Hello All – For many months we have been told that Israel’s war on Gaza (and now the West Bank) might be ended soon if US-brokered negotiations were successful. For whatever reasons, only one negotiation was successful, and the ceasefire inaugurated last January was broken by Israel in March. Since then, only more hopeful words – until last Tuesday, when Israel bombed the Hamas negotiating delegation in Qatar, killing 5. All but the Zionist bitter-enders now concede that Israel has no intention of ending the war, and if allowed to pursue war unhindered it will purge Gaza of its inhabitants by any means necessary.
The only possible path to save the Gazans is serious coercion, whether it be military or crushing economic sanctions. Neither peaceful protest in Israel nor protest around the world moves the leaders of the United States, Europe, or Israel itself. The recent convening of the UN Security Council in response to Qatar’s complaint about Israel’s bombing resulted in many fine words, but no effective action.
When the Security Council refuses to act, the UN General Assembly (all 193 members) has some power under the heading of “Uniting for Peace” to do something. What should they do? Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin outlined some action that might be effective in an article posted yesterday. She urged that a “Uniting for Peace” resolution at the UN include the following:
-- A UN protection force to deliver humanitarian aid, protect civilians, preserve evidence of war crimes, and facilitate reconstruction;
-- Comprehensive sanctions and military embargo;
-- Withdrawal of Israel’s General Assembly credentials;
-- Reactivation of the UN’s long-dormant anti-apartheid mechanism, and
-- Establishing a war crimes tribunal.
The world has given “diplomacy,” fine words, legal initiatives, and similar efforts their chance. Israel is simply a “rogue nation,” and it is to the shame of the United States that we have allowed our government and political elites to go along with this charade. In “working for peace,” it’s time to move the message from fine words to coercive action.
THE GENOCIDE ROLLS ON
“America Is Bankrolling This”: Jeremy Scahill on Israel’s Bombing of Hamas in Qatar
From Democracy Now! [September 10, 2025]
---- Global condemnation is mounting after Israel bombed Qatar’s capital Doha, attempting to take out senior Hamas leaders who had gathered to consider a U.S. proposal for a Gaza ceasefire. Hamas leadership survived the strike, which killed six. We speak with Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of Drop Site News, who has reported extensively on Gaza ceasefire negotiations and is one of the few Western journalists to be in regular contact with senior members of Hamas. He reacts to Tuesday’s unprecedented strike.“The very Palestinians who are trying to negotiate some form of a truce with Israel, Israel then targets them and kills them,” says Scahill, who also questions claims by the Trump administration that it was uninvolved in the planning of the bombing. “At the end of the day, Americans should be asking themselves: Is all of this worth the cost, that America is bankrolling this, arming this, supporting this, encouraging this?” [See the Program]
Gaza’s worst fear is no longer bombs but ‘humanitarian cities’
By Logain Hamdan, Aljazeera [September 12, 2025]
---- Forced relocation uproots us forever. To lose a home is devastating. To lose the possibility of return is annihilating. That is why families whisper about the proposals with trembling voices. Because deep down, we know: once we are herded there, we may never see home again. The world must see through the language being used. The term “humanitarian” is a mask. What is being proposed is not relief but imprisonment. What is being prepared is not shelter but a system of control designed to make displacement permanent. If you read those headlines, do not imagine children playing safely in neat new towns. Imagine them staring through barbed wire, asking why they cannot go home. Imagine mothers queueing for a ration of flour under the eyes of soldiers. Imagine fathers pacing at night, unable to protect their families from the indignity of being treated as captives. For us in Gaza, the worst may still be ahead. [Read More]
Gaza and the Death of Conscience
By Ismail Salahuddin, Middle East Monitor [September 13, 2025]
