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Today's Stories July 28, 2006 Charles
Glass July 27, 2006 Tanya
Reinhart Saul Landau Ramzi
Kysia Tom Barry Joseph
Grosso Sharon Smith Gale Courey
Toensing Christopher Reed Werther Yusuf Mansur Richard
Harth Website of the Day
Norman
Solomon Barbara
Olshanksy David
Nally Jonathan
Cook Patrick
Cockburn William
Blum Joshua
Frank Gabriel
Kolko Daniel
Cassidy Michael
Dickinson Robert
Fisk Uri
Avnery Website
of the Day
July 25, 2006 Harry
Browne Marjorie
Cohn Robert
Bryce Sharat
G. Lin George
Bisharat CounterPunch
News Desk Zena
El-Khalil Larry
Lack Mike
Mejia Ashraf
Isma'il Website
of the Day
July 24, 2006 Mark
Levy Robert
Fisk Maher
Osseiran Paul
Craig Roberts Patrick
Cockburn Website
of the Day
July 22-23, 2006 Jonathan
Cook Paul
Craig Roberts Gilad
Atzmon Robert
Fisk Ralph
Nader Fred
Gardner Christopher
Reed Dr.
Susan Block Najla
Said Uri
Avnery July 21, 2006 George
Galloway P.
Sainath Aseem
Shrivastava Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day July 20, 2006 William
S. Lind Robert
Jensen John
Ross Tom
Hayden Paul
Craig Roberts July 19, 2006 Patrick
Cockburn Trish
Schuh Jonathan
Cook Vicente
Navarro July 17 / 18 2006 Mike
Whitney Kathleen Christison Atrocities in the Promised Land
July 14 / 15,
2006 Alexander Cockburn Tanya Reinhart Robert Fisk Daniel Cassidy Winslow Wheeler Hugh O'Shaughnessy M. Shahid Alam William S. Lind Ramzy Baroud Gilad Atzmon Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Samar Assad Ron Jacobs Lee Ballinger Walter Brasch Dave Lindorff Clifton Ross Tom Crumpacker Ricardo Alarcon William Hughes Susie Day Farrah Hassen Poets' Basement
July 13, 2006 Rev. William
Alberts Ramzi Kysia Rep. John P. Murtha Radford / Santos Stan Cox Saul Landau José
Pertierra Website of
the Day
July 12, 2006 John Ross John Stauber Robert Boston Wayne S. Smith John Graham Kevin Prosen Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
July 11, 2006 Dave Lindorff Dave Zirin Mokhiber / Weissman Amira Hass Clare Hanrahan Brian Cloughey Felice Pace Raed Jarrar Website of the Day
July 10, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Uri Avnery Roger Burbach Ron Jacobs Joshua Frank Missy Comley Beattie Alexander Cockburn
Stephen Green Paul Craig
Roberts Greg Moses Ralph Nader Laura Carlsen Conn Hallinan John Chuckman Fred Gardner Dr. Tod Mikuriya Pierre Tristam Lucinda Marshall David Swanson Heather Gray Dave Zirin
/ John Cox Mark Engler Michael Lettieri Ron Jacobs Jamal Juma' Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement
July 7, 2006 John Ross July 6, 2006 Nick Dearden John Stanton Ralph Nader Laray Polk Saul Landau Joshua Frank William S. Lind Adelman / Lindorff Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
Mike Whitney Saul Landau Ramzy Baroud Missy Comley Beattie Arthur Neslen Vincent Maruffi Paul Cantor Paul D. Johnson David Price
Col. Dan Smith Chris Floyd Marjorie Cohn James Brooks Medea Benjamin Matt Reichel Elisa Salasin Rick Wilhelm Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
July 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Dr. Bouthaina Shaban Julia Olmstead Dave Lindorff Andres Gomez Alan Singer Alexander Cockburn
Paul Craig
Roberts Stephen T.
Banko Daniel Cassidy Fawzia Afzal-Khan Jeff Taylor John Ross Greg Moses Laura Carlsen Justin E.H.
Smith Brian Cloughley Anthony Papa Mike Ferner Jerry Tucker Jane Goodall / Rick Asselta Phyllis Pollack Poets' Basement
June 30, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Heather Williams Burbach / Cantor Nick Dearden Michael J.
