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Today's Stories July 27, 2006 Richard
Harth July 26, 2006 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 27, 2006 From New Orleans to GazaSqueezing the Last Drops from PalestineBy RICHARD HARTH New Orleans. Thirsty in New Orleans On Sunday, August 29th of last year, the hurricane we'd been watching metastasize in the Gulf of Mexico crossed from sea to land, disfiguring and permanently altering the city of New Orleans. Our beloved and often backward backwater became instant front page news across the country, in Europe and nearly everyplace else--a 9/11-style catastrophe (in truth, much larger in scale) that was soon on everyone's lips. It was unthinkable that a modern city could simply drop off the radar like a doomed passenger jet, but soon enough, we were alone, incommunicado; the accessories of modernity-radios, television, cooling systems to protect us from suffocating heat, street lamps to illuminate the increasingly terrifying nights, put to ruin in a few short hours. On Poydras Avenue near the Louisiana Superdome, the sky seemed spray-painted with stars. It was the first time in 100 years they were visible above the extinguished city. In the Central Business District, the so-called social contract was unraveling. Guns were drawn, unattended fires raged, and panic seized a citizenry abandoned to its fate and severed from all sources of news other than circulating rumors and generalized dread. Meanwhile, in the suburb of Old Metairie, an otherworldly calm prevailed. I floated through the submerged neighborhoods in a boat that had plucked me out of chest-high floodwaters. A mélange of chemicals and gasoline left an iridescent sheen on the surface, above which dragonflies danced in the heat. The smell was uniquely repulsive. We wouldn't learn of the hair-raising mismanagement of the crisis for weeks-neither about Brownie's heck of a job, Bush's operatic Jackson Square farce or the convoys of ice trucks crisscrossing the nation with their chilled cargo only to languish in Carthage, Missouri or Montgomery, Alabama, finally completing their futile trek in Maine (yes, Maine); a frozen odyssey worthy of Garcia Marquez. By Wednesday after the storm, conditions were turning dire for the fortunate among us, having long since turned life-threatening or lethal for the less-than-fortunate, generally, the working poor, baking on rooftops awaiting rescue or confined in the claustrophobic torture chamber known as the Louisiana Superdome, which had been transformed from crisis shelter to makeshift prison for the city's untouchables, surrounded by a phalanx of armed National Guard. I remember the marshals standing on the median along Canal Street, their pump shotguns pointed uselessly skyward as goods of every description were being dragged from the smashed shop windows into the waist high muck. I remember a CNN correspondent urging me to eat and drink whatever was available because "you're not getting out of here anytime soon." Apart from the chaos, I mostly remember the thirst.the anxiety about water. It was our Gaza moment. The suffering in Israel's Occupied Territories, however, is not the result of mismanagement or indifference. Instead, it is the consequence of premeditated, often cruelly ingenious strategies to strip an oppressed population of cropland, housing, security, education, basic services, medical care, freedom of movement, functioning government, olive groves, citrus trees, nightly sleepand water. As with so much else in the Palestinian tragedy, the already lopsided balance of power regarding water resources tipped decidedly against the Palestinians following Israel's lightning victory of June,1967. The region's three primary water sources consist of the Jordan River, and two large aquifers, the Mountain Aquifer of the West Bank and the Coastal Aquifer, extending northward from the Gaza Strip. Prior to the Six Day War, Israeli land encompassed only three percent of the Jordan River Basin, though in 1964, the enterprising state had already constructed an elaborate conveyance network of canals, pumping stations, reservoirs and pipelines, integrating them into a national water system which diverted 75 percent of the Jordan's flow for Israel's use. After the 1967 War, Israel claimed full control of the Jordan's headwaters. While Israel shares some of the flow with Jordan and Syria, the Palestinians are forbidden any water from the river, forcing them to rely on groundwater pumped from aquifers and springs or delivered, often sporadically, by truck. Unfortunately, while 83 percent of Palestine's groundwater sources are recharged by rainwater within the borders of the West Bank, only 19 percent of this water is available to the Palestinians, due to transparently inequitable arrangements symptomatic of Israel's racist occupation. After 1967, Israel also exerted dominion over new groundwater resources, diverting these for Israel's exclusive use, either within the Jewish state or to serve illegal settlements (including the Eastern Aquifer, whose boundaries are entirely within Palestinian Occupied Territory). Israel at once seized the opportunity of military occupation to bypass demands for equitable sharing of water resources, as mandated under international law. This feat was accomplished through a series of military orders designed with two purposes in mind: 1) to secure the maximum water available to fuel the economic growth and profligate water habits of Israel and its illegal settlements beyond the Green Line and 2) to deprive the Palestinians of vital water resources, essentially, an ethnic cleansing by other means, two decades after Israel's forced expulsion of 750,000-800,000 Palestinians in the Nakba of 1948. A review of these military orders makes for chilling reading. Military Order # 291 for example, entitled Concerning the Settlement of Disputes over Titles in Land and the Regulation of Water, underlines Israel's non-negotiable stranglehold on a resource essential to life, declaring null and void any previous laws or agreements concerning water rights and transferring control to Israeli discretion. The military orders, while having no legitimacy under International law, have nonetheless had the effect on the ground of denying Palestinians all right of equitable distribution as well as the means to exploit new resources to serve a growing population under acute stress. The tactic has served Israel's Judeo-supremacist ethos well, causing severe hardship to Arab communities under Israeli