Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
May 20, 2018
Hello All – Our weekly vigil in Hastings was rained out Saturday. We hoped to continue our protest against the on-going events in Gaza, which have so far resulted in 101 Palestinians killed and several thousand wounded. We intended, last Saturday, to call for an end to US military aid to Israel, and for an end to Israel's (and Egypt's) land, sea, and air blockade of Israel. We expect to continue with this protest next Saturday, so please join us at noon at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton Ave. and Spring St.).
Needless to say, a protest in Hastings about anything is not likely to change the world. What's the point? I think there are several points. On a personal/individual level, it's not healthy to stand by and do nothing when one is aware of grievous harm being done to people/someone right before our eyes. A truculent silence in the face of moral outrage diminishes us as humans and numbs our ability to empathize with others. Second, the absence of protests against outrage, even small protests, conveys to our rulers that what they are doing is tolerated by those they rule. The protests around #BlackLivesMatter, the school shootings, the attack on Planned Parenthood, and the gas pipeline next to Indian Point are examples of protests that speak out against the rightward slide of our nation. By speaking out publicly, protests can reassure others, perhaps not so bold, that they are not alone in their distress about what is happening in this country. And finally, to return to the issue of Israel and Gaza, those humans living in the Gaza Ghetto are deserving of the support of all right-thinking people. Their 70 years of oppression has been brought to the world's front-burner by their desperate actions over the past two months to make their life-and-death situation known. And now that we know, we can't let ourselves forget.
Korea re-emerged this week as a possible site of horrible war. Only recently the success of the negotiations between North and South Korea seemed to have pushed back the danger of war, paving the way for bilateral talks between North Korea and the Trump administration on June 12th. While much that we would like to know is taking place behind the scenes, the most likely reason for the re-escalation of tension is that super-hawk John Bolton has become Trump's National Security Adviser. For decades, and including very recently, Bolton is on record as calling for the military destruction of North Korea. The appointment of Bolton would reasonably appear to the North Koreans to indicate that the Trump team has decided to block the reunification of Korea, to demand the nuclear disarmament of the North before lifting sanctions can even be discussed, and to employ what Bolton called this week "the Libyan model"; i.e., get an adversary to disarm, and then destroy it. Please watch the excellent Democracy Now! interview with Korea expert Christine Hong, linked below under "Featured Essays" for insights on what might be coming our way.
News Notes
Now another horrible school shooting, this time in Texas. After the Parkland high school shootings, The New York Times put up this useful/frightening chart about the 1,600 mass shootings (four or more deaths) since the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in December 2012. Sadly, here is it again.
Today the people of Venezuela will go to the polls to choose their next president. For two decades, the US government and mainstream media have been at war with the "Bolivarian Revolution" of Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro. The go-to place for useful information and discussion about Venezuela is www.venezuelanalysis.com, which is maintained by CFOW friend Eva Golinger. A good selection to understand today's election is "Venezuela's Highly Unusual Presidential Election," by Greg Wilpert [Link]. (There are more useful articles here.) Also useful is "A Primer on the Venezuelan Elections" by [Link].
Margie (Margot) Kidder died this week. Mostly we knew her for her role as Lois Lane in "Superman." But a close friend reminds us that she was an activist, a writer, and a stalwart for peace and justice. Check out "Wild at Heart: Keeping Up With Margie Kidder," by Jeffrey St. Clair, editor of Counterpunch.[Link].
I haven't had time to watch the whole thing, but a new documentary film – "Islamophobia, Inc.: Sinister Billionaires and White Nationalists breed Hate" – seems very useful/interesting. It's from Aljazeera English; see it here.
Finally, imo film reviewer Louis Proyect consistently writes thoughtful essays. In "Faith or Action in a World Hurtling Toward Oblivion?" he writes about "First Reformed," a new film written by Paul Schrader, who also wrote "Taxi Driver" and other features. The film is about dealing with despair in dark times; ripped from today's headlines! [Link].
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!
