Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
November 19, 2018
Hello All – During the past week, the significance of the mid-term elections for Congress, state offices, and issues on ballot questions has become somewhat clearer. I would like to suggest some conclusions, speaking just for myself and not CFOW, though the discussion on this topic at the recent CFOW meeting has contributed to my thinking.
It is simply a fact that with an entrenched two-party system, liberals, progressives, and radicals of all stripes must deal with the Democratic Party. And since the Clinton administration – if not long before – the Democrats have occupied a place in the political spectrum that is best described as "centrist," not "left-center" or whatever. (In Europe, it might even be called a "center-right" party.) And since the advent of zillion-dollar election campaigns, the role of Very Big Money – whether from Wall St. or Hollywood or Silicon Valley, etc. – plays a very big role in the Party's election chances, and thus in the Party's election platforms.
Since the Clinton Era, those of us on the left or to the left of the Party have been stymied by the insistence of the Party "pragmatists" that almost any Democrat is better than a Republican, and so the Party's program and campaign strategies seek to wean the political center – ironically called the "white working class" – away from the Republicans. And so the argument within the Party, and between the base of the Party and its leadership, is a) Whether this is working, in terms of winning elections; and b) What about the important issues – war & peace, the climate crisis, racial justice, populist economic programs – which the centrist strategy always seems to leave out?
The mid-term elections seem to me to give those on the left of the Party and to the left of the Party a lot to work with. Some of these ideas are developed in the section of articles on the mid-term elections linked below, but highlights include: a shift to the left in voters' economic preferences and positive attitudes towards immigrants; a shift to the left not only among "college-educated suburban women," but among working-class women as well; not only the election of many new Democrats running on populist or even social-democratic issues, but – even in defeat – massive inroads of strong African-American candidates in Florida and Georgia, and a strong showing by a populist in Texas. And much more. There are many indications that we have behind us not only a "Blue Wave," but a more radical electorate. And why should these trends not continue?
The issue for those on the left of the Party or to the left of the Party, therefore, is how to push this radicalization forward. There have been debates forever about working Inside or Outside the Party, and about working on electing candidates or building social movements. I think one of the lessons of the victories of progressive Democrats in the recent election is that candidates coming out of progressive movements (e.g., the Sanders campaign) and candidates running with the support of social movements (e.g. on environmental issues) seem to do pretty well, and can compensate for lack of money and/or lack of support from the Party leadership through mobilization, numbers, and intensity of commitment. This conclusion calls for a perspective of building coalitions; developing campaigns that will mobilize working-class or lower-income people, and not just professionals and suburbanites; and in many cases thinking in terms of broad, antifascist coalitions. Whether organizations that have focused almost exclusively on social issues, or on just electing Democrats, can broaden our perspectives to find allies in a common struggle, remains to be seen. A lot will depend, I think, on our success in doing this.
News Notes
Here's another interesting interview with Noam Chomsky, including some thoughts on the danger posed to Israel ("turning fascist") by its occupation of Palestinian territories. [Link]
Last year the UK organization Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants blocked the deportation of refugees from Nigeria and Ghana by locking themselves around a chartered flight at Stansted airfield (UK). Read this the interesting story of these brave stalwarts, now on trial and facing life in prison.
I was surprised to learn that some members of the Central American refugee caravan are already at our border in Tijuana, and that some several thousand people are expected in the next few days. Here is a useful press release from one of the support groups accompanying the caravan. President Trump has made a complex situation more complicated by deploying 5-10,000 (?) active-duty troops to the border to help block the refugees from applying for asylum or otherwise entering the country. Despite Trump's campaign of anti-immigrant hate speech, a New York Times article by a public-opinion pollster finds that this campaign has failed, and US people have become more, not less, sympathetic to the refugees.
Despite a Pentagon campaign that was allocated millions of dollars to prevent suicides by active-duty service members, the suicide rate has actually gone up, doubling between 2001 and 2016 and standing now at 21 per 100,000 troops per year. The article in Mother Jones describing the Pentagon program shows that it is in chaos. [Link]. An article in Stars and Stripes notes that [a report shows] "the total is 20.6 suicides every day. Of those, 16.8 were veterans and 3.8 were active-duty service members, guardsmen and reservists, the report states. That amounts to 6,132 veterans and 1,387 service members who died by suicide in one year."
