A Road Map to Nowhere
By Uri Avnery, Media Monitors Network, April 7, 2003
Or: Much Ado About Nothing -- This could have been an important document, IF – IF all the parties really wanted to achieve a fair compromise. IF Sharon and Co. were really prepared to give back the occupied territories and dismantle the settlements. IF the Americans were willing to exert serious pressure on Israel. IF there were a president in Washington like Dwight Eisenhower, who did not give a damn about Jewish votes and donations. IF George Bush were convinced that the Road Map serves his interests, instead of being a bone to throw to his British poodle. IF Tony Blair thought that it serves his interests, instead of being a crumb to throw to his domestic rivals. IF the United Nations had any real power. IF Europe had any real power. IF Russia had any real power. IF my grandmother had wheels. All these IFs belong to an imaginary world. Therefore, nothing will come from all the talking about this document. The embryo is dead in the womb of its mother, the Quartet. In spite of this, let’s try to treat the matter in all seriousness. Is this a good document? Could it be helpful, if all the Ifs were realistic? In order to answer this seriously, one has to distinguish between the declared objectives and the road that is supposed to lead to them.

Drowning in Salem - In Order for Life to Continue
By Anne Gwynne, Palestine Chronicle, April 6, 2003
"Two peoples a world apart – on the one hand, only the wish to kill and destroy, on the other, only the wish to help and heal. Hatred versus love. Violence versus kindness. Delusion versus comprehension. Ignorance versus knowledge. Self-preservation versus self-sacrifice. I pity Israel .." -- NABLUS, West Bank (PalestineChronicle.com) - Earlier this week I received an urgent call from my young friend, Feras al Bakri (the courageous UPMRC Ambulance Driver) - “An’ne, where are you now? Come on, quickly, quickly to my home! Today I am nearly killed”. A 10-minute sprint through the Old City, flights of stairs taken two at a time, and there he is, pale and exhausted, lying on a sofa in front of a gas heater, wrapped in blankets and quilts, and very, very cold. Stressed and shocked, he wants to tell me of his day (though he interrupts his story frequently with – “really, I don’t want to remember”), skipping briefly over the morning which, anywhere else, would be a story in itself. The Beit Iba roadblock was ‘closed’ when the Ambulance stopped there with three patients bound for Raffidia Hospital from Sebastiya, a city so ancient that my guide book almost apologises that it ‘did not become an important Administrative Centre until 837 BCE’! “Checkpoint closed while soldiers take rest. Come back in three hours” smirked the fat, red-faced young thug who went away, giggling hysterically, to join his juvenile mates in an appropriate, if demeaning game of ‘donkeys’ - leading each other around the checkpoint with the strapping on the helmets acting as halters – whilst they exchanged lewd sexual banter about whores and brothels. Naturally, Feras could not keep three sick people in that hell-hole for hours, so up the mountain he went, to the Sar’ra T-Junction and over the hilly, but very smooth ‘settler’ roads and down to Huwarra checkpoint to the west of Nablus. ‘Checkpoint?’ It all sounds straightforward. No. These very illegal roadblocks which stretch for miles and destroy hectares of Palestinian farmers' land with no redress, are not in any sense of the word, checkpoints. These desolate places are for terrorizing, humiliating, inflicting pain by beating or shooting, degradation and death; they have only one purpose – to make any kind of normal life or commerce impossible for the civilian population whose lives the Israelis daily destroy.

Resisting occupation
By Omayma Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 3 - 9 April 2003
In an exclusive interview with Al-Ahram Weekly from Tehran, Sayed Mohamed Baqer Al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq spoke to Omayma Abdel-Latif about his views on the US-led war on Iraq and its consequences -- 64-year-old Sayed Mohamed Baqer Al-Hakim is one of only a few highly respected Iraqi opposition figures in exile. For the past three decades he has been involved in political activities and was the founder of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the main Shi'a opposition movement, and the most competent amongst Iraq's opposition factions. Currently based in Tehran, SCIRI's main constituency is in southern Iraq. Al-Hakim belongs to one of the most notable Shi'a families in Iraq: his father is Muhsin Al- Hakim Al-Tabataba'i, a senior Shi'a ayatollah from Al-Najaf Al-Ahsraf, who was known for his vocal criticism of Ba'athist regime practices against the Shi'as during the 1950s and 60s. Tabataba'i died in June 1970. Al-Hakim's political activities during the 1970s led to his imprisonment a number of times: in 1972, 1977 and 1979. On 17 November 1977, Al-Hakim founded the SCIRI with the support of Iran. He chairs the organisation and works together with a central committee of 16 members. Al-Hakim fled to Iran a year after his release from prison. Al-Hakim has been keen that the SCIRI be representative of all Iraqi Muslims, both Sunni and Shi'a, from its inception. The SCIRI is also known to have refused an offer of US funding, has been keen to distance itself from any connection with that country and remains opposed to any American intervention in Iraqi affairs. The SCIRI has a paramilitary wing called the Badr Brigade who Al- Hakim has prevented from conducting military activities inside Iraq so as not to be interpreted as supporting the US-led invasion.