Ongoing – The Poor Peoples' Campaign got underway this week, with actions across the country. On Monday there will be some nonviolent direct action in Albany; learn more here. And on Tuesday, in Westchester, there will be an organizing meeting at the WESPAC office at 6:30 p.m. learn more here. For more information and to get involved, contact Rev. Joya Colon-Berezin.
Tuesday, May 22nd – The League of Women Voters will hold a forum at the Hastings Community Center (44 Main St.) on "How Secure is Your Vote?" The program starts at 7:30 p.m. The speakers include Allegra Dengler, founder of "Citizens for Voter Integrity"; Virginia Martin, Democratic Commissioner for the Columbia County Board of Elections; and Lulu Friesdat, a journalist specializing in election reform. The program will also have a short from, "I Hacked an Election: So Can the Russians." IMPORTANT!
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 tax cut legislation are often targeted, depending on current events. We 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. If you would like to make a financial contribution to our work, please send your 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" and the selection of articles/essays about Israel and Gaza, I especially recommend Michael Klare's article ("War & Peace") on the prospects for a third Gulf War; Marjorie Cohn's essay on the issues behind Gina Haspell's confirmation as the new head of the CIA; the tragedies now awaiting Honduran refugees in the USA the end of their "Temporary Protected Status"; and a useful review/summary ("Israel/Palestine") of Norman Finkelstein's new book on Gaza. Read on!
Rewards!
This newsletter needs a little levity, considering…. So back for an encore is The Real Tuesday Weld with "The Show Must Go On." And to make our weekend complete, here are Dorothy Dandridge and the fabulous Nicholas Brothers. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CRISIS IN GAZA
Palestinians Are Forcing the World to See Their Humanity
By Phyllis Bennis, In These Times [May 16, 2018]
---- We watch a split screen. On one side: celebrations of the new U.S. embassy opening in Jerusalem. The president's daughter, son-in-law, cabinet officials, Congress members, all smiling, proud. The U.S. ambassador, longtime settlement financier David Friedman, joins Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, his family, cabinet officials, Knesset members—all waiting for President Trump to join their festivities. The other screen: solemn faces, tears, teenagers splayed across makeshift stretchers carried by other teenagers to waiting ambulances. Tear gas so thick one can't see through it even on a television or computer screen. Sharpshooters, with live fire coming so fast that casualty counters can't keep up. It's 38 dead—just in one day. No, it's 40. And then it turns out it's nearly 60. Another 1,500 injured, no it's more than 2,000 already. Twenty-four hours later it turns out to be more than 2,400. Not a single Israeli has been killed—the dead are all Palestinians. The killers, the maimers, the shooters, the gassers, are all Israeli soldiers. [Read More]
How Long Will We Pretend Palestinians Aren't People?
---- Monstrous. Frightful. Wicked. It's strange how the words just run out in the Middle East today. Sixty Palestinians dead. In one day. Two thousand four hundred wounded, more than half by live fire. In one day. The figures are an outrage, a turning away from morality, a disgrace for any army to create. And we are supposed to believe that the Israeli army is one of "purity of arms"? And we have to ask another question. If it's 60 Palestinians dead in a day this week, what if it's 600 next week? Or 6,000 next month? Israel's bleak excuses – and America's crude response – raise this very question. If we can now accept a massacre on this scale, how far can our immune system go in the days and weeks and months to come? … Rarely in modern times have we come across an entire people – the Palestinians – treated as a non-people. Amid the trash and rats of the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Lebanon – oh fateful names they remain – there is a hut-museum of items brought into Lebanon from Galilee by those first refugees of the late 1940s: coffee pots and front door keys to houses long destroyed. They locked up their houses, many of them, planning to return in a few days. … there are families in Gaza whose grandfathers and grandmothers were driven from their homes less than a mile from Gaza itself, from two villages which existed precisely where stands today the Israeli town of Sderot, so often rocketed by Hamas. They can still see their lands. And when you can see your land, you want to go home. [Read More]
Killing protestors for the crime of Walking While Gazan
By May 17, 2018]
[FB - Marilyn Garson, a New Zealander whose blog Contrapuntal is highly recommended, responded to an article in Haaretz, the leading Israeli English-language newspaper, which criticized the criticism of Israel's use of "disproportionate force." Garson's is a powerful statement, imo.]