In London, Saturday was Rebellion Day. Organized by the Extinction Rebellion Group – a nonviolent direct action group opposed to human extinction because of global warming – some 10,000 people blocked the five main bridges early Saturday morning, before moving to Parliament Square to voice more dissent. Read about this great action here.
If you have had doubts about the accuracy of post-election polling and whether people lie about what they did in the voting booth, your suspicions will be confirmed by this set of interviews with alleged voters - from "Lie Witness News."
Finally, and h/t to Sharon D., Mad Magazine has returned from the grave with an all-too-true comic, Ghastly Guntinies. Scholars can read the New York Times commentary here.
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Ongoing – CFOW holds a vigil/rally each Saturday at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton and Spring) from 12 to 1 p.m. Everyone invited; please join us!
Saturday, December 1st – Each year WESPAC hosts the Margaret Eberle Fair Trade Festival and Crafts Sale. It's a good place to buy holiday presents, and it supports worthy causes. It goes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Memorial United Methodist Church, 250 Bryant Ave. in White Plains. $5 suggested admission.
Sunday, December 2nd – The next CFOW monthly meeting will be held at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs. We meet from 7 to 9 p.m. At our meetings we review our work/the events of the past month and make plans for what to do next. Everyone is welcome at these meetings.
Saturday, December 8th – CFOW favorites Hudson Valley Sally will team up with Ellis Paul at the next installment of the Clearwater Walkabout Coffeehouse. The program runs from 7:30 to 10 PM at the Memorial United Methodist Church, 250 Bryant Ave. in White Plains. For more info, tickets, directions, etc., go here.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our leaflet and posters for our rallies are usually about war or climate change, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, depending on current events. We (usually) meet on the first Sunday of each month, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page.
Please Support CFOW
CFOW's expenditures are very small, but our Treasury is now pretty low. If you would like to support our work financially, please end a check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
This Newsletter
Articles linked in the CFOW newsletter are intended to illuminate some of the main action-issues about which we are concerned. Coming mostly from the "dissenting media," they provide an alternative to the perspectives of the mainstream media. In addition to the excellent Featured Essays, I especially recommend the sets of articles about the New York Times' duplicity around US negotiations with North Korea, the significance for the Democratic Party of its voter base moving left, ominous developments in the Julian Assange imbroglio, and some insights into the Facebook investigations. I also highly recommend Gareth Porter's overview of the new Military-Industrial Complex and Bill McKibben's assessment of the latest UN climate report. Read on!
Rewards!
There's some substantial reading coming up, so if you'd like to take a rest and savor a reward, here's some entertainment. The year was 1946 and the war was over and patriotism was peaking in France, so Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli jammed and recorded their own version of "La Marseilles." Would that our National Anthem was so cool! Next up is a number from Radio Free Honduras, a Chicago group who were at the Common Ground Coffee House this weekend. The Coffee House has some good concerts coming up; check out their schedule here.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet
By Bill McKibben, The New Yorker [November 26, 2018 issue]
---- Thirty years ago, this magazine published "The End of Nature," a long article about what we then called the greenhouse effect. I was in my twenties when I wrote it, and out on an intellectual limb: climate science was still young. But the data were persuasive, and freighted with sadness. We were spewing so much carbon into the atmosphere that nature was no longer a force beyond our influence—and humanity, with its capacity for industry and heedlessness, had come to affect every cubic metre of the planet's air, every inch of its surface, every drop of its water. Scientists underlined this notion a decade later when they began referring to our era as the Anthropocene, the world made by man. I was frightened by my reporting, but, at the time, it seemed likely that we'd try as a society to prevent the worst from happening. In 1988, George H. W. Bush, running for President, promised that he would fight "the greenhouse effect with the White House effect." He did not, nor did his successors, nor did their peers in seats of power around the world, and so in the intervening decades what was a theoretical threat has become a fierce daily reality. As this essay goes to press, California is ablaze. [Read More] And for more by McKibben and other writers on our climate crisis, see below in the "Global Warming" section.
Izzeldin Abuelaish's three daughters were killed in Gaza – but he still clings to hope for the Middle East
By Robert Fisk, The Independent [UK] [November 17, 2018]
[FB – I think Robert Fisk is one of the great journalists of our era. This interview/analysis is characteristic of many of his articles. Much of his great work The Great War for Civilization is made up of interviews with Israeli and Palestinian or Lebanon families involved in the same "incident," similar in tone and sensibility to this essay.]
