Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
February 4, 2024
Hello All – A week ago the International Court of Justice (ICJ) warned that Israel's war against Gaza may be a genocide, and directed Israel and its supporters to prevent this. Already, some 100,000 Gazans have been killed or injured. Thousands of children have been killed or have been made orphans. There are no working hospitals, no housing, just rubble and the winter cold. Now Gaza faces famine.
As Alex de Waal explains in his article linked below, "Gaza is experiencing mass starvation like no other in recent history. Before the outbreak of fighting in October, food security in Gaza was precarious, but very few children – less than 1% – suffered severe acute malnutrition, the most dangerous kind. Today, almost all Gazans, of any age, anywhere in the territory, are at risk." Starvation and near-starvation will weaken people, especially children and the elderly, making them more susceptible to disease, and to the effects of winter homelessness. According to UN sources, some 700,000 people sheltering in UN buildings suffer from infectious diseases.
Starvation and disease are part of the warning of imminent genocide issued by the International Court of Justice a week ago. Was it a coincidence that, on the day that the Court issued its ruling, the United States – at the urging of Israel – "paused" its support for the UN program that is feeding almost the entire Gazan population? The US action was followed by more than a dozen US/Israel allies; and UNRWA – the UN agency in question – has announced that it will not be able to continue its programs beyond the end of February.
Stopping famine in Gaza means a ceasefire, so that food and other aid can be distributed. Please call the White House (202-456-1111), Senators Schumer (202-224-6542) and Gillibrand (202-224-4451) and Rep. Bowman (202-225-2464). Tell the phone person that you want a ceasefire to prevent famine. Thank you.
Some useful reading on Gaza's food crisis
The World Needs to Stand by UNRWA
By Espen Barth Eide, New York Times [February 3, 2024]
[FB - Mr. Eide is the foreign minister of Norway.]
---- The main lifeline for Gazans in this landscape is the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, the nearly 75-year-old agency that is almost entirely funded by voluntary contributions. Now, at least 15 countries, including the United States, have announced a halt to payments to UNRWA, pending an investigation, because of Israeli intelligence reports that a dozen of its workers took part in the terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7.Now is exactly the wrong time to halt funding for UNRWA. Norway is standing fast to our commitment to continue funding this crucial agency and to the Palestinian people. As the Norwegian foreign minister, I urge fellow donor countries to reflect on the wider consequences of cutting UNRWA off. If these decisions are not reversed, we run a serious risk of worsening the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza. And since UNRWA also supports millions of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, a stop to payments could further destabilize an already extremely volatile region. The world should keep funding UNRWA on more than practical grounds, however. We should not collectively punish millions of people for the alleged deeds of a few. [Read More]
Unless Israel changes course, it could be legally culpable for mass starvation
By Alex de Waal, The Guardian [UK] [January 31, 2024]
---- Gaza is on the brink of famine. If the US and UK fail to use every possible lever to stop the catastrophe, they will be complicit. Gaza is experiencing mass starvation like no other in recent history. Before the outbreak of fighting in October, food security in Gaza was precarious, but very few children – less than 1% – suffered severe acute malnutrition, the most dangerous kind. Today, almost all Gazans, of any age, anywhere in the territory, are at risk. There is no instance since the second world war in which an entire population has been reduced to extreme hunger and destitution with such speed. And there's no case in which the international obligation to stop it has been so clear. [Read More] Also of interest - (Video) 'It's immoral': UN special rapporteur on UNRWA funding cuts," from Aljazeera ["Upfront"], [February 2, 2024] [See the Program]; (Video) "Biden and Gaza: Is Cruelty the Point?" from Peter Beinart [January 29, 2024] [Link]; and "Republicans Move to One-Up Biden and Permanently Defund UNRWA," by Ryan Grim, The Intercept [February 2, 2024] [Link].
News Notes
The steady fall of President Biden's poll numbers has been attributed to the opposition to Biden's support of Israel's war on Gaza. The fall is concentrated among young people and minorities, not least Arab Americans, not least those living in Dearborn, Michigan and environs. A loss of Michigan may well cost Biden the presidency. What's happening there? Last week Democracy Now! interviewed Dearborn's mayor and some Arab-American activists. The program also interviewed pollster James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. See the Program; we have been warned. For the second year in a row, the Doomsday Clock has been set—by scientists analyzing the dangers faced by Planet Earth due to human exploitation and nuclear-armed geopolitics—at 90 seconds to midnight. In other words, be afraid. Be very afraid. The dangers include ongoing nuclear-weapons development by both major and minor national powers, combined with the planet's current slaughter-wars—in Ukraine, Palestine, and elsewhere—and the ever-looming possibility that they could go nuclear. … And of course this is all combined with the planet's ongoing climate collapse. [Read More]
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil is held in Yonkers on the first Monday of the month (next is March 4th) 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!
