Why friends of Israel should see Gaza
By David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, May 13, 2003
The checkpoint at the north end of Gaza - where you can (if you're lucky) spend a couple of hot hours waiting to be let through - was manned last Tuesday by a collection of very young Israeli men and women. The boys resembled people I had shared classrooms with in north London, the girls beautiful sixth-formers from my daughter's school. Eventually - along with the woman from Unicef, two Swedes and an ostentatiously world-weary film crew - the three of us (myself, a producer and a Channel 4 cameraman, making a documentary) were waved politely through and made our way across the walled no man's land and into the strip. There is no real distance between Gaza City and the checkpoint: the journey takes only a few minutes. Yet you would hardly situate the dusty, chaotic, governmentless jumble of concrete and rubbish on the same continent as the fields and woods through which you drive from Jerusalem to the border. I saw the camps in Lebanon in the old days, and Gaza is worse. It is becoming like Beirut used to be, except they don't kidnap foreigners in Gaza. Instead the Gazans surround them, smile at them, yell at them, accuse them of being Israelis, shake their hands and, above all, demand to be heard. Men with guns but without uniforms walk the streets. We went to a school. Unbelievably, most of the kids in Gaza still dress up in neat school uniforms, and in our school - recently built with money from the Gulf - the boys wore shorts and a kind of sailor shirt in navy and white. The headmaster showed me round. We saw his office, the classrooms where they were teaching dental hygiene and geography, and the makeshift museum in which the head displays the remains of his safe and the computer destroyed in an Israeli raid two weeks earlier. In the English class, we found a boy who had been educated in Chesterfield and somehow been plonked down here in hell, and we asked him what he and the other 12-year-olds felt about "the situation". For himself, he said, he was always frightened. Every noise became a tank, or a helicopter, and might mean death or injury for him, his family or his friends. His class-mates, however, were too well-schooled to admit to fear. Death was welcome, said one exceptionally handsome, tall boy. His teachers nodded approvingly.

War on Iraq: Implications for sovereignty
By Adrian Kuah, Asia Times, May 13, 2003
Has the war on Iraq finally consigned sovereignty to the wastebasket of history? If sovereignty is taken to be the cornerstone of the international system, then the United States, by acting without a United Nations mandate, had surely broken the "rules of the game" and done as much to destabilize the international system as what Iraq might have done. Yet the current crisis could also be seen as the unabashed vindication of realist thought. If so, then sovereignty, along with "power" and "interest", has never been more important since the end of the Cold War. Sovereignty, it seems, is caught between the realists/unilateralists and the liberals/multilateralists. Right and responsibility or power politics? One way to understand the implications on sovereignty is through a recent exercise in rethinking sovereignty undertaken by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Its controversial report supplements "sovereignty as a right" with the added dimension of "sovereignty as responsibility". The crux of the report is that when states fail or act irresponsibly, thereby putting its own people at risk, the international community has an obligation to intervene. Given this radically augmented conception of sovereignty as both a right and responsibility, the US's actions appear to fulfill the criteria for justifiable intervention: despotic regime, repression of society, human suffering, hence responsibility to protect. Why was there a lack of support within the UN for the war? One reason could be that intervention did not fulfill the criteria for justifiable intervention. Another could be that the "regime change" rationale was really just a smokescreen for US interests. Whichever the case, it is clear that the "sovereignty as responsibility" doctrine is highly problematic. Obtaining a consensus on what makes a good case for intervention is extremely difficult. And in the event, the responsibility principle failed simply because it was viewed as a realist agenda in a benign liberal guise. Ironically, too, the greatest skepticism about US intervention in the name of regime change came from the liberals themselves.

