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Today's
Stories
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel
and the Bush Team
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
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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Weekend
Edition
February 28 / 29, 2004
The Israeli Crisis
America's
Albatross
By WILLIAM A. COOK
"Ah! Well a day! What evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung."
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner)
Two issues dominate the electoral debate as Kerry
battles Edwards and Bush, abandoning the crisis in Israel, enters
the fray: homeland security and job loss caused by exporting
jobs "offshore." One issue that encompasses both cannot
be mentioned by political commentators and politicians for fear
of condemnation as anti-Semitic and for fear, among politicians,
of loss of their positions: what role does America's support
of Israel play relative to homeland security and job loss? Is
it the Albatross around America's neck?
Before undertaking this discussion, I
need to make this assertion in self-defense: the violence that
corrodes the mind and heart of fanatics in Palestine and Israel
nourishes seeds of vengeance in children and adults alike, breeding
only destruction and death; vengeance, retaliation, and terrorism
- - caused by purported freedom fighters or by the state--cannot
and must not be tolerated in a world that claims to be civilized.
I do not condone suicide bombing any more than I condone the
firing of missiles into crowded streets. I do condemn my country's
blind support of the government of Ariel Sharon, the principal
cause of insecurity in America and the greatest threat to peace
in the world today.
"Israel, world's biggest threat
to world peace!" blared the headlines in Europe when the
"Eurobarometer" poll, undertaken by the European Commission,
reported more than 59% of EU citizens see Israel as a threat
to world peace (Brussels: AFP-Reuter-Agencies, Nov. 2003). The
United States, in the company of Iran and North Korea, came in
second at 53%. Fifteen countries participated in the poll. Israel
voiced outrage at the poll results claiming it reflected media
bias against Israel. This despite the fact that a terrorist attack
against Israeli citizens outpaces Israeli attacks against Palestinians
20 to 1 in media coverage. This poll follows the Pew Research
Center survey of December 2002 that reflected growing discontent
with America around the world. Criticism of America is on the
rise as 19 of 27 countries disapprove of the actions taken by
the Bush administration, actions that reflect an increased movement
away from inter- nation engagement to a position of isolationism
and unilateralism. "True dislike, if not hatred, of America
is concentrated in the Muslim nations of the Middle East and
in Central Asia, today's areas of greatest conflict." Less
vociferous are America's traditional allies, but they too critique
harshly "American- style democracy and business practices."
"Huge majorities (64%, 71%, and
79% respectively) in France, Germany and Russia oppose(d) the
use of military force to end the rule of Saddam Hussein."
The reason? The war with Iraq will increase the risk of terrorism
in Europe, and while Americans seem to believe that terrorism
has diminished as a result of the invasion of Iraq, the reality
is that we are fast approaching a death rate of American soldiers
in Iraq comparable to one third the number killed in the 9/11
attacks. Are we willing to say that it's OK for Americans to
die in the Middle-East as long as they are not being killed on
American soil? Similar attitudes about America exist in Indonesia,
Senegal, Western Europe, Australia and Canada. In short, Israel
and America are perceived by the vast majority of people around
the world as true threats to world peace. What does the world
know that we are unwilling to face? In this election year, America's
absolute and unswerving support for Israel and its unquestioned
spread of corporate-style democracy (read Globalized Capitalism)
remains the unseen elephant in the Oval Office and the campaign
rooms of Kerry and Edwards.
Interestingly, John Kerry's Presidential
web site mocks Howard Dean for a string of "misstatements"
about Israel and America's unstinting support of that state.
What constitutes a "Misstatement"? Disagreement with
Kerry's statement that "Every candidate who aspires to be
president should know that Israel is a democracy and our closest
ally in the region." What did Dean say? Israel is "a
Jewish state, it's not a democracy." He's right! Israel
is NOT a democracy: it has no constitution after fifty years
of existence, yet we demand that Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine
have a constitution; its system of laws is determined by the
Torah, a religious document not a secular one; it denies recognition
of the Palestinian minority despite UN Resolution 181 calling
for such recognition; it defies UN Resolutions requiring it to
accept return of the indigenous Palestinians from the refugee
camps to their rightful homes taken from them in 1948 or 1967
but allows Jews from Russia and other lands to immigrate and
become citizens solely because of their religion, making Israel
a de facto theocracy (similar, ironically, to an Islamic democracy!);
and it keeps on the books more than 20 laws that discriminate
against the Palestinian minority (Adalah: Legal Center for Arab
Minority Rights in Israel).
