The wartime deceptions: Saddam is Hitler and it's not about oil
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, January 27, 2003
The Israeli writer Uri Avnery once delivered a wickedly sharp open letter to Menachem Begin, the Israeli prime minister who sent his army to defeat in Lebanon. Enraged by Begin's constant evocation of the Second World War – likening Yasser Arafat in Beirut to Hitler in his Berlin bunker in 1945 – Avnery entitled his letter: "Mr Prime Minister, Hitler is Dead." How often I have wanted to repeat his advice to Bush and Blair. Obsessed with their own demonisation of Saddam Hussein, both are now reminding us of the price of appeasement. Bush thinks that he is the Churchill of America, refusing the appeasement of Saddam. Now the US ambassador to the European Union, Rockwell Schnabel, has compared Saddam to Hitler. "You had Hitler in Europe and no one really did anything about him," Schnabel lectured the Europeans in Brussels a week ago: "We knew he could be dangerous but nothing was done. The same type of person [is in Baghdad] and it's there that our concern lies." Mr Schnabel ended this infantile parallel by adding unconvincingly that "this has nothing to do with oil".

Why Bush is sunk without Europe
By Will Hutton, The Observer, January 26, 2003
Even while George Bush growls out his bellicose message, his country has never been in such an enfeebled state -- WHEN THE STOCK market falls for a record 10 consecutive days, as it just has done, you take notice. Falls like these are usually the portent of something bad, even calamitous, ahead. The worry is obvious; Bush's intentions on Iraq could have potentially disastrous economic repercussions. The US's economic position is far too vulnerable to allow it to go war without cast-iron multilateral support that could underpin it economically as well as diplomatically and militarily. The multi-lateralism Bush scorns is, in truth, an economic necessity. America may be a superpower that spends more on defence than the next nine countries combined and is preparing to increase defence spending this year by an enormous $48 billion, equivalent to Britain's entire defence budget, but it is a strategic position built on economic sand. On latest estimates, its net liabilities to the rest the world are more than $2.7 trillion, nearly 30 per cent of GDP, a scale of indebtedness associated with basket-case economies in Latin America. Its industrial base is so uncompetitive that it consistently imports more than it exports; its current-account deficit, the gap between all its current foreign earnings and foreign spending, is now a stunning 5 per cent of GDP, continuing a trend that has lasted for more than 25 years and which is the cause of all that foreign debt. As a national community, it has virtually ceased to save so that government and individuals alike live on credit.

The only vote that counts is George Bush's
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, January 27, 2003   
Imagine that when the Labor Central Committee meets to debate joining the unity government, the headlines of that day's papers would say: "Sharon tells Quartet he supports the road map, including a Palestinian state and a settlement freeze." How many party members will raise their hands for Amram Mitzna against guidelines that wouldn't embarrass Meretz in a coalition agreement? With an extremist right-wing government looming in the background, who will be bothered with "petty details," like the nature of that Palestinian state or the preconditions for the settlement freeze? It seems Sharon has no competitors in the political world capable of portraying failure as success, a criminal as a victim, and opposition as acceptance. He learned that "yes, but" is much more effective than "no, but," since in any case the result is the same: perpetuating the status quo to enable the establishment of more "outposts." There's no better proof of this than the document prepared last month with Sharon's reservations about the last version of the "road map," slated for President Bush's desk. No wonder Sharon keeps the document deep inside the vault. In effect, it is the trap he is laying for the "peace camp."

Frayed legitimacy
By Avi Temkin, Globes, January 27, 2003
"What therefore now hangs in the balance is the democratic character of Israel itself. The momentum towards solutions based on force will only be stopped if social and political forces can be created that will provide rational, practical solutions to social, political, and economic problems." -- The forecasts for tomorrow’s elections indicate that an unstable political structure is possible, and that’s nothing new. The fact that the political structure will hamper the designing of economic policy has also become part of the conventional wisdom. Israel’s problems go further, however, than the barriers to forming a governing coalition presaged by the election results. Israel’s political crisis is the result of something far more basic the loss of legitimacy by the governing institutions, and by democracy itself. It’s no secret that for some sections of the public, not only the government, but the entire Israeli institutional system is illegitimate.

