Worth a little more senior poverty

On the surface, it seems unfair that American seniors must have their Social Security and Medicare benefits cut in order to send billions more to Israel.

But consider what Israel has achieved. During its recent invasion of Gaza, Israel was able to destroy 10,000 family homes, almost all the water treatment and sewage facilities and much of the power grid, leaving 1.8 million Palestinians destitute. Not only that, Israel successfully killed 550 children and left 1,000 permanently disabled using white phosphorus and precision guided bombs on UN schools. The West Bank has seen similar gains, with Israeli snipers expertly targeting young stone throwers. Tens of thousands of new Israeli settlers have been given generous payments by Israel to move to the West Bank, insuring that the Palestinians never get their own state. 

In addition, Israel almost singlehandedly blocked US efforts to reach a peace deal with Iran, spending money like water when it came to Congressional stooges. Most recently, Israel has donated tens of millions to stir up racism against Muslim citizens. Even our presidential candidates fall to their knees for the financial blessing of the Israel Lobby. 

America has learned an important lesson from the Holocaust: don't stay neutral while millions are suffering. This time, our country is right in there funding, arming and protecting the killers. Our political class makes all expenses paid trips to Israel while America becomes increasingly responsible for the genocide of the Palestinian people. That's certainly worth a little more senior poverty.

Fred Nagel

FACTS ARE FACTS, MR. FRIEDMAN

FACTS ARE FACTS, MR. FRIEDMAN

Sadly, and contrary to Mr. Friedman’s contentions, Fred Nagel’s list of Israeli atrocities that are supported by US tax dollars, are facts [“LETTER: U.S. seniors should be happy to sacrifice their benefits for Israel,” by Fred Nagel, Dec. 18, 2015]. And they are readily verifiable by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) and other organizations. 

Mr. Nagel, however, left out the day to day nightmare of life under the Israeli occupation – roads on which Palestinians are not allowed to travel; confiscation of their land; demolition of their homes; checkpoints that make movement difficult or impossible; harassment by settlers; middle of the night Israeli Occupying Forces break-ins to terrorize families and arrest children; constant humiliation, etc.. The clear intention is to make Palestinian lives miserable AS A POLICY OF THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT. 

Were it any other country than Israel, Mr. Friedman would call it like it is – an illegal and brutal occupation but, since Israel is the perpetrator it is, for him, justifiable. You can agree with Israel’s policy or disagree, call it genocide or not, but facts are facts, and to pretend otherwise is simply ignorance or lies. In either case, it is inexcusable.

Judith Simon

Nic Abramson to display his work

OR DO THEY? (mixed media)

Local Woodstock artist, Nic Abramson, will display his work at the

Phoenix Gallery on West 28th St, NY. The opening is scheduled for

Thursday, January 7th, and the show is entitled "What's Right,

What's Left: Democracy in America."

Senseless Slaughter of Innocents

I am saddened, sickened,  and stunned by the senseless slaughter of innocents in Paris.  We as progressive members of civil society must condemn any and all barbarous attacks on innocents.

These types of acts whether in Paris,  Palestine,  Pakistan, or Ferguson are the result of oppression,  militarism,  racism.  and exceptionalism .  The US,  Israel and Saudi Arabia are all guilty on all counts.

Relentless,  daily brutality and terror are inflicted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) upon women, children and men in the militarily occupied West Bank and Gaza. Children are shot, gassed and imprisoned every day.  Israels' most recent attack on Gaza in 2014 resulted in 550 children killed,  10,000 homes demolished,  and thousands of adults killed or wounded.

The US drone attacks in Pakistan have killed scores of innocent men, women, and children.  Dozens of Black men killed by police and thousands more imprisoned on bogus charges and convictions.

It is profoundly disturbing that US policies and US tax dollars finance activities which result in so much unnecessary suffering and loss.

Let us stop sending Israel $3 billion a year to enable the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.  Let us say no to more funding for US drones which kill innocents in Pakistan.  Let us end the injustice in the justice system.

My heart breaks for the Parisians, the Palestinians,  the Pakistanis, the poor Blacks and all the other innocents, of which there are many.

Unfortunately, until we address and remedy the issues of oppression, militarism, racism, and exceptionalism these gruesome,  ghastly, and terrifying events will continue to occur.

Eli Kassirer

Empire or Democracy?

Jean-Paul Sartre had a warning for the French people regarding their country's long occupation of Algeria. Whatever a country does to an occupied people, it in turn does to itself.

With 800 foreign bases in 150 countries, the US is no doubt the world's largest empire in history. Since 1945, our country has overthrown dozens of democratic governments unfriendly to US business interests, and put in their place compliant military dictatorships. 

Now we see the destruction of our own democracy. Obama has established the president's right to kill anyone in the world, including US citizens, based on secret evidence presented at closed White House meetings. The National Defense Authorization Act overturns over 150 years of domestic law to allow the US military to enter our homes, remove us to some unknown detention center here or abroad and keep us incommunicado until "the end of hostilities." Section 1021 would strip US citizens of any due process whatsoever. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act making its way through Congress would legalize mass surveillance of all Americans by the national security state, enabling it to build a case against anyone.

