Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
September 8, 20 24
Hello All – War or peace? We will know the answer in a few days, when the Biden people release its "take it or leave it" plan for ending Israel's war on Gaza. If Hamas and Israel agree to it, a ceasefire and negotiations to end the war are possible. If either rejects it, the war will continue and may spread to other countries in the Middle East.
Many reports from Israel say that Prime Minister Netanyahu will not agree to any plan that mandates a permanent ceasefire and a withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from Gaza. A particular sticking point is Israel's demand to keep troops along the strip of land at the southern end of Gaza on the border with Egypt. Many observers see this demand as intended to sabotage the negotiations. Netanyahu wants the war to continue.
If a permanent ceasefire is rejected, it is unlikely that negotiations will start again before the US election. It is also feared that Israel's fight with Hezbollah may escalate into a full-scale war. The danger that the war would spread to Iran, Syria, and Lebanon is high, drawing in US military support and perhaps US soldiers.
In the face of such danger, the Biden people can and should take the additional step of ordering Netanyahu to stop the war, cutting off US money and weapons to Israel, and ending support for Israel at the UN if he does not. US election considerations – a "blank check for Israel" – cannot be allowed to continue the slaughter of Palestinian civilians and endanger the world with a wider war. Work for peace!
Remembering Aysenuur Eygi
---- An American woman was shot and killed by Israeli forces during a protest in Beita near Nablus in the northern occupied West Bank on Friday. On Friday morning the State Department confirmed that Aysenur Eygi, a 26-year-old American citizen born in Turkey, had died. Two Palestinian doctors told the AP that Eygi had been shot in the head and died after arriving at the local hospital. "We tried to save the American citizen, we tried to revive the heart for several stages, but unfortunately, we did not succeed in restoring the heart to function," said Rafidia Hospital director Dr. Fouad Naffa. [From Mondoweiss.] Ms. Eygi was part of a delegation from the International Solidarity Movement. The ISM issued a press statement about her murder. Illuminating the Week that Was
(Video) Former. Israeli Hostage Negotiator Gershon Baskin Slams Netanyahu for Blocking Ceasefire Deal
From Democracy Now! [September 4, 2024]
---- As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects growing domestic and international calls to accept a Gaza ceasefire deal, we go to Jerusalem to speak to Gershon Baskin of the human rights advocacy group International Communities Organization. Baskin has spent years as a back-channel Israeli negotiator with Hamas in ceasefire deals, including throughout Israel's current war on Gaza. "It's very clear that Netanyahu doesn't want to end the war," says Baskin, who calls for all remaining stakeholders, including Hamas, the United States and Israeli protesters, to increase pressure on the defiant prime minister. [See the Program] Also of interest is "Why's Netanyahu so insistent that Israel control the Gaza-Egypt crossing?" by Justin Salhani, Aljazeera [September 5, 2024] [Link].
Israeli Protesters Have Chosen a Side
By Meron Rapoport, The Nation [September 4, 2024]
[FB – This article refers to the Israeli protests of the previous weekend. About 500,000 people rallied in Tel Aviv yesterday, with an additional 250,000 protesting in other places in Israel.]
---- For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the mass protests that erupted across Israel on Sunday were all about overthrowing him and his government. Certainly, this goal was stated explicitly by almost every speaker who took to the stage at the main protest in Tel Aviv—where reportedly more than 300,000 Israelis flooded the streets after the army's recovery of the bodies of six more hostages from Gaza, who had been executed shortly beforehand. Einav Zangauker, the mother of the hostage Matan, captured the mood of much of the public when she ordained Netanyahu with a new nickname: "The executioner." But the protests, which have continued into the week, also had a deeper, more subversive message that Netanyahu probably understood too. Without any of the speakers explicitly saying as much, Sunday's demonstrations were for an end to the war. [Read More]
U.S. Finalizing New Israel-Hamas Cease-fire Proposal Despite Skepticism
By Amir Tibon and Jonathan Lis, Haaretz [Israel] [September 8, 2024]
---- The Biden administration is in the final stages of formulating a bridging proposal in the negotiations for a hostage release deal and cease-fire in Gaza, but officials are pessimistic about its chances of success and no decision has been made on when and if to make it public. In the U.S., Qatar and Egypt, the view has strengthened that the chances of reaching a deal within the coming days is not high. "We are not progressing anywhere," a foreign diplomat involved in the talks told Haaretz. According to him, "the decision on whether to publish the final draft of the document, which is supposed to bridge the gaps between Hamas and Israel, is delayed because we feel that neither side wants to adopt it." [Read More]
Coming Attractions
On Wednesday, September 11th, the Village of Hastings will hold a 9/11 Remembrance at Fulton Park (next to the Library, at 7 pm.
