|
|
home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq
|
Why Hillary Clinton Has Always Been a Republican In the first of a series of profiles, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair chart the formative years of Hillary Clinton. Watch her as she zigzags from Nixon campaigner and vote-fraud investigator in 1960 to Goldwater Girl and President of Young Republicans at Wellesley to her internship for Gerald Ford and campaigner for Nelson Rockefeller. Witness her reaction to the student protests at Yale and the demonstrations at Grant Park during the Democratic Convention in 1968. Learn how she and Bill vowed to "remake" the Democratic Party--using the Nixon model HRC learned about as a member of the House impeachment staff. And much more! Plus: David Price on anthropologist Andre Gunder Frank, the FBI and the Bureaucratic Exile of a Critical Mind.
|
|
Today's Stories July 3, 2007 Bill
Quigley July 2, 2007 Andy
Worthington Nina
Serrano Jack
Hirschman Paul
Craig Roberts Bill
Williams Anthony
Papa Sonja
Karkar Louay
Safi Anthony
Gregory Monica
Benderman Website
of the Day
June 30 / July 1, 2007 John
Ross Alan
Farago Peter
Quinn Christopher
Brauchli Robert
Fisk Uri
Avnery Judith
Siers-Poisson Saul
Landau Abbas
Zaidi Ron
Jacobs Ralph
Nader Donald
Worster Mike
Whitney Jacob
Hill Kenneth
Couesbouc Missy
Beattie Mohammad
Kamaali Ramzy
Baroud Leonard
Peltier Phyllis
Pollack Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
June 29, 2007 St.
Clair / Frank Brian
Cloughley Patrick
Cockburn Gilad
Atzmon Dave
Lindorff Jennifer
Matsui / Kevin
Zeese Daniel
Klimek David
Michael Green John
Chuckman Website
of the Day
June 28, 2007 Bill
Quigley Vijay
Prashad Margaret
Kimberley Winslow
T. Wheeler Philip
Rizk D.
K. Wilson Bill
Williams Mahmoud
El-Yousseph Richard
Rhames Paul
Krassner Website
of the Day
Marjorie
Cohn Dr.
Susan Rosenthal, MD Alan
Farago Carla
Blank Matthew
Abraham Sunsara
Taylor Russell
D. Hoffman Robert
Weissman Sen.
Russ Feingold Paul
Buchheit Website
of the Day
June 26, 2007 Jonathan
Cook Ralph
Nader Corporate
Crime Reporter Ron
Jacobs Martha
Rosenberg John
Chuckman Denny
Haldeman Anthony
DiMaggio Stephen
Fleischman William
S. Lind Website
of the Day
Paul
Craig Roberts Jennifer
Loewenstein Bob
Anderson Robert
Pollin Patrick
Cockburn Eva
Liddell Dan
Bacher Larry
Atkins Mark
Brenner James
Rothenberg Website
of the Day June 23 / 24, 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Jeff
Taylor Oren
Ben-Dor Gary
Leupp Robert
Fisk David
Rosen Russell
Mokhiber Alison
Weir Robert
Fantina D.
K. Wilson Nicole
Colson Stephen
Soldz, Steven Reisner and Brad Olson Dave
Lindorff Benjamin
Dangl Michael
Dickinson Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
June 22, 2007 Andy
Worthington Sherwood
Ross Eliana
Monteforte Robert
Weissman Richard
Rhames Christopher
Brauchli Ramzy
Baroud Ehud
Krinis, David Shulman and Neve Gordon David
Michael Green Kathryn
Webber Website
of the Day
June 21, 2007 Peter
Linebaugh Natsu
Saito Ron
Jacobs Saree
Makdisi John
Stauber Scott
Liebertz Tom
Clifford Robert
Jensen Michael
J. Smith Jeb
Sprague Website
of the Day
Omar
Barghouti Andy
Worthington Margaret
Kimberley Robert
Weissman Russell
D. Hoffman Rannie
Amiri Stephen
Lendman Dave
Lindorff David
Swanson Anne
Dachel Website
of the Day
June 19, 2007 Ralph
Nader Dr.
Shepherd Bliss Bill
and Kathleen Christison Jeff
Leys Dave
Zirin Chris
Floyd Ben
Terrall Anthony
Papa VIPS Linda Flores Website
of the Day
John
Ross Paul
Craig Roberts Martha
Rosenberg Norman
Solomon Don
Santina Isabella
Kenfield James
Brooks Eva
Liddell Sam
Husseini Akiva
Eldar Website
of the Day
Alexander
Cockburn John
Halle Robert
Fisk Andy
Worthington Uri
Avnery Fred
Gardner Saul
Landau P.
