Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
June 2, 2024
Hello All – On Friday, President Biden announced that Israel had put forward a peace proposal for Gaza and asked that Hamas agree to it. The plan was very similar to one that Israel had rejected several weeks ago. Both included three "phases," with a ceasefire of six or more weeks at the start, during which some hostages and Palestinian prisoners would be exchanged, and humanitarian aid would flow into Gaza. Though only in sketchy outline, the plan was greeted by many as a possible path to end the war. Strong support came from the families of Israelis held hostage by Hamas.
By today, it is clear that however much the peace plan was an Israeli one, Prime Minister wasn't behind it. Statements from Israel on Saturday and Sunday rejected or severely modified key elements of the proposal. While Hamas responded positively to the Biden's statement, it said that they would await an opportunity to read the full text (is there one?), and would also await Israel's response. What's going on, and if "Israel's plan" is rejected by Israel, what will Biden do?
The details and uncertainties of the "Israeli" plan are examined in the several articles and one video linked below. I fear that our basic takeaway from the events of the last few days, of the "plans" and "explanations," is well summarized by Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy: "Don't expect too much." Of great interest, however, are the obvious fractures in Israel's governing coalition and, I believe, about what to do about Israel, as viewed by the small circle making war policy in the US. Under these circumstances, strong dissent can move the unmovable, as the student uprising has shown. Our antiwar movement needs to continue to dissent loudly and act in whatever ways we can to dramatize the disasters of this war and the necessity for peace. Work for peace.
Perspectives on the Week That Was
(Video) Gideon Levy: Israel has achieved nothing with war on Gaza
From Aljazeera [June 2, 2024]
---- Given a choice between war and getting all its captives back, Israel has opted for more war, argues Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. Levy tells host Steve Clemons that Israeli politicians may abandon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but even if he was replaced, Israel would continue its war on Gaza and occupation of the Palestinian people as a whole. "Radical change" in Israeli attitude and US support is needed for any improvement in the situation, says Levy. After October 7, even those on the Israeli left believe that Israel has the right to do whatever it wants, the Haaretz columnist argues. [See the Program]
Biden's 'non-starter' Gaza ceasefire deal only demonstrates his lack of influence
By Julian Borger, The Guardian [UK] [June 1, 2024]
---- The latest peace plan for Gaza was given a launch worthy of a historic turning point, with the US president delivering remarks directly to camera from the White House state dining room, declaring it finally "time for this war to end". Yet even as Joe Biden spelled out the proposal – leading in theory to a permanent end to hostilities, large-scale food deliveries and the start of reconstruction, there was clearly something awry. If this plan was an Israeli proposal as Biden claimed, why was it being launched by Biden in Washington? … When the prime minister's office did produce a statement in response, it exuded all the reluctance and irritation of a politician roused from sleep. Yes, Benjamin Netanyahu had "authorised the negotiating team to present a proposal" but it was one that would "enable Israel to continue the war until all its objectives are achieved". A second statement issued after daybreak was even blunter. Any plan that did not achieve Israel's war aims, including the destruction of Hamas's military and governing capacity, was a "non-starter". [Read More]. Also useful/of interest is "Understanding Biden's proposal for a Gaza ceasefire," by Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss [June 1, 2024] [Link]; and "Biden's Rafah 'red line' is a green light for 'death and destruction'," by Aaron Maté [May 27, 2024] [Link].
Shattered theory: the war on terror and Western impunity
---- The ICC request for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and others is only the beginning. Around the world evidence is being gathered and cases are being prepared, including against British, American and EU politicians and officials for complicity in genocide and other crimes against humanity. … The reality is Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden are guilty of far worse crimes than Osama Bin Laden, Ismail Haniyeh, Marwan Barghouti or Nelson Mandela. I don't condone Bin Laden or minimise what he did; a good friend of mine John Lozowski was killed in the Twin Towers on 9/11. He didn't deserve to die. The current US President and the PM of Israel, however, just happen to have murdered far more innocent men, women and children – and, unlike Bin Laden and the others, are clearly guilty of the crime of crimes: genocide. The game changer, however, is the looming presence of the combined legal and moral authority of the ICC and ICJ. Bearing down like angels of justice, they will pursue Israel, and, ultimately even top US officials, to the ends of the earth. In the case of the ICC, no signatory nation to the Rome Statute can provide a safe haven once the arrest warrants go out. Which is why the ICC seeking Netanyahu's arrest has triggered something approaching a nervous breakdown, a shattering of the psyche for the Western elites. Impunity is in the job description. [Read More]
Also of interest re: the ICC – (Video) "This Is a Crime": Ken Roth on Israel's Secret War Targeting the ICC to Derail War Crimes Charges," from Democracy Now! [May 30, 2024] [Link]; "The ICC Takes on Israel and the US Congressional Mafia," by[Link]; "To continue the Gaza genocide, Israel and the US must destroy the laws of war," by Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye, May 31, 2024] [Link]; and (Video) "International Court of Justice Orders Israel to Immediately Halt Military Offensive in Rafah," from Democracy Now! [May 24, 2024] [Link].