---- There are moments in history that strip away every illusion we carry about ourselves. Gaza is one such moment. For nearly two years, the world has witnessed a genocide live on its screens. We have seen children pulled from rubble, families starving in tents, hospitals turned to dust. We cannot say we did not know. Every image, every cry, every number has reached us in real time. And yet the killing goes on, the silence goes on, life goes on. The truth is unbearable but undeniable: we have failed Gaza, and in doing so, we have failed ourselves as human beings. Frantz Fanon once wrote that colonialism is not a machine but a human reality, and when confronted, it responds with naked violence. Gaza is the purest proof of this truth in our own time. Israel’s colonial war does not speak the language of justice or dialogue; it speaks through bombs, siege, and starvation. Genocide today does not come only with the slogans of hatred but with the bureaucratic jargon of “security,” “collateral damage,” “military necessity.” Western governments supply the bombs while speaking of peace. The United Nations counts the dead while doing nothing to stop the dying. Media outlets repeat official lines while children are buried under rubble. [Read More]
THE CHARLIE KIRK MURDER
While there is still more to learn about the Charlie Kirk killing and the motivations of his murder, I think it is clear that we are on the cusp of a perhaps large surge in political violence coming from “the Right,” starting with the Trump people and working down the food chain to local militias and patriotic vigilantes. Today’s New York Times reports a surge in the use of the phrase “civil war” on social media. A New Yorker writer surveys the talk coming out of Washington and asks, “Did Trump just declare war on the American left?” In an insightful program from Democracy Now! Last week, a historian of political violence asserts that we are in a “moment of great peril.” Those familiar with the rise of Hitler compare the Kirk murder to the Reichstag fire of 1933, which the new Nazi government used to end civil liberties in Germany and launch a massive purge of regime opponents, arresting thousands.
Yesterday’s CFOW vigil leaflet denounced the murder and remarked on the irony of Kirk’s defense of the “right to bear arms,” even if some innocent people were killed, it would be “worth it.” The leaflet pointed out that Utah allowed “open carry” on university campuses, and that the Gun Violence Archive records more that 15,000 people killed by gunfire each year over the last decade, and that there have been 301 “mass murders” – defined as 4 or more people killed or injured – so far this year: about 1 per day.
ALSO USEFUL TO READ – Kirk’s murder has prompted insightful essays about right wing politics and political/gun violence in the USA. Recommended here are “Nothing Will Stop Trump From Weaponizing Charlie Kirk’s Killing to Attack the Left,” by Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [September 11 2025] [Link]; “Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Is Part of a Trend: Spiking Gun Violence in Red States,” by Alain Stephens, The Intercept [September 12 2025] [Link]; “Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning,” by Elizabeth Spiers, The Nation [September 12, 2025] [Link]; and “Charlie Kirk Didn’t Shy Away From Who He Was. We Shouldn’t Either,” by Jamelle Bouie, New York Times [September 13, 2025] [Link].
FREEDOM FLOTILLA TO GAZA
(Video) Global Sumud Flotilla Vows to Keep Sailing to Gaza
From Democracy Now! [September 12, 2025]
---- Democracy Now! speaks to two activists aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla as it prepares to set sail for Gaza in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade. In recent days, two drone attacks on the flotilla ships, which are docked in Tunisia, have been reported. “We know who has interest in stopping these flotillas,” says Mariana Mortágua, a Portuguese parliamentarian who has joined the Global Sumud Flotilla and suspects the strikes were the work of the Israeli military. Mortágua says she has joined the flotilla because it’s “my duty to be here and to help in any way I can … to show people that Gaza is a real place. It’s not an abstract location. Gaza exists. It’s there. Real people are living there and are living under attack.” We also hear from Saif Abukeshek, a Palestinian activist based in Barcelona and a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla steering committee. “There is no one mission or campaign that will have a direct outcome impact. But I believe solidarity work is an accumulative process that we have to build in,” says Abukeshek. “We have to mobilize people around the world. We have to get pressure on governments, because that’s the only way that Israel will listen and will stop their crimes.” [See the Program].
ALSO OF INTEREST - “A Symbol of Global Resistance: Why Israel Fears the Gaza Flotillas,” By Ramzy Baroud, Znet [September 11, 2025] [Link]; and from Aljazeera, a map, “Israel has attacked, intercepted all Gaza-bound flotillas since 2010,” [Link].
