Sunday, May 26, 2024
Sunday, May 19, 2024
CFOW Newsletter - Fighting the War, Remembering the "Nakba"
Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
May 19, 2024
Hello All – Ten days ago there was a moment of hope for peace in Gaza. Hamas had agreed to the outlines of a US-brokered peace deal. Then Israel rejected the deal – insisting on a temporary, not a permanent ceasefire – and the war has resumed and escalated.
For months President Biden said that an attack by Israel on the southern Gaza city of Rafah – where more than a million refugees had ended up – was a "red line." The United States would not support an attack on Rafah, and might take serious action. But no action was taken; perhaps it was never intended, only a bone thrown to the antiwar majority of the world, desperate to end Israel's slaughter.
Red lights are flashing in Gaza. Genocide. Famine. 600,000 have fled Rafah in the last 2 weeks. In all of Gaza, more than 35,000 people have been killed, food deliveries by land have been blocked – sometimes by Israeli "settlers" – and hospitals no longer function. Those who want to know – millions around the world – can watch the cruelty and killing live-streamed on their phones. Those who don't want to know – especially in Israel and the US – can pass by on the other side, oblivious to the horror.
It is a mystery to many why President Biden, behind in the polls, continues on his war-supporting path that is rejected by so many, especially young people and people of color. It is reckless to believe that somehow these millions of voters will be corralled back into the Democratic Party base in time for November's election. Those who fear a Trump presidency must redouble our efforts to persuade Biden to end the war now, before it is too late for all of us.
The 76th Anniversary of "The Nakba"
Last week Palestinians marked the 76th anniversary of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle. Palestinians refer to the anniversary as the "Nakba", Arabic for "catastrophe". Some 700,000 Palestinians, a majority of the pre-war population, fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel's establishment.
After the war, Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders. Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some six million, with most living in slum-like urban refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In the Gaza Strip, the refugees and their descendants make up about three-quarters of the population.
Israel's rejection of what Palestinians say is their right to return has been a core grievance in the conflict and was one of the thorniest issues in peace talks that last collapsed 15 years ago. Now, many Palestinians fear a repeat of their painful history on an even more cataclysmic scale. (For example, "My Grandmother Survived the Nakba—Now I Hope to Survive a Genocide," by Abeer Barakat, The Nation [May 15, 2024] [Link]).
The war in Gaza is a political earthquake, reshaping politics in both the US and Israel. Where this will end up will be determined in part by historical memory – of the Holocaust, October 7th, 100 years of Israel's "settler colonialism," and the Nakba. Millions of people in Israel/Palestine carry these memories with them. Understanding this will help us to understand the roots of this war and the possible roads to peace.
Some commentaries for this week
(Video) South Africa's Lawyer Breaks Down in Tears at ICJ Hearing!
[FB – In December, South Africa filed a complaint against Israel at the International Court of Justice, charging Israel with committing genocide in its war on Gaza. In February the ICJ issued a preliminary ruling that South Africa had established a "plausible case," and ordered Israel not to violate the Genocide Convention. Recently, with Israel's invasion of Rafah, South Africa filed a further complaint, pointing not only to the military assault, but also to the deliberate blocking of humanitarian and food supplies to Gaza by Israel. South Africa presented its case last Thursday, and Israel replied on Friday. A South African lawyer's presentation of the case I thought was particularly eloquent and persuasive. Check it out here. Middle Eastern historian Juan Cole presented a useful summary/analysis of the South African case – "S. Africa v. Israel on Rafah Genocide: Endgame in which Gaza is utterly Destroyed for Human Habitation" -- which you can read here.
The View Within Israel Turns Bleak
---- Israel has hardened, and the signs of it are in plain view. Dehumanizing language and promises of annihilation from military and political leaders. Polls that found wide support for the policies that have wreaked devastation and starvation in Gaza. Selfies of Israeli soldiers preening proudly in bomb-crushed Palestinian neighborhoods. A crackdown on even mild forms of dissent among Israelis. The Israeli left — the factions that criticize the occupation of Palestinian lands and favor negotiations and peace instead — is now a withered stump of a once-vigorous movement. In recent years, the attitudes of many Israelis toward the "Palestinian problem" have ranged largely from detached fatigue to the hard-line belief that driving Palestinians off their land and into submission is God's work. [Read More]
The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel
Ronen Bergman and
---- This story is told in three parts. The first documents the unequal system of justice that grew around Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The second shows how extremists targeted not only Palestinians but also Israeli officials trying to make peace. The third explores how this movement gained control of the state itself. Taken together, they tell the story of how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power. [Read More]
Also of interest – (Video) "Stop This War Right Now": U.S. Doctor Who Saved Sen. Duckworth's Life in Iraq, Now Trapped in Gaza," from Democracy Now! [May 15, 2024] [Link]; and (Video) "The Plan Is Genocide": Palestine's U.K. Ambassador Decries Israel's Attack on Gaza & U.S. Complicity," from Democracy Now! [May 13, 2024] [Link].
