Save the children, Shukri!'
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, March 13, 2003
Shukri Makadama: "Where are your religious people, when they see children being slaughtered?" -- New widower Shukri al-Makadama lies on the floor of his brother's house, lighting cigarette after cigarette. His neck is encased in plaster, due to a possible fractured vertebra caused by a wall falling on top of him. He mourns his dead wife and moans in pain. Staring at the ceiling, he quietly describes - in fluent Hebrew, from all the years he worked in Tel Aviv - the events of that terrible night when the Israel Defense Forces destroyed his house and his world, and killed his wife - Noha al-Makadama, a mother of 10, who was in her ninth month of pregnancy. Late one night last week, the army came to demolish the house of the family of teenage terrorist Sami Abdel Salam, who was shot dead on February 9 after he and several others started shooting at IDF soldiers in the El Bureij refugee camp in Gaza. In the process, they also demolished the homes of seven other families - without warning and while the residents were inside. Before she lost consciousness, Noha, who was due to give birth any day, managed to shout to her husband to protect the children and to hand him the small purse that held the money she was saving for a washing machine. He shows us the blue purse, still full of coins.

When Even Poppy Says Go Slow --George, You're in Trouble, Big Trouble
By Wayne Madsen, CounterPunch, March 11, 2003
George W. Bush, the rancher from Crawford, Texas, has finally done it. He has Daddy Bush mad at him. In a recent speech at Tufts University, the elder Bush warned his son against a unilateral war against Iraq. Bush 41 must also have been on the receiving end of some heated phone calls from world leaders tired of the pomposity and bellicosity of the Junior Bush. Bush Pere called for the United States to mend fences with allies such as France and Germany. Junior Bush's messianic call to arms has upset the world economy, rendered 40 year military and economic alliances practically meaningless, soured world public opinion against the United States, triggered political crises in the Britain and Spain, and caused serious rifts within the U.S. and British military and intelligence structures. The intelligence revolt is so serious, a Top Secret National Security Agency tasking memo was featured in Britain's The Observer newspaper thanks to high-level authorized leaks. Although Daddy Bush was not the best presidential actor available from central casting, he did bring to the table a long history of involvement with both diplomacy and intelligence. He was a U.S. ambassador to both the UN and China and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Both the UN and the CIA are steaming mad at Junior Bush. Trying to stampede the UN into submission after bragging that there were more "Get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US" signs in Midland than there were "God Bless America" signs has ruined his cause on the banks of the East River. Similarly, at Langley, Virginia, seasoned intelligence agents are under pressure to cook the books and come up with smoking guns in Iraq that just do not exist.

Whose Interests Will the Abrogation of the ROR Serve? (Response to Elias Tuma)
By Hanna Kawas, Arabic Media Internet Network, March 11, 2003
We are witnessing a calculated campaign of highly publicized attacks on the Palestinian Right of Return (ROR), aimed at confusing, demoralizing, terrorizing (physically and politically) and frustrating the Palestinian refugees and people with the sole purpose of forcing them to abrogate this right. It started with the Camp David “generous offer” and continued with Palestinian advocates such as Sari Nusseibeh, pushing to drop the ROR if Israel met other conditions, as if we are in a Bazaar, and as if what is on the line is vegetables to be traded and not inalienable rights for human beings. This intellectual debate reminds me of the debate inside the Palestinian resistance movement after the 1973 war about being realistic and accepting the notion of the two state solution with a Palestinian state in the 22 per cent of what was left over from historic Palestine. It also reminded me of the debate that took place after the first US war on Iraq in 1991, which led to the Madrid conference and then to the Oslo process. That process led the Palestinian people to what we are witnessing now at this pivotal juncture of our history. I always hoped that well-meaning Palestinian intellectuals and leaders generated these debates, positions and then actions, with the intention of advancing the Palestinian peoples aspirations towards achieving their inalienable rights. However, whatever the intentions, the results were clearly otherwise. Furthermore, these two examples took place at certain stages where the US-Israeli strategies for the Arab World were facing a crisis.

