Journalists are under fire for telling the truth
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, December 18, 2002
First it was Roger Ailes, the chairman of the Fox News Channel, who advised the US President to take the "harshest measures possible" against those who attacked America on 11 September, 2001. Let us forget, for a moment, that Fox News's Jerusalem bureau chief is Uri Dan, a friend of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the author of the preface of the new edition of Sharon's autobiography, which includes a revolting account of the Sabra and Chatila massacre of 1,700 Palestinian civilians and Sharon's innocence in this slaughter. Then Ted Koppel, one of America's leading news anchormen, announced that it may be a journalist's duty not to reveal events until the military want them revealed in a new war against Iraq. Can we go any further in journalistic cowardice? Oh yes, we can. ABC television announced, a little while ago, that it knew all about the killing of four al-Qa'ida members by an unmanned "Predator" plane in Yemen but delayed broadcasting the news for four days "at the request of the Pentagon." So now at least we know for whom ABC works.

Politics of hatred
Editorial, The Star, December 15, 2002
What would ordinary Americans think of a country that routinely resorts to threats, bullying and even piracy in the UN Security Council...JORDAN (Star) - What would ordinary Americans think of a country that routinely resorts to threats, bullying and even piracy in the UN Security Council while its diplomats and officials galumph in world capitals preaching war and flaunting their muscles? This is how the United States is perceived today by millions of non-Americans around the world. Such image is fuelling rising sentiments of hatred and animosity against America around the globe as a recent survey conducted by the Washington, DC, based Pew Research Center has found. The survey concluded that favorable rating for the United States has dropped in 19 of the 27 nations surveyed by the US State Department two years ago. In short sympathy for America following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks has dissipated and even in Europe and among America’s allies anti-Americanism is rife.

Mixed messages
By Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, December 18, 2002
While Syria's despotic president gets his Downing Street photo op, Iran's reformist one gets the cold shoulder  --  They were talking television in Tehran yesterday. In a hot, occasionally steamy, session in the Iranian parliament, lawmakers fought long and hard over whether sex, pop videos and international news should be allowed to penetrate the Islamic republic via the "alien capitalist waves" of satellite TV. The hardliners condemned the idea as the "legalisation of sin", debauchery beamed direct into Iranian homes. "Many corrupt deeds [already] take place in secret," insisted conservative MP Mohammad Razavi. "There is no reason for us to make it even easier for people to sin." But guess what? The hardliners didn't win. The reformers carried the vote, approving a bill to lift restrictions on satellite TV. Porn and "anti-Iranian" material will still be jammed, but otherwise the airwaves will be set free. If the parliament has its way, the dishes Tehranis have long hidden under tarpaulins or disguised as rooftop air-conditioning units are about to face the world.

Three groups, one nation
By Amira Hass, Ha'aretz, December 18, 2002
Sometimes it seems as if there are two or even three different nations: the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, and their relatives, one million Israeli citizens. These three groups live under three different administrative and governmental systems. The first group is the occupied population, dependent since 1994 on an androgynous combination of Israeli military rule and shrinking Palestinian self-rule. The second is the population annexed to Israel. They received residents' status. The third group are Israeli citizens, with the right to vote for Knesset and the theoretical right to participate in determining Israeli politics. One group experiences deadly military violence on a daily basis, with limitations on their freedom of movement that are as destructive and grave as anything in the country since the 1950s. The second, in East Jerusalem, enjoys basic rights as residents including freedom of movement, but they live under deliberate, institutionalized discrimination that is blunt, blatant and insulting. The third group, the Israeli Arabs, have citizenship that allows them to deal in varied political ways with long years of discrimination both de facto and de jure.

Zionism Unbound
By Ann Pettifer, Dissident Voice, December 11, 2002
In the spring of 1986, Gore Vidal, novelist and chronicler of US history, published an essay in The Nation which became instantly notorious. Called "The Empire Lovers Strike Back," its subject was the relationship of American Jewish neo-conservatives to the state of Israel. He chose as exemplars of the phenomenon, Commentary magazine editor, Norman Podhoretz, and spouse, Midge Decter (mother-in-law of Elliot Abrams of Iran Contra infamy; Abrams, a racial purist who disdains intermarriage, now serves as White House Director of Middle Eastern Affairs). Podhoretz and Decter had once been liberals, but an aggressive Zionism led them to pitch their tent in the Republican Party. Their aim was to use US economic and political heft to advance Israel's interests in the Middle East. The essay was vintage Vidal and it greatly provoked his critics. To ensure that no one took seriously what he had to say - to silence the debate before it started - he was rubbished as the worst kind of anti-Semite.