Smith Brian Concannon Virginia Tilley
Bill Quigley Ron Jacobs Paul Craig
Roberts June 28, 2006 Jorge Mariscal Greg Moses Mark Weisbrot Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff William S.
Lind Mike Ferner Zoltan Grossman
Marjorie Cohn Benjamin /
Jarrar William Hughes Doug Giebel Uri Avnery Alexander Cockburn
June 26, 2006 Don Santina Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Rafael Rodriguez-Cruz Evelyn Pringle Jonathan Cook
June 23, 2006 Youmans / Erakat Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Col. Dan Smith
June 22, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Winslow T.
Wheeler Tanya Reinhart Mike Marqusee William Blum
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July 28, 2006 "Israeli propaganda, except in the United States where there isn't any other kind, doesn't work its old magic."Operation "Save Israel's High Command"By CHARLES GLASS London. In 1982, an unusual sight appeared on the Mediterranean horizon. Like the death ship in Star Wars, a World War II battleship threatened the Lebanese shore. US naval spokesmen claimed the USS New Jersey was the most fearsome artillery platform on the high seas. The Reagan administration had re-commissioned her and a few other seagoing dinosaurs to pursue gunboat diplomacy from Nicaragua to Iran. The New Jersey's advance propaganda impressed the Lebanese, who had already endured seven years of civil war, Syrian occupation and two Israeli invasions. The sixteen-inch guns aboard the New Jersey, the Navy said, would send payloads the size of Volkswagens to clear areas big as football fields. Why a Volkswagen rather than a small Ford was never explained, anymore than whether the football referred to was the kind the Lebanese or the Americans played. A Marine officer I knew pointed at the summit of Mount Lebanon above Beirut one day. He told me that, if the New Jersey fired at that mountain, it wouldn't be there anymore. It seemed an extravagant claim, but most of us were willing to believe him--until the New Jersey actually fired. When the New Jersey
unleashed its Volkswagens on December 14, 1983, from a mile away
we saw flames shoot out of its muzzles. What we didn't see was
much destruction--not by Lebanese standards anyway. A few houses
in the Druze hills of the Shouf were demolished. Hundreds of
people, mostly Shiites and Druze, died. The summit of Mount Lebanon
remained intact. There were no flying Volkswagens, no football
fields. The Lebanese, faced with a bluff called, lost their fear
of the New Jersey and, indeed, of the United States. They
continued blowing up American embassies and military barracks.
By February 1984, the New Jersey killed a Syrian army
general while covering the "redeployment" of the Marines
from Beirut. The Marines were ordered to abandon Lebanon and
the French, British and Italian allies that Secretary of State
George Schultz had conned into joining them in Lebanon as the
so-called Multi-National Force. US The biggest military mistake the Americans made in Lebanon was to use the New Jersey. As a threat, she caused fear. In reality, she caused a bit of damage. I won't go into the political mistakes, which were so many that the Reaganite Mideast specialists almost make George W. Bush's neo-cons look competent (I said, almost). An army can frighten people with a devastating weapon, until it uses it. Israel has used its weapons so often in Lebanon that the Lebanese don't care. They are suffering, but they are standing up to the displacement of a half million people and the loss of many hundreds of men, women and children. "The resistance isn't playing the role of victim," Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian Arab Member of the Israeli Knesset wrote in Al Ahram Weekly. "It didn't ask for international sympathy with the victims but for solidarity among freedom-seeking peoples." So, what other tricks can Israel perform that are not old-hat to the Lebanese? Bombardment? The Israelis have been bombing Lebanon since the late 1960s. Invasion? They played that card in 1978 and 1982 and left a thousand soldiers dead on the field before they withdrew in 2000. What's left in the arsenal? Occupation, again? The Lebanese realized sometime in 1983 that Israeli soldiers on Lebanese soil were not ferocious warriors so much as targets. Israel could give them more targets, like the eight or nine Israeli soldiers who died on Wednesday in the small Shiite border village of Bint Jbeil (a place that made shoes until Israel occupied and nearly emptied it in 1978). Israeli propaganda, except in the United States where there isn't any other kind, doesn't work its old magic. In 1982, a few people may have believed that Ariel Sharon sent his troops into Lebanon to avenge the wounding of Israel's ambassador to Britain, but no one is falling for the ruse that the current devastation is an operation to rescue two captured Israeli solders. The planners are