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Today's
Stories
March 24, 2004
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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March
24, 2004
The Consequence of Killing Sheikh Yassin
Israel's
Assassinations Will Only Fuel Suicide Bombings
By STEVE NIVA
Not everyone in Israel was jubilant following
Israel's assassination of the much reviled Sheikh Ahmed Yassin,
the founder and spiritual leader of the Palestinian militant
Islamic group Hamas.
Israel's Interior Minister Avraham Poraz,
who voted against assassinating Yassin in the security cabinet
last week, warned after the attack that many Israelis could pay
with their lives for the assassination.
"I fear we have opened up a cycle
here and that many will pay for it with their lives," Poraz
told Israel Radio. "I am afraid that Hamas's motivation
will increase. [Yassin] will become some sort of martyr... a
national hero for them and I'm very sorry to say, this won't
prevent Hamas from continuing its activities."
Leader of the left-wing Yahad Party and
former justice minister Yossi Beilin also criticized the assassination,
asking, "How many Israelis will have to pay with their lives
for this act?" He said the assassination was a "horrendous
mistake that will cost Israel heavily."
This anguished criticism of Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's decision to assassinate the most significant Palestinian
militant leader to date is not based on naive notions about Yassin.
No one doubts that the elderly and quadriplegic
Yassin was responsible for sanctioning and legitimating horrific
attacks on Israeli civilians, particularly through his tortured
religious rationalizations for the suicide bombings that have
rocked Israel since they began in 1994.
But these Israeli critics clearly understand
one of the few certainties in this bloody conflict: Israeli assassinations
of a senior leader of a Palestinian militant group inevitably
result in a rash of suicide bombing attacks on Israeli civilians,
often within a week. And there was no one more senior than Sheikh
Yassin. "Today Ariel Sharon ordered the killing of hundreds
of Zionists in every street, city and centimeter of the occupied
lands," a statement by the Hamas military wing said.
This predictable and deadly pattern first
emerged following Israel's assassination of the Islamic Jihad's
local leader Hani Abed in Gaza on November 2, 1994 and then of
its founder Fathi Shikaki by Israeli operatives in Malta on October
28, 1995. Each was immediately followed by a wave of suicide
bombings. The pattern was solidified when Israel's 1996 assassination
of the Hamas bombing mastermind Yehiya Ayash, known as "the
Engineer," led Hamas to respond with a horrific series of
suicide attacks on Israeli buses in the following weeks, leaving
nearly 100 Israelis dead and many more injured.
Since then, the Islamic militant groups
Hamas and Islamic Jihad appear to have adopted a routine policy
of responding to civilian massacres and especially assassinations
with suicide bombings.
Indeed, this striking pattern has become
even more frequent and predictable since Ariel Sharon became
Prime Minister in February 2001 and escalated Israel's assassination
campaign against Palestinian militant leaders, particularly when
the militant groups were involved in negotiating or upholding
cease-fires on attacks on Israeli civilians.
The first high level assassination of
a senior Hamas political leader came with the missile strike
on Sheikh Jamal Mansour on July 31 2001, which put an end to
a nearly two-month cease-fire on attacks on Israeli civilians
observed by Hamas. Haim Shalev, an editorialist in the Isreali
daily Ma'ariv, gravely warned on August 1 that because most consider
that "Israel has violated the cease-fire" it should
expect a Hamas retaliation. It came in the bloody August 9 attack
on a Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria that killed 15 Israeli's.
Sharon's decision to assassinate the
senior Hamas militant Mahmud Abu Hanoud on November 23, 2001,
just when the Hamas was upholding an agreement with Arafat not
to attack targets inside of Israel, resulted in simultaneous
suicide bus bombings in Haifa and Jerusalem within a week.
In a widely cited article from November
25 2001, the conservative military commentator for one of Israel's
leading newspapers Yediot Aharanot, Alex Fishman, noted that
this assassination had the effect of "shattering in one
blow the gentleman's agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian
Authority." He continued that "Whoever decided upon
the liquidation of Abu Hanoud knew in advance that [a terrorist
attack inside of Israel] would be the price. The subject was
extensively discussed both by Israel's military echelon and its
political one, before it was decided to carry out the liquidation."
Israel's assassination of the leading
Fatah militant Raed Karmi on January 14 2002 during another cease-fire
led the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade to deliver its first suicide
bombing on January 27, 2002. This group has conducted dozens
of suicide bombings since that time.