As this is Black History Month, the Rewards for stalwart readers this week are a slender sampling of some of the great African American vocal music of long ago. First up is this remarkable restoration (AI, etc.) of Bessie Smith singing St. Louis Blues from the 1929 film of the same name. In 1939 Hastings' Abe Meeropol wrote "Strange Fruit" for Billie Holiday, heard/seen singing it here in a 1959 performance. Some of the arc of Billie Holiday's career can be heard in this playlist, mostly from the '30s and '40s. Finally, I think you will like this collection of songs/duets from Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays – The War on Gaza
Palestine Is in Asia: An Asian American Argument for Solidarity
By Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Nation [January 29, 2024]
---- For Asian Americans, among whom I count myself, the question of Palestine holds great relevance. And for writers, among whom I also count myself, the question of when to speak our conscience has always mattered. I want to address Israel's war on Gaza and how it raises issues of self-defense, inclusion, and solidarity that have great meaning for anyone who has been classified as an "other" and for anyone who has sought to write through that otherness. This includes Asian American, Palestinian, Israeli, and Jewish writers—all of whom have grappled with what it means to be the monstrous other. … I return to my own otherness. Being Asian American is not the only dimension of myself. It is just one aspect, born from defending myself and others seen to be like me. But my Asian Americanness matters less than my ethics, politics, and art. Together, they constitute a repository of a stubborn otherness that resists the lure of a domesticated otherness satiated by belonging. [Read More]
Who Is Marwan Barghouti, and Why Is He Israel's Most Important Prisoner?
By Jo-Ann Mort, The New Republic [January 30, 2024]
---- Many Palestinians and Israelis consider him the only person who can lead the way to a two-state solution. Maybe that's why Netanyahu won't release him. Marwan Barghouti is Israel's most celebrated prisoner and, by all accounts, the person most likely to succeed Palestinian Authority president and PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas whenever the Palestinian Authority—and the PLO—holds elections. … There is faint hope that he could be released soon, as part of a deal with Hamas for the Israeli hostages. More likely, he will be released by a post-Netanyahu government if there is any hope for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian crisis. There is simply no other leader who can deliver this scenario. Indeed, his prisoner status gives him extraordinary gravitas among the Palestinian people. He is also seen as not corrupt, unlike the current leadership of Abbas and those around him. [Read More]
A Historic Junction. The Israeli left after October 7.
With Sally Abed, et al., Dissent [Winter 2024]
---- [By Dissent Editor Joshua Leifer] - After more than two months of intensive bombardment, Israel's war in Gaza continues to exact a terrible human toll. As of this writing, Israeli forces have killed close to 20,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians. According to the United Nations, roughly 1.8 million people, or 80 percent of Gaza's population, have been internally displaced since the war's start. Within Israel, an atmosphere of tension, fear, and anger prevails. … Against this backdrop, and despite mounting repression, left-wing Israeli organizers and anti-occupation activists have begun to return to the streets. Their demand: a ceasefire and a deal to free all the hostages. On December 6, I spoke with three left-wing Israeli activist-thinkers about the challenges facing the Israeli left right now. [Read More]
Israel's Fifth Column in the USA
Inside the Israel Lobby's New $90 Million War Chest
By Amos Barshad, The Lever [February 3, 2024]
---- In the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has reaped a $90 million fundraising haul, according to confidential internal documents reviewed by The Lever. … From January to September 2023, the non-public documents show that AIPAC received an average of around $12 million in monthly pledged donations. By contrast, in October alone, the documents show that AIPAC received more than triple that amount — more than $40 million in pledged donations. In the following two months, donors pledged another nearly $50 million. [Read More]
The Anti-Defamation League: Israel's Attack Dog in the US
By James Bamford, The Nation [January 31, 2024]
---- The problem is that The New York Times, PBS, and other mainstream outlets that reach millions are constantly and uncritically promoting the ADL and amplifying the group's questionable charges. At the same time, they regularly fail to inform their readers, viewers, and listeners either about the organization's current shift towards silencing Israel's critics or its long history of deception, lying, and corruption—including covert operations and illegal spying on innocent Americans. A greater awareness of this history—and of the ADL's ongoing attempts to silence critics of the war in Gaza via slanderous and often untrue charges—might suggest that, instead of simply repeating those charges, a less-credulous media might want to examine the group's long-standing (but carefully hidden) links to the Israeli government. And whether the ADL's spying and covert operations are really all in the past. [Read More]
The Media and the War
Western coverage of Gaza: A textbook case of coloniser's journalism
By Vidya Krishnan, Aljazeera [February 2, 2024]
---- Since the beginning of the latest Israeli assault on the besieged Palestinian enclave – which is proving to be one of the swiftest ethnic cleansing efforts in history – Western news organisations have repeatedly published unsubstantiated claims, told one side of the story and glossed over violence selectively to justify Israel's violations of international law and shield it from scrutiny. In doing so, Western journalists have abandoned basic standards in their coverage of Israel's conduct towards Palestinians. None of this is new. The failures of Western journalism have helped Israel justify its occupation and violence against Palestinians for over 75 years. [Read More]
A Wider War?
