Concerned Families of Westchester
May 12, 2024
Hello All – Last Monday the world breathed a sigh of relief. Hamas had agreed to the proposed peace deal that would end the fighting in Gaza, exchange hostages for prisoners, and re-open the roads for food & aid.
After a war of more than 200 days, with 35,000 dead in Gaza, including 15,000 children, and with about 100 Israelis held hostage in Gaza, it looked like the war might end. Rejoicing broke out in the streets of Gaza, and hostage families in Israel had new hope. Now all this has gone; Israel said NO.
What we have now is the likelihood of a new round of genocide in Gaza. Israel has seized the border crossing with Egypt and is forcing the evacuation of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1.5 million refugees have ended up. Bombs are falling, and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu vows that the bloodiest part of the Gaza war is coming.
To our horror, President Biden has stepped aside and turned away. While some weapons going to Israel have been blocked, Biden says that US support for Israel is "ironclad." By failing to cut off ALL weapons and money to Israel, and by not using US diplomatic power at the UN and elsewhere, Mr. Biden has signed the death warrants for thousands more Palestinian, risking a regional war and making it more likely that Donald Trump will win in November. – We must keep fighting against this war; we can't give up. Work for peace.
Some Illuminating Commentaries
Antisemitism, Then and Now: A Guide for the Perplexed
By Omer Bartov, The Nation [May 10, 2024]
---- Even more important is a total misunderstanding of what antisemitism actually is and how it can and must be resisted. To be sure, antisemitism existed decades before the Jewish state was established—and would not disappear if Israel ceased to exist. But currently, it is Israeli policies—not only in Gaza, but more generally the long-term occupation and oppression of Palestinians—that are giving license to real antisemites, as well as converting supporters of the state, even those who once loved and cherished it, into determined opponents, in the name of precisely the same values that were supposed to have led to Israel's creation: liberty, dignity for the oppressed, resistance against the oppressor, solidarity with the victims, and determined opposition to unbridled violence and the killing of innocents. [Read More] Also of interest - "The New Anti-Antisemitism," by Rick Perlstein, The American Prospect [May 8, 2024] [Link]; and "Weaponizing Antisemitism," by Ellen Cantarow and Jennifer Loewenstein, Common Dreams [May 10, 2024] [Link].
(Video) Aid Worker in Gaza: "To Say There's Not an Incursion in Rafah Right Now Is Patently False"
From Democracy Now! [May 9, 2024]
---- Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians are fleeing Rafah as Israeli airstrikes and shelling hammer the eastern part of the city. Fuel, food, medicine and other supplies have been cut off following Israel's seizure and closure of the border crossing with Egypt. The main hospital in the area has also been shut down. Over 1.4 million people are seeking shelter in Rafah, the southernmost city of the Gaza Strip. Tent camps in some parts of Rafah have now vanished, springing up again as displaced families head back north. Over 60 Palestinians were killed across Gaza, many of them in Rafah, over the past 24 hours. We get a live update from Rafah from Dorotea Gucciardo of the Glia Project, who is currently on a medical mission in Gaza. [Read More] Perspectives on the "Non-Incursion" – "Rafah Is in Panic as the Israeli Invasion Begins," by Ruwaida Kamal Amer and Mahmoud Mushtaha, The Nation [May 8, 2024] [Link]; "600,000 Palestinian Kids in Rafah Can't "Evacuate" Safely, UNICEF Official Says," by Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept [May 8, 2024] [Link]; and (Video) "They Are Starving," Says Doctor Back from Gaza; World Food Programme Warns North in "Full-Blown Famine," from Democracy Now! [May 6, 2024] [Link].
A View from Cairo
By Yasmin El-Rifae, New York Review of Books [May 12, 2024]
[FB – Egypt has joined South Africa in its filing with the International Court of Justice that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. For Egypt to do this is huge, a diplomatic disaster for both Israel and the US. This article supplies some context.]
