Kill the Internationals!
By Waleed Arafa, Islam Online, April 21, 2003
The rationale of international protection rests upon the assumption that Israel cannot remain unaccountable for the killing of international civilians as it is unaccountable for the killing of Palestinians. Today this assumption has been challenged. International Solidarity Movement British peace activist Thomas Hurndall was shot in the head at the start of a protest as he was rescuing Palestinian children from gunfire. The sudden end of the so-called “liberation” of Iraq seems to be inconvenient to many people. To those who miss the amusing announcements of Iraqi Information Minister al-Sahaf, and to those who used the world’s undivided attention towards Iraq as a cover for all kinds of crimes that were committed during that period, the end of the war was an unpleasant surprise. Israelis have been killing everyone who stood in their way; not only Palestinians but even international peace activists. Killing the innocent has been “globalized” and Palestinian lands are now flooded with an international blood cocktail. April 13, 2003 , British citizen Tom Hurndall, 21, of London , was shot in the head while rescuing Palestinian children from Israeli gunfire in Rafah, Gaza . He currently lies in a coma. April 5, 2003 , American citizen Brian Avery, 24, of New Mexico , was shot in the face by a burst of Israeli machine gun fire in Jenin. March 16, 2003 , American citizen Rachel Corrie, 23, of Olympia , Washington , was run over by an Israeli bulldozer attempting to demolish a Palestinian home in Rafah, Gaza.  November 23, 2002 , Irish citizen Caoimhe Butterly, 23, was shot in the leg while trying to stop Israeli soldiers from shooting at Palestinian school children in Jenin. International peace activists now join 1,900 Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers since September 2000, mostly unmentioned in the Zionist-controlled global media, which has deviously used the so-called “War on Terrorism” to cover for such brutal acts or to justify them as part of that war.

Police Questions on War Dissent Are Off Base
By Sheryl McCarthy, New York Newsday, April 21, 2003 
A reader of this column, irate over my criticisms of the Bush administration, e-mailed me a warning the other day. Pretty soon, he said, people won't be allowed to write the kinds of things you are writing. The way things are going, he could be right. This attitude - that you'd better not criticize the government, and if you do you're unpatriotic and deserve to be shipped off to a country where they chop people's hands off - is gaining currency here. It's emboldened by the message that's emanating from Washington to Americans and to other countries, and says: "We're in charge now, and you'd better watch what you do and say." This used to be the kind of behavior we deplored in undemocratic governments. But it's growing here, and Sept. 11 and the war with Iraq are being used to justify it. One proof of this is the way peaceful anti-war protestors have been treated by the New York City Police Department, people like Carey Larsen and Daniel Ueda. In February, Ueda, a 26-year-old mechanical engineer from New Jersey, was arrested during an anti-war march on Fifth Avenue when he and others sat down in the street. He was arrested again in March after a similar sit-down demonstration following a peaceful march to Washington Square Park....At police headquarters both Ueda and Larsen were asked questions that seemed strange, considering the minor offenses with which they were charged. Questions like: how many protests had they participated in, what groups were they affiliated with, how they heard about the demonstrations, how - in Ueda's case - he got into the city from New Jersey, how they felt about the war with Iraq and whether they thought the United States should have entered World War II. Yes, really....Stolar faxed me a copy of the "demonstration debriefing form" that's being used by New York police to question anti-war protestors. The form bears the seal of the police department's intelligence division on one side, and on the other a seal I was unable to decipher, but which Stolar said reads "New York, New Jersey High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, Executive Office of the President of the United States."

