Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss
By James Brooks, CounterPunch 11/10/2003
"We Didn't Know" Will Be No Excuse -- Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories passed through a profound transformation during the last several months. Through a series of policy changes and military orders, the West Bank “security fence” has gradually revealed itself to be the backbone of a comprehensive new system of land theft, imprisonment, collective punishment...and worse. The question is not whether it is a “political fence” or a “security fence”, but whether it is an engine of ethnic cleansing. In the past ninety days Israel has established a clear pattern of using its “security fence” to deny Palestinian farmers access to their own lands. Much of the olive harvest in the northern West Bank hangs dead on the trees because farmers have been ‘caged’ for weeks at a time. Entire villages have been issued permits to farm that give them as little as two days outside the barrier - for the entire year. Even if you have a permit, you must hope the soldiers open the gate for a few minutes on your appointed day, and open it again when you return from your labors.
In the past sixty days, Israel revealed its willingness to use deadly force to protect its “fence”. It relaxed its rules of engagement, and shot an unarmed Palestinian dead for disobeying orders; he touched the wall.
In the past thirty days, Israel issued new military orders that obliterate the rights of Palestinians left outside the barriers to live in their own homes. The orders expropriate their land, and all Palestinian land west of the “security fence”, to create a “closed zone” open only to Jews and citizens of Israel. All others, including the people who live there, must apply for a permit from the Israeli army. By the end of next year, at least 210,000 Palestinians are expected to be subject to similar orders.
Zionism as a Racist Ideology
By Kathleen and Bill Christison, CounterPunch 11/10/2003
Reviving an Old Theme to Prevent Palestinian Ethnicide -- During a presentation on the Palestinian-Israeli situation in 2001, an American-Israeli acquaintance of ours began with a typical attack on the Palestinians. Taking the overused line that "Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity," he asserted snidely that, if only the Palestinians had had any decency and not been so all-fired interested in pushing the Jews into the sea in 1948, they would have accepted the UN partition of Palestine. Those Palestinians who became refugees would instead have remained peacefully in their homes, and the state of Palestine could in the year 2001 be celebrating the 53rd anniversary of its independence. Everything could have been sweetness and light, he contended, but here the Palestinians were, then a year into a deadly intifada, still stateless, still hostile, and still trying, he claimed, to push the Jews into the sea.
It was a common line but with a new and intriguing twist: what if the Palestinians had accepted partition; would they in fact have lived in a state at peace since 1948? It was enough to make the audience stop and think. But later in the talk, the speaker tripped himself up by claiming, in a tone of deep alarm, that Palestinian insistence on the right of return for Palestinian refugees displaced when Israel was created would spell the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. He did not realize the inherent contradiction in his two assertions (until we later pointed it out to him, with no little glee). You cannot have it both ways, we told him: you cannot claim that, if Palestinians had not left the areas that became Israel in 1948, they would now be living peaceably, some inside and some alongside a Jewish-majority state, and then also claim that, if they returned now, Israel would lose its Jewish majority and its essential identity as a Jewish state.*
The Palestinian Resistance: Its Legitimate Right and the Moral Duty
By Samah Jabr, Miftah 11/10/2003
The overwhelming and ceaseless atrocities of Israel’s government leave most Palestinians with little opportunity to reflect on the moral aspect of our resistance. Most often our reactions to events are immediate, instinctive and emotional. The few who still manage to consider the moral, political and strategic aspects of our struggle may find themselves all but stymied by the contradictions, the lack of choice, and the damage done by war to both reason and conscience.
How can Palestinian resistance be fairly assessed, then, with due consideration given to the entire history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The occupation of Palestine is based on a 19th century ideology that denied the very existence of the Palestinian people and pursued a colonial agenda asserting divine claims to a “land without a people.” In response to this “theo-colonial” aggression, the Palestinian resistance adopted the strategy of “a protracted people’s war” to regain recognition as a dispossessed, rather than “nonexistent” nation.