---- Since the beginning of the war Israel has urged Egypt to let it push people into Sinai, the peninsula on the Egyptian side of the border. The Egyptian government has consistently refused these proposals, in an effort both to protect its own interests—it says it does not want Palestinian fighters attacking Israel from its territory—and to maintain a historic Arab position of rejecting Palestinian displacement. The people fleeing Gaza know they may not be able to return in their lifetimes. Many are from families that were forced south by Zionist militias in 1948; they have lived for seventy-five years just a few miles from their homes in towns and villages that are now in Israel. … The American-backed alliance between the two countries has never been accepted by the Egyptian people, who share a history of anti-imperialist struggle with their Palestinian neighbors. It is becoming ever clearer that there cannot be freedom for people on one side of Rafah and not the other. [Read More]
The Bowman Campaign
On Monday, May 13th, the first/only (?) debate between Rep. Jamaal Bowman and challenger George Latimer will take place at 8:30 p.m. It is sponsored/organized by Channel 12. All the info I have on this can be found here. For those who supported George Latimer in the past and now support Rep. Bowman in this election, please consider this list/letter in formation – "Latimer Lost Us - Sign on Letter for Former Supporters" [Link].
For information about Rep. Bowman – his campaign, where he stands on the issues, how to get involved/help out - go here.
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
Unfurling Love from the Window
By Kathy Kelly, The Progressive [May 10, 2024]
----- On April 30, when Columbia University student protesters took over Hamilton Hall, they renamed it "Hind's Hall," dropping a large banner out the windows above the building's entrance. This was a hall famously occupied by students in the 1968 protests against the Vietnam War and against Jim Crow racism in the United States. The students are risking suspension and expulsion, and a very real blacklist has already been generated against them, with Congress joining in to define criticism of genocide as a form of antisemitism that state universities and state-linked employers will not be allowed to tolerate. I believe their love for Hind Rajab guides the movement so desperately needed to resist militarism. Hind was six years old when Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons to kill her. [Read More]
A New Jewishness Is Being Born Before Our Eyes
By Will Alden, The Nation [May 10, 2024]
---- The future of our people is being written on campuses and in the streets. Thousands of Jews of all ages are creating something better than what we inherited. A new Jewish tradition is growing in those places where solidarity flourishes. Amid the ugliness and death, and as our institutions cleave to the mistaken idea that our safety comes from ever more brutal applications of state power, the future of our people is being written on campuses and in the streets. Thousands of Jews of all ages are creating something better than what we inherited. Our new Jewish tradition prioritizes truth-telling and justice, and in this way it is actually the old Jewish tradition, which has given us all the tools we're using. …The goal we're striving for is clear: to end this US-backed war and secure liberation and justice for Palestinians. Yet our striving itself has value. In an essay published in an earlier season of protest, the spring of 1968, the critic John Berger calls it "a convenient rationalization" to say that demonstrations are intended to move those in power. "The truth is that mass demonstrations are rehearsals for revolution: not strategic or even tactical ones, but rehearsals of revolutionary awareness." [Read More]
A Year Under the Palestine Exception at Columbia University
By Joseph A. Howley, The Nation [May 7, 2024]
---- We speak in the academy of the "Palestine exception" to free speech: that you can protest about any topic except Palestine. Our graduating students bid farewell to an institution now involved in what we might call the Palestine example: Israel-Palestine as one of those special causes, like police violence in 2020, against which the total force of suppression is brought to bear, and an example is to be made of any who dare protest. The Columbia and Barnard classes of 2024 have had the misfortune of an unusually clear education in the nature of power in and around the academy. Whatever they thought a university was when they applied, when they arrived in September 2020 prepared to dig into Homer's Iliad, they graduate now knowing fundamental truths about what a university actually is that even my colleagues and I are struggling to truly grasp. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/columbia-barnard-palestine-protests-gaza/ Also of interest – "A Diary of a Palestinian Living in Israel," by Diana Buttu, Palestinian lawyer [May 7, 2024] [Link]; and "Most hated country in the world," by Rafia Zakaria, Democracy for the Arab World Now [DAWN] [May 8, 2024] [Link].
