United States — how can one explain the consensus in Israel around the "danger" of a ceasefire? [Read More]
The Bowman Campaign
CFOW stalwarts assisted this weekly in collecting more signatures on Rep. Bowman's petitions nominating home for the June 25th primary election. This process will be completed this week, and then he will "officially" be on the June ballot.
There were several useful articles published this week about this campaign. They include: "Who's endorsing Jamaal Bowman and George Latimer?" by Peter Sterne and Holly Pretsky, City & State [March 28, 2024] [Link]; "House Dem leaders back Bowman in primary, while Latimer racks up endorsements back home," by Chris McKenna, The Journal News [March 29, 2024] [LInk]; and "In one of New York's most competitive primaries, Jamaal Bowman is a party of one," by Michelle Bocanegra, The Gothamist [March 29, 2024] [Link].
A public opinion poll initiated by the Working Families Party produced positive results for the Bowman campaign and many interesting details (yet on a smallish sample) about the voters in CD 16. Read "Rep. Jamaal Bowman's Democratic constituents back ceasefire in Israel war: poll," by Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News [March 26, 2024] [Link].
Related to the above, and in a development that may be a focus of debate in the coming weeks, Bowman's challenger George Latimer denied that a genocide was underway in the war on Gaza, indicating that he was totally ignorant of the UN's (and the world's) definition of genocide. This may be another indication of the ways that a rift between the Biden people and the Israel lobby may be damaging to the Latimer campaign. Read more here.
Finally, Rep. Bowman was among the 22 progressive Democrats who voted against the fiscal FY 2024 budget legislation that discontinued funding for the UN aid agency UNRWA; sadly, the bill passed with a strong bi-partisan vote.
News Note
How to Vote for a Cease-Fire: A guide to voting "Uncommitted."
By Joshua A. Cohen, The Nation [March 29, 2024]
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We've seen the impact that a robust "Uncommited" vote in just the first half of these races has already had on the administration's words and deeds, moving the White House from a full-body hug of Netanyahu to talk of a cease-fire and the need for a Palestinian state. It's our task to make sure that momentum is sustained—to send a message, end a war, and save a presidency from itself. Here's how those who live in upcoming primary states can do so. [Read More]
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 the first Monday of the month (next is April 1st) 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 two great songs from Patti Smith. I think you will like this choral version of "People Have the Power" [h/t SR]. And here is her rendition of Bob Dylan's "Hard Rain," performed on the occasion of Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
The CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
(Video) How the World Failed Gaza: The Great March of Return Six Years On
By Norman Finkelstein, The Jerusalem Fund & Palestine Center [March 30, 2024]
---- This year, March 30th commemorates the sixth anniversary of the Great March of Return, a mass mobilization effort initiated in Gaza in 2018. This March of Return aimed to highlight the dire circumstances faced by two million Palestinians in Gaza, 70% of whom are refugees, living under a severe blockade that has rendered the Gaza Strip "unlivable", as described by the United Nations. Years of blockade, development, and "Mowing the Lawn" policies have been exacerbated by a devastating genocide that Israel has launched against the Palestinians in Gaza, now entering its sixth month. [See the Program]
The Nuclear Explosion That Makes US Aid to Israel Illegal
By James Bamford, The Nation [March 29, 2024]
---- Israel's nuclear program has been in violation of international law for decades, rendering it ineligible for American assistance. … Now, 45 years later, that explosion could play a significant role in bringing an end to Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza by using American lawfare to halt Israeli warfare—finally enforcing US laws that would cut off all aid, including the billions and billions of dollars and the tons and tons of weapons Israel now receives. For decades, these laws, enacted by Congress to halt harmful and destructive actions by rogue actors, have been deliberately ignored with regard to Israel. Clearly, they must now be enforced. [Read More]
Gaza war evokes Vietnam's own struggle, past unity with Palestine
By Hai Dang, Aljazeera [March 30, 2024]
---- Horrified by Israel's war on Gaza and the spiraling death toll, primarily young Vietnamese people have begun to raise their voices in support of Palestinians. In the process, they are discovering historical ties between Vietnam and Palestine and their shared fights for national liberation. … But Vietnam's strict policies against public assemblies and political activism means pro-Palestinian campaigners have to come up with low-key and creative ways of organising events without attracting the unwanted attention of Vietnamese authorities. [Read More]