----- Rarely can history have dictated that the blood of three beheaded daughters should be injected into a vein of hope. The operation, I suppose, was self-administered by the stout little man with thick, matted hair sitting in front of me in an upper floor of the University of Toronto's medical centre. I might even call Izzeldin Abuelaish stubborn, save for his awesome courage and his instant invitation for coffee and dates. He welcomes visitors to his fifth floor office with a large coloured photograph on the opposite wall which has the dignity and objectivity of an Impressionist painting. It shows his three daughters, Mayar, Aya and Bessan, sitting on a blustery Gaza beach in the early new year of 2009. Mayar, in a white scarf and looking slightly to her right, Aya in the middle in a woollen cap, Bessan also in a scarf, almost full length, resting on her right hand, looking at her own name, in English, which she has drawn in the sand. As her father said to me, every time the tide came in, it erased their names and they wrote them again. Two weeks after the photographs was taken, they will be with their father Izzeldin in their Gaza home when Israeli tank shells smash into the house. I don't ask Izzeldin to repeat what happened next. He told the story, eloquently, terribly, unanswerably in the months that followed. Mayar appeared to be the first to die. This is how he described the events when he spoke at the Karachi Literary Festival…. [Read More]
Trump and the Ghosts of the Past in Fascist America
November 6, 2018]
---- Trump has repeatedly used language associated with a fascist politics and ruthless dictators. Incapable of both empathy and self-reflection, he can only use language in the service of lies, vilification, and violence. This is a language that "marks a terrifying new horizon for human political experience," one that suggests that the fascist appropriation of language as a tool of state repression and domestic terrorism is still with us. Trump may not be Hitler, but there are disturbing parallels in his language and reactionary policies that send up warning signs that resonate with dangerous echoes of the past. Moreover, it is precisely these historical lessons that should be examined carefully so that the plague of fascism can be both recognized in its current form and resisted so that it will never happen again. [Read More]
The President and the Media Are a Match Made in Heaven: "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS."
By Tom Engelhardt, Tom Dispatch [November 15, 2018]
---- Face it: It's been an abusive time, to use a word he likes to wield. In his telling, of course, it's he or his people who are always the abused ones and they—the "fake news media"—are the abusers. But let's be honest. You've been abused, too, and so have I. All of us have and by that same fake news media. It isn't complicated, really. Thanks to them, to those cable-news talking heads who never stop yammering about him, to the reporters who clamor over his every word or twitch, he's always there, 24/7. I know that it's still called covering the news, but it's a phrase that no longer faintly fits the situation. Yes, a near-majority of Americans voters chose for him as president, but no one voted to make him a living (and living-room) icon, a neverending presence not just in our world, but in all our private worlds, too. Never, not ever, has a single human being been so inescapable. You can't turn on the TV news, read a newspaper, listen to the radio, wander on social media, or do much of anything else without almost instantly bumping into or tripping over… him, attacking them, praising himself, telling you how wonderful or terrible he feels and how much he loves or loathes… well, whatever happens to be ever so briefly on his mind that very moment. [Read More]
THE MID-TERM ELECTIONS: FURTHER ASSESSMENTS
Trump Is Beginning to Lose His Grip
By Stanley B. Greenberg, New York Times [November 17, 2018]
---- Because the votes were counted so slowly across the country, we were also slow to realize that Democrats had won the national congressional vote by a margin greater than that of the Tea Party Republicans in 2010. In fact, Democrats overcame huge structural hurdles to win nearly 40 seats…. First of all, Democrats did not win simply because white women with college degrees rebelled against Mr. Trump's misogyny, sexism and disrespect for women. Nearly every category of women rebelled…. Second, Mr. Trump and his party maintained their principal base with white working class voters, the shift among women notwithstanding, and Democrats still need to do better. Nonetheless, Democrats got their wave in part because a significant portion of male and female white working class voters abandoned Mr. Trump and his Republican allies. … Third, Democrats made big gains because Mr. Trump declared war on immigrants — and on multicultural America — and lost. On Election Day, a stunning 54 percent of those who voted said immigrants "strengthen our country." Mr. Trump's party lost the national popular vote by seven points, but he lost the debate over whether immigrants are a strength or a burden by 20 points. [Read More]
Also useful/interesting for changing voter interests - "Progressives Point the Way to Recapturing the Rural Vote," by Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation [November 13, 2018] [Link]; "Progressive Economics Are Ascendant—Among Democrats, and at the Ballot Box," by Chris Hughes, The Nation [November 15, 2018] [Link]; "White Nationalist Steve King May Have Won, but Iowa Race Shows Republicans Are Losing Ground in Rural Areas," by David Dayen, The Intercept [[Link].
