Israel alleges that twelve of those 13,000 relief workers played some role in the October 7 attack against Israelis by the Palestinian Resistance.

These allegations – which remain unproven, to say the least – implicate slightly less than one-tenth of one percent of UNRWA employees. Even so, the UNRWA has already fired nine of the twelve accused. But the US, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, Japan, Austria and Romania are using the unproven allegations as the basis to cut off funding for UNRWA.

That’s two-thirds or more than $760 million cut from the budget of the primary organization providing humanitarian aid in Gaza. The chief of the UNRWA says that with the funding cuts the agency may be forced to “shutter” its operations within a month. Current levels of aid are already a trickle compared to the period before October 7, and the people of Gaza are facing famine and the spread of preventable diseases in addition to the ongoing deaths caused by Israel’s bombing and its ground operations.

The corporate media has described Democrats in Congress as “divided” over support for UNRWA funding. So far, though, it appears the only public appeal for restoring UNRWA funding has come from congressperson Alexandra Ocasio-Cortes.

“Cutting off support to UNRWA—the primary source of humanitarian aid to 2 million+ Gazans—is unacceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on social media. “Among an organization of 13,000 U.N. aid workers, risking the starvation of millions over grave allegations of 12 is indefensible. The U.S. should restore aid immediately.”

Common Dreams, “Ocasio-Cortez: US Should Restore UNRWA Funding ‘Immediately,’” 1/29/2024.

NOT ONE of Connecticut’s Democrats in the House and Senate have said they support restoring US funding for UNRWA. When urged to support a ceasefire these elected officials insisted they were doing the most good by supporting humanitarian aid. Now humanitarian aid has been cut and they are silent.

In the aftermath of the October 7 “prison break” by Hamas against Israel, it is not surprising that in the U.S. and Western Europe there were immediate cries of support for Israel and condemnation of not just Hamas but the Palestinian cause altogether. Support for Israel has been a mainstay of Western ideology virtually since its founding as a nation in 1948, bolstered by creation myths about how it was “a land with no people for a people with no land,” and is “the only democracy in the Middle East,” while ugly media stereotypes of Muslims and Arabs remain commonplace.

Over the last month, however, it has become apparent that there are millions of people in the U.S. and in Western Europe who are horrified by the extreme violence of Israel’s bombing of civilians living in Gaza. Many have found themselves siding with the Palestinian cause as they understand the history and context of recent events.

While public opinion in the West may be divided, there are no divisions among the ruling elites: they remain firmly committed to the defense of Israel even in the face of an Israeli bombing campaign that has already killed more than 10,000 people in Gaza, half of them children.

So as a matter of foreign policy, the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, and others cluck their tongues or shed crocodile tears over the victims of Israel’s brutality but they will not even utter the word “ceasefire” to create a respite in which humanitarian relief can reach them. Nor will they condemn the killing of aid workers, doctors, ambulance drivers, or journalists.

Moreover, as this conflict has continued, these same ruling elites have revealed themselves as cynical hypocrites in their treatment of the Muslim and Arab communities in their countries, and of the millions of people who support them. Here are a few of the more blatant examples:

Manchester, U.K. Police arrested two young people who spray painted the words “Free Palestine” on the base of a British World War 1 memorial – and not only are they pursuing criminal charges against the youths, they are characterizing and charging the behavior as a “racially biased hate crime.”

In New York City, the NYPD arrested teenagers who tore down anti-Hamas posters. That is to say: they arrested people for tearing down posters that were illegally posted.

In Washington D.C., Congress censured Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, for a tweet that included video of protesters chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” Tlaib has explained that the slogan is about liberating Palestinians, not – as some allege – about expelling or killing Jews. The vote on censure, initiated by Republicans, was joined by 22 Democrats.

France has banned all pro-Palestine demonstrations – an action that has not stopped thousands of French people from marching and protesting to show their support for Palestine.

Germany has banned the pro-Palestine group Samidoun, which organizes in support of Palestinian political prisoners as well as banning pro-Palestine demonstrations. As in France, the government has been unable to prevent large protests in support of the Palestinian people.

For several decades the Western nations have effectively banned public discussion of Palestine liberation by marginalizing supporters from all popular media, banning speakers and conferences from college campuses whenever possible, and perpetuating the falsehood that opposing anti-zionism is itself anti-Semitic. Now, however, the wave of popular support for Palestine has forced these nations to move from de facto bans to de jure criminalization.