The Bowman Campaign
A reminder that the Democratic primary is on June 25th, with early voting starting on June 15th. Yesterday CFOW members passed out leaflets for Bowman at the Hastings farmers market, with a good response. Today about 100 members of Jews for Jamaal attended a bagel breakfast and meeting with Jamaal Bowman at Hastings' Riverfront Park. Members of JVP, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and other organizations attended, with several speeches – including a great one by Jamaal -- followed by some door-knocking in Hastings. If you would like to get involved in the Bowman for Congress campaign, or for more information, email here.
AIPAC Watch
Jamaal Bowman's challenger is Westchester Country Executive George Latimer. Latimer was encouraged to run against Bowman by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), among other pro-Israel groups. So far AIPAC has contributed at least $8 million to the Latimer campaign, more than to any other candidate in the US. Much of this money has been collected from Trump supporters who see an opportunity to get rid of a progressive voice in Congress. Much of the AIPAC funding story is murky: Who is the money coming from, etc.? Below are links to some useful articles:
"Biden won't set red lines for Israel so long as AIPAC is 'top' Democratic campaign funder," by Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [May 31, 2024] [Link]
"Bowman echoes Democratic base on 'genocide' — and is 'secretly' targeted by the Israel lobby," by Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [May 26, 2024] [Link]
"AIPAC ramps up attack on Jamaal Bowman with ads on antisemitism," by Nicholas Wu and Ally Mutnick, Politico [May 31, 2024] [Link]
"Jamaal Bowman finds himself in the crosshairs of a Black voter group," by Emily Ngo, Politico [May 30, 2024] [Link] [FB – This group is indirectly funded by AIPAC.]
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil is held in Yonkers on Mondays from 5:30 to 6:00 pm at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. Another Facebook page focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
It has been too long since we heard from piano great Stephanie Trick, and so this week's Rewards for Newsletter stalwarts come from her. As a teenager, Stephanie amazed us with her stride piano performances, such as "Handful of Keys" by Fats Waller. Among her more recent recordings are "Margie," "The Entertainer," and a medley of songs from The Stephanie Trick Trio. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
The CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
Can Palestinians imagine a future with Israelis after this war?
By Mahmoud Mushtaha, +972 Magazine [May 27, 2024]
---- "We were free. It was the most beautiful life. We had everything — our heritage, our trade, and our sea." My grandfather, who is now 85, still remembers life in Palestine before 1948. There were no restrictions on travel, no checkpoints, no sieges, and no curfews. He grew up in a small village in Jaffa, where life was bustling with activity during the day, and filled with social gatherings at night. His was a community rich in culture and connection. But this life was abruptly shattered by the events of the Nakba. The necessary consequence of Zionism, the Nakba of 1948 marked the beginning of an unhealed wound that has continued to deepen ever since. The profound sense of loss and the enduring pain of displacement are feelings that many Palestinians, like my grandfather, continue to bear — a pain that is now being horrifyingly inflicted upon a new generation. Alongside tens of thousands of other Palestinians, my grandparents were forced to leave Jaffa in 1948. They initially went to Hebron, hoping to soon return to their home. Within a week, however, it became clear that such a quick return would be impossible. Instead, they moved to Gaza, where my grandfather's brother worked in trade. They have lived there ever since. [Read More]
'We're Seeing Universities Following a Corporate Agenda to Get Favor With Donors'
An interview with Ellen Schrecker, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [May 24, 2024]
---- Every time there is an attempt to repress free speech and academic freedom, I'm always asked, how does this compare to McCarthyism? And I'm a trained historian, so I sort of put in a lot of nuance, and I'll say, "Oh, it depends…." But I don't do that anymore, because it's worse than McCarthyism. Much worse. And that is really because the university of 2024 is a very different place than the academic community in the late 1960s. In the 1960s, American universities were expanding. They had a great reputation. People loved them. State governments and the federal government were throwing money at the universities. And that's no longer the case. And what we're seeing is a very much weaker system of American higher education than had existed during what was called the Golden Age of American higher education, in the late 1950s and 1960s. So I'd like to talk about what has changed between that period and now, and why what's happening today is so much worse. [Read More]
Biden was my boss. I resigned because as a Jew I cannot endorse the Gaza catastrophe
