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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:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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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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Read Whiteout and Find Out
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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This Explosive
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Reviews of Gore:
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April 14, 2002
Palestinians and Americans
by Sam Bahour
The Palestinian people have no grudge against
the American public. We never did. As a matter of fact, if one
resists the media spin and takes a closer look at what the Palestinians
have been struggling for during the last two weeks--let alone
the last thirty-five years--it will be revealed that the Palestinian
Intifada is a very American struggle. After all, it is a struggle
for national independence, civil liberties, human rights, as
well as a struggle to establish an open market in an independent
economy, free to market forces and free from Israeli domination.
The Palestinians are doing what any American
citizen would do: we are fighting for our rights. At times, some
Palestinian individuals and organizations reach a point of equating
life under Israeli occupation to death and unfortunately choose
to take Israeli civilian lives along with their own. This is
a sad but bitter reality of the environment that a prolonged
foreign military occupation creates. No matter how many times
US President Bush or a war criminal like Israeli prime minister
Ariel Sharon call upon Palestinians to condemn these acts, the
reality remains that taking civilian lives is definitely not
the norm in the Palestinian struggle.
Palestinians realize that, unfortunately,
too many Americans--as the anti- apartheid song used to say--think
the West Bank is California and the Middle East is Chicago. In
fact, however, the history of the Palestinian struggle is rich;
it is something that every American can relate to. Let me explain.
First, the Palestinians are not begging
for a homeland of their own. They had a homeland in 1948 before
the establishment of the State of Israel. As a matter of fact
before 1948 they were living mostly peacefully in a secular environment:
Jews, Muslims and Christians. It is the establishment of the
State of Israel that created the first wave of Palestinian refugees
who are still suffering a daily hell, fifty-four years later.
These Palestinian refugees, plus their offspring, are the same
people that are (or were) living in the Jenin refugee camp before
Israel committed its latest atrocity. In 1948, these Palestinian
refugees did not immediately take up arms against Israel when
they were forcefully evicted from their homes. Just the opposite.
From 1948 up until the mid-1960's Palestinians
attempted to find a peaceful resolution to their being forced
from their homes by the Israeli military. Through numerous political
and organizational venues, Palestinians shuttled from the United
States to the United Nations to the United Kingdom and back again,
demanding that justice be served. Everyone recognized the historical
injustice committed against the Palestinians, but no one stood
up to take action. It was only then that the Palestinians took
up arms and began their military struggle. For this they paid
a high price. Israel saw that the world's powers-to-be were not
concerned with resolving the plight of Palestinians and proceeded
with a military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East
Jerusalem on June 4, 1967. This created a second round of Palestinian
refugees and, consequently, another generation of anger.
In the 1970's the Palestinians went to
the UN and asked again for justice to be served, peacefully and
diplomatically. The UN took significant decisions in favor of
Palestinians; however, it had neither the power nor the will
to implement any of them. Palestinian living conditions continued
to worsen. The Palestinians turned again to non-violence in the
beginning of the 80's, only to have the leaders of that nascent
movement exiled from the West Bank. Many others -- writers, student
activists, unionists, musicians, and organizers -- that tried
to work non-violently to end the occupation and restore the rights
of the refugees were thrown in Israeli prisons. Most of them
were tortured. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and tried to crush
the Palestinian movement there, where thousands of Palestinian
refugees had taken refuge as they waited for the world to act.
Although it supported the massacre of up to twenty-five hundred
Palestinians in the refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila, Israel
failed to destroy either the Palestinians' hopes or their struggle.
Then in 1987 the Palestinians took to the streets in what is
now known as the first popular uprising (Intifada), an action
not unfamiliar to anyone who lived in the US South during the
1960's. Palestinians made their voice heard, again mostly non-violently,
but the US continued to turn a blind eye while at the same time
arming Israel to the teeth and pumping more foreign aid money
into Israel than it provided to the entire continent of Africa.
