Legendary birthplace faces a slow death
By Alfredo Lanier, Chicago Tribune, April 8, 2003
30-foot-high concrete wall will destroy what is left of the little town of Bethlehem -- While American and British forces invade Baghdad, a far quieter but no less effective campaign of military attrition and economic strangulation continues against Palestinians on the West Bank territories occupied by Israel since 1967. And the fabled little town of Bethlehem, with its population of 28,000, showcases the tragic effect Israeli policies are having on the Palestinian population. Shooting occasionally breaks out in Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, as it did last month, when Israeli soldiers shot three suspected Palestinian militants, along with a Palestinian family in a car, killing a 10-year-old girl and seriously wounding her father, mother and sister. But the rest of the time, Bethlehem--which for centuries has lived off its status as the birthplace of Jesus--is dying a slow, asphyxiating death.

The two faces of Ha'aretz
By Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada, April 5, 2003
Israel's leading "liberal" newspaper, Haaretz, has received numerous accolades from its foreign readers (who are able to access its English edition on the Internet) for its coverage of the Intifada. Prize-winning journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy have won an enthusiastic audience abroad since their reports started being regularly translated into English three years ago, contributing to the newspaper's image as Israel's conscience. For many outside Isarel, Haaretz is their main window on the Jewish state. Hass and Levy, however, contribute only a tiny fraction of Haaretz's daily output, and it is getting hard to ignore a disturbing trend: the paper's senior editors are increasingly shading the events of the Intifada in a very different light than that provided by Hass and Levy, the paper's two moral beacons. As several commentators have noted, the Hebrew edition of the paper has drifted rightwards, in line with the rest of Israeli society. The paper's stance also reflects a more general mood of belligerence among a large segment of Israel's former peace camp, which feels betrayed by the Palestinians and their rejection of former prime minister Ehud Barak's "generous offers" at Camp David and Taba.

Betrayal on All Sides
By John R. Bradley, Arab News, April 9, 2003
JEDDAH, 9 April 2003 — Now it’s obvious that the Iraqis aren’t going to put up a credible fight, and it’s equally clear that as a result the world has changed into pretty much what the Americans wanted it to be. The pride the Arabs felt in the initial stages of the invasion, before those legendary “pockets of resistance” halting the advance of the world’s only superpower were revealed as a myth, has been replaced by immense shame and humiliation. The images of US soldiers taking a picnic in the heart of Baghdad will haunt the Arab psyche for generations to come. Yesterday I heard a young Saudi mockingly shout at a friend he had a minor disagreement with: “You’re an Arab.” I asked him what that was supposed to mean, and he told me that the shabab (youth) are now throwing that word about as though it were an insult. He left me with the feeling that it was meant to be taken only as half a joke. Everyone has betrayed everyone. America led the way, abandoning its Jeffersonian democratic foundations in favor of crude economic exploitation and colonial expansion. The Arabs quickly followed suit, abandoning their brothers. Britain turned its back on Europe, while Europe chose lip-service over action when push came to shove. Saddam long ago betrayed his people and so the Iraqi people, in turn, predictably betrayed him. Less predictable, but equally devastating, was the passive betrayal of the Republican Guard. They betrayed their honor and dignity, which we are supposed to believe are the most important things to any Arab man, let alone an Arab fighter.

Is there some element in the US military that wants to take out journalists?
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, April 9, 2003
First the Americans killed the correspondent of al-Jazeera yesterday and wounded his cameraman. Then, within four hours, they attacked the Reuters television bureau in Baghdad, killing one of its cameramen and a cameraman for Spain's Tele 5 channel and wounding four other members of the Reuters staff. Was it possible to believe this was an accident? Or was it possible that the right word for these killings – the first with a jet aircraft, the second with an M1A1 Abrams tank – was murder? These were not, of course, the first journalists to die in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Terry Lloyd of ITV was shot dead by American troops in southern Iraq, who apparently mistook his car for an Iraqi vehicle. His crew are still missing. Michael Kelly of The Washington Post tragically drowned in a canal. Two journalists have died in Kurdistan. Two journalists – a German and a Spaniard – were killed on Monday night at a US base in Baghdad, with two Americans, when an Iraqi missile exploded amid them. And we should not forget the Iraqi civilians who are being killed and maimed by the hundred and who – unlike their journalist guests – cannot leave the war and fly home. So the facts of yesterday should speak for themselves. Unfortunately for the Americans, they make it look very like murder.