Cameraman under the streetlamp  
By Amira Hass, Haaretz, April 23, 2003
The shot that killed Palestinian cameraman Nazeh Darwazeh was intentional, precise, on target. One shot that was aimed at the upper torso. Israeli soldiers have been heard saying what the Palestinians have felt: a shot to the upper torso is meant to kill.  -- One of the answers often used by the army when its soldiers kill someone who clearly had nothing to do with the fighting or even stone-throwing (which nobody questions is a crime punishable by death), is that the situation is dangerous, there's combat going on, and the risks about being in the area are known. That's what was said Sunday when Palestinian cameraman Nazeh Darwazeh, 45, a father of five - the youngest, four months old - was killed. Anyone who lives, works or learns in the territories knows very well it is dangerous. Every foreign correspondent or solidarity activist who has chosen to be there is well aware of the dangers; so are quite a few Israelis who, despite the ban, choose to meet with Palestinians in their besieged communities - for example, the Ta'ayush activists who were attacked. Most Palestinians choose to stay away from dangerous places, because in any case, they live in constant danger. But it was Darwazeh's choice, like other cameramen and reporters, Palestinian and foreign, to run around documenting slices of life in hours of danger. Thus, Darwazeh, as a Palestinian and a journalist, lived with a double jeopardy. For civilians, and not only reporters, there is always the danger of becoming a dead or wounded casualty from a piece of shrapnel fired from a rocket aimed at a Fatah or Hamas activist or a Palestinian Authority building or from a stray bullet fired by a careless Palestinian gunman or a bullet fired by frightened, angry or careless soldiers at a checkpoint. That's why the shepherds are afraid to move between the hills and stay in the fields closest to their homes. It is dangerous to be alone in a field, because a soldier can always claim he suspected you were a terrorist. There's constant danger lurking for Palestinian civilians and their visitors in Gaza's refugee camps, since every IDF raid there is accompanied by deadly fire.

An old Israel-Iraq oil line ... reopening?
By John K. Cooley, Christian Science Monitor, April 23, 2003
Nevertheless, the authoritative Cyprus oil journal Middle East Economic Survey (MEES) reports that the Washington hawks may insist that the next Iraqi government rebuild the Kirkuk-Haifa oil line, probably with major US firms. -- ATHENS – Nothing could be better designed to undermine the coalition's promise that Iraq's oil should benefit its own people than Israel's proclaimed wish to "reopen" a long-unused pipeline from Iraq's Kirkuk oil fields to Israel's Mediterranean port of Haifa. Israel's National Infrastructure Minister Joseph Paritzky was quoted in a March 31 Ha'aretz article saying that Israeli and Jordanian officials would soon meet to discuss reviving the line. Built by the British in the 1940s, the line crossed west from Iraq through Jordan to British-ruled Palestine (today's Israel). Upon the 1948 birth of Israel and the immediate eruption of war with Iraq, Jordan and other Arab neighbors forced its shutdown and the diversion of Iraqi oil through a branch line to Syria. Arabs reacted with predictable fury to Mr. Paritzky's suggestion that the oil of a post- Hussein Iraq could flow to the Jewish state, to be consumed or marketed from there. Jordan's information minister instantly declared the story about Israel-Jordan meetings "devoid of truth," because Jordan's "relations with Israel are now very cold." Despite the wishful thinking among President Bush's neoconservative and pro-Israel advisers, a post-Hussein Iraq is unlikely voluntarily to warm to Mr. Sharon's government. Since 1948, Israel and Iraq have been implacable foes. Unlike Egypt, Jordan, or Syria, Iraq has never been willing even to discuss an armistice with Israel, let alone a peace accord like those Israel signed with Egypt and Jordan - this despite some wishful mediation attempts by US and other Western business interests during Saddam Hussein's presidency. Technically, Baghdad has been in a continuous state of war with Israel since 1948. It sent armies to fight Israel in 1948 and 1967, and to back up Syria's defense of Damascus in the October 1973 war. It has supported several Palestinian guerrilla and terrorist organizations, and during the current Palestinian intifada, Hussein subsidized families of Palestinian suicide bombers and other activists. Israeli officials have been rejoicing over the US-led war coalition's elimination of Iraq as a principal strategic foe of the Jewish state.

MSNBC Reveals Facts on Israel's Weapons of Mass Destruction
By Ira Chernus, CommonDreams, April 21, 2003
Most astounding web page of the week: http://www.msnbc.com/news/wld/graphics/strategic_israel_dw.htm  -- Here is MSNBC, giving us more information on Israel's weapons of mass destruction (WMD)than I've seen in any left-wing or peace-activist news source. Here is the mainstream U.S. media, that beast we love to hate, giving us a story that gives away the store. It's a story we expect the elite media to hide, because it is so embarrassing to U.S. policymakers. How could anyone cheer for the carnage in Iraq, where no WMD have yet been found, if they knew that Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation with a proven WMD arsenal? How could anyone approve of a U.S. policy that kills where WMD don't seem to exist and turns a blind eye where they obviously do? Far from hiding the story, though, MSNBC uses its graphic skills to put all the details just a mouse-click away. What's going on? Supporters of Israeli policy will give you an answer in a single word: anti-semitism. These folks are always amazing us with their charges of anti-Israel bias in the U.S. media, which they insist proves anti-semitism. It's silly, of course. If the media were biased against Israel, the facts about Israeli WMD would have been headline news every day during the debate about the Iraq war. Those facts were headline news in the Arab world. They were absolutely crucial, because they undermined the Bush administration's principal justification for war. But mainstream news sources here paid very little attention. Even now, MSNBC is not making the information easy to get. It is tucked away in an obscure corner of the website. Try finding it from the home page, and if you figure out how, let me know. (I found it only through a direct link in an email I received.) When I searched the site for "Dimona" (Israel 's best-known nuclear weapons site), it came up blank. When I tried to access the root directory, I was told that I was "not authorized to view this page."