To this day Palestinians still have no state or armed forces. Our occupiers subject us to curfews, expulsions, home demolitions, legalized torture, and a highly imaginative assortment of human rights violations. No justifiable comparison can be drawn between the level of official accountability to which Palestinans are held for the actions of a few individuals and the responsibility for the systematic and intense violence against the entire Palestinian population practiced with impunity by the state of Israel. The American media call our search for freedom “terrorism,” thus casting the Palestinian in the role of the international prototype for the terrorist. This has shaped Western public consciousness and resulted in an international bias that tends to describe instances of violence against Palestinian civilians in neutral language, reducing Palestinian losses to mere faceless statistics, while using emotional language and visuals to describe Israeli losses.
Arab democracy and progress require justice for Palestinians
By Lamis Andoni, Daily Star 11/10/2003
Despite increased talk about the need to make economic development and democratization in the Arab world the major priority of intellectual discourse and government policy, the Palestinian cause remains the single most influential factor in the Arabs’ political psyche and life. It is not that most Arabs don’t view progress and the alleviation of poverty as relevant issues, but that the impact of the Arab-Israeli conflict (particularly the Palestinian issue) on the political, economic and even routine existence of Arabs underscores, to varying degrees, the extent to which the conflict is an obstacle to development and political progress.
It is true that many Arab leaders have used “commitment to the Palestinian cause” to justify measures ranging from martial law to stifling dissent and press freedoms. However, these leaders’ acquiescence toward Washington or fear of popular anger against Israel have been used more often to justify repression. In other words, while public opinion in most Arab countries has always favored increased support for the Palestinians and stronger Arab governmental positions vis-a-vis Israel, Arab leaders their bombastic rhetoric not withstanding have sought to undermine political parties and all forms of popular opposition to their weak policies in addressing the Palestinian plight.
One should remember that Israel’s establishment in 1948, which involved the dispossession of Palestinians and the cutting off of an important part of the Arab world from its environment, instilled a deep awareness of a residual colonial legacy, despite the nominal or practical independence of most Arab governments from French and British rule after World War II. Therefore, the presence of Israel, with its policies of displacement of the Palestinians, confiscation of Arab land and alliance with the United States, has become a daily reminder of foreign influence and a challenge to Arab identity.
Devaluing the Complexity of the Middle East Conflict
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 11/3/2003
The Middle East conflict, exemplified in its most enduring phase, that of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle, is commonly accepted to be “complex”. Undoubtedly, although the complexity in my mind has more to do with the deliberately fraudulent representation of the conflict’s nature, enormity and projected solution, rather than in the blurriness of its origins or the identity of its architects. However, one of the most palpable signs of this perceived complexity is our incapacity to determine the level of our involvement in the conflict, and therefore our powerlessness in bringing it to a halt.
This is not a history lesson; thus, there won’t be a need to examine or reexamine the sinister role played out by certain world powers, a role that in many aspects invented the conflict, or to say the least, fashioned it to serve their imperial interests in the region. But one can hardly circumvent from divulging the most obvious fact of all, that while imperial agendas and “great games” invented and fueled the conflict, apathy and silence forced its continuation, at the expense of innocent victims, the causalities of bombs and indifference, the collateral damage of unsound policies, championed by unsound leaders.
There is certainly enough blame to go around, enough to break out from its traditional pivot in the Western hemisphere to reach every Arab capital, every devious lobby group, business interest, ideological fanatic, impotent UN resolutions, innumerable US vetoes, failed leaderships and hidden racist tendencies that coerce us into believing that the victim alone, due to his purported religious, racial inferiorities, deserves to be reprimanded, crucified even.
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List at University of Texas
By Robert Jensen, Palestine Chronicle 11/7/2003
I was happy to learn last week that a conservative student group at the University of Texas had published a "professor watch list" of instructors who "push an ideological viewpoint on their students through oftentimes subtle but sometimes abrasive methods of indoctrination."
I have long held that one of the most serious problems on our campus -- the largest in the country, with more than 51,000 students -- is that the student body is largely depoliticized. Given that lack of political engagement, I'm grateful for anything that gets students talking about politics, especially the role of politics in the university.
