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How the U.S. Army Kills Its Own Soldiers

A horrifying, exclusive report from JoAnn Wypijewski on the grim secrets of Fort Sill, Oklahoma. How a sadistic drill sergeant tortured basic trainees, amid brutal indifference that led to the death on March 19,2006,of 21-year-old PFC Matthew Scarano. Dead Movement Marching? Cockburn and St Clair assess the failures of the national antiwar groups, even as popular opposition to the war tops 60 per cent. Stalin or Confucius? Chris Reed on the Secrets of the Garden of Bliss, otherwise known as North Korea. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

March 29, 2006

John Ross
When Water is Not a Human Right

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
AWOL: Black Leaders and Immigration

Website of the Day
Colombia Support Network Needs Your Help

 

March 28, 2006

Sharon Smith
Liberal Hypocrisy on Immigration: Krugman and Clinton Say Shut the Door

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush is No Conservative

Tariq Ali
Karachi Social Forum: NGOs or WGOs?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
God's Torturers: from Torquemada to Opus Dei

Ramzy Baroud
False Impressions: the Media and the Middle East

Evelyn Pringle
Fentanyl's Body Count: the FDA's Math Problem

Seth Sandronsky
Inflation and Speculation

Patrick Cockburn
Shias May Now Turn on US Forces

 

March 27, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
War Crime in a Mosque

Joshua Frank
The Democrats' Daddy Warbucks

Ron Jacobs
The Case of the Anti-Minutemen Five

Jeff Lays
Eternal Spending for a Never-Ending War

Davey D.
We Didn't Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Us

Robert Billyard
"I Did Not Join the British Army to Conduct US Foreign Policy"

Jim Rigby
Why We Let an Atheist Join Our Church

Lisa Viscidi
Justice and Impunity in Latin America: the Case of Rios Montt

Nick Dearden
Refugees: Thirty Years in the Western Sahara

Gideon Levy
Are We Done Killing Children, Yet?

Website of the Day
"Love Me, I'm a Liberal " (Updated)


March 25 / 26, 2006

Alexander Cockburn
Why There's No Strategy to End This War

Patrick Cockburn
The Battle for Baghdad: It's Already Begun

Ralph Nader
Bush's Divorce from Reality

Christopher Reed
Slave Labor and Hell Ships: Mitsubishi Awaits Judgment for Its War Crimes

Jeff Ballinger
Memo to Walter Mosley: the Crisis in Black Leadership

Joseph Massad
Blaming the Israel Lobby

Brian Cloughley
The Fifth Afghan War

Chris Floyd
Death in the Village of Isahaqi

Elaine Cassel
Abortion Politics: The FDA and Plan B

Dave Zirin
Death Row Talks Back to Etan Thomas

John Chuckman
Sorry, Prime Minister, Afghanistan is Not Canada's War

Sharon Smith
"Si Se Puede!": On Chicago's Streets

Christopher Fons
A City With Latinos

Chris Kromm
Coretta Scott King a Communist? There's a History Here

John Bomar
Neurotic-in-Chief: Bush's "Change of Course"

Ron Jacobs
More Than Just a Band

Maymanah Farhat
What MoMA Does to "Islamic" Art

St. Clair / Walker / Vest
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Harley, Davies, Engel and Subiet

Website of the Weekend
Peacecast

 

March 24, 2006

Cockburn / Sengupta / Duff
How the CPT Hostages were Freed

P. Sainath
Bribe or Die

Todd Chretien
Jim Crow Goes Fishing: the Racist War on Immigrants

Marty Omoto
The Other California

Michael Carmichael
Islamophobia at Downing Street: Tony Blair's Bipolarity

Peter Phillips
Impeachment Movement Grows; Media Yawns

Gabriel Kolko
The US Empire vs. Reality

Website of the Day
Music for Peace

 

March 23, 2006

Charles V. Peña
Bush's Pro-Terrorism Defense Budget

Joe DeRaymond
El Salvador 2006: a Broken Nation

Robert Fisk
"US Authorities Say..."

