In the news this week is the drama of Palestinian families living in Israel’s “West Bank,” who are terrorized around the clock by Jewish “settlers” living nearby. These terror attacks illustrate Israel’s strategy of “ethnic cleansing,” removing Palestinians from the “redeemed land” either by making conditions of life impossible, or simply by killing them. In some articles and a video linked below, what “ethnic cleansing” amounts to from the perspective of Palestinian villages is unfolded in all its terror.
About 3.4 million Palestinians live in refugee camps or rural areas in the West Bank and in the urban E. Jerusalem, lands conquered by Israel in the 1967 war. Since that war, a half-million Jewish Israelis who have moved created “settlements,” small towns and a few cities, in the Bank. Under international law, as the West Bank is “occupied territory, all these settlements are illegal. A report issued this week by Human Rights Watch describes what’s happening:
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more Palestinians were forcibly displaced by settler attacks, demolitions, and evictions in the first four months of this year than the whole of 2025. OCHA has documented an average of 6.6 settler attacks per day that resulted in casualties, property damage, or both, higher than any year on its record. … It found that settler violence has completely or partially displaced 107 communities comprising 5,900 Palestinians since January 2023. The Israeli military expelled another 32,000 Palestinian refugees from their West Bank homes in January 2025, essentially emptying the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams camps. … Settlers responsible for displacing Palestinians operate with the financial, material, and legal backing of the Israeli state. According to Amnesty International, the Ministry of Settlement and National Missions’ budget has increased 122 percent under the current government.
It appears that Israel considers its genocide in Gaza to be well on the way to “mission accomplished,” and is now turning its attention to the Palestinians living on the eastern side of Israel, bordering the west side of the Jordan River. This is a different road to the same end as Israel’s war on Gaza: “genocide,” defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention as “specific acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” As with Gaza, genocide in the West Bank is unacceptable, and should not be funded or supported by our government.
ESSAYS ILLUMINATING THE WEST BANK STRUGGLE
An American Returns to Palestine to Defend His Home from Settlers
From Jasper Diamond Nathaniel, Infinitejaz [August 23, 2026]
---- On Saturday, I spoke with Loui Ridi, the Palestinian American, Ohio-based business owner whose family home in Qusra is currently under siege by Israeli settlers and soldiers. When I stayed in that house a month earlier, Loui watched our violent encounters unfold in real time on his security cameras from his home in Ohio. Now he’s returned to Qusra, where settlers and soldiers have effectively imprisoned him in his own home. We talked about what’s happening at his house now, and how it’s actually anything but remarkable, reflecting the broader strategy of IDF- and government-backed settlers seizing hilltops, surrounding villages, and gradually forcing Palestinians from their land. The only thing that makes his case unusual is that his nationality has attracted international media attention. But the coverage is already fading, and he’s worried about what happens after it’s gone. [Read More] – ALSO OF INTEREST - (Video) “Meet Loui Ridi: Palestinian American Returns to West Bank Home Besieged by Israeli Settlers,” from Democracy Now! [August 21, 2026] [Link]
West Bank: Israel-Backed Settler Violence Drives Displacement
From Human Rights Watch [August 22, 2026]
---- Attacks by settlers in the occupied West Bank are increasingly driving the forced displacement of Palestinian communities, with dozens at risk of erasure, Human Rights Watch said today. Israeli authorities are arming, funding, and granting impunity to the violent settlers responsible for these escalating deadly abuses. Settler violence spiked in March and April 2026, with killings, including of children, as well as assaults, sexual violence, physical and mental abuse, arbitrary detention, arson, property destruction, and theft. The attacks occurred during the United States and Israel’s war with Iran, but the rising trend has been clear since the current government took office in December 2022. “The Israeli government and the settlers share the same goal of maximum land and minimum Palestinians, with the authorities not only failing to stop settler violence, but actively enabling it,” said Sarah Sanbar, acting Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Settlers shoot, attack, and expel Palestinians from their land, and the state provides the weapons, the legal cover, and the budget to do it.” [Read More]
The Israeli Siege of Palestinian Families in Qusra Is Part of an Escalating Tactic
By Zena Tahhan, Drop Site News [August 20, 2026]
---- For the 12th consecutive day, three Palestinian families, comprising 10 people, including two young children, have been trapped inside their homes in the occupied West Bank, besieged and terrorized by dozens of armed Israelis—both settlers and soldiers. The family members have been stuck in separate homes, unable to shelter together or attend to their basic needs, with food supplies running dangerously low and without access to cooking gas or a fridge. While the siege on the three families has garnered international media attention and statements of condemnation, the attack is not the first of its kind, but rather a more prominent example of a growing tactic by Israeli settlers and soldiers working in tandem to dispossess Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank. The attacks are increasingly focused on Palestinian communities in Area B, a designation under the Oslo Accords where the Palestinian Authority is nominally in charge of civil administration while Israel retains security control. [Read More]
NEWS NOTES
Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, writes: “The scale of the emergency is immense. As of August 21, the DRC has reported 5,290 confirmed cases and 2,516 deaths across 56 health zones. This is now the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded and it is moving faster than any previous one. It is being fueled by insecurity caused by decades of armed conflict that have undermined law, order and social services, and displaced more than a million people. Read more here.
