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Today's
Stories
November 10, 2003
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
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
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.
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November
10, 2003
"We Didn't Know"
Will be No Excuse
Israel's
New War Machine Opens the Abyss
By JAMES BROOKS
Israel's occupation of the Palestinian Territories
passed through a profound transformation during the last several
months. Through a series of policy changes and military orders,
the West Bank "security fence" has gradually revealed
itself to be the backbone of a comprehensive new system of land
theft, imprisonment, collective punishment...and worse. The question
is not whether it is a "political fence" or a "security
fence", but whether it is an engine of ethnic cleansing.
In the past ninety days Israel has established
a clear pattern of using its "security fence" to deny
Palestinian farmers access to their own lands. Much of the olive
harvest in the northern West Bank hangs dead on the trees because
farmers have been 'caged' for weeks at a time. Entire villages
have been issued permits to farm that give them as little as
two days outside the barrier - for the entire year. Even if you
have a permit, you must hope the soldiers open the gate for a
few minutes on your appointed day, and open it again when you
return from your labors.
In the past sixty days, Israel revealed
its willingness to use deadly force to protect its "fence".
It relaxed its rules of engagement, and shot an unarmed Palestinian
dead for disobeying orders; he touched the wall.
In the past thirty days, Israel issued
new military orders that obliterate the rights of Palestinians
left outside the barriers to live in their own homes. The orders
expropriate their land, and all Palestinian land west of the
"security fence", to create a "closed zone"
open only to Jews and citizens of Israel. All others, including
the people who live there, must apply for a permit from the Israeli
army. By the end of next year, at least 210,000 Palestinians
are expected to be subject to similar orders.
No longer content to chop away at Palestine
until it eventually disappears, Israel is now using the "security
fence" as a vehicle for the more rapid and overt methods
of large-scale ethnic cleansing. This grave step ushers in the
terminal stage of the cleansing process, in which years of organized
persecution, brutality, bigotry and theft, all the patriotic
acts required in the effort to dehumanize another people, finally
succeed in radically dehumanizing the perpetrators. At this point,
it is simple to use the bureaucracy of the state to erase a people's
very existence. With the stroke a pen, an entire region can be
"Judaized", with assurance that the necessary consequences
will follow in time.
They wouldn't actually do this, right?
They wouldn't push another quarter of a million Palestinians
right off their land, not now. The people will get their permits.
Right?
Let's put it in perspective.
By the end of this summer, Israel's occupation
had reduced the Palestinian people to the poverty and malnutrition
levels of sub-Saharan Africa, according to studies by the UN,
the World Bank, and CARE International. The UN Special Rapporteur
on the right to food said in mid-October, "The occupied
Palestinian territories are on the verge of humanitarian catastrophe
as a result of extremely harsh military measures...There can
be no justification for harsh internal closures that prevent
people from having access to food and water; otherwise the imposition
of such military measures amount[s] to what has been called a
'policy of starvation'.."
Israel's incredibly dense network of
army checkpoints, "flying" checkpoints, roadblocks
and barriers has made travel for Palestinians in the West Bank
almost impossible. A five-mile trip can take all day, waiting
at checkpoints for hours on end out in the open, no shelter provided.
It often doesn't matter if you're having a baby or bleeding to
death from an Israeli-inflicted wound - you wait. So far, thirty-one
"checkpoint babies" have perished. (On the other hand,
any Jew can use the bypass roads and get from one side of the
West Bank to the other in minutes.)
Since Israel signed the Oslo Accords,
the settler population has doubled to 390,000, strewn over a
thick web of at least 145 settlements and their interconnecting
Jewish-only roads, blanketing the Palestinian West Bank. Since
the beginning of the Second Intifada three years ago, the Israeli
army has been systematically wrecking Palestinian infrastructure
throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Water mains, wells, and pumping
stations, sewage systems, telephone and internet hubs, markets,
airports, police stations, roads, civic buildings, mosques and
churches, all have felt the special attentions of Israel's bulldozers,
bomb teams, helicopter gunships, and F-16s. It's a slow-motion
version of what Gulf War I did to Iraq.
