Hello All – For two months Israel has tightened its siege on northern Gaza, “home” now to 130,000 children at risk of starvation. They and their families have little or no shelter, as thousands of tents were destroyed in a recent storm. Yesterday Israeli soldiers killed three more World Central Kitchen workers, and WCK announced that they would no longer be able to provide food to northern Gaza. The UN’s main relief effort in Gaza, UNWRA, also announced that they could not continue their work, as their staff would be in danger – some 200 have already been killed.
A UN agency announced this week that throughout November Israel had blocked all attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to the northern Gaza Strip. The charity organization Save the Children said on Monday that children living in north Gaza “have been almost completely cut off from supplies of food, water, and medicine since October 6, 2024, when Israeli forces declared the area to be a closed military zone,” with the independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) saying that famine is either imminent or likely already occurring in the area.”
Last October, an independent UN commission concluded in October that Israel “has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza” and “deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles,” constituting multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the crime of extermination.
If this is not genocide, what shall we call it? Please check out Peter Beinart’s video interview with leading genocide scholar Omer Bartov (below), where he explains the differences between war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, and describes how he came to the conclusion that there was no alternative to calling Israel’s war on Palestinians genocide.
The tens of thousands of Palestinians not dying of famine or disease are being killed by US-made bullets and bombs. More than an accomplice, the United States is a partner in this genocide, not only supplying the means for the massive killing, but also refusing to take steps that might bring Israel’s killing to a halt. While millions in the United States and around the world have protested, millions more have been silent, especially those in positions of power or influence. The failure to stop Israel will shame our nation forever. We must find the determination to stop this.
SOME THOUGHTS ILLUMINATING THE ABOVE
(Video) Omer Bartov on Genocide and the ICC
From Peter Beinart’s Notebook [December 1, 2024]
---- Our guest is the renowned, Israeli-born, Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov, who teaches at Brown University. In August, he described returning to Israel and encountering students whose “rhetoric brought to mind some of the darkest moments of 20th-century history.” This month he concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. We’ll discuss the genocide debate, the ICC warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, and the use and misuse of the memory of the Holocaust. [See the Program]
Israeli total War Continues, with “No end in sight” for Palestinians in Gaza — Cold, Drenched, Homeless and Hungry
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [November 26, 2024]
---- Muhannad Hadi, the special UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, addressed the ambassadors of the UN Security Council states on Monday, Nov. 25, on the “ongoing devastation in Gaza,” which, he said, “persists relentlessly, with no resolution in sight” as winter approaches with its drenching rains and chilly temperatures, endangering lives. Even as he was speaking, what is left of the Gaza government announced the grim news that this weekend storm surges along the coast destroyed 10,000 tents people had set up near the sea. Rain storms and wind have damaged 81% of refugee tents in Gaza, with 110,000 out of 135,000 tents needing to be immediately replaced. Hadi warned that “the delivery of critical aid across Gaza is grinding to a halt. He cautioned that as a result, “the survival of two million people hangs in the balance.” [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST
“Israel blocked all humanitarian aid for northern Gaza in November, says UN,” From Middle East Monitor [November 28, 2024] [Link]; “Israel Is Carrying Out a War on Hospitals,” by Jake Sonnenberg, Jacobin Magazine [November 2024] [Link]; and “Northern Gaza: 130,000 Children Deprived of Food and Medicine Under Israeli Siege,” by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [November 27, 2024] [Link].
NEWS NOTE
(Video) Leonard Peltier: Amnesty Int’l Calls on Biden to Free Indigenous Leader “Before It’s Too Late”
From Democracy Now! [November 26, 2024]
---- With just weeks left in President Joe Biden’s term, we speak with Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O’Brien, who has written to the outgoing president urging him to “change course on critical human rights” before the end of his term in office. One of his key demands is for Biden to free Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who has been imprisoned for decades and repeatedly denied parole. Peltier recently turned 80 and has always maintained his innocence for the 1975 killing of two FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation. His conviction was riddled with irregularities and prosecutorial misconduct [See the Program]
PEACE ACTION – THINGS TO DO
CFOW is an affiliate member of Peace Action New York State (PANYS), a network of a dozen community-based peace groups (like CFOW). One of the groups is located in Syracuse, where our friends the Syracuse Cultural Workers have a fine array of peace calendars, t-shirts and other such holiday-giftable things. Purchases from the Syracuse Cultural Workers “store” will generate a donation for PANYS if you shop using this code and use the discount code “PANYS” at check-out. Thanks!
