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April 20, 2002
Chris Floyd
The Empire Never Sleeps
A Letter from the Front
April 19, 2002
Eric Flint
Free
the Books!
David Krieger
A Peace Proposal:
Bring in the Children
Jeff Paterson
Advice
to Recruits from
a Gulf War Vet
Jeffrey St. Clair
From Sen. "Lunkhead" to
Bush Energy Czar: A Year in the Life of Spencer Abraham
April 18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Latin
America's Dilemma:
The Propaganda of Otto Reich
Sam Bahour
Bush is Playing Russian
Roulette with Palestinians
M. Shahid
Alam
A
Colonizing Project
Built on Lies
Alexander Cockburn
Austin Cultural Limits:
Willie Nelson, Film and BBQ
April 17, 2002
Norman
Finkelstein
Behind
the Carnage in Palestine
Kristen Schurr
With the Wounded
and the Homeless in Nablus
Norman
Madarasz
Undoing
Chavez:
The View from South America
Brian Wood
Combing The Ruins of Jenin
George
Monbiot
Chemical
Coup: The CIA's Attempt to Undermine the UN's Weapon Inspector
for Iraq
Robert Fisk
Fear and Learning in America
April 16, 2002
Todd May
US
Should End Aid to Israel
Gabriel Ash
The Oilman, the General
and the Coup that Failed
Ron Jacobs
Wake
Up Some Mornin',
Find Your Own Self Dead:
The Chavez Coup
Brian Wood
Inside Jenin: Rubble and Decomposing
Bodies
Jack McCarthy
Citizen
Coup: The Times,
The Post and the Coup Plotters
Dave Marsh
Hymns: How I Got Through
Last Week
April 15, 2002
Susi Abeles
A
Field Trip to Jenin
Breyten Breytenbach
A Letter to Ariel Sharon:
"You Won't Break Them"
Gregory
Wilpert
CounterCoup
in Venezuela
Kristen Schurr
Amid the Rubble of Nablus
Jordy
Cummings
An
Open Letter to Abe Foxman
Christopher Reilly
The Media, the CIA
and the Chavez Coup
James
T. Phillips
"Homicide"
Bombers
April 14, 2002
William Blum
The CIA and Venezuela
David
Vest
A
Good Old-Fashion "Incursion"
Ralph Nader
General Motors:
Stuck in Reverse
M. Junaid
Alam
From
the Ashes: Palestinian Struggle for Freedom
Sam Bahour
Palestinians and Americans
April 13, 2002
Beth Daoud
Life
in the Ruins of Nablus
Patrick Cockburn
Bulldozing History:
The End Nears for Stalin's
Most Monstrous Hotel
Gregory
Wilpert
The
Coup in Venezuela:
an Eye-Witness Account
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Thoughts on Our War
Against Terrorism
Anne Winkler-Morey
Why
I Didn't Organize
a Passover Seder This Year
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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Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
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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Reviews of Gore:
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April 20, 2002
Israel and the Intifada for Dummies
By Bernard Weiner
So much convoluted politics in the Middle East,
so much history, so much violence and hatred. It's all so confusing.
So once again I turn to the noted reference series for answers
that can help me make the turmoil and tragedy easier to figure
out.
Q. Why can't there
be at least a cease-fire between the Palestinians and the Israelis?
A. Your question rests on an assumption
that either or both sides want peace. Maybe the majority of both
peoples would be amenable to peace, if it came with enough justice
and security, but the leaders have other agendas -- and right
now, because of all the wanton slaughter, have been able to bring
a good section of their frightened, angry peoples along with
them. In so doing, the Middle East is living in a soul blackout,
and there's no estimate on when moral power will be restored.
Let's get it straight. The bloody butcher
Sharon doesn't want a viable, truly independent Palestinian state
next to Israel. Never has, never will. He's willing to accept
a pseudo-"Palestinian state" on his border, but it
would hardly be considered a viable country, rather something
more like a collection of bantustans amidst all the Israeli settlements
on the West Bank and Gaza. Each of those little Palestinian enclaves
effectively would then have to deal with Israel on their own,
ensuring Israeli domination and control of the area -- in short,
continued hegemony over land promised to the Palestinians for
their state. That's why Sharon has spent the past several weeks
utterly and totally destroying the Palestinian political and
actual infrastructure. Whatever Arafat will eventually be President
of, this Israeli views goes, it won't be worth having. And, Israel
believes, it will have bought itself a good block of time until
it once again has to worry about a unified, majorly re-armed
Palestinian enemy.
The former PLO terrorist Arafat at one
time may have been willing to consider a two-state deal, but
when it became apparent over the decade since the Oslo agreement
that Israel had no intention of following through and granting
Palestine anything close to justice and territorial/political
integrity, he began to re-think: Maybe it's time to pressure
Israel through a re-activation of the intifada, except this time
with a more violent component. Plus, Arafat, who likes to think
of himself as the one true leader of the Palestinian people,
was being pressured by the extreme Palestinian nationalists like
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who believed they could, and would,
militarily drive Israel into the sea. These groups (with Osama
bin Laden out there as a spiritual force, belittling Arafat as
a corrupt individual who couldn't lead his people into anything
but poverty and ruin), and the other Arab states not lifting
much of an open finger in helping the Palestinians, fueled Arafat's
desire to reclaim his leadership status in the Arab Middle East.