Jonathan Cook
The Emerging Jewish Consensus in Israel

Tom Engelhardt
Whatever Happened to Congress?: an Interview with Chalmers Johnson

Joshua Frank
Political Lemmings: the Democrats and the Precipice

Norman Solomon
The Ultimate Scapegoat: Blaming the Media for Bad War News

Robert Fitch / Joe Allen
An Exchange on the State of Organized Labor

Patrick Cockburn
Kirkuk's Dr. Death

CounterPunch News Service
On the Proper Way to Address a Bible-Waving Republican State Senator from Maryland

Website of the Day
Bird-Dogging Kerry

 

March 22, 2006

David MacMichael
Iranian Nuclear Showdown: an Unnecessary Crisis

Juan Santos
Brown Skin, Yellow Star: Making Latinos Illegal

Paul Craig Roberts
Hollow Nation: Americans Don't Live Here Anymore

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's My Lai?: Shooting Any Iraqi Who Moves

Ramzy Baroud
The Jericho Raid

Jason Leopold
The Mysterious "Official One": Woodward's Plame-Leak Deep Throat

Dennis Perrin
Killer Lies from Cheney's Harlot

William Blum
The Cuban Punching Bag

Jeffrey St. Clair
Contract Casino

Website of the Day
Bird Flu: Will It Cross Over?

 

March 21, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's Delusional Speech

Winslow Wheeler
Lipstick on the Pig: the Fiasco of Congressional Earmark Reform

Tom Engelhardt
Cold Warrior in a Strange Land: an Interview with Chalmers Johnson

Arnold Oliver
To the Guy Who Called Me a Traitor: Dissent and the Iraq War

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
When Black Cops Go Bad: the Killing of Elio Carrion

Mike Whitney
Death Squad Democracy

William A. Cook
Israeli Human Rights: Starve the Palestinians

Sophia A. McLennen
Assault on Higher Education: the Conservative Push for the Right Student

 

March 20, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
A Collapsing Presidency

Dave Lindorff
Howard Dean Tells CounterPunch: DNC No Foe of Impeachment

Ralph Nader
The DNC's "Grassroots Agenda": Howard Dean's Plea for Advice

Diane Christian
License to Lie: Over to You, Dante

Jeff Halper
"To Hell with All of You": the Power of Saying No

Harry Browne
Unhappy St. Patrick's Day: Bush's Crackdown on Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein

Norman Solomon
Why are We Here?: Is There a Right Way to Wage a Wrong War?

Patrick Cockburn
Death Squads on the Prowl; Iraq Convulsed by Fear

Website of the Day
Abugate

 

March 18 / 19, 2006

Cockburn / St. Clair
Three Years On: Where's the Resistance Here on the Home Front?

Werther
Bombs and Butchers: "Where Do We Get Such Men?"

Chris Kromm
Katrina Aid Package: Much Too Little; Much Too Late

Patrick Cockburn
Halabja: Kurds Destroy Monument to Victims of Saddam's Poison Gas Attack

Elaine Cassel
Abortion Politics and Animus for Women: Can Justice Kennedy be Swayed?

S. Brian Willson
Iraq Vets and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Fred Gardner
The War on Kids

Brian Cloughley
General Insanity: the Prevarications of Gen. Peter Pace

Laura Carlsen
Challenging Disparity: Toward a New US Policy in Latin America

Eamon Martin
Life in the Shadows of the Empire: Mysterious Photographers of Nothing

Julie Hilden
Free Speech in the Classroom: Teachers Don't Enjoy Enough Legal Protection

Alison Weir
So Much for "Sunshine Week": AP Erases Video of Israeli Soldier Shooting Palestinian Boy

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Krieger, Louise, and Engek

Website of the Weekend
Are the Elites Turning Against the Effects of the Israel Lobby?

 

March 17, 2006

Eduardo Galeano
Abracadabra: Uruguay's Desaparecidos Begin to Appear

Greg Moses
Bush and Nuclear Preemption: Do You Feel Safe With This Man's Finger on the Button?

Richard Falk / David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is Dying: What Now?

Cindy and Craig Corrie
Three Ways to Remember Rachel

Amira Hass
Hamas's Haniyeh: "I Never Sent Anyone on a Suicide Mission"

Mike Marqusee
Reasons to March

James Petas and Robin Eastman-Abaya
Philippines: the Killing Fields of Asia

Website of the Day
Black Shamrock

 

March 16, 2006

Norman Solomon
Hook, Line and Sinker: War-Loving Pundits

Tom Philpott
Neoliberalism at the Garden Gate: Community Farming in LA

Heather Gray
Anne Braden: the South's Rebel Without a Pause

Amira Hass
Is Hamas Playing into the Hands of Israeli Hardliners?

