Re: CNN USING 1991 FOOTAGE of celebrating Palistinians to

Carina,

There appears to be no denying that there was, at the least, a moment 
of triumphalism. Perhaps, and hopefully, there has been a retreat 
from that as the enormity and the calamity of what has happened sets 
in. As should be evident by now, the single greatest beneficiary of 
what has happened is Israel; a moment of evil -- and there's no need 
for the quotation marks -- has served to erase all the many moments 
of evil that perhaps had made more Americans question Washington's 
Mideast policy (and elsewhere). There will be backing for Israel when 
it carries out its acts in the name of combatting terrorism; there 
will be backing for the policy of assassination (if not an adoption 
of such a policy by Washington itself); there will be a blind eye 
turned (as if there were not enough blind eyes turned already) when 
the next apartment block is hit in the occupied territories.

If you haven't already read Chalmers Johnson's "Blowback" (2000), now 
may be a good time to do so, not least because Johnson is someone who 
could not be accused of being a radical leftie, although at times his 
analysis verges on the conspiratorial. But put that together with how 
Osama b Laden (assuming that he  had something to do with it) came to 
be in Afghanistan, and not even Johnson could have anticipated how 
horribly prescient he was.

Appended below is an item by Robert Fisk in The Independent (UK). It 
is, I think, a thoughtful piece (bar the factual error regarding the 
missiles on Kabul, since claimed by the Masood faction) -- a piece 
that humanises and recognises the humanity and equality in the very 
act of recognising the horror of the reactions of _some_ 
Palestinians. I think that that indeed is the only way of humanising 
that is not simultaneously patronising and demeaning, if those words 
can carry the weight they have to in the present horrifying 
circumstances.

kj khoo


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=93623

Terror in America

The wickedness and awesome cruelty of a crushed and humiliated people

By Robert Fisk

12 September 2001

So it has come to this. The entire modern history of the Middle East 
- the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the Balfour declaration, 
Lawrence of Arabia's lies, the Arab revolt, the foundation of the 
state of Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and the 34 years of Israel's 
brutal occupation of Arab land - all erased within hours as those who 
claim to represent a crushed, humiliated population struck back with 
the wickedness and awesome cruelty of a doomed people. Is it fair - 
is it moral - to write this so soon, without proof, when the last act 
of barbarism, in Oklahoma, turned out to be the work of home-grown 
Americans? I fear it is. America is at war and, unless I am mistaken, 
many thousands more are now scheduled to die in the Middle East, 
perhaps in America too. Some of us warned of "the explosion to 
come''. But we never dreamt this nightmare.

And yes, Osama bin Laden comes to mind, his money, his theology, his 
frightening dedication to destroy American power. I have sat in front 
of bin Laden as he described how his men helped to destroy the 
Russian army in Afghanistan and thus the Soviet Union. Their 
boundless confidence allowed them to declare war on America. But this 
is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be 
asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American 
missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing 
missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells 
crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia - 
paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally - hacking and raping and 
murdering their way through refugee camps.

No, there is no doubting the utter, indescribable evil of what has 
happened in the United States. That Palestinians could celebrate the 
massacre of 20,000, perhaps 35,000 innocent people is not only a 
symbol of their despair but of their political immaturity, of their 
failure to grasp what they had always been accusing their Israeli 
enemies of doing: acting disproportionately. All the years of 
rhetoric, all the promises to strike at the heart of America, to cut 
off the head of "the American snake'' we took for empty threats. How 
could a backward, conservative, undemocratic and corrupt group of 
regimes and small, violent organisations fulfil such preposterous 
promises? Now we know.

And in the hours that followed yesterday's annihilation, I began to 
remember those other extraordinary assaults upon the US and its 
allies, miniature now by comparison with yesterday's casualties. Did 
not the suicide bombers who killed 241 American servicemen and 100 
French paratroops in Beirut on 23 October 1983, time their attacks 
with unthinkable precision?

There were just seven seconds between the Marine bombing and the 
destruction of the French three miles away. Then there were the 
attacks on US bases in Saudi Arabia, and last year's attempt - almost 
successful it now turns out - to sink the USS Cole in Aden. And then 
how easy was our failure to recognise the new weapon of the Middle 
East which neither Americans nor any other Westerners could equal: 
the despair-driven, desperate suicide bomber.

And there will be, inevitably, and quite immorally, an attempt to 
obscure the historical wrongs and the injustices that lie behind 
yesterday's firestorms. We will be told about "mindless terrorism'', 
the "mindless" bit being essential if we are not to realise how hated 
America has become in the land of the birth of three great religions.

