Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
March 3, 2024
Hello All – Children have started to die of forced starvation in Gaza. UN agencies have estimated that more than 500,000 people in Gaza are at risk/on the edge of starvation. On February 27, according to the UN's ReliefWeb, "Save the Children warned that Gaza is witnessing 'a mass killing of children in slow motion because there is no food left and nothing getting to them,' echoing earlier warnings of the threat of malnutrition among children by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO)." One of the most active organizations supporting humanitarian rescue in Gaza is the Norwegian Refugee Council. On February 29th, its director reported witnessing "the children of Gaza visibly malnourished, reduced to searching the streets for food and assistance. It is unimaginable," he said, "that an entire population is left to starve while vast amounts of supplies sit waiting just a few miles away across the border" [Link].
A population starving to death and lived-streamed on the Internet is obviously an embarrassment for President Biden, whose efforts to block a permanent ceasefire have so far been successful. Yesterday the President pushed back, joining Jordan is air-dropping ready-eat-meals (30,000 it was said) to the starving population of Gaza. One pro-Palestinian source headlined its report: "Demeaning airdrops over Gaza are humanitarian aid theater." We must remember what the Palestinians so bitterly know:; that following a mere request from the Israeli government, the Biden people initiated a funding boycott (now with 2 dozen other countries) to block further aid to the UN's main relief organization UNRWA. On Thursday, Israel's murder of more than 100 people waiting for a food delivery underscored Israel's intention to use forced starvation as a tool of ethnic cleansing/genocide in Gaza.
There are now serious questions about whether Biden can possibly regain the electoral support he has lost – and thus the presidential election itself – by his callousness towards Gaza's population and his refusal to produce a ceasefire. A useful article about the defection of 13 percent of Democratic primary voters in Michigan last week is entitled "Michigan's Primary Shows Biden Is Courting Political Suicide." Two recent in-depth surveys of voter preferences illustrates Biden's dilemma. One survey concludes that a "Majority of Muslim and Jewish Democrats Favor a Permanent Ceasefire in Gaza"; and a second survey is headed "Voters Support the U.S. Calling for Permanent Ceasefire in Gaza and Conditioning Military Aid to Israel."
This is where we are. Millions of Democratic voters are appalled by the immoral and irrational stance of the Biden administration towards Israel's war on Gaza, at the same time that we are bewildered by his apparent determination to stick with Israel's genocidal war, even at the risk of his re-election. Work for peace.
Useful articles about Gaza's humanitarian crisis
(Video) Gaza Ceasefire Could Save 75,000 from Death: Report from London School of Hygiene & Johns Hopkins
From Democracy Now! [February 26, 2024]
---- A new report on Gaza's escalating health crisis projects that due to the extent of destruction wrought upon the region's infrastructure since October, thousands of Palestinians will continue to die from disease, malnutrition, dehydration and starvation, regardless of whether Israel continues to pursue its military assault. "In case of an escalation, we'd see around 85,000 deaths," warns Zeina Jamaluddine, a nutritionist and epidemiologist who is one of the lead authors of "Crisis in Gaza: Scenario-Based Health Impact Projections" from the London School of Hygiene and Johns Hopkins University. Jamaluddine also says it is not too late to stop the bulk of these forecasted deaths, should a ceasefire be immediately put into place and aid deliveries resumed. "In case of a ceasefire now, we would be saving around 75,000 lives." [See the Program]
(Video) Devastation in Gaza unlike any other war zone American doctor has been to.
