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Today's
Stories
January 19, 2004
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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
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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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January
19, 2004
A Practical Manual
Anti-Semitism
vs. Anti-Zionism
By URI AVNERY
A Hungarian Joke: During the June 1967
war, a Hungarian meets his friend. "Why do you look so happy?"
he asks. "I heard that the Israelis shot down six Soviet-made
MiGs today," his friend replies.
The next day, the friend looks even more
jubilant. "The Israelis downed another eight MiGs,"
he announces.
On the third day, the friend is crestfallen.
"What happened? Didn't the Israelis down any MiGs today?"
the man asks. "They did," the friend answers, "But
today someone told me that the Israelis are Jews!"
This is the whole story in a nutshell.
The Anti-Semite hates the Jews because
they are Jews, irrespective of their actions. Jews may be hated
because they are rich and ostentatious or because they are poor
and live in squalor. Because they played a major role in the
Bolshevik revolution or because some of them became incredibly
rich after the collapse of the Communist regime. Because they
crucified Jesus or because they infected Western culture with
the "Christian morality of compassion". Because they
have no fatherland or because they created the State of Israel.
That is in the nature of all kinds of
racism and chauvinism: One hates someone for being a Jew, Arab,
woman, black, Indian, Muslim, Hindu. His or her personal attributes,
actions, achievements are unimportant. If he or she belongs to
the abhorred race, religion or gender, they will be hated.
The answers to all questions relating
to anti-Semitism follow from this basic fact. For example:
Is everybody who criticizes Israel an
anti-Semite?
Absolutely not. Somebody who criticizes
Israel for certain of our actions cannot be accused of anti-Semitism
for that. But somebody who hates Israel because it is a Jewish
state, like the Hungarian in the joke, is an anti-Semite. It
is not always easy to distinguish between the two kinds, because
shrewd anti-Semites pose as bona fide critics of Israel's
actions. But presenting all critics of Israel as anti-Semites
is wrong and counter-productive, it damages the fight against
anti-Semitism.
Many deeply moral persons, the cream
of humanity, criticize our behavior in the occupied territories.
It is stupid to accuse them of anti-Semitism.
Can a person be an anti-Zionist without
being an anti-Semite?
Absolutely yes. Zionism is a political
creed and must be treated like any other. One can be anti-Communist
without being anti-Chinese, anti-Capitalist without being anti-American,
anti-Globalist, anti-Anything. Yet, again, it is not always easy
to draw the line, because real anti-Semites often pretend just
to be "anti-Zionists". They should not be helped by
erasing the distinction.
Can a person be an anti-Semite and a
Zionist?
Indeed, yes. The founder of modern Zionism,
Theodor Herzl, already tried to enlist the support of notorious
Russian anti-Semites, promising them to take the Jews off their
hands. Before World War II, the Zionist underground organization
IZL established military training camps in Poland under the auspices
of the anti-Semitic generals, who also wanted to get rid of the
Jews. Nowadays, the Zionist extreme Right receives and welcomes
massive support from the American fundamentalist evangelists,
whom the majority of American Jews, according to a poll published
this week, consider profoundly anti-Semitic. Their theology prophesies
that on the eve of the second coming of Christ, all Jews must
convert to Christianity or be exterminated.
Can a Jew be anti-Semitic?
That sounds like an oxymoron. But history
has known some instances of Jews who became ferocious Jew-haters.
The Spanish Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada, was of Jewish descent.
Karl Marx wrote some very nasty things about the Jews, as did
Otto Weininger, an important Jewish writer in fin-de-siecle
Vienna. Herzl, his contemporary and fellow-Viennese, wrote in
his diaries some very uncomplimentary remarks about the Jews.
If a person criticizes Israel more than
other countries which do the same, is he an anti-Semite?
Not necessarily. True, there should be
one and the same moral standard for all countries and all human
beings. Russian actions in Chechnya are not better than ours
in Nablus, and may be worse. The trouble is that the Jews are
pictured and picture themselves (and indeed were) a "nation
of victims". Therefore, the world is shocked that yesterday's
victims are today's victimizers. A higher moral standard is required
from us than from other peoples. And rightly so.
