Speech by Sophie Hurndall
International Solidarity Movement, May 18, 2003
Speech by Sophie Hurndall at Palestine Rally - Trafalgar Square - 17th May 2003 -- I have been asked to speak at this rally as the sister of Tom Hurndall. As many of you may know Tom was shot while trying to save children from Israeli army fire. While I would emphasise that my family have no political affiliation, what Tom and we discovered during our separate visits to Israel and Gaza has caused us deep concern. I am here today to describe our experiences. My brother Tom was a keen and talented photographer - he was also a caring human being. He travelled to Gaza because he had heard about human rights abuses taking place in the occupied territories and wanted see for himself the way in which Palestinians were living, and to photograph and document what he saw. Tom is now lying in hospital in Israel in a deep coma. His brain has suffered severe damage and the doctors have said he is unlikely to regain consciousness. In the days before Tom was wounded he sent e-mails home detailing several incidents he had observed in which civilians had been shot by Israeli soldiers and also a helicopter attack in which 46 civilians were wounded, some of whom later died. Tom had already sent us photographs including one of a boy of about 7 or 8, who posed no threat, being shot from an Israeli tank. Tom was himself shot as he was trying to help a group of children. Waiting at the end of a street in Rafa, he saw machine gun fire being directed at a mound of earth on which about twenty children were playing. Most of the children fled but three young children were too scared to move, two girls and a boy aged between 5 and 8. Tom walked forward and picked up the little boy, named Salem Baroum. Having brought Salem back to safety he returned for the second child. Tom was shot in the head by a single sniper bullet as he leant forward to pick up the little girl. The IDF released reports that Tom was armed, clothed in army camouflage and firing at the soldiers. They have also released a report saying he was involved in crossfire. These reports have been reflected in media around the world, especially in Israel. These reports are not true. Many of you will have seen photographs of Tom in his fluorescent orange activist's vest. We have photographs of Tom immediately before and after the shooting - from several independent sources. There were over ten eye witness reports of Tom's shooting including the accounts of journalists- all of which support the fact that Tom was fired at with no justification. But what is extraordinary is that to this day, not a single one of these witnesses has been questioned by the IDF or the Israeli authorities. How can any credible inquiry be conducted without questioning them? Indeed some of these witnesses have since been arrested, detained and unlawfully deported.

Time Bush told Sharon to choose
Editorial, Financial Times; May 20, 2003
The Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers met at the weekend, the highest-level discussions between the two embattled peoples since the second intifada began 2½ years ago. Right on cue, Islamist suicide bombers struck, killing nine Israelis - and at least four more yesterday evening. Israel's ultra-nationalist government reacted equally predictably. Ariel Sharon, prime minister, said all terrorism must stop before Israel began moving along the "road map", the international peace plan intended to give secure borders to Israel and an independent state to the Palestinians. The Bush administration now faces a hard choice. It can dutifully echo Mr Sharon, as it has done since this hardline champion of Greater Israel came to power just over two years ago. Or it can state forthrightly that this peace process - unlike the ultimately abortive Oslo accords of the 1990s - is not subject to veto by extremists on either side. If Washington is serious, that means the road map it has underwritten cannot be negotiable and that both sides have to move along it simultaneously, irrespective of the bumps they will hit on the way. But how serious is Mr Bush (let alone Mr Sharon)? The president did not demur when the Israeli prime minister all but snubbed Colin Powell, secretary of state, last week. Mr Sharon - who had an unpublicised earlier meeting with Elliot Abrams, the controversially partisan Bush aide - said he would discuss his fundamental objections to the peace plan only with Mr Bush. Mr Sharon appears to believe the president will not risk the ire of the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the US ahead of his re-election bid next year. The prime minister's meeting with the president has been postponed because of the bombings. But when it does take place, Mr Bush needs to make certain things clear if he means what he has said publicly about making the peace plan a success.