By Lily Greenberg Call, The Guardian [UK] [May 28, 2024] ---- Palestinian and Jewish safety are not oppositional. In fact, they are deeply intertwined. President Biden does not recognize this. He refuses to call for a lasting and permanent ceasefire, end the blank check offered to Israel, secure a diplomatic release of the Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, end the siege on Gaza and work to abolish the apartheid system stretched across the Holy Land. That is why, at this moment, my former boss is the person who makes me feel most unsafe as an American Jew. … Each day, I see photos of those displaced in Gaza, and I am reminded of my own family's memory of loved ones killed in the Shoah – which, in turn, reminds me of the Nakba: the tragedy that occurred in 1948 when Palestinian society was destroyed and an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homeland for the formation of today's modern Israel. Shoah and Nakba mean the same thing in Hebrew and Arabic: catastrophe. [Read More]
(Video) We need to talk about Zionism
From Aljazeera ["The Listening Post"] [June 1, 2024] - 24 minutes
---- In the coverage of Israel-Palestine in the Western media, an ideology that is central to the story – Zionism – rarely gets discussed. Instead, we hear a debate about whether opposition to it – anti-Zionism – is anti-Semitic. The Listening Post reports on Zionism, the confusion that surrounds it, and what it tells us about the world's longest-running occupation. (With Simone Zimmerman.) [See the Program]
Gay Pride Month
FB – Today The Boston Review sent out a packet of articles from their archives reflecting on themes associated with Gay Pride Month. Here are two that I thought especially interesting:
Love One Another or Die By Amy Hoffman [April 2, 2020]
---- Social distancing in my apartment during this new terrifying [COVID] pandemic has given me time to reflect on the early days of queer liberation. In particular, I have thought about how, when celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall in June 2019, we committed a grave error by not making the HIV/AIDS crisis a central feature of our recollections. While it's too simplistic to speak in terms of lessons that can be transcribed from HIV/AIDS onto COVID-19, I believe we can benefit in general from recalling what it was like to live as a community under siege, and how we rose to the challenge of caring for one another. In the following, which draws heavily on my own memory, I recall what LGBTQ life was like in the first decades following the Stonewall riots, and how that determined our response to a plague. [Read More]
Queers Against Hate
By Michael Bronski [August 8, 2016]
---- As a participant in multiple incarnations of the LGBT movement since 1969, I can say, advisedly, that the gay movement's shift in the past decade—from calls for radical cultural change to the push for legislative adjustments—feels predictable, even inevitable. The impulse was always there. The gay movement, for lack of a more inclusive term, began in the early 1950s with homophile groups such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, which organized around issues of basic legal reform and protection from police harassment. Only much later, following the June 1969 Stonewall riots, did the gay movement become a specifically leftist one. The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and related groups drew most of their members from the New Left. Fueled by the enormous energy of the Black Power movement, the antiwar movement, and Second Wave feminism (as well as sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll), this iteration of gay activism demanded not rights but wholesale cultural change. We were not interested in same-sex marriage: we were against all marriage as a patriarchal power structure. We were not interested in electing a gay man or lesbian to a city council seat: we wanted to upend foundational ideas about sex, gender, power, nationhood, and citizenship. That these revolutionary ideas were mostly impossible to accomplish in any legal sense felt inconsequential to us. We wanted to change hearts and minds, not laws. It was the gay rights movement, which came later, that carefully picked and won legal battles at the local, state, and national levels. This was a matter of some tension, but what often goes overlooked is how the more radical movement made reformist successes possible. [Read More]
The War on Gaza
The Only Ones Still Buying the Israeli Army's Version of the Rafah Strike
By Amira Hass, Haaretz [Israel] [May 28, 2024]
----It was reported on Monday afternoon that the Israel Defense Forces did not expect or estimate that civilians would be hit in the strike on Rafah. Such a disingenuous announcement can only be issued to consumers of the same media that for seven months has been hiding the unbearably high figures and choking photographs of toddlers who were killed or injured in every Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip. Such a statement can only persuade Israelis that this time too, the targets of the strike and the kind of munitions selected were scrupulously chosen by the Shin Bet security service, Military Intelligence and the IDF. [Read More]
