A New Type of Crime
By Rixon Stewart, The Truthseeker, December 27, 2002
It’s happening virtually every day, right in front of us. It’s a new type of crime: a crime against humanity and a war crime all in one and the Israelis are currently practising to perfection. Although some examples have been reported few have noticed that, like serial killings, it is a crime that is both deliberate and recurrent. To correct that misapprehension I’ll give some examples, see if you can spot the deliberate and calculated crime. On Thursday April 4th 2002 Samil Ibrahim Salman was shot in Bethlehem’s Manger Square. The middle aged Palestinian Christian had risen at dawn and crossed the square every day to ring the bells in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. However on the morning of the 4th Samil was felled by a single bullet. Medics say that Samil bled for hours before an ambulance, blocked by the Israelis, was eventually able to reach him. But by then he was already dead.

An attack on us all
By Ghada Karmi, The Guardian, December 28, 2002
Saddam is simply the latest focus for the west's racist abuse of Arabs --- The preparations for a war on Iraq are moving inexorably forward, despite UN intervention, formal and popular opposition, and Iraqi ingenuity and compliance. The real motives for this projected attack, despite a plethora of public pronouncements, remain confusing and mysterious. Many Arabs see in it a variety of sinister plots involving control over their oil, neo-colonialism in their region and the machinations of a hegemonic Israel. Much of this has been ascribed to the Arab obsession with conspiracy theories, and yet there is an anti-Arab theme running through the debate over Iraq. A deep and unconscious racism imbues every aspect of western conduct towards Iraq - and by extension the Arabs in general. Ever since the first Gulf war, America and its western allies have portrayed the conflict as a fight with one man, Saddam Hussein, apparently existing in a void in which the 22 million Iraqi inhabitants do not feature. Even the name of the 1991 military campaign against Iraq - Desert Storm - helped reinforce this concept of an empty land. The Iraqi leader is always referred to by his first name, not in endearment of course but, in the Arab view, to denigrate his status; no other president of a sovereign state is addressed in this way.

America's New Mideast Empire
By Eric S. Margolis, The Foreign Correspondent, December 9, 2002
NEW YORK - Arms inspections are a 'hoax,' said Tariq Aziz, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, in a forthright and chilling interview with ABC News last week, 'war is 'inevitable.' Aziz is the smartest, most credible member of President Saddam Hussein's otherwise sinister regime - my view after covering Iraq since 1976. What the US wants is not 'regime change' in Iraq but rather 'region change,' charged Aziz. He tersely summed up the Bush Administration reasons for war against Iraq: 'oil and Israel.' Aziz's undiplomatic language underlines growing fears across the Mideast that the Bush Administration intends to use a manufactured war against Iraq to redraw the political map of the region, put it under permanent US military control, and seize its vast oil resources. These are not idle alarms. Senior administration officials openly speak of invading Iran, Syria, Libya, and Lebanon. Influential, pro-Israel neo-conservative think tanks in Washington have deployed small army of 'experts' on TV urging the US to remove governments deemed unfriendly to the US and Israel. Washington's most powerful lobbies - the oil and Israel lobbies - are urging the US seize Mideast oil and crush any regional states that might one day challenge Israel's nuclear monopoly or regional superpower dominance.

New hate figures and oil revenues
By Robert Fisk, Arab News, December 28, 2002
Who would have believed, a year ago, that it would be the beardless features of Saddam Hussein we’d have to hate rather than the unshaven Osama bin Laden? When did it take place, this transition from “the evil one” (Newsweek) to the Beast of Baghdad? As usual, our newspaper and television journalists connived at it all. Wasn’t it their job to point out that something funny was going on? Wasn’t it the task of reporters to say: hang on, I thought the enemy was Bin Laden — you’ve just changed the picture? But no. Osama faded from our screens, to be replaced by Saddam. Our enemy no longer lived in Afghan caves, but on the banks of the Tigris. And instead of graphics of Afghan mountains and Al-Qaeda networks, we got stories of weapons of mass destruction and human rights abuses in Iraq.

Lawlessness
Editorial, Arab News, December 28, 2002
The United States is a land of lawyers, who will sue over anything and everything, from the obvious, such as injuries sustained in a car wreck to loss of earnings because someone with a head cold did not warn another person and so passed on the condition. This would seem to betoken the fact that America is a land of laws, rights that can be enforced in the courts. Indeed, most Americans will tell you that it is the protection enshrined by the constitution and the laws that have flowed from it that makes the US “The Land of the Free”. Odd then, that the United States is now behaving in complete contravention of all the values that it supposedly holds so dear.

