Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
September 29, 2024
Hello All – Israel's bombing of Lebanon, including Friday's assassination of the leader of Hezbollah, moves the conflict there into new territory. The war in Lebanon will certainly continue. The front-burner questions now are: Will Israel invade Lebanon with ground forces? Will the war spread beyond Israel-Lebanon to other countries (especially Iran)? And what will the Biden administration do now?
As in Gaza, our government's support for Israel's war in Lebanon is important and has consequences. For example, Israel's assassination of Hezbollah's leader Friday used 85 "bunker buster" bombs to level a whole block of apartment buildings in south Beirut. The Washington Post reports that these bombs were US-made BLU-109s, a 2,000-pound bomb manufactured by General Dynamics. Last December, The Wall St. Journal described the shipment of 100 of these bombs, part of a package of 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells, following the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. (According to a report in The Intercept, the 2,000 bombs used to kill Hezbollah's leader were the kind of bomb that President Biden briefly put "on hold" a few months ago.)
The complicity of the US in Israel's assassination of Hezbollah's leader, and more generally in its supplying of weapons and ammunition for Israel's wars, illustrates the flaw in the hand-wringing of elite commentators who bemoan the apparent "powerlessness" of the US and other "Great Powers" to stop Israel's insane savagery. The New York Times' Roger Cohen, for example, writes in today's paper::
The United States' ability to influence events in the Mideast has waned, and other major nations have essentially been onlookers. The United States does have enduring leverage over Israel, notably in the form of military aid that involved a $15 billion package signed this year by President Biden. But an ironclad alliance with Israel built around strategic and domestic political considerations, as well as the shared values of two democracies, means Washington will almost certainly never threaten to cut — let alone cut off — the flow of arms.
That is to say, the United Sates is "powerless" because its political leadership chooses to sacrifice human rights and basic moral values on the altar of the Golden Calf of Israel, and to the political forces in the United States that have weaponized the fear of "anti-Semitism" into a state of national paralysis when it comes to standing up to Israel's war crimes. No wider war? The USA stands back and stands by.
Illuminating the Week that Was
(Video) Israel's Nasrallah Assassination – More Horror Beckons
Owen Jones [UK] interviews Mouin Rabbani [September 29, 2024] - 50 minutes
---- Israel's cheerleaders are triumphalist about the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah – which involved the mass slaughter of countless Lebanese civilians in Beirut. But what next? We're joined by brilliant Palestinian-Dutch analyst Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya, on the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon, the risk of regional conflagration, and the root of the current evil – the genocide against Gaza. [See the Program
Israel's Barbaric Glee Over Nasrallah's Assassination Is a New Low for Israeli Society
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [September 29, 2024]
---- The scale of the death caused by the 80 American bombs is not yet clear, but the numbers will have no effect in Israel – 100 or 1,000 innocent civilians, even the deaths of tens of thousands of children will not change anything in the Israeli mood. Why not a small atom bomb? After all, we killed Hitler. … In the past year, Israel has spoken only one language, that of unbridled war and force. It is maddening to consider that millions of people have lost everything over this. While the bombers were bombing Dahiyeh, to applause in Israel, millions in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon cried bitterly at their fate, for their dead, for the crippled, for their lost property and for the loss of the last shreds of their dignity. They are left with nothing. [Read More]
"Powerlessness"
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!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
After the Encampments
By Aparna Gopalan, Jewish Currents [September 26, 2024]
---- In hindsight, it is clear that—with few exceptions—neither negotiation nor escalation managed to secure real commitments to divestment last spring. Instead, both the deals that came from negotiations and the sweeps that followed escalations seemed to have hastened the end of the encampments, and thus the dissipation of students' leverage. Such decampments, whether voluntary or forced, ultimately worked together with the arrival of the summer break to offer a reprieve that universities could use to refortify themselves against future uprisings. Administrators at more than 100 schools took to this task with gusto, instituting draconian policies penalizing protest; cordoning off lawns and other common campus spaces; announcing sweeping bans on pro-Palestine speech and, at times, speech writ large; and giving themselves new pretexts for calling the police on demonstrators who do not, say, confine their rallies to specific corners of campus or certain hours of the day. [Read More] Also of interest is "Meet the First Tenured Professor to Be Fired for Pro-Palestine Speech," by Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [September 26 2024] [Link]; and (Video) "How CNN, ADL & Others Amplified Smear against Rep. Rashida Tlaib for Criticizing Campus Prosecutions," from Democracy Now! [September 27, 2024] [Link].
Militarism Abuse Disorder: A Very American Malaise
By Frida Berrigan, Tom Dispatch [September 28, 2024]
---- My name is Frida and my community is military dependent. (I feel, by the way, like I'm introducing myself at a very strange AA-like meeting with lousy coffee.) As with people who have substance abuse disorders, I'm part of a very large club. After all, there are weapons manufacturers and subcontractors in just about every congressional district in the country, so that members of Congress will never forget whom they are really working for: the military-industrial complex. … In 2023, the United States of America spent $142 billion buying weapons systems and another $122 billion on the research and development of future weaponry and other militarized equipment. … A recent analysis by the Costs of War Project at Brown University calculated that, since September 11, 2001, the United States has used an estimated $8 trillion-plus just for its post-9/11 wars. Talk about addiction! It makes me pretty MAD, if I'm being honest with you! [Read More]
(Video) The Case for BDS, with Naomi Klein
From "Unshocked," with Mehdi Hasan and Naomi Klein [September 23, 2024]
---- Mehdi and Naomi debunk the myths around the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement – a nonviolent Palestinian-led movement that works to pressure Israel into complying with international law using some of the tactics of the South African 'Anti-Apartheid Movement'. … As a part of Climate Week, the BDS Movement is focusing their energy on a target environmental activists like Naomi have been calling out for years: Chevron. The company is Israel's largest supplier of energy, which not only includes power to the Israeli government, but also to Israeli military bases. … Mehdi and Naomi also get into why the BDS Movement gets so much backlash in the United States; why Israel "gets a special pass" despite the US having a long history of sanctions; and they address the charges of anti-Semitism against BDS. They also discuss recent gains of the movement. [See the Program]
(Video) Marcellus Williams Execution in Hands of Supreme Court; Victim's Family, Prosecutor Don't Want Him to Die
From Democracy Now! [September 24, 2024]
---- The state of Missouri is set to kill Marcellus Williams tonight. Williams has always maintained his innocence in the 1998 killing of St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Lisha Gayle during a robbery. The jurors, prosecutors and victim's family are all supporting Williams's bid for clemency, which has been denied by Missouri's Republican governor and state Supreme Court. "What we see is a system that's looking at finality over fairness, rushing to get to an execution date instead of taking the time to stop this execution and look at the merits of what is being argued," says Williams's attorney and the executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, who is now seeking a last-minute reprieve and reassessment of the case from the U.S. Supreme Court. [See the Program] For more on this horror, read "The Death Penalty Is Always an Atrocity, Not Just for the Wrongfully Convicted," by Mustafa Ali-Smith , Truthout [September 28, 2024] [Link]; and "This Is Why We Need to Abolish the Death Penalty," by Elias Khoury, Jacobin Magazine [September 2024] [Link],
Israel's War on Lebanon
[FB] – As seen by the daily news program Democracy Now! A valuable collection of program offerings about Lebanon this week, featuring medical and human rights experts. Unparalleled in US media coverage of the emerging war.
(Video) Israel Bombs Lebanon After Blowing Up Pagers in "Act of Mass Mutilation." Is Ground Invasion Next?
