Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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.
|
January
16, 2004
A Response to Benny
Morris
Genocide
Hides Behind Expulsion
By ADI OPHIR
At some point in the interview, when the reader
might think that Benny Morris has already said the most terrible
things, he brings up, in passing, the extermination of the Native
Americans. Morris contends that their annihilation was unavoidable.
"The great American democracy could not have been achieved
without the extermination of the Indians. There are cases in
which the general and final good justifies difficult and cruel
deeds that are carried out in the course of history." Morris
seems to know what the general and final good is: the good of
the Americans, of course. He knows that this good justifies
partial evil. In other words, under specific conditions, specific
circumstances, Morris believes that it is possible to justify
genocide. In the case of the Indians, it is the existence of
the American nation. In the case of the Palestinians, it is
the existence of the Jewish state. For Morris, genocide is a
matter of circumstances, that can be justified under certain
conditions, all according to the perceived threat that the people
to be annihilated represent to the people carrying out the genocide,
or just to their form of government. The murderers of Rwanda
or Serbia, that are standing trial today in international courts
for their crimes against humanity, might like to retain Morris
as an advisor.
The circumstantial justifications for
transfer and for genocide are exactly the same: in some circumstances
there's no choice. It is just a question of the circumstances.
Sometimes you have to expel. Sometimes expulsion is not enough,
and you must kill, exterminate, destroy. If, for instance, you
have to expel, and those expelled insist on returning to their
homes, there's no choice but to eliminate them. Morris documents
this solution in his book on Israel's border wars in the 1950s.
A straightforward reading might lead one to think that he is
describing the State of Israel's greatest sin: the sin is not
that Israel expelled the Palestinians in the course of a bloody
war, when the Jews faced a genuine threat, but that they shot
to death anyone that tried to return to their homes, and would
not allow the defeated refugees to return to their deserted villages
and accept the new authorities, and be citizens, as they allowed
the Palestinians that did not flee. But Morris the careful commentator
offers a different interpretation from Morris the historian:
there was no choice. Not then and not today. He suggests that
we see ourselves as remaining for at least another generation
in the cycle of expulsion and killing, ready at any moment to
take the harshest measures, when required. At the present stage
we have to imprison the Palestinians. Under graver conditions
we will need to expel them. If circumstances require, and if
the "general, final good" justifies it, extermination
will be the final solution. Behind the threat of prison and
expulsion lies the threat of extermination. You don't need to
read between the lines. He stated it clearly in the interview.
Ha'aretz printed it.
It would not be surprising if the Palestinians
see in him an irredeemable enemy. For the Palestinians, Morris,
along with the many Israelis who enthusiastically accept the
logic of transfer and elimination, presents himself as the enemy
against whom there is no choice but to fight to the death. "That's
the Israeli mentality," the concerned Palestinian will say,
"there's nothing we can do about it. The Israelis are prepared
to do anything in order to negate our presence in their surroundings.
There is a problem in the depths of Israeli-ness. The sense
of victimhood and persecution takes a central place in the culture
of Jewish nationalism. The people standing opposite us are ready
to give up the last moral restraints every time that they feel
threatened, and they tend to feel threatened whenever they become
more aggressive. You can never compromise with people like that.
Every compromise is a trap. The Oslo agreements prove it."
And indeed, Morris, with his words, creates
the enemy with which one cannot compromise, exactly as the cages
of occupation create the suicide terrorist with which one must
not, and indeed, cannot any longer, compromise. When Morris
speaks of the need for transfer, he is not describing something
that already exists, but contributing to its creation. And not
only transfer for the Palestinians. Morris suggests that Israelis
should live out at least another generation chained to a the
roof of a cage in which barbarians and incurable serial killers
are imprisoned, and on the horizon he hints at an Armageddon:
"in the coming twenty years there could be a nuclear war
here." Under such conditions there is something not quite
sane about the decision to stay here. According to Morris's
analysis (that uses the language of pathology only to describe
the Palestinians, of course), Israel has become the most dangerous
place for the Jewish people. If Zionism is motivated first and
foremost by a concern for the national existence of the Jewish
people, this analysis must lead sane people to emigrate from
Israel and leave the people of the "iron wall" to continue
alone on the path to their national collapse.
A war to the death, in which one is ready
to shed any moral restraint, is the result of a sense of 'no
exit,' not necessarily a real lack of alternatives. The logic
of Morris's words creates a feeling of no exit for both sides.
In his research, Morris is generally careful and responsible,
even conservative, sticking to details while avoiding generalities.
Morris the interviewee is a lousy historian and an awful sociologist.
His generalities about "a problem in the depths of Islam,"
on "the Arab world as it exists today" and on "the
clash of civilizations" are not the result of historical
research, but a smokescreen designed to rule out any possibility
of such research. His statements about Palestinian society as
a sick society deny the fact that if there is sickness there,
then the Israelis-soldiers, settlers, politicians, and intellectuals
like Morris himself-are the virus. If the Palestinians are serial
killers, Israel is the traumatic event that haunts the killer.
And this is not because of memories of the 1948 catastrophe
(the Nakba). It is not the victims of the Nakba who have turned
into suicide terrorists, but their grandchildren, people responding
to the current form of Israeli control of the territories.
The trauma is what is happening today.
On the day that Morris's words were published in Ha'aretz,
the humanitarian coordinating organization of the UN in Palestine
published a strong protest against harm to the civilian population
of the old city of Nablus and the destruction of ancient buildings
during the course of IDF activities in the city. One day a historian
like Benny Morris will arise to document one by one the crimes
committed in the course of operations like this one. For the
time being, however, Morris himself is contributing to their
denial, by discussing them in future tense. The cage whose establishment
he calls for is already here, at least since April of 2002.
To a certain extent, transfer is here as well. When Morris talks
of expulsion, he is dreaming, so it seems, of the return of the
trucks of 1948. But under the conditions of Israeli control
in the territories today, transfer is being carried out slowly
by the ministry of the interior, by the civilian authority, at
airports and border crossings, by sophisticated means such as
forms, certificates and denial of certificates, and by less sophisticated
means such as the destruction of thousands of homes, and checkpoints,
and closures, and sieges, that are making the lives of the Palestinians
intolerable and leading many of them to try to emigrate in order
to survive. Even if the number of new refugees is small for
now, the apparatus that can increase their number overnight,
is already working.
The most frightening thing in this interview
is not the logic of mutual destruction that Morris presents.
The most frightening thing is that this logic is creeping into
Ha'aretz and peeks out from the front page of its respected
Friday supplement. The interviewer and editors thought it proper
to interview Morris. They appreciate the fact that he has dropped
the vocabulary of political correctness and says what many are
thinking but do not dare to say. If there is a sick society
here, the publication of this interview is at one and the same
time a symptom of the illness and that which nourishes it.
Professor Adi Ophir teaches philosophy
at Tel Aviv University
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|