NEWS NOTES
In case you missed it, a small news item this week recorded that the House of Representatives voted to fund the Pentagon to the tune of $892.6 billion. This of course was a record; and the same legislation slashed Medicare, Food Stamps, and much else, affecting tens of million low-income people. If you can stand it, read more here.
It seems increasingly likely that the boat off the coast of Venezuela blasted by a US drone last week had nothing to do with drug smuggling. Nevertheless, a small flotilla of warships remains in the Caribbean. Military exercises, including amphibious-landing practice, are taking place in Puerto Rico. Is this preparation for war with Venezuela? A distraction from things not working in the USA? Is this wagging-the-dog, or the real thing? Check out this useful essay.
In another profile in courage from our great universities, UC Berkeley has send the names of 160 students, faculty, and staff to the Trump admin. The names were demanded by the Trump people as part of the extortion racket now assaulting universities in the name of making Jews “feel safe.” Judith Butler, a prominent academic at Berkeley and one whose name was submitted to the government, described the university’s action as an "enormous breach of trust," and a "practice from the McCarthy era." [Learn More].
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 Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com, and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group 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 Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers provide some songs from B.B. King, born 100 years ago this week in Memphis. Among dozens of his great songs on the Internet, here are “The Thrill is Gone"; "Hummingbird"; and "How Blue Can You Get?" (live at the Cook County Jail.) I hope you will ALSO ENJOY The Marsh Family, with their timely song, (Video) "Measles and Polio Down in the Schoolyard" (h/t Paul Simon).
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS & ARTICLES
The War for the Imagination
By Rebecca Solnit, Meditations in an Emergency [September 8, 2025]
[FB – Last week Rebecca Solnit was honored for “lifetime achievement” by the Northern California Book Awards. She expressed her thanks to the San Francisco Public Library, and libraries everywhere, with this speech/essay.]
---- I and we are wildlife whose natural habitat is libraries, when it comes to physical space, because they contain books in which minds roam free through time and space, encounter Dogen and Dante and Sappho and Black Elk and others long since gone, meet ideas and possibilities, meet each other in that deep way that AI can never replace, because when you read a work of literature you encounter another human being's struggles and successes in describing the world or their heart or a particular time and place in words, and that contact, even through the medium of black ink on white paper, even across continents and centuries, is human and humane. We are wildlife because books freed us to reach beyond the particulars of time and place and self. And we are the Bay Area, which has been a liberatory place for writing, a place more out from under the shadow of Eurocentrism than the East Coast, a place where poetry broke free seventy years ago, a place that faces Asia, in a state that shares a border with Mexico. In what we now call California, which was a place of astonishingly linguistic and cultural diversity and creativity among its first peoples, and that too has been and is and will be at the heart of the stories and voices of this place. [Read More]
From European leaders to American media personalities, Zionism’s rationale is crumbling
By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [September 10, 2025]
---- The U.S. establishment will not break on support for genocide till the Jewish community breaks. Older Jews who support Israel remain a pillar of the Democratic party. AIPAC contributions are a symptom of the generational commitment to what Nadler calls the “Zionist dream.” Chuck Schumer, David Axelrod, Brad Sherman, and Bernie Sanders too still buy Jewish delusions about the Jewish state. And that view still predominates in the mainstream media– including influential voices like Thomas Friedman, Jake Tapper, and Dana Bash. CBS’s former owner Shari Redstone, who is 71, reportedly decided to sell the network because she was so distressed by a 60 Minutes report on Biden State Department resignations over genocide. The blindness of older pro-Israel Jews is the impediment to change inside the liberal establishment. Macron and Friedland are a threat to that blindness. Break that power and our media will finally focus on the American-sponsored genocide, 24/7. Then Trump will see the pictures, and move. [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
The Perilous Path to Escape Gaza City [Pictures]
By Saher Alghorra and Liam Stack, New York Times [September 13, 2025]
