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April 13, 2002
Anne Winkler-Morey
Why
I Didn't Organize
a Passover Seder This Year
April 12, 2002
Nancy Stohlman
Live from East Jerusalem:
International Nonviolence
Brian
J. Foley
Defeating
Evil
Olivier Audeoud
Did the US Break
the Laws of War?
Rep. Ron
Paul
The
Middle East Quagmire
Michael Colby
Republican Porn:
Oiling Up the Caribou
John Chuckman
Tom
Friedman's Fabrications
April 11, 2002
Patrick Cockburn
Battle of St. Petersburg Zoo
Jeff Halper
After
the Invasion:
Now What?
Falk / Krieger
Taming the Nuclear Monster
Steve
Perry
The
Good Life of
Nellie Stone Johnson
Nick Ring
Efficiency and Occupation:
Terrorism vs. Taylorism
Alexander
Cockburn
From
the West Bank to BBQ
to Old Sparky, And Beyond
April 10, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians
George
Monbiot
World
Bank to West Bank
Fran Schor
US-Sponsored State Terror
David
Vest
Political
Color Schemes
Jack McCarthy
Florida State Radicals:
The Berkeley of the South
Rises Again
Doreen
Miller
A
Tale of Two Warring Tribes
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
Resources:
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
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
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by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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April 14, 2002
From the Ashes:
The Struggle
for Freedom in Palestine
By M. Junaid Alam
After an episode of horror, silence prevails.
The final pleas and cries of hundreds of Palestinians, ignored
by international bodies, were answered most decisively with the
screaming sounds of Israeli bombs and bullets. The frantic rush
of anxious ambulances unable to reach those in need has ceased,
as have the lives of the unassisted victims. Life has been stilled.
The entire city has been smashed to pieces, as insidious "terrorist
infrastructure" such as roads, schools, homes, and water
supply lines has been blown asunder. One can only perhaps hear
the light fluttering sounds of celestial wings, as angels descend
from the heavens, through the earth, and into the hell that is
Jenin, gathering up the souls of massacred innocents.
Many variations of this same theme have
been repeated throughout the Occupied Territories as Sharon continues
his campaign of carnage. Virtually the entire physical network
of the Palestinian Authority has been smashed, as Arafat awaits
the godly grace of Powell to deliver him from the clutches of
Israel.
Given the dramatic and serious qualitative
changes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it seems prudent
to understand how the current peace framework has collapsed,
and how a genuine solution to Palestinian self-determination
can be put forth.
That the Oslo framework has collapsed
is undeniable. Ten years after its inception, the life of the
ordinary Palestinian has become increasingly miserable and intensely
frustrating. The Israeli settlements have thrust the sharp blade
of colonization deeper into the heart of Palestinian aspirations
than ever before. Barak, Netanyahu, and Sharon have all increased
the number of settlements in Palestinian lands dramatically.
Sharon authorized the construction of 30 new settlements during
his first year in office, and his draconian plans for a new buffer
zone in the West Bank would likely result in the expulsion of
around 400,000 Palestinians, according to a recent article by
Patrick Martin of World Socialist Web Site.
Palestinian economic ability, never on
the verge of real development in the last ten years, lies shattered.
Investment is non-existent. Around 40-70% of the population is
unemployed, and a full two-thirds of all Palestinians live below
the poverty rate off the measly sum of two dollars a day. This,
however, pales in comparison to a Financial Times report
last year which revealed that almost half of all Palestinian
children are born blind, deaf, or anemic.
To these figures must be added the daily
destruction of infrastructure and homes as a result of Israeli
bombs, missiles, and bulldozers. Thousands of new refugees and
homeless children have been created in the last year alone, and
even the refugee camps have been targets of IDF uprooting campaigns:
the expropriated are re-expropriated.