These hypocritical and anti-democratic actions are likely to continue, coupled with informal campaigns to get workers fired and students expelled from schools and colleges for expressing support for Palestine. Growing support for the cause of Palestinian liberation, especially among young people and including Black people and other oppressed groups in the U.S. and Western Europe will force these nations to escalate their suppression of free speech, but such actions will only widen the gap between popular opinion and ruling class dogma.

Republished with minor style edits from the author’s blog, Tell No Lies. Claim No Easy Victories… We thank the author for his kind open-ended offer of republication.

Atrocities are carried out by human beings. It is logical and necessary to identify the Israeli leaders who can be deemed responsible for the harrowing of Gaza. But here in the US we can not simply blame the Israeli government and be done with it. It is well established under international law that collective punishment of the kind we are now witnessing is a war crime. But if the Israeli military is the knife that makes the cut, the US government is the hand that holds the knife and must also be condemned.

From the Kennedy administration to the present, the US government has maintained that it is responsible for providing Israel with a Quantitative Military Edge over its adversaries. While the Truman and Eisenhower administrations had embargoed military aid to Israel, President Kennedy ended that policy, selling Israel the Hawk antiaircraft missile system in 1962. Over the next sixty years, US aid – especially military aid – has risen from millions to billions of dollars.

Of course, there is a quid pro quo for this military aid. Currently, the US gives Israel $3 billion in aid each year through Foreign Military Financing. That program requires Israel to spend at least 74% of the acquisition of weapons and training from US military contractors. In other words, not only does the US bankroll the Israeli military, but it uses that bankroll as a subsidy to weapons manufacturers here in the US.

Although the US is by far the world’s largest arms dealer, sending military aid to 160 nations (and lining the pockets of US weapons makers in the process), US military aid to Israel is twice that of the next six largest recipients. It is this massive, ongoing funding of the Israeli military that ensures the US policy of ensuring Israel’s Quantitative Military Edge.

Viewing the relationship between the US and Israel in this light, Israel is like the NATO nations of Western Europe. Israel extends the reach of US foreign policy. While policy decisions by the Israeli government in the years since the Kennedy administration have not always tracked US tactical goals in the region, it is a consistent strategic partner.

People in the US who are in solidarity with Palestine justifiably join in the international condemnation of Israel’s genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people. But just as the US calls its connection with Israel a “special relationship,” the movement for peace and social justice in the US has a special responsibility to hold our own government accountable for Israel’s actions.

For years, US liberals and progressives have debated the “right” solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict. That is a topic better left to the Palestinian people to work out. Far more critical for us is to shed the belief that the US wants to bring peace to the region, when it funds Israel precisely to maintain US hegemony in the region.

The greatest role we can play in solidarity with Palestine is to end military aid to Israel. That role must be part of an overall effort to dismantle the US military industrial complex that strangles us and permits the US government to maintain its stranglehold on the world.

Republished with revisions from the author’s blog, Tell No Lies. Claim No Easy Victories… We thank the author for his kind open-ended offer of republication.

Beginning in the years following World War 2, this became the stock answer for tens of millions of US parents when their kids asked “Are we poor?”

That’s what my parents told us, even though they scraped to keep us in new clothes, couldn’t send us to college, and struggled financially throughout their retirements, right up to the day they died. To my parents, being middle class meant that my dad had a full-time job, they owned a house with a mortgage, and we never went hungry.

“We’re not poor. We’re middle class.”

Fifty or sixty years later, today’s parents will have to think twice before they give that stock answer.

According to the United Way of Connecticut, in 2021 “a family of four, with two adults, one pre-schooler and one infant, needed to earn $106,632 in 2021 to cover a basic survival budget.” Courant, 9/20/2023 (emphasis added). Adjusted for inflation, that number is currently estimated at $126,018.

In other words, almost 40% of all Connecticut families are living below the United Way’s basic survival budget.

Even the “basic survival budget” of a single person in Connecticut is presently estimated at $39,141. That single person, if they work 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year, still must earn around $18.18/hour to make ends meet – well above not only the current $15.00/hour minimum wage, but the $15.69 minimum that will take effect on January 1, 2024.

Of course, we’re talking here about a realistic survival budget created by the United Way of Connecticut for what it calls Asset-Limited Income-Constrained Employed (ALICE) households, which includes things like child care, transportation, housing, utilities and the need for at least a smart phone – factors that aren’t even included in the official Federal Poverty Level.

