Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
June
19, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bush Plays the Racial Profiling Card:
It's a Smokescreen
Brian
Cloughley
Punch-and-Judy in the West Wing:
The Powell-Rice Show
David Lindorff
What's Next?
Mark
Jacobs
A Serious Conversation: a Former Foreign Service Officer on Diplomacy
in the Age of Bush
Alfredo
Castro
Bloodbath in Colombia: The Army and the Death Squads
Saul
Landau
Lying, Flag Waving and Redefining
Conservative Values
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/19
June
18, 2003
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
Elaine
Cassel
Dark Star Chambers: Secret Trials,
Nameless Defendents, Veiled Threats to Defense Lawyers
Col.
Daniel Smith
Iraq's WMDs: Integrity, Ethics and
Intelligence
Chris
Fagen
Ignoring the World's Bloodiest War
Rick
Fantasia and Kim Voss
Bush's Low Intensity War on Labor
Sam
Hamod
Theater of Deception: Bush, Sharon,
Abbas
M.
Shahid Alam
Illuminating Tom Friedman
Jon
Brown
Greens & Dems: a Reply to Publius
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/18
June
17, 2003
Dr.
Susan Block
Sex, Lies and WMDs
Elaine
Cassel
Scalia, the Rumsfeld of the Supremes
Roger Burbach
Brazil Under Lula
Dan
Bacher
The WTO's War on Salmon
Peter
Phillips and Jason Spencer
Entertainment Media 2003
Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation
The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century
Wayne Madsen
Outting Ashcroft's Latest Hypocrisy
Larry
Kearney
Starlight
Steve
Perry
The Bush Administration
Lies Marathon, Day 3
June
16, 2003
Frida
Berrigan
Death in Aceh: US Weapon Aid the
Repression
Publius
Candidate Dem and Citizen Green
Tarif
Abboushi
Roadmap or Roadkill?
Rep. John
Conyers
Bush's Deceptions about Iraq Threaten Democracy at Home
Julian
Samuel
A Review of Pilger's The New Rulers of the World
Uri
Avnery
The Children of Death
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies,
Part 2
June
14 / 15, 2003
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence
Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Counting Bush's
Lies, part 2
Hot Stories
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.
|
June
26, 2003
Killings Are So Routine
No One Notices
Ambient
Death in Palestine
By
PAUL de ROOIJ
Before her murder by the Israeli army, Rachel
Corrie referred almost casually to the conditions at a refugee
camp in Gaza as being beset by "ambient gunfire" [1].
Today the problem isn't necessarily the gunfire, but it is the
"ambient death and destruction". In fact, Palestinian
death has become so routine that it simmers at a level not meant
to enter "Western" consciousness at all. It has been
a long time now since we even saw the names of Palestinian victims
in The New York Times or similar newspapers, but now even
death as a statistic is disappearing. If anyone wonders how terrible
mass crimes occurred in the past and no one intervened, then
Israel's relentless dispossession of the Palestinians provides
a case study in how this happens.
Some Statistics
A brief perusal of the usual newspapers
reveals that most don't mention the daily death toll in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories (OPT). It is only when the Israeli Occupation
Forces (IOF) engage in some particularly egregious act that there
may be some mention, but it disappears in a matter of days. As
long as the death toll remains below a magical threshold, it
is not deemed important enough to bother Western readers with
deaths happening elsewhere. The regularity of the death toll
indicates that this is something that the IOF may be exploiting
on purpose. The statistics reveal that some very sinister and
criminal acts are perpetrated against the Palestinians regularly,
and it is a chronic condition. The graphs below aim to give a
better perspective of what is happening on the ground and what
is the true nature of the occupation.
Graph
1: Ave. Number of Palestinians Killed Per Day During Intifada
II.
Graph #1 shows the average number of
killings per day during the course of the intifada. At the beginning
of the intifada, about two Palestinians were killed every day,
but now this has steadily increased to 2.6 p/day (see trend line).
