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Should the Left Cheer the Dollar's Drop? How to make the bankers scream: Robert Pollin, world's best obituarist of Clintonomics, explains it all for you. Do police states make people feel safer? Vicente Navarro on Franco's Spain, Cockburn on Ireland in the Fifties under the Catholic Hierarchy, Alevtina Rea on growing up in Brezhnev-time. Capitalism's true utopia? St Clair on the Pentagon's no-bid arms contracts. How's the press doing in Iraq? Patrick Cockburn tells all to Omar Waraich. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
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Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY  Today's Stories May 12, 2005 Greg
Moses Gary
Leupp
May 11, 2005 Patrick
Cockburn Kevin
Zeese Christopher
Brauchli Zalman
Amit Robert
Shull Mike
Whitney Dr.
Teresa Whitehurst Norman
Solomon
May 10, 2005 Richard
Drayton Dave
Zirin Jackie
Corr Dave
Lindorff Michael
Donnelly Reza
Fiyouzat Scott
Parkin Stephen
Babcock Alan
Farago Michael
Neumann Website
of the Day
May 9, 2005 Louis
Proyect Robert
Fisk Kevin
Zeese Joshua
Frank Sasha
Kramer Andrew
Wimmer Jeffrey
Webber Jeffrey
St. Clair
May 7 / 8, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Gary
Leupp Saul
Landau Joe
DeRaymond Daniela
Ponce Heather
Williams Gregory
Elich Anis
Memon John
Chuckman Mike
Whitney Ron
Jacobs Colin
Kalmbacher Lance
Selfa Fred
Gardner Ben
Tripp Mickey
Z. Richard
Joseph Dr.
Susan Block Poets'
Basement
May 6, 2005 Patrick
Cockburn Erin
Yoshioka Sam
Husseini Dave
Lindorff Kevin
Zeese Joshua
Frank Dan
Bacher P.
Sainath
May 5, 2005 Carles
Mutaner Carl
G. Estabrook Farrah
Hassen Kevin
Zeese Michael
Leonardi Bennett
Ramberg Ray
McGovern Norman
Solomon Nicole
Colson Brian
Concannon, Jr.
May 4, 2005 Colin
Kalmbacher John
Walsh Greg
Moses Ali
Khan Chris
Floyd Linda
S. Heard Dave
Zirin William
S. Lind Gary
Leupp Website
of the Day
May 3, 2005 Dave
Lindorff Brian
Cloughley Ira
Kurzban Seth
Sandronsky Gilad
Atzmon Michael
Donnelly Alex
Sanchez Peter
Linebaugh
May 2, 2005 Ron
Jacobs Stan
Goff Karyn
Strickler Joshua
Frank Kevin
Zeese Vicente
Navarro
April 30 / May 1, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Gabriel
Kolko Jennifer
Loewenstein Lee
Sustar Saul
Landau T.W.
Croft Nikolas
Kozloff William
Blum Dave
Lindorff Joshua
Frank Doug
Giebel Steven
Erlanger Fred
Gardner Mike
Whitney Kurt
Nimmo Joe
DeRaymond Michael
Dickinson Mickey
Z. Justin
Taylor Poets
Basement Website
of the Weekend
April 29, 2005 W.
John Green Luke
Brothers Norman
Solomon M.
