A UN report issued on Friday says that 500,000 people in central Gaza are now experiencing famine. That is, 1 out of 4 people in Gaza face death because they don’t have food. And it will get worse. The report also states that in the coming weeks the massive famine will move south, where the Palestinian population is being concentrated according to the Israeli plan of genocide. As noted in a video linked below, it is unlikely that many of the children or the elderly (and many others) who have entered the “experiencing famine” zone will survive, even if food aid is restored in the near term.
Commenting on the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “It is a man-made disaster, a moral indictment – and a failure of humanity itself. Famine is not about food; it is the deliberate collapse of the systems needed for human survival.” The UN Emergency Food Coordinator pointed out that “food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel. It is a famine within a few hundred metres of food, in a fertile land.”
We are at an incredible turning point in history. Unlike many famines in the past, famine today is not caused by agricultural failures, but is the collateral damage (or deliberate plan) of a military conflict. ALL food and famine specialists see that Gazans are starving because this is what Israel wants: they are just NOT starving, they are BEING starved. The level of sadist cruelty behind Israel’s ethnic cleansing, and the pure evil behind the failures of the United States and other rich and powerful countries to intervene is almost beyond belief.
About 20 years ago there was a lot of talk among foreign policy intellectuals about “the responsibility to protect.” This was a follow-on to the world-class disaster as the United Nations and the “Great Powers” stood aside while Tutsis and Hutus slaughtered each other in Rwanda. Later the “responsibility to protect” became incorporated into mainstream US thinking about military intervention. Obama’s UN representative, Samantha Power, became famous for her advocacy of intervention-to-protect. WHERE ARE THESE PEOPLE NOW! Where is the international blockade against Israel? Where is the armed “humanitarian intervention,” authorized by the UN General Assembly, bringing food and medicine to the shores of Gaza?
It is ironic that the United States and some other countries have been stampeded into agreeing that criticism of Israel is antisemitic. The claim that Jews were threatened by nasty words addressed to the Golden Calf of Israel can be set beside the recent editorial in Israel’s leading liberal newspaper Ha’aretz, “Netanyahu Declares War on the World, Dragging Israel and Global Jewry Toward the Abyss” [Link]. Moral crimes are being committed on a scale that will not be forgotten for many generations.
Of course there are many “saving remnants” (Isaiah). This week our eyes will be on the next Freedom Flotilla heading to Gaza. This flotilla will have several dozen small ships. Like previous attempts to break Israel’s starvation blockade on Gaza, the ships will have food and medicine, things that babies and nursing mothers need, etc. And they will also have several dozen stalwart crews, among them once again will be Greta Thunberg. To learn more about these heroes and their flotilla go here and here.
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING THE WEEK THAT WAS
(Video) How can Israel engineer a famine in Gaza in the 21st century?
From Aljazeera [“Inside Story”] [August 23, 2025]
---- UN chief Antonio Guterres says famine in Gaza is ‘a moral indictment and a failure of humanity itself’. Famine in Gaza from Israel’s deliberate starvation policy has pushed more than half a million people into immediate danger. Yet Israel is intensifying its war, backed by the United States and other Western allies. How can an engineered famine be allowed happen in the 21st century? [See the Program]
Making it official: Famine strikes Gaza City
By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, Middle East Monitor [August 23, 2025]
---- On 22 August, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Famine Review Committee (FRC) published a report claiming that 514,000 people – a roughly a quarter of Gaza’s population – faced famine conditions for the period 1 July to 15 August, described in technical terms as IPC Phase 5. The body defines IPC 5 as “the highest phase of the IPC Acute Food Insecurity Scale, and is attributed when an area has at least 20 per cent of households facing an extreme lack of food, at least 30 per cent of children suffering from acute malnutrition, and two people for every 10,000 dying each day due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease.” … Be it willed ignorance or sinister motivation, Israel’s official response sidesteps the fundamental problem: the issue was always whether food would be allowed to reach a hungry Palestinian civilian population through unabridged humanitarian channels. Given the complete blockade of March and the choking, murderous points of food distribution set up in Gaza after May, the answer is all too clear in its grimness. [Read More]
