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April 17, 2002
Norman
Madarasz
Undoing
Chavez:
The View from South America
Brian Wood
Ruins and Body Parts inJenin
George
Monbiot
Chemical
Coup: The CIA's Attempt to Undermine the UN's Weapon Inspector
for Iraq
Robert Fisk
Fear and Learning in America
April 16, 2002
Todd May
US
Should End Aid to Israel
Gabriel Ash
The Oilman, the General
and the Coup that Failed
Ron Jacobs
Wake
Up Some Mornin',
Find Your Own Self Dead:
The Chavez Coup
Brian Wood
Inside Jenin: Rubble and Decomposing
Bodies
Jack McCarthy
Citizen
Coup: The Times,
The Post and the Coup Plotters
Dave Marsh
Hymns: How I Got Through
Last Week
April 15, 2002
Susi Abeles
A
Field Trip to Jenin
Breyten Breytenbach
A Letter to Ariel Sharon:
"You Won't Break Them"
Gregory
Wilpert
CounterCoup
in Venezuela
Kristen Schurr
Amid the Rubble of Nablus
Jordy
Cummings
An
Open Letter to Abe Foxman
Christopher Reilly
The Media, the CIA
and the Chavez Coup
James
T. Phillips
"Homicide"
Bombers
April 14, 2002
William Blum
The CIA and Venezuela
David
Vest
A
Good Old-Fashion "Incursion"
Ralph Nader
General Motors:
Stuck in Reverse
M. Junaid
Alam
From
the Ashes: Palestinian Struggle for Freedom
Sam Bahour
Palestinians and Americans
April 13, 2002
Beth Daoud
Life
in the Ruins of Nablus
Patrick Cockburn
Bulldozing History:
The End Nears for Stalin's
Most Monstrous Hotel
Gregory
Wilpert
The
Coup in Venezuela:
an Eye-Witness Account
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Thoughts on Our War
Against Terrorism
Anne Winkler-Morey
Why
I Didn't Organize
a Passover Seder This Year
April 12, 2002
Nancy Stohlman
Live from East Jerusalem:
International Nonviolence
Brian
J. Foley
Defeating
Evil
Olivier Audeoud
Did the US Break
the Laws of War?
Rep. Ron
Paul
The
Middle East Quagmire
Michael Colby
Republican Porn:
Oiling Up the Caribou
John Chuckman
Tom
Friedman's Fabrications
April 11, 2002
Patrick Cockburn
Battle of St. Petersburg Zoo
Jeff Halper
After
the Invasion:
Now What?
Falk / Krieger
Taming the Nuclear Monster
Steve
Perry
The
Good Life of
Nellie Stone Johnson
Nick Ring
Efficiency and Occupation:
Terrorism vs. Taylorism
Alexander
Cockburn
From
the West Bank to BBQ
to Old Sparky, And Beyond
April 10, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians
George
Monbiot
World
Bank to West Bank
Fran Schor
US-Sponsored State Terror
David
Vest
Political
Color Schemes
Jack McCarthy
Florida State Radicals:
The Berkeley of the South
Rises Again
Doreen
Miller
A
Tale of Two Warring Tribes
Michael Neumann
Israelis and Indians
April 9, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
Colin
Powell's Table Talk
Matt Vidal
Thomas Friedman,
Another Wasted Pulitzer
Ron Jacobs
Buyer
Beware
Robert Jensen
I Helped Kill a Palestinian
Vijay
Prashad
Memories
of Barbarity:
Sharonism and September
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
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
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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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April 17, 2002
First the Carrot, Then the Stick:
Behind the Carnage
in Palestine
By Norman G. Finkelstein
During the June 1967 war, Israel occupied the
West Bank and Gaza, completing the Zionist conquest of British-mandated
Palestine. In the war's aftermath, the United Nations debated
the modalities for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict. At the
Fifth Emergency Session of the General Assembly convening in
the war's immediate aftermath, there was "near unanimity"
on "the withdrawal of the armed forces from the territory
of neighboring Arab states occupied during the recent war"
since "everyone agrees that there should be no territorial
gains by military conquest." (Secretary-General U Thant,
summarizing the G.A.  debate)
In subsequent Security Council deliberations,
the same demand for a full Israeli withdrawal in accordance with
the principle of "the inadmissibility of the acquisition
of territory by war" was inscribed in United Nations Resolution
242, alongside the right of "every state in the region"
to have its sovereignty respected. A still-classified State Department
study concludes that the US supported the "inadmissibility"
clause of 242, making allowance for only "minor " and
"mutual" border adjustments. (Nina J. Noring and Walter
B. Smith II, "The Withdrawal Clause in UN Security Council
Resolution 242 of 1967") Israeli Defense Minister Moshe
Dayan later warned Cabinet ministers not to endorse 242 because
"it means withdrawal to the 4 June boundaries, and because
we are in conflict with the Security Council on that resolution."