John Edwards parrots the same line as
Kerry: "John Edwards believes that Israel is one of America's
vital allies, and that the US must support Israel to help it
fight terror and achieve peace." Such blind support for
a state that, in the eyes of the vast majority of the world communities,
is seen as instigating terror by its overwhelming military power
(the fourth largest military in the world protecting a nation
the size of New Jersey and with a smaller population) against
an impoverished people that has no meaningful military force
to speak of, only desperate people deprived of human dignity
and hope, runs counter to reason, to say nothing of human rights.
Ridiculing Dean became a cause celebre
that all had to join because he refused to lockstep behind the
blind leading the blind into the ditch. "He was not ready
for the presidency" because he had not joined the chorus
directed by AIPAC; an "even handed" approach to the
crisis in Israel/Palestine meant criticism of Israel that cannot
be tolerated. The Israeli political forces launched a massive
attack against Dean, as vicious as any mounted against Arafat,
and he folded. Such is the power that controls America's democracy.
That leaves Kucinich; but nobody pays
attention to Kucinich because he, too, contradicts the Neo-Con
line that dictates America's allegiance to Israel. Kucinich would
not cave to the powers that forced House Resolution 392, expressing
solidarity with Israel, into being, a resolution that blared
to the disenfranchised world America's bias against the Palestinian
people even as it solidified in the minds of the terrorists (our
term, they see themselves as freedom fighters) America's desire
to control the Mid-East through its 51st state, Israel. Kucinich
declared that "...we are missing an opportunity to lead
people of the Middle East toward a secure and stable future together...The
same humanity that requires us to acknowledge with profound concerns
the pain and suffering of the people of Israel requires a similar
expression for the pain and suffering of the Palestinians."
How simple and how compassionate! Here is recognition that the
suffering of both peoples must be our concern, not a wimpish
subservience to a powerful elite that controls the current administration
and our Congress.
The accepted dogma in the US states that
America must support Israel to ensure peace in the Mid-East and
to secure America against "terrorism" since Israel,
like America, battles and fights the same "terrorists."
But how substantive is this argument? If all the states that
surround Israel, including the citizens of our puppet states
Egypt and Jordan, and fifteen countries in the European Union
observe Israel stealing land from the indigenous population of
Palestine by defying UNSC resolutions that demand it return land
taken in 1948 and 1967, if they see Israel placing illegal settlements
in Palestinian territory eating up another 2% of Palestinian
land and blatantly defying other UN resolutions, if they see
America hypocritically demand that the UN invade Iraq for defying
its resolutions while remaining silent about Israel's defiance,
if they witness Israel incarcerate the indigenous population
behind barbed wire and cement walls, even as they steal more
land and isolate the people from relatives, mosques, work, and
land, a device resurrected from Medieval days when states walled
in the Jews in ghettoes, if they watch helplessly the willful
invasion of Palestinian territory by tanks, armored vehicles,
thousands of soldiers, and bulldozers that decimate homes, how
can we believe that our support of Israel brings peace when it
is so obvious that it is the reason there is no peace?
Bush prides himself on deposing "madmen,"
"ruthless dictators," "murderers," and "criminals"
who kill wantonly, women, children, the old and infirm. In August
of 1953, a poverty plagued refugee camp suffered an onslaught,
supervised by a military commander that resulted in the deaths
of 50 civilians as "bombs were thrown through the windows
of huts in which the refugees were sleeping." Another village,
Qibya, endured a massacre when that same commander reduced the
village to rubble killing 69 civilians, two-thirds of them women
and children, then buried the victims under their homes as they
were blown up over them. In Gaza strip, after the 1967 war, Had'd
Street, a narrow alley in a mass of similar alleys that made
up a shantytown for refugees, was eradicated and hundreds of
homes destroyed by bulldozers to enable tanks and armored vehicles
to move unhindered through the camp, while this same commander
allowed his soldiers to beat the people leaving them homeless
once again. That same commander later destroyed an additional
2,000 homes uprooting 16,000 people and assassinated 104 suspected
guerrillas without benefit of trial or jury. In 1982 this same
commander directed the bombing of civilian populations and oversaw
the massacres of 1,962 people at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps,
all infants, children, women, pregnant women, and the elderly,
many mutilated (The Crimes of Ariel Sharon, Counterpunch 2/7/04).
