The guns have fallen silent in Gaza, after 2 years of war. The 20 living Israelis now in captivity will be released tomorrow. This will be followed by the release of 250 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons for many years, along with some 2,000 Gazans detained after the start of the war. What comes next?
What is described as “Trump’s 20-Point Peace Plan” is not really a plan for peace, but for a cease-fire and an exchange of prisoners. The plan was written by a few of Trump’s inner circle and by the Israelis. No Palestinians were consulted. The “peace plan” addresses none of the root causes of the war. Palestinian freedom and self-determination are not considered. The plan says what Hamas and the Palestinians must do, but there are no restrictions on what Israel can do. Israel will decide if and when Hamas has broken the “agreement.” This is the plan to which Hamas gave a qualified OK.
The world rejoices that the killing will stop for at least a short time. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are today returning to what is left of their homes in the north of Gaza, trucks will bring food and medicine into Gaza, and people can sleep without bombs falling and drones hovering over them.
While Trump takes full credit for this ceasefire, it was Israel’s genocidal war and lying diplomacy that generated the worldwide wave of opposition not seen since the Vietnam War. Public pressure forced many governments to reject and isolate Israel and thus the US. Perhaps the protests from millions of people and the distress of “allied” governments persuaded Trump that it was in his interest to stop the war. If so, we must continue this pressure to make the ceasefire last so peace is possible.
WHAT ARE THE PROSPECTS FOR PEACE FOR GAZA?
(Video) A Ceasefire Deal, But Not a Peace Agreement: What Will Happen in Gaza After Hostages Are Released?
From Democracy Now! [October 9, 2025]
---- President Donald Trump says Israel and Hamas have agreed to the “first phase” of a U.S.-backed ceasefire deal for Gaza. The 20-point roadmap includes a swap of captives and a phased Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, though details on many of the planks remain sketchy. Democracy Now! spoke with Palestinian and Israeli analysts on how to interpret the peace plan. “We’re now at a fork in the road,” says Mouin Rabbani, a Palestinian Middle East analyst. “While it’s very welcome, of course, that the genocide may be coming to an end … this is a renewed Oslo process with an even lower political ceiling.” He says there are calls around the globe for a “different paradigm … in which Israeli accountability for its actions replaces these meaningless, endless negotiations about nothing.” [See the Program]
(Video) After Gaza Ceasefire, “Massive Political Pressure” Needed to Prevent Israel from Restarting the War
From Democracy Now! [October 10, 2025]
---- A ceasefire came into effect in Gaza on Friday after the Israeli government approved the first phase of the U.S.-backed plan to end two years of war in the Palestinian territory. The deal calls for a pause in Israeli attacks, the release of the remaining Israeli captives held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons, as well as an influx of badly needed humanitarian aid for the starving population of Gaza. Israeli forces have pulled back but continue to control roughly half the territory, with the ceasefire agreement calling for further withdrawals in later phases. “This is a deal that really should have been made long, long ago,” says Amjad Iraqi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. “We’ve known that the parameters of this truce have been on the table for well over a year, if not since the very beginning of the war.” Palestinian human rights attorney Diana Buttu says while people are happy for a pause in the slaughter, she finds it “repulsive” that Palestinians had to bargain with their own oppressors. “It should have been that the world put sanctions on Israel to stop the genocide, rather than forcing Palestinians to negotiate an end to it. [See the Program]
First Ceasefire, Then Palestinian Liberation
By Jewish Voice for Peace [October 11, 2025]
---- Today, after more than two years of the US-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, President Trump announced that Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first phase of ceasefire agreement. And while the single most important thing right now is saving Palestinian life, Trump’s deal does nothing to address the root cause of injustice: Israel’s brutal military rule and oppression of Palestinians. While a ceasefire does not bring an end to the genocide, right now we are holding tightly to the hope that Israel will in fact finally be compelled to the first elements of this agreement: halting the mass killing of Palestinians through bombardment, and stopping its blockade of food and medicine. And we await the moment when thousands of Palestinian hostages and Israeli hostages will be returned home to their families and loved ones. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST ABOUT THE WAR - (Video) What Now? From Peter Beinart [October 12, 2025] – 58 minutes [Link]; (Video) 2 Years On: Has the Resistance Won? An Interview with Norman Finkelstein, from The Thinking Muslim [October 9, 2025] – 74 minutes [Link]; “Palestinian Civil Society Reacts to the Trump-Netanyahu Genocidal Plan,” by the Palestinian BDS National Committee [October 11, 2025] [Link]; and (Video) “It’s Not a Peace Plan”: Ex-Israeli Negotiator Daniel Levy on Trump Push to End War on Gaza,” from Democracy Now! [October 6, 2025] [Link].
