CFOW Newsletter - Antisemitism and Israel's War on Gaza

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

April 28, 2024

Hello All – In response to the widespread student protests against Israel's war on Gaza (see map) and the arrest of several hundred students by police, the on-going genocide in Gaza has been obscured by the outpouring of denunciations of antisemitism.  These (mostly) false claims come from the President, from Congress, from the mainstream media, and from college presidents.  The students' righteous protests against the mass-killing of noncombatants in Gaza – more than half of the 35,000 dead – are Off the Agenda for news organizations and discussion.

The powerful assault on dissent and Thought-Crimes comes as the long-feared Israeli assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah appears imminent.  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says that a date for the invasion "has been set"; and Palestinian Authority leader Abbas says that it will begin in 3 days.  Rafah, ordinarily a border city (w/Egypt) with a population of 250,000 people, has been swollen by hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, sent south by the Israeli military during their assaults on northern and central Gaza.  President Biden and heads of state around the war have protested loudly against such an assault, which is anticipated to kill tens of thousands of civilians, jam-packed together without shelter.  President Biden used to say that an Israeli invasion of Rafah was his "red line"; now he appears to have capitulated to Netanyahu's war plan, perhaps thinking that it would be better to have it over and done with before the US presidential election.

A growing majority of Americans oppose Israeli violence against Gazans, and for a few short weeks the US student uprising put Israel's crimes on the mainstream media front-burner.  Over the past 10 days, however, the media framing of antiwar protest has shifted from a focus on the war itself to a focus on alleged student antisemitism.  Though police action against the students is vigorously denounced by many college faculty, my reading of the mainstream media is that the crackdown on students is widely supported.  This of course is bad for freedom of speech and for academic freedom. It also fits into a narrative that fascism is on the war in the USA.

Let us conclude with some excerpts from a statement by Jewish Voice for Peace, whose student chapters have been in the forefront of campus protests and the antiwar movement more broadly.

"People of conscience across the country are organizing in unprecedented numbers to demand divestment from Israeli apartheid and genocide. Our elected officials and the U.S. media, desperate to maintain unquestioning support for the Israeli war machine in service of their own interests, have responded by exploiting fears of rising antisemitism and smearing peaceful, anti-war protests as dangerous, anti-semitic mobs. As the largest anti-Zionist Jewish organization in the world, we unequivocally reject the conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism and reaffirm in the strongest terms that there is no place for antisemitism in our movements. We condemn the false accusations of antisemitism leveled against principled, anti-war protesters to discredit our movements. We understand these accusations for what they are: a cynical distraction from the ongoing atrocities in Gaza. Over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, with thousands more feared dead. They are currently unearthing the bodies of their loved ones in mass graves. In Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have taken shelter, Israel's military is preparing to invade."

For those of us working for peace, for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, defending the student protesters now becomes a priority.  That also means taking head-on the propaganda that being opposed to Israel's war is in itself antisemitic.  These are difficult conversations to have, but we must start now and work hard; we can't wait.

Some Essays/Videos Illuminating This Editorial

(Video) The Campus Protests Aren't Perfect. And We Need them Desperately.

From Peter Beinart [April 28, 2024] – 12 minutes

[FB – Peter Beinart argues that Jewish safety and freedom are intertwined with Palestinian freedom and equality.  A powerful statement, calling for critical reasoning about the student antiwar movement, but also the need to recognize the movement as having the potential for great and beneficial change in the US and in Israel/Palestine.] [See the Program]

Why They're Calling Student Protesters Antisemites

By Branko Marcetic, Jacobin Magazine [April 2024]

---- Backers of Israel's war have lost the battle for hearts and minds, so they've ginned up a controversy over student protests — they want us talking about anything other than the genocide in Gaza. … With the war now deeply unpopular, and only losing more hearts and minds every day as Americans watch the list of Israeli atrocities pile up and up, its supporters have decided their only recourse is to simply gin up a controversy to draw the media and politicians' attention away from what has been widely declared a genocide in Gaza, while simultaneously making themselves, the supporters of this crime, out to be the real victims. This is why we've now seen several unseemly, often embarrassing attempts by the war's supporters to manufacture victimhood at the hands of the nonviolent protesters. … As tends to happen when authorities respond heavy-handedly to protests, Columbia and others' arrests of students is already backfiring, bringing them negative publicity and inspiring similar, larger, and more militant protests to spring up in solidarity and outrage. But as the campus standoffs take up more headlines, don't forget what this is all really about: trying to get us to talk about something, anything, other than the ongoing mass murder in Gaza that the US government could stop at any moment. [Read More]

No, Mr. Netanyahu, It's Not Anti-Semitic to Criticize the Israeli Government's War

By Sen. Bernie Sanders [April 26, 2024]

[FB – Senator Sanders gave these remarks in reply to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's claim that student protests against Israel's war on Gaza were based simply on student antisemitism, calling for arrests, etc.]

