THE SLAUGHTER IN ALGERIA
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THE SLAUGHTER IN ALGERIA

April 28, 2001

MER WeekEnd Reading:

ARABS SLAUGHTER ARABS IN ALGERIA

150,000 Killed So Far

'I cannot remain silent' - The role the Algerian army played in the massive killings of innocent civilians during the last 10 years is exposed by a former officer

By Daniel Ben Simon

[Ha'aretz 20 April 2001]:

"La Sale Guerre: le Temoignage d'un Ancien Officier des Forces Speciales de l'Armee Algeriennes, 1992-2000" ("The Dirty War: The testimony of a former officer of the special forces of the Algerian army, 1992-2000"), by Habib Souaidia, preface by Ferdinando Imposimato, La Decouverte, 203 pages, 95FF.

This book contains shocking testimony about what is happening inside a country where, according to reliable estimates, more than 150,000 of its citizens have been slaughtered during the past decade.

"My name is Habib Souaidia, and I am 31," writes the author at the beginning of the book. "I served as an officer in the special forces of the Algerian Army. When I enlisted in the army in 1989, I never imagined that I would be a direct witness of the tragedy that has befallen my country ...

"I have seen my colleagues set fire to a boy of 15, who burned like a living torch. I have seen soldiers slaughtering civilians and blaming 'the terrorists.' I have seen senior officers murdering in cold blood simple people who were suspected of Islamic activities. I have seen officers torturing Islamic activists to death. I have seen too many things. I cannot remain silent. These are sufficient reasons for breaking my silence."

There is a huge argument raging in Algeria and elsewhere about the identity of those responsible for the killings, the massacres and the mass liquidations. It is hard to believe, but the fact is that even after more than 150,000 people were massacred, there are only rare cases in which the identity of the killers has been made known. The army claims that armed Islamic fighters associated with the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) are the ones who have perpetrated the mass killings of innocent people. The Front claims that it is the army that is behind the horror that has been raging in the country for over a decade.

Habib Souaidia's book is the first to expose the part the army has played in the work of liquidation. The testimonies that could embarrass the military regime in Algeria and undermine the international legitimacy of the regime headed by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Immediately after the book came out in France in February of this year, the heads of the army hastened to deny its contents, and defined the author as a criminal and traitor who is not to be believed. Even before the book came out, the fleeing officer was granted political refuge in France.

Fighting his own people

When he was young, Habib Souaidia dreamed of enlisting in the army. The smartly pressed uniform and the respect accorded military service sparked his admiration for the army. There was an additional reason for a young man like him to enlist: In 1980 the country suffered an economic crisis that threatened to paralyze it. Unemployment skyrocketed to rates unprecedented since Algeria received its independence.

"The army, the police and the presidential guard looked to us like a lifesaver against unemployment," he writes. "This is the reason many of my friends chose to go into uniform immediately upon completing school."

Habib comes from a different background. According to him, he did not need the army's money. It was his patriotic sentiments and the love of his country that impelled him to volunteer for the army in the hope that one day he would become a fighter in one of the special units. He never imagined that his intensive training would qualify him to fight to the death against members of his own people, the Islamic fighters.

This happened faster than expected. In October 1988, a few months before he was inducted, bloody demonstrations took place in the capital, Algiers. At the end of the week of demonstrations, it turned out that 500 young demonstrators had lost their lives to army bullets. The mass killing shocked the nation. The religious background of the victims led to the strengthening of the status of the religious leaders. Not five months went by, and in March 1989 the birth of the Islamic Salvation Front was declared.

According to the author, the appearance of the Islamic movement in the public arena stirred the emotions of millions of inhabitants. Many of them, especially young people, were sick of the blunders of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), which headed the country after Algeria won its independence from France. The discourse of the FIS "conquered" the poor suburbs, the distressed neighborhoods where the inhabitants were barely scraping together a living.

"The poor behaved as if they had been bewitched by the preachers and speakers of the FIS," the author explains.

A year later, in June 1990, an incident occurred that could have changed the history of the country that had been ruled by the French for more than 130 years, until Algeria became independent in the 1960s. The FIS ran in the elections for local authorities and won a sweeping victory in many parts of the country. Immediately thereafter, plaques of the former ruling party were ripped off the facades of municipal buildings and new signs along the lines of Baladiya Islamiya (Islamic Municipality) were affixed.

Barely a day had passed and the new local authorities, wearing white robes, hastened to inform the nation that it was their intention to prohibit women from bathing at the beaches, and that men had to wear bathing suits.

