8 thoughts on “Riverbend: read her!”

  6. i am confussed and maybe you guys can help. i have been reading river since the beginning, except for a few months that i didn’t have access to the web. i thought i read her before the start of the war but her archives start in the summer. does anyone remember her writing about the destruction of old growth olive and date trees by our troops on bull doziers? some of the guys had tears in their eyes but had to follow orders. seems it was called “operation community punishment” or “operation collective punishment”? i think i even remember writing my senators about this, but i couldn’t find it on her site. i thought it happened in june. anyone know? i don’t care what they say about river, i love her and am grateful for the insight she has provided. when she goes too long not posting i panic for her. glad to know there are other river people.

  7. ouachitawoman, I think you are partially confusing Palestine with Iraq – easy to do because many of the American occupation tactics were/are taken from the Israeli playbook. Olives are not an Iraqi crop, though Iraq has always been famous for its dates – no country has the variety and quality of dates that Iraq had. Date trees are everywhere in Iraq.
    The Americans did destroy a great many date trees, but the trees I know of that were destroyed as a means of collective punishment were mainly citrus as I recall. I am quite sure there was no “operation punishment” of any kind, but indeed that was one form of collective punishment that was used by the Americans. It was, of course, always justified in the name of security for American troops. The fact that it destroyed the economic security of entire communities is not considered significant, of course.

  8. Shirin,
    Thank-you for the info. At least I’m not totaly crazy, just slowly going out of my mind.

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