Dear Progressive Reader,

On Monday, the United Nations passed a ceasefire resolution calling for an immediate end to military activity in Gaza. The United States abstained and did not veto the resolution, as it had done three previous times. The fact that the United States did not veto this resolution has dramatically increased tensions between the Biden Administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with Israel canceling a high-level delegation that was meant to discuss, in Washington, U.S. concerns over a planned ground campaign in Rafah (although it is now being rescheduled).

The resolution itself seems to have little effect so far. According to The New York Times, “Senior Israeli officials said that they would ignore the call for a cease-fire, arguing that it was imperative to pursue the war until it has dismantled the military wing of Hamas.” The article continues, “Since Monday, there has been no apparent shift in the military campaign. Israel’s air force continues to pound Gaza with strikes.” In the meantime, by abstaining, rather than supporting the ceasefire, the U.S. government continues to send mixed messages, as cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates. This week, the Biden Administration authorized the transfer of more bombs and military aircraft to Israel. The Washington Post reports the arms transfer includes “2,000-pound bombs [that] have been linked to previous mass-casualty events throughout Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.”

Meanwhile, an investigation by The Progressive has uncovered tens of thousands of dollars being provided to the Israeli Defense Forces by students on college campuses across the United States. Arvid Dilawar and Nell Srinath write, “Students [at one campus]. . . helped purchase drones and body armor for the IDF.” The fundraising campaigns, often organized by a series of Chabad houses on or near college campuses, raise money from students to send directly to groups supporting the IDF in various ways. As Dilawar and Srinath note, “These contributions are potentially in violation of both campus rules and the group’s nonprofit status.” When confronted with this question, one Chabad representative counters, “Encouraging people to give towards humanitarian causes—including the IDF—is absolutely part of the education and practice of Judaism.” The IDF does include on its website of listing of past humanitarian missions in which their members have participated, however, the current war in Gaza has been designated in a new report by the United Nations Human Rights Council as a probable genocide. The draft summary of the report, scheduled for formal release next week, reads, “[T]here are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met.” Israel, in response, said the report was “an obscene inversion of reality.”

As the Biden campaign continues to suffer from the foreign policy actions of the President, many of the domestic policy achievements of this administration continue to go unheralded. In an op-ed this week on the Endangered Species Act, Abigail Dillen of Earthjustice notes, “T​he Biden Administration is weighing regulations that could finally undo former President Donald Trump’s damage.” This is just one of many areas where the current President has undone, or is undoing, damage initiated by his predecessor. (Another example might be Friday’s anniversary of the signing of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, more than a century in the making, but finally signed by Biden in 2022.) And yet, the campaign seems unable to take hold of the narrative and make these highlights resonate for voters. Meanwhile, as Miriam Davidson points out in another op-ed, Republican groups are trying to criminalize aid organizations on the border; and Mike Ervin writes that rightwing groups continue to produce attack ads attempting to tar Democratic candidates with a myth about “defunding the police” when the real issue is realizing that “in many cases a situation is better handled by other trained professionals.” And mathematician Ismar Volić opines that we really could manage our elections better with a system like ranked-choice voting to “increase competitiveness, gather input from an array of sources, and ultimately declare the winner that most people would agree is the right one.”

Also this week, Bill Blum looks at why the Biden Administration should stop trying to extradite WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange; Sarah Cords examines the issues around the death of Boeing whistleblower John Barnett; and Howard Schneider reviews the new book Means of Control, about the growing U.S. surveillance state. Earlier this month, was the anniversary of the government’s court injunction to prevent The Progressive from publishing an investigative report on the manufacture of the Hydrogen bomb. A case the magazine eventually won by default, allowing us to publish the article six months later.

Next month from April 25 to 27 in Madison, Wisconsin, The Progressive (the magazine founded by Robert M. La Follette), will be celebrating the centenary of La Follette’s third-party campaign for the presidency in 1924. We will be holding a conference at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the Arts and Literature Lab, and the Barrymore Theatre with scholars and authors, speakers and musicians, and a theatrical performance by La Follette’s great granddaughter, Tavia La Follette. For more information, visit progressive.org/progressive-presidency.


Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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