They're jumping in head first
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, September 30, 2002
"My dear Colette, don't worry," said Tom Lantos, the California congressman, as he tried to calm MK Colette Avital of the Labor Party, who was visiting Capitol Hill last week as part of a delegation of the Peace Coalition. "You won't have any problem with Saddam," the Jewish congressman continued. "We'll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator, who will be good for us and for you." Lantos explained to his guest from Israel that there's no lack of Iraqi opposition figures in exile, but until they learn how to run a state, "we'll be there." According to Lantos that interim period, with an American-sponsored dictator in power, should last between five to six years.

Israeli charade
Arab News Editorial, October 1, 2002
So, after 10 days, the Israelis lifted the siege on Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters because, as reported in Washington, President Bush was concerned about the effect it was having on Arab opinion just when he needed to rally support for action against Iraq. Whatever, the reaction of certain Palestinian officials to the pullout is baffling. To call the withdrawal a victory defies logic. Their relief at being able to emerge from the rubble of the headquarters is thoroughly understandable, as is the need to put some heart back into the traumatized and exhausted Palestinian people. Likewise, it is true that Arafat’s refusal to bow to pressure and leave his offices scotched some of Ariel Sharon’s plans.

Seven pillars of Jewish denial
By Kim Chernin, Arab News, October 1, 2002
I am thinking about American Jews, wondering why so many of us have trouble being critical of Israel. I faced this difficulty myself when I first went to Israel in 1971. I was an ardent Zionist, intending to spend my life on a kibbutz in the Galilee and to become an Israeli citizen. Back home, before leaving, I argued almost daily with my mother, an extreme left wing radical, about the Jews' right to a homeland in our historical and therefore inalienable setting. However, once established on my kibbutz on the Lebanese border, I began to notice things that disrupted my complacency.

Diary
By 'Yitzhak Laor', Palestine Media Center, September 30, 2002
On Saturday morning, 31 August, after a painful summer 'vacation', children went back to school all over the West Bank under the authority of the still-existing Palestinian Ministry of Education. They went back despite the curfew imposed on Palestinian towns, despite the two years of cordons around most of the villages, despite the growing death toll. In the week preceding that Saturday, 13 Palestinian civilians were shot dead by the Israel Defense Forces; none of the 13 was implicated in terrorist activity, even in the official IDF version of events, but the Army has already concluded that in all cases the soldiers acted properly. In short, Israel is waging a war, not only against militant Palestinian organizations, but against the Palestinian people.

Perles of wisdom for the Feithful
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, October 1, 2002
Saturday night's TV audience for the weekly foreign affairs show "Ro'im Olam" on Channel One saw Prince Hassan, King Abdullah's uncle, starring at a London assembly of the Iraqi opposition in exile. Ever since the Bush administration ordered the CIA to nurture the exiled Iraqis, nothing happens to them by accident. Prince Hassan didn't just happen to drop in because he was in town. The Hashemite dynasty has never given up its dream to revive the Iraqi throne. It could be a great job for Hassan, whose older brother denied him the Jordanian kingdom at the last minute. It's true that restoring a monarchy in Iraq does not exactly fit the Bush administration's vision of a democratic Middle East. But there are signs that it fits some old dreams of a few of the key strategists around the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld triangle running America's Iraq policy.

Two years ago today
By Danny Rabinowitz, Ha'aretz, October 1, 2002 
On Sunday, October 1, 2000, the first two Israeli Arab demonstrators were killed by police gunfire in Jatt and Umm al-Fahm. Their deaths ignited even stormier riots and an even harsher police response. The results are well known. Those terrible days constituted a watershed in the relations between Israel's Jewish majority and its Arab minority. Three days earlier, on September 28, then opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount. Dozens of Palestinians were wounded in clashes with the police. The next day, Friday, a mass protest took place on the Temple Mount, and seven Palestinians were killed.

Who Controls Whom?
By Dr. Musil Shehadeh, Palestine Chronicle, September 30, 2002
"US total support to Israel, right or wrong, does not serve the US interests in the region, but at the same time we cannot accept the premise that the Zionist lobby alone is the cause of all US blind support to the Jewish state..": The inexplicable relation between the US and Israel, as evidenced by the total and blind support of the US to the Jewish State right or wrong, prompted many political analyst in the Middle East to explore the causes that underline such abnormal relation in a manner that concur with certain entrenched political beliefs that each espouses. In general, we can categorize all these political themes under two schools of thought; one that postulate that Israel is an outpost of Western imperialism serving its interests in the region, while the other tends to explain such strange unholy alliance, by premising that Zionist enormous influence in the Western world underlines the real reasons for supporting Israel by its western protégé. Recently a third school of thought has emerged claiming that international Zionism has joined Western imperialism and became an integral part of it.

Oy!
By Gabriel Ash, YellowTimes, October 1, 2002
On September 11, 2002, the New York Times allowed George W. Bush to present his Orwellian "War is Peace" vision in an Op-Ed. One wonders what brought the Times editors to become an official government mouthpiece. Do they believe the President lacks opportunities to communicate his "ideas"? Do they worry that nobody attends press conferences with the President of the United States? Bush is afraid to hold press conferences, lest some innocent reporter asks a question for which only Dick Cheney knows the answer. Interviews include questions, too. That makes them subversive to a President with so much to hide. Thank God the Times gave Bush an opportunity to speak without having to fear even the timid questions American journalists ask. That's a patriotic press! Faith in the Leader: Some time ago, a hoax traveled the Internet promising a Spielberg version of the Intifada. That, of course, couldn't happen. As far as the U.S. elite is concerned, cute robots will be granted human rights long before Palestinians.

Twice that Afternoon (Poem)
Anonymous, Palestine Chronicle, September 30, 2002
Dedicated to the loving memory of mohammed al-durah, and the three hundred twenty one palestinian children killed in the first two years of the intifada.