All this may help explain his support for the suicide-bombing
campaign, the one weak link in the Israeli security armor. Absent
the Israeli reaction to those bombings, Arafat probably would
have become even more irrelevant as a Palestinian leader -- but
Sharon turned him into a hero among Palestinians and ordinary
Arabs throughout the region.
Q. Is Arafat gambling
that the other Arab states will be forced to come in on the Palestinian
side, for a final, all-out Arab-Israeli war?
A. He may be putting all his chips on
this last hand, but, if so, he'd have been better off cashing
in while he could. No Arab state, at least as presently governed,
will do anything to provoke the Israelis to attack their countries.
These Arab states may agree with the Palestinian cause, and may
even do things under the table to aid the Palestinians, but they
know what would happen to them if they openly attacked Israel,
the strongest and most-determined military regime in the neighborhood:
They'd be wiped out, either by the Israelis immediately or, after
military defeat, by their own people as a result of having their
governments overthrown. Which gets us back to the phrase "as
presently governed": Several of these "moderate"
Arab rulers -- in, say, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, etc.
-- might be overthrown anyway by Islamicist mobs, if Israel continues
its brutal campaign on the West Bank, with nobody willing or
able to stop them.
Q. The United States,
the United Nations, the Pope, worldwide opinion, etc. is opposed
to Israel's current military campaign. Why isn't this enough
to get Sharon to back off?
A. It must be clear by now that the U.S.
-- having inflated anti-terrorist rhetoric for its own war --
is in no position (even if it wanted to) to dictate to Sharon
that he should stop in his campaign to break the back of Mideast
terror networks. Sharon right now is the tail that's wagging
the dog. Since Bush has no intention of getting further sucked
into the Mideast quagmire, and neither the U.S. or U.N., despite
all their calls for a cease-fire, seems interested in building
a serious international coalition to force a ceasefire and political
negotiations, the Israeli military campaign will continue until
Sharon feels he's caused as much damage as he can to the Palestinians'
capacity to govern a destroyed infrastructure.
Q. But surely both
sides can see that the other side isn't going to disappear and
that military solutions will never get them what they want --
peace, security, control of their own territory -- so why can't
they call a halt in the violence and get back to the political
negotiating table?
A. Of course they know that, but they
don't want to accept that. Each believes, if they keep the military
pressure up just a little while longer, the other side will capitulate
and simply vanish. Of course it's insane, but that's what is
going on. Plus, see Answer #1 above. Plus: Ever see two boys
fighting in the school yard? "You started it first!"
"No, you did!" "No, you started it!" And
so on. Until someone comes along and separates them, and forces
them to some serious reflection -- in this case, to recognize
that going over the history again and again of who started what
when is not productive -- they will continue in this everlasting
cycle of historical blaming forever.
Both sides also know roughly what the
final solution will look like: something like the Saudi proposal,
with Israel being recognized as a legitimate state with normalized
relations with its Arab neighbors; Israel pulling out of the
Occupied Territories, including abandoning its settlements; a
viable Palestine state being created out of the contiguous territory
in the West Bank and Gaza (and perhaps even part of Jordan);
a shared Jerusalem, presided over by an international body; perhaps
international peacekeepers in between the two equal states; Israel
permitting a certain limited number of Palestinians to return
to their ancestral homes and farms inside Israel and paying reparations
to others not permitted to return, etc. But knowing what the
ultimate solution will look like and being able to get there
are two very different things.
Q. What will it take
to get on the road to that final peace settlement? Will Sharon
and Arafat have to go?
A. Unless the United States and United
Nations and other interested international parties intervene
to help develop the mechanisms for peace -- and there's no real
movement beyond rhetoric in this area -- and unless the two sides
themselves come to realize the futility of their present behavior
patterns, one can expect nothing but continued slaughter for
years and years. At that point, new leaders will emerge, probably
younger, who will have the courage to say, finally, enough is
enough, and let's sit down and seriously talk. But that means
untold amounts of carnage, hatred, revenge cycles, suicide bombers,
colonial repression, and so on. That's why the current moment
needs to be seized in the name of peace. If the old warriors
cannot make the peace -- and it certainly doesn't look like they
can at the moment -- others will have to do it for them. Devoid
of a current movement toward peace, all we can expect is a continuing
slide into moral darkness and slaughter on a scale heretofore
unthinkable.
Bernard Weiner,
a poet and playwright, has previously contributed The
'War on Terrorism' for Dummies, and The
Middle East for Dummies. Holder of a Ph.D. in government
& international relations, he has taught at San Diego State
University and Western Washington University. He was with the
San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20 years.
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