Missy Comley Beattie
Dangerous-to-Society Women: Locked Up in the Tombs

Sen. Russell Feingold
President Bush has Broken the Law; He Must be Held Accountable

Lucinda Marshall
President Ken Doll: Bush Insults Women on Intl. Women's Day

Andrew Bosworth
From the Man Who Voted Against Katrina Aid: Joe Barton's War on CITGO

Clancy Sigal
In Celebration of Dachau's 73rd Anniversary, Halliburton Gets Concentration Camp Contract

Website of the Day
Help Rebuild the New Orleans Public Library


March 15, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Raid on the Jericho Jail

Winslow Wheeler
Hiding the Cost of War: Paying for Iraq with Supplemental Funding

Diane Christian
Sharon's Stroke

Ron Jacobs
New Tenants for Abu Ghraib?: a Cell for Kissinger and Haig

Missy Comley Beattie
How Many Brinks to Pass?

Jared Bernstein
The Minority Wealth Gap

Noam Chomsky
The Crumbling Empire

Website of the Day
French Students Reclaim the Streets of Paris

 

March 14, 2006

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
No Requiem for a Black Conservative: the Fall of Claude Allen

Dave Lindorff
Why the Gitmo Tribunals are a Bad Idea: Exhibit A, t he Moussaoui Case

Kevin Zeese
Divide and Rule in Iraq Gone Awry

Todd Chretien
Counting the Dead in Iraq: Why is the Left Understating the Carnage?

Jason Kunin
Canada in Afghanistan: "We're Here Because We're Here"

Thomas Palley
The Economics of Outsourcing

Cockburn / St. Clair
Pages from the Liberals' War

Website of the Day
Golf Courses and Swimming Pools

 

March 13, 2006

Uri Avnery
The Missing Word

Dave Lindorff
Extra, Extra! Media Reports on Censure Motion

Mike Whitney
South Dakota's Taliban: the Fanatics are on the Loose

David Green
Questions of Solidarity: Blacks and Jews in Neo-Con America

Jeremy Scahill
Rest Easy, Bill Clinton: Slobo Can't Talk Any More

Mike Ferner
Up Against the Wall, Son: Hungering for Justice During My First Congressional Testimony

Corey Harris
Memories of Ali Farka Touré

Paul Craig Roberts
Killing Off Milosevic: Was Serbia a Practice Run for Iraq?

Website of the Day
Prayer Flags for Peace


March 11 / 12, 2006

Alexander Cockburn
Democrats: When the War Was Lost

Ralph Nader
Bush at the Tipping Point

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Did Bush Destroy Iraq?

Ben Tripp
My Night at the Oscars: the Happy People Speak Out

John Strausbaugh
The Cowboys and the Village Voice: Alt Press Flagship Goes Corporate

Landau / Hassen
Why "We" Fight "Their" Wars

Robert Bryce
A Thousand Pages of Rage

Gary Leupp
Why They Really Think They Must Defeat Iran

Fred Gardner
"But He's Good on Our Issue"

Ron Jacobs
Condi and Iran: Folly, Tragedy and Farce

Jonathan Scott
Science Fiction's Black Oracle: the Genius and Courage of Octavia Butler

Ramzy Baroud
Who Will Stop Bush's Militant Militarists?

Jordan Flaherty
Gitmo on the Mississippi: Life Under the Klan Wasn't This Bad

John Chuckman
Parable of the Hatchet: the Fallacy of Nation-Building in Afghanistan

Joe Allen
Smearing Ron Carey and the TDU: Bob Fitch's Hatchet Job

Julia Kendlbacher
Amazonia: Where All Life Matters

St. Clair / Walker / Pollack / Vest
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Hassen, Harley, Ford and Subiet

Website of the Weekend
No Hay Ser Humano Ilegal

 

March 10, 2006

Ben Rosenfeld
The Great Green Scare and the Fed's Case Against Rod Coronado: a War on the First Amendment

Lila Rajiva
The Gitmo Documents: Miller, Boykin, Cambone and Feith

Saree Makdisi
From Rachel Corrie to Richard Rogers: the Wall, the Javits Center and the Bullying of an Architect

Elena Shore
FBI Grills US Professor Over Support for Venezuela

Joshua Frank
How the Green Party Slays Their Own

Dave Zirin
Lynching Barry Bonds

Aura Bogado
An Interview with Subcomandate Marcos

 

