Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
September 22, 2024
Hello All – Are we at a new turning point? This week's attacks by Israel on Lebanon escalate a slow-burning fight between Israel and Hezbollah – the main military force in Lebanon – to the brink of a regional war. It will be easy for such a war to spill over to Syria and Iran. The US military would then become involved in defense of Israel. These flames would not be easy to extinguish.
Why is this happening? Since October 7th, when Hamas attacked Israel, Hezbollah has attacked Israel military sites in northern Israel, on Lebanon's border. They claim to do so in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Thousands of Israeli residents living near the border have fled their homes. Israel's response to these attacks has caused thousands of southern Lebanon residents to flee their homes also.
Israel claims that its escalation of fighting this week – both in the south of Lebanon and on Lebanon's capital Beirut – has the objective of allowing its displaced citizens to return to their homes. Obviously this will be impossible while war continues. In truth, Israel's expanded war has its real objectives in diverting attention from Gaza, fulfilling its long-standing goal of controlling/annexing southern Lebanon, and perhaps even involving the USA in a war against Iran, an Israeli goal for many years.
This danger can be avoided if the war in Gaza were ended. Hezbollah has made this clear: attacks on Israel will end with an end to the fighting in Gaza. The failure of the Biden administration to force a ceasefire on Israel now has dangerous consequences. Yet this week the Wall St. Journal quoted US officials as saying that there would be no ceasefire for Gaza before Biden's term ends in January.
Finally, early this morning Israeli soldiers raided Aljazeera's broadcasting headquarters in Ramallah, in the West Bank. Israel had previously banned Aljazeera from broadcasting in Israel, and now the influential programing will be banned from the Occupied West Bank as well. As no "Western" journalists are allowed entry to Gaza, Aljazeera has been hugely important in living-streaming war news. The new closure on Aljazeera is presumably part of Israel's expansion of its Gaza military tactics to the West Bank; and it also indicates Israel's fear that the exposure of its genocidal war will further delegitimize its Zionist project.
Illuminating the Week that Was
Can the World Save Palestine From US-Israeli Genocide?
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Code Pink [September 17, 2024]
[FB – On September 18th, the UN General Assembly voted to support the Palestinian Resolution by 124 to 14 with 43 abstentions. Among those voting No were the US and Israel, Argentina and Chile, and a half dozen Pacific island nations.]
---- On September 18th, the UN General Assembly is scheduled to debate and vote on a resolution calling on Israel to end "its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory" within six months. If Israel predictably fails to heed a General Assembly resolution calling on it to withdraw its occupation forces and settlers from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the United States then vetoes or threatens to veto a Security Council resolution to enforce the ICJ ruling, then the General Assembly could go a step further. It could convene an Emergency Session to take up what is called a Uniting for Peace resolution, which could call for an arms embargo, an economic boycott or other UN sanctions against Israel – or even call for actions against the United States. Uniting for Peace resolutions have only been passed by the General Assembly five times since the procedure was first adopted in 1950. [Read More] For more, read "The World Says That Israel's Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Must End," by Vijay Prashad, Counterpunch [September 20, 2024] [Link].
(Video) Lebanon: 37 Dead, 3,400+ Injured in Wave of Explosions in Electronic Devices Booby-Trapped by Israel, from Democracy Now! [September 19, 2024]
---- We get an update from Beirut, after at least 20 people were killed and 450 others wounded in Lebanon on Wednesday when walkie-talkie radios across the country exploded without warning, the second day of an apparent Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah members by booby-trapping handheld communication devices. … "This has been widely reported in the Western press as a sophisticated campaign that targeted alleged Hezbollah operatives, but the reality is that, for the most part, these explosions were occurring in civilian areas," says journalist Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of the Beirut-based independent media organization The Public Source. Bitar warns that Israel's "terrorist attacks" could be a prelude to a larger assault. "The Israeli government has already taken a decision to escalate, to wage full-scale war on all of Lebanon." [See the Program] Also of interest is "Israel's New Campaign of "Terrorism Warfare" Across Lebanon," By Jeremy Scahill, et al., Drop Site News [September 18, 2024] [Link].
