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Today's
Stories
December 17, 2003
Andrew Cockburn
Saddam's
Last Act
December 16, 2003
Robert Fisk
Getting
Saddam...15 Years Too Late
Mahajan / Jensen
Saddam
in Irons: The Hard Truths Remain
John Halle
Matt
Gonzalez and Me
Josh Frank
The
Democrats and Saddam
Tariq Ali
Saddam
on Parade: the New Model of Imperialism
December 15, 2003
Robert Fisk
The Capture
of Saddam Won't Stop the Guerrilla War
Dave Lindorff
The
Saddam Dilemma
Abu Spinoza
Blowback on the Stand: The Trial of Saddam Hussein
Norman Solomon
For
Telling the Truth: the Strange Case of Katharine Gun
Patrick Cockburn
The
Capture of Saddam
Stew Albert
Joy to the World
December 13 / 14, 2003
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts
at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli
Connection
Stan Goff
Jessica Lynch, Plural
Tariq Ali
The Same Old Racket in Iraq
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Map is not the Territory
Marty Bender / Stan Cox
Dr. Atkins vs. the Planet
Christopher Brauchli
Mercury Rising: the EPA's Presents to Industry
Gary Leupp
On Marriage in "Recorded History", an Open Letter to
Gov. Mitt Romney
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Saga of Iran's Alleged WMD
Larry Everest
Saddam, Oil and Empire: Supply v. Demand
William S. Lind
How to Fight a 4th Generation War
Fran Shor
From Vietnam to Iraq: Counterinsurgency and Insurgency
Ron Jacobs
Child Abuse as Public Policy
Omar Barghouti
Relative Humanity and a Just Peace in the Middle East
Adam Engel
Pretty Damn Evil: an Interview with Ed Herman
Kristin Van Tassel
Breastfeeding Compromised
Ben Tripp
On Getting Stabbed
Susan Davis
"The Secret Lives of Dentists", a Review
Dave Zirin
Does Dylan Still Matter? an Interview with Mike Marqusee
Norman Madarasz
Searching for the Barbarians
Poets' Basement
Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Dean on Race
December 12, 2003
Josh Frank
Halliburton,
Timber and Dean
Chris Floyd
The
Inhuman Stain
Dave Lindorff
Infanticide
as Liberation: Hiding the Dead Babies
Benjamin Dangl
Another Two Worlds Are Possible?
Jean-Paul Barrois
Two States or One? an Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva
Accords
David Vest
Bush
Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton
December 11, 2003
Siegfried Sassoon
A
Soldier's Declaration Against War
Douglas Valentine
Preemptive
Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program
John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra
Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride
James M. Carter
The
Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq
December 10, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Pat Youngblood / Robert
Jensen
Workers
Rights are Human Rights
Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children
CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart
Case
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
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
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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December
17, 2003
Sharon's War on Palestinian
Kids
"Don't
Think About the Children"
By GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz
Why was Asma Abu al-Haija arrested? Why did she
have to spend nine months in prison, sleeping on the floor of
her cell? Why was a woman arrested, not interrogated, not accused
of anything and then released nine very difficult months later,
without any explanation? Just because she is a Palestinian, so
anything can be done to her? Was she really arrested solely in
order to put pressure on her husband, the Hamas spokesman in
Jenin, who is also in Israeli prison? Is this legal? Moral? Could
there be any other reason? If so, why wasn't she brought to trial
for it? Forget justice, but what about a drop of compassion for
a sick woman with a brain tumor, who is going blind, has undergone
brain surgery twice, who has five children left alone at home
in the refugee camp, without a mother, without a father, without
their older brother?
All these questions continue to hover
in the attractive home in the heart of the Jenin refugee camp,
the home to which Asma Abu al-Haija finally returned a few weeks
ago. She returned to her five free children and to a house that
had been refurbished, and of course, there was much happiness.
Asma says the children became very independent
when she was away. One after the other, they returned from school
one afternoon this week, kissed their mother and tossed down
their bookbags, as if nothing unusual had happened. Only 7-year-old
Sajida still gets up sometimes in the middle of the night, frightened
by the sound of tanks or jeeps in the street, and leaps into
her mother's bed to hold her tight. Sajida has not forgotten
that cold, dark night in February when the soldiers came and
took her mother away. She won't ever forget it.
The birdcage is gone. For all those months,
while workers repaired the house that had been wrecked by an
IDF missile and the children were living there alone, the birdcage
hung on the wall of the guest room and the chirping sounds gave
the lonely children a little feeling of hope and warmth. Now
only the electric doorbell at the entrance to the house still
chirps like a bird.
"I want Mommy," Sajida told
us on our first visit about six months ago. A month later, she
proudly displayed the new dress--beige with embroidery--that
she had bought for her mother for NIS 100 at the Al-Wafa store
in Jenin, and the brown sandals and white veil--all in anticipation
of her mother's release. Israel had just promised to ease conditions
for the Palestinians and to make some goodwill gestures, and
the people of Jenin were sure that the most humane gesture would
be to release the ailing Asma.
