Israel Bonds: A bad investment for N.Y.

Ancram, N.Y.: I was shocked to read Tom DiNapoli (photo) call himself a progressive in his bid to win reelection as state comptroller (“Earning a new term as N.Y. comptroller,” op-ed, June 7). Progressives don’t support genocide, and New York State employees shouldn’t want their pensions invested in it. Aside from the obvious moral objections to his investing in Israel Bonds, it doesn’t make fiscal sense. 

From Drew Warshaw’s research (to whose candidacy I’m not committed): “It turns out, the government of Israel actually issues two types of bonds. The first are traditional sovereign bonds and can be freely traded between investors on ‘secondary’ markets. These bonds comprise 10% of our pension fund’s holdings. The second type, which represents 90% of our pension fund’s holdings, cannot be traded without the express permission of Israel’s government and thus must be held to maturity. This second type of sovereign bond is nearly unheard of in capital markets because the credit risk an investor takes on is total. If Israel’s finances begin to erode, if its credit rating falls, or if New York’s pension fund simply needs to raise cash to pay beneficiaries, unlike similarly-rated bonds from Ireland, Japan, Spain and the like, there is no getting out of this position. New York is stuck. 

“Is it possible that New York taxpayers are compensated for this unique risk? Is the return on this special class of bonds so enticing that it is worth owning such a disproportionate amount? Not even close.” 

 Dave Hall

Reclaiming our basic humanity

There we go again. Slaughtering civilians in a country that presents absolutely no danger to our ourselves, our military bases, or our international hegemony. It is hard not to think about what a bully our nation has become. We obey no international rules about killing women and children, or destroying any number of hospitals and colleges. We are the Death Star home of Darth Vader, that ominous murderer of peace on earth. 

For people like me who always cheer for the underdog, disliking one's own country has become inescapable. I think about those 20,000 children killed by US bombs and drones. Or about the hundreds of reporters assassinated. I think about how racist and criminally insane our one true friend in the world really is. The people of the earth understand what we have become. In fact we have been coming to that conclusion ourselves. 

Can we disarm Israel, and end its 75 years of Palestinian extermination? Would that be enough to regain our basic humanity? Would our grandchildren forgive us when pictures of starving children came up in their Social Studies books? Will their beloved nation ultimately do the right thing? Or will we as a people join the dark side, and take our place with the monsters of the Death Star?

We can start with shaming any member of Congress who takes Israeli bribes. How about Pat Ryan, who talks about human rights but received a quarter of a million in Death Star funds last year?

Fred Nagel

The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians

 To the NYT Editor: 

Thank you so much for publishing Nicholas Kristof's piece The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians. The sexual violence Palestinians who fall into the hands of the Israeli military and/or the prison system is almost never discussed, but is deeply felt in Palestinian society. I shared your article with a friend who was subject to 14 months of administrative detention and ultimately released with no charges. He shared with me some of his experiences which included sexual abuse with pictures taken by his abusers (as well as his losing 1/3 of his body weight from starvation). His wise comment to me, "The shame is not mine, it is theirs." 

The Israeli prison authorities' immediate and furious denials responding to the article are just par for the course for a government that rarely investigates abuses of power and never actually holds anyone accountable. 

And thank you for pointing out that our tax dollars support these abuses so we are complicit. I would add that state treasurers and controllers like NYS' Tom DiNapoli who have purchased large amounts of Israel Bonds are also complicit. 

Again, Thank you. It won't be easy to stand up to the response but if you can, it will be an important demonstration of what journalistic integrity looks like. 

Sincerely, 

Felice

The Last Chapter

 

No matter where a Social Studies curriculum starts, it always ends up in the same place. It can begin with Athens and Sparta, or the fall of the Roman Empire. It can explore the Industrial Revolution, the Renaissance or the Holocaust. But no matter where these courses start, they all culminate in the ascendance of the United States. At the end, students and teachers join in  hoping that the mass murders of history will somehow melt away under our country's benevolent world order. 

In the spirit of human advancement, students explore the end of slavery, but not the 100 years of Jim Crow that followed. They celebrate the American flag on Iwo Jima, but not the two nuclear explosions that wiped out hundreds of thousands. We can all agree that the barbarism of the past will certainly give way to the American dream of human rights and world peace. Our Judeo-Christian leaders fill us with thoughts of a better world. 

Except that Israel and the US are perpetrators of the worst genocide of the twenty first century. Hundreds of thousands are being slaughtered, a godless crime against humanity. Is this the Judeo-Christian alliance we are urged to glorify? The empire makes the bombs, and the colony drops them on its helpless victims. The empire manufactures the bullets that the Israel Defense Force shoots through the heads of Palestinian reporters, doctors, and ambulance drivers. And through the heads of the children. Perhaps Moloch, the ancient deity of child sacrifice, is really the last chapter of our curriculum.     

 
Fred Nagel
Rhinebeck, NY 12572
845 430 4676

Kleptocracy

No matter how crazy Trump gets, the DNC (Democratic National Committee) wants to keep him in power. Instead of taking its cues from the vast majority of Democratic voters, the committee refuses to consider ending military aid to Israel. And despite an ongoing genocide in Gaza, the committee won't condemn the bloodbath. This despite polls that show 77% of Democratic voters think that Israel is the cause of the slaughter. 

Is the majority of the DNC just keeping Trump around long enough to run against him in the next election? Palestinians be damned, as long as the Democrats gain control of the Congress?

I think the truth is worse than that. To understand what really motivates the DNC, we have to learn the meaning of an unusual word: "kleptocracy." It is really a combination of two Greek words, one for "thief" and one for "ruler." Of course, no one fits that definition better than our current scoundrel in chief. But we can identify other elected official much closer to home.

