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April 2, 2002
Robert Fisk
Farce and Terror
in Ramallah
Steve
Perry
Let's
Roll! ®:
The Marketing of Lisa Beamer
April 1, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
America's War Inc.
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Peace
and Nuclear Disarmament: a Call to Action
Bahour / Dahan
Bloodshed in Palestine:
A Way Out
Molly
Secours
Tennessee's
Kangaroo Court
Phyllis Pollack
The Making of Exile
on Main Street
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's
Top 10 CDs
Francis Boyle
The Big Lie:
Palestine, Palestinians
and International Law
March 31, 2002
Jordan
Flaherty
Last
Night the Israeli
Military Tried to Kill Me
Kristen Schurr
Live from Bethlehem
Maha Sbitani
The
Israeli Army Took Over My House
Robert Fisk
Lies Leaders Tell When
They Want to Go to War
March 24/30, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
The Year
of the Yellow Notepad:
Plagiarism and History
Rep. Ron Paul
Slavery and the Draft
Fidel
Castro
A
Better World is Possible
Edward Said
What Price Oslo?
José
Saramago
Justice
and Democracy Denied
Azmi Bishara
Talking to Tanks
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Clearcutting
Montana
Alexander Cockburn
50 Years of James Bond
Wilhelm
Reich
Gethsemane
Claud Cockburn
The Horror of It All
Dave Marsh
What's
Playing at My Houe
David Vest
Remembering Tammy Wynette
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Waylon
Jennings:
an Honest Outlaw
March 23, 2002
Mokhiber/Weissman
A
Corporate Lawyer
Speaks Out
Saeed Vaseghi
The US and Iran's Quest
for Democracy
Brian
J. Foley
Does
Pedophilia Scandal Spell an Opportunity for Catholics?
Sheperd Bliss
American Soul and Empire
James
Packard Winkler
Occupation
and Terror:
Politics from a Gun Barrel
M. Shahid Alam
A New International Division
of Labor
T.W. Croft
Enron's
Attack on Our
Economic Security
March 22, 2002
Robert Jensen
Corporate Power is a
Threat to Democracy
Tommy
Ates
The
Future of Black Academia
Rep. Ron Paul
Why are We in Ukraine?
March 21, 2002
McQuinn,
Munson, & Wheeler
Stars
and Stripes:
Killing for the Flag?
John Chuckman
How Change is Wrought
David
Vest
Hail
to the Chaff
March 20, 2002
Kay Lee
Censorship at Angelfire
Robert
Jensen
The
Politics of Pain
and Pleasure
Sheperd Bliss
Notes from Hawai'i:
Trouble in Paradise
Rick Giambetti
Prozac
and Suicide:
an Interview with
Dr. David Healy
Philip Farruggio
Bullies
Lori Allen
Live
from Ramallah:
The Madness of Occupation
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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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
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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April 2, 2002
Murdering Arafat?
By Uri Avnery
If Ariel Sharon succeeds in murdering Yasser Arafat,
as he wants to, the Palestinian leader will remain in the collective
memory of his people, and the whole Arab world, like Moses in
Jewish memory.
Moses rebelled against Egyptian oppression,
led his people forth from "the house of bondage",
led them for 40 years in the desert, made a new people out of
them and brought them to the threshold of the Promised Land.
He did not enter the land itself - God only showed it to him
from afar. That will be told about Arafat, too, if he becomes
a martyr now.
Moses is, of course, a mythological figure.
No serious scholar in the world believed that the exodus from
Egypt really happened. Experts explain that it could not have
taken place at all. But that is not really important: the mythological
Moses shaped the consciousness of the Jewish people more than
any flesh-and-blood leader of a nomad tribe in the desert could
have done.
The Haggada, the book read on Passover's
eve by almost every Jewish family throughout the world, commands
us to feel as if we ourselves had set forth from Egypt. The
basic Jewish ethos is built on this premise. The text of Ten
Commandments in Deuteronomium 5 explains why on the holy Sabbath
the servants and slaves must be allowed to rest, too: "Remember
that thou wast a slave in the land of Egypt."
In the new myth that is being born before
our eyes, Sharon is the Pharaoh and we are the ancient Egyptians.
In the story about the Exodus, the Bible lets God say: "I
have hardened (Pharaoh's) heart and the heart of his servants."
After every calamity that befell him, Pharaoh broke his promise
to free the Israelites. Why? What was God's purpose? He wanted
the Israelites to become hardened by the hardship, before they
started on their long march. This is what is happening to the
Palestinians now.
So what will happen if an Israeli bullet
kills Arafat now? After Moses, no second Moses appeared, but
Jehosuah, the merciless warrior who committed genocide. (This,
by the way, is also a myth. All serious scholars believe that
this holy genocide never actually happened.) After Arafat, the
heir will not be Abu-this or Abu-that. It will be Brother Kalachnikoff
- like the song we used to sing in our youth, during the fight
against the British occupation: "Give the floor to Comrade
Parabellum, Give the floor to Comrade Tommy-gun." Parabellum
was a pistol, tommy-gun a sub-machine-gun.
There will be no Palestinian Quisling
- and if a candidate would be found, he would be killed the
next day, like Sharon's Lebanese Quisling, Bashir Jumail. Dozens
of local guerilla leaders will take over, and they will start
a campaign of revenge that may go on for many years, not only
in the country, but throughout the world. The life of every
Israeli will become hell, all the world will become a Jerusalem-style
Ben-Yehuda street. No Israeli embassy, no airplane, no tourist
will be safe.
The dead Arafat will be by far more dangerous
than the living Aarafat. The living Arafat is able and willing
to make peace. The dead Arafat can not. He will eternalize the
conflict.
In our days, historians wonder what folly
took possession of the Jewish people 1930 years ago, causing
them to start a hopeless rebellion against the Roman empire
and bringing utter destruction upon the Jewish commonwealth
in Palestine. A hundred years from now, historians will ask
themselves what folly took possession of this people, causing
it to elect Sharon, a bloody person who has not done anything
in life apart from shedding blood and set up settlements. What
folly took possession of this people, causing it to prefer
settlements and some territories to peace and conciliation?
And how does this people remain indifferent, when the whole
Arab world offers it - perhaps for the last time! - real peace
and normal relations, and the public is listening to the silly
ranting of politicians and commentators, who ridicule the offer
and cheer Sharon on, at the start of a bloody campaign worse
than any one before?
History remembers the few, who warned
the people of the disaster that is bound to follow if they listen
to the Zealots. History will remember us, the few who are warning
the people now of the disaster that will befall all of us,
if we follow Sharon and his gang. Let's hope that our voices
will be heard in time, so that we can start on a new road.
If Arafat will be murdered, it will be
the moment of no return.
Uri Avnery
lives in Israel. He has written a biography of Ariel Sharon.
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