Practice to Deceive
By Joshua Micah Marshall, Washington Monthly, April, 2003
Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan. -- Imagine it's six months from now. The Iraq war is over. After an initial burst of joy and gratitude at being liberated from Saddam's rule, the people of Iraq are watching, and waiting, and beginning to chafe under American occupation. Across the border, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, our conquering presence has brought street protests and escalating violence. The United Nations and NATO are in disarray, so America is pretty much on its own. Hemmed in by budget deficits at home and limited financial assistance from allies, the Bush administration is talking again about tapping Iraq's oil reserves to offset some of the costs of the American presence--talk that is further inflaming the region. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border. But as they begin to move, there is an explosion: Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon blow themselves up in a Baghdad restaurant, killing dozens of Western aid workers and journalists. Knowing that Hezbollah has cells in America, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge puts the nation back on Orange Alert. FBI agents start sweeping through mosques, with a new round of arrests of Saudis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and Yemenis. To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated.

The U.S. betrays its core values
By Gunter Grass, The Smirking Chimp/Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2003
Having learned from its past, Germany rightly rejects Bush's war and his disdain of the U.N. -- BEHLENDORF, Germany -- A war long sought and planned for is now underway. All deliberations and warnings of the United Nations notwithstanding, an overpowering military apparatus has attacked preemptively in violation of international law. No objections were heeded. The Security Council was disdained and scorned as irrelevant. As the bombs fall and the battle for Baghdad continues, the law of might prevails. And based on this injustice, the mighty have the power to buy and reward those who might be willing and to disdain and even punish the unwilling. The words of the current American president -- "Those not with us are against us" -- weighs on current events with the resonance of barbaric times. It is hardly surprising that the rhetoric of the aggressor increasingly resembles that of his enemy. Religious fundamentalism leads both sides to abuse what belongs to all religions, taking the notion of "God" hostage in accordance with their own fanatical understanding. Even the passionate warnings of the pope, who knows from experience how lasting and devastating the disasters wrought by the mentality and actions of Christian crusaders have been, were unsuccessful. Disturbed and powerless, but also filled with anger, we are witnessing the moral decline of the world's only superpower, burdened by the knowledge that only one consequence of this organized madness is certain: Motivation for more terrorism is being provided, for more violence and counter-violence. Is this really the United States of America, the country we fondly remember for any number of reasons? The generous benefactor of the Marshall Plan? The forbearing instructor in the lessons of democracy? The candid self-critic? The country that once made use of the teachings of the European Enlightenment to throw off its colonial masters and to provide itself with an exemplary constitution? Is this the country that made freedom of speech an incontrovertible human right?

Israel must end the hatred now
Editorial, The Observer, October 15, 2000
A true Palestinian state is essential -- If Palestinians were black, Israel would now be a pariah state subject to economic sanctions led by the United States. Its development and settlement of the West Bank would be seen as a system of apartheid, in which the indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny fraction of its own country, in self-administered 'bantustans', with 'whites' monopolising the supply of water and electricity. And just as the black population was allowed into South Africa's white areas in disgracefully under-resourced townships, so Israel's treatment of Israeli Arabs - flagrantly discriminating against them in housing and education spending - would be recognised as scandalous too.

A Jew to Zionist Fighters
By Eric Fried, 1988, Palestinian Justice
[I often think of this poem that was written by Erich Fried, a famous German-speaking poet, an anti-Zionist. He was a refugee from his native land of Austria where he had fled from in the late 1930's. His own father had been tortured and beaten to death by the Nazis. - Anonymous] -- "What do you actually want? / Do you really want to outdo / those who trod you down / a generation ago / into your own blood / and into your own excrement / Do you want to pass on the old torture / to others now / in all its bloody and dirty detail / with all the brutal delight of torturers / as suffered by your fathers? / Do you really want to be the new Gestapo / the new Wehrmacht / the new SA and SS / and turn the Palestinians / into the new Jews?.."

