Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch
HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
Archives by Tag 'Palestinians'
Can a law be both ridiculous and dangerous?
It certainly can. Witness the ongoing initiative of our government to enact a law that would define the State of Israel as “The Nation-State of the Jewish People”.
Ridiculous 1 – because what and who is the ...
Homs Palestinian Refugee Camp, Syria
Historically, Palestinian refugees, wherever they have sought temporary sanctuary following the ethic cleansing of their country by the 19th Century Zionist colonial enterprise, and pending their Return to P...
Jewish opponents of Zionism understood the movement since its early age as one that shared the precepts of anti-Semitism in its diagnosis of what gentile Europeans called the “Jewish Question”. What galled anti-Zionist Jews the most, however, ...
Al Jazeera Stream contacted me a few days ago asking if I would participate on a show commemorating the Nakbe. I would be the only Palestinian, the producer said, “to balance things out” amidst various Israeli voices. Here’s the exact excerpt of the email:
...
Damascus.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Professor
Richard Falk, came to Lebanon last week on an unofficial visit to survey
opinion while fact-finding the condition in Palestinian refugee’s camps. It
was the Professor’...
In New Guinea there is a word for a truth that everybody knows but nobody speaks: Mokita. In the official discourse surrounding Palestine—Gaza in particular—politicians, President Obama, and the media speak from a phony script full of false vocabulary, false ...
Shortly after the 15 April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian territories, published an analysis of the episode entitled ...
This June, a delegation of librarians, archivists, and other library workers will travel to Palestine. They will connect with colleagues in library- and archive-related projects and institutions there, traveling as truth seekers and information skeptics, applying their ex...
Appropriately, today is May Day, and in mid-Michigan a strikingly beautiful a.m., unusual for the dismal gray to which we have become accustomed of late, and moments ago, I awoke from sleep with a phrase recurring in mind, one that easily rolls off the tongue, yet that th...
What we’re doing in the Middle East isn’t working. In fact, it’s making things worse.
That’s the upshot of a letter from a group of 19 prominent Europeans to the E.U.’s top foreign policy official, Lady Catherine Ashton. The former officials, drawing on ...
Amira Hass is a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. She reports on Palestinian affairs in the occupied territories and, over the years, has come to understand the Palestinians’ plight from their own point of view. On 3 April 2013 Hass wrote an op-ed ...
A visit to a grave is often part of the political rituals that presidents and other political representatives include in their schedules during their State visits. In spite of the apparent mechanicity and automatism behind these gestures, they still constitute valid space...
Al Walaje (Bethlehem, West Bank).
“My land extended beyond the Wall. I used to have olive trees, apricots, plums, lemons. I also had 65 hives and more than 100 sheep. Then Israel planned the Separation Wall. They uprooted 100 olive trees and destro...
With the conclusion of Barrack Obama’s recent trip to Israel and Palestine, the subject of protected lands from the 1967 border agreement comes to mind — and with it, we are reminded of the Israeli governments’ voracious appetite for new development opportunitie...
When Barack Obama first appeared on the national scene, he was a Rorschach inkblot upon whom gullible liberals projected their hopes and anxious “conservatives” their fears.
The scare quotes are justified because then, as now, there was not much that is genuine...
It is said that the devil has about him the smell of fire and brimstone (sulphur). Evil deeds are often described as “most foul.” On the other hand, people who appear, accurately or not, as always innocent are described as “smelling like roses.” There seems, then,...
Obama’s Middle East mission, given star treatment at every turn, demonstrates, like the famous Cairo speech in his first term, verbal subterfuge, a handy cover for insinuating US power in the region even more than sought by his predecessors. Oil is too simple a reason...
Note: This text was written on Wednesday, a day before President Obama made his historic speech in Jerusalem. It appears that my text came much closer to his actual speech than I had dared to hope. Some passages are almost identical. Readers may want to compare the text...
David Grossman did the interviews for his book, The Yellow Wind, in May 1987, six months bef...
Where?
Well . . . Take a guess.
Choose two places and one does not count.
We are of course referring to the new measures taken by the Israeli Transport Ministry, for the daily transfer, back and forth, of Palestinians residing in the Occupied Territor...
Obama’s visit to Israel and the West Bank has been labelled as an opportunity by some. Indeed, it is an opportunity- and it’s likely to be one that will be deliberately skirted by the administration, in a bid to ensure that Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu does a be...
“Parents can be awakened by their children”
–Cindy Corrie, 2003 Commencement address
Ten years have now passed since we received ...
This does not happen every day: a Minister of Culture publicly rejoices because a film from her country has not been awarded an Oscar. And not just one film, but two.
It happened this week. Limor Livnat, still Minister of Culture in the outgoing government...
Is this the third intifada? This question was raised this week by a number of Israeli security experts. And not only by them – their Palestinian colleagues were almost as perplexed.
All over the West Bank, Palestinian youth threw stones at Israeli soldiers. All t...
Israeli and Palestinian officials have been in Washington laying the ground for President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel and the West Bank, scheduled for next month and the first since he took office four years ago.
Topping the agenda, Israeli Prime Minister ...