Puerto Rico’s governor declared a State of Emergency last month as the Island’s water crisis worsened. More than a half a million people are affected. This useful article from “Informed Comment” asks, “How did this water crisis get so bad?”
In recent times the World Food Program reaches more than 100 million people each year who face “acute hunger.” But as Peace Action’s Larry Wittner writes, “with the advent of the second Trump administration in January 2025, the World Food Program, which in 2024 received nearly half of its funding from the U.S. government, entered a period of crisis that has only deepened in the months since then.” Read more about this crisis here.
For those readers who have a library card, the movie platform Kanopy this week offers (free) a chance to view the 1970 classic film “Finally Got the News.” The film is about Detroit’s League of Revolutionary Black Workers, which organized primarily in the big auto plants. Kanopy says: “Through interviews with the members of the movement, footage shot in the auto plants, and footage of leafleting and picketing actions, the film documents their efforts to build an independent black labor organization that, unlike the UAW, will respond to worker’s problems, such as the assembly line speed-up and inadequate wages faced by both black and white workers in the industry.” 56 minutes. [See It Here]
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 feature the work of Sidney Bechet, who came into the musical world playing the clarinet back in the early days of the 20th century. He later became a genius on the saxophone. He went to France in 1925 along with many American artists, endured some time in prison and then hard economic times back in the USA, and returned to performing, again in Europe, in the 1950’s. Here’s a small sample of what he did - “Petite Fleur”; “Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me”; and “Marchand des Poisson” (“Fishmonger”). Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
What Does DSA do in Between Elections? Turns Out, Quite a Lot.
From The Indypendent [August 5, 2026]
---- New York City DSA is best known for its door-to-door canvassing operation that helped carry Zohran Mamdani all the way to City Hall. This year, NYC-DSA swept June’s Democratic primaries, winning eight out of nine contested races across the city. Come next January, socialists will hold three congressional seats from New York City and 16 seats in the state legislature. Yet, running elections is only part of what NYC- DSA does. The 16,000-member socialist organization also constantly engages in organizing campaigns that both benefit from the support of DSA elected officials and help build grassroots power that can feed into future electoral work. Harkening back to an earlier era when large numbers of Americans participated in everything from labor unions to bridge clubs and bowling leagues, NYC-DSA also organizes a wide array of social, cultural, recreational and educational activities that build community and make it easy for people to socialize. Here’s some of what they’re up to. For more, see here and here. [Read More] - ALSO OF INTEREST - “Gen Z turns against capitalism as DSA takes off,” by Abigail Walker, et al., Portside [August 21, 2026] [Link]
(Video) 5 Years After Taliban Takeover, Women & Girls in Afghanistan Have Disappeared from Public Life
From Democracy Now! [August 20, 2026]
---- Restrictions on women’s rights have expanded in Afghanistan since U.S. forces withdrew from the country five years ago, ceding control to the Taliban in the process. Afghan women are banned from attending schools and gyms, books written by women are removed from libraries, doctors and nurses are unable to practice, and child marriage rates have increased. Wives have been rendered legally subordinate to their husbands, and women are required to stay silent in public. “Women and girls of Afghanistan are suffering the most darkest situation in the world,” says Negina Yari, an Afghan women’s rights activist living in exile in Germany, who discusses the impacts of what some advocacy groups are characterizing as “gender apartheid,” as well as the effects of regional diplomatic normalization on the Taliban’s political influence. [See the Program]
One of the Biggest Myths of the Trump Era Is Unraveling - [Immigration]
By Chris Lehmann, The Nation [August 20, 2026]
