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Today's
Stories
October 12,
2004
Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Israel as Sideshow
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
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 for More Stories.
|
October 12, 2004
The Elephant
in the Room of Empire
Israel
as Sideshow
By
BILL and KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
Former
CIA analysts
During an interview with British journalist
Robert Fisk on Democracy Now! on October 1, the morning
after the first Bush-Kerry presidential debate, Amy Goodman's
associate Juan Gonzalez, clearly hoping for a substantive response,
observed to Fisk that Israel had hardly been mentioned during
the debate; each presidential candidate mentioned it only once,
and moderator Jim Lehrer asked no questions at all about Israel
or the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But Fisk simply dismissed
the issue as of no particular moment. Sure, he said, this is
something you just cannot talk about in political discussions
in the U.S., and so he did not.
Fisk was not sympathizing with
this very American impulse to push aside an issue of overriding
importance, but his brush-off did help perpetuate a serious misconception
in American politics. One of the enduring myths of the Arab-Israeli
and especially the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is that this
conflict, and the U.S.-Israeli relationship at its heart, is
basically a sideshow, vitally important emotionally to American
Jews and in fact to most Americans but of no great strategic
significance to U.S. national interests. This sense among far
too many Americans that Israel has no relationship to U.S. global
policies, and particularly to the U.S. pursuit of empire, has
been particularly evident in the last few years, just when everyone
truly desirous of a peaceful Middle East should have been promoting
precisely the opposite viewpoint.
In the last year, there has
been a rash of investigative films and in-depth studies and analyses
put out by progressive journalists and media outlets that examine
the U.S. drive for global hegemony and try to look at why terrorists
are targeting the U.S. These journalists and media outlets, the
very progressives who should best be able to "get it,"
have all totally or almost  totally ignored the Israeli
connection to the Iraq war and to the various other Bush administration
plans for the Middle East: the much discussed possibility of
an attack on Iran and its nuclear capability, the possible plans
to attack Syria, the so-called "transformation" of
the Middle East supposed to come about by foisting a false democracy
on it upon the wings of cruise missiles and B-52s.
These documentaries and reports
include particularly such widely circulated video presentations
as Uncovered, which made a big splash late last year,
and Hijacking Catastrophe, which is very popular right
now. There is also Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Among
the reports are at least two very serious in-depth studies done
by Foreign Policy in Focus ("A Secure America in a Secure
World," published in September 2004) and by a think tank
at Notre Dame ("Toward a More Secure America: Grounding
U.S. Policy in Global Realities," jointly published in November
2003 by the Fourth Freedom Forum and the Joan B. Kroc Institute
for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame).
Both of these studies were signed on to by a wide range of highly
respected scholars and former government experts. And, of course,
there is the 9/11 Commission report, which is being taken in
most circles as the definitive word on what went wrong
before September 11 and whether U.S. foreign policy had anything
to do with provoking the attack.
Hijacking Catastrophe actually gets close to the Israeli
connection by directly examining the neo-conservative plot to
induce the fear in average Americans that would serve as Bush's
mandate for implementing the plans for an invasion of Iraq that
the neo-cons had formulated long before, largely for the benefit
of Israel. But this film, as well as the others like it and the
reports, all stop just short of examining the Israeli connection
to U.S. war-mongering in the Middle East. These are all excellent
exposés of Bush administration empire-building and oil
greed, but film after film and investigative report after investigative
report ignore one of the most important strategic motivators
for the Iraq war: Israel and the effort to guarantee Israel's
security by neutralizing its greatest threat, which was Iraq
under Saddam Hussein. The neo-cons are now working on Iran, and
you can bet that, if the U.S. attacks Iran, a year or two hence
when that war begins to go bad, everyone will ignore Israel's
connection to that one too -- even though, with Saddam gone,
Iran is now Israel's greatest threat.
(Both Bush and Kerry did actually
slip up a bit in their first debate by mentioning the Israeli
connection to Iraq, but this was ever so en passant, so
that virtually no one noticed. Bush volunteered that, along with
other imagined benefits to the U.S. and the world, "a free
Iraq will help secure Israel." Kerry, not to be outdone
in the competition to fawn on Israel, inserted a statement that
he will "get it right" in Iraq because "it's important
to Israel, it's important to America, it's important to the world."
The candidates may have lost sight momentarily of the general
desire to downplay any Israeli connection, but each undoubtedly
thought it more important for the moment not to let his opponent
gain an advantage in the competition to demonstrate the greatest
support for Israel. Nevertheless, this whole episode blew over
in the blink of an eye, and in the arena of public discourse,
Israel remains a sideshow.)
