Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's
Stories
May
18, 2004
Doug
Stokes
Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib
Shouldn't Surprise Us
Bob
Wing
The Color of Abu Ghraib
Elaine
Cassel
Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later
May
17, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain
Laura
Santina
Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib
Mickey
Z.
With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness
Frederick
B. Hudson
Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice
Shakirah
Esmail-Hudani
Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera
Boris
Leonardo Caro
The Revelations of Mr. W.
Alex
Dawoody
Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation
Victor
Kattan
On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg
Ron
Jacobs
Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game
May
15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
May
14, 2004
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's POW Porn
Ron
Jacobs
Secret History of the War on Drugs
William
Blum
God, Country and Torture
Michael
Donnelly
The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India Shines
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
May
7, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention
Facilities in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ahmad
Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu
Alexander
Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison)
Bell?
Mike
Whitney
The Price of Victory
Norman
Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial
M.
Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
May
4, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
A Timeline of Torture and Abuse Allegations
and Responses
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Privatized Torture
David
Peterson
CBS, Self-Censorship & Iraq
Barry
Lando
CACI's Private Torture Chambers
Patrick
Cockburn
Torture: Iraqis Disgusted, But Not Surprised
Dr.
Susan Block
Indecent Insurgents: Watch What You Say
Fidel
Castro
A Mindless, Unnecessary War
Mike
Whitney
Empire of Torture
Sonali
Kolhatkar
How to Stop the War: Demonstrate Against
John Kerry
Josh
Frank
The Lost Sierra Club
Stan
Goff
The Role: Another Open Letter to US Troops in Iraq
Agustin
Velloso
Spare Us Your Disgusting Ethics
Stew
Albert
American Know-How
Website
of the Day
Scenes from a Cover-Up
May
3, 2004
Virginia
Tilley
Let the Wall of Silence Fall
May
1 / 2, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
An Army in Disgrace, a Policy
in Tatters, the Real Prospect of Defeat
Robert
Fisk
"Good Guys" Who Can Do No
Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
Watching Niagara: Stupid Leaders,
Useless Spies, Angry World
Heather
Williams
Gringo, We're Going Home: Latin
American Troops Flee Iraq
Diane
Rejman
An Army Vet on Torture in Iraq:
Abu Ghraib as My Lai?
Diane
Christian
Blood Spilling: Osama, Bush and
Sharon Speak the Same Language
Patrick
Cockburn
Seems Like Old Times in Fallujah
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torturous Logic: Shocked,
Shocked, Shocked
Chris
Floyd
Suicide Bomber: Neocons, Nihilists
and Annihilation
April
29 / 30, 2004
Dave
Zirin
A Pawn in Their Game: the Unlonesome
Death of Pat Tillman
Kathy
Kelly
The Warden's Tour
Greg
Weiher
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto: the
Banality of Evil
Michael
S. Ladah
Terrorism and Assassination: the
Ultimate Depception
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
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.
|
May
18, 2004
New Sharon Still
the Old Sharon
The Gaza Debacle
By NEVE GORDON
Two weeks after 60,000 Likud members
voted against a pullout from the Gaza Strip, about 150,000 Israelis
filled Rabin Square in Tel-Aviv, calling upon the government
to proceed with the withdrawal plan. The first group supports
the vision of a Greater Israel, the second supports the state
of Israel. The first group believes that without Gaza Israel
will be destroyed, the second believes that with it Israel will
be destroyed.
The contested area is an extremely
densely populated yet arid region. Enclosed by a security fence
on three sides and the Mediterranean Sea on the fourth, Gaza
has become a prison for most of the population. Within it live
1.3 million Palestinians, of which over 900,000 are refugees
who moved to the region after losing their homes in 1948. There
is barely any industry in the Strip, and very few residents have
been able to obtain permits to leave in search of work.
Unemployment rate is estimated
at 50 percent, and figures indicate that 84 percent of the Palestinian
residents live in poverty, with an average per capita income
of $2 per day. Considering that the Strip is on the brink of
a humanitarian crisis, it is not surprising that most people
have become dependent on aid handouts. Practically all doors
have been closed, except, of course, the mosque doors.
7,500 Jewish settlers also
live in this desolate region, less than one percent of the total
population of Gaza. They believe in the Greater Israel, and now
control over one third of the Strip's territory. Whereas about
half of the Palestinians live in squalid refugee camps, the settlers
have nice villas with green lawns and playgrounds, and use about
seven times more water than their occupied neighbors.