Sanders Leads New Senate Effort to Stop Flow of US Arms to Israel
By Julia Conley, Common Dreams [September 18, 2024]
---- Demanding that the Biden administration follow the lead of several close U.S. allies in recent months, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday announced his intention to take action on the Senate floor to stop the flow of American weapons to Israel. The Vermont independent said in a statement that he plans to file Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRD) regarding the sale of offensive weapons to the Middle Eastern country, which for nearly a year has bombarded civilian infrastructure and blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza, killing more than 41,000 Palestinians and pushing the enclave into famine. The JRD is the only congressional mechanism that can prevent weapons sales from moving forward, and after months of demanding the Biden administration end military support for Israel, Sanders said that "Congress must act to save lives, uphold U.S. and international law, and stand up for U.S. interests." [Read More]
Election 2024
What the New Right Wants
By Suzanne Schneider, New York Review of Books [September 22, 2024]
---- The Heritage Foundation has reinvented itself to include a new generation of conservatives at odds with their elders. Project 2025 lays bare the contradictions. … On July 8 Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, took the stage at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. He was there to deliver a special message to the old Republican coalition—the libertarians, neocons, and establishment types who remain skeptical of Donald Trump's GOP. Conservatives, he told them, face a left that is "totalitarian in its mission…expansionist, imperialistic, and practically jihadist in its theocratic fanaticism." Against that threat, Roberts argued, they have no choice but to ally with national conservativism, an emergent right-wing movement that combines militant cultural reaction, unilateralism on the world stage, and populist economics. [Read More] Also of interest is "Ten Ways Project 2025 Could Undermine Workers' Rights," by Bryce Covert, Capital and Main [September 18, 2024] [Link].
Jill Stein leads Kamala Harris among Muslim voters in swing states as Palestine supporters weigh choices amid Gaza genocide
By Michael Arria, Mondoweiss [September 19, 2024]
---- An August report put out by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) showed Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Stein essentially tied among Muslim voters, with 29.4% of American Muslims saying they plan to vote for the Vice President 29.1% saying they would vote for Stein. The poll surveyed over 1,000 Muslims between August 25-27, after Harris accepted her party's nomination. In September CAIR published a follow-up report specifically looking at Muslim voters in important swing states. Those polls showed Stein leading Harris in Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Link]
Also of interest – "Uncommitted Declines to Endorse Harris as Campaign Continues to Back Genocide," by Sharon Zhang, Truthout [September 19, 2024] [Link]; and "The Cornel West campaign, third parties, and the nature of the moment," by Bill Fletcher Jr, Liberation Road Notes [Sep 20, 2024] [Link].
The experts comment: Key nuclear questions that the US presidential candidates should answer
By François Diaz-Maurin and John Mecklin, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [September 19, 2024] [Link]
CFOW Nuts and 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
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
Israelis Must Ask Themselves if They're Willing to Live in a Country That Lives on Blood
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [September 15, 2024]
---- Israel is turning, with alarming speed, into a country that lives on blood. The daily crimes of the occupation are already less relevant. Over the past year, a new reality of mass killing and crimes of an entirely different scale has emerged. We are in a genocidal reality; the blood of tens of thousands of people has flowed. This is the time that all Israelis should ask themselves if they are willing to live in a country that lives on blood. Just don't say that there is no choice – of course there is – but first we must ask whether we are even prepared to live like this. Are we, the Israelis, willing to live in the only country in the world whose existence is based on blood? The only vision that is widespread in Israel now is to live from one war to another war, from one bloodletting to the next, from massacre to massacre, with intervals spaced as widely as possible. [Read More]
What Happens if China Stops Trying to Save the World?
