_______________________________________________________________________
NPK-info 21-09-2001- Nederlands Palestina Komitee / www.palestina-komitee.nl
_______________________________________________________________________

Palestijnen herdachten dezer dagen de massamoord in Sabra en Shatila in 1982, waarvoor met name Sharon verantwoordelijk was.
  • Het TV-programma zondag de 16e over Nur Masalha en Salman Abu-Sitta is
  • uitgesteld [sprekend over de Nakba en over de uitvoering van VN-resolutie 194]; tot wanneer weten we nog niet. Oorzaak ligt in een NMO-blunder.
  • Goed dat Eddo Rosenthal 18-9 op de TV [Ned1?] duidelijk aangaf dat Israel 80% van de West-Bank en 40% van de Gazastrook nog steeds bezet. 
  • Wonderlijk dat 2Vandaag 20-9 bij Gilo meldt dat het volgens de Palestijnen in bezet gebied ligt. Slechts volgens de Palestijnen?

En zie http://www.lawsociety.org voor "gewoon Palestijns nieuws".

NPK/WL, 21-9-2001
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Drie bijeenkomsten in De Rode Hoed te Amsterdam
[Keizersgracht 102]
Zie ook http://www.rodehoed.nl/

23 september
  • Om 19.00 uur overhandigt Anja Meulenbelt het eerste exemplaar van haar nieuwe boek 'De tweede intifada' aan Uri Avnery.
  • Om 19.30 uur organiseert 'Een Ander Joods Geluid' [tel: 020 6795850 of 's avonds 020 6641687] een bijeenkomst met Uri Avnery als hoofdgast.  
    [reserveren via 020-6385606; toegang f. 25.-/f. 15.00 (studenten/stadspas); 
    voertaal Engels]
    Avnery geeft zijn analyse van het mislukken van het Osloproces en 'wat te doen' gevolgd door discussie. 
    Zie ook http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html
 
12 oktober
  • Amnesty International organiseert die vrijdagavond in de Rode Hoed een bijeenkomst met de Israëlische advocate Allegra Pacheco en de Palestijnse psychiater Eyad Saraj. Zij zullen onder andere praten over vrede, veiligheid en mensenrechten na 1 jaar intifada. 
    Zie ook http://www.amnesty.nl/
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For The Record
Number 82
18 September 2001

The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine / 2425-35 Virginia Ave., NW /
Washington, DC 20037 / Tel: 202.338.1290 / Fax: 202.333.7742 /
<<<http://www.palestinecenter.org>>>

The Role of the Media in Shaping Public Perception

With a PhD in Political Science, a background in journalism, and a
current position as professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Army
War College, Stephen Pelletiere brought his expertise to a discussion of the
media at a 13 September 2001 Center lecture.  He focused on press coverage
of Iraq, Palestine, and the current situation following the 11 September
plane hijackings and attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the
U.S.

Pelletiere began by addressing the media campaign against Iraq
following the Iran-Iraq war.  The U.S. did not expect Iraq to win, and when
it did, U.S. leaders were "dumbfounded."  As Iraq sought to "rebuild itself"
after the war, the U.S. attempted to prevent this restructuring through a
number of avenues, focusing on damaging Iraq's "credit worthiness."  Despite
the accumulation of a large debt, Iraq "was good for the money" considering
its oil resources.  Still, in the spring of 1988, Iraq did not have the cash
reserves necessary and wished to reschedule its debt payments.  The media in
the U.S. began running stories on Iraq, "the tone of which was extremely
hostile."

"All of the stories were slanted against Iraq," which by itself is
suspicious.  In addition, some of the stories were simply "phony," such as
the report that 80,000 to 100,000 Kurds were gassed to death by Iraq.  "You
can't kill that many people using gas, in a concentrated period, in terrain
such as exists in northern Iraq."  Irrational stories do appear in the media
on occasion, but not usually so extensively in the established press.  It
seemed to Pelletiere that "this was a campaign."  At the time, Congress was
debating sanctions on Iraq and may have been trying to prepare the public.
When sanctions were eventually declared, Iraq could no longer reschedule its
debts.