There have been some spikes, e.g., during the destruction of
Jenin (Apr. 2002) when the average killings reached 8.2 p/day
[2]. NB: these numbers do not include the resistance fighters
(yes, lets dispense with the tainted word "militants")
killed by the IOF. The average killings for June 2003 stand as
of June 16th at 3.4 p/day; this is the death toll after the Road
Map negotiations were launched. Even without scaling this up
to the implied death toll in a larger US population, these numbers
would easily have caused outrage and would have been found intolerable
in the US. When it happens elsewhere and where it suits the Israelis,
then death can be ignored. Chomsky and Herman call victims of
friendly state terror "undeserving" victims, those
whose plight is not deemed important enough to appear in the
newspapers of record like the NYT. In the current context,
it is clear that Palestinians are "undeserving" victims.
[Data
Source: The data is available on
the Palestinian
Red Crescent Society website. It contains many reports and
up to date statistics. One note though: there is a data gap in
March/April 2002, at the height of the Israeli attack on Jenin
and elsewhere. It means that the number of fatalities and casualties
are actually understated. For the purposes of this report the
gaps were zeroed out.]
Graph
2: Live Ammo Injuries/Total Injuries
Graph #2 shows the percentage of injuries caused by live ammunition,
and it shows a clear upward trend. The use of "plastic or
rubber" bullets has declined and Israeli repression has
become more lethal. Today in Gaza, Israeli snipers arbitrarily
shoot Palestinians of all ages and often claim victims.
This graph also shows several declines in the "live ammo
ratio", for example in June 2003. The explanation for this
is that during this period most of the injuries are from helicopter
gunship attacks on the refugee camps--during the so-called targeted
killings. These attacks occur in densely populated refugee camps
and bystanders are often killed or injured--on occasion, e.g.,
in Khan Yunis on Oct. 7, 2002, even bystanders were targeted.
The NYT will refer to these injuries as "caught in
the crossfire" if they are mentioned at all.
Graph
3: Injuries vs. Death Ratio
Graph #3 shows the ratio of the number of injuries to the number
of fatalities per month. This has gone from 43 to about five
injuries per fatality in the course of the intifada. This reflects
the changing nature of the resistance against the Israeli occupation,
and the changing nature of the IOF's response to the Palestinian
resistance. At the beginning of the intifada, large numbers of
Palestinian youngsters would confront the army--many of them
would be injured, and today there are tens of thousands of Palestinians
maimed by an array of lethal weaponry. These days, large demonstrations
confronting the army are rare occasions--people do get tired
of being killed or maimed. But a more sinister, and perhaps realistic
interpretation is that the Israeli army is more determined to
kill directly. This is certainly supported by Graph #1, which
shows a steady increase in the death rate. Graph #2 is even more
blunt: it shows that the IOF's tactics have changed decisively;
the use of rubber/plastic bullets has given way to live ammunition
aimed at the head or torso--the way most people are killed today.
However, it is a serious mistake to think that the innocuous
sounding "plastic" bullets are meant only for crowd
control. These bullets have a zinc and glass core enveloped in
a plastic coating--these are plastic coated bullets. Within
the first 100 meters, these bullets are faster than "high
velocity" regular bullets, and therefore the impact of these
"plastic" bullets is catastrophic to the victim. Another
pernicious aspect of the plastic bullets is that soldiers feel
less inhibited using them.
Just to make sure
you know
The IOF has a proclivity of shooting
ambulances, abusing medical staff and ambulance personnel. If
any proof is needed, see Daymon Hartley's photo of Israeli soldiers
beating paramedics when they came to rescue a wounded youngster.
Caption: Israeli soldiers beat health workers who are attempting
to transport an injured Palestinian youngster. Jabalya refugee
camp, Gaza during intifada #1. Photo: © daymonjhartley.com.