After the people of the FIS proclaimed their victory, Algerians walked the streets stunned, as if stricken by lightning. Though they were glad that the regime of the partie unique - the sole party - had come to an end after 30 years of rule, they feared the atmosphere of chaos that hovered in the air.

"One thing was clear," writes Habib. "The Islamists were determined to go all the way and take political control in the general elections as well. To many citizens it was clear that the era of freedom in the country was about to end: Women would stop going out to work, studying and advancing their liberation; men would have to change their habits and learn to live without smoking cigarettes and without drinking alcohol."

'Pillars of the homeland'

The seeds of the civil war began to sprout at every street corner. The army did not intend to sit idly by and see Algeria march along the Islamic route on its way to becoming a north African version of Khomeini's Iran. The day after the Front's victory in the local elections an alert was declared in the ranks of the army.

"The country must not fall into the hands of the Islamists," General Mohammed Bousharab exhorted cadets at the officers' academy. "Algeria is relying on you. You are the pillars of the homeland and you must save it from its enemies."

Second Lieutenant Habib Souaidia stood at attention with his friends and took the words of the senior officer to heart: "The truth is that we didn't really understand what he was talking about," he writes. "They prepared us for a war against a foreign invader and now we found ourselves getting ready for a war to the death against Algerians, members of our own people."

In 1992, the year the army revoked the FIS' victory in the general elections, there was a hunt for any sign of religion in army bases. Any soldier who held secret or open sympathies for the Front movement was immediately discharged from the ranks of the army or put in prison. Soldiers and officers were forbidden to pray at the mosques on their bases. According to the author, the army command operated mercilessly against any evidence of hesitancy or doubt regarding the iron fist policy against the Islamic party. Officers and soldiers were thrown in jail and harshly tortured. Others were murdered.

"Suspicion poisoned the atmosphere at the army bases," he writes. "Everyone was afraid for his life, everyone was afraid he would be informed against, everyone was afraid to talk to his fellows lest it turn out he was an agent of military intelligence."

This dirty war knew no limits. Hundreds and thousands were slain using brutal methods reminiscent of the regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia. The slayers showed no mercy toward old people, women, children or infants. Throughout that period, the big question reverberated: "Who is behind these shocking killings?"

Second Lieutenant Habib Souaidia acknowledges that most of the acts of killing were carried out by Islamic Front people, but in his story he also relates the part the army played in this bloody scenario. He became aware of this directly. "It happened one night in March, 1993," he relates. "After I finished my shift I was summoned to my commanding officer, Major Daoud. He ordered me to take my people to guard a truck on its way to one of the villages. I went outside and I saw the truck. I peeked inside and saw the silhouettes of dozens of commando fighters from one of the special units. They were carrying knives and grenades. I was told that they were on their way to a 'special mission.'

"I drove behind the truck until it stopped in the village of Dawar Azatariya where the inhabitants were suspected of supporting the FIS movement. I was asked to remain with my men outside the village. Two hours later the truck came back. One of the officers took a blood-stained knife that he held near his throat, making a sweeping side to side motion. I didn't need any additional signs to understand what had happened in the village. Two days later there were headlines in the Algerian press: 'Islamic attack in Dawar Azatariya. Dozens killed in the massacre.' I couldn't believe my eyes. I felt that I had been an accomplice to a terrible crime."

Soldier, not murderer

On his way to a military opearation against Islamic activists in the city of Tiz-Ouzu east of the capital, the writer received explicit instructions from General Mohammed Laamri: "The Islamists want to get to Paradise, so we'll help them get there as quickly as possible," the general said. "I don't want prisoners, I want dead people only." This order gave Second Lieutenant Habib Souaidia no rest: "I realized that I had nothing more to do in the Algerian army," he writes. "I wanted to be a soldier, not a murderer."

But events followed one another at a dizzying pace. Dead and wounded every day in a horrendous cycle of violence. The author admits that he was shocked by the death-lust that filled the "armed fighters for Islam," which is the military wing of the FIS. "They were not afraid of death," according to his account. "They even hastened toward it. That was their belief. They were sure that their death would bring them to Paradise. As for us, we were trapped in hell."

The author documents the reciprocal slaughter with surgical precision. There is no torture that was not tried by both sides. The Islamic liquidators slew entire villages, and eradicateurs from the army cruelly eliminated anyone suspected of belonging to or aiding the armed Islamic groups. The behavior of his fellows in the army disturbed him so much that Souaidia began to think of deserting to the West to expose what he calls "the dirty war."