The Bowman Campaign
Concerned Families of Westchester supports Rep. Bowman for re-election. Yesterday we passed out Bowman flyers at Hastings' farmers market. We had a good reception. Phone banking and door-knocking are also part of the campaign. If you would like to learn more – or get involved – email Bowman for Congress
During the last re-districting of Rep. Bowman's congressional district (CD 16), Co-Op City in the Bronx was restored to CD 16. Many people may not know the fascinating history behind Co-Op City. Check out "History of Co-Op City," byNew Left Review.
By Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams [May 16, 2024]
---- As the leading U.S. pro-Israel lobby's political action committee unleashes a nearly $2 million ad blitz targeting Congressman Jamaal Bowman, Jewish allies of the New York Democrat—who is an outspoken critic of what he and many experts call Israel's genocide in Gaza—on Thursday joined progressive lawmakers in condemning right-wing efforts to defeat pro-Palestine incumbents. United Democracy Project (UDP), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) super PAC, has booked $1.9 million in television ads to influence the outcome of the Democratic primary in New York's 16th Congressional District. [Read More]
Also of interest – "Long-anticipated AIPAC blitz against Bowman begins with $2 million, one-week ad buy," by Marc Rod, Jewish Insider [May 16, 2024] [Link]; and "Outside Groups Spent $285,000 Backing Jamaal Bowman. AIPAC Alone Just Dropped Nearly $2 Million to Attack Him," by Akela Lacy, The Intercept [May 16, 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!
An informal poll this week revealed that too few had checked out last week's Rewards from Mavis Staples; so here's another chance. For those yearning for more, here are some new dance steps from New Orleans and Tuba Skinny. Still more? Check out the family-friendly anarchist group Chumbawamba, here with "Time Bomb" and "The Diggers' Song." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
UCLA's Unholy Alliance
By Robin D. G. Kelley, Boston Review [
---- In December the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing on anti-Semitism on college campuses that forced University of Pennsylvania president Liz McGill and Harvard University president Claudine Gay to resign in its wake. In April the committee held another hearing, reducing Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, keen to avoid the fate of her counterparts, to a groveling mess. On May 23 it will hold yet another, under the title "Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos." … Between April 25 and May 2, UCLA experienced the worst episode of both anti-Semitic and anti-Palestinian/Islamophobic/racist violence in the university's century-long history. Proud Boys, white nationalists, and neo-Nazis joined forces with Zionists (including some self-declared Israelis) to attack UCLA's Palestine Solidarity Encampment, whose residents included a large number of Jewish students. The assailants were not affiliated with the university. [Read More] Also of interest is "Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protesters, chats show," by Hannah Natanson and Emmanuel Felton, Washington Post [May 16, 2024] [Link].
Code Pink's Medea Benjamin on Disrupting the U.S. War Machine
From The Intercept [May 15, 2024]
---- This week on Intercepted, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the feminist antiwar organization Code Pink, speaks with Jeremy Scahill. Since the launch of the so-called war on terror in 2001, the 71-year-old activist has spent more than two decades disrupting congressional hearings, chasing members of Congress through the halls of the Capitol for answers, and traveling to countries the U.S. has labeled as enemies. Benjamin discusses her personal path to activism and the siege on Gaza, and offers a guide on how ordinary people can disrupt business as usual in the chambers of power in Washington, D.C. [Read More]
Also of interest – "We're in a pivotal moment in American history. We cannot retreat," by Sen. Bernie Sanders [May 15, 2024] [Link]; and "I Was Shot in Vermont. What if It Had Been in the West Bank?" b[Mr. Awartani is a Palestinian American student at Brown University.] [Link].
