|
July 8, 2002
Tariq Ali
How the
Bush Used 9/11 to Remap the World
Lori Allen
The Tugs
of War:
Palestinian Life Under Curfew
July 7, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
White
House Crooks
July 6, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Loose
Lips:
Liberty, Democracy & Bush
Michael Neumann
What's
So Bad About Israel?
Steve Baughman
Ashcroft's
Vendetta:
Lynching John Lindh
July 5, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Bush Freezes Peace Process
Todd May
Independence
and Terrorism
Rahul Mahajan
Why I
Won't Celebrate the Fourth of July This Year
July 4, 2002
S. Brian Willson
What
the Flag Means to Me
Philip Farruggio
Independence Day and
the Working Poor
Tom Gorman
The Uncommon
Pledge
of Allegiance
Chris Floyd
Jungle
Fever:
Bush's Bolivian Mercenaries
July 3, 2002
Francis Boyle
The Death
of the Oslo Accords
Mokhiber / Weissman
Cracking
Down on Corp. Crime
Robert Jensen
Lynne
Cheney's Primer
Behzad Yaghmaian
An Alternative
to the G-8s Africa Initiative
Toward a Global AIDS Fund and a Living Wage
John Borowski
Public
Schools Under Seige
Norman Madarasz
Brazil,
the Workers' Party and the Financial Times
July 2, 2002
Leah Wells
The Wedding
Was a Bomb
CounterPunch Wire
Trial of
the SOA 37
Edward Hammond
Bombing
the Mind:
The Pentagon's Drug Warfare
Sam Bahour
Ramallah
Occupied:
Uninvited Guests Become Neighbors
July 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil's
Triumph
June 28/30, 2002
Kathleen Christison
The True Story of Resolution
242 or How the US Sold Out
the Palestinians
Cockburn / St. Clair
Death,
Juries and Scalia
Tarif Abboushi
Bush's
Double Standard
on Israel
N.D. Jayaprakash
Seething
with Rage:
The Palestinian Saga
Michael Yates
Taking
the Pledge:
Teachers and the Flag
Stephen Zunes
Bush's
Speech a Setback
for Peace
Walt Brasch
The Pledge
v. The Constitution
Cockburn / St. Clair
Strikers
as Terrorists?
Tom Ridge Calls Longshoremen
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 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
|
July
9, 2002
IDF: Gangbanging in Merkava
Tanks
by Kurt Nimmo
When I lived in Chicago a few years back, on occasion
gangbangers would injure or kill children in the interminable
process of turf war. For instance, two kids were caught in the
crossfire one sunny afternoon. They were on their bikes outside
a candy store near Humboldt Park. Of course, the gangbangers
were not really interested in killing children; it was simply
a by-product of their senseless violence. I imagine one or two
of them even felt bad about accidentally gunning down innocent
kids. Some gangbangers, after all, have consciences, maybe even
kids of their own.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said
for the Israeli Defense Forces. If we are to believe a videotape
shot in Jenin, the Occupied Territories, on June 21, the IDF
deliberately fired a tank shell at three kids. Two of them, age
11 and 13, were blown to pieces as they rode their bikes. The
crime: venturing out to find food without permission from the
Israeli Army.
Naturally, Israel apologized. Binyamin
Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli Defense Minister, said he was sorry
and there'd be an investigation, never mind that such investigations
rarely go anywhere. Anyway, the IDF said there was a bomb factory
in the area and they were on pins and needles. Of course, to
many Israelis, the whole of the Occupied Territories - what some
people call Palestine - is nothing less than a huge bomb factory.
The IDF and Hamas (Islamic Jihad, al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades, etc.) are like gangbangers engaged in a turf
war. They are vicious and crazed gangbangers on ideological and
religious steroids and - at least in Israel's case - are armed
with cutting edge (no pun intended) weapons. Instead of accidentally
shooting children, both groups do so as a tactic. Undoubtedly,
a lot of these gangbangers do not feel any remorse for killing
each other's children. In fact, as politically motivated serial
killers, they strive to kill children, old ladies, pregnant mothers,
grandfathers, probably even dogs, cats, and parrots.
In Chicago, at least, if the OK Coral
shoot-outs became too frequent - or if too many kids died as
a result - the police did sweeps, arrested people, locked up
gang leaders, stepped up patrols, etc. You'd see a lot of young
men being searched and hustled off in cop cars. So long as the
police were vigilant, the gangbangers were kept at bay to a certain
extent.
Who's going to be the cops in the case
of the Israelis and various motley Palestinians? The United Nations?
Yeah, right.
Best policy is to de-fund the political
and religious gangbangers. Every year, our tax money - to the
tune of more than 5 billion dollars - is forked over to the Israelis
and Palestinians, though mostly to the Israelis. We even give
the Israelis the most advanced and deadly hardware available
(F-4E Phantoms, F-16 Fighting Falcons, AH-64 Apache and Cobra
Attack helicopters, Patriot and Sidewinder missiles, M-16s, etc.),
which makes a bundle for the likes Boeing, Raytheon, and Bell
Textron, etc., but does nothing to save kids and old ladies.
Imagine pimps for Chicago gangbangers
going door to door demanding a tax to arm drive-by shooters.
Or worse, imagine them claiming part of your paycheck before
you even see it. That's about what's happening in the case of
Israel. Lobbyists are making sure you're party to killing kids
on their bikes. You have nothing to say about it because, essentially,
every politician in Congress believes Israel has a right to all
that money and all those expensive tanks and helicopters and
automatic small and big arms. It has to defend itself against
those damn 11 year boys breaking curfew.
Like the war on terrorism, it's just
something you'll have to get used to. It's probably best you
grow a thick hide. Or believe Congress when they say all those
modern weapons are necessary for Israel to protect itself against
11-year-old Arab troublemakers. Well, they don't say that, not
exactly, but that's essentially the crux of the situation.
Anyway, most of us wouldn't even know
about that tank shell killing those pesky Arab boys if it hadn't
been for that videotape. Last time this happened - when a Palestinian
father was wounded and his small son killed - the Israelis said
it was terrorists who shot them.
This time they fessed up and apologized.
It's kind of hard to place the blame
elsewhere when a Merkava tank is videotaped shooting at kids,
blowing them to smithereens.
Next time the political gangbangers will
have to make sure they lob the first shell at the guy with the
Handycam.
Kurt Nimmo
can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
Today's Features
Tariq Ali
How the
Bush Used 9/11 to Remap the World
Lori Allen
The Tugs
of War:
Palestinian Life Under Curfew
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|