Moving to the issue of how the media has covered Israel and
Palestine, Pelletiere explained that Israel's current military activity in
the Occupied Territories is "coming dangerously close to ethnic cleansing."
Nonetheless, the press presents the conflict as relatively balanced and
argues that both sides are equally responsible for the violence.  Pelletiere
takes a different approach.  He explained that at the Camp David
negotiations, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered a deal "that
was no deal at all."  Barak hoped the Palestinians would accept it and be
"saddled with an entity that was not viable," a so-called state that would
fall apart.  Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat refused.  "The pro-Israeli
forces . . . had to find a way of retreating from the exposed position they
found themselves in, because in the process of setting Arafat up, . . . they
had dignified both him and his movement by appearing to take the idea of
Palestinian statehood seriously."  They choose to "criminalize" the
Palestinians.  Israeli leader Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Haram
al-Sharif, which Barak allowed, started the uprising, then the Israeli army
responded to subsequent protests with "unusual ferocity."  "Once a cycle of
violence had been created, one could simply nurse it along."

Pelletiere urged the public to "pay special attention" to the fact
that journalists who are focusing on these stories and opinions are
conservative, as are the newspapers publishing them, mainly The New York
Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.  The line between
news and opinion has become blurred, mainly through the op-ed pages of the
newspapers.  "Spurious" ideas start there and then filter into the news.
This is not only the case regarding Israel/Palestine, but with other issues
as well.  The role of the press is to "serve special interests."  Pelletiere
urged those concerned with these issues to confront to media.  The "peace
movement faced the same challenges" in the 1960s and managed to overcome
them.  They can be overcome now as well, "but it does take innovative
thinking."

"There is a cadre [in the government] that knows what's going on"
and who are "fairly astute," but if their opinions are heard at all, they
are labeled "alternative."  During his work with the army and Central
Intelligence Agency, Pelletiere met those like him who had alternative
viewpoints but "never got a hearing until there was a crisis," such as
during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Despite his encouragement of innovative thinking, Pelletiere was
keenly aware of the challenges involved.  As he explained, conservatives are
"in the ascendancy" now.  He already sees trends developing following
Tuesday's attack.  These trends include the perceptions that:  (1) "We're at
war."  (2) America will never again be the same.  However, Pelletiere
asserted, "I don't think we're any different" than before.  The U.S. is
still nearing a recession, the information technology industry is still
failing, President Bush is still untested.  (3) Osama bin Laden is guilty of
the attack.  Pelletiere does not believe bin Laden had the resources to
organize such a campaign, but whether or not he is guilty, the U.S. will use
him as a scapegoat.  (4) The United States will likely attack Afghanistan.
The administration is already preparing the public for it through news
coverage and government briefings.

This is "not a classic conspiracy," Pelletiere pointed out.
Government and media leaders do not get together and decide what these
"lines" or trends will be.  Rather, there is a "distillation process" from
"thinks tanks" and policy institutes.  Certain approaches seem more
plausible than others, are repeated often enough, and are easier to defend
than other arguments, and they become the "line."  Pelletiere also urged the
audience to watch the stock market and observe how it affects U.S. policies.
The only times he has witnessed "real changes made" were when business
interests were affected.

As for what the U.S. leadership will do now, Pelletiere said, "All
they want to do is get themselves through this period.  If it develops into
a real exploitation where the administration begins to single out certain
areas for repression-then we're in for a very bad period.  I don't see any
signs of that now."  Nonetheless, "there's a tradition of using incidents
like this . . . to point American society into a very conservative
direction."  This has occurred "over and over again" in the past.  "Whether
that will happen this time, I don't think anyone has a way of knowing, but
it's a possibility."