Sainath Missy
Comley Beattie Alan
Gregory Walter
Brasch Website
of the Weekend
June 15, 2007 Alan
Farago Andy
Worthington Michael
Simmons Franklin
Lamb Gary
Leupp John
Ross Website
of the Day
June 14, 2007 Michael
Donnelly
Faisal
Kutty Harry
Browne Charles
Jonkel Steven
Higgs Bruce
Dixon Bruce
K. Gagnon
Website
of the Day June 13, 2007 Glen Ford Marjorie Cohn Bill Christison Charles Jonkel Silvia Cattori Richard Gott Firmin DeBrabander William S. Lind Keith Rosenthal Website of the Day June 12, 2007 Jeffrey St.
Clair Paul Craig
Roberts P. Sainath Ralph Nader Omar Waraich Dave Lindorff Harvey Wasserman Malini Johar
Schueller Ramzy Baroud Website of
the Day
June 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig
Roberts Uri Avnery Norman Solomon Eva Liddell Rannie Amiri Rachel Voss Christopher
Brauchli D. K. Wilson Website of
the Day
Alexander Cockburn George Ciccariello-Maher Saul Landau Robert Fisk Brian Cloughley Ron Jacobs Ward Boston Conn Hallinan Leonard Peltier Lawrence Davidson John Ross Kate Allan Fred Gardner Stephen Fleischman Monica Benderman Geoff Bailey Missy Beattie Patrick Dyer Tim Lengerich James Irani
Gary Leupp Michael Tillery Michael Simmons Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
June 8, 2007 Serge Halimi Patrick Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair
Paul Craig Roberts William Blum Joshua Frank Lance Selfa Dave Lindorff Lawrence Ferlinghetti Website of the Day
Marjorie Cohn Soldz, Reisner
and Olson: Soldz, Reisner
Paul Craig Roberts Bill Quigley Silvia Cattori Carl G. Estabrook Ellen Taylor Corporate Crime
Reporter Brenda Norrell D. K. Wilson Kevin Zeese Website of
the Day
Alain Gresh Gary Leupp Steven Sherman Bruce Dixon Corporate Crime Reporter Brian M. Downing Ron Jacobs George Bisharat Nicole Colson Bruce K. Gagnon Website of the Day
June 5, 2007 Michael Neumann Jonathan Cook David Vest Robert Fantina Hoffman, Parsneau and Chowdhury John V. Walsh Richard Cretan Adam Engel William S. Lind Myles Hoenig Jim Minick Website of
the Day
Nizar Latif Diana Johnstone Gregory Wilpert Paul Watson Susan Rosenthal,
MD Richard Ward Eva Liddell Zahi Khouri Evelyn Pringle China Hand Karyn Strickler Website of the Day
June 2 / 3, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Marc Levy Martin Smith Diana Johnstone John Ross Uri Avnery Sunsara Taylor Richard Neville P. Sainath Missy Comley
Beattie Nisrine Abiad Rannie Amiri Margot Pepper Eric Stewart Ralph Nader Dan Bacher Shaun Harkin Richard Rhames Frederick Hudson Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Dave Marsh Saul Landau David Phinney Robert Jensen Stanley Heller Yifat Susskind Robert Weissman Paul Buchheit William S.
