Sacks
states some home truths; will he stand
by them?
By David Landau, Ha'aretz, September 1,
2002
The British Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks,
who voiced pained criticism in The Guardian
this week of the morality of Israel's
occupation policy, has now followed up
with a letter to the Israeli Chief Rabbi
(Ha'aretz, 30.8). But instead of inviting
Chief Rabbi Meir Lau to join him in his
warning that the ethical fibre of Israeli
society is in danger of fraying, Chief
Rabbi Sacks tried to persuade his Israeli
colleague that he had not in fact criticized
Israel, "which I have consistently supported...
with all the love I feel," and that The
Guardian had sensationalized his remarks
"to portray me as a critic of Israel."
The
Return of the Dinosaurs
By Uri Avnery, Palestine Chronicle, September
1, 2002
The Israeli tyrannosaurus is no different
from his big brother. Compared to all
his neighbors, he has immense military
capacity, and over this huge power reigns
the brain of a child. How did the dinosaurs
die out? There are many theories about
this. For example, that a meteor hit earth
and the ensuing dust cloud obliterated
the sun. I have a theory of my own: the
dinosaurs suffered from a lack of proportion
between body and brain. The tyrannosaurus,
for example, had monstrous physical dimensions
but his brain was the size of a pea. Then
our ancestors, the little mammals, arrived
and displaced them everywhere. Now we
are witnessing the return of the dinosaurs.
Human dinosaurs. People who control immense
power structures and who have the brains
of a bird.
Extending
the boycott
By M Shahid Alam, Al-Ahram Weekly, Aug
29 - Sep 4, 2002
In early April 2002, moved by the massacres
in Jenin and the wanton destruction of
civilian infrastructure in West Bank cities
by invading Israeli forces, two British
academics, Hilary Rose and Steven Rose,
circulated a call -- posted at www.pjpo.org
-- for an academic boycott of Israel.
This campaign was directed mostly at European
academics, and so when it reached me nearly
two months later, in the first week of
July, there were only six American academics
among the signatories. I carefully read
the boycott statement, which entailed
non- cooperation with "official Israeli
institutions, including universities",
and decided to sign the list. I also forwarded
the call to academics on my mailing list.
Law
and Disorder in the Middle East
- Acrobat version
Law
and Disorder in the Middle East
- HTML version
The
Interim Agreement and International Law
Support document - HTML
By
Francis X. Boyle, The Link, January -
March 2002
The Participants: The Palestinian delegation
entered the negotiations in good faith
in order to negotiate an interim peace
agreement with Israel that would create
a Palestinian interim self-government
for a transitional five-year period. Immediately
following the ceremonial opening at Madrid
on 30 October 1991, I was instructed to
draft several position papers on numerous
issues that were expected to come up during
the first round of negotiations scheduled
to begin a month later in Washington,
D.C. But when we got to our headquarters
at the Grand Hotel in Washington, nothing
happened. At the U.S. State Department
headquarters, which served as the venue
for all tracks of the Middle East peace
negotiations, the Israeli team offered
no reasonable good-faith proposals for
dealing with the Palestinians.
Palestinians
Face De-development
By Arjan El Fassed, Palestine Chronicle,
September 1, 2002
Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands
has destroyed every aspect of Palestinian
environment. Palestinian land continues
to be used as dumping grounds for all
forms of waste, while Israel builds chemical
factories on confiscated Palestinian land,
in illegally established colonies.
This week, thousands will gather in Johannesburg
(South Africa) at one of the largest international
meetings ever held, the World Summit on
Sustainable Development. As the world
is to promote concrete commitments to
implement sustainable development, Palestinians
face a process that can be termed as 'de-development'
or the deliberate, systematic deconstruction
of an indigenous economy by a dominant
power.
Living
by the sword
By Hussein Ahmed Amin, Al-Ahram Weekly,
Aug 29 - Sep 4, 2002
By the last decade of the 20th century
it was fairly easy to foresee, as historian
Eric Hobsbawm did in the epilogue of his
book The Age of Extremes, that international
terrorism would be one of the major problems
of the new century. It is becoming more
possible for small groups of political
and other dissidents to disrupt and destroy,
threatening the security of the inhabitants
of the stable, strong and rich states
of the First World with advanced weapons,
including chemical, bacteriological or
even nuclear arms. The materials and know-how
for the manufacture of such arms are widely
available, and they are becoming increasingly
adapted for small group use.
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