Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
November 3, 2024
For more than a year Concerned Families of Westchester has played its small role in the movement of millions of Americans to force a change of course on the Biden administration, to end US support – military, financial, and diplomatic – for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. In this we have joined with tens of millions of people around the world demanding a ceasefire and peace for the Middle East. Tragically, our efforts have so far failed; and as we await Tuesday’s presidential election, there appears no light at the end of the tunnel of war. While the results of the election will have a great impact on Americans, for Palestinians the war will continue.
For many months, the mainstream of the antiwar movement has warned the Democrats that their failure to take steps to end the war, or even to make symbolic gestures towards Palestinian rights, could result in a defeat for the Biden/Harris campaigns. More recently, the mainstream of the peace movement has urged people in swing states who strongly oppose the war to nevertheless vote for Harris, to avert the Great Evil of a Trump presidency. We will see on Tuesday and down the road whether the war and opposition to the war have played a role in the election; but clearly our failure to move the Biden/Harris people towards stopping the genocide is a tragedy.
As described in several articles and essays linked below, it appears that Israel is now intensifying its military actions against Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, with clear signals that a true “cleansing” of people from northern Gaza is underway, perhaps to make room for Jewish settlements. With all hospitals and shelters under attack, and with the blockade of food and medical supplies from reaching northern Gaza, the elements of a ‘genocide’ are clearly visible, live-streamed on Arabic TV and Aljazeera English for anyone who makes to effort to learn what’s going on.
If Trump wins Tuesday’s election, we will obviously have a full plate of antifascist issues to contend with. But no matter who wins the election, those who are disgusted and outraged by the US support for genocide won’t give up the fight for peace. As Henry David Thoreau remarked in his essay on Civil Disobedience (1848), “Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely.” Beginning on November 6th, we will have a lot to do.
Further Reading
Whatever Happens Next, Trump Has Already Won a Tragic Victory
By Lydia Polgreen, New York Times [November 2, 2024]
---- Against the backdrop of this widening catastrophe, surely the most consequential presidential election of my lifetime, between two candidates offering starkly different visions of America, is grinding to a photo finish. Every conversation I have is filled with anxiety and fear that Trump will win and plunge the United States, and the world, into chaos with his dystopian vision of a dog-eat-dog world of zero-sum competition. … Elections are always about what matters to voters. But they also reveal who matters. Looking back as we barrel toward Election Day, it is clear that the past year has provided some depressing answers to this question. [Link]
Exterminate, expel, resettle: Israel’s endgame in northern Gaza
By Idan Landau, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [November 1, 2024]
---- The “Generals’ Plan,” published in early September, has a very simple goal: to empty the northern Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population. The plan itself estimated that about 300,000 people were still living north of the Netzarim Corridor — the Israeli-occupied zone that bisects Gaza — although the UN put the number closer to 400,000. During the first phase of the plan, the Israeli army would inform all of those people that they have a week to evacuate to the south through two “humanitarian corridors.” In the second phase, at the end of that week, the army would declare the whole area a closed military zone. Anyone who remained would be considered an enemy combatant, and be killed if they didn’t surrender. [Read More]
ELECTION 2024
Why Is the Election Between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris So Close?
By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Hammer and Hope [Fall 2024]
---- Trump’s campaign has been fueled by racism, misogyny, and homophobia, a consistent and extraordinary display of bigotry in person and via commercials bombarding swing states across the country. And yet this race is razor close, leaving us to guess who may eventually win. Even as Trump’s campaign has offered little more than racist rants, lies, and a few incoherent economic policies (higher tariffs and eliminating taxes on tips for service workers), he stands as good a chance as Harris of winning the presidency. How can this be? [Read More]
How Will White Women Vote? It’s a Question With a Fraught History.