From Sixty Minutes [February 25, 2024] – 13 minutes
---- Children in Gaza are suffering shrapnel injuries and people are getting amputations without any anesthesia. Doctors and aid workers say the medications and supplies they need aren't getting through. [See the Program]
The Biden Administration Joins Israel's War on UNRWA
By Phyllis Bennis, The Nation [February 28, 2024]
---- The impact of the aid cuts on the already threatened lives of 2.3 million displaced Gazans, as well as millions more Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, can hardly be overstated. US officials who suggested redirection of UNRWA funds to UNICEF and the World Food Program only showed their ignorance of conditions on the ground, and the capacities of aid organizations. UNICEF and WFP together have less than 70 staff on the ground in Gaza; UNRWA has over 13,000 providing, for more than half a century, all the services that ordinarily would be provided by a government civil service. Most of Gaza's doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, street sweepers are UNRWA employees. Without UNRWA, all the UN agencies and NGOs would be unable to carry out their crucial work. Thousands, probably tens of thousands more civilians—especially babies, children, pregnant women, and the elderly—will die. [Read More]
The Bowman Campaign
The Bowman campaign has started its "field organizing" for the June 25th Democratic Party congressional primary election. Rep. Bowman's field organizer is Ilona Duverge: experienced, a campaign-winner, etc. If you would like to help the Bowman campaign with collecting petition signatures, phone-banking, writing postcards, etc. theses and other campaign efforts are underway and need your help. For more info, to volunteer, etc., email ilona@bowmanforcongress.com.
AIPAC – the American Israel Political Action Committee – has interjected its huge financial and political resources into a campaign to defeat pro-Palestinian Democrats, either in the primary elections or the November general elections. They are supporting & funding "moderate" Democrats and even Republicans. A useful article about AIPAC was published this week in the leading Israeli liberal newspaper Haaretz. Read ""AIPAC, Explained: The Inside Story of America's Powerful and Divisive pro-Israel Lobby," by Ben Samuels, [February 28, 2024] [Link].
News Notes
A group called Westchester4Palestine has introduced a Ceasefire Resolution into the Yonkers City Council. To read the Resolution, and to learn more about the group, go here. The Freedom2Boycott NYS Coalition supports the BDS movement and works to end the NYS prohibition on supporting boycotts of Israeli products, etc. CFOW is a member of this Coalition; and the Coalition has just released a terrific 5-minute film called The Right to Boycott. The film highlights the important role boycott has played in winning struggles in the US and who is behind the anti-boycott laws trying to throttle Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. Check it out!
Worried about what a Trump presidency would look like? Well, we should be. Some Deep Thinkers from his political orbit have written an 887-page guidance for a second Trump administration. It is called "Mandate for Leadership," and it was produced by the far-right Heritage Foundation. For a useful primer on what the Heritage Foundation wants Trump to do if/when, read "What I Learned When I Read 887 Pages of Plans for Trump's Second Term," by Carlos Lozada, New York Times [February 29, 2024] [Link]. We have been warned.
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!
The Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers this week mark the beginning of Women's History Month with some music by some old friends in Cambridge, Mass., put together almost 50 years ago. I speak, of course, of the New Harmony Sisterhood Band. Here are some of their classics: "Union Maid" (with Marcia Diehl); "Sojourner Truth"; and "Working Class Woman." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
What Is Left? Rebecca Solnit on the Perennial Divisions of the American Left
By Rebecca Solnit, Literary Hub [February 23, 2024]
---- In late 1936 George Orwell, like so many young idealists from Europe and the USA, went off to fight fascism in Spain. By the spring of 1937 he realized he was in a war with not two but three sides. The USSR was holding back a full Spanish revolution while attacking the socialists and anarchists outside its control. Facing prison and possible execution himself, not from the fascists, but the Soviet-allied forces, Orwell fled Spain. Orwell would spend the rest of his life trying to clarify that in his time the left meant both idealists committed to human rights, equality, and justice and supporters of a Stalinism that was the antithesis of all those things. He wrote after he got back to England: "When I left Barcelona in June the jails were bulging… But the point to notice is that the people who are in prison now are not Fascists but revolutionaries; they are there not because their opinions are too much to the Right, but because they are too much to the Left. And the people responsible for putting them there are… the communists." [Read More]