The above text is based on remarks delivered on 13 September 2001 by Stephen
Pelletiere, Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Army War
College.  His views do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for
Policy Analysis on Palestine or The Jerusalem Fund.  This "For the Record"
was written by Publications Manager Wendy Lehman; it may be used without
permission but with proper attribution to the Center for Policy Analysis on
Palestine.
______________________________________________________________________

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From F r e e d o m: 14 September 2001

After the horrific tragedy, media outlets in the US repeatedly aired a clip
of a few Palestinians rejoicing.  However, there was hardly any
discussion or even reporting in the news of the following items.

- The terrorist act was strongly condemned by every single Palestinian
organization including Fatah, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas, Workers
Unions and Committees, Human Right Organizations (AlHaq, Law, Palestine
Center for Human Rights), student associations, municipalities, mosques
and churches, etc.

- The attack was also condemned by every single Arab American, Muslim
American, and countless other human rights organizations who support and/or
work for Palestinian human rights

- Palestinian Americans living in Palestine issued a statement in which they
reported that all messages they received from other Palestinians were of
sorrow and concern.

- Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi told a news conference the celebrations
were "misguided" and "aberrations" motivated by a feeling among Palestinians
that they have been victims of U.S. backing for Israel. Palestinian analyst
Ghassan al-Khatib said the ``human tragedy'' in the  United States should
not be exploited for political gains by making Palestinians, Arabs and
Muslims look like the "bad guys.'' The vast majority of Palestinians
condemned and were horrified and shocked by the terrorist attacks and
identified with the victims (as victims themselves).

- We won't know the exact numbers for sometime but there are likely dozens
if not hundreds of Muslim and Arab Americans killed in these despicable
terrorist attacks. Many are still missing and we pray that they will be
found safe.

- The US Consul General in Jerusalem reported that he has received a huge
stack of faxes from Palestinians and Palestinian organizations expressing
condolences, grief and solidarity.  He himself was pained to see that the
media chose to focus on the sensational images of a few Palestinians
rejoicing.

- The Palestine Legislative Council condemned the terrorist attack on the
United States and sent an urgent letter of condolences to Mr. J Dennis
Hasterd, Speaker of the House of Representatives.

- Palestinians in Occupied East Jerusalem held a candle-light vigils on 12
and 14 September to express their grief  and solidarity with the American
families struck by this tragedy. Mr. Abdel Qader Al-Husseini, son of the
late Palestinian leader Faisal Al-Husseini led one of the vigils.

- Jerusalem University students, along with the President of the
University and the Deans of the various Faculties, began a blood donation
drive in Occupied East Jerusalem. Students and
professors went to hospitals in the Occupied City, in order to donate blood
for the American victims who need it.

- The 1 million Palestinian students in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,
including Occupied East Jerusalem, stood five minutes in silence to express
their solidarity with the hundreds of American children who have been struck
by this strategy, which resembles in its shocking effects their daily
sufferings.

- Throughout the US, Arab and Muslim Americans joined other American in
solidarity vigils and prayers even when some of those members were attacked
and/or frightened by rhetoric being espoused in the media

Meanwhile:

- Georgia Senator Zell Miller's stated "I say bomb the hell out of them. If
there's collateral damage, so be it. They certainly found our civilians to
be expendable." [NY Times 9/13/01].

- "Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United
States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied:
'It's very good.' Then he edited himself: 'Well, not very  good, but it will
generate immediate sympathy.' New York Times, 12 September 2001, p. A22:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/international/12ISRA.html

- While the media's attention was diverted by the tragedy, Israeli forces
stormed the Palestinian cities of Jenin and later Jericho killing scores of
people, injuring over 120, and demolishing many homes and other buildings.

For other information, see
http://electronicIntifada.net/coveragetrends/rejoicing.html

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, is the largest network of
grassroots activists dedicated to Palestinian human rights.

For more information contact:

Al-Awda, Palestine Right to Return Coalition
P.O. Box 1172
Orange, CT 06477
Fax: (717) 832-1123
E-mail: prrc@mail.com
WWW: http://al-awda.org
Press Room: http://al-awda.org/pressroom.htm
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From: F r e e d o m

Khadeeja Fatafta---an epitome of Israeli terrorism

Occupied Jerusalem: 19 September

By Khalid Amayreh

"If the world wants to understand what happened in New York and Washington
on 11 September, the world must know first what happened to Khadeeja
Fatafta  in downtown Hebron on 17 September."

