Today's Stories

January 13, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza

January 12, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Blood-Stained Monster Enters Gaza

Paul Craig Roberts
Our Collapsing Economy

Mike Whitney
Israel's Moral and Political Insanity

Ewa Jasiewicz
Oh, Quiet Night: Only Six Homes Were Bombed

Bill Quigley
A Day in Gaza

Dave Lindorff
From Vietnam to Gaza

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Blowback From a Tragic Error: a Message to Barack Obama

Jonathan Cook
Israel Ponders the Third Stage

Andy Worthington
Seven Years of Guantánamo

Kara N. Tina
Oakland on Fire

Brenda Norrell
Palestinians and American Indians: Russell Means Breaks the Silence on Obama

Nour Kharma
A Plea From a Teen in Gaza: "Will I Die, Too?"

Website of the Day
The Villages Group: an Antiwar Alliance in Sderot

January 9/11, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Israel's Onslaught on Gaza: Criminal, for Sure; But Also Stupid

Kathy Kelly
Tunnel Vision: Report from Arish, Egypt

Bill Quigley
Report From Rafah: Doctors Stopped at the Border

George Ciccariello-Maher
Oakland's Not for Burning?

Elaine C. Hagopian
Gaza: History Matters

Mike Roselle
Drowning in a Toxic River: What Can be Done to Save Appalachia?

Steve Hendricks
The Torturer-Elect?

Gary Leupp
Revisiting the Tale of Samson

Jonathan Cook
Outcry Over Israel's War Crimes

Karim Makdisi
The Ceasefire Plan: the UN Finally Acts, But Does It Mean Anything?

Rannie Amiri
Livni's Big Lie

Peter Morici
In the Jaws of a Depression

Peter Montague
Can Chemicals be Regulated?

Ralph Nader
Move Fast to Restore the Rule of Law

Andy Worthington
The Dying Days of the Guantánamo Trials

Nadia Hijab
A Music School Silenced in Gaza

Dan Bacher
Unholy Alliance: Nature Conservancy Backs Schwarzenegger's Big Ditch

Catherine Fenton
The American Peace Movement and Israel

David Macaray
Wal-Mart Caught Stealing

Valia Kaimaki
Why Greek Youths Took to the Streets

Richard Morse
Haiti's Gas Gang

David Yearsley
To Gotham City with Dexter Gordon

Charles R. Larson
The Horror, the Horror

Richard Rhames
Gaza and the Goon Squad Meet the Wizard

Stephen Martin
Meltdown Memo to Come?

Lorenzo Wolff
What They Sing About When They Sing About Love

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Beatty and Valentine

Website of the Weekend
Gaza Protest

January 8, 2009

Jean Bricmont /
Diana Johnstone
Gaza Seen From Paris

Franklin Lamb
How Dershowitz Misstates, Misrepresents and Misapplies the Law

Paul Craig Roberts
The Difficulty of Being an Informed American

Kevin Alexander Gray
Give Burris His Seat

Chris Floyd
The Enduring Priorities in Obama's Time of Change

Ewa Jasiewicz
Riding on Fire in Gaza

Steve Conn
Sanjay Gupta and Obama

Harvey Wasserman
Kill the Nuclear Stimulus!

Wayne S. Smith
An Opening to Cuba?

Linda Mamoun
Re-settling Gaza: the Real Goal of the Israeli Invasion?

Adam Turl
Unions and Young Workers

Chris Papaleonardos
Mourning Maria Dimitriadi

Website of the Day
On the Wing

January 7, 2009

Saree Makdisi
What Kind of Security Will This Barbarism Bring Israel?

Franklin Lamb
Bend Over Professor Dershowitz, It's Time for Your Check Up

William Blum
America's Other Glorious War

Belén Fernández
The Trauma Vortex: Israel's Monopoly on Psychological Suffering

Lawrence Davidson
What is New About Gaza?

Allan Nairn
Adm. Dennis Blair and the Church Killings in East Timor

Jonathan Cook
What is Israel's Objective?

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Watching the War on BBC

Deepak Tripathi
Bush, as He Leaves

Cal Winslow
Now is the Hour to Defend Democracy in the Labor Movement!