Palestine & the Commons: Or, Marx & the Musha'a
By Peter Linebaugh, Counterpunch [March 1, 2024]
---- I approach the wars in Palestine neither as an Arabic nor a Hebrew scholar or even as one knowledgeable to other forms of life in the region—olive, almond, fig, citrus fruits, sheep, cotton, or grains like wheat. I come as a student, with a life-long admiration for the radical, abolitionist, and antinomian traditions: Jesus and the prophets, Karl Marx, Gerard Winstanley, Thomas Spence, Olaudah Equiano, the IWW, Frederick Douglass, … and then I became an historian of all the above with particular interest in the commons. As Marcus Rediker and I said in the introduction to the Arabic translation of our Many-Headed Hydra, Herodotus, "the grandfather of history," explained that Palestine lay between Phoenicia and Egypt. [Read Moe]
Remembering Aaron Bushnell
(Video) The Life & Death of Aaron Bushnell: U.S. Airman Self-Immolates Protesting U.S. Support for Israel in Gaza
From Democracy Now! [February 28, 2024]
---- In an act that has captured the attention of the world, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington Sunday to protest Israel's assault on Gaza and U.S. support for the military campaign. Bushnell, who live-streamed the action, said, "I will no longer be complicit in genocide," before lighting himself on fire and repeatedly shouted "Free Palestine" as he was engulfed in the flames. He was pronounced dead in the hospital later that day. Democracy Now! speaks with Bushnell's friend and conscientious objector Levi Pierpont, who says his friend's death was not a suicide but was about using his life to send a message for justice. Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army colonel and former diplomat, lays out the history of self-immolation to protest war and how Bushnell's act could impact U.S. policy for the war on Gaza. [See the Program] For more on Aaron Bushnell – "Why Would Anyone Kill Themselves to Stop a War? On Aaron Bushnell and Others," by Ann Wright, Common Dreams [February 26, 2024] [Link]; "Filthy, Rotten System Refusers: Aaron, Rachel and Silas," by Kathleen Wallace, Counterpunch [March 1, 2024] [Link]; and "Aaron Bushnell's Divine Violence," by Chris Hedges [February 29, 2024] [Link].
The War in Gaza
Lives Ended in Gaza [Photo Essay]
By Ben Hubbard, et al., New York Times [March 2, 2024]
---- They served cappuccinos, repaired cars and acted onstage. They raised children and took care of older parents. They treated wounds, made pizza and put too much sugar in their tea. They loved living in Gaza or sought to leave it behind. They represent a fraction of the more than 30,000 people the local authorities say have been killed in Gaza in four and a half months of war. Their stories offer a snapshot of the vast human loss — one in every 73 of Gaza's 2.2 million people. [Read More]
(Video) In Gaza now, it's worse than ethnic cleansing
From Aljazeera ("Centre Stage") [February 25, 2024]
---- In this episode of Centre Stage, our guest is Ilan Pappé. He's an Israeli historian and professor at the University of Exeter. Pappé is known for his outspoken views on the Israeli-Palestinian question - drawing both praise and criticism. He's the author of several books including "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine", in which he challenges the traditional Israeli narrative over the establishment of Israel in 1948. In today's episode, Pappé discusses the dangers of the Zionist ideology and its impact on Israel and Palestine, the historical context of October 7, and his vision for a one-state solution. Dareen Abughaida is a principal presenter at Al Jazeera English. [See the Program]
Unilateral Actions
By Amjad Iraqi, New York Review of Books [March 2, 2024]
---- So far most Western governments have played along with the idea that a war waged with openly sadistic intent is more conducive to peace than bringing that war to an immediate halt. Now, as they begin to reckon with the consequences of their complicity, they are acting as if they can influence Israel more readily with carefully chosen words than by wielding the vast economic and military leverage at their disposal. If that logic is inverted, a ceasefire is only the first step. The obliteration of Gaza is proof, if any more were needed, that Palestinians must immediately be released from the tyranny of apartheid—not to live in a shriveled quasi-state at the mercy of Israeli diktats, but to live as free people in their homeland. That is an item worth adding to the wish list for the "day after." [Read More] Also of interest – "Israeli Attempts to Depopulate Gaza, A Brief History," by Zachary Foster, Palestine Nexus [March1, 2024] [Link]; and "Israel's Far Right Finally Gets the War It Has Always Wanted," by James Bamford,The Nation [February 26, 2024] [Link].
