Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
September 1, 2024
Hello All – The deaths of six Israelis held hostage in Gaza has ignited an outpouring of protest in Israel that may be a turning point in the Gaza war. This evening half a million Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv and other cities calling for an end to the war. The six hostages were alive a few days ago, and were apparently on the list to be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners if/when negotiations for such an exchange took place. Netanyahu is widely regarded by a large segment of the Israeli public as delaying and even sabotaging these negotiations. The Israeli trade union federation Histadrut has called for a nationwide general strike for Monday. What will the Biden/Harris team do if/as it becomes apparent that the war against Gaza is now strongly opposed by a majority of Israelis? We can support this antiwar wave in Israel by joining the march and rally against the war TOMORROW, Monday, in Union Square NYC starting at noon.
Harris clarifies her views. All out for war!
Many Democrats thought they had seen hints that Kamala Harris would move away from the blank-check support that President Biden gives to Israel and its war on Gaza. Thursday night's extended CNN interview with Harris shows that this was a false hope, and that candidate Harris has every intention of delivering to Israel all the weapons, money, and diplomatic support it needs to continue its war on Palestinians.
This is a disaster for Palestinians and Americans alike. The official death toll for the Gaza war now exceeds 40,000, including more than 16,000 children; but many experts believe the toll is much higher. The war's destruction of shelter, of hospitals and health centers, of all universities and most schools, of water and sewerage facilities, etc., means that Gaza has become unlivable. Yet the war will go on until we have an arms embargo.
Harris's commitment to Israel's war also hurts her chances of defeating Donald Trump in November. The alienation of Muslim and Arabic voters, especially in "swing" states, is a serious problem. Also a problem is the fact that a large majority of Democrats want an end to the war, and a majority also want an end to sending weapons to Israel. This antiwar sentiment is especially strong among young voters and people of color. Support for the war is not a safe bet for Harris, but a dangerous gamble. In the case of Trump, a gamble with fascism.
People who understand the horror of this war and are committed to defeating Trump in November must do all we can to persuade Harris and her supporters to change course. It is a life-and-death situation, both in Palestine and at home. Work for peace.
Illuminating the Week That Was
How the U.S. Netanyahu to Sabotage a Gaza Ceasefire
By Jeremy Scahill, Drop Site [September 1, 2024]
---- After the bodies of six more Israeli hostages of Hamas were found in the Gaza Strip, pressure in Israel is mounting on the government to secure a ceasefire deal and free the remaining hostages and soldiers taken captive on October 7. The announcement Sunday that the captives, including a dual citizen of the U.S., were discovered in a tunnel in Rafah has further fueled the rage toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, particularly from the families of those held in Gaza. They have accused the prime minister of sabotaging deals to free their loved ones, saying "their blood is on his hands." Senior Israeli officials, most prominently the defense minister, have joined the public demands for Netanyahu to stop obstructing ceasefire negotiations, while Hamas has said they will not participate in any process until the U.S. convinces Israel to accept a negotiating framework Hamas agreed to in early July. Both Hamas and the families of Israeli captives still held in Gaza have stated that Netanyahu bears responsibility for continuing the war and preventing the exchange of prisoners. [Read More]
Israeli PM Netanyahu says Recovering Hostages not a Priority, Occupies Philadelphi Corridor Instead
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [August 31, 2024]
---- Bilal Daher of the Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports on Thursday evening's knock-down, drag-out fight between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at the cabinet meeting, which ended in a vehement shouting match. The heated discussion was leaked to an Israeli television news channel. Some members of the Israeli cabinet, such as Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, have said that returning Israeli hostages from Hamas control is not a high priority for them, and it seems that PM Benjamin Netanyahu has joined their number. The dispute centered on the negotiations led by the Biden administration on the release of Israeli hostages by Hamas in return for a ceasefire (which Netanyahu insists will be only temporary). [Read More]
News Notes
Twenty billion dollars "worth' of weapons are now on their way from the USA to Israel. But the Senate could block this, and Jewish Voice for Peace is urging us to join their campaign to message our Senators about the right thing to do: "Not Another Bomb," etc. To send a message to our Senators Gillibrand and Schumer, use this handy form.
