Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
April 28, 2024
Hello All – In response to the widespread student protests against Israel's war on Gaza (see map) and the arrest of several hundred students by police, the on-going genocide in Gaza has been obscured by the outpouring of denunciations of antisemitism. These (mostly) false claims come from the President, from Congress, from the mainstream media, and from college presidents. The students' righteous protests against the mass-killing of noncombatants in Gaza – more than half of the 35,000 dead – are Off the Agenda for news organizations and discussion.
The powerful assault on dissent and Thought-Crimes comes as the long-feared Israeli assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah appears imminent. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says that a date for the invasion "has been set"; and Palestinian Authority leader Abbas says that it will begin in 3 days. Rafah, ordinarily a border city (w/Egypt) with a population of 250,000 people, has been swollen by hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, sent south by the Israeli military during their assaults on northern and central Gaza. President Biden and heads of state around the war have protested loudly against such an assault, which is anticipated to kill tens of thousands of civilians, jam-packed together without shelter. President Biden used to say that an Israeli invasion of Rafah was his "red line"; now he appears to have capitulated to Netanyahu's war plan, perhaps thinking that it would be better to have it over and done with before the US presidential election.
A growing majority of Americans oppose Israeli violence against Gazans, and for a few short weeks the US student uprising put Israel's crimes on the mainstream media front-burner. Over the past 10 days, however, the media framing of antiwar protest has shifted from a focus on the war itself to a focus on alleged student antisemitism. Though police action against the students is vigorously denounced by many college faculty, my reading of the mainstream media is that the crackdown on students is widely supported. This of course is bad for freedom of speech and for academic freedom. It also fits into a narrative that fascism is on the war in the USA.
Let us conclude with some excerpts from a statement by Jewish Voice for Peace, whose student chapters have been in the forefront of campus protests and the antiwar movement more broadly.
"People of conscience across the country are organizing in unprecedented numbers to demand divestment from Israeli apartheid and genocide. Our elected officials and the U.S. media, desperate to maintain unquestioning support for the Israeli war machine in service of their own interests, have responded by exploiting fears of rising antisemitism and smearing peaceful, anti-war protests as dangerous, anti-semitic mobs. As the largest anti-Zionist Jewish organization in the world, we unequivocally reject the conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism and reaffirm in the strongest terms that there is no place for antisemitism in our movements. We condemn the false accusations of antisemitism leveled against principled, anti-war protesters to discredit our movements. We understand these accusations for what they are: a cynical distraction from the ongoing atrocities in Gaza. Over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, with thousands more feared dead. They are currently unearthing the bodies of their loved ones in mass graves. In Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have taken shelter, Israel's military is preparing to invade."
For those of us working for peace, for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, defending the student protesters now becomes a priority. That also means taking head-on the propaganda that being opposed to Israel's war is in itself antisemitic. These are difficult conversations to have, but we must start now and work hard; we can't wait.
Some Essays/Videos Illuminating This Editorial
(Video) The Campus Protests Aren't Perfect. And We Need them Desperately.
From Peter Beinart [April 28, 2024] – 12 minutes
[FB – Peter Beinart argues that Jewish safety and freedom are intertwined with Palestinian freedom and equality. A powerful statement, calling for critical reasoning about the student antiwar movement, but also the need to recognize the movement as having the potential for great and beneficial change in the US and in Israel/Palestine.] [See the Program]
Why They're Calling Student Protesters Antisemites
By Branko Marcetic, Jacobin Magazine [April 2024]
---- Backers of Israel's war have lost the battle for hearts and minds, so they've ginned up a controversy over student protests — they want us talking about anything other than the genocide in Gaza. … With the war now deeply unpopular, and only losing more hearts and minds every day as Americans watch the list of Israeli atrocities pile up and up, its supporters have decided their only recourse is to simply gin up a controversy to draw the media and politicians' attention away from what has been widely declared a genocide in Gaza, while simultaneously making themselves, the supporters of this crime, out to be the real victims. This is why we've now seen several unseemly, often embarrassing attempts by the war's supporters to manufacture victimhood at the hands of the nonviolent protesters. … As tends to happen when authorities respond heavy-handedly to protests, Columbia and others' arrests of students is already backfiring, bringing them negative publicity and inspiring similar, larger, and more militant protests to spring up in solidarity and outrage. But as the campus standoffs take up more headlines, don't forget what this is all really about: trying to get us to talk about something, anything, other than the ongoing mass murder in Gaza that the US government could stop at any moment. [Read More]
No, Mr. Netanyahu, It's Not Anti-Semitic to Criticize the Israeli Government's War
By Sen. Bernie Sanders [April 26, 2024]
[FB – Senator Sanders gave these remarks in reply to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's claim that student protests against Israel's war on Gaza were based simply on student antisemitism, calling for arrests, etc.]
