Can we justify killing the children of Iraq?
By Jonathan Glover, The Guardian, February 5, 2003
If we go to war with Saddam, thousands of children will die. So why aren't we agonising over this in the way we would the possible death of a child in Britain? We do not have the moral authority to start such a conflict. -- I have spent the past few years discussing medical ethics with students who are often doctors or nurses. Their work involves them in life-and-death decisions. Our discussions have reminded me of what many of us experience when we are close to someone in acute medical crisis. When a parent is dying slowly in distress or indignity, or when a baby is born with such severe disabilities that life may be a burden, the family and the medical team agonise over whether to continue life support. No one finds such a decision easy or reaches it lightly. What is at stake is too serious for anyone to rush the discussion. It is hard not to be struck by the contrast between these painful deliberations and the hasty way people think about a war in which thousands will be killed. The people killed in an attack on Iraq will not be so different from those in hospital whose lives we treat so seriously. Some will be old; many will be babies and children. To think of just one five-year-old Iraqi girl, who may die in this war, as we would think of that same girl in a medical crisis is to see the enormous burden of proof on those who would justify killing her. Decisions for war seem less agonising than the decision to let a girl in hospital die. But only because anonymity and distance numb the moral imagination.

Powell Without Picasso
By Maureen Dowd, New York Times, February 5, 2003
When Colin Powell goes to the United Nations today to make his case for war with Saddam, the U.N. plans to throw a blue cover over Picasso's antiwar masterpiece, "Guernica." Too much of a mixed message, diplomats say. As final preparations for the secretary's presentation were being made last night, a U.N. spokesman explained, "Tomorrow it will be covered and we will put the Security Council flags in front of it." Mr. Powell can't very well seduce the world into bombing Iraq surrounded on camera by shrieking and mutilated women, men, children, bulls and horses. Reporters and cameras will stake out the secretary of state at the entrance of the U.N. Security Council, where the tapestry reproduction of "Guernica," contributed by Nelson Rockefeller, hangs. The U.N. began covering the tapestry last week after getting nervous that Hans Blix's head would end up on TV next to a screaming horse head. (Maybe the U.N. was inspired by John Ashcroft's throwing a blue cover over the "Spirit of Justice" statue last year, after her naked marble breast hovered over his head during a televised terrorism briefing.)

Catch me if you can
By Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, February 5, 2003
I should be a natural recruit to the pro-war camp. Trouble is, their arguments remain so painfully thin. -- By rights, I should be for this war. I am instinctively pro-American, if not pro-Bush. I care enough about the security of Israel to back the removal of a regime which rained missiles down on that country little more than a decade ago. I am not against military interventions per se and believe that US power can sometimes be a force for good in the world: that's why I supported the Kosovo campaign of 1999. Even my prejudices draw me to the pro-war side. When I see Tony Blair alongside Jacques Chirac, I find myself drawn to Blair's brand of conviction politics - his willingness to defend an unpopular cause - rather than to Chirac's self-interested calculation which, you just know, will see France sink its nose into the Iraqi trough the instant there's a sniff of oil profits to be had. So I should be a natural recruit to the pro-war camp. The trouble is, most of the pro-war arguments remain so painfully thin. First, Blair says we have to get Saddam before he gets us. But the evidence of Iraqi aggression beyond its borders has been slim to non-existent for more than 12 years: the US and its allies have confined the Iraqi dictator to his cage.

Don’t label people
Editorial, Arab News, February 5, 2003
The advice coming from some Western embassies in the Kingdom and elsewhere in the region that their citizens should have their travel documents in order in case the Iraqi situation gets worse and they have to leave at a moment’s notice has not had any noticeable effect so far; no one is rushing to the airport to catch the first plane out. Nonetheless, it is deeply regrettable. It suggests that expatriates are not going to be safe here if war breaks out. That is rubbish. No one felt at risk here when Afghanistan was attacked — and for all its harsh and repressive ways, it was a specifically Islamic government that the US overthrew. During the Gulf War, Westerners and other expats did not feel under threat either — despite Iraq’s scud missile attacks on Riyadh and the Eastern Province. That is not going to happen this time. There is no earthly reason to imagine that Iraq is going to target Saudi Arabia. Kuwait might be different: Saddam Hussein has said that if there is war he might re-invade it. That too is unlikely, since all it would achieve would be turn the entire Arab world against him anew, although the possibility of Iraqi missile attacks on the state cannot be ruled out.

Only by Swallowing Big Lies Can Powell Justify a War 
By Robert Scheer, Common Dreams/Los Angeles Times, February 4, 2003  
We know in advance that Colin Powell's performance will be flawless. His military career has prepared him well to execute the orders of his commander in chief, no matter what his doubts as to their morality, efficacy or logic. Making a seamless case for preemptive war on Iraq to the United Nations, the secretary of State can draw on his decade of wartime experience in which he publicly justified the deaths of more than a million Vietnamese, tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Laotians and Cambodians. It took two decades for Powell, in his autobiography "My American Journey," to acknowledge that all the destruction brought down upon Indochina by the U.S. was based on an uneducated, unfocused and enormously costly policy that he and other military leaders had known to be "bankrupt." But duty, apparently, required they not tell the public the truth.

