Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
November 5, 2023
Hello All – Yesterday, in Washington, DC, some 300,000 people joined millions more around the world to protest Israel's war on Gaza. The universal cry demands an immediate ceasefire and an end of the blockade of Gaza, where hospitals have run out of supplies and everyone is without food and water. Without these steps, thousands will die soon, perhaps within hours, the victims of a genocide imposed by Israel and supported by our own government.
It is evident that the Biden administration is failing to use the leverage that the USA has in its relations with Israel. For decades, the United States has sent billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, and has used its influence and/or veto power in the United Nations and other forums to protect Israel from condemnation and consequences. This has enabled US presidents to set limits from time to time on war-waging or settlement policy. Yet last week, as first President Biden and then Secretary of State Antony Blinken rushed to Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu apparently refused to agree to even a cosmetic "humanitarian pause" to the slaughter in Gaza. Whether the imminent death throes of Gaza's hospitals and the UN relief structure will change this remains to be seen.
We cannot stand by, spectators to a 24-hour news cycle of mass slaughter of civilians, including thousands of children, without protest. Let's raise our voices – Now! – to demand an immediate ceasefire and a tsunami of emergency relief supplies to people who need it. Call the President, call Congress, mobilize your friends.
This Week's Featured Essays on the War on Gaza
A Month Into Israeli War, Massive Protests in US and Around the World Demand Cease-Fire
By
---- Huge crowds of protesters filled the streets of Washington, D.C. and other U.S. cities on Saturday to demand a cease-fire in Israel's war on Hamas, which has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip over the past month. … The Saturday actions followed weeks of protests at places including congressional offices and major transit stations. [Read More]. Also of interest is "The largest Palestine protest in U.S. history [300,000] shut down the streets of D.C." by November 5, 2023] [Link]
Why Israel wants to erase context and history in the war on Gaza
By Ilan Pappe, Aljazeera [November 5, 2023]
[FB - Ilan Pappe is the Director of European Center of Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of several books on Israel and Gaza]
---- On October 24, a statement by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres caused a sharp reaction by Israel. While addressing the UN Security Council, the UN chief said that while he condemned in the strongest terms the massacre committed by Hamas on October 7, he wished to remind the world that it did not take place in a vacuum. He explained that one cannot dissociate 56 years of occupation from our engagement with the tragedy that unfolded on that day. The Israeli government was quick to condemn the statement. Israeli officials demanded Guterres's resignation, claiming that he supported Hamas and justified the massacre it carried out. The Israeli media also jumped on the bandwagon, asserting among other things that the UN chief "has demonstrated a stunning degree of moral bankruptcy". This reaction suggests that a new type of allegation of anti-Semitism may now be on the table. Until October 7, Israel had pushed for the definition of anti-Semitism to be expanded to include criticism of the Israeli state and questioning the moral basis of Zionism. Now, contextualising and historicising what is going on could also trigger an accusation of anti-Semitism. [Read More]
(Video) Gaza's Al-Shifa: A hospital on the brink [23 minutes]
From Aljazeera [October 25, 2023]
---- Gaza's main hospital is overflowing with both the living and the dead. The morgues are at capacity, and the bodies spill onto the street outside Al-Shifa Hospital. Inside, hundreds of seriously injured people fill the hallways as the doctors decide which lives they can save. Men, women and children are among the wounded, and doctors work under immense pressure, knowing all services will soon grind to a halt when the backup generators stop working. … Israel's siege on Gaza has meant no food, no water, no electricity and no fuel. As these necessities deplete faster than the hospital can cope, Al-Shifa is on the brink on catastrophe. While the hospital struggles to cope with arrivals of the injured, its staff also worries for other patients – 70 people on ventilators, hundreds receiving dialysis and 118 babies in incubators. Without electricity, they will die. [See the Program]
The Gaza genocide: 75 years in brief
By Tom Suarez, Countercurrents [November 4, 2023]
---- For 75 years, Israel has been terrorizing Gaza, attacking and bombing the very people it ethnically cleansed from their homes in 1948. When finally on 7 October the Gaza concentration camp blew wide open, the 'West' feigned outrage — and blamed Gaza. Herewith a crash-course for the media and US presidents… [Read More]
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
FB – For the 5th straight week, the CFOW newsletter has a single focus: the War on Gaza. The purpose of the "Weekly Reader" is to highlight and clarify the several issue-areas that are on the CFOW action-agenda. These include the war in Ukraine and the threat of war with China, the Climate Crisis, the dangers of white supremacy and the rightwing attacks on civil liberties, and much more. Next week I hope to return the Newsletter to its standard format: but for now, the War on Gaza rightly commands all our attention.
