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Today's
Stories
July
10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
July
9, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Carlos Delgado on Deck: Blue Jays Slugger
Stands Up Against War
Justin
Delacour
Wishing Kerry Would Shut Up About
Latin America
Robert
Fisk
Iraq in Reverse: Martial Laws Fuel Insurgency
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Two Congresses and a Funeral
William
S. Lind
The October Surprises
Sibel
Edmonds
Our Broken System: John Ashcroft's War on Truth
Ron
Jacobs
Reading Tea Leaves: What Vietnam Tells Us About Iraq's Future
Gary
Leupp
The Lie That Will Not Die: Cheney and
the Iraq/al-Qaeda Link
July
8, 2004
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Inexplicable John McCain
Toufic
Haddad
Protesting Israel's Apartheid Wall:
a Letter from the Hunger Strikers' Tent
Dave
Lindorff
Liberation as Martial Law
Joshua
Frank
The Fall: How Beltway Dems Sank Howard
Dean
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush & Cheney Play the Hitler Card
James
Petras
The Truth About Jimmy Carter
July
7, 2004
John
Chuckman
Kerry's BBQ: a Deafening Silence
of Meaning
Virginia
Tilley
A Line in the Sand: Azmi Bishara's
Hunger Strike
Susan
Martinez
A Letter to Bill Cosby
Mickey
Z
Elie Wiesel's Strange Parade
Michael
Donnelly
Our Own Private Wilderness: Trusting the Land in the Inland Empire
Sean
Donahue
Boston Social Forum: the Dems aren't the Only Show in Beantown
Diane
Christian
Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq
July
6, 2004
Lisa
Viscidi
Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans
Risk Lives to Reach El Norte
Marc
Norton
The Felonious Five Ride Again: the
Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants
James
Brooks
Chemical Warfare on the West Bank?
Ray
McGovern
Porter Goss as CIA Director?
William
Cook
Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...
July
5, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept.
11, July 4 and Systematic Torture
Chris
White
A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning
of Independence Day
Joe
Bageant
Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July
Robert
Jensen
Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore
Misses About the Empire
Kathy
Kelly
"Two Days an' a Wake-Up"
July
3 / 4, 2004
Elaine
Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence
Day
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
Snehal
Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak
Out
Bruce
Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens
Sharon
Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"
Josh
Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates
Robert
Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
Joe
Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!
Brian
Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine
Justin
Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons
William
S. Lind
Saudi Spillover
Linda
S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"
Greg
Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't
Back Down
Ron
Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"
Toni
Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There
Dan
Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?
Stew
Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection
Dave
Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for
Our Brando
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball
Steven
Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies
Website
of the Day
Global Peace Solution
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in
His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
June
29, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Cloak-and-Dagger Handover
Robert
Fisk
Alice in an Iraqi Wonderland
Troy
Selvaratnam
New York Times Boosts Pet Developer
Harry
Browne
Bush in Ireland
Ray
McGovern
The CIA According to Anonymous
Elaine
Cassel
Hamdi, Padilla & Rasul: Who Really
Won?
June
28, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn / Leyla Linton
Grisly Rituals in Iraq
Amira
Hass
Confronting Myths and Deadly Power
June
26 / 27, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
Patrick
Cockburn
Iyad Allawi, the CIA's New Stooge
in Iraq
Dennis
Hans
Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney,
the NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11
Ben
Tripp
Adventures in Fuel Efficiency
Dave
Lindorff
That State Department Terrorism
Report: What They Knew, But Didn't Tell You
Chris
Floyd
Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit
Ali
Tonak
Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives,
Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela
Keith
Rosenthal
The Withering of the Anti-War Movement
Bryan
Sacks
The Failure of the 9/11 Commission
Wayne
Madsen
Another Case of Blowback
Thomas
St. John
L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating
in the Wizard of Oz
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
American Swadeshi
June
25, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"
Saul
Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege:
Bush Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction
Amir
Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace
Jack
McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal?
Did Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?
Greg
Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
June 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
John
Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links
Patrick Cockburn
A
Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing
Death Threats
Harry Browne
On
the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe
Bill Kaufman
Another
Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush,
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did
They Tell?
Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?
