Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
August 26, 2003
Saul Landau
Bush: a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action
Figure?
Recent
Stories
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
Mustache
Hot Stories
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
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.
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August
26, 2003
Collective Punishment
on the West Bank
Dialysis,
Checkpoints and a Palestinian Madonna
By JULIANA FREDMAN
Although it is cliché to say so, her beauty
and serenity evoke an aging Virgin Mary, especially in this setting.
She sits on her donkey expression unchanged as she bounces along
among the olive trees through the rocky valley pass eyes glancing
outward, watchful and placid.
Her donkey has an open sore on its behind and she has a grotesquely
bulbous and purple arm irritated to elephantine proportions by
the holes made to clean her blood three times a week.
It is this arm that she offers to the
soldier as proof of her right to pass. The man she travels with,
also a dialysis patient, on a healthier donkey with less corroded
looking track marks, speaks English,"Please", he says
looking up at the two boys lounging on the hill, guns cocked,
"Dialysis, we are dialysis."
Nidal has no common language with these
people. She offers the arm and a slight faraway smile.
The soldiers let them pass with very
little trouble. Around the corner, invisible from the informal
checkpoint, sat the 25 people who had already been detained by
5:30 this morning, quietly beneath the olive trees not lucky
enough to have a life threatening illness and luck with the soldiers.
Their huweas (identification cards) have been taken tying them
invisibly to this spot.
This is the road between the incredibly
beautiful village of Assyra and the equally spectacular urban
center of Nablus. In this spot the solders asked me why I carried
a tri-pod. To take pictures, I said, it is very beautiful here.
"Why here? Why don't you take pictures
in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv?"
(The response of go visit beautiful Tel
Aviv is so widespread and rote that it must be part of basic
training. It is as if they are so enamoured of the smoggy skies
and modern art/ Stalinist architecture of Tel Aviv that they
really cannot see the spectacular rugged mountains and gnarled
1000 year olive trees all around.)
As if, as one detained man told me,
"Soldiers have 3 eyes. The 2 eyes on their face and the
eye on their gun. And they wear dark glasses over their real
eyes."
So we arrive after the journey that would
be 10 minutes on a road that has been closed for 3 years, after
about an hour. Car to donkey to checkpoint to car to hospital.
At the hospital the patients exchange stories of the journey
while waiting for their tubes to be inserted. They come from
villages in every direction through some of the most notoriously
difficult permanent checkpoints in Palestine; Beit Iba, Beit
Farik, and the dreaded Huwara. All of them left before sunrise
to arrive here, their conversation is dominated with how the
roads were, and the soldiers, at Beit Farik'. It is as if they
are farmers discussing the weather.
During the course of the dialysis treatment
it filters out that all of the checkpoints have been completely
closed. This is not too surprising as the previous day the army
invaded Askar refugee camp, killing 4 people and dealing the
hudna its final blow after a long series a provocations. Displaying
a cynical foreknowledge of the possible results of this act the
Israelis were sealing off the west bank in anticipation of the
retaliation that they courted.
The patients clamoured around the ambulances
as they drove by, squeezing in beyond what space would allow,
knowing that this was their only hope of getting home today.
Nidal and Mofid do not join the crush.
Ambulances cannot enter Assyra on the best of days.
This is because one of the tallest mountains
in Palestine overlooks the village. From its peak, say long time
residents who can remember flying kites up there as children,
you can see cars driving in cities in Jordan and the Mediterranean
Sea. Now at the top of the mountain one can see a series of towers
and wires. It is an army base, almost entirely underground, the
second most important in the territories. This is why people
who live in Assyra are told to travel hours out of the way to
Beit Iba or Beit Farik where they have little chance of taking
a car through and why they are told by 20 year olds with guns,
"this is our road, for you there is no road here."
The same soldiers are there after we
walk back over the mountains. Because of the stringent security
Nidal's sons are afraid to run the donkeys across as this practice
(taking people and parcels around the soldiers through the mountain
or valley) is the sole source of income for her family of ten.
Anyway, they say, we always feel stronger after dialysis although
Mofid is agonizingly slow on his cane.
Again the soldiers let them through with
remarkable ease so again the 60 people, this time on the far
side of the roadblock were a shock anew. This has nothing to
do with the `increased security measures' unique to this day.
Rather, as the soldier explained to me, "they must learn
to go through Beit Iba."
"But Beit Iba is all the way around
the mountains, it takes hours more each way, these people work
and go to school in Nablus, you can't expect them to go that
way."
"If they know that every time they
pass this way they will be held for 6 hours they will learn to
stop coming this way." As if these were Pavlovs dogs to
be trained by repetitive punishment (although as any dog trainer
will tell you, this approach does not really work.)
"Anyway," I continued to argue.
"Beit Iba is closed today, so is Beit Farik and Huwara."
"Then they should stay in their
houses, they should have known the checkpoints would be closed
today."
I sat for 3 hours listening to where
people were trying to go this day, to work, to university, to
physical therapy, shopping. We all watched as new groups arrived,
approach the soldiers, see their huweas disappear into camoflage
pockets and come join the group under the trees. Intervention
with soldiers led to the release of a few medical cases including
an old woman with eye cancer returning to the village from chemotherapy
in Nablus and a baby with a broken arm, but most remained.
And the logic of this, the uniquely twisted
logic, was revealed through interaction with the soldiers. It
was not merely the daily project of attempting to teach people
that the quickest way between two points is not a straight line,
and that in fact there is no quick path between two points for
Palestinians. No on this day they revealed that they had good
reason to believe that there would be a `terrorist' attack. Why
do you think this, I pressed in various forms. Well because we
killed 4 Palestinians this week of course, because we broke the
ceasefire.
And suddenly the lethal absurdity that
is collective punishment reveals itself. The dance that becomes
pre emptive . Punishment of a population for acts which you yourself
have committed. The army recognises its guilt and embraces it.
Sitting in Jerusalem, after hearing the
loud explosion from a huge bomb that everyone knew was coming
from the moment that the army gave its latest series of extra
judicial asasination orders I know why those people are dead.
And as I watched the police and soldiers roll up to Damascus
gate and grab every Palestinian man on the street, in the stores,
in their cars and beat them and lead them away in a slow march
at gunpoint I knew then also. Israel knows that it is guilty
as surely as Nidal knows that she is not and this is why it can
never let this end.
Juliana Fredman
is a film maker working on a documentary about Health care under
occupation in the West Bank. She can be contacted at joolz@riseup.net
Weekend
Edition Features for August 23 / 24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
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