Amram Mitzna: another zionist, racist, colonialist liberal leader or the general de Gaulle of Israel? 
Thursday, December 12th, 2002 
Majed Nassar, Nassar Ibrahim/AIC 
"Mitzna himself had no qualms about meting out harsh treatment to the Palestinians under his control while commander of the West Bank during the first Intifada. According to Hadas Ladav in Challenge Magazine (September, 2002), General Mitzna was responsible for the demolition of 121 houses, 28 deportations, and the killing of 302 and injury of 3252 Palestinians from December 1987 until March 1989." -- In less than two months, on January 28, 2003, the Israeli public will vote in an early parliamentary election. Israelis will have the chance to change their future and opt for a peaceful settlement to the Palestinian conflict. Polls show that 65% of the Israeli population support an end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and dismantling of the settlements. Paradoxically, the same polls show that they will vote by the same margin to elect Sharon, who is propagating and practicing the opposite. Does this seeming contradiction stem from the fact that Labor, as the largest opposition party, has lost its credibility as a result of its participation in the national unity government?

Mitzna's the man
By Marc Sirois, YellowTimes.org, December 11, 2002
(YellowTimes.org) – Amram Mitzna gets all sorts of bad press -- even the unintentional kind. As if the Labor Party candidate for prime minister in Israel's January elections did not have enough of a challenge in trying to unseat Ariel Sharon, now the Western media is hobbling his efforts to connect with the voters. This is not to say that the journalists who cover the Middle East for wire services and major newspapers are hostile to Mitzna's candidacy. On the contrary, most of them fancy knee-jerk liberals and secretly long for him to win. The problem is that, while they fawn over him in private and actually try to help him with their reporting in public, they do so for all the wrong reasons and are therefore undermining the very cause they seek to buttress. The current fashion is to describe Mitzna as a "dovish former general." Virtually everyone who writes about the man has adopted this formula, never bothering to check whether or not it has any basis in fact. Given the track record of Western reportage from this part of the world, a failure to get the story straight should not surprise. What is amazing is that this time, the half-wits are shooting themselves in the collective foot because they refuse to learn anything about the subject matter at hand.

Zionism doesn't define Jews - it divides us
By Gabor Matι, Globe and Mail, December 12, 2002
Given its horrific 20th-century connotations, anti-Semitism is a serious charge. It was levelled against critics of Israel on this page recently by three people who have demonstrated a strong lifelong commitment to humanitarian values. Lawyer Clayton Ruby, labour leader Jeff Rose and physician Philip Berger wrote that they feel "anti-Semitism has emerged as a powerful force" among some left-wing opponents of Israeli policy.
As a Jew and a former member of a Zionist youth movement, I understand the affinity the three writers have for Israel. I can also see why the blindly murderous attitudes and actions of some in the Palestinian resistance trigger a powerfully defensive emotional response in the Jewish community. But the flaw in their argument is rooted in a confounding of Jewish identity with the Jewish state. They write of an "artificial distinction between Israel and Zionism, on one hand, and Jewish identity on the other." The modern identification of Jews and Israel emerged largely as a reaction to the Nazi genocide. Although it may represent the majority view today, it should be not taken for granted. Historically, it never has been. It is unlikely to persist. From its beginnings, political Zionism faced opposition within the Jewish world.

Reading entrails
By Firas Al-Atraqchi, YellowTimes.org, December 8, 2002
(YellowTimes.org) – In the formative years of paxa Romana, it was common practice for wealthy families to seek out soothsayers who would read the entrails of geese, sheep, and fish to prophesize the future. In the formative years of paxa Americana, one need not rely on such drastic measures to predict times to come. The devil is in the details, as they say, and there are many interesting concurrent 'details' to choose from. The last few weeks saw a flurry of public (and discreet) events that should give one some insight into events in the Middle East. Briefly: 1. The U.S. quietly, and with practically minimal media coverage, increases financial and military aid to Israel by a whopping 500 million dollars. 2. Israel announces that Dov Weisglass, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, met with U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to discuss Israel's demand for 10 billion dollars in loan guarantees. Of note is the fact that the Federal Reserve just slashed rates, U.S. unemployment rates are rising and 401ks are quickly becoming worthless garage sale artifacts...

