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Today's
Stories
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure, Yet? Bush, Security, Energy and Money
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
November 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
November 13, 2003
Jack McCarthy
Veterans
for Peace Booted from Vet Day Parade
Adam Keller
Report
on the Ben Artzi Verdict
Richard Forno
"Threat Matrix:" Homeland Security Goes Prime-Time
Vijay Prashad
Confronting
the Evangelical Imperialists
November 12, 2003
Elaine Cassel
The
Supremes and Guantanamo: a Glimmer of Hope?
Col. Dan Smith
Unsolicited
Advice: a Reply to Rumsfeld's Memo
Jonathan Cook
Facility
1391: Israel's Guantanamo
Robert Fisk
Osama Phones Home
Michael Schwartz
The Wal-Mart Distraction and the California Grocery Workers Strike
John Chuckman
Forty
Years of Lies
Doug Giebel
Jessica Lynch and Saving American Decency
Uri Avnery
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left
Website of the Day
Musicians Against Sweatshops
November 11, 2003
David Lindorff
Bush's
War on Veterans
Stan Goff
Honoring
Real Vets; Remembering Real War
Earnest McBride
"His
Feet Were on the Ground": Was Steve McNair's Cousin Lynched?
Derek Seidman
Imperialism
Begins at Home: an Interview with Stan Goff
David Krieger
Mr. President, You Can Run But You Can't Hide
Sen. Ernest Hollings
My Cambodian Moment on the Iraq War
Dan Bacher
The Invisible Man Resigns
Kam Zarrabi
Hypocrisy at the Top
John Eskow
Born on Veteran's Day
Website of the Day
Left Hook
November 10, 2003
Robert Fisk
Looney
Toons in Rummyworld: How We Denied Democracy to the Middle East
Elaine Cassel
Papa's Gotta Brand New Bag (of Tricks): Patriot Act Spawns Similar
Laws Across Globe
James Brooks
Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss
Thom Rutledge
The Lost Gospel of Rummy
Stew Albert
Call Him Al
Gary Leupp
"They
Were All Non-Starters": On the Thwarted Peace Proposals
November 8/9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
November 7, 2003
Nelson Valdes
Latin
America in Crisis and Cuba's Self-Reliance
David Vest
Surely
It Can't Get Any Worse?
Chris Floyd
An Inspector
Calls: The Kay Report as War Crime Indictment
William S. Lind
Indicators:
Where This War is Headed
Elaine Cassel
FBI to Cryptome: "We Are Watching You"
Maria Tomchick
When Public Transit Gets Privatized
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
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
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.
|
December
3, 2003
Who Caused the Palestinian
Diaspora?
Origins
of the Middle East Crisis
By GEORGE BISHARAT
In early October, I meandered the shores of Lake
Geneva, Switzerland with easy-laughing Mahmoud. We were bleary-eyed
from international travel, and from many hours of animated discussions
at our conference.
Scholars, lawyers and activists had converged
to explore ways to implement the rights of Palestinians to return
to and regain their homes, seized by Israel in 1948. This fate
had befallen Villa Harun ar-Rashid, the Jerusalem home of my
late grandfather, Hanna Ibrahim Bisharat. We had been inspired
by accounts of successful campaigns for housing restitution for
refugees and other dispossessed peoples in Bosnia, South Africa
and Rwanda.
The sky was leaden, the wind off the
slate lake bracing. But the fountain at the end of the lake lofted
exuberant white plumes of water toward the heavens, and seemed
to elevate with them our hopes and dreams for a more just and
peaceful future.
Little did we suspect that in other conference
rooms across the same city, Israelis and Palestinians had been
conducting covert, informal negotiations for two years toward
what are now touted as the "Geneva Accord." The agreement,
while envisioning a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, studiously avoids mention of the very rights Mahmoud and
I, and many others, are fighting to protect. The negotiators,
prominent private citizens, include former Israeli Justice Minister
Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Information and Culture Minister
Yasser Abed Rabbo.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has
vehemently attacked the unofficial pact, and the negotiators
have been condemned as irresponsible meddlers. The accord has
no chance of adoption in the immediate future.
Its principal objective may have only
been didactic: to teach Israelis there is an alternative to the
militaristic policies of Sharon.
The pointed silence regarding the Palestinian
right of return, however, means that an important opportunity
has been missed to apprise Israelis, and the world, of a critical
reality. No real or lasting peace will be achieved in the area
until Israel finally admits the long-denied truth, accepts moral
responsibility and apologizes for its forcible exile of Palestinian
refugees 55 years ago.
In 1948, three quarters of a million
Palestinians were driven from what became Israel, their homes,
land and possessions taken over by the new Jewish state. Most
were victims of direct military attacks, forcible expulsion orders
or a deliberate campaign of terror and intimidation, fueled by
actual massacres. A post-war internal report from the Haganah
(a quasi-official Jewish militia) stated that of 391,000 Palestinians
who had fled by June, 1948, some 73 percent had done so in response
to Jewish military operations.
Palestinian villagers were often attacked
at night, from two or three sides, while a road to the closest
Arab country was left open. Their flight was hastened by news
of massacres committed by Zionist forces, the most infamous of
which occurred on April 9, 1948 in Deir Yassin. Up to 254 mostly
unarmed Palestinians were slaughtered. Some were paraded in Jerusalem
on trucks before being executed.
Describing the July 10, 1948 attack on
Kweikat, near Haifa, a villager attested: "We were awakened
by the loudest noise we had ever heard, shells exploding and
artillery fire ... the whole village was in panic ... Most of
the villagers began to flee with their pajamas on. The wife of
Qasim Ahmad Said fled [mistakenly] carrying a pillow in her arms
instead of her child."
Exile involved more than material deprivation.
