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From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
July
29, 2003
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
July
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
July
25, 2003
Francis
A. Boyle
Impeaching Bush
David
Krieger
15 Questions
Harvey
Wasserman
Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah
Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!
Dan
Bacher
Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River
Kurt Nimmo
Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Stop the Wall!
July
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses...Again
Robert
Fisk
The Ugly Story of Camp Cropper: The
US Torture Camp in Iraq
David
Lindorff
Dumb and Dumber in Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Ashcroft Demands Death Penalty in
Puerto Rico
David
Vest
Dylan in Bend
Tom Turnipseed
Killing Saddam & His Family Won't Stop Killing of US Troops
Douglas
Valentine
A Nation of Assassins
Stew Albert
Contract Killing
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Report on Palestinian Child Prisoners
July
23, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Caesar's Favor
David
Lindorff
Lynne Stewart's Big Win: Ashcroft
Rebuked
Mano
Singham
Iraq's Missing WMD Scientists
Steve
Perry
Better Late Than Never: the Press, the Dems, and Bush's Lies
John Stanton
Avoiding Plato's Republic in America: Is Anarchy the Only Hope?
Patrick
Bond
Bush and South Africa: a Petro-Military-Commerce Mission
Harry Browne
A Victory for a Disarming Irishwoman
Paul
Beaulieu
When the WTO Comes to Montreal
Robert
Fisk
The Sons are Dead, But the Resistance
Will Grow
William
Witherup
Georgie Porgie
Website
of the Day
Lieberman & Falwell:
True Love at Last
July
22, 2003
Diane
Christian
Bad Guy / Good Guy: War Forces;
Peace Frees
Jeremy
Brecher
Solidarity and Student Protests in Iran
Steve
Kretzmann
and Jim Vallette
Plugging Iraq into Globalization
Sam
Smith
Greening the Golden Triangle
James
Plummer
Smile, You're on Federal Camera
Lucretia
Stewart
This Day Shall Not Define My Life:
January 18, 2003
Website
of the Day
Iraq Coalition Casualties
July
21, 2003
Edward
Said
Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping
of Arabs
Ron
Jacobs
Shut Up and Shoot
Allan J.
Lichtman
Why is George Bush President?
Elaine
Cassel
How's the Occupation Going? Ask the People of Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
History Recapitulates: Guantanamo and the Japanese Internment
Camps
Bruce
Jackson
Third and Arizona, Santa Monica
Website
of the Day
John Dean: Taking Apart Bush's State of the Union Speech, Claim
by Claim
July
19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
July
18, 2003
David
Vest
Drowning in Deep Doo-Doo
Rahul
Mahajan
Deceit Runs Deep
John Chuckman
Enron-style Management in a Dangerous World
Harold
A. Gould
The Bush-Musharraf Conclave
Alvaro
Angarita
In the Eye of the Storm: Colombia's War on Journalists
David
Grenier
Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island
Dave Lindorff
Bush and Hitler: a Response to the Wall Street Journal
Website
of the Day
Murder of a Whistleblower? Timeline in David Kelly Affair
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
July
29, 2003
Tom
Delay's Pilgrimage
The
Bug Exterminator Goes to Jerusalem
By KURT NIMMO
Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader and former bug
exterminator from Sugar Land, Texas, wants you to know he stands
"shoulder-to-shoulder" with accused war criminal Ariel
Sharon and the Israeli occupation forces that killed Mohammed
Kabha, 6 years of age, last week near Barta al-Sharqeyah, east
of Ramallah. Mr. DeLay also wants you to know he supports Israeli
settlers, even though on July 11 a settler ran over and killed
Yazan al-Tal, a 13-year-old Palestinian child, south of Nablus.
Naturally, DeLay wouldn't admit he's
in favor of gunning down or driving over children. No, for DeLay
and millions of other Christian Zionists, slaughtered Palestinians
are but a fleeting tick on their moral compasses, if that. In
fact, for Christian Zionists the Palestinians are all but invisible,
except when they strike out in desperation.
"The United States must stand with
Israel against Palestinian terror because Israel's fight is our
fight," DeLay told the influential American Israel Public
Affairs Committee on July 23. "Israel's liberation from
Palestinian terrorism is an essential  component of victory in the war on terror.
It's a 'liberation' we're talking about, not a mutually-agreed
upon cease-fire."
Unfortunately, Mohammed Kabha and Yazan
al-Tal experienced this rapacious Israeli version of "liberation"
firsthand. So have thousands of other Palestinians, the vast
majority of who have little to do with Hamas or Islamic Jihad
or even Yasser Arafat. Israeli liberation from so-called terrorism
is so important that it requires the Palestinians to suffer the
same rate of malnutrition as the people of Zimbabwe and Congo,
according to the World Bank.
So critical is Israel security in response
to the above-mentioned militant groups that it requires the shattered
Palestinian economy to suffer from a 53% unemployment rate. Israeli
occupation soldiers and armed Jewish settlers are so alarmed
over the security situation that they routinely attack Palestinian
orchards and agricultural farms. In fact, the Israelis are so
disturbed by security issues that when they destroy Palestinian
vineyards and olive groves they often charge farmers for the
use of bulldozers.