The dogs were yelping. They knew bombs were on the way
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, April 9, 2003
Day 20 of America's war for the "liberation" of Iraq was another day of fire, pain and death. It started with an attack by two A-10 jets that danced in the air like acrobats, tipping on one wing, sliding down the sky to turn on another, and spraying burning phosphorus to mislead heat-seeking missiles before turning their cannons on a government ministry and plastering it with depleted uranium shells. The day ended in blood-streaked hospital corridors and with three foreign correspondents dead and five wounded. The A-10s passed my bedroom window, so close I could see the cockpit Perspex, with their trail of stars dripping from their wingtips, a magical, dangerous performance fit for any air show, however infernal its intent. But when they turned their DU shells – intended for use against heavy armour – against the already wrecked Iraqi Ministry for Planning, the effect was awesome. The A-10's cannon-fire sounds like heavy wooden furniture being moved in an empty room, a kind of final groan, before the rounds hit their target. When they did, the red-painted ministry – a gaunt and sinister building beside the Jumhuriya Bridge over the Tigris that I have always suspected to be an intelligence headquarters – lit up with a thousand red and orange pin-points of light. From the building came a great and dense cloud of white smoke, much of which must have contained the aerosol DU spray that so many doctors and military veterans fear causes cancers.

Killing Civilians, the Immoral Face of War
By Robert Fisk, Arab News/The Independent, April 8, 2003
BAGHDAD, 8 April 2003 — They lay in lines, the car salesman who’d just lost his eye but whose feet were still dribbling blood, the motorcyclist who was hit by a shell fired at him by bullets from American troops near the Rashid Hotel, the 50-year-old female civil servant, her long dark hair spread over the towel she was lying on, her body pock-marked with shrapnel from an American cluster bomb. For the civilians of Baghdad, this is the real, immoral face of war, the direct result of America’s clever little “probing missions” into Baghdad. It looks very neat on television, the American Marines on the banks of the Tigris, the oh-so-funny visit to the presidential palace, the videotape of Saddam’s golden loo. But the innocent are bleeding and screaming with pain to bring us our exciting television pictures and to provide Bush and Blair with their boastful talk of victory. I saw one little boy in the Kindi Hospital yesterday, his mother and father and three brothers all shot dead when they approached an American checkpoint outside Baghdad. I watched two-and-a-half-year-old Ali Najour lying in agony on the bed, his clothes soaked with blood, a tube through his nose, until a relative walked up to me. “I want to talk to you,” he shouted, his voice rising in fury. “Why do you British want to kill this little boy? Why do you even want to look at him? You did this — you did it!” The young man seized my arm, shaking it violently. “Are you going to make his mother and father come back? Can you bring them back to life for him? Get out! Get out!”

Force is not enough
By Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, April 9, 2003
George Bush praised the Belfast peace process yesterday, even as he tramples on its lessons across the globe. -- So where exactly in Northern Ireland is this summit going to be, asked the White House press corps last Friday. "Dublin," replied Ari Fleischer, press secretary to the US president. You can forgive Fleischer his error, just as George Bush hardly deserves to be pilloried for referring to "Northern Irelanders" in his press conference with Tony Blair yesterday, following their Belfast summit. Northern Ireland has been off the boil as an international issue and Bush decided early on that it was to be a low priority for his administration. That's fine: Bill Clinton's intense involvement in Northern Ireland was always an idiosyncratic interest, and presidents have every right to choose their pet projects. Less forgivable, though, is Bush's willingness to talk the honeyed talk about the province's astonishing achievements since the Good Friday agreement was sealed five years ago tomorrow - "there is such hope here in Northern Ireland that the past can be broken"- without absorbing a single one of its lessons. Yesterday the president seemed smilingly unaware even of the contradiction, unbothered that the approach which has made peace possible in Northern Ireland is the very opposite of the Bush philosophy for the rest of the world. He sang a hymn of praise to the Belfast peace process yesterday, even as he tramples on its teachings across the globe. So the president seizes on the welcome US and British troops are now receiving in Iraq, as if that augurs an amicable, long-term relationship. His in-flight briefing material should have told him that Northern Ireland's Catholics welcomed British troops, too, back in 1969 - and look where that led. Ulster's lesson is that a military presence, no matter how well received initially, is soon resented.

