Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 26,
2005
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
Read How the
Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
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January 26, 2005
An Iron Wall of Colonization
Fantasies
and Realities About the Prospects for Peace Between Israelis
and Palestinians
By
SAREE MAKDISI
The recent election of Mahmoud Abbas
as the new President of the Palestinian Authority has renewed
speculation that 2005 will bring genuine peace between Palestinians
and Israelis. Insofar as it depends on Israel's own intentions,
however, such hope is entirely misplaced.
Israel has made it clear that
the first thing it expects of the new Palestinian leader is for
him to bring the Palestinian population under control: a mission
that, in order to demonstrate his good behavior, he has already
zealously taken up by deploying his security forces in order
to protect Israel from attack by Palestinians (rather than the
other way around). If he is successful in that mission, Abbas
will likely be invited to agree to a political settlement of
the Israeli-Palestinian struggle whose terms will be essentially
dictated by Israel. Such an arrangement would allow Palestinians
a severely limited form of self-rule in those (disconnected)
parts of the territories occupied in 1967 that Israel no longer
intends to keep for itself. The rest of the West Bank would
be dominated by Israeli colonies, bypass roads, and military
outposts. Even in the unlikely event that the colonies there
would actually be dismantled, Gaza would become-even more than
it is now-essentially a gigantic open-air prison, as would large
areas in the West Bank, which would be encircled and completely
cut off by the various layers of Israel's separation barrier,
much as the city of Qalqilya (population 60,000) already is today.
The process of Judaizing Jerusalem would continue, and the
city itself would be encircled by an iron wall of Jewish colonization
extending toward the Dead Sea.
There is nothing new here.
Most of the plans proposed since Israel conquered the West Bank,
Gaza and east Jerusalem in 1967 have been variations on a theme
originally devised by Yigal Allon, then Israel's Deputy Prime
Minister. Allon called for Israel to colonize strategically
important parts of the West Bank (and east Jerusalem), to maintain
control over natural resources, borders and airspace, and to
grant a kind of autonomy to densely populated Palestinian areas
where colonization would prove difficult. In fact, despite all
the talk about a "peace process," Israel's basic position
(which has been gradually translated into realities on the ground
for almost forty years now) has not budged an inch since 1967.
The Oslo agreements of the
1990s reiterated the principle behind Allon's plan by dividing
the occupied territories into Area A (nominal Palestinian control,
which at its maximum extent amounted to 18 percent of the West
Bank), Area B (Palestinian administration, but Israeli security
control, about 22 percent of the West Bank) and Area C (total
continued Israeli control, about 60 percent of the West Bank,
and more or less the same proportion of Gaza). So did Israel's
proposal at Camp David in 2000, which offered Palestinians "sovereignty"
over disjointed territories to be dominated by a reinforced network
of Israeli colonies and roads-that is, sovereignty in name only,
while Israel continued to control not only most of the territory
itself, but also the borders, the airspace and the invaluable
water resources. Yasser Arafat was only dismissed as an obstacle
to peace when he proved incapable of selling these terms to the
Palestinian people. Now Abbas is supposed to continue where
Arafat left off.
If, however, the so-called
disengagement proposal advanced by Ariel Sharon last year is
the most forceful reiteration of the original Allon Plan, that
is so because for the first time the Israeli scheme now has US
support. Reversing decades of US policy-and dismissing key principles
of international law in the process-President Bush last April
validated Israel's territorial ambitions. "The understandings
between the US President and me protect Israel's most essential
interests," Sharon gloated in a speech he made in December
2004. "First and foremost, not demanding a return to the
'67 borders; allowing Israel to permanently keep large settlement
blocs which have high Israeli populations; and the total refusal
of allowing Palestinian refugees to return to Israel."
But if Israel's present policy
amounts to a reiteration of an old formula, what's driving it
forward is a form of racism that has been dressed up as merely
a kind of demographic paranoia. This racism is, and has always
been, at the heart of what Israel stands for as a state, and
what Zionism has always represented as a political movement:
the idea that an empty land could be found in which an exclusively
Jewish state might be established: a land without a people for
a people without a land. The problem with this idea is that Zionists
were unable to find a suitably empty land. So they took someone
else's land instead. And ever since taking over Palestine and
arranging the expulsion of much of its native population in 1948,
Israelis have been acting paradoxically-on the one hand, acting
as though they really do inhabit a Jewish state, and, on the
other hand, panicking about the fact that their state really
is not Jewish, that it never has been, and that it is set to
become even less Jewish in the years to come.
In fact, the land Israel rules
today includes almost equal populations of Jews and Palestinians.
Under Israeli rule, however, only Jews enjoy complete rights
of citizenship, as well as the ability to circulate in freedom,
and, in principle, to live (almost) wherever they like. Palestinians
living under Israeli rule in the occupied territories, on the
other hand, face extreme difficulties in moving around even in
their own territories, and the vast majority of them are barred
from entering Israel and even Jerusalem, and are routinely and
systematically deprived of their most fundamental human and political
rights. Palestinian citizens of Israel proper enjoy certain
privileges denied to their compatriots in the occupied territories,
but their rights fall far short of those enjoyed by Jewish citizens
of the state (for example, in matters of marriage, naturalization,
and land use, among others).
