Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
February 18, 2024
Hello All – On Tuesday the US representative at the UN Security Council will cast a veto, preventing the UN (once again) from demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. The humanitarian catastrophe is dire and getting worse. More than 29,000 Gazans have been killed, with total casualties now passing 100,000. Most people make do on one meal a day, and UN agencies warn of starvation deaths in the tens of thousands. Most of the victims are women and children.
There is a worldwide consensus that only the United States can stop this genocide. The Israeli government – the most rightwing in its history – is clearly out of control; and just today Netanyahu reiterated that nothing will stop the planned invasion of Raffah, the southernmost city of Gaza, into which 1.4 million of the total Gaza population of 2.3 million has been forcibly displaced. Yet the Biden administration has made it clear that, whatever soft dissents it will utter from time to time, it will take no meaningful steps to prevent the invasion of Raffah. Indeed, this week Biden will attempt to push through an additional arms sale to Israel.
What can we do? There seems to be no answer on the horizon. While most Americans are opposed to this war in one way or another, and while much of the Democratic Party electoral base is in revolt, neither the closed circle of advisors around Biden nor the congressional leadership seems open to a change of course. The war in Gaza is now spreading to Lebanon, Yemen, and perhaps Iran and Syria. Hair on fire? Not at all. Not even the threat of a loss to Trump in the next election seems to move the forces-that-be. The Ship of State stays the course, the large and small Captain Ahabs are crazed by the whiteness of the whale, while the ship's crew – the "mariners, renegades, and castaways" – see no way to seize control and thus save them/ourselves. Alas.
Featured Articles about the Gaza War
In Rafah, We Are Waiting for the Worst
By Kamal Sobeh, The Nation [February 16, 2024]
---- For everyone else, there is not much to do but wait and think about the series of contradictions that life has become. People are waiting for where the occupation army will tell them to go next, even as they know that Israel will pursue them in those places and may bombard them on the way. They know that the invasion of Rafah will inevitably happen, and at the same time, they cling to any updates about truce negotiations and prisoner exchanges. They know that international regimes and institutions are warning against the invasion, but they also know that Israel will ignore these calls, and will pay no price. They know that the people of the world are in solidarity with them, but they also know that governments are cracking down on the movement for Palestine. Above all, everyone in Rafah, and Gaza, knows that the world is governed by oil, gold, gas, racism, and empire. And they know that, just like so many other times over the decades, they are being ignored, even as the worst forms of organized state terrorism are used against them. [Read More]
The World Must Force Peace on Israel
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [February 18, 2024]
---- Now is the time for the United States, and in its wake the international community, to make a decision: Will the endless cycle of violence between Israel and the Palestinians continue, or are we going to try to put a stop to it? Will the United States continue to arm Israel and then bemoan the excessive use of these armaments, or is it finally prepared to take real steps, for the first time in its history, to change reality? And above all, will the cruelest Israeli attack on Gaza become the most pointless of all, or will the opportunity that came in its aftermath not be missed, for a change? [Read More]
Also of interest - (Video) "Worst-Case Scenario": Noura Erakat on Israel's Looming Invasion of Rafah, from Democracy Now! [February 12, 2024] [Link]; "Things That Should But Can't Be Said," by Dr. James J. Zogby, President, Arab American Institute [February 12, 2024] [Link]; and (Video) "Where are Our Jews?" with Peter Beinart [12 minutes.]
The Bowman Campaign
Of interest this week was a focus by both the Bowman and Latimer campaigns on the sources of their opponent's funding. An article in Mondoweiss provides a useful overview of the role of the Israeli lobby group AIPAC in funding opponents of Black progressive incumbents, first Jamaal Bowman and, this week, Cori Bush of Missouri. [Read "AIPAC targets Bush and Bowman."] In The Intercept, a useful article unravels a controversy erupting from Latimer's absurd charge that Bowman was being funded by Hamas [Link]. And while on the subject of campaign finance, the Israel liberal newspaper Haaretz published a detailed article on "the Jewish Megadonors Helping Fund Biden's Reelection Campaign." Is this part of the explanation for Biden's unswerving support for Netanyahu's genocidal war on Gaza?