Ominous Signs
Editorial, Arab News, April 9, 2003
With the Iraqi war appearing to have moved into its final stages, the question that now raises its ugly head is: Who is next? Which countries figure on the list of states George Bush believes need decapitating. Those who imagine that his administration is going to stop with Baghdad delude themselves. His addresses during this conflict have been full of the rhetoric of moral justification. Only yesterday, while in Northern Ireland for talks with Tony Blair on what happens next in Iraq, he again peppered his press conference with talk about fighting terrorism in Iraq, fighting a regime that has plans to develop weapons of mass destruction, fighting a cruel dictatorship. Someone who genuinely believes in that (and all the evidence indicates that both he and Tony Blair do) is not going to stop with Saddam Hussein. If Iraq is merely a trial run for Bush’s new concept in international relations — the so-called pre-emptive strike, intended to achieve the changes he wants — then next on the list could well be either North Korea or Iran, more likely the former. Both figure along with Iraq in the American president’s “axis of evil,” and both have nuclear plans. But while Iran was accused by US officials in the past week of having nuclear ambitions that were as dangerous as Iraq’s, it is North Korea that has been openly aggressive in recent weeks — to the extent of actually threatening to unleash a nuclear conflagration in the Korean peninsula. But long before it turns its attention to Pyongyang, there is reason to believe that Washington intends to stay put with the Middle East and “deal” with one of Iraq’s neighbors.

Dances With Wolfowitz
By Maureen Dowd, New York Times, April 9, 2003
There is an unforgettable scene in "Lawrence of Arabia" when an agonized Lawrence resists as a British commander in Cairo presses him to return to the desert to lead the Arabs revolting against the Ottoman Turks. Lawrence: "I killed two people. One was yesterday. He was just a boy, and I led him into quicksand. The other was . . . well . . . before Aqaba. I had to execute him with my pistol, and there was something about it that I didn't like." General Allenby: "That's to be expected." Lawrence: "No, something else." General Allenby: "Well, then let it be a lesson." Lawrence: "No . . . something else." General Allenby: "What then?" Lawrence: "I enjoyed it."  We were always going to win the war with Iraq. We were always going to get to some triumphant moment, like the great one on Fox at 1:30 a.m. Eastern time on Monday morning, when two G.I.'s from Georgia held up a University of Georgia bulldog flag in front of Saddam's presidential palace in Baghdad, and others mischievously headed upstairs to try out Saddam's gold fixtures in the master bathroom. The big question about the war was, How much blood could Americans bear? Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were determined to lead America out of its post-Vietnam, post-Mogadishu queasiness with force and casualties, to change the culture to accept war as a more natural part of a superpower's role in the world. Their strategy might be described as Black Hawk Up.

America is not a role model
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, April 6, 2003
"As soon as the United States starts to become mired in the occupation, today's enlightened soldiers will become tomorrow's inhuman troops. They will lose the remnants of their moral image and will kill, destroy and abuse. The children huggers will become the children persecutors, the food distributors will turn into agents of starvation, the wound healers will block ambulances at checkpoints, the liberators will become jailers. Humiliating the occupied and stripping them of their rights will become the norm." --  Those who trample human rights in Israel are having a field day: Look at the behavior of the Americans in Iraq, they say. Every time troops open fire at a checkpoint, every killing of a civilian, every picture of siege and plight, leads to merriment here. The United States, the cradle of democracy, the leader of the free world, is behaving like us. According to one report, "IDF officers find it difficult to stop smiling" when they hear the reports of the war in Iraq. From now on, no one will be able to criticize their conduct in the territories. The New York Times reported that Israel even hastened to suggest that the United States learn from its experience in the use of tanks, helicopters and bulldozers in the center of cities and refugee camps. Similar delight has also gripped those wishing to curb the media in Israel: Look at how America is censoring the images of the war in its media - no coffins and no prisoners, how the media has volunteered enthusiastically to enlist in the war effort. And how they fired the courageous reporter Peter Arnett, without so much as batting an eyelash, for expressing his opinions on enemy television.

We see too much. We know too much. That's our best defence
By John Pilger, The Independent, April 6, 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 neighbours. "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.'' To this, the Palestinian writer Ghada Karmi adds, "a deep and unconscious racism that imbues every aspect of Western policy towards Iraq." It is this racism, she says, that has cynically elevated Saddam Hussein from "a petty local chieftain, albeit a brutal and ruthless one in the mould of many before him, [to a figure] demonised beyond reason".