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April 1, 2002
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
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Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published March 1, 2002
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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:
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April 1, 2002
The Bloodshed in
Palestine
A Way Out
By Sam Bahour and Michael
Dahan
Every foreign military invasion has a pre-defined
end called withdrawal. The hideous Israeli incursion of internationally
recognized Palestinian territories is no exception. Every military
operation has a defined political goal, yet Sharon seems to be
keeping this a secret from his cabinet, the Israeli people, indeed,
the world.
Tomorrow, next week, next month, next
year, Israel will need to decide to which border they will withdraw
their troops. Israel can choose to move back to one of the hundreds
of its self-defined 'security' borders, or they can, once and
for all, choose to end the never-ending spiral of violence by
finally implementing UN resolutions and withdrawing back to the
June 4, 1967 borders, thus closing one chapter of its senseless
military occupation.
The infamous Israeli Prime Minister,
Ariel Sharon, knows this very well and he also knows that his
time is limited in rampaging Palestinian cities, institutions
and lives. The fact of the matter is that US-armed Israel can
occupy, and re-occupy, Palestinian lands over and over, and under
any media slogan that fits the times, but will never rid itself
of the legitimate Palestinian resistance to end the illegal Israeli
occupation that has haunted it, and the world, for 37 years now.
Palestinians went to Madrid, Oslo, Camp
David and Taba and extended the greatest concession ever voluntarily
made by an indigenous people -- to relinquish 78% of their ancestral
homeland so Jews around the world could fulfill their own dream
of a homeland. In return, the world community expected the Israeli
occupiers to dismantle its illegal occupation on the 22% of Palestinian
lands that remained, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
What Palestinians received instead was a package of Israeli aggression
like never before.
Israeli policy makers have become blinded
by the suicide bombings to the point that they cannot comprehend
that their own, home-made, military occupation of Palestinian
lands is generating, not only suicide bombers, but a united community
that is increasingly feeling that any future co-existence may
be impossible given the deafening silence of the Israeli public-opinion
toward the continuing occupation. Suicide bombings are totally
immoral and serve no strategic goal, but have been totally successful
in feeding into the political plans of maniac military professionals
like Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres.
Well-oiled public relation campaigns
are emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv to portray the Palestinian
victim as the rapist and the Israeli rapist as a poor soul with
a dire need for a security fix. In spite of this, Palestinians
are going out of their way to facilitate the entry of Israel
into the Middle East as an equal, legitimate entity and a partner
for the future. Now with the Arab League offer for normalization
with Israel if UN resolutions are implemented, the Arab World
too, as a whole, is giving Israel a respectable way out as well.
Unfortunately, Sharon and Peres are missing this once in a lifetime
opportunity and would rather turn every single Palestinian citizens
life upside down hoping for mass submission, which will never
come.
History will judge the Palestinian leadership
on its political wisdom, but Israel cannot wait for history.
Israel must choose today between peace on internationally recognized
terms with the dispossessed indigenous people of their State
or face another half-century of isolation with the backdrop of
a rapidly encroaching demographics dilemma.
For our part, we as two citizens of this
troubled region, offer President Bush and his Administration,
a history book of Palestine and the Palestinians. For the Palestinian
and Israeli leaderships, their part starts with an Israeli withdrawal
to the 1967 borders and a Palestinian commitment to remain committed,
which Mr. Arafat amazingly still is even under gunfire, to resolving
the remaining issues of refugees, settlements, and security in
a new and improved peace process.
Today, we write not as colleagues, but
as a Palestinian living under Israeli attack, a few hundred meters
from Arafat's compound, and an Israeli, living a few hundred
meters from one of the latest suicide bombings.
There is a way out.
Sam Bahour
is a Palestinian-American living in the besieged Palestinian
City of Al-Bireh in the West Bank and can be reached at sbahour@palnet.com.
He is co-author of HOMELAND: Oral Histories of Palestine and
Palestinians (1994).
Michael Dahan
is an Israeli-American political scientist living in Jerusalem
and can be reached at <mdahan@attglobal.net>.
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