home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events
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 3, 2006 Robert Fisk James Petras Ron Ridenour
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
Day
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
Day
May 22, 2006 Alan Maass William Blum Elaine C. Hagopian Stan Cox Chris Floyd Alexander Cockburn Website of the Day
May 20 / 21, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Kathy Kelly Ralph Nader Hugh O'Shaughnessy Greg Grandin P. Sainath Greg Moses Stephen Philion Landau / Hassen Fred Gardner Missy Comley
Beattie Michael Dickinson Seth Sandronsky Luke Young John Zavesky Ben Tripp Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement
May 19, 2006 Winslow T. Wheeler José Pertierra John Ross Dave Lindorff Jeff Juel Alan Farago Eric Johnson-DeBaufre José Martî Jonathan Cook Website of the
Day
May 18, 2006 Bill Simpich Patrick Cockburn Christopher Brauchli Nora Barrows-Friedman Victoria Buch Eric Ruder George Wuerthner Juan Santos Website of the Day
May 17, 2006 Lenni Brenner Carlos Villarreal Larry Everest CounterPunch News Service Lee Sustar Anthony Papa William S. Lind Bruce K. Gagnon JoAnn Wypijewski Website of the Day
May 16, 2006 Ward Churchill Ted Honderich Paul Craig Roberts Annie Nocenti Charles V. Peña Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Harvey Wasserman Michael George
Smith Harry Browne Website of the
Day
May 15, 2006 Alexander Cockburn William Blum Tanya Golash-Boza
and Douglas A. Parker Dave Lindorff Debra Schaffer
Hubert Patrick Cockburn Tom Turnipseed Ken Livingstone Gideon Levy Mickey Z. Jeff Faux Website of the Day
May 13 / 14, 2006 Vijay Prashad Joan Roelofs Kathy Kelly Michael Neumann Dr. Susan Block Daniel Cassidy Christopher Reed Mike Roselle Saul Landau Robert Fisk Ralph Nader Evelyn Pringle Fred Gardner Stanley Heller Conn Hallinan Valentina Palma Novoa David Krieger Col. Dan Smith Christopher Brauchli Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
May 12, 2006 Michael Snedeker Dave Lindorff Leah Fishbein
/ RJ Schinner Brian Kwoba Chris Kromm Kai Diekmann David Swanson Virginia Tilley Website of the
Day
May 11, 2006 Sunsara Taylor Jonathan Cook Tariq Ali Wayne S. Smith Mike Whitney Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Mickey Z. Francis Boyle Edward S. Herman
/ David Peterson Website of the
Day
May 10, 2006 Werther Larry Birns / Michael Lettieri Ramzy Baroud Kevin Zeese Evelyn Pringle Amira Hass Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Sharon Smith Website of the Day
May 9, 2006 Ray McGovern M. Shahid Alam Moshe Adler Walter MIgnolo Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor William S. Lind Todd Chretien Dave Lindorff Ishmael Reed Website of the
Day
May 8, 2006 Kate McCabe Paul Craig Roberts Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Ingmar Lee Robert Jensen Ricardo Alarcon Will Youmans / M. Kay Siblani Alexander Cockburn Website of the
Day
May 6 / 7, 2006 Jeffrey St. Clair Ariel Dorfman Joe Allen Fred Gardner Jeff Taylor Saul Landau Stephen Philion Trish Schuh Ralph Nader Robert Fisk Paul Cantor John Holt James Ryan Lawrence R. Velvel Greg Moses Laray Polk Ron Jacobs Ben Tripp Mickey Z. Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Week
May 5, 2006 Vijay Prashad Robert Fisk David Swanson Mearsheimer / Walt Dave Lindorff Sarah Ferguson CounterPunch
News Service Corporate Crime Reporter Website of the
Day
May 4, 2006 John F. Sugg Jonathan Cook Roger Burbach Chris Dols Christopher Brauchli Tony Swindell Website of the Day
May 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Paul Craig Roberts James Petras Lee Sustar David Bolton Joshua Frank Jeffery R. Webber Website of the
Day
May 2, 2006 Evelyn Pringle Tariq Ali Saul Landau Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs Sen. Russell
Feingold Anthony Papa Website of the
Day
May Day, 2006 Norman Finkelstein Christopher Reed Michael Donnelly Dave Zirin Mike Whitney Gilad Atzmon Missy Comley Beattie Alexander Cockburn Website of the
Day
April 29 / 30, 2006 Peter Linebaugh Ralph Nader Robert Bryce Rev. William
Alberts Lee Sustar John Chuckman Eric Ruder Seth Sandronsky Ron Jacobs Ben Tripp Fred Gardner Don Monkerud Tommy Stevenson Lettrist International Contratiempo St. Clair, Vest
and D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the
Weekend
April 28, 2006 James Ridgeway Ramzy Baroud Sarah Knopp William S. Lind Werther April 27, 2006 Winslow T. Wheeler Robert Fisk Juan Santos Robert Jensen Dave Lindorff Jose Pertierra
April 26,2006 Robin Philpot Sherry Wolf Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Gary
Leupp Bill
Quigley
April 25, 2006 Gary
Leupp Paul
Craig Roberts Linda
S. Heard Ralph
Nader Mike
Whitney Michael
Donnelly Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
April 24, 2006 Tim
Wise John
Stanton Dave
Lindorff Steve
Shore Amadou
Deme Mickey
Z. Ralph Nader Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day
Subscribe Online
|
Weekend