NO KINGS DAY – OCTOBER 18
[CFOW will hold a “No Kings!” rally in Hastings at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton Ave and Spring St. We will have an “open mic” so that everyone who wishes to speak (short!) can do so. Please join us next Saturday!]
No Kings, Socials and Us
By Michael Albert, Znet [October 10, 2025]
---- On October 18th, the second installment of No Kings will unfold. Over 2,400 component anti-Trump, anti-Fascist, anti-war, anti-racist, anti-misogyny, anti ecological collapse demonstrations will sum to what hopes to be one incredibly massive demonstration. How many activists will have made all that happen? How many times that number will participate in the actions? How many more will see, feel, and be moved by the cumulative effects? And then, we have the most central, most consequential questions. How many participants will on October 19th start to prepare for the next No Kings? How many more will first start to newly work against Trump and what is now undeniably fascism on parade? And finally, how many, even as they seek ever more No Kings participation, will also work on civil disobedient responses to Trump and on positive, assertive themes along with rejectionist ones? [Read 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!
The Rewards! for stalwart newsletter readers this week introduce (or amplify) the work of the fabulous Elle Cordova. She is a musician, but here I focus on her innovative short videos, introduced to me only recently by my culture adviser EZ. Many of Elle’s videos address the news of the day, such as this one. She also has a series of videos about dueling parts of grammar, like this one, that I have to watch more than once to know what’s going on. And she’s into science, as in this one, eavesdropping on sub-atomic particles hanging out at the bar. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
We Must Welcome International Intervention Into the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
By Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz [Israel] [October 12, 2025]
---- There’s a chance that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about to undergo a dramatic internationalization. In a present whose future bodes ill, no news could be better. The Palestinians must be extricated from Israel’s eternal grasp, and only internationalization can achieve this. After Israel’s recent actions in Gaza and in the West Bank, the fate of the Palestinians can no longer be left in its hands. The amazing news that U.S. President Donald Trump is to hold a summit in Egypt this week with Arab leaders, in Israel’s absence, to discuss Gaza’s future is a propitious sign. Maybe, just maybe, the Palestinians will finally be freed from the Israeli boot that is standing on their necks. … There is no longer any possibility that Israelis will extricate themselves from the moral abyss into which they have slid, that they will wake up one day and say, let’s put an end to the apartheid, the occupation, the malicious domination of another people. Anyone wishing to combat these phenomena must focus their efforts abroad. There, they will find not only a more attentive ear but also an opportunity for action. Once public opinion leads more governments to mobilize to join this struggle, hope will emerge. [Read More]
A Movement-Based Opposition to Trump and MAGA
By Jeremy Brecher, Common Dreams [October 9, 2025]
---- As President Donald Trump launches illegal armed attacks against American cities, peaceful civilians, and people in foreign countries that have not attacked the US, it may look like a sign of strength and a harbinger of a future of total domination. But Trump’s turn to such extreme forms of violence is less an expression of growing power than an attempt to distract from the growth of opposition, the loss of public support, and the splits within the ranks of his own supporters. It is a sign not of strength but of weakness. This report lays out a strategy to take advantage of that weakness to defend society against Trump’s MAGA assaults. That strategy is based on the principle of “social self-defense”—that all the people and institutions harmed by Trump’s autocracy can and must come together to protect society against his assault. … Sometimes called a non-electoral or independent opposition, such a movement-based opposition is a convergence of social movements that performs some of the classic functions of an opposition party without the goal of itself taking power in government. It draws diverse constituencies out of their silos to combine their power, but uses direct action rather than electing candidates as its means to exercise that power. Like a political party, it brings together different constituencies around common interests, exposes the lies of those in power, and wins support for alternatives. [Read More]
Famine’s Long Shadow
By Alex de Waal, Jewish Currents [October 6, 2025]