---- Just 37 percent of respondents in a recent Kennedy School survey approved of Trump’s mass deportation regime, and the paramilitary command structure of the immigration sweeps was even less popular, with just 33 percent professing support for ICE, 31 percent backing ICE raids in the workplace, and 34 percent approving of the use of the military in rounding up immigrants. … There are some heartening signs that such an effort is underway; last week, Democratic National Committee members approved a resolution calling for the abolition of ICE—a position that party leaders have long disowned as too fringe and unworkable. But the DNC isn’t dictating broader messaging to the party, and the consensus from on high remains mired in support for a set of “reform” proposals—such as requiring ICE agents to go unmasked and wear body-cams, the cessation of roving ICE patrols, and a revamped code of conduct—that would do little to derail the overall collapse of immigration enforcement into fascist squalor. … In reality, unsanctioned entry into the country isn’t a crime at all but rather a civil misdemeanor. That’s right: The federal goon squads terrorizing our cities and neighborhoods are tearing families apart, arranging extrajudicial renditions, and placing ailing immigrants in squalid conditions that have repeatedly proved fatal, for the rough legal equivalent of traffic violations. The overall contributions of immigrants to the US economy will work out to more than $7 trillion from 2024 to 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And Trump has continually proclaimed that undocumented immigrants are a debilitating drain on Social Security and Medicare—when, in reality, they pay into both programs on a massive scale while deriving zero benefits. ICE’s terror campaign has already caused notable spikes in unemployment and small-business failures, since immigrants are integral to the labor economy. [Read More]
THE US-ISRAEL WAR AGAINST IRAN
Has Trump turned the tables on Iran - or is another round of war coming?
By Trita Parsi, Substack [August 19, 2026]
---- The Trump administration believes it has turned the tables on Iran. Washington assesses that the rerouting of maritime traffic through the Omani corridor, combined with a global shift away from Persian Gulf oil, has reduced the effectiveness of Tehran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, the U.S. blockade has sharply constrained Iran’s ability to sell its oil. The result, in Washington’s view, is a status quo that imposes greater costs on Iran than on the United States. That calculation changes the strategic equation. Rather than being forced to accommodate Iranian demands, President Donald Trump now believes he can afford to wait Tehran out. For the first time since the war began, the White House has concluded, time is working in America’s favor. Assuming that assessment is correct, the more important question is what Trump intends to do with this newfound leverage. If Washington interprets Iran’s vulnerability as an opportunity to extract capitulation rather than to negotiate a durable settlement, the result is more likely to be another round of war than an end to the conflict. Tehran has already demonstrated that when confronted with a choice between surrender and escalation, it will choose the latter. Giving Iran the same choice again is therefore unlikely to produce a different outcome. [Read More] - ALSO OF INTEREST - “An American soldier in the Persian Gulf sent me a picture. It went viral,” by Trita Parsi, Substack [August 23, 2026] [Link].
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
Gaza’s Gravediggers by Norman Finkelstein
By Talal Hangari, The Examiner [August 20, 2026]
---- The modern edifice of international law, and its correspondent institutions, were avowedly designed, after the Second World War, to prevent the recurrence of the unspeakable atrocities of the first half of the twentieth century. The United Nations, with its Security Council and International Court of Justice, was formed in 1945; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Genocide Convention, were adopted in 1948; older international legal texts were revised and expanded by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Some institutions came much later: the International Criminal Court was established in 2002. Although these institutions are very imperfect, it must yet be admitted that they can discharge useful investigative and political functions, and can prepare the ground for the punishment of international criminals. It follows that, in so far as these institutions are corrupted, and stray from their lofty objects, the cause of justice suffers: the truth is obscured and concealed from the world public, while the criminals are enabled to persist in their evil careers. The special task of this meritorious volume by Norman Finkelstein is, the exposure of corruption in the international organs of justice and accountability. He has written, not a history of the genocide in Gaza, but a record of “the complicity—born of cupidity and corruption, cowardice and careerism—of officials in high places … Truth cannot be mangled and Justice traduced with impunity” (xxxii). [Read More]
AND TWO FILMS ABOUT GAZA - “What American Doctors Saw in Gaza,” from The Intercept Briefing [August 21, 2026] [Link]; and the Aljazeera documentary “The Night Won’t End” [June 21, 2024] [Link].
