CFOW Newsletter - A Savage War in Lebanon. Is the US "Powerless" to Stop It?

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
September 29, 2024

Hello All – Israel's bombing of Lebanon, including Friday's assassination of the leader of Hezbollah, moves the conflict there into new territory. The war in Lebanon will certainly continue.  The front-burner questions now are: Will Israel invade Lebanon with ground forces?  Will the war spread beyond Israel-Lebanon to other countries (especially Iran)?  And what will the Biden administration do now?

As in Gaza, our government's support for Israel's war in Lebanon is important and has consequences.  For example, Israel's assassination of Hezbollah's leader Friday used 85 "bunker buster" bombs to level a whole block of apartment buildings in south Beirut.  The Washington Post reports that these bombs were US-made BLU-109s, a 2,000-pound bomb manufactured by General Dynamics.  Last December, The Wall St. Journal described the shipment of 100 of these bombs, part of a package of 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells, following the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023.  (According to a report in The Intercept, the 2,000 bombs used to kill Hezbollah's leader were the kind of bomb that President Biden briefly put "on hold" a few months ago.)

The complicity of the US in Israel's assassination of Hezbollah's leader, and more generally in its supplying of weapons and ammunition for Israel's wars, illustrates the flaw in the hand-wringing of elite commentators who bemoan the apparent "powerlessness" of the US and other "Great Powers" to stop Israel's insane savagery.  The New York Times' Roger Cohen, for example, writes in today's paper::

The United States' ability to influence events in the Mideast has waned, and other major nations have essentially been onlookers. The United States does have enduring leverage over Israel, notably in the form of military aid that involved a $15 billion package signed this year by President Biden. But an ironclad alliance with Israel built around strategic and domestic political considerations, as well as the shared values of two democracies, means Washington will almost certainly never threaten to cut — let alone cut off — the flow of arms.

That is to say, the United Sates is "powerless" because its political leadership chooses to sacrifice human rights and basic moral values on the altar of the Golden Calf of Israel, and to the political forces in the United States that have weaponized the fear of "anti-Semitism" into a state of national paralysis when it comes to standing up to Israel's war crimes. No wider war?  The USA stands back and stands by.

Illuminating the Week that Was

(Video) Israel's Nasrallah Assassination – More Horror Beckons
Owen Jones [UK] interviews Mouin Rabbani [September 29, 2024] - 50 minutes 
---- Israel's cheerleaders are triumphalist about the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah – which involved the mass slaughter of countless Lebanese civilians in Beirut. But what next? We're joined by brilliant Palestinian-Dutch analyst Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya, on the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon, the risk of regional conflagration, and the root of the current evil – the genocide against Gaza. [See the Program 

Israel's Barbaric Glee Over Nasrallah's Assassination Is a New Low for Israeli Society 
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [September 29, 2024] 
---- The scale of the death caused by the 80 American bombs is not yet clear, but the numbers will have no effect in Israel – 100 or 1,000 innocent civilians, even the deaths of tens of thousands of children will not change anything in the Israeli mood. Why not a small atom bomb? After all, we killed Hitler. … In the past year, Israel has spoken only one language, that of unbridled war and force. It is maddening to consider that millions of people have lost everything over this. While the bombers were bombing Dahiyeh, to applause in Israel, millions in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon cried bitterly at their fate, for their dead, for the crippled, for their lost property and for the loss of the last shreds of their dignity. They are left with nothing. [Read More]

"Powerlessness" 

By Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post [September 27, 2024] 

---- America's political elites are not powerless to restrain the rogue Israeli regime: They are powerless to act against the grotesque lobby, led by but not limited to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to which they have sold themselves. … We must now consider whether "the Jewish state's" near-total impunity, as it has appeared to date, is in fact limitless impunity—impunity without end.  Once we grasp the extent to which the executive and legislative branches in Washington have sold U.S. policy to AIPAC and other influence-mongering groups serving in the Zionist state's behalf, we are face to face with powerlessness as it is. The true powerlessness is ours. This is what we have to think about.  [Read More]

CFOW Nuts & Bolts  
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil is held in Yonkers on 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 make out your check to "Frank Brodhead," write "CFOW" on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!