Thursday, December 5, 10 a.m. – Rally to Defend and Protect Immigrant Rights. Sponsored by the New York Immigration Coalition. “A press conference in Yonkers to stand up for immigrants and fight back against the imminent threats to Immigrant New Yorkers.” Endorsed by several Westchester immigrant-support groups. The press conference will be at Van Der Donk Park/Yonkers DMV.
Monday, December 9, 4 to 6 pm. “Make the Road New York is offering a Train the Trainers workshop focused on Knowing Your Rights during interactions with ICE. . Please invite any allies, volunteers, electeds, etc. who are interested in being trained on this topic, and who are eager to bring this information back to their respective hubs. Some of the topics covered will be
· Difference between USCIS, ICE, and DHS
· ICE activity at home, workplace, in the car, and in public spaces
· Calling the court
· Creating a family plan
Interested folks should fill the registration link. Once they register they will receive an automatic zoom 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.) The next "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil will be held in Yonkers on Monday, December 2nd 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!
This week’s Reward for stalwart newsletter readers brings back Charlie Chaplin’s speech concluding “The Great Dictator.” Here the Jewish barber, mistakenly thought to be the “great dictator” Adenoid Hynkel, speaks to the assembled soldiers and citizens. He says what many are saying today, that freedom is precious and fascism must be defeated. 84 years later, not much needs to be changed. Listen to the speech.
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
THE CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ESSAYS
Israel’s Revenge: An Interview with Rashid Khalidi
By Mark O’Connell, New York Review of Books [December 19, 2024 issue]
---- The historian Rashid Khalidi has, for many years, been a preeminent Arab-American intellectual and among the most vocal critics of America’s involvement in the conflict between Israel and Palestine. In the aftermath of the armed incursion by Hamas and other militant groups on Israeli territory on October 7 last year, and of the ongoing Israeli military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon that followed, Khalidi and his work have only increased in relevance. His book The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (2020), which frames the history of Palestinian dispossession as a settler-colonial project dependent on elite support in the West, has been a fixture on the New York Times best-seller list for much of the past year.[Read More]
A Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be One of the Most Foreseeable Catastrophes in History
By Zeynep Tufekci, The New York Times [November 29, 2024]
---- Almost five years after Covid blew into our lives, the main thing standing between us and the next global pandemic is luck. And with the advent of flu season, that luck may well be running out. The H5N1 avian flu, having mutated its way across species, is raging out of control among the nation’s cattle, infecting roughly a third of the dairy herds in California alone. Farmworkers have so far avoided tragedy, as the virus has not yet acquired the genetic tools to spread among humans. But seasonal flu will vastly increase the chances of that outcome. … We might be fine. Viruses don’t always manage to adapt to new species, despite all the opportunities. But if there is a bird flu pandemic soon, it will be among the most foreseeable catastrophes in history. [Read More]
This Maverick Thinker Is the Karl Marx of Our Time
By Christopher Caldwell, New York Times [November 28, 2024]
---- Wolfgang Streeck may be best known for his essays in New Left Review, including a dazzling series on the cascade of financial crises that followed the crash of 2008. He resembles Karl Marx in his conviction that capitalism has certain internal contradictions that make it unsustainable — the more so in its present “neoliberal” form. His latest book, “Taking Back Control? States and State Systems After Globalism,” published this month, asks whether the global economy as it is now set up is compatible with democracy. He has his doubts. Understand Mr. Streeck and you will understand a lot about the left-wing movements that share his worldview — Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain and the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance in Germany. But you will also understand Viktor Orban, Brexit and Mr. Trump. Mr. Streeck (whose name rhymes with “cake”) argues that today’s contradictions of capitalism have been building for half a century. [Read More]
THE WAR ON GAZA
How the US Media Helped the Biden Administration Distance Itself From the Horrors of Gaza
By Adam Johnson and Othman Ali, The Nation [November 25, 2024]
---- An analysis of press coverage of the first year of the siege, bombing, and invasion of Gaza reveals a US media eager to produce narratives that allow the White House to distance itself from the moral, social, political, and professional consequences of their support for Israel. White House and State Department reporters at major US outlets consistently took self-serving claims by anonymous aides at face value, did not interrogate clear conflicts of interest, and focused too much on alleged personality disputes, unverifiable states of mind, and assumed benevolent motives over material policy. … The destruction of Gaza is in its 14th month. Israel continues to escalate in Lebanon, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens by the day. Understanding how US media outlets continue to paint a participant in the siege and bombing of Gaza as a separate, reluctant, humanitarian force is essential to shifting the focus of coverage away from self-serving leaks, personality disputes, court intrigue, and presumed humanitarian motives into the more concrete, skeptical, policy-driven coverage typically reserved for states hostile to US interests. [Read More]