John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy
Diana Johnstone
Kerry
and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"
June 23, 2004
Laura Carlsen
Bush
and Castro Face Off
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
Kurt Nimmo
From
Saddam, With Love
Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars
Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"
Patrick Cockburn
The
Pretense of an Independent Iraq
Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib
June 22, 2004
Dave Lindorff
The
Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption
Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings
Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq
John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés
Bruce Jackson
Saying
No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify
Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill
June
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Putin's Helpful Remarks
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos
Upon Chaos
Cockburn
/ Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty
Uri
Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage
June
19 / 20, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid
and Isolated
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation
on Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh
Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother
Nature
Col.
Dan Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis
in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a
Year Later
Prudence
Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!
Poets'
Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert
Kathy
Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids
June
18, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave
Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player
& Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American
Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
18, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
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Weekend
Edition
July 10 / 12, 2004
A
CounterPunch Special Report
The
Problem with Neutrality Between Palestinians and Israel
By
KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
A friend recently said that she had
come to believe the level of Israeli violence against Palestinians
is now so great that a balanced approach to the two sides, the
middle way promoted by so many peace groups, has become totally
untenable. Another friend, an Israeli American just returned
from several months in Israel, witnessed such a level of Israeli
violence, not only against Palestinians but even against Israeli
protesters, that she committed herself to oppose it. She decided
she could no longer "protect my own skin" by simply
standing by. "I no longer cared about protecting myself".
She put her life in danger on behalf of justice for the Palestinians.
These two friends have recognized
and are strongly protesting the sham of taking a neutral position
between the two sides in this most unbalanced of conflicts.
Neutrality in any conflict in which there is a gross imbalance
of power is probably an impossibility and certainly immoral.
Treading a middle path between one utterly powerless party and
another party with total power, effectively removes all restraints
on behavior by the powerful party. Yet this is the posture of
those American peace groups that put themselves forward as advocates
for Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation. They take no position
between the Palestinians and Israel, but only promote peace
plans such as the unofficial Geneva Accord. without also taking
action or even speaking out forcefully against Israel's occupation.
The consequence is that these groups have given Israel the time
and the license to devastate the land, begin its ethnic cleansing,
and destroy any prospect for Palestinian independence. Their
refusal to take a clear stand against Israel's oppressive policies
is a statement that might makes right, that oppressive policies
are acceptable, and most particularly that justice for Palestinians
is less important than power for Israel.
But when in history have decent
people seriously accepted balance and neutrality as a proper
response in moral conflicts or national conflicts that pit one
very powerful party against a powerless party?
Consider this analogy: a group
of well-meaning activists in late 1850s America hope to bring
an end to the horrors of slavery without war. They propose that
the two sides strive for reconciliation, that slaves sit down
at the negotiating table with slave owners and attempt to work
out their differences through negotiation. The activists believe
that the institution of slavery is oppressive, a violation of
human rights, and that it must end, but they also recognize the
property rights of owners to their slaves, as well as the owners'
right to their lives and their livelihoods their right
to exist and not be murdered in a slave uprising. The activists
propose a middle way between the two sides, recognizing that
both are responsible for the conflict (slaves have shown a propensity
to rebel, causing the slave owners to tighten their oppressive
grip) but believing that both slaves and owners have a right
to free, peaceful, and secure lives and that the only way to
achieve this is to avoid blaming either side.
Do we think this is absurd?
Imagine a similar scenario involving an attempt to mediate in
a balanced, blame-free atmosphere between Catholic priests and
the children they have sexually abused. The absurdity of neutrality
is equally obvious in this situation. What is most absurd in
these scenarios and what links them is the notion of treading
a middle or supposedly neutral path between two sides when there
exists a total imbalance of power. Could  anyone seriously suggest that
slaves, utterly powerless except for the ability occasionally
to rebel, should seek some kind of equitable solution between
themselves and their overlords? Could anyone seriously suggest
that abused children, utterly powerless except for the ability
to kick and scream, should negotiate with their abusers?