So, when my name ended up on the list of the alleged indoctrinators (with no clear indication whether I am subtle or abrasive), I wasn't upset, even though the group's description of my "Critical Issues in Journalism" course doesn't quite square with my experience in the classroom. While I teach about the role of economics, race, and political ideology in journalism, but there's a bit more to the semester than "a crash course in socialism, white privilege, the 'truth' about the Persian Gulf War and the role of America as the world's prominent sponsor of terrorism." (The watch list is here. My syllabus is here.)
Between Two Hotels In Beirut And Natanya
By Hazem Saghieh, Al-Hayat 11/9/2003
Rarely has an Arab Summit had such positive implications as did the Beirut meeting of March 2002. Compared with the Khartoum summit after the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, which rejected reconciliation, negotiation and recognition of Israel, or with the summit of 1978 in Baghdad that "isolated" Egypt as a reaction to the Camp David treaty, the distance covered by Arab rationality becomes apparent. Yet this rationality needed the September 11 tragedy to express itself, and remained restricted to some limited political elites, while the masses confronted it with animosity. Radical positions like this one caused some difficulties for the Beirut summit. But what with the additional counter-radicalism manifest in the administrations of Ariel Sharon and George Bush?
On March 28, 2002, it looked like there was a change from the past. Arab leaders emphasized that peace is their strategic option in settling the Middle East conflict. In a revival of Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, and the land-for-peace formula, as sensibly included in the Prince Abdallah initiative, participants pledged to recognize the Jewish state if it fulfilled its major and numerous obligations towards peace.
But the conciliatory effort was not sufficient to deter Sharon, who was detaining Arafat in his Ramallah headquarters. When Sharon granted Arafat "permission" to leave, he attached a number of humiliating conditions: the Palestinian leader was to accept his enemy's format for a ceasefire. If he incited against Israel in Beirut, or if a suicide attack took place in his absence, the door would be closed for his return to his country.
Back to that old autonomy
Ha'aretz 11/10/2003
Every road into East Jerusalem last Friday was blocked with checkpoints and hundreds of police officers and soldiers, if not more. In effect, it made it impossible for anyone from the territories to get to the mosque, even if they had the necessary permits. -- Palestinian spokesmen are sneering at Israel's announcements that the IDF is easing restrictions in Gaza and the territories. One need only look to the PA's news sheet, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, from last Friday, where the lead headline on the story about what happened in Gaza and the West Bank a day earlier was, "The easing fraud."
The story read, "A woman who was shot by occupation soldiers bled to death in her home in Nablus, and an engineer was murdered when he drove by the Tul Karm checkpoint, while four people were injured by the bombing of Khan Yunis and 20 others were arrested in the West Bank." The reports have been accompanied daily by pictures of demolished homes, uprooted and burned olive trees, barbed-wire fences and women and children clearly exposed to rifles.
Last weekend, 12 Palestinians were killed, among them activists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but also a child from the Balata refugee camp and another from Gaza.
For Whom the Bells Toll - Is Syria Next?
By Kareem M. Kamel, Islam Online 11/8/2003
Events in the Middle East took a dramatic turn in the past few weeks when Israel launched an air strike against an alleged training camp for Palestinian militants in Ein Saheb, 15 km northwest of Damascus. The raid, Israel’s first attack on Syrian territory since 1973, came right after a Palestinian bombing, claimed by Islamic Jihad, in Haifa, northern Israel, which left 19 Israelis dead. While the Israeli-Syrian border has been relatively quiet since the armistice agreement following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, both countries fought each other in Lebanon or through proxy forces during the Lebanese civil war. However, the Israeli raid signals an end to proxy warfare between both sides and the beginning of a new chapter in Arab-Israeli confrontations.