---- On the coastal road heading south from Gaza City, thousands of people have begun an arduous journey to what they hope will be relative safety. Israel has told them to flee as it prepares to take over the city. It is a dangerous journey through stifling heat and battered landscapes. Those who own a car or can afford a taxi are at an advantage. They cram into beat-up vehicles, some of which are missing windows or windshields. The cars are piled high with mattresses, suitcases and buckets. But many more people flee the city on foot, taking only what they can carry. As they walk down the coastal road, some stop to watch the pillars of smoke rising from the city behind them. The booms of Israeli airstrikes are never far away. [Read More]
How America helped create the Palestinian Authority – only to undermine it ever since
By Anne Irfan, The Conversation [September 12, 2025]
---- At the end of August, the Trump administration blocked Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and 80 other Palestinian officials from attending the UN general assembly meeting in New York, which runs between September 9 and 23. The US president’s decision to revoke the Palestinian officials’ US visas comes as various European governments prepare to formally recognise the state of Palestine at the general assembly. Supporters of Palestinian statehood are proposing a central role for Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza’s future government. Historically, the US has also supported the PA. … Yet behind the scenes, the US stance on Palestinian statehood has always been murkier. A deeper look shows that the Trump administration’s recent moves blocking the PA are less of a departure from long-term US policy than they may seem. As I explain in my new book A Short History of the Gaza Strip, the US has long paired its ostensible support for the PA with policies that cripple its ability to function and undermine prospects of real Palestinian independence. … The reality of US treatment of the PA since the 1990s calls into question whether Trump’s recent moves are really a turning point in US policy – or simply the culmination of a long-term trend. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
(Video) “Here Comes the Sun”: Bill McKibben on Renewable Energy, “Sun Day” & the “Last Chance” for Climate
From Democracy Now! [September 10, 2025]
---- As the Trump administration grows increasingly hostile to renewable energy, we speak with acclaimed environmentalist Bill McKibben about his new book, Here Comes the Sun, in which he lays out a hopeful vision for the future that includes avoiding climate catastrophe, reshaping the economy and saving democracy. He says the key to unlock that future is fully embracing renewable energy over the fierce opposition of the fossil fuel industry and its political enablers. He notes that solar and wind are already the cheapest and fastest-growing power sources in history, with more green energy coming online every year. “It’s not that we’re going to stop global warming. It’s too late for that. It’s that we really have a chance to reboot the way the world and its economy and its geopolitics works right now,” says McKibben. [See the Program]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
The Underestimated “Price of Parenting”
By Nancy Folbre, Dollars & Sense [September 9, 2025]
---- The private cost of raising children in the United States is at least twice as high as recent estimates suggest. The price of something is not a measure of its worth, just what you have to pay in order to get it—and in some cases—take care of it. No one would argue that cost is the only factor driving the birth rate down in the United States. but it is surely one factor, if only because potential parents worry about their ability to do a good job raising their kids. … In 2022, economists at the Brookings Institution took the USDA estimates for children in two-parent married middle-income families with two children in which the youngest child was born in 2015 and applied a realistic estimate of the rate of inflation to project an estimate of $310,605 for total parental expenses up to age 18 for a child born in 2015. … The biggest omission from estimates of the price of parenting, however, is the monetary value of parental time. A back-of-the-envelope calculation that takes the replacement costs of time into account more than doubles the parental price tag for one child from birth to age 18 to over $600,000. … 75% of the surveyed parents reported that having and raising children has been “far more expensive than expected.” [Read More]
(Video) Jeffrey Epstein & JPMorgan: How the Largest U.S. Bank Enabled the Sexual Predator’s Crimes
From Democracy Now! [September 9, 2025]