occupation, while ensuring unlimited running water to Israelis within the Jewish state's borders as well as in the West Bank's expanding settlement blocks, where Hebraic overlords splash contentedly in their swimming pools. A plastic olive branch was extended in 1993 with Israel's signing of the Oslo Accords, including their vague reference to "Cooperation in the field of water." The Interim Agreement of 1995, however, spelled out what such "cooperation" amounted to, from the Israeli perspective. Far from offering the Palestinians relief for their increasingly desperate water situation, the Interim Agreement acted to legally solidify Palestinian water impoverishment, declaring that there could be no reduction in Israel's exploitation of the West Bank aquifers, so that any additional water required for the Palestinian people would have to come from new sources, specifically, new wells. By means of military dictates, intimidation, land confiscation and a byzantine bureaucratic system to obtain well permits, the Israelis effectively closed this option as well, leaving the Palestinians of Gaza with less water than they had in 1947 and the rest of the Palestinians with a grossly inadequate water supply of ever-declining quality. Adding insult to injury, Israel's separation wall conveniently meanders east of the Green Line, incorporating and annexing some of the most important wellsprings of the West Bank. As the human rights group If They Knew reports:
Contrary to international law, (as well as the stipulations of Oslo), Israel refuses to treat the West Bank and Gaza as portions of the same territory entitled to a just sharing of water. This shortchanges Gaza from any water from the West Bank Mountain Aquifer, (three quarters of which is pumped instead to supply Israel's needs), making the water-starved Gazans dependent on the Coastal Aquifer. Ninety percent of the Coastal Aquifer's water is non-potable and drastic overpumping is further degrading it. It should be noted that non-potable means the water isn't suitable for drinking. It doesn't mean the Palestinians don't drink it. In fact, they have no choice. Through the metering of Palestinian wells, Israel imposes strict quotas and exorbitant fines for Palestinian "overuse." In truth, Palestinians are kept on a starvation diet in terms of water, with an average per person daily consumption of 70 liters per day in the West Bank (with many inhabitants receiving a fraction of this), and a dismal 13 liters per day Gaza (about five percent of the average for Israelis), despite the World Health Organization's minimum daily requirement for human health of 100 liters per day. The consequences for hygiene and health are severe, with dehydration and widespread skin ailments joining various water-borne diseases ravaging the population. The Gaza aquifer suffers from the intrusion of sea water as well as pollution from sewage, partly due to non-maintenance of infrastructure (another Israeli responsibility under International law). Salt has rendered this water unsuitable for irrigation, with disastrous consequences to Palestinian subsistence and economy. The health effects of ingesting this water have been predictably grim, the international community's response, predictably lackadaisical. Dysentery and hypertension (caused by salinity) are prevalent. Eighty percent of the children in some areas test positive for one or more parasitic infestations. Kidney failure caused by dehydration is common, as is anemia, likely caused by nitrate levels (present at 13 times the World Health Organization's safety levels), due to sewage and agricultural chemicals leaching into the aquifer. Much of this pollution comes from Israel's habit of using Palestinian lands as a dumpsite for its waste. These shameful conditions have persisted without relief throughout the Occupied Territories for decades prior to June 28th, 2006, when Israel's latest military offensive demolished Gaza's electrical plant, carrying the longstanding practice of collective punishment to new summits of barbarity. Dr. Virginia Tilley, professor of political science, writes of the latest crisis. Her description deserves quotation at length:
In other words, New Orleans times a thousand. Deprivation of water has proven one of the most effective means of crushing Palestinian society, consigning an entire people to perpetual desperation. Having reduced Palestinians to a crippled state, Israel lately appears determined to unplug remaining life support. Appeals to international law, insistence on water as a fundamental human right, the (pathetically muted) outcry of the international community, the endless recitation of deplorable health statistics (particularly concerning those most vulnerable, Palestinian children), have done little to alleviate the anguish of the victims. Or their thirst. We must continue to speak out on their behalf and redouble our efforts to secure for them the things we take for granted. In the meantime, Palestinians continue to subsist on their dwindling supply of poisoned water, many staring gloomily from Red Cross tents toward the remnants of bulldozed and dynamited homes, some 12,000 and counting, since 1967. As The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights, BT'Selem reports:
A few unresigned youths still turn out in Hebron, in the squalid streets of Khan Younis, to confront the tanks and gargantuan D9 bulldozers with gathered stones. From the Gaza border, primitive missiles are now and again launched in the general direction of the oppressor, an omnipotent state boasting the fourth most powerful military on earth, bristling with leading-edge weapons and backed without restriction by the United States. Defiance, whether in the form of peaceful protest or ineffectual militancy, is enough to mark the Palestinian people, their malnourished children, their brutalized society pounded into wreckage, as a serious menace to the civilized world. I was one of the lucky ones following Hurricane Katrina. I never ran out of fresh water to drink, even as conditions here fell into anarchy. But I rationed the supply I had with me, taking abbreviated gulps of warm water that failed to quench, uncertain what the coming days would bring. Today I raise a glass to those in the Occupied Territories, consider their fate, and count my blessings. Richard Harth is a writer living in New Orleans.
He can be reached at: harth@cox.net
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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.                    |