The war must go on!
By Tariq A. Al-Maeena, Arab News, December 28, 2002
The month of December saw several faiths this year celebrating their religious holidays. Muslims celebrated the end of the month Ramadan, and Christians reveled in Christmas cheer. And as they gathered with their loved ones, their close families and friends, how much thought was being given to the drums of war beating ever so loudly by the US government? Barely had the initial reports from the UN inspectors reached the UN offices in New York, when the US government, along with Tony Blair trotting obediently in tow, declared that war must go on. And this in spite of several appeals by the top UN inspector that there was not yet any proof that Saddam was indeed building these awful weapons of mass destruction that would destroy Washington and London, let alone Iraq having any remote capability of launching them!

Civil disobedience: An effective weapon against occupation
By Ghassan Andoni, AMIN, December 27, 2002
The Palestinian liberation movement has special traits that render its ability to achieve liberation reliant on steering the conflict at the highest level of competence and recruiting all available human and material resources for it. The Palestinian liberation movement is the only such movement that is still struggling to remove occupation marked for the undying desire to expand while gaining international approval, able to make geographical and demographic changes in a record time. In addition, the scattering of the Palestinian people all over the world has destroyed the basis of ownership rights and turned the Palestinians into immigrants, thereby increasing the already existing challenges. While most national liberation movements were able to gain some form of independence during the era that witnessed the destruction of direct colonization (1940-1970), the Palestinian effort was interrupted by an unprecedented occupation/settlement scheme. While the Palestinian liberation movement fought using all known means, rapid international changes and the persistence of occupation for more that 50 years created conditions that necessitated that the liberation movement take a break in order to evaluate its performance and techniques.

Israel Chooses Easiest Way, Assassinates Palestinians
By Maha Abd el-hady, Palestine Chronicle, December 27, 2002
OCCUPIED TERRITORIES - Although targeted assassination of Palestinian leaders is not a new practice to the Israeli occupation army, Israeli forces have stepped up their criminal policy over the past days. Israel, it seems, is favoring assassination of any Palestinian suspected of belonging to any of the resistance factions instead of arresting and interrogating him. This (easy) policy was further demonstrated by the Israeli occupation army on Thursday, December 26, when its undercover elite units assassinated five Palestinian resistance leaders instead of taking any judicial procedures against them. Several Palestinian legal experts believe the Israeli escalation of targeted assassination marks a new strategic turning point in Israeli policies.

Stop the Wall: PENGON Launches the Apartheid Wall Campaign
By Jamaal Jumaa, Palestine Chronicle, December 27, 2002
Contrary to worldwide news reports, the Wall (also referred to as the “fence” or “security fence”) which Israel is currently building in the northeast of the West Bank, as well as in the Bethlehem and Jerusalem areas, will not mark the 1967 border, also known as the Green Line. Rather, amidst some of the most fertile land in Palestine, this latest unilateral offensive will be a further exercise in Israel’s annexation of lands, destruction of agriculture and property, and violation of human rights.

Passionate attachment to Israel
By James J. David, Media Monitors Network, December 24, 2002
Is there any criminal act that Israel can do without being protected from criticism from the United States? If there is I haven't seen it. And I haven't seen it from the Bush Administration or from the Clinton Administration or from any administration before them. But when you consider the influence of Israel's lobby and its political action committees and the more than $41 million they've given to Congress and the White House, is it any wonder Israel is shielded from any shame? For more than 54 years the Israelis have committed acts that no other nation would dare get away with. But even here in America, where it is not yet illegal to publicly ask the wrong questions, any public figure that does so is subjected to smears, intimidation, and the attempted destruction of his career and reputation by Jewish organizations and by the very cooperative news media.

When the rats come out of the sewers
By Firas Al-Atraqchi, YellowTimes.org, December 27, 2002
(YellowTimes.org) – Sixty-five thousand U.S. military men and women are poised around Iraq for an impending invasion; 50,000 more are likely to be called up after Christmas. Arab politicians are screaming till they are blue in the face that a war on Iraq would plunge the entire Middle East into chaos. Israeli government officials are imploring the U.S. to launch the war now. However, none of the above succinctly indicates the unimaginable devastation yet to befall the region. The only surefire way of foretelling the hellish outcome in Iraq in the next few months is to count the number of rats finally emerging from the sewers to festoon the night streets with their stench and loathing. And emerge they did in London. Three hundred so-called Iraqi opposition members gathered in their Armani suits, Rolex watches, and flowing Islamic garb to express their desire to forge a new future in Iraq. If the London meeting, held December 13-17, is any indication of the unity that Iraqis can look forward to, well, they are sure to be disappointed.