Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
July 21, 2024
This afternoon President Biden announced that he would no longer be a candidate for re-election in November. In a later tweet, he announced his support for Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party's candidate for president. Where is this going?
The terms of the debate – should he stay or should he go? – have saturated the news media for several weeks, and need not be repeated. A threshold question now is whether the torch can be passed easily to Harris, or whether her candidacy will be contested in one form or another (see Ryan Grim's article "Biden is out. Here's the case for an open convention"). There are also important questions such as who will be nominated as Harris's vice-president (and how?), and how will money and delegates pledged to Biden be transferred to Harris? And no doubt much more.
For peace & justice stalwarts, there are also unknowns about issues important to us between now and the election. In addition to stopping Trump and preserving what remains of our democracy, the leading existential issues are war and the climate crisis. As she campaigns against Trump while continuing to be Biden's vice-president, can/will Harris have any wiggle room to make policy adjustments that would improve her chances to win the election? Taking the Gaza war as an example, will she as The Candidate be able to make a stronger case for a ceasefire and ending support for Israel's war, assuming that President Biden continues his de facto blank check for whatever Israel wants? There is ample evidence in recent mainstream media that members of the Sunrise Movement, Latino organizations, and Black organizations are unable to mobilize their young people to work for, or even vote for, Biden, based on his military support for Israel's war. I think it is unlikely that she can/will try to do so without loud clamor and disruptive pressure; and here we might recall the defeat of Vice-President Humphrey by Richard Nixon in the election of 1968, where Humphrey could not project any meaningful distance from Lyndon Johnson's failed Vietnam-war strategies, allowing Nixon to capitalize on his "secret plan" to end the war – and win the election.
Certainly we must pay attention the political arm-wrestling and sword-fighting within the Democratic Party hierarchy over the coming weeks, but I think NOW is an important time to keep raising the issues of war and peace in whatever spaces we can find. Work for peace.
Illuminating the Week That Was
The Seeds of This Political Disaster Were Sown Decades Ago
By M. Gessen, New York Times [July 20, 2024]
---- It's tempting to say that Trump's autocratic movement has spread like an infection. The truth is, the seeds of this disaster have been sprouting in American politics for decades: the dumbing down of conversation, the ever-growing role of money in political campaigns, the disappearance of local news media and local civic engagement and the consequent transformation of national politics into a set of abstracted images and stories, the inescapable understanding of presidential races as personality contests. None of this made the Trump presidency inevitable, but it made it possible — and then the Trump presidency pushed us over the edge into the uncanny valley of politics. If Trump loses this year — if we are lucky, that is — it will not end this period; it will merely bring an opportunity to undertake the hard work of recovery. [Read More]
In a historic ruling, ICJ declares Israeli occupation unlawful, calls for settlements to be evacuated, and for Palestinian reparations
By David Kattenburg, Mondoweiss [July 19, 2024]
---- In a scathing Advisory Opinion sure to tighten the legal screws on Israel and place its Western allies in a huge bind, the world's supreme judicial body declared today that Israel's 57-year occupation and settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem are unlawful, that both must end, that settlements must be evacuated, and that Palestinians — denied their inalienable right to self-determination – must be compensated for their losses and allowed to return to their lands. … In declaring Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories unlawful, the court moves far beyond its 2004 ruling on Israel's Separation Wall. That opinion simply declared the barrier illegal, and an impediment to the Palestinian people's right to self-determination. Israel ignored it and its Western allies have refrained from enforcing it. In today's Advisory Opinion, the court re-enunciated the illegality of Israel's settlement enterprise under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and confirmed the applicability of Geneva IV, the two Covenants on Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) outside Israel's internationally recognized territory (Israel denies they apply).[Read More]. Also of interest – "The International Court of Justice's Decision on the Occupation Goes Beyond Israel's Worst Fears," by Alon Pinkas, Haaretz [July 19, 2024] [Read More]
Inside Project 2025
By James Goodwin, Boston Review [July 1, 2024] ---- Project 2025 is candid about its ultimate goal: to reprogram the U.S. administrative state to support and sustain archconservative rule for decades to come. The distinguishing features of this regime would include a far more politicized bureaucracy, immunity against meaningful public or congressional oversight, abusive deployment of agency enforcement capabilities as a tool of political retribution, and aggressive manipulation o\f federal program implementation in the image of Christian nationalism, white supremacy, and economic inequality. … In many ways, Mandate for Leadership can be read as an instruction manual for undermining the safeguards meant to prevent governing officials from engaging in the abuses of power Project 2025 wants to encourage. [Read More]