Was this Saddam? Was he the "little madman" in North
Korea? No, quite obviously, he is Bush's mentor in Israel, a
"man of peace" according to "W," Ariel Sharon.
Prior to the ascendancy of Ariel Sharon
to head the government of Israel, prospects for a peaceful settlement
existed. Sharon cripples any and all peace efforts and he does
so with the complicity of the US administration and our government.
He knowingly caused the current intifada by taking a 1000 IDF
entourage to the holy Al Aqsa Mosque understanding his act as
a defilement, and America said nothing, but the world looked
on and the world objected. He alone of all Israeli leaders has
used the full force of the Israeli military machine to subdue
a defenseless people who fight against all odds to retain even
a sliver of the land they owned before the state of Israel was
forced upon them, a military machine bought and paid for by our
tax dollars, and the world looks on and the world objects. He
instigated the creation of settlements in Palestinian territory
creating in the process groups of "terrorists" who
plague Palestinians on their own land under the protection of
the IDF, settlements paid for by our tax dollars, and the world
looks on and the world objects. He prevented the introduction
of UN Peace keepers as a means to resolve the crisis, and the
world observes and objects. He instituted the pernicious practice
of "extra judicial executions" that abandons the most
rudimentary principles of Western justice, and America adopts
that same pernicious practice in Iraq and Yemen, and the world
looks on and the world objects. He cries to the world that he
must defend Israelis against "terrorists" by any means
even as he crushes 30 to 40 Palestinian homes per month under
the relentless treads of America's paid for caterpillars, arrests
and detains young Palestinians without charge, allows torture
of some, accepts in silence the murder of international peace
observers, and America says nothing to this man Bush calls a
"man of peace," and the world looks on and the world
objects.
But the Arab world sees more than just
Sharon and his savage legacy; they see what Benny Morris, author
of Righteous Victims: a History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict
1881-2001, has revealed recently that confirms a planned
genocide against Palestinians by Ben Gurian and Moshe Carmel
as far back as 1948. The massacre at the Dahmash Mosque (July
11, 1948) that resulted in the deaths of 350 worshippers by the
89th Israel Commando Battalion commanded by Moshe Dayan exemplifies
the nature of the genocide and the savagery of its execution
as Dayan's forces stripped the dead of their valuables and tossed
the bodies out of the Mosque into the boiling sun (Gains, UK).
While the West bought the lies of the Israeli historians and
the media covered up the reality of "transference,"
what we now euphemistically call "ethnic cleansing,"
and what properly should be called massacre and theft, the release
of Ben Gurian's orders tells the truth and confirms what the
Arab world has said all along. That alone gives reason for the
world to see Israel as the cause of instability in the Mid-East
since it gives legitimacy to the cause of the Palestinians to
resist Israeli occupation and insist on return of the refugees.
Morris reveals, "In the months of April-May 1948, units
of Haganah (precursor of IDF) were given operational orders that
stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel
them and destroy the villages themselves" (Ari Shavit, Ha'aretz,
Sun. 2/15/04). When asked how many acts of massacre occurred,
Morris replied, 24, in Dawayima, Saliha, Deir Yassin, and Abu
Shusha, "Ben Gurian silenced the matter. He covered up for
the officers who did the massacres." Should not these revelations
force a reconsideration of America's one-sided support of Israel?
Doesn't Dean's observation that a more "even-handed"
approach seems justified and Kerry and Edwards' blind adherence
to an unanalyzed policy to a purported "democratic"
Israel and a "peaceful" Israel need reconsideration?
