|
March 15, 2002
Chris
Floyd
Render
Unto Caesar:
Ashcroft's Secret Snatches
Norman Madarasz
Neo-Con Propaganda
and the National Review
Paul-Marie
de La Gorce
Making
Enemies
March
14, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
RIP
Danny Pearl
Francis
Boyle
Bush
Nuke Plan Violates International Law, Again
Wayne
Saunders
Memo
to Paul McCartney:
There Are Two Kinds
of Freedom, Sir
H.P. Albarelli
Anthrax
Cover-up?
March
13, 2002
Amira
Hass
Are
the Occupied Protecting the Occupier?
CounterPunch
Wire
National
Review Editors Suggest Nuking Mecca
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Personal
Responsibility
for Corporate Elites?
Robert
Fisk
Arabs
Don't Want US
to Strike Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
When
Billy Graham Wanted
to Kill One Million People
March
12, 2002
Kay Lee
Dangerous
Changes in
California's Prisons
John Patrick
Leary
The
Return of Otto Reich
Wole Akande
US
is Being Discredited
in the Eyes of Africa
March
11, 2002
Hani Shukrallah
This
is the Way the World Ends
Tommy
Ates
Bush's
New Nuke Policy:
Target Allies and Enemies
Lidia Andrusenko
The Great
Chicken War:
Bush v. Putin
Dave Marsh
10
CDs Playing On My Desk
John Chuckman
Footprints
in the Dust
Norman
Madarasz
Max
Steel in a Time of Chaos
March
10, 2002
Thomas
Croft
Year
of Living Dangerously
March
9, 2002
Bill Cook
Sharon's
Bulldozer
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Nightmare in Israel
March
8, 2002
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
When
Business Men
Make Boo-Boos
CounterPunch
Exclusive
Enron's
Spooky
Image Consultant
Rep. Ron
Paul
Stop
the War on Colombia
Andre
Achong
The
Failed War on Drugs
John B.
Kelly
Michael
Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy
March
7, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Congressman
McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda
Mike Rogers
Will
the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo
Walt Brasch
Patriot
Act and Free Speech
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
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
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
March 15, 2002
Israel's Settler Warlords
By Doron Rosenblum
Borne mainly on rivers of blood and Palestinian
terror, a grim spectacle unfolded at Rabin Square this week,
ostensibly closing a tragic circle--"Shir Lashalom"
("Song of Peace") replaced by cries of "Israel
demands war!" at the rally of settlers and their supporters.
At Rabin Square, of all places, the settlers, of all people,
came to dance on the grave of hope for peace and blow the shrill
trumpet of war.
It's true the Palestinians started this
business. It's true the settlers' tidings were once again wrapped
in an odd, carefully-packaged mixture of religious messianism
masquerading as defense-ism, and anachronism masquerading as
inert Zionism.
And yet the general message, and the
closing of the circle, were unmistakable. The settlers for years
have done whatever they could to obstruct territorial compromise,
the settlers fought tooth and nail against all initiatives for
peace or separation, the settlers waged an incitement campaign
against the only prime minister who opposed them and was murdered
by one of their supporters in this very square.
And these are the people now jubilantly
sounding the bugle and calling the nation to war. They're the
ones who are pushing for escalation and rallying the "Jewish
people" around them. They're the ones, who after supplying
some of the pretexts for war, and more than a few reasons to
keep it going, have now taken it upon themselves to dictate
its goals and dimensions.
But who says we need a demonstration
in Rabin Square to figure out who our real military commanders
and masters are? Not a day goes by without some settler getting
up in front of a microphone and in his most autocratic tone
of voice--a product of years of habit--outlining objectives
and handing out orders to the army. "This flour mill stuck
like a bone in our throats has got to be blown up!" decrees
a settler lady from Gush Katif--whose own settlement is perceived
as a bone in Gaza's throat. "And on the double!" she
adds, in military parlance.
Don't think they're satisfied with tactics.
After ordering the IDF "to win" (mainly by recycling
previous wars and shouting chants like "Go, Arik go!"
and "Arik, recross the canal!"), and getting their
way, however hollow the victories, the settlers are now mapping
out general strategic objectives--"reoccupying the cities
of our Lord," as they call it, and basically annexing the
territories, again as part of a much broader agenda.
On the surface, the settlers have good
reason to celebrate the failure of the Oslo process--that bold,
noble-minded, creative initiative (yes, someone has to say it,
even now) whose cardinal sin, it seems, was naivete. But what
were they trying to say in this demonstration? That "war
casualties," double and triple anything we've known, are
better than "peace casualties"? And would they have
accepted Oslo if it had succeeded?
The trouble is that as the violence mounts
all over the country, and Palestinian terror is interpreted
as a kind of free-form entity that operates without political
rhyme or reason and recognizes no borders, the settlers delude
themselves that they are celebrating the victory of their long-standing
dream--a dream for which they have laid down their lives for
years and now want us to lay down ours: the dream of erasing
the Green Line.
But this borderline, which has been erased
over and over in the course of decades of defiant "settlement,"
and looks as if it has now been erased again by terror, stubbornly
reappears anew each time. It is the same borderline that lies
at the end of all the rivers of blood and all the "outline
plans" being drawn up, and it is more or less the same
one that waited for us at the end of Oslo and awaits us at the
end of the war the settlers themselves are calling for.
But the issue of geographic borders is
only a symbol of the abysmal difference between Israeliness
that yearns for normalcy and peace (or, alternately, secular
self-definition within demarcated borders) and the "people-of-Israel"
Israeliness of the settlers--transcendental, borderless, deliberately
anomalous, contemptuous of the constraints of real-politik--the
kind of Israeliness to which occupation has become not second-nature,
but first-nature.
The truth is, this only looks like a
dispute between hawks and doves over relations with the Palestinians.
Actually, the settlers have their own special agenda--a nice,
solid one that conflicts with the agenda of most Israeli citizens.
Over the years, however, they have managed to hide its true
essence behind a veil of defense concerns or nostalgic-Zionist
inertia.
Only occasionally does the truth slip
out, via an unplanned shout at a rally ("The people of
Israel don't want peace!") or the careless remark of a
settler ("The real dispute is over the character of the
state. We've never had any intention of being a nation like
all others.
"Secular Zionism has got it all
wrong. We're going to build a Temple on the Temple Mount, and
the mosque will be torn down," a settler told Ha'aretz
correspondent Daniel Ben Simon in September 2001).
Not so much through their own planning,
but by virtue of the spiritual decline and emptiness of the
secular Zionist movements since the Six-Day War, the settlers
have commandeered the national agenda, sabotaging normalization
efforts for 30 years and now openly embracing the greatest
of anomalies--kindling and escalating war.
Yes, it's Arafat's fault. Yes, it's the
Palestinians' fault. But only one Israeli leader, Yitzhak Rabin,
found the courage to stand up to the deeper, more tenacious
form of occupation--not our conquest of territories but the
conquest of the Israeli agenda by the settlers. But look where
he is. And look where they are.
Doron Rosenblum writes for the Israeli
daily Ha'aretz.
|