Thinking back to some of the
colonial conflicts of the twentieth century, is it possible to
imagine a scenario in which peacemakers or public commentators
and opinion molders ever believed these conflicts could be resolved
by simply splitting the difference and pursuing some middle path
between the two sides? In Vietnam, Algeria, South Africa, other
colonial conflicts in Africa and Asia conflicts that by
their very nature involved an overwhelmingly strong power in
absolute domination over a virtually powerless civilian population
no mediator, no commentator, no activist group ever credibly
proposed that the conflict be resolved by working from a neutral
position to try "reconciling" the two sides.
Yet this is essentially how
virtually everyone public discourse in general, from
opportunistic U.S. politicians of both major parties, to mainstream
media commentators, to most peace activists proposes
to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The notion of holding
the middle ground, of being "neutral", is soothing
to most people because it is ostensibly fair, it is optimistic,
it is positive, obviating the need for negativity and unpleasantness.
But a balanced position in an unbalanced situation inevitably
is a miscarriage of justice. In Palestine-Israel, it is a profoundly
immoral stance to maintain neutrality between powerless Palestinians
(who have the ability occasionally to murder innocent Israelis
but no power to regulate or save their own lives) and an overpowering,
overbearing Israel possessing all the military power, controlling
all the land. Neutrality here is no different from refusing
to take a stand between slaves and slave owners, or between children
and abusive priests.
The Pleasure
of Neutrality
Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun
magazine and founder of a network of grassroots organizations
around the country called collectively the "Tikkun Community",
is probably the most prominent of the centrist peace advocates,
although there are other organizations that pursue a similar
approach. Lerner has enunciated a position, which he calls the
"progressive middle path", that seeks a Palestinian-Israeli
reconciliation based on scrupulous adherence to the notion that
both peoples are responsible for the conflict, that each has
acted immorally and inhumanely, and that the only hope for peace
lies in not blaming either side and working for peace plans that
"provide for the well-being of both sides". The national
president of the Tikkun Community recently wrote in a letter
to the editor that Tikkun's purpose is to recognize that both
peoples have legitimate needs, that both "bear responsibility
for co-creating the conflict", and that both must be responsible
for solving the outstanding issues between them.
On the surface, all this glowing
neutrality sounds positively enlightened. Who could criticize
a program asserting that "both peoples' best chance for
lasting security lies in a new spirit of generosity, openhearted
reconciliation, and a genuine commitment to nonviolence"?
And in fact, Tikkun's strong support for the Geneva Accord,
an unofficial peace plan forged by former Palestinian and Israel
cabinet ministers and launched with considerable fanfare last
December, is a laudable effort to put something concrete behind
the call for reconciliation. There is much that is unfair to
the Palestinians in the Geneva Accord, particularly on the issue
of the refugees' right of return, but the plan as drafted at
least provides an acceptable starting point for negotiating the
particulars of a final peace agreement if there were
any hope of its being endorsed by either the government of Israel
or the United States. Unfortunately, there is no such hope.
One has the urge to tell these people to get real. It is not
historically true that both sides bear equal responsibility for
creating the conflict; moreover, in the hopelessly unbalanced
situation existing today, the two sides very clearly cannot bear
equal responsibility for resolving the conflict. The failure
to understand this indicates a wilful failure to acknowledge
the actual situation on the ground.
Neutrality and "generosity"
toward both sides may sound nice, but they are breathtakingly
unrealistic. Imagine urging Ariel Sharon or any of the Israeli
leadership or indeed most of the Israeli public these
days to exercise a spirit of generosity and openhearted
reconciliation. Imagine urging George Bush to work for the well-being
of Palestinians as well as Israelis. As a spiritual guide for
life, generosity and openhearted reconciliation are fine, but
as a political plan of action, they are meaningless. To do nothing
beyond issuing pleasant generalities, while Israel proceeds unimpeded
with the stunning transformation of the Palestinian landscape,
the destruction of Palestinian national expectations, and the
ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, is to make a mockery
of any "spirit of generosity".
Obsessive optimism and adherence
to a "middle path" can lead to some skewed thinking.
Lerner, for instance, denounces all those who have criticized
the Geneva Accord, as well as anyone who criticizes Israel for
human rights abuses without denouncing other states for worse
abuses, as "lefties" or, in his more unguarded moments
as when he recently attacked a long-time Middle East
activist and journalist in the Bay Area as "idiots
and anti-Semites". Lerner blames the "lefties"
for dividing the peace movement and thereby undermining the movement's
ability to push Bush toward pressuring Sharon to adopt the Geneva
Accord, something he claims with a straight face was a real possibility.
