I am Sorry
By MIFTAH, May 28, 2003
Following the Israeli government’s bitter acceptance of the ‘roadmap’ on Sunday, General Ariel Sharon addressed his fellow Likud members the next day, in an attempt to calm their outrage at what they see as a threat to Israel’s security (recognition of the basic Palestinian human rights). Instead, Sharon only seemed to fuel their anger by stating that he thinks “…the idea of keeping 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation is the worst thing for Israel, for the Palestinians and also for the Israeli economy. You may not like the word, but what's happening is occupation. Israel’s control over the Palestinians cannot continue without end. Do you want to stay forever in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem? That is not right,” he said. Is this a sudden awakening of Israel’s sense of humanity and justice? Not only did Sharon personally refer to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories as occupation (a rare sign of logic in Israeli policy), but he also said it is “…not right.” Unfortunately, Sharon’s statements were neither a sign of pragmatism nor enlightenment. They could, at best, qualify as a Freudian Slip! A quick change of heart soon followed on Tuesday, as criticism mounted from radical members of his right wing coalition government. Sharon swiftly shifted into damage control mode, desperately attempting to reinvent his statements to suit mainstream Israeli repression politics again. “Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein called me yesterday and confirmed that the official word used for the territories is ‘disputed’” he said, apparently regretful of his earlier statements. This somewhat clumsy political saga must not go unnoticed. That Sharon’s (unintended) mere reference to Israel’s status in the Palestinian territories as occupation has stirred such explosive anger on the Israeli political arena is alarming. When/if Israel is put to the real test of peacemaking with the Palestinians (troop withdrawal, settlement freeze, and so on), will the Israeli government be able/willing to deliver? Apparently, it all depends on the magnitude of Israeli resistance to peace. Equally alarming is Sharon’s ‘rubber-coated steel bullet’ style terminology, which deceptively attempts to insinuate that Israel will make the “painful territorial concessions.” Yet, with 14 Israeli reservations regarding the ‘roadmap’ already in place, what guarantees do the Palestinians have that Israel’s definition of withdrawal will not literally only entail not staying “…forever in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem?”

Can bad fences make good neighbours?: Israel's separation wall is being used to annex territory
By Neve Gordon, International Press Center/The Guardian, May 29, 2003
Although Mazmuriah is located less than 20 minutes' drive from my Jerusalem apartment, all roads connecting the small village to the city have been blocked off. Using roundabout roads that wind across the hilly terrain of the southern Jerusalem municipal border, we took more than an hour to reach the village. The Palestinian residents invited us. They wanted to tell Israeli peace activists about their imminent expulsion, about their fear of being forced to move from their ancestral land. They wanted to tell us about the bad fence. But first some background. After the 1967 war, Israel annexed some 70sq km of land to the municipal boundaries of West Jerusalem, imposing Israeli law on this area. These annexed territories included not only the part of Jerusalem that had been under Jordanian rule but also an additional 64sq km, most of which had belonged to 28 villages in the West Bank. Unlike most of the inhabitants of the annexed villages, who were subsequently registered by the Israeli civil administration as Israeli residents (as opposed to citizens), the inhabitants of Mazmuriah were given West Bank identity cards. This created a juridical situation straight out of Kafka. The Mazmuriah residents and their houses belong to different legal and administrative systems: the houses and land are part of the Jerusalem municipal system, while the inhabitants are residents of the West Bank and therefore subjected to Israeli military rule.