Last Time I Saw Mus`ab
By Annie C. Higgins, Dissident Voice, May 10, 2003
Last time I saw Mus`ab, he was holding a tire in a tub of dirty water checking it for leaks. The auto repair shop is on the Burqin Road between the two main entrances to Jenin Refugee Camp. Mus`ab left high school at age sixteen to provide for the family, because Israel has imprisoned his father without cause in so-called administrative detention since their invasion of the Camp in April 2002. Mus`ab had been inviting me repeatedly to visit his family in Burqin village, to which they had relocated after their house was destroyed, like hundreds of homes in the Hawashin and Damaj areas of the Camp. I had rescheduled a couple of times, and this time told him I was going away for a bit, but would be back. He insisted I must come for dinner as soon as I returned. I promised. Mus`ab was one of the first people I met on my first trip to Jenin Camp in June 2002. He had stopped by the home of friends a little way up the hill, where I was enjoying a starry evening on the upper-story verandah. A few days later I saw him outside/inside a home at the lower edge of the destroyed area. He was in what should be the inner front room of the house, but with the wall shaved off, the entire room was exposed to the outside. The steps were missing also, so I climbed up the broken concrete foundation to enter the home. His mother greeted me so warmly, and introduced me to his aunt and cousins, including one stocky young boy who could be my own cousin with his red hair and freckles. I sat on a chair facing the rubble of the bulldozed homes, that cataclysmic panorama that the eye grasps long before the intellect does, while the poor heart straggles behind, never quite catching up to how something like this could happen, never fully believing the evidence of the eyes and the mind. His mother brought me coffee and joined me, intermittently answering calls on her mobile phone as the lawyer communicated his futile attempts to talk with her husband in prison. Mus`ab’s little sister, about four years old, audibly expressed her desire to go with him as he jumped off the inside floor to the outside ground. His mother asked him to take her along on his errand. I was so touched by what happened next, though not surprised. With a typical Arab man’s tenderness toward children, he turned around and lifted her from the floor to the security of his embrace, kissed her, and she went proudly off, shoulder to shoulder with her big brother.

Looking At the Middle East Through Arab Eyes
By Joel Bainerman, Arabic Media Internet Network, May 13, 2003
Zichron Yaacov, Israel-- It is ironic that in the entire history of the Middle East conflict it has always been the claim of the pro-Israel camp that, "the Arabs view their history as one long conspiracy against them", when in fact- such a view is completely accurate and the view that the Israeli side receives- is not at all realistic. Unlike Israelis- Arab intellectuals aren't swayed by the propaganda of their own national leaders. If Arab intellectuals complain of exploitation and colonialism at the hand of the foreigners- this isn't because of some "wild conspiracy theory that all Arabs have of foreigners" but because it is the truth. Israelis would do themselves a favor by stop arrogantly thinking their political culture is so much further advanced than the "primitive Arabs" and realized that their perceptive and perception of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is not accurate. So if one is dive into the history of the Arab world- and leave the Arab-Israeli conflict aside for the moment- it would be helpful to accept the Arab perception of reality. That reality is based on one simple principle: legitimate Arabs leaders were never allowed to develop or surface because unless an Arab national leader did what the foreigners wanted them to do- they found themselves victim to a coup concocted by foreign elements- or branded as a "radical Arab dictator" and thus a "threat to regional security." As a "radical Arab threat" this served to bolster the Israeli government's claim that "radical Arab leaders/nations threaten the continued existence of the Jewish state. There have been about thirty-five coups and coup attempts in the Middle East in the past 50 years. Only one of them came into being without Western involvement. The absence of a system or an acceptable governing group made it easy for the pro-American and pro-British army colonels to do what they did- covertly. Any proper review of modern Middle East history reveals that except for Egypt, the boundaries of every state which emerged after the First World War were drawn by European powers. Indeed, every Arab state of the time was run by what Desmond Stewart (The Temple of Janus, p. 166) calls as "client dynasty" or under the direct control of the West. Says Middle East scholar, Dr. Mohammed Daud Miraki : "Most of the time, the elite controlling the governments of Muslim states views their survival parallel to the interests of the elite in the United States and her allies, and view the continuation of their hold on power in their submission to the will of the United States." (essay January 28th, 2003)