Democracy Now!
Once again, this week's programming from Democracy Now! has given us outstanding coverage and analysis of the Gaza War. Each day 3-4 excellent segments are offered at www.democracynow.org, broadcast live from 8 to 9 am, and then available via live streaming at anytime. Below I've pasted in a few segments broadcast this week.
(Video) Ta-Nehisi Coates Speaks Out Against Israel's "Segregationist Apartheid Regime" After West Bank Visit - [November 2, 2023]
---- As pressure builds for a ceasefire after 27 days of Israel's bombardment of Gaza, author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates joins us in a broadcast exclusive interview to discuss his journey to Palestine and Israel and learning about the connection between the struggle of African Americans and Palestinians. "The most shocking thing about my time over there was how uncomplicated it actually is," says Coates, who calls segregation in Palestine and Israel "evil." "There's no way for me, as an African American, to come back and stand before you, to witness segregation and not say anything about it." Coates acknowledges the suppression of those advocating for Palestinian rights but says this is not new for Black writers and journalists. "I have to measure my fear against the misery that I saw." [See the Program]
(Video) State Department Official Resigns, Says Israel Is Using U.S. Arms to Massacre Civilians in Gaza - [November 3, 2023]
---- We speak with Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned last month to protest continued arms sales to Israel amid its bombardment of Gaza, writing in a viral letter that one-sided U.S. support for Israel is "shortsighted," "destructive" and "contradictory." Media reports say many others inside the State Department are equally frustrated with the U.S. role in the conflict. Paul tells Democracy Now! he tried to raise his concerns with his superiors but found "no appetite for that discussion" and that unlike all other U.S. arms sales that take humanitarian concerns into account, Israel gets a blank check. Paul says the overall message inside the Biden administration is: "Don't question the policy because it's coming from the top." [See the Program]
(Video) Gaza Doctor Says Hospitals Have to Choose Who Lives and Who Dies Amid Worsening Humanitarian Crisis - [October 31, 2023]
---- As Israeli tanks and other ground forces enter Gaza, we speak with a doctor in the besieged territory. Dr. Hammam Alloh is working at Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the area, and says tens of thousands of people have sought shelter to escape Israel's heavy bombardment. He describes making harrowing decisions with rapidly dwindling supplies, such as not resuscitating a patient who went into cardiac arrest because of a lack of ventilators. He also remains steadfast in staying at the hospital, despite Israeli demands to evacuate south. "You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?" he says. "This is not the reason why I became a doctor." [See the Program]
(Video) Rep. Delia Ramirez Backs Gaza Ceasefire Resolution in Congress: We Need Diplomacy, Not More Bombings -October 30, 2023
---- We speak with Illinois Congressmember Delia Ramirez, one of the 18 members of the U.S. House of Representatives who have signed a resolution calling for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and Palestine. "The only way we move forward is deescalating," says Ramirez. "The aid that we send cannot be used to kill innocent lives. It's unacceptable, it's not moral, and I can't stand behind that." [See the Program]
The Media and the War
FB - The framing of the war is critical for understanding what it going on, and the US media has played a significant role in amplifying the Biden administration's pro-Israel spin on what's happening in the war. The best, most-consistent reporting on the US media is by www.fair.org, Fairness and Accuracy in the Media. Here are several assessments of the mainstream media performance this week.