---- No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 people — seventy percent of whom are women and children. It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless — almost half the population. It is not antisemitic to realize that your government has annihilated Gaza's health care system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 health care workers. … Mr. Netanyahu, antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people. But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts. It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your policies. [Read More]

The Crackdown on Campus Protests Is Happening Everywhere

From Student Nation [April 26, 2024]

---- Across the US, pro-Palestine students have faced repression, suspension, and arrest. We asked more than a dozen students to share how their schools have restricted the right to protest. … Since October, universities have suspended student groups, curbed academic speech, and called the police on peaceful protesters on campuses coast to coast. With calls for divestment only growing louder, we asked students nationwide to share how their schools have responded to protests calling for a cease-fire and in support of Palestine. [Read More]  Also of interest is (Video) "Hundreds Arrested: Students Across U.S. Protest for Palestine as Campus Crackdown Intensifies," from Democracy Now! [April 25, 2024] [Link]

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 Mondays 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!

The Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers this week come from Django Reinhardt and his partner Stéphane Grapelli, stars of the Parisian club circuit in the 1930s.  I think you will enjoy their renderings of  "Minor Swing"; "Vipers Dream"; and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If it Ain't Got that Swing)".  Lots more of their stuff on-line.

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

CFOW Weekly Reader

Featured Essays

We need an exodus from Zionism

By Naomi Klein, The Guardian [UK] [April 24, 2024]

---- I've been thinking about Moses, and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf. The ecofeminist in me was always uneasy about this story: what kind of God is jealous of animals? What kind of God wants to hoard all the sacredness of the Earth for himself? But there is a less literal way of understanding this story. It is about false idols. About the human tendency to worship the profane and shiny, to look to the small and material rather than the large and transcendent. What I want to say to you tonight at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshipping a false idol once again. They are enraptured by it. Drunk on it. Profaned by it. That false idol is called Zionism.[Read More]

Postscript – Naomi Klein gave this speech at the "Seder in the Streets," in Brooklyn, near the home of Senator Schumer, on the second night of Passover.  For Democracy Now!'s coverage of this event, go here.  For a video of Naomi Klein delivering her speech at the "Seder in the Streets," go here.

Will the Freedom Flotilla Sail to Gaza?

By Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies, Code Pink [April 23, 2024]

---- The non-violence training to join the Freedom Flotilla Coalition's ships to Gaza has been intense. As hundreds of us from 32 countries gathered in Istanbul, we were briefed about what we might encounter on this voyage. "We have to be ready for every possibility," our trainers insisted. The best scenario, they said, is that our three ships–one carrying 5,500 tons of humanitarian aid and two carrying the passengers–will reach Gaza and accomplish our mission. Another scenario would be that the Turkish government might cave to pressure from Israel, the United States and Germany, and prevent the boats from even leaving Istanbul. … Another possibility is that the ships take off but the Israelis illegally hijack us in international waters, confiscate our boats and supplies, arrest and imprison us, and eventually deport us. This happened on several other voyages to Gaza, one of them with deadly consequences. [Read More] Also of interest is "The Freedom Flotilla Is Sailing Into Its Most Dangerous Waters Yet," by Saliha Bayrak, The Nation [April 26, 2024] [Link].

Genocide in Real Time

By Ronald Grigor Suny, The Nation [April 25, 2024]

---- As a scholar of genocide and author of a book on the Armenian Genocide, "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton University Press, 2015), I have pondered the fraught definition of genocide as set out in the United Nations Convention on Genocide. In my own work, and in accordance with the UN definition, I consider genocide to be the deliberate crime "committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, in whole or in part, as such." Genocide is not simply the killing of people—or eliminating political groups, or so called "cultural genocide"—but the mass killing of a people. …. Not surprisingly, young people, along with progressive Democrats in Congress appalled by the massive destruction of Gaza, have rallied to the cause of the Palestinians. Increasing numbers of observers believe the Gaza killings constitute genocide. [Read More]

Nuclear Power's Lethal, Larcenous End Game

By Harvey Wasserman, Counterpunch [April 26, 2024]