In 1993 Palestinians entered a peace
process that made unprecedented Palestinian political overtures
to Israel even though the Oslo accords still maintained the system
of Israeli military occupation. Palestinians recognized Israel
as a state and renounced terror. During the next eight years
what the Palestinians got in return was a seventy per cent increase
in the number of illegal Israeli settlers living on their land
and Israeli domination of their economic development. And now
we are facing another Israeli military invasion and more war
crimes. Many Palestinians believed that a world now in a state
of US-led globalization would not put up with continued Israeli
intransigence. We were wrong.
I was born in Ohio and lived all of my
life there before relocating to Palestine following the signing
of the Oslo Peace Accords. I would bet that any American put
in the circumstances the Palestinian people have found themselves
in would act just as we have. The American way would counsel
being steadfast, fighting back, and even painfully witnessing
some of their own taking their lives after losing all hope for
the possibility of a secure and respectable life.
Over the years Palestine and the Palestinians
have historically been every American government's worst nightmare.
Why? Because US administrations know something that every Palestinian
also knows -- US foreign policy, at least on this issue, has
never reflected genuine US strategic interests in the Middle
East, nor has it reflected the will and principles of the American
people. The foreign government of Israel identified the huge
chasm between the American public and its administrations and
the United States Congress. Thus, when the Palestinian struggle
moves to the front burner, as it does periodically, US presidents,
officials and most congresspersons know that their most prestigious
government institutions are about to be exposed to their own
constituency. What is their fear? Well, Israel decided not to
waste its time with the American people so it created the American
Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and its related political
action committees to deal with Congress. And deal with Congress
it has!
In their own words, AIPAC aims to "Reinforce
our commitment to Israel and support her security infrastructure
by providing nearly $3 billion in aid, while refocusing that
assistance to meet Israel's changing security needs." Also,
AIPAC aims to, "Recognize Israel's singular needs by granting
unique early disbursal of aid -- all assistance was received
30 days after the foreign aid bill was passed." What does
all this mean to you -the American citizen? It means an expenditure
of your taxes amounting to $5 billion a year: in total over $82
billion since Israel was established. Additionally, it means
that a good amount of these monies went to build illegal Israeli
settlements on Palestinian lands, in flagrant disregard to US
objections and in blatant violation of international law. Moreover,
it means that some of these monies will go to professional public
relations firms that keep repeating that "all Palestinians
are terrorists" until you actually believe it. And there
is more. Israel offers its citizens free health care, free education
and a standard of living that beats that in most US cities. All
this and more is made possible by your tax money.
In his farewell address in 1793, George
Washington said, "Against the insidious wiles of foreign
influence - I conjure you to believe me, fellow- citizens - the
jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since
history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of
the most baneful foes of republican government." With regard
to Israel, his words could not have been more accurate.
Most Americans do not recognize the similarities
between the Palestinian struggle and their own principles of
freedom and independence, because Israel (with your taxes) makes
sure that you do not hear the other side. Worse yet, the pictures
of innocent Israelis killed have overwhelmed and moved you--as
they should--but you have yet to ask why no cameras have been
allowed in the Jenin refugee camp to photograph the mass killing
of Palestinian civilians by the State of Israel. A sad but true
fact is that American society, the most developed in the world,
has forced upon you to view the Palestinian struggle, and many
others too, in the same manner that you purchase your toothpaste...the
side that spends more advertising dollars wins.
Palestinians will eventually end the
Israeli occupation, maybe sooner, maybe later. But Israeli colonialism
will fail no matter how many US armaments, UN vetoes and US funds
are made available to it. Colonialism always fails. And as we
struggle to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, we urge
you to end the Israeli occupation of Congress. The American people
deserve better leadership.
Sam Bahour
is a Palestinian-American living in the besieged Palestinian
City of Al-Bireh/Ramallah in the West Bank and can be reached
at sbahour@palnet.com.
The writer urges readers to download and display the poster at
http://www.epalestine.com
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