A More Constructive Internationalism
By George S. McGovern, Washington Post, May 12, 2003
In his May 1 op-ed piece, Will Marshall praised presidential candidates Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards as "Blair Democrats" -- internationalists who are willing "to use force in the national interest." He rejoiced that the Democratic Party "is moving away from McGovernism and back to its international roots." One wonders why Marshall went to Britain for an example of how American Democrats ought to behave. It is more puzzling why he concluded that I'm opposed to internationalism and the "use of force in the national interest." I first used force in the national interest during World War II, when I flew 35 combat missions in Europe. American involvement in that war was clearly in our national interest, and that is why I volunteered at the age of 19 to be part of it. It is true that I opposed the American war in Vietnam, but not because I had ceased to be an internationalist. That war was a disastrous folly, as all literate people now acknowledge. We were never more isolated from the international community than when our troops were deepest in the Vietnam jungle. A close second in isolating us from the international community was the invasion of Iraq, a largely defenseless little desert state that posed no threat to us and had taken no action against us. The best way to support our troops is to keep them out of needless wars such as Iraq and Vietnam. The best way for America to play a constructive role internationally is to support the United Nations and to work toward expanding international trade, aid and investment while protecting our workers and the environment. An internationalist would also support the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the International Criminal Court, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and an international ban on land mines.

Iraq's Untidy Postwar
Editorial, Washington Post, May 13, 2003
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION now appears to have a good chance of succeeding in its single-minded campaign to exclude the United Nations and most other governments from any significant role in managing postwar Iraq. Though a draft Security Council resolution empowering the United States and Britain to govern the country for the next year assigns only a token political position to a U.N. representative and excludes any mention of U.N. arms inspectors, many governments that refused to support the war now appear inclined to give in to Washington rather than engage in another damaging quarrel. An end to the diplomatic feuding would certainly be welcome, especially if it led to an early lifting of the sanctions that continue to choke Iraq's economy and impede reconstruction. Yet the logic behind the administration's strategy -- that Iraq can best be secured and stabilized through a transition process dominated by the United States -- is looking shakier by the day. White House officials smugly cited the troubles of U.N. operations in places such as Bosnia and Cambodia in justifying their insistence on concentrating power over postwar Iraq in the Pentagon. But the first month of American rule suggests that the administration was unprepared for the challenges it would face and continues to lack the resources and skills to manage them. Though it expected the Iraqi army to crumble and Saddam Hussein's regime to collapse, the Pentagon failed to deploy sufficient forces to keep order in the country: Looters and criminal gangs continue to roam Baghdad at will, undeterred by the 12,000 U.S. soldiers deployed in a city of 5 million. Garbage is piling up on streets, water and electricity remain spotty, and Iraqis wait in days-long lines for gasoline. U.S. administrators remain isolated inside a palace, without adequate communications, transportation or translation services; they are now to undergo a time-consuming leadership reorganization that appears to be driven as much by the administration's internal feuding as by needs on the ground.

Settler fanatics and a greater danger
By Amnon Rubinstein, Haaretz, May 13, 2003
[Ed. How a Zionist supports the 'road map'.] But Israel must accept the road map to guarantee itself American support, because only it has the strength to possibly avoid the greater danger. There is a good chance that if Israel accepts the road map, which George Bush supports, it will be possible to create a Pax Americana in the Muslim world, so no Islamic bomb can threaten the Jewish state. -- A few days after the publication of the French philosopher Henri Bernard-Levi's book "Who Murdered Daniel Pearl?" suicide bombers attacked Mike's Place in Tel Aviv. The link between the two is Islamic, non-Arab, Pakistan. Levi investigated the shocking murder of the American journalist. In an interview with Haaretz on May 2, he said there are two parallel systems in Pakistan - one Muslim, seeking to make Islam dominant in the world through terror and violence, and the other is the official secular government - nothing more than a thin veneer covering the reality. The young middle class men from Pakistani backgrounds who carried out the suicide bombing - both British citizens who had never lived a day under Israeli occupation - confirmed Levi's thesis. The dangers Israel faces have greatly expanded in recent years and are now compounded by evidence that the explosives used by the murderer were apparently not made in the territories, but in a well-equipped laboratory. Furthermore, Pakistan has a nuclear bomb that is often dubbed - as Levi reminds his readers - the Islamic bomb. Iran is also moving ahead with its own development of nuclear weapons....Israel does not have a rapid, absolute response to that danger, but it should be remembered that in comparison, the territorial dispute between us and the Palestinians is marginal. Even those who believe that the creeping annexation of the West Bank is a divine commandment must understand this. The road map as a document is not clear enough, and there is no proof that Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) can prevent terrorism, just as there is no proof that Ariel Sharon is interested in removing the outposts and freezing the settlements.