News Notes
Fawzia Afzal-Khan is a professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace-Westchester. She is in trouble because of her support for Palestinian rights and her attempt to teach/talk about Palestinians. Please read this very interesting essay about her experiences: "US Academia and the Censoring of an Anti-Zionist Professor," Counterpunch [July 19, 2024] [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 Mondays 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 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!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
The CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
The Neck and the Sword: Rashid Khalidi Interviewed by Tariq Ali
From New Left Review [May-June 2024]
---- Let's start with the present, not just in the sense of the horrors being inflicted on Palestine right now, but the present as part of Palestine's still-active past. The brutal Anglo-Zionist repression of the great Arab Revolt of 1936–39 was followed by the Nakba of 1948, the Six-Day War in 1967, the 1982 siege of Beirut, led by Ariel Sharon, and the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, the two Intifadas, the continuous raining down of terror by Israel since then. Yet the post-October 7 genocide seems to have had a bigger global impact than any of these. … Yes, something has shifted globally. I'm not sure why those historic episodes did not have the effect of completely changing the narrative—the popular narrative, in particular. I don't want to speculate about things like social media. But this has been the first genocide that a generation has witnessed in real time, on their devices. Was it the first in recent times in which the US, Britain and Western powers were direct participants, unlike others, in Sudan or Myanmar. … As a result of the horrors that have been inflicted on Gaza over eight continuous months, and which are still being inflicted now, something new has happened. The displacement of three quarters of a million people in 1948 did not produce the same impact. The 1936–39 Arab Revolt is almost completely forgotten. None of those earlier events had anything like this effect. [Read More]
Zionism: the End of an Illusion
By Richard E. Rubenstein, Counterpunch [July 19, 2024] ---- American role in creating, exacerbating, and perpetuating the Israel/Palestine conflict is not recognized – that is, if we buy into the fantasy of noble imperialism and the pax americana – the "day after" solutions now being retailed by will prove equally illusory. Each day that the slaughter in Gaza continues makes it clearer that Zionism can never again command the loyalty of Jews dedicated to peace and justice or anyone else committed to the development of a human community. It is long past time for American Jews to get rid of the Israeli flags that so often stand on the bimas of their synagogues and temples. But the American flags standing there should also be eliminated. Realizing the vision of a human community – the vision of prophets from Isaiah to Marx – means transcending all forms of ethno-nationalism that stand in the way of human development. The point is not to deny one's ethnic and cultural heritage but to overcome the fixation on national (and in America's case, imperial) identities and to move ahead, out of the flames of the present holocaust, toward species-consciousness. [Read More]
Lies, Damn Lies, and NATO
By David Swanson [July 18, 2024]
---- After someone shot Donald Trump, Joe Biden said, indignantly, "We resolve our differences at the ballot," which is classic propaganda, taking something obviously true (namely: it's evil to shoot people) and using it to make seem true something obviously false (namely: you can use a ballot in a U.S. election to choose policies you support and have them enacted). When Trump and Biden debated, they debated who would destroy Gaza faster and who would make Europe move more money into war. No election ballot in the U.S. will resolve any war. And of course, when Biden says he is running the world, at least 96% of the world doesn't get any say in that on any ballot. Here's another bit of Biden propaganda. See if you can spot any problem with it: "We support NATO in order to work together with the world." Spot anything? [Read More]
Bernice Johnson Reagon, a founder of The Freedom Singers and Sweet Honey in the Rock, has died
By Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong, NPR [July 17, 2024] ---- Bernice Johnson Reagon, a civil rights activist who co-founded The Freedom Singers and later started the African American vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, died Tuesday at the age of 81. Her daughter, the acclaimed musician Toshi Reagon, shared the news of her mother's passing Wednesday night in a public Facebook post. It is impossible to separate liberation struggles from song. And in the 1960s — at marches, and in jailhouses — the voice leading those songs was often Bernice Johnson Reagon. Her work as a scholar and activist continued throughout her life, in universities and concert halls, at protests and in houses of worship. [Read More]
Also of interest - In 1994, Bernice Johnson Reagon created a 26-part NPR documentary called Wade in the Water. Wade in the Water was a listener's guide to African American sacred music — one that celebrated the ways in which both worship and liberation are sacred. Learn more, and hear the music, here.
