Psychological Study of the Mentality of Jewish Children
By Tayseer Jaber, Arab News, June 8, 2003
RAMALLA, 8 June 2003 — A letter from a Jewish child to a Palestinian child, said, “I hope you and your family will burn in hell.” These ugly expressions and desires come from an Israeli child who took part in a research study. The study was conducted by an Israeli researcher and translated into Arabic. The study was presented to a teaching committee at the London School of Economics (LSE). The researcher is a former soldier and a member of the anti-terrorist unit in the Israeli army. He studied psychology at the LSE. The study involved more than eighty Israeli children and it indicates that the current generation is passing a Zionist legacy to the next generation. Zionism is being passed to the younger generation — even more than knowledge of the Torah. The parents of this generation know how to plant hate and anger toward Arabs in children’s minds to such an extent that children are happy to hear of the death of Palestinian child or to hear news of a Palestinian official’s being assassinated. The researcher observed the problem and has searched for results and reasons. The reason he conducted the study was because of a contradiction in Israeli policy. In August 2000, Ehud Barak promised to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in August 2001, Sharon was talking about the assassination policy. The researcher talked to eighty-four children after the suicide bombing in the nightclub. The result shows the hate Israeli children harbor towards Palestinians has reached a high point. Children under the age of eight have pictures in their minds of Palestinian children as blind and with no teeth. They wish that those children would suffer from Aids and burn in hell. Israeli children admitted to these feelings. What is even stranger is that they used very strong language, which cannot be published here. The researcher asked each child to write a letter to a Palestinian. He also asked them to draw a picture of a Palestinian child. The results were amazing because of the quantity of hate these children under the age of eight manifest. There is a mixture of fear and anger in these children. To begin with, the children asked two questions. The first was whether to write the letter to a good or bad Palestinian and the second was if they could curse in the letter.

Driving along the roadmap trail
By Nevine Khalil, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 5 -11 June 2003
The first US-Arab summit set the stage for the long road to peace, but the pace of progress depends on how long Bush retains his hands-on approach. -- Much to the displeasure of the media covering the first summit of its kind between five Arab leaders and a US president in Sharm El-Sheikh on Tuesday, no questions were permitted after conclusion of the closing statements of President Hosni Mubarak and his American counterpart, President George W Bush. There was no opportunity to tackle sensitive issues such as the new US "vision" for the Middle East, the tricky definition of "terrorism", the precarious status of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, a guarantee that the roadmap will be implemented, or criticism of Israel's obstructive behaviour during the peace process. Understandably, prehaps, the less said was deemed the better, on the eve of a landmark summit between Bush, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Aqaba. In fact, Sharm El-Sheikh was seen by many as a precursor for yesterday's summit in Aqaba, where the Palestinians and Israelis were expected to show their true intentions with regard to the roadmap, as well as their intentions for the peace process. Bush came to the Red Sea resort to hear Arab leaders confirming their support for the roadmap and their condemnation of terrorism. The Arabs, for their part, impressed on him the need for continued US involvement to ensure firstly that the parties remain on the road to peace and secondly, that the US proposal will not be altered to accommodate Israel's "reservations".