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
The CFOW Weekly Reader
The US Election and the War on Gaza
Hanging On with Gaza
By Kathy Kelly, World Beyond War, [August 29, 2024]
[FB – CFOW is an affiliate of World Beyond War.]
---- During a week of action focused on UN potential to end Israel's genocidal attacks, I was part of a coalition that met with twelve different permanent missions to the United Nations. We urged that if countries that are parties to the Genocide Convention or the Geneva Conventions stop trading with Israel as international law demands, (cf. the July 19th advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice), the genocide will end quickly. In each encounter at a Permanent Mission to the UN, its staff asked if we, as U.S. citizens, have addressed our government's unwavering support for the genocide against impoverished and forcibly displaced people. It was a deeply meaningful moment when the Irish Ambassador to the United Nations showed our delegation a miniature replica of John Behan's poignant statue depicting the Irish exodus – it showed weary, hungry people disembarking from a boat after a stormy ocean voyage. "You have to see each one of these as a human being," he said. My mother was an Irish indentured servant first in Ireland and then in England. As things go, she was among the more fortunate. [Read More]
In CNN Interview, Harris Dodged Gaza Genocide and Damaged Her Election Prospects
By Norman Solomon, ZNet [August 30, 2024]
---- Time is running out for Kamala Harris to distance herself from U.S. policies that enable Israel to continue with mass murder and genocide in Gaza. Polling shows that a pivot toward moral decency would improve her chances of defeating Donald Trump. But during her CNN interview Thursday night, Harris remained in lockstep with Biden's unconditional arming of Israel. … In sharp contrast, with horrors in Gaza continuing, fellow Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib has never taken the easy way out. As she has done countless times since last fall, on Thursday she sent out a truthful and disturbing message. "Palestinian Americans feel invisible, with our trauma and pain unseen and ignored by both Democrats and Republicans," Tlaib wrote. "We want action to stop the horrific massacres of our families and polling shows that, regardless of political party, the majority of Americans are with us. . . . Yet, even after over 600 weapons shipments since October, including fighter jets, high explosive mortars, and more, the Biden administration has approved another $20 billion in weapons for the Israeli military to commit well-documented war crimes and continue to murder Palestinian children and civilians." And Tlaib wrote: "An arms embargo to stop the genocide is not just the moral, just, and right thing to do. It is also good politics." [Read More]
Who Is Kamala Harris? Aggressive Foreign and Military Policies
By Joseph Gerson Sep 01, 2024 Common Dreams
---- We should expect Harris to hew to the trajectory of Biden's foreign and military policies. Along her way, she has recruited a cadre of traditional national security advisers. As vice president, her first national security adviser was Nancy McEldowney, a career U.S. diplomat and former director of the Foreign Service Institute. McEldowney was succeeded by Philip Gordon, Harris' current and very influential foreign policy adviser, who served on former President Bill Clinton's National Security Council staff and as an Obama European and Middle East specialist. Gordon's deputy has been Rebecca Lissner, formerly of the Naval War College and the woman who oversaw the development of the Biden National Security Strategy. Recall that the strategy declares that the post-Cold War era is over, that the struggle with China—Washington's only peer competitor—to shape what follows is under way. And it reiterated the United States' commitment to its first-strike nuclear arsenal and warfighting doctrine. [Read More]
Protect the Vote!
(Video) "Five-Alarm Fire for Democracy": New GOP Rules Could Block Election Results in Georgia and Beyond
From Democracy Now! [August 28, 2024]
----- New voting rules in key battleground states could impact the 2024 election results. In Georgia, Democrats are suing to halt a set of Trump-backed election rules which Democrats say could be used to block certification of election results if they win in November. "It appears that Georgia Republicans are laying the groundwork not to certify the presidential election if Kamala Harris wins," explains Ari Berman, who is the voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones magazine. Berman also discusses Tim Walz and JD Vance's voting rights records and a recent voting rights law out of Arizona that requires new voters to prove their U.S. citizenship. [See the Program]
Nuclear War?
