What Is Coming

 Little seems to get said in the press about the ongoing attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank; they are smaller in scale than the devastating bombardments to the south in Gaza, but even more vicious in some ways.  A good source of reporting on events is David Schulman who periodically writes in The New York Review of Books.  His latest brief report, "Netanyahu's War", looks at the courageous efforts of Israeli human rights activists to ameliorate the unrelenting attacks on Palestinian families by the invading Israeli settlers with the aid of soldiers and police. Schulman also succinctly profiles the perpetrators:

In this country, ICE is clearly making use of neighborhood informants, but violent hate groups have so far only been able to operate intermittently.  Those groups, however, are bound to be encouraged  and enabled as Trump and his Republican lackeys pour vast resources into their anti-immigrant programs.While that escalation seems inevitable, an awareness of it makes effective resistance feasible.  A good example of that was provided recently by the invasion of MacArthur Park in Los Angeles by heavily armed Federal forces.  What is most interesting about that event is that there were no arrests of undocumented people; that was the result of a well-organized resistance effort to provide documentation and timely warnings as described in an article in The Intercept, What To Do When You See ICE in Your Neighborhood.

UPDATE

Featured on the evening news was ICEBLOCK, an Iphone app which records and reports sightings of ICE agents within a 5-mile radius.  (I don't have an Iphone.  I would be interested in assessments of the app in the Albuquerque area.)

The West Bank

I was pleased to discover recently that I can once again access magazines online from the Albuquerque Library through my old Kindle Fire tablet.  Even though the long-outdated tablet is slow and cumbersome it is still a nice way to read (at no cost) the two magazines that I follow, The New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books.

This last issue of the NY Review has some particularly good book reviews and articles, including an extraordinary account of the the atrocities currently taking place in the West Bank against the Palestinian population by right-wing Israeli settlers with the full cooperation of the Israeli Defense Forces.

An 'Unlawful Presence' is by David Shulman, an Israeli human rights activist who works on the ground to try to combat the endless, horrific persecution of the rural Palestinian people.  He also, in this article, describes how it is that so many of his fellow citizens have become numb to the facts of the genocidal assault in both Gaza and the West Bank. He mentions in regard to that skewed perception of reality that it is attributable in part to the dereliction of the Israeli news sources, with the sole exception of the Haaretz newspaper; how that paper's willingness to persevere in the country's climate of right-wing terror is another story that needs telling.

The Convention

 My expectation for the Democratic Party Convention is that there will be a lot of balloons and confetti.  Beyond that, I'll be surprised if there are any really new policy initiatives.  Harris will mostly be careful not to step on any toes, the foremost of those being the American Israel Public Affairs Committee(AIPAC) which has already deployed millions of dollars against progressive Democrats supporting Palestinians facing Israel's genocidal war in Gaza. At the same time Kamala will need to signal some willingness to push for a ceasefire as soon as possible. A lot will depend on the numbers of pro-Palestinian delegates and demonstrators who show up and how the protestors are handled by the Convention's security and Chicago police forces.

Joe Biden could have taken action to avoid Harris' dilemma over Gaza by demanding an immediate ceasefire.  He did not do that and it is unlikely that he will make that part of his convention message, or even that he will push effectivly on Israel for a movement toward peace during his remaining months in office.

The pro-Palestinian demonstrators, of course, have their own dilemma to confront as Trump's pro-Israeli record has been even more radical in some ways than Biden's decades-long unconditional support of Israel and the resultant disaster.

Rafah

 Biden's response to Israel's actions in Gaza is wholly inadequate.  He should resign.

UPDATE:

For a good explanation of why now is the time to dump Biden see the TNR article,

The Democrats Have a Joe Biden Problem

And this at The Nation,

The Media Keeps Asking the Wrong Questions About Biden and the “Uncommitted” Vote

Gaza

 Israeli forces are massing for an invasion of Gaza with the objectives of recovering hostages and dismantling the Hamas organization directly responsible for the horrific attacks on Israel.  To what extent the invasion will accomplish those objectives is uncertain.  What is certain is that the destruction of cities and the displacement of huge numbers of Palestinians will breed the conditions which produce hopelessness and extremist violence for many, many years to come.  There is no turning back now of the momentum for violent retribution, but at some point it will have to be admitted that the failure was not just of defensive preparations, but also of the loss of opportunities to create an environment of hope which is ultimately the only real insurance against extremist violence.