The War on Gaza
How the Israeli Extreme Right Has Achieved Victory
Ellen Cantarow, Tom Dispatch [July 16, 2024] ---- Forty-five years after my first report on the settlements, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote that a farmer in his seventies living in the West Bank village of Qusra, Abdel-Majeed Hassan, had shown him "the blackened ground where his car had been set on fire, the latest of four cars belonging to his family that he said [Israeli] settlers had destroyed." … His article was entitled "We Are Coming to Horrible Days." Coming? The horror began over half a century ago. Had the New York Times run similar articles, starting in the late 1970s; had successive American governments not turned a blind eye to what was happening; had Washington not continued funding Israel's crimes with some $3 billion a year in aid, that country's land thefts and other crimes on the West Bank could never have continued. .. . Sometimes evil does triumph. Israel has now become a largely fascist country with a deeply fascist government and it has been transformed into that, at least in significant part, because my country has profusely underwritten the most malignant developments there, which are still ongoing. [Read More]
A flawed peace conference offers a radical proposal: hope
By Haggai Matar +972 Magazine [July 4, 2024 ]
---- Israelis are faced with a political landscape in which there is almost wall-to-wall denial — from Itamar Ben Gvir to Yair Lapid — of the need for a political agreement, for justice for Palestinians, and for substantive Jewish-Arab partnership. We are dealing with a mainstream media that for years has tried to conceal the occupation and siege from the Israeli public, and now hides the truth about the horrific war crimes Israel is committing in Gaza and in its detention facilities, while silencing every critical voice for peace and justice. … To even begin discussing the future, it is essential to first stop the war, the destruction, and captivity. But for the peace camp to amass the power and influence necessary to bring about real change in Israel-Palestine, there is still a long road ahead, with many obstacles along the way. [Read More]
Also of interest – "How the Israeli Hostage Rescue Led to One of Gaza's Deadliest Days," by Neil Collier, et al. [July 16, 2024] [Link]; and (Video) "What life is like for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation," Aljazeera [The Stream] 1[July 16, 2024] [Link].
The War at Home
No, the US Doesn't Back Israel Because of AIPAC
By Joseph Massad, Middle East Eye [July 21, 2024]
---- Over the last few weeks, the Israel lobby has been increasingly featured in the news in the context of the ongoing election seasons in the U.K., France, and the U.S. News articles proliferate about the huge funds the U.K.'s Israel lobby contributed to candidates in the recent elections, the Israeli ministerial interference in the recent French elections, or the defeat of U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) due to the support of his opponent by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential pro-Israel lobby group in the U.S. This is in addition to media coverage of the role the lobby has played since October 7 in silencing critics of Israel and its genocide in Gaza. … The common assumption among these Americans and pro-Western Arabs who support the Palestinians is that absent the Israel lobby, the U.S. government and other Western powers would become more friendly or, at the very least, far less hostile toward Arabs and Palestinians. The seduction of this argument hinges on its exoneration of the U.S. government from all the responsibility and guilt that it deserves for its policies in the Arab world. It seeks to shift the blame for U.S. policies from the U.S. onto Israel and its U.S. lobby and gives false hope to many Arabs and Palestinians who wish America would be on their side instead of on the side of their enemies. [Read More]
(Video) "Blank Check" for Genocide: Court Dismisses Palestinians' Case against Biden Admin over Gaza War
From Democracy Now! [July 16, 2024]
---- A lawsuit led by Palestinians and Palestinian Americans that accused President Joe Biden and other top U.S. officials of enabling genocide in Gaza was rejected Monday by a federal appeals court, which upheld a lower court's dismissal of the lawsuit. The three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that courts cannot review the executive branch's decisions on foreign policy, even when there is a risk of breaking domestic and international law. We speak with Katherine Gallagher, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which helped represent the plaintiffs in the case. She says the court has "essentially given a blank check" for U.S. governments to do whatever they want in times of war. [See the Program]
These Corporations Are the True "Winners" of the War on Gaza
By Spencer Ackerman, The Nation [July 9, 2024] ---- On May 14, days after Israel moved forward with its invasion of Rafah, Biden informed Congress that his administration would also move forward with providing Israel another $1 billion worth of weapons. It was part of more than $12.5 billion in military aid the US had given to Israel since October 7, and it was a full reversal of Biden's earlier decision to pause a weapons shipment to Israel over its imminent move on Rafah. "This is just another example of [the Biden administration] muddying their message and undermining any real strength behind the hold," an arms-export expert told the Wall Street Journal. The move also demonstrated the trajectory of US foreign policy in the Middle East. Since 1945, the United States' primary objective in the region has been to ensure access to cheap oil, and it has been willing to prop up whatever tyrants can secure that interest. More recently, US foreign policy has added regional integration to that imperative, which it has sought to achieve not through peace accords but through weapons deals. [Read More
Our History
Howard Zinn and the Joy of a Political Life
By Frances Fox Piven, The Nation [December 15, 2014]
---- [The following is reprinted from Frances Fox Piven's introduction to Some Truths Are Not Self-Evident: Howard Zinn's Essays in The Nation on Civil Rights, Vietnam and the "War on Terror."] ---- Zinn was a leading figure in the antiwar protests of the Vietnam era, an experience that informs a number of his essays in The Nation and included in this book. His fervent opposition to that war reflected his anguish about his own role as a bombardier in World War II, when the bombs he released from 30,000 feet not only killed German soldiers but also visited mayhem and death on civilian bystanders. His resistance to war making was also the result of his reasoned conclusion that wars are simply almost never justified. Whatever the arguments of presidents or dictators about national interests, the price in the lives and limbs of ordinary people is simply too overwhelming. [Read More]