---- No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 people — seventy percent of whom are women and children. It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless — almost half the population. It is not antisemitic to realize that your government has annihilated Gaza's health care system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 health care workers. … Mr. Netanyahu, antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people. But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts. It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your policies. [Read More]
The Crackdown on Campus Protests Is Happening Everywhere
From Student Nation [April 26, 2024]
---- Across the US, pro-Palestine students have faced repression, suspension, and arrest. We asked more than a dozen students to share how their schools have restricted the right to protest. … Since October, universities have suspended student groups, curbed academic speech, and called the police on peaceful protesters on campuses coast to coast. With calls for divestment only growing louder, we asked students nationwide to share how their schools have responded to protests calling for a cease-fire and in support of Palestine. [Read More] Also of interest is (Video) "Hundreds Arrested: Students Across U.S. Protest for Palestine as Campus Crackdown Intensifies," from Democracy Now! [April 25, 2024] [Link]
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 send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
We need an exodus from Zionism
By Naomi Klein, The Guardian [UK] [April 24, 2024]
---- I've been thinking about Moses, and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf. The ecofeminist in me was always uneasy about this story: what kind of God is jealous of animals? What kind of God wants to hoard all the sacredness of the Earth for himself? But there is a less literal way of understanding this story. It is about false idols. About the human tendency to worship the profane and shiny, to look to the small and material rather than the large and transcendent. What I want to say to you tonight at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshipping a false idol once again. They are enraptured by it. Drunk on it. Profaned by it. That false idol is called Zionism.[Read More] Postscript – Naomi Klein gave this speech at the "Seder in the Streets," in Brooklyn, near the home of Senator Schumer, on the second night of Passover. For Democracy Now!'s coverage of this event, go here. For a video of Naomi Klein delivering her speech at the "Seder in the Streets," go here.
Will the Freedom Flotilla Sail to Gaza?
By Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies, Code Pink [April 23, 2024]
---- The non-violence training to join the Freedom Flotilla Coalition's ships to Gaza has been intense. As hundreds of us from 32 countries gathered in Istanbul, we were briefed about what we might encounter on this voyage. "We have to be ready for every possibility," our trainers insisted. The best scenario, they said, is that our three ships–one carrying 5,500 tons of humanitarian aid and two carrying the passengers–will reach Gaza and accomplish our mission. Another scenario would be that the Turkish government might cave to pressure from Israel, the United States and Germany, and prevent the boats from even leaving Istanbul. … Another possibility is that the ships take off but the Israelis illegally hijack us in international waters, confiscate our boats and supplies, arrest and imprison us, and eventually deport us. This happened on several other voyages to Gaza, one of them with deadly consequences. [Read More] Also of interest is "The Freedom Flotilla Is Sailing Into Its Most Dangerous Waters Yet," by Saliha Bayrak, The Nation [April 26, 2024] [Link].
