Tag: Stanley Heller

Can Connecticut at Least Divest the Drone Company?

by Stanley Heller, Executive Director, Middle East Crisis Committee

Responding to a resident’s request, the State Treasurer’s office revealed that investments of state money in Israel have ballooned to over $113 million. This is a big increase since 2021 when it was $85 million.

The Israeli government, which is widely recognized as guilty of the international crime of apartheid, is committing the crime of genocide in Gaza, and since October of 2023 has killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. For a decade, groups and individuals have been calling on various treasurers and CT governors to divest from Israel. They’ve argued that it’s a shame to make profit from financing oppression. However, these calls have been ignored. To make some headway an effort is underway to get rid of just one Israeli stock.

The Treasury has now over a million dollars invested in Elbit, Israel’s biggest weapons company, which has made drones that are implicated in several massacres. In 2014 its Hermes drone was involved in a notorious incident at a Gaza beach where the drone gunned down four cousins playing soccer. The oldest was 11. Elbit produces cluster munitions, weaponized white phosphorus, and flechette projectiles. The use of these weapons is prohibited under a 2008 international treaty signed by 111 countries.

A petition campaign has been started calling on the state of Connecticut to divest its Elbit stock. This is the link to the Change.org petition: https://tinyurl.com/divest-elbit. The campaign should be of special interest to public worker unions. The overwhelming majority of money in the state treasury is money to be used for pensions for Connecticut teachers, state employees and city employees. Much of it has been deducted from those workers’ salaries. Other money comes from general taxes. None of that money should be used to finance Israeli wars, prisons and walls.

Often one hears the argument that we’re wasting our time with divestment efforts because nothing can be done and that the companies are just too powerful. Yet just recently it was announced that Elbit is permanently closing down its offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after months of picketing.

As Israel Expands Its Lebanon Attacks…

The need to divest from Israel grows as Israel becomes more aggressive in its bombings in Lebanon, which has faced acts of war from the Zionist government for many decades. In September, many memorialized the Sabra and Shatila massacres of mid-September 1982 when over 1400 Palestinians and Lebanese were killed during Israel’s invasion. Since the genocide in Gaza began there’s been limited attacks from Hezbollah forces in Lebanon in solidarity with Palestinians. Israel has responded with jets dropping bombs. Some include white phosphorus, whose use against civilians is regarded as a war crime. There’s been a steady drumbeat by rightist forces in Israel for a full-scale attack on Lebanon. The mass explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies that killed scores and maimed thousands may be the start of that attack.

Connecticut should divest from Israel if only for its constant aggression against Lebanon.
For questions or more information: [email protected].

Chat with Others about The Struggle News Programs On-line

Stanley Heller, The Struggle Video News

When you premiere a show with YouTube, you get to have a chat column on the side where you and your viewers can converse. We had fun with it last Sunday and we’re hoping to do this every Sunday at the same time.

Watch The Struggle #851 on Sunday, May 31, 8:30 p.m. at http://www.TheStruggle.org. Stay for the chat!

The Struggle #850 was shown May 24 and featured the following: Verdict in murders of Dawabshe family *** poem “72 Years a Birth Certificate” for Palestine *** #Act4Daraa to warn world of Assad threat to Daraa *** new look for RPM.world *** Martha Klein talks about the threat of pipelines and fracked gas plant *** Tony Cherolis on transportation and climate *** What We Didn’t See at the Botanical Garden (NY) during Coronavirus 2020.

Remember, you can always access past shows on our website http://www.TheStruggle.org.

Nov. 2 Book Launch, Zionist Betrayal of Jews, New Haven

News release

On Saturday, Nov. 2, Stanley Heller will talk about his new book “Zionist Betrayal of Jews: From Herzl to Netanyahu.” It’s a history of the many, many times Zionist groups and Israel put their state-building project ahead of the vital interests of Jews. The event will take place in the Community Room in the lower level of the New Haven Public Library, 133 Elm St., at 2 p.m. Free and open to the public, there will be light refreshments. Sponsored by the Middle East Crisis Committee and co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace (New Haven), part of the meeting will be about their projects.

Most people know something about the disastrous effects of the Zionist movement on Palestinians and other Middle Eastern peoples, but the story of the cost of Zionism to Jews is less well known. The account ranges from Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, making a deal with the notorious anti-Semitic Imperial Russian minister von Plehve to Israel’s current Prime Minister Netanyahu declaring friendship with authoritarians who use dog whistles of anti-Semitism to appeal to their bases. The book describes the Zionist destruction of the powerful anti-Nazi boycott of the ’30s, Israel’s friendly relations to Argentina under the rule of Jew-hating generals and Israel’s sale of weapons to modern Ukraine whose army includes a neo-Nazi Azov Brigade.