---- For the first time since 1954, no large new atomic reactors are under construction or on order in the United States. On March 1, 2024, Vogtle Unit 4 connected to the Georgia grid …years behind schedule and billions over budget.   Once hyped as "too cheap to meter," America's last large light-water reactor thus forever froze the "Peaceful Atom" in financial failure. Despite enormous public hype and subsidies, ZERO new US atomic reactors—large or small— are likely to become significantly available here for at least a decade. The first will likely be an unproven "Small Modular Reactor" prototype already leaning toward a trillion-dollar failure. … When it comes to the myth of nuke power helping to fight global warming…there's no there there. … Despite the latest round of "Nuclear Renaissance" hype, the US lacks the industrial capacity to produce impactful new reactors—large or small— before 2030, if then. The void comes when we most desperately need to reduce carbon emissions.  The mega-grift for unproven new nukes cripples the vital transition to renewables, multiplying the planet-killing impacts of fossil fuels…and of decrepit old reactors whose average age is now over 40. [Read More]

The Student Uprising

Columbia Protests Now and in '68

By Jonah Raskin, Counterpunch [April 25, 2024]

---- The student protests on the campus of Columbia University this April have reminded me of the protests that took place there 56 years ago. Along with about  700 or so other men and women, I was arrested and jailed at the Tombs in Manhattan. Those arrests didn't curtail student protests. Indeed, there were demonstrations later that year and again in 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972. When push comes to shove, Columbia has called on the police again and again and the police have arrived in force and have made arrests. … In the late 1960s and early 1970s, we raised awareness about the university's collaboration with the war machine and with institutions of racism and patriarchy. Columbia began to hire women and Black and brown intellectuals and to revise the curriculum in response to student demands to make education relevant to their own lives and their times. … That middle ground seems to have evaporated. Indeed, the ground under our own feet has shifted dramatically.  There is less room for dissenting opinions today than there was in '68, near the height of the war in Vietnam. There are also more virulent anti-Arab and more virulent anti-Jewish voices today than there were then. Better prepare for the rocky road ahead. [Read More] Also of interest is "Poisoning the American Mind: Student Protests in the Age of the New McCarthyism," by Henry Giroux, Counterpunch [April 26, 2024] [Link].

Inside the Week That Shook Columbia University

By Nicholas Fandos and Sharon Otterman, New York Times [April 23, 2024]

---- The secretive deliberations that followed over 24 frantic hours have sent Columbia into a crisis over free speech and safety unlike any the campus has seen since 1968. The events also set off a chain reaction rattling campuses across the country, just as one of the most trying academic years in memory neared its end. … In the fall, the university suspended two student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, whose rolling protests repeatedly violated its policies. This month, it suspended students who it said had been involved in an event called "Resistance 101," where speakers openly praised Hamas. [Read More]

Also about the protests at Columbia –  (Video) "Pro-Palestinian Campus Encampments Spread Nationwide Amid Mass Arrests at Columbia, NYU & Yale," from Democracy Now! [April 23, 2024] [Link]; and (Video) "LIVE From Encampment: Jewish Columbia Student NOT Afraid" [Link]. -25 minutes

The War on Gaza

The Rafah invasion will be catastrophic

By Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss [April 27, 2024]

---- With the page seeming to have at least temporarily turned on a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, the promised Israeli invasion of Rafah is once again looming large. On Friday, a "high-level" Egyptian delegation arrived in Israel to continue attempts to negotiate a ceasefire, as Cairo's fears of a large exodus of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai have been renewed. … Even if Egypt succeeds in finding an agreement on a delay in Israel's invasion of Rafah, all it will do is delay the inevitable because there is no common ground to unearth between Israel and Hamas on a permanent agreement. Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that Israel simply doesn't want one because a permanent agreement means the end of the military actions by both sides. For Netanyahu, that means that if all the rest of the hostages die, if the entire Middle East becomes even more unstable, and even if the conflict widens — so be it. [Read More]

From the river to the sea, Israel is waging the same war

By Orly Noy, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [April 26, 2024]

---- The Gaza assault cannot be understood separately from Israel's divide-and-conquer strategy against Palestinians in Jenin, Jerusalem, and Nazareth. … The categorization of Palestinians into separate classes — citizens inside Israel, permanent residents of East Jerusalem, occupied subjects in the West Bank, prisoners in the Gaza ghetto, and refugees in exile — is at the heart of Israel's policy of divide and conquer. It effectively negates the existence of the Palestinians as a single and organic people, while keeping them all under the rule of Jewish supremacy. ... Since October 7, Israel has been waging an all-out war not only against the residents of Gaza, but against the entire Palestinian people. True, in Gaza, this war is being waged with such unprecedented cruelty as to be called a genocide. But if we see the Israeli regime as a hand with five fingers, each gripping a different part of the Palestinian people, it becomes clear how this hand has clenched into a single iron fist.  [Read More]

The War in Ukraine

What $61 Billion for Ukraine Won't Do. There are problems money can't fix.