Beginning in the mid-1970s a modification
of UN Resolution 242 to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict
provided for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West
Bank and Gaza once Israel withdrew to its pre-June 1967 borders.
Except for the United States and Israel (and occasionally a US
client state), an international consensus has backed, for the
past quarter century, the full-withdrawal/full recognition formula
or what is called the "two-state" settlement. The United
States cast the lone veto of Security Council resolutions in
1976 and 1980 calling for a two-state settlement that was endorsed
by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and front-line
Arab states. A December 1989 General Assembly resolution along
similar lines passed 151-3 (no abstentions), the three negative
votes cast by Israel, the United States, and Dominica.
From early on, Israel consistently opposed
full withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, offering the Palestinians
instead a South African-style Bantustan. The PLO., having endorsed
the international consensus, couldn't be dismissed, however,
as "rejectionist" and pressure mounted on Israel to
accept the two-state settlement. Accordingly, in June 1982 Israel
invaded Lebanon, where the PLO was headquartered, to fend off
what an Israeli strategic analyst called the PLO's "peace
offensive." (Avner Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security)
In December 1987 Palestinians in the
West Bank and Gaza rose up in a basically non-violent civil revolt
(intifada) against the Israeli occupation. Israel's brutal repression
(extra-judicial killings, mass detentions, house demolitions,
indiscriminate torture, deportations, and so on ) eventually
crushed the uprising. Compounding the defeat of the intifada,
the PLO suffered yet a further decline in its fortunes with the
destruction of Iraq, the implosion of the Soviet Union, and the
suspension of funding from the Gulf states. The US and Israel
seized this occasion to recruit the already venal and now desperate
PLO leadership as surrogates of Israeli power. This is the real
meaning of the "peace process" inaugurated at Oslo
in September 1993: to create a Palestinian Bantustan by dangling
before the PLO the perquisites of power and privilege.
"The occupation continued"
after Oslo, a seasoned Israeli commentator observed, "albeit
by remote control, and with the consent of the Palestinian people,
represented by their `sole representative,' the PLO." And
again: "It goes without saying that `cooperation' based
on the current power relationship is no more than permanent Israeli
domination in disguise, and that Palestinian self-rule is merely
a euphemism for Bantustanization." (Meron Benvenisti, Intimate
Enemies)
After seven years of on-again, off-again
negotiations and a succession of new agreements that managed
to rob the Palestinians of the few crumbs thrown from the master's
table at Oslo (the population of Jewish settlers in the Occupied
Territories had fully doubled in the meanwhile), the moment of
truth arrived at Camp David in July 2000. President Clinton and
Prime Minister Barak delivered Arafat the ultimatum of formally
acquiescing in a Bantustan or bearing full responsibility for
the collapse of the "peace process." As it happened,
Arafat refused. Contrary to the myth spun by Barak-Clinton as
well as a compliant media, in fact "Barak offered the trappings
of Palestinian sovereignty," a special adviser at the British
Foreign Office reports, "while perpetuating the subjugation
of the Palestinians." (The Guardian, 10 April l 2002; for
details and the critical background, see Roane Carey, ed., The
New Intifada)
Consider in this regard Israel's response
to the recent Saudi peace plan. An Israeli commentator writing
in Haaretz observes that the Saudi plan is "surprisingly
similar to what Barak claims to have proposed two years ago."
Were Israel really intent on a full withdrawal in exchange for
normalization with the Arab world, the Saudi plan and its unanimous
endorsement by the Arab League summit should have been met with
euphoria. In fact, it elicited a deafening silence in Israel.
(Aviv Lavie, 5 April 2002) Nonetheless, Barak's - and Clinton's
- fraud that Palestinians at Camp David rejected a maximally
generous Israeli offer provided crucial moral cover for the horrors
that ensued.
Having failed in its carrot policy, Israel
now reached for the big stick. Two preconditions had to be met,
however, before Israel could bring to bear its overwhelming military
superiority: a "green light" from the U.S. and a sufficient
pretext. Already in summer 2000, the authoritative Jane's Information
Group reported that Israel had completed planning for a massive
and bloody invasion of the Occupied Territories. But the US vetoed
the plan and Europe made equally plain its opposition. After
11 September, however, the US came on board. Indeed, Sharon's
goal of crushing the Palestinians basically fit in with the US
administration's goal of exploiting the World Trade Center atrocity
to eliminate the last remnants of Arab resistance to total US
domination. Through sheer exertion of will and despite a monumentally
corrupt leadership, Palestinians have proven to be the most resilient
and recalcitrant popular force in the Arab world. Bringing them
to their knees would deal a devastating psychological blow throughout
the region.