Best wishes, 
Frank Brodhead 
For CFOW

CFOW Weekly Reader

Featured Essays 
After the Encampments 
By Aparna Gopalan, Jewish Currents [September 26, 2024] 
---- In hindsight, it is clear that—with few exceptions—neither negotiation nor escalation managed to secure real commitments to divestment last spring. Instead, both the deals that came from negotiations and the sweeps that followed escalations seemed to have hastened the end of the encampments, and thus the dissipation of students' leverage. Such decampments, whether voluntary or forced, ultimately worked together with the arrival of the summer break to offer a reprieve that universities could use to refortify themselves against future uprisings. Administrators at more than 100 schools took to this task with gusto, instituting draconian policies penalizing protest; cordoning off lawns and other common campus spaces; announcing sweeping bans on pro-Palestine speech and, at times, speech writ large; and giving themselves new pretexts for calling the police on demonstrators who do not, say, confine their rallies to specific corners of campus or certain hours of the day. [Read More] Also of interest is "Meet the First Tenured Professor to Be Fired for Pro-Palestine Speech," by Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [September 26 2024] [Link]; and (Video) "How CNN, ADL & Others Amplified Smear against Rep. Rashida Tlaib for Criticizing Campus Prosecutions," from Democracy Now! [September 27, 2024] [Link].

Militarism Abuse Disorder: A Very American Malaise 
By Frida Berrigan, Tom Dispatch [September 28, 2024] 
---- My name is Frida and my community is military dependent. (I feel, by the way, like I'm introducing myself at a very strange AA-like meeting with lousy coffee.) As with people who have substance abuse disorders, I'm part of a very large club. After all, there are weapons manufacturers and subcontractors in just about every congressional district in the country, so that members of Congress will never forget whom they are really working for: the military-industrial complex. … In 2023, the United States of America spent $142 billion buying weapons systems and another $122 billion on the research and development of future weaponry and other militarized equipment. … A recent analysis by the Costs of War Project at Brown University calculated that, since September 11, 2001, the United States has used an estimated $8 trillion-plus just for its post-9/11 wars. Talk about addiction! It makes me pretty MAD, if I'm being honest with you! [Read More]

(Video) The Case for BDS, with Naomi Klein 
From "Unshocked," with Mehdi Hasan and Naomi Klein [September 23, 2024] 
---- Mehdi and Naomi debunk the myths around the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement – a nonviolent Palestinian-led movement that works to pressure Israel into complying with international law using some of the tactics of the South African 'Anti-Apartheid Movement'. … As a part of Climate Week, the BDS Movement is focusing their energy on a target environmental activists like Naomi have been calling out for years: Chevron. The company is Israel's largest supplier of energy, which not only includes power to the Israeli government, but also to Israeli military bases. … Mehdi and Naomi also get into why the BDS Movement gets so much backlash in the United States; why Israel "gets a special pass" despite the US having a long history of sanctions; and they address the charges of anti-Semitism against BDS. They also discuss recent gains of the movement. [See the Program] 

(Video) Marcellus Williams Execution in Hands of Supreme Court; Victim's Family, Prosecutor Don't Want Him to Die 
From Democracy Now! [September 24, 2024] 
---- The state of Missouri is set to kill Marcellus Williams tonight. Williams has always maintained his innocence in the 1998 killing of St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Lisha Gayle during a robbery. The jurors, prosecutors and victim's family are all supporting Williams's bid for clemency, which has been denied by Missouri's Republican governor and state Supreme Court. "What we see is a system that's looking at finality over fairness, rushing to get to an execution date instead of taking the time to stop this execution and look at the merits of what is being argued," says Williams's attorney and the executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, who is now seeking a last-minute reprieve and reassessment of the case from the U.S. Supreme Court. [See the Program] For more on this horror, read "The Death Penalty Is Always an Atrocity, Not Just for the Wrongfully Convicted," by Mustafa Ali-Smith , Truthout [September 28, 2024] [Link]; and "This Is Why We Need to Abolish the Death Penalty," by Elias Khoury, Jacobin Magazine [September 2024] [Link],

Israel's War on Lebanon 
[FB] – As seen by the daily news program Democracy Now!  A valuable collection of program offerings about Lebanon this week, featuring medical and human rights experts.  Unparalleled in US media coverage of the emerging war.