Edition "We Have No One to Talk To"Israel's Targeted Assassination PolicyBy ROSEMARY RADFORD RUETHER On May 24, 2006, Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, appeared before the U.S. Congress to decry the lack of any "genuine Palestinian partner for peace," with whom Israel could talk. Although declaring "our deepest desire to build a better future for our region, hand in hand with a Palestinian partner," Olmert warned that Israel cannot "wait forever," If such a partner fails to appear, Israel will move forward to set the borders of Israel vis á vis the Palestinians unilaterally. Olmert received the warmest ovations from the Congress and was promised support from the White House for the plan to unilaterally set Israel's borders, should no Palestinian leaders who satisfy Israel's conditions as "partners for peace" appear. Olmert's stance should be put in the context of Israel's long standing policy of targeted assassination of Palestinian leaders. For more than thirty years it has been Israel's policy to assassinate or otherwise eliminate popular Palestinian leaders who were independent and had wide trust of the people, while seeking to construct a subservient leadership with whom it could negotiate "peace" on Israel's terms. In the 1970s, after Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 war, Israel tried to create the "village leagues," a puppet leadership which Israel could pass off as Palestinian self-government. These pseudo-leaders were resoundingly rejected by the Palestinian people. In 1976 Palestinian municipalities were allowed to elect their own mayors. When pro-PLO candidates swept the elections, Israel sought to assassinate several of them. The mayor of Ramallah lost one leg and the mayor of Nablus both legs in car bombs. In 1982 Israel removed all the elected mayors and replaced them with Israeli military governors. From the founding of the PLO in 1964 until 1992 Israel refused to talk to the PLO, claiming they were determined to "destroy the state of Israel," even though the PLO had accepted a two state solution by mid-1970s. Prominent leaders of Palestinian organizations were killed in rocket attacks and car bombs. In 1973 a group of Israeli commandos, led by Ehud Barak, (later Prime Minister of Israel) arrived by speedboat in Beirut. Disguised in women's clothes Barak and his men gunned down three top PLO officials in their downtown apartments. Arafat himself escaped assassination only by living constantly on the run, seldom sleeping in the same place on successive nights. In 1993 Israel announced that it had been meeting secretly with the PLO in Norway and had reached an interim agreement for Palestinian self-government. After signing a Declaration of Principles for this plan in September, the PLO leaders were allowed to return from Tunis to head the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza as part of a "peace process" that would lead to the negotiated settlement of the conflict under the Oslo accords. But it soon became apparent that what Arafat and the PLO thought they were doing and what Israel thought they were doing were two very different things. Arafat thought he was an autonomous leader of the Palestinian people parallel to Israel's leaders who could negotiate the details of a two-state solution leading to an independent Palestinian state. What Israel wanted was to convert the PA into a subservient tool of a permanent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. These territories would be divided into small enclaves of Palestinian population largely cut off from agricultural resources, separated from each other and surrounded by the Israeli military, while the areas of Israeli settlement would be annexed into Israel. The PA leaders could administrate its enclaves under Israel's permanent control. Israel and the U.S. played a continual cat and mouse game with Arafat, occasionally agreeing to negotiate with him and then rejecting him as someone with whom they could "talk," when he failed to accede fully to this plan of permanent colonization. In September of 2000 a second Intifada (Uprising) broke out after a provocative visit of Ariel Sharon with armed soldiers to the El-Haram el-Sharif in Jerusalem, in effect laying claim to this central Muslim shrine as belonging to Israel. The Intifada expressed the growing Palestinian frustration with a supposed "peace process" that was revealed as a continual betrayal of their basic demands for dignity and independence. Israel responded with extreme violence, returning to a policy of targeted killing of Palestinian militants and political leaders that had been suspended during the period of supposed peace negotiations. Israel shelled Palestinian police stations and government buildings, bulldozed Palestinian houses and crops to create barren swaths of land, tightening its control over Palestinian population enclaves and reoccupying areas that had been supposedly turned over to Palestinian control. In 2002 Israel began the construction of a wall that would permanently separate the Palestinian population enclaves from Israel, including a significant number of Israeli settlements built in the West Bank land around east Jerusalem. Far from being