The 'Pelosi Problem' Runs Deep
By Norman Solomon, Truthdig [November 16, 2018]
---- Nancy Pelosi will probably be the next House speaker, a prospect that fills most alert progressives with disquiet, if not dread. But instead of fixating on her as a villain, progressives should recognize the long-standing House Democratic leader as a symptom of a calcified party hierarchy that has worn out its grassroots welcome and is beginning to lose its grip. Increasingly at odds with the Democratic Party's mobilized base, that grip has held on with gobs of money from centralized, deep-pocket sources—endlessly reinforcing continual deference to corporate power and an ongoing embrace of massively profitable militarism. … Her position is even more outrageous in view of her fervent support for astronomical military spending. Like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (who was just re-elected to his post), Pelosi went out of her way last winter to proclaim avid support for President Trump's major increase in the already-bloated Pentagon budget. Whether our concerns involve militarism, social equity, economic justice, civil liberties, climate change or the overarching necessity of a Green New Deal, the Democratic Party must change from the bottom up. [Read More]
---- Nancy Pelosi will probably be the next House speaker, a prospect that fills most alert progressives with disquiet, if not dread. But instead of fixating on her as a villain, progressives should recognize the long-standing House Democratic leader as a symptom of a calcified party hierarchy that has worn out its grassroots welcome and is beginning to lose its grip. Increasingly at odds with the Democratic Party's mobilized base, that grip has held on with gobs of money from centralized, deep-pocket sources—endlessly reinforcing continual deference to corporate power and an ongoing embrace of massively profitable militarism. … Her position is even more outrageous in view of her fervent support for astronomical military spending. Like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (who was just re-elected to his post), Pelosi went out of her way last winter to proclaim avid support for President Trump's major increase in the already-bloated Pentagon budget. Whether our concerns involve militarism, social equity, economic justice, civil liberties, climate change or the overarching necessity of a Green New Deal, the Democratic Party must change from the bottom up. [Read More]
Also useful/interesting is "Nancy Pelosi Wants to Find "Common Ground" With Donald Trump. But Her Job Right Now Is to Fight Fascism," by Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept [[Link]; and "Chuck Schumer Caved to Facebook and Donald Trump. He Shouldn't Lead Senate Democrats," also by Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept [[Link].
WAR & PEACE
America's Permanent-War Complex
By November 15, 2018]
---- What President Dwight D. Eisenhower dubbed the "military-industrial complex" has been constantly evolving over the decades, adjusting to shifts in the economic and political system as well as international events. The result today is a "permanent-war complex," which is now engaged in conflicts in at least eight countries across the globe, none of which are intended to be temporary. This new complex has justified its enhanced power and control over the country's resources primarily by citing threats to U.S. security posed by Islamic terrorists. But like the old military-industrial complex, it is really rooted in the evolving relationship between the national security institutions themselves and the private arms contractors allied with them. The first phase of this transformation was a far-reaching privatization of U.S. military and intelligence institutions in the two decades after the Cold War, which hollowed out the military's expertise and made it dependent on big contractors (think Halliburton, Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI). The second phase began with the global "war on terrorism," which quickly turned into a permanent war, much of which revolves around the use of drone strikes. [Read More]
The War in Yemen
When will America stop participating in Yemen's genocidal war?" by [Link]; and "Paul Ryan Secures His Legacy by Supporting a Brutal War On Yemen," by James Carden, The Nation [November 16, 2018] [Link].
War With North Korea?
North Korea 'Deception': NYT Malpractice or Laziness?
