Articles - Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel

Europe versus America
By Edward Said, Al-Ahram Weekly, 14 - 20 November 2002
In comparison with US war fever, Europe has struck a more moderate, thoughtful tone. But when will it assume a countervailing role to America? - Although I have visited England dozens of times, I have never spent more than one or two weeks at a single stretch. This year, for the first time, I am in residence for almost two months at Cambridge University, where I am the guest of a college and giving a series of lectures on humanism at the university. The first thing to be said is that life here is far less stressed and hectic than it is in New York, at my university, Columbia. Perhaps this slightly relaxed pace is due in part to the fact that Great Britain is no longer a world power, but also to the salutary idea that the ancient universities here are places of reflection and study rather than economic centres for producing experts and technocrats who will serve the corporations and the state. So the post-imperial setting is a welcome environment for me, especially since the US is now in the middle of a war fever that is absolutely repellent as well as overwhelming. If you sit in Washington and have some connection to the country's power elites, the rest of the world is spread out before you like a map, inviting intervention anywhere and at any time. The tone in Europe is not only more moderate and thoughtful: it is also less abstract, more human, more complex and subtle.

Tricked and bamboozled into war
By Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, November 13, 2002
The west's warlords will get their invasion, in spite of global opinion: Casualty lists are usually compiled after the battle. But since the coming war in Iraq has been so heavily trailed, it is possible to identify its victims in advance - or pre-emptively, to use one of George Bush's favourite words. The casualties of Desert Storm II, physical and figurative, will include Iraqi civilians and combatants on both sides; the people of Israel and of sidelined Palestine; Kurdish hopes of self-rule; Iran's pro-western civil reform movement; the entire region's security, living standards and environment if chemical or biological weapons are used; the Arab and Muslim world's already strained relationship with "Christendom"; state sovereignty as defined in international law; and democracy.

A glimmer of hope from Kibbutz Metzer
Editorial, Ha'aretz, November 13, 2002
Once again, to our great horror, it has transpired that Palestinian terrorism contains within it a blind and callous cruelty, undeterred by any humane inhibition. No cause, no faith and no national aspiration will ever cleanse the hands of the villain, who in the thick of the night burst through a young woman's door, and while she covered her young children with her own body, shot her at such close range that the bullets ripped through her killing the children as well.

Labor and Meretz: A synergy of electoral forces
By Yossi Beilin, Ha'aretz, November 13, 2002
The gap between Likud and Labor in opinion polls - about 10 mandates - creates the impression that the right is sure of an election victory. One of the main reasons for this gap is that former Shas voters - no longer able to vote for a party and a prime minister separately - have transferred their votes to the Likud. On a national level, this is a welcome development, since it strengthens a national party at the expense of a sectorial party. But for the peace camp, the fact that Likud could become the largest party in the Knesset is a problem.

The Plight of Arab Citizens in Israel
By Hassan Tahsin, Palestine Chronicle, November 12, 2002
Israel agreed to retain 148,000 Palestinians in the new state at the time of its founding in 1948. Israel consented to the idea not out of any noble sentiments but to avoid the stigma of a racist regime. The presence of Arabs in Israel, who were reduced to a minority as a result of frequent terrorist attacks by the Jewish immigrants, was a matter of continuous dispute among the early Jewish terrorists. Goldamier said she could not go to sleep if she heard a baby was born to an Israeli Arab. The Jews called the Israeli Arabs the Arabs of 48. The population of the Israeli Arabs has crossed the half a million mark. The recent developments in the region have put the existence of the Arab minority in Israel in an extremely precarious state. Ariel Sharon is reviewing the official attitude toward the Israeli Arabs with the aim of launching an ethnic-cleansing operation. Increasing arrests and interrogation of Arab Israeli youths point to the diabolical designs of the Israeli authorities.