(Video) Israel Bombs Lebanon After Blowing Up Pagers in "Act of Mass Mutilation." Is Ground Invasion Next? 
From Democracy Now! [[September 23, 2024] 
---- Israel attacked more than 300 sites in Lebanon Monday, killing at least 182 people and injuring more than 700 others as fears grow of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah. The Israeli military also ordered residents of southern Lebanon to leave their homes if they live near any site used by the militant group. "At the heart of this is an attempt to manufacture consent and try to portray most southern Lebanese as Hezbolloh operatives," says Sintia Issa, editor-at-large at the Beirut-based media organization The Public Source. We also speak with Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon volunteering at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, where he has been treating victims of last week's device explosions that injured thousands of people. He describes the disfiguring injuries from Israel's booby-trapping of pagers and walkie-talkies, calling it "an act of mass mutilation." [See the Program]

(Video) "Absolutely Terrifying": Israel's War Comes to Lebanon, Setting Record-Breaking Single-Day Death Toll 
From Democracy Now! [September 24, 2024] 
---- Israel's massive aerial bombardment of Lebanon killed at least 558 people on Monday in what is the highest single-day death toll in Lebanon in nearly two decades. Thousands more have been injured in strikes that targeted hospitals, medical centers and ambulances, while tens of thousands of civilians have been forced from their homes. "It has been havoc," says Michelle Eid, editor-in-chief of Al Rawiya, in Beirut, describing attempts by family members to flee the attacks in the south. "The speed with which this has happened has been incredibly shocking," says Lebanese writer and translator Lina Mounzer. "Once Lebanon goes up in flames, it's also very likely that the entire region goes up in flames." [See the Program]

(Video) "Lebanese Civilians Are Paying the Price": Israeli Strikes Kill Nearly 600, Displace Tens of Thousands 
From Democracy Now! [September 25, 2024] 
---- The Israeli military is reportedly preparing to invade Lebanon while continuing to launch extensive airstrikes across the country, forcing tens of thousands to flee. Lebanon's Health Ministry reports the death toll has reached at least 569 people, with more than 1,800 wounded. Israeli strikes have killed United Nations employees, medical workers, at least one journalist and 50 children over the past two days. Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at Israel, including a long-range missile fired toward Tel Aviv that was intercepted by Israeli air defense systems. "Lebanese civilians are paying the price," says Aya Majzoub in Beirut, Amnesty International's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.  [See the Program]

(Video) "Hell Is Breaking Loose in Lebanon": Israel Rejects Ceasefire Proposal as U.N. Chief Calls for Peace 
From Democracy Now! [September 26, 2024] 
---- Israel is continuing its bombardment of Lebanon and preparing for a possible ground invasion of the country, with the Netanyahu government rejecting a proposed 21-day ceasefire put forward by the United States, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. About 500,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced, and the Health Ministry reports at least 72 people were killed and nearly 400 wounded in Israeli attacks on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to over 620 in recent days. "There is a lot of suffering. There is a lot of hardship right now," says Beirut-based journalist Lara Bitar, who details how Israel has repeatedly attacked and invaded Lebanese territory going back decades. [See the Program]

Palestinian Voices from Gaza 
The Gazan infants who never saw their first birthday 
By Ibrahim Mohammad, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [September 18, 2024]
---- On Sept. 16, Gaza's Health Ministry released a 649-page document containing the personal information of 34,344 Palestinians killed by Israel's onslaught on the enclave over the past 11 months. The seemingly endless list is incomplete: more than 41,000 Palestinians have been martyred since October 7, according to Health Ministry figures, but many of them have not yet been fully identified. Over 11,300 of the identified victims are children, and 710 of them were killed before they turned 1. These are the stories of six of those infants who were stolen from the world before even seeing their first birthday, as told by their families. [Read More]