David Wallace-Wells, New York Times [September 16, 2024]
---- In climate world, something that once seemed almost unthinkable may now be happening. Preliminary data shows that while global carbon emissions are continuing to rise, China's emissions may already be peaking — the longtime climate villain turning the corner on carbon before the planet as a whole does. Forecasts like these are not perfectly reliable, but already China has completely rewritten the global green transition story. You may be familiar with the broad strokes of that story: that thanks to several decades of mind-boggling declines in the cost of solar, wind and battery technology, a new wave of climate advocacy and dramatically more policy support, the rollout of various green energy technologies is tracing an astonishing exponential curve upward, each year making a mockery of cautious projections from legacy industry analysts. Consider solar power…. [Read More]
Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and the Armageddon Agenda
By Michael Klare, Tom Dispatch [September 16, 2024]
---- The next president of the United States, whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, will face many contentious domestic issues that have long divided this country, including abortion rights, immigration, racial discord, and economic inequality. In the foreign policy realm, she or he will face vexing decisions over Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, and China/Taiwan. But one issue that few of us are even thinking about could pose a far greater quandary for the next president and even deeper peril for the rest of us: nuclear weapons policy.… For all too many of us, nuclear weapons policy seems like a difficult issue that should be left to the experts. This wasn't always so. During the Cold War years, nuclear war seemed like an ever-present possibility and millions of Americans familiarized themselves with nuclear issues, participating in ban-the-bomb protests or the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign of the 1980s. But with the Cold War's end and a diminished sense of nuclear doom, most of us turned to other issues and concerns. Yet the nuclear danger is growing rapidly and so decisions regarding the U.S. arsenal could have life-or-death repercussions on a global scale. [Read More]
The War on Gaza
(Video) U.N. Experts Accuse Israel of "Starvation Campaign" in Gaza & Demand End to Western Complicity
From Democracy Now! [September 17, 2024]
----- Top United Nations human rights experts have condemned Western nations for supporting Israel's devastating war on Gaza, urging the world to stop an unfolding genocide in Palestine. This comes as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, is accusing Israel in a new report of carrying out a deliberate starvation campaign in Gaza. "What we are witnessing in Gaza is the starvation of 2.3 million Palestinians. We've never seen a civilian population made to go hungry so quickly and so completely," says Fakhri, who joins us from Brazil. [See the Program] Also of interest is "International Pressure on Israel averted Widespread Gaza Famine this Summer, but the Danger is Back," by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [September 15, 2024] [Link]
A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam
By Meron Rapoport, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [September 17, 2024]
---- As Israeli ministers, generals, and academics bay for a decisive new phase in the war, this is what Operation Starvation and Extermination would look like. … The date is October, November, or December 2024, or maybe early 2025. The Israeli military has just launched a new operation throughout northern Gaza — "Operation Order and Clean-up," we'll call it. … The scenario I sketched out above is not far-fetched. Since October 7, Israeli society has undergone an accelerated process of dehumanization toward the Palestinians, and it is hard to see the army refuse en masse to carry out such an extermination campaign, certainly if it is presented in stages: first forcing out most residents, followed by the imposition of a siege, and only then the elimination of those who remain. [Read More]
Israeli Ignominy
By Michael Albert, ZNet [September 21, 2024]
[FB – Michael Albert is the founder of ZNet and South End Press (books)]
---- How should we who are nauseated by what has been and is being done to Palestinians and by what is now spreading rather than ceasing, regard Netanyahu, regard the IDF, regard Israelis in Israel who support genocide, and regard Israel's supporters around the world who ignore, alibi, arm, and abet genocide? Can we be horrified, outraged, and enraged but also regard the ignorers, supporters, perpetrators, and planners of the genocide hurled at Gaza's schools, hospitals, homes, and streets without ourselves hurling dehumanizing epithets? Without ourselves becoming dehumanizers? [Read More]
The West Bank
Palestinians in the West Bank are completely unprepared for the coming genocide
By Fathi Nemer, Mondoweiss [September 12, 2024]
---- The Zionist end game in the West Bank is upon us. The last eleven months leave little room for doubt as settlers continue to actively depopulate Palestinian communities, kidnapping and torturing young men and establishing new colonies. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir openly boasts about seeking to build a synagogue on top of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound. None of this should be understood as a new phase of Zionist settler colonialism; rather it is its sharpening, its coming out into the open in a more brazen way. What is happening in Gaza can and will happen elsewhere in Palestine. … If anything, October 7 showed how completely unprepared the West Bank is for what is coming, partly due to stubborn self-deception nurtured over the last three decades: the idea that there can be any semblance of normal life under occupation in return for obedience. [Read More]. Also of interest is (Video) "Seizing the West Bank: Extremist settlers in power," from BBC World Service Documentaries [Link].
