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February
6, 2002
David
Vest
The
Enron Creature
February
5, 2002
Norman
Madarasz
Dispatch
from Pôrto Alegre
Tom Malinowski
What
to do with
Our "Detainees"?
Dita Sari
Why
I Rejected the
Reebok Human Rights Award
February
4, 2002
Eric Miller/Beth
Daley
Five
Weapons Systems
That Bilk the Taxpayers
Kenneth
Roth
Dear
Condoleezza,
You've Misstated the
Geneva Convention
Robert
Jensen
The
Occupation Must End
Shahid
Alam
How
Different Are
Islamic Societies?
David
Vest
Everybody
Says I Loathe You
John Chuckman
American
Politics of Grief
February
3, 2002
Zoltan
Grossman
War
and New Military Bases
February
2, 2002
Francis
Schor
Carlucci's
Strange Career
February
1, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
The
Great Ashcroft Cover Up
Jeremy
Voas
Why
We're Suing Ashcroft
David
Vest
10
Things I Know About Him
January
31, 2002
Rahul
Mahajan
The
State of the Union:
A New Cold War
Dave Marsh
Miles
Copeland, War
and the Future of Music
John Pilger
The
Colder War
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Killer Dog, Weird Couple
Dr. Susan
Block
Blowback
and Daniel Pearl
January
30, 2002
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Linda
Lay, Hill and Knowlton and the Tears of a Clown
Jack McCarthy
Free
Noelle Bush!
Michael
Ratner
Memo
to Bush: Adhere to
the Geneva Convention
Jay Moore
Proud
to be an American?
Susan
Block
The
Great Pretzel Swallower
and Guantanamo Porn
January
29, 2002
Gary Leupp
Why
This War Was, and Remains, Utterly Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Birds of Kandahar
Patrick
Cockburn
Afghan
Opium Trade
Back in Business
January
28, 2002
Larry
Chin
Brosnahan
for the Defense
Mokhiber/Weissman
Tyranny
of the Bottom Line
George
E. Curry
Civil
Rights Nominee Called Affirmative Action "Racist"
Sen. Russ
Feingold
Campaign
Finance Reform?
Think Enron
John Chuckman
Liberal?
Media?
January
27, 2002
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Enron's
Drip, Drip, Drip
Tom Turnipseed
MLK
Jr.'s Dream Perverted
January
26, 2002
Norman
Madarsz
Adieu,
Bourdieu
January
25, 2002
National
Lawyers Guild
Know
Your Rights
Alexander
Cockburn
You
Call This Terrorism?
CounterPunch
Wire
Cal
Energy Crisis Hoax:
It Wasn't A Shortage,
It Was a Shakedown
Tariq
Ali
Kashmir,
Klinghoffer,
the Kurds and Chomsky
Nadine
Strossen
Protecting
MLK Jr.'s Legacy:
Justice and Liberty After 9/11
January
24, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Turkey
Targets Chomsky
Dean Baker
Lying
on Top:
Ken Lay One of Many
David
Vest
Idiot
Wind
January
23, 2002
Terry
Waite
Guantanamo
Prisoners:
Justice or Revenge?
Molly
Secours
The
Case of Abu-Ali:
Racism and the Death Penalty
Robert
Jensen
Speak
Out, Get Slimed
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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CounterPunch
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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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February 6,
2002
On the Edge of the Non-Violent
Demonstrations
By Amira Hass
If Israeli TV cameras had bothered to follow the
Israeli peace activists from the coexistence group Ta'ayush last
Saturday when they went to Ramallah, they could have provided
Israelis an answer to the question of what the IDF would do if
thousands of unarmed Palestinians marched on the army's positions.
Some 300 men and women from the Israeli
group, which calls itself a Jewish-Arab partnership, met last
Saturday in Ramallah with Yasser Arafat and central activists
from Fatah, feminists, and representatives from Palestinian non-governmental
organizations. After a meeting in Arafat's office, they went
outside to demonstrate opposite the tanks poised on a hill outside
the Palestinian government complex. They marched toward the tanks.