The reek of injustice
By Emma Williams, The Spectator, May 17, 2003
Good and conscientious Israelis live in denial of what is being done to the Palestinians  -- Living in Jerusalem for the past two and a half years has meant living Israeli fear: the fear of taking children to school and hearing a suicide bomber detonate himself outside the school gates; of not wanting to go to a restaurant or bar or coffee shop for fear of being blown up; of hesitating to call Israeli friends for fear that one of their children had been killed in the latest Palestinian terrorist atrocity. Living in Jerusalem also means seeing the suffering imposed on three million Palestinians because of these fears. The realities are ugly, difficult to talk about, difficult to believe: the brutality, the injustice, the silencing, the denial, the racism — above all, the Occupation. Most Israelis never go to East Jerusalem; most Palestinians avoid the West. Jerusalem is desperate, beautiful and divided — so clearly divided that you could put up a wall along the seam. Indeed Israel is putting up a wall, but not along the seam. It doesn’t so much divide Israelis from Palestinians as Palestinians from each other, and Palestinians from Israeli settlers, grabbing yet more land in the process; all part of the extremists’ plan to make any future Palestinian state unworkable by expanding the network of colonies, intersecting roads and industrial developments, leaving the Palestinians living between the mesh, in ghettoes. Unhappy word, ghetto; but there is no other word for the enclosures being built around Palestinian towns. Qalqilya, a once thriving market town of 45,000 people, is now shut off from the world by a fence and wall of concrete 24 feet high. There is one exit, guarded by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), who determine whether the occupants, their produce, their food and medicines may or may not pass. The word ‘ghetto’ comes from mediaeval Venice. It described the walled-off quarter in which Jews were obliged to live: a barbarous, discriminatory policy.

Self-fulfilling prophecy
Editorial, The Guardian, May 20, 2003
US threats make matters worse in Iran -- But in Iran, [Bush's] bluster and interference have compromised the already weakened reformists in their ongoing battles with hardline mullahs who point with fury (and fear) to events in Iraq. -- Growing US pressure on Iran takes many forms, much of it questionable and some of it deeply hypocritical. A campaign of public accusation is now in full flood; in the past few days alone, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has reiterated her view that Iran harbours al-Qaida terrorists, while another official claimed it is stockpiling chemical weapons. Pressure is applied through burgeoning US collaboration with the Iraq-based, Iranian opposition Mujahedeen; and by intimidation of Iranian allies like Syria and Lebanon. The US is pushing Russia to curtail its nuclear technology sales to Tehran; and it is barely less hostile to an EU (and British) policy of critical engagement that contradicts unilateral US trade and investment sanctions.  US pressure has sharp edges, too. Its military encirclement of Iran is all but complete via Afghanistan, the Gulf, Iraq, and Nato's Turkey. George Bush, deeming Iran a part of his infamous "axis of evil", called last summer for what sounded very much like a popular uprising. Turning the screw again last week, Washington demanded that the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, declare Iran in "material breach" (sound familiar?) of its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT). With Israel, it is convinced that Iran is secretly building nuclear bombs and may attain that goal as early as 2005. In these many ways, the Bush administration seeks to convince the world that Iran, like Saddam's Iraq, constitutes a threat that may one day have to be extinguished by force.

The road to Washington
By Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 15 -21 May 2003
Will the Arabs ever have a voice in US foreign affairs? The question of Arab lobbying -- There is no longer a need to delve into the mythology of invading villains, evoked so eloquently in Mohamed Al- Sahhaf's press conferences. Debate over the need to influence US public opinion or affect the US's decision-making has virtually come to an end. The US is not run by an authoritarian regime, a one-man show subject to the whims of the individual in power. Its political system is intricate, composed of a number of balanced and interacting forces. It has room for interest groups, public opinion, and the press to have their say. Periodic presidential and congressional elections also affect its course. Currently, there are feverish attempts by political insiders to inject the US's domestic life with its unipolar view of international politics. The United States has changed drastically since it began to assume the global role of empire. Washington's power is gradually eclipsing that of the states and individual freedoms are diminishing -- with individuals being closely monitored by the state and with state propaganda becoming more effective. The state apparatus has co-opted African-Americans, but the government's central power is on the rise. During the course of the "war on terror", powerful blows have been dealt to political freedoms and civil rights within the US. These blows are bound to generate conflicts within the empire, on top of the already existing conflicts involving income distribution, social justice, environmental degradation, and the state of permanent war into which the country is being dragged. These conflicts have to be addressed as the US saunters along its global path of imperialism. In order to create a more balanced and interactive Arab-US rapport, we have to ask ourselves once again: Who are we? And what credibility does the all-encompassing concept of "we" have anymore? Some may say, "Why do we need to take a position on US domestic affairs?" There is room for a convergence of interests without having to close ranks with opposition movements within the United States. And, there is room for US solidarity with the issues of the Arab world and the Palestinian people, for example, without this being conditional on the Arabs taking any specific stance on US domestic affairs.

