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April 10, 2002
Michael Neumann
Israelis and Indians
April 9, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
Colin
Powell's Table Talk
Matt Vidal
Thomas Friedman,
Another Wasted Pulitzer
Ron Jacobs
Buyer
Beware
Robert Jensen
I Helped Kill a Palestinian
Vijay
Prashad
Memories
of Barbarity:
Sharonism and September
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
April 8, 2002
David
Vest
From
Birmingham to Nashville:
The Making of Tammy Wynette
Rick Giombetti
Paxil, Suicide and Science
Dr. Neve
Gordon
Letter
to an IDF Colonel:
How Did You Become
a War Criminal?
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's Top 10 CDs
Jordy
Cummings
Not
in My Name Anymore
Gavin Keeney
Bush and the Middle East:
Mouth Wide Shut
Edward
Said
The
Future of Palestine
April 7, 2002
Beth Daoud
Accompanying Ambulances
in Bethlehem
Nancy
Stohlman
After
the Invasion:
The Search for Bread
Among the Ruins
Thomas Mountain
"Yellow Peril" In Hawai'i:
Judge Orders Chains and Shackles for Chinese Witnesses
Tariq
Ali
Who
Killed Daniel Pearl?
April 6, 2002
Philip Farruggio
War, Snake Oil and Circuses
Viktor
Litovkin
Russian
Generals Raise Questions About Pentagon Victories in Afghanistan
Patrick Cockburn
CIA Survey of Iraqi Airfields
May Herald Attack
Walt Brasch
Oil
Slick George:
Bush-whacking the Environment
Ralph Nader
Campaign Finance Sham
Sam Bahour
The
Blind Leading the Criminal
Bill Christison:
A Former CIA Official on
Oil and the Middle East
April 5, 2002
Charmaine
Seitz
In
Ramallah: The Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On
Nancy Stohlman
The Invasion of Bethlehem
and Our Tax Dollars at Work
Beth Daoud
The
Siege of Bethlehem:
"What Do You Mean God Is Punishing Me?"
Fareed Marjaee:
Demonizing Iran
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Philip
Morris to Canada:
"Drop Dead"
Alex Lynch
Tampa Campus Mirrors
Middle East Strife
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon's
Wars: How the
News Gets Through
April 4, 2002
Ray Hanania
Sharon's Latest Lie About the Church
of the Nativity
Mike Leon
Rightwing
Assault on Madison Progressives Misfires
Tom Turnipseed
Stop the Killing Now!
Nancy
Stohlman
An
American Under Siege in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Christopher Reilly
Kissinger, Chile and Justice
at Long Last?
M. Shahid
Alam
The
Lies of Thomas Friedman
April 3, 2002
Don Henley
Dear Loathsome Trade Hacks
Bernard
Weiner
An
American Jew Talks
About His Shame
David Vest
Sting of Stings
Gabriel Ash
America's Bravest
John Chuckman
Of
War, Islam and Israel
Robert Fisk
The Siege of Bethlehem
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Sins of the Church
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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April 10, 2002
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians
By M. Junaid Alam
With Israeli troops currently ravaging entire
Palestinian cities, urinating in homes, beating civilians, strapping
them to tanks as human shields, shooting them like dogs in the
streets--in a word, defending civilization--American pundits
have come up with a timely answer to the situation: blame the
Palestinians.
Who is responsible for Sharon being put
into power, but the wicked Palestinians who forced the poor Israelis
to elect him; who is being called to "end terror" as
Palestinian civilians starve and bleed to death in the streets,
but a man literally hiding behind barb wires in a shelled-out
compound, Yassir Arafat.
The gravest offense of the dark-hearted
and dark-skinned Palestinians, however, is suicide bombing. Op-ed
writers feign absolute horror, disbelief, and disgust at this
most inhumane act, assuring us that no people on earth now or
ever before were capable of such hatred, save the Palestinians.
A week and a half into an Israeli invasion that has left 200
Palestinian slaughtered, media experts invite representatives
of the Palestinian people on television, only to interrogate
them like Al-Qaeda detainees about this heinous crime of suicide
bombing. Every assessment of the conflict begins and ends with
denunciations of the suicide bombings, with nothing in between
but the occasional clearing of the throat to emphasize the moral
authority of the assertion. But do these moralistic tirades contain
a single ounce of consistency, sincerity, or truth in them? Let
us see if such is the case.
