Here are some local stories from the last week or so that we were unable to cover in the Indy as well as some select commentary on the emerging war in Palestine and Israel.

Have you read something that you think is worth sharing? Share the link in the comments section below and tell us why you are sharing it.

Are Paywalls An Obstacle?
Here at the Indy we support several other publications and we encourage our readers to do the same as they are able.  And for this feature, we try to post articles that are not hiding behind a paywall.  But sometimes an article worth reading is hiding behind a paywall, and subscription to the source is just not feasible.  For such instances there are workarounds. Check out some possibilities here and here and here.  

Amherst News
Behind Closed Doors: Amherst Regional School Committee Mum on Investigation into Allegations of Transphobic Actions at Middle School by Scott Merzbach (10/13/23). At least one investigation that began last spring into allegations of transphobic actions by counselors at the Amherst Regional Middle School, and possibly the hiring practices used by the assistant superintendent at the time, appears to be complete. While members of the Amherst Regional School Committee acknowledged Thursday evening that the school district has received a report, no details about what is contained in the document, or who was the subject of the investigation, are yet being made public.Within 15 minutes of commencing a joint meeting with the Union 26 Superintendent Committee at the high school library, members of the committees voted to go into executive session and all members left the building, along with interim Superintendent Douglas Slaughter and Marc Terry, the school committee’s attorney, to meet with the employee subject to the report. The executive session was then held elsewhere in the high school, though committee members did not disclose where. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

Amherst Climate Board Calls For Town Manager To Push Sustainability Goals by Scott Merzbach (10/12/23). Enlarging the town’s Department of Sustainability and doing more to promote state and federal programs for energy retrofits, especially for affordable and rental housing, are among goals for the town manager being endorsed by the Energy and Climate Action Committee. The committee delivered a nine-page fiscal year 2023 report this month, its first annual document presented to the Town Council in advance of councilors adopting new and revised goals for Town Manager Paul Bockelman. The report provides details on several renewable and green energy topics, including how installing heat pumps can provide energy efficiency and decarbonize homes, the potential for ground-mounted solar arrays in town, and the possible development of an electric vehicle infrastructure. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

Over 300 Attend Protest For Palestine at UMass by Jack Underhill and Micah McCarthy (10/13/23).  On Oct. 12, over 300 people gathered in front of the Student Union to protest in solidarity with Palestine. The University of Massachusetts chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine coordinated the march that traveled down North Pleasant Street and around the Fine Arts Center, concluding with a return to the Student Union. The protest comes days after the recent attack on Israel by Hamas, a militant organization governing the Palestinian territory of Gaza. The acts of terror by the group killed over 1,300 people, mainly civilians, and abducted over 150. The invasion was part of a longstanding conflict stemming from the Israeli seizure of Palestinian territories over the last 55 years.    Israel has retaliated, bombarding the Gaza Strip and laying siege to the region’s resources, killing around 1,500 people and leaving over 300,000 Palestinians homeless. Two million residents are facing shortages of food and hospitals are overwhelmed by wounded patients. (Massachusetts Daily Collegian)

Grieving Together: Jewish Community Gathers in Amherst, Northampton to Share Emotions, Show Solidarity with Israel by Alexander MacDougall (10/11/23). Mara Hahn received a text from her nephew, who lives in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, on Tuesday saying that he had already been in and out of a bomb shelter twice that day.Then another text came from a friend, an Israeli who lives in America, saying they know someone living at Be’eri, a kibbutz in southern Israel that had been the site of a recent massacre by Hamas, with more than 100 Israelis killed. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

Amherst May Get First Pickleball Courts by Scott Merzbach (10/11/23). Three municipal pickleball courts will likely be constructed at Kiwanis Field, a park along the Fort River that is mostly used for youth soccer, ultimate, softball and baseball. With $120,000 in Community Preservation Act money available, town officials are looking at the Stanley Street location to build Amherst’s first pickleball courts, though the original funding proposal came from residents interested in having the pickleball courts at the Mill River Recreation Area in North Amherst. (Amherst Bulletin)

Amherst Students Bring Call to Drop Columbus Day to Statehouse by Scott Merzbach (10/4/23). As fifth graders at Fort River School in Amherst last spring, weeks of research into a change they would like to see in the world prompted students to champion the idea of Indigenous Peoples Day becoming a state holiday.On Tuesday afternoon, three sixth graders brought their expertise on the topic to a state legislative hearing, offering testimony on Senate and House bills that would officially remove Columbus Day as a holiday on the second Monday in October each year and replace it with Indigenous Peoples Day.“We believe it is wrong to honor someone who treated Indigenous people so badly,” sixth grader Elo Schwabe told the members of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

NEWS FROM NEARBY
Activists Blockade Northampton Weapons Manufacturer by Jason Kotoch (10/12/23).  Activists and supporters of the group Demilitarize Western Mass blockaded the entrance to L3Harris Technologies early Thursday morning to protest the weapons manufacturer’s role in violence abroad and their contributions to surveillance systems that militaries and police use globally.A spokesperson for the group, Jeff Napolitano, said that police have now arrested five activists who locked themselves to trailers and a large boat that blocked access to the driveways leading in and out of the L3Harris manufacturing facility at 50 Pine St. in Northampton. The activists were joined by around 40 supporters who held signs and played music in order to disrupt manufacturing and to educate the public about the company. (The Shoestring)

