On rescuing Private Lynch and forgetting Rachel Corrie
By Naomi Klein, The Guardian, May 22, 2003
The Israeli army got away with murder - and now all activists are at risk -- Jessica Lynch and Rachel Corrie could have passed for sisters. Two all-American blondes, two destinies for ever changed in a Middle East war zone. Private Jessica Lynch, the soldier, was born in Palestine, West Virginia. Rachel Corrie, the activist, died in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Corrie was four years older than 19-year-old Lynch. Her body was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza seven days before Lynch was taken into Iraqi custody on March 23. Before she went to Iraq, Lynch organised a pen-pal programme with a local kindergarten. Before Corrie left for Gaza, she organised a pen-pal programme between kids in her hometown of Olympia, Washington, and children in Rafah. Lynch went to Iraq as a soldier loyal to her government. Corrie went to Gaza to oppose the actions of her government. As a US citizen, she believed she had a special responsibility to defend Palestinians against US-built weapons, purchased with US aid to Israel. In letters home, she described how fresh water was being diverted from Gaza to Israeli settlements, how death was more normal than life. "This is what we pay for here," she wrote. Unlike Lynch, Corrie did not go to Gaza to engage in combat: she went to try to thwart it. Along with her fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), she believed that the Israeli military's incursions could be slowed by the presence of highly visible "internationals". The killing of Palestinian civilians may have become commonplace, the thinking went, but Israel doesn't want the diplomatic or media scandals that would come if it killed a US student. In a way, Corrie was harnessing the very thing that she disliked most about her country: the belief that American lives are worth more than any others - and trying to use it to save a few Palestinian homes from demolition. Believing her fluorescent orange jacket would serve as armour, Corrie stood in front of bulldozers, slept beside wells and escorted children to school. If suicide bombers turn their bodies into weapons of death, Corrie turned hers into the opposite - a weapon of life, a "human shield". When that Israeli bulldozer driver looked at Corrie's orange jacket and pressed the accelerator, her strategy failed. It turns out that the lives of some US citizens - even beautiful, young, white women - are valued more than others. And nothing demonstrates this more starkly than the opposing responses to Rachel Corrie and Pte Jessica Lynch.

Disunited nations
By Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, May 20, 2003
How the conflict in Iraq has undermined the role of the UN -- The scene seems familiar. The US tables a draft resolution on Iraq at the security council. Delegates huddle behind closed doors. Briefers make positive noises about the need for unity. In capital cities ministers call for changes. An amended draft is put forward. The cycle resumes. As ambassadors of the council's 15 member states go into new discussions on Iraq this week, an outsider might think we are back to last autumn, when six weeks of argument produced resolution 1441 and a new mandate for UN weapons inspectors to return to Baghdad. Wrong. The war George W Bush launched in mid-March not only changed Iraq; it changed the UN. The current arguments over an international role in post-Saddam Iraq may look the same in form, but the context is new. The worldwide attention given to every report the inspectors made to the security council were unprecedented. Not since the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 had the council's proceedings been followed so avidly. Yet in the end the UN was humiliated. The US went to war regardless. A triumph of international debate ended in a tragedy of unilateralism. "Since the end of the cold war, the UN has never been so weak. The situation is disastrous," says Dr Volker Stanzel, director general for political affairs at Germany's foreign ministry. What Bush did was not a total novelty. His brazen unilateralism is built on tendencies which have never been absent from US foreign policy. Clinton used military force at least three times without security council authority: in Bosnia in 1995, in bombing Baghdad for four days in December 1998, and in attacking Yugoslavia over Kosovo in 1999. But Bush's behaviour was different on three counts. His drive for war on Iraq was prompted by a new doctrine of pre-emption. During the council debates, Washington, echoed by London, used the old UN language of saying Iraq posed an imminent threat to international peace and security; but Bush had made it clear several months earlier that the US would act against states even before they posed an actual danger. This was a dangerous carte blanche for interventions almost anywhere.