The War in Ukraine
Putin Has Allowed the West to Cross So Many Lines That He Is Now Under Pressure to Respond
By Anatol Lieven, The Nation [September 18, 2024]
---- We must hope that the Biden administration will continue to keep the [UK] Starmer government on a leash over the question of allowing Ukraine to fire British Storm Shadow missiles into Russia…. This deep US involvement in not only the provision but the targeting of these missiles explains why Moscow sees this as a very serious escalation, which if not checked would be a green light to the West to go further and further. It is therefore not open to serious doubt that this action could indeed lead to war between the West and Russia. In addition, precisely because Putin has allowed the West to cross so many Russian red lines, he is now under intense pressure to respond. … Fortunately, the decision on whether to allow Ukraine to strike into Russia rests with Washington, not London—not only because toeing the US line has long been a doctrine of the British establishment, but also because (as noted) US targeting intelligence is essential if the missiles are actually to hit what they are aiming at. [Read More]
Also of Interest – "No Word on Long-Range Strikes in Russia After Biden-Starmer Meeting," by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [September 15, 2024] [Link]; "A Nuclear War in Ukraine Is a Distinct Possibility," C.J. Polychroniou interviews Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen. Common Dreams [September 21, 2024] [Link]; and "White House finalizing plans to expand where Ukraine can hit inside Russia," by Erin Banco, et al., Politico [September 11, 2024] [Link].
The Climate Crisis
'Red Flags' on Climate: U.S. Methane Emissions Keep Climbing
By Max Bearak, New York Times [September 19, 2024]
---- The United States' booming fossil-fuel industry continues to emit more and more planet-warming methane into the atmosphere, new research showed, despite a U.S.-led effort to encourage other countries to cut emissions globally. Methane is among the most potent greenhouse gases, and "one of the worst performers in our study is the U.S., even though it was an instigator of the Global Methane Pledge," said Antoine Halff, the co-founder of Kayrros, the environmental data company issuing the report. "Those are red flags." Much of the world's efforts to combat climate change focus on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which result largely from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, and whose heat-trapping particles can linger in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. But methane's effects on the climate — which have earned it the moniker "super pollutant" — have become better appreciated recently, with the advent of more advanced leak-detection technology, including satellites. [Read More] Also of interest is "World Governments Are Using 'Increasingly Harsh' Laws Against Climate Protesters," by Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, Ecowatch [September 11, 2024] [Link].
The State of the Union
For-Profit US Healthcare System—Once Again—Ranks Dead Last Among Its Peers
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams [September 19, 2024]
---- A report out Thursday shows that the United States' for-profit healthcare system still ranks dead last among peer nations on key metrics, including access to care and health outcomes such as life expectancy at birth. The new analysis from the Commonwealth Fund is the latest indictment of a corporate-dominated system that leaves tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured and unable to afford life-saving medications without rationing doses or going into debt. "Despite spending a lot on healthcare, the United States is not meeting one of the principal obligations of a nation: to protect the health and welfare of its residents," the report states. "Most of the countries we compared are providing this protection, even though each can learn a good deal from its peers. The U.S., in failing this ultimate test of a successful nation, remains an outlier." People in the U.S., which spends roughly twice as much per capita on healthcare as other rich nations, "live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths," Commonwealth noted, pointing to frequent "denials of services by insurance companies" and other systematic defects of the American system, including massive administrative costs. [Read More]
