Dear Editor:

It's great Josh Riley and Pat Ryan voted for a resolution condemning antisemitism.  It would be  less hypocritical if they also voted to quit funding Israel's genocide against the SEMITIC people of Gaza.  Indigenous Palestinians are at least as "Semitic" as the western settlers in Israel, who are granted citizenship with the flimsiest connection to Judaism. These immigrants are major drivers of far right Zionist settler colonialism, which hides behind Judaism in it's naked quest for "lebensraum".  Israel's obvious ethnic cleansing and takeover of Gaza is fueling Jewish antisemitism world wide.  How many eyes for an eye are enough? Many  Zionists openly call for exterminating ALL Gazans, not just Hamas.

By conflating protest against the Gaza massacre and boycott of the Zionist state with

antisemitism, our constitutional freedoms are being criminalized.  Today the Palestinian freedom movement; tomorrow the climate justice, women's, civil rights, LGTBQ+ movements, and any speech our rulers don't like. Indeed some very bad actors like Trump, who called Neo-Nazi rioters in Charlottesville (August 2017) "very fine people", the Heritage Foundation (Project 2025), and Christian Nationalists, are all onboard with weaponizing antisemitism to silence liberal education, including progressive Jewish voices, while stoking actual antisemitism, as in demonizing Jewish "elitists" like George Soros.

Following the horrific police murder of George Floyd and so many others (Monica Goods locally), Wrong wingers countered  "Black Lives Matter" with "All Lives Matter".  Wouldn't it be awesome if all Semites, indeed all people mattered? Or are some Semites just chopped liver?

Edmund

Some Sort of Perspective

How can we put America's starvation of Gaza in some sort of perspective? Do we write songs about it? Do we hold up signs? How do we get beyond what our country is capable of doing? Has it always been that way and we didn't notice?

The pictures are already upon us. The skeletal bodies and shrunken eyes. There are 90,000 children under imminent threat of starvation. The trucks are only a few miles away, but Israel, backed by its partner in crime, the United States, has decided not to let them through.

Do you think we live in a humane society? That we follow some sort of moral code? Do we believe in a God that doesn't slaughter children? How did we end up in a country that always puts money and power before its basic humanity?

We the people forced an end to our invasion and occupation of Vietnam. Not in time to save the lives of 58,000 US troops and over two million Vietnamese people. We worked at it, defying the police and the college administrators that kept telling us to shut up and be patriotic. It turned out that the war resisters were the patriots. Those in power were the liars and the murderers.

Today, we must overcome the apartheid state of Israel, a toxic mixture of religious fanaticism and wanton cruelty. We must end our support of this genocide against the Palestinian people. The battle is for the soul of our democracy, just as it was in Vietnam.

Fred

A protected part of free speech

Dear Daily Freeman:

When I was a child I shopped with my mother to buy a new blanket. In the store, I longingly stroked a cloud-soft white wool blanket, but my mother shook her head. Why? She showed me the label: "Made in Germany". I knew we had relatives who were murdered in the holocaust, perpetrated by Nazi Germany in World War II.

What a peaceful, meaningful act: a boycott, a protected part of free speech. For me, the holocaust meant "Never Again" for anyone. Never again the murder of civilians by a heavily armed state.

An event to talk about the Boycott Divestment and Sanction movement, which addresses Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, and the ongoing starvation, slaughter and ethnic cleansing taking place in Gaza, was cancelled due to threats from supporters of Israel. This makes clear that for some, there is nothing Israel does that can be criticized, even in a peaceful way. For these supporters, criticism of Israel will be met with violence.

Sincerely,

Marcy

Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been

Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been Critical Of Israel?

We live in a quid pro quo political universe. There are few laws that can keep the very rich from buying up all our elected representatives. The trick is to buy both the Republicans and the Democrats, and that is what the very rich have been doing for decades.

Foreign countries have learned this lesson as well. The Israel Lobby was there for Harry Truman when he was running low on reelection cash. In turn, he pressured the UN to recognize the state of Israel, in spite of the fact that Palestine was already owned by someone else.

More recently, the Israel Lobby has emerged as the most sinister political pressure group in our nation's capital. Biden was paid more than any other member of Congress during his long, quid pro quo career. Trump has done him one better, selling the move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for 20 million in cash. Sheldon Adelson, billionaire Zionist, paid for the bribe.

A brief look at opensecrets.org will find that even our local House Representatives are awash in Israel Lobby money. Representative Pat Ryan from the Hudson Valley  stood tall against any cease fire resolution, despite the fact that millions of children in Gaza were starving. The Israel Lobby gave him over two hundred thousand last year to look the other way. In fact, the Lobby paid Congress over $58 million during the last election cycle, more than any other political action committee.   

But the US Empire is getting something more from its troubled relationship with apartheid Israel. The dominance of the Middle East has long been one of the Empire's goals, and Israel is more than willing to be our military proxy. That way, American troops aren't committing war crimes or dying in our perpetual wars for oil. The various international courts like the ICC and the ICJ blame Israel and not the Empire for the charnel house that Gaza has become. And the rest of the world strongly condemns Israel for crimes against humanity, while overlooking the country that is supplying the missiles and two thousand pound bombs.

Another benefit for the Empire is the right to use "antisemitism" to crush human rights groups in the United States. Controlling the free expression of ideas has long been a goal of the Empire, especially when college students and faculty speak out against US militarism and racism. Now, our Congress is busy passing laws that equate all criticism of Israel's war crimes with antisemitism. You don't like the destruction of the hospitals, universities, and public infrastructure in Gaza? Why, you must be an antisemite! Don't think starvation should be used as a weapon of war? Why, you must hate all Jews!

How many students will be mistreated or expelled under this new McCarthyism? How many teachers will be terminated or denied tenure? How many reporters will be fired? The Empire is having a field day with its new weapon against the free expression of ideas. Even bringing up the fact that the International Court of Justice found Israel guilty of genocide could cost someone their job.    

Some pro Israel institutions are more than willing to support the Empire's assault on our First Amendment rights. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance has come out with a definition of antisemitism that includes several examples of criticizing Israel. Many local and state governing bodies have accepted this flawed definition, without thinking too much about it. But conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel has dangerous consequences for freedom of speech throughout American society. Apartheid and genocide must always be resisted, despite what the Empire would have us believe.

Fred

Lettter sent to congressional "reprsentatives."

The deliberate starving to death of civilians in Gaza, especially infants and children, is a crime equal to any genocide the world has ever seen. Deaths of Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans during World War I, murder of Jews by the Nazi government of Germany during World War II and deaths of half a million Tutsis in Rwanda in the 1990s are all chilling reminders of the inhumanity to which governments can descend. 

Now genocide is being supported by the government of my own country. And, unlike these earlier genocides, video images of this one are everywhere. We can watch the starving babies on CNN. The claims of “self-defense” issued by the government of Israel are an insult to our intelligence.

And none of this would be happening without the active support of the US government.

As your constituent, I demand that congress take action to remove the US from its role as enabler of this horrific attempt to exterminate the Palestinian people. All weapons shipments to Israel must stop. The blockade must end. The starving people must be fed.

Dick