Growing Divide Between US and Other Nations
Will Hutton, The Guardian, May 22, 2003
America has always been a nation of churchgoers, with invocations to God part of the national conversation. But over the past 20 years the long-standing American churches — Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and Methodist — have been hemorrhaging members to the fast-growing Pentecostal movement which takes scripture literally as the word of God and believes in salvation earned by individualistic virtue rather than via the mediation of the church. The Republicans have struck a Faustian pact with the Pentecostal movement; they will concede its arguments that abortion and even stem cell research are against biblical text in return for the church mobilizing its members to vote Republican. Christianity is no longer above politics. For the Republican high command this is not just a cynical exercise in coalition building. It believes that America is mired in moral decay, and that the character of the nation must be rebuilt, which begins with improving the virtues of individual Americans by celebrating patriotism and religion. Thus there are prayers before Bush Cabinet meetings. Thus routine meeting by interest groups with the administration are punctuated by calls to praise God and the Bible. And thus one of the great benefits of the war with Iraq; it has made patriotism even more pervasive — helping to remoralize the nation around individualism and self-reliance, banishing to the sidelines the role of the social and the commonwealth in supporting good character. Gerrymander and alliance with Pentecostals alike serve the great cause. American liberals feel their country is being taken from them and rage in impotent fury. It is impossible to underestimate, they say, how Sept. 11 has changed the rules of the political game. Security has become the Republicans trump card, and under its cloak the country is being driven unassailably to the right. This generation of Republicans respect neither the letter of the constitution nor its custom or practice. What they want is an entrenchment of their power and their own idiosyncratic world view — whether prioritizing tax cuts to enrich the “investor class” and so boost Wall Street, or insisting that pre-emptive unilateralism must rule in the name of homeland security. The troika deemed to be in their way — the United Nations, France and the New York Times — are mocked and savaged.

Israel Makes Abu Mazen’s Position Even More Perilous
By Megan K. Stack & Rebecca Trounson, Arab News/LA Times, May 22, 2003
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — If there is a single most despondent figure in the stalled Middle East peace process, it is probably Mahmoud Abbas. A few weeks after he swept into office as the favored candidate of the United States and Israel, the new Palestinian prime minister is stranded on a shrinking scrap of political turf. These days, it’s hard to find anybody who believes Abbas will last in his post. Some observers predict he’ll be assassinated; others think he’ll resign. Friends say he has slipped into depression. A wave of suicide bombings has battered his credibility. Palestinians dismiss his government as the product of foreign meddling. He’s been shoved into a high-stakes power struggle with his boss and sometime nemesis, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. Any number of miscalculations could put his job — or his life — at risk. President Bush telephoned Abbas for the first time Tuesday and urged him to round up the Palestinian militant factions whose bloody exploits threaten to plunge this region deeper into violence. Bush, who then called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, views Abbas as “a reformer who is working for peace who genuinely wants to do everything in his power to achieve peace and to fight terror,’’ White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said. But if Abbas does what Bush has asked — arrest and disarm militants without any concessions from Israel — “he is at serious risk,’’ Israeli political scientist Menachim Klein said. “He cannot be perceived as a collaborator.’’....“The worst thing would be to enter into a military confrontation with Hamas, because the result would be devastating,’’ said Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian lawmaker and confidant of Abbas. “That is what the Israelis want him to do, because they know it would be suicidal.’’

The Truth Will Emerge
By US Senator Robert Byrd, CommonDreams, May 21, 2003
Senate Floor Remarks - May 21, 2003 -- "Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, - - The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, And dies among his worshippers."  Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it.  Distortion only serves to derail it for a time.  No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually. But the danger is that at some point it may no longer matter.  The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized.  The reality is that, sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue.  We see a lot of this today in politics.  I see a lot of it -- more than I would ever have believed -- right on this Senate Floor. Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises.  There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not.  The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured the President and members of his cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ laden death in our major cities.  We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein's direct threat to our freedoms.  The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 911.  It was the exploitation of fear.  It was a placebo for the anger. Since the war's end, every subsequent revelation which has seemed to refute the previous dire claims of the Bush Administration has been brushed aside.  Instead of addressing the contradictory evidence, the White House deftly changes the subject.  No weapons of mass destruction have yet turned up, but we are told that they will in time.  Perhaps they yet will.  But, our costly and destructive bunker busting attack on Iraq seems to have proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what we were told was the urgent reason to go in.  It seems also to have, for the present, verified the assertions of Hans Blix and the inspection team he led, which President Bush and company so derided.  As Blix always said, a lot of time will be needed to find such weapons, if they do, indeed, exist.  Meanwhile Bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddam Hussein has come up missing.

