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THE INSIDE HISTORY OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY Former top CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison give CounterPunchers the real scoop on the Israel lobby and precisely how powerful it is. Read how US presidents from Wilson, through FDR to Truman were manipulated by the Zionist lobby; how Israel bent LBJ, Reagan and Clinton to its purpose; how Bush's White House has been the West Wing of the Israeli government; how Washington's revolving doors send full-time Israel lobbyists from think-tanks to the National Security Council and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. For all who want a true measure of the Lobby's power, the Christisons' 8-page dossier, exclusive to CounterPunch newsletter subscribers, is a MUST read. 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! |
Today's Stories June 15, 2006 Gabriel Kolko June 14, 2006 Nicole Colson Jonathan Cook Joseph Schechla Michael Carmichael Evelyn Pringle Ward Churchill Rev. William E. Alberts Website of the
Day
June 13, 2006 Medea Benjamin Anthony Alessandrini Paul D'Amato Dave Lindorff John Ross Gabriel Garcia Hilton Obenzinger Yitzhak Laor Juan Antonio
Ocasio Rivera Jennifer Van
Bergen Website of the
Day
June 12, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Mike Marqusee Lee Sustar Robert Fisk Michael J. Smith Felice Pace Jennifer Loewenstein Website of the Day
June 10 / 11,
2006 Robert Fisk Diane Christian Joe Allen Ralph Nader Fred Gardner Dave Lindorff Dave Zirin /
John Cox Dennis Perrin Greg Moses John Chuckman Michael J. Smith Roger Burbach Ira Moskowitz Sam Bahour Seth Sandronsky Michael Berg Kirsten Roberts Ron Jacobs Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the
Weekend
June 9, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Eric Ruder Evelyn Pringle Mickey Z. Michael J. Smith Patrick Cockburn Website of the
Day
June 8, 2006 Chris Floyd Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs William S. Lind Joshua Frank Missy Comley Beattie Lloyd Williams Bill Christison Website of the Day
June 7, 2006 Dave Lindorff Sunsara Taylor John Walsh David MacMichael Mickey Z. Evelyn Pringle Myles Palmer Laura Ribeiro Website of the Day
June 6, 2006 Diane Christian Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Norman Solomon Darmont / Genovali Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Subcomandante Marcos Patrick Cockburn Website of the Day
June 5, 2006 Bruce Jackson Chris Floyd Michael Neumann Heather Gray William Hughes David Swanson Alexander Cockburn Website of the Day
June 3 / 4, 2006 Robert Fisk James Petras Rosemary Radford Ruether Harry Clark Jeffrey St. Clair Ron Ridenour Ron Jacobs Fred Gardner Peter Montague John Walsh Greg Moses Sean Donahue Mike Whitney Dave Patten Ali Khan Robert Dotson,
MD Hammond Guthrie St. Clair / D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the
Day
June 2, 2006 Kathy Kelly Alan Maass Mickey Z. Dave Lindorff Chris Kutalik Sunsara Taylor Sam Husseini Mike Ferner Website of the
Day
June 1, 2006 Brian Cloughley David Peterson Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Mike Whitney Paul Rockwell Clifton Ross Kevin Zeese Website of the
Day
May 31, 2006 Dave Lindorff Joshua Frank Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz P. Sainath Ramzy Baroud Seth Sandronsky Mickey Z. Ralph Nader Jeffrey St. Clair Website of the Day
May 30, 2006 Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Gary Leupp John Ross Robert Jensen Michael Dickinson Michael Carmichael Tim Wise Harry Browne Website of the
Day
May 27 / 29,
2006 Paul Craig Roberts Kathleen Christison Kathy Kelly Christopher
Reed Lawrence R. Velvel Tom Barry Gary Leupp Col. Dan Smith Ron Jacobs Don Fitz Fred Gardner Peter Montague Raymond Garcia John Farley Seth Sandronsky Tia Steele Lenni Brenner Dr. Susan Block Scott Michael Perey Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Recipe of the
Weekend Website of the Weekend
May 26, 2006 Col. Douglas
MacGregor Brian J. Foley Michael Dickinson Missy Comley Beattie Pierre Tristam Joe Allen Kona Lowell Roger Burbach Website of the
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May 25, 2006 Les AuCoin Jeff Halper Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Bob Wing Elise Gould Robert Bryce Website of the Day
May 24, 2006 Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Lucinda Marshall Dave Lindorff Shmuel Rosner Moshe Adler Heather Gray Pratyush Chandra Paul Craig Roberts Floyd Rudmin Website of the Day