(Video) Biden's Middle East Policy "Leading Us into a War Whose Aims We Have Not Defined"
From Democracy Now! [January 31, 2024]
---- President Biden says he holds Iran responsible for the drone killing of three U.S. soldiers at a base in Jordan and that he has decided on a U.S. response. Tehran has denied any involvement in the attack and threatened to "decisively respond" to any U.S. retaliation. Responsibility for the strike was claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a term used to describe a loose coalition of militias that oppose U.S. support for Israel's assault on Gaza. "This is leading us into a war whose aims we have not defined, whose exit we cannot envision," says Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, who warns that "continued warfare in Gaza by the Israelis is a direct threat to U.S. national interests." [See the Program]
Top 3 Things Biden could Do instead of intensively Bombing Iraq and Syria
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [February 3, 2024] ---- President Joe Biden could easily avoid the necessity of bombing Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and the good Lord knows how many other countries in the region. He just has to do three things to make US troop secure in the region.
1. He could cut Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu off from resupply of armaments and ammunition, forcing a ceasefire in Gaza;
2. Biden could just pull the US troops out of Syria. It is crazy that they are still there. They only total 900, spread across three small forward operating bases. Bring them home; and
3. Biden could also withdraw the 2,500 US troops from Iraq. The Iraqi parliament voted against their continued presence in January 2020, so they are there illegally, as well. They are also exposed and vulnerable.
Presto change-o, the extreme tensions and crisis that threaten to draw the US into a wider war would likely evaporate. [Read More]
Also of interest re: the wider war – "(Video) "The Houthis Are Not Iranian Proxies": Helen Lackner on the History & Politics of Yemen's Ansar Allah," from Democracy Now! [February 1, 2024] [Link]; and "Biden Isolated as 85% of Americans fear wider Mideast War, and 50% say Israel has gone Too Far," by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [February 4, 2024] [Link].
The War in Ukraine
Two Years Into the Ukraine War, Europe Has No Strategy
By Harrison Stetler, Jacobin [February 2024]
---- On Thursday, European leaders released another €50 billion in funding for Ukraine. The funds are a lifeline for the Ukrainian military — but waning US support and the stalemate on the front line are chipping away at Europe's commitment to Kyiv. … With the Russia-Ukraine conflict descending into a near-hopeless war of attrition in recent months, support for Kyiv from the United States and Europe has appeared increasingly fragile. In Washington, Ukraine funding is caught in the mire of Republican efforts to exact steep concessions from congressional Democrats and the Biden administration on immigration. …But another round of propping up Ukraine's defenses will not make up for the glaring absence of a serious strategic debate about where this conflict is going and what is to be expected of Europe's investment in it. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
New Evidence Reveals Fossil Fuel Industry Sponsored Climate Science in 1954
By Rebecca John, DeSmog Blog [January 30, 2024]
---- With the discovery of these Air Pollution Foundation documents, it is now possible to date the earliest sponsorship of climate science by the fossil fuel industry to 1954, approximately a quarter of a century before Exxon's internal research program of the late 1970s. These new documents provide important evidence that the fossil fuel industry has been intricately connected to climate science from its earliest beginnings — not only as a driver of the greenhouse effect behind climate change, but also as a contributor to the scientific discoveries that would transform our understanding of humanity's relationship with the Earth and its atmosphere. [Read More]
The State of the Union
First They Came For the Immigrants
By Max Elbaum,, Convergence Magazine [January 30, 2024] ---- Demonizing immigrants and attacking their rights is at the forefront of today's MAGA assault on the international, multiracial working class, democracy, and basic human decency. Top Republican strategists have decided once again that fearmongering about immigrant "invaders" pouring over US borders is the best formula for winning the 2024 election and implementing their white Christian Nationalist agenda. This is why Republican governors have been dramatizing the movement of people by busing them to "blue" cities; why Texas Republicans are attempting to nullify federal authority and take control of immigration enforcement at "their" borders; why Trump doubles down on saying that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country." This is why Republicans demand that harsh "border security" measures be the price of approving the already terrible legislation funding military aid to Ukraine and Israel. [Read More]
Joe Hill Finally Comes to San Francisco's City Lights
By Jonah Raskin, Counterpunch [February 2, 2024]
---- Everyone in San Francisco and beyond loves City Lights Bookstore and Publishing Company. At least every reader and bookish citizen or craves culture and community. Indeed, City Lights Bookstore and City Lights Publishing have long been hailed as exemplary countercultural institutions, so it comes as a surprise to learn that the workers at the store and the press are not now and have never been in a union. But that will soon change. Sixteen employees recently signed union-authorization cards and joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), aka The Wobblies, the legendary union that battled capitalism, corporations and the robber barons in the early 20th century. [Read More]
Our History
(Video) "Origin": Ava DuVernay's New Film Dramatizes "Caste," from U.S. Racism to India's Dalits to Nazi Germany
From Democracy Now! [February 2, 2024]
---- We speak with award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay about her latest feature film, Origin, which explores discrimination in the United States and beyond through a dramatization of the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose process of writing the book is a central part of the film's story. [See the Program]