A Looming Nuclear Catastrophe
By Melvin Goodman, Counterpunch [August 30, 2024]
[FB – Melvin Goodman is a former CIA analyst and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. Among his books is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.]
---- The next president will inherit a nuclear landscape that is more threatening and volatile than any other since the dangers of the Cuban missile crisis more than 60 years ago. China is expanding its nuclear arsenal; Russia is threatening the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine and warning about World War III; Iran's nuclear program is expanding rapidly in size and sophistication; and North Korea reportedly has a nuclear arsenal that rivals three nuclear states that never joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty: Israel, India, and Pakistan. The close ties between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are feeding Washington's nuclear paranoia. Washington's failure to hold substantive discussions with these four countries makes the potential for conflict more real. Our obsession with terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons adds to the exaggeration of the threat and our distorted strategic spending. [Read More] Also of interest is "Biden's 'new' nuclear strategy and the super-fuse that sets it off," by Theodore Postol, Responsible Statecraft [August 29, 2024] [Link].
The War in Gaza
Death Camp
By Gary Fields, Counterpunch [August 30, 2024)
---- Now, after 11 months of incessant daily bombing and killing of a largely defenseless population with no end in sight; with an entire population, including women and children, made to suffer from no food, no clean water, diseases with no medicines and with the hospitals largely destroyed; and with the civilians of Gaza locked inside the space of the territory with nowhere to flee; the Israeli military is re-creating a project akin to the camps of Treblinka, Sobibor, and Oswiecim but on a larger spatial scale. What else but a death camp corresponds to the organized daily slaughter of Palestinians within a confined space carried out by the State of Israel? [Read More]
Palestinian Voices
'We won't leave our people': the medical workers refusing to evacuate central Gaza's last functioning hospital
By Tareq S. Hajjaj, Mondoweiss [August 28, 2024]
---- On August 21, the Israeli army ordered different areas in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip to evacuate their homes and newly-erected tents. This was the first step in the army's invasion and campaign of destruction in Deir al-Balah, the last town that had not been completely leveled throughout the war. One of the blocks ordered to evacuate included the last fully operational hospital in central and southern Gaza, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, the governmental hospital has been working at four times its capacity, hosting over 700 patients. As the military order spread among people in the area, dozens of doctors and nurses evacuated too, knowing what would likely happen to anyone in the hospital who remained, with the horrors of the massacres and mass graves at al-Shifa Hospital and Nasser Hospital still fresh in their minds. But there are others working in the hospital who have refused to evacuate under any circumstances, intent on remaining to care for the patients that keep streaming in. Mondoweiss spoke to several medical workers at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital who refused to abandon their posts when the Israeli army ordered the evacuation. [Read More]
"I Couldn't Ask if She Was Still Alive": A Girl, Her Mother, and a Bloody Night In Gaza
By Lujayn, Mondoweiss [August 26, 2024]
---- We lay down on the ground. My mother made me sleep by the wall, while she lay down beside me on the exposed side, surrounding my head with pillows. I felt drowsy and tired. I dozed off, only to wake up to the sound of bullets flying in the street, bombs, and shrapnel hitting the walls and windows. My mother shielded me with her exhausted body, smiled at me, and said, "We're OK, don't be afraid." This went on for several minutes. We couldn't move. I felt cold despite the summer heat—until I felt something warm on my hand. I couldn't see what it was in the darkness. Then I realized it was blood. A piece of shrapnel had pierced my mother's shoulder—which she was using to shield my head—and it had made no sound I couldn't comprehend it. I couldn't ask if she was still alive. Fear paralyzed me, and I wondered if death had claimed her this time. I kept searching with my hand for her heartbeat to see if there was a pulse. [Read More]
The West Bank
Israel's Violent Invasion of West Bank Parallels the Early Stages of War on Gaza: UN Rapporteur on Palestine
By Jeremy Scahill, Drop Site News [August 31, 2024]
---- Israel is in the midst of its largest scale assault of the occupied West Bank since 2002. Beginning in the predawn hours on Wednesday, hundreds of Israeli forces in columns of armored vehicles and bulldozers backed by drones and helicopters stormed into refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas. Israel also carried out drone strikes and snipers have reportedly been firing on people inside Jenin. Internet and cell phone service, as well as water and sewage systems, were shut down in parts of the West Bank as Israeli forces conducted house raids. Local residents have reported widespread demolitions of their homes and streets and the blocking of ambulances and medical workers attempting to reach wounded people. Israeli forces surrounded the main hospital in Jenin and have reportedly been searching people entering and exiting the facility. [Read More]
Also of interest – (Video) "Is Israel's war on Gaza spilling over into the occupied West Bank?" from Aljazeera ("Inside Story") [August 30, 2024] [Link]. Also useful are two programs from Democracy Now! : (Video) "Trying to Repeat the Nakba": Israel Launches Largest Military Raids in West Bank in Two Decades";[Link]; and (Video) "They Want Palestine Empty": Artist in Jenin Blasts U.S. Support for Israel Amid West Bank Assault" [Link].
