|
Recent
Stories
April
21, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
An Administration in Contempt
Edward
Said
Give Us Back Our Democracy
Gary
Leupp
Easter Thoughts on Liberation, Jesus
and Kanaka WaiWai
Roger
Witherspoon
Why Michigan Needs Affirmative Action
Uri Avnery
At Midnight, a Knock on the Door
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/19
April
19, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Rape of History
Saul
Landau
Shop, Go to Church, Support Bush's
War, Wait for Armageddon
Michael
J. Fellows
Off With Their Heads: the Constitution According to Scalia
Pablo
Mukherjee
Roadmap to Resistance
Omar
Barghouti
Sharon's Bloody Beat
Anthony
Gancarski
Tony Blair: the Most Powerful Man in the World
Mickey
Z.
Animals: the Other Collateral Damage
Will
Potter
When Police Attack Journalists
William
MacDougall
America's In-Bedded Journalism
Neve
Gordon
Haunted by History
Adam
Engel
Wal-Mart and Peace
Dr.
Susan Block
Art Bombs: American Libertines for Peace
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Buono, Guthrie
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/19
Song of
the Weekend
Baghdad to Basra
April
18, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Operation "Syrian Freedom":
This One's Not About Oil
Jorge
Mariscal
"They Died Trying to Become
Students": the Future of Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation
Mickey
Z:
Coalition of the Unindicted: Only Losers Get Tried for War Crimes
Hussein
Ibish
Syria and the Road to World War IV
Reza Ladjevardian
Tarqeting Iran? Do It With TV, Not Cruise Missiles
Matania
Ben-Artzi
You Are Not Protecting My Son's Rights: a Letter to the President
of Israel's Supreme Court
Bruce Jackson
Jews Like Us
Joe
Allen
My Lai Revisited
Carl Estabrook
Support Our Euphemism
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/18
Website
of the Day
Meet the Victims of War
April
17, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Patriot Gore: the Fatal Flaws in
the Patriot Missile System
Joanne
Mariner
Looting Antiquity: the Legal Implications
for the Pentagon
Issam
Nashashibi
Zalmay Khalilzad: the Neocon's Bagman
to Baghdad
Wayne Madsen
Another Sign of the "End Times" for American Journalism
Robert
Fisk
The Army of Occupation
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Virtual Saddam Takes Aim
Biljana
Vankovska
A Personal View of Iraq: Where
is the Truth?
Dan Brook
Oil War: Fueling the Empire
Stanley
Heller
Bomb and Steal: This is What Privatization Looks Like
Tim Robbins
A Chill Wind is Blowing Through This Nation
Harold
A. Gould
Iraq After the War
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/17
April
16, 2003
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Jason
Leopold
Halliburton's Bloody History: They'll
Work for Anyone
Kurt
Nimmo
The Destruction of Iraq: Hey, It's
Good for Business
Stephen
Green
Dancing to Sharon's Beat: the Road
to Unilateral Pre-emption
Diane
Christian
The Devil in Bush's Details
Carol
Norris
Mourning Iraq
Anthony
Gancarski
They Call Themselves Economists?
Michael
Sells
Nero in Baghdad
Alexander
Cockburn
Contract with Iraq
Ninan Koshy
India's Devious Middle Path Through the Iraq War
Brenda
Norrell
Lakota Leader: World Must Resist
American Empire
Wallace
Gagne
End of History; More in a Moment
Stew
Albert
On the Road Again
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/16
April
15, 2003
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
US Must Leave
Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
April
14, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush's War Without End
Uri Avnery
Gunboat Democracy: This is Only the Beginning
Wayne
Madsen
Americans: The New Mongols of the Mideast?
Shahid
Alam
Iqra: Iraq is Free
Hani
Shukrallah
Day of the Chicken Hawks
Terry
Jones
The Iraq Gravy Train
John
Chuckman
The Iraq War's Trashiest Piece of Propaganda
Patrick
Cockburn
US has a Lot to Answer For: Violence,
Misery and Poverty in Iraq
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/14
April
12 / 13, 2003
Carol
Lipton
Wag the Kennel: the Kenneth Joseph
Story
Wayne
Madsen
Meet the New Butcher of Baghdad: Maj.