The Demons of War
By Ramzy Baroud, CounterPunch, February 5, 2003
War on Iraq Double Disaster for Palestinians -- In the case of an American war on Iraq, Palestinians will not be watching for a "smart bomb" heading their way, but for the Israeli army forcing them out of their homes. This possibility is of greater danger that one might think. It is seldom that the international community has stood in the face of Israel and halted its plans, whether invading Arab land, "transferring" civilian populations, destroying a refugee camp or ending a siege imposed on a church. These violations have been repeated time and again, and were almost entirely cloned during the ongoing Palestinian uprising: the reoccupation of the West Bank, the "transfer" of many Palestinian residents in the northern West Bank villages, destroying much of the Jenin refugee camp and the siege on the church of the Nativity (one ought to mention that many mosques were destroyed or burnt to the ground by Israeli troops in the last two years. Such news seems to be of lesser significance in the Western media). "Transfer", an euphemism of ethnic cleansing is one of these terms with a non-threatening sounding and catastrophic results. There is no need to examine the sounding of the word however, since history has clearly detailed the meaning of the expulsion of Palestinians from their ancestral homeland, and the massacres that often accompany it.

Free Israel's Prisoners of Conscience
By Neve Gordon, CounterPunch, February 5, 2003
How You Can Help Conscientious Objectors -- Dear friends and supporters of the conscientious objectors, The abuse of the conscientious objectors continues. The Israeli military is sentencing them to repetitive prison terms, with no end in sight. We must step up the campaign to release these courageous prisoners of conscience. Below is a short petition we plan to publish in Israeli press soon. Please read and sign by sending a message to conscienceobjector@yahoo.com. Mention your name, first and then last in the subject of the message. In the message ad title and institutional affiliation. Please spread the petition widely. We need as many signatories as possible. Please note: The success of this campaign depends to a large extent on the funds we gather to support it. Placing an ad in a leading daily is very expensive. PLEASE, in addition to signing, contribute towards covering the cost ($10, $25, $50, $100, $200... $1,000). Information how to contribute follows the petition.  Free the Prisoners of Conscience! -- The State of Israel has been consistently abusing a group of young men who have refused to be conscripted on grounds of conscience. While religion continues to be a reason for exempting young men from army or national service, conscientious objection is considered a serious crime. Despite the fact that these objectors have announced their willingness to serve the state through some kind of civil service, the military, led by Menachem Finkelshtein the head military prosecutor, is punishing these young men again and again for the same "offence."

Mounting Israelization of American Society
By Marwan Bishara, Palestine Chronicle, February 5, 2003  
Growing up in Nazareth, an Arab in a Jewish state, a secular Christian in a Muslim society, a leftist in a Baptist school, I learned firsthand how managing ideological, religious and national differences helps us evolve peacefully. Succumbing to them generates fundamentalism and antagonism. Applying brute force to overcome them as Israel, my country, has done to my people, the Palestinian Arabs — fails utterly. So it puzzles me as to why America now views the Middle East through Israel’s eyes, and why, since 9/11, it has adopted an apocalyptic Israeli vision of an irredeemable world that “hates us.” Such fatalism on the part of Bush and Sharon is rendering diplomacy a prelude to imminent war in Iraq and Palestine. Their justification — “If it doesn’t get worse, it won’t get better, and when force doesn’t work, more force will” — threatens to globalize the violent impasse of Israel/Palestine. Judging from the January Israeli (and last fall’s American) elections, more people are buying into this dangerous paranoia. In order to confront this logic, I feel it is indispensable to debunk the myths behind America’s misplaced identification/fascination with Israel, best captured in a post-9/11 headline: “We Are All Israelis Now.” As seen in this light, Israel is a “peace-seeking” victim of Arab hostility, a “true democracy” that shares “our” values, an “ally” that serves “our” interests, whose “success” in a “hostile neighborhood” is inspirational in a Hobbesian world.

Danger: Rafah's fresh water wells
By Amira Hass, Ha'aretz, February 5, 2003
Considering the thoroughness with which the bulldozers worked early last Thursday morning, one might have thought the soldiers received a clear order from their commanders and knew exactly what they were doing: demolishing the foundations of the pumping station for two water wells that provide nearly 50 percent of drinking and household water to Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Raids on the houses of Rafah, particularly in its refugee camps, and the wounding of residents from IDF fire, has become so routine, so un-newsworthy, that it usually does not get reported in the Israeli media, which does, however, generally report on the number of Palestinians killed in those operations. It all began last Wednesday. Israel Defense Forces bulldozers dug and moved around and then dug some more for a few hours in the dunes that divide the refugee neighborhood of Tel al Sultan and the southern settlements of the Muwassi area. Nobody, of course, told the Palestinian residents what was planned for their land: perhaps another military outpost, perhaps another fence to protect the settlement, perhaps the settlement was to be expanded.

'Transfer’ is Nothing More Than Ethnic Cleansing
Palestine Media Center, February 5, 2003
Position Paper Against the Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians -- It is widely feared that Israel may use the diversion of a war in Iraq to begin the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the occupied territories into one or more Arab countries. In Israel, this has euphemistically been referred to as "transfer." In reality, "transfer" is nothing more than ethnic cleansing. Apart from being morally outrageous, it is a severe breach of Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) to uproot and exile a people from their homes. As a group that has faced ethnic cleansing in the recent past, we, as Jews and as members of Jews Against the Occupation, feel the need to speak out in order to prevent similar inhumane acts from being perpetrated on another people in our name. The idea of "transfer" has moved increasingly from the fringes of Israeli society towards mainstream Israeli political discourse. As a proposed solution to both the Israeli "security" and "demographic problems" allegedly posed by the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, talk of deporting the Palestinians from these areas -- a.k.a. "transfer" -- has become an acceptable option to many Israelis. Recent polls show that more than 40% of the Israeli population is in favor of "transfer."