Leaders from all over the world condemned the Israeli attack on Syria as an act of “extreme gravity,” and an “unacceptable breach of international law.” On the other hand, US President George Bush said that Israel had a right to defend itself and that it “must not feel constrained in terms of defending the homeland.”3 In the following days, a war of words erupted between Israel and Syria, in which the Syrian spokeswoman, Bushra Kanafani asserted Syria's right of self-defense in case of further Israeli attack, and Israel responded provocatively by insisting that it had the option to attack anytime, against any country that harbored “terrorists.”4
The song Rabin sang before he was killed
By Yuli Tamir, Ha'aretz 11/10/2003
On the eighth memorial day for Yitzhak Rabin, the fourth bullet was fired, which was intended to kill the memory. The timing is not surprising. The awakening of the left is frightening rightist circles. The assembly of the defeated left at the square could have been tolerated, but a left that is sending out signals of hope is already a real stumbling block, and therefore, it needs to be silenced. This can be done by affixing labels of treason, as National Religious Party MK Shaul Yahalom did to the initiators of the Geneva accords; it is possible to do this by silencing Rabin Square as those who eulogized the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in the Knesset tried to do. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) and Yahalom attacked the memorial at Rabin Square and the political tone that prevailed in the remarks of speakers there. "I also want to be at the square," chorused Knesset members, rightists and settlers. "I want to be there, but they're not letting me, because they mention the Oslo agreement that I hate and they sing `The Peace Song'."
....He was assassinated because those who are now standing on the official platform and talking about tolerance were silent at the time. From the pocket of Rabin's suit, stained with his blood, the words of "The Peace Song" and no other song were taken, and the last things he said were words of peace. This must be mentioned in the official ceremony. It is necessary to speak against incitement and to show the documentation of the terrible days of violence prior to the murder. It is necessary to show the rightist demonstration at Zion Square in Jerusalem and that demonstration at Rabin Square and not to conceal the signs in either of them. It is necessary to show the last pictures and not to blur Peres' face, and it is necessary to tell Rabin's life story that was cut off cruelly because of his faith in the Oslo process.
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left
By Uri Avnery, Media Monitors Network 11/8/2003
Immediately after leaving the army, Ariel Sharon created the Likud. It was 1973, when he realized that the army top brass would never tolerate his appointment as Chief-of-Staff.
For the creation of the Likud, he had a simple recipe: to unify all the four factions of the Right: Begin’s Herut (“freedom”) movement, the Liberal Party, the “Free Center” and the “State List”.
That was quite ridiculous. Herut and the Liberals had already formed a joint bloc. The two other factions were insignificant little groups. The “State List” was a remnant of the party founded by Ben-Gurion after Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres had deserted him and rejoined the Labor party. The “Free Center” was splinter party led by Shmuel Tamir. The big unification was a sham. Indeed, none of the factions’ leaders liked it. Sharon imposed it by creating public pressure.
At the time, I asked him about the sense of this maneuver. He explained the logic: the public must be given the impression that the entire Right Wing is coming together and creating a big political force. Nobody should be left out. Therefore, even the two small factions had to be included. There was an added value to the inclusion of the “State List”, which originated in the Labor movement: it could provide an alibi for former left-wingers ready to join the Right.
How we denied democracy to the Middle East
By Robert Fisk, Miftah 11/10/2003
We created this place, weaned the grotesque dictators. And we expect the Arabs to trust Bush's promise?
It gets weirder and weirder. As his helicopters are falling out of the sky over Iraq, President Bush tells us things are getting even better. The more we succeed, he says, the deadlier the attacks will become. Thank God the Americans now have a few - a very few - brave journalists, like Maureen Dowd, to explain what is happening.
The worse things are, the better they get. Iraq's wartime information minister, "Comical Ali", had nothing on this; he claimed the Americans weren't in Baghdad when we could see their tanks. Bush claims he's going to introduce democracy in the Middle East when his soldiers are facing more than resistance in Iraq. They are facing an insurrection. So let's take a look at the latest lies. "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe," he told us on Thursday. "Because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." Well said, Sir. George Bush Jr sounds almost as convincing as, well, Tony Blair. It's all a lie. "We" - the West, Europe, America - never "excused and accommodated" lack of freedom. We endorsed lack of freedom. We created it in the Middle East and supported it.
When Colonel Ghaddafi took over Libya, the Foreign Office thought him a much sprightlier figure than King Idriss. We supported the Egyptian generals (aka Gamal Abdul Nasser) when they originally kicked out King Farouk. We - the Brits - created the Hashemite Kingdom in Jordan. We - the Brits - put a Hashemite King on the throne of Iraq. And when the Baath party took over from the monarchy in Baghdad, the CIA obligingly handed Saddam's mates the names of all senior communist party members so they could be liquidated.
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