The army goes virtually everywhere, usually
raiding two or three cities or villages every day and night,
leaving a string of casualties and appalling human rights abuses
rarely reported by the American media. The death toll of innocent
civilians, children, mothers, grandfathers, mounts daily, in
ones and twos and fours that slip through the cracks of the wire
services, or are entombed as eleventh-paragraph filler in policy-and-politics
stories.
Over 41,000 Palestinian civilians have
been wounded by Israeli fire in the last three years. Americans
don't understand how constant it is, how the occupation teems
round-the-clock, 24/7, month in, month out, leaving an ever-larger
trail of both indiscriminate and calculated destruction. Even
when they say they've withdrawn, or relaxed the curfews and closures,
they haven't. In Palestine, falling for those old lies can get
you killed.
Do you think this is an army that likes
to issue permits to civilians? No, this is an army that likes
to demand permits, especially permits the "subject"
cannot produce. And that is precisely the game they play.
A Palestinian must always have her ID
card ready, to indicate her "Bantustan" assignment.
If she has a West Bank ID, she cannot go to Jerusalem or Israel
except for rare medical care. If she lives in Jerusalem, she
may be issued a West Bank ID instead. That will be used later
to prove that she is illegally residing in the Holy City, which
is cause to demolish her home and seize her land for Israeli
"military purposes". It is policy to give her five
minutes to retrieve her belongings.
Wherever she lives, she almost certainly
will not receive a permit to build or change her home. If she
does so anyway, that is cause for the Israeli army to demolish
it. Even houses hundreds of years old require permits in some
areas, which the army almost never issues. These homes are also
subject to demolition at Israel's convenience. And if a Palestinian's
home lies in the path of a new Israeli road, settlement expansion,
or the massive "security fence" project, that is cause
to demolish the home and seize the land outright, sometimes with
no pretext at all. This has been going on steadily for many years,
as part of a larger accelerating project of land theft and dispossession
that Israelis call "Judaization".
Now the "security fence" is
carving out broad new areas of dispossession, invisibly creating
tens of thousands of new permits that will never be issued. It
is transforming the landscape of Israel's aggression from a study
in many miniatures into a work of more sweeping scope, perhaps
ultimately worthy of Delacroix, or, since this is not art, but
real, death-worshipping life, Speer. Israel is on course to render
almost 15,000 Palestinians homeless this year. Why not 200,000
next?
US politicians from Howard Dean to Dick
Cheney support the "fence" as part of Israel's "right
to defend herself". But most would "prefer" it
built along the Green Line, the recognized Palestinian boundary
since 1967. Meanwhile, "it is imperative" that America
continue to pay Israel billions of dollars a year to wage war
on civilians inside that same Green Line. Denial is the seat
of hypocrisy.
Perhaps you'you've read that the "fence"
deviates from the Green Line by "a few miles in places",
and imagined that Israel was just taking a little land again.
Israel is taking a lot of land again. A projected 45% of the
West Bank will be in Israeli hands when the project is complete.
Bush and Powell find that "troublesome".
On October 28, an official from the Israeli
Defence Ministry announced that the barrier will now extend 450
miles, nearly five times longer than the Berlin Wall. And that's
not including the 'eastern fence' beginning to amputate the Jordan
Valley into Israel's waiting slop bucket. When it's all done,
perhaps by the end of next year, there will be three walled Palestinian
islands controlled by the Israeli army; one north, one south,
and a tiny enclave around Jericho, marooned inside the Zionists'
dream; a Greater Israel reaching from the Mediterranean to the
Jordan River at least.
The Israeli official offered an estimate
of $1.6 billion for the cost of the "fence", but, according
to Israel's Business Arena (Globes), he also explained that this
figure does not include the cost of the 'eastern fence', or the
barrier's terminals, or anything else involved in making the
damn thing operational. At the end of the briefing, the official
said that "the fence, including the east and west fences,
the terminals, and maintenance" would cost 15 billion shekels
($3.3 billion), "which Israel would have trouble meeting."