By Nikole Hannah-Jones, New York Times Magazine [November 2, 2024]
---- Polling shows that a clear majority of Black men, some 69 percent according to an October 2024 Times/Siena Poll, support Harris. The only group supporting Harris at a higher rate than Black men is Black women, at 81 percent. There is one group, however, that deserves more attention as they could very well determine this election: white women. At about 59 million voters, white women constitute this nation’s single largest voting bloc, and also its most divided. [Read More]
A No-Win Dilemma for US Peace Voters
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Code Pink [October 31, 2024]
---- Many of the principles and policy proposals of “third-party” and independent candidates are more in line with the views of most Americans than those of Harris or Trump. This is hardly surprising given the widely recognized corruption of the U.S. political system. While Trump cynically flip-flops to appeal to both sides on many questions, and Harris generally avoids committing to policy specifics at all, especially regarding foreign policy, most Americans understand that they are both more beholden to the billionaires and corporate interests who fund their campaigns than to the well-being of working Americans or the future of the planet. [Read More]
Also of interest – (Video) “Puerto Rico Is an “Island of Garbage”: Outrage Grows over Trump’s Racist & Xenophobic NYC Rally, from Democracy Now! [Octobery 29, 2024] [with Jean Guerrero] [Link]; That “Little Secret” Between Trump and Johnson? Here’s What It Could Mean,” by Elie Mystal, The Nation [October 30, 2024] [Link]; and “Sanders: “I disagree with Kamala’s Position On the War in Gaza. How Can I Vote For Her?” [October 29, 2024] [Link].
NEWS NOTES
Unanimous Rejection of U.S. Economic Sanctions Against Cuba
By Salim Lamrani, ZNet [November 2, 2024]
---- As usual, only Israel aligned itself with Washington, opposing the resolution put forward by Havana. Moldova, for its part, chose to abstain. [Link].
They Got 60 Days in Jail for Protesting Israel’s Largest Arms Maker — and Say that’s a “Huge Victory”
By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [October 30 2024]
---- In mid-November, four young women will start two-month jail sentences for an action attempting to halt operations last November at a weapons factory in Merrimack, New Hampshire, operated by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer. It could have been far worse for the Merrimack 4, as the women are called by fellow activists. [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 the first Monday of the month 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!
At a reader’s suggestion, this week’s Rewards come from the late Leonard Cohen. Here are some I like: "Democracy," "Everybody Knows"; and "Tower of Song." Many more great ones on line. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ESSAYS
Terrified, starving, crushed: The agonising death of my grandfather in Gaza
From Aljazeera [November 2, 2024]
---- My grandfather survived the first Nakba in 1948; he didn’t make it to the end of the second – this interminable war waged by Israel. [Read More]
Does Israel Have the Right to Defend Itself?
By Stephen R. Shalom | October 29, 2024
---- “Israel has the right to defend itself,” President Joseph Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and countless commentators have declared multiple times over the past year. But does Israel in fact have such a right? Even if there were an Israeli right to self-defense, such a right would be limited by the standard of proportionality. … The Biden administration has used the same “Israel has the right to defend itself” language with respect to Netanyahu’s war against Hezbollah. Does Israel have such a right in this case? … Self-defense is a basic right of individuals and countries. But it is not justified self-defense when it represents the defense of an unjust occupation. And it is not legitimate self-defense when war was neither necessary nor a last resort.[Read More]
Which Countries Are on the Brink of Going Nuclear?
By John P. Rueh, Economy for All [November 1, 2024]
---- Obtaining the world’s most powerful weapons may be a natural ambition of military and intelligence sectors, but it hinges on the political forces in power as well. In Iran, moderates could counterbalance hardliners, while continued support for Ukraine might prevent more nationalist forces from coming to power there. Yet an additional country obtaining a nuclear weapon could set off a cascade of others. … With major powers in open contention, the barriers to nuclear ambitions are already weakening, making it ever harder to dissuade smaller nations from pursuing the ultimate deterrent. [Read More]
Also of interest - (Video) “Save Us from Ourselves”: 3,000+ Israelis Call for Int’l Help to Pressure Israel to Back Ceasefire, from Democracy Now! [October 28, 2024] [Link]; and “More Genocide: Israel Bans UNRWA, Guaranteeing Further Spike in Maternal and Infant Deaths in Gaza,” by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [October 29, 2024] [Link].