Since the beginning of intifada through June 13, 2003
Total attacks on ambulances = 253
Total ambulances damaged = 118
Total personnel injured = 192
Total ambulance personnel killed = 3
Denial of access to ambulances logged = 920
Source: PRCS; www.palestinercs.org
And we thought things
couldn't get worse
We may be lulled into thinking that the
situation in the Occupied Territories may improve now that President
Bush has officially launched the "road map" negotiations.
However, at the same time the IOF is doing its best to eliminate
witnesses to its actions from the OPT. That is, it is becoming
increasingly difficult for volunteers to witness and to resist
the actions of the IOF. All foreigners are finding it increasingly
difficult to enter the OPT. If things were about to improve,
then why is the IOF so intent on removing potential witnesses?
There they go again!
Amnesty International, the Mother Theresa
of Human Rights organizations, is notorious for its long spells
of silence and meek statements about Israel/Palestine. Graph
#4 shows the number of days and number of deaths since the previous
report, e.g., as of June 18th it has been 227 days since its
previous report and there have been 528 killings since then [3].
Given the severe, massive and flagrant abuse of human rights,
it would seem incumbent on Amnesty to highlight the situation.
It is troubling to find that there is an upward trend in the
number of fatalities between reports. That is, given the chronic
and severe nature of the situation one would expect to find constant
monitoring, and thus a proportional number of reports. Also given
the very large number of Palestinians imprisoned without charges,
trial, and for indefinite periods, it is remarkable to find only
a handful of Palestinian cases that Amnesty asks its volunteers
to do anything about. Whereas one finds a long list of Cuban
"prisoners of conscience", there are only two
Palestinians found in this category.
Graph
4: Number of Palestinians Killed Since Previous Amnesty Intl.
Report
Amnesty is also strangely silent on the de facto
abrogation of the Fourth Geneva Conventions by the US and Israel.
Although there hasn't been a formal declaration by the Americans
or Israelis that the Geneva Conventions are no longer operative,
it is clear from the actions of both countries that the Geneva
Conventions are being routinely flouted. Israel has violated
all but one of the Geneva Conventions provisions.
AI's
latest press release (June 5, 03) is better than most, and therein
one finds: "The Israeli and Palestinian sides have a duty
to respect fundamental rights, regardless of whether or not they
are engaged in a peace process. Their obligation to abide by
international law must not rest on the implementation of such
a process or on other political considerations. Both sides are
bound by the principles of international human rights and humanitarian
law which prohibit the killing of civilians." Amnesty
continues to postulate equal responsibility for the conflict
and its consequences. Never mind that Israel is the occupying
power and has specific obligations under the Geneva Conventions.
The same report also states: "Taking concrete measures to
end such abuses, some of which constitute war crimes and crimes
against humanity is a requirement of international law and cannot
be made conditional to the implementation of the 'roadmap' or
other political processes". Off hand, this seems like a
clear statement, but it highlights Amnesty's propensity
of not proffering clearly directed condemnations or accusations.
In most instances, Amnesty gives the impression that the
accusation of war crimes may apply to both Israelis and Palestinians;
again neglecting the fact that Israel is the occupying power.
Finally, the far more serious crime: "crime against humanity"
has never been leveled clearly against Israel, this accusation
only appears clearly when referring to Palestinian violence [5].
(For a further discussion of Amnesty
see: Say It Isn't So)
The undeserving underdog
Despite the fact that the situation on
the ground for the Palestinians is desperate, and that they have
endured decades long occupation and dispossession of their land,
it is remarkable to find legions of apologists willing to whitewash
Israeli actions on many levels. The list of offending aspects
of media discourse that apologist groups pursue is surprising,
and a web search reveals many such pressure groups. It is curious
that some groups attack any portrayal of Palestinians as victims
and a portrayal of their victimhood as different from that of
Israelis. They rail against weighing the death of a Palestinian
by IOF violence differently from the death of an Israeli killed
by a Palestinian. In their jargon, they are objecting to an "immoral
equivalence". They want Israel to be considered the victim,
and if this fails, then in the very least they equate the moral
standing of Israelis to that of Palestinians. When a Palestinian
has been portrayed as a victim these apologists lobby/harass
media in order to obtain "balance".
