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Today's
Stories
October
24, 2003
Harry
Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
October
23, 2003
Diane
Christian
Ruthlessness
Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism
David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology
Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement
William
Blum
Imperial
Indifference
Stew Albert
A Memo
October
22, 2003
Wayne
Madsen
Religious
Insanity Runs Rampant
Ray McGovern
Holding
Leaders Accountable for Lies
Christopher
Brauchli
There's
No Civilizing the Death Penalty
Elaine
Cassel
Legislators
and Women's Bodies
Bill Glahn
RIAA
Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism
Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali
October 21, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Beilin Agreement
Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General
David
Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!
William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History
Bridget
Gibson
Fatal Vision
Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor
Peter
Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell
October
20, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Chile's
Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Chris
Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California
Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky
& Nader
John &
Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful
World
Elaine
Cassel
God's
General Unmuzzled
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
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
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
October
24, 2003
Americans and the
Middle East
It's Palestine, Stupid!
By MOHAMMED HAKKI
During the presidential contest between Bill Clinton
and George Bush Sr, a phrase was coined that became the most-quoted
rallying cry of all election campaigns since; "It's the
economy, stupid." Something very similar is happening between
America and the whole Arab world. Someone should be shouting
out: it's Palestine, stupid. All problems that exist between
the US and the Arabs, including the most recent and continuing
illegal and unnecessary war against Iraq, has its roots in the
Palestinian problem. It has poisoned not only relations, but
modes of thinking, upset the traditional sense of fairness, sense
of justice, and any useful attempt at dialogue between the two
sides. It blew any faith in international law, or that Security
Council resolutions have any practical value.
Now almost everyone has come to the conclusion
that the peace process is finished, but few, unlike Tony Judt
writing in the New York Review of Books, see clearly that it
"did not die, it was killed". Unfortunately, it was
not killed by Ariel Sharon alone. It was killed with the help
of an accessory who ironically was the one who coined the term
"roadmap" to push the peace process forward: President
George W Bush. No one had any illusions about Ariel Sharon or
his intentions. The man was clear about his goal every step of
the way. He opposed the peace process, opposed the idea of a
Palestinian state, opposed the decade-long rapprochement with
the PLO that began in Oslo. He declared back in 2001 that the
Palestinian Authority was "an entity that supported terror".
He never wavered in his determination to continue to build and
expand Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in cynical disregard
of the "roadmap". But everybody is disappointed in
President Bush. Bush never critici! sed Sharon. He continued
to call Sharon a "man of peace". When Sharon called
Arafat irrelevant President Bush said that the Palestinians deserve
a different leadership. He allowed Sharon to imprison Arafat
in Ramallah and re-occupy nearly the whole of Palestine. Finally,
as Tony Judt asserts, the president of the United States has
been reduced to a ventriloquist's dummy, painfully reciting the
Israeli cabinet's line: "It's all Arafat's fault."
After having tried everything with America
and having failed, the Arab countries turned to Europe. Almost
all Arab diplomats that I have talked to said that "they
don't want to listen," meaning the American side. They put
their faith in the Quartet's efforts to revive the roadmap. But
that too has come to a dead end. Sharon made sure to kill that
too.
Geoffrey Aronson, director of the Foundation
for Middle East Peace thinks that the Quartet is now playing
to Sharon's tune. In a comment in the Financial Times, Aronson
says: "Mr Sharon believes time is on Israel's side. A campaign
to de-legitimise Arafat, and as a consequence the Palestinian
national liberation movement, as the interlocutor for Palestinian
national aspirations, has proceeded in tandem with the destruction
of the PA's institutions." Aronson goes on to say: "Mr
Sharon has been gratified beyond his wildest expectations by
US and international complicity in his campaign against the elected
Palestinian president. While foreign capitals shared Mr Sharon's
tactical objective -- removing Mr Arafat's influence from Palestinian
councils -- they failed to comprehend just how much Mr Arafat's
removal served Mr Sharon's strategic goal -- the destruction
of the capacity for Palestinian self-rule."
Aronson thinks that the Quartet's efforts
to resurrect a "reformed" PA without Arafat is doomed.
Sharon thinks that as long as Arafat breathes he remains an obstacle
to Israel's desire to end the possibility of sovereign Palestinian
rule, but a virtual PA would not survive Arafat's death at Israel's
hand. "It may well be too late to arrest this process,"
he says.
Last weekend's destruction by Israeli
forces of 1500 Palestinian homes, reported on the BBC, was not
even mentioned by any of the mainstream media in the US. With
the exception of Colin Powell, not a single leader in the Bush
administration has visited the West Bank or Gaza. Not a single
one has denounced the monstrosity Israel is building under the
pretext of Israeli security. The London-based Economist describes
the first phase of the planned wall as trapping 15 Palestinian
villages with 13,600 residents between the Green Line and the
barrier. These unfortunates are prohibited from entering Israel
to the West, and physically barred from reaching their lands,
businesses and extended families in their West Bank hinterland
to the east. A reported further 30,000 farmers who live on the
east side of the barrier are now cut off from their orchards,
groves and farms on the western side.