The War on Gaza
The Arsenal of Genocide: the U.S. Weapons That Are Destroying Gaza
By
---- On May 8, 2024, as Israel escalated its brutal assault on Rafah, President Biden announced that he had "paused" a delivery of 1,700 500-pound and 1,800 2,000-pound bombs, and threatened to withhold more shipments if Israel went ahead with its full-scale invasion of Rafah. The move elicited an outcry from Israeli officials (National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted "Hamas loves Biden"), as well as Republicans, staunch anti-Palestinian Democrats and pro-Israel donors. Republicans immediately prepared a bill entitled the Israel Security Assistance Support Act to prohibit the administration from withholding military aid to Israel. Many people have been asking the U.S. to halt weapons to Israel for seven months, and of course Biden's move comes too late for 35,000 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza, mainly by American weapons. Lest one think the administration is truly changing its position, two days after announcing the pause, the State Department released a convoluted report saying that, although it is reasonable to "assess" that U.S. weapons have been used by Israeli forces in Gaza in ways that are "inconsistent" with international humanitarian law, and although Israel has indeed delayed or had a negative effect on the delivery of aid to Gaza (which is illegal under U.S. law), Israel's assurances regarding humanitarian aid and compliance with international humanitarian law are "credible and reliable." By this absurd conclusion, the Biden administration has given itself a green light to keep sending weapons and Israel a flashing one to keep committing war crimes with them. [Read More]
Israel Wants Endless War Without the Politics. Biden's Going Along for the Doomed Ride.
By Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept [May15, 2024]
---- Israeli military officials are now going public with criticisms that the war in Gaza had been misguided for a simple reason that Clausewitz himself would have recognized: Besides revenge, the war never had a clear political strategy or objective. Israeli leaders have taken the position that Palestinians are merely a subject population to be suppressed and controlled. This lack of a political approach reflects long-standing attitudes in Israeli society that have now trapped the country in a forever war with the Palestinians and their other neighbors — with the U.S. as its patron effectively pulled along for the ride. The roots of this failure had been years in the making. … From a U.S. perspective, Biden's reflexive backing for a war that has proven to be equal parts aimless and brutal has now trapped the U.S. in a situation where it is the primary enabler of an alleged genocide. The war has not only tarnished America's reputation abroad but is also increasingly tearing at its own social fabric. Even diehard subscribers to the U.S. foreign policy consensus have been forced to reckon with the failures of treating the Palestinians as politically irrelevant. [Read More]
What About the Palestinian Hostages?
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [May 16, 2024]
---- Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh was the head of the orthopedic wing at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. During the war, he had to wander from one hospital to the next, as they were all destroyed by the IDF. He has not been back to his home in Jabalya since the start of the war, and last December all trace of him disappeared. Recently, it transpired that he had died in an Israeli jail, apparently due to the torture of beatings during interrogation. … How can people identify with the pain felt by Israelis over the fate of the hostages, when these same Israelis turn out to be cold-hearted and indifferent to the fate of the other side's hostages? Why isn't there a single banner in Tel Aviv's "Hostage Square" calling for an investigation into the killing of the doctor from Gaza? Is his blood less red than the blood of the Israeli hostages who died? Why should the whole world take an interest and work only for our for hostages, and not for the Palestinian hostages, whose conditions of imprisonment and whose deaths in Israeli prisons should horrify everyone? [Read More]
Also of interest - (Video) "How AI Tells Israel Who To Bomb," Vox [May 17, 2024] [Link]; "y Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams [[Link]; "Is Israel Committing Genocide?" by Aryeh Neier, New York Review of Books [June 6, 2024 issue] [Link]; and "Beyond Awards and Accolades: Why Gaza Journalists are the Best in the World," by[Link].
The Student Uprising
Gaza Solidarity Encampments Interactive Map
(Video) Columbia-Affiliated Union Theological Seminary Votes to Divest from Israel's War on Gaza
From Democracy Now! [May 14, 2024]
---- As student protests around the world call for their educational institutions to divest from companies with ties to Israel, we speak to the Reverend Dr. Serene Jones, the president of Union Theological Seminary, an ecumenical seminary affiliated with Columbia University that is one of the first schools to begin divesting from companies that "profit from war in Palestine/Israel." Jones says divestment is an extension of Union's "long policy of trying our best to bring our values, our core mission and our conscience to bear on how we invest our money," and credits student activists with pushing the administration to action. Jones criticizes Columbia's decision to arrest student protesters with a "police takeover" and "violent decampment," in contrast to Union's approach to student political expression. "We support students learning what it means to find their voice and speak out for justice and freedom," she says. [See the Program]. Also of interest is "Many Speak for Palestine," by Ayça Çubukçu, Boston Review [May 1, 2024] [Link].