Gen. Buford Blount III
John
Brown
"They Got It Down": the Toppling
of the Saddam Statue
Kathy and
Bill Christison
Final Thoughts from Palestine
William
Blum
Our Vulnerable Warmongers' Rush to Justify Devastation
Wallace
Gagne
Let the Stealing Begin
Ann
Harrison
Rosenthal Update: Judge Delays Ruling in Medical Pot Mistrial
Case
Henry Miller
What is the Greatest Treason?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Render Unto Cesar
Zeljko
Cipris
Mocking Militarism: On Ishikawa Jun's Song of Mars
Ishikawa
Jun
The Song of Mars
Jamey Hecht
Chairman of the Sandwich Board
Adam
Engel
Hell of a Town: Mayor Bloomberg and
the News
Poets'
Basement
Chang Yang-Hao, Adam Engel and Hammond Guthrie
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/12
April
11, 2003
Omar
Barghouti
From Saddam to Uncle Sam
Ron
Jacobs
Greed is Rewarded
David
Vest
The Corporate War on Iraq
Paul
de Rooij
Propaganda Stinkers: Fresh Samples from the Field
Anthony
Gancarski
Foreign Aid: Embezzlement as Public Policy
Mas'ood
Cajee
Franklin Graham: Spiritual Carpetbagger
Michael
Neumann
Now What?
Michael
Berry
The Neo-Cons Have a Dream
Stew Albert
Oh Freedom
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/11
Website
of the Day
About Those Dancing Crowds
April
10, 2003
Zoltan
Grossman
The Perils of Occupation: the Easier
the Victory, the Harder the Peace
Uri
Avnery
The Night After
Wayne Madsen
The Telltale Signs of Empire
David Krieger
Before You Become Too Flushed with Victory, Think of Ali Ismaeel
Abbas
Jeremy
Brecher
What Can the World Do Now That Tanks Prowl Baghdad?
Robert
Jensen
The Unseen War
Geoffrey
Neale
Ashcroft's War on the Constitution:
A Patriot Attack on America
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Last Tango in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
Rumors of War
Joseph
Heller
Nately's Old Man
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/10
Website
of the Day
The
Third Page
April
9, 2003
David
Lindorff
Secret Bechtel Docs Reveal: Yes,
the War Is About Oil
Doug
Lummis
Saving Private Lynch: Hollywood and
War
Susan
Davis
The New York Times and the Peace Movement
David Vest
Smoking Gun? You're Watching It
John
Chuckman
America's Sovereign Right to Do
as It Damn Well Pleases
Akiva
Eldar
Gary Bauer and AIPAC: an Unholy Alliance
with the Christian Right
Ray
Hanania
Suicide Bombers without the Suicide:
Racism, Hypocrisy and the War on Iraq
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/9
April
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Killing the Messengers: It Doesn't
Matter If It's Deliberate or Accidental
Richard
Lichtman
Dr. Phil in the Trenches
John
Brown
Why Uncle Ben Hasn't Sold Uncle Sam:
a Former Foreign Service Staffer on Bush's Policy Failures
Ben
Terrall
Report from the Oakland Docks: "The
Cops Had No Reason to Open Up on Them"
Jason Leopold
FERC and Wall Street: Conversations
May Have Violated Federal Law
Anthony
Gancarski
Conyers Heeds the Call on Perle
Linda Heard
Journalists Die, the Networks Lie, Iraqis Ask "Why?"
Ahmad
Faruqui
Wallowing in Hypocrisy
Wallace
Gagne
Baghdad Babble
Harry
Browne
Report from the Protests at the Bush/Blair
Summit
Larry Kearney
I Understand There's a Boy in
a Baghdad Hospital
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/8
M. Shahid
Alam
The Israelization of America
April
7, 2003
Todd
Chretien
Wooden Bullets & Grenades: Oakland
Cops Attack Peace Protesters and Dock Workers
David
N. Gibbs
Spying, Secrecy and the University:
The CIA is Back on Campus
Harry Browne
War and Peace Summit a Royal Farce
Gideon
Levy
America is Not a Role Model
Diane
Christian
A Scene from an Obscene War
Jules
Rabin
Remembering Deir Yassin
James Davis
Oddsmaking in Dublin: Will Bush
Shake Gerry's Hand?