In all likelihood, they have successfully
lobbied Amnesty on this issue, because it equates the
nature of the violence perpetrated against Israelis and Palestinians.
That is, AI will condemn to the same degree when an Israeli
or a Palestinian is killed. It also calls on "both parties
to respect human rights...". Prof. Honderich's answer to
this is revealing: "Everyone should object to the terrible
"even-handedness" of such statements as the Amnesty
one. Everyone should choke on such attempts at "balance".
In an ordinary sense of the words, there is no place at all for
even-handedness and balance in actually dealing with the rapist
engaged in the rape of the woman with a knife at her throat.
The rapist has no rights that bear significantly on the question
of whether he should stop or be stopped. The analogy with Israel
is not a wild one, but exact." [6]
Moral turpitude
People once asked how genocide could
happen without sparking mass outrage. Yet there is no mystery
as to why there is virtually no reaction. We've witnessed many
sordid events in the recent past like the genocide in Rwanda,
and it barely disrupted the liberals' cocktail parties -- it
even engendered a new term: compassion fatigue. June 5th
marked the 36th year of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza,
the relentless and gradual campaign to drive the Palestinians
off the land. Scores are killed every month, even more are wounded
or maimed, and several houses demolished every day. A grotesque
eight meter high wall is being built that has all to do with
quartering what little land could form the basis of a negotiated
solution. NB: this is not a fence. The wall isolates tens
of thousands of Palestinians from neighboring villages--again,
a ploy to drive even more people off the land, and this includes
Palestinians living in what is now Israel. As Jeff Halper, the
coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions,
recently stated: "the bulldozers are working 24 hours a
day" [7], and we are talking about 500+ bulldozers [12].
So, horrible things can happen to millions of people, yet instead
of moral outrage we encounter the classic three-monkey hear-see-say
no-evil situation.
Meanwhile, there are some sanctimonious
weasels busy looking the other way or chastising others for raising
their voices. The king of the pack is perhaps Elie Wiesel, the
professional holocaust survivor. He is not willing to witness
or say anything about what is happening to the Palestinians,
and when confronted with the dubiousness of his stance he squirms
out stating that it is not up to him to criticize Israel. What
Wiesel preaches has all to do with the "cult of remembrance"--an
inert look at history that doesn't draw the crucial lessons that
can be carried forward in a universal manner. People like him
risk trivializing the lessons of history, and to transform the
message from one dealing with the lessons of the holocaust to
one only dealing with the hollow-caust.
Last year Jonathan Sacks, London's chief
rabbi, uttered a meek statement about the Palestinians. That
is, he stated that the occupation was having morally corrosive
effects on Israeli Jews; interestingly, he didn't mention what
was being done to the Palestinians. As soon as he had uttered
it, he faced some criticism, and retracted his statement forthwith
[8]. Never mind, a month later, he was lobbying Tony Blair, the
British prime minister, to quash criticism of Israel at universities
around the UK. Here is someone barely willing to raise
his own voice lobbying the prime minister to censor speech at
universities across the UK. If one wonders how the Church kept
quiet about the Nazis, then one only has to look at these moral
frauds to see why. A singular unwillingness to raise their voices
about the daily outrages is the main part of the problem; ingratiating
themselves with those in power is the other part of the problem.
Cherie Blair, the British prime minister's
wife, is an intelligent woman and a lawyer, but one rarely hears
any statement coming from her. However, last year when referring
to the Palestinians she stated: "As long as young people
feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up, you are
never going to make progress." A barrage of criticism immediately
ensued from the right wing and pro-Israeli press in the UK, and
Tony Blair's office retracted this statement the next day without
an explanation. Blair, who is portrayed as church-going, moral
(is passionate about moral issues), and "blue eyed"-sincere,
retracted his wife's meek statement. The only fault of the statement
was that it helps understand why people engage in desperate actions.