built on the Green Line (the truce line of the 1948 war) the wall cut deeply into Palestinian land, to include these settlements and major aquifers in the West Bank. Although Israel denied it, the line of the wall likely represents its plan for final borders which it is ready to unilaterally impose, if no Palestinian "partner" can be "found" to agree to it. During the Second Intifada Israel renewed a policy of indiscriminate shooting into Palestinian protest crowds, killing and wounding large numbers. From the beginning of the second Intifada (9/29/2000) until May 15, 2006 some 3394 Palestinians have been killed in the Occupied Territories by Israeli occupation forces. Among these 233 were targeted killings in which Israel either invaded a Palestinian area or targeted a house or car from the air to assassinate someone seen as a "militant." These targeted assassinations generally result in deaths of by-standers. 353 bystanders have been killed in the course of targeted killings. The targeted persons include such religious and political leaders as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), and Abdul 'Aziz al-Rantisi, a senior political leader of Hamas. Tanya Reinhart, in her article, "Sharon's Legacy in Action," shows that during Sharon's four years in office he pursued an all-out war against Hamas, killing all its first rank military and political leaders. In January, 2006 the Palestinians startled Israel and the world by overwhelmingly electing Hamas representatives to the Palestinian Legislative Council (76 seats to Fatah's 43). Israel returned to its rhetoric of the 80s, declaring that it would never talk to a Palestinian government run by Hamas unless it renounced armed resistance and accepted Israel's "right to exist." But the Palestinians did not elect Hamas because it rejected a two state solution (which Hamas does reject outright), but because, among other things, they were tired of the corruption of Fatah's leaders, who had made so many compromises with Israel that any genuine two-state solution had eroded to the vanishing point. Hamas leaders were seen as less corrupt, concerned with the daily welfare of increasingly impoverished Palestinians and possessing more spine to defend a real solution that would bring genuinely independent Palestinian state. Israel and the U.S. seek to isolate Hamas worldwide, denying the Palestinian Authority any international aid and access to funds, thus undermining the fragile remnants of social, health and educational services in the territories. It has stepped up a virtual siege on all the Palestinian territories, turning both Gaza and the other Palestinian regions into open air prisons, which can be invaded at will. In the week of May 18-24 (while I have been visiting the region of Ramallah) there have been 50 incursions of Israeli Occupation Forces into the West Bank and two into the Gaza Strip. 78 Palestinian civilians have been arrested and nine have been killed. For example, on May 20 the occupation forces assassinated a member of the al-Quds brigade in Gaza City, by launching a missile from a helicopter at the car in which he was traveling. Three other people were killed and four wounded, all from the same family, in a passing car. On May 24 at 2:30 in the afternoon undercover agents dressed as Palestinians came into the center of Ramallah and entered an internet café to arrest a leader of the Al-Aqsa brigade and four others. Young people in the street, discovering what was happening, began to throw stones at the soldiers and to burn the car in which they had come. Fifteen military jeeps quickly drove into the center of town and opened indiscriminate fire on the crowd, wounding 35 (eight under 18) and killing four. Meanwhile check points have been continually tightened around Gaza and between enclaves in the West Bank, making travel and cultural or commercial exchange difficult to impossible. It is this system of separated Palestinian enclaves, turned into prisons surrounded by Israeli military who invade or bomb at will - enclaves cut off from each other, whose means of daily life have become increasingly restricted and impoverished - which Israel plans to institutionalize permanently. It will do so unilaterally if necessary, if no compliant Palestinians can be founded to give it a fig leaf of legitimacy. Is the rest of the world prepared to stand by and let this happen? Where is that respect for "democracy" which the U.S. claims to champion for the Middle East and the whole world? Where are the national leaders from around the world who reject this brutal and ultimately untenable scheme? Where are those who will demand that the leaders whom the Palestinians have elected be recognized as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people with whom Israel and the rest of the world must deal? Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether teaches at the Claremont Graduate University in California and is the co-author of The Wrath of Jonah: the Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
|
from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |