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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! From Nixon to Sarah Palin
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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers!
From Nixon to Sarah Palin
What’s happened to the Republican Party? What’s happened to populism? Read Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair on the life and death of Nixonland, and the class politics of the war over Sarah Palin. ALSO in our new subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter, read Serge Halimi on how Russia gave Georgia and the U.S.a well-deserved black eye. PLUS Carrie Dann’s wonderful first-hand account of the fight of the Western Shoshone to reclaim their land. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents.
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Today's Stories September 12, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff September 11, 2008 Noam Chomsky Sharon Smith Ron Jacobs Marjorie Cohn Mike Whitney Jeffery R. Webber Paul Cantor Peter Morici Ray McGovern Linn Washington, Jr. Website of the Day September 10, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Conn Hallinan Ralph Nader Peter Morici Joanne Mariner Laura Tate Kagel / Chuck Spinney Dave Lindorff Scott Campbell Paul Farmer Anne Kilkenny Website of the Day September 9, 2008 Michael Colby Chellis Glendinning Vijay Prashad Jeffery R. Webber/ David Michael Green Brian J. Foley John Ross Pierre M. Sprey / Nicole Colson Marc Gardner William S. Lind Website of the Day
September 8, 2008 Mike Whitney Tariq Ali Pam Martens Bill Quigley Malini Johar Schueller / Robert Jensen Uri Avnery Win McCormack Howard Lisnoff Maria C. Khoury Website of the Day September 6 / 7, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Linn Washington, Jr. Patrick Cockburn Gary Leupp Nancy Kurshan William Blum Michael Winship Fred Gardner Nikolas Kozloff Wajahat Ali Robert Fantina Karyn Strickler David Yearsley Richard Rhames James L. Secor Missy Beattie Eric Patton Ben Terrall Thom Rutledge Dan Bacher David Macaray Jane Stillwater Grady Harper Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend September 5, 2008 Elizabeth Walters Bill Quigley Alan Farago Dave Lindorff Ira Glunts Peter Morici Deepak Tripathi Manuel Garcia, Jr. Michael Donnelly Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day September 4, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair Paul Craig Roberts Ron Jacobs M. Junaid Levesque-Alam Andy Worthington Osama Dawoud Stephen Lendman Fidel Castro Website of the Day September 3, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Sen. Mike Gravel Vijay Prashad Nikolas Kozloff Ralph Nader Howard Lisnoff Steve Early / Cal Winslow Shepherd Bliss Bill Quigley Website of the Day
September 2, 2008 Marjorie Cohn Jonathan Cook Robert Weitzel Corey D. B. Walker John Ross Eric Walberg Judith Scherr Richard Morse B. R. Gowani Michael Greenberg Website of the Day September 1, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff C. G. Estabrook Manuel Garcia, Jr. David Macaray B. R. Gowani Saul Landau Charles Orloski Gloria La Riva Website of the Day August 30 / 31, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Bill Quigley Jeffrey St. Clair Andy Worthington Deepak Tripathi Stanley Howard Dave Lindorff Wajahat Ali Robert Fantina Josh Schlossberg Benjamin Dangl Missy Beattie Howard Lisnoff Suzan Mazur Rev. Jim Rigby David Yearsely Serge Quadruppani B.R. Gowani Richard Rhames Poets' Basement Website of the Day
August 29, 2008 Mike Whitney Brian Cloughley David Ker Thomson Joanne Mariner Neve Gordon Chris Genovali Ron Jacobs Michael Donnelly August 28, 2008 Judy Gumbo Albert Paul Cantor Saul Landau / Andy Worthington Ben Terrall Leonard Peltier Niranjan Ramakrishnan Donna J. Volatile Website of the Day
August 27, 2008 Anthony DiMaggio Jordan Flaherty Ralph Nader Melissa Checker Bob Sommer Cynthia McKinney Ali Khan M. Junaid Levesque-Alam Dave Lindorff David Macaray Website of the Day
August 26, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Michael D. Yates Paul Craig Roberts Andy Worthington Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Huwaida Arraf Joseph Grosso Sheldon Richman Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day August 25, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Bill Quigley Jonathan Cook James McEnteer Uri Avnery Will Potter Robert Jensen Stephen Lendman Wajahat Ali Carl Finamore Website of the Day August 23 / 4, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patty O'Grady Nicole Colson Steve Conn Deepak Trapathi Robert Fantina Jonathan M. Feldman Joshua Frank Osama Qashoo Howard Lisnoff David Michael Green Dave Lindorff Christopher Brauchli Alan Farago Michael Winship Richard Rhames David Rosen Patrick B. Barr Jamie Newlin Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 22, 2008 Boris Kagarlitsky Laura Carlsen Bob Barr Marwan Bishara Peter Morici Manuel Garcia, Jr. Charles Mostoller Sumbul Ali-Karamali Keith Rosenthal John F. Miglio Website of the Day August 21, 2008 Allan J. Lichtman Dave Lindorff Loserville: How Obama Blew It Ralph Nader Joanne Mariner Wajahat Ali Ron Jacobs Rostam Purzal Anthony Papa Website of the Day August 20, 2008 Michael Neumann Ray McGovern Eric Walberg Fidaa Abed Daniel Haack Mike Whitney Website of the Day August 19, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Deepak Tripathi Marwan Bishara Saul Landau William S. Lind Martha Rosenberg James Brittain Pratyush Chandra David Macaray Website of the Day |
September 12, 2008 Denigration and Demonization of the Palestinian ResistanceThe Mendacity of Missed OpportunitiesBy M. SHAHID ALAM