Your Rights: Use 'Em or Lose 'Em
By Rachel Neumann, AlterNet, May 30, 2003
When I was growing up, there was a popular bumper sticker, seen mostly on the back of old VW vans that said: "What if there was a war and nobody came?" I am reminded of that bumper sticker now, in light of this administration's unprecedented attack on civil liberties. What if our basic rights were taken away and no one noticed? What if our system of checks and balances was destroyed and everyone remained convinced it was happening to someone else? Under current legislation, if you are "suspected" of terrorist activity, you can be picked up and held indefinitely, without charges and without access to a lawyer. If your loved ones call to find out where you are or if you are okay, they will be told nothing. After all, to disclose your whereabouts would infringe on your right to privacy. Don't bother clutching your passport to your chest; this law applies to all U.S. citizens. And, if currently proposed legislation – PATRIOT Act II – passes, you may no longer even be a citizen. Under PATRIOT II, if you attend a legal protest sponsored by an organization the government has listed as "terrorist," you may be deported and your citizenship revoked. This is true even if you are only suspected of terrorist activity and nothing has been proven. More specifically, according to FindLaw's Anita Ramasastry, a U.S. citizen may be expatriated "if, with the intent to relinquish his nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United Stated has designated as a 'terrorist organization.'" I wish this were an exaggeration. The attack on civil liberties hasn't been subtle; rather it has erred on the side of being so extreme as to seem surreal. Some of the lowlights include: The USA PATRIOT Act creates a new crime of "domestic terrorism" – defined so broadly as to include civil disobedience and other nonviolent forms of resistance. The PATRIOT Act also greatly reduces free speech and privacy, allowing for Internet and library surveillance and eliminating the need for warrants before searching video or music store records. The new Homeland Security Department, whose massive reorganization of over 22 different federal agencies includes a beefed-up immigration office, renamed the Bureau of Border and Transportation Security, with a focus on catching immigrant violations and keeping people outside of U.S. borders. Total Information Awareness, recently renamed "Terrorist Information Awareness," which hopes to predict terrorist actions by analyzing such transactions as passport applications, visas, work permits, driver's licenses, car rentals, airline ticket purchases, arrests or reports of suspicious activities. TIA would make financial, education, medical and housing records, as well as biometric identification databases based on fingerprints, irises, facial shapes and even how a person walks available to U.S. agents. Patriot Act II: Enough Already! If all this weren't enough, currently proposed legislation would increase the PATRIOT Act's powers. The Center for Public Integrity (www.publicintegrity.org) lists the full provisions of the act, which include, beside the deportation of citizens who are suspected of consorting with or supporting terrorists:

Privatizing security
By Raoul Teitelbaum, Globes, May 29, 2003
Security companies prosper from government cutbacks while guards earn the minimum wage. -- We’re reinventing the wheel. It won’t help us much, but putting economic theory into practice is some kind of achievement. Old Prof. Milton Friedman must be smiling. He’s been preaching at us for ages to privatize everything that moves even national security and we’ve been going about it by leaps and bounds. Every neighborhood café has long since had a sign in the entrance, saying, “Dear customers, due to the security situation, we are forced to charge NIS 2 for security. We hope you’ll understand. We apologize.” We, of course, understand, and we pay. Public institutions, apartment houses, and luxury neighborhoods in other countries also have security guards, but it’s different with us. Our civilian security personnel are doing jobs that the Israel Defense Forces did until a few years ago. Security for Israel Railways and buses, Israel Electric Corporation facilities, Bezeq, the courthouses, and even ministers’ homes are some examples. Private security guards even watch over installations at Israel Military Industries (IMI), Rafael (Israel Armament Development Company), and other defense industries. Most shocking of all, security company personnel are responsible for safeguarding the Israel Police national headquarters and the Prime Minister’s Office. The official statistics have not yet caught up with the reality. Well-founded estimates mention 100,000 security guards, almost 10% of whom are women. In other words, 4.5% of all wage earners work as guards or in civilian security. Turnover in this sector has risen 50% in the past three years. Added to cleaning workers, this amounts to 9% of total business services. This prosperous sector involves a lot of money. According to D&B Israel, 300 security companies compete intensely against each other. Security companies expanded their business by 10-30% last year. The revenue of the 16 leading companies totaled $483 million in 2002, and the estimated 2002 total for all security companies was at least $1 billion (almost NIS 5 billion).....The security guards engaging in this dangerous work are paid miserable wages, starting at the minimum wage of NIS 18 per hour, and ranging up to NIS 25 per hour. Only those at the high end of this industry’s pay scale make the same NIS 35 per hour as a housemaid without social benefits (which she is entitled to by law).

