Netanyahu: Coming to a City Near You!
By Susan Abulhawa, Dissident Voice, September 24, 2002
“Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."  -- Benjamin Netanyahu to students at Bar Ilan University: Lesson learned!  The former Prime Minster of Israel has been busy appealing to American audiences for support of Israel’s “war on terror” by equating Israel’s merciless colonial designs with the US war against Al Qaeda.  Ostensibly, the aim is to appeal to American sensitivities, post 9-11.  Tuesday, he’ll speak in Pittsburgh. In some ways, he exemplifies the imperialist nature of his assertions.   He is the son of immigrants to Palestine, turned impertinent master with nefarious solutions to “deal” with the “problem” of the natives, who have lived on, cultivated, and loved the land for centuries. He speaks of “cleaning out” the occupied territories, “attacking terrorist nests,” destroying “terrorist dens,” (or any other choice zoological habitat.)  So efficient is the Israeli propaganda machine that a whole nation of human beings is reduced to little more than a “den” of  “terrorists” such that no matter what sheer wanton killing and destruction Israel inflicts, it is done without so much as a peep of compassion from our absurdly pro-Israel government.

Mentioning the war
By Martin Kettle, September 25, 2002
The German minister who likened Bush to Hitler was sacked. So what will happen to Al Gore?: In a speech this week, a senior western politician controversially compared the effects of George Bush's foreign policy to the conditions which created the rise of Adolf Hitler. But the politician in question was not the unfortunate former German justice minister Herta Däubler-Gmelin, who was sacked by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on Monday for saying much the same thing at the height of the German election. The man who drew the comparison this time was none other than former US vice-president Al Gore.

Roads Lead Nowhere for Palestinians
By Sherri Muzher, Dissident Voice, September 24, 2002
Is it just me, or does it seem that Palestinians are damned if they do and damned if they don't? When there's violence against Israeli civilians, the entire Palestinian population suffers. When there's no violence against Israeli civilians, the entire Palestinian population suffers. The Israelis crowed about six weeks of no bombings. Six weeks of relative calm for the Israeli people. They patted themselves on the back since the tranquility was attributed to Israel's measures of curfew and continued siege on every Palestinian city. So the brutal measures continued. And for those of us who advocate nonviolence against civilians as one strategy to winning Palestinian freedom, Israel essentially told us that calm for its own citizens wasn't enough. Israel didn't withdraw or pull its tanks back even a little. More than 75 Palestinians were killed in 30 days. Palestinian homes and buildings continued to be destroyed by Caterpillar D9 bulldozers, and people could only buy groceries when the Israelis allowed them to. Yet, our media and political analysts classified these six weeks as "calm."

The homeland purified of Arabs
By Meron Benvenisti, Ha'aretz, September 26, 2002
A few dozen kilometers separate Hebron's casbah from the remains of the abandoned Arab village at Sataf. There's no comparison between the crooked narrow alleyways of the casbah and the manicured olive groves, reconstructed mountain terraces and the remains of the irrigation system of the mountain village; and the visitors who decided to have a "day of fun" during Sukkot at each site are also very different. Hebron was toured by those with knitted kippot and their militant rightist supporters. Sataf, on the other hand, was visited by secular Jews for a "happening" of pastoral olive picking.

People and Politics / Resurrecting Arafat
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, September 26, 2002 
Even Benjamin Netanyahu, the master of spin, wouldn't have dared try to sell the public nonsense like "so what if the U.S. didn't cast a veto in the Security Council. That has nothing to do with us. Everyone knows that it's all because of Bush's war against Saddam Hussein." Or: "Don't pay any attention to the Palestinian whining, behind Arafat's back they're begging us to help them get rid of him." Then there's the nonsense that the defense establishment continues selling: that Mohammed Dahlan pressured the Hamas to cease the terror attacks out of fear that the next terror attack would lead to the expulsion of Arafat.

Resurrected again
By Graham Usher,
Middle East Online
For the third time in six months, the Israeli army laid siege to Yaser Arafat’s presidential compound in Ramallah on 19 September. Bulldozers crushed all offices save the one housing the Palestinian leader. Tanks took out adjoining walkways and stairwells. And trenches were ploughed around every exit. This was Ariel Sharon’s response to two suicide bombings in Israel on 18 and 19 September that left seven dead and 60 wounded. The attacks were claimed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and roundly condemned by Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. It has ceased to matter. Israel says that among the 250 Palestinians ensnared with Arafat in his offices are 50 “fugitives”, chief among them Tawfiq Tirawi, head of the PA’s West Bank intelligence force. The siege will stay, says Israel, until these are extradited. None will be “surrendered”, answered Arafat.

How the International Community has Taught Israel that it is Above the Law
Palestine Chronicle, September 25, 2002
(PC) - The following is a summary of a report issued by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) which highlights the “double standard of the international community”: SUMMARY: "Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant? …We want the resolutions of the world's most important multilateral body to be enforced." – U.S. President George W. Bush, Address to the U.N. General Assembly, September 12, 2002.  Double Standards contrasts international responses to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with those of other conflicts (including Iraq) thereby revealing the double standards that have been applied to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by the international community. In similar conflicts such as Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and Rwanda, the international community has both condemned violations of international law and has taken action to ensure that the violations cease. In the case of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, however, while the same condemnations have been issued against Israel, absolutely no enforcement action has been taken.