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April 15, 2002
James
T. Phillips
"Homicide"
Bombers
April 14, 2002
William Blum
The CIA and Venezuela
David
Vest
A
Good Old-Fashion "Incursion"
Ralph Nader
General Motors:
Stuck in Reverse
M. Junaid
Alam
From
the Ashes: Palestinian Struggle for Freedom
Sam Bahour
Palestinians and Americans
April 13, 2002
Beth Daoud
Life
in the Ruins of Nablus
Patrick Cockburn
Bulldozing History:
The End Nears for Stalin's
Most Monstrous Hotel
Gregory
Wilpert
The
Coup in Venezuela:
an Eye-Witness Account
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Thoughts on Our War
Against Terrorism
Anne Winkler-Morey
Why
I Didn't Organize
a Passover Seder This Year
April 12, 2002
Nancy Stohlman
Live from East Jerusalem:
International Nonviolence
Brian
J. Foley
Defeating
Evil
Olivier Audeoud
Did the US Break
the Laws of War?
Rep. Ron
Paul
The
Middle East Quagmire
Michael Colby
Republican Porn:
Oiling Up the Caribou
John Chuckman
Tom
Friedman's Fabrications
April 11, 2002
Patrick Cockburn
Battle of St. Petersburg Zoo
Jeff Halper
After
the Invasion:
Now What?
Falk / Krieger
Taming the Nuclear Monster
Steve
Perry
The
Good Life of
Nellie Stone Johnson
Nick Ring
Efficiency and Occupation:
Terrorism vs. Taylorism
Alexander
Cockburn
From
the West Bank to BBQ
to Old Sparky, And Beyond
April 10, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians
George
Monbiot
World
Bank to West Bank
Fran Schor
US-Sponsored State Terror
David
Vest
Political
Color Schemes
Jack McCarthy
Florida State Radicals:
The Berkeley of the South
Rises Again
Doreen
Miller
A
Tale of Two Warring Tribes
Michael Neumann
Israelis and Indians
April 9, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
Colin
Powell's Table Talk
Matt Vidal
Thomas Friedman,
Another Wasted Pulitzer
Ron Jacobs
Buyer
Beware
Robert Jensen
I Helped Kill a Palestinian
Vijay
Prashad
Memories
of Barbarity:
Sharonism and September
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
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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Read Whiteout and Find Out
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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April 15, 2002
A Field Trip to Jenin
By Susi Abeles
Jenin is one among many "closed military
zones" from which the media is barred; it considered the
most devastated of the areas assaulted and occupied by the IDF
in the last two weeks of its incursions into the Palestinian
Territories). Reports leak out of hundreds dead and their bodies
piling up in the houses and streets for lack of ability to transport
them out of the camp, the wounded dying with access of medical
assistance denied, houses demolished with their inhabitants
still inside, hundreds of families fortunate to escape (as it
were), driven out of the camp with nothing but the clothes they
are wearing, those left behind destitute following the demolition
of their homes and destruction of their property. Food supplies
are scarce; the residents are reported to have been without
fresh water for some ten days, relying now on sewage water which
is also being given to babies.
Early Friday evening, as the dusk's forgiving
light softened the city's streets and, just a couple of kilometres
away, as city workers swept up shards of glass and washed blood
away from the sidewalks where a woman had blown herself and
others up only three hours earlier outside the market, I raided
the large recyling cages in my neighborhood for empty water
bottles. I was joining a coalition of peace groups to travel
to Jenin, in the northern Palestinian Territories, to deliver
water and other emergency supplies to the beseiged people of
the refugee camp.
I rose with the sun on Saturday morning
and mounted a battered coach, my buggy bulging with now filled
water bottles. Along the way, we were briefed on how to respond
in a non-violent fashion to the kind of police brutality experienced
just two weeks earlier at another action --tear gas and sticks
--and what to say if we were arrested. We received a call that
water cannons were sighted at the checkpoint --tools, we were
reassured, that were much less painful than tear gas and blows
from sticks.
We travelled two hours north, past fields
of irridescent coral red poppies and into the gentle hills of
the Lower Galillee. We were soon joined by dozens of other buses,
from Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv and Haifa, and from neighboring towns
and villages. I cried to see a few thousand others embark over
the next hour, mostly Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, as well
as people from various Christian "peace-keeping" groups:
from Italy and Spain, France and Germany, women from Greenham
Common in England and several lively Brazilians, in baseball
caps bearing the emblem of their organization, who had themselves
photographed in front of their bus. And the media, some in bulky
bullet proof vests --from the United States, Europe, Japan and
other countries and continents.
We formed human chains, working for two
hours to unload supplies from the buses and packing nearly as
many trucks with them; there were several thousand litres of
water, hundreds of boxes of infant formula and bags of diapers,
bedding and clothes. One painful altercation took place between
an Israeli activist who wanted to carry the Israeli flag --an
attempt by the liberal left to reclaim it from the right --and
a Palestinian enraged by the meaning it conveys. Otherwise,
collaboration was realized nearly soundlessly -- signs were written,
last minute supplies distributed, marshalls organized us to
move to this side and then to the other and suddenly we were
setting off for the Salem checkpoint three kilometres away,
where we hoped to be able to deliver the trucks to Palestinians
waiting on the other side.
We kicked the dust into our hair and
mouths, our spirits high, stirred too with the energy of young
Palestinians' vigorous chants. Along the road, clusters of Palestinians
resting among orchards of fruit trees waved and called out
to their friends. An Israeli with a video camera walked behind
a photographer who was shooting for the police, irritating him
with her calm challenge --whether he wasn't ashamed to be working
for them. He climbed into a military jeep and accelerated along
the road; alas, we walked nearly as quickly as he was able to
drive and she pursued him doggedly, poking her camera into the
car and filming his license plate. A quick bright brushstroke
in a vast landscape of injustice and powerlessness.
We arrived at the crest of the road where
below sprawled the menacing complex that comprised the checkpoint.
Soldiers with guns slung across their chests fanned out in a
line across the field; behind them a tank along with several
dozen various other military personnel reminded us of our small
place. Our people and theirs met somewhere between our perspiring
and exhilerated crowd and their ranks (I was reminded of team
captains in sports). We waited for an hour, eating hungrily
from donated boxes of shnitzel in pita and hotdogs in buns.
A truck sold ice-cream and cold soft drinks, it's cheery song
dislocated in the rubble of this terrain. Men placed signs among
the rough grasses of the fields, on which they carefully knelt
for the mid-day's prayer; women also settled onto pieces of
cardboard and removed their shoes with relief. Knots of young
men, oiled hair glistening in the sun, were tempted by the sight
of the military; they advanced towards the checkpoint and then
retreated as the marshalls shouted at them to return to the
road.
Eventually, an settlement was negotiated
--we would leave and the trucks would be allowed entry through
another passage. We turned around and climbed back up the road,
back towards the buses that awaited us. We trudged quietly now,
thinning into groups of two or three, both pleased with our
success and disappointed by the non-confrontational resolution.
Somehow, rage isn't satisfied with agreements reached over handshakes,
--a sometimes truth seemingly obvious in this particular corner
of the world...particularly in these "disgusting days",
as Israeli journalist David Grossman writes.
Susi Abeles
a grade school teacher in West Jerusalem on her participation
in bringing humanitarian relief supplies to Jenin Palestine.
She is an active member of several Israeli activist groups that
favor the complete removal of Israeli military and settler society
from the occupied territories to the "Green line"
of 1967.
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