Lessons in baseball
By Amir Oren, Haaretz, May 13, 2003
The political game that was opened when Bush whistled was not basketball played against the clock, but baseball - at least nine innings - in which each side has a role. If the Palestinians deliver what Bush is demanding, it will become Sharon's turn to deliver. -- WASHINGTON - Americans love to quote athletes, especially players and coaches from the leading team sports of baseball, football and basketball. In American folklore athletes have inherited the role of worn-out masters of irony from the first half of the 20th century, from Groucho Marx's league. Nowadays, sometimes with a measure of justification, supreme wisdom is attributed to sports heroes like Yogi Berra and Vince Lombardi and more recently, Charles Barkley, the basketball player who noticed the reversal of the old, familiar order: "The best golfer is black (Tiger Woods), the most successful rapper is white (Eminem), the tallest basketball player is Chinese (Yao Ming) and the Germans are against war." The world's gone crazy. Last weekend the deputy American ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Williamson, added another punch line to the Barkley list and won a round of applause during a speech to the American-Jewish Committee's annual conference in Washington. He said: "And the French - the French! - call Americans arrogant." The French are now hated by the masses and have quickly become the laughing stock of America because of their stubborn, self-righteous and economically suspect objections to George Bush's war on Iraq....The latest victim of this cruel system which lifts someone from the garbage to dizzying heights and then smashes to the ground those who aren't prepared to glide comfortably down, is Michael Jordan, the most highly regarded athlete ever. When the owners of the Washington Wizards decided to retract their decision to name Jordan president of basketball operations for the team when he retired from active play, it shoved aside everything else from the Washington press' headlines, including Iraq and the road map. Jordan failed at his task - he did not get the Wizards into the playoffs. The investment in him didn't pay off, and he was thrown out with a rude, amazing thump, as if someone had pulled down his statute in Chicago. Coincidentally, the smasher of the idol was Jewish businessman Abe Polin, who next week, in the same stadium Jordan left so angrily, will be hosting Ariel Sharon.

Where is Madame Cynthia?
By Kathy Kelly, Iraq Peace Team, April 29, 2003
Kassem lives at the Al Monzer Hotel in Amman, where he is treated always with affection and respect. I feel puzzled now, not to know many details about him, though I've known him for years. Every time we'd enter the hotel, coming or going from Iraq, often in a great hurry, we took it for granted that this huge giant, a former Iraqi professor recovering from an illness that impairs his speech, this delightful character with deep pouches beneath his large, beautiful eyes, would take us into the slow motion of his life, pronouncing carefully each syllable of welcome. Last week, he radiated familiar child like happiness when Cathy Breen and I returned from Iraq. But his first words were, “Where is Madame Cynthia?” “She's in Baghdad,” I said. “They love her so much. How can she leave?” “Of course,” he said, moving his head up and down twice. “She must stay. Good.” Cynthia, a 72 year old librarian from Vernon, New York, has spent decades working for peace. Her work has taken her to beleagured communities in Central America and Haiti. With Voices in the Wilderness she has joined forty day fasts, spent many nights in New York City jails, and helped lead delegations to break the economic sanctions. This was her first time living in a war zone. Without fail, she flinched at each explosion. “What are we going to do?” I whispered to Cathy after the first day of the war. “Cynthia's liable to have a heart attack.” Cynthia's heartbeat is strong as ever, but yes, each blast struck her in the deep heart's core. Mortars, anti-aircraft, cluster bombs, land mines, cruise missiles, Massive Ordnance Air Bombs, the roar of C-130 transports, JDAMs, Rocket Propelled Grenades, --each and every one of the murderous, ugly attacks on human decency ripped into her mind and heart and she visibly cringed. She is the bravest woman I know. When the US troops arrived, outside the Al Fanar Hotel, Cynthia quickly scooped up banners for us to hold, stating “Courage for Peace, Not War” and “War = Terror.” We stared at the Marines, young men laden with many pounds of gear and weapons. They were sweaty, tired, thirsty, and, well, friendly. “Where are you from?” they shouted to us. “Are you a Red Sox fan?” “They're just kids,” Cynthia observed, and within minutes she was walking toward an Armored Personnel Carrier, carrying a six pack of bottled water. Two days later, Cynthia approached the kid soldiers again, carrying a sign that quoted the Geneva Accords which state that an Occupying Force is responsible to maintain law and order. Ever the librarian, she had the exact document at her fingertips.