The Rise of a Bigger, Better Taliban
By Ted Rall, AlterNet, May 30, 2003
We told you so. We warned the Bush Administration that invading Iraq would destabilize the Middle East and spread radical anti-American Islamism. We told the American people that taking out Saddam Hussein without a viable government to replace him would open a vacuum for anarchy, civil war and a power grab by radical Iranian-backed Shiite clerics. Now the antiwar movement's doomsday scenarios have been fulfilled so completely that military history scarcely mentions a more thoroughly botched endeavor – and we'll be living with the fallout for years. When we argued that Donald Rumsfeld's low-budget occupation of Iraq would turn out as disastrously as it had in Afghanistan, right-wing Republicans called us stupid and un-American. Now that we've been proven correct on every count, is it too much to expect an apology? Maybe so. Given George W. Bush's performance on the economy and the war on terrorism (where's Osama? Saddam? the WMDs? the surplus?), betting against him hardly makes one a prophet. And no one is less pleased with the speed and totality of the Iraqi catastrophe than those of us who called it in advance. The Slicing of the Iraqi Melon: The war has meant the end of a unified Iraq and the beginning of chaos throughout the Middle East. The former northern "no-fly zone" is already openly referred to by Kurdish officials as the incipient Islamic Republic of Kurdistan. "It's etiquette, like a game," says Farhad Pirbal of Erbil University. "[Kurdish] politicians say what the Americans want to hear" – that they want to remain part of Iraq. But, he continues, "more than 80 percent of the people are for independence." Since Turkish reticence prompted the Pentagon to invade Iraq from the south, only small numbers of American forces entered the Kurdish zone, which has since remained under control of peshmerga guerillas. On May 23, U.S. and British occupation authorities formally endorsed the permanent partition of Iraq, setting the stage for Kurdish statehood. Even as U.S. civilian administrator Paul Bremer officially dissolved Iraq's armed forces, allied commander Lt. Gen. David McKiernan announced that the peshmerga would be allowed to keep its automatic weapons and heavy artillery – becoming Kurdistan's de facto army. A few days later, Kurdish leaders announced plans to continue expanding their territory. "Now we are back in Mosul," regional governor Nechirvan Barzani told The New York Times. "We control Senjar and Mosul provinces. We want to add the other parts of Kurdistan."

Pentagon Aims Guns at Lynch Reports
By Robert Scheer, AlterNet, May 29, 2003
It is one thing when the talk-show bullies, who shamelessly smeared the last president even as he attacked the training camps of Al Qaeda, now term it anti-American or even treasonous to dare criticize the Bush administration. It's another when our Pentagon – a $400-billion-a-year juggernaut – savages individual journalists for questioning its version of events. Especially if you're that journalist. Last week, this column reported the findings of a British Broadcasting Corp. special report that accused the U.S. military and media of inaccurately and manipulatively hyping the story of U.S. Pvt. Jessica Lynch and her rescue from an Iraq hospital. The column was also informed by similar and independently reported articles and statements in the Toronto Star, the Washington Post and other reputable publications. Expected – and received – was a hysterical belch of outrage from the right-wing media, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox empire, which has already committed a huge book advance to the telling of this mythic tale. A fiery and disingenuous response from the Pentagon, however, was quite a bit more sobering. Calling the column a "tirade," Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke wrote in a letter to The Times that "Scheer's claims are outrageous, patently false and unsupported by the facts." "Official spokespeople in Qatar and in Washington, as well as the footage released, reflected the events accurately," the Pentagon letter continued. "To suggest otherwise is an insult and does a grave disservice to the brave men and women involved." Actually, what is a grave disservice is manipulating a gullible media with leaked distortions from unnamed official sources about Lynch's heroics in battle. That aside, it would have been easier to rebut the Pentagon if its spokeswoman had actually questioned any of the facts the BBC or this column reported. In particular, the Pentagon turned down the request by the BBC and other media to view the full, unedited footage of the rescue.