The bottom line here is that
virtually no one -- no analyst, no moviemaker -- wants to touch
the Israel issue. You can't sell a movie like Fahrenheit 9/11
if you talk about Israel; you won't have the same impact, and
you certainly won't be able to make any money, if you are seen
to criticize Israel in any way, so better just to ignore it.
In actuality, it is impossible to get around the fact that most
of the neo-conservatives in this current administration, who
wield a great deal of influence over U.S. foreign policy, have
long been active supporters of Israel, even to the point of opposing
past U.S. policy on the peace process that went against the desires
of Israel's right wing. It is also impossible to get around the
fact that many of the neo-cons happen to be Jewish. But this
is reality; in the surreal world of U.S. and Israeli politics,
you cannot bring this up. It is anti-Semitic, you are told, to
say that Jews have any power at all, because that begins to sound
like the old canards, which really were anti-Semitic, that used
to put forth a specious case for Jews trying to run the world.
So no one wants to touch the
issue. The result is that the moviemakers and commentators who
mold public opinion too often steer away from it. This is true
even of progressive journalists who know the realities. It is
true also of virtually all politicians, most of whom don't know
the realities, with the blessed exception of Ralph Nader. It
is true of former diplomats. It's impossible to count on the
fingers of two hands the number of retired diplomats who, called
upon in various public forums to expatiate on U.S. policy toward
Palestine-Israel, will spout meaningless formulas or beg off
entirely because the subject is too sensitive, too dangerous,
too set in the concrete determined by domestic politics.
As a result of this pervasive
silence, public opinion comes to think that Israel has no strategic
influence on the U.S., that the U.S. certainly wouldn't ever
carry out any policy because of Israel or even in cooperation
with Israel, and that Israel's policies in the occupied territories
and its oppression of the Palestinians have no strategic impact
anywhere and could not possibly factor in to the reasons the
U.S. is targeted by terrorists or to the reality that most of
the Arab and Muslim world hates the United States because
of its foreign policies and particularly because it
enables Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. Israel is the
elephant in the room of empire.
There is a vicious circle at
work here: the less the media and politicians discuss Israel-Palestine,
the less knowledgeable and the less interested the public becomes,
and vice versa. The general tone of the few press articles that
took note of the candidates' silence following the first Bush-Kerry
debate was that Palestinian-Israeli issues are of little concern
to the public and therefore should concern the candidates little.
Shibley Telhami, a leading Middle East expert and himself a Palestinian
American, was quoted as saying that the issue is not "on
the agenda for the public" and is therefore of low priority
for the candidates. "They have bigger fish to fry,"
said another scholar from a Middle East think tank in Washington.
According to a Council on Foreign Relations poll taken in August,
respondents placed resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
at number 17 on a list of 19 important issues for the next administration.
The Israelis are getting the message. An article in the Israeli
newspaper Ha'aretz summed it up: "The candidates
can't be blamed. They didn't set the agenda for the electorate;
they only respond to it, and the voters are far from being interested
in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
This is appalling -- a startling
upending of the concept of leadership, a huge failure of understanding
by the American public, and a dismal failure of understanding
by the politicians in whose hands U.S. security is supposed to
lie. In fact, the U.S.-Israeli relationship has grown so very
close over the years that it is almost impossible to distinguish
whose policy, Israel's or ours, is being pursued in the Middle
East, and this is a reality that puts the United States in grave
danger.
The U.S.-Israeli tie has been
growing steadily since well before there was an established state
of Israel -- from the time when the Zionist movement arose and
won the support of much of the American public and of early twentieth-century
policymakers. But by now, the political culture in the United
States has turned so decidedly toward support for Israel that
any alternative view is almost impossible to express. This is
more true nowadays than at any time in the past, and today the
relationship is much more than a matter simply of emotional sympathy
for the plight of Jews or admiration for Israel's accomplishments,
much more than merely a matter of looking at the conflict from
an Israel-centered perspective.
After decades of ever-solidifying
ties, Israel is now so closely linked to the United States in
concrete ways that it is actually a part of the U.S. military-industrial
complex. Israel sells military equipment, with our knowledge,
to countries to which the U.S. is restricted by law from selling
-- for instance, to China. So many arms and types of arms are
produced in the U.S. for Israel that it has become quite easy
for Israel's lobbyists in Washington to go to individual congressmen
and point out to them how many jobs in a given district depend
on this arms industry and on not withholding arms from
Israel. In this way, Israel becomes a direct factor in sustaining
the U.S. military-industrial complex, in maintaining jobs in
the U.S., and in keeping congressmen and other politicians in
office.