By Ted Snider, The American Conservative [April 24, 2024]

---- Though the aid package "is extremely unlikely to have any meaningful impact on the eventual outcome of the war," Alexander Hill, professor of military history at the University of Calgary, told TAC, it "will certainly prolong the bloodshed." Geoffrey Roberts, professor emeritus of history at University College Cork, agrees that the aid will just "prolong Ukraine's agony." He told TAC that "Ukraine will lose more people, more territory and its viability as an independent state." "This decision will only prolong the agony of Ukraine and Europe," Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, told TAC. But, he added, "It also raises the stakes, and pushes the world one step further towards a cataclysm the likes of which we have never seen. Now is the time to start de-escalating, and to outline what it would take to start a diplomatic process of some sort." [Read More]  Also of interest – "Pentagon Announces Additional $6 Billion in Military Aid for Ukraine," by John Ismay, New York Times [April 26, 2024] [Link].

War with China?

A New Pacific Arsenal to Counter China

By John Ismay, et al., New York Times [April 26, 2024]

---- Since the start of his administration, President Biden has undertaken a strategy to expand American military access to bases in allied nations across the Asia-Pacific region and to deploy a range of new weapons systems there. He has also said the U.S. military would defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. On Wednesday, Mr. Biden signed a $95-billion supplemental military aid and spending bill that Congress had just passed and that includes $8.1 billion to counter China in the region. And Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken traveled to Shanghai and Beijing this week for meetings in which he planned to raise China's aggressive actions around Taiwan and the South China Sea. [Read More]

The State of the Union

(Video) Labor Organizer Jane McAlevey on UAW's Astounding Victory in VW Tennessee & Her Fight Against Cancer

From Democracy Now! [April 23, 2024]

---- Democracy Now! speaks with the great labor organizer and writer Jane McAlevey about the historic victory for Volkswagen employees at a Chattanooga, Tennessee, factory who voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers union. The plant will become the first foreign-owned car factory in the South to unionize. "This win wasn't just a win — it was what we would call a beatdown," says McAlevey, who says the UAW's recent success is a result of direct democracy and smart, strategic organizing that could lead to the unionizing of Mercedes workers in Alabama. "It'll be a massive change in the U.S. South." We also speak with McAlevey about her terminal cancer diagnosis and why she's "going to fight until the last dying minute, because that's what American workers deserve." [See the Program]

Also of interest – "The Covid Revisionists Are Endangering Us All," by Gregg Gonsalves, The Nation [April 25, 2024] [Link]; and (Video) "The Supreme Court Is a Product of Minority Rule": Author Ari Berman on America's Undemocratic System, from Democracy Now! [April 26, 2024] [Link].

Our History

Mandela's world. A photographic retrospective of apartheid South Africa.

By Jurgen Schadeberg, Aljazeera [April 26, 2024]

[FB – Friday was the 30^th anniversary of the transition to democracy in South Africa.]

---- On April 27, 1994, South Africa held its first multiracial democratic election, voting out apartheid and voting in its first Black president, Nelson Mandela. Forty-six years prior, in 1948, apartheid - a system built on white supremacy, segregation and inequality - was signed into law. It fomented the boundaries between races, cutting people off from one another with increasingly restrictive rules. In the vibrant multiracial enclaves of Johannesburg in the 1950s, apartheid police clamped down while many non-white people resisted. Among those documenting life and resistance under apartheid for the famed Drum magazine, was young German-born photographer Jurgen Schadeberg. On the streets of Johannesburg, he captured vibrant, diverse communities at a time when the apartheid government was trying its hardest to remove every trace of multiracialism from its streets. Through his lens, he also immortalised leading struggle and cultural icons, among them Oliver Tambo, Miriam Makeba and Nelson Mandela himself. [Read More]

 

CFOW Newsletter - The Columbia Strike and the Student Uprising

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

April 21, 2024

Hello All –  On Thursday more than 100 students at Columbia and Barnard colleges were arrested by the NYPD.  Their crime?  Protesting Israel's genocidal war on Palestinians by setting up tents in the center of the campus.  Their demand?  That Columbia "divest" itself from all financial ties with corporations (Raytheon, Lockheed, etc.) making profits from the war.  The arrested students have been suspended from school; some have been evicted from their dormitories.

The student uprising at Columbia is part of a tidal wave of antiwar protests at hundreds of colleges and high schools.  In most cases, it appears that the school administrators have opted for "law & order"; rather than taking the students' concerns seriously, they have suspended or expelled students and called in the cops.  Needless to say, the demands of the students now include "free speech," the right to assemble and dissent, and amnesty for the arrested and suspended students.  The protests will grow.