They were not armed. Not with guns, stones, or even posters.
All they had was a single hand-held loudspeaker,
and people aged from 17 to 75, 300 in all. They were exposed,
open, and walked toward ! the soldiers, also Israelis, who hid
inside four tanks and a single jeep. It would have been very
difficult to think the soldiers weren't there, because they did
what every IDF force in the territories does: They started their
engines with a deafening noise, moved the cannon barrels up and
down and left to right, as if aiming it at the demonstrators,
issued white and black smoke from the engines, and rolled back
and forth on the tank treads, those steel teeth that have chewed
up the asphalt and sidewalks that European countries spent a
lot of money improving.
It's doubtful the voice coming from the
loudspeaker reached the soldiers. But they must have known that
every person marching toward them was an Israeli. The IDF takes
a great deal of pride in its sophisticated technology, which
enables daylight or nighttime identification of sources of fire.
That day in Ramallah, a pair of opera glasses would have sufficed
for the soldiers in the tanks to know who was marching ! outside.
Who knows, maybe they recognized a neighbor, or their older sister's
philosophy teacher.
In fact, maybe the Hebrew voice reached
the soldiers. The speaker, a Ph.D. in history, was emotional
as he shouted "We invite the soldiers to come home."
The rest of the marchers began chanting "Soldiers come home,"
and with perfect orchestration, the soldiers responded immediately
with two stun grenades. Don't be afraid, said an Israeli woman
with some experience in these kinds of events. That's nothing
but noise. It's just meant to frighten us.
That's not exactly true. When a stun
grenade falls inside a crowd, and not away from it, the way they
are supposed to, it can burn, harm eyes, wound, even break a
bone. Dozens of Palestinians who stood unarmed over the past
year opposite soldiers have been wounded that way. During the
last 16 months, the Palestinians tried dozens, if not hundreds,
of times to hold non-violent demonstrations against IDF forces.
It! 's impossible to march on the settlements.
Banks of tanks and machine guns, fortifications, reinforced outposts
and roads for Jews only block direct access to the settlements.
The IDF Spokesman's Office has spun a myth that every clash that
ended with Palestinian casualties was a conflict between two
armed sides.
IDF and Border Patrol troops have made
clear innumerable times that any gathering of people opposite
its forces is considered a dangerous "disturbance of the
peace" that requires a response. Sometimes clubbing and
violent dragging, then come the stun grenades, maybe tear gas,
and very quickly firing live ammunition into the air and then
shooting rubber-coated steel pellets into the crowd. The steel
pellets are covered with a thin layer of rubber, sometimes it's
live ammunition.
Sometimes the shooting starts before
any of the demonstrators have managed to throw a stone. Often,
the shooting is in response to stone-throwing by teenagers who
hide behind ! improvised barricades. Sometimes they are shot
in the head, sometimes the pellets strike protesters standing
in albeit dangerous places, but dozens of meters away from the
stone-throwers. To someone who has been at these non-violent
demonstrations in recent months, it appears the IDF has long
since gone past what was thought to be its limits. The Israelis
that day in Ramallah decided not to test the limits, and dispersed
on their own, going to their next meeting with the Palestinians.
For Palestinian activists to organize
dozens of non-violent demonstrations that would march simultaneously
toward IDF forces, they would need some guarantee that the soldiers
wouldn't cross the red lines into mass murder. Only Israeli society
can provide that guarantee. Israeli society must widen the circle
of those asking about the nature of the IDF's activities in the
territories captured in 1967. It must ask what its frightened
and frightening children are doing at the checkpoints, b! efore
those children become casualties of the "Let me die with
the Philistines" war. Israeli society must ask more and
more questions about the IDF's rules of engagement and the money
the government spends on developing the settlements and on the
welfare of their residents, while its disabled citizens are left
to live as beggars.
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