The War in Gaza
(Video) "The Worst of What Humanity Is Capable Of": Pediatrician Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan on What She Saw in Gaza
From Democracy Now! [March 28, 2024]
---- Almost six months into Israel's assault, Gaza's health sector has been completely decimated. Before October 7, Gaza had 36 hospitals. Now only two are minimally functional, and 10 are partially functional, according to the United Nations. The rest have shut down completely. … We speak with Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care physician who just spent two weeks volunteering and living at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza, about what she witnessed and the conditions of healthcare in the beleaguered and devastated territory. "This is not a humanitarian crisis. This is the worst of what humanity is capable of, and it's entirely all man-made," says Haj-Hassan. "This is an utter and complete failure of humanity, and, to be frank, I feel ashamed to be an American citizen. I feel ashamed to be part of a society that has allowed this to continue." [See the Program]. For the report of another doctor, read "'Man-Made Hell On Earth': A Canadian Doctor on His Medical Mission to Gaza," by Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept [March 23, 2024] [Link].
Israel's War on Hamas Must Not Turn Into a Second Palestinian Nakba
Editorial, Haaretz [Israel] [March 26, 2024]
---- As time passes, there is increasing fear that the displacement and destruction will become a permanent reality – and the residents of the northern Gaza Strip will become refugees, like their forefathers, the refugees of the 1948 Nakba. The war that aimed to bring down Hamas and return the hostages to Israel – and whose goals have not been achieved, even after many long and bloody months – must not turn into the Palestinians' second Nakba. …A prolonged occupation and the building of settlements in Gaza would be a war crime and a moral crime, which would only intensify the conflict and cause Israel to be hated the world over. [Read More]
We Need to Admit It: Israel Wants the War in Gaza
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [March 27, 2024]
---- Israel wants war. More and more war, as much as possible, and perhaps even more. Gone are the days of our childhood, when they told us Israel wants peace more than anything else. We saw ourselves as peace seekers, a naive people. … This is an awful situation. First we did away with peace as a value, as a goal and vision, and now we've turned the war into a value we must fight for against the whole world. The few against the many, we'll fight for our right to war. The few against the many, we'll fight for our right to kill and destroy indiscriminately. The greatest threat to Israel now is stopping the war. Where will we go? That war is the most satanic human invention has been forgotten. Make peace, not war – that's for the gullible and the stupid. Continuing the war is what unites Israel in a tight bond. We're ready to pay any price to continue the war, including ruining relations with the United States, not exactly a renowned peace seeker, which is also demanding: Enough. [Read More] Also of interest: (Video) "How Israeli TV Sells Gaza's Destruction," Aljazeera [March 20, 2024] – 10 minutes.
Famine and Starvation
The Road to Famine in Gaza
By Neve Gordon and Muna Haddad, New York Review of Books [March 30, 2024]
---- In the days that followed Hamas's heinous October 7 attack on military bases, kibbutzim, towns, and the Nova music festival, several high-ranking Israeli officials announced that they intended to deprive Gaza's civilian population of its most basic needs. At the time, over 80 percent of the goods entering the Gaza Strip came from Israel, which has kept the area under strict blockade for seventeen years. On October 9, following two days of extensive aerial bombing, the country's minister of energy and infrastructure, Israel Katz, announced that he had ordered water, electricity, and fuel to be cut off. "What was," he said, "will not be." The same day, the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, demanded a "complete siege" of the enclave: "there will be no food, there will be no fuel." (His reasoning has since become notorious: "we are fighting human animals.") … These were all declarations of an intent to deprive the Palestinians in Gaza "of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies"—the legal definition of "using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare," a crime against international law under the Rome Statute. [Read More] Also useful – "We are about to witness in Gaza the most intense famine since the second world war," by Alex de Waal, The Guardian [UK] [March 21, 2024] [Link]; "Gaza's risk of famine is accelerating faster than anything we've seen this century," by Ellen Ioanes and Nicole Narea, VOX [March 25, 2024] [Link]; and "Inside Israel's Disturbing Denial of Starvation in Gaza," by Dahlia Scheindlin, Haaretz [Israel] [March 26, 2024] [Link].