With the kind of pro-Israeli
activists who people the policymaking ranks of the Bush administration,
it has come to the point that the U.S. gears much of its foreign
policy to furthering Israel's interests as much or more than
to furthering our own interests. Bush policymakers have as little
interest in actually resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
as the voters in the Council on Foreign Relations poll whom they
are supposed to be leading; their interest is in dealing with
the conflict in whatever way Israeli sees fit. One of the primary
reasons we went to war in Iraq was to benefit Israel. This reality
is so frightening that it needs to be trumpeted whenever motivations
for the war are discussed. The United States' own pursuit of
global hegemony was obviously another major motivation, as was
oil, but U.S. and Israeli goals in the Middle East are so intertwined
that it is impossible to determine where a policymaker like Paul
Wolfowitz, for instance, or Donald Rumsfeld or the many neo-conservatives
in the Defense Department stop thinking of Israeli interests
and begin to think exclusively of U.S. interests. Policy and
policymakers are so closely interlinked that there probably is
no such point. This needs to be discussed loudly and often.
One problem with treating Israel
and its conflict with the Palestinians as a sideshow, with no
direct impact on U.S. interests, is that the more Israel is ignored
as a factor, as an ingredient in U.S. empire-building, the stronger
Israel becomes, the stronger its ties to the military-industrial
complex, the more it is able to stand up to the United States
and resist any U.S. demands -- in the peace process for instance
-- the more it is able to kill Palestinians, pursue its territorial
aggrandizement, and ultimately endanger the United States. Everything
Israel does in the Middle East is perceived throughout the world,
and accurately so, as having been condoned, encouraged, and enabled
by the United States, with the result that any terrorists able
to concoct an attack like September 11 will target us before
they will target Israel.
Another problem is that the
entire anti-war and anti-empire movement in the U.S. is split
on the question of policy toward Israel, and efforts to hide
this split are widespread. Two different arguments, both spurious,
are made in favor of continuing the cover-up. The first is that
the U.S.-Israeli relationship is simply not a major causal factor
behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq or the U.S. desire to concentrate
its drive for global domination first and foremost on the Middle
East. Many Israeli and American-Jewish peace activists firmly
support this argument, and it cannot be denied that many non-Jewish
activists do also, although some of these may do so at least
in part for tactical reasons.
The second argument is completely
tactical, and those who espouse it openly recognize that fact.
This argument alleges that unity in the U.S. peace movement is
important above all else, and that we will weaken the movement
irretrievably unless we ignore the controversial Israel-Palestine
problem. The fear is that media companies and publishers will
refuse to distribute documentary videos, films, books, and articles
if we challenge establishment positions on Israel and Palestine,
and that fewer people will watch or buy or read our documentaries
and writings. The rationalization is often put forward that there
are so many other issues on which we can attack the bellicose
policies of the U.S. that it is really not even necessary to
deal with the particular hot potato of the American relationship
with Israel.
For starters, the argument
goes, we have oil to talk about; the wrongs of global domination;
the immoral wars against "terrorism" (which is nothing
but a tactic) as self-servingly defined by Washington and its
allies; killings of thousands of innocents in Afghanistan and
Iraq that the U.S. refuses even to count; the injustices of a
U.S. version of economic globalization that has widened the gap
between rich and poor throughout the world; ever-expanding military
expenditures in the U.S.; more new American military bases almost
everywhere; continuing U.S. support for authoritarian governments
in the Arab world, Central Asia, and elsewhere; new nuclear weapons
produced by a blatantly hypocritical U.S. government futilely
trying at the same time to prevent unfriendly nations and non-state
entities from obtaining nukes, etc., etc., etc.
So, with so much to talk about,
why bother with one more issue that is exceedingly troublesome?
Just ignore the Israel-Palestine thing and the excessive pandering
by both Republicans and Democrats to a terrible right-wing Israeli
government. After all, criticizing any Israeli policy comes too
close to anti-Semitism, and that would destroy the peace movement.
So -- play on the team. At the same time, we must still deplore,
and at great length, acts against Israelis such as the recent
terrorism at Taba, whether committed by Palestinians, by al Qaeda,
or by anyone else, and we must be careful to avoid serious criticism
of any Israeli retaliation, even though that retaliation may
be on a scale two or three times greater than the original terrorism.