March 9, 2006

John Walsh
Neocon Daniel Pipes Advocates Civil War in Iraq as Strategic Policy

Annie Zirin
Leftwing Generals: the Dark Side of Liberal Imperialism

Brian McKenna
We All Live in Poletown Now: GM and the Corporate Uses of Eminent Domain

Chris Floyd
Scar Tissue: How the Bushes Brought Bedlam to Iraq

Rachard Itani
"Over There": Iraq as Soap Opera

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Action Thing

Wylie Harris
Immigration and Jeffersonian Democracy: Free Borders Make Good Neighbors

Alexander Cockburn
Ex-State Department Security Officer Charges Pre-9/11 Cover-Up

Website of the Day
About Pace: Expelling Anti-War Students

 

March 8, 2006

Patrick Bond
The Loans of Mass Destruction: Wolfowitz's Anti-Corruption Hoax at the World Bank

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Elusive Victories in Haiti

Pat Williams
Buyer's Remorse: Bush, the View from the Purple States

Lance Selfa
The Democrats and Dubai: the Politics of Distraction

Mokhiber / Weissman
Have You Ever Been Convicted of a Felony?

Walter Brasch
Compromising Civil Liberties

Vijay Prashad
For Them Indian Mangoes: Anatomy of an Agreement

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie: a Call to Action

 

March 7, 2006

Werther
Half a Trillion Dollars: It's an Awful Lot of Money to Make Us Less Safe and Less Free

John Blair
Dr. Strangelove is Our President: Global Peace Through Nuclear Weapons

Dave Lindorff
The Impeachment Groundswell and Bush's Last Hope: the Democrats

Mike Whitney
No Immunity: Israel's Policy of Targeted Assassination

Warren Guykema
Who is Afraid of Rachel Corrie?

Sen. Russell Feingold
Misleading Testimony About NSA Domestic Spying

Robert Jensen
Why I am a Christian (Sort Of)

Norman Solomon
Digitalized Hype: a Dazzling Smokescreen?

Bernie Dwyer
Hopeful Signs Across Latin America: an Interview with Noam Chomsky

Website of the Day
Golem Song


March 6, 2006

Ralph Nader
Bush and Katrina: "Situational Information?"

Dave Zirin
Why Did Pat Tillman Die? an Investigation Reopens

Vanessa Redgrave
Censorship of the Worst Kind: the Second Death of Rachel Corrie

Walter A. Davis
Theater, Ideology and the Censorship of "My Name is Rachel Corrie"

Joshua Frank
Down By Law: the Mysterious Case of David Cobb

Nate Mezmer
A Second Look at "Crash": More Myths About Blacks and Racist Cops

Paul Craig Roberts
America's Bleak Jobs Future

Website of the Day
Crossroads: Race, Class and Art


March 4 / 5, 2006

Alexander Cockburn
The Dubai Ports Purchase: National Insecurity, Imported or Homegrown?

Jennifer Van Bergen
Bush's NSA Spying Program Violates the Law

Steven Higgs
Dying for Their Work: Westinghouse Workers and the Highest Level of PCBs Ever Recorded

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Generals, the Legislators and the Gulfstream VIP Transports

Ron Jacobs
Stealing Back Adam's Rib

Rev. William E. Alberts
Remember Damadola

Colin Asher
Goodbye, Dubai: the Teamsters and the Ports

Fred Gardner
Denney's Law

"Pariah"
Scapegoats and Shunning: Sexual Fascism in Progressive America

John Scagliotti
Brokeback Mountain: Pain is Not Enough

Seth Sandronsky
When the White House Walks Away: Bush, Arnold and the Flood Risk in the Central Valley

Joan Roelofs
A Challenge to Rebuild the World

Arjun Makhijani
The US / India Nuclear Pact: a Bad and Dangerous Deal

Ardeshr Ommani
Destroying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Diana Barahona
An Open Letter to Freedom House: Release Info on Your Federal Grants

Ben Tripp
Bonzo, Wherefore Art Thou?

St. Clair / Socialist Worker Staff
Playlist: What We're Listening To

Poets' Basement
Engel, Davies, Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Return of Pearl Jam

March 3, 2006

Laura Carlsen
Mexico: the Power of Corruption and the Corruption of Power

John V. Whitbeck
Two States or One?

Chris Floyd
The Monolith Crumbles: Reality and Revisionism About Iran

Mohamed Hakki
Wolfowitz at the World Bank: Cronyism and Corruption

Pratyush Chandra
Bush in India: Dinner with George and Manmohan

John Scagliotti
Why are There No Real Gays in "Brokeback Mountain"?

