Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
December 10, 2023
Hello All – Why not a ceasefire? On Friday, at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, the United States vetoed a simple Resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The Resolution was co-sponsored by 97 countries, and was initiated by the Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres. Condemnation of the US veto thundered from national capitals and people in the street. It has been many years since the United States so disgraced itself, refusing even to vote for a halt to war crimes and the slaughter of civilians.
Why did the Biden people veto the Resolution? Was it because he thought this would help him win in 2024? Wrong – his "approval rating" is tanking. Was it because he believes that continuing the slaughter in Gaza would be good for Israel and increase US power in the Middle East? So far the results of US support for Israel are increasing insecurity in the Middle East and the decline of US influence there. And at home, Biden's blank-check support for Israel's war against the people of Gaza is disrupting and dividing the country as only Trump could do. Does Biden really think that "supporting" Israel, while whimpering cautionary pleas about not hurting too many civilians, is really having any effect on Israel's war plans in Gaza? What is he thinking?
The support of the United States for Israel's war is critical. Palestinians are killed by US-made planes and tanks, and by US-made artillery shells. Our government sends $10 million each day in military assistance to Israel; and President Biden is now asking Congress for an additional $14 billion. If Israel is guilty of genocide, the US is complicit in this crime. If Israel is only guilty of war crimes and ethnic cleansing, the US is similarly complicit. There is near-universal agreement that an order from the US to Israel to stop the bombing of Gaza and resume negotiations for the release of hostages would be successful. We don't know if this is true, but it is certainly preferable to continued funding, and continued support at the UN, for Israel's horrible war against the Palestinian people.
Featured Essays on the War on Gaza
Israel Is Losing this War
By Tony Karon and Daniel Levy, The Nation [December 8, 2023]
---- It may sound daft to suggest that a group of armed irregulars, numbering in the low tens of thousands, besieged and with little access to advanced weaponry, is a match for one of the world's most powerful militaries, backed and armed by the United States. And yet, an increasing number of establishment strategic analysts warn that Israel could lose this war on Palestinians despite the cataclysmic violence it unleashed since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7. And in provoking the Israeli assault, Hamas may be realizing many of its own political objectives. [Read More]
(Video) "We Want Freedom": Refaat Alareer, Gaza Scholar & Activist Killed by Israeli Strike, in His Own Words
From Democracy Now! [December 8, 2023]
---- An Israeli airstrike in Gaza has killed the acclaimed Palestinian academic and activist Refaat Alareer, along with his brother, his sister and her four children. Alareer was just 44 years old. For more than 16 years, he worked as a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza and authored dozens of stories and poems about life under Israeli occupation in Gaza. "Whether it is my kids or any Palestinian kid or any Palestinian, no one is safe. No place is safe. Israel is bombing everywhere," Alareer told Democracy Now! on October 10. [See the Program]
(Video) Rashid Khalidi on the Israel-Hamas War
From Foreign Policy [December 1, 2023] – 47 minutes
---- After a brief pause, Israel is now looking to expand ground operations across the Gaza Strip. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement that "under no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank." Palestinian civilians are stuck in a dire situation. And already, global media and public attention on the Middle East seems to be declining. [See the Program] Also of interest by Rashid Khalidi, "How the U.S. has fueled Israel's decades-long war on Palestinians," Los Angeles Times [December 2, 2023] [Link].
Israel Is Fostering the Next Generation of Hatred Against Itself
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [December 7, 2023]
---- Children are now being killed by the thousands. The recent pictures from Jabalya showed that neither God nor the IDF has mercy on the little children. Every 15 minutes, a child is killed in Gaza. Every few minutes, a child is rushed to what remains of a hospital, tossed onto the filthy floor, sometimes without anyone accompanying him. Sometimes nobody knows if anyone is left from his family, and the child casts an uncomprehending, glassy-eyed glance at what's happening around him. His body and face are covered with dust; he was pulled out of the ruins. These sights are broadcast continuously on all the television channels that know the meaning of journalism, with the exception of Israeli television, which shows nothing of that, after becoming fully mobilized in the service of the war. … An unbridled and terribly cruel attack against Gaza creates hatred of Israel at levels we've never seen before, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in the Palestinian diaspora, in the Arab world and everywhere in the world where people are seeing what the Israelis don't see and don't want to see. And what's even more terrible is this hatred will be justified. Nothing will be more justified. … And in a few months from now, good Israelis will once again travel to Paris and London, Dubai and New York, and will be shocked by how they hate us. Why? What did we do wrong? [Read More]
