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April 18, 2002
M. Shahid
Alam
A
Colonizing Project
Built on Lies
Alexander Cockburn
Austin Cultural Limits:
Willie Nelson, Film and BBQ
April 17, 2002
Norman
Finkelstein
Behind
the Carnage in Palestine
Kristen Schurr
With the Wounded
and the Homeless in Nablus
Norman
Madarasz
Undoing
Chavez:
The View from South America
Brian Wood
Combing The Ruins of Jenin
George
Monbiot
Chemical
Coup: The CIA's Attempt to Undermine the UN's Weapon Inspector
for Iraq
Robert Fisk
Fear and Learning in America
April 16, 2002
Todd May
US
Should End Aid to Israel
Gabriel Ash
The Oilman, the General
and the Coup that Failed
Ron Jacobs
Wake
Up Some Mornin',
Find Your Own Self Dead:
The Chavez Coup
Brian Wood
Inside Jenin: Rubble and Decomposing
Bodies
Jack McCarthy
Citizen
Coup: The Times,
The Post and the Coup Plotters
Dave Marsh
Hymns: How I Got Through
Last Week
April 15, 2002
Susi Abeles
A
Field Trip to Jenin
Breyten Breytenbach
A Letter to Ariel Sharon:
"You Won't Break Them"
Gregory
Wilpert
CounterCoup
in Venezuela
Kristen Schurr
Amid the Rubble of Nablus
Jordy
Cummings
An
Open Letter to Abe Foxman
Christopher Reilly
The Media, the CIA
and the Chavez Coup
James
T. Phillips
"Homicide"
Bombers
April 14, 2002
William Blum
The CIA and Venezuela
David
Vest
A
Good Old-Fashion "Incursion"
Ralph Nader
General Motors:
Stuck in Reverse
M. Junaid
Alam
From
the Ashes: Palestinian Struggle for Freedom
Sam Bahour
Palestinians and Americans
April 13, 2002
Beth Daoud
Life
in the Ruins of Nablus
Patrick Cockburn
Bulldozing History:
The End Nears for Stalin's
Most Monstrous Hotel
Gregory
Wilpert
The
Coup in Venezuela:
an Eye-Witness Account
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Thoughts on Our War
Against Terrorism
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:
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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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:
a User's Manual
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April 18, 2002
Bush is Playing Russian
Roulette With Palestinians
By Sam Bahour
The United States of America is organizing another
international conference in the Middle East. This one, sadly,
emerges as a result of the destruction of Palestinian society
by Israel. By doing so, the US is setting itself up for a political
and security failure, yet again. The first US failure was called
Oslo, where the Palestinian leadership was lured into a US-sponsored
'peace process' that has led to the intentional obliteration
of Palestinian cities and dismantling of Palestinian leadership
and the Palestinian Authority.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has
been central to the Middle East ever since Israel was created
54 years ago. Furthermore, ever since Israel occupied the remaining
22% of Palestine - the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem
- on June 4, 1967 tensions in the region have been steadily increasing.
Today's Middle East crisis reflects another round of US foreign
policy failure and the continuation of Israeli disregard for
international law and universal standards of nation-state behavior.
There is, however, an important difference this time around:
the world, including the Arab world, has finally been able to
glimpse at the nature of the Israeli occupation. This one difference
has the power to create a momentum that may change the political
landscape of the Middle East forever, and with it US interests
in Middle East.
As Israel defied President Bush's repeated
call for an immediate withdraw from Palestinian cities and refugee
camps, some US leaders such as Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have called upon the
US to provide the region with the "strong leadership that
only America can provide." This is a senior US foreign affairs
official who was unable to predict and is now unable to admit
that the last 35 years of US support - financially, politically
and morally - for Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people
would lead to a human catastrophe. Equally astonishing is the
refusal of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to ask why
Palestinians should accept American leadership now, after it
failed throughout the entire course of the Oslo peace process
to address the political rights of the Palestinian people.
The Bush administration's decision to
ignore Israel's 18-month military aggression on Palestinian cities
displays that American leadership is already in full support
of Israel's actions. Bush's earlier landmark policy change in
support of a Palestinian state, now seems only to have provided
a thin veneer of political cover under which Israeli tanks rolled
into nearly every Palestinian city. All this comes with the backdrop
of President Bush, after being rebuffed by Israeli refusal to
stop its war on Palestinians, calling prime minister Ariel Sharon
a 'man of peace'.
Conversely, the Palestinian leadership
is in over its head. President Arafat does not have a public
or organizational mandate to negotiate anything other than the
principles in the PLO Covenant. Some would even argue that with
the total collapse of the Oslo Peace Accords, the reference points
of the Madrid Conference, namely Palestinian acceptance of UN
resolutions 242 and 338 and the PLO recognition of the State
of Israel, are now also in need of reassessment. The US will
continue to abuse this Palestinian political vacuum in order
to promote its agenda of having Arab States (fearful for their
own survival) pressure President Arafat into accepting less than
what Palestinians rightfully and legally deserve. However, the
US is mistaken to believe that in this period the Palestinian
Authority President and his handful of personal aides or a few
randomly appointed Palestinian civilians authoritatively speak
for the Palestinian people.
The Palestinian Authority that was established
to operate in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by the Oslo agreement
was created by US-blessing and has now been dismantled by US-blessing.
That leaves us where we were pre- Oslo with regard to Palestinian
politics, with the PLO being the sole legitimate representative
of the Palestinian people. This being the case, it is crucial
that the PLO convene an emergency Palestine National Council
meeting outside of Palestine in order to assume the reins of
leading the Palestinian struggle. For Palestinians there is too
much at stake to wait for President Arafat to be released from
captivity by Israel and the US before taking action. Also, it
is unfair to all those Palestinians that have sacrificed so much
in this struggle to allow the Palestinian Authority to negotiate
under these conditions.
With or without the US-sponsored conference
being proposed by Secretary of State Powell, the US can end the
Israeli occupation and reinstate Palestinians their national,
political and civil rights as defined in over 60 UN resolutions.
This, and only this, will reinstate US credibility in the region.
If the conference maintains the Israeli occupation, in any way,
shape or form, it will commit the region to more bloodshed and
put regional US strategic interests at serious risk. Given that
all participants, except Israel, would be coming to this conference
with a US political and economic knife at their throats, it is
unlikely that the US and Israel will walk away with anything
more than a media success, and at best, another empty 'peace
process' that delays solving the conflict for a few more years.
The US is clearly defining its Middle
East foreign policy by playing Russian Roulette with the Palestinian
cause. By spearheading a political initiative based upon Palestinian
physical and political ruins, the international/regional conference
initiative has two conceivable outcomes. Either the Palestinian
struggle will end with the fate that befell Native Americans,
or the Palestinians, these suffering 6 million people, will be
the Achilles heel of a much larger movement that will tear the
US hegemony in the Middle East at its seams. If I were a betting
man, I would take the latter, for Martin Luther King was right
on the money when he said, "True peace is not merely the
absence of tension, it is the presence of justice." Without
the enfranchisement of the Palestinian people, the Middle East
will know neither.
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
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