The Students Are Back!
College Administrators Spent Summer Break Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests
By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [August 27 2024]
---- As students and faculty in the U.S. return to campuses for the fall semester, there are innumerable reasons to continue demonstrating against institutional complicity with Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. The need for those protests is as urgent as it's ever been. University and college administrations, however, are not only signaling plans to treat pro-Palestinian speech with intellectual dishonesty, they're making clear they plan to use their specious logic to inflict evermore repressive intolerance. New York University led by troubling example when the school shared an updated code of student conduct last week. Ostensibly aimed at curtailing bigotry, the new language instead shuts down dissent by threatening to silence criticism of Zionism on campus. Students who speak out against Zionism — an ethno-nationalist political ideology founded in the late 19th century — will now risk violating the school's nondiscrimination policies. [Read More]
The War in Ukraine
The Murky Meaning of Ukraine's Kursk Offensive
By Prof. Stephen M. Walt [August 28, 2024]
---- Is Ukraine's surprise counteroffensive into Russia a critical turning point in the war, a meaningless sideshow, or a strategic misstep on Kyiv's part? It has been mostly a success in the short term, but it's the medium to long term that matters. Does it have broader implications for Western policy toward Russia in general and the war in Ukraine in particular? The fortunes of war have shifted back and forth several times since Russia invaded in February 2022, and no outside observer has gotten everything right. For this reason, a certain amount of humility is in order. As with most wars, it is impossible to know exactly where each side's breaking point might be, in terms of either capabilities or resolve, and it's hard to predict how third parties will react to new developments. That said, I see little reason to think Ukraine's incursion into the Kursk region will have a significant positive impact on its fortunes. [Read More]
Our History
A Demonstration of Working-Class Power (Labor Day)
By Michael Kazin, Dissent [August 30, 2024]
---- Labor Day began as a demonstration of working-class power. On September 5, 1882, the Central Labor Union of New York City planned a parade around Union Square in Manhattan, followed up by a lavish picnic. The CLU—an umbrella body led by socialists—was determined to "show the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and Labor organizations" of the biggest city in the United States and to "warn politicians that they shall go no farther in pandering to the greed of monopoly and reducing the condition of the masses." The thousands of people who came to march and play that day certainly made their intent clear. Over the next decade, workers in numerous other cities followed their lead. In 1894, a Congress that was hoping to mollify wage earners during a time of economic depression and a nationwide railroad strike passed a law making Labor Day a national holiday. But private employers were under no obligation to give their workers the day off. So in many towns and cities around the country, Labor Day became a virtual one-day general strike. Workers stayed off the job and dared their bosses to fire them. Not until the early twentieth century did most businesses reluctantly observe the occasion. [Read More]
September 1, 1939
By W. H. Auden, poet
[FB – 85 years ago today Nazi Germany attacked Poland is what is conventionally seen as the beginning of World War Two in Europe. Auden's description of 1930s as "a low dishonest decade" still rings true, and resonates with our own times in as well.]
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