(Video) “I Just Want to Die”: Desperate Med Student in Gaza Sends Messages to Doctor Denied Entry
From Democracy Now! [August 21, 2025]
---- Israel’s military says it has established a foothold on the outskirts of Gaza City and is calling up an additional 60,000 reservists ahead of a full-scale invasion of Gaza’s largest urban area. This follows days of escalating airstrikes and artillery fire that have killed scores of Palestinians in one of the world’s most densely populated regions. Dr. Mimi Syed is an emergency medicine physician who’s been on two medical missions in Gaza working in hospitals that were under Israeli siege and was just denied reentry into Gaza, mere hours before she was scheduled to travel there for a third medical mission. [See the Program]
The Trump administration’s halt on medical evacuations from Gaza is a death sentence for Palestinian children
By Bilal Irfan and Alyssa Seliga, Mondoweiss [August 18, 2025]
---- The U.S. State Department’s decision this weekend to halt all visitor visas for people from Gaza, which includes the medical-humanitarian visas that have brought injured children to American hospitals, will cost Palestinian lives. Officials say this process will be subject to a “full and thorough review”. For a child with infected burns or a deep trauma wound, a pause is a verdict on their life. The freeze did not arise from new intelligence or any novel identification of problems in the temporary visitor visa pathway. It followed a social-media panic with the circulation of mischaracterized videos of injured children arriving under the care of a U.S. nonprofit being labeled as a “security threat,” rhetoric amplified by political allies. [Read More]
THE MAMDANI CAMPAIGN
The Democratic Establishment’s Shunning of Mamdani Is Disqualifying
By Perry Bacon, The New Republic [August 20, 2025]
---- In the weeks after he won the 2021 Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, Eric Adams was enthusiastically embraced by the party’s establishment. … Four years later, Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral Democratic primary in the Big Apple by a larger margin than Adams, with far more overall votes, and on the strength of a spectacular campaign that inspired young voters across the country. But the party’s establishment is dissing him. ...The shunning of Mamdani is an important illustration of the state of the Democratic Party in 2025. It shows some unfortunate truths about the party’s center-left establishment and points to some clear steps progressives must take. [Read More]
NEWS NOTES
An organization that tracks political protests and citizen engagement reports that “No Kings was One of the largest Days of Protest in US history.” The report on Waging Nonviolence says that “between 2 and 4.8 million people participated in over 2,150 actions nationwide.” Read about this here.
Popular Irish novelist Sally Rooney, author of the best-seller Normal People, is in big trouble after writing in the Irish Times, “I support Palestine Action. If this makes me a ‘supporter of terror’ under UK law, so be it.” Rooney promises to donate the proceeds of her book sales to Palestine Action, made a “prohibited organization” (e.g. like Al Queda) by the UK Parliament. As the UK now longer governs Ireland, she is safe for now. For more on this story, which challenges the UK law under which hundreds of people have been arrested for carrying signs in support of Palestine Action, read this useful story from the UK Guardian.
Next week the Democratic National Committee will be meeting in Minneapolis to figure out how to contest next year’s congressional elections, etc. Too bad for them, on the meeting agenda are two competing Resolutions addressing the Party’s position on the Gaza war, genocide, more arms to Israel, etc. For some useful background and a scorecard of likely players, read “DNC vote on Israel arms embargo will be the next Democratic Party showdown over Palestine,” by Michael Arria, Mondoweiss [August 22, 2025] [Link].
Relevant to the story above, the shift in opinion by US Democratic voters towards greater support for Palestine should (but will it?) play a role in the DNC’s discussions about the Party’s position on Israel/Palestine. Lots of useful information is provided in “As Israeli Genocide Intensifies, Majority of Americans Support Palestinian Statehood,” by Stephen Prager, Common Dreams [August 20, 2025] [Link].
REWARDS!