The Invasion of Haiti
The US Plan to Outsource Its Imperialism in Haiti to Kenya
By Samar Al-Bulushi, Jacobin Magazine [May 2024]
---- The US has long outsourced meddling in Haiti to Global South countries. Recently Kenya has agreed to take over leading a US-backed multinational police intervention there — justifying its own "stabilization" mission with Pan-Africanist rhetoric. As far as the plan to "stabilize" Haiti is concerned, the US-Kenya alliance represents a convergence of strategic interests between the United States as an imperial power and Kenya as an increasingly assertive player in the Global South. Given the widely criticized history of imperial meddling in Haiti, the Biden administration has sought to avoid being seen to play a direct role in the most recent plan to intervene in the country (a plan that is dominated by US concerns about migration rather than the well-being of Haiti's people). By outsourcing the mission to Kenya, the Biden administration hopes to convince the American public that the United States is not committing itself in yet another foreign military occupation, and to persuade Haitian citizens — much as it did in 2004 when Brazil agreed to lead the UN stabilization mission known as MINUSTAH — that the interveners are comrades rather than colonizers. Strategically downplayed is the fact that (along with at least $300 million in financial backing) the United States will be providing logistical support to the mission in Haiti, including intelligence sharing, communications, and air power — meaning that this is as much a US-led mission as it is a Kenyan-led one. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
The Race to End Fossil Fuel Production
By May 15, 2024]
---- Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. This quip by the American essayist Charles Dudley Warner applies to fossil fuels as well. Everyone talks about ending fossil fuel production, but almost no one is doing anything about it. … Given all this Green rhetoric and crude (oil) action, it's hard to find examples around the world where people are actually doing something to end fossil fuel production. One of those places is Ecuador, which held a referendum last August about keeping oil under the ground of a certain plot of land in the Yasuní national park. [Read More]
Who will Tell the Story of Regional Climate Disasters when the News Desert Swallows all Local Newspapers?
By Jane Braxton Little, Tom Dispatch [May 13, 2024]
---- My adopted hometown of Greenville in Plumas County, California, was hit by a climate-driven wildfire in 2021 that devastated 800 homes and left the downtown smoldering on its Gold Rush-era dirt foundations. Two years into rebuilding, the only local online publication announced that it was shuttering. So, I set aside my freelance journalism career, joined a team of like-minded citizens, and launched The Plumas Sun. Like hundreds of journalists across the country, we're reporting from the intersection of news deserts and climate disasters. As floods, fires, and tornadoes surge, and daily as well as weekly publications collapse, local journalism maintains an all-too-slender lifeline in devastated rural communities like mine. Local journalists remain after the Klieg lights go dark and the national media flee our mud-strewn, burned-out Main Streets. We continue to report as our friends and neighbors face the challenge of rebuilding (or not). [Read More]
Also of interest – "y Jon Queally, Common Dreams [May 16, 2024] [Link]; "The Strategy of the Green New Deal from Below," by [Link]; and "How Oil Companies Manipulate Journalists," by Molly Taft, The Nation [May 15, 2024] [Link].
The State of the Union
Alabama Mercedes Workers Lose First Union Election, Vow to Fight On
By Luis Feliz Leon and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes May 17, 2024]
---- A no-holds-barred campaign by Mercedes management convinced a majority of workers at its Alabama factory complex to vote against forming a union. In addition to anti-union videos and mailings, captive-audience meetings, firings, and an onslaught of pressure from state politicians and even a local pastor, the winning move was to fire the company's U.S. CEO and replace him with a vice president who promised to care about the "team members." A team leader named Ray, who voted no, said his area was 100 percent union before the former CEO was removed. "[New CEO] Federico [Kochlowski] has been a positive influence," he said. "A lot of people want to give him a chance. It was all production-driven before him; he's more about the team members. He's willing to change. "We have a year. We have that year to see what he does. If he doesn't make positive changes we can bring the union in." (After losing an election a union has to wait a year before filing a new petition for the same group of workers.) The vote, held May 13-17, was 2,045 in favor of forming a union to 2,642 against. The majority of the workforce is Black. There were 51 challenged ballots, and five voided; 5,075 workers, not including contract workers, were eligible to vote. [Read More]. Also of interest is "What It's Like Voting Union Inside Alabama Mercedes Plant," by Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes [May 15, 2024] [Link].