So angry is Lerner at the failure of the Geneva Accord that
he says he would not be surprised if "some of the most militant
of the ultra-lefties today who managed to paralyze the progressive
forces because of their one-sided hostility to Israel . . . turn
out to be conscious and paid agents of the Israeli or American
political Right".
Lerner also has a puzzling
tendency puzzling for someone clinging to the middle
to refer to the Palestinians as "the Other".
Although he uses the term in a friendly context of having
respect for "the Other" for instance the terminology
actually gives away the true nature of his neutrality. No matter
how conciliatory, Lerner clearly deep down thinks of himself
and Israel as residing on "this" side of that imaginary
middle path between "us" and "them", and
therefore his first interest is Israel. It cannot be particularly
appealing for the majority of Palestinians who seek genuine reconciliation
to be held at arm's length in this way. It is also very distasteful
for non-Jewish, non-Palestinian Americans who do not feel a loyalty
to Israel to hear any other American refer to Israel as part
of "us" while the Palestinians are characterized so
openly as alien.
The immorality of the center
is that this middle path has helped create a deathly silence
about the destruction of lives and property that goes on every
day in the occupied territories. Because they refuse to see
realities on the ground, centrists cannot even imagine the scale
of the oppression that Palestinians face at Israel's hands.
They cannot imagine the grotesque miscarriage of justice represented
by taking a middle position between the oppressor and the oppressed.
The checkpoints, the roadblocks, the sniper shootings, the aerial
bombardments, the assassinations, the settlements and Israeli-only
bypass roads, the land confiscations, the bulldozing of olive
groves, the demolition of homes and entire residential neighborhoods,
the foul labyrinth of walls and fences that have imprisoned entire
Palestinian villages, halted all movement, separated farmers
from farmland, children from schools, the sick from hospitals,
brothers from brothers: all of these separate aspects of Israel's
oppressive system, and the magnitude of their totality, have
escaped the rosy view of those who only follow a middle way.
Their silence and averted gaze grease the wheels of oppression
and are in no way balanced by the occasional suicide bombing.
Their silence clears the way
for ever greater Israeli violence, making it easier for Israel
to swallow more of Palestine while the world looks elsewhere.
Certainly the centrists are not alone responsible for enabling
continued Israeli oppression; they are themselves fighting a
valiant uphill struggle against vocal mainstream pro-Israeli
sentiment on the near right and the far right, among Jewish organizations,
Christian fundamentalists, the media, and politicians of both
major parties. But the peace movement represents a substantial
minority voice that could have a major place in public discourse
if only it would speak out against oppression. Its determination
merely to be a voice of sweetness and light, rarely criticizing,
always accentuating the positive, severely diminishes its own
impact and allows Israel to be wanton while the rest of the world
is silent.
"Balance"
on the Right
Public discourse in general,
and many in the vocal pro-Israel community in particular, are
tuning in to the public relations benefits of appearing balanced
and open to the Palestinians. The rightwing pro-Israel advocacy
group The Israel Project, led by Republican consultants Frank
Luntz and Jennifer Lazlo Mizrahi, has recently been holding seminars
to train activists in how to get the Israeli message across most
effectively and is emphasizing the importance of being optimistic
and not demonizing the Palestinians. It's hard to distinguish
this kind of false, deliberately deceptive appearance
of "balance" from the balance advocated by the centrists
of the peace movement, and in terms of how the situation on the
ground plays out, there is no difference. As it works out in
actuality, neutrality is an endorsement, at least implicit and
often explicit, of all Israel's policies; it results in a virtually
total obliviousness to how those policies affect Palestinians,
their daily lives, and their national prospects. Centrist peace
activists have helped make this possible.
In this atmosphere, George
Bush continues to spout his inanities about two states living
side by side in peace, while Israel seizes the land on which
the Palestinian state would sit and ethnically cleanses its inhabitants.