THE WAR ON UKRAINE
“A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind” Mandates a Search for Peace in Ukraine
By Anatol Lieven, The Nation [August 20, 2026]
---- The Trump administration’s attempt to bring stable peace to Ukraine has failed. The war is thus set to continue, without a radical change, but with a slowly deteriorating situation for Ukraine. The United States is no longer capable of supplying Ukraine with adequate numbers of the air defense systems necessary to prevent Russia from steadily destroying Ukrainian infrastructure. The coming bitter winter is likely to drive millions more Ukrainians to seek refuge in the West. Russia does not necessarily need to win on the battlefield if it can turn Ukraine into a permanently ruined state and a burden on Europe that European electorates will not sustain indefinitely. While this conflict lasts, it will also present a permanent risk that the US will be dragged into direct conflict with Russia, and a certainty that the US will be distracted from other urgent and essential goals at home and abroad. … For the sake of the American people and the international community, most of which ardently desires and needs an end to this war, it is for the new American left to take up the search for peace, and to press for this if the Democratic Party wins control of Congress this November, and of the presidency in 2028. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
A year in, the data center/AI battle starts to clarify
By Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years [August 21, 2026]
---- One of the year’s most important political battles—the one against ICE deportations in Minneapolis this past winter—took place in a geographically confined area filled with people with cellphones who could record its brutal but fairly simple dynamic. The other—the fight against data centers—is sprawling and nationwide, often taking place in rural areas where journalism is all but nonexistent, and has generated few dramatic images beyond people yelling at county board meetings. It’s been very effective—earlier this month even Texas governor Greg Abbott, facing a tough re-election fight, called for an “audit” and temporary freeze on new connections. According to a new poll from Heatmap, 75 percent of Americans oppose data center development near them. But the opposition has also been hard to parse. There are few nationally recognizable names leading the battle, no single book or documentary guiding the fight…. One—It really is an environmental plague. Those impacts look different in different places; in dry areas, for instance, the use of water is egregious, and its effect on electric rates will vary from one jurisdiction to another. But for those who are concerned about the rapid warming of the planet, the last few weeks have made it finally clear that there’s an unholy alliance between Big Tech and Big Fossil. [Read More] – ALSO OF INTEREST - “AI’s Natural Gas Addiction Could be Deadly for Communities,” by Todd Larsen, Other Words [August 21, 2026] [Link].
Have We Forgotten Covid’s Lessons?
By Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation [August 20, 2026]
---- There are critical differences, of course, between the Covid and climate emergencies. In the opening weeks of the pandemic, scientists weren’t sure how the virus spread, or how to treat it. By contrast, science is unequivocal that today’s extreme heat waves—and the drought and fires they’ve kindled—would be “all but impossible” without human-caused global warming driven primarily by burning oil, gas, and coal. “Summer of 2026 is another step in the escalation of our world into a sort of hotter, more dangerous planet that climate scientists have been telling us about for decades,” Jeff Goodell, the author of The Heat Will Kill You First, said on CBS. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES/”THE WAR ON TERROR”
How Far Will the Trump Administration Go to Deport Mahmoud Khalil?
By Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker [August 17, 2026]
---- Khalil moved to Manhattan in 2022, and he adapted quickly to American culture. (In a sense, he even came to inhabit that most American of identities: an influencer.) At Columbia, where he was a master’s student in public and international affairs, he became perhaps the most visible pro-Palestine activist. After the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli invasion of Gaza, there were turbulent protests at many universities, and those at Columbia were often featured on TV news. Khalil, one of the few student protesters who never wore a mask to hide his face, became a symbol of the anti-Zionist movement. President Donald Trump, a few weeks into his second term, was standing next to Elon Musk, shilling Teslas on the White House lawn, when a reporter asked about Khalil. “I think we ought to get him the hell out of the country,” Trump said. Although Khalil was a legal permanent resident, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, wrote a three-paragraph memo declaring him “deportable” owing to his “beliefs, statements, or associations.” Khalil was sent to an ICE detention center in rural Louisiana, where he was held for more than a hundred days, missing the birth of his son. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Atlanta offers a model for building sanctuary
By Stephanie Guilloud, Waging Nonviolence [August 20, 2026]
---- By creating “Sanctuary Zones” that refuse to cooperate with ICE or police, a coalition in Atlanta is building the infrastructure to practice real community safety. … From California to Kenya, whenever I say I’m based in Atlanta, people immediately bring up Cop City, the police training facility that sparked years of protest and major campaigns to prevent it from being built on public land. The training facility was ultimately built and is now in operation. But the Stop Cop City movement reduced the size and scale of the compound and, importantly, captured the imagination of people fighting on the frontlines against policing and state violence around the world. In 2026, organizers in Atlanta have shifted from protests and mass mobilizations to applying the lessons they learned from the campaign and building the infrastructure needed to practice real community safety every day. … Building sanctuary and protection for all people is critical in this period. It keeps us alive through moments of immediate crisis while positioning our communities to build the power needed for deeper, fundamental change. We share the lessons we are learning on the ground so that we are moving in coordination and solidarity with other communities all over the country who are similarly experiencing the trauma of this moment — the murders, detentions, intimidation and indictments — as fascist forces attempt to consolidate power at every level of society. [Read More]
What Is “Far Left”?
