Before the United States government subcontracted the Chilean military to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973, it carried out a number of important missions in the country in preparation for the coup of 11 September. These included major strikes, especially by truck owners, which crippled the economy, massive demonstrations that included middle-class housewives and children carrying pots and pans demanding food, purging the Chilean military of officers who would oppose the suspension of democracy and the introduction of US-supported fascist rule, and a major media campaign against the regime with the CIA planting stories in newspapers like El Mercurio and others. Read more about Pinochet in Palestine
Yesterday at dawn, the Israeli air force bombed and destroyed my home. I was the target, but instead the attack killed my sister-in-law, Nahla, a widow with eight children in her care. In the same raid Israel’s artillery shelled a residential district in the town of Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, leaving 19 dead and 40 injured, many killed in their beds. One family, the Athamnas, lost 16 members in the massacre: the oldest who died, Fatima, was 70; the youngest, Dima, was one; seven were children. The death toll in Beit Hanoun has passed 90 in one week. This is Israel’s tenth incursion into Beit Hanoun since it announced its withdrawal from Gaza. Read more about We overcame our fear
“Let’s assume that what the Israelis are saying is true and that they are imposing this siege because of the capture of the Israeli soldier. If that is true then they are admitting to the most serious war crimes that can be committed under international law because the Geneva Convention makes it very clear that it is a serious crime to punish a civilian population for political reasons. Here Israel says they are punishing the civilian population in order to secure the release of a prisoner of war. I think that, if nothing else should alert people to the true nature of this regime.” Read more about "One Country": An Interview with Ali Abunimah
The highlight of the Rabin Memorial ceremony in Tel Aviv on 4 November last was, by common consent, David Grossman’s speech directed rhetorically to Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. This text has already done the rounds of the world’s liberal media, and there is general agreement that it represents Israeli pacifist humanism at its very best. Of Israeli literature’s “three wise men”, Grossman is the one who universally gleans most respect. Amoz Oz’s reputation survives outside Israel primarily because the repentant Germans dutifully worship at his shrine. A. B. Yehoshua put his foot in it once too often when in a Ha’aretz interview he prescribed the use of “full force against the entire population” of Gaza. Read more about The Anatomy of a Beautiful Soul
In a recent interview published in Haaretz, Naftali Tamir, the Israeli ambassador to Australia, articulates a perennial need for ‘white’ collaborators that has defined the Zionist project since its inception. He speaks bluntly of an Israeli partnership with Australia, founded on racial solidarity, to “enhance” Israeli influence over East Asia. Only perhaps in the nineteenth century could a Western diplomat have spoken so plainly about race as the basis of a political alliance. Infinitely better armed against their Arab victims, the Israelis have no need for caution. They can dispense with diplomacy, with political correctness. Read more about Two White Sisters in Asia: Israel and Australia
The ramifications of Israel’s second Lebanon War should be gauged against the background of the dramatic events that the region has undergone in the last three years: the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Hamas electoral victory, and changes in Israel’s political economy. These events, in turn, should be viewed against the political vacuum created by the fall of the Soviet Union. The vacuum has been filled in two very different ways: 1) by the neo-liberal conceptions of the global capitalist regime, and 2) by Islamic fundamentalism. The Organization for Democratic Action (ODA-Da’am) opposed the war in Lebanon. Read more about Lebanon II: The Wider Picture
America’s entrapment in Iraq creates a vacuum through the Middle East. The way out of that war has become the great question of US politics. Mid-term Congressional elections are due on November 7, 2006, but whatever the result, President George W. Bush will be a lame duck. If he boldly signals a change of direction (for example, by firing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld), he will lose all credibility. On the other hand, if he doggedly “stays the course,” he will appear as a man out of touch with reality, unfit to lead his nation or the world. Either way, Bush’s lot will be that of the leaders his policy helped bring down: Asnar in Spain, Berlusconi in Italy, Blair in Britain. Read more about The Conflict Cannot Wait
The year 2006 has seen by far the most skewed ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed. While no deaths should be accepted, the figures show that the Israeli war machine has shifted into an unprecedented frenzy. Through the entire second Palestinian intifada or uprising which began September 29, 2000, approximately 3.9 Palestinians have been killed for every Israeli killed.[4] The highest previous multi-month ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed during this intifada occurred from March to December 2004 when around 9.5 Palestinians were killed for every Israeli. In the first Palestinian intifada from 1987-92, 5.2 Palestinians were killed for every Israeli. Read more about Israel's Large-Scale Killing of Palestinians Passes Unreported
Lebanon is once again on the brink of a crisis caused by foreign meddling and domestic inaction. The White House is accusing Hizbullah, Iran and Syria of seeking the illegitimate overthrow of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government, parroting a theme long championed by a very recent visitor to Washington, Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt. The simplistic charge dovetails with much of the current US approach to the Middle East, but it also lends credence to the theory that the Bush administration’s Lebanon policy is so flimsy as to be alterable by the last person who gained an audience with the president or one of his top advisers. Read more about Foreign meddling and domestic inaction push Lebanon to the brink of crisis
The terrible imbalance of power between the Israelis and Palestinians makes it impossible for Israel, regardless of which government is in power, to deal with the Palestinians in any way except through a lens of assumed moral, cultural, and racial superiority, as though military prowess equates with civilization and home-made rockets equate with savagery and a sub-human status. The savagery, though, belongs to Israel and to anyone who has the power to stop a bully in his bloody pummeling of a much weaker opponent but instead stands aside, watching under the cover of the manufactured excuse that the bully is defending himself against his hapless victim. Read more about Pummeling the victim