THE WAR ON GAZA
Lest We Forget: The Destruction Of Gaza And What Followed Did Not Start On October 7
By Oded Goldreich and, Assaf Kfoury, ZNet [November 2, 2024]
---- An incendiary war has been raging for more than a year in the Middle East. It has been indescribably devastating on Gaza and has now extended to the West Bank, to northern Israel and Lebanon, with ominous signs of expanding further into a regional war. This is a war driven by an Israeli government bent on exacting vengeful retribution on all of its perceived enemies, unrestrained by its American benefactor and main purveyor of weapons. While this war has been extensively covered by the media, what is mostly understated or forgotten are the circumstances that led to it – a covert decades-long war waged by Israel on the Palestinian people. [Read More]
(Video) “Genocide as Colonial Erasure”: U.N. Expert Francesca Albanese on Israel’s “Intent to Destroy” Gaza
From Democracy Now! [October 31, 2024]
--- We are joined by U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, who says Israel is committing genocide on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Facing accusations of antisemitism from Israeli and U.S. officials, Albanese is in New York to present her report, titled “Genocide as colonial erasure,” which finds that Israel’s genocide is founded on “ideological hatred” and “dehumanization” and “enabled through the various organs of the state,” and recommends that Israel be unseated from the United Nations over its conduct. She argues that Israel’s attacks on U.N. employees, including the killings of at least 230 U.N. staff in Gaza, its flagrant violations of U.N. resolutions and international law and the unique status of “the first settler-colonial genocide to be ever litigated before [an international] court” justify this unprecedented measure. Israel’s continued impunity, Albanese warns, “is the nail in the coffin of the U.N. Charter.” [See the Program]
Also of interest – “Historian Tareq Baconi on the Or igins and Future of Hamas,” PBS [17 minutes] [October 25, 2024] [Link]; (Video) “This Carnage Needs to Stop”: Israel Bans Aid Groups from Gaza, Kills Over 1,000 in North Gaza Siege, from Democracy Now! [October 28, 2024] [Link]; and “What Will Israel's UNRWA Ban Look Like for Palestinians? Experts Warn of 'A Massive Ripple Effect',” by Linda Dayan, Haaretz [Israel] [October 30, 2024] [Link].
THE WEST BANK
New UN Special Rapporteur report warns Israel’s genocide in Gaza could be expanding to the West Bank
By Jonathan Ofir, Mondoweiss [October 30, 2024]
---- The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, has just issued her new report in conjunction with the 79th session of the General Assembly, titled “Genocide as colonial erasure.” The report comes on the heels of her March report, “Anatomy of a genocide” in which Albanese concluded that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide has been met in Gaza. The current report, however, expands the analysis to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and shows how Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians throughout the entirety of the occupied territory that it controls. [Read More]
THE WAR ON LEBANON
‘The Slow Bleeding Out of a Country’ [Lebanon]
By Andrew Arsan, The New York Review of Books [November 2, 2024]
---- Once again Lebanon’s inhabitants are living through—and dying in—a conflict they are powerless to end. Western leaders like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer talk of pulling “back from the brink,” as though doing so were still possible. But what is this if not war? Since last October, when Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging cross-border fire in the aftermath of Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood attacks, more than 2,800 people have died in Lebanon. Over 13,000 more have been injured. The Lebanese government estimates that 1.3 million people—over a fifth of the population—have fled their homes, in what the caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, described as possibly “the largest displacement” in the country’s history. Of these, more than 500,000 have crossed the border into Bashar al-Asad’s empire of ruins. [Read More]
THE WAR IN UKRAINE
Ukraine: Compromise or Collapse
By Anatol Lieven, The Nation [October 29, 2024]
---- Whoever wins the US election, the start of a new administration should be an opportunity for a serious reevaluation of US policy toward the war in Ukraine. For it is abundantly clear that the present course is unsustainable, and if persisted in, is likely to lead sooner or later either to Ukrainian collapse or to direct NATO involvement in war with Russia. … It is true that the Ukrainian forces, with tremendous grit, are forcing the Russians to advance very slowly, and are inflicting heavy casualties. Together with the war weariness of much of the Russian population, and Russian economic problems, this could allow Ukraine to reach a peace settlement that would limit Russian territorial gains, and, while excluding NATO membership, allow Ukraine to seek membership of the European Union at some point in the future. This would be very painful for Ukrainians, but it would still be a great triumph in historical terms, and vastly better than what they are likely to get if the war continues. [Read More]