Junaid Alam Jackie
Corr Hunter
Greer Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
April 28, 2005 Omar
Waraich Kevin
Zeese Dave
Lindorff Greg
Moses Toni
Solo Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Werther
April 27, 2005 John
Ross Joshua
Frank Ray
McGovern Mark
Donham Dan
Smith
April 26, 2005 Dave
Lindorff Alevtina
Rea Greg
Moses Joshua
Frank Diana
Johnstone
April 25, 2005 Uri
Avnery Alison
Weir Lee
Sustar Leonardo
Boff Gary
Leupp
April 23 / 24, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Gary
Leupp James
Petras Harry
Browne Fred
Gardner Ron
Jacobs Elizabeth
Schulte Chris
Floyd
April 22, 2005 Saul
Landau Kevin
Zeese Joshua
Frank Mike
Whitney Michael
Flynn Lee
Sustar Website
of the Day
April 21, 2005 Bill
Quigley Dave
Lindorff Jason
Leopold Kathleen
Christison
April 20, 2005 John Ross Kevin Zeese Uri Avnery Website of the Day
April 19, 2005 Jean-Guy Allard Dave Lindorff Neve Gordon Brian Concannon, Jr Murray Hudson Frank B. Ford Monty Python Michael Dickinson Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
Linda Schade
/ Kevin Zeese John Ross Brian McKenna Mike Whitney Patrick Cockburn Dave Zirin Eli Stephens Harry Browne Website of
the Day
April 16 / 17, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Mark Dow Omar Waraich Robert Buzzanco Sherry Wolf Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Mark Weisbrot John Pardon Yoshie Furuhashi Mike Roselle Ralph Nader Ramzy Baroud Jackson Thoreau Michael Dickinson Richard Neville Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
April 15, 2005 Brian Cloughley Bill Glahn Mickey Z. Stephanie McMillan Josh Mahan David Russitano Jorge Mariscal Rodolfo "Corky"
Gonzales Tom Reeves
April 14, 2005 Karyn Strickler Pat Williams Jessica Pupovac Joshua Frank Jerzy Mankowski Talli Naumann Antony Loewenstein Virginia Rodino Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen Website of the Day
April 13, 2005 Maria Carrión Mike Whitney Terry Jones Dave Lindorff Nathaniel Livingston, Jr. Kurt Nimmo Don Fitz Tom Crumpacker JG Jack McCarthy Kevin Zeese Jeffrey St.
Clair
April 12, 2005 John Wheat
Gibson Kevin Zeese Alan Farago Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Nelson P. Valdes Dave Zirin Website of the Day
April 11, 2005 Tom Barry Saul Landau Monique Dols Phil Gasper Mike Whitney Edwin Krales Paul de Rooij Website of the Day
April 9 / 10, 2005 Jeffrey St.
Clair William A. Cook Gary Leupp Alan Maass Laura Carlsen Joe DeRaymond Nikolas Kozloff Dave Lindorff Greg Moses Fred Gardner Justin Smith Ron Jacobs M. Junaid Alam Ira Kay Elizabeth Schulte Jackie Corr Christopher
Brauchli Leslie A. Fiedler Ben Tripp Poets Basement Website of
the Weekend
Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Subcomandante
Marcos Norman Finkelstein Steve Niva Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams Steve
J.B. Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber Wendell
Berry CounterPunch
Wire Cindy
Corrie Gore Vidal Francis Boyle
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May 12, 2005 The Basque Roots of "Jerusalem Gold"Death of a MythBy URI AVNERY The uproar has been raging for two weeks so far, and is showing no sign of abating. Israel is shaken to the core--is it the postponed "disengagement plan? Is it the killing of demonstrators against the Wall? No, it's a song. Like a devout Christian, Naomi Shemer confessed, on her deathbed, to the greatest sin of her life: her immortal song, "Jerusalem of Gold", is a copy of a Basque lullaby she heard some years earlier from a Spanish singer. The way she told it, she had not stolen the melody consciously, but had absorbed it into her subconscious and taken it for her own. It was, as she put it, "a work accident". She also took pains to stress that she had altered eight notes of the melody, so that, according to the law, she had every right to the royalties she had been receiving for 38 years. Good. Can happen to anybody. You see or hear something, it enters your unconscious mind, and when it later emerges you believe it's your own idea. But in this case, something more serious happened: several times in the past she was asked about the similarity of the songs, and she reacted angrily, denying any resemblance and even attacking the questioners. But in her letter of confession, addressed to a close friend, on the eve of her death, she admitted that pain of remorse had been gnawing at her guts, and had perhaps caused her fatal cancer. Up to this point, a painful but not very important story. A songwriter makes a mistake, her song turns out to be a plagiarism. Except that she was no ordinary songwriter, and this no ordinary song. Naomi Shemer is a symbol of what is called, nostalgically, "the beautiful Eretz Israel". She was born in a socialist Kibbutz on the shores of the Sea of Tiberias and celebrated the landscape of the country in words and music. Even when she married an extreme rightist and became an icon of that trend, leftists continued to admire her for her modesty, engaging personality and the quality of her songs. But the song was even more important than the songwriter. Not only because of its quality, but also because of its extraordinary history. Exactly 38 years ago, on the eve of the 1967 Independence Day, Shemer took part in an