Mapping Israel's expanding battle for Rafah, a test of U.S. red lines
By Joyce Sohyun Lee, et al., Washington Post [May 31, 2024]
---- Israeli forces are pushing into Rafah's most populated areas, razing scores of buildings along the way, as they work to dismantle Hamas and establish a line of control along the Egyptian border, according to satellite imagery and videos analyzed by The Washington Post. The Israeli offensive, launched on May 6, has progressed slowly, but has already radically altered the geography of the Rafah area, displaced more than a million Palestinians and resulted in one of the most horrific strikes of the war — testing the limits of support from Washington, Israel's main backer. [Read More]
'Solidarity over hatred': the small band of Israelis stopping settlers obstructing aid trucks
By Lorenzo Tondo and Quique Kierszenbaum, The Guardian [UK] [May 31, 2024]
---- At approximately 10.30am on a scorching Monday, a group of five young Israeli settlers arrived at the Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the West Bank, where dozens of aid trucks bound for Gaza were expected. The settlers had received detailed information about the timing, location, and number of trucks that would pass through the checkpoint that morning. What they had not anticipated was that dozens of peace activists had also gathered in Tarqumiya with a specific mission: to prevent the settlers from blocking the vehicles and ensure that the aid continued its journey to Gaza. "We decided to form this humanitarian guard, because we understand that this a fight over the lives of innocent people in Gaza," said Alon-Lee Green, the national co-director of the Jewish-Arab peace coalition Standing Together, a movement mobilising Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality and social justice. [Read More]
The War at Home
The Gaza Protests Were a Mask-Off Moment for American Universities
By Harry Zehner, The Nation [May 29, 2024] ---- The US military-industrial complex—which forms the industrial base for the world's largest military and exports nearly half of all weapons sold on the global market—could not function without American universities. It needs college-educated engineers and scientists. It relies on thousands of research projects, funded by the Pentagon and carried out by academics around the country. The atrocities we witness every day in Gaza—including the abject horror that Israel unleashed on Rafah this past weekend—are carried out with American-made bombs, dropped from American-made jets, guided by sophisticated military technologies; all researched, designed and built with the full-throated participation of the academy. Just as the university provides blood and oxygen to the US war machine, the scale of research funding and jobs offered by the industry lend it a tremendous amount of influence on campus. [Read More]
For more on the student uprising - "Students for Gaza Are Undeterred," by Arun Gupta, Yes! Magazine [May 16, 2024] [Link[; and "Creating an All-American Homeland Security Campus," by Michael Gould-Wartofsky, Tom Dispatch [May 28, 2024] [Link].
(Video) "I Was Shocked": Meet the State Dept. Official Who Quit After Report Denies Israel Blocking Gaza Aid
From Democracy Now! [May 31, 2024] ---- After working at the U.S. State Department for over 20 years, Stacy Gilbert quit the Biden administration this week after a report she contributed to concluded Israel was not obstructing humanitarian assistance to Gaza. … Despite "abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid," the report concluded the opposite and was used by the Biden administration to justify continuing to send billions of dollars of weapons to Israel. Gilbert says she was "shocked" to find that the report concluded Israel was not blocking humanitarian assistance. [See the Program]
The War in Ukraine
US Endgame in Ukraine — War Without End, Amen
By
---- It is now two and a half years since Moscow sent two draft treaties, one to Washington, one to NATO in Brussels, as the proposed basis of talks toward a new security settlement — a renovation of relations between the trans–Atlantic alliance and the Russian Federation. An urgently needed renovation, we must quickly add. And after that we must also quickly add the Biden regime's rejection of Russia's proposals as a "nonstarter" faster than you can say "deluded." Let us pause for a sec to bring to mind all those who have died in the war that erupted in Ukraine a year and a few months after Joe Biden refused, even mocked, Vladimir Putin's honorable diplomatic demarche… If we keep recent history in mind, we will be able to see that the viscously irresponsible decisions of a couple of years ago, so wasteful of human life and common resources, are now repeated such that it is now certain the brutalities and waste will continue indefinitely even as their pointlessness is now way, way, way beyond denying. [Read More]
The War in Ukraine Escalates – "As U.S. Shifts Policy on Striking Into Russia, Kharkiv Is Hit Again," b [Link]; "The Weapons That Ukraine Might Use to Shoot Into Russia," b [Link]; and "Russia's Medvedev Says Nuclear Threats Are No Bluff as U.S., Germany OK Weapon Use by Ukraine," Haaretz [Israel] [May 31, 2024] [Link].