Ironically, Sharon's unilateral
plan to dismantle the Gaza settlements and withdraw the troops
who guard them, while closing of all the Strip's borders -- including
access from air and sea -- was also informed by the Greater Israel
paradigm. Sharon realized that the occupied Palestinians will
always have a demographic advantage in the area, and he is no
longer willing to allocate outrageous amounts of resources to
protect the handful of Jewish settlers living there. One senior
United Nations official recently put it to me in the following
way: "Sharon intends to remove the wardens, lock-up the
prison, and throw the keys into the sea."
Sharon's proposal, though,
is also about annexation, not only withdrawal. One clause stipulates
that areas within the West Bank "will remain part of the
state of Israel, among them civilian settlements, military zones
and places where Israel has additional interests." The Bush
Administration supported this clause, legitimating Sharon's request
to annex de jure what has already been annexed de facto. The
idea is to provide legal standing to the 220,000 Jewish settlers
living in the West Bank and the 180,000 living in East Jerusalem,
and, in this way, reduce the possibility that they will need
to return to Israel proper in any future agreement.
Paradoxically, though, the
Likudniks rejected their leader's plan. The highly efficient
yet extremist West Bank settler organization, the Yesha Council,
managed to hijack the ruling party. In the days leading up to
the referendum, settlers went from door to door, convincing Likud
voters to reject Sharon's proposal; ultimately, 60 percent were
persuaded.
Why, one might ask, did the
West Bank settlers reject Sharon's unilateral plan? After all,
in return for relocating 7,500 settlers, Bush acknowledged the
legality of 400,000 settlers and, in this way, helped cement
the dream of a Greater Israel.
The answer is simple. The settlers
know, better than anyone else, that in the occupied territories
the rule of law matters much less than facts on the ground. The
settlers learned as much from Sharon himself, who is considered
the father of Israel's unruly settlement project. They accordingly
care less about legalisms and more about implementation, and
a withdrawal from Gaza would create a dangerous precedent: it
would be the first time that Jewish settlements were dismantled
within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And if
it can happen in the Strip, it can happen in the West Bank as
well.
Sharon no longer accepts this
logic, and while he might have lost the battle, he has yet to
lose the war. He is intent on moving forward with his original
plan, and the military campaign launched in Gaza in many ways
serves his objective.
Sharon turned Gaza into a military
playground some time ago. Yet after his recent defeat at the
polls he decided to transform it into a Lebanon of sorts. Whereas
only 12 out of the 116 terrorist attacks perpetrated inside Israel
since the eruption of the second Intifada came out of the Gaza
Strip, 45 percent of the Palestinians killed by the Israeli military
are Gazans (about 1,000 people). The Israeli military has destroyed
hundreds of houses in the Strip, thus rendering over 17,500 people
homeless. In the past few days the south part of Gaza was cut-off
from the north, and as scores of Palestinians were killed and
over 100 houses were demolished, thousands fled Rafah in fear
of being hurt. A whole civilian area was transformed into a war
zone. The Lebanonization of Gaza has succeeded.
On the one hand, Sharon has
successfully convinced large segments of the Israeli public that
the military campaign in Gaza, including the massive house demolitions,
are carried out in order to "stop the terrorist cells' oxygen."
Unlike his 1982 invasion of Beirut, this time even the Supreme
Court has given its green light, rendering both Sharon and his
campaign kosher.
On the other hand, the senseless
deaths of 13 Israeli soldiers during the campaign's first days
has shocked the Israeli public, reminding it of the pointless
occupation of Lebanon. Their deaths have become an impetus for
insisting on the withdrawal of troops and the dismantling of
settlements.
Sharon, so it seems, is destroying
Gaza in order to withdraw from it, thus suggesting that the new
Sharon is still the old Sharon. His myopic plans, informed by
short term security concerns, totally ignore Israel's aspiration
to be a democratic state in the Middle East and have nothing
to do with a vision of peace. Regardless of whether he manages
to implement his plan, the vision of a Greater Israel, as opposed
to a state of Israel, has, for the time being, triumphed.
Neve Gordon is an activist in Ta'ayush, Arab-Jewish
Partnership and can be reached at neve_gordon@yahoo.com
Weekend
Edition Features for May 15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
|