May 23, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Sharon Smith Sunsara Taylor Joel Whitney Alice Cherbonnier Ron Jacobs Kristen Ess Patrick Cockburn Website of the
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June 15, 2006 Cover Up on Gaza BeachIsrael Spinning Out of ControlBy RAMZY BAROUD Israel's Defense Minister Amir Peretz announced today that Israel is preparing a global "propaganda offensive" to counter the recent barrage of news reports and writings that condemned Israel for the recent killing of 10 civilians, including 5 children, on a Gaza beach. In political and media lingo this is called spin, to twist and turn an event so as to give an intended interpretation, and Israel excels at it. Israel is unable to comprehend that by going to extremes to find a single event that lends itself well for a "propaganda offensive," its continued military occupation, now extrajudicially killing an average of 10 Palestinians per day, is causing so much death and destruction that its spin not only instigates further animosity against Israel, but fuels a culture of propaganda and arbitrary aggression in Israel that is ripping apart Israeli society at its fragile seams. Context Before looking at the specific Gaza beach killings, let's remember Israel's track record of conducting investigations. Not to bore you, I will not delve into the entire period of 58 years of dispossession of Palestinians caused by Israel's creation, nor will I touch on the full 39 years of Israel's ongoing military occupation of over 3.5 million Palestinians. It is enough to look only at the last few years of Israeli aggression to make the point that Israel is attempting to cover blatant war crimes by media spin. Worse yet, the international community is allowing them to get away with it. These last few years have been characterized by the intensity of mostly the same practices Israel has used for decades. The context of these Israeli actions toward Palestinians may be summarized as follows: collective punishment, travel restrictions, denial of access to religious sites (e.g. Jerusalem, Bethlehem), bombarding population centers, arbitrary imprisonment (20% of population has been imprisoned at some time ion their lives since 1967, which equates to 60 million people if compared in U.S. terms), demolishing houses (since 1967 Israel has demolished almost 12,000 Palestinian homes, leaving some 70,000 without shelter and traumatized.), deporting Palestinians, uprooting trees, strangulating the Palestinian economy, taking Palestinians' natural resources hostage (e.g. water, electromagnetic spectrum) - the list is endless. Case in point as reported in The Guardian (UK) by Chris McGreal, of how Israel deals with investigating Palestinian deaths:
If you are curious, a five-count indictment was ultimately brought against Captain R. A few months ago Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that Captain "R," a Givati Brigade soldier in the IDF, would be awarded 80,000 NIS [over $15,000 USD] in compensation from the State of Israel in addition to reimbursement for NIS 2,000 of legal expenses, as part of an arrangement reached between his lawyers and the military prosecution after being acquitted of all five counts against him related to the killing of Iman! A second case in point: On the night of July 22, 2002 an Israeli F-16 dropped a one-ton bomb in a densely populated area of Gaza City, killing Hamas military wing leader Salah Shehadeh and 16 others, of whom 15 were civilians and 9 were children (between the ages of two months and 13 years), including Shehadeh's wife and child. Over one hundred others were injured in the attack. Witnesses said that a F-16 fired a missile into an apartment house in which Shehadeh and his family were living. The air strike shortly after midnight leveled the five-storey apartment block and damaged several adjacent buildings. In a Ha'aretz interview, the then Israeli Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz claimed to be satisfied both "militarily and morally" with the operation. He was subsequently promoted to his current position of IDF Chief of Staff. A third case in point is the Jenin Refugee Camp in April 2002. The Jenin Refugee Camp, the second largest refugee camp in the West Bank, was surrounded by Israeli occupation forces as part of their aggression throughout the West Bank and continuing till today. The camp was raided and tens of Palestinians were murdered and dozens of homes bulldozed. For days, the Israelis refused to allow medical personnel, journalists, Red Cross, and the UN enter the camp.