US media failing in Middle East coverage
By Ahmed Bouzid, Jordan Times, January 27, 2003
IF THE United States were a country where the mainstream press had the collective character and professional jealousy to make its own independent judgement about news priorities, rather than by default safely defer to the daily briefings given by the State Department, the White House and the Department of Defence, the following Jan. 15, 2003, UPI story would have grabbed the headlines, or at least made the front pages: “Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries.” As things stand, however, the story that Israel is planning to carry out assassinations right here, on US soil, has simply been treated as anything but that. As a nonstory. Also a story not worthy of the media's attention was the following news item from the Washington Post: “[Israel's] state attorney, Talia Sasson, had argued that [Arab Knesset member Azmi] Bishara and his political party, Balad, should be banned because they supported making Israel a state for all its citizens, which she said would contradict Israel's founding principle as a Jewish state.”

Fraud fit for a King: Israel, Zionism, and the misuse of MLK
By Tim Wise, Zmag.org, 25 January 2003
Rarely am I considered insufficiently cynical. As someone who does anti-racism work for a living, and thus hears all manner of excuse-making by those who wish desperately to avoid being considered racist, not much surprises me. I expect people to lie about race; to tell me how many black friends they have; to swear they haven't a racist bone in their bodies. And every January, with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday just around the corner, I have come to expect someone to misuse the good doctor's words so as to push an agenda he would not likely have supported. As such, I long ago resigned myself to the annual gaggle of fools who deign to use King's "content of their character" line from the 1963 March on Washington so as to attack affirmative action, ostensibly because King preferred simple "color-blindness." That King actually supported the efforts that we now call affirmative action--and even billions in reparations for slavery and segregation--as I've documented in a previous column, matters not to these folks. They've never read King's work, and they've only paid attention to one news clip from one speech, so what more can we expect from such precious simpletons as these? And yet, even with my cynic's credentials established, the one thing I never expected anyone to do would be to just make up a quote from King; a quote that he simply never said, and claim that it came from a letter that he never wrote, and was published in a collection of his essays that never existed. Frankly, this level of deception is something special. The hoax of which I speak is one currently making the rounds on the Internet, which claims to prove King's steadfast support for Zionism. Indeed, it does more than that.

Are the people stupid? 
By Hannah Kim, Ha'aretz, January 28, 2003
It was Amram Mitzna who on Sunday revealed the same amazement that has been a constant theme in the rhetoric of the Labor Party and the left since 1977. "I am unable to break the genetic code of the Israeli voter," he said. "I see a woman on TV who has nothing to eat and no work and she says she will vote for Sharon." Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, who anointed Mitzna, once said it differently: "The people should be changed." In other words, the people are to blame. After all, why the hell does a large part of the Israeli public vote for "those who screw them"? Indeed, why the lower classes generally tend to vote for the right is an age-old question. Every introduction to political sociology provides two basic answers. The first is that the lower classes usually vote for those they want to be like. The people want to be near the wealth, and the Likud of the last 20 years has been the party that has the jobs, the national party for protektzia. The other explanation is close to Israeli reality: The lower classes, who have been stripped of their sense of security and control over their own lives, derive a sense of compensation for their own low stature from a xenophobia against the foreign and different. In the reality of impoverishment, it's convenient to feel a sense of superiority over someone, and it's easy to crawl into the warmth of nationalism, which apparently makes up for the daily sense of impotence.

It's all waste, and will end with a whimper
By Lily Galili, Ha'aretz, January 28, 2003 
Last Friday, Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Neve Ya'akov neighborhood in Jerusalem. In other times this combination of words - Bibi, right-wing Neve Ya'akov, and four days before elections - would have been a sort of chemical brew, a catalyst creating a political explosion of emotions. Rhythmic chants of "Bibi-Bibi" and "Bibi, king of Israel," would have filled the air, only to be brushed aside by some dismissive Netanyahu gesture of false modesty. Not this time. In this election race there is no king in Israel. There are gray politicians the public regards with suspicion, indifference and disgust - worse, these politicians seem have no relevance to the people's lives. "What kind of elections are these?" said Zion Seri, a resident of the neighborhood. "Where are the days of (Menachem) Begin? There was atmosphere, there was enthusiasm. That's over with. Bibi? He can come, for all I care. They don't think about us, so we also don't think about them." There have been many important and dramatic moments in this election race but Bibi's visit was the most symbolic one - not for what it had, but for what it did not have. There was no "election fever," no atmosphere, no heat, no passion.