Now let's take a more selfish look at
the consequences this parasitic allegiance to Israeli interests
causes the American taxpayer. The Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs summarizes the amount of US tax dollars going to
Israel: $134, 791, 507, 200 from 1949 to 1997. Tom Malthaner
writes in "U.S. Aid to Israel: What U.S. Taxpayers Should
Know" (WRMER 2/16/04), "When grants, loans, interest
and tax deductions are added together for the fiscal year ending
in September 30, 1997, our special relationship with Israel cost
U.S. taxpayers over $10 billion." Using that figure, we
can increase US aid to Israel by 10 billion from 1997 to 2004
or something close to 200 billion in taxpayer support. Would
you believe that this is the conservative figure? David Francis
of the Christian Science Monitor notes that "Since
1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion.
If divided by today's population, that is more than $5,700 per
person." (CSM, 12/9/02). This, he points out, is an estimate
by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington, who
notes that this represents more than twice the cost of the Vietnam
War!
Considering that Israel is the 16th wealthiest
nation in the world with a per capita income just below that
of Britain and France, one has to ask why the American taxpayer
spends one-third of its foreign aid budget on Israel, a country
with a population only two thirds the size of New Jersey representing
1/1000 of the world's population; a give-away comparable to Bush's
tax relief program for the well-healed! For every dollar we spent
on an African since 1948 (a continent that desperately needs
foreign aid), we have donated to each and every Israeli standing
on the street corner, cup in hand, $250.65! (Adhaf Soueif, 11/03).
To put it another way, "The per capita U.S. foreign aid
to Israel's 5.8 million people (that doesn't include the 20%
Arab population living in the Israeli state) during the same
period was $10,775.48." (Richard Curtiss, "The Cost
of Israel to U.S. Taxpayers"). Turn that into dollars per
American taxpayer: the cost to each taxpayer up to 1997 amounts
to $23,240 per Israeli. A quarter of Israel's income comes from
the taxpayer in America. Perhaps they need it since they have
a higher life expectancy than that of the U.S.! But what if 10
billion were distributed to individual states? California could
use 10 billion and it has more than 34 million people not a paltry
5.8 and its land area far exceeds that of Israel. Now there's
bang for the buck! But Alan Cranston in 1984 created an amendment
to the U.S. Foreign Aid bill that compels the U.S. government
to provide Israel enough Economic Support Funds to meet its debt
burden to the United States, an act of generosity not offered
to California, the state he represented! And what have we gotten
for our investment?
Putting aside the origins of the state
of Israel that by itself could account for a major portion of
the hatred of the United States in the Arab world, Israel has
given the US taxpayer the following return on his/her investment:
(1) an absolute unwillingness to return
land stolen from the Palestinians during the 1967 war despite
UNSC resolutions demanding that return, leaving the indigenous
population with about 14% of the land they originally inhabited
before 1948, a time when the Palestinians owned all but 6% of
the land in Palestine and constituted 69% of the population,
the Jewish population in 1948 being only 806,000, a defiance
guaranteed to bring hatred not peace;
(2) an absolute defiance of more than
a hundred UN resolutions demanding that Israel abide by international
law and the Human Rights guarantees of the Geneva Accords, a
defiance guaranteed to bring distain not peace;
(3) a sadistic disregard for American
friendship and loyalty by its insidious use of spies against
America as the Jonathan Pollard case readily demonstrates and
David Tenenbaum before him, actions guaranteed to undermine the
taxpayers loyalty to Israel if this democracy had an uncensored
press;
(4) an absolute defiance of expected
behavior between allies by executing an act of war against America
in its attack on the U.S. Liberty in 1967, a crime covered up
by the Johnson administration as it acquiesced to Jewish interests,
a crime that almost forced the US into another war on behalf
of Israel, a crime that cost the American taxpayer untold amounts
of dollars even as it demonstrated to the world the extent the
Israeli government would go to protect its own interests;
(5) a sadistic strategy of infiltration
into US government affairs through the Neo-Con Cabal that worked
on behalf of Israeli interests as laid out in their advisory
report to the Israeli government, "Securing the Realm,"
that brought America to war against Iraq based on lies generated
by these men, an act guaranteed to bring hatred not peace to
the Mid-East;
(6) an open defiance of the American
government's desires regarding the invasion of the Jenin refugee
camp, the bulldozing of thousands of Palestinian homes, the murder
of international peace observers, and the construction of the
Israeli Wall, all defiance's that disregard American interests
and guarantee hatred of America not peace;
(7) an insidious desire to encourage
Evangelical Zionist Christians to invest millions in Settlements
that cause terrorism in Palestinian territory while inciting
hatred of Arabs by encouraging their fanatical beliefs in the
"Clash of Cultures" that will come with the fulfillment
of the prophecies of Revelation, actions guaranteed to rouse
deeper suspicion and hatred not peace;
(8) a defiance of the Arms Export Control
Act that provides US military hardware to Israel on condition
it be used only for defensive purposes by using US made cluster
bombs in 1982 against civilian targets in Lebanon, an action
guaranteed to cause hatred not peace;
(9) finally, and this brings us back
to the second issue that dominates this year's election debate,
a maneuvering of the agreements that provide Israel with taxpayers'
dollars, an arrangement that allows Israel to purchase military
equipment from Israeli manufacturers even though they are available
here in the US and an arrangement that requires that the US purchase
with Department of Defense funds military hardware from Israel,
an action that in effect ships American jobs to Israel, jobs
paid for by the taxpayer! Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul.
And we haven't mentioned here the sale by Israel of US classified
technology to Ethiopia, South Africa, Chile, Venezuela and China
contrary to the agreements made between the US and Israel (Shawn
Twing, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 4/96).
Why does this administration pretend
that it is in the best interests of this country to continue
to spend an estimated 10 billion a year on a relatively wealthy
people that is protected by the fourth largest military in the
world, one that possesses nuclear weaponry as well as chemical
and biological, for a population that is slightly larger than
the population of the city of Los Angeles? Wouldn't it be more
effective to force that state to make peace with its neighbors
by returning to the ideals that gave rise to its existence in
the first place, not the driven purpose of the Zionists, but
the compassionate values of Europe and America when it sought
to establish a homeland for Jews who had suffered for centuries
the racism that eventually resulted in the holocaust of WWII?
How can peace be brought to the Mid-East unless Europe and America
recognize that they bear responsibility for imposing a population
on an existing indigenous people, without their consent, who
were innocent of the evil done to the Jews in Europe? How can
peace arise when Palestinians look back at the forcible eviction
of 737,166 of their people in 1948 and, in 1967, an additional
69,000 from the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, a population
that has grown to over a million people now living in refugee
camps and denied both compensation for their stolen homes and
right of return that flaunts international law? Rights denied
are sores that infest the soul only to explode in vengeance and
retaliation.
But do we have a return to the compassion
that the world offered to the Jews? Do we address the consequences
of the actions that have given rise to the unrelenting horror
of oppression, occupation, and insane reaction that uses humans
as bombs? No! We have the erecting of an American taxpayer Wall,
an Israeli constructed "Wall of Fear" that creates
an Israeli Pogrom to encircle the most deprived in the world,
the mirror image of the suffering of the Jews at Terezin, and
the world sees fear on both sides--fear of imprisonment and deprivation
and fear of retaliation for wrongs inflicted. I empathize with
Shlomo Shmelzman when he cries, "I see bombs falling on
a city, on innocent civilians--men, women, children and babies.
Houses crumbling, dead bodies in the streets. I remember a morning
in September 1939, when my mother and I were running to my grandmother's
home, through the fire and smoke under a heavy bombardment, finding
our way between dead bodies lying in the streets of Warsaw. Too
many things in Israel remind me of too many other things from
my childhoodToday, as a citizen of Israel, I cannot accept the
systematic destruction of cities, towns, and refugee camps. I
cannot accept the technocratic cruelty of the bombing, destroying
and killing of human beings."
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner carried the
Albatross until "A spring of love gushed from my heart/
And I blessed them unaware/The self same moment I could pray/
And from my neck so free/ The Albatross fell off, and sank? Like
lead into the sea." And so must America bring peace by forging
an alliance with the Jews for Peace and their counterparts in
Palestine; when love and fairness guides our policy toward both
peoples, when love and fairness rise in our hearts "unawares,"
then will peace come to the Mid-East and America's Albatross
sink like lead into the sea. "He prayeth best who loveth
best/ All things both great and small./ For the dear God who
loveth us/ He made and loveth all."
William Cook
is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern
California. His new book, Psalms
for the 21st Century, was just published by
Mellen Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU
Weekend
Edition Features for February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
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