Trump and his unelected gang of billionaire thieves have moved much faster than anyone expected. Or maybe it's the glacial pace of the opposition, old white men who have been so thoroughly corrupted by corporate money that they seem paralyzed.
Who is to blame for the current madman in the White House? Both major parties are, since they are designed to benefit the very rich. Is there any way out? Now that Trump is threatening the nation's federal judges, one more safety switch is being turned off. And there aren't many safeguards left. Not only does Trump control the US military and the boarder patrol, but he has a right wing civilian militia that is armed to the teeth. All he needs to do is point out his political enemies and his death squads may just kill them. Those who are apprehended and charged with murder would all be pardoned by our runaway tyrant.
Do you think you are watching some Third World dictatorship put in place by the CIA? No, the enormity of our military power has created a world of perpetual war. Even our closest allies will be looking for ways to protect themselves from our threats of invasion.
The best outcome may be a long shot. Trump may get so enamored with his fame and dominance, that he makes terrible mistakes both on the battlefield and off. Once Trump shows signs of deranged thinking, why the billionaires may sacrifice him and put someone else in his place.
Fred Nagel
The Last Days of Democracy
Wrapped in the Star of David
One fine day we wake up and realize that the people who rule us are war criminals. They have been sending planes and bombs to help in the extermination of two million Palestinians. And instead of ending the US supported butchery, they push on with the destruction of Gaza's hospitals, doctors, and universities. Can we be part of this genocide? And once we see it clearly, just how can we forget?
We must be careful about what we say though. Students have been suspended or expelled for pointing out Israel's savagery. Teachers have lost their jobs. For all this talk about the First Amendment, there are few free speech rights when it comes to Israel. The American Empire has wrapped itself in the Star of David as it marches toward hell.
But the blood shows through. There is no forgiveness for starving and slaughtering 20 thousand children. We bow our heads and weep for the monstrous country that we are part of. After so much talk about freedom and human rights, what liars we have making decisions for us.
Who is to blame? Why it is the billionaires and the venal congress that they love to bribe. There is simply too much money to be made and the scoundrels of both major parties live on greed. The American Empire is a failed state for all its history of noble ideas.
We the people must take to the streets. We have a right to demand that our government represent us and not the Israeli warmongers.
Fred Nagel
To the Editor:
Israel has been savagely slaughtering, starving, and relentlessly bombing two million Palestinians since October 7, 2023. At least 60,000 Palestinians killed (including 13,000 children), 145,000 wounded, perhaps hundreds of thousands buried and uncounted beneath the bombed out rubble of their homes. Israel blames Hamas (which, by the way, was funded and encouraged by Israel). Blaming Hamas for Israel’s genocide is a smokescreen and excuse used to justify the ethnic cleansing and elimination of all Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. This brutal and illegal ethnic cleansing started with the forced expulsion of 800.000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948 (the Nakba). Israel violently evicted Palestinians from their lands and stole farms, homes, and property. The displaced Palestinians were forcibly relocated to refugee camps like Gaza or forced out of Israel altogether. It was ugly. The Israeli military (many of whom were Haganah and Irgun terrorists) would go to Palestinian homes at noon and say: “We will be back at 5pm. If you are still here we will kill you.” The Palestinians fled and to this day are not allowed to return to their homes. Tragically, Israel has become a pariah nation despised by the world. For Israel to survive, it must abandon it’s deep commitment to racist Zionism, ethno-supremacy, and the apartheid state. Israelis must fully embrace those people they are currently so viciously trying to exterminate. Israelis and those who supported, financed, and encouraged this genocide must be held accountable for their actions. Peace and reconciliation can only follow if justice prevails. (To learn more truth go to electronictifada.net)
Eli Kassirer
Stand with us for Gaza
Stand with us for Gaza, Saturday, August 16, 12:30-1:30, at Elting Library on Main Street!
From Donna--
What could be more antisemitic than the assertion that the Jewish people support the genocide of the people of Gaza? That the Jewish people support the death by starvation of an entire generation of children?
And yet, building on the memories of the Nazi Holocaust, building on the guilt of those who looked the other way in the face of fascism, the global north’s right-wing leaders have used the slander of antisemitism against those who challenge Israel’s right to plunder and kill the people and the land of Palestine.
Popular thinking credits the Holocaust with the creation of the Jewish state, as a zone of safety for the Jewish people.
In fact the ideology of Zionism predates the Nazi holocaust by more than a century. In the early 1800s the Christian nationalists believed that Jewish occupation of the “Holy Land” would lead to the Second Coming of Christ. In the later part of the century Jewish Zionist leaders such as Theodor Herzl offered Britain its own imperial outpost in the Middle East in the form of a loyal Jewish enclave. Toward the end of World War I, picking up this piece of territory from the fallen Ottoman Empire, Britain declared its support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, even though only 2.5% of the population of Palestine were Jewish, .