How Big Media Facilitate Israeli War Crimes in Gaza
By Robin Andersen, Mint Press News [October 23, 2023]
---- Many news outlets reported that the violence came out of nowhere, offering no historical context. The attacks, therefore, were without motivation, attributed only to the pure evil of Hamas and Palestinian terrorists. … In a piece published on October 8 titled "Media Calls The Attack On Israel Unprovoked: Experts Say That's Historically Inaccurate," the Huffington Post pointed to the Israeli government's "apartheid against Palestinians" as a provocation. It quoted IfNotNow, an American Jewish group that opposes Israeli apartheid, expressing their dread for the loss of life and loved ones, Israelis and Palestinians alike. It continued, "Every day under Israel's system of apartheid is a provocation. The strangling siege on Gaza is a provocation. Settlers terrorizing entire Palestinian villages, soldiers raiding and demolishing Palestinian homes, murdering Palestinians in the streets, Israeli ministers calling for genocide and expulsion" are all provocations. [Read More]
The media's blinding dark cloud of moral clarity
ByNovember 2, 2023]
---- Westerners who talk about Israel's ongoing attack on Gaza usually offer policy prescriptions that can be broken down into four categories. There are three major arguments you will find in our press justifying Israeli violence, and the fourth argument, for a ceasefire, which is not usually voiced. […] Plan D. A ceasefire with all the hostages released. Plan D is simply out of the question for mainstream American politicians, pundits and other moral giants of that sort. If you advocate it, they ask challengingly, "What is YOUR plan for Israel to deal with Hamas?" This is supposed to be a question that forces you back to where you either choose Plan B or C (or A if the questioner is openly and unashamedly genocidal.) If you cling stubbornly to Plan D, it must be that you simply don't care how many Jews Hamas may kill in the future. [Read More]
Media's In-House Critics to Reporters: Quit Quoting Palestinians About Civilian Deaths
By Jim Naureckas and Ari Paul, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [November 3, 2023]
---- The devastating explosion at a Gaza hospital on October 17 provoked soul-searching in US corporate media—over the willingness of press outlets to quote Gaza officials who attributed the calamity to an Israeli airstrike. … Perhaps the factor that seemed to most impel media's own media critics to rebuke outlets for the initial coverage of the hospital bombing was that the US government supported the Israeli version of events. … Of course, a government that is the main supplier of weaponry to another government accused of committing a war crime is not an objective analyst; the US exoneration of Israel (which was also a self-exoneration) should not have been treated as particularly compelling evidence, let alone a definitive judgment. [Read More]
Additional Commentary on the War
Gaza: Colonialism in the 21st Century
By
---- It is nowadays pretty much consensual in the social sciences that colonialism did not end with the political independence of the European colonies that took place between the beginning of the 19th century and the end of the 20th. What came to an end, though not completely, was a form of colonialism, historical colonialism characterized by territorial occupation by a foreign country. The vast majority of Israelis experience with no qualms the apartheid of the society in which they live. .… Palestine is therefore one of the remaining situations of historical colonialism. The war being fought is a colonial war on the part of the Israelis and an anti-colonial liberation war on the part of the Palestinians. [Read More]
Why Israel Slept
By James Bamford, The Nation [November 2, 2023]
---- By 2015, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was content that his military's deadly rockets, assassination drones, and snipers were keeping the grass neatly mowed in Gaza. He therefore decided to turn his attention toward launching a new front in his war against the Palestinians. This one, however, would be covert. Its target: the growing numbers of noisy and irritating Americans who dared to protest his government's brutal occupation. … Netanyahu's greatest fear was that as a result of the growing strength of the BDS movement, the American public would finally begin seeing Israel in the same light that many people in the rest of the world, and even in Israel, saw it: as a brutal apartheid state. The more Israel's atrocities came to light, the more the BDS movement gained strength around the country. [Read More]
Internal U.S. State Dept. document urges pressure on Israel to renew Gaza water supply
By Amira Hass, Haaretz [Israel] [October 29, 2023]
---- Due to the worsening water shortage in the Gaza Strip, an internal U.S. State Department document recommends the Biden administration pressure Israel to take immediate steps which the report's writers believe will alleviate Palestinian residents' suffering and potentially save tens of thousands of lives. The authors assess that 52,000 pregnant women and more than 30,000 babies under six months of age are currently drinking brackish or contaminated water due to the absence of drinking water or the electricity needed to power the water infrastructure. … In the absence of clean water, most Gazans are forced to make use of brackish water often contaminated with nitrates as a result of waste and fertilizer seepage. As mentioned in the document, the diseases such water carry are especially harmful to pregnant women and babies. [Read More] Also of interest by Amira Hass is "Amid the Mourning, Israel's Settlement Enterprise Celebrates a Great Victory," Haaretz [November 1, 2023] [Link].