With a green light from the US, all Israel
now needed was the pretext. Predictably it escalated the assassinations
of Palestinian leaders following each lull in Palestinian terrorist
attacks. "After the destruction of the houses in Rafah and
Jerusalem, the Palestinians continued to act with restraint,"
Shulamith Aloni of Israel's Meretz party observed. "Sharon
and his army minister, apparently fearing that they would have
to return to the negotiating table, decided to do something and
they liquidated Raad Karmi. They knew that there would be a response,
and that we would pay the price in the blood of our citizens."
(Yediot Aharonot, 18 January 2002) Indeed, Israel desperately
sought this sanguinary response. Once the Palestinian terrorist
attacks crossed the desired threshold, Sharon was able to declare
war and proceed to annihilate the basically defenseless civilian
Palestinian population.
Only the willfully blind can miss noticing
that Israel's current invasion of the West Bank is an exact replay
of the June 1982 invasion of Lebanon. To crush the Palestinians'
goal of an independent state alongside Israel - the PLO's "peace
offensive" - Israel laid plans in August 1981 to invade
Lebanon. In order to launch the invasion, however, it needed
the green light from the Reagan administration and a pretext.
Much to its chagrin and despite multiple provocations, Israel
was unable to elicit a Palestinian attack on its northern border.
It accordingly escalated the air assaults on southern Lebanon
and after a particularly murderous attack that left two hundred
civilians dead (including 60 occupants of a Palestinian children's
hospital), the PLO finally retaliated killing one Israeli. With
the pretext in hand and a green light now forthcoming from the
Reagan administration, Israel invaded. Using the same slogan
of "rooting out Palestinian terror," Israel proceeded
to massacre a defenseless population, killing some 20,000 Palestinians
and Lebanese, almost all civilians.
The problem with the Bush administration,
we are repeatedly told, is that it has been insufficiently engaged
with the Middle East, a diplomatic void Colin Powell's mission
is supposed to fill. But who gave the green light for Israel
to commit the massacres? Who supplied the F-16s and Apache helicopters
to Israel? Who vetoed the Security Council resolutions calling
for international monitors to supervise the reduction of violence?
And who just blocked the proposal of the United Nation's top
human rights official, Mary Robinson, to merely send a fact-finding
team to the Palestinian territories? (IPS, 3 April 2002)
Consider this scenario. A and B stand
accused of murder. The evidence shows that A provided B with
the murder weapon, A gave B the "all-clear" signal,
and A prevented onlookers from answering the victim's screams.
Would the verdict be that A was insufficiently engaged or that
A was every bit as guilty as B of murder?
To repress Palestinian resistance, a
senior Israeli officer earlier this year urged the army to "analyze
and internalize the lessons of...how the German army fought in
the Warsaw ghetto." (Haaretz, 25 January 2002, 1 February
2002) Judging by the recent Israeli carnage in the West Bank
- the targeting of Palestinian ambulances and medical personnel,
the targeting of journalists, the killing of Palestinian children
"for sport" (Chris Hedges, New York Times former Cairo
bureau chief), the rounding up, handcuffing and blindfolding
of all Palestinian males between the ages 15 and 50, and affixing
of numbers on their wrists, the indiscriminate torture of Palestinian
detainees, the denial of food, water, electricity, and medical
assistance to the Palestinian civilian population, the indiscriminate
air assaults on Palestinian neighborhoods, the use of Palestinian
civilians as human shields, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes
with the occupants huddled inside - it appears that the Israeli
army is following the officer's advice. Dismissing all criticism
as motivated by anti-Semitism, Elie Wiesel - chief spokesman
for the Holocaust Industry - lent unconditional support to Israel,
stressing the "great pain and anguish" endured by its
rampaging army. (Reuters, 11 April; CNN, 14 April)
Meanwhile, the Portuguese Nobel laureate
in literature, Jose Saramago, invoked the "spirit of Auschwitz"
in depicting the horrors inflicted by Israel, while a Belgian
parliamentarian avowed that Israel was "making a concentration
camp out of the West Bank." (The Observer, 7 April 2002)
Israelis across the political spectrum recoil in outrage at such
comparisons. Yet, if Israelis don't want to stand accused of
being Nazis they should simply stop acting like Nazis.
Norman Finkelstein is the author of The Holocaust Industry
and Image
and Reality of the Palestinian Conflict. Visit his website
at: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/
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