Writing in Haaretz (January 21, 2002)
the Israeli journalist Danny Rubeinstein claimed that "Israel's
assassinations today generate far more damage than the benefits
they are supposed to bring...it can be said explicitly this time
that Karmi's assassination has already and directly cost the
lives of the ten Israelis who died in last week's murderous terrorist
attacks"
The July 22, 2002 assassination of a
founding member of Hamas, Salah Shehada, in Gaza, which also
killed 15 civilians, 11 of them children, resulted in a bombing
at Hebrew University that killed seven Israeli's and another
suicide bombing a week later. It was widely reported that Israel's
attack on Shehada came within hours of a unilateral cease-fire
declaration by both the Palestinian nationalist militia Tanzim
and Hamas.
In a scathing August 2, 2002 editorial
in Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper following the assassination of
Shehada in Gaza City, Doron Rosenblum declared that "In
short, any four-year-old child who examined this pattern of events
would conclude that this government, whether consciously or not,
is simply not interested in the cessation of the terrorist attacks,
for they constitute its raison d'etre".
In 2003, the June 10 attempted assassination
on the top Hamas political leader Abdul Aziz Rantisi just as
Hamas was negotiating a truce with the Palestinian authority
as part of the U.S. sponsored Road Map process was followed within
12 hours by a suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem that killed 16
Israelis.
And many more examples can be added to
the list since then.
What the Israeli critics of this latest
assassination likely recognize is that not only has Sharon sealed
the death warrants for dozens of Israeli's in the expected attacks
to follow, but that he has also systematically derailed any attempts
to reduce violence. Assassinations have only served to embolden
and empower the militant groups and may have made them even more
dangerous.
In effect, Sharon appears willing to
sacrifice Israeli lives in order to justify his relentless efforts
to colonize Palestinian lands with Israeli settlements and destroy
Palestinian society so that they will submit to the crumbs cast
their way. Suicide bombings have become a crucial pretext for
enabling the brute force and violence needed to achieve these
objectives.
Writing in Haaretz newspaper on January
18, 2002, Israeli analyst Uzi Benziman noted that there seems
to be "a pattern of Israeli behavior that has recurred since
Sharon began running the country: When a period of calm prevails
in the confrontation with the Palestinians, circumstances are
created that induce Israel to carry out military operation in
a manner that renews, or accelerates, the cycle of violence."
Given Sharon's track record, it should
surprise no one that Sharon ordered the assassination of Yassin
at this time.
Specifically, there is no evidence that
Yassin ordered or even needed to sanction the most recent suicide
bombing, the March 14 attack on the port of Ashdod that killed
10 Israelis. This attack was a joint operation undertaken by
Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade operatives who were following
their predictable policy of responding to the previous week's
Israeli army assaults in Gaza and Nablus, which had resulted
in the deaths of 10 Hamas members and 5 Brigades' members.
But Sharon is currently facing his most
severe domestic crisis to date. He is facing serious corruption
charges, weekly no-confidence motions in the Knesset, and a revolt
from his right wing that considers his initiative for a unilateral
withdrawal from Gaza to be a capitulation to terrorism. Palestinian
activism has also garnered significant local and international
opposition to the wall and fence barrier in the West Bank upon
which Sharon has apparently staked his career. Such factors must
be included in any serious analysis of Sharon's motivations.
None of this should be taken to exculpate
militant Palestinian groups that conduct suicide bombings, who
have proven more than willing to seize upon Sharon's provocations
through their myopic preoccupation with revenge to bring untold
misery upon both Israelis and Palestinians. Their actions have
soured the Israeli public on peace and played right into Sharon's
efforts to justify quarantining them behind the massive wall.
But the time has come for more Israelis
and their supporters to join with the growing numbers of Israeli
officials, security analysts, and soldiers who agree with the
former Israeli Army Chief of Staff and Labor Party candidate
for Prime Minister Amram Mitzna (Haaretz, August 31, 2003) that
"every liquidation engenders a terrorist attack and more
casualties" and that "the policy of targeted assassinations
has failed and the time has come to admit it."
Steve Niva
teaches International Politics and Middle East Studies at the
Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He has recently
had articles appear in The Seattle Times, Al-Ahram Weekly, Middle
East International and other publications. He is currently writing
a book on the relationship between Israeli violence and Palestinian
suicide bombings. He can be reached at: niva@counterpunch.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
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