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Today's
Stories
April 10 / 12, 2004
Tariq Ali
Iraqi
Resistance: a New Phase
April 9, 2004
Robert Fisk
This
War's Simple Truth: Iraqis Do Not Want Us
John L. Hess
The Non-Confessions
of a Warrior Princess: Condi on the Stand
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Condoleezza's Condescensions
Christopher Brauchli
Holes in the Sky: Bush's Crazed Missile Defense Plan
Don Santina
Forget the Alamo!: Glorifying the Fight for Slavery in Texas
William S. Lind
The 4G Warfare Seminar, Cont.
Bill Christison
9/11
Commission is Bush's New Lapdog
Website of the Day
What We've Done to Fallujah
April 8, 2004
Wayne Madsen
Rice
(and the Record) Proves It: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act
Kurt Nimmo
Will
Bush Flatten Fallajuh?
Patrick Cockburn
Guided
Missile; Misguided War
Laura Flanders
Steamed
Rice
Larry Everest
What Condi Rice is Hiding
Adam Federman
Sacred Capitalism Hits Russia
M. Junaid Alam
The Iraqi Intifada Begins
Norman Solomon
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence
Douglas Valentine
Echoes
of Vietnam: Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq
Website of the Day
Xispas: Chicano Art, Culture and Politics
April 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Those
Pulitzers!
Sen. Robert Byrd
Deeper
into the Mouth of Hell: We Must Find the Exit from Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Tet
in Iraq: Closer to the Cosmic Disaster?
Patrick Cockburn
Battles
Across Iraq: US Death Toll Mounts
Kathy Kelly
Pacification: Worth the Price?
Sonali Kolhatkar
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan?
Rahul Mahajan
Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell
Robert Fisk
US Airlifts Saddam to Qatar
Mike Whitney
America Out of Iraq, Now!
Sam Hamod
Bush, Pandora's Box and the Tiger
April 6, 2004
C.G. Estabrook
Mercenaries
and Occupiers
William Blum
The Anti-Empire
Report: the Israel Lobby
Col. Dan Smith
The
Language of Disbelief: 1.3 Billion Still Live in War Zones
Dr. Bulent Gokay
The Coming Islamic Republic of Iraq?
Lynn Landes
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote; Machines Do
Sheila Samples
What Would Royko Write?
Jason Leopold
Condi's Blind Spot: Rice Never Mentioned al-Qaeda
Mickey Z.
A Reality Show with No End in Sight
Robert Fisk
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
April 5, 2004
John Farrell
Lessons
from El Salvador and Iraq
Robert Fisk
Bloodbath
a Bad Omen for Bush
Gary Leupp
Shiites Say No: Another "Nightmare
Scenario"
April 3 / 4, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God
Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine
Frederick B. Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer
Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising
Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney
Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard
Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti
Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld
Quiz
Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?
Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time
Nader/Kerry Quandary
Stephen Gowans
Communists
for Capitalism?
Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto
Mickey Z
Turn ON
Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?
Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp
Website of the Weekend
Missing
April 2, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Barbaric
Relativism: the Press and Fallujah
Kurt Nimmo
Wherever
Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Emma Miller
The
Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Susan Block
Same
Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition
Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick
Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey
Christopher Brauchli
The
Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee
Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree
Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons
Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo
Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers
Laura Flanders
Elaine
Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez del Solar
A Year
Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The Illegal
Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated US and
International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
March 30, 2004
William S. Lind
An Occurrence
in Pakistan: the Battle That Wasn't
Ron Jacobs
Assassinations, Hate Mail &
Justice
Mickey Z.
Tommy Boy Friedman Does "Imagine"
Neve Gordon
Strategic Motives of the Yassin Assassination
Mark Scaramella
The Founding Scam: Insider Trading is the American Way
John Chuckman
The Countessa of Empire: Condi
Rice's Idea of Democracy
Greg Moses
Live from Pasadena: Silhouettes of New Order
Rai O'Brien
What Kind of Democracy to Expect if the Opposition Takes Power
in Venezuela
Bill Christison
The
9/11 Commission: Dangerous Harbinger for the Future
Website of the Day
Ghost Town: Riding Through Chernobyl
March 29, 2004
John Maxwell
Crisis
in the Caribbean: a Miasma Foretold
J. Michael Springmann
Email
Spying & Attorney Client Privilege
Robert Fisk / Severin
Carrell
Coalition
of the Mercenaries
The Black Commentator
Haiti's Troika of Terror
Doug Giebel
Candide in the Wilderness:
How Bush Policy Was Made
David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Bargain
Mike Whitney
Rejecting the Language of Terrorism
Richard Oxman
The Pitts: a 9/11 Burrow of an American
Family
Kim Scipes
The AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again
Michael Donnelly
End Game for Northwest Forests
Norman Solomon
The Media Politics of 9/11
Kathy Kelly
Last Lines Before Vanishing
Website of the Day
Swans: Can Money Buy Everything?