The West Bank
While War Rages in Gaza, the West Bank Has Undergone a Metamorphosis
By Gideon Levy and Alex Levac, Haaretz [March 30, 2024]
---- In the past six months, the occupied West Bank has undergone a metamorphosis. War broke out in the Gaza Strip, but the West Bank's "punishment" for the events of October 7 wasn't long in coming. You don't need a particularly sharp eye to notice the revolution on the ground. No special insight is necessary in order to understand that Israel and the settler communities have exploited the dark specter of war to alter reality in the West Bank: to intensify the occupation, extend the boundaries of the settlements, remove the last remaining constraints on interaction with the Palestinian population and to run wild – all far from the public eye. It's impossible to overestimate the depth and breadth of the changes wrought in the West Bank in these months. Most of them, if not all, are probably irreversible. [Read More]
The War at Home
(Video) I Could Not Stay Silent: Annelle Sheline Resigns from State Dept. over U.S. Gaza Policy
From Democracy Now! [March 28, 2024]
---- A State Department official working on human rights issues in the Middle East resigned Wednesday in protest of U.S. support for Israel's assault on Gaza. Annelle Sheline, who worked as a foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, was not planning on publicly resigning, but her colleagues asked her to "please speak out" against the Biden administration's unconditional support for Israel. Sheline describes being moved by the words of Aaron Bushnell, the active-duty U.S. airman who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in protest of the war on Gaza, who implored everyone to take a stand against genocide. "I have a young daughter, and I thought about, in the future, if she were to ask me, 'What were you doing when this was happening? You were at the State Department.' I want to be able to tell her that I didn't stay silent." [See the Program]
Pro-Israel Advocates Are Weaponizing "Safety" on College Campuses
By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [March 28, 2024]
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Right-wing GOP culture warriors and conservative Zionist groups are using similar claims about campus incidents nationwide. "Safety" is the latest weapon in the culture war, being deployed now to deal a blow to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, known as DEI, and to silence criticism of Israel. The result has brought us to our intolerable status quo, with students and faculty risking grave consequences for protesting a war in which Israeli forces have slaughtered over 31,000 people. Israel's U.S.-backed assault has razed to rubble every single university in Gaza, but the concern as relates to intellectual life in this country focuses instead on the inoculation of Israel's young supporters from bad feeling. [Read More]Also of interest – "Majority of Americans disapprove of Israel's military operations in Gaza," from Aljazeera [March 27, 2024] [Link]; and "The Israel lobby is fractured, and so at last is the Jewish community," by Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [March 28, 2024] [Link].
The War in Ukraine
Gloom in Ukraine
By Tim Judah, New York Review of Books [March 20, 2024]
---- Two years after the Russian invasion, Ukrainian morale has plummeted. The front line is more or less where it was at the end of 2022, but the Ukrainians are under severe pressure, and some are convinced that the Russians are about to punch through and capture a lot more territory. In the Black Sea, on the other hand, the Ukrainians have pushed most of the Russian navy from its base in Crimea and broken the naval blockade of their grain exports. In the shadow world of cyber war, where both sides are attempting to steal intelligence and disable each other's infrastructure, it is hard to assess who has the upper hand. Neither side talks about defeats there unless they are so glaring they cannot be hidden. [Read More] Also of interest is "Putin's nuclear warnings: heightened risk or revolving door?" by Stephen J. Cimbala and Lawrence J. Korb, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [March 28, 2024] [Link].