Khadeeja Fatafta, 22, and mother of two little children, was not hurling
stones on Israeli occupation soldiers tormenting Palestinian civilians into
subjugation and surrender.

Nor was she taking part in a peaceful demonstration protesting Israel's
ongoing  rampage of murder and terror against a people whose only crime is
their enduring desire to be free.  In fact, Fatafta didn't even happen to
be in a place where "confrontations" between the occupation army and
Palestinian resistors were taking place.

Khadeeja  was sitting peaceably outside the Princess Alia hospital in
downtown Hebron, awaiting to see a cardiologist to examine her child who
suffers from a congenital heart anomaly, the occurrence  of which doctors
say has increased significantly in Palestine due to the intensive and
unbridled  use by the Israeli army of lethal weapons with long-lasting
effects.

  And suddenly, on 17 September, calamity struck when an  Israeli army
sniper stationed on one of these strategic rooftops at Tel al Rumeida
pushed the trigger:  The result an 800 mm -caliber bullet  striking
Khadeeja  in the face, plucking out her left eye and causing a deep wide
hollow in the upper part of her face.

Unconscious and nearly dead,  Khadeeja was rushed to Saint Johns eye
hospital in East Jerusalem for treatment.  There her calamity was described
as the worst of all the estimated 193 Palestinian civilians who have lost
an eye or two as a  result of being hit by Israeli bullets, often fired by
army snipers stationed on strategic rooftops in Palestinian urban centers.

Her treating doctor, Aghlab Khouri, describes Khadeeja's case as "the
ugliest I've ever seen."

Speaking sorrowfully of Khadeeja's tragedy,  Khouri laments  that not only
will the young woman be blind for the test of her life, but will have to
live with serious defacement as well.

Khadija's distraught mother, weeping outside the hospital, mourns the
tragedy that befell her only daughter.

She asks in a lethargic tone,  combining bitterness, anger and helplessness
"what was her fault, why did they shoot her.may  God avenge my daughters'
calamity.may God destroy Israel, and American as well."

In fact what happened to Khadeeja is only a small representative example of
what  the Palestinian people have been going through  in the past year.

Last week, a Palestinian medical doctor, Hussein Ikdeimat, was killed in
similar circumstances in the same vicinity when he sought to give first aid
to a child who was shot by Israeli snipers.

The child survived, but Ikdeimat, 50 and father of six children, died to be
added to the long list of victims of the American-funded Israeli oppression
of a decimated people whose only crime is its enduring desire to be free
from occupation and apartheid.

Two other children had died earlier in similar circumstances and in the
same area which townspeople have come to call "death square."

All in all, the Israeli army and paramilitary Jewish terrorists killed no
less than 690 Palestinians in the last eleven months, a third of them
children and minors.

 And the injured exceeds 25000, many, very many, like Khadeeja Fatafta,
with crippling  disabilities and handicaps that will stay with them for the
rest of their life.

The Israeli army and government, indeed the heavily-armed fanatic Jewish
settlers, and also the media,  view the daily Palestinian calamities
blithely, even gleefully.

On 12 September, less than 24 hours after the tragic disasters in New York
and Washington, Israeli defense minister Benyamin Benalizer boasted that
the Israeli army killed 18 Palestinians and the world didn't utter a word
of protest at the carnage.

He  was alluding to the murder of 18 Palestinians in the city of Jenin on
12 September when as many as 60 Israeli tanks and several thousand soldiers
rampaged through the town, spreading death and terror everywhere,  taking
advantage of the world's preoccupation with events in the United States.

Other Israeli spokesmen would only blame the victims, suggesting that "this
is a self-inflicted tragedy that the Palestinians brought upon themselves,"
claims unscrupulously, even readily,  parroted by CNN and other
Zionist-controlled and manipulated American media.