Finally, two massive trade deals pushed by Obama, the TPP and the TTIP, would create secret courts of corporate appointed judges to dictate policy on pollution control, worker safety laws, consumer protection, food safety, etc. The rules of America's economy would be completely decided by the multinational corporations rather than by its citizens.

Empire or democracy. Nations have never managed to have both.

Fred Nagel

I hate: the Occupation. I hate racism. I hate hypocrisy.

Last night, October 19,  in Greenburgh Town Hall, at a Jewish Voice for Peace/ WESPAC event when Suhail Khalilieh, Palestinian policy analyst, and a young Palestinian girl from Bethlehem who teaches violin in Aida Refugee Camp, and Gideon Levy, Haaretz  journalist spoke, they were continually and furiously harassed and assaulted with violent ugly words shouted and spit out at them from a group of people mainly at the back of the room and in particular one woman who held up a sign “Gideon Levy = Hate.”  

Gideon Levy began in his steadfast strong measured voice: “Yes, the sign does represent me. I hate: the Occupation. I hate racism. I hate hypocrisy. I hate ignorance. I hate brainwashing…” The audience applauded his words. 

The audience was filled with a diversity of people, many of whom I recognized as Jewish friends, people who cared deeply about what has been happening to the Palestinians -  Christians and Muslims – as well as the Jewish people - since 1948 at the founding of Zionist Israel. I have been wondering why there is always such a brutal attempt to silence people who speak out against “Settler Israel,” regime after regime that has promoted an apartheid system in Israel and a brutal military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza; people who have erased the memory of Palestine as a country that once harbored Jews, Christians and Muslims.  

This Saturday night, October 24, 7 p.m. at the Inquiring Mind, Saugerties, Noga Kadman - whose Jewish forefathers on her mother’s side arrived in Palestine from Eastern Europe in 1860’s and on her father’s side, in the 1930’s -  born in  Jerusalem, now residing in Tel Aviv, will be presenting her book Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948. I hope people of all faiths and beliefs attend, and are able to take in and listen to -- without trying to snuff out -- what Noga has to say.  

Jane Toby

Intent to destroy… a national, ethnical, racial or religious group

Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor

To: Saugerties Times

Countering the opinions of Susan Puretz in her Oct 8 letter, I will refer to Jewish Israeli writers, researchers, journalists, and organizations.

Puretz writes: “Arab citizens, a minority in the State of Israel, just like their majority Jewish counterparts, enjoy full and complete citizenship rights.”

Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Faculty of Education, Hebrew University Jerusalem and member of Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Parents for Peace, writes in Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education that in spite of Israel’s success advertising its regime as a Democracy, researchers define it as an ‘Ethnocracy’ or ‘ethnic Democracy’ because ethnicity and not citizenship is the main determinant in Israel for the allocation of rights, power and resources.  Jews who are citizens of other nations and Jewish settlers outside state borders have full citizenship rights while Arab citizens inside state borders don’t and Palestinians from the occupied West Bank are ‘state-less.’

Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston writes (Aug 15, 2015) “It’s time to admit it, Israeli policy is: Apartheid.” “… I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel… I’m not any more … Not after terrorists firebombed a West Bank Palestinian home, annihilating a family…—only to have Israel’s government rule the family ineligible for financial support and compensation granted Israeli victims of terrorism, settlers included… Not after Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, declaring stone-throwing terrorism, passed a bill holding stone-throwers liable to up to 20 years imprisonment… one week later, pro-settlement Jews hurled rocks, furniture, bottles… at Israeli soldiers and police at a West Bank settlement; in response Netanyahu rewarded the Jewish stone-throwers with a pledge to build hundreds of new settlement houses... This is what has become of the rule of law. Two sets of books. One for us, one for them. Apartheid… We are what we turn a blind eye to.”

Regarding the Occupation: Read reporters of Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, Haaretz,:  Gideon Levy, Amira Hass.  Hass reports from Ramallah, West Bank: “Palestinians Are Fighting for Their Lives; Israel Is Fighting for the Occupation—That we notice there’s a war on only when Jews are murdered does not cancel out the fact that Palestinians are being killed all the time.” Look up Jeff Halpern’s work with ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, “a human rights/peace organization dedicated to ending the prolonged Israeli occupation over the Palestinians.”

The international legal definition of “genocide” is not as simplistic as Puretz poses. This definition includes “intent to destroy… a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” and “killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to group members; inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction …” Here, I recommend Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

For statistics -- on Fatalities, Detainees and prisoners, Destruction of property, Demolition of houses, East Jerusalem, the Separation Barrier, Settlements, Residence (Deportation,) Restrictions on movement (Checkpoints and roadblocks, unemployment and poverty, Death following restrictions on movement) and water crisis data -- check out B’tselem - The Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

Jane Toby