Dear Rabbi Yoffie,
---- Regarding your column, If You Call The Gaza Death Toll 'Disproportionate', [Ha'aretz, May 16] we agree that language counts. The deaths arising from Gaza's protests are one-sided: the IDF has killed more than one hundred Gazans. They have injured more protestors than Gaza has hospital beds. Medecins Sans Frontieres has noted an alarming pattern among the gunshot wounds, indicating a particularly harmful choice of ammunition. No Israeli has been injured or killed. You ask whether a person who observes these facts would like to see "a hundred Jewish bodies… strewn across the desert". No, I would not. I am simply observing a fact. I am not seeking more deaths; I am seeking fewer. I am calling attention to avoidable killing. If I may not note the factual distribution of death, then what am I allowed to say? [Read More]
Also useful/illuminating in understanding Israel/Gaza/Palestine – Gideon Levy, "60 Dead in Gaza and the End of Israeli Conscience," Haaretz [Israel] [May 17, 2018] [Link]; Hosam Salem, "Gaza rallies: How women shape Great March of Return movement," Aljazeera [May 2018] [Link]; Richard Falk, "Gaza: Grief, Horror, Outrage, Remembering," ZNet [May 17, 2018] [Link]; Sharif Abdel Kouddous, "Palestinians Engaged in Nonviolent Protest. Israel Responded With a Massacre," The Nation [May 17, 2018] [Link]; and Ian S. Lustick, "Israel's Massacre of Palestinian Civilians Should Spark Horror—and Action," The Nation [May 18, 2018] [Link].
Media Tutorial
[FB – The newsletter's occasional "media tutorials" highlight articles that analyze media bias: what it is, how it works, and how it is produced. For those interested in this topic, I recommend the book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent. In a nutshell, they develop a "propaganda model" that attempts to explain how the free-market media develops a news/information product that is in lock-step with the needs of the people/corporations that run the USA and much of the rest of the world.]
Blaming the Victims of Israel's Gaza Massacre
By Gregory Shupak, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] [May 19, 2018]
---- Israel massacred 60 Palestinians on Monday, including seven children, bringing to 101 the total number of Palestinians Israel has killed since Palestinians began the Great March on March 30. In that period, Israel has killed 11 Palestinian children, two journalists, one person on crutches and three persons with disabilities. Monday's casualties included 1,861 wounded, bringing total injuries inflicted by Israel to 6,938 people, including 3,615 with live fire. Israel is using bullets designed to expand inside the body, causing maximum, often permanent damage: "The injuries sustained by patients will leave most with serious, long-term physical disabilities," says Médecins Sans Frontières (Ha'aretz, 4/22/18). On the 70th anniversary of Israel's so-called "declaration of independence," the United States opened its new embassy in Jerusalem—a city Israel claims as its own, despite what international law says on the matter—and Palestinians undertook unarmed protests in reaction to the move and as part of the Great Return March. Although to this point, the only Israeli casualty during the entire cycle of demonstrations has been one "lightly wounded" soldier, considerable space in coverage of the massacres is devoted to blaming Palestinians for their own slaughter. [Read More]
FEATURED ESSAYS
(Video) Trump Pursues Denuclearization in North Korea & Nobel Peace Prize, While Ramping Up US Weapons Sales
From Democracy Now! [May 17, 2018]
---- We continue our look at how North Korea is threatening to cancel the June 12 U.S.-North Korea summit, after President Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, said on Sunday the U.S. should use the so-called Libyan model for denuclearization. In Part 2 of our interview with Christine Hong, executive board member of the Korea Policy Institute and an associate professor at University of California, Santa Cruz, she discusses the response to Bolton's comments, the role of South Korea's president and workers in negotiations that could lead to reunification, and her own family's experience after the division of Korea between North and South Korea. [See the Program] Though brief, Part 1 of this interview is also very good. [Link]
Down the Memory Hole: Trump's Strategic Assault on Democracy, Word by Word
By Karen J. Greenberg, Tom Dispatch [May 19, 2018]
By Karen J. Greenberg, Tom Dispatch [May 19, 2018]