Needless to say,  Israel's indescribably wanton terror and murder, which
very often assumes a collective approach and often thinly conceals
genocidal undertones of unmistakable features, triggers deep feelings of
frustration, vindictiveness and hatred, not only toward Israel, the
executive and direct tormentor, but at the United States,  perceived here
as the  ultimate enabler of Israeli oppression and guarantor and sponsor of
its continuity.

Last week, most Palestinians did express genuine sympathy with the victims
of the suicide plane crashes in the United States. However, it is morally
imperative to point out that there was also a feeling permeating in
Palestine, as in the rest of the Arab and Muslim world, that the US brewed
what it baked and reaped what it sowed.

The wanton and brazen embrace by the United States of Israeli apartheid and
colonialism may not justify the deadly terrorist attacks in the United
States. The murder of innocent people can never be justified, especially by
Muslims whose religion teaches them that "killing an innocent soul is like
killing the entire humanity."

  However, it would be brashly dishonest and crassly stupid to think that
America's misdeeds in the Middle East, to put it very mildly , don't  lead
to equally diabolic  reactions such as what we saw in New York in
Washington on 11 September.

It is wisdom's turn now  to mend the mess created so blithely and
insolently by greed and mindless power.
(end)
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Robert Fisk: Bush is walking into a trap

16 September 2001

Retaliation is a trap. In a world that was supposed to have learnt that the
rule of law comes above revenge, President Bush appears to be heading for
the very disaster that Osama bin Laden has laid down for him. Let us have no
doubts about what happened in New York and Washington last week. It was a
crime against humanity. We cannot understand America's need to retaliate
unless we accept this bleak, awesome fact. But this crime was perpetrated -
it becomes ever clearer - to provoke the United States into just the blind,
arrogant punch that the US military is preparing.

Mr bin Laden - every day his culpability becomes more apparent - has
described to me how he wishes to overthrow the pro-American regime of the
Middle East, starting with Saudi Arabia and moving on to Egypt, Jordan and
the other Gulf states. In an Arab world sunk in corruption and
dictatorships - most of them supported by the West - the only act that might
bring Muslims to strike at their own leaders would be a brutal,
indiscriminate assault by the United States. Mr bin Laden is unsophisticated
in foreign affairs, but a close student of the art and horror of war. He
knew how to fight the Russians who stayed on in Afghanistan, a Russian
monster that revenged itself upon its ill-educated, courageous antagonists
until, faced with war without end, the entire Soviet Union began to fall
apart.

The Chechens learnt this lesson. And the man responsible for so much of the
bloodbath in Chechnya - the career KGB man whose army is raping and
murdering the insurgent Sunni Muslim population of Chechnya - is now being
signed up by Mr Bush for his "war against people''. Vladimir Putin must
surely have a sense of humour to appreciate the cruel ironies that have now
come to pass, though I doubt if he will let Mr Bush know what happens when
you start a war of retaliation; your army - like the Russian forces in
Chechnya - becomes locked into battle with an enemy that appears ever more
ruthless, ever more evil.

But the Americans need look no further than Ariel Sharon's futile war with
the Palestinians to understand the folly of retaliation. In Lebanon, it was
always the same. A Hizbollah guerrilla would kill an Israeli occupation
soldier, and the Israelis would fire back in retaliation at a village in
which a civilian would die. The Hizbollah would retaliate with a Katyusha
missile attack over the Israeli border, and the Israelis would retaliate
again with a bombardment of southern Lebanon. In the end, the Hizbollah -
the "centre of world terror'' according to Mr Sharon - drove the Israelis
out of Lebanon.

In Israel/Palestine, it is the same story. An Israeli soldier shoots a
Palestinian stone-thrower. The Palestinians retaliate by killing a settler.
The Israelis then retaliate by sending a murder squad to kill a Palestinian
gunman. The Palestinians retaliate by sending a suicide bomber into a
pizzeria. The Israelis then retaliate by sending F-16s to bomb a Palestinian
police station. Retaliation leads to retaliation and more retaliation. War
without end.