Understanding the Existential Threat: Israel's Demographic Obsession
by Will Youmans, CounterPunch, December 7, 2002
When pundits and commentators declare that Israel's war against the Palestinians is existential, they are correct but not in the way they mean. The Israeli obsession with demography demonstrates that Israel ideologically conceives of the Palestinians existentially as threats--Palestinians are threats to the Zionist vision just by being alive. Such numerical concern exhibits a deep-seated fear of all Palestinians regardless of age, political persuasion, and so on. This obsession is binary and inverse: they want more Jews and less Palestinians. The Associated Press reported that the newly revived Israel Council for Demography's mandate "is to encourage Jewish households to have more children, using incentives such as housing benefits and other government grants." This government-funded enterprise is headed by Social Welfare Minister Shlomo Benizri of the Orthodox Jewish Shas party. The council actively discourages Jews "from abortion and intermarriage." Besides governmental initiatives with ethno-religious purity as their mission, the non-governmental sector is teeming with demographic activism.

Gameplanning: Team AIPAC's 2002 Season
By Anthony Gancarski, CounterPunch, August 8, 2002
A couple of interesting tidbits appear on the "new this week" section on the website of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: "Take Action! Urge Bush to Approve $200 Million to Israel A $29 billion homeland security bill that recently passed in Congress with strong bi-partisan support includes $200 million in anti-terror aid for Israel. These funds would provide vital additional resources to help Israel fight its war on terror and protect its population from future conflicts in the region. Since Israel's allocation was added to the bill by congressional appropriators, President Bush must designate the $200 million for Israel as an "emergency" in order for Israel to receive the funding. Urge President Bush to approve the "emergency" designation of the money for Israel's war on terror." Emergency! Quite the loaded word to use, given the current "2 Weeks to Judaism" program being used to convert and import converts to said faith from the Andean mountains.

Fast food in the cradle of civilisation
By Jonathan Glancey, The Guardian, December 13, 2002
We need to understand what we will really be fighting for in Iraq: "And it's one, two, three / What are we fighting for? / Don't ask me, I don't give a damn - / Next stop is Vietnam"  Remember Vietnam? More than two million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans died. Country Joe McDonald was a war veteran. He first sang the I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag in 1965: "And it's five, six, seven / Open up the pearly gates, / Well there ain't no time to wonder why / Whoopee! We're all gonna die" -- It was innocent Vietnamese villagers, though, who died at My Lai on March 16 1968. Led by Lieutenant William Calley, "Charlie Company", a unit of the US Eleventh Light Infantry, massacred 500 unarmed villagers. My Lai was a turning point in the uncalled-for US invasion. How, Americans began to ask, could the US have God and "Charlie Company" on its side? In what ways was "Charlie Patrol", President Johnson and the US morally superior to the Vietcong, Ho Chi Minh and an ancient Far Eastern civilisation? Even if it were worth fighting to keep communism and its weapons of mass destruction at bay by blasting civilians with napalm, what positive message was Uncle Sam preaching? "Men who take up arms against one another in public," said Abraham Lincoln - quoted in Lt Calley's trial - to Union troops during the US civil war, "do not cease on this account to be moral human beings, responsible to one another and to God." With the experience of Vietnam behind them, what is the moral impulse driving George Bush and Tony Blair to war in Iraq?

A Day in the Life of Jenin Refugee Camp
By Annie Higgins, Palestine Chronicle, December 12, 2002
(7 December 02) This was the third and final day of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday concluding Ramadan. I awoke at the home of a family where twin sons had been killed on separate occasions in the last two months. The rest of the children make the home boisterous. I heard the cries of Allahu Akbar, the funeral parade for a boy from the neighbouring village of Sili who had been killed the night before. I joined the march on the main street bordering the massive destroyed Hawashin neighbourhood of the Camp. Two young girls joined me, each one taking my hand as we maneouvered through the puddles left by the nightis rain. We walked through the Camp and then turned back again in the direction of the city of Jenin. We were no more than twenty women, just a line or two walking behind the crowd of men, and I made sure to keep the eager girls at an appropriate distance behind them. A jeep up ahead carried the slogan master who was broadcasting with a megaphone, followed by a sombre response from the marchers. Abdullah `Umar al-`Umariis small body was borne by men at the head of the procession.