Representative Pat Ryan thrives in our current kleptocracy. He talks endlessly about human rights, despite spending most of his career in the US military occupying foreign countries in the Middle East. He was also a contractor for Palantir, an AI company linked to the killing of 120 school children in Iran. Not surprisingly, Ryan's top two campaign contributors were the Israel Lobby and Palantir. Together, they lined Ryan's pockets with about 269,000 dollars for the last election. Our hometown grifter is doing very well.  

Fred Nagel
8 Clay Ct.

“Woodstock Company Expands For War Work”

    Woodstock, NY, is a tiny town with an outsize global brand. As the town’s largest employer approaches its 80th anniversary of war profiteering, we pause for a vignette of a history that somewhat belies the peace-and-love associations.

    June 28, 1973: Hippies, tourists and assorted pilgrims graced the Village Green. And the front page of the Ulster County Townsman led with a photo of the President of Woodstock’s largest employer, Rotron, proudly receiving a Special Award from Rockwell International, maker of the Minuteman nuclear missile.

    “Year after year,” the award said, “the Rotron fan has performed on the Minuteman missile program without a single instance of failure.”

    Next to a model of a Minuteman, the award displayed a replica of the pirate and slaver Sir Francis Drake’s ship, likening Rotron’s contribution towards keeping a Soviet attack at bay to Drake’s turning back the Spanish Armada in 1588.

    The early 1970s were a boom time for this mainstay of Woodstock’s economy. The Vietnam War and the Cold War were raging — Rotron’s Woodstock plant was providing “components critical to the success of nearly every U.S. military missile program,” as the company’s promotional material proudly stated. “Minuteman, Poseidon, and Spartan all carry the Rotron logo within their shells. Custom-designed Rotron fans are also contained in the Cruise missile and in the Trident [submarine-launched ballistic nuclear missile].”

    Six months before Rotron received its Minuteman award, its Made-In-Woodstock fans had been busy over Vietnam in the “Christmas Bombings”, the largest heavy bombardments by the US  since World War II, with heavy civilian casualties. Woodstock’s production lines were turning out components for B-52 bombers, B-58s, nuclear-armed F-102 and F-106 fighter aircraft, nuclear submarines, and tanks.

    From its earliest days the company concentrated on the military market. In the early 1950s a local paper reported: “The Korean emergency [a euphemism at the time for the Korean War] ... keeps Rotron’s business going at full tilt.” And another local newspaper shouted: “Woodstock Company Expands For War Work.”

    Meanwhile (although this only became known in the 1980s) TCE and other highly toxic byproducts of Rotron’s weapons production were poisoning the groundwater and wells of neighborhood homes and creating the town’s only Superfund site. To this day the poisons remain on site, although supposedly contained, and neighbors can’t grow their own vegetables. Two satellite Rotron plants in nearby towns, Olive and Saugerties, also left legacies of toxic spills. A reminder that war is bad for the environment in all of its phases.

    The Afghanistan and Iraq Wars provided another bonanza for Rotron, now owned by Ametek Inc. And business is surely booming just now for the plant whose production is 80% military.

    In 2020 the factory completed another in a series of expansions for more war work, with the aid of $600,000 of New York State taxpayer money. (Throughout the Covid closures of that year, the factory remained open as an “essential business”.)

    More recently, the widespread horror at the atrocities in Gaza has focused more attention on companies like Rotron that supply the tools of genocide and apartheid. While information is scarce, we know that Rotron has supplied the Israeli Defense Ministry directly as well as selling to Israeli war manufacturers like IAI and Merkava, and has continued to do so since 2023 – and Made-In-Woodstock parts are in all the F-35s and F-15s delivering the genocide.

    Today, the third generation of Minuteman ICBMs, now made by Boeing, still threaten to annihilate the world — and still depend on crucial Made-In-Woodstock components. As do F-16 and F-22 warplanes, Apache and Black Hawk attack helicopters, Bradley and Abrams tanks, warships, drones, rocket launchers, and the vast communications, spying and logistics systems that run modern battlefields.

    We don’t mean to imply that Woodstock, or Rotron, or Ametek Inc, are unusually evil – on the contrary, we see here a microcosm of the military-industrial complex, whose tentacles  reach into every congressional district. What if the great skills and the hard work of this company’s employees had been devoted 100% to peaceful, green, job-creating, infrastructure-strengthening technologies rather than machines of destruction and death? What if the community could help them make that happen?

U.S. needs to rethink relationship with Israel

The Israeli government has miscalculated with its latest war on Iran, particularly Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s dragging Donald Trump and the United States into the war.

U.S. military facilities in several Persian Gulf nations are being damaged and destroyed, with worse perhaps yet to come.

The war has spread to more than 10 nations, many of whom are rethinking their strategic U.S. relationship.

Israel’s goal may be to transform Iran into a failed state. Trump’s demand for Iran’s unconditional surrender shows his ignorance of Iran.

A little country like Israel could not wage large-scale sustained violence in the occupied Palestinian territories and multiple other nations without massive U.S. military and diplomatic aid.

Mr. Netanyahu and his former defense minister are fugitives, having been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC has issued arrest warrants.

The United States needs a new Israel policy, including a declaration of independence from Israel and Zionism, and an end to U.S. weapons sales and gifts to Israel.

As supply constricts, oil, natural gas and gasoline prices are increasing in many nations, as will inflation rates in the United States.

Hopefully, sanity and international law will soon prevail and the United States and Israel will discontinue their unprovoked war before it becomes a world war with catastrophic consequences.

Tom Ellis