Failing approach to democracy
By Muli Peleg, Haaretz, May 22, 2003
The disturbing pubic opinion poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute on the weakening of Israeli democracy passed in silence. The silence confirms the findings: A large number of Israelis have contempt for democracy and regard it as an irrelevant obstacle to reality here. The rest are apathetic or have lost hope for a dialogue with the first group. Beyond the brutalization of Israeli society as a result of ongoing occupation and unforgivable widening income gaps, there is a deeper failure in the approach to democracy. One of the significant and stubborn debates in the doctrine of democracy is over its character and dimension. Is democracy a means or a goal, is it limited to politics or is it a way of life? The importance of that distinction goes far beyond the academic argument and affects the applied dimensions of government and how public life is navigated. Polar positions and differing interpretations of democracy's role create a variety of attitudes, most frequently contradictory, to ideological pluralism and coexistence. The two relevant concepts are the narrow or liberal approach and the broader, participatory approach to democracy. The first emphasizes individual liberties, a clear separation between public and private, government efficacy and rule of law, and ideological pluralism. The second emphasizes participation and social activism, equality, and broadening the public arena beyond politics. Liberal democracy supporters regard it as an instrument to guarantee natural rights - life, liberty, property, and all that is derived thereof. In other words, democracy is a condition or framework for the fulfillment of other goals. Therefore, it must be directed to that end - no more, no less. Because it is functional, democracy must operate properly, be efficient, and be executable. Under certain circumstances, if not supervised, democracy could oppose other ideals, such as liberty or justice. Supporters of broad, participatory democracy argue that democracy is a goal unto itself. It's a way of living based on a comprehensive view of its values that does not contradict other ideals, but allows them to exist. Natural rights can only be achieved in a democratic environment. That's why the borders of democracy, its principles, and methods of operation must be broadened into all areas of life. The Israeli model is authoritarian-hierarchal and narrow. The poverty of Israeli democracy goes back to the days of the pre-state yishuv, when the commitment to democracy was focused on processes and procedures. 

Is Bush Building a New American Empire?
By Tim Kennedy, Arab News, May 22, 2003
Foreign policy experts are lately using the word “empire” when criticizing the global aspirations of US President George W. Bush. They worry that the United States has ceased being a democratic republic and is now embarked on a dangerous expansion of its political, military and economic interests overseas. Americans are generally discomforted with the idea that the US presence overseas is an empire. It is at odds with the idealized view that America is a peace-loving republic uninterested in exploiting other nations. Yet American empire succinctly defines the reality of America’s global dominance. Whether under the pretext of fighting communism or international terror, the United States has expanded its own economic and political power — usually at great cost to global stability and its own prosperity. But is the United States truly embarked on a new path toward a New American Empire? Or is it simply staying a course of global expansion established by Bush’s presidential forbearers? A mere 227 years ago, several visionary British-educated political intellectuals established the United States of America as a republic: a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” George Washington, the most sanguine among these so-called founding fathers, hoped to strike a balance between the big-money interests of the federalists (the Anglo-nostalgic predecessors of the Republican Party) and the small-farm, small-government interests of civil-libertarians (the genesis of the Democrats) led by Thomas Jefferson, a man who would eventually succeed Washington as the country’s third president. But the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) destabilized this political balance. Jackson, a real estate speculator, merchant and slave trader, proved to be the most aggressive enemy of Native Americans in early US history: His drive for land and power became his predominant concern, and resulted in the relocation (or annihilation) of most Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River.

Arabs Have Failed to Tell Their Story in a Proper Way
By James Zogby, Palestine Chronicle, May 21, 2003 
"If it is true that Americans have too little appreciation for history, it is equally true that Arabs have too little appreciation for the need to tell their story in a way to make it relevant and understood .." -- DAVIDSON, NC - I spent this spring as the Batten Professor of Public Policy at Davidson College in North Carolina. It was a wonderful opportunity to leave Washington and spend five months teaching a remarkable group of young people. It also provided me with the opportunity to relearn some important lessons about politics and history. There were times, to be sure, when it was hard being away from Washington. This was the first time in 25 years that I was not in the capital as major events were unfolding in the Middle East. With continuing upheaval in Palestine and the war in Iraq, there was so much to do, and I was not there to do it. My office however, did what needed to be done. Press releases went out, TV appearances and interviews were done and calls to action were sent to community leaders on a regular basis. From my distant vantage point, I played a different role. I did return to Washington one day each week. I did some press and television interviews and I wrote a few articles. At one point, I did publicly challenge the Democratic Party to demand answers from President Bush about the war, and I led the anti-war debate at the Party’s Winter meeting. Finally, thanks to Abu-Dhabi TV, I was able to host two televised conversations between Americans and Iraqis—both before and after the war. These efforts generated national press attention. So it was not that I was inactive or AWOL, I was just in a different place doing some different things. And what I escaped, while being in Davidson, was being part of the exhausting “ping-pong ball-like” game of being bounced back and forth from network to network, interview to interview, dispensing disposable quotes or engaging in the three-and-one-half minute “all heat and no light” debates that have become standard fare on too many US networks. What teaching provided was an opportunity to read and think, to reflect and learn — in particular to reflect on Arab history and to place the events playing out in today’s Middle East in the broader context of that history. It is so tragically clear that most Americans ignore history. For many US news reporters, for example, history begins the day they receive the assignment to cover a particular story.