March 27 / 28, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
March 26, 2004
Christopher Brauchli
There's
a Chill Over the Country
Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal
of Mordechai Vanunu
Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again
Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon
Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?
John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
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Weekend
Edition
April 9 / 11, 2004
Two Portraits from
the West Bank
Health
Under Siege
By ELLEN CANTAROW
Silat Al-Harthiya.
The 23-year-old social worker, Sirin, dressed
in Muslim orthodoxy--hijab and jilbab (a long, high-collared,
floor-length coat)--lives in a village in the northern West Bank.
With three others including a Boston-based OB/GYN, a medical
student and a public health student, I'm here to get some sense
of how Israel's occupation and war of attrition impact health
in the West Bank. The social worker has offered interviews with
two of her clients, children wounded by the IDF. Between September,
2000 and March 1, 2004, 2,859 Palestinians have been killed,
82 percent of them civilians. Nineteen percent of these were
children under age eighteen. 41,000 Palestinians have been injured
of whom 35.7 percent are children, 32.4 percent of these were
struck, as was the little boy in the story below, by live ammunition,
64.9 percent in the upper body. 39 percent of the injuries were
"moderate to severe"--as were those of our second interviewee.
Among the injured, 2500 people have been permanently disabled,
of whom 500 are children like Hakim and Mazin, described below.
We travel to the village through hills
I haven't seen for sixteen years. They still bear the same lovely,
fragile lines of stone terracing and burdens of olive trees that
make this countryside seem like an austere Tuscany. But now the
roads I traveled in the 1980s are ground into ruts, potholes
and ditches full of muddy pools in January's bitter chill. Only
tanks can decimate roads this way; the last time I saw such destruction
of the roadways wasn't in the West Bank, but in South Lebanon
during Israel's 1982 invasion. Another change since I was here
in 1988: far more settlements scar the landscape. With their
white box-like houses and red roofs they look like something
out of suburban California. In 1978 Matityahu Drobles, head of
the World Zionist Organization's "Master Plan for the Development
of Settlements in Judea and Samaria, 1979--1983," wrote:
"The disposition of the settlements must be carried out
not only around the settlements of the minorities but also in
between them." (by "settlements" Drobles was referring
to towns and villages centuries old, and by "minorities"
he meant the Arab majority.) In 2004 Drobles, Ariel Sharon, Israel's
far-right parties and the militant religious settlers who spearheaded
the settlements from 1967 on have triumphed: settlements ring
and separate all major Palestinian centers of life. I'd long
read about the "Jewish-only bypass roads" that take
settlers and foreign visitors through the West Bank without having
so much as to skim a Palestinian town, but I was hardly prepared
for what they were. Plop them down in New York state or New Jersey
and they'd fit right in -- sleek, smooth, multi-laned. The commuters
who speed along them from Jerusalem to the settlements don't
even have to think about, let alone see, the misery that surrounds
them in cities like Qalqilya, Tulkarem, Jenin, and the villages
surrounding them.
In the 80s I could drive the length and
breadth of the West Bank. Travel between East Jerusalem and Ramallah
was a matter of fifteen to twenty minutes; to Nablus, an hour;
to Jenin, somewhat more. The Palestinian population could move
freely within the West Bank. A roadblock meant several soldiers
posted in the middle of the road checking the identity cards
and passports of passengers traveling in their vehicles, with
rarely a major delay. Two decades later both general and internal
closures are in force. General closure, which prevents Palestinians
from entering Israel either from the West Bank or Gaza, was imposed
shortly after the Oslo accords. Internal closure, which restricts
a population of 3.4 million to their cities and villages, was
imposed when the second intifada began. Families like the ones
described below have often not left their villages and towns
for three years. Unemployment rates have skyrocketed: in the
West Bank, 48% with rates in cities like Jenin and Qalqilya far
above that. In Gaza the rate is 67%. 75% of Palestinians live
in poverty--84.6% in Gaza, 57.8% in the West Bank. In the 1980s
there was occupation, an apparatus of collective punishment--house
demolitions, long curfews on whole villages for the alleged acts
of individuals--but the Palestinian economy was still viable.
Now, after nearly four years of the Sharon regime's war of attrition,
it is not.