The silence induced by the peace movement's stance in the middle
helps make this chicanery possible. The international community
goes along, as evidenced by the recent decision by the Quartet,
representing the UN, the EU, and Russia along with the U.S.,
to endorse Sharon's unilateral "disengagement" plan
for Gaza something Israeli activist Uri Avnery has dubbed
a "scandalous" step, constituting a confirmation by
the international community that the Palestinians have no right
to take part in determining their own fate. The Quartet endorsement
came with indecent haste just after Israel wound down a weeks-long
rampage through the city of Rafah, Gaza, during which it demolished
entire residential neighborhoods, left thousands of Palestinians
homeless, and fired missiles into crowds of peaceful demonstrators.
Not only did the centrists
help make all this possible, but one of the centrist peace organizations,
Brit Tzedek, has endorsed the Sharon plan for Gaza, with some
skepticism to be sure, but welcoming it as a definite indication
that Sharon does intend to get out of Gaza never mind
that a withdrawal is doubtful at best, never mind that, even
if he does get out, 1.3 million Gazans would remain in what some
have called a holding pen, walled in and enclosed under Israeli
control, always at Israel's mercy, without freedom to move, to
govern themselves, or even to disagree with their imposed fate.
Brit Tzedek believes somehow that it was the Geneva Accord that
forced Sharon to come up with a plan and that the plan represents
"a major shift away from the extremist right and therefore
toward the moderate left". (One would guess that Brit Tzedek's
moderate left is Tikkun's progressive middle.) Believing that
Sharon acted out of anything but purest opportunism, expecting
to gain political points and appear to the gullible like a peacemaker
by pledging to withdraw troops and settlers from a small sliver
of land that he never particularly wanted to keep in any case,
is truly a triumph of hope over realism.
The list of those easily fooled
by such deceptions is long. In June, 407 congressmen and 95
senators passed resolutions lauding Sharon's disengagement plan
and seconding Bush's unilateral endorsement of Israel's intent
to annex occupied territory and deny Palestinian refugees any
right of return. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi excused
the overwhelmingly one-sided House resolution by noting that
she and many other congressmen were concerned about the plight
of Palestinians but were satisfied that the resolution urges
negotiations between the parties and recognizes the absolute
necessity that there be a Palestinian state. Precisely seven
Representatives voted against this odious pretense.
The media too have largely
been fooled, or fooled themselves, into thinking that the Sharon
plan means something. The usually savvy Christian Science
Monitor fell into the trap of misplaced optimism with a recent
editorial welcoming Sharon's Gaza plan as something that is "already
boosting prospects for peace in the Middle East". What
usually fuels this incongruous optimism, not only in the Monitor
but elsewhere in the media and among the doggedly upbeat centrists,
are polls that show a large majority of Israelis favoring a Gaza
withdrawal and even dismantlement of many West Bank settlements,
additional polls that show far more American Jews supporting
the Geneva Accord than opposing it, and the widespread belief,
spurious but tenacious among peace hopefuls, that not only the
Israeli left, but the right as well, recognize that Israel will
lose its character as a Jewish state if it does not soon shed
control over some Palestinian territories.
In fact, the right is not hesitant
about getting rid of the Palestinians by whatever means necessary
and therefore is not worried about being able to maintain Israel's
Jewish character. As for the polls, they have shown forthcoming
attitudes for some years, but none of this good thinking has
induced either the pollees or their governments in Israel and
the U.S. to institute changes on the ground. Thus, while the
peace movement does nothing, basking in the comforting knowledge
that majorities everywhere "want peace", Israel is
swallowing more land and killing more Palestinians without interference.
Much of the optimism prevailing
nowadays arises from the fact that there has not been a suicide
bombing in Israel for over three months. Rather than take this
as a reason for hope, Ha'aretz correspondent Danny Rubinstein,
more of a realist than the peace movement centrists, recently
observed that, far from inducing an interest among Israelis in
moving toward peace, this possibly temporary respite from fear
has brought a determined complacency and lack of interest in
what is happening to Palestinians. "Israeli public opinion
has become deaf to Palestinian suffering", he says, because
a clear equation has been created in the Israeli mind: as long
as "they" suffer, we Israelis are not being blown up.