The Economist goes on to say that thousands
more Palestinians have lost their access to schools, hospitals,
government services and universities in the main urban centres
of Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilya and Nablus. According to B'tsalem,
an Israeli human rights research centre, 210,000 Palestinians
living in 67 Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps have
been "directly affected" by construction. What a roadmap!
Sooner or later an American statesman
is going to have to tell the truth to an Israeli prime minister
and find a way to make him listen.
Commemorating the 25th anniversary of
the Camp David Accords, President Carter said in an opinion piece
in the Washington Post that the only choice for the Israelis
is to withdraw from the settlements in the occupied territories.
But in the same article he explained one of the main reasons
that the US is not tempted or even forced to do the right thing.
There is an "important and fundamental change" in the
motivation of the US as mediator, he writes. "At Camp David
we Americans knew that our nation's strategic interests were
directly involved in the peace process. Cold War alliances had
resulted in a direct nuclear confrontation between the superpowers
as Egypt and Israel fought during 1973 war ... Today, except
for the fact that the Palestinian issue has become one of the
foremost causes of international terrorism, our strategic interests
are much less involved in the Israeli-Palestinian violence ...
Confident that our support is unshakable, Israeli leaders eventually
began! to assert their independence, and real American influence
has reach its lowest ebb in 50 years. In the face of certain
rebuffs, why would any American president become deeply involved
in a balanced mediating role?"
But this absence of any strategic threat
has been there since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Besides,
it should not dissuade America from pursuing a policy of self-interest;
of even-handedness based on justice and moral values. Actually,
there is another motive, sick as it may be, that puts Israel
and the US in the same bed. That is the misguided notion forwarded
by the Israel-blinded zealots who dominate this administration
-- that the US is now fighting the fourth world war.
Philip Bobbitt, a University of Texas
law professor, wrote a book last year that finds resonance in
the intellectual atmosphere in Washington. The Shield of Achilles:
War and Peace and the Course of History conceives of World War
I, and World War II, and the Cold War not as discrete events
but as phases in a single protracted conflict -- what he calls
"the Long War". All were constitutional struggles in
which liberal democracy hunted down a series of challengers to
its right to govern. World War I brought an end to the dynastic
empires, but did not settle the question of what form of rule
would succeed them. First fascism and then communism staked their
claims, and defeating them was not complete until 1991. That
left liberal democracy triumphant. It was declared "the
end of History".
Several writers picked up on that theme
and on what they term America's war against Islamic totalitarianism,
or Islamism as they call it. They may not necessarily reflect
the views of the fundamentalist Christian right, or evangelicals
like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, but there is an echo. One
of those writers is Jonathan Rauch who writes for the National
Journal. He asserts that Islamists propose a system of government
that has imperial aspirations and that seeks to abolish the private
sphere and secular politics. Others like him think that the US
is locked in a life or death struggle with Islamists. Rauch is
right in saying that for 50 years America was complicit in presenting
the Arab world with a false choice between corrupt authoritarianism
and militant Islamism. Worse, the US took the side of corrupt
authoritarianism. In that limited sense America was complicit
in the rise of militant Islamism. But then he loses his argument,
and his common sense, saying that what ! America is doing is
trying to establish a competent, honest, stable Palestinian state
(along with stable Afghan and Iraqi states).
No one I know thinks there is any other
alternative than for Israel to withdraw and dismantle all of
the settlements and return to the 1967 borders, in exchange for
real Arab recognition; but nobody believes that the US is expending
one ounce of effort to achieve that. Judt believes it is already
too late. Too many settlements, too many Jewish settlers, and
too many Palestinians, and they all live together, albeit separated
by barbed wire and laws of passage. He thinks that those hundreds
of thousands of settlers will die -- and kill -- rather than
move.
A lot of Jews are very pessimistic not
only about the Middle East, but about the future of Israel itself.
Richard Cohen, the Washington Post columnist, who thinks that
there is "a perpetual war against Israel" and supports
Israeli assassinations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders and
militants, concludes by admitting that Israel is losing. He too
says that Israel must return to the Green Line, and dismantle
"most" of the settlements. He says that by building
the fence to encompass the settlements, Sharon is ensuring the
continuation of his problem. He needs to get out.
Israeli Labour politician Avraham Burg
recently wrote: "After two thousand years of struggle for
survival, the reality of Israel is a colonial state, run by a
corrupt clique which scorns and mocks law and civic morality."
Unless something changes, Israel in half a decade will be neither
Jewish nor democratic. Tony Judt concludes: "The depressing
truth is that Israel's current behaviour is not just bad for
America, though it surely is. It is not even just bad for Israel
itself, as many Israelis silently acknowledge. The depressing
truth is that Israel is bad for the Jews."
H G Wells once compared Napoleon to the
influenza microbes. He said that if a military leader's worth
is based on how many people he kills, then the microbe wins,
because it killed more people in Europe than Napoleon ever did.
The same thing can be said of Ariel Sharon. In comparison to
either Napoleon or the flu microbe he is nothing. Insignificant.
He will only be remembered in history as a killer and mass murderer,
and less significant than any modern microbe.
Mohammed Hakki writes
for Al Ahram, where this article originally appeared.
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
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