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Today's Stories August 12 / 13, 2006 Jean Bricmont
Col. Dan Smith John Ross Michael Donnelly William S.
Lind Linda Milazzo Rep. Cynthia
McKinney Azmi Bishara Henri Picciotto CounterPunch News Wire Dave Lindorff Jonathan Cook
Uri Avnery Dave Marsh Gabriel Kolko Arthur Versluis Jennifer Loewenstein
Linda Schade Jackie Mason Jonathan Cook Gilad Atzmon
Charles Hirschkind
Tom Barry Cockburn &
St. Clair
August 8, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Paul Larudee Joan Roelofs Dimi Reider John A. Murphy Tim Llewellyn Website of the Day
August 7, 2006 Uri Avnery Karim Makdisi Nadia Hijab Sharon Smith Magan Wiles George Beres Rachard Itani Norman Solomon Stan Cox Mickey Z. Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
August 5 / 6, 2006 Virginia Tilley Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Sgt. Martin Smith Gary Leupp Neve Gordon Ralph Nader Peter Bouckaert Peter Montague David Krieger Michael Donnelly Fred Gardner Catherine Norris Imraan Siddiqi Missy Comley
Beattie Ira Kay Dave Lindorff Pratyush Chandra Ron Jacobs St. Clair / Donnelly Poets' Basement Website of the Day Video of the
Weekend
August 4, 2006 Ralph Nader Brian Cloughley Eliza Ernshire Roger Assaf George Bisharat Remi Kanazi Laura Carlsen Niranjan Ramakrishnan Derrick O'Keefe Mickey Z. Col. Dan Smith Website of the Day
Jonathan Cook Uri Avnery Saree Makdisi Robert Fisk Farrah Hassen Nicola Nasser Ron Jacobs Mitchel Cohen Seth Sandronsky Bruce K. Gagnon Alexander Cockburn
John Ross Chip Mitchell Saul Landau Naseer Aruri Winslow T.
Wheeler Matthias Gebauer Joshua Frank Bill Quigley Manuel Yang Shamai Leibowitz David Himmelstein Lara Marlowe Website of
the Day
August 1, 2006 Michael Neumann Robert Fisk Omar Barghouti Marc Levy Diana Barahona / Jeb Sprague Claud Cockburn Ross Eisenbrey Dave Lindorff John Chuckman Francis Boyle Phil Doe Stephen Soldz Website of the Day
July 31, 2006 Jonathan Cook Uri Avnery Robert Fisk Amina Mire Marjorie Cohn Sibel Edmonds / William Weaver John Ross Stanley Rogouski Gideon Levy Ron Jacobs James Ridgeway
/ Alicia Ng Brian Tokar Alexander Cockburn
July 29 / 30,
2006 Michael Neuman Vijay Prashad Ramzi Kysia Werther Robert Fisk Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Rachard Itani Eduardo Galeano Gary Leupp Eve Poretsky John Chuckman Fred Gardner Juan Santos Punyapriya Dasgupta Liaquat Ali
Khan Israel Shamir William A.
Cook Stanley Heller Dave Lindorff Moshe Adler Susie Day Pat Williams Anthony Papa John V. Whitbeck Jackie Corr Myles Palmer Tom D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
July 28, 2006 Jonathan Cook Uri Avnery Renee Bowyer Robert Fisk Patrick Cockburn Ramzy Baroud Don Fitz Elaine Cassel David Price Mike Whitney Mickey Z. Niranjan Ramakrishnan Charles Glass Website of
the Day
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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August 12 / 13, 2006 Ending the Cycle of Righteousness and RevengeHow the Irish Could Save the Middle EastBy CONN HALLINAN History is the story we tell ourselves in the present about the past. But how we punctuate the story-where we put the periods, the commas, and the ellipses-depends not on everything that happened, but on who is telling the story, where we stand in the narrative, and what outcome we want. As Rebecca Goldstein notes in her study of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, there are "powerful tendencies in each of us toward developing a view of the truth that favors the circumstances into which we happen to have been born." Israel and Hezbollah both have stories to tell based on their particular circumstances. A Tale of Two Tales Tel Aviv-Hezbollah terrorists ambushed an Israeli patrol on July 12 near the Lebanese border. Three solders were killed and two others kidnapped. Israel launched a counterattack in an effort to retrieve them. This is the story Israel and the United States tell, and there is nothing factually wrong about it, although Associated Press and Agence France-Press initially reported that it was not clear whether the Israeli soldiers were in Israel or Lebanon. Hezbollah also has a story though the punctuation is different. Beirut-Resistance fighters captured two members of the Israeli Defense Force on July 12 in order to exchange them for three Hezbollah soldiers Israel has held since 2000. The operation was also part of efforts to expel Israel from the Lebanese territory of Shebaa Farms. Each of these stories generates a set of predictable responses. Hezbollah's rockets threaten Israeli sovereignty; Rockets were fired after Israel bombed and shelled Lebanon; Hezbollah is ignoring United Nations (UN) Resolution 1559 to disarm, while Israel has ignored at least five UN resolutions to withdraw from the West Bank and the Golan Heights; What about the Holocaust? What about the Crusades? Yahweh gave us this ground; Allah gave us this land. People punctuate stories so as to establish causality and to assure themselves that they stand with the angels. But such stories can kill. When reinforcing narratives of victimization, they may perpetuate endless cycles of righteousness and revenge. Is humanity then locked into a world of subjective point and counterpoint, doomed like Sisyphus to never-ending efforts and fruitless undertakings? By no means. But when it comes to solutions, it may be necessary to edit our stories even if they are true. There is at least one historical example that suggests a way to short circuit the narrative loop. The Lore of the Irish For just under 837 years, the English and the Irish have warred against one another. Terrible things have been done in those long centuries, and the Irish tell endless stories about them. They know when it began: On Aug. 23, 1170, Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke-"Strongbow" to the Irish-waded ashore with 200 Norman knights and 1,000 men-at-arms near Waterford on Ireland's southeast coast. He took the town in five days, then marched north and smashed an Irish army near Dublin. Thus began the longest war in European history. For more than 40 generations the Irish seethed at the occupation, rising up time and again to fling themselves in bloody rage at armies they could not hope to defeat. The Irish call it "the long sorrow," and they can recite it with the precision of a rosary: "Red" Hugh O'Neill's war against Elizabeth I; The First Land War; the Great Rising of '98; the Tithe War; Catholic