The Zionist Stratagem | August 16, 2008
As a self-defined movement for the national ‘liberation’ of European Jews, Zionism had an anomalous relationship with its perennial Other, the Gentile nations, from whom it wanted the Jews to secede and become a distinct nation under a Jewish state.
The Zionists did not define Europe’s Gentile nations as the adversary they would have to oppose, and against whom they would struggle, to secure the rights of Jews to emerge as a distinct nation.
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Hizbullah: Has Israel Met Its Match? | April 14, 2008
On January 31, 2008, when the Winograd Commission submitted its final report on the Second Lebanese War of July 2006, this was a first in Israeli history: a report on why the Israeli military had failed in a war.
The Winograd Commission offers a quite honest appraisal of some aspects of the July 2006 War. [1] It acknowledges that it was “a serious missed opportunity.” Israel had “initiated a long war, which ended without its clear military victory (italics added).” The Commission notes that a militia “of a few thousand men resisted, for a few weeks, the strongest army in the Middle East, which enjoyed full air superiority and size and technology advantages.” Nothing could reverse Israel’s handicaps: not even a massive ground offensive launched in the last days of the war.
Yet, after this clear-headed assessment, the Commission stumbles.
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Benazir Bhutto: A Pakistani Tragedy | January 2, 2008
On December 27, a little more than two months after her return to Pakistan from years of exile, Benazir Bhutto was killed while leaving the grounds of Liaquat Bagh after addressing a rally of party faithfuls. Daughter of the charismatic Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, possessing some charisma of her own, driven, talented, but lacking higher aspirations, the career of Pakistan’s best-loved political leader had been cut short by unknown assassins. She was still young at 53.
Did Benazir Bhutto’s life have to end this way?
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Islam Now, China Then: Any Parallels? | July 24, 2007
On some days, a glance at the leading stories in the Western media strongly suggests that Muslims everywhere, of all stripes, have gone berserk. It appears that Muslims have lost their minds.
In any week, we are confronted with reports of Islamic suicide attacks against Western targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Western countries themselves; terrorists foiled before they could act; terrorist attacks gone awry; terrorists indicted; terrorists convicted; terrorists tortured; terrorist suspects kidnapped by CIA; or warnings of new terrorist attacks against Western targets.
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Pakistan’s Mercenary Elites | October 9, 2007
In Pakistan today we encounter a paradox crying for an explanation; it is a paradox, moreover, whose exploration can bring some clarity to the predicament of the Islamicate today.
In January 2002, when President George Bush defined his near-term agenda for waging wars, he fixed his sights on Iraq, Iran and North Korea: the ‘axis of evil,’ marked for regime change. These countries were targeted – we were told – because they were developing ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ In the case of Iraq and Iran, this was only a cover. More likely, the two countries were targeted because they opposed Israeli hegemony. Perhaps, too, the US wanted their oil.
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The Zionist Question | September 21, 2007
In recent times, no nationalist project has been so completely mythologized by its partisans as Zionism. In the construction of nearly all aspects of its history, the official Zionist narrative is often at variance – even complete variance – with the facts as they are known to the rest of the world: and, more recently, even as they have been documented by some Zionist historians.
Yet few Zionists would deny one central fact of their history: and that is the history of violence that has attended the insertion of Jewish colons into the Middle East. The history of the Zionist movement in Palestine – it can scarcely be disputed – has been attended by violence between the Jewish settlers and the Palestinians; it has led to unending conflicts between Arab societies and Israel; and these conflicts continue to draw Western powers, especially the United States since 1945, into ever widening clashes with the Islamic world.
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A Comic Apology | May 07, 2004
This happens rarely--very rarely. An apology from the President of the United States, not for personal lapses, but for the rare slippage in the workings of America's virtuous, divinely blessed, civilizing mission to the benighted world...
Day after day, the mandarins and media in this country work tirelessly, cleverly, to project an image of an America that protects freedoms at home and abroad; an America that has time and again shed its blood to rid foreign lands of murderous tyrannies; an America that cares, that responds with alacrity to famines and calamities abroad; an American that contributes men, money and ideas to bring prosperity to the backward races; an America that has patiently served as an honest broker in the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.
As a result, year after year, most Americans are kept in the dark, unaware of the actual, the real America--the only kind seen by much of the rest of the world. This is the America that daily employs its might to mangle the lives of hundreds of millions, that pushes a globalization that devastates the economies of the Third World, that instructs and arms foreign tyrannies to terrorize their own people, that aids and abets an Israeli machine that is determined to extirpate the Palestinians. This America acts in the name of freedom, in any way that it sees fit and necessary, to keep the world safe for American capital. However, this dark side of America is nearly completely, nearly always, whitewashed by the myth-making powers of America's elites.
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Is The United States a "Terrorist Magnet"?| August 07, 2003
Is it possible that a single metaphor, one that has dropped from the lips of a serving American general, can offer some forbidden insights into the dynamics of America's relations with the Islamic world?
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Published in Counterpunch
MediaMonitors | View Acrobat PDF version
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America's Dual Mission | March 05, 2003
It should not surprise anyone if I feel duty-bound, as a professor of economics, to draw upon my modest expertise in neoclassical economics to look ahead, beyond the impending war against Iraq, and contribute to the nation-building efforts in that benighted country as soon as we have finished destroying it.
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Published in
CounterPunch | View Acrobat PDF version
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Israel's Proxy War? Motives for a Flawed War | February 22, 2003
It has been apparent to all but the purblind--a defect in understanding assiduously cultivated by America's mass media--that the war United States is ready to wage against Iraq has almost nothing to do with its security.
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Published in
CounterPunch | View Acrobat PDF version
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Zionist Thesis and Anti-Thesis | November 9, 2002
We are at a turning point of history, for better or worse. If we can unravel the fabric of lies woven over the past century, we can perhaps nudge this historical turning point just a little bit towards better outcomes.
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Published in
Outlook India| View Acrobat PDF version
here.
Lies of Desperation: Answering Thomas Friedman | April 03, 2002
As the ratio of fatalities between Palestinians and Israelis has narrowed during the past few months, the media mills in the United States that have demonized Palestinians for the past 50 years have been going into higher gear.
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Published in
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here.
Is This A Clash of Civilizations? | February 28, 2002
On September 11, 2001, when the nineteen Arab hijackers from Al-Qaida struck the most visible icons of America's military and financial power--the Pentagon and the Twin Towers--there were more than a few pundits who concluded with some satisfaction that the "clash of civilizations" they had been predicting had finally arrived.
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Published in
CounterPunch and Media Monitors | View Acrobat PDF version
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Clash of Civilizations? | February 14, 2002
Are we to accept Huntington's reading-of September 11 as an attack on the West, and part of an unfolding, or yet to begin, war between Islam and the West?
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Published in
Outlook India | View Acrobat PDF version
here.