Roadblocks and checkpoints are the physical
apparatus of internal closure. The roadblocks, usually unmanned,
are designed to hamper passage from one point to the next. They
assume a myriad of forms, from boulders heaped in the middle
of the road to huge steel contraptions barring all vehicles from
crossing. Vehicles can circumvent the roadblocks by jolting up
and down narrow back roads, but sooner or later they will come
to a checkpoint. Checkpoints bristle with armed soldiers, watch
towers, concrete dividers or heavy wire chutes that track lines
of people towards Israeli sentries, many if not most of whom
are as young as eighteen. Everyone's fate, from infants to the
elderly, depends on their whims. According to the United Nations
Coordination Committee there are 757 checkpoints in the West
Bank and Gaza. It is impossible to overemphasize the catastrophic
effect of closure on health care. Given that permission is needed
to leave one's village in Jenin district to access the hospital
in Jenin, if there's an emergency--a child is wounded; a woman
goes into labor--it's too late to apply for permission. You have
to take your chances at getting lucky with the soldiers on duty
at the checkpoint. Free access to medical care is therefore nonexistent.
According to Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committee figures,
at least 100 people have died because the Israeli army prevented
them from crossing checkpoints to access hospitals. All of this
is said to exist for "security reasons," but according
to Israeli writer Baruch Kimmerling Ariel Sharon's aim is to
finish what he started in Lebanon in 1982--"politicide"
(Kimmerling's word) against the Palestinian people, terminating
their viability as a political entity. In this view "general
closure" and "internal closure" enforce a government
policy driven by the desire to retain all the settlements, especially
those in the resource-rich West Bank.
* * *
At the home of the first child, a 13-year-old
boy, Hakim, we sit on cushions that line the floor against the
walls. Someone brings the usual tray bearing mint tea and small
cups of sweet, strong coffee. The boy is timid, silent, flanked
by his father, a lean, unsmiling, withheld man in his 30s in
whose face you can see the features inherited by the son. He
says he was a worker in Israel but he's now one of tens of thousands
unemployed since internal closure was imposed. "We have
nothing, we have no land, no water, nothing to do--they don't
allow us to live," he says. Father and son have a similar
facial expression, wary, watchful. Hakim has large dark eyes
and well-shaped brows, a cap of dark hair, a slender face and
handsome features. He is a beautiful child, but timid, and he
tells his story with downcast eyes, haltingly and so softly that
it's sometimes hard to hear him. Our translator says that tradition
dictates his subservience to his father, one reason he's reluctant
to speak without his parent's permission. Another might be his
exposure to the gaze of strangers in his disability. Finally,
the boy has been depressed and "not right," says the
translator, ever since the accident happened a year ago.
He was playing with other children outside
his house when he suddenly saw "something strange on the
ground." He picked it up, set it down beside the house,
and threw a stone at it. A bomb left by the Israeli army, it
exploded, shattering his right leg. His uncle rushed him in an
ambulance to the hospital in Jenin where he was given first aid.
From there he should have been taken immediately to Makassed
Hospital in East Jerusalem for treatment: perhaps his leg would
have been saved had travel time permitted. But these days it
is virtually impossible to rush a critically injured boy from
a village like Silat Al-Harthiya to East Jerusalem. So the boy
began a long odyssey -- from Jenin to a Ramallah hospital where
he stayed for twelve days. Then to Makassed Hospital where it
was judged too late to save the leg, which got amputated just
below the knee. After a month the boy was brought home. So far
he has had six operations; another will take place next month.
A Jerusalem charitable society gave him a free prosthesis but
it's very heavy and has never fit correctly. He can't really
walk with it, certainly can't go up and downstairs with it. Not
feeling right with only one leg, he didn't want to go back to
school but he finally returned; his father takes him there by
car. "How has it been to go through this terrible thing
with your son?" Alice, the OB/GYN, asks the father. "I
live in sadness because my son's future is canceled. My son used
to play around the house with his friends but now he can do nothing,
even to go to the bathroom he needs help."
We're all dumbstruck at the dour finality
of the father's pronouncement about Hakim's future. To give the
boy some sense that others his age might support him, Alice asks
him if he has "friends who have had such things happen."
He has one friend, but he wasn't bombed, he was handicapped from
birth. Alice: "And can you help each other in this?"
The translator interposes sardonically: "We are not like
you Americans, we do not do this sort of thing." At one
point the grandparents arrive. The grandmother looks 60 but may
well be younger, with a face that was once handsome, deep-set
eyes, a jutting jaw. "Nothing can compensate the loss of
parts of a body," she intones vehemently. "Even one
million cannot compensate his playing with children, nothing
can make up for the feeling of leisure and happiness he has lost."
What would he like us to tell our friends
about him? The father interposes: "To make our cause reach
honest people in your country and the whole world, people who
don't like to kill people, who have feelings, to tell them what
we face from the Israeli army." We offer Adnan suggestions
about what he can still do; we're all fighting the family's bitterness
and fatalism, and feeling acutely for this child who is absorbing
the conviction that he will always be a helpless victim. We try
to get him to say what he would like to do, and after much prodding
the translator says, "He wants to go to America." Then
he adds, "The problem here is, children don't have their
own opinions." He manages to drag out of the boy that he
wants to be very good in his studies and become an engineer.