From Democracy Now! [[September 23, 2024]
---- Israel attacked more than 300 sites in Lebanon Monday, killing at least 182 people and injuring more than 700 others as fears grow of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah. The Israeli military also ordered residents of southern Lebanon to leave their homes if they live near any site used by the militant group. "At the heart of this is an attempt to manufacture consent and try to portray most southern Lebanese as Hezbolloh operatives," says Sintia Issa, editor-at-large at the Beirut-based media organization The Public Source. We also speak with Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon volunteering at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, where he has been treating victims of last week's device explosions that injured thousands of people. He describes the disfiguring injuries from Israel's booby-trapping of pagers and walkie-talkies, calling it "an act of mass mutilation." [See the Program]
(Video) "Absolutely Terrifying": Israel's War Comes to Lebanon, Setting Record-Breaking Single-Day Death Toll
From Democracy Now! [September 24, 2024]
---- Israel's massive aerial bombardment of Lebanon killed at least 558 people on Monday in what is the highest single-day death toll in Lebanon in nearly two decades. Thousands more have been injured in strikes that targeted hospitals, medical centers and ambulances, while tens of thousands of civilians have been forced from their homes. "It has been havoc," says Michelle Eid, editor-in-chief of Al Rawiya, in Beirut, describing attempts by family members to flee the attacks in the south. "The speed with which this has happened has been incredibly shocking," says Lebanese writer and translator Lina Mounzer. "Once Lebanon goes up in flames, it's also very likely that the entire region goes up in flames." [See the Program]
(Video) "Lebanese Civilians Are Paying the Price": Israeli Strikes Kill Nearly 600, Displace Tens of Thousands
From Democracy Now! [September 25, 2024]
---- The Israeli military is reportedly preparing to invade Lebanon while continuing to launch extensive airstrikes across the country, forcing tens of thousands to flee. Lebanon's Health Ministry reports the death toll has reached at least 569 people, with more than 1,800 wounded. Israeli strikes have killed United Nations employees, medical workers, at least one journalist and 50 children over the past two days. Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at Israel, including a long-range missile fired toward Tel Aviv that was intercepted by Israeli air defense systems. "Lebanese civilians are paying the price," says Aya Majzoub in Beirut, Amnesty International's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa. [See the Program]
(Video) "Hell Is Breaking Loose in Lebanon": Israel Rejects Ceasefire Proposal as U.N. Chief Calls for Peace
From Democracy Now! [September 26, 2024]
---- Israel is continuing its bombardment of Lebanon and preparing for a possible ground invasion of the country, with the Netanyahu government rejecting a proposed 21-day ceasefire put forward by the United States, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. About 500,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced, and the Health Ministry reports at least 72 people were killed and nearly 400 wounded in Israeli attacks on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to over 620 in recent days. "There is a lot of suffering. There is a lot of hardship right now," says Beirut-based journalist Lara Bitar, who details how Israel has repeatedly attacked and invaded Lebanese territory going back decades. [See the Program]
Palestinian Voices from Gaza
The Gazan infants who never saw their first birthday
By Ibrahim Mohammad, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [September 18, 2024]
---- On Sept. 16, Gaza's Health Ministry released a 649-page document containing the personal information of 34,344 Palestinians killed by Israel's onslaught on the enclave over the past 11 months. The seemingly endless list is incomplete: more than 41,000 Palestinians have been martyred since October 7, according to Health Ministry figures, but many of them have not yet been fully identified. Over 11,300 of the identified victims are children, and 710 of them were killed before they turned 1. These are the stories of six of those infants who were stolen from the world before even seeing their first birthday, as told by their families. [Read More]
The War in Ukraine
The Claim That Russia Doesn't Possess Any Solid Red Lines—or Won't Enforce Them—Isn't Supported by Evidence
By Marty Blatt and Marjorie Feld, Common Dreams [September 23, 2024]
---- As historians and as anti-Zionist Jews active in our communities, we know that unqualified support for Israel has been widespread among American Jews, built on the idea that only Israel could prevent another Holocaust and keep Jews safe. But crucially, there has never been a complete pro-Zionist "consensus." What we understand is that there has always been a small, vocal, articulate American Jewish minority—many with direct ties to the devastation of the Holocaust—who fundamentally questioned the role of Zionism and Israel in American Jewish life and asserted that Zionism and democratic ideals are incompatible. Our own lives and research agendas illuminate that for over a century, since the beginning of the modern Zionist movement with Theodor Herzl in 1897, some American Jews have drawn attention to the brutality and racism inherent in the modern Zionist project. [Read More]
A Means to Live: The past and future of debt resistance
By Astra Taylor, The Nation [September 25, 2024]
[FB – This is a review of The Political Development of American Debt Relief, by Emily Zackin and Chloe N. Thurston.]
---- "Early in January at Le Mars, in northwestern Iowa, a mob of a thousand farmers seized the attorney for an insurance company, dangled a rope before his eyes, and threatened him with immediate lynching." So begins an article by the journalist Charlotte Prescott, published in The Nation in February of 1933. In the first paragraph, Prescott informs her readers that the protesters then "held the judge of the district court a prisoner in his chambers and defied the county sheriff." She also notes that the farmers won. … The Iowa rebellion was no isolated skirmish. In the 1930s, indebted farmers fought foreclosure across the heartland. They organized to protect one another's homes and livelihoods and campaigned for politicians who vowed to represent their interests, preventing land seizures through direct action and at the ballot box. Yet as impressive as this surge of populist fervor was, it represented only one chapter in a much longer conflict between debtors and creditors in the United States—a conflict that is foundational to American politics and yet, for some reason, is mostly forgotten. The Political Development of American Debt Relief, a fascinating new book by Emily Zackin and Chloe N. Thurston, seeks to recover this history. [Read More]