The War on Gaza
I Shall Stand at Attention to Remember Them All – Israelis and Palestinians
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [May 12, 2024]
---- I shall remember them all Monday. I shall remember Pvt. Gideon Bachrach, after whom I am named. I will stand at attention during the Memorial Day sirens, to honor his memory and the memory of all those who died in Israel's wars. I will think about the people who were slaughtered at the Nova music festival and in the communities along the border with Gaza, and about hostages and the soldiers who were killed in Gaza. But at the same time I cannot help but think about the victims of Israel's hostilities, the Palestinian residents of Gaza and the West Bank. I will also stand at attention in memory of them. ,,, This will be my Memorial Day this year, the memory of our fallen and the memory of their fallen. I cannot do otherwise, especially this year. You don't have to compute the relative justice and injustice of the two nations to understand that both experienced disaster. There is also no need for blame games: Innocents have died, in the thousands, on both sides. The kibbutznik from Nir Oz, the raver at Nova and the refugee from Jabalya were all killed in vain. [Read More]
Medicide in Gaza: the Killing of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh
By Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch [May 10, 2024]
---- More than two weeks after Israel announced his death, it still has not released the body of one of Gaza's most celebrated doctors, Adnan al-Bursh. Israel hasn't said how this 50-year-old man in good health died, even though he died in one of its darkest places, Ofer Prison, a place where very bad things are done at the hands of Israeli prison guards and Shin Bet interrogators. … Adnan Al-Bursh was intelligent, humane, and committed. He could speak multiple languages. He saw and could explain the ravages of the occupation and the horrors of the war. He was exactly the kind of person, like the still imprisoned Marwan Barghouti, Israel has always feared might become a leader of the Palestinian people. For that reason, he was also exactly the kind of person Israel has been targeting for elimination under the cover of its bombardment and invasion of Gaza. [Read More]
(Video) Pulitzer Winner Nathan Thrall on Israel's "System of Domination" and Biden Pausing Bomb Shipment
From Democracy Now! [May 9, 2024]
---- Jerusalem-based journalist and author Nathan Thrall has been awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy. It tells the story of Israel's occupation of the West Bank through one Palestinian father's quest to seek answers and accountability after his 5-year-old son is involved in a deadly accident. We speak to Thrall about President Biden saying for the first time that he would not supply certain weapons to Israel to be used in an all-out invasion of Rafah. "It is too little, too late," Thrall says. "It is a step in the right direction, but the administration has said that it has not made a final determination even about these paused weapons." [See the Program]
The Media and the War
Watching the watchdogs: How US media weaponised campus protests coverage
By Rami G Khouri, Aljazeera [May 6, 2024]
---- As I closely followed US media outlets in recent weeks, I was shocked to see reporters, commentators and hosts use the exact same words and phrases that Biden and US and Israeli officials have used to smear the protesters. The mainstream media gives the impression of circling the wagons with Israeli and American officialdom to prevent at all costs an open, honest, comprehensive and contextualised public discussion on Israel's behaviour while trying instead to focus public attention on spurious accusations. The mainstream media has widely condemned students and accused them of using "hate speech and hate symbols" (in the words of the US president), endorsing terrorism, advocating for Israel's destruction, resorting to anti-Semitic slurs and threatening and frightening Jewish students. Everywhere they look in the student protest encampments, the media oracles have seen "terrorists" in training, "anti-Semites" at work, "Jew-haters" being groomed, universities collapsing, and "Nazi mobs" in the making. [Read More] Also of interest - (Video) "60+ Journalism Profs Demand Investigation into Controversial NYT Article Alleging Mass Rape on Oct. 7," from Democracy Now! [May 8, 2024] [Link]; and "On Campus Gaza Protests, Media Let Police Tell the Story—Even When They're Wrong," by Neil deMause, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [May 9, 2024] [Link].
The Student Uprising
War Culture Hates the Ethical Passion of the Young, In the Thrall of a Dominant Death Culture
By Norman Solomon, Counterpunch [May 10, 2024]
---- Persisting in his support for an unpopular war, the Democrat in the White House has helped spark a rebellion close to home. Young people — least inclined to deference, most inclined to moral outrage — are leading public opposition to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. The campus upheaval is a clash between accepting and resisting, while elites insist on doing maintenance work for the war machine. … When Columbia University and many other colleges erupted in antiwar protests during the late 1960s, the moral awakening was a human connection with people suffering horrifically in Vietnam. During recent weeks, the same has been true with people in Gaza. Both eras saw crackdowns by college administrators and the police — as well as much negativity toward protesters in the mainstream media — all reflecting key biases in this country's power structure. [Read More]
(Video) Meet Students at 4 Colleges Where Gaza Protests Win Concessions, Incl. Considering Israel Divestment
From Democracy Now! [May 8, 2024]
---- As students around the country set up Gaza solidarity encampments on their campuses, many universities have called in police who have arrested students and dismantled the sites. But students at a number of colleges have managed to negotiate agreements where administrators have acceded to some of their demands, including considering divestment from Israel. We speak with four students who have been involved in pro-Palestine protests on campuses at Middlebury College in Vermont, Evergreen College in Washington state, Brown University in Rhode Island and Rutgers in New Jersey. [See the Program] Also of interest is "Some Universities Chose Violence. Others Responded to Protests by Considering Student Demands," by Prem Thakker, The Intercept [May 8 2024] [Link].