---- Consider us officially in an Orwellian world, though we only half realize it. While we were barely looking, significant parts of an American language long familiar to us quite literally, and in a remarkably coherent way, went down the equivalent of George Orwell's infamous Memory Hole. … The very idea that the government can control what words we use and don't at a university-related event seems to violate everything we as a country hold dear about the independence of educational institutions from government control, not to mention the sanctity of free speech and the importance of public debate. But that, of course, was in the era before Donald Trump became president. … What we are evidently living through is a coordinated attack on the previous American definition of reality. The question is: Where do such directives come from? Who has identified the words and concepts that need to be deleted from the national lexicon? However unknown to us, is there a virtual minister or ministry of propaganda somewhere? Is there someone monitoring and documenting the progress of such a strategy? And what exactly are the next steps being planned? [Read More]
Socialism Is on a Winning Streak [Recent Democratic Party primary elections]
By John Nichols, The Nation [May 18, 2018]
---- The long history of American socialism has been built in left-wing strongholds. A century ago, Oklahoma and Wisconsin were Socialist Party bastions, while North Dakota and Montana were hotbeds of radical politics. And there was always Pennsylvania. … But the dry spell is over. Socialists have been on an electoral winning streak in some parts of the country for a number of years—Socialist Alternative's Kshama Sawant made her electoral breakthrough in 2013, winning a major race for the Seattle City Council—but the results from western Pennsylvania in the past two years have been particularly striking. And, now, national observers are starting to take note. "Democratic Socialists scores big wins in Pennsylvania," declared CNN this week, while The New Yorker announced: "A Democratic-Socialist Landslide in Pennsylvania." Tuesday's primary election in Pennsylvania saw young progressive women who were backed by Democratic Socialists of America winning Democratic primaries all over the place—in cities and suburbs, to the west and to the east. "We're turning the state the right shade of red tonight," declared Arielle Cohen, the co-chair of the Pittsburgh chapter of DSA [Read More].
Israel and Palestine in 2018: Decolonisation, Not Peace
By Ilan Pappe, Aljazeera [May 2018]
---- In 2018, one cannot talk about the Arab-Israeli conflict any more. Arab regimes are willing to enter strategic relations with Israel, despite the objection of their citizens and while there is still a risk for an Israeli war with Iran, at this moment in time, it does not look like it is going to involve any of the Arab states. It seems that from our vantage point it is useless to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict either. The correct terminology to describe the present state of affairs is continuing Israeli colonisation of historical Palestine, or as the Palestinians call it "al-Nakba al-Mustamera" (the ongoing Nakba). Thus, 70 years on, one has to resort to a term that might seem outdated in order to describe what can genuinely bring peace and reconciliation to Israel and Palestine: decolonization. How exactly this will occur is yet to be seen. It would require first of all a more precise and united Palestinian position on the political endgame or the updated vision of the project of liberation. This vision will be supported by progressive Israelis and the international community, which will have to do their bit as well. They have to work towards the creation of a democracy for all from the river to the sea based on the restitution of the rights denied to the Palestinians in the last 70 years, foremost of which is the right of the refugees to return. This is not a plan for the short term and would require sustained pressure on the Israeli society to give up its privileges and face the truth that this is the only way to bring peace and reconciliation to a country torn from within. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
An Empire of Nothing at All? The U.S. Military Takes Us Through the Gates of Hell
By Tom Engelhardt, Tom Dispatch [May 17, 2018]
By Tom Engelhardt, Tom Dispatch [May 17, 2018]
[This essay is the introduction to Tom Engelhardt's new book, A Nation Unmade by War.]