One of the reasons for writing the book was to expose the Zionists who constantly accuse critics of Israel for being anti-Semitic. Again and again a sentence is taken out of context or a political cartoon is taken to task for resembling something anti-Semitic from the ’30s. Heller’s book exposes the hypocrisy of the Zionist movement which made deals with anti-Semites and in some cases killers of Jews, deals that put Jews in peril.

This is Heller’s second book. His first was titled “The Uprising We Need” (2017), which was a collection of his articles that appeared in newspapers and media. The book is available for a donation of $10 or more to the Middle East Crisis Committee.  See ordering information about both books at stanleyheller.com.

Christian Parenti — Upbeat Possibilities Upset by Science Denier

by Stanley Heller, Administrator, PEP

Christian Parenti gave the Mark Shafer talk for Promoting Enduring Peace on Nov. 17 and talked a lot about events that upended his ideas for strategies to avoid climate catastrophe. He tried to be upbeat about humanity and environment, saying that human and other species routinely shape the natural world and that it can be a good (he gave as an example how Native Americans would burn forests to increase soil fertility and eliminate pests like ticks).

He said humanity as a whole has all we need to turn the corner on climate: first, the technical know-how to get off fossil fuels; second, the cash ($3 trillion sitting idly in bonds and other such paper owned by the super-rich); and third, a way to make fossil fuel use too expensive by using the executive branch power of regulation.

I had interviewed Parenti a week before the election for The Struggle Video News on point #3 and he made a convincing argument that the government could “euthanize” fossil fuel production without a carbon tax and without approval of Congress. It could be done by the Environmental Protection Agency fining companies producing global warming gases. He says many court decisions have backed this up.
This all was thrown off course by the presidential election. Parenti says he assumes the new president will attempt to gut the regulatory state and starve the EPA. So we have to resist. “Standing Rock is the model. People have to attack these infrastructure projects in every way, with their bodies, with sit-ins, peaceful protests, lawsuits and with deals.” He referred to Native Americans in Bellingham, WA, who at first wanted a coal export terminal on their land, but ended by working with environmentalists instead. They killed the project after finding a different one that would create jobs.

That makes the Dec. 3 climate march in Hartford quite critical (email [email protected] for more information). It’s a way to show that we’re not giving up and that we will reject the science denier’s march to climate suicide. It’s directed at Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and his foolish methane projects as well as Trump and his love of unbridled development.

Action also needs to be directed at Obama. He has almost two months left in office and he can do a lot just by Executive Orders. He can go to Standing Rock, show solidarity. He could even put in federal troops at Standing Rock just as LBJ did in Alabama. He can settle the lawsuit inspired by James Hansen and filed by young people who realize the government is liable for destroying their future. He can do more. He can act now.

Court Sessions Continue Against the ‘Westport 2’

Stanley Heller, Exec. Director, Middle East Crisis Committee

On May 12 two young men went into a Westport, CT, synagogue to read a three-paragraph statement opposing the meeting there to raise funds for the “Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.” They were stopped before they could get into the meeting room and someone FALSELY claimed the two were armed. Many police cars came to the synagogue. Police brandished automatic weapons. Schools in the area were sent into lockdown. The two men, Dan Fischer and Gregory Williams, were arrested on a charge that if punished to the maximum could get them one year in prison.

In court on May 22 in Stamford Dan Fischer applied for “Accelerated Rehabilitation.” Gregory Williams opted for a jury trial. The next court session is July 21.

The two had attempted to enter the talk and to read testimony by Nabilah Abu Halima, a Palestinian woman whose son was killed in Gaza during 2009’s Operation Cast Lead and who had to flee her home with the rest of her family during 2014’s Gaza Massacre.

Fischer and Williams were particularly concerned that the event, a women’s luncheon sponsored by Friends of the IDF, claimed that the occupying army is “a world leader in integrating women in the armed forces.” The activists intended their demonstration to call attention to the experiences of women living under the apartheid regime in Palestine.

Palestinian women and families suffer the brunt of the violence of the IDF’s periodic assaults on Gaza. The family of Nabilah Abu Halima, whose testimony Fischer and Williams were attempting to read at the talk, is just one example: “Our son Matar was 17 when he was killed in the 2009 war [Operation Cast Lead]. He was killed together with his cousin Muhammad, who was 12, while they were trying to escape the bombardments. Other members of the family who were with them were injured. One of them, Ghada Abu Halima, died of her wounds three months later….My son Matar was killed right before my eyes.” Ghada Abu Halima died from burns she suffered from a white phosphorus bomb.

A defense fund has been created to help pay for lawyers.  To see how to contribute and for latest developments see: www.TheStruggle.org.