(Video) The impact of student encampments for Gaza at universities worldwide
From Aljazeera ["The Stream"] [May 10, 2024]
---- After the escalation at US student encampments, we revisit the students raising their voices to protest Israel's ongoing war on Gaza. … Anti-war student protesters have been met with brutal pro-Israel counterprotests, violent arrests and suspensions, raising debates around freedom of expression and the future of activism on college campuses. What started as a student encampment at Columbia University in New York City three weeks ago has now turned into a global student movement, expanding to Europe, Australia, Canada and beyond. We'll get the latest from the campus grounds and ask what is next for the global student movement for Gaza. [See the Program]. Also of interest is "Pro-Palestinian Student Protests Unfurling Across Europe Met With Varying Responses," by Rachel Fink, Haaretz [Israel] [May 9, 2024] [FB – Updates on the UK, The Netherlands, Germany, etc.] [Link].
Some Faculty Perspectives
In Harvard Yard, by Walter Johnson, New York Review of Books [May 8, 2024] [Link].
Under the Jumbotron [UCLA], by Anahid Nersessian, London Review of Books [May 6, 2024] [LInk]; and UCLA: Whose Violence?, by Piper French, New York Review of Books [May 11, 2024] [Link].
Aux armes! May Day in the Olive Grove [University of Arizona], by Beth Henson, Hard Crackers [May 8, 2024] [Link].
Universities Like Mine Are Providing an Authoritarian Blueprint for Trump [Yale], by Gregg Gonsalves, The Nation [May 9, 2024] [Link].
The Invasion of Haiti
(Video) The Real Reason the US is Invading Haiti
Break Through News interviews Jemima Pierre [May 11, 2024]
---- The US is moving forward with its plans to invade Haiti by way of a UN-backed police force led by Kenya. The intervention was postponed after Haiti's unelected prime minister Ariel Henry resigned in March but CARICOM's recent appointment of a 'transitional council' has revived the plans. Dr. Jemima Pierre, Professor of Global Race in the Institute of Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice (GRSJ) at the University of British Columbia and a member of Black Alliance for Peace, discusses Haiti's newest puppet leaders and why foreign intervention is not the solution to the deepening crisis in the country. [See the Program]
The Climate Crisis
77% of Top Climate Scientists Think 2.5°C of Warming Is Coming—And They're Horrified
By Olivia Rosane, Common Dreams [May 8, 2024]
---- Nearly 80% of top-level climate scientists expect that global temperatures will rise by at least 2.5°C by 2100, while only 6% thought the world would succeed in limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, a survey published Wednesday by The Guardian revealed. Nearly three-quarters blamed world leaders' insufficient action on a lack of political will, while 60% said that corporate interests such as fossil fuel companies were interfering with progress. "I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South," one South African scientist told The Guardian. "The world's response to date is reprehensible—we live in an age of fools." [Read More]
The State of the Union
We Need "Outside Agitators"
By Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Jacobin Magazine [May 2024]
---- Pro-Palestine student protesters are being smeared as puppets of shadowy "outside agitators." The presence of community members and experienced activists in the protests is nothing to be ashamed of: we need outside agitators to build a better world. … To affirm that the majority of protesters are "insiders" as opposed to "outsiders" only aids those who want to create fissures and foment distrust in order to divide and conquer our movements. It's a way of denying the rights of activists to share lessons, learn from movement elders, and collaborate across communities — in other words, to properly and effectively organize. The "outside agitator" charge is a way to isolate individuals and create social separation, when the reality is that injustice of any kind, but especially war, necessarily concerns us all. On the issue of genocide, there should be no outside. … Why are outside agitators so threatening to the powers that be? The answer is that outsiders are a special kind of solidarity builder, even when they remain at a distance and lack any particularly useful skills or insights. Anyone who has been part of a movement knows how much displays of solidarity matter. [Read More] Our History – Mother's Day
"Mother's Day Proclamation"
By Julia Ward Howe
Boston, 1870
Mothers' Day was originally a day for peace. The first "Mother's Day Proclamation" was written by Julia Ward Howe, an abolitionist, a leader of the campaign for women's rights, and the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
"Arise, then… women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage,
for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: Disarm, Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
nor violence vindicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
at the summons of war,
let women now leave all that may be left of home
for a great and earnest day of council.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live in peace,
each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality,
may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient,
and at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
to promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
the amicable settlement of international questions,
the great and general interests of peace."
~ Julia Ward Howe