The War in Ukraine
The Claim That Russia Doesn't Possess Any Solid Red Lines—or Won't Enforce Them—Isn't Supported by Evidence

By Daniel R. DePetris, The Nation [September 26, 2024]

---- From the moment the war in Ukraine began, the Biden administration has attempted to accomplish what would seem to be two contradictory objectives: support Kyiv's defenses against Russia's unjustified invasion and minimize the prospects of a direct NATO-Russia conflict that could conceivably rise to the nuclear level. … Russian President Vladimir Putin's nuclear saber-rattling, which he started at the very beginning of the conflict, has been just that: saber-rattling. While so many perceived Russian red lines have been crossed the last two and half years, some Western foreign policy commentators, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, have concluded that Washington and its allies can do pretty much anything without having to worry about escalation. [Read More]

The State of the Union 

How Immigration Became a Lightning Rod in American Politics 

By Gaby Del Valle, The Nation [September 25, 2024] 

---- The promises of mass deportations and a "big, beautiful wall" were all Trump, but a policy wonk he was not. Trump's immigration policy was devised by the alumni and allies of a single ecosystem of intertwined think tanks, nonprofits, and advocacy groups—one that once operated largely on the margins but that, beginning with Trump's ascension to the presidency, has set the tone of the national immigration debate. Few of Trump's immigration policies survived legal challenge, and even fewer are still in place today. Congress didn't pass a single immigration bill during Trump's term, nor has it under Biden. But immigration restriction is now dogma among Republicans and Democrats alike. The choice is no longer between a party that wants to turn away migrants and one that claims to welcome them, but rather between opposing sides that, despite their broader differences, disagree only on the best way to "secure" the border at any cost. [Read More]

Our History 

American Jews Have Long Questioned Zionism
By Marty Blatt and Marjorie Feld, Common Dreams [September 23, 2024]
---- As historians and as anti-Zionist Jews active in our communities, we know that unqualified support for Israel has been widespread among American Jews, built on the idea that only Israel could prevent another Holocaust and keep Jews safe. But crucially, there has never been a complete pro-Zionist "consensus."  What we understand is that there has always been a small, vocal, articulate American Jewish minority—many with direct ties to the devastation of the Holocaust—who fundamentally questioned the role of Zionism and Israel in American Jewish life and asserted that Zionism and democratic ideals are incompatible. Our own lives and research agendas illuminate that for over a century, since the beginning of the modern Zionist movement with Theodor Herzl in 1897, some American Jews have drawn attention to the brutality and racism inherent in the modern Zionist project. [Read More]

A Means to Live: The past and future of debt resistance
By Astra Taylor, The Nation [September 25, 2024]
[FB – This is a review of The Political Development of American Debt Relief, by Emily Zackin and Chloe N. Thurston.]
---- "Early in January at Le Mars, in northwestern Iowa, a mob of a thousand farmers seized the attorney for an insurance company, dangled a rope before his eyes, and threatened him with immediate lynching." So begins an article by the journalist Charlotte Prescott, published in The Nation in February of 1933. In the first paragraph, Prescott informs her readers that the protesters then "held the judge of the district court a prisoner in his chambers and defied the county sheriff." She also notes that the farmers won. …  The Iowa rebellion was no isolated skirmish. In the 1930s, indebted farmers fought foreclosure across the heartland. They organized to protect one another's homes and livelihoods and campaigned for politicians who vowed to represent their interests, preventing land seizures through direct action and at the ballot box. Yet as impressive as this surge of populist fervor was, it represented only one chapter in a much longer conflict between debtors and creditors in the United States—a conflict that is foundational to American politics and yet, for some reason, is mostly forgotten. The Political Development of American Debt Relief, a fascinating new book by Emily Zackin and Chloe N. Thurston, seeks to recover this history. [Read More]

CFOW Newsletter - Now a Wider War - Israel into Lebanon

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

September 22, 2024 

Hello All – Are we at a new turning point?  This week's attacks by Israel on Lebanon escalate a slow-burning fight between Israel and Hezbollah – the main military force in Lebanon – to the brink of a regional war.  It will be easy for such a war to spill over to Syria and Iran.  The US military would then become involved in defense of Israel. These flames would not be easy to extinguish.