It has been too long since the Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers included the musical offerings of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. First up we have "Minor Swing." Next is “The Sheik of Araby," with lots of great pictures. And here is a rendition of "La Marseillaise" (the French national anthem) that I think you will enjoy.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
(Video) The Silencing of Anas al-Sharif
From Aljazeera [August 21, 2025] – 24 minutes
---- This is the story of Anas al-Sharif, Al Jazeera Arabic’s correspondent in northern Gaza, who risked everything to document the war unfolding around him. Born and raised under blockade, Anas grew up surrounded by conflict but chose not to turn away. Instead, he became a journalist, determined to show the world the human cost of war. As bombs rained down and entire neighbourhoods were erased, Anas remained on the front line, reporting with unwavering courage. He captured starvation, the destruction, and the relentless targeting of civilians and journalists alike. But in a place where truth is dangerous, Anas became a target himself. This is the story of a man who gave his voice to Gaza until he was silenced. [See the Program]
Statehood Without Liberation: Europe’s Response to Genocide
By Inès Abdel Razek, et al., Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network [August 14, 2025]
--- In response to this Israeli-manufactured catastrophe, several European states have begun recognizing or signaling their intent to recognize the State of Palestine. Most recently, France announced its intention to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September. The UK has stated it will follow suit unless Israel abides by a ceasefire and recommits to a two-state solution. The recent wave of symbolic recognitions that began in 2024 now appears to be the only step many European powers are willing to take in the face of genocide, following nearly two years of moral, material, and diplomatic support for the Israeli regime as well as near-total impunity. This roundtable conversation with Al Shabaka policy analysts Diana Buttu, Inès Abdel Razek, and Al Shabaka’s co-director, Yara Hawari, asks: Why now? What political or strategic interests are driving this wave of recognition? And what does it mean to recognize a Palestinian state, on paper, while leaving intact the structures of occupation, apartheid, and the genocidal regime that sustains them? [Read More]
Trump’s Smokescreen on Venezuela: Exposing the “Narco-State” Accusation
By Manolo De Los Santos, Znet [August 22, 2025]
---- The US government has revived its campaign to label Venezuela a “narco-state”, accusing its top leadership of drug trafficking and slapping hefty bounties on their heads for capture. This campaign, which only momentarily took a backseat, is a strategic fabrication, not a factual assessment. … A new military escalation comes after the Trump administration recently signed a Pentagon memo on confronting drug cartels in Latin America, a directive that frames these criminal organizations as a national security threat. … These military maneuvers were met with sharp condemnation from leaders across the region. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum firmly rejected the use of US military forces in her country, stressing that cooperation does not extend to “invasion” and that her government has no evidence of a direct link between President Maduro and Mexican cartels. Colombian President Gustavo Petro explicitly stated that he would consider any unapproved US military operation an “aggression against Latin America and the Caribbean” and that an attack on Venezuela would be seen as an attack on Colombia. [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
Israel has started the invasion of Gaza City, and is now annihilating one of its most historic neighborhoods
By Tareq S. Hajjaj, Mondoweiss [August 21, 2025]
---- Earlier this month, the Israeli army confirmed its plans to occupy Gaza City, with the invasion reportedly set to start on October 7. But on the ground, the invasion has already started. On August 10, the Israeli army began invading the eastern parts of Gaza City, with Israeli ground forces moving into one of the city’s largest neighborhoods, al-Zaytoun. The neighborhood borders the Netzarim corridor to the south. Locals from the Zaytoun neighborhood told Mondoweiss that they had received orders via phone calls to evacuate their homes to the southern Gaza Strip. Shortly after, the Israeli army started relentlessly bombarding the neighborhood. Based on the pace of the carpet-bombing, locals in Gaza are now speculating that October 7 would not be the date Israel’s occupation of the city began, but the deadline for when Gaza City would be completely erased. [Read More]
(Video) How can Israel continue to claim it does not target civilians? – 28 minutes
From Aljazeera [“Inside Story”] [August 22, 2025]
---- An investigation into leaked classified Israeli military data reveals five out of six Palestinians killed in Gaza were civilians – not fighters. It’s one of the highest civilian death rates recorded in modern wars. So what more do these figures tell us? And with only 17 percent of those killed being combatants, how can Israel continue to claim it does not target Palestinian civilians? [Presenters include Gideon Levy, Francesca Albanese, and Omar Shakir (Human Rights Watch)] [See the Program]
(Video) “The West Bank Is the Prize”: Israel Approves New Settlements to “Bury” Palestinian State
From Democracy Now! [August 21, 2025]
---- Israel gave final approval Wednesday for a controversial settlement project in the occupied West Bank, sabotaging efforts at creating a future Palestinian state. The project has been on hold for over 20 years, largely due to pressure from previous U.S. administrations. The “E-1” settlement would see the construction of about 3,400 new housing units and would sever one of the last remaining territorial links between major Palestinian cities like Ramallah in the northern West Bank and southern cities including Bethlehem, as well as cut off East Jerusalem. “The West Bank is nearly 6,000 kilometers squared in size, and it has been the prize for Israel,” says Mariam Barghouti, Palestinian writer and journalist based in Ramallah. Barghouti says Israeli officials have blatantly expressed their intent to bury the prospect of a Palestinian state. “Israel is not engaging in just a war on Gaza,” she says. “It is engaging in a war of annihilation of Palestinians.” [See the Program].
The War on Truth: Why Are Palestinian Journalists Being Systematically Erased?