Questionable detention
Editorial, Seattle Times, April 23, 2003
If it weren't for "Mike" Hawash's high profile friends, we might not have heard about the Portland man's sudden arrest and detention under a federal material-witness statute intended to fight organized crime. As it is, neither they nor anyone outside of federal law-enforcement circles knows exactly why this naturalized U.S. citizen, father of three, youth soccer coach and community volunteer is still being held today. The Palestinian-born Maher Hawash was arrested 34 days ago in the parking lot at Intel, where the software engineer worked. Such is the case for possibly dozens of others being held under the federal material-witness statute. The Washington Post confirmed about 44 for a November story, but critics suspect there are more and fear the statute is being used in America's war on terrorism to detain suspects as a secret substitute for enough evidence to charge them. There's no way to tell. Under the federal statute, a judge had to give the OK for Hawash's arrest. But it wasn't until April 7 that U.S. District Judge Robert Jones confirmed Hawash's detention publicly, while keeping the reasons secret because they relate to matters pending before a grand jury. Jones ordered the U.S. attorney to take Hawash's deposition or present him to the grand jury before Friday.

The men who are selling Palestine
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, April 23, 2003
David Hirst, the veteran correspondent for The Guardian, reported in 1996 on fears in Yasser Arafat's entourage that the Israelis would turn the Palestinian security forces against the Palestinian leader. According to Hirst, a Palestinian official said that the Israelis had so "penetrated" the security forces "that some of its leaders now depend on them at least as much as they do on Arafat. The time is coming when the Israelis decide that Arafat - who argues too much - has served his purpose." The official told Hirst that, "the Israelis are grooming Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas], one of the secret negotiators of the Oslo accord, to take Mr. Arafat's place, and that they will count on Muhammad Dahlan, head of Preventative Security in Gaza, to lead the putsch." Seven years ago such fears and infighting could be dismissed as so much paranoia. And yet, as I write this, Arafat clings desperately to the rubble of his bombed-out headquarters, the Israelis having declared him "irrelevant," while the US- and Israeli-chosen Palestinian 'prime minister' Mahmoud Abbas is locked in a dispute with Arafat over the formation of a cabinet. The key sticking point is Abbas' insistence that Dahlan be placed in charge of security. Arafat's paranoia appears in this case to have been justified. Even the most level-headed observer is tempted to see in this a conspiracy. Abbas and Dahlan have been enjoying a positive press in the United States recently. The Los Angeles Times noted that Abbas' supporters hope he "will help Arafat's Fatah party break loose from a corruption-plagued past." As for Dahlan, a New York Times editorial called him the "tough Gazan," who "has pressed Mr. Arafat to crack down on Hamas and other militant groups," and noted that "he has often dealt with Israeli and American officials, who hold him in high respect."

Promise and unfulfillment
By Hasan Abu Nimah, Jordan Times, April 23, 2003
BOTH PRESIDENT George Bush of the United States and British Prime Minister Tony Blair made repeated promises, during the preparatory period for the war, that the resolution of the Palestinian problem would come next. In late March, Blair said that “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a primary cause of the rift between Islamic world and the West, and that resolving it would be an American and British priority once the war with Iraq was over”.  The Israeli rage over this statement, referring to it as “worrying and outrageous”, was further aggravated when Jack Straw, the British foreign minister accused the West of double standards over the enforcement of United Nations resolutions on Israel. “There was real concern that the West has been guilty of double standards — on the one hand saying that the United Nations Security Council resolutions on Iraq must be implemented, on the other hand appearing rather quixotic over the implementation of resolutions on Israel and Palestine” Straw said. (The Guardian, March 28th.) In no less committed terms, and in what the Israelis feared was the result of Blair's influence on Bush, the latter had announced (at Camp David on March 27) that the roadmap would be published as soon as a Palestinian prime minister was in place and that it would lead to the creation of a viable, independent state. Of course, this promise from the two leaders was not the first to be made. Neither will it be the last. Now with the requirements for turning Anglo-American attention to the Palestinian problem almost completed, is it realistic to expect the pre-war promises to be fulfilled?