Palestinians demanded an investigation. A fact finding mission was proposed by the United Nations on April 19, 2002. Israel initially agreed to co-operate with the inquiry, but demanded a set of conditions to do so. Among the conditions, Israel demanded that the mission should include anti-terrorism experts, that the UN agree not to prosecute Israeli soldiers for potential violations of international law, and that it limit its scope exclusively to events in Jenin. The UN refused to accept the last two conditions and were forced to ultimately disband their mission. The world will never know, until a war crimes trail in The Hague of Israeli officials, what really happened inside the camp during those deadly days. The cases demonstrating Israel's systematic cover-up of Palestinian deaths are voluminous. It will suffice to direct you to Leigh Brady's writing on this issue, entitled, "Don't worry - it's just another Palestinian child's death" (Live from Palestine, 31 March 2006) Not all Israelis are blind to Israel's war crimes. The renowned Israeli journalist Amira Hass who lives in Ramallah wrote these words: "There is a long list of Palestinian civilians whose blood was spilled neither in battle nor because they endangered someone, and their blood has evaporated from our consciousness." (Ha'aretz, 9 February 2005.) Beach Killing So back to the Gaza beach killings. Israel is now claiming, five days after the fact, that they are not responsible for the killing. Instead, the spin that they have developed is that the deaths were a result of a mine planted in the sand by Palestinians in anticipation of Israeli navy seals attacking Gaza from the sea. Is this possible? Yes? Will we ever really know? No? Well, again, not until Israeli officials are brought before The Hague for their war crimes. In the hours and days to come, Israel will have an army of media experts speaking perfect mother-tongue language of their target audience explaining, in what seems scientific terms, why their "findings" exonerate the Israeli military from these killings. What they miss is that responsible accountability requires not the occupier to investigate the occupier, or Israeli military to investigate the Israeli military. What is required is an international and independent investigation, an investigation that has consequences. Is this too much to ask for? Well, if we look at past Israeli investigations of their own leaders we can use the past Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, to learn how Israelis punish their own leaders. The date was September 16-18, 1982. The place was the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. Then Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon encircled the camps, sealed them, and sent in his closest allies amongst the Lebanese militias to "cleanse" the area of the "2,000 terrorists" which he insisted had remained there during Israelis invasion of Southern Lebanon. As a result, hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were subject to three days of relentless torture, rape and killing, while hundreds more were arrested and trucked away, never to be seen again: an estimated 2000 civilians were killed or disappeared. What happen to Sharon? A high-level Israeli commission was formed to investigate. The result of that investigation was the "Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut" (The Kahan Commission, February 8, 1983). The report stated:
After being found unfit to be Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon swiftly rose to be the Prime Minister of Israel, twice. Homemade Missiles Of course Palestinians are firing missiles into Israel, albeit a failing strategy. If some Palestinians had the chance to smuggle F-16's into Gaza to release them toward Tel Aviv, I'm sure they would. I wonder what the State of Texas would do if Mexico militarily occupied if for 39 years. I would assume, then, the Palestinian missiles excuse would be acknowledged for what it is, acts of desperation and not an existential threat. In spinning the recent Gaza beach killings, Israel will no doubt point to the homemade missiles that a few Palestinians are firing into Israel as a pretext to the continuous Israeli shelling of Gaza. But again, Israel forgets that after occupying Palestinians by force in a most brutal way for so long and giving no indication of the possibility for peaceful co-existence built on international law and human rights, they are feeding a terrible, lethal despair within Palestine that gives rise to steps of desperation taken by a few desperate people to cause harm to the occupier. Not only is the Palestinian firing of missiles into Israel a failing strategy, one I wish I had the power to stop, but it is a blatant example of Palestinians not having a strategy that can end the occupation. Not having a strategy of liberation is understood, albeit unacceptable. Israel has killed off and imprisoned most of the first and second level Palestinian leadership. Also, two-thirds of the Palestinian population is denied entry into Palestine and thus cannot participate on the ground to create a better reality. Thus, without a cohesive leadership, who could expect those under Israel's non-stop aggression to become peace doves overnight. Chutzpah Jews are very familiar with Yiddish, the Jewish dialect that gave us the widely used term, chutzpah. The dictionary defines chutzpah as unbelievable gall; insolence; audacity. In Palestinian lay terms, chutzpah relates to Israel's amazing ability to kill a people in cold blood and then march solemnly in their funeral procession. Israelis must wake up. International and humanitarian laws do not release the State of Israel, or individual soldiers, from their responsibility as an occupying force simply because they apologize for killing those they occupy. While Israel launched its "propaganda offensive" today, another 11 Palestinians were killed, 2 of them children and 2 medics, when Israeli warplanes struck a Palestinian car on a crowded Gaza City street. Also, in the midst of this living hell, Israeli Defense Minister stated that the time for restraint is over. If the Israeli-made living hell that we have been living with thus far was an example of Israel showing restraint, God help us all, Palestinians and Israelis, as the Israeli occupation flexes its military muscle in the coming days. When all the flexing is done and all the dead buried, the occupation will still be wrong and The Hague will still await all those who committed war crimes. Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American businessman
living in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian city of Al-Bireh.
He is co-author of HOMELAND: Oral Histories of Palestine and
Palestinians (1994). He can be reached at sbahour@palnet.com
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