(Video) "Unbuild Walls": Detention Watch's Silky Shah on Debunking Immigration Myths & Embracing Abolition
From Democracy Now! [May 14, 2024]
---- Amid an intensifying crackdown on asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border, we speak to the author of the new book Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition about U.S. immigration policy under the Biden administration. Author Silky Shah is the executive director of Detention Watch Network and a longtime immigration rights advocate whose new book aims to "debunk the idea that immigration is a public safety issue," in the face of narratives, from both the Republican and Democrat political establishments, of criminality and deterrence. Despite Biden's campaign promises to reform the immigration system, his administration has "ceded more and more ground to the Republicans and moved the whole conversation to the right," Shah says. "Legalization isn't even on the table." Shah discusses how the immigrant rights' movement uses the language of abolition to build connections with other social movements fighting oppression, from mass incarceration to police brutality. "These systems aren't separate. … We have to call for abolition of the whole system and understand those things together." [See the Program]
Our History
Happy Birthday Malcolm X
---- Born on May 19, 1925, Malcolm was assassinated in 1965. Here is a short (video) biography of Malcolm, with a bare-bones outline of his life. For a more complete overview, here is a Democracy Now! program from 2005, "A Life of Reinvention," in which Manning Marable, one of Malcolm's biographers, traces the arc of the tragedy of Malcolm X.
Sunday, May 12, 2024
CFOW Newsletter - Israel & Biden reject ceasefire, double-down on war
Concerned Families of Westchester
May 12, 2024
Hello All – Last Monday the world breathed a sigh of relief. Hamas had agreed to the proposed peace deal that would end the fighting in Gaza, exchange hostages for prisoners, and re-open the roads for food & aid.
After a war of more than 200 days, with 35,000 dead in Gaza, including 15,000 children, and with about 100 Israelis held hostage in Gaza, it looked like the war might end. Rejoicing broke out in the streets of Gaza, and hostage families in Israel had new hope. Now all this has gone; Israel said NO.
What we have now is the likelihood of a new round of genocide in Gaza. Israel has seized the border crossing with Egypt and is forcing the evacuation of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1.5 million refugees have ended up. Bombs are falling, and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu vows that the bloodiest part of the Gaza war is coming.
To our horror, President Biden has stepped aside and turned away. While some weapons going to Israel have been blocked, Biden says that US support for Israel is "ironclad." By failing to cut off ALL weapons and money to Israel, and by not using US diplomatic power at the UN and elsewhere, Mr. Biden has signed the death warrants for thousands more Palestinian, risking a regional war and making it more likely that Donald Trump will win in November. – We must keep fighting against this war; we can't give up. Work for peace.
Some Illuminating Commentaries
Antisemitism, Then and Now: A Guide for the Perplexed
By Omer Bartov, The Nation [May 10, 2024]
---- Even more important is a total misunderstanding of what antisemitism actually is and how it can and must be resisted. To be sure, antisemitism existed decades before the Jewish state was established—and would not disappear if Israel ceased to exist. But currently, it is Israeli policies—not only in Gaza, but more generally the long-term occupation and oppression of Palestinians—that are giving license to real antisemites, as well as converting supporters of the state, even those who once loved and cherished it, into determined opponents, in the name of precisely the same values that were supposed to have led to Israel's creation: liberty, dignity for the oppressed, resistance against the oppressor, solidarity with the victims, and determined opposition to unbridled violence and the killing of innocents. [Read More]
Also of interest - "The New Anti-Antisemitism," by Rick Perlstein, The American Prospect [May 8, 2024] [Link]; and "y Ellen Cantarow and Jennifer Loewenstein, Common Dreams [May 10, 2024] [Link].
(Video) Aid Worker in Gaza: "To Say There's Not an Incursion in Rafah Right Now Is Patently False"
From Democracy Now! [May 9, 2024]
---- Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians are fleeing Rafah as Israeli airstrikes and shelling hammer the eastern part of the city. Fuel, food, medicine and other supplies have been cut off following Israel's seizure and closure of the border crossing with Egypt. The main hospital in the area has also been shut down. Over 1.4 million people are seeking shelter in Rafah, the southernmost city of the Gaza Strip. Tent camps in some parts of Rafah have now vanished, springing up again as displaced families head back north. Over 60 Palestinians were killed across Gaza, many of them in Rafah, over the past 24 hours. We get a live update from Rafah from Dorotea Gucciardo of the Glia Project, who is currently on a medical mission in Gaza. [Read More]
Perspectives on the "Non-Incursion" – "Rafah Is in Panic as the Israeli Invasion Begins," by Ruwaida Kamal Amer and Mahmoud Mushtaha, The Nation [May 8, 2024] [Link]; "600,000 Palestinian Kids in Rafah Can't "Evacuate" Safely, UNICEF Official Says," by Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept [May 8, 2024] [Link]; and (Video) "They Are Starving," Says Doctor Back from Gaza; World Food Programme Warns North in "Full-Blown Famine," from Democracy Now! [May 6, 2024] [Link].
A View from Cairo
By Yasmin El-Rifae, New York Review of Books [May 12, 2024]
[FB – Egypt has joined South Africa in its filing with the International Court of Justice that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. For Egypt to do this is huge, a diplomatic disaster for both Israel and the US. This article supplies some context.]