By Ramzy Baroud, Znet [August 23, 2025]
---- The killing of seven Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza on August 10 has prompted verbal condemnations, yet has inspired little to no substantive action. This has become the predictable and horrifying trajectory of the international community’s response to the ongoing Israeli genocide. By eliminating Palestinian journalists like Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqeh, Israel has made a sinister statement that the genocide will spare no one. According to the monitoring website Shireen.ps, Israel has killed nearly 270 journalists since October 2023. … For the systematic destruction of a whole nation to succeed, it must include the deliberate targeting of its scientists, doctors, intellectuals, journalists, artists and poets. While children and women remain the largest categories of victims, many of those killed in deliberate assassinations appear to be targeted specifically to disorient Palestinian society, deprive it of societal leadership, and render the process of rebuilding Gaza impossible. [Read More]
THE WAR IN UKRAINE
The Ukraine Peace Process Is Moving Quite Fast
By Anatol Lieven, The Nation [August 20,2025]
---- The Ukraine peace process is now moving as fast as can reasonably be expected. Only two months ago, all sides were still locked in positions that gave no chance at all of progress. Russia was demanding complete Ukrainian withdrawal from all the four provinces it claims to have annexed, and a bar on all Western arms supplies to Ukraine—things that neither Ukraine nor Western governments could possibly accept. The Trump administration and the Kyiv and European governments were demanding a prior ceasefire before beginning talks on an agreement—something that Moscow has made clear for months that it would not accept, since Russian advances on the ground are by far the most important leverage that Russia can bring to bear in talks (just as the Ukrainians rejected a ceasefire when they thought they were winning). Of course, major obstacles remain. Of these, the greatest from Ukraine’s point of view is probably the continued Russian demand for Ukrainian military withdrawal from the approximately 30 percent of Donetsk region that Ukraine still holds. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - (Video) “Will Russia-Ukraine War End with Diplomacy or on Battlefield?” from Democracy Now! [August 19, 2025] [Link]; and “Giving Ukraine a US Security Guarantee Risks National Suicide,” by Ted Galen Carpenter, Antiwar.com [August 22, 2025] [Link].
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
State of Climate: Earth Hottest on Record again, as CO2 still Climbs and Glaciers Wilt
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [August 17, 2025]
---- The American Meteorological Society has issued its annual climate report, this one summarizing changes in 2024. It paints an alarming picture, especially at a moment when Big Oil has taken over the US government via its Republican puppets and is spiking all our efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and to move to green energy. Carbon dioxide is a dangerous greenhouse gas, which keeps the sun’s heat from radiating back out into space, and acts like someone set off atomic bombs in the atmosphere. People think nothing of burning gasoline in their cars, or coal and fossil gas for heating or electricity, but would be freaked out if someone detonated atomic bombs in the sky over their homes every day. But it comes to the same thing. AMS says that the global average of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose to about 422.8 parts per million in 2024, a 52% increase over the level of about 278 ppm that had prevailed in the 18th and previous centuries before the Industrial Revolution. The last time the atmosphere held this much CO2 was the Pliocene era from 5 to 2 million years ago. [Read More]
Make the Fossil Fuel Powers Stranded Assets
By Jeremy Brecher, Strike! [August 19, 2025]
---- There is a specter haunting the fossil-fuel powers. As a recent article in The National Interest by Columbia University energy experts put it, “What is emerging are two competing models of energy and influence—one anchored in the enduring logic of hydrocarbons, the other in the accelerating promise of electrification. At stake is not just the future of energy systems, but the contours of geopolitical power in the decades ahead.” The reality behind the specter is the phenomenal rise of China as the superpower of “Greentech” (sometimes also called “Cleantech”)—technology that reduces or repairs harm to the environment. As BP’s chief economist recently warned, “China is leading the global energy race because of its dominance in building up supply chains for renewable energy and electric vehicles.” Or as a Bloomberg headline put it, “US Will Lose if the EU and China Become Clean Energy Buddies.” [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES/THE STUDENTS
The Troubling Lines That Columbia Is Drawing
By Eyal Press, The New Yorker [August 18, 2025]
---- In 2005, a “working definition” of antisemitism was posted on the website of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, a research institute founded by the European Union. It described antisemitism, somewhat vaguely, as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” Even less precise were the eleven examples of antisemitism that followed, many of which focused on Israel. Among them was “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” and “applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” In the two decades since it was introduced, this definition has not been endorsed by most leading scholars of antisemitism, in part because critics believe that it blurs the line between hostility toward Jews and criticism of Israel. It has been a different story in the political arena, where the reception of the definition has been nothing short of astonishing. [Read More]