Genocide in Real Time
By Ronald Grigor Suny, The Nation [April 25, 2024]
---- As a scholar of genocide and author of a book on the Armenian Genocide, "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton University Press, 2015), I have pondered the fraught definition of genocide as set out in the United Nations Convention on Genocide. In my own work, and in accordance with the UN definition, I consider genocide to be the deliberate crime "committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, in whole or in part, as such." Genocide is not simply the killing of people—or eliminating political groups, or so called "cultural genocide"—but the mass killing of a people. …. Not surprisingly, young people, along with progressive Democrats in Congress appalled by the massive destruction of Gaza, have rallied to the cause of the Palestinians. Increasing numbers of observers believe the Gaza killings constitute genocide. [Read More]
Nuclear Power's Lethal, Larcenous End Game
By Harvey Wasserman, Counterpunch [April 26, 2024]
---- For the first time since 1954, no large new atomic reactors are under construction or on order in the United States. On March 1, 2024, Vogtle Unit 4 connected to the Georgia grid …years behind schedule and billions over budget. Once hyped as "too cheap to meter," America's last large light-water reactor thus forever froze the "Peaceful Atom" in financial failure. Despite enormous public hype and subsidies, ZERO new US atomic reactors—large or small— are likely to become significantly available here for at least a decade. The first will likely be an unproven "Small Modular Reactor" prototype already leaning toward a trillion-dollar failure. … When it comes to the myth of nuke power helping to fight global warming…there's no there there. … Despite the latest round of "Nuclear Renaissance" hype, the US lacks the industrial capacity to produce impactful new reactors—large or small— before 2030, if then. The void comes when we most desperately need to reduce carbon emissions. The mega-grift for unproven new nukes cripples the vital transition to renewables, multiplying the planet-killing impacts of fossil fuels…and of decrepit old reactors whose average age is now over 40. [Read More]
The Student Uprising
Columbia Protests Now and in '68
By Jonah Raskin, Counterpunch [April 25, 2024]
---- The student protests on the campus of Columbia University this April have reminded me of the protests that took place there 56 years ago. Along with about 700 or so other men and women, I was arrested and jailed at the Tombs in Manhattan. Those arrests didn't curtail student protests. Indeed, there were demonstrations later that year and again in 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972. When push comes to shove, Columbia has called on the police again and again and the police have arrived in force and have made arrests. … In the late 1960s and early 1970s, we raised awareness about the university's collaboration with the war machine and with institutions of racism and patriarchy. Columbia began to hire women and Black and brown intellectuals and to revise the curriculum in response to student demands to make education relevant to their own lives and their times. … That middle ground seems to have evaporated. Indeed, the ground under our own feet has shifted dramatically. There is less room for dissenting opinions today than there was in '68, near the height of the war in Vietnam. There are also more virulent anti-Arab and more virulent anti-Jewish voices today than there were then. Better prepare for the rocky road ahead. [Read More] Also of interest is "Poisoning the American Mind: Student Protests in the Age of the New McCarthyism," by Henry Giroux, Counterpunch [April 26, 2024] [Link].
Inside the Week That Shook Columbia University
By Nicholas Fandos and Sharon Otterman, New York Times [April 23, 2024]
---- The secretive deliberations that followed over 24 frantic hours have sent Columbia into a crisis over free speech and safety unlike any the campus has seen since 1968. The events also set off a chain reaction rattling campuses across the country, just as one of the most trying academic years in memory neared its end. … In the fall, the university suspended two student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, whose rolling protests repeatedly violated its policies. This month, it suspended students who it said had been involved in an event called "Resistance 101," where speakers openly praised Hamas. [Read More] Also about the protests at Columbia – (Video) "Pro-Palestinian Campus Encampments Spread Nationwide Amid Mass Arrests at Columbia, NYU & Yale," from Democracy Now! [April 23, 2024] [Link]; and (Video) "LIVE From Encampment: Jewish Columbia Student NOT Afraid" [Link]. -25 minutes
The War on Gaza
The Rafah invasion will be catastrophic
By Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss [April 27, 2024]
---- With the page seeming to have at least temporarily turned on a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, the promised Israeli invasion of Rafah is once again looming large. On Friday, a "high-level" Egyptian delegation arrived in Israel to continue attempts to negotiate a ceasefire, as Cairo's fears of a large exodus of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai have been renewed. … Even if Egypt succeeds in finding an agreement on a delay in Israel's invasion of Rafah, all it will do is delay the inevitable because there is no common ground to unearth between Israel and Hamas on a permanent agreement. Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that Israel simply doesn't want one because a permanent agreement means the end of the military actions by both sides. For Netanyahu, that means that if all the rest of the hostages die, if the entire Middle East becomes even more unstable, and even if the conflict widens — so be it. [Read More]
From the river to the sea, Israel is waging the same war
By Orly Noy, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [April 26, 2024]
---- The Gaza assault cannot be understood separately from Israel's divide-and-conquer strategy against Palestinians in Jenin, Jerusalem, and Nazareth. … The categorization of Palestinians into separate classes — citizens inside Israel, permanent residents of East Jerusalem, occupied subjects in the West Bank, prisoners in the Gaza ghetto, and refugees in exile — is at the heart of Israel's policy of divide and conquer. It effectively negates the existence of the Palestinians as a single and organic people, while keeping them all under the rule of Jewish supremacy. ... Since October 7, Israel has been waging an all-out war not only against the residents of Gaza, but against the entire Palestinian people. True, in Gaza, this war is being waged with such unprecedented cruelty as to be called a genocide. But if we see the Israeli regime as a hand with five fingers, each gripping a different part of the Palestinian people, it becomes clear how this hand has clenched into a single iron fist. [Read More]
The War in Ukraine
What $61 Billion for Ukraine Won't Do. There are problems money can't fix.
