Explaining the occupation to the occupier
By Amira Hass, Ha'aretz 10/8/2003
How can a tiny Palestinian organization like Islamic Jihad produce so many walking bombs, suicide bombers who choose babies in strollers and their grandparents as targets? And how does an organization that once declared it would only target soldiers send its latest suicide bomber to a mixed Jewish-Arab city, to sow death and sorrow in a restaurant whose owners, workers and customers are Jews and Arabs, old and young.
Intelligence experts and Arabists on our side say it's because of Islam, which sanctifies wars, that there is unceasing incitement in the mosques, that Iran and Syria are behind it, that the suicide bombers and those who send them are out to destroy the State of Israel, that the people who blow themselves up are animals and that Arafat encourages terror.
There's a concept behind all these explanations, in which this sickening form of the Palestinian struggle has nothing to do with the occupation, that Israelis should not believe Palestinians who say there is a connection to the Israeli occupation. The concept says there is no connection between the proliferation of suicide bombings and the prevailing view in Palestinian society, which is that Israel, as a military and nuclear power, wants to squeeze a surrender out of the Palestinians that will legitimize the Israeli takeover of land in the West Bank and Gaza.
Inspecting the Obvious: Israel’s WMD’s and the West’s Double Standard
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 10/8/2003
"Israel’s refusal to approve the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in addition to strong speculations that Israel owns up to 300 nuclear warheads and the Arab League’s most recent assertion to the IAEA that Israel now has the capability of producing a hydrogen bomb, are all not enough to convince the US that Iran and Iraq aren't the real 'imminent' danger .." -- A highly distinguished and carefully selected team of American scientists just concluded a thorough and consequential mission in Iraq. The declared objective was finding Iraq’s arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. But hidden within such a declaration, was the hope of unearthing a pretext for a calamitous war on Iraq that cost billions of dollars and the irreplaceable lives of thousands.
Shortly after David Kay, who headed the scientific crusade to Baghdad, briefed the US Senate and House of Representatives of his findings, or lack thereof, a declassified version of his report was released. Not only were no weapons found in Iraq, but the disposed Iraqi government, according to Kay, had no capacity to produce chemical warfare agents before the war. So much for the British government scare campaign alleging Iraq’s readiness to launch a global attack using its supposed weapons within 45 minutes upon order.
But as if the war party’s lack of sense was not enough, the response to Kay’s report has displayed a greater lack of shame. Australia’s Prime Minister, John Howard, responded by saying he had no regrets. “You make judgments on the basis of the information available at the time you are required to make those judgments, and the judgment was valid,” he said, arrogantly and in startling defiance of the facts, and with no remorse for thousands of Iraqis who perished by the war allies’ weapons, which, ironically were the closest in nature to the alleged weapons of mass destruction that Iraq did not even possess.
Christian Zionists, Israel and the ‘second coming’
By Donald Wagner, Daily Star 10/8/2003
The term Christian Zionism is of relatively recent vintage and was rarely used prior to the early 1990s. Self-proclaimed Christian Zionist organizations such as the International Christian Embassy-Jerusalem and the US-based Bridges for Peace, both with offices in Jerusalem, have been operating for 20 years, but were under the radar of most Middle East experts and the mainstream media until after Sept. 11, 2001.
Briefly stated, Christian Zionism is a movement within Protestant fundamentalism that sees the modern state of Israel as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and thus deserving of political, financial and religious support. Christian Zionists work closely with the Israeli government, religious and secular Jewish Zionist organizations, and are particularly empowered during periods when the more conservative Likud Party is in control of the Knesset. Both the secular and religious media place Christian Zionism in the Protestant evangelical movement, which claims upward of 100-125 million members in the US. However, one would more accurately categorize it as part of the fundamentalist wing of Protestant Christianity, since the evangelical movement is far larger and more diverse in its theology and historical development.
Christian Zionism grew out of a particular theological system called “premillennial dispensationalism,” which emerged during the early 19th century in England, when there was an outpouring of millennial doctrines. The preaching and writings of a renegade Irish clergyman, John Nelson Darby, and a Scotsman, Edward Irving, emphasized the literal and future fulfillment of such Biblical teachings as “the rapture,” the rise of the Antichrist, the Battle of Armageddon and the central role that a revived nation-state of Israel would play during the latter days.
Sharon Unveils Israel's Expansionism
By Tariq Shadid, MD, Palestine Chronicle 10/8/2003
Some people may have believed George W. Bush, when he said that he was in favour of the founding of a Palestinian State. And, as unlikely as it may seem, some people even believed Ariel Sharon when he said it. I am assuming that the people who know who he is and support the Israeli president, are confident enough to know that he was just putting on a media show for the world, and that his fingers were most probably crossed behind his back.