---- Even now, the means to end the hunger are readily at hand. The UN and experienced humanitarian agencies have the resources, expertise, and plans to provide food and medicine, and are standing ready just a few miles away. Should Israel give the signal, the basic survival needs of many Palestinians in Gaza could be met within days. But even if food is surged into Gaza today—as it must be—irreparable harms have already been done to those who have endured prolonged starvation. We know from history that a famine’s legacy is generations long, its traumas remaining imprinted on the bodies of the survivors even after sustenance is at hand. In the immediate term, severely acutely malnourished children cannot be saved by food alone—their starvation is so advanced that they need specialized hospital care. In the longer term, children who are malnourished in their first thousand days of life, or in utero, face “potentially irreparable physical and neurocognitive damage,” including increased susceptibility to a range of chronic diseases as adults. [Read More]
How the US funded Israel’s wars on Gaza, Lebanon, Iran
By Justin Salhani, Aljazeera [October 7, 2025]
---- Israel would not have been able to sustain its wars across the Middle East without the United States’ significant financial backing of more than $21bn since October 2023, according to a pair of new reports. The reports, which were released by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, found that: without US weapons and money, Israel wouldn’t have been able to sustain its genocidal war on Gaza, start a war with Iran, or repeatedly bomb Yemen. … “Given the scale of current and future spending, it is clear the [Israeli army] could not have done the damage they have done in Gaza or escalated their military activities throughout the region without US financing, weapons, and political support,” read the report – US Military Aid and Arms Transfers to Israel, October 2023–September 2025 – by William D Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Hartung’s findings and a companion report by Linda J Bilmes, an expert on budgeting and public finance at the Harvard Kennedy School, found that the US spent “a total of $31.35 – $33.77 billion and counting” since October 7, 2023 in military aid to Israel and in “US military operations in the region”. [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
The ruin of Gaza: how Israel’s two-year assault has devastated the territory
By Jason Burke, et al., The Guardian [UK] [October 7, 2025]
---- The devastating war in Gaza has entered its third year, standing as Israel’s longest war since the 1948 conflict that led to the country’s creation. The majority of those killed by Israel’s offensive in the strip have been civilians, and the overall total now exceeds 67,000. Entire families have been wiped out in a single airstrike. Sometimes, only a single individual, frequently a child, is left alive. There are also nearly 170,000 injured. In all, casualties amount to roughly 10% of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million. There may well be many more dead uncounted in the rubble that now covers much of Gaza. Those killed by untreated illnesses, poor nutrition, suicide or other causes linked to the conflict are more numerous still. Thousands of people have simply disappeared – lost, incinerated or blown apart by explosions, or held in secret detention by Israel. [Read More]
We Are Genocide Survivors. But Our War Is Far From Over.
By Ali Skaik, The Nation [October 10, 2025]
---- After two years of relentless genocide, a ceasefire is here. We Gazans are overwhelmed with mixed emotions—joy for the silence that followed the intensive bombing, yet sorrow that lingers deep within. Hope and grief intertwine as we begin to heal amid the echoes of loss and survival. Yes, the missiles have stopped. But our war is far from over. The real war—the one against grief, destruction, and despair—has just begun. Around 70,000 people—that we know of—were killed in the past two years. Thousands are still buried beneath the rubble. We don’t even know all their names. These aren’t just numbers. These are entire families erased, students who will never return to school, newborns who never made it past their first cry. These are my neighbors, my friends, my relatives, my people. Gaza is not just rubble now; it is memory, trauma, and broken dreams wrapped in dust and blood. [Read More]
(Video) Gaza Flotilla Update: U.K. Journalist Describes “Torturous Conditions” in Israeli Custody
From Democracy Now! [October 6, 2025]
---- Global condemnation is mounting as hundreds of international activists remain in Israeli prison days after Israel’s military raided and captured dozens of boats in the Global Sumud Flotilla. Reuters reports at least 170 flotilla activists, of the more than 400 arrested, have been deported from Israel. Many have described torture and mistreatment in Israeli custody. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg told Swedish officials she was held in a cell infested with bedbugs and deprived of food and water. Turkish activist Ersin Çelik told the Anadolu news agency that guards had “dragged little Greta by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag.” Kieran Andrieu is a British Palestinian journalist who was recently deported to Britain after being detained aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla. Andrieu says that activists faced torturous conditions in Israeli prisons. “They were throwing people’s medicine in the bin in front of them and laughing in their faces,” he says. “They were totally and utterly insensitive to the possibilities of any of us dying.” [See the Program]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Israel Attacks Another Group Of Civilian Ships Bound For Gaza,: by Ana Vračar, People’s Dispatch [October 9, 2025] [Link].