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Students Planning Careers: Be Mindful

Dr. Hannah Safran
No More Recycled Military Solutions

Website of the Day
CNN: Israel Broke the Ceasefire First

January 6, 2009

Pam Martens
It's All One Big Lie

Victoria Buch
Real Estate War in Gaza: the History and "Morals" of Ethnic Cleansing

Neve Gordon
Israel's New War Ethic

Tami Sarfatti /
Yonatan Mendel
What Silence Says: Gaza is Still Waiting on Obama

Mike Whitney
The Gaza Bloodbath

Alan Farago
After the Fall

Gary Leupp
A Hamas Coup d'Etat in 2007?

Larry Everest
Silent Partner: the US-Backed War on Gaza

Ron Jacobs
The New Iraqi Sovereignty

David Macaray
Union-Busting is Alive and Well

Stephanie Basile
Where's Anna's Money?

Stacey Warde
An Uncle's Unrest

Website of the Day
Israeli Refusenik on Gaza

January 5, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Will There be a Recovery?

Sousan Hammad
Phoning Home to Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Flying While Brown

Mats Svensson
Longing in Gaza

Jen Marlowe
Abeer's Baby

Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Gaza Phone Tag

Brian Cloughley
Israel is Immune From Criticism

Faheem Hussain
Gaza and India: a View From Pakistan

William Cook
Consider the Realities of Gaza

Dr. Trudy Bond
The Madness Among Us

Christopher Ketcham
The Revenge of the Blogger at the National Press Club: a Rotten Washington Interlude

Steve Early
Who Rules SEIU?

Dave Lindorff
When It Comes to Terrorism and POW Cases, Equal Justice Under Law is a Joke

Website of the Day
The Endangered Fish of the Colorado River Basin

January 2 - 4, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Diary of 2008: an Incredible, Hope-Filled Year

Uri Avnery
Molten Lead in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of the Gaza Assault

Paul Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Western Morality?

Brian Eno
Stealing Gaza: an Experiment in Provocation

Ralph Nader
America Must Stop Shirking Its Responsibility on Gaza

Omar Barghouti
UN Complicity in Israel's Massacre in Gaza

Graham Usher
Where Pakistan's Generals and the ISI Draw Their Lines

P. Sainath
The Economy is Worse Than It Appears

Belén Fernández
Pardon Our Dust: Israel's PR Campaign for Gaza

Deb Reich
Shiv'a in Gaza, December 2008

Gary Leupp
Defacing Mr. Jefferson's Wall: Preachers and the Inauguration

Michael Yates
Top Chef or Top Wage Thief? Tom Colicchio and the Economics of Restaurants

Joanne Mariner
How to Close Guantánamo

Seth Sandronsky
Funding the Israeli Military: the US Pipeline

Cynthia McKinney
We Lived to Tell the Story

Sonja Karkar
Israel's Dogs of War

Deepak Tripathi
Gaza in Perspective

Robert Fantina
Obama, Afghanistan and Israel

John Ross
The Year No One Can Remember

Norm Kent
The Heat on Duval Street: Why Head Shop Raids are Unfair and Unjust

Larry Portis
Syria and the Arab Barbie Doll--Before the Deluge

Richard Rhames
Is Conscience Dead?

Dee C. Lubell
We Come From the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright

David Yearsley
A Gay German at the Courts of the Medici and Hanover, and of Course the BBC

Lorenzo Wolff
Joe Ely, the Fighting Rooster of Rock

Marc Catone
Looting Lennon's Legacy

Poets' Basement
Five Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski

Website of the Weekend
Earth in High Rez

January 1, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
If Hamas Did Not Exist

Oren Ben-Dor
The Self-Defense of Suicide

Wajahat Ali
The U.S. Response to the Gaza Crisis: Unfair and Unbalanced

Saul Landau
In Cuba No One Man Could Steal $50 Billion From Other People

David Michael Green
What to Expect While We're Expecting

Website of the Day
Morbid Anatomy

December 31, 2008

Pam Martens
Wall Street's Collapse and the Ownership Society

Neve Gordon /
Jeff Halper
Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

Ted Honderich
The First Casualty of Israel's War

Brian Cloughley
Five Little Girls on a Sofa: Gaza's One-Sided Images

Ron Jacobs
What is Hamas, Really?

