Hell no, we won't go
A young Israeli draft resister isn't challenging just the Israeli occupation, but the very foundation of this warrior nation.
By Michelle Goldberg, Salon, May 30, 2002
May 30, 2002  |  NEW YORK -- Haggai Matar is standing in an ornate Brooklyn church on a warm night in May, trying to explain why he started a movement among young Israelis to refuse to serve in the army. It began during the summer of 2001, when Israeli society was convulsed by suicide bombings. Matar was a 17-year-old activist who'd worked for Palestinian rights, and he knew that the following year he'd be faced with going to the occupied territories to implement policies he despised. So he and a few friends he'd met in the peace movement drafted a letter to Ariel Sharon informing the prime minister of their refusal to join the army. By the time they sent it in late August, it had been signed by 62 high school students, mostly people they knew; now the number is up to 170.

Ad condemning anti-Semitism on campuses misses the point
By Susannah Heschel, JTA, October 15, 2002
"Most of us are well-aware, too, that Arab and Muslim students are often treated on campus with condescension, as exotic, primitive creatures. We want to bring our communities together, speak on behalf of one another, unite in facing our common political concerns about the long-term and sustainable future of Israel and Palestine. How do we open the conversation and speak to those we fear may be our political enemies?" Susannah Heschel is the Eli Black Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, and is serving this fall as visiting professor in the Jewish Studies Program at Princeton University: PRINCETON, N.J., Oct. 14 (JTA) — As a historian of Jewish-Christian relations in Germany, and as a professor who has taught at several German universities, hostility toward Jews and Judaism in university settings is certainly nothing new to me. Yet the recent New York Times ad condemning anti-Semitism at American colleges neither reflects the reality of most campuses nor provides assistance to those of us in the field of Jewish studies who are, in fact, confronting serious problems.

Bush banks on Pyrrhic victory
By Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, October 24, 2002
If passed, America's tough resolution on Iraq could be so damaging that only al-Qaida may be said to have scored a victory: The Bush administration's battle to secure a tough new UN security council resolution on Iraq is approaching a climax. The word from the White House is that after over a month of discussions, it's time to wrap it up. Having been presented with the "final" US draft, the council is expected to meet again this weekend. US diplomats are adamant that their government, having toned down some of the draft's provisions, is unwilling to make further concessions to critics led by France and Russia. One of three outcomes is possible in this high-stakes game of diplomatic poker; all are potentially hugely damaging on a wide range of fronts. That consideration prompts a more basic question about the wisdom of President George Bush's approach.

Gilad’s farm cultivates grapes of wrath 
By Nancy Hawker, Alternative Information Center, October 23, 2002
Havat Gilad (Gilad’s Farm) is a test tube. The Israeli army has attempted to dismantle this outpost three times in the past week, and it seems it will have to come back again. The settlers are determined, and they have seen this before. Many settlements in the early 70s were established despite efforts by the government to prevent them; the exemplary case is that of Sebastia, which then PM Yitzhak Rabin ordered to forcibly remove in 1974. The settlers persisted and eventually prevailed. Havat Gilad will be a similar test of determination – on behalf of the Israeli army under orders of Defence Minister Ben-Eliezer, and on behalf of the settlers.

Terror and Blackmail
By Chris Meyer, Palestine Chronicle, October 23, 2002
WASHINGTON (PINA) - "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - Herman Goering:  Ariel Sharon is a superb student of Goering's tactics. Sharon even added a few improvements of his own. Antagonize your opponent until he begins to resist; then loudly proclaim the resistance as an attack and tenaciously hide the fact that you attacked first. Sharon's brutal occupation of the Al Aqsa Mosque started the 2nd Intifada and got him elected Prime Minister. More recently, the well-timed bombing assassination of a Hamas leader in Gaza left 9 children dead and undercut a strong Palestinian cease-fire initiative.

A Free Press, but for Whom?
By William Hughes, Palestine Chronicle, October 23, 2002 
BALTIMORE (PINA) - Oswald Spengler in his mighty tome, “Decline of the West,” had some very prophetic things to say about the press. He wrote that the sentimentalist may beam with contentment about it being “constitutionally free,” but the realist will always ask, “At whose disposal is it?” The wire pullers, he said, know how to use the media “as a weapon to be forged and used for blows” against their enemies. They realize that the “truth” for the great mass of the public is what it “continuously reads and hears” in their controlled outlets. Doesn’t this explain how if you ask school children who their heroes are, they will invariably answer by citing some air headed Hollywood celebrity, whose name and image appears repeatedly in the newspapers, magazines and on television?

"This is from God and the Army": Daily life under occupation
By Gideon Levy, Tikkun, September/October, 2002
Death lurks around every corner in Jenin. Young Hasan Satiti was waiting for his father, who had promised to bring him breakfast on the recent holiday commemorating the Prophet Mohammed's ascent to heaven. But Ahmed Satiti was shot to death from afar by IDF soldiers, killed in the city market in the early morning as he loaded vegetables into his car. Young Ala Hamrashi, son of taxi driver Tawfik Hamrashi, who was a friend of Ahmed Satiti, carries in his pocket the wages his father earned on the last day of his life: 220 blood-soaked shekels. His father was killed in his taxi as he left the home of the Satiti family after having paid a condolence call. A tank, its lights and engine off, was waiting in ambush and apparently killed him without any warning.

The history of Hizbullah
By Marc Sirois, YellowTimes, October 24, 2002
(YellowTimes.org) – The war between Israel and Hizbullah was not simply born. It was conceived in a seething cauldron of all the things that make the Middle East a snake pit of unending bloodshed, unrivaled bitterness, and unfathomable duplicity. To understand how this violent relationship might evolve in the future, and how the international community can most effectively seek to keep it under control, it is best to start at the beginning - the real one, rather than the red herrings bred by a mainstream media that is alternately guilty of gross ignorance and shameless fabrication. The beginning was not in 1985, when Israel declared a memorably ill-named "security belt" in southern Lebanon. It was not in 1982, either, when the Jewish state's then-defense minister, Ariel Sharon, sent his forces crashing all the way to Beirut in a bid to eliminate the Palestinian Liberation Organization. No, to truly understand why the water still running under this particular bridge is so heavy with blood and hatred, one has to go back to 1978. That was when Israel first occupied a strip of southern Lebanon in response to cross-border raids by Palestinian guerrillas fighting to regain lands lost during conventional wars in 1948 and 1967.