Robert
Fisk
The Twisted Language of War
Patrick
Cockburn
Slaughter on the Road to Dibagah
John
Mackay
War and Art
Seth Sandronsky
Wars and the Color Line
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/7
April
5, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Iraqi Humanitarian Relief is
in Shambles
Anne
Gwynne
A Drowning in Salem
Uri
Avnery
Roadmap to Nowhere
Chris
Floyd
Hell for Leather: Bombs, Bullets, Bibles and Bush
William
Cook
Would You Have Sent Your Son (or Daughter) Off to War If...
Gila
Svirsky
A Busy Day for Bulldozers
Mike Ferner
Back from Baghdad: What Next for the Peace Movement?
Joanne
Mariner
Civilian Deaths and Official Apologies
John Stanton
Bush Takes His Killing Orders
from the Lord
Romi
Mahajan
Learning to Count the Dead
Aluf Benn
After Iraq, US Vows to Deal with
Other Mideast Regimes
Mary
Ellen Peterson
Gay Marine Refuses to Fight
William
MacDougall
Country Music and the Crimes of Patriotism
Ron
Jacobs
War and Occupation
Bernie
Pattison
Aborigines and the Different God
Mark
Engler
Iraq War as Arms Expo
Adam Engel
Li'l Box of Love: a Novelini
Poets'
Basement
Tripp, Albert, Katz
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flesh and Its Discontents: the Paintings of Lucian Freud
Norman
Madarasz
Canada and the War
April
4, 2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
or Treason?
Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
Show
Hammond
Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
April
3, 2003
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
Hot Stories
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.
Burn Your Sweatshop Clothes!
Buy Union Made Apparel!
|
April 21,
2003
The Price of War
At Midnight,
a Knock on the Door
by URI AVNERY
It was an almost unbelievable news story: in order
to trim the national budget, the Ministry of Education had decided
to dismiss hundreds of teachers. A private company got the job
of delivering the bitter news to the dismissed teachers. Two
days before Passover one of the highpoints of the Jewish
calendar, both for religious and secular Jews, when families
sit together around the table for the joyous Seder ceremony
the messengers of the company spread out to do their job. They
knocked on the doors at midnight and delivered the notices.
Even the Israeli public, which does not
get excited any more about anything, was shocked for a moment.
How could such a thing happen? Couldn't they have waited until
after the feast? What brutality!
For me, it was much more than a mistake
of some government office. This is a symbolic act, which reflects
all that is wrong in today's Israel.
First of all, the cruelty. It wasn't
deliberate, of course. The Minister of Education did not tell
the private contractor: hand them the notice in as painful a
way as possible. The contractors, too, did not sit down and decide:
let's do it just  before Passover and knock on their doors
in the middle of the night, like Stalin's secret police or our
undercover soldiers in Nablus.
No, nobody decided. Nobody thought about
it. And that is really the most shocking part: the total insensitivity.
Even three or four years ago, this would
not have been possible. Somebody would have intervened in time
and shouted: "What are you doing? Are you crazy?"
The Jews always defined themselves as
"the compassionate sons of the compassionate". They
believed that compassion is a Jewish invention and quoted the
old texts (such as the Sabbath injunction in the Ten Commandments,
ordering Jews to relieve their slaves and draft animals every
seventh day.) Nietzsche, who abhorred pity, accused Judaism of
creating a morality of pity.
The new Hebrew society that was created
in this country was always proud of its "mutual responsibility",
the fact that nobody went hungry in our society, that the incapacitated,
sick, old and unemployed were protected by the whole of society.
Once, when I was asked what being a Jew meant to me in my childhood,
I mentioned compassion, together with seeking justice, hating
violence, striving for peace and loving education.
Not any more. After two years of the
al-Aksa intifada, the senses of Israeli society have become almost
completely blunted. The terrible things that happen daily in
the occupied territories pass without mention. "Closures"
and curfews that last for months, hunger and thirst, sick people
dying for lack of treatment, the demolition of homes and the
uprooting of groves these are "small change",
routine matters. Men, women and children shot by snipers in their
homes and on the streets? Who cares. A young American woman crushed
to death by a giant bulldozer while trying to prevent the demolition
of a Palestinian home? So what. She deserved it, anyway. A stone-throwing
Palestinian boy shot dead by a tank? Three lines in the paper.
