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Today's
Stories
October
28, 2003
Chris
White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October
27, 2003
William
A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David
Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine
Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert
Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October
25 / 26, 2003
Robert
Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James
Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher
Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane
Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin
Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey
Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets'
Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October
24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David
Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
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
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.
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October
28, 2003
Incident in Gaza
Whom
to Believe? Well...
By URI AVNERY
"Whom do you believe?" asked
General Ya'akov Amidror on TV with subdued anger, "the army
spokesman or Hamas?"
General (reserves) Amidror is the highest
religious officer in our army. In the past he has raised several
public storms with some utterances denigrating secular Israelis,
saying that they are not real Jews. He has a sharp mind, much
above the average in the army command, and his intellect is fully
employed in serving his extremist views both the extremist
religious and the extremist nationalist ones.
His question was intended to be rhetorical.
After all, the answer is self-evident: on one side there is the
IDF, "the most moral and most humane army in the world",
as it calls itself, and on the other side there is a bunch of
crazy murderers, so what's the problem?
But, according to Amidror himself, the
reverse is happening. The world believes Hamas and does not believe
the IDF spokesman. The Israeli public believes Hamas. Even cabinet
ministers and Knesset members believe Hams and do not believe
the army spokesman.
The crisis of confidence was revealed
in all its harshness by a series of events last week in the Gaza
Strip. According to the Palestinians, the army fired air-to-surface
missiles at a car in which there were two Hamas militants. When
people from the neighborhood crowded around the smashed car to
see if the could help the victims, they were attacked by another
missile. All in all 14 Palestinians were killed, among them a
doctor who had rushed there to help, and dozens of others, including
many women and children, were wounded.
"A big lie!" the Army Spokesman
angrily announced. The army did not fire another missile at all.
It did not hurt civilians! It's just another vicious Palestinian
slander!
So there are two opposing versions, which
are completely incompatible. A matter of either-or. One of the
two sides is lying. But who?
The Palestinian version is supported
by the TV and video coverage of the killed, the funerals, the
wounded delivered to the hospitals, as well as by doctors and
journalists, local and foreign. The army version is supported
by the host of Israeli "military correspondents" and
"Arab affairs reporters" on TV, the radio and the newspapers
who, almost to a man, repeat the official line like robots, as
if they themselves had investigated and come to this conclusion.
This time even the heavy artillery joined
the battle, headed by Haaretz military commentator Ze'ev Shiff,
whose independent judgements are often uncannily similar to those
of the army command. The Air Force commander, already up to his
neck in the affair of the rebellious combat pilots, took an unprecedented
step and had the official version, denying the Palestinian story,
circulated at all Air force bases.
To reinforce its own story, the Air Force
published, after a delay of 24 hours, a clip shot during the
action by an army drone (unmanned aircraft). It clearly shows
two missiles fired at the suspect car, with hardly any civilians
in the vicinity. The devoted military correspondents even used
their stopwatches to measure the seconds between missile A and
missile B.
So here we have a perfect riddle. A factual
clip against the eye-witness account of the journalists. What
would Sherlok Holmes have said?
Well. Perhaps a Palestinian propagandist
of genius invented the whole thing. The civilians committed suicide
or shot each other, dozens of others wounded themselves, all
in order to besmirch the IDF with a monstrous lie. (By the same
logic, the father of little Muhammad al-Dura killed his son,
at the beginning of the present intifada, in order to
slander our brave and upright soldiers).
Another possibility is that not two,
but three missiles were used the two seen in the clip and
a third one later on. In order to find out, one has to view the
whole film, not just an excerpt. And perhaps we are dealing with
two different events altogether.
If the Israeli media were truly independent,
instead of being a department of the security establishment,
a dozen Israeli journalists would have rushed to Gaza on the
same day, interviewed the dozens of wounded in the hospitals,
compared the evidence, visited the families of the dead and taken
testimony from eye-witnesses, confronting these with the army
version. But apart from Amira Hass and a Palestinian correspondent
of Channel 2, this kind of independent investigation has disappeared
long ago from our media (and perhaps never existed.)
There remains the rhetorical question
posed by General Amidror: Whom to believe?
The Minister of the Interior Avraham
Poraz (Shinui party) and the Knesset member Zahava Gal'on (Meretz)
chose, so it seems, the Palestinian version and acted accordingly.
So did a large number of other public personalities. That was
what raised the hackles of the army.
But even if we take the official version
on trust, we would have to raise another question: WHY do so
many people, in Israel and throughout the world, believe the
Palestinians? In other words, why do they not believe the army
spokesman?
There were times when the army spokesman
was believed without reservation. During the 50s, I was often
asked by foreign journalists whether to believe the army statements.
My answer invariably was: Sure, our army does not lie.
These days are long gone. The occupation,
which has corrupted everything, has corrupted the army statements,
too. During the first intifada, the IDF published hundreds
of statements that were manifestly mendacious. Children "lost
their lives" when the army "shot into the air"
(giving rise to bitter jokes about "flying children").
Palestinians were killed while "trying to wrest weapons
from the hands of soldiers". Tall stories. Baron von Munchhausen
would have been envious. Since then, the situation has become
even worse.
During the last 20 years I have followed
the work of foreign correspondents, neutral, pro-Palestinian
and pro-Israeli, and almost all of them trust the Palestinians
more than official Israeli spokespersons.
When things get tough, official spokespersons
bring up the Jenin affair. The Palestinians claimed that during
the "Defensive Shield" operation in April 2002 a massacre
occurred there. This proved to be an exaggeration, but the things
that did indeed happen there were terrible enough. For example,
many houses were demolished by the drunken driver of a giant
army bulldozer, without any idea whether the inhabitants were
still inside. The terminological battle over the word "massacre"
distracted attention from what actually happened.
Credibility is worth more then gold.
It takes years to build up, but just a few minutes to destroy.
Now this affair shows that the credibility of the army spokesman
has fallen into an abyss.
"Whom do you believe?" the
general asked. Wellhmmit's not pleasant to say, but...
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 The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 2003
Robert
Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James
Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher
Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane
Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin
Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey
Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets'
Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
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