Dying for Public Relations
By Samah Jabr With Betsy Mayfield (from Jerusalem), The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2002
The Palestinian/Israeli conflict has become a staple of international news through neverending reports that volley our Ping-Pong violence back and forth, inviting an international audience to see bloodshed as it happens. The drama of conflict sells, they tell me, and marketers of news must draw an audience. So far, the Middle East has disappointed neither the marketers or consumers of news. We live the stories, the propaganda, the sound bites. Here in Palestine, we’re all dying, in a sense, for public relations. The world seems to view us as mere actors in a war movie, trying our best to get the lead roles and the support to survive until the world’s directors call, “Cut!” In Hollywood movies, one man can pummel another and, the next day, the victim is up and about, showing no sign of injury or pain. For us, however, the pain is real, lasting and ugly. Women do not maintain perfectly pressed clothes or unsmeared makeup when shoved into the mud at a checkpoint. Young men beaten with gun butts or kicked in the ribs by soldiers wearing military boots do not jump out of bed the next morning as if nothing had happened to them the day before.

Ringing in the old
By Graham Usher, Al-Ahram Weekly, 21 - 27 November 2002
All the polls indicated that Israel's Labour Party would elect a "new and different" leader. He is neither new nor different:  On Tuesday the 110,000 members of Israel's Labour Party went to the polls to elect their new chairman and, they fervently hope, Israel's next prime minister. The first place went to a politician who, until recently, was a bit player on Israel's national stage. As for the hope, that is an "exercise in fantasyland prime ministers", in the words of one seasoned Israeli observer. The polls, rightly predicted that Labour's new leader will be Avram Mitzna. On the eve of the ballot, he was leading incumbent chairman, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, by 23 percentage points and his left-wing rival, Haim Ramon, by a colossal 41. The same polls show Ariel Sharon's Likud party sweeping the board for the general elections on 28 January, winning 36 seats in the 120-member parliament as against Labour's 18, the lowest ever representation for a movement that was once viewed as Israel's "natural" party of government. Mitzna's rise is inextricably connected to Labour's fall. After nearly two years in a "national unity" government where Labour ministers appeared to prefer spoils of office to the politics of principle, rank-and-file Labour members are looking to Mitzna to restore new hope to a party grown old by the failure of Oslo and the blood of the Palestinian Intifada. Mitzna may bring hope, not least to a Palestinian leadership desperate to escape the clutches of another Israeli government led by Sharon. But neither the man nor his policies can in anyway be described as new.

Israel's killing of British citizen Iain Hook, UNRWA's Project Manager in Jenin
By Caoimhe Butterly as told to Annie Higgins, Electronic Intifada, November 22, 2002
In today's reinvasion of Jenin Refugee Camp, the Israeli Occupation Forces made the bottom section of the camp into a closed military zone in the morning, using about twelve tanks, ten jeeps, and at least two Apache helicopter gunships. I had been trying to get between the unarmed children and the tanks, when I received a call from a friend who wanted me to evacuate her sick daughter as the Army would not let any ambulances through. I went with a friend who is a Palestinian journalist, and we were immediately arrested, along with another international volunteer, and taken to a place where about twenty Palestinian men were being held. They were blindfolded, handcuffed, stripped to their trousers or underwear, and beaten severely. After I was detained for two hours and interrogated briefly, the Israeli soldiers said that I was free to go. I asked permission to remain with the men, hoping to minimise the violence, but the soldiers refused, saying it was not allowed. When I refused to leave, I was forcibly dragged away, pulled down the road, and told that if I returned to the area I would be shot.

Comment: Need to speak out as one voice
By Mohamed Jawher Hassan, From The Wilderness, November 18, 2002
New York, Bali, Moscow. Jenin, Ramallah, Jerusalem. Chechnya, Xinjiang, Aceh. As one surveys the landscape of terrorism, both state and non-state induced, one is reminded of the timeless words of Haile Selassie, that "throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph". And soon another evil may be added to the list: an attack on Iraq. Indeed, history is littered with many sins of omission, as many as the crimes of commission. But as we wait with bated breath for what seems to many as an inevitable attack on Iraq, I am reminded most of all of the sins of omission. Of the Arab streets that are so silent, when it is they who should be leading the demonstrations, not the good people in Europe and Asia and the United States. Of the Arab and Muslim leaders whose voices and actions should be more united, forceful and persistent, but instead are divided, compromised and fitful. And of the many movements and eminent individuals everywhere who fight for peace and justice, who should join hands across the globe in one powerful statement against the evil of unrestrained military might gone mad, but instead remain silent, or speak but with disjointed and isolated voices.

What Did You Do In The War, Dad?
By Matthew Norman, Daily Mirror November 22, 2002    
WHEN a nasty spat broke out between Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac at an EU summit last month, no one knew what provoked such ill-feeling. Now an explanation has emerged. During talks about Iraq, Chirac asked Blair if, in 20 years, he'd be able to explain a war to his son, Leo. We all know how Mr Blair hates having his kids dragged into public life, unless of course he's doing the dragging himself ...
Even so, what a fantastic question Chirac asked. In 20 years, Leo will be just out of university and when, one autumn evening in 2022, he and his old man settle down over a beer to discuss wangling him a place in some smart barristers' chambers, and Leo says: "By the way, Dad, the war with Iraq's been bugging me for ages. What the hell was that all about?" how will he reply? "Well, son," he might begin, "you know your Uncle George W?"

Ariel Sharon's generation
By Mickey Z., Online Journal, November 21, 2002
November 21, 2002—Ne