The centrists of the peace movement tend to think this way themselves,
and in a kind of vicious circle, the silence induced by their
insistence on balance and neutrality plays a part in facilitating
the Palestinian suffering.
And finally, there is Rafah,
where Israel destroyed much of a city while the world, seeking
neutrality, sat by.
Neutrality
in Rafah
The great appeal of being positive
and on the middle path is that it gives one the soothing feeling
that something is being done. One is able to avoid confronting
the discomfiting realization that not only is nothing positive
happening, but things get worse by the day. Neutrality allows
one to ignore stories like the following, told to Ha'aretz
correspondent Gideon Levy in the aftermath of Israel's destruction
of Rafah in May. Manal Awad is a young architect who lives in
Rafah but was working in Gaza City on the day Israeli tanks demolished
her family's home. "I'll never forget that day", she
told Levy. "My sister called and told me there was a tank
next to the house . . . but in our worst dreams we never imagined
that our home would be destroyed. . . . It was the first time
in my life that I ever heard my mother cry like that. . . . In
1948, the family fled from our village near Ramle to a cave.
In 1972, Sharon demolished our house in the Shabura camp, when
I was a baby. Now this is the third house. My mother is a strong
woman, but now she's broken. It's the end for her. She always
dreamed about the first house that they fled from, but she was
attached to the house in the camp. Now it's all meaningless.
Her life was for nothing. . . . I lost all my memories there.
A house isn't just walls. . . . Photographs of our loved ones
and our joys and our sorrows all destroyed. . . . Nothing
is left. The house is destroyed. Life is destroyed. . . . It
was a simple refugees' house, but on the inside it was beautiful
to me".
The reaction throughout the
United States to Israel's horrifying brutality in Gaza throughout
May and into June demonstrated a concerted, almost obsessive
effort by Israeli supporters of all political stripes, including
most centrists, to excuse, cover up, divert attention
in effect, to encourage ignorance of what actually occurred.
But ignorance is not an excuse, just as the Germans' claim that
they did not know about the slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust
was not an excuse. Mindlessly promoting peace plans in the vacuum
of destruction and devastation left in Israel's wake, without
decrying Israel's actions and U.S. complicity in them, is not
enough, just as promoting a peace plan in the midst of the Rwanda
massacre, without taking action to end the massacre, would not
have been enough.
Yet the devastation in Gaza
seems to have left most Americans unfazed. New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman got through the entire Israeli rampage
without so much as a mention: the killing spree; the helicopter
and tank fire on peaceful protesters; the sniper fire on children
gathering laundry and buying candy; the massive demolition of
homes in Rafah like the one described above; the thousands left
homeless; the lines of refugees fleeing bulldozers and carrying
away furniture and bedding on donkey carts; the massive destruction
of personal property, greenhouses, even petting zoos; the lives
ruined.
This is characteristic of Friedman.
He also never bothered to take much note of Israel's murderous
siege of Jenin two years ago. Unlike Jenin, there were pictures
this time, literally hundreds of them available the world over,
on the Internet and even occasionally on the front pages of mainstream
newspapers, including Friedman's own pictures of bleeding
children, dead children, adults in morgues, crying women picking
through piles of rubble for their possessions. But Friedman
ignores such things. Friedman would probably not characterize
himself as a follower of Michael Lerner's middle path, but he
is basically a centrist and fancies himself a fair critic of
Israel, particularly of its settlements policy. But let Israel
commit an unadulterated war crime, something that might truly
tax his conscience, and he has nothing to say, as if it never
happened.
One should probably not be
too hard on Friedman. Few other public people seemed outraged
by or even to notice the devastation in Gaza either. At its
height, George Bush appeared before Israel's lobby, AIPAC, and,
to rousing cheers, endorsed Israel's "right to defend itself";
when the destruction reached discomfiting levels even for this
White House, all the administration could muster was a few sotto
voce words of reproach and a limp abstention on a critical
UN Security Council resolution, a sign of mild displeasure with
Israel but hardly anything approaching condemnation. (Two years
ago, after Israelis had bulldozed a large portion of Jenin, Bush
thought the action qualified Ariel Sharon as a "man of peace".)
John Kerry could not find it in his political heart to say anything
about Gaza. No congressman said anything. Few peace groups
could find outrage anywhere in their peace-loving hearts either.
