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America's First Terror War
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Today's Stories May 7, 2007 Patrick Cockburn
Alexander Cockburn William Blum Uri Avnery Franklin Lamb Fred Gardner Lawrence R.
Velvel Missy Beattie Robert Fantina Carla Blank Linn Washington,
Jr. Stephen F. Jackson P. Sainath Anthony Papa James T. Phillips John Ross Stephen Lendman Ben Terrall CounterPunch
Newswire Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
May 4, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Azmi Bishara Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Kevin Zeese Bob Fitrakis Janet Kauffman Website of
the Day
May 3, 2007 Jeff Halper Christopher
Brauchli Dave Zirin Corporate Crime
Reporter Robert Fisk Mike Ferner Mike Whitney Pham Binh Dave Lindorff Michael A.
Johnson Website of the Day
May 2, 2007 Saul Landau Dr. Susan Block Carla Blank Margaret Kimberly Kevin Zeese Carlos Villareal Michael Dickinson Tim Shorrock Alevtina Rea William S.
Lind Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn Fred Gardner Chase Madar Ralph Nader John V. Walsh Joshua Frank Leslie Radford Shaun Harkin Dave Lindorff Peter Rost,
MD Peter Linebaugh Website of
the Day
April 30, 2007 Frank Menetrez Paul Craig
Roberts Ray McGovern Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Diana Johnstone Sherwood Ross Peter Rost, MD Robert Jensen Kevin Zeese Jane Stillwater Website of
the Day
April 28 / 29, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St.
Clair Fred Gardner David Orchard
Alan Maass Joe Bageant Robert Fantina Hanan Ashrawi Ron Jacobs Nicole Colson Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Harvey Wasserman Cindy Beringer Mike Roselle RAWA James McEnteer Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Eva Liddell Phyllis Bennis Mike Whitney Michael F.
Brown Jordan Flaherty Margaret Kimberly Christopher Brauchli Jacob Mundy Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn Franklin Lamb Patrick Cockburn Roger Morris Henry Siegman Alevtina Rea Paris Nikolas Kozloff Alan Farago Matthew S. Miller Website of
the Day
Sharon Smith David Price Diana Johnstone Brendan Cooney Sonja Karkar Brian Concannon Lee Gaillard Leah Fishbein Dave Lindorff Neal Galloway Website of the Day
April 24, 2007 Ishmael Reed Lila Rajiva Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Mike Whitney Website of the Day
April 23, 2007 Saul Landau Patrick Cockburn Robert Fantina Sam Husseini Corporate Crime Reporter Elizabeth Lalasz Harvey Wasserman Dave Lindorff Gary Leupp Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Fred Gardner Kristoffer Larsson Barbara Rose
Johnston Manuel Garcia, Jr. John Scagliotti Marjorie Cohn Patrick Cockburn Diana Johnstone Ron Jacobs Evelyn Pringle BANCO Paul Richards Dan Bacher Ben Terrall Sherwood Ross Remi Kanazi Aseem Shrivastava Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
April 20, 2007 Doug Peacock Diane Farsetta Tom Clifford Amira Hass Nicole Colson Sonja Karkar Heather Gray Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban Agustin Velloso Matthew Koehler Website of
the Day
April 19, 2007 Emad Mekay
/ Patrick Cockburn Larry C. Johnson Norman Solomon Saul Williams Sunsara Taylor Harvey Wasserman Christopher
Brauchli Anthony Papa Dave Lindorff Website of the Day
April 18, 2007 Lila Rajiva Landau / Hassen Charles Fisher
/ Diane Christian Kevin Prosen China Hand Peter Rost,
MD Justin Akers Chacón Jerry Kroth Sherwood Ross Niranjan Ramakrishnan Alice Cherbonnier Website of
the Year?
April 17, 2007 Jean Bricmont
/ Paul Craig
Roberts Frida Berrigan Alison Weir John Walsh Jason Hribal Evelyn Pringle Ben Terrall Stan Cox Soren Ambrose Website of the Day
April 16, 2007 John F. Sugg Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Carl G. Estabrook Paul Craig Roberts Uri Avnery Ralph Nader Eamon McCann Lee Sustar Mike Whitney Don Fitz Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
April 14 / 15, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jorge Mariscal Jeffrey St. Clair Dave Marsh Dr. Trudy Bond Joe Bageant Fidel Castro Alfredo Molano Alan Farago Michael Neumann Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Gail Dines Linda Ford Missy Beattie Dan La Botz Giuliana Sgrena Laura Carlsen Abu Spinoza Elizabeth Schulte Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
April 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Stephen Soldz George Ciccarriello-Maher Laith al-Saud Dave Zirin John Ross Ramzy Baroud Harvey Wasserman Lopez, Olivo and Garcia Dols, Fukumori,
Judd and Tillett-Saks Website of the Day
April 12, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski Paul Craig
Roberts Marjorie Cohn Evelyn Pringle Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Joe DeRaymond Nicola Nasser Nikolas Kozloff William S.