By Peter Dreier, Portside [August 20, 2026]
----The growing visibility of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and victories by some DSA-backed candidates has triggered an upsurge of redbaiting by Republicans and fear-mongering by moderate Democrats. The growing visibility of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and victories by some DSA-backed candidates has triggered an upsurge of redbaiting by Republicans and fear-mongering by moderate Democrats. Much of the establishment media has also joined the chorus, often describing DSA and the candidates it supports as “far left.” In truth, DSA candidates and DSA’s progressive allies are more reformers than revolutionaries. Their proposals are akin to what most people around the world call “social democracy,” which seeks to make capitalism more humane and democratic. These ideas are popular with the vast majority of Americans. So, Republicans hope that their warnings of a socialist takeover of American politics will help their candidates this November and in 2028 by painting all Democrats with the same “far left” or “extreme left” brush. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “We are finally witnessing the decline of corporate Democrats,” by Robert Reich, The Guardian [August 20, 2026] [Link]; and “’Moderates’ Support Extreme Injustice,” by Norman Solomon, Nation of Change [August 17, 2026] [Link].
OUR HISTORY
A Look Back at SDS, Michael Harrington and the Decline of Marxism
By Kathy Deacon, Counterpunch [August 21, 2026]
---- According to a familiar narrative, protest is a kind of parlor game of privileged students. When it occurs on Ivy League campuses, it gets its fair share of attention, creating an impression that social/political movements based on long tradition have their point of origin there. (The 170 students arrested at the City College of New York’s Gaza encampment on April 30, 2024, largely people of color, had a median family income less than a quarter of that of the students arrested at Columbia. The news coverage—of their pepper spraying—and reported tasering—and broken teeth and bones—was delayed a few days and then relegated to the back pages.) … In Campus Wars, Kenneth J. Heineman points out that student mobilization against the Vietnam War–and in support of free speech and the right to organize on campus–arose initially at publicly funded state universities. Enmeshed in a hot war and a cold war, awash in DoD grants for war-related research, the universities assumed a division of labor: Elite schools turned out foreign policy “experts”; while state schools supplied teachers and engineers for the home front as well as international policing experts needed to shore up the unpopular South Vietnamese government. [Read More]
“Syphoning Morale” – [The attack on Stars and Stripes]
By Bill McKibben, New York Review of Books [March 27, 2026]
[FB – On Friday the Pentagon fired the editor and publisher of the government-funded soldier’s newspaper Stars and Stripes. According to the New York Times, the Pentagon had been critical of Stars and Stripes since the beginning of the year, ordering it to “refocus its content away from woke distractions.” Among the “woke distractions” were issues confronted by military families during the lengthy deployments re: the war against Iran. Apparently the straw the broke the Pentagon’s back was Stars and Stripes reporting about dire conditions for sailors on US aircraft carriers. Last March, Bill McKibben wrote an interesting about the roots of this mess, with some history of the early days of the paper. As a child in the late 1940s, our house – like millions of others – had books with the GI cartoons of Stars and Stripes cartoonist Bill Mauldin. Read more below.]
---- Stars and Stripes was born during the Civil War, when Illinois regiments stationed in Bloomfield, Missouri, found an abandoned printing press and began publishing a newspaper. Over time it gained a reputation for independence and accuracy, and for reflecting a view from the battlefield and the barracks, not the Pentagon. Its World War I editor was Harold Ross, who went on to found The New Yorker; the editorial staff in those years included Alexander Woolcott, later the country’s most famous drama critic, and the legendary columnist Franklin P. Adams. But the newspaper hit its zenith during World War II, and perhaps its most important contributor was the cartoonist Bill Mauldin. These cartoons were well-loved—they won Mauldin not only the first of two Pulitzer Prizes at the age of twenty-three, but also the newly established Legion of Merit award from the armed forces. And they helped reinforce the idea that the paper, and the military it covered, was, while clearly a military, also a reflection of the democracy it served. But neither he nor the paper was universally loved. He had, in fact, one highly placed critic, General George S. Patton, who considered him an “unpatriotic anarchist” and wanted to ban Stars and Stripes from his Third Army. [Read More]