The Genocide Case at the International Court of Justice
Israel Not Complying with World Court Order in Genocide Case
By Human Rights Watch, Informed Comment [March 1, 2024]
---- The Israeli government has failed to comply with at least one measure in the legally binding order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in South Africa's genocide case, Human Rights Watch said today. Citing warnings about "catastrophic conditions" in Gaza, the court ordered Israel on January 26, 2024, to "take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian aid," and to report back on its compliance to the specific measures "within one month." One month later, however, Israel continues to obstruct the provision of basic services and the entry and distribution within Gaza of fuel and lifesaving aid, acts of collective punishment that amount to war crimes and include the use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war. [Read More]
The West Bank
The West Bank: Settler Colonial Spillover of the Gaza Genocide
By Samia al-Botmeh, et al., Al- Shabaka [February 25, 2024]
---- Since the assault on Gaza began in October, 2023, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, injured, or missing, likely buried under the rubble of their homes or shelters. Nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced, with cold, thirst, and hunger ravaging the entire population. While the world deliberates on the technicalities of genocide, Israeli colonization of the West Bank and disruption to Palestinian life there has only accelerated. In this roundtable, Fathi Nimer, Abdaljawad Omar, Basil Farraj, and Samia Botmeh discuss the situation in the West Bank since October 7th 2023. Parallel to the Israeli regime's genocide campaign on Gaza, the authors delve into the false dichotomy between settler and state, the passivity of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the individual and collective imprisonment of Palestinians, and the dire state of the West Bank economy. [Read More]
The Wider War
Red Sea attacks in Sympathy with Gaza Escalate as Yemeni Houthis' Resilience Surprises Biden
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [February 26, 2024]
---- The Helpers of God (Ansar Allah) or Houthis in Yemen are proving a bigger challenge for the Biden Administration's attempt to run interference for the Israeli atrocities in Gaza than Washington had expected. Just Monday morning the Yemeni forces fired a ballistic missile at the US-owned and —operated M/V Torm Thor, an oil tanker, but it fell short. The leadership say they are hitting Red Sea traffic as a protest against Israel's war against Gaza. Enormous crowds in the hundreds of thousands have demonstrated in Sanaa and other cities against the Israeli campaign against Gaza, which the International Criminal Court has ruled may be a genocide. [Read More]
The Mainstream Media
The Intercept: New York Times Exposé Lacks Evidence to Claim Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence Oct. 7
From Democracy Now! [March 1, 2024]
---- We speak with Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim of The Intercept about their exposé of a major New York Times piece into alleged mass rapes committed by Hamas militants on October 7 that raises serious questions about the accuracy of the story. The Times article was headlined "'Screams Without Words': How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7," and its release in late December helped the Israeli government to justify the ongoing war on Gaza and to paint pro-Palestine supporters abroad as not caring about sexual violence…. "The New York Times has grave, grave mischaracterizations, sins of omission, reliance on people who have no forensic or criminology credentials to be asserting that there was a systematic rape campaign put in place here," says Scahill, who criticizes the newspaper for not issuing any corrections for their flawed reporting. [See the Program] Also of interest – The Intercept's story, "Between the Hammer and the Anvil": The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Exposé, can be read here. Also of interest is "The Nixonian "New York Times" Stonewalls on a Discredited Article About Hamas and Rape," by Jeet Heer, The Nation [March 1, 2024] [Link]; and "American Media Keep Citing Zaka — Though Its October 7 Atrocity Stories Are Discredited in Israel," by Arun Gupta, The Intercept [February 27 2024] [Link].