Blocking humanitarian medical aid in Gaza is a death sentence
By Bilal Irfan, et al., Mondoweiss [December 1, 2024]
---- It is imperative for the medical community, humanitarian organizations, and global leaders to take a principled stand on this issue.141516 We call upon our colleagues to champion their respective governments and civil society organizations to urge Israel to rescind its decision and allow these medical NGOs entry into Gaza to continue coordinating life-saving medical missions and providing critical humanitarian relief. The context needs no further contextualization: war crimes have already been committed against healthcare infrastructure and personnel in Gaza in violation of the core ethics of our profession. We cannot fail or remain silent at this stage, with the alarmingly horrific developments across the Strip, especially northern Gaza. If we are unable or unwilling to act now, it may become impossible for our medical community to recover from this dereliction. Failing to act is complicity in the crimes being committed, and a death sentence for the vulnerable in Gaza. [Read More]
In choosing to ban UNRWA, Israel has entrenched itself as a pariah state
By Mohammad Abu Hawash, New Politics [November 29, 2024]
----In choosing to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israel has permanently branded itself as a pariah state. However, what is more important is what this ban means for millions of Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation and rely on UNRWA for daily essential services like education, medical care, and life-saving humanitarian aid in times of crisis. The international community’s response to this travesty must be two-pronged; there should be immediate measures taken to force Israel to backtrack before more Palestinians die as a result of reduced humanitarian aid, but there should also be consequences for Israel’s other actions. This attempt to curtail UNRWA’s operations is part of a wider strategy and hence should not be seen in isolation of the atrocities that Israel committed in Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere. [Read More]
THE WAR ON LEBANON
FB - On top of the horrible war on Gaza, Israel’s 50 day-war on Lebanon has killed more than 3,000 people and displaced about a million. Especially noteworthy in Israel’s latest war was the targeting of hospitals and first-responders. Now the US/Biden claims to have brokered a truce. Will this last? The more we learn about the details of the truce, the flimsier it seems. Already there are many reports (Aljazeera, etc.) of Israel continuing to bomb “targets” in Lebanon. On Wednesday Democracy Now! broadcast excellent interviews with a Lebanese woman on the view from inside Lebanon, and with Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy, giving insights on what the Israelis may think they’re doing. Also useful on the details of the ceasefire is this essay from Substack’s Jeremy Scahill, “The ‘Ceasefire’ in Lebanon is a Ticking Bomb.” [Link]
THE WAR IN UKRAINE
Biden Asks Congress To Authorize $24 Billion More To Spend on Ukraine
By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [November 26, 2024]
---- The Biden administration has asked Congress to approve $24 billion in additional spending on Ukraine as it’s working to ramp up the proxy war as much as possible during President Biden’s final weeks in office. … If Congress agrees to the request, it would bring total US spending on the proxy war, according to publicly available data, to about $210 billion. … US officials have told The Washington Post that the Biden administration is trying to put Ukraine in the best position possible before President-elect Donald Trump might push for an end to the war. US officials acknowledged that within a few months, Ukraine could be pushed into negotiations and could end up ceding territory. [Read More]
Mass Desertions Over Radiation Could End the War in Ukraine
By Barbara G. Ellis, Counterpunch [November 29,2024]
---- Ukrainian desertions have now become legendary, along with increasing populations of neighboring Romania, Poland, and Germany. The Kyiv Post just reported some 60,000 alone are facing criminal charges of desertion since the war’s start in 2022. Thousands of others have not been caught nor wooed or forced back to the ranks. The Eurasian Review also noted Ukrainians on the 629-mile frontline were poorly armed and often out of ammunition. This prolonged war nearing three years have near decimated many Ukrainian infantry battalions, making the situation grim on the battle lines. Reinforcements are few …. not to mention the 44,000 draft-age Ukainian males who by August had slipped through border-police lines of other nations. The Wall Street Journal says 15,000 fled to mountainous Romania in particular. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST – “White House Pressing Ukraine To Draft 18-Year-Olds for War,” by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [November 27, 2024] [Link].
