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Today's
Stories
June
4, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's
Animal House
June
3, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Iran's Nuclear Dilemma
Dr.
Susan Block
America in tha Hood
Michael
Donnelly
The Bully and the Brahmin
John
Chuckman
Insanity in America: US Ranks Number
One in the Deranged
Christopher
Brauchli
The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome
on $12,000 a Month
Samia
Nassar Melki
Caravaggio in Iraq
Mike
Whitney
Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case
Diane
Rejman
Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead
Scott
Morris
"WMDs" in Cuba
Paul
de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective
June
2, 2004
Brian
Cloughley
The Liars are Winning
Ray
McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible
Intelligence"
Josh
Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive
Mike
Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots
Jackie
Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana
Robert
Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too
Alexander
Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"
June
1, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up
with Him
William
A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in
Rafah
Dave
Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?
Kevin
Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did
the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?
Jacob
Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft,
a Bipartisan Production
Kathy
Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US
Government
Website
of the Day
Remind Us
May
29 / 31, 2004
Lee
Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day
Janine
Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
May
28, 2004
Rafael
Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5
Greg
Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib
Dave
Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors:
Those Who Do the Dirty Work
Norman
Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times
Rep.
Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba
Paul
McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After
Alexander
Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a
Little"
May
27, 2004
Amy
Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times
Douglas
Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the
NYTs
John
L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of
Stew
Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist
Dave
Dellinger
a 1993 Interview
Christopher
Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids
Rampton
/ Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran
May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
May 21, 2004
Ray
Close
The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
Hass
Darkness at Noon
Jack
McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
Bill
Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
Christopher
Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to
Torture
Website
of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much
May
20, 2004
Andrew
Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi
Kathy
Kelly
A Visit from the FBI
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India
Tom
Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.
Sam
Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy
Robert
Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle
Billy
Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year
Website
of the Day
Rafah Today
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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June
4, 2004
Only
the IDF is Secure
Before
Rafah
By
YITZHAK LAOR
On Sunday 16 May, a day before the IDF
launched its long-awaited, well-planned attack on the civilian
population of Rafah, the Israeli chief of staff, Major- General
Moshe (Boogey) Ya'alon said it was 'almost the last chance' for
such an operation and that 'special conditions were in place'
for an imminent attack. By 'special conditions', of course, he
meant the public desire for revenge following the deaths of 13
soldiers in Gaza in the space of 48 hours. It was a convenient
opportunity to start a war. But he also meant that sooner or
later the Jewish settlements blocking Rafah's access to its beach
would be evacuated, so there was no choice but to destroy as
much of Rafah as possible, and as soon as possible.
José Saramago, visiting
Israel in March 2002, before the invasion in which Israel reoccupied
the territories, said that Israel had two problems. The first,
he said, is that the settlements need the army. Everyone agreed.
The second is that the army needs the settlements. Nobody agreed.
Nobody even listened. Yet Ya'alon knows that without the settlements
he would have no excuse for patrolling the Gaza strip. Do Israelis
understand the military's motives? No. Many Israelis, probably
the majority, would gladly turn their backs on the settlers.
Not on the military, though. Therefore, the whole political campaign
against the extreme right is futile. Behind the extreme right
lurks the 'moderate army', and the army is the one player in
Israeli society whose motives are never questioned.
Israeli militarism is about
Israel's faith in this huge benevolent apparatus. The army is
always described in terms of 'our boys out there', sons, lads,
children, a poor, beleaguered David. That's us, the eternal victims.
And the enemy is always Goliath, even the children who defied
the IDF in Rafah three days ago and therefore had to die while
demonstrating, empty-handed, in solidarity with the thousands
whom the benevolent military had thrown out of their shacks and
houses.
That same Sunday, 16 May, before
the lethal convoy left on its way to Rafah, was almost a euphoric
day among more moderate Israelis. On Saturday night, 150,000
people rallied in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to call for peace,
more or less. It was the largest rally Israel had seen for many
years. The main speaker at the demonstration was Shimon Peres,
foreign minister in Sharon's former government, a man for all
seasons and suits. His excellent speech was broadcast live on
Israeli TV, even on the state-owned channel, which has become
almost a Likud station. Yet we shouldn't be surprised at the
favourable TV coverage, just as we shouldn't be surprised that
all three Israeli newspapers were very excited about the rally
the following day, even Ma'ariv. 'We are not the Left, we are
the majority of the people,' Peres declared. But that wasn't
what the rally was about. And it wasn't about the IDF policy
of daily killings: the strategy that ensures our war will never
end. It was about the Gaza settlers and everyone's opposition
to them.