"Free People Will Set the Course of History"
By Robert Blecher, Middle East Research and Information Project, March, 2003
Intellectuals, Democracy and American Empire -- As the Bush administration struggled to find a justification for launching an attack on Iraq, churning out sketchy intelligence reports about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links with al-Qaeda, Washington wordsmiths produced their own grist for the war mill: the prospect of a democratic pax americana in the Middle East. The importance of the pundits' contribution to the war machine should not be underestimated. As the task of swaying public opinion grew more difficult, rhetoric around freedom and democracy has become ever more central. In the weeks after September 11, 2001, George W. Bush did not talk of remaking the Middle East. But in successive State of the Union addresses, commencement speeches, press conferences and televised appeals to the nation, Bush showed increasing faith in the ability of the US to extirpate tyranny and implant freedom in this agonized region. Presidents did not always profess belief in the region's democratic potential, nor did the intellectuals who served them. At the time of the 1991 Gulf war, shapers of public opinion such as Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes toed the first Bush administration's line that Washington should not aim to democratize the Middle East. But by the leadup to the junior Bush's war on Iraq, the same thinkers and pundits had reoriented their policy prescriptions, in many cases directly contradicting their writings of a decade ago. Employing their prodigious skills to trumpet the golden age of democracy, they have set aside their former convictions to serve power.

Hizballah in the Firing Line
By Nicholas Blanford,  Middle East Research and Information Project, April 28, 2003
The overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and Washington's recent pressure on Syria have placed Lebanon's Hizballah organization firmly in the firing line in the next phase of George W. Bush's war on terrorism. But Hizballah is confident that its strategic alliance with Damascus will remain unbroken and it hopes that a backlash against US forces in Iraq in the coming weeks and months will reduce Washington's incentive to pursue Syria, Iran and Hizballah. Nonetheless, Hizballah potentially faces the greatest challenge of its 18-year history, with the US viewing the organization as a possible threat to its position in Iraq, a continuing menace to its ally Israel and an impediment to the successful implementation of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. KEEN NOT TO INTERVENE: The war in Iraq posed a dilemma for Hizballah. On the one hand, it had little sympathy for Saddam Hussein and his regime, which had oppressed the group's fellow Shiites in numerous ways. On the other hand, Hizballah strongly opposed US military intervention in the heartland of the Arab world, which it viewed as Washington's first step toward a radical alteration of the strategic map of the Middle East to suit Israel's purposes. During the buildup to the US-led invasion of Iraq, Hizballah's secretary-general, Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah, proposed a reconciliation initiative whereby Saddam Hussein would have mended fences with elements of the Iraqi opposition to create a new government in Baghdad, thus obviating the need for external military intervention. Nasrallah's plan, based on the Taif Accord which ended Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, stood little chance of success and was generally ignored by the relevant parties. Other than that failed initiative, Hizballah has remained on the sidelines of developments in Iraq, confining itself to dire predictions of Iraqi and Arab uprisings against the US military. "We tell them, do not expect that the people of this region will receive you with flowers, rice and rose water. The region's people will receive you with rifles, blood, weapons, martyrdom and martyrdom operations," Nasrallah said in a March 2003 speech marking the tenth day of Ashura -- the Shiite commemoration of the death of the venerated imam Hussein on the plain of Karbala in the seventh century.

The horse is out of the stable
By Yoel Marcus, Haaretz, May 30, 2003
Last Friday, I stated in this column that I could write a big fat book about why I changed my mind about Sharon at least 20 times. Make that 21. The Great Zigzagger, who has always done the opposite of what he says, and said the opposite of what he does, has suddenly displayed political vision: He is calling for an end to occupation. The use of a word no Israeli prime minister before him has used, and which has never appeared on any official paper issued or signed by Israel, knocked the leftists off their chairs. Sharon is the last person they ever expected to pass them on the left. He is the last person anyone expected to get up at a Likud meeting swarming with reporters and TV cameras, and tell it like it is: that the time has come to divide the country and establish a Palestinian state; that ruling 3.5 million Palestinians is bad for Israel, the economy and the Palestinians; that occupation cannot continue indefinitely. "Do you want to stay in Bethlehem, Jenin and Nablus?" he asked. Even when Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein pointed out that "occupation" is not in our lexicon and the proper terminology is "disputed territories," even when Uzi Landau and his pals howled, Sharon stood his ground. You may not like the word, he said, but that's what it is: occupation. A genuine Sharon in Beilin's clothing. In private conversation, and for foreign relations purposes, Sharon has spoken many times about establishing a Palestinian state (in practice, he says, it already exists). In the Likud Central Committee, he debated with Netanyahu on this issue and won. But Sharon, being Sharon, said one thing and did another.