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
The “Worst COP” Concludes With a “Heartbreaking” Climate-Finance Deal
By Carol Schaeffer, The Nation [November 27, 2024]
---- COP29 ended with an agreement that disappointed nearly everyone who wasn’t from a rich country. The deal created a New Collective Quantified Goal or NCQG, UN-speak for a fixed amount that wealthy nations would pay to poorer ones. The bill for the Global North will come to $300 billion per year by 2035. This is a fraction of the $1.3 trillion in annual grants that developing countries were pushing to begin immediately. It is only a marginal increase from the $250 billion offered in an earlier version of the agreement, released the final scheduled day of the summit. The climate-financing agreement was reached in the early hours of Sunday morning, well after the scheduled end on Friday of the two-week climate summit held in Baku. The deal marked an end to a climate summit marred by chaos and bitterness and which one negotiator called the “worst COP in recent memory.” [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Democrats should stop mocking Trump’s ground game and start learning from it
By Astra Taylor, The Guardian [UK] [November 25, 2024]
---- Changes at the top won’t be enough if they’re not tethered to change on the ground. Voter outreach needs to be people- and place-centered, not data- and advertiser-driven. It needs to be issue-focused and year-round, not scaled in eight weeks and gone overnight. And it must offer more than an awkward conversation at the door and an alienating avalanche of texts treating recipients like little more than ATMs. People need a sense of belonging and a compelling and credible vision of a future worth fighting for. In the end, the fate of democracy is too precious to leave in the hands of the Democratic Party. Across the country, ordinary people are building the relationships, organizations, and power required to move this country forward. They are the ground game we need. [Read More],
(Video) “I Am Ready, Warden”: New Film on TX Death Row Prisoner John Ramirez Examines Redemption & Vengeance
From Democracy Now! [November 26, 2024]
---- We speak with journalist Keri Blakinger about a new documentary, “I Am Ready, Warden,” based partly on her reporting about death row prisoner John Henry Ramirez, who was sentenced to die for the 2004 murder of a convenience store clerk named Pablo Castro in Texas. While on death row, Ramirez became a devout Christian and sued for the right to have his pastor lay hands on him when he was ultimately executed in 2022. I Am Ready, Warden examines the forces of redemption and vengeance by following Ramirez, as well as the son of his victim, Aaron Castro, and Ramirez’s own son and his supporters. [See the Program]
OUR HISTORY
The “Battle of Seattle,” 25 Years Later
By John Tarleton, The Indypendent [NYC] [December 1, 2024]
---- Twenty-five years ago yesterday, thousands of protesters poured into the streets of downtown Seattle and shut down a World Trade Organization summit meeting. At stake was whether the WTO would be allowed to continue its drive to further concentrate power over the global economy in the hands of the few at the expense of the many and the natural world. The Battle of Seattle was a spectacular victory for progressive social movements that ignited a wave of mass protests around the world wherever political and corporate elites gathered to meet behind closed doors. It also birthed Indymedia, a decentralized, global network of radical media collectives, which The Indypendent has its roots in…. The Left’s greatest moments occur when it taps into a deep longing for change and alters our sense of what’s possible. Think of the Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, Occupy Wall Street, Bernie 2016, the George Floyd uprising. The Battle of Seattle was one of those moments. [Read More]
Berkeley Free Speech Movement Forged an Organizing Blueprint That’s Relevant Now
By Derek Seidman, Truthout [November 30, 2024]
---- U.S. universities have always been sites of contestation and political struggle. Today, their governing bodies are dominated by representatives of corporate power. Issues like the student debt crisis and military research are bound up with universities. The right wing, often joined by establishment Democrats, attacks college curricula and scapegoats students to score political points. Student activists today are challenging university ties to everything from fossil fuels to racist policing — and, of course, to the genocide in Palestine. They demand divestment and stage protests and encampments. In response, government officials and big donors are accelerating the machinery of repression against students and faculty. This tradition — of student struggle for justice at universities, of the deep politicization of university spaces — is far from new. A key turning point in its birth occurred 60 years ago, with the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in late 1964. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST is this short video of Mario Savio’s great speech, “Put your bodies in the gears, stop the Machine!”