American intentions are tainted by Iraq's oil
By Jeffrey Sachs, New York Times, May 22, 2003
Throughout the world people believe that the US fought the Iraq war to secure control of Middle East oil. The Bush administration vehemently rejects this; Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, has declared that oil had nothing to do with the war. This difference of opinion has impeded Iraq's recovery at every step. The US wants to lift United Nations sanctions immediately to speed Iraqi reconstruction. Many other countries, notably France and Russia, have expressed fears that the UN resolution pushed by the US would legitimise a US grab of Iraqi oil. Accusations of crony politics have flown back and forth. Now a revised resolution is set to be voted on by the UN Security Council. While it looks as if the US may have made enough concessions for it to pass, possibly by consensus, they fall far short of what is needed to allay the suspicion that this was a war about oil. If the US is to clear the air - and secure the international co-operation to help rebuild Iraq and allow the US rapidly to extricate itself - it will have to take further definite steps. Above all, it should agree to place the Iraqi oil sector under direct UN control until the US occupying authority in Iraq has been replaced by a sovereign Iraqi government. So far, however, the US has moved in the opposite direction. It has appointed an interim head of the Iraqi oil sector and placed over him a US-appointed advisory board headed by an American, Philip Carroll, the former chief executive of Shell Oil. The role earmarked for the UN in the oil sector is that of a monitor of some financial flows, not that of a decision-maker. The US should undertake not to decide unilaterally on new contracts for the reconstruction and development of Iraqi oil, or on any fundamental restructuring of the sector (such as privatisation), in lieu of a UN authority. Indeed, all countries should abjure from negotiations behind the backs of the Iraqi people about past and future oil contracts. As for the existing contracts and claims on Iraq held by Russia, France and other countries, the US should respect these. Richard Perle, the Pentagon adviser fighting charges of financial conflict of interest, told the Russian press recently that the US would cancel the old Russian contracts. If some of these contractual claims do indeed contravene international law, their cancellation should occur through an international legal process, including direct negotiation between a sovereign Iraqi government and the contractual counterparts.

The apartheid wall
By Ran HaCohen, Palestine Monitor/Antiwar.com, May 21, 2003
Only alert readers may have noticed that the Israeli-biased American "Road Map to Peace", already being imposed on the Palestinians, has not even been accepted by Israel's rejectionist government. Asked about it, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that accepting or not accepting it "didn't really matter" – when Israel is concerned, to be sure; I have a hunch that had the Palestinians declined to accept it, the American reaction would have been quite different. But for once, I agree with Mr. Powell: it really does not matter. A central function of the "Road Map" is to distract from the actual map of the Palestinian territories. This map is being radically altered, and unlike the Road Map, which will be forgotten like all its cynical forerunners ("Zinni Plan", "Tenet Plan", "Mitchell Report", "Regional Peace Conference" etc.), the geographical map of Palestine is here to stay, with a huge Wall now being built in its middle, the "Security Fence" in official Israeli language, is in fact an Apartheid Wall. PM Sharon has long opposed the idea of a barrier between Israel and the West Bank. As late as April 2002, Sharon was still rejecting it, in spite of public pressure, in spite of demands raised by both Israel's President and the Head of the Secret Service, and, above all, in spite of hundreds of Israeli civilian victims to Palestinian terrorism, whose death could have been prevented by such a fence. Not before June 2002, in what was portrayed as a victory for Labour's leader Ben-Eliezer (then Defence Minister in a unity coalition) imposed on Sharon against his will, was the huge construction project finally launched. Since, unlike their ruling junta, most Israelis do want to end the occupation, support for the Fence is overwhelming. Most Israelis believe it will bring security, and eventually turn into a border between Israel and a Palestinian State. Israel's millionaires, as Yedioth Achronoth exposed (22.11.2002), have a special reason to celebrate: hundreds of Palestinian olive trees on the route of the fence are rooted out by the constructors, smuggled and sold for the gardens of rich Israelis (up to $5.000 for an ancient tree). Palestinian owners who dare ask for compensation for their often only source of income are driven away by threats and beating.    Change of Heart?  The junta's change of heart towards the Wall happened only after "Operation Defence Shield" of April 2002. As long as Israeli terror victims could be used to justify the repeated incursions into autonomous Palestinians areas, no fence was built. After "Defensive Shield", when Israel had finally managed to reoccupy the entire West Bank and to destroy the Palestinian Authority (existing in name only ever since), the Wall could be erected. But the deeper reason for the apparent change of heart is that the junta found a way to use the Wall for its ends: as part of its project of destroying the Palestinians. This cannot be grasped without taking a look at the actual route of the Wall. Why, you may wonder: isn't the Wall following the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank? – Not quite. If this had been Israel's intention, we could have had Peace long ago. The whole point is that Israel refuses to give up the West Bank, and building a Wall on the Green Line is the last thing the junta had in mind. The Wall is constructed deep in Palestinian territory, in order to rob as much Palestinian land and water as possible. A good example is the small village of Mas'ha, where a joint group of Palestinians, Israelis and internationals has set a small camp trying to attract attention and to fight the ongoing atrocity.