Accepting Condolences: Palestinian Journalist Killed While Documenting the Truth
By Amer Abdelhadi, Palestine Chronicle, April 23, 2003 
The crowd started gathering at the early hours of the morning. No one could believe that the person they saw and heard many times is no longer with them on this earth. Nazih Darwazeh, 45, was murdered, in cold blood, every one voiced out. Tens of thousands of mourners participated in the huge funeral, shouting revenge and calling for the International community to wake up from the deep sleep and intervene before Israel becomes too much of an obstacle for them to protect themselves from. Local and foreign reporters took turns on carrying the grave that showed the brutality of the Israeli army on Nazih’s face. A journalist is shot down. This is becoming a common event when talking about Israeli and American policies. Nine Palestinian journalists were killed without anyone moving to conduct a serious investigation. The sadly becoming familiar scene in funerals is seeing tens and tens of men and women wearing what looked like a uniform, this time; a press vest. Last year, a similar appearance took place. Municipality workers in Nablus buried a colleague who was murdered in cold blood by an Israeli soldier during the curfew. The driver was ordered to stop and wait for several minutes in a clearly marked municipal truck licensed to commute during the curfew before opening fire at him killing him instantly. Later in the year, Shaden Abu Hijleh, a mother and a friend to many was also murdered in cold blood. An Israeli jeep stopped outside her house for several minutes making sure everything was calm before opening fire in her direction killing her instantly and injuring her husband and son.What was common in all these incidents is the army refusing to take responsibility of their actions diverting the responsibility on Palestinians using insulting excuses to cover up their stories.

The bottom dollar
By George Monbiot, The Guardian, April 22, 2003
There is only one way to check American power and that is to support the euro -- The problem with American power is not that it's American. Most states with the resources and opportunities the US possesses would have done far worse. The problem is that one nation, effectively unchecked by any other, can, if it chooses, now determine how the rest of the world will live. Eventually, unless we stop it, it will use this power. So far, it has merely tested its new muscles. The presidential elections next year might prevent an immediate entanglement with another nation, but there is little doubt about the scope of the US government's ambitions. Already, it has begun to execute a slow but comprehensive coup against the international order, destroying or undermining the institutions that might have sought to restrain it. On these pages two weeks ago, James Woolsey, an influential hawk and formerly the director of the CIA, argued for a war lasting for decades "to extend democracy" to the entire Arab and Muslim world. Men who think like him - and there are plenty in Washington - are not monsters. They are simply responding to the opportunities that power presents, just as British politicians once responded to the vulnerability of non-European states and the weakness of their colonial competitors. America's threat to the peace and stability of the rest of the world is likely to persist, whether George Bush wins the next election or not. The critical question is how we stop it.

Israel is an occupier with a duty to protect
By Henry Siegman, Financial Times, April 21, 2003
A frequent complaint of Israel's government and its supporters is that the country is subjected by the international community to double standards. Even President George W. Bush, from Israel's point of view an exemplary supporter of Ariel Sharon, its prime minister, is suspected of double standards in calling for the resumption of a political process that entails changes in Israel's behaviour towards the Palestinians. The Israeli lobby is campaigning to get the US Congress to press Mr Bush to soften his support of the "road map" to peace. The latest evidence of this double standard, according to Israeli commentators, is the absence of international condemnation of the "collateral damage" inflicted by coalition forces on Iraqi civilians. The world accepts, they maintain, the unavoidable killing and maiming of Iraqi civilians by US and UK forces while criticising Israel for causing civilian casualties during its incursions into the West Bank and Gaza and extrajudicial killings of suspected Palestinian terrorists. What is more, Israelis note, this criticism of Israel did not prevent coalition forces from turning to the Israeli Defence Force for advice on urban warfare based on last year's assault on Jenin. Mr Sharon and his military commanders are convinced that the way to end Palestinian terror and to restore Israel's security is to inflict on Palestinians a devastating military defeat. In the words of General Moshe Ya'alon, the IDF's chief of staff, the aim is to lead Palestinians to internalise "in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people". The notion that there are similarities between the Sharon government's objective of humiliating an entire people and the US-UK military goal in Iraq is a measure of the Israelis' lack of insight into their own situation.