Has Europe become anti-Semitic again?
Not really. The number of anti-Semites
in Europe has not grown, perhaps it has even fallen. What has
increased is the volume of criticism of Israel's behavior towards
the Palestinians, who appear as "the victims of the victims".
The situation in some suburbs of Paris,
which is often cited as an example of the rise of anti-Semitism,
is a quite different affair. When North African Muslims clash
with North African Jews, they are transferring the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict to European soil. It is also a continuation of the feud
between Arabs and Jews that started in Algeria when the Jews
supported the French regime and Muslims considered them collaborators
of the hated colonialists.
Then why did most Europeans state in
a recent poll that Israel endangers world peace more than any
other country?
That has a simple explanation: Europeans
see on television every day what our soldiers are doing in the
occupied Palestinian territories. This confrontation is covered
more than any other conflict on earth (with the possible exception
of Iraq, for the time being), because Israel is more "interesting",
considering the long history of the Jews in Europe and because
Israel is closer to the Western media than Muslim or African
countries. The Palestinian resistance, which Israelis call "terrorism",
seems to many Europeans very much like the French resistance
to the German occupation.
What about the anti-Semitic manifestations
in the Arab world?
No doubt, typically anti-Semitic indications
have crept lately into Arab discourse. Suffice it to mention
that the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"
have been published in Arabic. That is a typically European import.
The Protocols were invented by the secret police of Czarist Russia.
Whatever inanities may be voiced by certain
"experts", there never was any widespread Muslim anti-Semitism,
such as existed in Christian Europe. In the course of his fight
for power, the prophet Muhammad fought against neighboring Jewish
tribes, and therefore there are some negative passages about
the Jews in the Kor'an. But they cannot be compared to the anti-Jewish
passages in the New Testament story about the crucifixion of
Christ that have poisoned the Christian world and caused endless
suffering. Muslim Spain was a paradise for the Jews, and there
has never been a Jewish Holocaust in the Muslim world. Even pogroms
were extremely rare.
Muhammad decreed that the "Peoples
of the Book" (Jews and Christians) be treated tolerantly,
subject to conditions that were incomparably more liberal than
those in contemporary Europe. The Muslims never imposed their
religion by force on Jews and Christians, as shown by the fact
that almost all the Jews expelled from Catholic Spain settled
in the Muslim countries and flourished there. After centuries
of Muslim rule, Greeks and Serbs remained thoroughly Christian.
When peace is established between Israel
and the Arab world, the poisonous fruits of anti-Semitism will
most probably disappear from the Arab world (as will the poisonous
fruits of Arab-hating in our society.)
Aren't the utterances of the Prime Minister
of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Muhammad, about the Jews controlling
the world, anti-Semitic?
Yes and no. They certainly illustrate
the difficulty of pinning anti-Semitism down. From a factual
point of view, the man was right when he asserted that the Jews
have a far bigger influence than their percentage of the world's
population alone would warrant. It is true that the Jews have
a large influence on the policy of the United States, the only
super-power, as well as on the American and international media.
One does not need the phony "Protocols" in order to
face this fact and analyse its causes. But the sounds make the
music, and Mahathir's music does indeed sound anti-Semitic.
So should we ignore anti-Semitism?
Definitely not. Racism is a kind of virus
that exists in every nation and in every human being. Jean-Paul
Sartre said that we are all racists, the difference being that
some of us realize this and fight against it, while others succumb
to the evil. In ordinary times, there is a small minority of
blatant racists in every country, but in times of crisis their
number can multiply rapidly. This is a perpetual danger, and
every people must fight against the racists in their midst.
We Israelis are like all other peoples.
Each of us can find a small racist within himself, if he searches
hard enough. We have in our country fanatical Arab-haters, and
the historic confrontation that dominates our lives increases
their power and influence. It is our duty to fight them, and
leave it to the Europeans and Arabs to deal with their own racists.
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. He is also
a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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