Why is this happening?  Since October 7^th, when Hamas attacked Israel, Hezbollah has attacked Israel military sites in northern Israel, on Lebanon's border.  They claim to do so in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Thousands of Israeli residents living near the border have fled their homes.  Israel's response to these attacks has caused thousands of southern Lebanon residents to flee their homes also.

Israel claims that its escalation of fighting this week – both in the south of Lebanon and on Lebanon's capital Beirut – has the objective of allowing its displaced citizens to return to their homes.  Obviously this will be impossible while war continues.  In truth, Israel's expanded war has its real objectives in diverting attention from Gaza, fulfilling its long-standing goal of controlling/annexing southern Lebanon, and perhaps even involving the USA in a war against Iran, an Israeli goal for many years.

This danger can be avoided if the war in Gaza were ended.  Hezbollah has made this clear: attacks on Israel will end with an end to the fighting in Gaza.  The failure of the Biden administration to force a ceasefire on Israel now has dangerous consequences.  Yet this week the Wall St. Journal quoted US officials as saying that there would be   no ceasefire for Gaza before Biden's term ends in January.

Finally, early this morning Israeli soldiers raided Aljazeera's broadcasting headquarters in Ramallah, in the West Bank.  Israel had previously banned Aljazeera from broadcasting in Israel, and now the influential programing will be banned from the Occupied West Bank as well.  As no "Western" journalists are allowed entry to Gaza, Aljazeera has been hugely important in living-streaming war news. The new closure on Aljazeera is presumably part of Israel's expansion of its Gaza military tactics to the West Bank; and it also indicates Israel's fear that the exposure of its genocidal war will further delegitimize its Zionist project.

Illuminating the Week that Was

Can the World Save Palestine From US-Israeli Genocide? 

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Code Pink [September 17, 2024]

[FB – On September 18^th, the UN General Assembly voted to support the Palestinian Resolution by 124 to 14 with 43 abstentions.  Among those voting No were the US and Israel, Argentina and Chile, and a half dozen Pacific island nations.] 

---- On September 18th, the UN General Assembly is scheduled to debate and vote on a resolution calling on Israel to end "its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory" within six months. If Israel predictably fails to heed a General Assembly resolution calling on it to withdraw its occupation forces and settlers from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the United States then vetoes or threatens to veto a Security Council resolution to enforce the ICJ ruling, then the General Assembly could go a step further.  It could convene an Emergency Session to take up what is called a Uniting for Peace resolution, which could call for an arms embargo, an economic boycott or other UN sanctions against Israel – or even call for actions against the United States. Uniting for Peace resolutions have only been passed by the General Assembly five times since the procedure was first adopted in 1950. [Read More] For more, read "The World Says That Israel's Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Must End," by Vijay Prashad, Counterpunch [September 20, 2024] [Link].

(Video) Lebanon: 37 Dead, 3,400+ Injured in Wave of Explosions in Electronic Devices Booby-Trapped by Israel, from Democracy Now! [September 19, 2024] 

---- We get an update from Beirut, after at least 20 people were killed and 450 others wounded in Lebanon on Wednesday when walkie-talkie radios across the country exploded without warning, the second day of an apparent Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah members by booby-trapping handheld communication devices. … "This has been widely reported in the Western press as a sophisticated campaign that targeted alleged Hezbollah operatives, but the reality is that, for the most part, these explosions were occurring in civilian areas," says journalist Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of the Beirut-based independent media organization The Public Source. Bitar warns that Israel's "terrorist attacks" could be a prelude to a larger assault. "The Israeli government has already taken a decision to escalate, to wage full-scale war on all of Lebanon." [See the Program]  Also of interest is "Israel's New Campaign of "Terrorism Warfare" Across Lebanon," By Jeremy Scahill, et al., Drop Site News [September 18, 2024] [Link].