WAR WITH IRAN
(Video) “We Are in an Escalatory Cycle”: Trita Parsi on Latest Israeli Attack on Iran, Risk of Wider War
From Democracy Now! [October 28, 2024]
---- We speak with Iranian American policy analyst Trita Parsi about Israel’s latest attack on Iran on Saturday, when it bombed military facilities and air defense systems in the country. Iran said four soldiers were killed in the attack. Israel also struck air defense batteries and radars in Syria and Iraq. Israel’s assault this weekend came about four weeks after Iran launched a missile attack on Israeli military sites in response to Israel’s war on Lebanon and Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, part of a series of actions between the two countries since the outbreak of the war on Gaza last year. [See the Program]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
"On the brink of an irreversible climate disaster": Summarizing the 2024 state of the climate report
By Patrick Mazza, The Raven [October 29, 2024]
---- Scientists have issued yet another clarion call regarding our seemingly unstoppable momentum toward climate catastrophe. In a recent article, The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth, some of the world’s leading climate scientists lay it out. “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis . . . For half a century, global warming has been correctly predicted even before it was observed—and not only by independent academic scientists but also by fossil fuel companies. Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high, the 3 hottest days ever occurred in July of 2024, and current policies have us on track for approximately 2.7 degrees Celsius peak warming by 2100.” [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST – “Donald Trump’s war on what he calls the “deep state” and his broader war on climate science are neatly aligned,” by Jonathan Mingle, New York Review of Books [October 30, 2024] [Link].
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Trump Is Planning a Third Red Scare
By Branko Marcetic, Jacobin Magazine [November 2024]
---- This election season has been a tumultuous and widely debated one for the Left, on both moral and strategic terms. But strangely absent from these discussions have been the explicit promises and detailed plans from Donald Trump and his team to kick off a third Red Scare and destroy the organized left if they win. … That strategy envisions a whole-of-government campaign of intimidation, slander, and “lawfare,” at both the federal and state levels and working with private organizations, to crush pro-Palestinian activists’ First Amendment rights and carry out a wave of repression. The stated end goal is to make it impossible for activists to organize while turning the public against the movement.[Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST – “Project 2025 Creators Have a Plan to 'Dismantle' Pro-Palestine Movement,” by Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain, Drop Site News [October 29, 2024] [Link].
OUR HISTORY
Paulo Freire and the Enemies of Justice
By Henry A. Giroux, The Journal of Wild Culture [October 27, 2024]
---- Paulo Freire, the radical Brazilian educator, would have turned 103 on September 19, 2024. Freire was not merely an academic; he was a revolutionary, a fierce champion of the oppressed whose lifelong fight for economic, educational, and social justice has left an indelible mark on generations of teachers, students, and cultural workers worldwide. His seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was written under the brutal political repression of 1960s Brazil, yet its message reverberates even louder today in the face of rising authoritarianism and the war on critical thought. Freire knew that education is never neutral — it is always a political act. It either serves to liberate or to domesticate, to empower or to subjugate. [Read More]
‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ Review: What Lies Beneath [The Congo, 1960]
By Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times [October 31, 2024]
---- “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” is a furious and elliptical film, a piece of true history structured like a spider web and drenched in real urgency. The story at its center is the rise to power and eventual C.I.A.-led assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who was elected in May 1960, shortly before his country gained its independence from Belgium. Congo, a country rich with natural resources that were vital, among other things, to Western countries’ weapons of war, had been colonized by Belgium since the late 19th century. [Read More]