Lind Siegfried L. Sassoon Website of
the Day
R. T. Naylor Vijay Prashad Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler Jack Balkwill Alan Farago Russell D.
Hoffman Peter Rost, MD Mike Whitney Dave Lindorff Susie Day Website of the Day
April 10, 2007 James G. Abourezk Earl Ofari
Hutchinson Joshua Frank Lee Sustar Joseph Grosso Nirmal Ghosh Robert Jensen Ramzy Baroud Paul Rockwell Mario Joseph
and Fred Wilhelms Website of
the Day
April 9, 2007 Saul Landau Uri Avnery Nicole Colson Gideon Levy Corporate Crime Reporter Evelyn Pringle Hill Kemp Martha Rosenberg Keith Rosenthal Jane Stillwater Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Sara Roy Arno J. Mayer Jeffrey St.
Clair Vicente Navarro Fidel Castro Fred Gardner Ralph Nader David N. Rahni Arthur Neslen Pratyush Chandra Missy Beattie Marc Levy Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
April 6, 2007 Franklin Lamb Gloria La Riva Corporate Crime Reporter Ron Jacobs Felice Pace Walter Brasch David Swanson Sylvia Syracuse
Patrick Cockburn Tom Barry Richard W. Behan Nicola Nasser Bernadine Dohrn Laray Polk Helen Redmond
April 4, 2007 Col. Dan Smith Joshua Frank Margaret Kimberly Sharon Smith Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon Martin Luther
King,Jr. Bill Quigley Dave Zirin Evelyn Pringle Peter Rost,
MD Website of the Day
April 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Marjorie Cohn Brian M. Downing Corporate Crime
Reporter Carol Norris Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Scott Bontz Thomas Dolby Website of
the Day
Gary Leupp Uri Avnery James Petras Norman Solomon Robert Fisk Stanley Heller Sherwood Ross Monica Benderman Stephen Fleischman Anne McElroy
Dachel Website of the Day
Cockburn /
St. Clair Fred Gardner Greg Moses Gary Leupp Robert Fisk Roger Morris Conn Hallinan Kristin J.
Anderson Jason Hribal John Ross Christopher Brauchli David Underhill Elizabeth Schulte Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Sonja Karkar Daniel Wolff David Vest Ron Jacobs Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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May 7, 2007 Mr. Sheridan's Strange AwardPrizes for Supporting Israel?By SONJA KARKAR Every now and then, journalists who have shown excellence in their work are rewarded. A prize that recognises their investigative skills and critical thinking is a worthy achievement; a prize that rewards them for using their profession to "conspicuously" support a foreign state in conflict, is not. Rather, it raises questions about their impartiality, good judgment and integrity. Their professionalism can no longer be trusted. It happened in Australia this past week. Greg Sheridan, billed as "the most influential foreign affairs analyst in Australian journalism" by his newspaper "The Australian" was awarded the annual Jerusalem Prize by the State Zionist Council of NSW. According to its president Frank Levy, "The prize is awarded to someone who fosters and supports the state of Israel and its ideologies, the concept of the Jewish homeland and the Jewish community, particularly in Australia." Sheridan saw nothing wrong in accepting the prize, but many Australians did. In fact, Sheridan wrote a loose article "Rare support for democracy in a sea of misunderstanding" (The Australian 3/5) in response to the mail he received urging him not to accept the prize and was at great pains to explain that he had not compromised his independence as a commentator because he believed Israel--quoting the former pro-Israel president of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid--"is a democracy in a sea of misunderstanding". Anxious to justify his position, Sheridan referred to the illustrious recipients of the prize worldwide including our own Liberal Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and a former Labor lord mayor of Sydney and current NSW minister, Frank Sartor. Sheridan wanted to make sure that bipartisan support for Israel in Australia was really understood and he pointed to both Liberal Prime Minister Howard and Labor Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd as avid supporters of Israel's democracy. After all the names Sheridan dropped to validate his own selection for the prize, Israel's democracy emerged as the prime reason for Sheridan's unquestioning support, not because it is perfect, but because being anti-Israel is "fundamentally irrational and evidence of psychological and ideological dysfunction rather than genuine analysis." There is no room in Sheridan's argument for an irrational and dysfunctional Israel and the ideology in which it is rooted. If any of its actions are mistakes that should be understood because "any democratic nation makes plenty of mistakes and sometimes it makes moral mistakes." But, he does not allow for other forms of government and leaders to make mistakes. Sheridan raises Saddam's responsibility for the killing of 300,000 to 400,000 of his own citizens: he does not mention that Israel slipped through the legal and moral net without condemnation when it deliberately killed hundreds of Palestinians and terrorised some 750,000 others to flee their homes and homeland in 1948. Sheridan's snapshot look at history gives an out-of-context account of Israel's birth, ignoring the well-documented massacres and complete razing of Palestinian villages and towns that Israel executed to gain a permanent foothold in all of Palestine. None of that is in the least justified by Sheridan's statement that "there have always been Jews in Palestine." Indeed, it would have been helpful for him to point out that most of those Jews who