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in September
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Featuring Essays by:
Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander
Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More
Today's
Stories
Uri Avnery
Hero of War and Peace
Recent
Stories
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
Mustache
August
11, 2003
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland Security for Whom?
Mickey
Z.
Bush's Progress
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Meet the New Bitch, Same
as the Old
Elaine
Cassel
Indicting DNA
Dr. Mohammad
Omar Farooq
Civil Liberties and Uncivil Super-Patriotism
Uri
Avnery
Who Will Save Abu Mazen?
Website
of the Day
RIAA Subpoena Clearinghouse
August
9 / 10, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
California's Glorious Recall!
Saul
Landau
Bush and King Henry
Gary
Leupp
On Terrorism, Methodism, "Wahhabism"
and the Censored 9/11 Report
Paul de
Rooij
The Parade of the Body Bags
Michael
Egan
History and the Tragedy of American Diplomacy
Rob Eshelman
A Home of Our Own
Daoud
Kuttab
Life as an ID Card
Philip
Agee
Terror and Civil Society: Instruments of US Policy in Cuba
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Marc Racicot: Bush's Main Man
Walt Brasch
Schwarzenegger, "Hollyweird"
and the Rigtheous Right
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush, Bribery and Berlusconi
Josh Frank
Mean, Mean Howard Dean
Elaine
Cassel
Will the Death Penalty Ever Die?
Sean Carter
Total Recall
Poets'
Basement
Hamod, Engel, Albert
August
8, 2003
John
Chuckman
What the US Says Goes
Roberto
Barreto
Defend the Vieques 12!
Bruce Gagnon
Iraq War Emboldens Bush Space Plans
Elaine
Cassel
The Reign of John Ashcroft
Dave
Lindorff
Snoops Night Out
Website
of the Day
Zero Boy
August
7, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
It the US a "Terrorist Magnet?"
Toni
Solo
Neo-liberal Nicaragua: a New Banana
Republic
Adam Lebowitz
Hiroshima Commemorated: the View from Japan
Hanan
Ashrawi
When the Bully Whines
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Conscience Takes a Holiday
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Lets Slip: Iraq Not Behind 9/11; No Ties to Al-Qaeda
Mike Kimaid
What's the Score?
Elaine
Cassel
The Smell of VICTORY: Ashcroft's Latest Stinkbomb
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
August 6, 2003
Steve
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause: It's Not
Easy Confronting King Coal
David
Krieger
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Robert
Fisk
The Ghosts of Uday and Qusay
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's War on the National Forests
Elaine
Cassel
No Fly Lists
Stan
Goff
Military Equipment and Pneumonia
Hugh Sansom
An Open Letter to Nicholas Kristof on the Nuking of Japan
August
5, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Prisoner of Ramallah: Arafat at
74
Forrest
Hylton
Terrorism and Political Trials: the
View from Bolivia
Ray
McGovern
"We Cook Estimates to Go"
David
Morse
Poindexter's Gambit
Edward
Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
George
W. Bush
My Darn Good Resumé
Hammond
Guthrie
It's Incremental, Watson!
Website
of the Day
National Prayer Day
August 4, 2003
Bruce
K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by
Airport Cops: My Story
David
Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security
Mark
Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody
James
Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail
Mickey
Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush
Bruce
Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's
Pimps for the White House
August
2 / 3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
August
1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape
Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
Prison Rape
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq
Wayne
Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix
Robert
Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico
Website
of the Day
Stop Prisoner Rape
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
Wars
Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
of the Day
Army of One?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
Hot Stories
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
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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August
18, 2003
First Self-Respect,
Then Peace
Hero
in War and Peace
By URI AVNERY
Sometimes a single sentence is enough to reveal
a person's mental world and intellectual profundity. Such a sentence
was uttered by Shaul Mofaz, the Minister of Defense, some days
ago during a visit to the Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip.
"With our enemies, it seems, no
shortcuts are possible. Egypt made peace with Israel only after
it was defeated in the Yom Kippur War. That will happen with
the Palestinians, too."
This means that there is no political
solution. There is only war, and in this war we must "defeat"
the Palestinians. A simple, simplistic, not to say primitive,
view.
But the revealing sentence is: "Egypt
made peace with Israel only after it was defeated in the Yom
Kippur War".
Revealing, because it utterly contradicts
the almost unanimous view of all the experts in Israel and around
the world--historians, Arabists and military commentators. These
believe that the exact opposite is true: Anwar Sadat was able
to lead Egypt towards peace only because he was admired as the
commander who had defeated Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Only
after the Egyptian people had won back their national pride were
they able to consider peace with the enemy (with us).
When the war broke out, the Egyptians
did something that amazed the world and shook Israel: they crossed
the Suez Canal and overcame the celebrated "Bar-Lev line".
Everybody considered this a brilliant military feat. The stupidity
of Israeli army intelligence and the arrogant complacency of
Prime Minister Golda Meir allowed the Egyptians to achieve total
surprise, destroy a large number of tanks and pin down the Israeli Air force. The Minister of Defense,
Moshe Dayan, was in shock and talked about the "destruction
of the third Jewish state". (In traditional Jewish historiography,
the first two Jewish states are symbolized by the first and second
temple in Jerusalem.)