Vijay Prashad
Hot Rod and His Sikh Warrior: Blago's Indian Connections

Franklin Lamb
Mr. Mubarak, Tear Down That Wall!

Mike Whitney
My Brilliant Career

David Macaray
What Really Killed the Auto Bailout

Richard Thieme
The Betrayal of the Commons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Who Wins What in Gaza?

Stephen Lendman
The Troubling Case of the Fort Dix Five

Worthy Group of the Day
Western Shoshone Defense Project

December 30, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
May We No Longer Be Silent

Tariq Ali
The Gaza Ghetto and Western Cant

Robert Bryce
The $775,000-a-Year GI

Jonathan Cook
Electioneering with Bombs

Gary Leupp
The Fishbarrel War

Dave Lindorff
Tough Guys Don't Walk: Will Cheney Seek a Pardon?

Brian McKenna
Ted Downing and Troublemaker Anthropology

John Walsh
The End of the Green Party

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the World

Bob Sommer
The Education of David Frost

Worthy Activist of the Day
Support Marie Mason

December 29, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's Attempted Endgame in Gaza

Neve Gordon
What, Exactly, is Israel's Mission?

Joshua Frank
Obama and the "Special Relationship"

George Salzman /
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The War Against Palestine: Exception From Humanity

Norman Solomon
A Hundred Eyes for an Eye

Ewa Jasiewicz
Gaza Today: "This is Just the Beginning"

Rob Larson
The Banks Laugh All the Way to the Bank

Kenneth Libby
Arne Duncan's Dark Years in Chicago

Robert Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

Elsa Johnson
High Noon at Black Mesa: Bush's Farewell Gift to Peabody Coal

Nicola Nasser
Resolution 1850: Bush's Parting Gift

Belén Fernández
Hanukkah Games

Worthy Group of the Day
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

December 26-28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Medusa's Head

Dr Eyad Al Serraj
The Boming of Gaza: "An Earthquake on Top of Your Head"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Cancerous Air

Bradley Simpson
Obama's New Intel Chief, Dennis Blair, Ran Interference for Indonesia's Butchers

Ralph Nader
Government Without Laws

Gary Leupp
Obama and the Graveyard of Empires

Ellen Cantarow
Richard Falk, Israel and the NYT

Matt Landon
The Great Coal Ash Flood: a Report From Swan Pond Road

David Macaray
SAG's Terrible Dilemma

Patrick Bond
End of Neoliberalism? Sorry, Not Yet

Norm Kent
Invoking Bigotry: Obama and Rick Warren

Brian T. Ketcham
Fuel Efficiency is Easy--Just Don't Let Detroit Tell You How to Do It

Rannie Amiri
War Clouds Over Gaza

Larry Portis
Changing the Ethnic Vocabulary

Richard Rhames
Welcome to Soup Kitchen America

Stephen Lendman
29 Red Flags: Early Suspicions About Bernard Madoff

James L. Secor
Unheralded Coup

Ramzy Baroud
Iraq, the Plot Thickens

Harold Pinter
Art, Truth and Politics: the Nobel Lecture

Cpt. Paul Watson
Tracking the Cetacean Death Star

Howard Lisnoff
Nixon's Cambodian Shock Treatment

Michael Dee
The Bill of Rights, Killed in Action by the War on Drugs

Steve Conn
Eight Predictions for 2009

Poets' Basement
Valentine, Kaung, Moser and Graham

Worthy Group of the Weekend
United Mountain Defense

December 25, 2008

Judy Gumbo Albert
What Were Those 1960s Terrorists Thinking, Anyway?

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Sole of Christmas

Hannah Mermelstein
Caution: Settlers Ahead

Worthy Group of the Day
Citizens' Coal Council

December 24, 2008

Bill Quigley
Five Bailout Lessons From Katrina

Saul Landau
Then and Now: Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008

Sam Smith
Evangelism and Politics

Brian Cloughley
Torture, Slaughter and Lies

John Ross
Where's al-Zaidi's Pulitzer?

