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December 4, 2001
Rep. Ron Paul
Keep Your
Eye on the Target
Susan
Herman
Ashcroft
and the Patriot Act
Tariq Ali
The Afghan
King and the Nazis
November 30, 2001
Jordan
Green
Disappeared
in the Southland
Willliam Blum
Rebuilding
Afghanistan?
November 29, 2001
Phillip
Cryan
Defining
Terrorism
Robert Fisk
We Are the
War Criminals Now
November 28, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
A
Continuum of Terror
Patrick Cockburn
Tribal
Council:
Don't Blame It All on Taliban
Robert
Fisk
At
Last, The Truth about the Sabra and Chatila Massacres
Harry Browne
The Bill of
Rights:
They Threw It All Away
Sunil
Sharma
Suffer
Palestine's Children
November 27, 2001
Paul Coggins
Kafka and
the Patriot Act
Tariq
Ali
Tigris
and Euprhates
November 26, 2001
Robert Fisk
Blood and
Tears in Kandahar
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Boeing's
Sweet Deal
CounterPunch Wire
Human
Rights Abuses and
Nuke Waste Shipments
Alexander
Cockburn
Harry
Potter and Terrorism
November 25, 2001
Ralph Nader
The Crisis
in Leadership
Sam Bahour
Israel's
Choice
November 24, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
He Who
Has
the Guns Rules
November 20, 2001
Sam Bahour
Plain
Truths About Palestine
Michael Ratner
Moving Toward
a
Police State
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 19, 2001
Edward
Said
Suicidal
Ignorance
November 18, 2001
John Farley
Shame on You,
Chelsea!
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bin Laden and Bush
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Cockburn
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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
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December
5, 2001
The Last Colonial War?
'Arafat
used to make the same eloquent expressions of grief when his
gunmen murdered innocent Lebanese'
By Robert Fisk
The Independent
Can Ariel Sharon control his own people? Can he
control his army? Can he stop them from killing children, leaving
booby traps in orchards or firing tank shells into refugee camps?
Can Sharon stop his rabble of an army from destroying hundreds
of Palestinian refugee homes in Gaza? Can Sharon "crack
down" on Jewish settlers and prevent them from stealing
more land from Palestinians? Can he stop his secret-service killers
from murdering their Palestinian enemies --or carrying out "
targeted killings", as the BBC was still gutlessly calling
these executions yesterday in its effort to avoid Israeli criticism.
It is, of course, forbidden to ask these
questions. So let's "legalise" them. The Palestinian
suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa are disgusting, evil,
revolting, unforgivable. I saw the immediate aftermath of the
Pizzeria suicide bombing in Jerusalem last August: Israeli women
and children, ripped apart by explosives that had nails packed
around them --designed to ensure that those who survived were
scarred for life.
I remember Yasser Arafat's grovelling
message of condolence, and I thought to myself --like any Israeli,
I guess --that I didn't believe a word of it. In fact, I don't
believe a word of it. Arafat used to make the same eloquent expressions
of grief when his gunmen murdered innocent Lebanese during that
country's civil war. Bullshit, I used to think. And I still do.
But there was a clue to the real problem
only hours after the latest bloodbath in Israel. Colin Powell,
the US Secretary of State, was being questioned with characteristic
obsequiousness on CNN about his reaction to the slaughter. Nothing,
he said, could justify such "terrorism", and he went
on to refer to the plight of the Palestinians, who suffer "50
per cent unemployment". I sat up at that point. Unemployment?
Is that what Mr Powell thought this was about.
And my mind went back to his speech at
Louisberg University on 20 November when he launched --or so
we were supposed to believe --his Middle-East initiative. "Palestinians
must..." was the theme: Palestinians must "end the
violence"; Palestinians must "arrest, prosecute and
punish the perpetrators of terrorist acts"; Palestinians
"need to understand that, however legitimate their claims"
--note the word "however" --"they cannot be...
addressed by violence"; Palestinians "must realise
that violence has had a terrible impact on Israel". Only
when General Powell told his audience that Israel's occupation
of the West Bank and Gaza must end, did it become clear that
Israel was occupying Palestine rather than the other way round.
The reality is that the Palestinian/Israeli
conflict is the last colonial war. The French thought that they
were fighting the last battle of this kind. They had long ago
conquered Algeria. They set up their farms and settlements in
the most beautiful land in North Africa. And when the Algerians
demanded independence, they called them "terrorists"
and they shot down their demonstrators and they tortured their
guerrilla enemies and they murdered --in "targeted killings"
--their antagonists.
In just the same way, we are responding
to the latest massacre in Israel according to the rules of the
State Department, CNN, the BBC and Downing Street. Arafat has
got to come alive, to get real, to perform his duty as the West's
policeman in the Middle East. President Mubarak does it in Egypt;
King Abdullah does it in Jordan; King Fahd does it in Saudi Arabia.
They control their people for us. It is their duty. They must
fulfil their moral obligations, without any reference to history
or to the pain and the suffering of their people.
So let me tell a little story. A few
hours before I wrote this article --exactly four hours after
the last suicide bomber had destroyed himself and his innocent
victims in Haifa --I visited a grotty, fly-blown hospital in
Quetta, the Pakistani border city where Afghan victims of American
bombing raids are brought for treatment. Surrounded by an army
of flies in bed No 12, Mahmat --most Afghans have no family names
--told me his story. There were no CNN cameras, no BBC reporters
in this hospital to film the patient. Nor will there be. Mahmat
had been asleep in his home in the village of Kazikarez six days
ago when an bomb from an American B-52 fell on his village. He
was asleep in one room, his wife with the children. His son Nourali
died, as did Jaber --aged 10 --Janaan, eight, Salamo, six, Twayir,
four, and Palwasha --the only girl --two.
"The plane flies so high that we
cannot hear them and the mud roof fell on them," Mahmat
said. His wife Rukia --whom he permitted me to see --lay in the
next room (bed No 13). She did not know that her children were
dead. She was 25 and looked 45. A cloth dignified her forehead.
Her children --like so many Afghan innocents in this frightful
War for civilisation --were victims whom Mr Bush and Mr Blair
will never acknowledge. And watching Mahmat plead for money --the
American bomb had blasted away his clothes and he was naked beneath
the hospital blanket --I could see something terrible: he and
the angry cousin beside him and the uncle and the wife's brother
in the hospital attacking America for the murders that they had
inflicted on their family...
One day, I suspect, Mahmat's relatives
may be angry enough to take their revenge on the United States,
in which case they will be terrorists, men of violence. We may
even ask if their leaders could control them. They are not bin
Ladens, Mahmat's family said that --"We are neither Taliban
nor Arab" --but, frankly, could we blame them if they decided
to strike at the United States for the bloody and terrible crime
done to their family. Can the United States stop bombing villages?
Can Washington persuade its special forces to protect prisoners?
Can the Americans control their own people?
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