Subverting 'the Arab street'
By Joseph Massad, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 15 -21 May 2003
Can 'the Arab street' be cleansed of the Palestinian cause? A reply to Arab neo-liberals --  Whenever I open an Arabic newspaper these days, I am accosted by columns written by neo-liberals expressing much worry about the "primacy" of the question of Palestine in Arab politics. The columnists insist that it is to the detriment of Arab nationalism, the Arab regimes, and "the Arab Street", that Palestine remains central. While Arab nationalism as an organised political force has ceased to exist as a political project except in the hopes of believers, Arab regimes who might have paid lip service to it as the quintessential "Arab Cause", no longer even do so except as parody. Since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the military defeat of the PLO, even that organisation, or its mere truncated shadow, the Palestinian Authority no longer believes the Palestinian cause is primary. As far as the PA is concerned, two of the three central elements of the "cause", namely, the millions of Palestinians living in forced exile or the over one- million Palestinian Israelis who live under Israeli institutionalised racism are no longer part of the cause. If for the Arab regimes, making peace with Israel and submitting to America's will is what has been primary all along, for the PA, it is obtaining political power for the corrupt Oslo elite and a mere semblance of rights to West Bank and Gaza Palestinians that remains primary. In today's Arab world, apart from the Palestinians themselves, it is only in "the Arab street" that their cause lives on. While pontificating about "the Arab street", few of the commentators bother to even define it. It is not workers and professional unions, women's organisations, business associations, members of opposition political parties (legal and outlawed), men and women of letters, artists, students and faculty, government and private sector employees, the unemployed, and all kinds of people drawn from rural and urban backgrounds that are spoken of, but rather some amorphous entity known as "The Arab Street". As the last and only bastion where the cause of an oppressed people remains primary, "the Arab street" has become the major target of subversion. It is not only the United States and its propaganda outlets (to which Radio Sawa was added last year and a new Arabic--speaking television station will be added this year) that is targeting it, but also the neo-liberal Arab intellectuals who aim to throw the Palestinian cause in the dustbin of history in the interest of making subservience to America and Israel the primary cause for "the Arab street" to espouse -- just as it has been for the Arab regimes.

The Palestinian Mitzna, the IDF's peacemaker
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, May 19, 2003
Abu Mazen and Dahlan did not object to accept responsibility for the chosen area, northern Gaza, for example. But the two asked Sharon to promise the army would show restraint and not return to the area for two months even if a Qassam manages to slip out. "You have to give us a chance of a couple of weeks to take control over the area," said Dahlan. Sharon's question-answer was short: "What are you talking about? You expect us to sit quietly when we're shot at?" --- Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is beginning to remind his Israeli friends of Amram Mitzna. Like the outgoing chairman of the Labor Party, Abu Mazen is flawed by the Yekke custom of saying things he should keep under his hat and hiding things he should say out loud. Both played into the hands of Ariel Sharon, who's incomparable as a player with facts and leaks - what is usually called "spin." As a result, it's not impossible that Abu Mazen's term in office as the Palestinian prime minister will be even shorter than Mitzna's as chairman of Labor. While Abu Mazen was letting the angry Palestinian street know about his decision to include the settlers in the cease-fire, he prohibited his people from publishing the details of the entrance test posed by Sharon to the new Palestinian government. Only yesterday, two days after the failed meeting with Sharon, did it become known that when Mohammed Dahlan became minister for state security, he was told by a senior envoy from Sharon that to prove his seriousness, Dahlan has to send his police to arrest 50 Hamas activists. To make the test results perfect, the envoy recommended that at least 25 of the Hamas activists be killed in the gunfight that would surely erupt as the Hamas men resisted arrest. Dahlan didn't know whether to laugh or cry and decided to ignore the matter. The strange test strengthened his suspicions that whatever threshold Sharon sets for him, the prime minister will raise it if Dahlan succeeds. Participants in the inner circle of the Palestinian government's decision-making process were under the impression that if Sharon were to promise a modest but appropriate contribution of his own, Abu Mazen would take the risk of a clash with the Palestinian rejectionist front. It's not certain that he'd succeed. One unnecessary sentence in his inaugural address haunts him to this day: His declaration that from now on only those with government authority to bear arms would be allowed to do so created an immediate coalition between the Tanzim and Hamas. Arafat is unbeatable when it comes to such opportunities and to fanning the flames (already hot) of the dispute at the top of the Fatah leadership. The rais is claiming Abu Mazen is a political tyro ready to disarm his brethren while the Israeli enemy continues to kill them.