Things reached their peak when his fellow soldiers arrested a 15-year-old cigarette seller. He was suspected of passing information to Islamic activists in the city of Sidi-Bal-Abbas, which is to the west of Algiers. Lieutenant Abdelhak ordered him to kneel. He poured fuel over him, pulled a lighter out of his pocket and set the boy on fire.

"No, I said to myself," writes the author. "I don't believe that he is going to do this."

In 1995, Second Lieutenant Habib Souaidia was sentenced to four years in prison, after he was convicted of stealing spare parts from army stores. At first the officer denied the charges, but he quickly realized that he was being punished because he had criticized the murders under the auspices of the army and the cruel behavior of his fellow men in uniform.

"They arrested me to silence me," he writes. The author swore that after he was released he would expose to the free world what his state had been doing. A year after he was released with the rank of private, he obtained a passport and flew to France. He tried to interest journalists in his story. Some accused him of spreading lies, others believed him and published things that he said. Within a few months a publisher was found who agreed to publish his memoirs. In November 2000 the French authorities granted his request for political asylum.

With its appearance, the book precipitated a fair amount of embarrassment in the corridors of the government of France. During the past decade, Presidents Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac stood behind the Algerian administration and backed its war against the Islamic fighters. Any time rumors spread in France about slaughter committed under the auspices of the army, the two presidents denied them and described them as "Islamic propaganda."

Now along comes this book to fortify these rumors: "I wanted to write about the dirty war that was directed against innocent civilians, whose only crime was that they were well-disposed toward Islam," he writes. "This war is still going on. Thus far more than 150,000 people have been killed, and those responsible for this crime are the generals who head the army. They are fighting to defend their rule and the enormous amount of property they have accumulated."

At the top of the list of countries who are aiding the generals he places France. "France has given me political asylum," he writes, "but this cannot prevent me from declaring that it has abetted the murderous generals to protect its interests."

If he were to be asked about a possible solution, he would say that his country's problem is not religion, nor is it Islam.

"The main problem is injustice," he states at the end of the book. "If an end is put to the injustice, peace will come to Algeria. Therefore it is necessary to stop the corrupt individuals who are continuing to rob the huge assets of the Algerian people.


April 2001


Magazine



ARAB-AMERICANS - PATHETIC STATE OF AFFAIRS
(April 30, 2001)
Regular readers of MER won't be all that surprised; though many others will be, especially those who misguidedly and in many cases sincerely give their money, support, and most of all their hopes to these pathetic groups.

THE DARK SIDE OF ISRAELI INDEPENDENCE Day
(April 30, 2001)
Leave it to the Arab Americans to screw things up all the time. As the iconoclastic Israel writer Israel Shamir said as he prematurely departed American shores a few days ago: "With such Palestinian activists, who needs the Israeli lobby?"

ABDULLAH AND THE CIA - LONG HISTORICAL CONSPIRACY AGAINST PALESTINIANS
(April 30, 2001)
The Israelis and the Americans are busy using the Mubarak Regime in Egypt and the Hashemite Regime in Jordan in an increasingly desperate attempt to quash Intifada II and create still more years for the Israelis to consolidate and make permanent their grip on the Palestinians.

WAR MACHINES ON THE MARCH - MER FLASHBACK
(April 29, 2001)
Before the Second Intifada began, before last year's aborted Camp David fiasco, before this year's sweeping victory of Ariel Sharon and the attempt to then position Ehud Barak as Defense Minister, MER was already writing about what was to come while most of the media was sidetracked with and seduced by "the peace process."

THE "APARTHEID PEACE" REMAINS THE GAME BEING PLAYED
(April 28, 2001)
They -- the same personalities representing the same countries that created this "Apartheid Peace" and its resultant intensified uprising against it -- are at it again.

THE SLAUGHTER IN ALGERIA
(April 28, 2001)
This book contains shocking testimony about what is happening inside a country where, according to reliable estimates, more than 150,000 of its citizens have been slaughtered during the past decade.

THE ARAB AMERICAN and JEWISH AMERICAN SCENES
(April 27, 2001)
You gotta love all these scams that so many so tragically so often fall for -- especially the confused and naive Arab Americans.

THE GAZA CONCENTRATION CAMP
(April 27, 2001)
Over the years the Israelis have essentially turned The Gaza Strip from a Ghetto to a kind of Concentration Camp. In this small area today live more than 1 million Palestinians, a large number of whom have never been able to leave and reenter.