As soon as one attempts to understand the causes of violence,
then one also humanizes the Palestinians. But that crossed the
line -- it is simply unacceptable to the pro-Israeli apologists.
A more important question arises pertaining
to Tony Blair's action. As Jack Straw, the foreign minister,
recently acknowledged: "a lot of problems we are having
to deal with now are a consequence of our colonial past"
and " it is not an entirely honorable history". If
Blair is not willing to stand by the meekest statement his wife
has made, then how can we expect him to side with the Palestinians
to obtain meaningful negotiations let alone uphold some meaningful
principles? Alas, Tony Blair is more concerned about his image
in the right wing press than in standing up for principles and
paying an historical debt to the Palestinian people [9].
An interesting case study of corporate
morals is that of Caterpillar. One should visit Caterpillar's
website to admire the "Social Responsibility" section,
or to view its extended "code of conduct"--obviously
they have gone through the motions of incorporating business
ethics into their corporate ethos (at least the website).
While upholding these lofty ideals, Caterpillar is still willing
to supply the 60-ton D9 and D11 armored bulldozers that are wreaking
havoc in the occupied territories [10]. Every day these bulldozers
demolish several houses on the flimsiest of pretexts or with
no justification at all [11], they flatten and uproot more olive
groves or orchards, and in general, Caterpillar has a hand in
creating mass misery and destruction. Caterpillar also supplies
some of the key equipment required to build the hideous 1,000km-long
and 8m-high wall [12]--its equipment is creating a wall to imprison
an entire people in the 21st century.
Caterpillar also has on its conscience
the murder of Rachel Corrie. A Caterpillar bulldozer crushed
her while she was trying to defend a house. Perhaps Glen A. Barton,
Caterpillar's Chairman & CEO, may want to discuss the social
responsibility of his company's support of Sharon's bloody enterprise.
However, the shareholders' meetings are closely guarded events,
and emails/letters to company representatives are never answered.
One can only suspect that Mr. Barton will not allow a bit of
conscience stand in the way of some profit. The least Caterpillar
can do is to remove the grossly hypocritical social responsibility
section from its website.
The moral turpitude of many players,
especially in the US, makes the occupation of Palestinian land
possible, and guarantees the continued dispossession of masses.
Many provide the intellectual backing for this enterprise, others
extort the funding from the American taxpayer, hordes of apologists
bully the media, and a plethora of companies provide the tools.
Alas, it is unlikely that the legions of hypocrites will bear
the consequences of any revenge by the dispossessed or those
maligned for so many decades. Their violence will elicit from
this same rotten gang the hollers of "terrorism" and
similar disingenuous accusations. There is no violence without
a cause, and for once one would hope our American friends would
at least consider their responsibility in this long tragic episode.
There is a singular need to stop the US bankrolling of the Israeli
enterprise.
Associated with the ambient death in
Palestine is an ambient fetid stench. And it surrounds us.
Paul de Rooij
is an economist living in London and can be reached at proox@hotmail.com
(NB: all attachments will be automatically deleted.)
Notes
[1] "I asked Rachel [Corrie] what
the nightly situation was like in Brazil camp. 'Oh, theirs is
a good deal of ambient gunfire usually. But nothing much,' she
casually described it."
-- Ben Granby, Nightmare in Rafah,
CounterPunch March 7, 2003.
[2] Note that there never was an official
and independent investigation of the number of Palestinians killed
at the time of the Jenin massacre. Palestinians were killed in
large numbers not only in Jenin, but elsewhere too. The death
toll for this period may never be known because the UN was not
permitted to investigate by Israel. Amnesty Int'l or Human
Rights Watch's reports on the Jenin event aren't conclusive
and speculate on the total number of fatalities and casualties.