Website of the Day
Support the IRC!

 

March 2, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economic News is Spun

Dave Lindorff
Troops to Bush: Get Us Out of Here!

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Democracy: the Hamas Factor

Saul Landau
Halfway Down the Road to Hell

Joe Allen
The Murder of George Jackson: an Interview with His Lawyer, Stephen Bingham

Steve Shore
Berlusconi on Capitol Hill: "I Am Italy!"

Denise Boggs
Roadless and Clueless: Wilderness Logging Greenwashed by Enviro Groups

Norman Finkelstein
The Attacks on Beyond Chutzpah

Website of the Day
ScreenHead

 

March 1, 2006

Mairead Corrigan Maguire
The Human Right to a Nuclear Free World

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The India That Can No Longer Say No

Faheem Hussain
Bush in Pakistan

Antony Loewenstein
Spinning Us to War with Iran: an Aussie Perspective

Elizabeth Schulte
The Charge to Overturn Roe Has Begun

Mike Whitney
Sudan: Beware Bolton's Sudden Humanitarianism

John Ryan
Canada and the American Empire

Michael Donnelly
Brokeback Mountain: a No Love Story

Tom Reeves
Haitian Election Aftermath

Website of the Day
Mardi Gras Index: Reuilding of New Orleans Stalled

 

 

 

 

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March 29, 2006

Atrocities By Any Other Name...

When is Killing Arab Civilians Considered a Massacre?

By OMAR BARGHOUTI

Recent reports from Iraq indicate beyond doubt that the U.S. occupation army has embarked on a new "tactic" from its menu of atrocities, in an attempt to counter the burgeoning Iraqi resistance attacks against its soldiers. "Old-style" massacres of Iraqis have become so commonplace lately that even Iraqi "allies" of the U.S. were forced to unreservedly condemn them.

Among Western governments, alas, silence prevails. After all, the massacre victims are only Arabs. Not only is there an alarming apathy towards the horrifying spread of this phenomenon, but there is also a despicable aversion to calling it by its name. At the same time, many in the West go up in arms condemning the "massacre" of seals, whales, dolphins or a few white men anywhere around the world.

"Modern" massacres, that is the indiscriminate bombing -- which last year included the use of phosphorus -- of Iraqi civilian neighborhoods in "unruly" cities like Falluja and Qa'im, have always been a standard U.S. and British tactic. But those "clean," remotely-executed and hi-tech acts of state terrorism were always easier for the world's only empire and its lackeys to defend and present as "precision" targeting of "the enemy," especially to a pathetically obedient media. The direct, messy murder of civilians, particularly by tying their hands and shooting them in the head, execution style, has not been as common, although it was practiced in several reported incidents in Iraq since the invasion. Now it is being reported more often, but in language that in effect, if not always by intention, leads to sanitizing it, even to normalizing it as a nasty, yet unavoidable, part of "war." If this evasion from using the term massacre is not deliberate, it can only reflect a deep-seated racism among western journalists who cannot use the same ethical or professional standards in reporting the killings of Arab civilians that they normally use when dealing with "white" victims in comparable situations.

Just this month, for instance, the U.S. army committed at least two massacres, killing in cold blood tens of Iraqi civilians, including four children and a six-month old baby, yet neither of them was reported as a massacre. On March 15, near Balad, the Iraqi police reported the following:

"American forces used helicopters to drop troops on the house of Faiz Harat Khalaf situated in the Abu Sifa village of the Ishaqi district. The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people, including five children, four women and two men, then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals."

A local police commander said hospital autopsies "revealed that all the victims had bullet shots in the head and all bodies were handcuffed." It is crucial to note that the Iraqi police force is recruited, trained and assigned tasks under vigilant U.S. supervision.

A similar massacre was committed in Haditha, in November of last year, as an act of revenge after a bomb attack on a U.S. marine force. A nine-year-old survivor of that crime, who lived in a house near the site of the killings, told Time magazine that after the explosion her father began reading the Qur'an. "First, they went into my father's room, where he was reading the Qur'an, and we heard shots. I couldn't see their faces very well, only their guns sticking into the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny." All in all, 15 Iraqis were butchered in this incident.

Still, the Guardian reporter, or editor, chose not to call either "event" a massacre. He also avoided any terms of revulsion usually used to describe similar "incidents," particularly those involving white victims.