Also in Hastings, on Monday, September 16th, Hastings' mayor Nikki Armacost invites us to a program at the Community Center (7 pm, 44 Main St.) called "Holding on to Humanity. The program is the work of the Parents Circle Friends, which is described as "a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization made up of more than 700 bereaved families. Their common bond is that they have lost a close family member to the conflict, and in their grief have chosen a path of reconciliation." To attend the meeting, you must RSVP HERE.
On Tuesday, September 17th, Community Voices Heard will sponsor a Yonkers Community Meeting on Violence and Youth Opportunities. The meeting is at the CVH office, 28 N. Broadway in Yonkers, from 6:30 to 8 pm. If you're going, sign up here.
On Tuesday, September 24th. WESPAC will host a "Solidarity Social" It will include "a potluck and mingling" starting at 6 pm, a program called "Movement Mapping," and music from the Solidarity Singers (7 to 7:30). All this will take place at WESPAC HQ, 77 Tarrytown Rd., Suite 2W in White Plains.
Thoughts from Aleena
[FB – Aleena is 11 years old and has just started a new school year (6th grade) in the Bronx. She is Palestinian, has relatives in the West Bank area, and has been attending CFOW antiwar vigils with her mother. "What do you like in school?" she was asked. "Writing," she replied. And so here is Aleena's first essay for the CFOW newsletter.]
Palestine
---- As you may know there has been a conflict with the country called Palestine and the occupiers known as Israel. The war has not started recently: it's been ongoing for 76 years now. For many reasons Israel has always targeted Gaza and has terrorized the West bank. Children grow up living in fear and the feeling of uncertainty. Israel has been bombing, but your tax dollars have been paying for it. Children and newborn babies have nowhere to go, since all the hospitals have been bombed. Many Palestinian children have lost their parents, so now the children are responsible for taking care of their siblings. Therefore, the Palestinians have been suffering for many, many years now. I hope you now know THIS IS A GENOCIDE and I hope one day I get to see PALESTINE FREE.
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 make out your check to "Frank Brodhead," write "CFOW" on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
Dear stalwart readers, let's lift the gloom. This week's Rewards are boogie-woogie style, starting with Albert Ammons and "You Are My Sunshine." Also working for happiness is Pete Johnson with "Rocket Boogie." And now Pinetop Perkin's with "Pinetop's Boogie." Finally, Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson duet "Sixth Avenue Express." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
Two and a Half Hours Alone with Nixon, the Anti-Trump
By Jerelle Kraus, Counterpunch [September 6, 2024]
[FB – CFOW friend Jerelle Kraus was a New York Times art director for 30 years. Her insider's view of this interesting experience is described (and illustrated) in her book, All the Art That's Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn't).] ---- No one would be more repelled by let-it-rip Trump than anal Nixon. Nixon, shrewd and sweaty, imploded behind closed doors. Trump, crude and swaggering, is an open faucet. "He left," Trump says of Nixon. "I don't leave." I remember Nixon's exit. Fifty years ago, Marine One swooped down from a cloudless sky and slid to a smooth landing on the White House lawn. The staccato of the chopper's engine and the whirling of its propeller blades slowed to a stop. Nixon and his wife, Pat, strode solemnly toward the helicopter. Before boarding, Nixon turned and faced the cameras. Flashing a studied grin, he hunched up his shoulders and thrust his arms skyward. At the height of humiliation, Nixon posed as a human victory sign. As if to say, I may be the first American president to resign, but goddamnit, I'll do it in style. My style that day was Bay Area hippie. My friends and I watched Marine One take off and knew Nixon could never again figure in our lives. Yet eight years later, after I moved to Manhattan, he would figure in mine. [Read More]
The N-Word: Still Troublesome After all These Years
By Jonah Raskin, Counterpunch [September 6, 2024]
---- The N-word appears sparingly in James, Percival Everett's 2024 novel that reinvents the escaped slave narrative while it recycles Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a classic set in the antebellum American South where Black men and Black women, both free and enslaved, were lashed with the word "nigger." Make no mistake about it, the word "nigger" hurt. The words, "darkies" and "Negro," also show up in a text that aims to cast the enslaved Black man in a heroic light. "Colored" – as in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People— isn't used in the text. Nor is the phrase "Black folk," which W. E. B. Bu Bois popularized. … Mark Twain uses the N-word more than 200 times in Huck Finn. That might seem excessive; censorious librarians and some communities have thought so, and have removed Huck Finn from shelves. It's one of the most frequently censored books in the U.S. [Read More]
How Former East Germany Became Home to the Far Right
By Konstantin Nowotny, Jacobin Magazine [September 7, 2024]
[FB – Recently, I have been reading the books of (former) East German novelist Jenny Erpenbeck, whose latest book, Kairos, won the prestigious Booker Prize this year. And so I have become interested in the German Democratic Republic – "East Germany" – which emerged from Soviet occupation in 1945 and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and with its incorporation into The Federal Republic of Germany ("West Germany") in 1990, thus bringing to an end a nation that had been "home" to millions of German-speaking people for 45 years. Now former East Germany is the birthplace of Germany's neo-Nazi movement. How & why did this happen? Here is a useful introduction.]