ARAFAT'S ESCAPE PLAN - MER FLASHBACK
(April 26, 2001)
More than $100 million dollars in a secret bank account set up by the Israelis and designed to make it possible for Arafat and friends to flee a coup and set up a "government in exile"?

SHA'ATH and PERES DESERVE EACH OTHER -- BUT HOW TRAGIC FOR THE PALESTINIANS
(April 26, 2001)
Sharon is sending Peres to Cairo, and Sha'ath visiting Sweden says there is a "crack in the wall of darkensss."

BERKELEY STUDENTS TAKE THE LEAD
(April 25, 2001)
With the total failure of the Arab American organizations at the national level, and of course provoked now by an Intifada II that is half a year old and the election of Ariel Sharon as PM in Israel, the grassroots are finally stirring a little, students in the lead as at other times in history.

CASINO FIRST!
(April 25, 2001)
In the old days of Intifada I Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres were busy pursuing their "Gaza First" strategy. It was never presented, but always designed, as a kind of trap for the Palestinians; and it was continually rejected by the Palestinian negotiating team that went to Madrid and then Washington, headed by Dr. Haider Abdul-Shafi.

Washington Scene: THE TRAGIC STATE OF ARAB AMERICAN AFFAIRS
(April 25, 2001)
Three things this week underscored the pathetically tragic state of affairs for the Arab American community which remains, well, politically retarded and as a result miserably weak...not to mention oh so co-opted and manipulated.

ISRAEL & TURKEY - MAJOR MILITARY ALLIANCE
(April 25, 2001)
While the misnomered "peace process" continues to dominate the news, arms continue to flood into the Middle East region and possible war preparations are underway.

SHIMON PERES - NOW HOLOCAUST DENIER!
(April 23, 2001)
For the past few years we have mentioned the great importance of the new military axis in the Middle East that adds Turkey's size and power to the U.S.-Israeli alliance that dominates and controls the region.

ARAFAT'S TRAVEL NOW RESTRICTED - MAYBE ON PURPOSE?
(April 23, 2001)
The front-page Washington Post article over the weekend about what the Israelis are up to helps reveal what the new General in charge of the Israeli Army, Ariel Sharon, is attempting to accomplish.

BLOODY SUNDAY AS SIX BOMBS ROCK ISRAEL, GAZA
(April 22, 2001)
Two explosions hit Israel over the space of several hours, and four bombs were detonated in Gaza City which is under Palestinian control.

TERROR IN TEL AVIV TODAY AS US PREPARES FOR BIOLOGICAL ATTACK
(April 22, 2001)
Like so many things in life, terror is a two-edged sword. No doubt the Israelis will use today's bomb blast in Tel Aviv to still further clamp down on and try to choke the Palestinians into submission.

ISRAEL'S ETHNIC CLEANSING SECRETS
(April 21, 2001)
Israel's prime minister-elect, in the throes of forming a new government, is known to be a militant nationalist. Ariel Sharon's view of history is that the Zionists unequivocally have justice on their side in the conflict over what is known to Jews as the Land of Israel and to Palestinians as Palestine.

HISTORIC JEWISH STATEMENT SUPPORTING PALESTINIAN INTIFADA
(April 21, 2001)
Two months after the first Palestinian Intifada began in December 1987, a group of professionals, all American Jews including many professors and lawyers, joined together to publish as a full page ad in THE NATION Magazine of 13 February 1988 this historic statement: "Time To Dissociate From Israel"

ARAB AMERICANS STILL TERRIBLY WEAK
(April 20, 2001)
Three things this week underscored the pathetically tragic state of affairs for the Arab American community which remains, well, politically retarded and as a result miserably weak...not to mention oh so co-opted and manipulated.

FROM THE FRONT
(April 19, 2001)
Attempts by Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, to crush Palestinian violence by adopting still harsher military tactics came to nought last night, after guerrillas in the Gaza Strip fired more mortars into Israel, and one of the worst battles for months erupted on the edge of Bethlehem.

MUBARAK - MORE FRIGHTENED THAN ANGRY OR CREDIBLE
(April 19, 2001)
They use to call him the "laughing cow". Anwar Sadat made him Vice-President thinking he'd never really have to worry much about him. And he himself has never made anyone Vice-President fearing any and everyone.