However, those who generally don't appreciate Sharon's aggressive attitude, and would prefer Israel to have a more 'dovish' president, may actually have felt a spark of hope when he said those words. How wrong they were, and how obvious this is today.
Shamelessly, on Sunday the 5th of October, the Israeli army sent its airforce to bomb a location in Syria. This act of war, against a country with whom a treaty was signed in 1974, is an act that clearly indicates that Ariel Sharon has military intentions in his mind, instead of peaceful ones. While this aggression is backed up by a vague story of a 'terrorist training camp', and the American president is clearly defending this Israeli escalation, the main excuse, again, seems to be 'self-defence'.
Israel's date with a runaway freight train
By Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 10/8/2003
Once more, the deceptive "calm" was shattered on Oct. 4 by the horrifying suicide attack in Haifa, that took the lives of 19 restaurant diners, among them men, women and children, both Jews and Palestinian Israelis. "Calm", as used by the news media in this context, does not mean that Israelis and Palestinians stopped attacking each other, but applies to Palestinian actions alone. Ongoing Israeli violence, no matter who its target, is never considered to disturb such a "calm".
The Haifa attacker was a young woman training to become a lawyer. Why would a person who ought to have had everything to live for choose, instead, to end her life in such a cruel and devastating manner? As we learned about her victims, we also learned that she too was a victim -- just a few months ago, her brother and her cousin were killed in Jenin by the Israeli occupation forces. In her mind, she may have been retaliating for the pain she saw inflicted on her family and country.
According to rules written in the blood of so many innocent people, it was Israel's turn to exact revenge for the revenge. Within hours, Israel bombed Gaza and demolished the family house of the suicide bomber, creating new victims whose pain and suffering may, in turn, harden into a desire for yet more revenge. And so on.
So Long, Middle East Road Map
By Ian Williams, AlterNet 10/8/2003
The reality is that there is more resistance inside the Israel Defense Forces to Sharon's policies than there is in Washington -- The Middle East road map finally met its untimely but expected demise over the weekend when Israeli bombs landed near Damascus, aimed at an alleged terrorist training camp.
The question this week in diplomatic circles is not how to salvage the peace process but how to avert global mayhem. It's not a question, however, that worries the Bush administration, which appears content to let the Middle East hurtle down the path to possible armageddon.
Supporting the Israeli action, the president said, "Israel's got a right to defend herself, that Israel must not feel constrained in terms of defense of the homeland." This weekend's Israeli attack on Syria shows how far Israeli leader Ariel Sharon will go – and just how willing Bush is to cover for his excesses. When the issue came before the UN Security Council on Sunday, Kofi Annan and most of the other delegates correctly described the attack as a violation of international law and the UN Charter.
In contrast, the Americans decided that any resolution had to be "balanced" with a condemnation of terrorism in general, and the Haifa bombing in particular. (There is no doubt that the Haifa suicide attack was horrific, but the Syrians had no provable or likely connection whatsoever with the bombers.) The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, showed equal chutzpah in decrying Syria's request for an emergency Security Council meeting. He said, "For Syria to ask a debate in this council is comparable only to the Taliban calling for such a debate after 9-11, it would be laughable if it was not so sad."
Listen to the pilots
By David Grossman, Ha'aretz 10/8/2003
Now that the furor over the pilots' declaration has abated a bit, perhaps the time has come to listen attentively to the essence of what they wanted to say in their protest. Even if, in the end, "the voice of the masses" silences the pilots and even if some of them retract their protest, there is still validity and importance to what they have said. Basic fairness also says that a government and a people that send their sons to carry out the difficult and sometimes dirty work of this particular war on their behalf must listen, for once, in an unbiased way to what the people who are doing these things in their name are saying.
The bottom line of the pilots' message is that if the Palestinians are currently capable of carrying out painful attacks on Israel and Israeli citizens, the war that is raging is still, ultimately, a war between a military power and a civilian population. And in a war of this sort, Israel must impose limitations on itself of both a practical and a moral nature.
The pilots are reminding the Israelis that even if the aim of the military action is to hit a murderer who is to die, when a state orders its pilots to drop a 1-ton bomb into a residential neighborhood in the most densely populated place in the world, and with the clear knowledge that hundreds of innocent civilians are likely to get hurt, its action, to a significant extent, employs the methods of a terror organization. And when a state orders its pilots to use powerful missiles to hit a car that is driving in the midst of passersby, even if it does not want to harm them intentionally, the nature of the deed, as well as its results, are like those of a terror organization.
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