---- Since the beginning of the war Israel has urged Egypt to let it push people into Sinai, the peninsula on the Egyptian side of the border. The Egyptian government has consistently refused these proposals, in an effort both to protect its own interests—it says it does not want Palestinian fighters attacking Israel from its territory—and to maintain a historic Arab position of rejecting Palestinian displacement. The people fleeing Gaza know they may not be able to return in their lifetimes. Many are from families that were forced south by Zionist militias in 1948; they have lived for seventy-five years just a few miles from their homes in towns and villages that are now in Israel. … The American-backed alliance between the two countries has never been accepted by the Egyptian people, who share a history of anti-imperialist struggle with their Palestinian neighbors. It is becoming ever clearer that there cannot be freedom for people on one side of Rafah and not the other. [Read More]
The Bowman Campaign
On Monday, May 13th, the first/only (?) debate between Rep. Jamaal Bowman and challenger George Latimer will take place at 8:30 p.m. It is sponsored/organized by Channel 12. All the info I have on this can be found here.
For those who supported George Latimer in the past and now support Rep. Bowman in this election, please consider this list/letter in formation – "Latimer Lost Us - Sign on Letter for Former Supporters" [Link].
For information about Rep. Bowman – his campaign, where he stands on the issues, how to get involved/help out - 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 start off with the great Mavis Staples singing Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More" (1854). And from her album "We'll Never Turn Back" (2007) I think you will like "Jesus is on the Main Line," "This Little Light of Mine," "I'm On My Way" [to Freedom Land], and "Eyes on the Prize." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
Unfurling Love from the Window
----- On April 30, when Columbia University student protesters took over Hamilton Hall, they renamed it "Hind's Hall," dropping a large banner out the windows above the building's entrance. This was a hall famously occupied by students in the 1968 protests against the Vietnam War and against Jim Crow racism in the United States. The students are risking suspension and expulsion, and a very real blacklist has already been generated against them, with Congress joining in to define criticism of genocide as a form of antisemitism that state universities and state-linked employers will not be allowed to tolerate. I believe their love for Hind Rajab guides the movement so desperately needed to resist militarism. Hind was six years old when Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons to kill her. [Read More]
A New Jewishness Is Being Born Before Our Eyes
By Will Alden, The Nation [May 10, 2024]
---- The future of our people is being written on campuses and in the streets. Thousands of Jews of all ages are creating something better than what we inherited. A new Jewish tradition is growing in those places where solidarity flourishes. Amid the ugliness and death, and as our institutions cleave to the mistaken idea that our safety comes from ever more brutal applications of state power, the future of our people is being written on campuses and in the streets. Thousands of Jews of all ages are creating something better than what we inherited. Our new Jewish tradition prioritizes truth-telling and justice, and in this way it is actually the old Jewish tradition, which has given us all the tools we're using. …The goal we're striving for is clear: to end this US-backed war and secure liberation and justice for Palestinians. Yet our striving itself has value. In an essay published in an earlier season of protest, the spring of 1968, the critic John Berger calls it "a convenient rationalization" to say that demonstrations are intended to move those in power. "The truth is that mass demonstrations are rehearsals for revolution: not strategic or even tactical ones, but rehearsals of revolutionary awareness." [Read More]
A Year Under the Palestine Exception at Columbia University
By Joseph A. Howley, The Nation [May 7, 2024]
---- We speak in the academy of the "Palestine exception" to free speech: that you can protest about any topic except Palestine. Our graduating students bid farewell to an institution now involved in what we might call the Palestine example: Israel-Palestine as one of those special causes, like police violence in 2020, against which the total force of suppression is brought to bear, and an example is to be made of any who dare protest. The Columbia and Barnard classes of 2024 have had the misfortune of an unusually clear education in the nature of power in and around the academy. Whatever they thought a university was when they applied, when they arrived in September 2020 prepared to dig into Homer's Iliad, they graduate now knowing fundamental truths about what a university actually is that even my colleagues and I are struggling to truly grasp. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/columbia-barnard-palestine-protests-gaza/
Also of interest – "A Diary of a Palestinian Living in Israel," by Diana Buttu, Palestinian lawyer [May 7, 2024] [Link]; and "Most hated country in the world," b[Link].