---- Amid growing pressure for the Trump administration to release the full Jeffrey Epstein files, a New York Times investigation reveals how the country’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, enabled Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation and profited from its ties to him. The exposé is based on more than 13,000 pages of legal and financial records. The Times reports JPMorgan processed more than 4,700 transactions for Epstein totaling more than $1.1 billion, including payments to some of the women who were sexually trafficked. The bank “arranged for Epstein to be able to pay those victims, both in the U.S. and in Eastern European countries and in Russia,” says David Enrich, deputy investigations editor for The New York Times. Epstein “operated in large part because he had unfettered access to the global financial system. And for many years, it was JPMorgan that was providing him with that access.” [See the Program]
THE MAMDANI CAMPAIGN
New York Socialist City
By Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work [September 8, 2025]
---- Normal socialism. That is the most important thing that Zohran represents to me. A socialism that means “It’s easier to take the bus and the subway and pay the rent and take care of your kids and generally live a decent life.” A socialism that means that the government is a thing that works on behalf of the public to make the public’s life better. That’s all! That’s it! Can we not try this? [Read More]
How DSA Built Zohran Mamdani’s Electoral Machine
By Hadas Thier, The Nation [September 12, 2025]
---- Three groups in particular, DSA wagered, could be activated by the campaign: left-wing activists, tenants of rent-stabilized apartments, and Muslims. While activists represent a small but influential demographic, more than 40 percent of New Yorkers live in roughly 1 million rent-stabilized units, and of the more than 350,000 Muslim New Yorkers who are registered to vote, only about 12 percent voted in the last mayoral election, making them a largely untapped voter base. [DSA leaders] developed a “big swing” organizing strategy that they would use to build the campaign. Their goals included knocking on 1 million doors and recruiting hundreds of new members. NYC-DSA surpassed its targets in less than six months. It helped the campaign recruit some 50,000 volunteers, of whom about 30,000 knocked on more than 1.6 million doors and made over 2.3 million calls. A quarter of the people who voted in the primary spoke to Mamdani canvassers at their doors. The chapter’s big swing delivered a momentous win: A little over an hour after the polls closed, Cuomo, the establishment favorite, conceded the race. As Mamdani declared on social media, “We rewrote the rulebook by talking to New Yorkers.” [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Farewell to Allende [Who died in the US-supported military coup in Chile, 9/11/73]]
From The Nation [September 24, 1973]
---- Salvador Allende, the Marxist doctor, who squeaked into the presidency of Chile in 1970 by a narrow margin, has now been deposed by a military coup and is dead, allegedly by his own hand. His regime had been in deep trouble from its inception, in part because of Dr. Allende’s lack of political cunning and ideological flexibility—he took his constitutional Socialist convictions seriously—and the predictable opposition of the wealthy and middle-class businessmen who feared for their perquisites and property. But from the outset many of Allende’s woes originated from up north. The story of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation’s efforts to influence the election, and its barefaced million-dollar attempt to bribe the CIA to intervene, is well known. Throughout Allende’s three years in office, U.S. official bodies and private firms continued to relentlessly wage economic war. [Read More]
When Trade Was at a Crossroads – [The “Battle of Seattle,” 1999]
By E. Tammy Kim, New York Review of Books [September 25, 2025 issue]
[FB – This is a review of One Week to Change the World: An Oral History of the 1999 WTO Protests, by D. W. Gibson.]
---- In 1999 the World Trade Organization gathered in Seattle to celebrate free trade. The protest that followed offers a blueprint for effective resistance to globalization at a time of renewed urgency. … They came from all over the US as well as Latin America, Europe, and Asia. They encircled the hotels, blocked the entrance to the Seattle Convention Center, and climbed up a crane to drop protest signs: an arrow labeled “DEMOCRACY” pointing in the opposite direction from one labeled “WTO.” … The activists were diverse in ideology. Some of them believed in breaking things. They set a dumpster on fire and smashed the windows of chain stores and banks that profited from the petroleum industry and Asian sweatshops. Law enforcement choked off the downtown in response, attacking the crowd with concussion grenades, rubber bullets, and batons. Over six hundred people were arrested. Amid the clashes and deafening ruckus (the name of one of the anarchist groups was the Ruckus Society), the ministers hit an impasse and deemed the “Seattle Round” of negotiations a failure. [Read More]