Background: AIPAC and the Iraqi opposition  
By Nathan Guttman, Haaretz, April 7, 2003
WASHINGTON - An unusual visitor was invited to address the annual conference held last week in Washington by AIPAC, the pro-Israeli lobby in the United States: the head of the Washington office of the Iraqi National Congress, Intifad Qanbar. The INC is one of the main opposition groups outside Iraq, and its leaders consider themselves natural candidates for leadership positions in the post-Saddam Hussein era. Qanbar's invitation to the conference reflects a first attempt to disclose the links between the American Jewish community and the Iraqi opposition, after years in which the two sides have taken pains to conceal them. The considerations against openly disclosing the extent of cooperation are obvious - revelation of overly close links with Jews will not serve the interests of the organizations aspiring to lead the Iraqi people. Currently, at the height of rivalry over future leadership of the country among opposition groups abroad, the domestic opposition and Iraqi citizens, it is most certainly undesirable for the Jewish lobby to forge - or flaunt - especially close links with any one of the groups, in a way that would cause its alienation from the others. "At the current stage, we don't want to be involved in this argument," says a major activist in one of the larger Jewish organizations. In the end, Intifad Qanbar did not attend the AIPAC conference. At the last moment, he was asked by the American administration to go to northern Iraq to help organize opposition to Saddam there. In his place, another well-known opposition activist spoke to the conference, Kana Makiya, who is less identified with the Iraqi exile organizations.

The postwar challenge will be hardest
By James Steinberg, Financial Times, April 7, 2003
In the coming days, the eyes of the world will be focused on the battle for Baghdad. It is impossible to predict the duration and the intensity of the battle but its outcome is certain: ultimately the US and its coalition partners will prevail. But success depends on much more than the result of that military engagement. For the US to achieve a meaningful, sustainable victory, one that justifies the cost in blood and treasure, it must now turn its attention to four critical tasks. First, it must make a long-term commitment to achieving a stable, representative, prosperous and just Iraq. The stated justification for military action is to eliminate weapons of mass destruction; but the administration has all along expressed wider hopes for the benefits of regime change. Now that the war has entered a decisive phase, it is essential that the US embrace that more ambitious goal, while recognising that it will be hard to achieve. Democracy will not come about overnight. There will have to be a sustained military presence to provide the secure conditions that permit humanitarian assistance; and a willingness to provide political and economic assistance to help indigenous democratic forces build a better society. The temptation will be to cut and run or to shift the burden to others. But America has too much at stake to let Iraq descend into chaos. The US cannot afford the half-hearted measures that have characterised its approach to Afghanistan.

Iraqis Sense the End of the Regime
Robert Fisk, Arab News/The Independent, April 7, 2003
BAGHDAD, 8 April 2003 — The last days of Baghdad. The Last Days of Saddam. Back in the 1950s, Hollywood produced films in which every historical scene would be followed by the sudden appearance of a fictional newspaper with an appropriate headline. Pictures of Marines storming ashore in the Pacific would be followed by the headline “Back to Bataan” or “MacArthur Returns.” Seeing the US Marines for the first time yesterday morning, as they jumped from their personnel carriers and threw themselves in the dust — and the sight of Iraqi soldiers running for their lives — provoked a cluster of new headlines in my imagination. “By the Waters of Babylon...” might apply to the Iraqis, but the geographical location would be 80 miles out. And it’s easy, in what more and more Iraqis are coming to regard as “the last days”, to understand the cruel intellectual beauty of collapse. There’s the Iraqi official I’ve known for years who has always enthusiastically supported the Baath Party line but who suddenly suggested to me yesterday that “negative events” may soon take place in Baghdad. Then there’s that extraordinary videotape of Saddam embracing his Baathist militiamen in the streets of Baghdad last Friday — not entirely unlike a European leader who pats a small Volksturm member on the cheek in his last known picture. Needless to say, the Pentagon black propagandists started their usual orchestra. It was Saddam’s double, it was filmed weeks ago... But it was all real. I’ve met two Iraqis who saw Saddam on Friday with their own eyes — complete with mole on the left side of his face — and the districts he visited were easily identifiable. For readers who know the city, Saddam was parading himself in Adamiya, Sarafiyeh, Al-Awi, Mansour, the Haifa and Iskan districts.

The Forbidden Truths of the Bush-Blair War
John Pilger, Arab News/The Independent, April 7, 2003
We now glimpse the forbidden truths of the invasion of Iraq. A man cuddles the body of his in-fant daughter; her blood drenches them. A woman in black pursues a tank, her arms outstretched; all seven in her family are dead. An American Marine murders a woman because she happens to be standing next to a man in a uniform. “I’m sorry,’’ he says, “but the chick got in the way.’’ Covering this in a shroud of respectability has not been easy for George Bush and Tony Blair. Millions now know too much; the crime is all too evident. Tam Dalyell, Father of the House of Commons, a Labour MP for 41 years, says the prime minister is a war criminal and should be sent to The Hague. He is serious, because the prima facie case against Blair and Bush is beyond doubt. In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected German arguments of the “necessity’’ for pre-emptive attacks against its neighbors. “To initiate a war of aggression,’’ said the tribunal’s judgment, “is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.’’