An Event of Interest [Prison Justice]
On Sunday, February 25, from 3 to 5 pm., the Racial Justice Committee of Temple Israel Center (White Plains) will host a meeting with Akeem Browder on the need to reform the criminal justice system. Mr. Browder's presentation, "How much does a backpack really cost?", is the story of his youngest brother, Kalief Browder, who at the age of 16 was imprisoned on Rikers Island for three years, often in solitary, for the never-proven crime of stealing a backpack. The program states: "Through sharing his family's firsthand experience, Akeem will help us examine the inequities in our justice system, understand how incarceration disproportionately impacts Black and Brown communities, and facilitate what we can do about it, as individuals and as a community." For more information, email rlevylesko@gmail.com.
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!
While strolling the Internet this week, I came across first one, and then many, versions of the socialist anthem "The International," Written in the dying days (1871) of the Paris Commune, it was soon set to music and adopted (eventually) as the anthem of socialist and (after 1917) communist parties around the world. I was struck by the national variations, and then by the variations of style and format. Here is a (sort-of) "standard" version by Anne Feeney; followed by a Jamaican Reggae Version, a Swing Dance Version, and a Korean Pop Version. Billy Bragg brings us home with a verse written by Pete Seeger and sung by Billy on the occasion of Pete's 90th birthday. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
In the Shadow of Silicon Valley
By
---- The San Francisco of my youth was full of small shops whose friendly eccentricity felt like part of the place. Some of them still exist but they're rarer now. … I used to be proud of being from the San Francisco Bay Area. I thought of this place in terms of liberation and protection; we were where the environmental movement was born; we were the land of experimental poetry and anti-war marches, of Harvey Milk and gay rights, of the occupation of Alcatraz Island that galvanised a nationwide Indigenous rights movement as well as Cesar Chavez's farmworkers' movement in San Jose and the Black Panthers in Oakland. We were the left edge of America, a refuge from some of its brutalities and conformities, a sanctuary for dissidents and misfits and a laboratory for new ideas. We're still that lab, but we're no longer an edge; we're a global power centre, and what issues from here – including a new super-elite – shapes the world in increasingly disturbing ways. [Read More]
Art world takes the stage to defend a Palestinian theater
By Dana Mills, Jewish Currents [February 15, 2024]
---- In the early hours of Dec. 13, Israeli forces raided the offices of the Freedom Theatre, a world-renowned bastion of artistic expression in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. The soldiers ransacked the building and defaced it with graffiti bearing Jewish symbols, before violently abducting three members of the theater's community from their homes. ... While this attack comes in the context of a brutal crackdown across the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, it also represents the latest escalation in Israel's decades-long persecution against the Palestinian cultural sphere in general, and Jenin's Freedom Theatre in particular. This time, however, Israel's aggression has not gone unchallenged, and the response from the global artistic community in solidarity with the theater has been unprecedented. [Read More]
The War on Gaza
The Campaign to Abolish UNRWA
By Peter Beinart, Jewish Currents [February 13, 2024]
---- The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has provided education, health care, and other essential services to Palestinian refugees since 1949, could soon disappear. In recent weeks, the United States and at least 18 other countries have suspended aid to the agency, which operates in the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, serving more than five million people. … The current effort to abolish UNRWA dates from late January, when Israel alleged that 12 of the agency's staff members took part in the October 7th massacre, and that roughly 1200 employees—10% of UNRWA's workforce in Gaza—have ties to Hamas or other militant groups. But Israel and its supporters in the US have been seeking to undermine the agency for at least a decade. [Read More]
The obliteration of Gaza's multi-civilizational treasures
By Ibtisam Mahdi, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [February 17, 2024]