The lunatic that stole Zionism
By Yehiam Sorek, Haaretz, May 19, 2003
"He was a hero / He called for freedom / All the people loved him / Bar Kochva the hero," children at kindergarten used to - and still do - sing on Lag Ba'omer. The kids cling to the image of Bar Kochva, the intrepid warrior, the hero of the war of freedom against the Romans. Hero? Freedom fighter? Is this indeed the case? The problematic figure of Bar Kosiva (Bar Kochva) pervades rabbinic literature, treasure troves of coins and his letters and is alluded to in Roman, Byzantine and Christian epistles. He may even be viewing us, through our imagination, from within the layers of archaeological findings in the Judean Desert. But after a time, he sank into the obscurity of history and not a single mention of him can be found anywhere in the literature of the Middle Ages or in the extensive responsa from Western and Central Europe. And then suddenly, as if by magic, the figure of Bar Kochva is resurrected in the late 19th century and turned into a thrilling and compelling idol. How did this come about? Bar Kochva, more than any other mythological figure (like Samson) or movement (like the Maccabees) became a symbol, the hammer of the Jewish national movement, Zionism, feeding the imagination of writers, poets, artists, essayists, intellectuals and even Zionist sports activists - note the Bar Kochva team in Berlin, 1898 - under the common denominator of being a truly Zionist character. This was not unlike the mythological figures that were brought back to life in German and Slavic Romanticism....Not all these facts were known to those that sanctified the Jewish national concept when they turned Bar Kochva into the idol of the Zionist renaissance, and even if they had their doubts about his personality, they closed their eyes, because the ancient, heroic rebel sells Zionism very well. They sought to fan the flames of the tribal bonfire with ethnocentrism, and to draw from Jewish mythology a fighter of the kind that challenged the greatest superpower of ancient times, and by his power-driven, crude, insolent and selfish light to educate the children of Israel to emulate him. They seemed to be advocating: Fight the bad guys (the nations of the world, the Turks, the British, the Arabs) to win what you seek, and damn the price.

Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free) 
By Arundhati Roy, CommonDreams, May 18, 2003
Presented in New York City at The Riverside Church May 13, 2003, Sponsored by the Center for Economic and Social Rights -- In these times, when we have to race to keep abreast of the speed at which our freedoms are being snatched from us, and when few can afford the luxury of retreating from the streets for a while in order to return with an exquisite, fully formed political thesis replete with footnotes and references, what profound gift can I offer you tonight? As we lurch from crisis to crisis, beamed directly into our brains by satellite TV, we have to think on our feet. On the move. We enter histories through the rubble of war. Ruined cities, parched fields, shrinking forests, and dying rivers are our archives. Craters left by daisy cutters, our libraries. So what can I offer you tonight? Some uncomfortable thoughts about money, war, empire, racism, and democracy. Some worries that flit around my brain like a family of persistent moths that keep me awake at night. Some of you will think it bad manners for a person like me, officially entered in the Big Book of Modern Nations as an "Indian citizen," to come here and criticize the U.S. government. Speaking for myself, I'm no flag-waver, no patriot, and am fully aware that venality, brutality, and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state. But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight I speak as a subject of the American Empire? I speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king. Since lectures must be called something, mine tonight is called: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free). -- Way back in 1988, on the 3rd of July, the U.S.S. Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner and killed 290 civilian passengers. George Bush the First, who was at the time on his presidential campaign, was asked to comment on the incident. He said quite subtly, "I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are." I don't care what the facts are. What a perfect maxim for the New American Empire. Perhaps a slight variation on the theme would be more apposite: The facts can be whatever we want them to be. When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC News poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported Al Qaida. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there isn't any). All of it is based on insinuation, auto-suggestion, and outright lies circulated by the U.S. corporate media, otherwise known as the "Free Press," that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests. Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood.

I was wrong. Free market trade policies hurt the poor
By Stephen Byers, The Guardian, May 19, 2003
The IMF and World Bank orthodoxy is increasing global poverty -- In November 1999, during the World Trade Organisation ministerial conference in Seattle, I watched from my hotel room as thousands demonstrated against the evils of globalisation. Anarchists clad in black marched alongside grandmothers dressed as turtles and steelworkers from Philadelphia. They saw international trade as a threat - to their jobs, the environment or simply as part of a capitalist conspiracy. As leader of the delegation from the United Kingdom, I was convinced that the expansion of world trade had the potential to bring major benefits to developing countries and would be one of the key means by which world poverty would be tackled. In order to achieve this, I believed that developing countries would need to embrace trade liberalisation. This would mean opening up their own domestic markets to international competition. The thinking behind this approach being that the discipline of the market would resolve problems of underperformance, a strong economy would emerge and that, as a result, the poor would benefit. This still remains the position of major international bodies like the IMF and World Bank and is reflected in the system of incentives and penalties which they incorporate in their loan agreements with developing countries. But my mind has changed. I now believe that this approach is wrong and misguided. Since leaving the cabinet a year ago, I've had the opportunity to see at first hand the consequences of trade policy. No longer sitting in the air-conditioned offices of fellow government ministers I have, instead, been meeting farmers and communities at the sharp end.

India's right-wingers woo Jewish lobby
By Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr., The Daily Star, May 20, 2003
The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has reduced Indian foreign policy to a single issue: Pakistan. As a consequence, New Delhi is either silent or passive on many of the burning issues across the world. Though India aspires to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and wants to be treated a world power, it is not keen to shoulder the responsibilities of a troubled and divided world. The Indian Parliament passed a resolution, which was critical of the US-led war in Iraq. It was, however, ineffective because it was passed on April 8, a day before the fall of Baghdad. On the other major issue in Middle East the Palestine-Israel conflict India's stand has been confused, marking a pendulum swing from unstinted support for Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to an uncritical leaning toward Israel. The BJP had always entertained a starry-eyed admiration for the Jewish state, but the realities of Indian foreign policy forced it to adopt a neutral stance. The irony is that both Palestine and Israel expect India to play a more active and positive role in resolving the Palestinian issue. The Palestinians seem to believe that India will be able to exert a moderating influence on Israel, while the Israeli leaders want India to use its goodwill among the Arab states to make peace. But Indian leaders have adopted a passive, and even a mulish, attitude in the matter. Apart from mouthing the platitudes that both Palestine and Israel must adhere to the plan outlined in the Mitchell Report, India is not willing to do anything more positive. There are moments, however, when the BJP leaders and policy-makers reveal in a startling manner their admiration for Zionism. India's National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra's speech at the annual dinner of the Zionist American Jewish Community (AJC) on May 8 was one of them. Mishra, a career diplomat and confidante of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, mooted an India-Israel-US axis to combat terrorism. He said: "The US, India and Israel have all been prime targets of terrorism. They have to jointly face the same ugly face of modern day terrorism. This is a common challenge." This found the Indian Foreign Office officials in an embarrassing position.