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December 24, 2001
Michael
Chisari
War
as Diversionary Tactic
Cockburn/St. Clair
Enron
and the Green Seal
December 21, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
War
Good for Bush
John Chuckman
The
First Victim in the
War on Terror
December 20, 2001
Lawrence
McGuire
Killing
Other People's Children
Miriam Rozen
Foundation
Without Representation?
Kenneth
Roth
A
Letter to Rumsfeld on
Military Tribunals
William Blum
Casualties:
Theirs and Ours
December 19, 2001
Marjorie
Cohn
Don't
Pre-Judge John Walker
Sam Bahour
Palestine
and You
December 18, 2001
Shahid
Alam
Clash
of Civilizations?
Carl Estabrook
Who
Opposes This War?
December 17, 2001
Edward
Said
Mahfouz
and the Cruelty
of Memory
December 16, 2001
Amira Howeidy
Dangerous By
Definition?
Bahour
and Dahan
Zinni's
Doomed Mission
December 15, 2001
John Isaacs
Bush's 12
Lumps of Coal
for Christmas
Dana Cook
The
Execution of bin Laden
Yusuf Agha
Tale of the
Tape:
Osama Gump?
December 14, 2001
Don Atapattu
A Conversation with
Norman
Finkelstein
December 13, 2001
Trojanow and Hoskote:
Nonsense
Mantras of Our Times
Dr. A.
Tajudeen
Afghanistan
and Zaire
Michael Williams
Prohibit
Prohibition
December 12, 2001
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens,
Walker
and Osama's Tape
Laura W. Murphy
Ashcroft's
Jihad
Shahid
Alam
Race
and Visibility
December 11, 2001
Joshua Orton
University
of Wisconsin
Won't Aid FBI Interviews
Philip
Farruggio
Cleansing
the Nation's Soul
Robert Fisk
Why I Was
Beaten
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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8-Page Special Issue
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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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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
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December 24,
2001
It Happened This Morning:
Believe It
or Not
By Sam Bahour
For the last sixteen months my staff has suffered
the humiliation of Israeli checkpoints twice a day, once coming
to work and once going back home. Daily, I'm briefed of the horror
stories, which unfortunately have become part of our 'normal'
life, about the events that take place at the checkpoints --
extended delays (at times 4-5 hours to travel what should take
20-30 minutes), shouting matches, walking through mud, climbing
mountains, being refused entry, etc, etc, etc.
However, today's briefing was special,
so special I had to document it. One of my mangers lives in Bir
Zeit, 7 minutes from Ramallah. When he arrived at the Surda checkpoint,
two hours prior to the start of the workday, he was faced with
a new type of Israeli solider. As part of Sharon's reinforcement
of all checkpoints around Ramallah to prevent Palestinian Authority
President Yaser Arafat from reaching Christmas prayers in Bethlehem,
Israel deployed Lebanese phalange soldiers to deal with the population.
These are the pro- Israel soldiers that joined the ranks of the
Israeli defense forces in Southern Lebanon when Israel invaded
that country in 1982.
With about two hundred people stopped
while on their way to work in Ramallah and in perfect Lebanese-accent
Arabic, the solider ordered the Palestinians to make 4 rows as
follows; pretty women, ugly women, men over 40 years old, and
men under 40 years old. Out of necessity to make it to Ramallah
and earn a living, three lines were formed, all females, men
over 40 and men under 40. This bastard Israeli solider then proceeded
to walk past the female line separating them into his taste of
pretty and ugly.
When he reached a female friend of my
manager he demanded that she stop chatting with the men. My manger
made a remark to her that he must be Lebanese. The solider heard
the remark and pulled my manager out of line and asked to see
his identification card. When he saw on the card that his family
name was Zeideh and that he was a Christian Palestinian (Palestinian
I.D. cards are required by Israel to state a person's religion)
he loudly chuckled that he was better than the other Muslims
in the row. My manager, being very politically aware himself,
provoked the solider by lying and telling him that he was an
Orthodox Christian, even though he is Marionette, just like the
solider. The solider quickly reacted in the opposite tone and
shouted to him that if that was the case then he is the scum
of the earth. Little did the solider know that the Zeideh family
is part of the family tree of the Khazen family, which is one
of the famous families of Lebanon.
The solider then asked my manager if
he was ever in Lebanon. When he refused to answer, the solider
told my staff member that he wanted to ask him one question.
How do you pronounce the word, tomato? My manager replied by
offering two options as an answer, tomato, or tomoto. He asked
the solider which one he wanted to hear. This infuriated the
solider because it was now revealed that this Palestinian knew
that in Lebanon one method of discrimination was for soldiers
to hear this word pronounced, which can identify if your accent
is Palestinian or Lebanese. In Lebanon, once that was known then
the age-old divide and conquers tactics used.
From that point the solider grabbed my
manager and a physical clash was about to ensue. Luckily, another
higher ranked solider approached and saw that the situation may
be explosive and thus put everyone waiting on his or her way.
This is the racism, the discrimination,
the humiliation, the naked arrogance and the military occupation
that Palestinians have been screaming to the world about. This
is what the Palestinians will end, with or without the U.S. consent!
Merry Christmas.
Sam Bahour
is a Palestinian-American and General Manager of the Arab Palestinian
Shopping Centers (www.apic-pal.com). He lives in the besieged
Palestinian City of Al-Bireh in the West Bank and can be reached
at sbahour@palnet.com.
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