In the aftermath of World War II, Israel indeed welcomed refugees of the Nazis, but the state itself was characterized by its allegiance to British and then U.S. imperialism.
The state of Israel forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians off their ancestral lands into refugee camps that exist to this day, killed tens of thousands in massacres that continue to this day.
It was never on the agenda of Israel or its imperial backers for Palestinians to have equality or self rule or a right to the land.
And so, the Palestinian liberation movement calls for Palestine to be free, from the river to the sea.
Antisemitic? Let’s take a look at the 1977 platform of Israel’s right-wing Likud party:
“The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable… therefore, Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
And what about the map of Israel that Benjamin Netanyahu presented to the United Nations in 2023, which showed neither the West Bank nor Gaza, but only Israel from the river to the sea?
We call for a free Palestine, an end to the genocide, the right of the Palestinian people to their homeland.
Stand with us every Saturday, from 12:30 to 1:30, in front of Elting Library in New Paltz.
Free Palestine!
From Linda
After 22 months of brutal Israeli attacks and atrocities, we are finally witnessing a sea change in world opinion—instead of denial and extemporizing, the world has begun to acknowledge these horrors.
Here at home, there was a vote in the Senate put forward by Bernie Sanders to stop weapons from being sent to Israel. The bill did not pass, but a majority of Democrats voted for it for the first time. (However, disappointingly and perhaps as expected our own senators voted against it. This is an outrage!!!!) The pictures of starving people looking like WWII concentration camp victims could no longer be excused. Palestinians being shot like fish in a barrel while struggling to get food for their starving children could no longer be blamed on Hamas. Even in Israel, there are demonstrations against the genocide taking place.
This change has given me hope that our efforts have not been for naught. Yet, we in the movement are left wondering what took so long. Where was the moral imperative to revolt against crimes against humanity 22 months ago? Those of us who bravely stood up and were received with hatred and scorn, knew that no matter what, we were on the right side of history. Will those senators who voted to keep Israel armed with weapons and money still be able to look at themselves in the mirror and accept their greedy and criminal behavior when the tide has totally turned, and Israel is revealed completely as a monster state, committing the same crimes against the Palestinians that Jews were once victims of at the hands of the Nazis?
Yet our work continues. No settlement is in sight. The total blockade of food and fuel that started in March remains, and Israeli forces continue to mow down Palestinians seeking food, or just trying to survive. The death toll is rising, now more than 60,000 with many more unaccounted for. Big parts of the Israeli government have declared their intention to take over Gaza permanently, removing the remaining Palestinians by force. And a big part of the Israeli population still supports its government’s ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians.
What keeps me going are all my sisters and brothers who have taken up the cause and are following what is in their hearts. Justice, respect, kindness and love lead the way. Solidarity against crimes committed on those whose rights have been denied. We will stand for as long as it takes to free Palestine.
Some positive developments:
(1) The University of Maryland has to pay $100,000 to its Students for Justice in Palestine for attempting to silence Palestinian voices on campus.
(2) More Jewish Israelis are speaking out against the genocide by their government. Israeli novelist and Israel Prize recipient David Grossman publicly stated that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
(3) Hundreds of thousands of Australians marched in Sydney, joined by an unprecedented number of trade unions, community organizations, and individuals.
(4) The Chinese government officially announced that they support the rights of the Palestinian state and the recovery of all its occupied territories.
(5) The Reform Jewish movement in the United States—by far the largest current of American Jewry--issued a statement denouncing the Netanyahu government’s blockade and starvation of Gaza.
We might ask ourselves why these actions took so long—but we should welcome them as a precursor of things to come—the total isolation of Israel in the world community, and the liberation of Gaza from suffering and oppression.
FREE. FREE PALESTINE!
Letter to the New York Times
The choice to publish Stephens's opinion piece on the use of the word "genocide" to descrbe Israel's actions in Gaza takes the Times further down the road of complicity in the unfolding horrors. The majority of scholars, almost all human rights and humanitarian organizations and the overwhelming majority of people -- especially those living in the global south -- know that Palestinians are being slaughtered "as such," as the definition of the word "genocide" requires. The only reasonable explanation for the deliberate targeting of children with bullets to the head or torso by Israeli snipers is the belief by the officers who instruct them on targeting that Gazan children are all just immature terrorists who "deserve" extermination. That sounds like killing Palestinians "as such" regardless of their individual beliefs or actions. Yes, this is a genocide and your publication is complicit in its execution.
Dick