Conspiracy of Silence
By Osama El-Sherif, Palestine Chronicle, September 27, 2002
"The world is shamefully quiescent about the latest atrocity, a dismal chapter in a hair-raising modern-day holocaust where the only thing that is missing is the gas chambers ..": What does Ariel Sharon really want from the Palestinians? What is the end game for the aging former commando officer now holding in his hand the future of both Israelis and Palestinians? In the past weeks the prime minister of Israel has managed to knock down the few remaining signposts of the Oslo peace agreements, and today as his tanks encircle the ramshackle headquarters of his archenemy, Yasser Arafat, in Ramallah he seems ready to cut free the hair-thin line that connects the two peoples who are destined to share the same piece of land. So again: what is Sharon's end game?

'Pro-Democracy' Think Tank is Front for Israeli Lobby
By Ismail Royer, Antiwar.com, September 26, 2002
A new think tank reports it has "joined forces" with a Saudi dissident (what are they, the Wonder Twins?) in the neocon campaign to smear the Saudi government and Saudi-based Islamic groups. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the so-called "Saudi Institute," a one-man show run by disgruntled Shi'ite Ali Al-Ahmed (above), claim in a new report that Saudi Arabian religious authorities are spreading "hate literature." The report is totally bogus, rife with mistranslation and selective quoting. For example, the report cites a passage from a book distributed by the Virginia-based Instititute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences, part of the Saudi university system, in which it is written that Muslims should feel hatred toward non-Muslims. He neglects to mention that this refers to what a Muslim's attitude toward the enemy should be during a period of war. He juxtaposes this with a quote 20 pages away that Muslims should not take the Christians and Jews as friends, regardless of whether or not they are combatants. They translate the word "awliyaat" as "friends," when the term actually means patrons or protectors ("isdiqaa" means friends).

Cave-men and women
By Daniel Ben Simon, Ha'aretz, September 27, 2002 
With Hebron under curfew, Jewish pilgrims flock to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in a Sukkot tour that ends in tragedy: Surreal scene: Tehila Ben Yosef, preceded by an IDF soldier, leads a group of Israeli visitors through the Hebron casbah. On the armored bus that made its way from Jerusalem to Hebron sat soldiers and Jewish settlers from the territories. The soldiers were from Paratroop Battalion 101, who guard the Jewish settlement in the city. Along the way the bus went past Palestinian villages. One of the soldiers, his face pressed up against the armored window, threw out to the officer sitting next to him: "Does what we're doing to them look okay to you?" The officer did not reply.

It's only a matter of time
By Yoel Marcus, Ha'aretz, September 27, 2002 
If an IDF computer, as the myth goes, rather than a military copywriter, gave the Muqata operation the code name "Matter of Time," dumb it's not. If you look at the situation overall and analyze it coldly, there are seven issues that are a matter of time: 1. This is the first time since the occupation that Palestinians have violated a curfew in several cities as a spontaneous protest against the IDF's hazing of Arafat. They galloped through the streets in noisy protest, totally ignoring our forces. The IDF, using its brains this time, did not respond.

Sharon's real purpose is to create foreigners
By Henry Siegman, International Herald Tribune, September 25, 2002
A 'Palestinian state': Palestinian suicide bombings that target Israeli civilians are a moral obscenity. But the sensibility of those in Israel who seek to exploit this Palestinian obscenity to extend and deepen Israel's hold on the territories, a situation that in the end can only lead to the expulsion of most Palestinians and the permanent subjugation of those who remain, is also obscene. Is there a justification for an Israeli policy that remains fixated on detestation of Yasser Arafat and deliberately ignores major changes within Fatah and the Palestinian population, withholding any action that might help these constructive forces achieve dominance? In fact, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has resorted to measures that undercut Palestinians who seek to abandon violence and resume a political dialogue. Not so long ago, Sharon demanded seven days of quiet before returning to a political process. Six weeks of Palestinian quiet - a period also marked by an unprecedented Palestinian debate about the immorality and political bankruptcy of Palestinian terrorism - elicited not a single Israeli move away from its reliance on overwhelming military suppression.

Jewish Peace Activists and Israeli violence
By Anis Hamadeh, Palestine Chronicle, September 27, 2002  
In a press release dated 26 August 2002, the AKdH (Aktion Kinder des Holocaust, Switzerland; http://www.akdh.ch/) expresses its opinion about the suspension of criminal proceedings which it had instituted against the Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff over a publication of his in Indymedia.org. The subject was a cartoon showing a boy with a Star of David saying: "I am Palestinian". This cartoon is placed among other, similar cartoons showing a black person, an American Indian and other people in situations of oppression. All say: "I am Palestinian".