As noted in the reading linked below, the events at Columbia have sparked solidarity demonstrations and similar protests at many other schools.  It is possible/likely that the campus antiwar movement will grow, with civil disobedience and student defiance of "authority" becoming the new norm.  Israel's genocide in Gaza is now live-streamed, and student demands that their colleges and university disinvest from the profiteers of the war machine and collaboration with the war-makers follow a well-trodden path. The personal bravery of this generation of peacemakers is inspiring to millions.

It is a great tragedy that the congressional and school-administrators' repression proceeds under the banner of fighting "anti-Semitism."  The fact that so many Jewish-led organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, are in the leadership of this antiwar movement shows the foolishness of the claim that anti-war equals anti-Semitic.  Yet here we are; let us applaud the brave students at Columbia and Barnard and the many other schools where students can tell the difference between right and wrong, and are willing to take risks to act on their beliefs. 

Some useful reading about the Columbia strike & its significance

Inside the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University

By Lara-Nour Walton, The Nation [April 19, 2024]

---- The occupation, organized by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition (CUAD), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), had been planned for months. The encampment was an escalation of previous pro-Palestine actions, designed to echo the university's history of protest. "Columbia University has a rich legacy of student activism, from Vietnam War protests in 1968 to being the first Ivy League school to divest from Apartheid South Africa in 1985," wrote CUAD on Wednesday. "The Gaza Solidarity Encampment will remain until Columbia University divests all finances, including the endowment, from corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine."  [Read More]

Pro-Palestinian organizations at universities across the world protest in support of Columbia 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment'

By Isha Banerjee, Columbia Spectator [April 21, 2024]

---- As the "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" at Columbia enters its fifth day, students at over a dozen universities across the country—and the globe—have begun protesting in solidarity with the encampment after 108 affiliates were arrested on campus by the New York Police Department on Thursday. Protests ranged from walkouts to marches to encampments in solidarity with the Columbia efforts, garnering anywhere from 50 to hundreds of protesters. At Yale University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, students started encampments in solidarity with the Columbia "Gaza Solidarity Encampment." In a Friday evening Instagram post, the national chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine called on all chapters to follow Columbia SJP's lead and pressure their administrations to divest from Israel. ]Read More]

(Video) The New McCarthyism: Congress Grills Columbia Univ. President Amid Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Speech

From Democracy Now! [April 18, 2024]

---- In nearly four hours of grueling congressional testimony before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce, the president of Columbia University, Nemat "Minouche" Shafik, said she had taken serious action against accusations of antisemitism on campus in recent months amid Israel's assault on Gaza, including dismissing or removing five faculty members from the classroom, suspending 15 students and suspending two student groups — Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. … Our guests Nara Milanich and Rebecca Jordan-Young, both professors at Barnard College and Columbia University, respond to the televised hearings. "What happened at those hearings yesterday should be of grave concern to everybody," warns Jordan-Young. "What we got was a live performance [of President Shafik] throwing the entire university system under the bus." Adds Milanich, "Antisemitism here is being used as a wedge. It's being used as a Trojan horse for a very different political agenda." [See the Program]

Statement by University of Southern California Student Asna Tabassum, Class of 2024 Valedictorian

By Asna Tabassum [April 16, 2024]

---- I am honored to have been selected as USC Class of 2024 Valedictorian. Although this should have been a time of celebration for my family, friends, professors, and classmates, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all. This campaign to prevent me from addressing my peers at commencement has evidently accomplished its goal: today, USC administrators informed me that the university will no longer allow me to speak at commencement due to supposed security concerns. I am both shocked by this decision and profoundly disappointed that the University is succumbing to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice. I am not surprised by those who attempt to propagate hatred. I am surprised that my own university—my home for four years—has abandoned me. [Read More] To see/hear Asna Tabassum on Democracy Now!, go here.

Misunderstanding Antisemitism

(Video) "Antisemitism"

From "Historians for Peace and Democracy" – 2 minutes [Link]. For a more in-depth explanation, read "Equating Critique of Israel with Antisemitism, US Academics are Being Silenced," by Maura Finkelstein, The Markaz Reader [April 12, 2024] [Link]

Also of interest – "Long live the student resistance," by Nushrat Nur, Mondoweiss [April 20, 2024] [Link]; (Video) "Over 100 Arrested at Columbia After Univ. President Orders NYPD to Clear Pro-Palestine Student Protest," an interview with Cornell West, Democracy Now! [April 19, 2024] [See the Program]; and "Protesting Columbia University's Arbitrary Suspension and Eviction of Students," from The Committee on Academic Freedom [April 16, 2024] [Link].