Does Defeat Always Have to be so Humiliating?
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle, May 13, 2003
"American civil rights activist Malcolm X used to say, 'you better stop singing and start swinging.' Many in the Arab media, especially in the Media are failing to realize that, wasting airtime for singing and dancing all day. What’s there to celebrate? .." -- What’s worse than a defeat is a humiliating defeat. Worse than both, a defeat that’s brushed off, as if it never happened. There are basic facts that some acknowledge and some wish to discount. The war on Iraq was fought for world hegemony, Israel, natural resources and a misguided president who genuinely believes that he was ordained by God to save the world. But why do we always stop there? It’s also a fact that Iraq was defeated, and in a very humiliating fashion. You’d think that both concepts refer to the same value: defeat is defeat. I beg to differ. What makes Iraq’s defeat a humiliating one, is not only the way the US chose to fight this dirty war, collect the spoils or reveal its “wanted list” of Iraq’s top alleged war criminals on decks of playing cards. The defeat was especially difficult because it exposed our incompetence. On one hand, the Arab world repeated the same old broken record, angry masses that are quickly dispersed by anti-riot police, and two-faced leaderships: against the war in fiery speeches while doing their best to provide the needed logistical help to aid the invaders. And, since the war is over, the only country that publicly hailed the war on Iraq, amongst the Arabs, Kuwait, has emerged on top, as poor Arab nations are now seeking forgiveness from the tiny Sheikdom, for opposing the war. On an Arab satellite television show today, a group of Egyptian psychiatrists and intellectuals met to discuss the “mass depression” suffered by Arab people as a result of the war on Iraq, on Palestine, poverty and every other stressful factor. One advised the audience to “avoid depressed people and only seek the company of happy ones”. That was his solution to the endemic problem. A religious cleric decided that the solution was to “keep on praying”, while a third disgruntled for a whole hour to prove that it’s scientifically wrong to call the feeling suffered by almost entire populations, “depression”. Did anyone think that a mass depression might require a mass movement for change, rather than seeking the company of happy people?

Palestine Day: The truth of a nation
By  Leila Diab, Middle East Online, May 13, 2003
The plight of the Palestinians refugees and their right to return (alawda) to their homeland has been one of the most neglected, unresolved and unjust human tragedies in modern day history. -- May 15th is Palestine Day. It was also on May 15, 1948 that the State of Israel was created and over 700,000 Palestinians became refugees on the long road of exile. The plight of the Palestinians refugees and their right to return (alawda) to their homeland has been one of the most neglected, unresolved and unjust human tragedies in modern day history. Professor Walid Khalidi, author and editor of All That Remains, writes, "By the end of the 1948 war, hundreds of entire Palestinian villages had not only been depopulated, but obliterated, their houses blown up or bulldozed. While many of the sites are different to access, to this day, the observant traveler of Israeli roads and highways can see traces of Palestinian village life that would escape the notice of the casual passerby: a fenced-in area, often surmounting a gentle hill of olive and other fruit trees left untended, of cactus hedges and domesticated plants run wild. Now and then a few crumbled houses are left standing, a neglected mosque or church, collapsing walls along the ghost of a village lane, but in the vast majority of cases all that remains is a scattering of stones and rubble across a forgotten landscape in a lost world." After 55 years of occupation, and now with another unjust and inhumane obstacle of separation behind a wall, a Palestinian Nation of people with human dignity still have a vision of a return to the fruits of their rightful homeland. For years and years, generations after generations of Palestinian children have listened to the oral histories and stories of their mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Stories of Palestine that preserves the cultural identity, its traditions, its pain and its sorrow. Palestine, a land of olive and citrus trees, and a land with much "sab'er " (patience and cactus fruit). Palestine, a land with a history of prophets, mosques, churches, portraits of biblical times and religious monuments that capture the essence of peace, in Jerusalem, known as the city of peace.