And of course it would also be better not to rile up Israel and
its AIPAC supporters by talking loudly about Israel's recent
excessive killings of Palestinians in Gaza -- many more than
the number of Israelis killed at Taba. Just let all that go.
Unity of the peace movement is far more important.
At a time when most Republican
and Democratic leaders already pander quite thoroughly to AIPAC
and the present Israeli government, how can we change the situation?
First, those leaders of the peace movement who believe such pandering
is wrong should show some courage. They should forget about unity
with anyone who believes that present U.S. policies toward Israel
and Palestine are morally justifiable and beneficial to future
global peace and stability. Then, they should also loudly and
publicly announce their belief that criticizing Israel's cruel
and oppressive policies toward Palestinians is not anti-Semitism,
just as criticizing the present combined Republican and Democratic
policy of supporting Israel so completely is not anti-Americanism.
They should lead in the peace effort and cease trying
to achieve unity with anyone who believes, absurdly, that criticism
of any government's policies constitutes ethnic hatred.
Certainly, there are multiple
aspects of U.S. foreign and military policies that peace activists
in this country should be working to change. But none of the
elements of U.S. global policies in the list above is more important
as a cause for hatred of U.S. policies around the world, and
therefore as a potential cause of future terrorism against the
U.S. and its allies, than the failure to impose meaningful restraints
on Israel's occupation and its behavior toward Palestinians.
By erasing U.S. policies toward Israel from the list of acceptable
targets for criticism, too many peace movement spokesmen inevitably
-- and sometimes perhaps unconsciously -- exaggerate the importance
of other U.S. policies. What has been exaggerated the most, in
part because it best suits the propaganda needs of Israel's Likud
government, is the U.S. relationship to, and the role of, authoritarian
Arab governments as a root cause of the September 11 terrorist
acts.
This exaggeration particularly
applies to the misplaced emphasis on the alleged ties of the
Saudi Arabian government to the events of that date. The Saudi
royal family's almost feudal rule, supported for over half a
century by the U.S., and the resulting alienation of many average
Saudis, particularly among the young, both from the U.S. and
from their own government's policies, clearly constitute one
-- although only one -- of the causes of terrorism against the
U.S. and its allies. But efforts by Israeli officials and friends
of Israel in the U.S. to magnify this as the single root cause
above all others began immediately after September 11 and have
largely succeeded.
Unfortunately, to take just
one example, Michael Moore and his film Fahrenheit 9/11
contributed substantially to this success, both by devoting so
much attention to the Saudis and by ignoring U.S. support for
Israel as a considerably more important factor behind terrorism
against the United States. Such distortions have been close to
universal in other recent films and academic analyses of U.S.
foreign policies as well, making it easier for any administration
to conclude that it can "win" or "solve"
the so-called war on terror while continuing to support Israel's
colonization of the West Bank to the hilt.
And in the meantime, the U.S.
relationship with Israel continues to be treated, at all levels
of political discourse in the United States, as a sideshow to
larger strategic questions. This is extremely dangerous. There
will be no resolution to the war on terror and no easing of the
hatred of the United States by our own allies and by the Arab
and Muslim world, until there is a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict that gives as much justice to Palestinians as to Israelis.
We ignore the direct danger Israel poses to us at our own peril.
Our drive for empire already came back to bite us three years
ago on September 11, and it will come back again as long as we
fail to distinguish our own interests from Israel's.
Yet The campaign rhetoric of
Bush and Kerry snores on, and neither the candidates nor the
media moderators of their so-called debates have once raised
the issue of justice for the Palestinians. The sideshow recedes
ever farther from the minds of Americans, even as the likelihood
mounts of an international explosion arising from this issue.
Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA.
He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director
of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. He is
a contributor to Imperial
Crusades, CounterPunch's new history of the wars on Iraq
and Afghanistan.
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst
and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the
author of Perceptions
of Palestine and The
Wound of Dispossession.
There essay Dual Loyalities
is a centerpiece of CounterPunch's The
Politics of Anti-Semitism.
They can be reached at: christison@counterpunch.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for September 18 / 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy
Patrick Cockburn
Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture)
Joe Allen
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets
Against the War
George Corsetti
Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication
Scott Handleman
The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus
Richard Ward
Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya
Conn Hallinan
Ashcroft and Indonesia
Lori Smith
Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick...
Dave Zirin
Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East
John L. Hess
Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates
Brian J. Foley
W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him?
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions
Poets' Basement
Vest, Landau & Albert
Website of the Weekend
Eye on the NYTs
/
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