having such problems with that slender pretext that, unusually, they have yet to give this mission a name. The operation that dare not speak its name has yet to join its immediate predecessors, Operation Accountability in 1993 and Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996, in the list of creatively branded onslaughts. How about calling this one Operation Infinite Repetition? Operation Cover-Up might do, given that the soldiers scurrying into Lebanon and being shot by Hizballah today are trying to make up for the incompetence of officers who let three men under their command be captured by Hamas and Hizballah. Where is the American taxpayer's money going if officers cannot keep their troops from abduction by young guerrillas whom they watch day and night with the most sophisticated technological eavesdropping devices that American-Israeli genius can produce? If the army had not been so careless, they would not now be bombing the hell out of Gaza and Lebanon--unless, of course, the politicians wanted to bomb the hell out of Gaza and Lebanon anyway. If so, what better excuse than a few missing in action? The prescient Mideast scholar Patrick Seale wrote in the Saudi-owned newspaper Al Hayat on July 21, "By their cross-border raids and the capture of three Israeli soldiers, Hizballah and Hamas humiliated the Israeli army and dented its deterrent capacity. In Israeli eyes, this cannot go unpunished." But who should be punished and who should be approached with an offer to save the soldiers' lives? Perhaps punish the high command for its negligence. Maybe approach Hamas and Hizballah for a trade of the kind Israel and its adversaries have made often--the last time in 2004, when a foolish, allegedly retired Israeli army major allowed himself to be taken in Beirut and Israel freed 400 prisoners to get him back. Israel knows it can pick up another 400 anytime it wants, so what's the problem? At the moment, it holds almost 10,000 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners and detainees. Using the 2004 ratio as a guide, the quick release of 1,200 detainees would do the trick without costing a single life. Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert has come clean with added objectives for Operation Untitled. On July 15, his spokeswoman Miri Eisen told Agence France Presse, "The Prime Minister is prepared to finish our operations in Lebanon if Hezbollah releases our two soldiers, stops its rocket fire and if the Lebanese Government decides to implement UN Security Council resolution 1559." The resolution requires the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon. That means Hizballah, because the other militias disarmed under Syrian pressure years ago. Hizballah claimed however that its armed wing was a resistance movement--the only one capable of protecting south Lebanon from Israeli attack--and not a militia. On July 21, another spokesman added a new Israeli shopping item, "One of the conditions for a ceasefire is that Hezbollah no longer receives arms supplies from Iran and Syria once it is enforced." As Operation Save the High Command annihilated Lebanon's post-war infrastructure--the airport, roads, bridges, army bases, clinics, telecommunications networks and lots of houses--without achieving anything, Ohlmert added a new condition: a NATO force in south Lebanon to stop Hizballah from hitting Israel. How about a force in north Israel to protect Lebanon? This will go on and on. When Operation Get-Even ends, the respite may last a year or so. There will be other crises, other kidnappings by both sides, other murders, other wars. And it will not stop until Israel makes peace on terms that the Palestinians and Israel's neighbors have said they will accept: enforcement of UN Security Council Resolution 242 and the end of Israeli land confiscations in the West Bank. If you think the land grab is over, ask the Palestinians whose property is fenced off and seized for the Israeli settlers almost daily. If you think Israel is content to leave the natives alone to get along with it, ask the Bedouin of the Negev desert (who serve in the Israeli army and have been loyal citizens) about the creative deployment of the Monsanto-manufactured herbicide Roundup Ready to destroy their crops so they will abandon their ancestral lands once and for all. Goat by goat, dunum by dunum, the old Zionist adage went, the settlers redeem the land. As the Arabs lost their goats and their dunums of land, they got bullets and bombs. Charles Glass lived in Lebanon from 1972 to 1976 and from 1983 to 1995. He was ABC News Chief Middle East Correspondent from 1983 to 1993 and was kidnapped by Hizballah in 1987. His new books on the Middle East are The Tribes Triumphant (Harper Collins) and The Northern Front (Saqi Books). His website is www.charlesglass.net. ] © Charles Glass 2006
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.                    |
