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May 1, 2002
Sam Bahour
Corporate
America and
the Israeli Occupation
Jacques Ranciere
Prisoners of the Infinite
April 30, 2002
Mike Leon
Chomsky,
Letters to the Writer and the Peace Movement
Dave Marsh
The FBI and the Music
Industry: Paying the Cost to Feed the Boss
Steen
Sohn
Something
Rotten in Denmark:
New Danish Government's Alliance with Far Right
Desmond Tutu
Apartheid in the Holy Land
Christopher
Reilly
Kissinger:
the Wanted Man
April 29, 2002
Larry Hales
At the Church of the Nativity
Michael
Colby
The
Times Does Brockovich:
Ralph Nader with Cleavage?
CounterPunch Wire
Bank Robs Publisher,
Vows to Repeat
Gavin
Keeney
So
Long, Frank O. Gehry?
April 28, 2002
Michael Neumann
The Jewish Left and Palestine
April 27, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
Adelphia
Going Down:
Cover Ups, Censorship
and Naughty Accounting
Jordy Cummings
Stuck Inside the Journalism School
Pyramid
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Set
This Flag on Fire!
April 26, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Act
Now to Stop the Killing
of an Innocent Man
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Anti-Bribery
Law Takes a Hit
Tariq Ali
Letter to a Young Muslim
April 25, 2002
Francis
A. Boyle
Home
Brew? Biowarfare,
Terror Weapons and the US
Adam Federman
"And the Earth Wept"
Bush at Saranac Lake
Stanton
and Madsen
US
Media Interests:
Champions of Profit, Propaganda and Puffery
Aaron Hawley
Cop a Buzz Day in Vermont:
Education v. Incarceration
David
Vest
Code
Red: Politics and Wordplay at the Vatican
Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Standing
with the Peace Movement
April 24, 2002
David Vest
State of Politics in France:
Code Bleu
Jean Fallow
A20
in Seattle:
Cops Get Rough, Again
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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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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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
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by Douglas Valentine
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May
Day, 2002
Inside Gaza
by Kristen Schurr
In Gaza City a Palestinian father, Amjad Shawa
of the PNGO, tells me that his son's first word was tahk, not
baba. Tahk is shooting, baba is dad. He is devastated when he
says that he cannot protect his children.
The Gaza Strip, effectively a prison
with 1,250,000 Palestinians who have not been allowed to enter
or exit for the past month, is divided into three parts by Israeli
soldiers. The 43 km trip from the north end to the south, can
sometimes take two days. Thousands of Palestinians and I were
lucky yesterday and made it through a checkpoint in only five
hours. It is forbidden by the Israeli soldiers for a Palestinian
to walk through the checkpoint.
I was crammed in the back of a truck
filled with macaroni along side six Palestinians who jumped in
for the ride. I was told that to walk within 100 meters of the
checkpoint is to be shot and killed.
There were hundreds of cars waiting for
a soldier to put the light on green, signalling the okay to pass.
The light turned green just for a second once, and quickly back
to red, seemingly as some sort of a joke.
I heard many stories of families spending
the night outside, waiting to go through a checkpoint. A mother
named her baby after the checkpoint Hajes where she was forced
to give birth while waiting. Israeli settler cars are allowed
to pass freely, while Palestinians live and die in the humiliating
position of waiting for the simple right to move throughout the
Gaza Strip.
A group of seven young women, students
at Al-Azher University in Gaza City, live above Khalil Abu Shammala
from the human rights organization Al Dameer in Gaza City. They
cannot live with their families in the south of Gaza.
It is impossible to attend classes, hold
a job, or be on any schedule, if one must pass through the checkpoints.
The young women come from Khan-Younis,
both the city and the camp, and Rafah. In Khan-Younis, two neighbors
were killed just this morning. Inside the camp many buildings
are rubble and bullet holes litter homes both inside and out.
While a friend's three year old daughter was playing in her grandmother's
living room, an Israeli sniper fired in through the window. The
bullet hole is just above an overstuffed chair.
The area of Rafah borders with Egypt,
but it is blocked by an Israeli sniper tower that is shot full
of bullets and heavily bombed. The soldiers threw a grenade as
I took photographs.
Wafa Mousa, a mother who works at PNGO,
has not seen her parents or siblings since October. She tells
me that she cannot take the risk of being unable to return to
Gaza City where she lives with her husband and young children.
She cries as she tries to talk about the fear she feels for the
safety of her family in Rafah, and her children growing up under
the Occupation.
I was told by Ben Granby, a worker at
Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza City, that the Israeli
incursions are so frequent in places like Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia,
Khan-Younis and Rafah, his organization has essentially given
up documenting them. He also tells me that his research proves
there is no international coverage of Palestinians killed in
Rafah or anywhere in South Gaza.
Another father who lives in Khan-Younis
Refugee Camp, says he would not be surprised if his 17 year old
son blows himself up considering the constant threat of death.
The camp is surrounded by sand, fences, sniper towers, gates,
Israeli soldiers and settlements.
Just beyond is the Mediteranean Sea,
which Palestinians can catch a glimpse of, but will be shot if
they get too close. A young man was shot and killed this morning
in a spot where I saw a patch of blue over a gate and a tank.
I am told that the Israeli soldiers taunt the young Palestinian
boys and shoot at them, beginning in the late afternoon and early
evening. This is after school gets out.
Described by Amjad Shawa as "Area
C, 200 percent," the town of Malwasi has been completely
isolated since before the beginning of the current Intifada.
Area C signifies complete Israeli control under which Palestinians
are not allowed to create infrastructure and Israelis refuse
to. The foot-only checkpoint is referred to as the Death Gate.
He says that Palestinians do not require material possessions,
but what they need is freedom and dignity, suggesting the adendum
to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 4th Geneva
Convention is "does not apply to Palestinians."
Even Oslo allows Palestinians 15 miles
of Sea from the coast, but instead they are only are allowed
three. Palestinians in the south of Gaza are restricted from
getting near it, and some Israeli settlements, I am told, dump
their sewage into the Palestinian are. Palestinians cannot dig
wells deep enough to find clean water. This is reserved only
for settlers.
Settlements such as Fardarum and Netzarim
are populated only part time and are flanked by tanks. Upwards
of 50 tanks are used to guard just 14 families in some areas.
There are 4,000 settlers in the Gaza Strip. Settlements are illegal,
as is the occupation of Palestine and the detention of Palestinians
are political prisoners without charge.
I was told by a 35 year old man in Khan-Younis
that he suffers from back problems after spending two months
in Israeli interrogation before serving eight years in Israeli
prison. As I sit in the early evening with Khalil Shammala's
family, the lights go out, reminding us all who controls the
prison that is Gaza.
Kristen Scurr is
from New York City.
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