In the course of the war, the tide turned
and, in the end, the Israeli army crossed the Canal into Egypt.
At the end of the war, Israeli troops were established on the
western shore, but large Egyptian forces remained to their rear,
on the eastern side. This week a long-delayed official study
by the Israeli army was leaked. It declares unequivocally that
Israel had "not won that war".
But the professional military analysis
is not so important in this context. What is important is how
the events appear to the Egyptian consciousness and affect their
actions since then.
I succeeded in reaching Cairo on the
morrow of Sadat's sensational visit to Jerusalem, and found myself
in a city drunk with joy, in some kind of delirious popular carnival.
Over the main streets stretched hundreds of slogans celebrating
the act of the president. Every commercial corporation felt duty-bound
to hang such a slogan with a peace message.
The one slogan that outnumbered all others
was "Anwar Sadat: Hero of War and Peace".
The Egyptian people would not have supported
peace, if they had considered it a surrender to the diktat
of an arrogant enemy. Only the crossing of the Canal four years
earlier, which Egyptians consider one of the greatest victories
in all the 8000 years of their history, enabled them to accept
the agreement as a compromise between equals, without loss of
honor. Like many other nations, the Egyptians--and all other
Arabs--consider national dignity the most important treasure.
Perhaps Mofaz should go to Cairo and
visit the round building that houses the museum of the Ramadan
War (as Arabs call the Yom Kippur War). There he will see an
exciting, emotion-laden display of the crossing of the Canal.
Every day the place is thronged with people, especially school-children.
If one wants to draw a parallel between
the Egyptians and the Palestinians, as Mofaz tries to do, the
conclusion would be: only after the Palestinians win back their
national self-respect, will they be able to make peace with Israel.
The first intifada, which Palestinians consider a victorious
struggle against the immense might of the Israeli army, allowed
them to accept the Oslo agreement. Only the second intifada,
which has already proved that the Israeli army cannot subdue
the Palestinian uprising, enabled them to accept the Road Map,
which is supposed to bring about peace between the Israeli and
the coming Palestinian state.
On a related topic: On the eve of the
thirtieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Israeli newspapers
are full of revelations about it. Among them is the disclosure
that I saved the life of Moshe Dayan. That surprised me, as it
would have surprised Dayan, if he were still living. But it appears
to be true.
The facts are revealed by Amir Porat,
the former communication officer and personal confidant of Shmuel
Gonen (universally known as "Gorodish"), who was in
charge of Southern Command during the war. Later, when the public
was looking for a scapegoat for the terrible initial defeat,
the main blame was put on Gorodish. He was dismissed from his
command and nobody was prepared to listen to his side of the
story. All the media boycotted him.
This man, who practically overnight had
fallen from the height of glory (as one of the heroes of the
1967 Six Day War) to the depths of ignominy, was in despair.
He blamed Dayan for the injustice done to him. In the end he
made an appointment with him, planning to shoot him and then
himself.
At the very last moment, one day before
the fateful meeting, Haolam Hazeh correspondent Rino Tzror arranged
a meeting between us. At the time I was editor-in-chief of this
newsmagazine, the only medium in the country that was truly independent
of the establishment. We had a reputation for supporting the
underdog and challenging the powers that be. I talked with him
at length. During the whole conversation he toyed with his pistol.
Gorodish was very far from my political
views, he was a right-wing person, an out-and-out militarist,
but I became convinced that the official inquiry into the war
had indeed done him a shocking injustice. Therefore I promised
to help him getting his side of the story across. He saw that
the whole world was not closed to him. Having someone listening
to his side of the story and promising to publish it relieved
his despair and made him give up the idea of killing Dayan and
committing suicide. I published a large article under the headline
"The Israeli Dreyfus".
This affair has its ironic side. In the
whole of Israel, no one was more opposed to Dayan than I. More
than anyone else (except Ben-Gurion and his sidekick, Shimon
Peres) Dayan laid down in the 1950s the anti-Arab tracks on which
Israel is moving to this very day. In the pages of Haolam Hazeh
I attacked him relentlessly, writing hundreds of articles against
him, exposing his illegal traffic in stolen archeological finds
and his private peccadilloes that endangered the security of
the state. And in the end it appears that I saved his life.
Back to the main point: The Yom Kippur
War did not lead to the "destruction of the third state",
as Dayan had prophesied, but to peace with Egypt, after its national
honor had been restored. If Sharon and the army command succeed
in disrupting the hudna (truce) and bring about the renewal
of the intifada, they will not break the Palestinians,
who will refuse to submit. And after large-scale bloodshed, Yasser
Arafat will make a speech in the Knesset, as did Sadat, the "Hero
of War and Peace".
Uri Avnery
is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He
is one of the writers featured in The
Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. One of his
essays is also included in Cockburn and St. Clair's forthcoming
book: The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
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