And while Mr Bush - and perhaps Mr Blair - prepare their forces, they
explain so meretriciously that this is a war for "democracy and liberty'',
that it is about men who are "attacking civilisation''. "America was
targeted for attack,'' Mr Bush informed us on Friday, "because we are the
brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.'' But this is not
why America was attacked. If this was an Arab-Muslim apocalypse, then it is
intimately associated with events in the Middle East and with America's
stewardship of the area. Arabs, it might be added, would rather like some of
that democracy and liberty and freedom that Mr Bush has been telling them
about. Instead, they get a president who wins 98 per cent in the elections
(Washington's friend, Mr Mubarak) or a Palestinian police force, trained by
the CIA, that tortures and sometimes kills its people in prison. The Syrians
would also like a little of that democracy. So would the Saudis. But their
effete princes are all friends of America - in many cases, educated at US
universities.

I will always remember how President Clinton announced that Saddam Hussein -
another of our grotesque inventions - must be overthrown so that the people
of Iraq could choose their own leaders. But if that happened, it would be
the first time in Middle Eastern history that Arabs have been permitted to
do so. No, it is "our'' democracy and "our'' liberty and freedom that Mr
Bush and Mr Blair are talking about, our Western sanctuary that is under
attack, not the vast place of terror and injustice that the Middle East has
become.

Let me illustrate what I mean. Nineteen years ago today, the greatest act of
terrorism - using Israel's own definition of that much misused word - in
modern Middle Eastern history began. Does anyone remember the anniversary in
the West? How many readers of this article will remember it? I will take a
tiny risk and say that no other British newspaper - certainly no American
newspaper - will today recall the fact that on 16 September 1982, Israel's
Phalangist militia allies started their three-day orgy of rape and knifing
and murder in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila that cost
1,800 lives. It followed an Israeli invasion of Lebanon - designed to drive
the PLO out of the country and given the green light by the then US
Secretary of State, Alexander Haig - which cost the lives of 17,500 Lebanese
and Palestinians, almost all of them civilians. That's probably three times
the death toll in the World Trade Centre. Yet I do not remember any vigils
or memorial services or candle-lighting in America or the West for the
innocent dead of Lebanon; I don't recall any stirring speeches about
democracy or liberty. In fact, my memory is that the United States spent
most of the bloody months of July and August 1982 calling for "restraint".

No, Israel is not to blame for what happened last week. The culprits were
Arabs, not Israelis. But America's failure to act with honour in the Middle
East, its promiscuous sale of missiles to those who use them against
civilians, its blithe disregard for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi
children under sanctions of which Washington is the principal supporter -
all these are intimately related to the society that produced the Arabs who
plunged America into an apocalypse of fire last week.

America's name is literally stamped on to the missiles fired by Israel into
Palestinian buildings in Gaza and the West Bank. Only four weeks ago, I
identified one of them as an AGM 114-D air-to-ground rocket made by Boeing
and Lockheed-Martin at their factory in - of all places - Florida, the state
where some of the suiciders trained to fly.

It was fired from an Apache helicopter (made in America, of course) during
the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when hundreds of cluster bombs were
dropped in civilian areas of Beruit by the Israelis in contravention of
undertakings given to the United States. Most of the bombs had US Naval
markings and America then suspended a shipment of fighter bombers to
Israel - for less than two months.

The same type of missile - this time an AGM 114-C made inGeorgia - was fired
by the Israelis into the back of an ambulance near the Lebanese village of
Mansori, killing two women and four children. I collected the pieces of the
missile, including its computer coding plate, flew to Georgia and presented
them to the manufacturers at the Boeing factory. And what did the developer
of the missile say to me when I showed him photographs of the children his
missile had killed? "Whatever you do," he told me, "don't quote me as saying
anything critical of the policies of Israel."