The War on Gaza
I Shall Stand at Attention to Remember Them All – Israelis and Palestinians
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [May 12, 2024]
---- I shall remember them all Monday. I shall remember Pvt. Gideon Bachrach, after whom I am named. I will stand at attention during the Memorial Day sirens, to honor his memory and the memory of all those who died in Israel's wars. I will think about the people who were slaughtered at the Nova music festival and in the communities along the border with Gaza, and about hostages and the soldiers who were killed in Gaza. But at the same time I cannot help but think about the victims of Israel's hostilities, the Palestinian residents of Gaza and the West Bank. I will also stand at attention in memory of them. ,,, This will be my Memorial Day this year, the memory of our fallen and the memory of their fallen. I cannot do otherwise, especially this year. You don't have to compute the relative justice and injustice of the two nations to understand that both experienced disaster. There is also no need for blame games: Innocents have died, in the thousands, on both sides. The kibbutznik from Nir Oz, the raver at Nova and the refugee from Jabalya were all killed in vain. [Read More]
Medicide in Gaza: the Killing of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh
---- More than two weeks after Israel announced his death, it still has not released the body of one of Gaza's most celebrated doctors, Adnan al-Bursh. Israel hasn't said how this 50-year-old man in good health died, even though he died in one of its darkest places, Ofer Prison, a place where very bad things are done at the hands of Israeli prison guards and Shin Bet interrogators. … Adnan Al-Bursh was intelligent, humane, and committed. He could speak multiple languages. He saw and could explain the ravages of the occupation and the horrors of the war. He was exactly the kind of person, like the still imprisoned Marwan Barghouti, Israel has always feared might become a leader of the Palestinian people. For that reason, he was also exactly the kind of person Israel has been targeting for elimination under the cover of its bombardment and invasion of Gaza. [Read More]
(Video) Pulitzer Winner Nathan Thrall on Israel's "System of Domination" and Biden Pausing Bomb Shipment
From Democracy Now! [May 9, 2024]
---- Jerusalem-based journalist and author Nathan Thrall has been awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy. It tells the story of Israel's occupation of the West Bank through one Palestinian father's quest to seek answers and accountability after his 5-year-old son is involved in a deadly accident. We speak to Thrall about President Biden saying for the first time that he would not supply certain weapons to Israel to be used in an all-out invasion of Rafah. "It is too little, too late," Thrall says. "It is a step in the right direction, but the administration has said that it has not made a final determination even about these paused weapons." [See the Program]
The Media and the War
Watching the watchdogs: How US media weaponised campus protests coverage
By Rami G Khouri, Aljazeera [May 6, 2024]
---- As I closely followed US media outlets in recent weeks, I was shocked to see reporters, commentators and hosts use the exact same words and phrases that Biden and US and Israeli officials have used to smear the protesters. The mainstream media gives the impression of circling the wagons with Israeli and American officialdom to prevent at all costs an open, honest, comprehensive and contextualised public discussion on Israel's behaviour while trying instead to focus public attention on spurious accusations. The mainstream media has widely condemned students and accused them of using "hate speech and hate symbols" (in the words of the US president), endorsing terrorism, advocating for Israel's destruction, resorting to anti-Semitic slurs and threatening and frightening Jewish students. Everywhere they look in the student protest encampments, the media oracles have seen "terrorists" in training, "anti-Semites" at work, "Jew-haters" being groomed, universities collapsing, and "Nazi mobs" in the making. [Read More]
Also of interest - (Video) "60+ Journalism Profs Demand Investigation into Controversial NYT Article Alleging Mass Rape on Oct. 7," from Democracy Now! [May 8, 2024] [Link]; and "On Campus Gaza Protests, Media Let Police Tell the Story—Even When They're Wrong," by Neil deMause, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [May 9, 2024] [Link].
The Student Uprising
War Culture Hates the Ethical Passion of the Young, In the Thrall of a Dominant Death Culture
---- Persisting in his support for an unpopular war, the Democrat in the White House has helped spark a rebellion close to home. Young people — least inclined to deference, most inclined to moral outrage — are leading public opposition to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. The campus upheaval is a clash between accepting and resisting, while elites insist on doing maintenance work for the war machine. … When Columbia University and many other colleges erupted in antiwar protests during the late 1960s, the moral awakening was a human connection with people suffering horrifically in Vietnam. During recent weeks, the same has been true with people in Gaza. Both eras saw crackdowns by college administrators and the police — as well as much negativity toward protesters in the mainstream media — all reflecting key biases in this country's power structure. [Read More]
(Video) Meet Students at 4 Colleges Where Gaza Protests Win Concessions, Incl. Considering Israel Divestment
From Democracy Now! [May 8, 2024]
---- As students around the country set up Gaza solidarity encampments on their campuses, many universities have called in police who have arrested students and dismantled the sites. But students at a number of colleges have managed to negotiate agreements where administrators have acceded to some of their demands, including considering divestment from Israel. We speak with four students who have been involved in pro-Palestine protests on campuses at Middlebury College in Vermont, Evergreen College in Washington state, Brown University in Rhode Island and Rutgers in New Jersey. [See the Program] Also of interest is "Some Universities Chose Violence. Others Responded to Protests by Considering Student Demands," by Prem Thakker, The Intercept [May 8 2024] [Link].