Sanders Leads New Senate Effort to Stop Flow of US Arms to Israel 

By Julia Conley, Common Dreams [September 18, 2024] 

---- Demanding that the Biden administration follow the lead of several close U.S. allies in recent months, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday announced his intention to take action on the Senate floor to stop the flow of American weapons to Israel. The Vermont independent said in a statement that he plans to file Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRD) regarding the sale of offensive weapons to the Middle Eastern country, which for nearly a year has bombarded civilian infrastructure and blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza, killing more than 41,000 Palestinians and pushing the enclave into famine. The JRD is the only congressional mechanism that can prevent weapons sales from moving forward, and after months of demanding the Biden administration end military support for Israel, Sanders said that "Congress must act to save lives, uphold U.S. and international law, and stand up for U.S. interests." [Read More]

Election 2024 

What the New Right Wants 

By Suzanne Schneider, New York Review of Books [September 22, 2024] 

---- The Heritage Foundation has reinvented itself to include a new generation of conservatives at odds with their elders. Project 2025 lays bare the contradictions. … On July 8 Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, took the stage at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. He was there to deliver a special message to the old Republican coalition—the libertarians, neocons, and establishment types who remain skeptical of Donald Trump's GOP. Conservatives, he told them, face a left that is "totalitarian in its mission…expansionist, imperialistic, and practically jihadist in its theocratic fanaticism." Against that threat, Roberts argued, they have no choice but to ally with national conservativism, an emergent right-wing movement that combines militant cultural reaction, unilateralism on the world stage, and populist economics. [Read More]  Also of interest is "Ten Ways Project 2025 Could Undermine Workers' Rights," by Bryce Covert, Capital and Main [September 18, 2024] [Link].

Jill Stein leads Kamala Harris among Muslim voters in swing states as Palestine supporters weigh choices amid Gaza genocide 

By Michael Arria, Mondoweiss [September 19, 2024] 

---- An August report put out by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) showed Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Stein essentially tied among Muslim voters, with 29.4% of American Muslims saying they plan to vote for the Vice President 29.1% saying they would vote for Stein. The poll surveyed over 1,000 Muslims between August 25-27, after Harris accepted her party's nomination. In September CAIR published a follow-up report specifically looking at Muslim voters in important swing states. Those polls showed Stein leading Harris in Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Link] 

Also of interest – "Uncommitted Declines to Endorse Harris as Campaign Continues to Back Genocide," by Sharon Zhang, Truthout [September 19, 2024] [Link]; and "The Cornel West campaign, third parties, and the nature of the moment," by Bill Fletcher Jr, Liberation Road Notes [Sep 20, 2024] [Link].

The experts comment: Key nuclear questions that the US presidential candidates should answer

By François Diaz-Maurin and John Mecklin, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [September 19, 2024] [Link]

CFOW Nuts and Bolts 

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil is held in Yonkers on 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 make out your check to "Frank Brodhead," write "CFOW" on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!

Best wishes, 

Frank Brodhead 

For CFOW

CFOW Weekly Reader

Featured Essays 

Israelis Must Ask Themselves if They're Willing to Live in a Country That Lives on Blood 

By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [September 15, 2024] 

---- Israel is turning, with alarming speed, into a country that lives on blood. The daily crimes of the occupation are already less relevant. Over the past year, a new reality of mass killing and crimes of an entirely different scale has emerged. We are in a genocidal reality; the blood of tens of thousands of people has flowed.  This is the time that all Israelis should ask themselves if they are willing to live in a country that lives on blood. Just don't say that there is no choice – of course there is – but first we must ask whether we are even prepared to live like this. Are we, the Israelis, willing to live in the only country in the world whose existence is based on blood? The only vision that is widespread in Israel now is to live from one war to another war, from one bloodletting to the next, from massacre to massacre, with intervals spaced as widely as possible.  [Read More]

What Happens if China Stops Trying to Save the World? 

