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Featuring Essays by: Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More

Today's Stories

Uri Avnery
Hero of War and Peace

Recent Stories

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

William Blum
Myth and Denial in the War on Terrorism

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

August 11, 2003

Douglas Valentine
Homeland Security for Whom?

Mickey Z.
Bush's Progress

Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Meet the New Bitch, Same as the Old

Elaine Cassel
Indicting DNA

Dr. Mohammad Omar Farooq
Civil Liberties and Uncivil Super-Patriotism

Uri Avnery
Who Will Save Abu Mazen?

Website of the Day
RIAA Subpoena Clearinghouse

August 9 / 10, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
California's Glorious Recall!

Saul Landau
Bush and King Henry

Gary Leupp
On Terrorism, Methodism, "Wahhabism" and the Censored 9/11 Report

Paul de Rooij
The Parade of the Body Bags

Michael Egan
History and the Tragedy of American Diplomacy

Rob Eshelman
A Home of Our Own

Daoud Kuttab
Life as an ID Card

Philip Agee
Terror and Civil Society: Instruments of US Policy in Cuba

Jeffrey St. Clair
Marc Racicot: Bush's Main Man

Walt Brasch
Schwarzenegger, "Hollyweird" and the Rigtheous Right

Christopher Brauchli
Bush, Bribery and Berlusconi

Josh Frank
Mean, Mean Howard Dean

Elaine Cassel
Will the Death Penalty Ever Die?

Sean Carter
Total Recall

Poets' Basement
Hamod, Engel, Albert

August 8, 2003

John Chuckman
What the US Says Goes

Roberto Barreto
Defend the Vieques 12!

Bruce Gagnon
Iraq War Emboldens Bush Space Plans

Elaine Cassel
The Reign of John Ashcroft

Dave Lindorff
Snoops Night Out

Website of the Day
Zero Boy

 

 

August 7, 2003

M. Shahid Alam
It the US a "Terrorist Magnet?"

Toni Solo
Neo-liberal Nicaragua: a New Banana Republic

Adam Lebowitz
Hiroshima Commemorated: the View from Japan

Hanan Ashrawi
When the Bully Whines

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Conscience Takes a Holiday

Jason Leopold
Wolfowitz Lets Slip: Iraq Not Behind 9/11; No Ties to Al-Qaeda

Mike Kimaid
What's the Score?

Elaine Cassel
The Smell of VICTORY: Ashcroft's Latest Stinkbomb

Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians

 


August 6, 2003

Steve Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause: It's Not Easy Confronting King Coal

David Krieger
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Robert Fisk
The Ghosts of Uday and Qusay

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on the National Forests

Elaine Cassel
No Fly Lists

Stan Goff
Military Equipment and Pneumonia

Hugh Sansom
An Open Letter to Nicholas Kristof on the Nuking of Japan

 


August 5, 2003

Uri Avnery
The Prisoner of Ramallah: Arafat at 74

Forrest Hylton
Terrorism and Political Trials: the View from Bolivia

Ray McGovern
"We Cook Estimates to Go"

David Morse
Poindexter's Gambit

Edward Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later

George W. Bush
My Darn Good Resumé

Hammond Guthrie
It's Incremental, Watson!

Website of the Day
National Prayer Day


August 4, 2003

Bruce K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by Airport Cops: My Story

David Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security

Mark Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody

James Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail

Mickey Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush

Bruce Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's Pimps for the White House

August 2 / 3, 2003

Tamara R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down

Francis Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool

David Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side

Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem

Uri Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus

Robert Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq

Jerry Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media

Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to Intervene?

Saul Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology

Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson

Thomas Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta

Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?

Poets' Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming

 

August 1, 2003

Joanne Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape

Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing Prison Rape

Steve J.B.
Prison Bitch

Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq

Wayne Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix

Robert Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor

Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico

Website of the Day
Stop Prisoner Rape

 

July 31, 2003

Ray McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence

Brian Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement

Sheldon Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)

Elaine Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys

Sheldon Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's Wars

Hammond Guthrie
Speculation Blues

Website of the Day
Army of One?

Congratulations to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD

 

July 30, 2003

David Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie

Marjorie Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About the Oil

Elaine Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas in Terror Cases

Zvi Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War

Lisa Walsh Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?

Sean Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes

ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon

Steve Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies

Standard Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing

Website of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!

 

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

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.

 

 

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August 18, 2003

First Self-Respect, Then Peace

Hero in War and Peace

By URI AVNERY

Sometimes a single sentence is enough to reveal a person's mental world and intellectual profundity. Such a sentence was uttered by Shaul Mofaz, the Minister of Defense, some days ago during a visit to the Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip.

"With our enemies, it seems, no shortcuts are possible. Egypt made peace with Israel only after it was defeated in the Yom Kippur War. That will happen with the Palestinians, too."

This means that there is no political solution. There is only war, and in this war we must "defeat" the Palestinians. A simple, simplistic, not to say primitive, view.

But the revealing sentence is: "Egypt made peace with Israel only after it was defeated in the Yom Kippur War".

Revealing, because it utterly contradicts the almost unanimous view of all the experts in Israel and around the world--historians, Arabists and military commentators. These believe that the exact opposite is true: Anwar Sadat was able to lead Egypt towards peace only because he was admired as the commander who had defeated Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Only after the Egyptian people had won back their national pride were they able to consider peace with the enemy (with us).