I've Been Under Bombardment. There Must Be a Cease-Fire in Gaza
By Megan K. Stack, New York Times [October 30, 2023]
---- Getting bombed from the sky is a particular horror: The sense that death hangs quite literally over your head, invisible until it's too late, and maybe it will hit you. Maybe this moment. Or this. Or this. Every heartbeat hammering through your skull. I've watched U.S. warplanes attack Afghanistan; barely escaped a direct strike from a Russian MiG in Georgia, and lived for weeks under relentless Israeli bombardment in Lebanon. The images from Gaza bring back memories I usually keep buried. As bad as that was, Gaza is incalculably worse. I have never experienced the merciless pace of airstrikes and death now being suffered by the people of Gaza — people who did not travel to a war zone as foreign reporters, but who are getting attacked at home, with their children and grandparents. People who already lived under blockade, and never had any real possibility of escape. [Read More]
Eyeless in Gaza
---- The question is, how many kinds of blindness, with what sorts of effects? … Although I cannot help but be horrified by the actions of Hamas on October 7, I am struck by how perfectly it diagnosed the weaknesses of its enemy. They capitalized on its blind arrogance, and then put out its eyes with a spectacle of violence designed to produce blind rage. This leads us to ask how things then turned out for Samson. The answer is: suicide. [Read More]
Some Gaza War Notes
Hand in Hand: Protesters Come Together in Support of Palestine
Photography by Hannah La Follette Ryan, The Nation [Link].
(Podcast) The Squad Is Getting Primaried for Standing Against the War
From The Intercept [November 3, 2023]
---- Fourteen Democratic senators called for a "short-term cessation of hostilities" on Thursday, as Israel's airstrikes continued for the fourth week and a ground invasion intensified. So far 18 House members have signed on to a resolution, introduced weeks earlier, with stronger calls for an "immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine." Pro-Israel lobbying groups have already begun efforts to oust House members pushing for a ceasefire. Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid joins Ryan Grim to discuss the powerful influence of groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Democratic Majority for Israel in shaping U.S.-Israel policy, the generational shift challenging their power, and how Arab and Muslim communities are responding to the Biden administration's response to the war. [Hear the Program]
U.S. Quietly Expands Secret Military Base in Israel
By Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw, The Intercept [October 27, 2023]
---- Two months before Hamas attacked Israel, the Pentagon awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to build U.S. troop facilities for a secret base it maintains deep within Israel's Negev desert, just 20 miles from Gaza. Code-named "Site 512," the longstanding U.S. base is a radar facility that monitors the skies for missile attacks on Israel. … Though President Joe Biden and the White House insist that there are no plans to send U.S. troops to Israel amid its war on Hamas, a secret U.S. military presence in Israel already exists. And the government contracts and budget documents show it is evidently growing. [Read More]