---- Like much of the former East, Sebnitz slowly turned from a political home to hostile territory for the Left. Under the socialist economic system of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), the town was known for its artificial flower factory. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many once-thriving businesses were unprepared for a new economic reality called capitalism. They were either sold off cheaply to Western buyers or forced to close due to economic pressure. Today, while still retaining some charm, much of Sebnitz is run-down. As in many eastern climes, Sebnitz's population is now aging, relatively low-income — and politically leans to the Right. In the constituency where it is located, the AfD took 45 percent support. [Read More]
The War on Gaza
Israeli Society Has Truly Fallen to Cruelty, Violence and Apathy. Just Look at Us
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [September 8, 2024]
---- As the people of Jenin buried their dead, soldiers shot and killed a 13-year-old girl. Bana Laboum died in her home in the village of Qaryout, whose residents tried to defend themselves after settlers set fire to their fields. The settlers riot, the army comes – and kills Palestinians, oddly enough. "Confrontations," the media calls the incidents. The rape victim confronts their rapist, the robbery victim their robber. In the insanity of the occupation, the aggressor is the victim and the victim is the aggressor. … All this happened on Friday, an ordinary day. Israel yawned. It was much more upset by the (infuriating) arrest of a young Jewish woman who threw a handful of sand at Ben-Gvir than by the fatal shooting of a non-Jewish woman who was motivated by principle no less than the young woman from Tel Aviv. … Look at what happened Friday in the Jenin refugee camp, in Qaryout, in Beita and in Megiddo Prison – and perhaps you will see us, finally. [Read More] Also of interest is "Israel's Week in Pictures by Haaretz Photographers" [Link]
The genocide in Gaza is as American as it is Israeli. The U.S. won't stop it.
By Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss [September 6, 2024]
---- After long months and rivers of Palestinian blood in Gaza, the Western world is finally grasping the fact that the proposed ceasefire in Gaza is not taking hold because Israel's government is preventing it. The desire for a ceasefire in the United States, certainly among Democrat voters, is clear. If one is to believe President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and, to her discredit, even progressive leader Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the administration is working "around the clock" to secure one. Yet, as the slaughter in Gaza enters its twelfth month, the world's only superpower appears helpless in the face of Israeli intransigence. If that sounds absurd, it is. So why isn't the U.S. stopping Israel, as it surely could simply by pausing the constant flow of weapons? [Read More]
The West Bank
(Video) Beyond Gaza: The terror in the West Bank
From Aljazeera ["The Listening Post"] 11 minutes
---- The other half of Israel's war: settlers and the army brutalize Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel has overseen a deadly and destructive 10-day military operation in the occupied West Bank. As international law and global media have fallen short in holding the Israelis to account during 11 months of genocide in Gaza, what hopes do the Palestinians have that outcomes will be any different in the West Bank? [See the Program] Also of interest: "'Days filled with terror': Palestinians in Jenin recount harrowing 10-day Israeli army invasion," by Shatha Hanaysha, Mondoweiss [September 6, 2024] [Link].
A Wider War?
(Audio) Trita Parsi on Iran, Hezbollah and Israel – 54 minutes
From The Peter Beinart Notebook [September 5, 2024]
[FB – Parsi has published 3 books on the US, Israel, & Iran, etc. He is often a guest on Democracy Now! and presents his ideas clearly & cogently.]
