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Navigating the Roadmap to Peace
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Polly Mann, W A M M
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Most who still read the daily press assume, I think, that they are being provided information they can depend upon. However, in the case of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, unless readers have a wealth of background information about the conflict and the proposed peace plan (the “Roadmap”), they will have no clear picture of the situation.
For example, an excerpt from an Associated Press article published in the Star Tribune (June 30, 2003) reads: “The militant Islamic Jihad and Hamas groups announced a joint three-month cease-fire and Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction declared a six-month truce. Israel expressed doubts about the promises and insisted that the Palestinian Authority must disarm the militants.” There is no mention of the Israeli armaments that the Palestinians face, including tanks, outsized bulldozers (built by the Caterpillar Company especially for demolishing homes), water cannons, and tear gas grenades. There is no mention of military checkpoints, the destruction of roads, barbed wire fences, and a court system that seldom shows mercy to Arabs yet deals gently with Israeli settlers.
“Anything that reduces violence is a step in the right direction,” White House spokeswoman Ashley Snee said later in the same article. “Under the road map, parties have an obligation to dismantle terrorist infrastructure. There is still more work to be done.” The word “terrorist” is selectively applied by the Administration and the media. It is never used to describe the actions of the Israeli military—even when the Israelis have delayed dying people en route to hospitals in ambulances, denied Palestinians humanitarian aid shipped to them from abroad, mistreated Palestinian elderly, killed children, or when they recently ran over and killed the American student Rachel Corrie.
In the article three Palestinian political groups are reported to have agreed on a truce and the Palestinian foreign affairs minister called on Israel to “halt targeted killings, freezing Jewish settlement activity in Palestinian territories and completing a full withdrawal from occupied Palestinian areas within six weeks.” Just what does “full withdrawal” mean?
Journalist Amira Hass, who writes for the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, reacts to this announcement: “Does anyone in Israel expect the Palestinians to be so grateful for having been permitted to leave their confined quarters that they won’t see what is happening before their very eyes? What is happening before their very eyes is the nonstop expansion of the settlements. Settlements are the unlawful transfer of an occupying population to occupied territory; they are the cynical theft of land reserves vital for the Palestinian cities and villages; they are the denial of territorial contiguity and the potential to develop; they are the wresting of control of irreplaceable water resources; they are control of roads. They are all that and more.”
In the photograph accompanying a June 30 Star Tribune article, two smiling Israeli soldiers embrace each other in celebration “after leaving the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.” The background news that readers are not offered is that several hundred soldiers and officers of the Israeli Defense Forces have conscientiously refused to serve in the occupied territories.
In a July 2, 2003, e-mail, Rev. Sandra Olewine, United Methodist liaison in Jerusalem, offered her perspective of the withdrawal. “While jeeps full of Israeli soldiers and tanks have been part of the life in Bethlehem for the last seven months, there will be no scenes of tanks driving out of Bethlehem today as in Gaza over the weekend. . . . About the only thing to change today will be that Israeli soldiers will not be driving down the streets daily, carrying out arrests, home demolitions, searches, or detentions. Palestinian police will be back in uniform and on the streets, hopefully bringing with them a bit of order after the disorder of the last seven months. I don’t mean to imply that this change isn’t a good thing. Already last night you could sense a change as the streets in town were as full of traffic as they have been at night since October. But again, the reality is that the soldiers haven’t gone anywhere—to the north, west, south, and east of Bethlehem they are still present. The ‘security fence’ continues to keep the residents locked in a small area.”
In the Star Tribune on July 1, 2003, the headline read, “Israel to Return Bethlehem to Palestinians.” Almost as if in response to this statement, Olewine says this: “The Israelis have so far refused to remove the road block at the southern end of Bethlehem which connects the city to Hebron. The main road to the north of the West Bank, the Wadi al-Nar, remains closed except to those few Palestinians who have permits to leave Bethlehem. Remember, these permits are not even to enter Jerusalem, but just to get out of Bethlehem and enter another city in the West Bank, whether it be Jericho, Ramallah, or Hebron. Rather than describe this as a withdrawal, it seems a more accurate description to say the ‘prison guards won’t be coming into the prison.’”
Several weeks ago, the Star Tribune published a photograph of Israeli soldiers confronting a group of angry Israeli settlers who were being removed from their homes. However, Uri Avnery, the founder of the Israeli Peace Council, said this photo and a video tape of the scene were staged to impress upon the Bush Administration and the U.S. public the heroic fight of Ariel Sharon to remove the settlers from their homes built on Palestinian land.
Uri Avnery has watched the Israeli military remove Palestinians from their homes and this, he says, is how it goes: “Early in the morning hundreds of soldiers surround the land. Behind them come the tanks and the bulldozers and the action starts. When despair drives the inhabitants to resist, the soldiers hit them with sticks, throw gas grenades, shoot rubber-coated metal bullets and, if the resistance is stronger, live ammunition too. Old people are thrown on the ground, women dragged along, young people handcuffed and pushed against the wall. After a few minutes it’s all over.” Obviously, the Israeli Defense Forces did not attempt the removal of Israelis from their homes in the same manner.
This kind of information is hidden from all but the people who read or listen to alternative media. Besides books and magazines, I find information on the Internet from people with verifiable credentials. Why do the media not avail themselves of this information? They could then inform the public of such issues as the destruction by Israeli Defense Forces of wells used by the Palestinians for agricultural purposes. Or the nonviolent direct action of volunteers from all over the world protesting the 25-foot wall constructed on Palestinian land by the Israelis to divide Israel from Palestine.
I have given up hope of ever reading in the mainstream press any mention of the $17 million a day the U.S. allocates Israel—well, maybe in the lower right-hand corner on page 11 of a weekday newspaper. |
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The Cost of War
Median CEO pay at the 37 largest defense contractors rose 79 percent from 2001 to 2002, while overall CEO pay climbed only 6 percent, according to an April report from United for a Fair Economy, “More Bucks for the Bang: CEO Pay at Top Defense Contractors,” by Chris Hartman and David Martin.
Median pay was 45 percent higher in 2002 at defense contractors than at the 365 large companies surveyed by Business Week magazine. The typical U.S. CEO made $3.7 million in 2002, while the typical defense industry CEO got $5.4 million. The jump in median defense contractor CEO pay far exceeded the increase in defense spending, which rose 14 percent from 2001 to 2002.
Compared with an army private’s pay of $19,585, the average CEO at a major defense contractor made 577 times as much in 2002, or $11,297,548. This is also more than 28 times as much as the Commander in Chief’s salary of $400,000.
United for a Fair Economy (UFE) is a national, independent nonprofit that spotlights growing economic inequality and advocates shared prosperity. The report is on the Web at www.FairEconomy.org. Hard copies are available upon request from UFE.
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© 2003 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete September 2003 Index - click here
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