(Video) The impact of student encampments for Gaza at universities worldwide
From Aljazeera ["The Stream"] [May 10, 2024]
---- After the escalation at US student encampments, we revisit the students raising their voices to protest Israel's ongoing war on Gaza. … Anti-war student protesters have been met with brutal pro-Israel counterprotests, violent arrests and suspensions, raising debates around freedom of expression and the future of activism on college campuses. What started as a student encampment at Columbia University in New York City three weeks ago has now turned into a global student movement, expanding to Europe, Australia, Canada and beyond. We'll get the latest from the campus grounds and ask what is next for the global student movement for Gaza. [See the Program]. Also of interest is "Pro-Palestinian Student Protests Unfurling Across Europe Met With Varying Responses," by Rachel Fink, Haaretz [Israel] [May 9, 2024] [FB – Updates on the UK, The Netherlands, Germany, etc.] [Link].
Some Faculty Perspectives
Under the Jumbotron [UCLA], by Anahid Nersessian, London Review of Books [May 6, 2024] [LInk]; and UCLA: Whose Violence?, by Piper French, New York Review of Books [May 11, 2024] [Link].
Aux armes! May Day in the Olive Grove [University of Arizona], bMay 8, 2024] [Link].
Universities Like Mine Are Providing an Authoritarian Blueprint for Trump [Yale], by Gregg Gonsalves, The Nation [May 9, 2024] [Link].
The Invasion of Haiti
(Video) The Real Reason the US is Invading Haiti
Break Through News interviews
---- The US is moving forward with its plans to invade Haiti by way of a UN-backed police force led by Kenya. The intervention was postponed after Haiti's unelected prime minister Ariel Henry resigned in March but CARICOM's recent appointment of a 'transitional council' has revived the plans. Dr. Jemima Pierre, Professor of Global Race in the Institute of Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice (GRSJ) at the University of British Columbia and a member of Black Alliance for Peace, discusses Haiti's newest puppet leaders and why foreign intervention is not the solution to the deepening crisis in the country. [See the Program]
The Climate Crisis
By Olivia Rosane, Common Dreams [May 8, 2024]
---- Nearly 80% of top-level climate scientists expect that global temperatures will rise by at least 2.5°C by 2100, while only 6% thought the world would succeed in limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, a survey published Wednesday by The Guardian revealed. Nearly three-quarters blamed world leaders' insufficient action on a lack of political will, while 60% said that corporate interests such as fossil fuel companies were interfering with progress. "I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South," one South African scientist told The Guardian. "The world's response to date is reprehensible—we live in an age of fools." [Read More]
The State of the Union
We Need "Outside Agitators"
By Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Jacobin Magazine [May 2024]
---- Pro-Palestine student protesters are being smeared as puppets of shadowy "outside agitators." The presence of community members and experienced activists in the protests is nothing to be ashamed of: we need outside agitators to build a better world. … To affirm that the majority of protesters are "insiders" as opposed to "outsiders" only aids those who want to create fissures and foment distrust in order to divide and conquer our movements. It's a way of denying the rights of activists to share lessons, learn from movement elders, and collaborate across communities — in other words, to properly and effectively organize. The "outside agitator" charge is a way to isolate individuals and create social separation, when the reality is that injustice of any kind, but especially war, necessarily concerns us all. On the issue of genocide, there should be no outside. … Why are outside agitators so threatening to the powers that be? The answer is that outsiders are a special kind of solidarity builder, even when they remain at a distance and lack any particularly useful skills or insights. Anyone who has been part of a movement knows how much displays of solidarity matter. [Read More]
Our History – Mother's Day
"Mother's Day Proclamation"
By Julia Ward Howe
Boston, 1870
Mothers' Day was originally a day for peace. The first "Mother's Day Proclamation" was written by Julia Ward Howe, an abolitionist, a leader of the campaign for women's rights, and the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
"Arise, then… women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage,
for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: Disarm, Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
nor violence vindicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
at the summons of war,
let women now leave all that may be left of home
for a great and earnest day of council.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live in peace,
each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality,
may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient,
and at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
to promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
the amicable settlement of international questions,
the great and general interests of peace."
~ Julia Ward Howe
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