---- It took Donald Trump -- give him credit where it's due -- to make us begin to grasp that we were living in a different and devolving world. And none of this would have been imaginable if, in the aftermath of 9/11, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney & Co. hadn't felt the urge to launch the wars that led us through those gates of hell. Their soaring geopolitical dreams of global domination proved to be nightmares of the first order. They imagined a planet unlike any in the previous half millennium of imperial history, in which a single power would basically dominate everything until the end of time. They imagined, that is, the sort of world that, in Hollywood, had been associated only with the most malign of evil characters. And here was the result of their conceptual overreach: never, it could be argued, has a great power still in its imperial prime proven quite so incapable of applying its military and political might in a way that would advance its aims. [Read More]
Gearing Up for the Third Gulf War: a Future Cataclysm between US, Israel, Saudi and Iran?
---- With Donald Trump's decision to shred the Iran nuclear agreement, announced last Tuesday, it's time for the rest of us to start thinking about what a Third Gulf War would mean. The answer, based on the last 16 years of American experience in the Greater Middle East, is that it won't be pretty. The New York Times recently reported that U.S. Army Special Forces were secretly aiding the Saudi Arabian military against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. It was only the latest sign preceding President Trump's Iran announcement that Washington was gearing up for the possibility of another interstate war in the Persian Gulf region. The first two Gulf wars — Operation Desert Storm (the 1990 campaign to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait) and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq — ended in American "victories" that unleashed virulent strains of terrorism like ISIS, uprooted millions, and unsettled the Greater Middle East in disastrous ways. … A Third Gulf War would distinguish itself from recent Middle Eastern conflicts by the geographic span of the fighting and the number of major actors that might become involved. In all likelihood, the field of battle would stretch from the shores of the Mediterranean, where Lebanon abuts Israel, to the Strait of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf empties into the Indian Ocean. Participants could include, on one side, Iran, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and assorted Shia militias in Iraq and Yemen; and, on the other, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). If the fighting in Syria were to get out of hand, Russian forces could even become involved. [Read More]
Post-War (?) Iraq
Election success for Muqtada al-Sadr shows Iraqi voters shaking off foreign intervention
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent [May 15, 2018]
---- Muqtada al-Sadr, the nationalist populist Shia cleric, has once again defied predictions as the coalition he leads outperformed rival parties in the parliamentary election on 12 May. His supporters successfully campaigned for social and political reform and against a corrupt and dysfunctional political establishment. It was the latest surprise in the career of a man who barely survived the murder of his father, the revered Shia religious leader Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, and his two brothers, on the orders of Saddam Hussein in 1999. … Mr Sadr will be very much the kingmaker – though he will have no official position – in the formation of a new Iraqi government. His coalition, which includes the Iraqi Communist Party, independents and secularists as well as his religious followers, appealed strongly to Iraqis who feel that, with the war won against Isis, they need to rebuild their country. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES/"THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR"
Senate Panel Endorses Gina Haspel, Despite Her Facilitation of Torture
[May 19, 2018]
---- The Senate voted 55-45 to confirm Gina Haspel as CIA director on May 17, despite the fact that her facilitation of torture should disqualify her from assuming the role. In her testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 9, Haspel insisted that the CIA's interrogation program during the Bush administration was legal. Haspel, a 33-year CIA veteran, argued that it could not be determined whether torture was effective to gain intelligence. She refused to state categorically that torture is immoral. And she never condemned the torture program in which she participated. … US law has long considered waterboarding to be torture, which constitutes a war crime. After World War II, the US government tried, convicted and hanged Japanese military leaders for the war crime of waterboarding. Torture is prohibited under the US Torture Statute; the US War Crimes Act; the Geneva Conventions; and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (also known as the Convention Against Torture). … Haspel testified that, if confirmed, she would not allow torture. But she never admitted that Bush's interrogation program included torture. She denied participating in the creation of the CIA detention and interrogation program, claiming she had no knowledge of it until the system had been operational for one year. In spite of her insistence that the CIA acted legally in the Bush interrogation program, Haspel denied she would restart it. "Having served in that tumultuous time," Haspel testified, "I can offer you my personal commitment, clearly and without reservation, that under my leadership, CIA will not restart such a detention and interrogation program." [Read More] And former CIA analyst and peace stalwart Ray McGovern got arrested again, this time protesting Gina Haspel [Link].