lived in Palestine over the centuries were in fact Palestinians. Just like there are Palestinians who are Christians, and of course, Muslims. The European Jews filtered in when they fled persecution in Christian Spain in the Middle Ages, but it was not until modern times that the European Jewish population in Palestine swelled in number after Zionists forced their mass exodus to Palestine in the aftermath of the European holocaust. This was the realisation of the great Zionist colonialist experiment that had no predilection for democracy. There was nothing fair about the Partition that created Israel, giving the minority European Jewish population a greater portion of the land belonging to the majority Palestinian population. And there has been no fairness for the Palestinians since, despite Sheridan raising the old canard of Barak's "generous" offer. The 95 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza that Sheridan says was offered to the Palestinians was once again not put in context. For years, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) had called for a two-state solution agreeing to Israel keeping 78 per cent of the former British-mandated Palestine while the Palestinians would form their state on the remaining 22 per cent that Israel has occupied since the 1967 war. At Camp David 2000, Barak's offer actually amounted to only a bare 8.3 per cent of the original Palestinian homeland from which they had been driven in 1948. In exchange for withdrawing completely from Gaza as well as the offer of a small piece of land in the Negev Desert that Israel had used as a toxic waste dump, Israel would annex the most fertile and strategically important areas of the West Bank while maintaining control over the Palestinian state's borders, air space and the land's scarce water resources--and with Israel's military free to intervene at any time. Effectively, what was offered were four non-contiguous parcels of land which would force Palestinians to cross Israeli territory every time they travelled or shipped their goods between each other and with no free access to their own international borders with Jordan and Egypt. Had Arafat agreed to this, he would have effectively waived any further Palestinian claims against Israel. That would have been political suicide for the Palestinians already being subjected to these Orwellian restrictions. Moving on, Sheridan says that Israel made this "generous" offer in exchange for a peace that would accept Israel's legitimacy. Because Arafat refused, Sheridan then makes the quantum leap to deduce that Arafat "had never accepted that Israel had a right to exist at all." Nowhere does Sheridan explain that all the while these negotiations were taking place, Israel's illegal settlement expansionism was still going on. In fact, the Israeli bureau of statistics reported that settlement building had increased 81 per cent in the first quarter of 2000. (Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories, 11-12/00) Nowhere does Sheridan describe the nightly military raids into Palestinian cities, towns and villages, the killings, home demolitions, arrests, humiliations and indignities suffered by the Palestinian population. Nowhere does he mention the frenzied attacks by the Israeli settlers, who have no moral qualms about allowing their children to hurl stones and abuse at Palestinian women and children as they try to make their way to school or home. Instead, he asks the reader to empathise with the Israelis who he says are forced to defend themselves from the constant threats and attacks driven by "hate-filled and anti-Semitic propaganda designed to make schoolchildren despise the Jews". Israel's democracy, therefore, has an excuse for war; Palestinians under occupation have none. For an experienced foreign affairs journalist, Sheridan shows an amazing reluctance to examine the realities of Israel's "democracy" at work. His article relies on the same old and now-debunked myths and arguments that no self-respecting journalist ought to employ. Even if Sheridan is convinced that "Israel is a democracy in good standing" he ought to be asking for whom? Israel has made no secret of its intention to be a Jewish state only, so it is no wonder that Israel's 1.2 million Palestinian citizens the survivors and descendants of the 1948 Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine--see themselves increasingly isolated and alienated from Israeli society. It won't be long before Israel will have to declare its hand: is it "a state of the Jewish people throughout the world" as it defines itself, or a state of all its citizens, both Jewish and non-Jewish? Perhaps Sheridan sees this as yet another issue that must be left for Israel's "vibrant, genuine problem-solving democracy" to solve. In the meantime, Sheridan should indeed congratulate himself on the "great honour" of being awarded the Jerusalem Prize for no other reason than having supported Israel so "conspicuously". Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women
for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia. See www.womenforpalestine.com
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The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained!  Buy End Times Now! CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal  Click Here to Order!  Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair           The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn           CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed        Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh                   |