David Wallace-Wells, New York Times [September 16, 2024]

---- In climate world, something that once seemed almost unthinkable may now be happening. Preliminary data shows that while global carbon emissions are continuing to rise, China's emissions may already be peaking — the longtime climate villain turning the corner on carbon before the planet as a whole does. Forecasts like these are not perfectly reliable, but already China has completely rewritten the global green transition story. You may be familiar with the broad strokes of that story: that thanks to several decades of mind-boggling declines in the cost of solar, wind and battery technology, a new wave of climate advocacy and dramatically more policy support, the rollout of various green energy technologies is tracing an astonishing exponential curve upward, each year making a mockery of cautious projections from legacy industry analysts. Consider solar power…. [Read More]

Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and the Armageddon Agenda 

By Michael Klare, Tom Dispatch [September 16, 2024] 

---- The next president of the United States, whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, will face many contentious domestic issues that have long divided this country, including abortion rights, immigration, racial discord, and economic inequality. In the foreign policy realm, she or he will face vexing decisions over Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, and China/Taiwan. But one issue that few of us are even thinking about could pose a far greater quandary for the next president and even deeper peril for the rest of us: nuclear weapons policy.… For all too many of us, nuclear weapons policy seems like a difficult issue that should be left to the experts. This wasn't always so. During the Cold War years, nuclear war seemed like an ever-present possibility and millions of Americans familiarized themselves with nuclear issues, participating in ban-the-bomb protests or the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign of the 1980s. But with the Cold War's end and a diminished sense of nuclear doom, most of us turned to other issues and concerns. Yet the nuclear danger is growing rapidly and so decisions regarding the U.S. arsenal could have life-or-death repercussions on a global scale. [Read More] 

The War on Gaza 

(Video) U.N. Experts Accuse Israel of "Starvation Campaign" in Gaza & Demand End to Western Complicity 

From Democracy Now! [September 17, 2024] 

----- Top United Nations human rights experts have condemned Western nations for supporting Israel's devastating war on Gaza, urging the world to stop an unfolding genocide in Palestine. This comes as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, is accusing Israel in a new report of carrying out a deliberate starvation campaign in Gaza. "What we are witnessing in Gaza is the starvation of 2.3 million Palestinians. We've never seen a civilian population made to go hungry so quickly and so completely," says Fakhri, who joins us from Brazil. [See the Program]  Also of interest is "International Pressure on Israel averted Widespread Gaza Famine this Summer, but the Danger is Back," by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [September 15, 2024] [Link]

A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam 

By Meron Rapoport, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [September 17, 2024] 

---- As Israeli ministers, generals, and academics bay for a decisive new phase in the war, this is what Operation Starvation and Extermination would look like. … The date is October, November, or December 2024, or maybe early 2025. The Israeli military has just launched a new operation throughout northern Gaza — "Operation Order and Clean-up," we'll call it. … The scenario I sketched out above is not far-fetched. Since October 7, Israeli society has undergone an accelerated process of dehumanization toward the Palestinians, and it is hard to see the army refuse en masse to carry out such an extermination campaign, certainly if it is presented in stages: first forcing out most residents, followed by the imposition of a siege, and only then the elimination of those who remain. [Read More]

 

Israeli Ignominy 

By Michael Albert, ZNet [September 21, 2024] 

[FB – Michael Albert is the founder of ZNet and South End Press (books)] 

---- How should we who are nauseated by what has been and is being done to Palestinians and by what is now spreading rather than ceasing, regard Netanyahu, regard the IDF, regard Israelis in Israel who support genocide, and regard Israel's supporters around the world who ignore, alibi, arm, and abet genocide? Can we be horrified, outraged, and enraged but also regard the ignorers, supporters, perpetrators, and planners of the genocide hurled at Gaza's schools, hospitals, homes, and streets without ourselves hurling dehumanizing epithets? Without ourselves becoming dehumanizers? [Read More]

The West Bank 

Palestinians in the West Bank are completely unprepared for the coming genocide 

By Fathi Nemer, Mondoweiss [September 12, 2024] 