Ask an Arab how he responds to 20,000 or 30,000 innocent deaths and 
he or she will respond as decent people should, that it is an 
unspeakable crime. But they will ask why we did not use such words 
about the sanctions that have destroyed the lives of perhaps half a 
million children in Iraq, why we did not rage about the 17,500 
civilians killed in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. And those 
basic reasons why the Middle East caught fire last September - the 
Israeli occupation of Arab land, the dispossession of Palestinians, 
the bombardments and state-sponsored executions ... all these must be 
obscured lest they provide the smallest fractional reason for 
yesterday's mass savagery.

No, Israel was not to blame - though we can be sure that Saddam 
Hussein and the other grotesque dictators will claim so - but the 
malign influence of history and our share in its burden must surely 
stand in the dark with the suicide bombers. Our broken promises, 
perhaps even our destruction of the Ottoman Empire, led inevitably to 
this tragedy. America has bankrolled Israel's wars for so many years 
that it believed this would be cost-free. No longer so. But, of 
course, the US will want to strike back against "world terror'', and 
last night's bombardment of Kabul may have been the opening salvo. 
Indeed, who could ever point the finger at Americans now for using 
that pejorative and sometimes racist word "terrorism''?

Eight years ago, I helped to make a television series that tried to 
explain why so many Muslims had come to hate the West. Last night, I 
remembered some of those Muslims in that film, their families burnt 
by American-made bombs and weapons. They talked about how no one 
would help them but God. Theology versus technology, the suicide 
bomber against the nuclear power. Now we have learnt what this means.