The Climate Crisis
Why is America Letting the Oil Industry Destroy the Planet?
By Thom Hartmann, The Hartmann Report [March 22, 2024]
---- The men who made the intentional decision to murder my father are long dead; the men and women who today are plotting to render much of our beautiful planet uninhabitable are very much with us… Analyses of the death and destruction wrought by the fossil fuel industry's carbon pollution have led a number of legal experts to suggest that now may be the time to lay the foundation for the prosecution of fossil fuel companies and their executives for murder or, at the least, manslaughter. … Today there are families all across the country who are mourning the loss of their loved ones to climate-change-fueled floods, heatstroke, and violent weather as much as I grieved my father's death at the hands of the asbestos industry executives. They deserve justice, and the industry needs a wake-up call like the asbestos industry got in the late 1990s, leading to a wave of bankruptcies. Holding murderous executives and their rogue companies bent on profiting from unnecessary death and destruction is imperative. [Read More]
Civil Liberties
(Video) Assange Extradition Delayed: British MP Jeremy Corbyn on U.K. Court Seeking More Assurances from U.S.
From Democracy Now! [March 26, 2024]
---- The British High Court in London has put the extradition of Julian Assange on hold until the United States provides assurances that he would get a fair trial in the U.S. without facing the death penalty. If those assurances are not met, Assange will be granted the right to a full appeal hearing. Speaking outside the court Tuesday, Stella Assange called for the Biden administration to "drop this shameful case" against her husband. "Julian should never have been imprisoned for a single day," she said. We speak with MP Jeremy Corbyn, who led the U.K. Labour Party from 2015 to 2020 and who has been calling for all charges against Assange to be dropped. [See the Program]. Also of interest – "UK Court Gives Biden Chance to Dodge Assange Appeal by "Assuring" His Rights," by Marjorie Cohn, Truth Out [March 29, 2024] [Link]; and "Chris Hedges: The Crucifixion of Julian Assange" [March 27, 2024] [Link].
(Video) The Palestine Exception [Free Speech]
From Aljazeera ["Fault Lines"] [March 25, 2024] – 30 minutes
[FB – The program focuses on the free speech fight at Columbia Univ.]
---- Fault Lines investigates what the crackdown on Palestine advocacy means for academic freedom in the United States. Doxxing. Blacklists. Terminations. Investigations. Hate mail and death threats. And accusations of anti-Semitism and material support for terrorism. These are some of the ways in which pro-Israel advocacy groups have tried to silence and intimidate pro-Palestinian voices in the US for years.But since October 7, these kinds of attacks have intensified. Constitutional rights advocates have called this a McCarthy-era moment for speech, suppression, and university campuses are on the front lines. [See the Program]
Our History
Five Ways Textbooks Lie About Reconstruction
By Mimi Eisen, Zinn Education Project [March 2024]
---- With "sufficient general agreement and determination among the dominant classes, the truth of history may be utterly distorted and contradicted and changed to any convenient fairy tale," wrote the great scholar W. E. B. Du Bois in 1935, critiquing the Reconstruction "scholarship" of the Jim Crow era. "One cannot study Reconstruction without first frankly facing the facts of universal lying." … The consequences of Reconstruction and its undoing still ripple through structural disparities and justice movements today. When students learn this history, they can better understand the world they inherited and recognize their own roles in history-making. They can see that progress toward an equitable future — and against longstanding traditions of racial capitalism — is always hard-fought and won through grassroots activism and mutual care. They will know that freedoms are not guaranteed and must be championed and protected by each new generation. But today, most textbooks omit these facts in favor of whitewashed myths — many of the same "fairy tales" Du Bois decried in 1935 — that promote the status quo and distance students from the lessons of history. [Read More]
