Robert Fisk - An Appreciation
By Michael Gillespie, Media Monitors Network, December 6, 2002
Journalist Robert Fisk, who writes for the Independent (UK), is the acknowledged dean of Western print journalists covering the Middle East.  His work is of a caliber that sets it apart, and Fisk, an increasingly popular figure on the lecture circuit here in the USA, is drawing large and enthusiastic audiences when he visits the States, which he does regularly.  But Fisk, who earned his Ph.D. in political science at Trinity College Dublin, is more than a journalist.  In his passionate pleas for individual integrity in professional journalism and his tireless efforts to educate his growing audiences about the terrible dangers inherent in Americans' unquestioning acceptance of authority, Fisk is becoming one of our era's foremost voices of reason and conscience, one of Western civilization's philosopher-torchbearers.  If such phrases sound more like fawning adulation than critically astute and well deserved recognition, just take another look at the thoughts of those who have gone before, thinkers who blazed the trail upon which Fisk now boldly strides.

A museum of tolerance in a city of fanatics
By Meron Benvenisti, Ha'aretz, December 5, 2002 
The proposed Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem: It is difficult to imagine a project so irrelevant, so foreign, so megalomaniac. -- Only in the holy city of Jerusalem are white elephants tempted to believe they have found their heaven. No matter where they come from, when someone decides to bring them to Jerusalem, the elephants first prosper, stuffed with all the hollow slogans of provincial kitsch, ignorance, and greed that blossom in the holy ground. But sadly, the life span of the white elephants is very short, because the struggle for survival is cruel and ruthless and their importers are interested in the profits resulting from bringing them to the city, not in the fate of the beasts after they've arrived.

From Baghdad to Dimona `the day after'
By Aluf Benn, Ha'aretz, December 5, 2002
Israel's political and defense leadership is united in its desire that the Americans attack Iraq soon. Senior Israeli officials explain to their American colleagues that they must not delay the attack too much because the Middle East is expecting a war to come quickly, and if these expectations prove false, there will be negative repercussions for the entire region. But alongside the hope for "far-reaching strategic changes," as Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon put it, that would remove Iraq from the map of threats, and at the same time weaken Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Arafat. Many in Israel are concerned and suspicious about the bill the United States will serve Israel for payment on "the day after."
According to one approach, after its victory in Iraq, the American administration will be free to deal with resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the spirit of the vision supplied by Bush's "road map." Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the senior staff in his ministry this week that Israel must formulate diplomatic proposals of its own so as not to find itself facing diplomatic facts on the day after the war. Senior officials in the defense establishment raise another possibility. They point to the slim chances of advancing to peace on the Palestinian track given the lack of a suitable partner, and warn the U.S. may march from Baghdad to Dimona in an attempt to appease its Arab friends by restricting Israel's nuclear capability.

Once again, George and Saddam
By Fawaz Turki, Arab News, December 5, 2002
The cover of Newsweek showed two US soldiers in full combat gear, weapons at the ready. The caption asked: Bush’s Invasion, How High A Price? The issue of the magazine was dated Jan. 1, 1990, the subject was Panama, and the president in question of course was Bush pere. Now Americans, polls show, are convinced that war with Iraq — whether or not Baghdad cooperates fully with weapons inspectors — is both predictable and inevitable, though many know that far fewer of their soldiers will die in the desert than ordinary Americans are killed annually — around 17,500 — by their gun-toting fellow Americans, who value, as Charlton Heston would put it, their “constitutional right to bear arms.” It is not altogether clear that a war with Iraq is as predictable and inevitable as militarists hope and pacifists fear. What is clear is that should authorities in Baghdad miscalculate, their country will face the near certainty of an American-led invasion, whose attendant consequences will be devastation of Iraqi society, a la 1991, and this time the overthrow or physical extinction of its top leadership.

The background music in Rafah
Darren Ell, The Electronic Intifada, December 5, 2002
I am home now, sitting comfortably in the quiet of my office, but the deafening machine gun fire, explosions, and anxious faces of the inhabitants of Block O in the southern Gazan city of Rafah are still with me. For 3 weeks in November, I photographed the debilitating impact of the Israeli occupation on the Palestinian people. Only 4 days ago, I was hearing bullets whiz over my head and watching as enraged youth threw stones at an IDF bulldozer as it destroyed yet another of their homes near the Egyptian border. Now I feel compelled to keep my promises to people and tell the world what I saw.

Fundamentalist logic
By Amira Hass, Ha'aretz, December 4, 2002
Kiryat Arba's settlers, with active assistance from the Civil Administration and the IDF, are keeping their promise to create "territorial contiguity between Kiryat Arba and the Tomb of the Patriarchs." Less than three weeks after the lethal Islamic Jihad ambush killed 12 soldiers and Israeli security officers, the appropriate Zionist response is taking concrete shape in the form of mobile homes and demolition orders - as everyone knew it would. Many Palestinian families no longer live along the route that connects the settlement to the old city of Hebron. They were driven away by fear of the settlers. Half-destroyed houses that are hundreds of years old, beautiful architectural pearls that the Palestinians were unable to renovate and preserve because they had no civilian control over the area of the old city, will be destroyed. Presumably, some less ancient buildings will also be destroyed. But that's the kind of information that evaporates quickly in a country that is so busy, on the one hand burying its dead from terror attacks, and on the other hand busy with primaries elections in the parties from the left to the right.

Is It All Mere Iraqi Propaganda?
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle, December 4, 2002
SEATTLE (PC) - What would happen if Iraqi militants bombed an American oil company, lets say based in the southern US, in Texas maybe, and killed eight Americans and seriously wounded 20 more? Would the US immediately strike Iraq? Would the UN convene, and unleash a chain of condemnations, denouncing the “barbaric terrorist aggression”. Would it