Israel's policies on Palestinians imperil its soul
By Rev. Bruce Burnside, Madison.com, December 14, 2002
Israeli security officials scrutinized our entry at Ben Gurion Airport: "Why are you coming? Aren't you afraid?" We heard that question frequently during the two weeks that followed. Fear is epidemic. We went to the West Bank during the November olive harvest to support Palestinian villagers, who are often attacked by Israeli settlers. Often the settlers steal and destroy Palestinian crops. Today thousands of Palestinians suffer tortuous and untold economic, physical and emotional despair from Israel's systematic and insidious policies that destroy their olive groves, decimate villages, kill countless innocents and foment despair, all under the sham of security. This was the fifth trip for my wife and me. Increasingly we have witnessed vanishing hope and mounting fear. We felt it on a rooftop with villagers in Kufr Laqif, watching military planes explode flares all around the houses throughout the night, and we experienced it with a brave, gentle man forced to beg settlers day after day for permission to harvest his own olives, which are now enclosed by settlement fences.

Was Irv Rubin Killed in 9-11 Mop Up?
By Michael Collins Piper, American Free Press
Did the late Irv Rubin have inside knowledge about the fact that Israeli intelligence operatives were trailing the alleged 9-11 hijackers while they were “on the ground” in California? -- When JDL chief Irv Rubin’s friends cry that their leader may have been murdered in federal custody, they may not be far off the mark. Rubin may have known too much for his own good and threatened to reveal—during his scheduled trial–his Mossad connection. Undoubtedly, Rubin and his henchman, Earl Krugel, were as surprised as anybody when the Justice Department charged them last year with conspiring to blow up a mosque and the office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). For years Rubin and Krugel and the JDL were almost “untouchable,” given free rein to practice their terrorist activities with virtually no sanction whatsoever. As such, there appears to be a lot more to the quite unexpected indictment of Rubin and Krugel than meets the eye. As a growing body of evidence indicates, much of which has already been reported in AFP, Israeli intelligence operatives were almost certainly monitoring at least some of the Sept. 11 hijackers when the hijackers-to-be were operating in California prior to 9-11. And considering the fact that the JDL is known to have closely cooperated on numerous fronts with Israeli intelligence, it is likely that Rubin—now conveniently dead by “suicide”—and Krugel may have been aware of this operation.

British initiative
Editorial, Arab News, December 19, 2002
The British invitation to the Palestinian Authority to come in January to London for talks about Middle East peace has been welcomed with unusual warmth. This may seem the more surprising because British officials have made little secret of the fact that one of the proposed subjects for discussion will be the reform of the Palestinian Authority itself. Any such reform is likely to pose a question mark over the political future of its leader Yasser Arafat. In the Palestinian camp, however, the view, informed by the desperate situation at home under Israeli occupation, is doubtless that any avenue which may offer a route toward peace must be explored. The talks in London, in which some other Arab countries also are expected to join, are likely to be more productive than any meetings held in Washington, where Secretary of State Colin Powell managed this week to deliver his government’s analysis of international terrorism and the Iraq crisis without once referring to the plight of Palestine.

The looming water crisis
By Nehemia Strasler, Ha'aretz, December 19, 2002
Several days of rain and a few additional centimeters of water in Lake Kinneret are likely to create the impression that the water crisis is behind us. However, according to forecasts, the present winter will not be especially rainy, and at its end we will be facing a very large deficit in the water reservoirs, so that next summer the water crisis will return to the headlines in a big way. The real reason for the water shortage is common knowledge: the appalling waste of potable water in the agricultural sector. For decades, successive governments allowed the agricultural sector to specialize, with acute irresponsibility, in water-guzzling crops, as though we were living in Norway rather than in a desert environment. During all those years, the farmers succeeded in receiving potable water at subsidized prices - currently, about half the price paid by the urban sector - because of their strong lobby in the Knesset and in the government.

Finkelstein's back - and so are the lies
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, December 19, 2002
Ariel Sharon is growing ever more reminiscent of a tired boxer holding on with the last of his strength in a clinch with his opponent, not letting him escape his grasp. The Labor Party slammed the door on him - Sharon announces that maybe Labor doesn't know it, but it's a matter of minutes and Labor will "come home" to the warm embrace of the unity government. Labor tosses out Fuad Ben-Eliezer - who said "I"m not sorry for a minute we stayed in the government" - and Sharon announces (not estimates, invites, hopes, but announces) that the next government will also be a unity government. The new chairman of the Labor Party, Amram Mitzna, can swear he won't sit in a government that insists on sitting in Gaza - Sharon doesn't get annoyed: "Mitzna, too, will join the unity government," he promises on Channel One.

Beyond the Border
By Dr. Annie C. Higgins, Palestine Chronicle, December 18, 2002
"Do you long for the day when your neighbor’s child puts down his weapon because it has become obsolete? You are not alone. You are in good company .." -- JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank (PC) - Imagine you are residing in a besieged city, having lived in your occupier’s neighboring land for ten years previously. You and your neighbors exchanged visits, and their children were part of your family home. You know the children’s names and their favorite sweets. You know the things that make them laugh. You and they have shared experiences stored up for years. Now one of these children is a soldier bearing arms against you. When you meet him in the street wearing military fatigues, you cannot call him by the name that brought a smile to your face in former times because people will consider you a collaborator with the oppressor. He cannot talk to you for the equal and opposite reason; his government will consider him a traitor or will try to exploit his relationship with you. It is safest to avoid eye contact when you happen to meet.