The Climate Crisis
Intensity: Right Now, Everything's Turned to 11
By Bill McKibben [June 1, 2024] ---- Nearly 70 percent of the planet's landmass, and nearly 90 percent of its population, is in the northern hemisphere. That means that the next six or eight weeks encompass the hottest days on planet earth each year, as we straddle the summer solstice on this side of the equator—the hottest days usually follow the solstice by a week or three, as the heat accumulates from all that sunlight on land and sea. … Right now we are seeing a heatwave of truly monstrous proportion across Asia—the temperature in New Delhi these past days has topped120 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time in its recorded history. (And the British colonizers were at least good about recording temperatures). This newsletter doesn't describe every hideous consequence of global warming, because there's not much we can do about it—our job is to try and keep it from getting worse. But sometimes moral and intellectual clarity demands simple description. [Read More]
The State of the Union
We're Facing a Potential Bird Flu Catastrophe
By Gregg Gonsalves and Anne N. Sosin, The Nation [May 30, 2024]
---- Everything that made rural America uniquely vulnerable to Covid-19 still exists. And now, a new threat from a well-known pathogen, influenza, is brewing in America's rural heartland. An outbreak of H5N1 started months ago and is spreading across dairy farms in the United States. This strain of bird flu looks like it is " well entrenched and has been in cattle for a long time and…probably very, very, very widespread," as Stat News reported. While there are only two documented human cases thus far, given the poor surveillance effort to date, there are likely other people infected as well. … H5N1 reminds us that when it comes to infectious diseases, there is no place to hide, no refuge or safety, except what we build together, systems and infrastructures to protect all of us. Perhaps this time around, we'll do better and chalk up a victory against an old foe. [Read More]
Our History
The Attack on the USS Liberty Symbolizes Israel's Duplicity and Deceit
By Melvin Goodman, Counterpunch [May 31, 2024]
---- Fifty-seven years ago during the Six-Day War (June 8, 1967), Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) brutally attacked a U.S. naval intelligence ship that was seconded to the National Security Agency (NSA) for intercepting communications in the Middle East. Thirty-four American sailors were killed in the attack, and 171 were wounded by unmarked Mirage fighter aircraft using cannons and rockets. Israeli boats fired machine guns at close range at those helping the wounded, including a Soviet naval vessel that was trying to rescue U.S. sailors; they also machine-gunned life rafts that survivors had dropped in hopes of abandoning the ship. The Israelis immediately called the disaster a "random accident." It wasn't "random" and it wasn't an "accident," but the NSA investigation of the assault remains classified to this day. [Read More]
Tiananmen: How Wrong We Were [China, May 1989]
By Jonathan Mirsky, New York Review of Books [May 20, 2014]
----Twenty-five years ago to the day I write this, I watched and listened as thousands of Chinese citizens in Beijing's Tiananmen Square dared to condemn their leaders. Some shouted "Premier Li Peng resign." Even braver ones cried "Down with Deng Xiaoping and the Communist Party." Before long, on the night of June 3–4, the People's Liberation Army crashed into the square, rolling over the tents pitched there by industrial workers who had joined in the protests, and mowing down unarmed demonstrators. Until then, crowds in the square had walked wherever they pleased rather than standing on one of the numbered paving stones in that vast space. For decades, those who went there to see and hear national leaders were instructed to stand on a particular stone and shout prescribed slogans. But in May 1989, students and ordinary people were engaged in something the Communist Party has never been able to tolerate: zifade, "spontaneous" demonstrations. [Read More]