Such naked injustice is difficult
to defend; when it is noticed, it makes for bad public relations
with the rest of the world. It also gives the lie to Israel's
claim of being a Jewish state, which it certainly is not (even
leaving aside the occupied territories, Palestinian Arabs constitute
a fifth of the population living within Israel's pre-1967 boundaries).
Mainstream Zionists have never
been able to tolerate the possibility of having a significant
Palestinian Arab presence inside the borders of what was supposed
(by them) to be their Jewish state. Recent work by Israeli historians
has revealed the extent to which, long before the UN's 1947 Partition
Plan, Zionists were eagerly preparing for what they called the
"transfer" of the indigenous Palestinian population
from as much as possible of its native land, an ambition which
the outbreak of war in 1947-48 allowed them to accomplish. Benny
Morris, one of the Israeli historians who has done much to reveal
the realities of what happened in 1948, is unabashed about both
the necessity and the desirability of what he frankly admits
was a form of ethnic cleansing. "There are circumstances
that justify ethnic cleansing," Morris has claimed since
he wrote his famous book on the Palestinian refugee "problem."
Just as "the great American democracy could not have been
created without the annihilation of the Indians," he argues
in an interview with Ha'aretz, in 1948 "a Jewish
state would not have come into being without the uprooting of
700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them.
There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary
to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse
the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from
which our convoys and our settlements were being fired on."
The only problem Morris has with what happened in 1948 is that
Israel did not go far enough. Even though Israel's first prime
minister, David Ben-Gurion, "understood the demographic
issue and the need to establish a Jewish state without a large
Arab minority, he got cold feet during the war. In the end,
he faltered." Perhaps, Morris adds, "if he was already
engaged in expulsion, he should have done a complete job."
For "if the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one
for the Jews, it will be because Ben-Gurion did not complete
the transfer in 1948. Because he left a large and volatile demographic
reserve in the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel itself."
The existential "threat"
that seems to be posed by this "volatile demographic reserve"
(that is, a group of people merely trying as best they can to
go about their daily lives under the most trying circumstances)
is what is driving current Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.
Israel has chosen to respond to this "threat" through
what it calls a policy of "separation," or, in other
words, by removing as many Palestinians as possible from the
land officially under Israeli control. Granting nominal sovereignty
to areas with dense Palestinian populations-while absorbing as
much other territory as possible into Israel itself-is the easiest
way to do this.
With precisely this in mind,
the original logic of Yigal Allon has thus been reformulated
and repackaged for our own times by Haifa University geographer
Arnon Soffer, a prime intellectual force behind Sharon's policy.
Soffer states bluntly that his aim is not peace but power.
Separation, he points out, "doesn't guaranteee 'peace'-it
guarantees a Zionist-Jewish state with an overwhelming majority
of Jews," he argues. "And it guarantees one other
important thing. Between 1948 and 1967, the fence was a fence,
and 400,000 people left the West Bank voluntarily. This is what
will happen after separation. If a Palestinian cannot come to
Tel Aviv for work, he will look in Iraq, or Kuwait, or London.
I believe there will be movement out of the area."
The mechanisms prompting such
movement are obvious. "When 2.5 million people live in
a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe,"
Soffer predicts. "Those people will become even bigger
animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist
Islam. The pressure at the border is going to be awful. It's
going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive ,
we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day."
All this killing, Soffer adds, will force Palestinians to realize
that "we're here and they're there."
The declared aim of Sharon's
plan is thus to maintain the fantasy of Israel's Jewishness-regardless,
of course, of the cost to Palestinians. If Abbas refuses these
terms, Israel has made it clear that it will proceed without
him. And as long as it enjoys unconditional American support,
there is little standing in its way.
But, even according to its
own logic, Sharon's plan is flawed. A quarter of the schoolchildren
of Israel (excluding the occupied territories) are today Palestinian.
Even if Israel rids itself of unwanted Palestinian territories,
it still must contend with the fact that within decades its own
population will include a Palestinian majority. Separation today,
unilateral or otherwise, will be of little use then. If in an
age of global multicultural connectedness (and continued Palestinian
resistance) it turns out to be difficult for Israel to transform
its current apartheid policy from a weapon used against a minority
to one used against an eventual majority (which is by no means
certain, of course), Israel will at last face two remaining choices.
It must either persist with its violent fantasy of Jewishness
and continue the ethnic cleansing initiated in 1947-48 by expelling
all the remaining Palestinians living within its borders, or
at least enough of them to artificially maintain-according to
the same obscene demographic calculus that keeps people like
Soffer and Sharon up at night-some kind of Jewish edge, for however
long it takes until the process has to be repeated again. Or
Israel must abandon fantasy for reality and see what chances
might be left to come to a genuine and just peace with a people
that it will by then have brutalized for decades on end. Assuming,
of course, that that people--the Palestinians--are still interested
in peace. But by then it might already be too late.
Saree Makdisi, a professor of English Literature
at UCLA, can be reached at: makdisi@humnet.ucla.edu
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