QANA MASSACRE - 5TH ANNIVERSARY
(April 18, 2001)
It was only four years ago; but already it has been mostly forgotten -- the terrible Qana Massacre in southern Lebanon, and the atrocious cover-up by Israel, the U.S. and the U.N. that followed.

QANA REMEMBERED
(April 18, 2001)
It was five years ago today that hundreds of civilians under U.N. protection in southern Lebanon were brutally killed or maimed by the Israeli Army. With Shimon Peres then Prime Minister after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israelis desperately tried to cover it all up and pretend it was just a mistake of war.

LATEST NEWS FROM THE FRONTS
(April 17, 2001)
With a heavy rocket barrage, Israel seized nearly a square mile of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, retaking Palestinian-controlled territory for the first time since 1994 in retaliation for a mortar attack on a small Israeli desert town.

ROBERT FISK SPEAKS UP OH SO THOUGHTFULLY AND COURAGEOUSLY
(April 17, 2001)
The famous American Jewish iconoclastic journalist Izzy Stone (I.F.Stone) once told me over a long dinner in my apartment that the role of real and serious journalists in our day and age needed to be "to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted."

ISRAEL STRIKES STILL HARDER, IMPOTENT ARAB "CLIENT REGIMES" COWER
(April 17, 2001)
We shouldn't be surprised what the Israelis are doing. Ehud Barak may have hesitated, but after all in the end both he and Shimon Peres publicly gave their endorsements to Ariel Sharon and Sharon has been warning and threatening to do just such things for a very long time.

HASHEMITES CONTINUE TO COLLABORATE
(April 16, 2001)
Today the Jordanian Foreign Minister goes to Israel even as Israeli bombs kill Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians and the whole region is being humbled and shaken by the Israeli Generals, accused war criminal Ariel Sharon now in charge.

CIA BUGS ARAFAT AND ALL P.A. LEADERSHIP
(April 14, 2001)
Arafat has been paid a very great amount of money for the deals he signed in Washington, Cairo, Sharm, Hebron, et. al. He, his family (the Tawils), and top cronies like Nabil Shaath, Abu Mazen, et. al., now have hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts as a result.

EPILOGUE TO A DECADE - A SERIOUS ISRAELI ANALYSIS
(April 14, 2001)
From what would usually be called the far far left in Israel and whose voice is rarely heard these days beyond their own circles -- but which we would term the serious, sophisticated, highly committed and principled Israeli intelligentsia -- there is a magazine published every other month called "Challenge".

EASTER IN THE "HOLY LAND"
(April 13, 2001)
Two thousand years ago on the ancient streets of Jerusalem it was the Roman army in control, the Jewish people under occupation, and Jesus, a heretical Jewish rabbi, heading to his crucifixation as a result of "official" Jewish and Roman cooperation.

DEATH MY REMOTE CONTROL AS HIT SQUADES RETURN
(April 13, 2001)
Israel's strategy has always been to overwhelm and suffocate the Palestinians. At various times different tactics have been used ranging from diplomacy to brutality, from talk of "Statehood" to the imposition of neo-Apartheid.

ISRAELI ARMY ON THE RAMPAGE
(April 12, 2001)
A seven-year-old Palestinian girl was shot in the face by an Israeli rubber bullet while at school in the West Bank village of al-Khader when clashes broke out nearby, medical sources said.

IT'S WAR, MURDER, ASSASSINATIONS AND BEATINGS
(April 12, 2001)
With Robert Fisk, based out of Beirut and the longest serving Western journalist in the region, and Phil Reeves among the Palestinians and the Israelis, The Independent is usually heads above the English rest in both its coverage and analysis.

ISRAELIS ATTACK EVEN MORE BOLDLY
(April 11, 2001)
The Israelis won't be returning to "Zone A"; why should they? After all one of the major goals of the Madrid-Oslo "Peace Process" was to get the Palestinians into isolated and controlled "autonomous population centers" and let them fend for themselves.

ISRAEL BEGINS MINI INVASION STRATEGY
(April 11, 2001)
The Israelis have changed Generals, and the new master General Ariel Sharon is doing things his way. But then nearly everyone else among the Israeli elite has lined up right behind him.

ABDULLAH - KING OF JORDAN, AGENT OF THE ANGLO-AMERICANS
(April 11, 2001)
Abdullah II, ruler of Jordan, once called TransJordan, once called the East Bank of Palestine, is once again in Washington. The pattern is all too familiar.