War Crimes, US Planners and Iraq’s Water Vulnerability: A Conversation with Professor Thomas Nagy
By Abu Spinoza, Press Action, June 4, 2003
Introduction: At the time of the first Persian Gulf War (1991), the United States’ military planners knew that Iraq’s water supply facilities were vulnerable to sanctions. They were also aware that Iraq’s vulnerability, owing to the lack of crucial imports of chemicals and equipment required for the purification of water, could cause deaths, diseases and epidemics. Yet planners went ahead with the imposition of sanctions that directly contributed to degrading Iraq’s water treatment facilities. The sanctions caused public health catastrophes, exactly as the planners had reasonably conjectured and anticipated in the planning documents dating from 1991. Declassified US government documents disclose planners’ complicity, foreknowledge and malfeasance in exploiting Iraq’s vulnerability in supplying clean water to its population. Professor Thomas Nagy, who teaches at George Washington University’s Business School, uncovered several declassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents outlining the US planners’ analysis of Iraq’s water treatment vulnerabilities and possible consequences of imposing sanctions. He published his findings in the September 2001 issue of the Progressive, a small but respected independent and alternative magazine. Nagy’s Key Findings: Nagy found these declassified documents at the website of the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses. These documents show that the US authorities had used sanctions to degrade Iraq’s water treatment facilities. The main document is titled, “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerability.” He also uncovered several other related documents, such as “Disease Information,” “Disease Outbreaks in Iraq,” “Medical Problems in Iraq,” “Status of Disease at Refugee Camps,” “Health Conditions in Iraq,” and “Iraq: Assessment of Current Health Threats and Capabilities.” Other Iraq-related US government declassified documents are also available in the same website. The document “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerability,” noted that “failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could result in increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease and to certain pure water dependent becoming incapacitated.”

The Secret Behind the Sanctions
by Thomas J. Nagy, The Progressive, September, 2001
How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply -- Over the last two years, I've discovered documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency proving beyond a doubt that, contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply after the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway. The primary document, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," is dated January 22, 1991. It spells out how sanctions will prevent Iraq from supplying clean water to its citizens. "Iraq depends on importing specialized equipment and some chemicals to purify its water supply, most of which is heavily mineralized and frequently brackish to saline," the document states. "With no domestic sources of both water treatment replacement parts and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to circumvent United Nations Sanctions to import these vital commodities. Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease." The document goes into great technical detail about the sources and quality of Iraq's water supply. The quality of untreated water "generally is poor," and drinking such water "could result in diarrhea," the document says. It notes that Iraq's rivers "contain biological materials, pollutants, and are laden with bacteria. Unless the water is purified with chlorine, epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid could occur." The document notes that the importation of chlorine "has been embargoed" by sanctions. "Recent reports indicate the chlorine supply is critically low." Food and medicine will also be affected, the document states. "Food processing, electronic, and, particularly, pharmaceutical plants require extremely pure water that is free from biological contaminants," it says. The document addresses possible Iraqi countermeasures to obtain drinkable water despite sanctions.  "Iraq conceivably could truck water from the mountain reservoirs to urban areas. But the capability to gain significant quantities is extremely limited," the document states. "The amount of pipe on hand and the lack of pumping stations would limit laying pipelines to these reservoirs. Moreover, without chlorine purification, the water still would contain biological pollutants. Some affluent Iraqis could obtain their own minimally adequate supply of good quality water from Northern Iraqi sources. If boiled, the water could be safely consumed. Poorer Iraqis and industries requiring large quantities of pure water would not be able to meet their needs."

Sharon a Changed Man? Not Many People Believe It
By Timothy Appleby, Toronto Globe and Mail, June 9, 2003 
TORONTO, 9 June 2003 — When it became evident that the Israeli Army could seize Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem and the adjoining West Bank during the 1967 Six-Day War, Labor Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was apprehensive. “Even if we take the West Bank and Old City,” he said, “we will eventually have to leave them.” Now, almost 36 years after Israel occupied the West Bank and the Egyptian-administered Gaza Strip, Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appears to have come to the same conclusion. Sounding more like a peacenik than a former general, Sharon astonished critics and supporters alike over the weekend. “We don’t like the word,” he declared, “but this is occupation. To keep 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation is bad for Israel and bad for the Palestinians.” Since Sharon has devoted much of his career to championing the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, his language and apparent change of heart have spawned skepticism, both at home and abroad. The most cynical view suggests that although he has publicly signed on to the notion of a Palestinian state — which to be viable would displace hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers — Sharon did so only because he believes that Palestinian extremists will torpedo the current momentum. “What is great about Sharon is that even today ... he can still spin everybody like a top,” political commentator Chemi Shalev wrote in the newspaper Maariv. Sharon’s defenders respond that concerted US pressure and a rapidly growing Palestinian population, expected to double in the next 20 years, have combined to turn him into a realist. Either way, it’s clear that while assorted Labor and Likud governments have espoused different views of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, the one constant has been a steady growth of the Israeli presence since Eshkol initiated the occupation.