It is not at all an exaggeration to state
that the Oslo "peace process" has been a complete death
process for the Palestinian people, demographically, economically,
and morally. Arafat's position as a formally recognized leader
of a mini-state authority has allowed him to throw a few thousand
dollars' worth of jewelry to real heroes of the cause, such as
Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright, but little else. Even
on the basis of full cooperation, such as his December cease-fire
of last year, nothing positive emerged: in three weeks, dozens
of Palestinians including women and children were gunned down
while not one Israeli civilian was killed, yet he was held responsible
for the "shattering" of the cease-fire after a blatant
provocation by Sharon. And who can forget the "generous"
peace offer, with Arafat refusing the grand prize of a glorified
ghetto consisting of disconnected villages, marred by settlements,
without sovereignty, water supply or airspace, still represented
as a "lost opportunity" by that great guillotine for
the mind, the American media. Even the PA police officers, often
used as a puppet police force to repress their own people, now
lie dead in the dozens, executed by Israeli soldiers.
From the start, the Oslo framework was
a frame-up. Arafat was given token powers, for which in return,
he would become the symbolic target of Israel's full scorn and
hatred. Everything could be reduced to demonizing Arafat; if
the natives have to be looted, plundered, uprooted, and liquidated,
it is only because Arafat is incompetent. And thus, Israel's
racist actions conveniently become the Palestinians' own fault.
The questions facing us now about new
avenues of hope for the Palestinians are also very important.
I respectfully disagree with the assessment of Jeff Halper, (Coordinator
of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions), who, after
pointing out that the settlements are on the verge of becoming
permanent, that destruction of Palestinian infrastructure is
extensive, and that the EU and international community has failed
in its most basic tasks, still believes that "international
civil society" can guide along Palestinian liberation towards
a "just peace".
The vague and nebulous formulation of
an "international civil society" seems to be undermined
by the complete impotence illustrated by Arab/EU leaders, as
well as international law, in saving civilians from massacres
in the camps of the West Bank. And who would implement, ensure,
and enforce this "just peace"-let alone propose it
above and over American plans to both sides? The concept of intervention
by civil society, based on the South African model of liberation,
will not by itself prove sufficient in Palestine. While America
could afford to oppose apartheid against South African blacks,
it cannot afford to abandon its only reliable ally in this valuable
region out of feigned compassion for human suffering. Similarly,
America could afford to pose as the saviors of the Kuwaitis,
but not without committing an act of genocide against over one
million Iraqi civilians. One must remember that Oslo was an American-sponsored
idea, and that the involvement of the American government in
the Middle East is not out of any impartial consideration
for both sides, but for the increased consolidation of
its global power, which often depends on human suffering.
Other solutions for a just peace must be sought out.
In this search, we must begin with the
Palestinian native, who is involved in a life and death struggle:
this is in itself power. He sees his condition deteriorating
daily, always at the mercy of the soldier with the gun and the
glare. He can look up and see the tiny, wealthy nearby settlements,
composed of mafia thugs, murderers, crop-burners, water-aggrandizers,
and other assorted representatives of modern Western values responsible
for his dispossession. The Palestinian, contrary to reactionary
nonsense, values his life as much as any other human. Otherwise,
we would not have witnessed those tragic images of a father desperately
trying to protect his young son from a hail of Israeli bullets,
which ultimately killed them both. But let us suppose that one
of them had survived: how long can a son or a father contain
his rage at the occupiers who killed his loved one, who humiliate
and taunt him daily, and who defend the colonizers of his own
homeland on the basis of racial supremacy? He has already died
from the occupation, that unavoidable, slow-motion bullet which
aims straight for the heart.
In sum, the Palestinian has suffered
from four decades of savage oppression-the pain of which deeply
moves the Arab masses throughout the region. The Arab street
has become painfully aware that the posturing of its leaders-issuing
rhetoric on television while whispering sweet things into American
ears-is useless. A movement based on NGOs and religious organizations
alone cannot create a free Palestinian state in an historical
and political vacuum, but a mass radical current against Arab
autocracies and dictatorships would provide the necessary impetus
to remove the very roots of conflict: the dictating stranglehold
of American capital.