Eric Walberg
Cold War Shivers

Norm Kent
What Will Obama Do About Marijuana?

Stephen Martin
Reasons for Cheerfulness

Worthy Group of the Day
Collateral Repair Project

December 23, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Ponzi Paradigm

Michael Yates
The Tombstone Economy

Chuck Spinney
The New York Times Flames Out in Defense Dogfight

Vijay Prashad
India's Reckless Road to Washington, Through Tel Aviv

Brian Horejsi
Interior Decorating: Obama, Salazar and the Future of America's Public Lands

David Macaray
Obama's Best Pick?

Neil Watkins /
Sarah Anderson
Ecuador's Conscientious Default

David Michael Green
Hey, Reagan Democrats! Now Do You Get It?

Worthy Group of the Day
Focus on the Corporation

January 13, 2009

Israel's Symphony of Injustice

Waltzing with War Crimes

By WAJAHAT ALI

Waltz with Bashir, an autobiographical “animated documentary” from Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman, examines the repressed memory and guilt of an IDF soldier’s participation in the horrific 1982 Sabra and Shatila Massacre of Palestinian refugees, while simultaneously offering a sobering reminder of Israel’s current, brutal military offensive in Gaza.

The audience accompanies Folman on this unique, aesthetic journey – a vivid animated film originally redrawn from real, taped interviews - fluidly existing in a mental purgatory of unreliable recollections, suppressed memories and haunted images. Through the movie, which is a striking collection of original interviews, flashbacks, dreams and war vignettes, Folman attempts to recollect his blocked memory of the fateful night of September 15, 1982 when nearly 2,000 innocent Palestinian refugees were brutally massacred in Lebanon by enraged Lebanese Christian Phalangist forces seeking revenge for their assassinated President, Bashir Gemayel.

A psychologist reminds Folman that “memory is dynamic; it’s real…it fills in the holes.” To illustrate how soldiers preserve sanity when faced with trauma and horror, he relates a tale of an IDF soldier who remembered the carnage in Lebanon as a detached, neutral observer merely viewing the events through an imaginary camera as if seeing amovie.  However, a horrific single memory of an open graveyard littered with slain, beautiful Arabian horses “breaks” this camera by forcing him to confront his traumatic experiences from the war, thereby inviting him “inside” the movie [his memories], instead of seeking protection outside it.

Watching this scene, I contemplated how Israeli leaders viewed the Gaza crisis through their “imaginary camera” as seemingly diplomatic leaders committed to defending their civilians against illegal rocket attacks endangering their border. By simply engaging in political double talk, perpetuating eternal victim hood, and rationalizing disproportional violence against a civilian population as self defense, do the military actors absolve themselves of their complicity in the current Gaza crisis, which has so far killed nearly 800 Palestinians, wounded 3,000 and officially been labeled as a “full-blown humanitarian crisis” by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)?

Although Folman’s movie deals with his attempts to remember his complicity in the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon nearly 27 years ago, the movie’s depiction of Israel’s relentlessly aggressive militarism resonates powerfully as the world currently watches The Gaze Strip being turned into a "concentration camp" - according to a senior Vatican official - due to two weeks of non stop Israeli bombardments

Folman’s striking animation portrays his IDF unit as young, horny, terrified kids who simply do as they are commanded, and thus proceed to shoot at everything in sight as they tear down Sidon, Lebanon with mortar shells, machine gun fire, and tank guns for hours on end. In an absurdly violent scene that would be comical for its surrealism if it were not a tragic reminder of an all too common reality, Folman highlights Israel’s misuse of force and penchant for reckless violence as they destroy roads, apartment buildings, and villages just to eliminate a single rogue Mercedes commandeered by terrorists.