Imad, her teenage son, got up early in
the morning and went to the checkpoint to meet his mother. He
stood in the sun for two hours until he realized that, goodwill
gestures or not, his mother was not coming. There was much crying
at home, and then they went back to their lives, without a mother
or a father.
Asma Abu al-Haija was born 40 years ago
in Jenin. At 19, she married a man now known as Sheikh Jamal,
a religion teacher and son of the imam of Jenin. They lived in
Yemen and Saudi Arabia for 10 years and returned to Jenin during
the Gulf War. Since then, Sheikh Jamal has been in one prison
after another: Six months in the Palestinian Authority prison,
followed by seven arrests by Israel. He was wanted for two years
by the IDF, and was caught and arrested about two years ago.
In the brief interludes between his incarcerations, he appeared
on international Arab television stations as the Hamas spokesman
in Jenin. Asma says her husband is a politician. They haven't
seen each other for two years. Six months before Jamal was apprehended,
their eldest son, Abd al-Salam was sentenced to 87 months in
prison for his activities in Hamas. Jamal is still awaiting a
verdict in his trial.
On February 11 of this year, at 3 A.M.,
soldiers knocked on the door of the house. Asma got dressed and
went downstairs. She was ill, suffering from terrible headaches
caused by the tumor in her brain. The soldiers burst in, overturning
everything in their path. The children were terrified. Sajida
and Hamzi, the two youngest, cried. They were all ordered to
go out into the street, in the cold and rain, until the search
was finished. Then they were all brought into one room and a
soldier called `Captain Jamal' came in.
"We want to take you in for questioning,"
the captain said.
"I haven't done anything. I just
take care of the children," Asma tried to protest. "The
Shin Bet wants to talk to you. Two words and you'll be back home."
Having no choice, she accompanied the soldiers. She says she
didn't take anything with her, because Captain Jamal said it
would just be "two words" with the Shin Bet. The children
shouted. Banan, a 17-year-old girl, said to the soldiers: "Take
all of us, then. Why do you come and take someone else every
time?" And Asma told the captain that she had to call someone
to watch the children until morning. She was sure she'd be back
very soon. But she remembers hearing one of the soldiers say
to the children: "Find yourselves another mother."
They took her in a jeep to the IDF detention
facility in Salem. She tried to ask why they couldn't just question
her at home. At Salem, other soldiers ordered that her hands
and legs be bound and that she be blindfolded. She tried to explain
that she gets severe headaches from a brain tumor. But the soldiers
told her: "It's the law here. We have to." She asked
to see a doctor. They brought her a female prison warden. She
was put into a small room and there Asma took off her headscarf
and showed her the scars on her head from her two surgeries.
The warden told the soldiers: "She really does have scars
on her head." But Asma remained bound and blindfolded. They
offered her something to eat and she refused. At noon, she was
taken to the Neve Tirza women's prison in Ramle. There was no
interrogation and no Shin Bet.
"I have a brain tumor," she
told the prison doctor the next day. She was suffering from pain
and dizziness. She says the doctor told her: "Don't think
about the children. If you think about the children--it causes
headaches."
"Do you have children?," Asma
asked her. "That's different. You're in prison and your
situation is different," was the reply. For the next seven
months, Asma had no contact with her children, who were at home
alone. She had no idea how they were, what was happening to them,
who--if anyone--was looking after them. She asked the prison
supervisor to at least let her call home once, but was turned
down. The supervisor suggested that she get a lawyer to talk
with the children, but Asma wanted to hear their voices herself.
"The security prisoner was denied
telephone calls because of the procedure that applies to all
security prisoners in Israel," was the response at the time
from the Prison Service. Asma complained to her lawyer, Tamar
Peleg-Sarik, that she wasn't receiving proper medical attention.
About a month after she was arrested, Physicians for Human Rights
(PHR) sent an urgent letter to the prison authorities requesting
that a CT Scan be arranged for Asma. It was two and a half months
before the examination was performed.
PHR informed Prof. Shlomo Melamed, director
of the Glaucoma Institute at Sheba Medical Center, and he volunteered
to go the prison to examine her. He found that Asma had completely
lost her vision in her left eye and that she was suffering from
severe headaches, dizziness and nausea.
Horrified, Prof. Melamed posted a stinging
article on the Internet: "It is incomprehensible that this
woman could be held in detention without trial for eight months.
Where is the human compassion? Where is the famous Jewish mercy?
Why has she not even been permitted to speak to her children
by phone, throughout her imprisonment?" Tear gas used to
quell a disturbance by the female prisoners affected her especially
hard and caused ferocious headaches.