Israeli song competition. For this occasion she wrote the song--lyrics and music--and insisted that it be sung by an unknown young singer. Just another song, just another festival. But the moment the song was heard in the hall and on the radio, something happened. It touched the souls of all who heard it. Even then it would have remained just a beautiful song, if the Six-Day war had not broken out a few weeks later. The Israeli army conquered East Jerusalem, the soldiers reached the Western Wall, a remnant of the ancient Jewish Temple. Israel was swept by the intoxication of victory, spiced with a semi-religious mysticism. Overnight, "Jerusalem of Gold" became the supreme expression of the national mood, the symbol of a victory that was seen as redemption, a second national anthem. I myself saw in this an opportunity. I was a member of the Knesset at the time. I do not like--to say the least--our national anthem. It was written more than a hundred years ago, and expressed the longing of the Jewish Diaspora for the Land of Israel. It is a hymn of a dispersed religious-ethnic community rather than the anthem of a sovereign state. Even worse, more than 20% of the citizens of Israel are not Jews at all, and it is not healthy that so many citizens cannot identify with the anthem and the flag of their state. By the way, the melody of the anthem, HaTikvah ("The Hope") was also "borrowed", but no one ever tried to hide this. It is a Romanian shepherd's song (with a version appearing in The Moldau, the symphonic poem of the Czech national composer Bedrich Smetana.) I thought that if I proposed Naomi Shemer's song as a national anthem, I might be able to build a consensus for the idea of changing the existing one. I was not happy with several nationalist phrases added to the song, but I believed that we could change that along the way. I introduced a bill to this effect. The Speaker insisted I obtain the agreement of the author. So I met her in a Tel-Aviv Café. I thought I detected a certain hesitation on her part, which I understand only now. In the end she allowed me to announce that she was not opposed to the idea. The bill was never put to a vote, but throughout the years "Jerusalem of Gold" has enjoyed the unofficial status of a second national anthem, and especially as the anthem of the Six-Day War. This is what makes the present uproar more than a scandal about a song and its author. "Jerusalem of Gold" has suffered the same fate as the Six-Day War. That war was preceded by three weeks of mounting, nerve-racking anxiety, when almost all Israelis--from members of the cabinet to the last citizen--believed that the state and its inhabitants were in mortal danger. The armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan were poised--so it seemed--to invade its territory from three sides and eradicate it from the face of the earth, when the Israeli army attacked first, defeated all three and conquered not only the remainder of Palestine, but also the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Years later, it became clear to historians that there had been no real danger to the state, that the neighboring countries has not intended to attack but merely to bluff, that Israel's victory had been no miracle but the result of meticulous preparations, especially by the Air Force. But the myth survives to this very day. During the fighting and the following days, it looked like a classic war of defense. Nobody even considered a permanent occupation. It was clear that we would be compelled to leave the occupied territories very soon, as happened after the 1956 Sinai war. The question was who to give them back to: The government and most parties were thinking about Jordan and Egypt, while I and those who shared my ideas, including at the time several army generals, proposed handing them over to the Palestinian people, so as to enable them to establish the State of Palestine. Until that happened, it was believed, they would live under a "benign occupation". Since then, 38 long years have passed. The "benign occupation" has long since turned into a brutal and ugly regime of oppression. The prophecy of Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz, that the occupation would corrupt us through and through and turn us into a people of exploiters and secret-service-men, has come awfully true. Nothing has remained of the "beautiful Eretz Israel" but a cloying nostalgia, of which Naomi Shemer was a standard-bearer. A small and gallant state, progressive and (relatively) egalitarian, respected by the world, has become an occupying and looting state, hostage to delirious settlers, full of internal violence and "swinish capitalism" (a phrase coined by Shimon Peres, one of those most responsible for this situation.) Throughout the world, the idea of boycotting Israel is gaining ground. What looked at the time like a divine miracle now looks more like a pact with the devil. Israel is a country built on many symbols and myths. What could be more symbolic than the destruction of the myth of the Six-Day war, now followed by the collapse of the myth of "Jerusalem of Gold", that war's symbol in song? 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.
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