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May 31, 2002
Chomsky / Bennett
Debating "Terrorism"
May 30, 2002
Steve Perry
Jim Carrey:
"Love Me!"
Tom Turnipseed
Sex Among the Sacred
George Monbiot
Corporate
Phantoms
Web of Deciet over GM Foods
Robert Jensen
Are You a Journalist
or a Patriot?
Gary Leupp
Georgia
and the War on Terror
May 29, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Age of Inequality
Philip Farruggio
The
Cleaning Lady
Bill Christison
Disastrous US Foreign Policy:
Part 2, Globalization
May 28, 2002
Michael Leon
Lincoln
Brigades Memorial
Scott Lucas
Christopher Hitchens:
No Longer an Authentic
Voice of Dissent
Nelson P. Valdes
Castro,
Bioterrorism and
the State Department
Harvey Wasserman
What Does the White House Know
About Atomic Terror?
Norman Madarasz
France,
Brazil, the Politics
of the World Cup
May 27, 2002
Dave Marsh
Why I Voted for Nader:
Ticketmaster's Stranglehold
on Music and Politics
Robert Fisk
The Coming
Firestorm:
Bush's Crazed Remarks
May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time:
Stephen Jay Gould
May 24, 2002
Edward Hammond
Documents Prove Pentagon Violated
Bioweapons Act
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Scandals:
Beginning of the End?
Feingold / Corzine
Halt Executions Nationwide
Bill Christison
Former
CIA Analyst:
Big Changes Needed in
US Intelligence Agencies
May 23, 2002
Dean Baker
Attack of the Clowns:
The Real Bush is Back
Susan Abulhawa
Israel
and South Africa:
Apartheid's Accidental Prophecy
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yaghmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
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
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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
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This Explosive
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Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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May 31, 2002
Land Grabs and
Occupation
The Silent Destruction of Palestine
by
Rev. Sandra Olewine
So much of the destruction against Palestinians
which happens here is 'silent destruction.' This term was rightly
used by Nigel Roberts of the World Bank quoted in an the article
by Amira Hass describing the economic crisis within the Palestinian
areas.
Silent destruction, though, is also an
apt term for what is happening to the land of Palestinians. News
cameras seldom catch the stories of land confiscation, crop destruction,
or barrier construction that happens day in and day out across
the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Such stories don't seem
to make 'exciting' or compelling video segments.
Yet, on and on it goes. More olive trees uprooted, more farmland
confiscated, more areas declared 'fit for only settler or Israeli
military use.' The 'prison' called Palestine gets smaller and
smaller each day. The pressure builds and builds.
And with the new system being put in
place by the Israeli government, the prison is about to get even
smaller. Palestinians will soon need permits to travel between
Palestinian areas. If someone from Bethlehem wants to travel
to Ramallah, already a journey that takes a couple of hours on
a good day, they will have to apply to the Israeli 'Civil Authority'
for a permit. The permits will be valid from 6 am to 6 pm only.
No travelling at night, no emergency trips, no evening meetings,
no weddings or funerals to go to. And in many instances the road
will be blocked--one will not be able to take a private car--but
will have to walk through barriers on the road, getting into
taxi after taxi trying to get to one's destination. As one of
my colleagues at ICB said, "This will end our life completely.
No one will tolerate this."
There will be no direct delivery of goods either--whether food,
medicine, building material--all of it will have to be moved
'back-to-back', meaning a truck has to back up to the road block
and unload to the back of a truck on the other side. This is
already the case in most Palestinians areas, increasing the cost
of items due to the increase cost of delivery.
Electric gates are being constructed
across Palestinian roads. Evidently one is already in place on
the Wadi Nar (the twisty, narrow West Bank road between the southern
West Bank and the northern West Bank.) Barbed-wire fences are
being put up around Palestinian cities, along with patrol roads
for the Israeli military. While the answer to a query about these
fences will be that are in response to suicide attacks inside
Israel; they have slowly been constructed throughout the last
20 months. They didn't just appear overnight.
During the Israeli invasion into Bethlehem
in early March, a trench was already being dug across the northern
edge of Bethlehem from the road into Bethlehem across to the
settler by-pass road. During the 40-day siege of the city in
April and May, work went on 24-hours a day. On one of the instances
when I snuck back home during the siege, the family I live with
asked me exactly where the trench was being dug. I knew instantly
why they were worried. Many of the olive trees between Bethlehem
and Tantur Ecumenical institute are theirs. "They're gone.
I'm sorry. The trench and road has cut you off from the trees.
They've cut us much of the land between Tantur and Bethlehem
off as possible," was all I could say.
A thriving stone factory and a little
coffee shop which were near the Bethlehem checkpoint were destroyed
as well, even though the new road and fence is behind where they
stood.
Coming back from Tantur the other day
from a meeting I took my camera with me to document the complete
destruction of the stone factory and to get pictures of the new
barbed-wire barrier. Behind me I heard a soldier bellowing through
a loudspeaker on a jeep, but I ignored it as I continued to take
my pictures. As I got up to the new road, a backhoe was digging
a new trench on the Bethlehem-side of the barbed-wire. As I came
around a tree to get a closer view, men around an Israeli Border
police jeep began to yell at me to stop taking pictures. A taxi
driver I know pulled up alongside me and told me to get in the
car. He said, "They've been yelling at you back there to
stop taking pictures. They're getting out of their jeep now.
Come on!" Having what I came for, I got in the car and went
back to the office.
This silent destruction is the creeping
hand of occupation. It is what has everyone here held in a death-grip.
Without removing its stranglehold from the lives of Palestinians,
Palestinians and Israelis here will tragically and brutally continue
to die.
Rev. Sandra Olewine is with the United
Methodist Liaison in Jerusalem.
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