It was only when soldiers were
killed for no purpose other than to defend the settlers that
public outrage brought Israelis to say: 'Something must be done.'
This is a mode Israelis adopt from time to time. But this 'something
must be done' always goes in two directions. The first leads
to the demonstration square (and then back home). The second
leads to the military operation that has just won ecstatic support.
People in the West don't know that the demonstrators are people
who love the army, that the peace movement in Israel is still
deeply involved in the military love affair, that no peace demonstration
in Israel has ever dared say that the military might be participants
in atrocities or warmongering. The phrase 'war crimes' is not
allowed at these demonstrations, because such words bring the
army, not only Sharon, into the frame of 'evil'.
The rally's organisers - Peace
Now, Labour and Meretz - invited General Yom-Tov Samya to speak.
And he did. Military men at a peace demonstration: how nice.
Only he hadn't come to say that he was tired of war, or that
he'd once been wrong; he hadn't come to call for more moderate
behaviour by the army. Samya had been the head of the IDF's Southern
Command; for years he was in charge of the war against the Gaza
strip. It was under his command that dozens of houses were demolished
in Rafah and their poorest inhabitants thrown into the mud during
the very cold winter of 2001. It was in his glorious day that
'war crimes' started to be part of the discourse. It was under
his command that some officers formed the refusenik movement
Courage to Refuse and went to prison. Of course they weren't
allowed to speak on the podium at Saturday night's rally. In
fact, the organisers had issued a press release in which they
promised not to invite any refuseniks to speak.
The rally in effect constituted
a licence for the military to complete their dirty war: not because
it was so friendly to the army but because it made it possible
for nothing to be said about the imminent attack. Everybody knew
there was a major attack on the way. Experts had argued on TV
talkshows about whether the army would be given the green light.
But not a word was said about it on the podium in front of the
150,000 moderate Israelis. The entire demonstration was about
supporting Sharon against the settlers. The biggest banner in
the rally read: 'Arik, the people are with you.' The Zionist
Left had, yet again, produced an imaginary battlefield in order
not to fight the real battle. Why are we for Sharon? Because
he was supposed to be against the settlers. Where was the voice
warning about the coming war in densely populated areas? Nowhere.
And so it began, as always,
by frightening the civilian population: poor, isolated refugees
in a world that doesn't know what Palestinians want, or how they
live. So they took their children and their mattresses and left,
again, and the army continued to spread its stories about the
tunnels of munitions running under the houses, and finally -
with the Supreme Court authorising them to destroy more houses,
because we're in a state of war, which the army declared, created,
produced - the forces went in.
Since that attack, which turned
into a blood-bath, there have been demonstrations in Tel Aviv
every day. Not massive, but larger than before. Some are being
led by Courage to Refuse activists. There were clashes with police,
there were arrests, yet the majority of Israelis went silent
again. The Supreme Court justices, the professors of ethics,
the chiefs of staff: they might meet at a university seminar
on 'Morality and War' or 'International Law and Terrorism'. But
right now the army is busy.
According to the Israeli sociologist
Alina Korn, there has been a ghettoisation of the Palestinians
since the early 1990s. It's not bantustans that the authorities
have in mind, but ghettos, detached from each other, dependent
on Israeli military authority. The ghettos, which are already
numerous, multiply, and the conditions differ from place to place.
Ramallah is visible to the West, so life there is more bearable.
Hebron is hidden. Rafah is entirely cut off. The Israeli army
didn't kill the children in Rafah intentionally, it will be said.
Who will remind us that for three months now, the army has been
killing unarmed Palestinians demonstrating peacefully along the
Wall that's going up in the West Bank?
Israeli families of dead soldiers
or dead civilians get a follow-up, even on foreign TV, for they
had a future ahead of them before they died. Did the Palestinian
children who died in Rafah have any future? No. So they are dead,
and it will be over in a few days. Palestinians don't get a follow-up,
not even on foreign TV. Maybe there'll be a documentary movie,
followed by some public discussion about whether to allow the
movie to be publicly screened, or whether it's another sign of
'the new anti-semitism'. Nothing will be followed up. The Israeli
army is secure. It calls itself the Israel Defence Force.
Yitzhak Laor is a novelist and poet who lives in
Tel Aviv.
This essay originally appeared
in the London Review of Books.
Weekend Edition
Features for May 29 / 31, 2004
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
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