Maybe not even that.
The callousness has spread from the occupied
territories into Israel itself. Photos in the paper show people
rummaging in garbage bins? Well, that's how it is. Government
offices send hungry poor people to get a free meal at private
charities? Who cares.
The new Minister of the Treasury, Binyamin
Netanyahu, a man who receives 50 thousand dollars for a single
lecture in the United States, has submitted an economic plan
that hurts the poorest of the poor. It reduces monthly old-age
allowances (to less than $300), child allowances, unemployment
payments, subsidies for homes for retarded children and the elderly
and the education and health budgets.
Does the public revolt? Do masses of
students take to the streets? Do the media explode in anger?
Does the opposition in the Knesset (if there is such an animal)
shake heaven and earth? Not at all. The Trade Union Federation
(Histadrut), representing the strongest and richest workers'
committees, threatens a general strike. What else? Here and there
a politician issues a statement, hoping to get into the headlines.
Here and there a handful of people of conscience protest. Here
and there a columnist writes an indignant article. And that's
that. So the poor will be a little poorer and the rich a little
richer. Big deal.
When Netanyahu himself is asked about
the plan, he takes to the well-established Israeli line: There
is no alternative. The Israeli economy is sinking. It's all the
fault of Arafat. The intifada has destroyed our economy,
And that is a new thing altogether with
far-reaching implications.
This needs an explanation: for more than
five decades, Israeli society has enjoyed the sweet illusion
that there is no connection at all between our policy towards
the Arabs and our economic situation. This is a cornerstone of
our national consciousness.
During my ten years in the Knesset, I
made at least a hundred speeches on this one point. In economic
debates I pointed to the security policy and the occupation.
In debates about security policy, I raised questions about the
economic price.
Each one of these speeches aroused a furious and impatient reaction
from all parts of the House. In security debates they shouted
at me: "What has that to do with the economy? We are now
speaking about terrorism!" In economic debates they shouted:
"We are discussing the economy, so what are you dragging
your Palestinians into this for!" (Only once in all those
years, a Deputy Minister of the Treasury took me aside in the
corridor and said: "You are the only one who made sense."
(Not being an economist, I was flattered.)
This ignoring of the price of the war
and the occupation has had curious results: the poorest people,
the unemployed and the inhabitants of the run-down so-called
"development towns" have always voted Likud. In the
last elections, they voted solidly for Sharon. They had only
two demands: to screw the Arabs and to put an end to the economic
crisis. They saw no contradiction between the two.
But for some months now, there has been
a change in public consciousness. In order to counter the accusation
that the government's economic policy has caused the depression,
the Sharon people have had to admit that the intifada is the
main cause, even if the worldwide crisis added to it. The intifada
dealt a terrible blow to tourism, one of the most important sectors
of our economy. Foreign investments, which are essential to economic
growth, have all but stopped. The giant army necessary for the
fight against the intifada, together with the settlers, devour
a huge proportion of our GNP (many times more, per capita, than
in the USA).
Some people believe that if the depression
deepens, the "weak strata" (as the poor are called
in Israel) will one day rise against the Sharon government, the
masses will pour onto the streets and topple it. That may be
too optimistic. But at least one can dream about the night when,
at midnight, the people knock on the door of the government and
hand it a notice of dismissal.
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 can be
reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.
Yesterday's
Features
Uri
Avnery
Operation "Syrian Freedom":
This One's Not About Oil
Jorge
Mariscal
"They Died Trying to Become
Students": the Future of Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation
Mickey
Z:
Coalition of the Unindicted: Only Losers Get Tried for War Crimes
Hussein
Ibish
Syria and the Road to World War IV
Reza Ladjevardian
Tarqeting Iran? Do It With TV, Not Cruise Missiles
Matania
Ben-Artzi
You Are Not Protecting My Son's Rights: a Letter to the President
of Israel's Supreme Court
Bruce Jackson
Jews Like Us
Joe
Allen
My Lai Revisited
Carl Estabrook
Support Our Euphemism
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/18
Website
of the Day
Meet the Victims of War
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|