By Ted Snider, The American Conservative [April 24, 2024]
---- Though the aid package "is extremely unlikely to have any meaningful impact on the eventual outcome of the war," Alexander Hill, professor of military history at the University of Calgary, told TAC, it "will certainly prolong the bloodshed." Geoffrey Roberts, professor emeritus of history at University College Cork, agrees that the aid will just "prolong Ukraine's agony." He told TAC that "Ukraine will lose more people, more territory and its viability as an independent state." "This decision will only prolong the agony of Ukraine and Europe," Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, told TAC. But, he added, "It also raises the stakes, and pushes the world one step further towards a cataclysm the likes of which we have never seen. Now is the time to start de-escalating, and to outline what it would take to start a diplomatic process of some sort." [Read More] Also of interest – "Pentagon Announces Additional $6 Billion in Military Aid for Ukraine," by John Ismay, New York Times [April 26, 2024] [Link].
War with China?
A New Pacific Arsenal to Counter China
ByJohn Ismay, et al., New York Times [April 26, 2024]
---- Since the start of his administration, President Biden has undertaken a strategy to expand American military access to bases in allied nations across the Asia-Pacific region and to deploy a range of new weapons systems there. He has also said the U.S. military would defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. On Wednesday, Mr. Biden signed a $95-billion supplemental military aid and spending bill that Congress had just passed and that includes $8.1 billion to counter China in the region. And Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken traveled to Shanghai and Beijing this week for meetings in which he planned to raise China's aggressive actions around Taiwan and the South China Sea. [Read More]
The State of the Union
(Video) Labor Organizer Jane McAlevey on UAW's Astounding Victory in VW Tennessee & Her Fight Against Cancer
From Democracy Now! [April 23, 2024]
---- Democracy Now! speaks with the great labor organizer and writer Jane McAlevey about the historic victory for Volkswagen employees at a Chattanooga, Tennessee, factory who voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers union. The plant will become the first foreign-owned car factory in the South to unionize. "This win wasn't just a win — it was what we would call a beatdown," says McAlevey, who says the UAW's recent success is a result of direct democracy and smart, strategic organizing that could lead to the unionizing of Mercedes workers in Alabama. "It'll be a massive change in the U.S. South." We also speak with McAlevey about her terminal cancer diagnosis and why she's "going to fight until the last dying minute, because that's what American workers deserve." [See the Program] Also of interest – "The Covid Revisionists Are Endangering Us All," by Gregg Gonsalves, The Nation [April 25, 2024] [Link]; and (Video) "The Supreme Court Is a Product of Minority Rule": Author Ari Berman on America's Undemocratic System, from Democracy Now! [April 26, 2024] [Link].
Our History
Mandela's world. A photographic retrospective of apartheid South Africa.
By Jurgen Schadeberg, Aljazeera [April 26, 2024]
[FB – Friday was the 30th anniversary of the transition to democracy in South Africa.]
---- On April 27, 1994, South Africa held its first multiracial democratic election, voting out apartheid and voting in its first Black president, Nelson Mandela. Forty-six years prior, in 1948, apartheid - a system built on white supremacy, segregation and inequality - was signed into law. It fomented the boundaries between races, cutting people off from one another with increasingly restrictive rules. In the vibrant multiracial enclaves of Johannesburg in the 1950s, apartheid police clamped down while many non-white people resisted. Among those documenting life and resistance under apartheid for the famed Drum magazine, was young German-born photographer Jurgen Schadeberg. On the streets of Johannesburg, he captured vibrant, diverse communities at a time when the apartheid government was trying its hardest to remove every trace of multiracialism from its streets. Through his lens, he also immortalised leading struggle and cultural icons, among them Oliver Tambo, Miriam Makeba and Nelson Mandela himself. [Read More]