We Make No Apologies
By Jacob Sullum, Reason, May 30, 2003
Illegal immigrants shouldn't be treated like terrorists. -- After the September 11 attacks, the FBI got a tip about a 24-hour grocery store "operated by numerous Middle Eastern men." The informant believed there were "too many people to run a small store" and considered it suspicious that the store was closed the day after the attacks. You might not think a convenience store run by immigrants working long hours would attract the FBI's attention. Yet a man arrested at the store was one of 762 immigrants detained by the federal government as part of the 9/11 investigation in the 11 months following the attacks. Almost all had entered the country illegally, overstayed a visa, or violated the immigration laws in some other way. Such illegal aliens usually are deported or sent back to their countries under "voluntary departure orders." Instead, these people were locked up for weeks or months without bail and treated like Al Qaeda operatives, although none has been charged with terrorism. A recent report from the Justice Department's inspector general reveals that the detainees, most of whom ultimately left the country, were considered guilty until the FBI declared them innocent, a process that took 80 days on average. Meanwhile, they might not be informed of the charges against them for weeks, and their efforts to find lawyers were obstructed. The detainees were isolated from their families, who often did not even know where they were being held. The inspector general also found credible evidence that they were subjected to "a pattern of verbal and physical abuse" that included slamming them against walls, twisting their limbs, yanking on their restraints, calling them "Bin Laden Junior," ordering them to "shut up" when they were praying, and telling them "you're going to die here." This is how Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock responded to the inspector general's damning report: "We make no apologies for finding every legal way possible to protect the American public from further terrorist attacks."

Gripped by Fear
By Shaik Ubaid, Newsday, June 8, 2003
Two weeks ago, in the midst of the state of high alert, my brother-in-law called my children, saying that he had three free tickets for the Mets game that evening. My son and middle daughter jumped at this chance. They were ready to leave when my wife and I arrived home that evening. We were aghast. With her hejab, our daughter is easily identifiable as Muslim. To send her into the charged atmosphere of a ballpark was out of the question. The most athletic member of our family, she tried arguments like, "Mom, I am bigger than my brother," or, "But, Dad, there are a lot of policemen in there." But nothing would sway us. My son went with his uncle, and my daughter sulked for days. We were probably being overprotective, and in hindsight our son could have been in just as much danger of becoming the victim of a bias attack, but the last 20 months have been a very stressful time for our family and other Muslim Americans on Long Island. From the Iraq war to the terror alert levels to the Sept. 11 attacks, we're gripped with fear. And it's taking a heavy toll on the community, as some of us avoid placing ourselves in perceived situations of danger, change our everyday behavior or leave the country altogether. Some of our fears are caused by events on the national front. During the latest heightened alert, for example, a Muslim girl and a teenager were attacked in two different towns in Pennsylvania, and a Sikh man, mistaken for a Muslim, was shot in Arizona. But some of our fears are caused by events on the local front. Some mothers pulled their sons out of Little League after Sept. 11, hearing of unrelated reports of mistreatment in the schools, never to send them back. Many motorists, especially women, avoid driving late at night because Muslims have become victims of racial slurs and verbal abuse. Many parents are even moving to Canada or returning to their countries of origin, causing great distress to their American-born children, because the United States no longer offers hope. The paranoia many of us feel even consumes our social gatherings. At parties and other events that are supposed to be joyful, stories are told and retold of young men who are being arrested on suspicion of terrorism and deported, of professionals who are losing their jobs because of discrimination, of travelers being harassed on trains and at airports, and of couples being separated because of minor immigration infractions. Our rampant fears are already inflicting far-reaching psychosocial trauma on our children. They are just as fearful as we are. We hear it in their questions. The younger ones ask, "Will there be more wars?" or "Why is the president not saying sorry when children in Iraq are killed?" or "What do 'towel head' and 'camel jockey' mean?" And many older ones have exhibited clear signs of stress, like falling grades and behavioral and mood problems.