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Criminalizing Victims: the Fate of Honduran Refugees
---- The Trump administration's recent decision to suspend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 57, 000 Hondurans who came to the United States after Hurricane Mitch devastated the country in 1998 may have also inspired his visit. Trump's refusal to renew TPS will affect a total of 300,000 Central Americans and Haitians. The vast majority are perfectly law-abiding members of US society who have now, at the stroke of a pen, been criminalized. … Suspending TPS is particularly cruel and counterproductive, but it is essentially a dramatic continuation of the general disregard for human life to which a succession of US governments — Democrat and Republican — has subjected Central America and Haiti for many years. From backing coups to supporting repressive regimes, the US has done much damage to these countries. [Read More]
(Video) Trump's EPA Doesn't Want You to Know Chemicals in Teflon Are Poisoning Waterways & Firefighters
From Democracy Now! [May 18, 2018]
---- The Environmental Protection Agency is facing a major new scandal after it worked with the White House to bury an alarming federal study detailing widespread chemical contamination of the nation's water supply. One Trump administration official warned release of the study would create a "public relations nightmare." The study found chemicals commonly present in Teflon and firefighting foam are a threat to human health at levels the EPA had previously called safe. We speak with Robert Bilott, the attorney the New York Times calls the the "worst nightmare of DuPont," the manufacturer of Teflon. He successfully won compensation for his clients whose drinking water had been contaminated by toxic chemicals used to make Teflon. He is a recipient of the 2017 Right Livelihood Award. [Read More]
Want to See How Biased Broken Windows Policing Is? Spend a Day in Court
By Michelle Chen, The Nation [May 17, 2018]
---- If you're a person of color in New York, one of the country's most policed cities, you're disproportionately likely to wind up in court for a minor charge. Though you're almost certainly going to walk that day, you'll probably still have to pay a fine, or lose a day of work to muddle through an arraignment hearing. … The Police Reform Organizing Project sent researchers to attend misdemeanor arraignments in every borough from January through August 2017, witnessed more than 1,600 proceedings, and observed that across all five boroughs, 1,438, nearly 90 percent, involved New Yorkers of color. About the same number of the defendants, 1,437, "walked out of the courtroom." In every borough, people of color and whites face disparate treatment from the criminal justice system for minor infractions. So compared to the total population of the city—which is about 44 percent white, 25 percent black, 25 percent Latino and 13 percent Asian American—the prevalence of non-whites among the arraigned was vastly disproportionate. That is, while people of color are three times as likely as their white peers to be arraigned in court, the vast majority of all arrestees walk out, either pending another court date or pleading guilty to a minor charge, without detention. [Read More]
Call Congress's "Blue Lives Matter" Bills What They Are: Another Attack on Black Lives
By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [
---- On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed the Protect and Serve Act of 2018 by a vote of 382 to 35. The act — a congressional "Blue Lives Matter" bill — would make it a federal crime to assault a police officer. The Senate version of the bill, which also has broad bipartisan support, goes even further, framing an attack on an officer as a federal hate crime. The bills exemplify the very worst sort of legislation: at once unnecessary and pernicious. The Protect and Serve Act would allow anyone who knowingly causes serious bodily injury to a law enforcement officer to be imprisoned up to 10 years. … The notion of police as victims is becoming entrenched in policy in other ways, too. The same ideological commitment to police-as-persecuted underpins FBI efforts to frame Black Lives Matter activists as potential "black identity extremists" — a designation, conjured from thin air, that claims anti-racist activism is breeding a terroristic targeting of cops. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Uncritical Support [The United States and Israel]
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent [UK] [May 19, 2018]