By November 19, 2018]
---- Major news outlets have resumed efforts to pressure President Donald Trump to pull back from trying to negotiate a deal with Pyongyang. In their latest salvo last week, The New York Times and CNN completely misrepresented the findings of a recent study of satellite photos of a North Korean missile base as evidence of bad faith and "deception" in talks with the United States. A New York Times article bore the sensational headline, "In North Korea, Missile Bases Suggest a Great Deception." In a breathless tone, the writers, David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, declared that the satellite images "suggest that North Korea has been engaging in a great deception," because it had offered to dismantle a major launching site while "continuing to make improvements at more than a dozen others that would bolster launches of conventional and nuclear warheads." … In short, there were no "improvements that would bolster launches of conventional and nuclear warheads" that could be cited as evidence of an effort by North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Un to deceive Trump. …A campaign of bureaucratic resistance to any move toward a peace deal with North Korea is in full swing. And as the latest round of journalist malpractice dramatically illustrates, the corporate media will not hesitate to resort to blatant untruth to support that resistance. [Read More]
Also useful/insightful on this New York Times distortion – "How 'The New York Times' Deceived the Public on North Korea," by Tim Shorrock, The Nation [November 16, 2018] [Link]; and [former State Dept. official] Peter Van Buren, "Deception in North Korea? Nope, But a New Flavor of Neocon," Antiwar.com [November 19, 2018] [Link].
GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHAOS
A Very Grim Forecast
By Bill McKibben, New York Review of Books [November 22, 2018 Issue]
Global Warming of 1.5°C: An IPCC Special Report
[FB – This is a review/assessment of the recent report on our climate by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.]
---- There's one paramount reason we didn't heed those earlier warnings, and that's the power of the fossil fuel industry. Since the last IPCC report, a series of newspaper exposés has made it clear that the big oil companies knew all about climate change even before it became a public issue in the late 1980s, and that, instead of owning up to that knowledge, they sponsored an enormously expensive campaign to obfuscate the science. That campaign is increasingly untenable. In a world where floods, fires, and storms set new records almost weekly, the industry now concentrates on trying to slow the inevitable move to renewable energy and preserve its current business model as long as possible…. As the energy analyst David Roberts predicted recently on Twitter, "the increasing severity of climate impacts will not serve as impetus to international cooperation, but the opposite. It will empower nationalists, isolationists, & reactionaries." Anyone wondering what he's talking about need merely look at the Western reaction to the wave of Syrian refugees fleeing a civil war sparked in part by the worst drought ever measured in that region. [Read More] Also useful/interesting is "Climate and the Infernal Blue Wave: Straight Talk About Saving Humanity," b [Link]
THE JULIAN ASSANGE CASE
As the Obama DOJ Concluded, Prosecution of Julian Assange for Publishing Documents Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom
By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept [November 16, 2018]
---- The Trump Justice Department inadvertently revealed in a court filing that it has charged Julian Assange in a sealed indictment. The disclosure occurred through a remarkably amateurish cutting-and-pasting error in which prosecutors unintentionally used secret language from Assange's sealed charges in a document filed in an unrelated case. Although the document does not specify which charges have been filed against Assange, the Wall Street Journal reported that "they may involve the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the disclosure of national defense-related information." … Prosecuting Assange and/or WikiLeaks for publishing classified documents would be in an entirely different universe of press freedom threats. Reporting on the secret acts of government officials or powerful financial actors – including by publishing documents taken without authorization – is at the core of investigative journalism, …After all, the Obama DOJ concluded, such a prosecution would pose a severe threat to press freedom because there would be no way to prosecute Assange for publishing classified documents without also prosecuting the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and others for doing exactly the same thing. … But the grand irony is that many Democrats will side with the Trump DOJ over the Obama DOJ. Their emotional, personal contempt for Assange – due to their belief that he helped defeat Hillary Clinton: the gravest crime – easily outweighs any concerns about the threats posed to press freedoms by the Trump administration's attempts to criminalize the publication of documents. [Read More]
For more illumination on these ominous developments – "The West is Failing Julian Assange," by Stefania Maurizi, Consortium News [November 6, 2018] [Link]; and "United States Will Bring Assange to US in Chains," by Ann Garrison, Consortium News [November 14, 2018] [Link].