Predicting Pestilence
By Kathy Kelly, The Progressive [December 4, 2023]
---- Speaking from a hospital ward about 50 meters from where a bomb had just exploded, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder raised his voice over sounds of children screaming. In a video posted on Twitter/X he emphasized that Gaza's health care system is overwhelmed. Pointing at children packed into the ward of a hospital he said was operating at 200 per cent capacity, Elder insisted the hospital "cannot take more children with the wounds of war…with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their bodies, with the broken bones." Calling it a war on children, Elder warned that "inaction by those with influence is allowing the killing." We, the citizens of the world, are those with influence as well as our elected officials. It is the citizens of the world who came out by the hundreds of thousands in recent weeks that caused the woefully inadequate gesture of a seven day truce. Now we must urgently pay heed to another persecution of Gaza's children and families, waged by one of war's more silent partners, disease. [Read More]
News Notes – The Bowman Campaign
Jamaal Bowman, George Latimer, and the Existential Threat to Progressive Political Power
By Michael Lange Dec 7, 2023
---- Yesterday, George Latimer put an end to months of speculation and officially announced his primary challenge to incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D–Bronx, Westchester), a rising star of the progressive left and key ally of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Latimer, Westchester's County Executive, had been courted by AIPAC (The American Israeli Political Action Committee) for months, as part of the lobby's ongoing effort to unseat members of "The Squad", a cohort of progressive lawmakers who have distinguished themselves on Capitol Hill, in part, for their willingness to publicly criticize the Israeli government's ill-treatment of Palestinian civilians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. … By advocating for the conditioning of aid to Israel, while calling for a ceasefire following the onset of the Israel-Hamas war — "The Squad" is firmly in the crosshairs of the Pro-Israel lobby, who recently pledged one-hundred million dollars in a collective effort to unseat the leftist bloc. [Read More]
y Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams [December 5, 2023] [Link]; "Progressive legislators join protest in front of US Capitol," from Aljazeera [December 7, 2023] [Link]; and (Video) "AIPAC was among the top 20 spenders in the 2022 elections. Here's how it breaks down," from MSNBC [December 3, 2023] [Link].
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil is held in Yonkers on Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. Another Facebook page focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
The War on Gaza
How international law is used to cover up Israeli settler-colonialism
By Shahd Hammouri, Ajazeera [December 10, 2023]
---- The dominant narrative in Western media and political circles has been that this is "a war", Israel has the "right to defend itself "against "terrorism", and the Palestinian plight is a "humanitarian" issue. This framing of what is going on – backed with language borrowed from international law – completely distorts the reality on the ground. Everything that is happening now in Israel-Palestine is taking place within the context of colonisation, occupation and apartheid, which according to international law, are illegal. Israel is a colonising power and the Palestinians are the colonised indigenous population. Any reference to international law that does not recall these circumstances is a distortion of the story. [Read More]
On How Israeli/US War Crimes in Gaza are orders of Magnitude Worse than those of Russia in Ukraine
---- Blinken has repeatedly charged Putin with war crimes. And yet on December 8, 2023, the deputy US representative to the UN, Robert Wood, vetoed a UN Security Council resolution, introduced by the United Arab Emirates, demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. None of the other members of the 15-nation council voted against the resolution, but one, Britain, abstained. Even the odious Rishi Sunak couldn't bring himself to vote "no." Thirteen members voted for the resolution, including France, China, and Russia among the permanent members. Wood's vote implicated the Biden administration further in Israeli war crimes in Gaza, which are worse by an order of magnitude than Russia's in Ukraine. [Read More]. Also of interest – "Does the West Have a Double Standard for Ukraine and Gaza?" by Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall St. Journal [December 2, 2023] [Link]
'Buying Quiet': Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas
Mark Mazzetti and
---- For years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip — money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them. … As far back as December 2012, Mr. Netanyahu told the prominent Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Mr. Margalit, in an interview, said that Mr. Netanyahu told him that having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state. [Read More]. Also of interest are "What Was Hamas Thinking?" by Tareq Baconi, Foreign Policy [November 22, 2023] [Link]; and "Classic Intelligence Failure: The Impact Of Arrogance and Hubris," b [Link].