According to the FPL that family of four doesn’t need $126,000 . . . why, they need only about $30,000 to survive! Of course, it’s hard to make sense out of that number if you consider that federal statistics put “fair market rent” for a two bedroom apartment in Connecticut at between $1,300 and $2,500 a month. Even at the lowest end of that spectrum, that family of four is paying half their income on rent . . . while at the higher end rent would literally represent 100% of that Federal Poverty Level income.

The US Census says that 10.1% of the people of Connecticut are living in poverty. The hard evidence is that the real number is significantly higher, and that as much as 40% of Connecticut families are constantly struggling just to make ends meet.

Republished with revisions from the author’s blog, Tell No Lies. Claim No Easy Victories… We thank the author for his kind open-ended offer of republication.

To be clear, my certainty was not based on any notion that the Democratic Party would choose a candidate for whom I could, in good conscience, vote. Any belief I may have once had in either the Democratic Party or in “lesser evil” politics vanished long ago. On the contrary, my decision to wait out the 2024 election cycle came from a growing sense that the Left, such as it is in the U.S., was incapable of a presidential campaign that would be worth an ounce of my energy. The 2020 Howie Hawkins Green Party campaign left a bitter taste, and confirmed my belief that an awful lot of otherwise good people who advocate for an independent Left political party are thoroughly out of touch with working and poor people — so much so that the presidential election has become for them a sort of escape valve, a place to promote their ideas, with no responsibility to organize locally around them.

Naturally, the announcement of an independent presidential run by one of this country’s foremost Black intellectuals grabbed my attention and captured my imagination. Several of Dr. West’s subsequent interviews did more: made me believe that he understands something critically important about where we stand in history.

Anyone who sees and listens to the world around them should be able to see and hear the level of discontent and desperation that so many people feel, as well as the deep cynicism and disgust they feel toward the existing political parties and the entire realm of public affairs in this country.

The moment of hope and sense of at least temporary relief many experienced with the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020 only made the reality of this administration so much more horrible. If you were encouraged by a presidential candidate who invoked the memory of George Floyd, a Black man publicly lynched by police, how could you not feel nauseous when, once in office, that same president spent billions putting thousands more police on the street? If you felt relieved that the Democrats had at last come to understand the urgency of rapid climate change in November 2020, in the few years since you have certainly shaken with rage as Biden ushers in new drillings and pipelines and giveaways to the fossil fuel industry. If you had deplored Trump’s militarism and believed that at least “our” government was reorienting to diplomacy, how could you not be sickened by the Democrats allocating billions of dollars to fund a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, while promoting and gearing up for a new cold war against China?

The sudden entry of a widely respected voice like Dr. West’s into the cacophony of what has come to pass for political discourse in this country naturally compels attention. No matter the how or the why or the how well, it is certain that Dr. West’s run, his contribution to political discourse, stands to bring clarity on a wide range of political issues to millions of working-poor people, and might very well spark a consciousness-raising that in turn inspires a genuine working-class movement for a better world.

Dr. West is criticized by some people on the Left because he has supported and even campaigned for Democrats in the past, from Jesse Jackson to Bill Bradley to Barack Obama to Bernie Sanders. So it is important to hear him now when he declares that there are two major parties and political forces in the U.S. One is the neo-fascist Republican Party. The other is what Dr. West refers to as the “milquetoast neoliberal” Democratic Party. And a significant part of Dr. West’s motivation for running for president in 2024 is simply this: neoliberalism cannot forestall the triumph of fascism. If the Democrats refuse to articulate a compelling working and poor people’s agenda, millions in the U.S. will turn or acquiesce to a fascist government — no matter which party dominates it.

There is much, much more to say about the Democratic Party — including that its owners, the ruling capitalist class, keep it on a short leash, using it precisely to restrain the emergence of an independent working-class movement that combines organized labor with campaigns against oppression and imperialism. Some of it Dr. West says and some of it he does not say, or does not say clearly. But that is another discussion.

Dr. West is successfully articulating that only a broad, multi-racial, working-class movement can stave off the rise of fascism — as well as combat existential issues like rapid climate change and the U.S. war machine. Dr. West grasps this essential fact, and has the unique ability to explain it to millions of people who feel this reality in their bones, but do not yet have the words to express it.

2024 could be a turning point in U.S. history. It could be the year that millions of people rally around a political campaign that prioritizes radical demands for social equality, that recognizes and validates the experiences of oppressed people who want control over their own bodies, their own communities, and their own destinies. It could be the year that millions rally around a political agenda that reflects the interests of working-poor people — socialized housing, healthcare, and education; the right to organize in unions; world peace; a habitable future for our planet — and unconditionally puts those interests front and center.