Tikkun did not cry out, or Brit Tzedek, or United for Peace
and Justice.
Everyone has been numbed by
long years of accumulated perceptions. The thought, for instance,
that Israel is after all only "defending itself", as
it has had to do year after year against supposedly hate-filled
Arabs, this time against a network of tunnels through which Palestinian
"terrorists" smuggle "arms", helps overcome
the unpleasantness of having to look at terrible pictures of
innocent people under assault. The fact that an Israeli settler
family, including four children, were murdered by Palestinian
attackers and that "terrorists" (who would be called
resistance fighters or guerrillas in any other context) killed
13 Israeli soldiers who were on their way to invade Rafah relieves
most Americans of any obligation to examine proportionality,
to wonder whether shooting Palestinian children and leaving thousands
of hapless civilians without homes is a proper response. The
realities that no more than one or two tunnels were found during
this rampage, that the vast majority of Palestinian dead and
homeless are innocent civilians, that the Palestinians who killed
the settler family and the Israeli soldiers had long since been
killed themselves, and that whatever arms are smuggled happen
to be quite insignificant, have all gone unnoticed.
The fact that Israel named
its demolition derby "Operation Rainbow" also creates
a diversion, putting a happy gloss on an atrocity; the fact that
this is a grossly hypocritical bit of spin, somewhat akin to
dubbing the Nazis' assault on the Warsaw Ghetto "Operation
Sunshine", can be pushed aside. The naïve but eagerly
nourished thought that Ariel Sharon is fighting the good fight
to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza, struggling
against recalcitrant rightwing ministers, adds to the relief
of those who desperately want to believe the best about Israel
and find excuses for its actions. Yet another psychological
aid is the perception we have all imbibed from our earliest years
that Israel is "good" all innocence, always
the victim and that one must never judge Israeli actions
harshly because it is essentially incapable of doing bad things.
All of these perceptions have created a mindset about Israel
throughout the United States that produces a knee-jerk, almost
electric horror at any strong criticism of Israel. The first
reaction of journalists, politicians, friends of Israel, centrist
peace groups, most Israelis themselves anyone who does
not want to acknowledge the reality of Israel's atrocities
is to turn away from uncomfortable realities, to refuse see,
refuse to hear.
Many Israelis are not so dishonest.
Ha'aretz correspondents Amira Hass and Gideon Levy have
been in Gaza witnessing and graphically reporting what is occurring.
Jeff Halper, the Israeli anthropologist and activist whose organization
rebuilds demolished Palestinian homes, was among the first to
alert the world to the scale of Israel's brutality in Gaza.
Peace activist Uri Avnery calls Israel's rampage a "rape",
animated by an "evil spirit" abroad in Israel and carried
out to gratify "primitive emotions". Longtime leftist
politician and peace activist Shulamit Aloni has also spoken
out against the "arrogant and light-hearted way in which
we kill and murder Palestinians . . . and then pretend that we
are the victims". Directly comparing Israelis to Germans
in the 1940s, she charges that most Israelis, wallowing in a
"patriotic hysteria" that induces them to keep quiet,
don't want to know what is going on and refuse to read Hass's
and Levy's reports from the occupied territories.
One seldom hears this kind
of tough talk from Americans, even more rarely from centrist
peace activists. In fact, these activists have become adept
at undermining this kind of testimony from Israelis on the scene:
Levy has a Palestinian girlfriend, it is noted pointedly (obviously
meant to be a damning revelation, apparently undermining his
objectivity; having a Jewish girlfriend would undoubtedly not
be an impediment to objectivity); the criticism of Hass is that
she is obsessed and not well balanced (despite her credentials
as the daughter of Holocaust survivors and despite or
perhaps because of her actual knowledge, gained not merely
from reading but from witnessing what Palestinians endure under
Israeli occupation); Halper is seen to be too critical of Israelis
and too sympathetic toward Palestinians (lack of balance, the
unforgivable sin); Avnery allegedly has a shady past (although
no one seems to have the details) or he is just getting old;
Aloni is a has-been (long experience of the Israeli political
scene is of no value). And anyway, these Israelis are all what
some would call radical "lefties".