---- The Zionist end game in the West Bank is upon us. The last eleven months leave little room for doubt as settlers continue to actively depopulate Palestinian communities, kidnapping and torturing young men and establishing new colonies. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir openly boasts about seeking to build a synagogue on top of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.  None of this should be understood as a new phase of Zionist settler colonialism; rather it is its sharpening, its coming out into the open in a more brazen way. What is happening in Gaza can and will happen elsewhere in Palestine. … If anything, October 7 showed how completely unprepared the West Bank is for what is coming, partly due to stubborn self-deception nurtured over the last three decades: the idea that there can be any semblance of normal life under occupation in return for obedience. [Read More].  Also of interest is (Video) "Seizing the West Bank: Extremist settlers in power," from BBC World Service Documentaries [Link].

The War in Ukraine 

Putin Has Allowed the West to Cross So Many Lines That He Is Now Under Pressure to Respond 

By Anatol Lieven, The Nation [September 18, 2024] 

---- We must hope that the Biden administration will continue to keep the [UK] Starmer government on a leash over the question of allowing Ukraine to fire British Storm Shadow missiles into Russia…. This deep US involvement in not only the provision but the targeting of these missiles explains why Moscow sees this as a very serious escalation, which if not checked would be a green light to the West to go further and further. It is therefore not open to serious doubt that this action could indeed lead to war between the West and Russia. In addition, precisely because Putin has allowed the West to cross so many Russian red lines, he is now under intense pressure to respond. … Fortunately, the decision on whether to allow Ukraine to strike into Russia rests with Washington, not London—not only because toeing the US line has long been a doctrine of the British establishment, but also because (as noted) US targeting intelligence is essential if the missiles are actually to hit what they are aiming at. [Read More]

Also of Interest – "No Word on Long-Range Strikes in Russia After Biden-Starmer Meeting," by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [September 15, 2024] [Link]; "A Nuclear War in Ukraine Is a Distinct Possibility," C.J. Polychroniou interviews Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen. Common Dreams [September 21, 2024] [Link]; and "White House finalizing plans to expand where Ukraine can hit inside Russia," by Erin Banco, et al., Politico [September 11, 2024] [Link].

The Climate Crisis 

'Red Flags' on Climate: U.S. Methane Emissions Keep Climbing 

By Max Bearak, New York Times [September 19, 2024] 

---- The United States' booming fossil-fuel industry continues to emit more and more planet-warming methane into the atmosphere, new research showed, despite a U.S.-led effort to encourage other countries to cut emissions globally. Methane is among the most potent greenhouse gases, and "one of the worst performers in our study is the U.S., even though it was an instigator of the Global Methane Pledge," said Antoine Halff, the co-founder of Kayrros, the environmental data company issuing the report. "Those are red flags." Much of the world's efforts to combat climate change focus on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which result largely from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, and whose heat-trapping particles can linger in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. But methane's effects on the climate — which have earned it the moniker "super pollutant" — have become better appreciated recently, with the advent of more advanced leak-detection technology, including satellites. [Read More]  Also of interest is "World Governments Are Using 'Increasingly Harsh' Laws Against Climate Protesters," by Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, Ecowatch [September 11, 2024] [Link]. 

The State of the Union 

For-Profit US Healthcare System—Once Again—Ranks Dead Last Among Its Peers 

By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams [September 19, 2024] 

---- A report out Thursday shows that the United States' for-profit healthcare system still ranks dead last among peer nations on key metrics, including access to care and health outcomes such as life expectancy at birth. The new analysis from the Commonwealth Fund is the latest indictment of a corporate-dominated system that leaves tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured and unable to afford life-saving medications without rationing doses or going into debt. "Despite spending a lot on healthcare, the United States is not meeting one of the principal obligations of a nation: to protect the health and welfare of its residents," the report states. "Most of the countries we compared are providing this protection, even though each can learn a good deal from its peers. The U.S., in failing this ultimate test of a successful nation, remains an outlier." People in the U.S., which spends roughly twice as much per capita on healthcare as other rich nations, "live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths," Commonwealth noted, pointing to frequent "denials of services by insurance companies" and other systematic defects of the American system, including massive administrative costs. [Read More]