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Who, Us? Corporate Media Ignore Their Role in Trump's Refugee 'Invasion' Panic
By Reed Richardson, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [November 15, 2018]
---- If the establishment media's coverage in the home stretch of the 2018 midterm elections is any kind of prologue to 2020, be prepared for an avalanche of right-wing xenophobic propaganda during our next presidential election. That's because, once again, the political press dutifully chased Trump's rhetorical tail as Election Day neared, and repeatedly ceded its editorial judgment and newshole to the nativist fearmongering he used to stoke the Republican Party's base. And nowhere was this fecklessness more apparent than media's breathless "migrant caravan" coverage. … Just as with the corporate media's obsession with Hillary Clinton's emails during the 2016 election—at the expense of robust policy coverage—what's really at issue here is the broader framing and messaging the press sends through its disproportionate focus. [Read More]
The Facebook Scandal
FB – There are lots of reasons to pay serious attention to Facebook, the most powerful media corporation in the galaxy. New Yorkers may be interested in the role of our US Senator Chuck Schumer in leading political interference in Congress for Facebook, a connection further strengthened by the fact that Schumer's daughter works for Facebook. One aspect of The Times' important report that is not stressed in the commentary is the assumption that "Russians" used Facebook as a platform to "meddle" in the US 2016 election. Previous newsletters have dwelled on the fact that such Facebook postings were a minute proportion of our pre-election "discourse," and that at least some/many of these posts were obviously phishing efforts to construct and sell mailing lists of users interested in many topics (Jill Stein, cute puppies, etc.). So in this case Russo-phobia has become distracting blowback, obscuring our understanding of what are Facebook's truly significant threats to democracy.
(Video) NYT Investigation: How Facebook Used a Republican Firm to Attack Critics & Spread Disinformation
From Democracy Now! [November 16, 2018]
---- "Delay, Deny and Deflect." That's the name of a new bombshell investigation by The New York Times revealing that Facebook executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, were aware of a Russian misinformation campaign on the social media network and took a series of extraordinary private actions to preserve the company's reputation, launching an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat critics and spread misinformation. The New York Times investigation reveals that Facebook hired the Republican opposition-research firm Definers Public Affairs to discredit critics of Facebook, linking them to the billionaire liberal donor George Soros. Facebook also allegedly lobbied the Anti-Defamation League to condemn criticism of the company as anti-Semitic. [See the Program]
For more interesting insights – You can read the New York Times' report, "Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook's Leaders Fought Through Crisis" [November 14, 2018] here. Rashad Robinson, leader of Color of Change, one of the organizations that were attacked by the Facebook attack team, was also interviewed on Democracy Now! For a good summary of the case so far, read "Facebook Is a Normal Sleazy Company Now," by [Link].
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Gaza Battle – Israel Loses Politically
November 17, 2018]
---- Earlier this week the Israeli military and armed groups in Gaza clashed in the worst fighting since their 2014 war. Israeli planes bombed Palestinians, killing seven, wounding 26 and destroying numerous office and apartment buildings. Palestinian groups fired rockets and mortars into Israel, killing one civilian and wounding 18. Both sides agreed to an uneasy ceasefire, but the key political issues are unresolved. Israel dominated the fighting militarily, but Palestinians nonetheless celebrated a victory because they forced Israel to back down and agree to a ceasefire. In a tacit admission of political defeat, Israeli politicians bickered among themselves. The Israeli defense minister resigned and right-wing politicians clamored for the head of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, complaining he had ended the conflict too soon. [Read More]
A Familiar Invasion: Settlers take another mountain top, soldiers follow, and Palestinians demonstrate for their rights
By Yumna Patel, Mondoweiss [November 13, 2018]
---- It was the day before Eid al-Adha last summer, and millions of Palestinian Muslims across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, Gaza, and Israel were preparing for the biggest holiday of the year. But when the residents of the Ramallah-area village of Kafr Ni'ma woke up, expecting to spend the day decorating their homes and preparing sweets for the visitors they would receive the following morning, they were shocked to find a group of visitors on the outskirts of the town. …The Risan mountain is nestled between three villages northwest of Ramallah, just a few kilometers from the Green Line — Kafr Ni'ma, Ras Karkar, and Kharbetha Bani Hareth. "People from all three villages own land on the mountain," Attayah said, noting that his family is among the landowners. "After the settlers came, the Israeli occupation authorities told us that they were confiscating the land for the settlers," he said. "They want to take 1,000 dunums [about 250 acres] of our land." Ever since the settlers showed up two months ago, the Palestinians from Risan's three surrounding villages have been staging weekly Friday protests on the mountain in attempts to stop the confiscation. "We have to maintain our presence in the area," Attayah said. "They think they can just come and take the land, but we will not make it easy for them." [Read More]