The true objection to these
Israelis is that they speak an uncomfortable truth; they actually
know what is going on, they actually know that Israel is committing
atrocities, and they are not afraid of saying that the Jewish
state pursues immoral policies and commits immoral actions.
They cannot be contradicted on the facts. And so the peace groups
must devise excuses for not hearing them and not speaking out.
The supposed need for balance and neutrality is an excuse.
Israelis like this are the most dangerous spokesmen as far as
peace activists are concerned, for they challenge the conscience,
and they undermine the very centrist basis on which the peace
groups rest.
Perhaps a little step to the
left, off the middle path, by the country's peace groups would
have induced Bush to call off Sharon's dogs in Rafah. Or perhaps
not. But it would obviously have been worth the effort. The
possibility that many innocent Palestinian lives could have been
saved if the "progressive middle" had taken a stand
is certainly not nearly as fantastic as Lerner's notion that
Bush would have been galvanized to pressure Sharon if only the
progressive left had not been quite so leftist.
Centrism
as a Salve
One centrist activist recently
observed that it is critical always to remain positive. After
being made aware of a particularly egregious Israeli action,
he said he had to sit back and catch his breath because this
new knowledge challenged his centrism. He was concerned that
he might end up defending the Palestinians if he did not take
some time to restore his positive attitude.
This is astounding. A positive
attitude is fine, but if it blinds us to anything negative, it
is very bad indeed. Ignoring the negative did not end apartheid
in South Africa. Being positive did not expel the French colons
from Algeria. Sweetness and light did not get us out of Vietnam.
Centrism and a refusal to criticize will not unseat George Bush.
Injustice has seldom if ever been ended by refusing to notice
and speak out against it. Israel's absorption and Judaization
of the occupied territories are increasingly rendering a two-state
solution meaningless and, as the possibility of an equitable
resolution moves farther out of reach, the notion of approaching
the conflict via the middle becomes more and more a sham. The
time has come to emphasize the negative.
Those on the ground know better
than the centrist activists and know the reality. Contrast the
activist's attitude above with that of a young Palestinian Lutheran
minister in Bethlehem who speaks of hope in a quite different
way. Discussing the profound difficulties of ministering in
any meaningful way to a congregation under occupation, Reverend
Mitri Raheb writes in Bethlehem Besieged that with its
talk of peace on earth, Christmas has become particularly difficult
for him. The usual emphasis at Christmas is on what he calls
a "cheap peace", which is in fact merely "a bit
of wishful thinking [engaged in] when one is not ready to do
much". For Palestinians, "peace talk" often turns
out to be simply a formula for managing the conflict rather than
resolving it a situation in which "the world continues
to talk peace while Israel continues to build the wall".
With the beginning of the peace process, Raheb says, Palestinians
had real hope, but in the last few years hope has evaporated.
"Our vision of peace became unrealistic, justice was impossible,
coexistence nothing but a myth. . . . A hopeful vision cannot
be mere words, statements, or resolutions. In fact, people gave
up hope because there was a clear discrepancy between what they
were seeing and what they were hearing. They were hearing the
false prophets say, 'Peace, peace,' but on the ground there was
no peace. . . . Waiting, being passive, and feeling optimistic
about the future these are false hope".
The world's obliviousness to
Israel's wanton destruction of property and lives and livelihoods
at Rafah, and in general to the obscene oppression that is the
occupation, is stupefying. Yet, although minorities of courageous
Israelis and American Jews speak out in opposition, most self-defined
centrists in the U.S., both within and outside the peace movement,
still do not dare confront Israeli governments in any meaningful
way. Centrists have clung too long to a misguided reluctance
to deviate from what the Palestinian Mitri Raheb cynically calls
the false hope of "balance", passivity, and forced
optimism. By their timidity, the centrists vastly strengthen
those in the U.S. and Israel whose true goal is to rid Palestine
of Palestinians.
Kathleen Christison, a former CIA political analyst, has
been a freelance writer since resigning from the CIA in 1979,
dealing primarily with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Her
book Perceptions
of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy
was published in 2001. A second book, The
Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story, was
published in 2002. They can be reached at: christison@counterpunch.org
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