US plays matchmaker to India, Israel
By Ninan Koshy, Asia Times/Foreign Policy in Focus, June 9, 2003
Close on the heels of Indian National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra's call for an India-United States-Israel strategic alliance, comes the confirmation that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will visit India within the next few weeks. Some observers in New Delhi consider Mishra's call, made at the annual dinner of the American Jewish Committee, as a curtain raiser for the Sharon visit. What they seem to ignore is that the India-US-Israel strategic alliance has moved beyond last call to center stage and that the plan for Sharon's visit is some 15 months old. It was an ironic coincidence that Brajesh Mishra was closeted in his office in New Delhi on September 11, 2001 with his Israeli counterpart Major General Uzi Dayan and engaged in what was dubbed a "joint security strategy dialogue" when the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon occurred. Their discussion had to be discontinued as they turned to the television news. Favored by the climate of the ensuing "war on terror", the security relationship between India and Israel developed into a strategic alliance in tandem with the India-US strategic partnership. The alliance between India and Israel - one an open member of the international nuclear club and the other a secret member - is based predominantly on military and intelligence cooperation. Israel has become the second-largest supplier of arms for India, next only to Russia. Israel has provided India with sea-to-sea missile radar and other similar systems, border monitoring equipment, and night vision devices. It also has upgraded India's Soviet-era aircraft.

Peace can't be bought on the layaway plan
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, June 9, 2003
"I hope Sharon doesn't evacuate a single outpost. I hope another quarter million Jews settle in the territories." Those aren't the words of a Yesha council member. It was Michael Tarazi, an adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, who said them. He doesn't believe it's possible to reach an agreement any longer on dividing the country along the 1967 lines. If it were up to him, the intifada would have long since been over - and possibly never taken place. Tarazi proposes to let Israel sow as many settlements as it wants, and wait patiently until the Palestinians and Jews become one entity. He is convinced that in another 10 to 20 years, the world will impose a one person-one vote system on Israel. Then, what happened to the apartheid regime in South Africa will happen to Zionism; a Palestinian will be elected to head the new entity in the 1947 borders. Tarazi's words should open the eyes of many Israelis given hope by the declarations of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon about the occupation (as important as they were), a Palestinian state and the dismantling of some settlements. Less than three years have passed since an Israeli prime minister offered the Palestinians "the most generous offer they were ever given." All that's left of those offers is Ehud Barak's story that the generous offer was meant only to expose Yasser Arafat's "true face" - and the terrorism and the despair. It seems the Israelis refuse to miss an opportunity to say the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. In another two or three months, two to three years tops, when the Palestinians reject Sharon's "generous offer" for half the West Bank, the prime minister will say he's exposed Abu Mazen's true face. When the road map goes the way of the documents that preceded it and the terror attacks resume, Amos Gilad will say Abu Mazen was nothing more than a clean-shaven version of Arafat.