Lind Sherwood Ross Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
Robert Bryce Patrick Cockburn Gary Leupp Kathy Kelly Marjorie Cohn Chris Kutalik
Corporate Crime Reporter Dave Lindorff Website of the Day
May 30, 2007 James Ridgeway Franklin Lamb Terrence E. Paupp Uri Avnery Alan Maass Rock and Rap
Confidential Ralph Nader Nirmal Ghosh Jean Daniels Tom Barry Website of the Day
Stephen Soldz Eliza Ernshire Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Evelyn Pringle Mike Whitney David Swanson John Holt Cynthia McKinney Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day
Bill Quigley Col. Dan Smith Cindy Sheehan Dr. Susan Block Jeeni Criscenzo Douglas Valentine Website of the Day 
Subscribe Online
|
July 3, 2007 The Broader ContextCivil Strife in PalestineBy GARY LEUPP In June 2002 President Bush gave a long-awaited Rose Garden speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those expecting even a pretense at even-handedness were surprised by its prettification of an Israel then ferociously attacking West Bank cities, and its vilification of Israel's opponents and victims. Bush denounced anti-Israel "terrorism" as the principle problem in the Middle East, avoiding mention of the historical context of Israeli aggression and occupation of Arab lands. He specifically mentioned Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Lebanese Shiite organization Hizbollah, and Syria. He also called for "new leadership" in the Palestinian Authority (led by the Fatah organization), implying that the existing leadership under President Yassir Arafat was---as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whom Bush two months earlier had called "a man of peace," insisted---pro-terrorist. (The main basis for this accusation was a government report released in May 2006, purportedly based on documents captured during the Israeli occupation of Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. These allegedly included papers authorizing funds for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades signed by Arafat as President of the Palestinian National Authority recognized by U.S. and Israel. The Brigades were included among the groups in the State Department's terrorism list.) Bush's speech, Jerusalem Post reporter David Horowitz told National Public Radio, could have been written by the Likud government in Israel. Arafat was thereafter marginalized, and shunned by the White House, until his death in 2004. (Some might recall that Bush speech writer David Frum, author of the "axis of evil" line, before Arafat's death suggested maliciously in the neocon National Review that the Palestinian leader must be dying of AIDS. The neocons generally despise and fear Palestinians in general: in his book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror coauthored with Richard Perle, Frum opposes any Palestinian state in principle and calls for the outright Israeli annexation of the West Bank.) To satisfy the neocon-led Bush administration, the Palestinian Authority was obliged to produce a Prime Minister in the form of Mahmoud Abbas, a Palestinian refugee raised in Syria, considered a "moderate" by the U.S. He was someone that Bush could talk to. When they met in Egypt in 2003, Bush informed Abbas that "God told me to smite" Osama bin Laden, "and I smote him." The same with Saddam Hussein. Abbas must have concluded that a religious fundamentalist fanatic suffering from delusions was in charge of the United States. Bush has certainly not made Abbas' job easy. An upshot of Washington's rejection of Arafat, the most popular Palestinian leader, and embrace of the "moderate" Abbas, was the democratic Palestinian election of a Hamas leadership in January 2006. The poll result was generally understood to reflect Palestinian disillusionment with the Fatah-led Palestinian Liberation Organization, widely accused of corruption and inefficiency, and admiration for Hamas' religious probity and militant stance against the Israeli occupation. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh became Prime Minister, while Abbas remained as President. The U.S. reaction was to denounce the result of the election, even as many pointed to the irony of the Bush administration public advocacy of "democracy" in the Middle East while rejecting this democratic statement of the Palestinian people. Washington and its European allies cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority, hoping to quickly achieve the Hamas-led regime's downfall. They sought to widen the political gap between the secular Fatah (that Bush had earlier associated with terrorism) and the Islamists. The Palestinian factions responded by an effort to create a coalition government, and in February 2007 in talks in Mecca sponsored by the Saudi king reached an accord on a government of national unity. Haniyeh would stay on as prime minister, while Fatah would get the Foreign Affairs Ministry among others. This agreement, favored by Russia among others, facilitated the transfer of some promised foreign funds to the Palestinian Authority. But the agreement didn't hold as fighting broke out throughout Gaza between Hamas and Fatah. The former has now seized control of the entire Gaza strip, a vast prison camp of 1.4 million Palestinians. Meanwhile on the West Bank 2.5 Palestinians are for the present governed (to the extent that they can be, under ongoing Israeli occupation) by the regime of Abbas and his newly-appointed prime minister, western-trained economist and political independent Salam Fayyad. So now there are two Palestinian political entities, both under Israeli occupation if accorded some degree of Bantustan-style self-government. The Israelis apparently target the Gaza one for immanent destruction. According to the London Times, senior Israeli military sources say Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak plans for 20,000 troops to invade and cripple Hamas during an operation lasting a few days. According to the London Guardian's Jonathan Steele, "Washington's fingerprints are all over the chaos that has hit Palestinians." Both Israel and the Bush administration were hostile to the February Mecca agreement because it further legitimated Haniyeh's position. They made their displeasure known to Abbas, who "was told to scrap Mecca at every subsequent meeting he has had with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert or with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and Abrams." This refers to Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, one of the highest-placed neocons