---- For Israel, there are two dangers stemming from Trump: Israel has always wanted to be close to US leaders, but it has never dealt with one as arbitrary, ill-advised and self-willed as this president. Netanyahu has traditionally been cautious when it comes to fighting real wars, though he is always happy to threaten to do so unless he gets what he wants. With Trump in the White House, he may feel that Israel will never be so well placed again and this is the moment to establish facts on the map. A more serious weakness in Israel's strategic position in the Middle East is likely to be worsened by uncritical support from Washington. There are 6.5 million Israeli Jews and a similar number of Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. All the Palestinians living in Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem and Israel are under some form of Israeli control. It is a situation that guarantees permanent crisis. Israel has the choice of expelling the Palestinians, subjugating them permanently or trying to find some means of coexisting with them. Mass expulsion is not feasible at this time and a deal on coexistence is unlikely, which leaves permanent repression as the only option. It may be that the protests in Gaza that led to so many people being killed will not turn into a more widespread, non-violent civil disobedience. But neither can Israel turn its superiority of force – and even its close alliance with Trump – into a permanent victory, because, whatever it does, the Palestinians will still be there. [Read More]
---- For Israel, there are two dangers stemming from Trump: Israel has always wanted to be close to US leaders, but it has never dealt with one as arbitrary, ill-advised and self-willed as this president. Netanyahu has traditionally been cautious when it comes to fighting real wars, though he is always happy to threaten to do so unless he gets what he wants. With Trump in the White House, he may feel that Israel will never be so well placed again and this is the moment to establish facts on the map. A more serious weakness in Israel's strategic position in the Middle East is likely to be worsened by uncritical support from Washington. There are 6.5 million Israeli Jews and a similar number of Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. All the Palestinians living in Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem and Israel are under some form of Israeli control. It is a situation that guarantees permanent crisis. Israel has the choice of expelling the Palestinians, subjugating them permanently or trying to find some means of coexisting with them. Mass expulsion is not feasible at this time and a deal on coexistence is unlikely, which leaves permanent repression as the only option. It may be that the protests in Gaza that led to so many people being killed will not turn into a more widespread, non-violent civil disobedience. But neither can Israel turn its superiority of force – and even its close alliance with Trump – into a permanent victory, because, whatever it does, the Palestinians will still be there. [Read More]
Trump Has Freed Progressive Democratic Senators To Finally Criticize Israel
May 15, 2018]
---- The Forward has learned that on Friday night, thirteen Democratic Senators—including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging the Trump administration "to do more to alleviate the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip." That may not sound particularly audacious. But according to J Street's Vice President of Communications, Jessica Rosenblum, it's the first letter signed by multiple senators challenging Israel's blockade of Gaza since the 2006 elections that led to Hamas taking control in the Strip. And it constitutes yet more evidence that while journalists focus on the alliance between the Trump and Netanyahu administrations, that alliance is sparking far-reaching changes inside the Democratic Party. The inhibitions that have long prevented Washington Democrats from speaking about Palestinian human rights are beginning to fade.
Read more: [Read More]
As Gaza Sinks Into Desperation, A New Book Makes the Case Against Israeli Brutality
By Charles Glass, The Intercept [
---- Israel celebrates a double anniversary on May 15 this year, the founding of the state and the formal establishment of the Israeli Defense Forces, the name the state gave to its combined army, navy, and air force. Armed statehood fulfilled the political Zionists' dream of gathering Jews from the ancient Diaspora under their own government in what they declared to be their "promised land." During the battle over the land between 1947 and 1949, the IDF expelled three-quarters of the indigenous population. Of the 750,000 Palestinian Arabs who fled, 250,000 took shelter in Gaza, a tiny pocket of southwest Palestine then occupied by the Egyptian army. The destitute and traumatized refugees were three times more numerous than the 80,000 Gazans who took them in. … In his new book, "Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom," Norman Finkelstein presents Gaza's case like a veteran prosecutor at a homicide trial. "This book is not about Gaza," he writes. "It is about what has been done to Gaza." He asks the reader to decide "whether this writer is partisan to Gaza or whether the facts are partisan to it." He dissects three major Israeli military actions against Gaza – Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012, and Operation Protective Edge in July 2014 – as well as the Israeli commando raid on a Turkish aid flotilla in May 2010. His blistering critique encompasses the international response to those events and the prolonged siege of Gaza by Israel and Egypt. [Read More]