Dr. Cornel West is not a messiah. He does not have all the answers. He will not — certainly not by himself — embody every change we need. In many respects, he is only a very eloquent figurehead. But he has appeared on the scene at a time, and in a manner, and with a message that could light a spark. And that spark, fanned by social movements into a flame, might grow into a fire that even fascism cannot extinguish.

Republished with revisions from the author’s blog, Tell No Lies. Claim No Easy Victories… We thank the author for his kind open-ended offer of republication.

Although a raft of anti-racist legislation was passed by the federal government in the period of Reconstruction immediately following the Civil War, most of those laws were then ignored for almost a century. The federal government could have, but chose not to use these laws to fight the exploitation of Black sharecroppers, the passage of Jim Crow laws by the states, and the rise of the KKK and other white supremacist vigilante groups. It was only the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and the Black Power Movement of the 1960’s that, through mass political action that went far beyond mobilizing to vote for this or that candidate, forced the US government to effect formal changes to federal and state laws that protected race segregation.

These changes consisted in part of reviving the post-Civil War laws that, on paper, had given every person “the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens.” But they predominantly involved Supreme Court decisions, such as Brown v. Board of Education (barring legal segregation in public education) and Loving v. Virginia (ending legal restrictions on inter-racial marriage), and new federal laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (and its constituent Fair Housing Act).

However, the legal concessions to civil rights by the judicial and legislative branches of the federal government took place at the same time that the executive branch — in particular, President Nixon and the FBI, successfully shattered the Black Power Movement with the illegal infiltration and destruction of its political organizations and the assassination or incarceration of much of its political leadership through the COINTELPRO program. Legal challenges to civil rights reforms from the openly racist wing of the US ruling class began almost immediately upon the successful weakening of the Black liberation movement.

As a result, the period from the 1970’s to the present has been characterized by constant weakening of laws that challenge racism. In particular, the weakening has taken the form of attacks chipping away at voting rights and affirmative action by the Supreme Court.

It’s important to recognize that the reason attacks on voting rights and affirmative action have been so relentless since the passage of the major civil rights laws in the 1960’s is that they proceed (generally) from the assumption that the purpose of civil rights laws is to undermine and ultimately demolish racism. As important and valuable as they are, most of the other legislative reforms of that era are not, strictly speaking, anti-racist but rather anti-discrimination. This is an aspect of the problem of legal efforts to undermine white supremacy in the US that is rarely addressed.

To cite one example, the portion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 often referred to as Title VII makes it illegal for an employer to make employment decisions based on race or sex. Unlike Section 1981, the Reconstruction-era statute I described above that was intended to guarantee to every resident of the US the same rights “enjoyed by white citizens,” Title VII makes any discrimination based on “race” illegal. As interpreted by the courts, that means that in many instances it can be as illegal for an employer to favor a Black worker over a white worker as it is to favor a white worker over a Black worker. While there are ways in which Title VII’s protection can be important in providing legal protection to Black people and other people of color, the law does not presume the existence of centuries of white supremacist exploitation of Black people. For example, to prove race discrimination in employment, it would not be enough to show that the Black applicant was just as qualified as their white counterpart who got the job; the Black worker would have to show they were more qualified. That’s why I say it is an “anti-discrimination” law, not an “anti-racist” law.

Affirmative action in college admissions, on the other hand, at least permits (or it did permit before the latest Supreme Court ruling) consideration of the history of white supremacy. When considering two equally qualified candidates, a college could decide that admitting a Black student instead of a white student would help to desegregate the student body or foster diversity. (Keeping in mind, of course, the Big Lie told by opponents of affirmative action that it allows a less-qualified Black student to be admitted over a more-qualified white student.) The existence of affirmative action as a policy meant that student activists knew a college could do more to change the racial make-up of a campus, and that enhanced their power to pressure administrations to effect such changes.

Of course, that is the goal of enemies of affirmative action — including the Supreme Court majority. They want to ensure that colleges can turn away Black applicants who are merely “as good as” white applicants, and limit the ability of Black and anti-racist groups to pressure colleges to do more. Predominantly white college admissions panels have free reign to admit students based on “legacy” (a family member attended or gave money to a college) or any other factor they choose. Breaking down white supremacy in colleges and universities is the one criteria that cannot be used.

Republished with minor edits from the author’s blog, Tell No Lies. Claim No Easy Victories… We thank the author for his kind open-ended offer of republication.