Dear Progressive Reader,
A cease-fire has been established in the recent bombing of Gaza by Israel. This took place after the deaths of in excess of 250 Palestinians (including sixty children) in the assault and twelve Israelis who died as a result of Hamas rockets. Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies wrote earlier this week that the United States must acknowledge its role in stoking the conflict by providing significant funds and military equipment to the government of Israel. “The United States,” they note, “is the largest seller of weapons to Israel, whose military arsenal now includes 362 U.S.-built F-16 warplanes and 100 other U.S. military aircraft, including a growing fleet of the new F-35s; at least forty-five Apache attack helicopters; 600 M-109 howitzers; and sixty-four M270 rocket-launchers. At this very moment, Israel is using many of these U.S.-supplied weapons in its devastating bombardment of Gaza.”
As Mark Fiore illustrates, the recent assault definitely helped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to distract from his current political woes. But the discourse here in the United States has changed over the past two weeks. Journalist Abby Seitz reporting from Jerusalem, says, “[U.S. Representative Rashida] Tlaib is the face of an emerging faction of progressive Congressmembers willing to challenge Washington’s decades-long status quo of unconditional support for Israel.” Tlaib, along with Congressional colleagues Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mark Pocan introduced a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday to block the $735 million of arms sales recently authorized by the Biden Administration. On Thursday, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a companion resolution in the Senate to block the sales.
Sarah Lahm writes this week from Minneapolis that even as the city grapples with recent police killings including the upcoming one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, a new rise in random gun violence has included three young children as victims of stray bullets. Meanwhile, as Robert Davis reports from Colorado, the mass shooting at a birthday party on May 10 has caused residents to call for local action at the state level for stronger gun regulations since federal lawmakers seem unable to act. Davis writes, “This tragic mass killing was just a speck of the violence the country saw over Mother’s Day weekend. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were more than 260 shootings in thirty-seven states that weekend. Taken together, the shootings resulted in ninety-four deaths and 236 injuries.” However, at the same time, as Bill Blum explains, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to look at a case that might further weaken gun restrictions nationwide. This case, along with several others being heard this session and next, could herald to a major rightward shift. “With the addition of three Trump appointees,” Blum notes, “conservatives now hold a solid 6-3 majority on the nation’s most powerful judicial body. No longer constrained by the need for compromise and caution, they are poised to drive U.S. law dramatically to the right.”
This weekend, C-SPAN’s Book TV will rebroadcast our April online book event with author Chuck Collins and his new volume The Wealth Hoarders. You can get a copy of the book, and benefit The Progressive, with a donation at our online shop.
Monday May 31 is Memorial Day, and The Progressive will be co-sponsoring an online event with the Madison chapter of Veterans for Peace at 1:00 p.m. Central Time on our Facebook and YouTube channels. Please join us.
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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