All too often, the failure of Israel and the Arabs to make peace – especially since the creation of Israel – has been described as the folly of missed opportunities. In a discourse that is dominated by the Zionists, the Palestinians are forced to carry much of the burden of this folly. How often have the Zionists, with delightful malice of the strong, accused the Palestinians – using the words of Abba Eban – that they “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity?” The objective of these Zionist accusations is plain: blame the victims. In order to make their accusations stick, the Zionists have elaborated a false but imposing history of their movement. In this history, it is the Jews who have the original, historical, natural, eternal, God-ordained, and Biblical right to Palestine. The Zionists also invented an entirely new species of claim to our affections – one that trumps all morality and man-made laws – because Jews were the victims of a uniquely inhuman crime. At the same time, the Zionists have labored hard to represent Palestine as empty, a land that had fallen into decay with the departure of its Jewish owners. The few Arabs occupants of this now desolate land are Bedouins, mere squatters, migrants, with no attachment to the land. They are only part of the wild fauna of Palestine, to be cleared as the colons take possession of their divine patrimony. Once their rights had been negated by the incomparably ‘superior’ rights of Jews, the Palestinians would have no ground to stand on. They would be seen as utterly dependent on the mercy of the Jewish colonists. Any scrap the Jewish colonists threw at them would be better than manna from heaven. Therefore, if the Palestinians rejected these scraps; if they refused to be spirited across the borders of Palestine; if they rejected two-thirds, one-third, one-tenth or some smaller fraction of their country; if they resist apartheid inside Israel; if they reject their dispossession and exile; they could only be acting out of a boundless hatred of Jews. Whenever the Palestinians reject the scraps offered to them, the Zionists accuse them of ‘missing another opportunity.’ So deep is their spite, their obtuseness, their perversity, the Palestinians now do not know what is good for them: what is the best deal they will ever get. Occasionally, Israel too is blamed for missing opportunities. Indeed, Uri Avnery – an Israeli peace activist, a former member of the Israeli Knesset, and a one-time member of the Irgun – argues that Israel enjoys a clear lead in missing opportunities to make peace with the Arabs. [2] This is scarcely surprising. As the stronger party in its conflict with the Arabs – it is easy to argue – Israel could have shown magnanimity instead of using its strength to gain new advantages over the Arabs: or after each of its military victories over the Arabs Israel could have offered to give up its gains, and thereby gained the confidence of its adversaries. Yes, these opportunities existed – and Avnery lists several such opportunities – but Israel ‘missed’ every one of them. In principle, during the war of 1948 the Haganah – the military forces of the Jewish colons in Palestine – could have chosen to limit its conquests to the borders defined by the UN partition plan: or withdrawn to these borders once the conflict ended. Instead, the Haganah pushed beyond these borders to capture a little more than half the territories that were ‘given’ by the UN to the Palestinians. It also expelled more than eighty percent of the Palestinians in these territories: and forcibly prevented them from returning to their homes. Had the Zionists ‘missed’ an opportunity for peace here? This question is entirely misplaced: it can only be based on a blatant disregard of the settler-colonial character of the Zionist movement. Nearly from the outset, the Zionist founders scarcely concealed their intent to create their Jewish state in all of mandatory Palestine – at the least – whose Jewish character could be guaranteed only by evacuating the Palestinians from their lands. On any honest assessment, the Zionists had merely seized the opportunity for which they had been preparing since 1897. It would have gone against their grain had they done anything else. Similarly, in terms of possible outcomes, one could argue that Israel, after its creation, could have taken the high road in its dealings with the Palestinians and Arabs. “On the morrow of the war of 1948, in which Israel was founded,” writes Avnery, “we could have achieved peace.” Israel could have supported the creation of a Palestinian state; given heed to Nasser’s peace feelers instead of joining hands with Britain and France in 1956 to overthrow him; after 1967, when Israel occupied all of Palestine, Israel could have given the Palestinians a state; and so the list goes on. Yet Israel took the path that led to escalation of its conflict with the Arabs. This was not the result of the repeated wrong-headed decisions of Israel's leaders: it was the working out of the dialectic of Zionism. Once launched, the Zionist project carried within itself the forces that pointed it towards success. Israeli successes would trigger the maximalist ambitions that many of the leading Zionists had cherished from the beginning; they would increase the flow of Jewish colons to Israel; they would empower the Jewish state to act as the political center of world Jewry, organizing them globally to strengthen Israel, to win allies, and shield it from criticism. At the same time, Israel’s capture of Palestine, its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and its lengthening record of wars against the Arabs would create the Arab and Islamic enemy, whom Israel – with Western arms and money – would very helpfully crush, only to demand and receive yet greater supplies of arms and money from the West. Once created, the Jewish state would be driven by a powerful, nearly irresistible dialectic to draw the United States – and to a lesser degree much of the West – into a deepening conflict against the Islamic world. In truth, the Palestinians have never missed an opportunity – to assert their rights against the greatest odds, against a settler-colonial movement aided and abetted by the most powerful states in the West. For their heroism, their endless sacrifices, the Palestinians deserve the accolades of all men and women who cherish human rights over brute force. In truth, Israel too has never missed an opportunity – to defenestrate the Palestinians, denude their lives, demonize their resistance, and denigrate their culture. For their unending violations of the rights of Palestinians, the world needs to look the Israelis in their eyes and tell them that their conduct dishonors the victims of the Holocaust, victims they eagerly claim as flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone. The narrative of missed opportunities is malicious when it refers to Palestinians; or misleading, when it is aimed at Israelis. References [1] The first two quotes are from Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978): 99, 121-122. [2] Uri Avnery, “Israel's missed opportunities for peace (partial list),” Redress (May 28, 2006). M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University. He is author of Challenging the New Orientalism (2007). Send comments to alqalam02760@yahoo.com. Visit the author’s website at: http://aslama.org. © M. Shahid Alam.
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