And yet, today we turn on the television and witness Israel striking clearly identified United Nations schools killing at least 30 civilians on the pretext that it was a hideout for Hamas militants. In pacifying Gaza, Israel affronts the Geneva Treaty by using white phosphorous on one of the most densely populated areas on earth; a weapon so deadly it burns to the bone for those unlucky enough to be caught underneath its unforgiving cloud. In retaliation for Hamas firing outdated Qassam rockets that have killed 20 Israeli civilians in the past eight years, Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” military offensive follows its two-year blockade of the Gaza Strip which has deprived 1.5 million Palestinians of necessary food, water, medicine, fuel and essential supplies. For good measure, they have also used Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME), which cuts its victims to pieces and reportedly causes cancer in survivors.

Should Israel and Hamas be condemned as the sole perpetrators of this unending tragedy, or does the United States also shoulder some responsibility in stroking this conflagration that has enveloped the Middle East for decades? After all, Israel attacks Gaza with American F-16 jets, Apache attack helicopters and tanks bought by U.S. money courtesy of the $3 billion Israel receives in U.S. taxpayer aid each year. Recently, the U.S. emerged as the only U.N. Security Council member who abstained from voting on a resolution expressing "grave concern" about the growing humanitarian crisis and heavy civilian casualties in Gaza.

If Palestinians are blamed for inviting Israeli’s wrath by democratically electing a reactionary and hardline Hamas government, then are Israeli citizens also guilty for electing Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister in 2001?  He won despite his avowed, lifetime legacy of hawkish militancy and his active role in the Sabra and Shatilla Massacres. Furthermore, in 2005 he oversaw Israel taking control of Gaza’s borders, airspace, and territorial waters thereby effectively turning it into a sealed prison, according to UN Special Rapporteur, Richard Falk. 

In the movie, Folman refuses to personally condemn specific people, and all the interviewees, including IDF soldiers present at the massacre, acknowledge they knew what was occurring but merely deferred to their superiors. However, Folman does single out Ariel Sharon, the Defense Minister at the time, who was found by his own government, through the Kahan commission, to “bear personal responsibility” for the Sabra and Shatilla Massacre. Folman also depicts the IDF encircling the refugee camp, controlling all entrances and exists and providing cover and logistical support for the Phalangist militia, giving it free reign to “clean out terrorist nests.”  The subsequent massacre of Palestinian refugees was declared an “act of genocide” by the United Nations General Assembly.

Eventually, Folman remembers his participation in the massacre: he fired flares that illuminated the darkened Lebanese night sky providing the militia with enough light to continue their bloodshed until the morning. His suppressed memory reveals not only the horrors of war, but also a burdensome, unspoken guilt.  Questions of “the banality of evil” and the depths of one’s complicity in aiding a massacre haunt him and other soldiers involved in the tragedy.  

As in life, Folman’s penetrating film offers few resolutions to such critical questions. Because Folman cannot remember the massacre, or his role in allowing it to occur, his journey begins in “denial.”  Subsequently, his pursuit of discovery is fueled by “awareness” of a traumatic event as he interviews IDF soldiers, psychologists and journalists and slowly begins reassembling his fragmented and tortured memory.  Only at the end, as Folman’s animated avatar finally stands in front of the grieving Palestinian women exiting the refugee camps, does he finally “accept” his role as a partner in this bloody waltz. At this moment of epiphany, Folman jarringly switches from animation to real, documentary footage depicting the devastated Palestinian survivors and the corpses of their brutally slaughtered men, women and children. As the “imaginary camera” breaks, we awaken from the hallucinatory dream and are transformed into active observers forced to experience the horrifying reality of the massacre.  Although Folman and his interview subjects never admit it, the film not only serves as a testament to their mea culpa, but also perhaps exists as an entreaty to atonement.

In order to achieve a similar awareness, however, Israel must break her imaginary camera and remove the blackened veil that has forever blinded her from confronting and accepting the crimes she has committed against the Palestinians, and ultimately, against herself.
As of today, Israel dances her waltz to the symphony of injustice.

Wajahat Ali is a Muslim American of Pakistani descent. He is a playwright, essayist, humorist and Attorney at Law, whose work, “The Domestic Crusaders” is the first major play about Muslim Americans living in a post 9-11 America. His blog is at http://goatmilk.wordpress.com/

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