What does he want to tell people about his injury? "I want
to tell Palestinian children not to play with anything that looks
strange, because I don't want this ever to happen to anyone again."
* * *
Tama'am means perfection. She is 52 and
she has had sixteen children, fifteen of whom have survived.
Her oldest is 36, her youngest is four. Mr. Sayed, the father,
is a teacher. He wears a traditional white headdress with black
band; his beard his gray; he sits hunched, saying nothing. When
our translator addresses him it is with the honorific given to
older men, "Haj." It's the mother--stout, with a white
headscarf and long, traditional dress -- who speaks volubly in
this household. Everyone is seated on cushions: the male children,
the father, the mother, Alice, the two American students and
I. The girls in the family keep peering into the living room
from the little foyer, giggling. Later, they will run up to Alice
and me, praising our hair, our eyes, our "beauty,"
though in this culture we are old enough to be their grandmothers.
The wounded child is a fourteen-year-old
boy, Mazin, also small for his age, but a different type entirely
from the first child. He has a stoical, almost adult facial expression
-- "manly" comes to mind -- and he looks us in the
eyes. "If you see his body you will feel very sad,"
says the translator. His story: "I was going home from school.
Suddenly a tank came, very fast. Boys were throwing stones, I
tried to escape, and the soldiers shot me. The other boys wanted
to give me first aid but the tank prevented them from helping
me." He was taken to the hospital in Jenin. He was there
for fourteen days, bleeding; then he was taken to Makassed where
he was hospitalized for two months. The family was told that
Mazin would probably die and that they should pray.
Even while he was in intensive care the
Israeli army wouldn't let his mother cross checkpoints to reach
him. His older brother, who had taken him to the hospital, stayed
with him. Mazin spoke with his mother by phone and said--she
recounts this with obvious pride--"Don't cry for me."
During a final ten-day hospital stay in Jordan, doctors grafted
skin from one leg to his side. He lost part of his intestines;
he still has trouble eating. Ta'mam produces photographs of her
boy swathed with bandages, tubes running out of his nose. In
the course of six months he has had six operations. At a slight
suggestion by his mother and by the translator, he takes off
his shirt and lowers his pants. Baring oneself before a group
of strangers is shocking in any event but more terrible here
because the boy's torso is twisted and knobbed in a hideous way,
with bits of flesh congealed into knots. Everyone photographs
feverishly and takes notes, as if the ritual of witness and documentation
will itself help a situation in which we are powerless to annul
what the soldiers in the tank did to this child.
Is Ta'mam afraid for her other children?
She says she has to go to Nablus to see her mother. Since it
is women's job to take care of the house and children, she's
afraid for her children in her absence. Mazin has special problems
that weigh on her: after the accident "he became very nervous,"
and started being aggressive with his brothers and sisters. "Everyone
is very sad for him." His sense of leisure and happiness
has been cut off, too. When we ask what, out of the activities
he engaged in before, he can and cannot do, he lists only the
ones he misses: "I was playing with other children and going
around but now I can't. I was able to play soccer but now I can't."
He has no strength in one of his legs, he can't run. Where he
was operated on, he "feels my bones are going to be broken."
There are problems with other boys who say, "You're handicapped,"
though his friends help him carry his bags to school every day.
He now has a date to go to Tel Aviv for an operation on the nerve
affecting the now defective leg. An organization in Jenin for
handicapped people will pay for the next operation. His father
will go with him. "He is not afraid," says the translator,
adding: "You Americans always say that we don't care about
our children, that our children play in the sand, in the soil..."
If he could tell Americans anything he
wanted, what would he say? "I want to live in peace, like
other children in the world." His ambition: to be a doctor.
"You've certainly seen enough of them," says Alice.
Everyone laughs and Mazin smiles. "You'll probably make
a very good doctor," continues Alice, "because you
know what it's like to be a patient." It turns out that
Mazin likes poetry. We ask him to recite his favorite poem and
the boy suddenly goes silent; he can't think of anything he knows
by heart. Then he looks up: "I will sing a song." In
a beautiful, low, child-voice, with all the dips and quavers
that characterize the Oriental style, he sings a song of bitter,
angry lament which, in the Arabic traditional fashion, he composes
on the spot. In return, we who are here only on a visit and do
not have to stay, sing "We shall overcome." Alice and
Tama'am have been holding hands. The two gaze at each other with
warmth and Alice asks, "How do you feel about Israelis?
The mothers there?" "It does not matter it you are
an Arab or Jewish mother, the pain of seeing your child hurt
is the same," replies Tama'am. "I can understand the
pain and sorrow that Jewish mothers have to go through: I experienced
this myself."
Ellen Cantarow
is a Boston-based musician and writer. During the 1980s she wrote
frequently from Israel and the West Bank for The Village Voice
and other US publications. Her most recent trip to the West Bank
was in January, 2004, with the Jewish American Medical Project.
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