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Today's
Stories
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
January
27, 2004
Steve
Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with
CNN's Aaron Brown
Daniel
Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the
Lies from the Inside
C.G.
Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected
President?
Josh
Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke
Screens
Greg
Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again
Gilad
Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art
Mike
Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an
Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day
January
26, 2004
Sean
Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's
Drug War Zealot
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
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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February
4, 2004
Sharon's Favorite
Senator
Ron
Wyden and Israel
By MARK GAFFNEY
It is not often that we get to hold our elected
representatives accountable. And so, I was very happy for the
chance when Oregon Senator Ron Wyden recently made a public appearance
in Klamath Falls. Wyden fielded questions and generally impressed
me as a thoughtful, caring, and articulate individual, that is,
until I questioned him about the Mideast--at which point Wyden
dissembled and intelligence went flying out the window.
I had hoped to get some substantive answers,
because the official reasons given as justification for a bill
that would impose sanctions on the state of Syria just don't
add up. (For my former assessment see <http://www.counterpunch.org/gaffney11292003.html>)
Wyden voted for the measure passed by Congress last fall and
signed into law by President Bush in December.
In my view, the legislation is dangerous.
The bill authorizes a variety of cultural and economic sanctions
against Syria. It is dangerous because imposing sanctions is
an extreme foreign policy--only one step from war.
Nothing I heard from Wyden changed my
opinion that Israeli PM Ariel Sharon was the driving force behind
this bill. Not even the neo-cons in Washington initially wanted
it. The Bush administration announced its support--to save face--only
when the bill's passage became inevitable.
This bill renders absurd any further
talk about a roadmap for peace. There is no roadmap: Sharon tore
it to shreds last summer, and with this bill he has blown back
the pieces into Bush's face. Now armed with an obsequious US
Congress (one house in each pocket), Sharon is perfectly positioned
to wring even more aid/concessions from the White House.
The best that Wyden could do was blame
Syria for terrorism and recite the familiar litany of clichA(C)s
about Arafat. Notably, Wyden never mentioned the Israeli air
attack on a site near Damascus that occurred just days prior
to the House vote, a brazen act of war that hardly generated
a ripple of concern--forget criticism--here in the US. Sharon
probably ordered the attack, in part, just to show the Syrians
and the world that within the larger framework of US global hegemony
he has license in his own backyard to do almost anything he pleases.
The air attack was also a thumb in the eye of the US public,
which though it very much wants a just Mideast peace settlement
unfortunately hasn't yet discovered the disconnect in Washington
on the matter of Israel.
Wyden's lame defense of the sanctions
bill showed that he doesn't understand what he has unleashed.
Wyden seemed strangely unaware that by supporting Ariel Sharon
he himself is aiding and abetting a war criminal.
Bush called Sharon a*oea man of peace,a**
but the reality is very different. The record shows that Sharon
has in fact opposed every peace initiative in Israel's history.
Sharon did not earn his nickname a*oeArika** (the lion) by working
for a peaceful settlement--on the contrary. He was busily helping
to destroy peace talks years before the PLO even existed--the
PLO was founded in 1959--and long before Arafat had emerged on
the world scene. This is why the proclivity of Wyden and other
US politicians--both Democrat s and Republicans--to blame Arafat
and the PLO is a dodge. The truth is that Israel could have had
a peace treaty as early as the mid-1950s, if men like David Ben
Gurion and Moshe Dayan had wanted it. Peace was there for the
taking. All they had to do was reach out and grab it. And no
excuse is acceptable from liberals like Wyden for not knowing
this.
The standard history we all know is that
tiny Israel (David) was surrounded by the Arab behemoth (Goliath).
The problem with this picture is that it is a fairy tale. In
fact, Israel faced no significant military threats in the 1950s
from any of its Arab neighbors. What is more, during the period
1953-55, under the leadership of Prime Minister Moshe Sharett,
the only moderate leader Israel has ever had, the region probably
came closer to peace than at any time before or since.
True, Sharett was a Zionist. But, unlike
his rival David Ben Gurion , Sharrett knew Arabs very well. He
had had lived among them, he spoke Arabic, and thus he knew that
peace was possible. Shortly after becoming prime minister of
Israel in 1953, Sharett launched a historic peace mission with
Egyptian President Abdul Nasser. To everyone's surprise the talks
progressed rapidly, even to the stage of drafting a formal peace
treaty on refugee resettlement and the future status of Jerusalem.
Despite pervasive propaganda to the contrary,
there is no doubt that Nasser genuinely wanted peace with Israel.
US and UN diplomats who knew Nasser well later confirmed this.
Nasser wanted to focus his considerable energies on his nation's
many internal problems; and to do this he needed peace on his
northern border. In those days there was no talk of a Palestinian
state. The Palestinian issue was viewed strictly as a refugee
problem. For this reason Israel could have had peace on very
favorable terms; and because Nasser was the acknowledged leader
of the Arab world, a separate peace with Egypt would almost certainly
have led to a wider peace settlement, also on favorable terms.
The reason Sharrett's peace initiative
failed should be of interest to us, today. The facts reveal much
about the current Mideast disaster, and expose the dissembling
of US politicians like Wyden, who keep telling us that we don't
have peace because there is no one on the other side to talk
to: a lie.
Part of this complex story is told in
my book Dimona the Third Temple (see chapter 2). Also see Elmore
Jackson's Middle East Mission and Livia Rokach's important book,
Israel's Sacred Terrorism, largely based on Sharrett's personal
diaries.
Sharrett's peace initiative failed for
a simple reason: Israel's military chiefs, Defense Minister Pinhas
Lavon, Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, and others, decided on their
own that peace was not acceptable and took steps to prevent it.
In this they had the backing of former PM David Ben Gurion, who
supposedly had retired from politics to his desert retreat at
Sdeh Boker. Though Ben Gurion later denied any involvement, there
is no doubt that he actively encouraged the subsequent military
intrigues that doomed peace with Nasser and led to the disasters
that continue in our time.
Without PM Sharrett's knowledge or approval,
Dayan and Lavon ordered a series of military raids and adventures
along the Syrian border and in the West Bank, which at this time
was part of Jordan, and also in Egypt. One of these provocations
was the world's first airline hijacking. On December 12, 1954
Israeli warplanes forced a Syrian commercial airliner to land
in Israel, where passengers and crew were detained for two days,
until a storm of international protest brought about their release.
Israeli agents also staged terrorism
in Cairo. By chance, however, the Israeli spy ring was broken
up by Egyptian police after one of the agents triggered a bomb
prematurely. Several Israelis were captured and subsequently
convicted in a public court trial. Most of the accounts of this
intrigue, which became known as the Lavon Affair, succeed in
obscuring its true purpose, which was to murder Americans and
Brits and thereby to disrupt Nasser's ongoing diplomacy with
the western powers. The imbroglio was obviously a case of state-sponsored
terrorism.
Large-scale military attacks were also
launched along the Egyptian border. These were often led by Ariel
Sharon, who commanded the 101 force, an elite commando unit that
specialized in atrocities and massacres. Sharon's trademark was
dynamiting homes with the occupants entombed within. Entire villages
were destroyed in this way.
The justification given by Israel for
these heavy-handed raids were sporadic attacks on Israeli settlers
by Palestinians. And while it is certainly true that such attacks
occasionally happened, at no time did they pose a military threat
to Israel's existence. No doubt, some of these incidents were
the result of the enormous refugee problem. At this time more
than 200,000 Palestinians were crowded into camps in the Gaza
strip, with another 300,000 in the West Bank. It was only natural
that these refugees would wish to return to their homes and property,
of which they had been recently dispossessed. Nor is it surprising
that some of these encounters resulted in violence.
During this period, however, Israel's
massive attacks along the Egyptian border were out of all proportion
to the infiltration problem. Numerous entries in Moshe Sharrett's
personal diary reveal his shock and frustration, indeed his horror,
on discovering--always after the fact--that his peace policy
was being undermined at every step by members if his own cabinet.
Sharrett's military colleagues clearly
were not interested in grappling with the refugee issue. They
had far grander designs. Other entries describe the vociferous
exchanges in the party councils, as men like Dayan hatched plans
to dismember neighboring Lebanon, to seize the West Bank, to
annex Sinai, and to topple Nasser from power. It's clear that
the planning for Israel's part in the 1956 Suez War began as
early as 1953, and brought Sharrett into direct conflict with
Israel's military leadership. In the end Sharrett was outmaneuvered
and defeated, forced to resign even as Ben Gurion reassumed control
and forged ahead with the final planning for the 1956 War, not
to mention his secret program to develop nuclear weapons. It
is no wonder the Israeli government tried to block publication
of Sharrett's voluminous memoirs!
Ariel Sharon was a key player in these
events: a useful instrument, the willing means to subvert peace
talks.
The schemes for territorial expansion
hatched in the 1950s were played out in future wars. In 1982,
for instance, General Sharon finally brought to fruition the
plan to dismember Lebanon. Sharon was both the architect and
leader of the IDF's 1982 invasion of that country, which slaughtered
10-20,000 people, mostly civilians. This includes the massacre
of more than 1,000 Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee
camps in Beirut, for which Sharon was found personally responsible.
Only a legal technicality has prevented the International War
Crimes Tribunal from indicting him for his leading role: Sharon
is currently immune from prosecution because he is a standing
head of state.
The question we Americans should be asking
our elected representatives is: Why is this war criminal dictating
US foreign policy?
Clearly, the US role in the region will
not change for the better until we Americans confront our elected
representatives with the real history. We need to get in their
faces, talk truth to power, and do it in a respectful way.
Mark Gaffney
is the author of Dimona the Third Temple? (1989). a pioneering
study of the Israeli nuke program. His forthcoming book about
early Christianity, Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes, will be
released by Inner Traditions in May. He can be reached at:
Weekend
Edition Features for February 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
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