|

April 9, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
April 8, 2002
David
Vest
From
Birmingham to Nashville:
The Making of Tammy Wynette
Rick Giombetti
Paxil, Suicide and Science
Dr. Neve
Gordon
Letter
to an IDF Colonel:
How Did You Become
a War Criminal?
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's Top 10 CDs
Jordy
Cummings
Not
in My Name Anymore
Gavin Keeney
Bush and the Middle East:
Mouth Wide Shut
Edward
Said
The
Future of Palestine
April 7, 2002
Beth Daoud
Accompanying Ambulances
in Bethlehem
Nancy
Stohlman
After
the Invasion:
The Search for Bread
Among the Ruins
Thomas Mountain
"Yellow Peril" In Hawai'i:
Judge Orders Chains and Shackles for Chinese Witnesses
Tariq
Ali
Who
Killed Daniel Pearl?
April 6, 2002
Philip Farruggio
War, Snake Oil and Circuses
Viktor
Litovkin
Russian
Generals Raise Questions About Pentagon Victories in Afghanistan
Patrick Cockburn
CIA Survey of Iraqi Airfields
May Herald Attack
Walt Brasch
Oil
Slick George:
Bush-whacking the Environment
Ralph Nader
Campaign Finance Sham
Sam Bahour
The
Blind Leading the Criminal
Bill Christison:
A Former CIA Official on
Oil and the Middle East
April 5, 2002
Charmaine
Seitz
In
Ramallah: The Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On
Nancy Stohlman
The Invasion of Bethlehem
and Our Tax Dollars at Work
Beth Daoud
The
Siege of Bethlehem:
"What Do You Mean God Is Punishing Me?"
Fareed Marjaee:
Demonizing Iran
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Philip
Morris to Canada:
"Drop Dead"
Alex Lynch
Tampa Campus Mirrors
Middle East Strife
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon's
Wars: How the
News Gets Through
April 4, 2002
Ray Hanania
Sharon's Latest Lie About the Church
of the Nativity
Mike Leon
Rightwing
Assault on Madison Progressives Misfires
Tom Turnipseed
Stop the Killing Now!
Nancy
Stohlman
An
American Under Siege in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Christopher Reilly
Kissinger, Chile and Justice
at Long Last?
M. Shahid
Alam
The
Lies of Thomas Friedman
April 3, 2002
Don Henley
Dear Loathsome Trade Hacks
Bernard
Weiner
An
American Jew Talks
About His Shame
David Vest
Sting of Stings
Gabriel Ash
America's Bravest
John Chuckman
Of
War, Islam and Israel
Robert Fisk
The Siege of Bethlehem
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Sins of the Church
April 2, 2002
Uri Avnery
Murdering Arafat?
Jeff Chang
Is
Protest Music Dead?
Lev Grinberg
Israel's State Terrorism
Norman
Madarasz
Bullying
Brazil
Robert Fisk
Farce and Terror
in Ramallah
Steve
Perry
Let's
Roll! ®:
The Marketing of Lisa Beamer
April 1, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
America's War Inc.
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Peace
and Nuclear Disarmament: a Call to Action
Bahour / Dahan
Bloodshed in Palestine:
A Way Out
Molly
Secours
Tennessee's
Kangaroo Court
Phyllis Pollack
The Making of Exile
on Main Street
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's
Top 10 CDs
Francis Boyle
The Big Lie:
Palestine, Palestinians
and International Law
March 31, 2002
Jordan
Flaherty
Last
Night the Israeli
Military Tried to Kill Me
Kristen Schurr
Live from Bethlehem
Maha Sbitani
The
Israeli Army Took Over My House
Robert Fisk
Lies Leaders Tell When
They Want to Go to War

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
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
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

Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
April 9, 2002
I Helped Kill a Palestinian Today
By Robert Jensen
I helped kill a Palestinian today.
If you pay taxes to the U.S. government,
so did you.
And unless the policies of the U.S. government
change, tomorrow will be no different.
It is easy for Americans to decry the
"cycle of violence" in Palestine, but until we acknowledge
our own part in that violence, there is little hope for a just
peace in Palestine or the Middle East.
The first step is to abandon the mythology
that the United States is a "neutral broker for peace"
in the conflict. A new report by the Institute for Southern Studies
shows that in the one-year period after the
Sharm el-Sheikh peace agreement in September 1999, the U.S. government
pumped $3.6 billion worth of arms into Israel -- an odd policy
for a country playing a supposedly neutral role.
So, when we hear on the news that Israeli
tanks are rolling through the cities and refugee camps of the
West Bank, we should remember those tanks were made in the United
States and purchased by Israel with U.S. aid. The Israeli jets
and helicopters used in the assault are American F-16s, Blackhawks
and Apaches. Machine guns, grenade launchers, missiles and bombs
-- made in the USA, paid for with our tax dollars -- are being
used to crush the Palestinian people. That means we must face
two realties:
First, the current Israeli attack on
West Bank towns is not a war on terrorism, but part of a long
and brutal war against the Palestinian people for land and resources.
If Israel is serious about ending terrorism, it would end its
35-year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Until it demonstrates a willingness to do that, Israeli calls
for peace ring hollow and its attempts to achieve security through
force will only make it less secure.
Second, Israel's war against the Palestinians
would not be possible without U.S. military and economic support
-- $3 billion a year in direct aid. While the whole world stands
against Israel's occupation, our government provides the political
and diplomatic cover that allows Israel to flout international
law. Specific Israeli policies sometimes draw mild criticisms
from U.S. leaders, and those criticisms have grown stronger in
recent days as Israel has ignored calls for a pullback of forces.
But Israel can continue to ignore the international consensus
-- and the U.N. Security Council resolutions calling on it to
end the occupation -- because of U.S. support.
U.S. officials recently have distanced
themselves from the extreme violence of the Sharon government
and the Likud Party, but it is folly to think all would be fine
if only a Labor Party government were in power. The differences
between the two major parties in Israel are more of style than
substance. Take the question of settlements in the occupied territories.
We are told repeatedly that Israel desperately
wants peace. If that is true, why has the number of Israeli settlers
living in the West Bank and Gaza almost doubled since the Oslo
peace process began nearly a decade ago? Given that those settlements
are one of the most serious obstacles to a peaceful solution,
why would the Israeli governments -- Labor and Likud alike --
expand settlements in territory it illegally occupies during
a so-called peace process?
The ultimate solution to the conflict
in the Middle East is a regional peace conference under an international
banner that takes seriously international law. There must be
regional arms control, which should be part of a movement to
reduce the insane levels of armaments globally (of which the
United States is the leading salesperson). The most important
contribution the United States could make is to stop blocking
that process.
But right now, the United States can
help defuse the immediate crisis by using the leverage its aid
to Israel provides. We the American people should pressure our
government to make a clear statement: Israel must not only end
its current brutal offensive but also must take meaningful steps
to end the occupation, and the United States must withdraw support
from Israel until it agrees to do so.
If we fail to do that, then we cannot
escape the knowledge that Americans are partly responsible for
the next missile fired into a Palestinian town, the next shell
lobbed into a Palestinian home, the next Israeli bullet that
cuts down an innocent Palestinian.
Robert Jensen
is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin,
a member of the Nowar Collective, and author of the book Writing
Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream.
His pamphlet, "Citizens of the Empire," is available
online
here. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
|