The Mad World of A. M. Rosenthal
By William Hughes, Palestine Chronicle, November 12, 2002
BALTIMORE (PC) - On September 14, 2001, three days after the 9/11 tragedy, A. M. Rosenthal swung virulently into action. Writing for Morton Zuckerman’s the New York Daily News, he demanded the U.S. deliver an ultimatum to at least six countries- - Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Sudan- - giving them three days to hand over documents and information relating to weapons of mass destruction and terrorist organizations. Rosenthal warned that “in the three days the terrorists were considering the American ultimatum, the residents of the countries would be urged 24 hours a day by the U.S. to flee the capital and major cities, because they would be bombed to the ground beginning the fourth day” (Source, FAIR, 09/21/01). Bombing civilian populations is a war crime, and a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. If actually carried out, Rosenthal’s proposal would have resulted in civilian deaths totaling millions of innocent souls, and would have created even more enemies among the survivors and in the Islamic World at large, for America.

Israel Wants Piece
By MIFTAH, November 13, 2002
According to Israeli sources, the so called Israeli 'security fence' is expected to be completed by June 2003. This three-part wall will not be built on Israel's de-facto international borders; in fact, it will be erected in the West Bank upon privately owned Palestinian lands. It will annex 10% of the West Bank and will be contrary to both agreements signed by Israel and International law which explicitly prohibits an occupying state from making permanent changes that are not, in the first place, intended to benefit the occupied population.

The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors
By Sara Roy, Journal of Palestine Studies, Autumn 2002
"In this critical respect, my first encounter with the occupation was the same as my first encounter with the Holocaust, with the number on my father’s arm. It spoke the same message: the denial of one’s humanity. It is important to understand the very real differences in volume, scale, and horror between the Holocaust and the occupation and to be careful about comparing the two, but it is also important to recognize parallels where they do exist." - Some months ago I was invited to reflect on my journey as a child of Holocaust survivors. This journey continues and shall continue until the day I die. Though I cannot possibly say everything, it seems especially poignant that I should be addressing this topic at a time when the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is descending so tragically into a moral abyss and when, for me at least, the very essence of Judaism, of what it means to be a Jew, seems to be descending with it. The Holocaust has been the defining feature of my life. It could not have been otherwise. I lost over 100 members of my family and extended family in the Nazi ghettos and death camps in Poland--grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, a sibling not yet born--people about whom I have heard so much throughout my life, people I never knew. They lived in Poland in Jewish communities called shtetls.

Have no doubt: terrorist leader is very much alive and more dangerous than ever
By Abdel Bari Atwan, The Guardian, November 14, 2002
"Like never before, the Muslim world today is boiling with rage. Anti-US sentiment is at its peak. As the US starts to deploy its troops against Iraq, it ignores the official confirmation that North Korea has nuclear weapons." - The recorded voice message from Osama bin Laden which was broadcast by al-Jazeera TV satellite channel confirms two highly important facts. The first is that he was not killed in the US bombing of the Tora Bora caves in Afghanistan. The second is that the American-led war on terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere has not achieved the aspired success of eliminating al-Qaida and bringing to justice its leaders such as Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Finishing the job
By Jonathan Cook, Al-Ahram Weekly, 14 - 20 November 2002
Opinion polls show that more than 40 per cent of Israeli Jews support schemes to encourage or force Arabs to leave the occupied territories and Israel. Is transfer inevitable? - What caused Benny Morris's recent conversion to the racist ideology of transfer? The "new historian" who began unravelling Israel's narrative of the war of 1948 -- that the Palestinians fled rather than that most were expelled or terrorised from their homes -- says he now believes David Ben Gurion, the country's first prime minister, made a grievous mistake in not finishing the job of clearing the land of Arabs between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. In an article in The Guardian (October 3, 2002) Morris concludes that peace in the Middle East might have been possible had the entire Arab population been removed from historic Palestine to make way for a Greater Israel. Not only does Morris believe that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are a permanent obstacle to peace but so too are Israel's one million Palestinian citizens -- the descendants of those who remained on their land in 1948. All the Palestinians, he argues, should have been transferred east to what is now Jordan.

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