Listen And Learn: The Parlor Room Embraces New Role as a Community Music Center by Steve Pfarrer (10/6/23). The Parlor Room, a small but important cog in the Valley’s music scene, has undergone a significant transition this year, changing from being strictly a performance space and a part of Signature Sounds, the record and concert producing company, to an independent, member-based nonprofit that’s embraced a more community-minded mission.Opened in 2012 as a space for occasional, intimate shows, The Parlor Room now offers a wealth of music workshops and lessons and other events, while still hosting a regular schedule of (mostly) acoustic music shows. Yet its role in the local music scene could change again, now that The Parlor Room is purchasing the Iron Horse Music Hall from Eric Suher, with plans to restore that larger club to its former role as a key center for varied music. For now, The Parlor Room, which seats about 70, remains the Valley’s premier folk club, and the schedule is still busy. Next week, for instance, five concerts are on tap Oct. 11-15, including a show by 1980s-1990s pop icon Juliana Hatfield. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

Commentary: The War In Israel and Palestine
Neither Palestinians Nor Israelis Will Be Safe Unless All Are Safe by Jamil Dakwar (10/13/23). The unfolding catastrophe in Palestine/Israel grows increasingly horrific as details about the gruesome weekend attacks continually come to light, and as the Israeli government, backed and armed by the United States, uses Islamophobic “war on terror” rhetoric to justify a genocidal campaign of collective punishment, mass displacement, and destruction against one of the most vulnerable populations on the planet: the people of Gaza. We can and must reject all of these things and proceed differently for the future of all of us—Palestinians and Israelis. As a Palestinian Israeli American and human rights lawyer, I know the larger context of the current violence is essential. It is not senseless religious hatred, as “war on terror” stories pretend. I also know that any response to violence must start by rejecting the killing of noncombatants and affirming the need to protect humanity—especially in the darkest times. Some initially felt victorious that Hamas fighters broke through the walls of the punishing Gaza prison until the attack’s horrors came to light. Now, Israel is using this unprecedented attack and “war on terror” narratives to distort Palestinians’ fight for liberation, to further Islamophobia, and to commit mass atrocities with impunity. There is no rejoicing. (The Nation)

We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other by Arielle Angel (10/12/13). This has been the hardest week we’ve ever had to weather as a staff at Jewish Currents. Events are moving so fast that there seems no hope of apprehending any of it fully, of saying the thing that will feel right for the moment which is already gone. With great effort, we finish a section of our explainer only for new information to surface and invalidate it. And it’s not just about the facts. Feelings and positions are in flux. There are political questions and fault lines that have been simmering under the surface in our organization—in the Jewish left, and I suspect the left generally—exploding to the fore, gumming up the works at a time when urgency feels paramount. Staff members are periodically bursting into tears, fighting with their families or with their friends, running on fitful sleep. A contributor’s son is a hostage. A contributor in Gaza texts: “Still alive. They are bombing everywhere. Nowhere is safe.” Most of our internal disagreements center on the correct container for our grief. Our staff is not unlike the rest of the Jewish world in that many of us are only a matter of degrees from someone who died or was taken hostage. How can we publicly grieve the death and suffering of Israelis without these feelings being politically metabolized against Palestinians? (Jewish Currents)

A Plea for Genuine Peace in Liberation by William Horne (10/12/23). If we are to take these atrocities seriously and treat Jewish victims, survivors, and their families with dignity, it is imperative that we address the root causes in Israel’s subjugation of Palestine. (Dr. William Horne on Substack)

In Gaza and Israel, Side with the Child over the Gun by Naiomi Klein (10/11/23). I spent the evening in candlelight and tears with a dear friend who just learned that a close family member was among those massacred in Israel. I won’t name the kibbutz to protect her privacy but yes, it was unequivocally a massacre. We tried to explain the killing of this family member – a civilian with two kids – to our kids. We tried to do it in a way that would not fill their young hearts with fear and hatred for the people who committed the crime. That was hard enough, but possible. Harder for us adults is the fact that, in their desire to celebrate the powerful symbolism of Palestinians escaping the open air prison that is Gaza — which occupied people have every right to do — some of our supposed comrades on the left continue to minimize massacres of Israeli civilians, and in some extreme cases, even seem to celebrate them.In fact these callous displays are a gift to militant Zionism, since they neatly shore up and reconfirm its core and governing belief: that the non-Jewish world hates Jews and always will – look, even the bleeding-heart left is making excuses for our killers and thinks that Jewish kids and old ladies deserved death merely by living in Israel. (The Guardian)

How Should the US Respond to the Israel-Palestine Crisis? Our Panel Weighs In by Noura Erakat, Alex Kane, Joshua Leifer, Libby Lenkinski, Yousef Munayyer and Diala Shamas (10/10/23). It now seems that the Middle East is poised on the edge of a broader regional war. Whether or not this was the goal of the Hamas invasion of towns and cities deep inside Israel, it is the result. Israel has suffered its deadliest day since the state’s founding, and the gruesome, unspeakable images of whole families shot in their homes and kidnapped Israeli children, women, youth and the elderly have galvanized almost the entire country in support of an overwhelming use of force against the Gaza Strip.Israeli leaders have promised that the ongoing bombardment of Gaza is just the beginning; this is, I fear, the precipice of a major atrocity in Gaza, perhaps on a scale that has not been seen this century. Contrary to those on the left who were quick to hail the Hamas attack as the opening act of putative uprising, it is more likely to be remembered as an act of will-to-suicide that will all but certainly result in immeasurable Palestinian suffering.Though it is unlikely to do so, the US has the power to stop the bloodshed. (The Guardian)

Netanyahu Bears Responsibility for This Gaza War by Haaretz Editorial Board  (10/8 /23). The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians. (Haaretz)