Though I hesitate to slander the American
establishment with the vile accusation of compassion, it is only
reasonable to suppose that their talking heads oppose suicide
bombings because it targets and kills civilians. But something
is clearly amiss: where is the mere mention of Palestinian casualties
in this conflict? Few, if any, of our self-appointed guardians
of civilization and democracy mourn the massacre of hundreds,
and the dispossession of hundreds of thousands, at the hands
Jewish terrorist groups and militias expelled the Palestinian
natives from their villages from 1947-1949. Even less is said
about the thugs who dominate the illegal settlements stabbed
into the bleeding heart of Palestinian territory by Israel today.
There are no grandiloquent speeches about the further expropriations
of Palestinian land and property that began in 1967, and continue
to this day. Moshe Dayan, the prestigious IDF commander who gleefully
gloated: "There is not one single place built in this country
that did not have a former Arab population.", must be smiling
in his grave at this double-standard.
Clearly, the house demolitions, settlement
expansions, and ethnic cleansing campaigns target civilians.
And even more clearly, the Israeli army, responsible for more
than five-fold the civilian casualties than suicide bombers,
has always targeted civilians, at least according to every human
rights group that has monitored them. Their shooting of ambulances,
international protesters, and reporters, prevention of the wounded
from receiving treatment, and deliberate sniping of civilians
outside of their homes during curfew is not exactly damning counter-evidence.
Based on the above, it is impossible
for us to say that the op-ed writers and media analysts revile
suicide bombing because it kill civilians, or else their sympathy
would extend to the far more numerous Palestinian civilian victims.
This represents a problem--or so it would seem. In reality there
is a very simple answer: for many commentators, Palestinians
simply aren't human. This postulation solves much of the dilemma:
after all, it is no great crime to mistreat, kick around, shoot
and maim mere sub-human animals. Especially the smaller ones,
as they make for much more difficult kills--and thus excellent
target practice.
But what about the more 'moderate' section
of the propagandizing class? Surely not all of them are so cruel.
No, some other sentiment must be behind their deep, heartfelt
moral qualms. Perhaps some experts abhor suicide bombings because
the subject deliberately kills him or herself in the process,
ending his or her life intentionally. But is this satisfactory?
How is it possible for the same analyst to dismiss the deaths
and dispossession of thousands of Palestinians, only to express
great moral consternation at the lost life of one? I remember
seeing one MSNBC "terrorism expert" recently screaming,
"I have never seen an American or an Israeli strap bombs
to his waist!". What American or Israeli needs a bomb belt
when ten times the damage can (and is) dished out by trained
killers pressing a few buttons in armored tanks or bomber aircraft?
If such sages are so disturbed by the suicide aspect, why don't
they bequeath the Palestinians with the tanks, guns, jets, and
missiles necessary to wage a war of resistanc e? Will they commit
to this noble course of action after they are done advocating
these same weapons for the Israelis, who are waging a war of
occupation? Or perhaps after they are done advocating the usual
$5 billion dollar annual donation to the Israelis for making
such good use of these precious instruments of civilization?
Unlikely.
The supposed moral superiority claimed
by the so-called defenders of civilization is nothing but sheer
nonsense; their moral standards are nearly as appalling as their
immoral double standards. Mainstream debate and discussion about
the recent conflict has been confined to whether our interests
would be best represented by barbecuing or boiling the Palestinians.
I think it is sufficiently clear that the mainstream American
media is complicit in the ongoing massacre campaign in the Occupied
Territories.
Indeed, the most prized occupied territory
in the hands of the Israeli government is the one-sided American
media itself. It is for this reason that we, as Americans, must
declare our own intifada against the suffocation of the truth--and
for the liberation of millions of Palestinians struggling not
only for their freedom, but for their very survival.
M. Junaid Alam
is an undergraduate student of Political Science Northeastern
University, a Boston Anti-war activist, and a member of the Committee
for Peace and Justice [Boston] .He can be reached at: alam.m@neu.edu
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