Choosing between friend and foe
By Amir Taheri, Arab News Staff
One evening in February 1778, Benjamin Franklin, the newly appointed envoy of the United States to France, was hosting a banquet at his Parisian residence in Passy. The guests were 18 Europeans and 18 Americans. Just before dessert Franklin asked the guests to leave the table and stand against a wall. He wanted to measure them to see who was taller. The shortest of the Americans proved to be taller than the tallest of the Europeans. Franklin had organized the exercise for the benefit of his guest of honor, the Abbe Reynal, who had just published a hefty tome arguing that, when transferred to America, all living creatures, including men, became diminutive. Thomas Jefferson, who later succeeded Franklin at the Paris embassy, narrates the episode as an illustration of “the irrational in the European approach” to things American. More than two centuries later that irrational approach is still present. Only this time its proponents, reversing Reynal’s theory that “America makes things small”, are concerned about the “bigness” of things American. This is combined with the fear that, in Baudelaire’s words, “The American night shall fall over the earth.”

Bypassing the political establishments to peace
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz, December 1, 2002
Every day of the week last week, the widely-distributed Al Quds newspaper carried advertisements from a movement called The Popular Campaign for Peace and Democracy - Palestinian. The texts of the ads called upon readers to support a joint Israeli-Palestinian document co-authored by former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon and the PLO representative in Jerusalem, Dr. Sari Nusseibeh. The initiative is familiar to the Palestinian public. Ayalon presented his political positions to the Palestinians in a long interview with him published in the Palestinian media a few weeks ago. Nusseibeh wrote a prominently displayed article in Al Quds, with his views about current events. The advertisements are clearly part of a comprehensive media campaign the two are conducting and which is expected to continue.

Condemned to Violence
By Ramzy Baroud, Washington Post, December 2, 2002
As long as we ignore downtrodden people, terrorism will not go away: "So do you condemn terrorism or not?" a young, immature journalist asked me with a mix of agitation and sarcasm. I refused to answer. I told him that I hated the pretentious, tainted term: "terrorism." He thought it was a poor attempt to escape the ritual condemnation of terrorism that is necessary for all who wish to be accepted into civil societies, especially in the West. But of course I condemn terrorism, if terrorism means the murder of innocent people for the sake of gaining political influence, or for inflicting punishment or simply to advance an argument. I condemn all kinds of terrorism -- that of a nation-state, no matter how mighty, as much as that of a solitary sniper gunning down innocent men and women. But in practice, it is only the powerless who receive retribution for it. "Terrorism" is seen only in one context: the effect, but never the cause, as though suicide bombings, the Moscow theater hostage crisis, the Kurdish rebels' frequent attacks on the Turkish army and more were all born in a vacuum.

Misinformation about Iraq
By Edward Said, Al-Ahram Weekly, 28 Nov. - 4 Dec. 2002
A fantastical future, predicted by the terminally disengaged. Woe to Iraq. -- The flurry of reports, leaks, and misinformation about the looming US war against Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq continues unabated. It is impossible to know, however, how much of this is a brilliantly managed campaign of psychological war against Iraq, how much the public floundering of a government uncertain about its next step. In any event, I find it as possible to believe that there will be a war as that there will not. Certainly the sheer belligerency of the verbal assaults on the average citizen are unprecedented in their ferocity, with the result that very little is totally certain about what is actually taking place. No one can independently confirm the various troop and navy movements reported on a daily basis, and given the lurching opacity of his thinking, George W Bush's real intentions are difficult to read. But that the whole world is concerned --indeed, deeply anxious -- about the catastrophic chaos that will ensue after another Afghanistan-like air campaign against the people of Iraq, of that there is little doubt.

Restoring basic values
By Nimrod Aloni, Ha'aretz, December 1, 2002
Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, that prescient diagnostician of Israel's decline, railed at Israel's governments that their policy was sometimes tainted by feeblemindedness, sometimes by malice, and usually by both of these ills at once. As a philosopher and a scientist, Leibowitz had a clear understanding of those traits that produce healthy sovereignty based on security and dignity, and those that condemn their peoples to physical ruin and moral opprobrium. As an Israeli patriot, Leibowitz demanded that the country's leaders show public responsibility and adhere to the principles whose critical importance for society's health has been proven time and again: truth, justice and peace (in the terms of the Jewish heritage); or logic, decency and humanity (in the terms of classical culture). Since the Israeli leaderships in the past two decades overall, and in the past two years especially, have patently turned their back on these values, Israel's decline appears to be inevitable.

Report: Forseen but not Prevented -
B'tselem, December 2, 2002
The Performance of Law Enforcement Authorities in Responding to Settler Attacks on Olive Harvesters -- The settlers threw stones for half an hour, while the soldiers stood by and did nothing. Later, an Israeli commander arrived, accompanied by a group of soldiers. The commander told us that he had come on behalf of the DCO. They tried to prevent the settlers from throwing stones at us, but they did not succeed in controlling them. The commander then ordered us to leave the area. Otherwise, he said, the settlers would open fire and there could be a massacre. He commented that he could not stay with us all day to prevent the settlers harassing us.” -- From the testimony of Suleiman Abu Mifrah, Head of Taqua village. -- Groups of armed settlers have been disrupting the olive harvest in the West Bank since the harvest began in October. These groups have carried out systematic and violent attacks on Palestinians who were harvesting olives. Report in Word 97 format / Report in zipped RTF format

Manufacturing the news: A report on Thomas Friedman
By John Paul Jones, YellowTimes.org, November 30, 2002
(YellowTimes.org) – In the transformation of the American economy into a "service economy," there is sometimes a wistful regret in the loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector. Maybe it's just a question of misclassification. If the news industry were considered manufacturing, the stats would be better. I recently had some personal insights into how the news is manufactured, and would certainly add the process to Bismarck's famous quip about sausage and foreign policy. I must confess that I was favorably inclined toward Thomas Friedman's writings ever since I read "From Beirut to Jerusalem," some fifteen years ago. It was quite a while back, but I still recall various sections of the book, one being when he had the guts to get on an Israeli tank outside the Palestinian refugee camp at Sabra, in Lebanon, and point the binoculars into the camp, and ask the tank commander rhetorically: "Tell me you didn't see?" Later in the book, he reported on Jewish fundamentalism (though I believe he still preferred the term "ultra/orthodox"). Though I have since found myself profoundly disagreeing with his columns, still there are those that he writes, as recently as 06 October 02, "Anyone Seen Any Democrats Lately" that I would agree with every word.