---- Since the beginning of Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip, innumerable treasures of Palestine's cultural heritage have been damaged or destroyed. Like so much of the rest of the besieged enclave, these priceless and beloved landmarks of our people's history — archaeological sites, millennia-old religious structures, and museums with ancient collections — now lie in ruin. Cultural heritage is an essential component of a nation's identity and carries enormous symbolic meaning, as recognized and protected by countless international conventions, treaties, and bodies. Yet Israel's pounding of Gaza, now in its fifth month, displays a callous disregard for these testaments to the thousands of years of Gaza's rich cultural history — to such an extent that it could amount to cultural genocide. [Read More]
The War Comes Home
With Netanyahu Threatening Rafah Invasion, Biden Prepares to Send Israel More Bombs
By Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept [February 17, 2024]
---- The most relevant fact about the Biden administration's current position on the war against Gaza is this: There is no Israeli war crime too extreme for Joe Biden to consider pausing, to say nothing of cutting off, the flow of U.S. weapons and financial support for Israel's war of annihilation. … Not only has Biden flatly rejected suggestions that he use the threat of halting military sales to Israel, his administration is currently preparing a new shipment of powerful munitions to Tel Aviv. [Read More] Also informative on this weapons delivery is "US to send weapons to Israel amid invasion threat in Gaza's Rafah: Report," from Aljazeera [February 17, 2024] [Link].
Dodging Biden's Moral Collapse Is No Way to Defeat Trump
By
---- The electoral base that Biden is going to need for re-election is heavily against his support for Israel's war on Gaza. Polling shows that young people in particular are overwhelmingly opposed. Most have seen through the thin veneer of his weak pleas for Israel to not kill so many civilians. No amount of evasions, silences or doubletalk can make Biden's policies morally acceptable. … A far better course of action would be actual candor about current realities: Joe Biden's moral collapse is enabling the Israeli government to continue, with impunity, its large-scale massacre of Palestinian people. In the process, Biden is increasing the chances that the Republican Party, led by fascistic Donald Trump, will gain control of the White House in January. [Read More]
Antiwar Voices
Prominent Black Church Leaders Call for End of U.S. Aid to Israel
By Audra D. S. Burch and Maya King, New York Times [February 16, 2024]
---- The African Methodist Episcopal Church Bishops Council says American financial assistance to help Israel fight its war in Gaza supports "mass genocide."Leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the country's oldest and most prominent Black Christian denominations, called this week for the United States to end its financial aid to Israel, saying the monthslong military campaign in Gaza amounted to "mass genocide." The statement was issued by the church's Council of Bishops, its executive branch, and signed by four senior bishops, including the council president, Bishop Stafford J. N. Wicker. [Read More]
The Movement for Palestine Takes Over MoMA
By Ella Fanger and Emmet Fraizer, The Nation [February 14, 2024]
---- It was an ordinary Saturday at the Museum of Modern Art. Tourists flowed through galleries, clogged lines at the bathroom, meandered through the institution's three gift shops, and looked at special exhibitions—such as An-My Lê's photographic meditations on perpetual violence and diaspora. Then, at 3:30 pm, in a gallery tucked into a fourth-floor corner, one group of masked patrons congregated beside an assemblage of objects evoking racialized violence in the 1960s South and began to distribute bright-yellow brochures. [Read More]
The Wider War
(Video) How likely is a regional conflict in the Middle East?
From Aljazeera ["Inside Story"] [February 16, 2024]
---- Israel has ramped up attacks in Lebanon – and Hezbollah has promised to retaliate.The Israeli military has been exchanging almost daily fire with Lebanese group Hezbollah since the war on Gaza began on October 7. Hezbollah says it is acting in solidarity with its ally in Gaza, Hamas, and that it will continue attacks as long as Israel bombards the besieged Palestinian strip. [See the Program]
More on "the wider war" – "Israel Was Behind Attacks on Major Gas Pipelines in Iran, Officials Say, bFarnaz Fassihi, et al., New York Times [February 16, 2024] [Link]; and "'Logistics' Outpost in Jordan Where 3 U.S. Troops Died Is Secretly a Drone Base," by Ken Klippenstein, The Intercept [February 9, 2024] [Link].