Both these organizations have had a dubious past, with a proclivity
to whitewash all that Israel does, and therefore theirs cannot
be taken as a final statement of what happened in Jenin and how
many people were killed.
[3] Only the reports pertaining Palestinian
human rights were included here. Its reports on the abuse of
Israeli human rights was excluded. The reason for this is simple:
this author thinks that it is inadmissible to equate the violation
of the human rights of the occupier with those of the occupied/victim.
In contrast, both Amnesty and HRW equate the human
rights of both occupied/occupier.
[4] Amnesty's website has only
two references (MDE 15/047/2001; MDE 15/31/2001) to Palestinian
Prisoners of conscience (POC), and there are a two "possible
prisoners of conscience" (MDE 15/112/2002; MDE 15/082/2001;MDE
15/093/2002). For someone to be classed as a POC they must not
be implicated in violence, association with certain groups, or
even voicing a desire to resist occupation. There are many Palestinians
rotting in jail now for the simple fact that they are community
leaders, they are held arbitrarily, with no charges or trial,
and often held for arbitrary sentences. For the most part, these
people don't feature anywhere in AI's literature or campaigns.
[5] For example, Without Distinction,
July 2002; stated in AI's usual cautious way [referring to the
Palestinians]: " such violations meet the definition of
crimes against humanity under international law."
[6] See an interview with Ted
Honderich.
[7] Jeff Halper stated that the aim of
Sharon is to integrate the West Bank into Israel, to make this
irreversible, and the "bulldozers are working 24 hours a
day" to implement this plan. Statement made at a talk in
London on May 29, 2003.
[8] This
interview contains his statement: "You cannot ignore
a command that is repeated 36 times in the Mosaic books: 'You
were exiled in order to know what it feels like to be an exile.'
I regard that as one of the core projects of a state that is
true to Judaic principle. And therefore I regard the current
situation as nothing less than tragic, because it is forcing
Israel into postures that are incompatible in the long-run with
our deepest ideals." Yes, that is it! Please note that rabbi
Sacks sent a letter to The Guardian retracting this statement
(confirmed by Jonathan Freedland, the author of the Guardian
article). This is not the first time Sacks has retracted a statement,
but has done so a few times in the past (e.g., see Recantation).
[9] Tony Blair and his spinmeisters are
particularly keen to appear in a good light in the right wing
press, and in particular, in Murdoch-owned tabloids. The tabloids
are a pernicious institution that debases anything we ever thought
about the press. It is also ironic that a Labour prime minister,
putatively on the Left, is defended by the right wing press and
criticized by the centrist and left-wing press.
[10] The D9 weighs 47.2 tons, it is 3.9
m high and has a blade 1.8 m high and 4.2 m long, and it costs
US$500,000. A newer version the D9R weights 50+ tons. However,
the Israelis add several tons of armor plating to the D9 increasing
its weight to about 60 tons. The D11 is an even larger monster--a
large sized SUV fits comfortably in its blade. Caterpillar gets
US$1.2m for each D11. The US taxpayer is most likely the one
who foots the bill.
[11] See Amira Hass: We
don't raze homes for no reason.
[12] Ran Ha'Cohen, The
Apartheid Wall, DissidentVoice, May 21, 2003. This
is an important article, and it provides a map that enables one
to appreciate the scale and nature of this project. Note that
the reported length of this wall changes every month--to accommodate
the latest whims of Sharon & Co., to incorporate the latest
punitive measure entering the planner's head, or to cater to
the wishes of the friendly settlers.
Also important is Neve Gordon's, Land Theft & Confinement: The
Bad Fence, CounterPunch, May 30, 2003. The best overview
of the wall is Meron Rappaport's On
Israel's Separation Fence. "On any given day has 500
bulldozers at work, paving and building one of the largest projects
in the history of the country, perhaps the largest."
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|