When Asma finished serving her first
term of administrative detention--six months--and was expecting
to be released, the next blow fell: Her detention was being extended
by another five months. She says she fainted when she was told
the news. All she knew was that a military judge had approved
the regional military commander's request to extend her detention
without trial, saying she was a terrorist. She is convinced that
her incarceration was intended solely to put pressure on her
husband, who was imprisoned in Be'er Sheva.
There was one happy moment: One day in
September, during the daily walk in the prison yard, a warden
came up to her and told her that she had visitors. Asma was brought
into the visiting room and there, on the other side of the partition,
for the first time in seven months, she saw her five children.
She says she couldn't believe her eyes--45 minutes of happiness.
Physicians for Human Rights had arranged the visit, after much
strenuous effort. Four of the children were given permits and
one, 15-year-old Imad, was not--for security reasons. But in
the end, he also snuck in for the visit. After they all finished
crying, she asked them the questions she had wanted to ask all
those months. How things were at home and at school, and who
was looking after them, and what they were eating. Sajida and
Hamzi sat there speechless most of the time, hardly able to speak.
For nine months, she slept on the floor.
Eight prisoners in a cell with six beds. Asma was the last to
be put in the cell and so she had to sleep on the floor, brain
tumor or not.
The Prison Service's new spokesman, Ofer
Lefler, said this week: "This is an administrative detainee
(who was released on November 10, 2003), entitled by law to be
kept separate from other prisoners and thus certainly entitled
to a bed. At her request, the detainee was transferred to living
quarters and kept with other security prisoners, despite the
shortage of space in the prison system. Therefore, she was forced
to take turns sleeping on a mattress and not on a bed, as a result
of an internal decision by the prisoners."
Asma's second period of detention was
subsequently shortened to three months. On the 10th of last month,
she thought she was being released, but an officer told her that
her release had been postponed again. But later that afternoon,
when she had almost despaired, they came and told her to pack
her things. With hands and feet bound, she was taken to one of
the checkpoints near Ramallah. At ten that night, she was sent
on her way, into the dark night, far from her home.
A Palestinian passerby invited her to
sleep at his house. From there, she called her children. "I'm
out!" she told them. At six in the morning, she got up and
started on the long way home from Ramallah to Jenin. She was
on the road until two in the afternoon, having waited at checkpoints
and resorted to circuitous dirt roads--an ailing woman finally
on the way home to her children, after nine months in prison
without trial.
Shooting children
Last week, this column told the story
of the killing of three children from Burqin and neighboring
Jenin one Saturday in November. One of the children was Ahmed
Zarouna, age 12. The IDF spokesman said, "The force fired
toward a Palestinian who climbed on an armored vehicle, apparently
in order to steal a machine gun that was on it." In order
to justify the killing even further, the IDF spokesman also said
that 12-year-old Ahmed was "a Hamas activist known to the
security forces."
A reservist who served in Jenin wrote
to me the day after the article was published: "I think
you should know that the brigade commander of the sector (a secondary
brigade) gave an unequivocal order that was relayed to us that
says that if a child climbs onto a military vehicle, he should
be killed. Shoot to kill immediately. The explanation given was
that he could take IDF equipment or toss a grenade into the vehicle.
In talking with my officer and with other soldiers in the company,
we agreed that this was an irrational decision, that there was
no reason here to kill and that such a matter could likely be
solved without any gunfire. I think that this order verges on
the totally illegal. In any case, this is the explicit order
as it is given to soldiers who arrive there."
Shooting to kill at children? In response,
the IDF spokesman did not deny it: "The IDF does not elaborate
on the rules of engagement. However, an inquiry will be conducted
regarding the specific aforementioned order. Unfortunately, experience
has taught us that a person who climbs onto a military vehicle
could pose a lethal danger to the occupants of the vehicle by
shooting or use of a Molotov cocktail, bomb or grenade."
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 13 / 14, 2003
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts
at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli
Connection
Stan Goff
Jessica Lynch, Plural
Tariq Ali
The Same Old Racket in Iraq
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Map is not the Territory
Marty Bender / Stan Cox
Dr. Atkins vs. the Planet
Christopher Brauchli
Mercury Rising: the EPA's Presents to Industry
Gary Leupp
On Marriage in "Recorded History", an Open Letter to
Gov. Mitt Romney
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Saga of Iran's Alleged WMD
Larry Everest
Saddam, Oil and Empire: Supply v. Demand
William S. Lind
How to Fight a 4th Generation War
Fran Shor
From Vietnam to Iraq: Counterinsurgency and Insurgency
Ron Jacobs
Child Abuse as Public Policy
Omar Barghouti
Relative Humanity and a Just Peace in the Middle East
Adam Engel
Pretty Damn Evil: an Interview with Ed Herman
Kristin Van Tassel
Breastfeeding Compromised
Ben Tripp
On Getting Stabbed
Susan Davis
"The Secret Lives of Dentists", a Review
Dave Zirin
Does Dylan Still Matter? an Interview with Mike Marqusee
Norman Madarasz
Searching for the Barbarians
Poets' Basement
Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Dean on Race
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