At 11:54 AM -0400 13/9/01, C. Bandhauer wrote:
>I hope the video tapes are fakes - the effect of these tapes is truly
>disturbing.  I teach just a bit more than an hour north of Manhattan, and
>have many students whose parents commute on the Metro North to work
>everyday.  It's been very difficult to change their mindset from "America
>the Kind & Gentle Superpower," to a (if only) slightly more critical
>perspective.  I did have one student (out of 130) who claimed his father had
>witnessed "Middle Easterners" in New Jersey watching and cheering as the
>buildings pancaked (I have NO proof of this).  I also heard a story from
>another student about how people from "that country" hate Americans "because
>US military women went there some years ago without veils on and it had
>offended 'them.'"  I've heard lots of "we should just bomb 'thems'" and even
>talk of (sigh) rounding 'them' all up and kicking 'them' out of 'America'.
>And another, that "if they hate us so much why do they keep coming here?"
>   It's been very difficult to try to get students to think more critically
>about 'why' many in the world hate 'America,'  particularly since emotions
>(especially yesterday) were so raw and I do have several students whose
>loved ones were in the WTC, yet to be accounted for.
>
>In my efforts to help students humanize the "terrorists" and socially
>construct the "evil," if someone could direct me to additional sources,
>books, websites, or something on this list that would give an effective
>chronology of US bombings, embargoes, arms deals, etc. etc. and who and how
>these have affected people in the Middle East, I would be grateful.
>
>Carina
>
>*************************************
>Carina A. Bandhauer, PhD
>Assistant Professor
>Department of Social Sciences
>Western Connecticut State University
>Danbury, CT 06810
>
>Phone:  (203) 837-8650
>Fax:    (203) 837-8526
>Email:  bcarina@mac.com
>**************************************
>
>
>on 9/13/01 9:42 AM, Louis Proyect at lnp3@panix.com wrote:
>
>>  At 08:33 AM 9/13/01 -0500, Alan Spector wrote:
>>>  I find the comments below entirely plausible. BUT I CANNOT SPREAD THIS
>>>  INFORMATION ON BASED SOLELY ON AN E-MAIL!  So, if someone can find a more
>>>  authoritative source for that story about 1991 Footage, I, and thousands
>>>  more would be very grateful and promise to spread that information to
>>>  hundreds of thousands more.
>>>
>>>  Alan Spector
>>
>>  NY Times, September 13, 2001
>>
>>  THE ARABS
>>  Arafat Angrily Insists Palestinians Didn't Rejoice
>>  By JAMES BENNET
>>
>>  JERUSALEM, Sept. 12 — Yasir Arafat angrily rejected tonight any suggestion
>>  that Palestinians had rejoiced over the terrorist attack on the United
>>  States on Tuesday, declaring that the Palestinian reaction was one of
>>  identification and not satisfaction with American suffering.
>>
>>  "For your information," Mr. Arafat said, when asked in an interview about
>>  images shown around the world of Palestinians celebrating, "it is clear and
>>  obvious that it was less than 10 children in East Jerusalem, and we
>>  punished them." It was unclear how this assertion could be squared with
>>  photographs suggesting that there were more people.
>>
>>  In the rare telephone interview, Mr. Arafat, who donated blood today that
>>  was intended for Americans wounded in the attack, said Israelis were taking
>>  advantage of the world's focus on the horror in the United States, and
>>  perhaps exploiting its anger over Tuesday's images, to tighten restrictions
>>  on Palestinians and to assault the West Bank town of Jenin, where seven
>>  Palestinians were killed today.
>>
>>  Mr. Arafat, who spoke from Gaza City, emphasized that Palestinians had
>>  reason to feel compassion for Americans. "As Palestinians, we too have
>>  experienced the tragic loss of innocent civilians, who suffer from violence
>>  on a daily basis," he said. "Our hearts go out to the people of the United
>>  States during this tragedy, our prayers are with them." He paused, then,
>>  spacing the words out for emphasis, repeated three times, "God bless them."
>>
>>  But interviews on the streets of Ramallah and Nablus today revealed a more
>>  diverse, complex Palestinian response to the attack. Some Palestinians
>>  condemned it, while others, furious at the United States for its policies
>>  here, said they hoped America had learned a lesson.
>>
>>  "Some people say Israel is an American state, but I say America is an
>>  Israeli state," said Muhammed Nabil, sitting in his candy stall in the
>>  dusky warren of figs, fresh meat and sneakers that is the Nablus market.
>>
>>  Israelis today relished the Palestinian predicament over the terror attack.
>>  "From the perspective of the Jews, it is the most important public-
>>  relations act ever committed in our favor," wrote a guest columnist in the
>>  daily Maariv.
>>
>>  But Palestinian officials fanned out in the news media to counter this
>>  Israeli drive, deploring terrorism and urging sympathy for the Palestinian
>>  plight. They argued that a handful of extremists were being treated as
>>  representative of all Palestinians.
>>
>>  In addition to the drive to collect blood from Mr. Arafat and others, the
>>  Palestinian Authority announced that all Palestinian schoolchildren would
>>  stand on Thursday for five minutes of silence.
>>
>>  West Bank towns were mostly quiet after the attack on Tuesday. But in
>  > Nablus, Palestinians took to the streets joyfully, without cameras to egg
>>  them on.
>>
>>  In the interview, Mr. Arafat at first insisted that "they were making this
>>  big demonstration because of the siege and the escalation of the Israeli
>>  military attack against Jenin."
>>
>>  Told that people in Nablus said today that the demonstration was in
>>  celebration of the terror attack, Mr. Arafat acknowledged that "there are
>>  some fanatic groups, and I'm sorry to tell you that these fanatic groups
>>  have been established by the Israelis."
>>
>>  This appeared to be a reference to the fact that Israel, seeking a
>>  counterweight to Mr. Arafat, assisted a fledgling group called the Islamic
>>  Resistance Movement in the 1980's. The group is known better now by its
>>  Arabic shorthand, Hamas, the name for the now-militant group seen on
>>  posters today in Nablus.
>>
>>  Mr. Arafat went as far as to praise the United States for its handling of
>>  the staggering peace effort here. He said Secretary of State Colin L.
>>  Powell had telephoned him today, and he insisted that "there is a big
>>  effort from the American administration" toward peace.
>>
>>  Asked if the United States would be justified in using force against any
>>  country implicated in the attack, Mr. Arafat said, "It is their decision,
>>  not my decision." But he added, "Those who have done this fatal crime and
>>  fatal mistake against the American people have to be punished."
>>
>>  Nablus is reached by a road that winds through terraced hillsides dotted
>>  with olive trees and, on the high ground, Israeli settlements. With
>>  Israelis clamping down on Palestinian towns after Tuesday's violence, the
>>  road was almost empty today.The town's police headquarters is mostly rubble
>>  from an Israeli F-16 attack in May.
>>
>>  Some in Nablus condemned any violence against civilians. Amin Amira, a
>>  43-year-old fruit vendor, said he was dismayed by Tuesday's demonstration.
>>  "I don't believe that this reflects the feeling of the Palestinian people,"
>>  he said.
>>
>>  Others were more sympathetic to the demonstrators. "We go to the
>>  checkpoints and are subjected to brutal measures by the Israelis, and
>>  Americans support that," said Ahmed Takrouri, 20. "When people went to the
>>  streets yesterday, it was because of that feeling."
>>
>>
>>  Louis Proyect
>>  Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
>>