---- Our guest will be Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute and one of the most thoughtful and best-informed observers in Washington about the relationship between Israel, Hezbollah and Iran. We'll discuss Israel's recent attack, US policy and the danger of a regional war. [Listen to the Program]
The War at Home
(Video) How U.S. College Administrators Are "Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests"
From Democracy Now! [September 5, 2024]
---- As the fall term gets underway for students across the United States, we speak with journalist and academic Natasha Lennard about how college administrators are attempting to quash Gaza solidarity actions following mass protests at campuses across the country in the spring. One example is New York University, which recently updated its student policy to make criticisms of Zionism potentially punishable under its anti-discrimination rules. "It's extremely dangerous," says Lennard, who teaches at The New School. "It performs de facto apologia for Israel, and to have that put into writing by a university so clearly is just open for further abuses." [See the Program] Also of interest: "Columbia Welcomes Students Back to. Campus With Arrests," by Jonah Valez, The Intercept [September 5, 2024] [Link].
The War in Ukraine
When will the war in Ukraine end?
By Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft [September 5, 2024]
---- Some Western supporters of Ukraine have been presenting the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian province of Kursk as a great victory that will significantly change the course and outcome of the war. They are deceiving themselves. While legally and morally justified, the attack has failed in all its main objectives, and may indeed turn out to have done serious damage to Ukraine's position on the battlefield. One U.S. analyst has compared it to the Confederate invasion of the North that led to the battle of Gettysburg — a brilliant tactical stroke that however ended in losses that crippled the Army of Northern Virginia. The Ukrainian attack has not captured any significant Russian population center or transport hub. It has embarrassed Putin, but there is no evidence that it has significantly shaken his hold on power in Russia. It may have done something to raise the spirits of the Ukrainian population in general; but, as Western reports from eastern Ukraine make clear, it has done nothing to raise the morale of Ukrainian troops there. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
Here Comes the Sun
By Bill McKibben, Founder of 350.org [September 5, 2024]
---- To understand the primal stakes in this year's election, and to understand the very exciting possibility for rapid progress in the climate fight, a new set of numbers is extremely useful. … In 2014, solar power "utility-scale solar provided a mere 9.25 GW (0.75%) of total installed US generating capacity." Which is to say, less than one percent. But "by the middle of 2024, installed solar capacity had risen to 8.99% of total utility-scale capacity." (Add another few percent for rooftop distributed solar). That still sounds like a relatively small percentage—under ten percent. But in fact what it means is that we've finally moved on to the steep part of an S curve, and if we can keep up anything like that pace of expansion it won't be long before the numbers are truly incredible. [Read More]
Civil Liberties
(Video) Are restrictions on pro-Palestine speech 'the new McCarthyism?'
From Aljazeera ("The Bottom Line") [September 8, 2024]
----Is there an attempt to chill debate on Palestine and Israel on both sides of the Atlantic? The United States, and the West in general, are in a "dire period" of repression of speech on Palestinian freedom or criticism of Israel, argues Dima Khalidi, founder of Palestine Legal. … The situation is similar across Europe, says British journalist Richard Medhurst, who's been covering Gaza closely and was arrested for "speech crimes" upon arrival in London recently. [See the Program]
Our History
The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Redux
By Noam Chomsky, Boston Review [September 1, 2011]
[FB – The essay was written for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The original essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals," was published in 1967 in The New York Review of Books; it is a critique of the state-supporting intellectuals who supported US policy in the Vietnam War.]
---- It seems to be close to a historical universal that conformist intellectuals, the ones who support official aims and ignore or rationalize official crimes, are honored and privileged in their own societies, and the value-oriented punished in one or another way. The pattern goes back to the earliest records. It was the man accused of corrupting the youth of Athens who drank the hemlock, much as Dreyfusards were accused of "corrupting souls, and, in due course, society as a whole" and the value-oriented intellectuals of the 1960s were charged with interference with "indoctrination of the young." In the Hebrew scriptures there are figures who by contemporary standards are dissident intellectuals, called "prophets" in the English translation. They bitterly angered the establishment with their critical geopolitical analysis, their condemnation of the crimes of the powerful, their calls for justice and concern for the poor and suffering. King Ahab, the most evil of the kings, denounced the Prophet Elijah as a hater of Israel, the first "self-hating Jew" or "anti-American" in the modern counterparts. The prophets were treated harshly, unlike the flatterers at the court, who were later condemned as false prophets. The pattern is understandable. It would be surprising if it were otherwise. As for the responsibility of intellectuals, there does not seem to me to be much to say beyond some simple truths. Intellectuals are typically privileged—merely an observation about usage of the term. Privilege yields opportunity, and opportunity confers responsibilities. An individual then has choices. [Read More]