A Global Rule of Lawlessness
By MIFTAH, March 9, 2003
The inevitability of a US war against Iraq has left the Palestinians in a state of continuous panic, fear, and negative speculation. Should all hell break loose in the Gulf (and it will!), the Palestinian people living in the occupied territories have no guarantees whatsoever that Sharon’s government, which includes some of the most radical elements in Israeli society (Likud, the National Religious Party and the National Union), will not venture into a killing spree, targeting whoever and whatever falls under their definition of “threat to Israel’s security.” Two years after the outbreak of the Intifada in September 2000, the Palestinians have come very close to accepting that the international community is either incapable or unwilling to protect them from Israel’s policies of military assaults, economic strangulation, assassination, and even forced transfer. Moreover, the increasingly ridiculous US policy of bullying, double standards, and hegemonic muscle flexing has only encouraged Israel to inflict more fatal blows on the captive Palestinians; with the worst scenarios likely to unravel during Bush’s blitz against Iraq. Washington’s continuous support (and at times open support) to Sharon’s policies of harsh militarism continues to confirm Palestinian fears that the international community is only guided by a global rule of lawlessness; dictated by the powerful and unaware/unconcerned with the plight of the weak and vulnerable.

War on Iraq - Conceived In Israel
By Stephen J. Sniegoski, Ph.D., Current Concerns, March 14, 2003
In a lengthy article in The American Conservative criticizing the rationale for the projected U.S. attack on Iraq, the veteran diplomatic historian Paul W. Schroeder only noted in passing 'what is possibly the unacknowledged real reason and motive behind the policy - security for Israel.' If Israel's security were the real American motive for war, Schroeder went on: 'It would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state.'1 Is there any evidence that Israel and its supporters have managed to get the U.S. to fight for its interests?...In the following essay an effort has been made to flesh out this thesis and to show the linkage between the war position of the neoconservatives and what has been long-time strategy of the Israeli right, if not of the Israeli mainstream itself. Essentially, the idea of a Middle East war had been bandied about in Israel for many years as a means of enhancing Israeli security, which revolves around an ultimate solution to the Palestinian problem..Deportation of Palestinians: 'What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times': To understand why Israeli leaders would want a Middle East war, it is first necessary to take a brief look at the history of Zionist movement and its goals. Despite public rhetoric to the contrary, the idea of expelling the indigenous Palestinian population (euphemistically referred to as a 'transfer') was an integral part of the Zionist effort to found a Jewish national state in Palestine.

Missile myths
By Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi, YellowTimes.org, March 14, 2003
(YellowTimes.org) – It is amazing how many times one comes across references in the media to the supposed threat Iraq poses to Israel. We are constantly told of vulnerable Israelis "bracing for an attack," gripped by fear and uncertainty. This imagery has increased markedly since the discovery that Iraq's al-Samoud 2 missiles exceed the U.N.-designated range. The London Times published a headline in late February about rockets that could reach "the heart of Israel." But even a shallow analysis of the balance of power between the two countries (which share no border) reveals the hollowness of such scare-mongering, which serves only to compound Arab and Muslim suspicions that the maintenance of Israel's regional supremacy is a major aim of a possible war against Iraq. The al-Samoud missiles can only reach Israel if deployed in western Iraq, which hasn't happened, Israel's military intelligence chief, General Aharon Zeevi, was reported as saying this month. Even if they were, it is difficult to see how they could reach their target. True, 39 Iraqi Scuds hit Israel in 1991 (though causing only two deaths), but the military disparity between the two enemies has widened immensely since then. In 1991, Iraq had far more missiles and a greater capability to launch them. Israel's defense against such missiles -- the U.S. Patriot system -- proved to be patchy and ultimately inadequate.

The case against war
By Paul Findley, Media Monitors Network, March 15, 2003
This is a moment of great national peril. A U.S. military assault on Iraq will have terrible consequences for America. Even if Saddam Hussein possesses an array of weapons of mass destruction, the inevitable costs of war far exceed any possible benefits. War will mean death or injury for U.S. troops. If it entails street by street fighting, the toll will be heavy. Thousands of innocent, politically-powerless Iraqi people -- mostly Muslims -- will be torn to shreds. Vast areas will be blighted. The agony suffered by these civilians will outrage many millions of people worldwide, especially 1.2 billion Muslims, more than six million of them U.S. citizens. These passions will widen and deepen the ugly gulf that, thanks to public policy and private bigotry, already exists between Muslims and the U.S. government. If war comes, it may provoke rather than prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction. If Saddam Hussein is cornered, he is apt to fight back with every weapon at his command. The war's financial cost will be enormous. The administration has given estimates from $50 billion to $200 billion. Perhaps the greatest costs will be inflicted on America internally. In our quest for security against acts of terrorism by the Iraqi dictator and others, we already sustain heavy costs: ethnic and religious discrimination, the impairment of individual liberty, personal privacy, and due process. If war comes, these costs will rise.