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April 21, 2002
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
April 20, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Drowning in a Sea of Apathy
Kristen
Schurr
Leaving
Nablus
Bernard Weiner
Israel and the Intifada
for Dummies
Jean-Guy
Allard
A
Coup Signed by Otto Reich
Chris Floyd
The "Grandeur" That Was Rome:
A Letter from the Front
April 19, 2002
Eric Flint
Free
the Books!
David Krieger
A Peace Proposal:
Bring in the Children
Jeff Paterson
Advice
to Recruits from
a Gulf War Vet
Jeffrey St. Clair
From Sen. "Lunkhead" to
Bush Energy Czar: A Year in the Life of Spencer Abraham
April 18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Latin
America's Dilemma:
The Propaganda of Otto Reich
Sam Bahour
Bush is Playing Russian
Roulette with Palestinians
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
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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:
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April 21, 2002
US "Suckered" Again in
Israel
By Michelle Campos
In the Israeli cultural lexicon, there is no bigger
insult than "freyer." Hebrew for "sucker,"
it describes anyone who pays too much for anything, stands quietly
in line waiting his turn, or generally is too weak to get his
own way, on his own terms. When I lived in Jerusalem, a recurring
television commercial for baby diapers featured one dry baby
triumphantly saying to a wet baby: "I'm no freyer!"
Aggressive, blunt Israeli society eats freyers for lunch.
When President Bush declared yesterday
that he "was satisfied" with Israel's response in the
aftermath of Secretary of State Colin Powell's shuttle diplomacy,
he proved himself to be...a big fat freyer. Our well-respected
former general, Secretary Powell, is also a freyer. The US Congress
is made up of a bunch of freyers.
They join the long list of US intermediaries
dismissed in the Israeli political jungle as ineffective, irrelevant,
and easily manipulated--in short, "freyers." President
Clinton (though personally not considered a freyer), repeatedly
sent freyers to the region on his Mideast peace team: Warren
Christopher, Dennis Ross, Aaron David Miller. Their visits were
virtually ignored, because it was clear they did not have the
authority or will to stand up to Israel, but rather meekly accepted
the terms it offered for US involvement. As a result, they were
not at all respected in neighboring Arab countries. Israel's
"sucker" is no one's friend in the Middle East.
In contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon is certainly no freyer, as he conveyed most effectively
in response to Bush's demand that the Israeli invasion of Palestinian
cities and towns end "now," "without delay."
Flash back to 1982, when Sharon as Minister of Defense masterminded
Israel's invasion of Lebanon, surpassing the intentions of Prime
Minister Begin and the Israeli Cabinet. Sharon did not listen
to his own prime minister then and even after 18 years of disastrous
policy in Lebanon that led to the deaths of hundreds of occupying
Israeli soldiers (not to mention thousands of occupied Lebanese
civilians and Palestinian refugees), Sharon was not prepared
to accept that his policies had been politically short-sighted
and even immoral.
Amazingly, President Bush and his foreign
policy "advisors" thought Sharon would play along with
the rhetorical reprimand of Israel's military invasion, and pull
out by the time Powell made it to the Middle East (after dawdling
in multiple pit stops along the way). What should have been perfectly
clear to anyone who knows anything about the Middle East and
Israel is that Sharon had no intentions of doing anything Bush
demanded--to do so would have been to show weakness, a lack of
resolve or power, never mind the fact that it would have contradicted
Sharon's geo-political strategy of dismantling all vestiges of
independent Palestinian state and society.
And now, in an effort to save face as
well as to placate the right wing and pro-Israel lobby, Bush
has declared he is "satisfied" with Sharon, "a
man of peace." Is Bush "satisfied" with the hundreds
of Palestinians--among them militants, yes, but mostly civilians
and those just defending their homes and villages--killed in
Sharon's operations? Would a man of peace see military force
as the only legitimate answer to crush a national resistance
to occupation (for Sharon's strategy goes far beyond the "terrorist
infrastructure" he flaunts to the world)? Do the US foreign
policy experts understand that yet again, Sharon's policy as
well as American acquiescence to it, are provocations and escalations
whose ramifications will be felt in the coming weeks, months
and years in the Middle East (and perhaps even at home)?
When will the American executive and
foreign policy apparatus stop making concession after concession
to whatever Israeli government is in power, whatever its policies?
When will the US administration, Congress, and "free"
press stop pandering to those interests who would have us believe
that peace in the Middle East is a zero-sum game, that Israeli
children have any more of a right to live free and safe than
Palestinian children? When will the images of burned out Palestinian
refugee camps horrify and mobilize as much as the images of bombed
Israeli buses?
Mr. President, Secretary Powell: when
will the US pursue a universal commitment to human rights, self-determination,
and social justice? Our international credibility and national
moral compass are at an all-time low regarding the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict--let's not get suckered again.
Michelle Campos
is a doctoral candidate in Middle Eastern history at Stanford
University. She has lived in Israel for four years, most recently
as a Fulbright Scholar. She can be reached at: mcampos@stanford.edu
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