For Tom DeLay and the Christian Zionists,
the systematic destruction of Palestinian culture by radical
right wing Israeli Zionists is part of God's Master Plan for
the Holy Land. "And I will make of thee a great nation,"
the Lord told Abraham, "And I will bless them that bless
thee and curse them that curse thee."
Surely, there's no shortage of Palestinians
who curse Israelis, especially when Israelis shoot their children,
steal their land and water, and deny them access to medical care
and food.
Obviously, for evangelical Christians
of DeLay's sort, all of this misery and injustice directed at
the Palestinians is biblically ordained. The Christian Zionist
God, the same God worshipped by so many Jews in Israel, demands
untold suffering. It's all there in the Old Testament.
Crazy as it may seem to many of us, Tom
DeLay, one of the most powerful men in the United States, is
a follower of an extreme version of Christianity. If the Christian
Zionists -- pegged at around 20 million Americans -- have their
way, there will never be peace in the Middle East. And considering
George Bush and far too many members of Congress are either Christian
Zionists or agree with the Christian Zionists in regard to Israel,
chances are slim to none there will be peace in the Middle East
anytime soon.
According to the Christian Zionists,
if there is peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians --
in other words, if there is a Palestinian state -- there will
never be a new Jewish temple erected on Temple Mount. The way
Christian Zionists see things, before Jesus can come back and
before the Antichrist can even be revealed, the Israelis must
control Temple Mount, destroy the Dome of the Rock -- the third
holiest place in Islam after the Ka'aba in Mecca and the Prophet's
Mosque in Medina -- and build their temple. As it now stands,
the Temple Mount is under the administrative control of Muslims.
It can be argued, however, that the Christian
Zionists really don't have the best wishes of Jews in mind. "The
scenario states that before the Second Coming, the Jews will
all either die or convert to Christianity," explains Gershom
Gorenberg, an Israeli author. "This is not a very Jew-friendly
scenario in the long run, so there's a tremendous irony built
in here that this support for hard-line Israeli positions is
actually based on a theology which negates Judaism."
"We welcome [Christian Zionist]
support as long as it doesn't come with conditions,'' Abraham
Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told
Malcolm Foster of the Associated Press earlier this year. "We
will continue to disagree on various issues, but we can disagree
agreeably."
In other words, so long as the money
keeps rolling in and Congress supports Israel, Jews like Foxman
-- who, according to the Christian Zionists, must one day choose
between oblivion or converting to Christian Zionism -- don't
seem to have a big problem with the more wacky aspects of a religion
26 percent of American voters embrace (according to a 2000 University
of Akron survey). For Israelis and American Jews, opportunism
is the rule of the day.
Meanwhile, Tom DeLay will tour Israel,
Jordan, Iraq, and Italy this week while Bush meets with the Israeli-approved
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon. "I want to hear what he plans to do to comply
with his part and his agreement of the road map," DeLay
said of Abbas. "In all these peace processes in the past
it's been more process than peace. And it's because people say
a lot of words and they do very few actions and what we're looking
for is actions."
DeLay, of course, fails to mention what
happened the last time the US brokered a "peace plan"
between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
"When the Israeli government finally
tendered a proposal for an interim peace agreement to the Palestinian
Delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations in Washington
D.C. in 1992, the Palestinian Delegation rejected it because
it constituted nothing more than an apartheid Bantustan for the
Palestinian People," writes Francis A. Boyle. "Akin
to the legal chicanery that the Afrikaners had unsuccessfully
attempted to impose upon the Black People in the Republic of
South Africa. Or the 'Indian reservations' that the United States
has so far successfully imposed upon its Indigenous Peoples.
Not surprisingly, the United States government fully supported
Israel in its attempt to impose this apartheid Bantustan upon
Palestine and the Palestinians."
But this is exactly what the Christian
Zionists and the Likudite Zionists want -- to have the Palestinians
shuffled off behind ghetto walls surrounding engineered Bantustans,
their militant factions rendered ineffectual or killed off by
way of "targeted assassination," ruled over by approved
"prime ministers," and kept an eye on by CIA trained
capos.
"Christian Zionism offers an uncritical
endorsement of the Israeli political right and at the same time
shows an inexcusable lack of compassion for the Palestinian tragedy,"
writes Stephen Sizer. "In doing so it has legitimized their
oppression in the name of God."
It's an oppression Tom DeLay and the
Christian Zionists refuse to acknowledge.
DeLay admitted as much when he visited
the Jewish state: "I didn't see any occupied territory --
what I saw was Israel." Undoubtedly, this will be the principal
message the House Majority Leader will deliver to Ariel Sharon
and the Likudites in Israel this week.
Finally, recall the remark made by Rafael
Eitan, former Israeli general and head of the Tromet Party: "We
will harass these Palestinians until they move like drunk cockroaches
in a bottle."
No doubt the bug exterminator from Sugar
Land, Texas, understands this well.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent online
gallery Ordinary Vistas. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn
and St. Clair's forthcoming volume, The Politics of Anti-Semitism..
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
Weekend Edition Features for July 19 / 20, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
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