The Bowman Campaign & AIPAC Watch

The main challenger to Rep. Jamaal Bowman's re-election to the House of Representatives is County Executive George Latimer.  Latimer's campaign was (at least partially) initiated by the pro-Israel lobby American-Israeli Political Action Committee, which has channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Latimer.  AIPAC's interest is in electing "pro-Israel" people and defeating those deemed "anti-Israel."  Rep. Bowman is judged to be "anti-Israel" because he supports Palestinian rights and, since October 7, calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, opposed by AIPAC and thus by Latimer.  AIPAC's program for this election campaign calls for spending up  $100 million to defeat progressive legislators such as Bowman.  An interesting article was published today in the New York Times describing some problems that AIPAC's campaign has encountered, as millions of Americans (and 80+ members of Congress) are demanding a ceasefire re: Israel's war on Gaza.  Here is an excerpt from that article:

After Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel, pro-Israel political groups put the Democratic Party's most outspoken critics of the Jewish state on notice: An avalanche of spending was coming to either unseat them or force them to change their posture on the Middle East. But the first expected target of that avalanche, Representative Summer Lee of Pittsburgh, will face only nominal opposition in the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday. And though groups like Democratic Majority for Israel and United Democracy Project, an affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, have raised tens of millions of dollars to make good on their threats, they have so far mostly declined to spend it.

To learn more about the Bowman campaign, and to get involved, go here.

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 Mondays 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 illustrate the musical genius of Rhiannon Giddens.  For a sampling of the many modes in which she makes music, enjoy "Cornbread and Butter Beans" (with the Carolina Chocolate Drops), "Julie"; "She's Got You"; and "Cry No More".  She can do anything!

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

The CFOW Weekly Reader

Featured Essays

'A new abyss': Gaza and the hundred years' war on Palestine

By Rashid Khalidi, The Guardian [UK] [April 11, 2024]

---- For people everywhere, myself included, the awful images that have come out of Gaza and Israel since 7 October 2023 have been inescapable. This war hangs over us like a motionless black cloud that gets darker and more ominous with the passage of endless weeks of horror unspooling before our eyes. Having friends and family there makes this much harder to bear for many of us living far away. … Looking back over the past six months – at the cruel slaughter of civilians on an unprecedented scale, the millions of people made homeless, the mass famine and disease induced by Israel – it is clear that this marks a new abyss into which the struggle over Palestine has sunk. While this phase reflects the underlying lineaments of previous ones in this 100 years' war, its intensity is unique, and it has created deep new traumas. Not only does no end to this carnage appear in sight: we seem to be further than ever from a lasting and sustainable resolution, one based on dismantling structures of oppression and supremacy, and on justice, completely equal rights and mutual recognition. [Read More]

Zionism must be exposed and discredited

By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [April 20, 2024]

---- You could not get a better picture of Zionism than from two recent events. Israel bombed a consulate in a foreign country – Syria – killing top Iranian military officers, among others, and Israel supporters in the U.S. forced the cancellation of the valedictorian address at the University of Southern California because the speaker opposes Israeli genocide in Gaza. Today Zionism threatens political freedom in the United States and international order. These actions are consistent. They are expressions of a maximalist ideology that operates on a global level to support the Israeli regime. That ideology, of course, is Zionism, the belief that Jews need a state in order to be safe. [Read More]

In a Historic Victory, Tennessee Volkswagen Workers Vote Union

By Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes [April 19, 2024]

---- In a watershed victory, workers at the Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted tonight "UAW, yes!" The company's sole non-union plant will finally join the rest of the world. "If Volkswagen workers at plants in Germany and Mexico have unions, why not us?" said equipment operator Briam Calderon in Spanish, ahead of the vote. … The UAW is riding a wave of momentum after winning landmark contracts at the Big 3 automakers last year. Production workers at Volkswagen earn $23 per hour and top out above $32, compared to $43 for production workers at Ford's Spring Hill assembly plant by the contract's end in 2028. … Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein compared tonight's win to the Union Army's victory in Chattanooga in 1863, during the U.S. Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln declared it "the gateway to the South."No longer will the wage-and-benefit standards of the million-strong auto workforce in the U.S. be set by the non-union portion of the industry. A militant and increasingly powerful UAW will set the standard." [See the Program]  For some background about labor organizing in the South, read "How Alabama Communists Organized in the Jim Crow South," an interview with Robin D. G. Kelley, Jacobin Magazine [April 9, 2024] [Link].