When the war broke out, the Egyptians did something that amazed the world and shook Israel: they crossed the Suez Canal and overcame the celebrated "Bar-Lev line". Everybody considered this a brilliant military feat. The stupidity of Israeli army intelligence and the arrogant complacency of Prime Minister Golda Meir allowed the Egyptians to achieve total surprise, destroy a large number of tanks and pin down the Israeli Air force. The Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, was in shock and talked about the "destruction of the third Jewish state". (In traditional Jewish historiography, the first two Jewish states are symbolized by the first and second temple in Jerusalem.)

In the course of the war, the tide turned and, in the end, the Israeli army crossed the Canal into Egypt. At the end of the war, Israeli troops were established on the western shore, but large Egyptian forces remained to their rear, on the eastern side. This week a long-delayed official study by the Israeli army was leaked. It declares unequivocally that Israel had "not won that war".

But the professional military analysis is not so important in this context. What is important is how the events appear to the Egyptian consciousness and affect their actions since then.

I succeeded in reaching Cairo on the morrow of Sadat's sensational visit to Jerusalem, and found myself in a city drunk with joy, in some kind of delirious popular carnival. Over the main streets stretched hundreds of slogans celebrating the act of the president. Every commercial corporation felt duty-bound to hang such a slogan with a peace message.

The one slogan that outnumbered all others was "Anwar Sadat: Hero of War and Peace".

The Egyptian people would not have supported peace, if they had considered it a surrender to the diktat of an arrogant enemy. Only the crossing of the Canal four years earlier, which Egyptians consider one of the greatest victories in all the 8000 years of their history, enabled them to accept the agreement as a compromise between equals, without loss of honor. Like many other nations, the Egyptians--and all other Arabs--consider national dignity the most important treasure.

Perhaps Mofaz should go to Cairo and visit the round building that houses the museum of the Ramadan War (as Arabs call the Yom Kippur War). There he will see an exciting, emotion-laden display of the crossing of the Canal. Every day the place is thronged with people, especially school-children.

If one wants to draw a parallel between the Egyptians and the Palestinians, as Mofaz tries to do, the conclusion would be: only after the Palestinians win back their national self-respect, will they be able to make peace with Israel. The first intifada, which Palestinians consider a victorious struggle against the immense might of the Israeli army, allowed them to accept the Oslo agreement. Only the second intifada, which has already proved that the Israeli army cannot subdue the Palestinian uprising, enabled them to accept the Road Map, which is supposed to bring about peace between the Israeli and the coming Palestinian state.

On a related topic: On the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Israeli newspapers are full of revelations about it. Among them is the disclosure that I saved the life of Moshe Dayan. That surprised me, as it would have surprised Dayan, if he were still living. But it appears to be true.

The facts are revealed by Amir Porat, the former communication officer and personal confidant of Shmuel Gonen (universally known as "Gorodish"), who was in charge of Southern Command during the war. Later, when the public was looking for a scapegoat for the terrible initial defeat, the main blame was put on Gorodish. He was dismissed from his command and nobody was prepared to listen to his side of the story. All the media boycotted him.

This man, who practically overnight had fallen from the height of glory (as one of the heroes of the 1967 Six Day War) to the depths of ignominy, was in despair. He blamed Dayan for the injustice done to him. In the end he made an appointment with him, planning to shoot him and then himself.

At the very last moment, one day before the fateful meeting, Haolam Hazeh correspondent Rino Tzror arranged a meeting between us. At the time I was editor-in-chief of this newsmagazine, the only medium in the country that was truly independent of the establishment. We had a reputation for supporting the underdog and challenging the powers that be. I talked with him at length. During the whole conversation he toyed with his pistol.

Gorodish was very far from my political views, he was a right-wing person, an out-and-out militarist, but I became convinced that the official inquiry into the war had indeed done him a shocking injustice. Therefore I promised to help him getting his side of the story across. He saw that the whole world was not closed to him. Having someone listening to his side of the story and promising to publish it relieved his despair and made him give up the idea of killing Dayan and committing suicide. I published a large article under the headline "The Israeli Dreyfus".

This affair has its ironic side. In the whole of Israel, no one was more opposed to Dayan than I. More than anyone else (except Ben-Gurion and his sidekick, Shimon Peres) Dayan laid down in the 1950s the anti-Arab tracks on which Israel is moving to this very day. In the pages of Haolam Hazeh I attacked him relentlessly, writing hundreds of articles against him, exposing his illegal traffic in stolen archeological finds and his private peccadilloes that endangered the security of the state. And in the end it appears that I saved his life.

Back to the main point: The Yom Kippur War did not lead to the "destruction of the third state", as Dayan had prophesied, but to peace with Egypt, after its national honor had been restored. If Sharon and the army command succeed in disrupting the hudna (truce) and bring about the renewal of the intifada, they will not break the Palestinians, who will refuse to submit. And after large-scale bloodshed, Yasser Arafat will make a speech in the Knesset, as did Sadat, the "Hero of War and Peace".

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. One of his essays is also included in Cockburn and St. Clair's forthcoming book: The Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.

 

Weekend Edition Features for 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

 

 

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