The Other Israel-Gaza Conflict: On Campus
By Juan Cole, DAWN [December 2023]
---- Israel's total war on Gaza, following Hamas's horrific terrorist attack on Oct. 7, has roiled higher education in the United States. The atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel two months ago have reverberated on many U.S. campuses, deeply traumatizing many Jewish students. But so too has Israel's massive military response in Gaza, which has been equally shocking to Palestinian-American, Arab American and Muslim American students, among many others. In the heated atmosphere prevailing since then, questions have arisen about the limits to free speech in the classroom, among student and faculty organizations, and on the social media accounts of university members, from professors to administrators. Often, these charged debates reflect the advent of significant numbers of minority students on university campuses, some from the post-1965 immigration wave, who view the Israel-Palestine conflict very differently than the white majority on many campuses. [Read More]
Additional articles of interest – "Killing Children, the Burdens of Conscience, and the Israel-Hamas War," b [Link]; (Video) "Who pays for the war damage in Gaza?" from Aljazeera [December 2, 2023] – 25 minutes [Link]; "The West's Love for Israel Erases the Middle East's Real History," by Ussama Makdisi, Jacobin Magazine [November 2023] [Link]; and "Israel deserves every bit of the global public criticism it is receiving," by Rami G Khouri, Aljazeera [December 2, 2023] [Link],
The Mainstream Media
"Let's Wait Till Israel Says Something": Why the Media Has Failed the Test of the War in Gaza
By Razia Iqbal, The Nation [December 5, 2023]
---- Who controls the narrative, and how, really matters. There is the actual war—and then there is the information war. The BBC and other so-called legacy media operate in similar ways, and though they may deny it, in accepting the notion that a nation-state carries more weight, whether consciously or unconsciously, they aid and abet Israel in that information war. By that I mean the emphasis, angles. and focus it gives to the nation-state appear obvious if you make the effort to see them. [Read More]
'Israel-Hamas War' Label Obscures Israel's War on Palestinians
By Gregory Shupak, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [December 8, 2023]
---- Since October 7, the day the escalation in Israel/Palestine began American media outlets have persistently described the fighting as an "Israel-Hamas war." From October 7 through midday on December 1, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have combined to run 565 pieces that use the phrase "Israel-Hamas war." … Characterizing what has happened since October 7 as an "Israel-Hamas war" fails to adequately capture the scope and the character of Israel's violence. Describing the bloodbath in Palestine this way obscures that grave violence is being visited upon virtually all Palestinians, whatever their political allegiances and whatever their relation to the fighting. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
(Video) "Cabal of Oil Producers": Climate Scientist Kevin Anderson Slams Corporate Capture of COP28
From Democracy Now! [December 7, 2023]
---- As we broadcast from COP28 in Dubai, leading climate scientist Kevin Anderson lays out why he dismisses the annual climate talks as "grand events" that do little to actually curb emissions. "These COPs have become little more than a scam under which the oil companies and the other fossil fuel companies are hiding that nothing is being done," says Anderson. Decades of inaction make solving the climate crisis much harder, and Anderson notes "technology and fairness have to go hand in hand" in order to save the planet. [See the Program] Also of interest are "'COP28 Should Be The Most Important Meeting In The History Of The World,' an interview with Jeremy Brecher, ZNet [December 9, 2023] [Link]; and "y Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams [December 5, 2023] [Link].
Civil Liberties/Free Speech
Biden Is Overseeing the Silent Death of the First Amendment [Julian Assange]
By Yanis Varoufakis,et al., The Nation [December 8, 2023]
---- In early 2024, a new, grim chapter may be written in the annals of journalistic history. Julian Assange, the publisher of Wikileaks, could board a plane for extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison on espionage charges for the crime of publishing newsworthy information. The persecution of Assange is clear evidence that the Biden administration is overseeing the silent death of the First Amendment—with global consequences. … At a time when the world grapples with the erosion of press freedom, with journalists imprisoned and killed, Assange's case raises profound questions about the consequences of challenging power and unveiling uncomfortable realities. [Read More]
Two dangerous bills in Congress take aim at Palestine solidarity
By
---- On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a controversial bill equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism and effectively laying the groundwork for other laws to be crafted that could classify pro-Palestine protests and demonstrations as crimes. The bill's passage stirred outrage among supporters of Palestine and free speech. Another bill was introduced more quietly and immediately demonstrated the dangers of the first. Both bills bear close scrutiny. Taken together, they promise to make support for Palestinians under siege by Israel much more difficult. [Read More]. Also of interest is "US Scholars of Mideast dispute House Resolution 894's Equation of anti-Zionism with Antisemitism," from the Committee on Academic Freedom, North America, Middle East Studies Association [December 2023] [Link],
More articles of interest - (Podcast) "Sonya Meyerson-Knox on Jewish Voice for Peace," from FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [December 8, 2023] [Link]; and "Columbia Suspended Pro-Palestine Student Groups. The Faculty Revolted," by The New Yorker [December 2, 2023] [Link].
Our History
Noam Chomsky at 95: No Strings on Him
By
---- Sometimes a voice reverberates across space and time. Sometimes a voice feels missing somewhere, sometime. Sometimes a voice does both, simultaneously, forever. For all the famous people who passed through MIT during my student stay there, or whom I have known in any other capacity since, or even who I have ever read from or read about, for all the great achievers who ever made a difference anywhere anytime, to my life the most important has been Noam Chomsky. His example has illuminated many paths that I and countless others have tried to navigate. Instead of throwing piddling pebbles at a giant, I prefer to just say thank you. And happy birthday, Noam, December 7. 95! Whatever befalls, may you be for us all, forever young. [Read More]
On the 75th Anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights
By Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation [December 8, 2023]
---- This Sunday, December 10, marks the 75th anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations. It comes at a time when disregard and contempt for human rights has resulted in barbarous acts of violence around the world. … It should also lead us to remember the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, the woman who brought the document into being. As the longest-serving first lady in American history, Roosevelt left an indelible mark on the country and the world. She transformed the role into what it is today, becoming a public face of her husband's administration. Throughout his presidency, she advocated for the rights of women, African and Asian Americans, and refugees. [Read More]