(Video) Occupied D.C.? Six GOP States Send National Guard to Washington as Outcry Grows over Trump Power Grab
From Democracy Now! [August 20, 2025]
---- Six Republican-led states have now pledged National Guard troops to the Trump administration’s takeover of Washington, D.C., where it has assumed control of policing under the claim of tackling crime. Along with the D.C. National Guard that Trump already controlled, this brings the total number of troops in the streets of the capital to more than 2,000. The federal takeover comes even as violent crime in the capital is at a 30-year low — numbers the Trump administration now disputes, with the Justice Department launching an investigation into whether those crime statistics were manipulated by city officials. “What we’re seeing is lawlessness, but it’s all coming from the White House,” says community activist Keya Chatterjee, the executive director of the group Free DC. [See the Program]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
America Is Abandoning One of the Greatest Medical Breakthroughs
By Rick Bright, New York Times [August 18, 2025]
---- In early 2020, when the first genetic sequence of the new coronavirus was posted online, scientists were ready. Within hours, they began designing a vaccine. Within weeks, clinical trials were underway. That unprecedented speed, which saved millions of lives, was possible only because years earlier, the United States invested in a vaccine technology called mRNA. Today that work is being sidelined and, with it, our best chance to quickly respond when the next threat emerges. … Political narratives about mRNA have fueled confusion, which leads to mistrust, yet the scientific evidence consistently shows that this technology is safe and effective and holds enormous potential for future vaccines and treatments. Some have claimed mRNA encourages viral mutations or prolongs pandemics. Research says otherwise. … The consequences of canceling mRNA contracts will affect more nations than just the United States. Many countries have been building regional mRNA manufacturing capacity. For a leader like the United States to pull back now undermines that effort and weakens our collective ability to respond to the next outbreak. It means choosing to face the next biological threat with fewer defenses and slower tools while others build speed and strength. [Read More]
Trump’s War on Mail-In Voting Threatens the Foundations of Democracy Itself
By Thom Hartmann, Common Dreams [August 19, 2025]
---- On Monday, US President Donald Trump crossed another line that no president in our history has ever dared to touch. With the echo of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s whisper in his ear, in front of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and seven other European leaders, Trump announced he’s preparing an executive order to ban mail-in ballots and even outlaw voting machines across America ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. … This is not just a partisan maneuver. It’s an open assault on the Constitution, a grotesque power grab, and a direct threat to the foundation of democracy itself. And it’s happening in real time, in broad daylight, with a criminally compliant Republican Party cheering him on. Republicans hate mail-in voting for multiple reasons. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The Audacity of Occupy Wall Street
By Richard Kim, The Nation [November 2, 2011]
[FB - Was it only 14 years ago?]
---- In these grim times, something unexpected happened: at first scores met in parks around New York City this summer to plan an occupation of Wall Street, then hundreds responded to their call, then thousands from persuasions familiar and astonishing, and now more than 100 cities around the country are Occupied. In the face of unchecked capitalism and a broken, captured state, the citizens of Occupy America have done something desperate and audacious—they put their faith and hope in the last seemingly credible force left in the world: each other. Early in the Occupation, Nation writer Jeff Madrick urged the Occupiers to “go to where the injustice is,” and they have…. If there is some meaningful convergence between traditional social-democratic politics and the anarchist-inflected focus on experience, perhaps it lies in these direct actions. As the members of a new generation put their bodies on the line, they discover that their languishing talents can be deployed in the pursuit of justice. What’s a name for this—organized anarchy or socialism with a beat? What matters is that it’s working for now. [Read More]
How Bigotry Crushed the Dreams of an All-Black Little League Team
By Chris Lamb, Counterpunch [August 22, 2025]
---- John Rivers, John Bailey, David Middleton, Leroy Major and Buck Godfrey – all teammates from the 1955 Cannon Street YMCA Little League All-Star team – left Charleston, South Carolina, on a bus on Aug. 18, 2025. After a stop at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, for a couple days, they’ll head to Williamsport, Pennsylvania. There, they’ll be recognized before the Little League World Series championship game on August 24, 2025 – 70 years after the players, then 11 and 12 years old, watched the championship game from the bleachers, wondering why they weren’t on the field living out their own dreams instead of watching other boys live out theirs. When the Cannon Street team registered for a baseball tournament in Charleston in July 1955, it put the team and the forces of integration on a collision course with segregation, bigotry and the Southern way of life. [Read More]