But of course the US media immediately agreed that the price
tag is $1.6 billion. Perhaps it "looks better".
It's possible the US will make good on
its threats to deduct costs of the "fence" from the
$9 billion in loan guarantees it pledged to Israel this summer.
Apparently the deductions will be only for certain short sections
that cause greatest US "concern". One of the few points
of sharp disagreement is the wall around Ben-Gurion Airport.
The US says the wall is not necessary to protect planes from
shoulder-fired missiles. Israel says it is.
Following the pattern of similar "adjustments"
for settlement construction, the modest deductions will probably
be arranged entirely for Israel's convenience. Finance Minister
Netanyahu has said that he is unlikely to use much more than
a third of the three billion dollars in loan guarantees available
this year. So the US could deduct even the "whole"
cost of the project ("$1.6 billion") from this year's
loan guarantees, and Israel wouldn't miss a red cent.
I recommend the reader study some maps
of the "security fence" to get a stronger feel for
the shape of the very near future. For a good picture of what
it will look like when completed, see Gush Shalom's general map
(1) or Foundation for a Middle East Peace's highly detailed projection
(2). B'tselem just published some updated maps that are very
good (3). And now we finally have one from the Israeli Defence
Ministry itself (4).
Unlike the smooth and coherent lines
of devastation portrayed by Gush Shalom's general maps, the details
of the IDM map reveal the shaky, recursive scratchings of an
obsessed old man, soon to be superimposed upon the Holy Land
as a 300-meter wide security zone, complete with trenches, electronic
sensors, motion detectors, infra-red cameras, razor wire, and
the actual barrier, be it fence, electric fence, or a 10- to
26-foot tall concrete wall, replete with guard towers.
The IDM map is a little out of date,
and it coyly shows only half the plan, but it is revealing nonetheless.
It projects the western side of the West Bank cracking apart
with interior barriers, leaving thirteen areas totally walled
in by the back-tracking scrawl, further separating Jews from
Palestinians, and Palestinians from other Palestinians.
Of course, every kilometer of "fence"
will have to be maintained by the Israeli army. So the fence
will permanently insert the army within the West Bank. If a more
forward base is required, Israel need only build another wall
to encircle it. Soon we will be hearing about the "natural
growth of the security fence".
It is not a "fence", nor a
"wall", nor a "barrier" at all, but a machine
of war, a forward basing system for the Israeli army and the
geographical superstructure for an accelerated campaign of starvation,
dispossession, and ethnic cleansing.
As one stares at the maps, absorbing
the hideous geography, two fat fists begin to emerge, one north,
one south, clutching the innards of the West Bank in a death-grip.
Now the fists begin to sprout fingers, worming through the flesh,
ripping apart the tissue of the people.
If you imagine that some new "peace
initiative" or act of Congress or the UN or the silly ditherings
of Bush are going to halt this US-sponsored nightmare before
the end of next year, you simply haven't been paying attention.
In today's world, only one force possesses both the potential
morality and the power required to stop this monumental crime.
And it is something you should already have: outraged public
opinion. You must rain it down upon the heads of this blind government
like a torrent, or else surrender to the shame, and the consequences.
Sources
1. http://gush-shalom.org/thewall/index.html
2. http://www.fmep.org/reports/2003/v13n4.html#map
3.http://www.btselem.org/English/Separation_Barrier/Map.asp
4. http://www.seamzone.mod.gov.il/Pages/ENG/map_eng.htm
James Brooks
is a writer, activist, webmaster, and former business owner.
Articles have been published by several web sites covering the
Middle East, investigative journalism and alternative politics.
Currently Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters
for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel and publishes News Links,
a free, once-daily (Mon-Sat) e-mail digest of in-depth Middle
East news and commentary. To subscribe, contact jamiedb@attglobal.net.
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 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
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