(Video) One Year into War, Sudan Wracked by World's Largest Displacement and Hunger Crises

From Democracy Now! [April 17, 2024]

---- One year ago this week, a devastating conflict erupted in Sudan when a fragile alliance between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces collapsed. The war initially began around the capital city of Khartoum but quickly spread to other parts of Sudan, including Darfur, Port Sudan and the Gezira state, situated in the country's agricultural heartland. One year on, the conflict has driven nearly 9 million people from their homes, collapsed the country's health system and created the world's largest hunger and displacement crisis. "This is essentially a war between two generals," says Khalid Mustafa Medani, chair of the African studies program at McGill University, who explains why the warring parties have "absolutely no legitimacy in civil society" and how the fighting is weaponizing international aid. [See the Program]

The War in Gaza

In Gaza's Hospitals

By Omar al-Najjar, New York Review of Books [April 19, 2024]

---- I was born in the spring of 1999 in the village of Khuza'a, east of the city of Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip. We grew up among wars: 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021. The main camp of the Great March of Return—the protest movement violently suppressed by the Israeli army in 2018—was less than 350 feet from our home.  … The war has changed everything. By the second day, October 8, the Israeli Occupation Forces—calling them "Defense Forces" would be inaccurate—were bombing our neighborhood indiscriminately, mostly with ground shells but also with airstrikes. That day we lost a neighbor and his entire family under the rubble. My parents, siblings, and I were left with no choice but to leave and stay with relatives in Bani Suhaila, closer to the city center. Right away I volunteered to work in the emergency department of the Nasser Medical Complex, the largest hospital in the southern half of Gaza. [Read More]  Also of interest is "Leaked Cables Show White House Opposes Palestinian Statehood," by Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw, The Intercept [April 17, 2024] [Link].

The West Bank

Palestinians Wonder Why Settlers Who Attack Them Bother Concealing Their Faces

By Amira Hass, Haaretz [Israel] [April 20, 2024]

---- "What I don't understand is why the settlers who attacked us were masked. After all, no one will punish them and no one will do anything to them," said a young Palestinian from the village of Al-Mughayyir on Sunday. He was just barely saved from Israeli attackers who invaded his village Friday afternoon – about 24 hours before the body of Binyamin Ahimeir, the Jewish teenager who was murdered in the West Bank that day, was found. The statement summed up a decades-long, collective Palestinian experience. The settlers benefit from committing violence, which serves the state's goal: to grab as much Palestinian land as possible. Over the past several years, the threat of settler violence has forced dozens of Palestinian herding communities to fold up their encampments and move to built-up areas in villages or nearby land. [Read More]

Also of interest – "Dear President Biden, Are You Okay With Israeli Settlers Using American Weapons?" by Amira Hass, Haaretz [Israel] [April 8, 2024] [Link]; and "Israeli Settlers, Soldiers 'Wiping Palestinian Communities Off the Map' in the West Bank," by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams [April 17, 2024] [Link].

The Wider War

(Video) Is Regional War at Stake as Israel Weighs Response to Iran?

From Democracy Now! [April 15, 2024]

----- The Middle East is bracing for the possibility of regional war after Iran responded to Israel's bombing of the Iranian Consulate in Damascus with a major drone and missile attack Saturday. This was "a performative operation to send a message," says journalist Reza Sayah, who joins us from Tehran. But while Iran "does not want to escalate matters," Israel may be preparing to do just that. Washington, D.C.-based analyst Trita Parsi says that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been trying to instigate conflict between the U.S. and Iran for "more than two decades," and given that Biden has demonstrated an unwillingness to "draw any red lines for Israel publicly," these latest provocations could become a prime "opportunity" for such a war. Crucially, Iranian restraint "cannot last forever," warns our final roundtable guest, the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who touches on both Iran's own sovereignty and increasing global pressure for Israel to end its war on Gaza. "Gaza is still starving and bleeding, and we shouldn't forget it," says Levy. [See the Program]

The War at Home

(Video) 'Israelism': How deep do indoctrination and Israeli army glorification go?

From Aljazeera ["Talk to Aljazeera"] [April 21, 2024]

---- The documentary Israelism examines the rift among Jews regarding Palestine, highlighting young people's increasing criticism of Israel and Zionism. This divide is driven by firsthand accounts of Israel's actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.As the film faces opposition from groups trying to cancel its screenings, its main protagonist, Simone Zimmerman, and its co-director and producer, Erin Axelman, talk to Al Jazeera. [See the Program]

(Video) No Tech for Apartheid: Google Workers Arrested for Protesting Company's $1.2B Contract with Israel

By Mohammad Khatami, et al., Democracy Now! [April 17, 2024]

---- Democracy Now! speaks with two of the Google employees who were arrested staging sit-ins on Tuesday at the company's offices in New York City and in Sunnyvale, California, to protest the tech giant's work with the Israeli government. Organized by the group No Tech for Apartheid, the protesters are demanding Google withdraw from Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli military. [See the Program]

Also of interest – "CBS News poll: Rising numbers of Americans say Biden should encourage Israel to stop Gaza actions," by Anthony Salvanto, [April 14, 2024] [Link]; and "Fired by a German University for Solidarity with Palestine — Interview with Nancy Fraser," from Left Voice [April 10, 2024] [Link].

