From Occupied Palestine

A mighty and passionate heart
Edward Said, Dead at 66
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
CounterPunch, 25 September 2003

Edward Said died in hospital in New York City Wednesday night at 6.30 pm, felled at last by complications arising from the leukemia he fought so gamely ever since the early 1990s.

We march through life buoyed by those comrades-in-arms we know to be marching with us, under the same banners, flying the same colors, sustained by the same hopes and convictions. They can be a thousand miles away; we may not have spoken to them in months; but their companionship is burned into our souls and we are sustained by the knowledge that they are with us in the world.

The roadmap hoax
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Counterpunch, 1 June 2003

Don't waste your time fretting over the fortunes of the "road map" to peace in the Middle East. It's all a fraud, following the contours of all the other frauds down the years, back to such museum pieces as the Rogers Plan, conceived in Nixon time.

The recipe is unvarying. The Palestinians are required to pledge that they will instantly abandon all vestiges of resistance to Israel's onslaughts on their persons, children, houses, land, crops, water, trees, livestock, roads, schools, universities, graveyards and public buildings.

The Palestinian Lone Star state
Dick Armey's modest proposal to rake in foreign aid in his native Texas
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Creators Syndicate, 8 May 2002

I'd guess it was the most explicit call for ethnic cleansing by a prominent American since Sherman's designation of the only good Indian being a dead one, or California's second governor, John McDougal's, declaration in his first message to the California legislature in 1851 to the effect that "A war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races till the Indian race becomes extinct." Mind you, Dick Armey wasn't calling for every Palestinian in the territories to be murdered, merely evicted to ... anywhere, so long as it's somewhere else.

Israel and "Anti-Semitism"
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Counterpunch, 16 May 2002

Right in the wake of House Majority leader Dick Armey's explicit call for two million Palestinians to be booted out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Gaza as well, came yet one more of those earnest articles accusing a vague entity called "the left" of anti-Semitism.

Is criticism of Israel anti-Semitic?
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Creators Syndicate, 16 May 2002

Right in the wake of House Majority leader Dick Armey's explicit call for two million Palestinians to be booted out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Gaza as well, came yet one more of those earnest articles accusing a vague entity called "the left" of anti-Semitism. This one was in Salon, by a man called Dennis Fox, identified as an associate professor of legal studies and psychology at the University of Illinois. Salon titled Fox's contribution, "The shame of the pro-Palestinian left: Ignorance and anti-Semitism are undercutting the moral legitimacy of Israel's critics." [See Dennis Fox's response to this article.]

The Nightmare in Israel
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Counterpunch, 8 March 2002

Let's start with Baruch Kimmering, a sociologist at Hebrew University. Here's what he sent to the Jerusalem Weekly Kol Ha'Ir last month, which duly published it:

"I accuse Ariel Sharon of creating a process in which he will not only intensify the reciprocal bloodshed, but is liable to instigate a regional war and partial or nearly complete ethnic cleansing of the Arabs in the "Land of Israel."

Sharon’s final solution
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Creators Syndicate, 2 May 2002

Two years ago, less than 8 percent of those who took part in a Gallup poll among Jewish Israelis said they were in favor of what is politely called "transfer" -- that is, the expulsion of perhaps two million Palestinians across the River Jordan. This month, that figure reached 44 percent.

Professor Martin van Creveld is Israel's best-known military historian. On April 28, Britain's conservative newspaper The Telegraph, published an article outlining what Van Creveld believes Sharon's near-term goal: "transfer," otherwise known as expulsion of the Palestinians.

Twenty years on
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
The Nation, 22 April 2002

Here we are, twenty years on, and the reports of the Israeli army smashing its way through Palestinian towns remind me of what came out of Lebanon as Sharon and his invading army raced north. Israeli troops beating, looting, destroying; Palestinians huddled in refugee camps, waiting for the killers to come.

But there is a huge difference. Twenty years ago, at least for people living here in the United States, it was harder, though far from impossible, to get firsthand accounts of what was going on. You had to run out to find foreign newspapers, or have them laboriously telexed from London or Paris. Reporting in the mainstream corporate press was horrifyingly tilted, putting the best face on Israeli deeds. Mostly, it still is. But the attempted news blackout by the Sharon government and the Israeli military simply isn't working.

Journalistic jingoism
How Daniel Pearl’s own newspaper factors into his death
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Creators Syndicate, 28 February 2002

Ironically, since his captors charged him with being an agent of the American Empire and of Zionism, Pearl was not afraid to file reports contradicting the claims of the State Department or the Pentagon or even of the mad dogs on the Journal's editorial pages, whose ravings fulfill on a weekly basis the most paranoid expectations of a Muslim fanatic.

The war they wanted
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Counterpunch, 6 December 2001

"Arafat is guilty of everything here." Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon declared on television Monday night. "Arafat has made his strategic choices: a strategy of terrorism." In sync with these fierce words, Israeli forces launched attacks close to the Palestinian leader's house and destroyed his helicopters, an onslaught that the US government conspicuously failed to condemn.