Palestinians lost their homes, belongings, fields, orchards,
workshops, possessions, professions -- but more than that they
lost their human dignity. Any people that has suffered massive
wrongs -- African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Jews -- understand
the special wound of victimization for who you are, not what
you have done.
Like slavery for African-Americans, internment
for Japanese-Americans and the Nazi holocaust for Jews, the "Nakba"
("Catastrophe") was a seminal event in the consciousness
of the Palestinian people. No act of the Palestinians justified
their expulsion. Their only "crime" was that they were
born Christians and Muslims in a place coveted by the Zionist
movement for an exclusive Jewish state, and refused to slink
off into history as a vanquished people.
As Israel's first prime minister, David
Ben Gurion, once candidly admitted to a colleague: "If I
were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That
is natural: We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it
to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs.
We come from Israel, it's true, but 2,000 years ago, and what
is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler,
Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing:
We have come here and stolen their country." (The comment
was made to Nahum Goldmann, as reported in the latter's book,
"The Jewish Paradox.")
The U.N. quickly affirmed the right of
the Palestinians to choose to return to their homes, or to receive
compensation and support for resettlement. Israel stone-walled
the entire international community, rejecting virtually any return
by the refugees of 1948, a position the U.S. delegate to the
U.N. Conciliation Committee on Palestine denounced as "morally
reprehensible."
An official Israeli Transfer Committee
under Yosef Weitz mobilized to block the return of Palestinian
refugees, orchestrating the obliteration of entire Palestinian
villages, or their resettlement with Jewish immigrants.
The Transfer Committee also devised a
propaganda plan to justify Israel's rejection of the right of
return. Israel soon claimed that Palestinians left their homes
after radio broadcasts by Arab leaders bidding them to evacuate.
Later review of broadcast transcripts proved this claim to be
a fabrication. Israel argued that Jewish emigration from Arab
countries, some of which flowed to Israel, constituted a "population
exchange" that compensated for its expulsion of the Palestinians
-- as if two wrongs made a right.
Israel also blamed Arab states for "failing
to resettle Palestinian refugees" -- something the Palestinians
themselves actively resisted. Five and a half decades later,
Palestinian refugees and their offspring number 5.5 million people.
Israel's denial of responsibility for
the refugees, and rejection of their repatriation -- unchallenged
by the new "Geneva Accord" -- is, at this stage, as
galling and hurtful as the original expulsion itself. The pain
of denial should be intuitively understood by victims of the
Nazi holocaust -- indeed, by all of us who are repelled by denial
of that terrible episode in history.
Thus the chances for long-term peace
and reconciliation would be greatly advanced if the Israeli government
were to stop hiding the truth. As remote as peace seems today,
halting the 55-year cover-up and apologizing would place peace
negotiations between the two peoples on an entirely different
ground. At this stage, the dream of return to Palestine is for
many Palestinians a shield against despair, and recognition of
the right to return a matter of great principle. A sincere Israeli
apology would be a milestone toward reconciliation that no Palestinian
could ignore.
Formidable obstacles lie in the path
to apology. Many Israelis doubt that Israel deliberately expelled
the Palestinians. But many others -- elders who remember the
events of 1948, or others who have read histories of the period
based on recently declassified documents -- know the truth.
More difficult are Israeli fears about
the consequences of such an admission, especially the possible
return of large numbers of Palestinians to Israel, and the attendant
threat to the Jewish character of their state. Yet establishing
an ethnically exclusive state in someone else's country may not
be a "right" that merits protection. Accepting back
refugees, who would form a larger Palestinian minority in Israel
than has been deemed ideal for Jews, may be the price Israel
must pay for establishing a Jewish state in Arab Palestine.
Nor would an apology inevitably cause
the return of millions of Palestinian refugees. It is entirely
possible that, with the dignity of Palestinian refugees ameliorated
by an apology, Palestinians' decisions regarding actual return
would be based on more purely pragmatic grounds.
Of course, part of Israel's political
elite may still seek exclusive Jewish control over all of former
Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip. If so -- and
there is much in current Israeli policy that supports such an
inference -- apology is the furthest thing from their minds,
and the regional forecast is for blood. One must place hope in
the small but growing number of Israelis who see through the
curtain of fear behind which their leaders hide their expansionist
policies, and in the desires of manyother Israelis to live a
simple life of peace.
I can add personal testimony to the power
of apology. Last May, I wrote about going to visit my grandparents'
home in Jerusalem, and my exchanges with its Jewish residents,
and their attempts to deny my family's connection to our home.
After my story was published, I heard from three other Israelis
who had lived there after its expropriation in 1948. Two of the
three discussed the home only casually, without acknowledging
my family's dispossession.
But the third person was different. His
message to me began: "I read your article with special interest,
and with an odd, but distorted sense of connection to you."
He explained that he was a native-born Israeli, and while a member
of the Haganah during the 1948 war, was stationed in Villa Harun
ar-Rashid for a period of three months. He ended by saying that
he would like to meet me, and apologize for the taking of my
family's home.
Fortunately, the gentleman lived nearby
and, indeed, we met. After an hour of friendly conversation,
this dear man reached across the table, extending his hand, and
said: "I am sorry. I was blind. What we did was wrong, but
I participated in it and I cannot deny it." He added: "
I owe your family three months rent," and we both broke
into laughter.
It is hard to fully describe what I experienced.
But vindication was secondary to the tremendous surge of admiration
I felt for this man's moral courage. I was inspired, truly, to
match his humanity. Just that response, writ large, is what awaits
Israel if it could bring itself to apologize to the Palestinians.
There is an untapped reservoir of Palestinian magnanimity and
good will that could transform the relations between the two
peoples, and make things possible that are not possible today.
George Bisharat is a law professor at
the University of California's Hastings College of Law in San
Francisco.
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
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