Sharon plans to drive down another road
By Avi Shlaim, Palestine Media Center/The Observer, June 8, 2003
Israel must make the peace of the brave, not the bully  -- The peace summit hosted by King Abdullah II of Jordan in Aqaba may have been a turning point in the conflict between Jews and Arabs. The 'road map' - drawn up by the United States, Russia, the European Union and the UN - calls for the creation by 2005 of an independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state, alongside a secure Israel. High-level endorsement of the plan opens the prospect of progress on the political front after two and a half years of violence and bloodshed. That prospect, however, is exceedingly slender. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most bitter and protracted international of modern times, but its basic cause is simple: there are two nations and one small area of land. Since the two nations cannot agree to share that land, the only solution is to partition it. The politics of partition, however, are anything but straightforward, for they cut to the core of each nation's image of itself and of its historic rights, going back to biblical times. In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed the partition of Palestine. In 1947 the UN voted for the partition of mandatory Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The logic behind partition remains the only viable solution now. The Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, better known as Abu Mazen, understands this, which is why he accepted the road map unconditionally. The attitude of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is more ambivalent. He had persuaded President Bush to delay its publication three times and then submitted 14 amendments aiming to wreck the plan. At Aqaba, Sharon appeared to reverse his position. Bowing to US pressure, he agreed to the creation not only of a Palestinian state, but of one with contiguous territory rather than a series of enclaves. But he refused to say this state would be independent. And in a bizarre move, even before he made his speech his office said that when he referred to a Palestinian state he meant one that would be demilitarised, and that by 'viable' he meant an interim state. Sharon's ideology of Greater Israel is incompatible with the quartet's plan for a genuine two-state solution. Like the right-wing Likud party, of which he is leader, he regards the West Bank as an integral part of the Land of Israel. Throughout his long career, the 75-year-old leader has been a committed territorial expansionist and a godfather of the settlement movement. He talks of the need for 'painful concessions', but has refused to yield to the Palestinian Authority more than the 70 per cent of Gaza and 42 per cent of the West Bank it controlled under the Oslo accords. While pretending to accept the quartet's road to a negotiated settlement, Sharon has been drawing a different map. Two principal means have been used towards this end.

Downsizing in Disguise
By Naomi Klein, The Nation, June 5, 2003
The streets of Baghdad are a swamp of crime and uncollected garbage. Battered local businesses are going bankrupt, unable to compete with cheap imports. Unemployment is soaring and thousands of laid-off state workers are protesting in the streets. In other words, Iraq looks like every other country that has undergone rapid-fire "structural adjustments" prescribed by Washington, from Russia's infamous "shock therapy" in the early 1990s to Argentina's disastrous "surgery without anesthetic." Except that Iraq's "reconstruction" makes those wrenching reforms look like spa treatments. Paul Bremer, the US-appointed governor of Iraq, has already proved something of a flop in the democracy department in his few weeks there, nixing plans for Iraqis to select their own interim government in favor of his own handpicked team of advisers. But Bremer has proved to have something of a gift when it comes to rolling out the red carpet for US multinationals. For a few weeks Bremer has been hacking away at Iraq's public sector like former Sunbeam exec "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap in a flak jacket. On May 16 Bremer banned up to 30,000 senior Baath Party officials from government jobs. A week later, he dissolved the army and the information ministry, putting more than 400,000 Iraqis out of work without pensions or re-employment programs. Of course, if Saddam Hussein's henchmen and propagandists held on to power in Iraq it would be a human rights disaster. "De-Baathification," as the purging of party officials has come to be called, may be the only way to prevent a comeback by Saddam's crew--and the only silver lining of George Bush's illegal war. But Bremer has gone far beyond purging powerful Baath loyalists and moved into a full-scale assault on the state itself. Doctors who joined the party as children and have no love for Saddam face dismissal, while low-level civil servants with no ties to the party have been fired en masse. Nuha Najeeb, who ran a Baghdad printing house, told Reuters, "I...had nothing to do with Saddam's media, so why am I sacked?" As the Bush Administration becomes increasingly open about its plans to privatize Iraq's state industries and parts of the government, Bremer's de-Baathification takes on new meaning. Is he working only to get rid of Baath Party members, or is he also working to shrink the public sector as a whole so that hospitals, schools and even the army are primed for privatization by US firms? Just as reconstruction is the guise for privatization, de-Baathification looks a lot like disguised downsizing. Similar questions arise from Bremer's chainsaw job on Iraqi companies, already pummeled by almost thirteen years of sanctions and two months of looting. Bremer didn't even wait to get the lights back on in Baghdad, for the dinar to stabilize or for the spare parts to arrive for Iraq's hobbled factories before he declared on May 26 that Iraq was "open for business." Duty-free imported TVs and packaged food flooded across the border, pushing many stressed Iraqi businesses, unable to compete, into bankruptcy. This is how Iraq joined the global "free market": in the dark.