Blix report
Editorial, Arab News, January 28, 2003
There were three possible verdicts on Iraq that UN chief arms inspector Hans Blix and IAEA head Mohamed El Baradei could have presented to the Security Council yesterday: that Iraq is innocent of the change of developing arms of mass destruction; that investigations are not yet complete and, please, can they have some more time; or that it is guilty. As expected, they have chosen the middle route, but doing so in a way that leaves Iraq firmly in the dock. Their reports were about as damning as they could be without actually finding Iraq guilty. Although it has cooperated “rather well” in the process of investigations in allowing access to sites, it had not complied in the substance of investigations — such as by preventing aerial surveillance and through instances of harassment. The claim earlier in the day by Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri that Iraq had cooperated fully with the inspectors is patently untrue.

Music Lives in Palestine: So Do the Kids. So Do the Teachers.
By Ellen Cantarow, CounterPunch, January 25, 2003
5:30 on a Wednesday in late November. Our Ramallah master-class at The National Conservatory of Music (Palestine) has just ended and ten-year-old Taher, a young flute-player, is practically jumping up and down, his face glowing with hope: "Oh! please let me play, too!" Will's and my jazz-improvisation demonstrations--I on piano, he on alto-sax, flute, clarinet and bass clarinet--drew inspired playing from Tariq, the little 14-year-old frame-drum-player with the punk hair-cut, also from a stocky 12-year-old flautist. We invited both of them to play a piece with us at our Friday concert. Now Taher is mad to join us. "But Taher," I say, "you need to rehearse with us! Can you do it now?" "I'll go ask my father!" He bolts down the Conservatory's narrow stone stairs. Dad peers out of the car, looking puzzled and irritated--it's Ramadan, nerves fray at the end of the day. "He's been fasting all day, he needs to go home to eat!" "I don't NEED to eat!" Dad's resistance crumbles; he trudges up the stairs, and we proceed to rehearse. Finally we light on something Taher plays well--a simple piece he wrote himself. "OK," I say, "You'll play with us," and the little boy throws his arms around my neck. For two weeks I taught master classes with Will Connell, a New York-based reed-player, at Palestine's National Conservatory of Music. Founded in 1993 as an affiliate of Birzeit (pron. Beer-zate) University, the school is dedicated to fostering excellence on a wide variety of instruments--piano, violin, flute, ney, clarinet, saxophone, oud, guitar, qanoon (a zither-like insrument with complex tuning), and many percussion instruments including the tabla. The curriculum revolves around European and Oriental classical music.

Sharon Campaigning
By MIFTAH, January 27, 2003
Only two days ahead of Israeli elections Ariel Sharon has proven to be a true crowd pleaser. His reelection campaign had suffered a few corruption blows, which resulted in a small decline in the number of expected seats for Sharon's Likud party at the Israeli Knesset, though he has emerged unscathed. Ariel Sharon has been successful in tapping into the Israeli psyche and is thus able to effectively manipulate and campaign what has become a blood thirsty Israeli general public. America has empowered Sharon and has indirectly turned a blind eye to the continuous murder of Palestinians and defiance of the international community's will for a peaceful solution. In recent days, the Israeli army has escalated its attacks against a captive Palestinian population. Carrying out the biggest demolition campaign, close to 300 armored vehicles roared into the Palestinian village of Nazlat El-Issa demolishing 62 stores that were fundamental for the survival of Palestinian residents who highly, if not completely, depended upon them. This destruction took place in order to erect the apartheid wall that is being built on more stolen Palestinian lands in order to protect Israeli settlers who choose the Palestinian hilltops as the place to build their illegal colonies, a.k.a. settlements.