Voices from Gaza
(Video) Bombs, Disease, Starvation: Canadian Doctor Describes the Desperate Situation Inside Gaza
From Democracy Now! [February 13, 2024]
---- As Israel continues to threaten to invade Rafah, where over a million Palestinians have sought refuge, we speak to a surgeon who recently returned from a humanitarian mission at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza. "What I saw in Khan Younis were the most horrific scenes in my entire life," says Canadian ophthalmologist Dr. Yasser Khan. He describes the dire conditions of injured civilians in Gaza, the majority of whom are children. "The genocidal intent of Israeli politicians, the Israeli army, is really clear. What is really bizarre is that they haven't hid it," says Khan. "The killing machine that Israel has unleashed on the healthcare system, I think, is unprecedented. … If the bombings are not going to get you, then disease will surely get you." [See the Program]
The Mainstream Media & The War
Biden Is Mad at Netanyahu? Spare Me.
By Jack Mirkinson, The Nation [February 13, 2024]
---- As Netanyahu plans for what is bound to be a catastrophic ground invasion of Rafah—the area that was supposed to be the "safe zone" for civilians—Biden is once again signaling his discontent while doing nothing to stop Israel's machinery of death from churning on. There will be many more opportunities for reporters to abandon the idea that Biden is exerting any kind of meaningful check on Israel. If they want to really hold Biden to account—rather than help the White House peddle the same hollow fantasy over and over—they should get started now. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
(Video) The Greatest Misinformation Campaign in History
From More Perfect Union [January 16, 2024] – 15 minutes
---- Big Oil has known for more than 50 years that fossil fuels pose a huge danger to the climate. They covered it up to keep raking in profits. It's one of the biggest corporate crimes in history. Now California is suing to make them pay for the damage. Included is commentary from Prof. Naomi Oreskes. [See the Program]
Civil Liberties
Julian Assange's Final Appeal
By Chris Hedges [February 18, 2024]
---- If Julian Assange is denied permission to appeal his extradition to the United States before a panel of two judges at the High Court in London this week, he will have no recourse left within the British legal system. … Julian's "crime" is that he published classified documents, internal messages, reports and videos from the U.S. government and U.S. military in 2010, which were provided by U.S. army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. This vast trove of material revealed massacres of civilians, torture, assassinations, the list of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and the conditions they were subjected to, as well as the Rules of Engagement in Iraq. Those who perpetrated these crimes — including the U.S. helicopter pilots who gunned down two Reuters journalists and 10 other civilians and severely injured two children, all captured in the Collateral Murder video — have never been prosecuted. Julian exposed what the U.S. empire seeks to airbrush out of history. [Read More]
Our History
The Stories of the Bronx
By Emily Raboteau, New York Review of Books [April 7, 2022]
[FB – This is a review of Urban Legends: The South Bronx in Representation and Ruin by Peter L'Official and several other books about The Bronx.]
---- As its name makes plain, the South Bronx lies in the southern part of the Bronx, the northernmost of New York City's five boroughs. On the subway map, the South Bronx extends from the head and neck of northern Manhattan like an elephant ear, separated by the Harlem River. Its borders have been debated over the years, but its many neighborhoods include Concourse, Mott Haven, Melrose, and Port Morris. The 6 train gets you there from Midtown, as Jonathan Kozol points out in his urban classic Amazing Grace (1995), making "nine stops in the 18-minute ride between East 59th Street and Brook Avenue. When you enter the train, you are in the seventh richest congressional district in the nation. When you leave, you are in the poorest." That district would be the Fifteenth—the country's poorest, still. It wasn't always so. [Read More]