The Mainstream Media & the War

The media is advancing a false narrative of 'rising antisemitism' on campus by ignoring Jewish protesters

By James North, Mondoweiss [April 20, 2024]

---- What is the mainstream U.S. media's greatest single distortion about the protests at Columbia University and elsewhere? Here's the winner so far: the media is ignoring the fact that Jewish students are participating in the pro-Palestinian protests, and therefore they might have valuable things to say about the charges of "rising antisemitism" on their campuses. Their comments would have been particularly pertinent because just last week, Columbia's president had been interrogated by a hostile committee in the House of Representatives, where she seemed to concede that antisemitism was a real danger. … Let's turn now to the second-place finisher in the media distortion sweepstakes: the failure to report on how powerful wealthy donors are almost certainly influencing recent university policies. This angle doesn't just apply to Columbia. [Read More]

Also of interest – "Cruelty of Language: Leaked NY Times Memo Reveals Moral Depravity of US Media," by Ramzy Baroud, Counterpunch [April 19, 2024] [Link]; and "The McCarthyist Attack on Gaza Protests Threatens Free Thought for All," by Ari Paul, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [April 19, 2024] [Link].

The Climate Crisis

The Green New Deal: From Below or from Above?

By Jeremy Brecher, Labor Network for Solidarity [April 2024]

---- The original Green New Deal resolution took as its models not only the original New Deal but also the home front mobilization for World War II. A fully developed Green New Deal will need both the kind of federal initiative and strong federal agencies that transformed the American economy during World War II and the popular participation and decentralized creativity represented by the Green New Deal from Below. The Green New Deal from Below can make a significant difference in reducing greenhouse gas pollution, creating good jobs, and countering injustice. It can help create the support and the building blocks for a national and even a global Green New Deal. [Read More]

Also of interest – "'Catastrophic': Biden Admin Approves Largest Offshore Oil Export Terminal," by Julia Conley, Common Dreams [April 15, 2024] [Link]; and "Climate Crisis to Cost Global Economy $38 Trillion a Year by 2050," by Olivia Rosane, Common Dreams [April 18, 2024] [Link].

Civil Liberties

The US isn't just reauthorizing its surveillance laws – it's vastly expanding them

By Caitlin Vogus, The Guardian [UK] [April 16, 2024]

---- A little-known amendment to the reauthorized version of Fisa would enlarge the government's surveillance powers to a drastic, draconian degree. The US House of Representatives agreed to reauthorize a controversial spying law known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act last Friday without any meaningful reforms, dashing hopes that Congress might finally put a stop to intelligence agencies' warrantless surveillance of Americans' emails, text messages and phone calls. The vote not only reauthorized the act, though; it also vastly expanded the surveillance law enforcement can conduct. In a move that Senator Ron Wyden condemned as "terrifying", the House also doubled down on a surveillance authority that has been used against American protesters, journalists and political donors in a chilling assault on free speech. [Read More]

The State of the Union

25 Years After the Columbine Massacre, Is There Any Hope to End America's Epidemic of Gun Violence?

By Peter Dreier, The Nation [April 19, 2024]

---- Twenty-five years ago —on April 20, 1999—two 12th-grade students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, armed with semiautomatic rifles and pistols murdered 12 students and one teacher, and injured another 21 people. The Columbine massacre triggered a national debate on gun violence. But the epidemic of gun violence has continued; in fact, it has escalated. Public opinion remains strongly in favor of stricter laws, but politicians, cowed by the National Rifle Association, have failed to do their job of protecting Americans from this plague. … Since Columbine, the nation has witnessed 476 school shootings. [Read More]

Our History

Howard Zinn and the Joy of a Political Life

By Frances Fox Piven, The Nation [December 15, 2024]

[FB - The following essay is reprinted from Frances Fox Piven's introduction to Some Truths Are Not Self-Evident: Howard Zinn's Essays in The Nation on Civil Rights, Vietnam and the "War on Terror."]

---- The essays of Howard Zinn collected here remind me sharply of the living man, who was my friend for many decades. Each commentary is written much as he spoke: straight-forward and to the point, invariably penetrating and well-informed, never cluttered with needless complexity or intellectual pretension. What is most distinctive about Zinn's writing is his moral passion and indignation at the corruptions and deceptions and bloodiness of the powerful; his deep empathy for the travails of ordinary people, especially people engaged in struggle. As Eric Foner comments in the final essay here, Zinn was not afraid to speak out about the difference between right and wrong. [Read More]