Emancipation; the Fenian revolt; the Second Land War; the Easter Rebellion. The stories, poems, and songs that the Irish wrote about these events taught each generation about courage and resistance, but also about hatred, tribalism, and a certain kind of suicidal madness the poet William Butler Yeats called "an excess of love." To the English, the men and women who rose on Easter Sunday, 1916, and fought them from Jacob's Biscuit Factory and the General Post Office, were traitors and terrorists. The British smashed up Dublin to root out the rebels, and then executed them against the walls of Kilmainham prison. To Yeats, the rebellion was the birth of "a terrible beauty," one that transformed Ireland forever, and elevated the executed leaders to the status of martyrs and saints. What began as a quixotic challenge to England in the middle of World War I was transformed into a cultural myth. What are the stories Hezbollah will tell about Bint Jbail, which the most powerful army in the Middle East was unable to secure after almost a week of savage fighting? As the English did to Dublin in 1916, the Israelis flattened the place with artillery and bombs, but that will not extinguish the narrative that Hezbollah held out against the mighty Golani Brigade. What are the stories the Israelis will tell about life in the shelters? Will they conjure up the spirit of Masada, the Jewish people's equivalent of the Easter Rebellion, albeit one that ended a good deal more tragically? Will they tell themselves that once again tiny Israel is beset by enemies on all sides? Both of these narratives will end up with a lot of people dead and homeless, economies derailed, and infrastructures shattered. They may even lead to the unthinkable: a regional war. They will pump up a tribalism that says, "We are special, we are better, we are owed this, and the wrongs we do to others are canceled out by the wrongs others have done to us." The Good Friday Agreement History does not mark all roads, and all analogies are fraught with danger. Like the Oracle of Delphi, Clio the muse of history predicts what we want her to predict. But the recent history of Ireland is worth some study. Starting in 1992, the principal antagonists in Northern Ireland began to talk with one another, in large part because majorities in both communities were fed up with the sectarian violence. It was not easy, but the talks led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which has kept the peace for the most part between warring Catholics and Protestants. It was a process the United States helped along, unlike the role the United States is playing in the current Middle East crisis. To reach an agreement, the parties had to get past a series of myths. The first myth is that force will get people to do what you want them to do. It never did, it never will. If Qassams and Katyushas have not caused the Israelis to throw in the towel, why would Israel think that bombs and artillery would force Hezbollah or Hamas to give up? To suggest that Arabs will react any differently to violence than the Jews or the Irish is simply racist. Rather than terrorizing the Lebanese and the Palestinians, the current war has united both communities. The collective punishment that Israel is inflicting on Gaza and Lebanon simply produces collective rage at both Israel and the United States. A poll by the Beirut Center for Research found that 89% of Lebanese do not consider the United States an "honest broker," and 87% support Hezbollah's "retaliatory rocket attacks." Even al-Qaida, which normally refers to Shiites as "dogs" and "a thorn in the throat of Islam," has called for aiding the resistance in Lebanon. Indeed, Israel has managed to drive Shiite Hezbollah into an alliance with Sunni Hamas. The second myth is that you can design someone else's country. You cannot tell the Lebanese what their internal politics should be, nor can you tell the Palestinians that they can have a nation but only if it is riddled with Jewish settlements and surrounded by a wall. Such a Palestinian state is not a country but an open-air prison, much like Gaza is today. All the settlements will have to go, the borders returned to the 1967 Green Line, and Jerusalem will have to be shared. The occupation is illegal, immoral, and clearly not in Israel's interest, despite being of its making. Instead of listening to David Ben-Gurion, who urged Israel to withdraw from the lands conquered in 1967, Tel Aviv established the settlements and kept East Jerusalem. In return, the Palestinians will have to abandon the right of return and accept a deal that compensates them for the lands they lost in 1948. Regardless of the injustice behind the original expulsions, asking Israel to dismantle itself unilaterally is a non-starter. Israel is a country, if for no other reason than the Holocaust made it so. But Israel cannot continue to hide behind the argument that it won't negotiate with "terrorists." If England could talk to Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army, Israel can to talk to Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel recently held a two-day seminar on the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel by the Jewish resistance. The blast killed 92 people. One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. Some in the Middle East will resist such a settlement, just as some hardliners in the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland reject the Good Friday Agreement. But in Northern Ireland those forces have been increasingly marginalized. For all its fragility, the pact is generally holding. Despite eight centuries of occupation, and 24 years of civil war, Irish on both sides are downplaying their respective nationalist narratives and finding common ground. The world does not need more tribal allegiances and stories that tell us it is all right to blow up pizza parlors or flatten towns in Southern Lebanon. It needs solutions anchored in the real world and a moral order that sees no difference between a dead Jewish child and a dead Arab child. The living weep for them equally, and no pain is greater or less because of the weight of history. Conn Hallinan is a foreign policy analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus and
a lecturer in journalism at the University of California, Santa
Cruz.
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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.                    |