remaining in the administration, who apparently devised "a plan to arm and train Mahmoud Abbas' presidential guard in a deliberate effort to confront and defeat Hamas militarily." Steele cites a U.S. document dated March 2, 2007 "doing the rounds in the Middle East" that define Washington's objectives to include keeping Abbas and Fatah "as the centre of gravity on the Palestinian scene," undermining "Hamas's political status through providing for Palestinian economic needs," and strengthening Abbas' "authority to be able to call and conduct early elections by autumn 2007." The document indicates that Washington planned to provide over a billion dollars in assistance to add seven special battalions totaling 4,700 men to Abbas' 15,000-strong presidential guard and security forces. "The desired outcome," its states, "will be the transformation of Palestinian security forces and provide for the president of the Palestinian Authority to able to safeguard decisions such as dismissing the cabinet and forming an emergency cabinet." In other words, to pull off a coup against the elected leadership. Steele pointedly notes, "Arming insurgents against elected governments has a long US pedigree and it is no accident that Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security adviser and apparent architect of the anti-Hamas subversion, was a key player in Ronald Reagan's supply of weapons to the Contras who fought Nicaragua's elected government in the 1980s." Confronted with efforts to sabotage the Mecca agreement, and particularly the refusal of Fatah's head of the Preventive Security Forces in Gaza to accept the authority of the Hamas interior minister, Hamas forces staged a preemptive attack on Fatah. This at least is the view of Alastair Crooke, former Middle East adviser to EU foreign minister Javier Solana. "Hamas," he told Steele, "felt they had little option but to take control of security away from forces which were in fact creating insecurity." So Abbas' forces didn't overthrow Hamas but vice-versa, at least in Gaza, while on the West Bank Fatah is conducting a campaign of mass arrests of its rivals. What is the U.S. response to these events, in which it appears to be heavily complicit? U.S. Consul General Jacob Walles, top American diplomat in Jerusalem, says the U.S. will fully support Abbas' government. Suddenly the floodgates of withheld economic aid are open in America and Europe. They will flow to the West Bank to indicate approval, and perhaps to Gaza as a carrot to encourage regime change alongside the stick of unremitting vilification of Hamas and efforts to isolate it. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert endorses the Abbas-Fayyad regime, declaring that it would have a "genuine partner" in Israel. "[T]here is," he claimed before a New York audience, "a genuine opportunity that the moderate forces headed by President Abbas will be able to form a solid government administered by the Palestinians." Israel will free up withheld tax revenues for the good guys. The irony here is that for Israel today's bad guys were yesterday's good guys. Yassir Arafat noted that in an interview in December 2001 with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera. "Hamas," he declared, "is a creature of Israel which at the time of Prime Minister Shamir [second term 1986-92], gave them money and more than 700 institutions, among them schools, universities and mosques. Even [former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin ended up admitting it, when I charged him with it, in the presence of [Egpytian President Hosni] Mubarak." Arafat told L'Espresso that "Hamas was constituted with the support of Israel. The aim was to create an organization antagonistic to the PLO. They received financing and training from Israel. They have continued to benefit from permits and authorizations, while we [in the PLO] have been limited, even to build a tomato factory. Rabin himself defined it as a fatal error." The problem is that these Hamas members became increasingly impatient with Israeli occupation, increasingly militant and unwilling to do what Fatah has done: formally recognize the Jewish state. Their leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin did indicate a willingness to accept, on a provisional basis, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (as opposed to all of Palestine). But an Israeli helicopter gunship firing Hellfire missiles killed him in his wheelchair after a morning prayer session March 22, 2004, along with two bodyguards and nine bystanders. Still, Hamas maintained a unilateral ceasefire with Israel for 16 months between 2005 and 2006, ending it following the killing of 8 Palestinian civilians, a family picnicking on a Gaza beach, by Israeli artillery shells June 10, 2006. So now we have the PLO's Abbas as the darling of the Washington-Israel axis, and Hamas targeted for destruction by the U.S., Israel, and Fatah. Palestine is divided politically and physically between two occupied zones subject at any time to Israeli military actions invariably condoned by the world's sole superpower. One of the zones is now depicted as a center of Islamic terrorism, the other courted as a "genuine partner" of Olmert's Israel. I don't know that this specific state of affairs was planned by anyone in particular. Hamas' attacks on Fatah offices in Gaza may have taken Washington by surprise. But now that it's occurred, I expect that Vice President Cheney and his neocon acolytes will try to make the most of it. They've been planning an assault on Iran, and wish before that happens to demolish Iranian allies such as Hamas and Hizbollah that could respond to such aggression with attacks on Israel. (Abbas has blamed Iran for Hamas' takeover of Gaza, giving the neocons another charge against the Islamic Republic.) I think the civil strife in Palestine should be seen in that broader context. Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
|
CounterPunch Books of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy  Click Here to Buy! How the Press Failed The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained!  Buy End Times Now! CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal  Click Here to Order!  Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair           The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn   Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont               CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed        Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh                   |