Of course, this would have to be accompanied
by a change of consciousness in Israel. It has not been said
strongly enough in the past, but I firmly believe that in order
for peace between peoples to prevail in the Middle East, the
Zionist project must be abandoned. Despite the fact that Zionists
constantly denounce my brave Jewish brothers and sisters who
oppose Israeli policies as "self-hating", Zionism is
one of the most self-hating philosophies ever created. As Jewish
historian Lenni Brenner notes in his book Zionism In the Age
of Dictators, it was created entirely out of a reaction to
European anti-Semitism, and held many of its characteristics:
consider the following repulsive quote from a paper published
by a 1930's Zionist youth group, Hashomer Hatzair, cited
in Brenner's book:
"The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being,
both physically and spiritually. As an individual in society
he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligations,
knows no order nor discipline."
Or consider the words of Zionism's founder,
Theodore Herzl, in his own diary: "I achieved a freer attitude
towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically
and to pardon. Above all, I recognized the futility of trying
to 'combat' anti-Semitism".
This kind of reactionary drivel, embedded
into the consciousness of many Israelis, represents a major psychological
obstacle to a sincere solution. The idea of mutual antagonism
through self-hatred and paranoia becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy:
the European Jewish settlers treated the Palestinians as inferior
pests that need to be removed even before Israel's inception.
In 1937 Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel's first PM, wrote:
"I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral
in it". A racialist basis for the Jewish state was made
clear by Joachim Prinz, Zionist rabbi of the 1940's: "A
state built upon the principle of the purity of the nation and
race can only be honored and respected by a Jew who declares
his belonging to his own kind." Such putrid nonsense, which
finds its echoes in several right-wing Israeli parties that now
fill Cabinet positions, is completely incompatible with a just
peace.
Zionism assumes that antagonism and hatred
between Jew and non-Jew are automatic and inevitable, providing
the fuel for a phenomenon Israeli writer Uri Avnery once described:
"We Israelis need a scarecrow to frighten ourselves, one
frightening enough to pump adrenaline into our national bloodstream.
Otherwise, it seems, we cannot function." The American empire,
of course, has no problem providing the syringes for Israel's
adrenaline needs, for since the 1967 war it has seen as Israel
an indispensable tool with which to smash Arab nationalism and
independent development. But now, the contradiction has been
reversed: Israeli colonialism is itself creating a burning passion
among Arab citizens to pursue a course radically different from
the one America and its friendly Arab dictatorships have in mind.
Avnery is right, Israel "cannot function" as long as
it remains a client state for the sake of a foreign power; its
very ability to survive as a healthy state depends on abandoning
this role and abandoning ethnocentrism as its guiding principle.
No effective solutions for peace can
be hoisted up on the rubble of Oslo, and on the rubble of thousands
of Palestinian homes and schools, if proposed on the basis of
American edicts once again. Palestinian freedom cannot be allowed
to fly away on the wings of ascending angels, struggling to reach
heaven with the heavy burden of so many innocent souls across
Palestine.
Oslo showed that there is no room for
an "independent" Palestinian ghetto that is only independent
from dignity and justice: the Palestinian masses refuse to accept
a prison cell with a sticker label, and Sharon refuses to accept
the existence of the Palestinian masses. The Palestinian struggle
for liberation has deep regional and international meaning, precisely
because all paths toward it lead away from the clawing grip of
pax-Americana. We should not be afraid to recognize that the
Palestinian right to self-determination does not amount to American-sponsored
determination of their fate, and that any just solution between
two peoples must involve the democratic, mass organization of
those people towards a brighter future.
M. Junaid Alam
is an undergraduate student of Political Science Northeastern
University Boston, an anti-war activist and a member of the Committee
for Peace and Justice. He can be reached at: alam.m@neu.edu
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