This last Sunday, March 26, another American massacre of Iraqis was reported in the Guardian. The Iraqi Security Minister, no less, described it as follows:

"At evening prayers, American soldiers accompanied by Iraqi troops raided the Mustafa mosque and killed 37 people. They [the victims] were unarmed. [US soldiers] went in, tied up the people and shot them all. They did not leave any wounded."

Calling the mosque massacre a "raid," the Guardian quoted U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson saying: "In our observation of the place and the activities that were going on, it's difficult for us to consider this a place of prayer," adding, "It was not identified by us as a mosque... I think this is a matter of perception." Accordingly, the U.S. army concluded that "no mosques were entered or damaged." Of course! No humans were massacred either, it would seem, as they were mere Iraqis. It is, after all, a "matter of perception."

The Independent, which is typically more courageous in covering Iraq, reported the same incident as such: "US forces killed 22 people and wounded eight at a mosque in east Baghdad." Though it did call the mosque by its name, the Independent still failed to call the "incident" a massacre. "The shooting," "the killings," but not a massacre.

To many Arabs, these massacres in Iraq evoke the memory of the Jenin refugee camp atrocities in 2002, when Israeli occupation forces bulldozed many homes and indiscriminately shot at any Palestinian who moved, leading to the death of tens and the injury of hundreds. The fact that the Palestinian armed resistance in the camp was exceptionally fierce -- and heroic, one might add, causing the death of more than 20 occupation soldiers, was used as a pretext to justify the brutal killing of innocent civilians.

A BBC report on the initial findings of an Amnesty International investigation team -- that visited the Jenin refugee camp right after the Israeli withdrawal from it -- stated:

"A British forensic expert who has gained access to the West Bank city of Jenin says evidence points to a massacre by Israeli forces. [] Prof Derrick Pounder, who is part of an Amnesty International team granted access to Jenin, said he has seen bodies lying in the streets and received eyewitness accounts of civilian deaths."

Then Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, who initially told Ha'aretz that a "massacre" had taken place in Jenin, later retracting his statement, categorically stated that under no circumstances Israel should allow UN investigators access to the Camp. Indeed, Israel, supported by the U.S. and appeased by the UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan, refused to allow the UN to investigate the Israeli atrocities in Jenin. Whether the indiscriminate killings it committed in Jenin constituted a massacre or not was never allowed to be examined impartially by the UN. But what was abundantly clear by all objective accounts was the fact that Israel committed the following war crimes in Jenin:

"[T]he systematic prohibition on the provision of food, water, and medical supplies to the entire civilian population of Jenin refugee camp despite its urgent need of such supplies; systematic prohibition of medical care to the entire population of the camp when it was known many individuals were in urgent need of such care on account [of] injuries sustained during the conflict and/or medical conditions unrelated to it; the deliberate use of civilian non-combatants as human shields to facilitate military operations; torture, abuse, deprivation, and humiliation of men and boys arrested en masse solely on account of their status as residents of Jenin refugee camp; summary executions; implementation of a shoot-to-kill policy against individuals clearly identifiable as civilian non-combatants, on the pretext of strict enforcement of a prolonged curfew maintained without any interruption; deliberate destruction of buildings in which civilian non-combatants were known to reside without prior warning when provision of such warning would not have impeded military operations; and widespread destruction of property after the conclusion of military hostilities for punitive rather than operational objectives."

The above and the early Israeli panic lead many in the media to suspect the occurrence of a massacre. Under unprecedented Israeli intimidation, accusations and threats, however, initial western media reports of a massacre in Jenin were quickly removed from circulation. Israeli-influenced media sources later attacked those who even entertained the thought of a massacre, particularly after the total number of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers turned out to be "only" 56.

Whether in Iraq or Palestine, a crucial question poses itself: how many Arab civilians must be murdered in order for a massacre to be recognized as such in the patently hypocritical western media?

Omar Barghouti, independent political and cultural analyst who has published essays on the rise of empire, the Palestine question and art of the oppressed. He holds a Masters degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University, and is currently a doctoral student of philosophy (ethics) at Tel Aviv University. He contributed to the published book, The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid (Verso Books, 2001). He is an advocate of the secular, democratic state solution in historic Palestine. His article "9.11 Putting the Moment on Human Terms" was chosen among the "Best of 2002" by The Guardian. He can be reached at: jenna@palnet.com





 

 

 

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