THE WAR ON UKRAINE
Russia Says Momentum Toward Ukraine Peace Deal Has Been ‘Largely Exhausted’
By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [October 8, 2025]
---- Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Wednesday said that the momentum toward a peace deal in Ukraine following the August 15 summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin has been “largely exhausted” as the two sides remain very far apart on the conditions to end the war. … In the wake of the Alaska summit, the US’s European allies continued to push for a deployment of European troops to Ukraine as part of a potential future detail, an arrangement Russia made clear would be a non-starter. President Trump also expressed support for the European deployment, making the chances of a deal unlikely. As the weeks went on, Trump appeared to adopt a maximalist position on the war, saying in a post on Truth Social that he believes Ukraine, with support from Europe, could win the war and retake all of the territory Russia has captured. Now, his administration is considering providing Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, which would mark a significant escalation of the proxy war since they have a range of over 1,000 miles. [Read More]
WAR ON VENEZUELA?
The Boat Strikes Are Just the Beginning [Venezuela]
By Nancy A. Youssef, et al., The Atlantic [October 10, 2025]
---- Administration officials have not decided whether they will try to push Maduro out, but the strikes are also a way to test what they can get away with in the region and whether Maduro has any means to respond. So far, the administration sees little downside. … In July, the president ordered the Pentagon to target certain Latin American drug cartels. By August, there were eight naval vessels—including destroyers, a cruiser, and a littoral-combat ship—operating in the Caribbean Sea. By September, the first of four boats had been struck, and 21 alleged drug traffickers have now been killed. Last week, the administration sent a confidential notice to Congress signaling its intent to carry out more strikes. The campaign could extend inside Venezuelan territorial waters or include drone strikes inside its land borders, defense officials told us. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
For First time in History, Renewables Overtook Coal in Global Electricity Production
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [October 8, 2025]
---- The Ember energy analysis firm has released its global electricity report for the first half of 2025, and it contains two big surprises. The first is that sustainable sources of energy have now overtaken coal for the first time since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The second is that renewables grew faster than electricity demand in H1. This incredible statistic may suggest that a positive tipping point is being reached. We hear a lot about negative climate tipping points lurking in our future that could make the climate breakdown accelerate. Here is the more optimistic sort, a sign we are going in the right direction. … Coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels, that is, the biggest producer of carbon dioxide per pound burned, so the rapid decline of this industry is essential to forestalling the worst outcomes of the climate breakdown. [Read More]
Youth-led US climate activists widen focus to fight authoritarianism
By Dharna Noor, The Guardian [October 5, 2025]
---- As the Trump administration cracks down on both environmental policies and progressive activism, the Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate justice organization that popularized calls for a Green New Deal, is widening its mission to fight authoritarianism. Unlike the majority of Sunrise’s past work, its newer efforts will not necessarily center the climate crisis. But Stevie O’Hanlon, a co-founder and spokesperson for Sunrise, said the projects will aim to build a world where climate action is possible. “In order to win the bold action that we’ll need to prevent climate catastrophe, we’re going to need a country where we have the right to dissent and protest,” she said. “How are we going to win on climate under authoritarianism?” One key focus will be campus organizing to urge schools to resist Trump’s attempts to control their curricula and rules around political dissent. Another will be garnering rapid responses to the administration’s deployment of troops and immigration policies to cities, and attempts to “infringe on our first amendment rights”. And a third expansion area will be training young activists to “recognize authoritarianism” and resist it using non-violent tactics. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES
How UCLA Justified a Crackdown on Protest
By Zoya Alam, The Nation [October 9, 2025]
---- More than a year after the crackdown on the encampments, UCLA students are still feeling its effects. Walking on campus, you find signs that read: “This is not a zone for public expression”—a reference to the infamous TPM policies—alongside many private security personnel, geared in black uniforms and riding bikes, patrolling students on campus. “Not everyone experiences cops as a calming thing, even at the best of times,” said Branstetter. “We’ve made this argument to this administration before, but they don’t seem to get that message. Their response is just more cops, more cops, more cops.” [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
This Isn’t Crisis Response, It’s Crisis Construction [Immigration “enforcement”]
By Jason P. Houser, New York Times [October 11, 2025]
---- Nearly nine months into President Trump’s second term, immigration enforcement has become the administration’s primary political weapon — not to solve problems, but to manufacture fear, provoke outrage and stage an illusion of control. This isn’t a crisis response. It’s crisis construction. The president’s team vowed to target gang members, murderers and rapists, but we’re not just rounding up violent offenders. We’re arresting working parents, students, asylum seekers and even U.S. citizens, to create made-for-TV crackdowns. I served as chief of staff at Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Joe Biden and spent over a decade working in homeland security. I knew that national security requires focusing on threats — not turning law enforcement into a spectacle. [Read More]
While Ripping Trump Authoritarianism, Over Half of Senate Dems Help GOP Pass $925 Billion Pentagon Bill
By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams [October 10, 2025]
[FB – Yes, that’s right, our Senators Schumer and Gillibrand voted for almost a trillion dollars for the Pentagon. Complaining is encouraged.]
---- Senate Democrats are blasting President Donald Trump’s increasingly authoritarian behavior and congressional Republicans for shutting down the US government to preserve devastating healthcare cuts, but over half of them voted with the GOP late Thursday to give nearly $1 trillion to the Pentagon, which has never passed an audit. The final vote on the Senate’s $925 billion version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 was 77-20. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Albert Einstein and the Problem of War
By Lawrence S. Wittner, Znet [October 10, 2025]
---- Although Albert Einstein is best-known as a theoretical physicist, he also spent much of his life grappling with the problem of war. In 1914, shortly after he moved to Berlin to serve as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, Einstein was horrified by the onset of World War I. “Europe, in her insanity, has started something unbelievable,” he told a friend. “In such times one realizes to what a sad species of animal one belongs.” Writing to the French author Romain Rolland, he wondered whether “centuries of painstaking cultural effort” have “carried us no further than . . . the insanity of nationalism.” As militarist propaganda swept through Germany, accompanied that fall by a heated patriotic “Manifesto” from 93 prominent German intellectuals, Einstein teamed up with the German pacifist Georg Friedrich Nicolai to draft an antiwar response, the “Manifesto to Europeans.” Condemning “this barbarous war” and the “hostile spirit” of its intellectual apologists, the Einstein-Nicolai statement maintained that “nationalist passions cannot excuse this attitude which is unworthy of what the world has heretofore called culture.” [Read More]
Celebrating Lenny Bruce’s 100th Birthday: “The World is Sick and I’m the Doctor”
By Bruce E. Levine, Counterpunch [October 10, 2025]
---- Lenny Bruce, born Leonard Schneider on October 13, 1925, died on August 3, 1966. Officially, Bruce died from a drug overdose. Unofficially, he was murdered by the New York County District Attorney’s office. … At the time of his death, Bruce was blacklisted by almost every venue in the United States, as owners feared that they too would be arrested for obscenity. One of the New York district attorneys who prosecuted Bruce’s last 1964 obscenity case, Assistant District Attorney Vincent Cuccia, later admitted, “We drove him into poverty and bankruptcy and then murdered him. I watched him gradually fall apart. . . . We all knew what we were doing. We used the law to kill him.” Today, it is an understatement to say that mainstream U.S. society is sick with what Lenny called “false values.” [Read More]