I'm sure the father of those children, who was driving the ambulance, will
have been appalled by last week's events, but I don't suppose, given the
fate of his own wife - one of the women killed - that he was in a mood to
send condolences to anyone. All these facts, of course, must be forgotten
now.

Every effort will be made in the coming days to switch off the "why''
question and concentrate on the who, what and how. CNN and most of the
world's media have already obeyed this essential new war rule. I've already
seen what happens when this rule is broken. When The Independent published
my article on the connection between Middle Eastern injustice and the New
York holocaust, the BBC's 24-hour news channel produced an American
commentator who remarked that "Robert Fisk has won the prize for bad
taste''. When I raised the same point on an Irish radio talk show, the other
guest, a Harvard lawyer, denounced me as a bigot, a liar, a "dangerous man''
and - of course - potentially anti-Semitic. The Irish pulled the plug on
him.

No wonder we have to refer to the terrorists as "mindless''. For if we did
not, we would have to explain what went on in those minds. But this attempt
to censor the realities of the war that has already begun must not be
permitted to continue. Look at the logic. Secretary of State Colin Powell
was insisting on Friday that his message to the Taliban is simple: they have
to take responsibility for sheltering Mr bin Laden. "You cannot separate
your activities from the activities of the perpetrators,'' he warned. But
the Americans absolutely refuse to associate their own response to their
predicament with their activities in the Middle East. We are supposed to
hold our tongues, even when Ariel Sharon - a man whose name will always be
associated with the massacre at Sabra and Shatila - announces that Israel
also wishes to join the battle against "world terror''.

No wonder the Palestinians are fearful. In the past four days, 23
Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and Gaza, an astonishing
figure that would have been front-page news had America not been blitzed. If
Israel signs up for the new conflict, then the Palestinians - by fighting
the Israelis - will, by extension, become part of the "world terror''
against which Mr Bush is supposedly going to war. Not for nothing did Mr
Sharon claim that Yasser Arafat had connections with Osama bin Laden.

I repeat: what happened in New York was a crime against humanity. And that
means policemen, arrests, justice, a whole new international court at The
Hague if necessary. Not cruise missiles and "precision'' bombs and Muslim
lives lost in revenge for Western lives. But the trap has been sprung. Mr
Bush - perhaps we, too - are now walking into it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=94254

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Articles

Dozens of scholars of Islam issued a statement , condemning last week's
violent attacks
http://groups.colgate.edu/aarislam/response.htm

Japanese Americans Recall '40s Bias, Understand Arab Counterparts' Fear
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59305-2001Sep19.html

Feeling Like the Enemy Within
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-092001family.story

Arab Americans Enduring Hard Stares of Other Fliers
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-092001profile.story

Explaining Arab anger
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1552000/1552900.stm

'Suicide hijacker' is an airline pilot alive and well in Jeddah
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=94438

Stunned into disbelief as their 'normal' son is blamed
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=94339

Working with UN could avert disaster
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,554979,00.html

France fears fractures from 'terrorist war'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,555167,00.html

Some Hijackers' Identities Uncertain
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59320-2001Sep19.html

Helping a Muslim Democracy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59538-2001Sep19.html

America Inspires Both Longing and Loathing in Arab World
http://nytimes.com/2001/09/16/international/16AMER.html

A Muslim specialist says our acquaintance with Islam has just begun, and at
the wrong place
http://beliefnet.com/story/87/story_8750_1.html

A dangerous myth that distorts Islam: The west makes too little effort to
understand the religion, and is partially responsible for its extremist
elements
http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=010919001834&query
=OZDEM+SANBERK

Petition that will be forwarded to President Bush, and other world leaders,
urging them to avoid war.
http://home.uchicago.edu/~dhpicker/petition

Better to be silent than out of step when Bush bangs the drum
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=94851

'Smoking them out' is not new in the Middle East
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=94825

The Mideast Is Also Changed
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/19/opinion/19TELH.html

Fear in the Open City
http://nytimes.com/2001/09/19/opinion/19RAHM.html

A Writer's Delicate Hope for His Native Pakistan
http://latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-000075082sep19.story

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