The War in Ukraine
(Video) Should U.S. Send More Weapons to Ukraine? A Debate on Funding & Ways to End Two-Year-Old War
From Democracy Now! [February 27, 2024]
---- It has been two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, sparking a brutal war in which tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have died. With Ukraine running low on both weapons and new recruits, and with more U.S. funding stalled in Congress, we host a discussion on the future of the conflict with peace activist Medea Benjamin of CodePink and Oberlin professor Stephen Crowley, an expert on Russian and Eastern European politics. While both agree on the need to end the war, Crowley says the $60 billion U.S. funding package should be passed in order to give Ukraine a stronger negotiating position. "The only reason to fund Ukraine right now is to get both sides to the negotiating table to end this war," he says. Benjamin, however, says more funding will inevitably be used to continue the fighting. "It will only give the impetus for Zelensky to keep trying to fight a war that is not winnable," she says, adding that progressives are making a mistake to cede the antiwar position to "the extreme right of the Republican Party." [See the Program]
Civil Liberties [Julian Assange]
US Refuses to Assure UK Judges That Assange Won't Be Executed If He's Extradited
By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [February 27, 2024]
---- Assange is asking the U.K. High Court to review issues of treaty obligations, human rights violations and political persecution. The U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty would allow the U.S. to amend or add charges which could expose Assange to the death penalty, a punishment prohibited in the U.K. In response to questioning by one of the judges, the prosecutor admitted that the U.S. had not provided assurances that Assange would not be subject to the death penalty if extradited. Article 4(1) of the extradition treaty does not allow extradition for political offenses. Espionage is the "quintessential" political offense. [Read More]
The State of the Union
The Supreme Court Must Be Stopped
By Elie Mystal, The Nation [March 1, 2024]
---- We must regard the Supreme Court with [a serious] level of skepticism. These people are not our friends; they are not here to help, and at any moment they can take from us that which we should value most: our ability to democratically govern ourselves. The court has been taking that away from us, fairly consistently, for the past 24 years, ever since it anointed George W. Bush as president in 2000 despite the fact that Bush lost the popular vote and likely would have lost the electoral count had all the votes (both undervotes and overvotes) been recounted in Florida. We failed to punish the court for its overreach then, and that failure has only emboldened the court to become what it is today. Put simply: The Supreme Court must be stopped. [Read More]. Also of interest is Mystal's essay on court expansion – also in The Nation – "There Is Only One Way for Biden to Fulfill His Promise to "Restore Roe" [February 20, 2024] [Link].
Our History
Harriet Tubman and the Most Important, Understudied Battle of the Civil War
By Eric Herschthal, The New Republic [February 26, 2024]
[FB – This a review of a new book by Edda L. Fields-Black, Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War].
---- On June 2, 1863, not long after midnight, 300 recently escaped slaves, all armed and with at least one woman among them, invaded a stretch of rice plantations along the Combahee River in South Carolina. …. Given the scale of the invasion and the number of Black people emancipated, this attack, known as the Combahee River Raid, could plausibly be considered the largest slave rebellion in American history. It might even be called the largest slave rebellion in what was the largest slave revolution in modern world history. Not even the Haitian Revolution—the first successful slave-led war to overthrow slavery—liberated as many Black people as the one in which the Combahee River Raid was only a part. [Read More]
Every Woman Is a Working Woman ["Wages for Housework"]
Silvia Federici is interviewed by Jill Richards, Boston Review of Books [December 19, 2018].
---- In 1972 feminists from Italy, England, and the United States convened in Padova, Italy, for a two-day conference. Associated with the extra-parliamentary left, anti-colonial struggles, and alternatives to the communist party, these activists composed a declaration for action, the "Statement of the International Feminist Collective." The statement rejects a separation between unwaged work in the home and waged work in the factory, pronouncing housework as a critical terrain in the class struggle against capitalism. Silvia Federici, an Italian expat living in New York, attended the conference and afterward returned to New York to found the New York Wages for Housework Committee. In the following years, Wages for Housework committees were launched in a number of U.S. cities. [Read More]