ISRAELIS START USING GROUND TO GROUND MISSILES TO ATTACK PALESTINIANS
(April 10, 2001)
Starting yesterday, and for the first time in the occupied territories against the Palestinians, the Israelies have begun to use surface to surface missiles. In doing so the Israelis are once again throwing down the gauntlet to the entire Arab and Muslim world.

RACISM, MILITARISM, NEO-NAZISM IN THE "JEWISH STATE"
(April 10, 2001)
Racism, militarism, and a peculiar form of Israeli neo-Nazism thrives in today "Jewish State". Harsh conclusions, true; but buttressed by considerable evidence, both factual and ideological.

"VOICE OF AMERICA" EXPANDING TOWARDS CRUCIAL MIDDLE EAST
(April 9, 2001)
Just a few years ago, after the original Camp David agreement in 1978, the joke around Cairo was that the "Voice of America" was really all those loud muffler-broken U.S-supplied buses helping choke, or unchoke depending on your perspective, Cairo's teeming streets.

BARAK AND SHARON PLAN NEXT WAR
(April 9, 2001)
Long before anyone even thought Ariel Sharon might become Israeli Prime Minister... Long before anyone even thought Shimon Peres would serve as Sharon's Foreign Minister... While the "Peace Process" and plans for "Camp David II" were riding high... MER was writing about the coming war being planned by Generals Barak and Sharon in tandem.

DEIR YASSIN REMEMBERED AND "THE QUILT"
(April 8, 2001)
"It's so unfair... After 50 years the Israelis have nuclear weapons, the Mossad, Hollywood, a kosher White House, and their own Assistant Secretary of State; while the Arabs have corruption, secret-police, pathetic Arab- American organizations, Arafat, and the 50th anniversary quilt!"

THE PATHETIC ARAFAT - GIVER AND BEGGAR
(April 8, 2001)
This guy Arafat, and those who advise him, are truly getting ore pathetic all the time. We now learn that while his people suffer even worse than before as a result of what he and his cronies have done, and not done, Arafat has been busy giving expensive jewelry gifts to the former American President, First Lady, and Secretary of State (and no doubt there is a larger list!).

PASSOVER IN THE TIME OF THE INTIFADA
(April 8, 2001)
"I have been invited to a neighbor's Seder this year, and in my fantasy I have thought that I would rather sit on a box at home by myself in the dark with my face to the wall for the length of time the Seder lasts, out of a mixture of shame and protest against Israel's denial of freedom to her Palestinian neighbors."

THE LAST PASSOVER
(April 7, 2001)
"Is this the last Passover that I will celebrate? My heart is not in the celebration this year. And it can never be again until freedom for Jews is also freedom for Palestinians."

THE NEXT EXPULSION OF THE PALESTINIANS?
(April 7, 2001)
The effect of the four-month-old al-Aqsa intifada has been to radicalize and polarize all sides and thus the current situation poses a great danger to the Palestinian people.

ISRAELIS AND U.S. CONGRESS POUND PALESTINIANS
(April 6, 2001)
What is happening now is the result of all the past years of ineptitude, corruption, stupidities, and mistakes by the the various Arab "client regimes", Yasser Arafat's included of course, as well as from the various "client organizations" allied with them, especially in the US.

ISRAELIS BUILD, AMERICANS DECEIVE, ARABS WINK AND HIDE
(April 6, 2001)
This little game has gone on quite literally for decades now. The Israelis twist and turn, delay and obfuscate, but all the while push forward. The Americans say one thing and do another, and when the going gets hot they provide a little criticism of Israel for the Arab media but reserve the important things that really matter for ongoing and escalating cooperation with the Israelis.

"RIGHT OF RETURN" AMERICAN STYLE - PART 4
(April 5, 2001)
This time they are going to march down a largely weekend deserted street in New York City, after gathering at a closed Israeli Consulate, to listen to a group of largely unknown speakers familiar only to themselves, with no strategy other than to gather among themselves to listen to themselves and to be able to say for themselves that they are doing something important...

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT AGAINST TOP THREE ARAFAT PEOPLE?
(April 5, 2001)
Believing the official Israelis is all but impossible at this point; so one has to do the best one can to put together the pieces in ways that make sense. What happened yesterday was probably not an actual assassination attempt -- if that's what the Israelis wanted to do to these three they have the capabilities to do so and not to miss.

THE JORDANIAN POLICE STATE
(April 4, 2001)
About five days before the convening of the Arab Summit in Amman, dozens of masked security men armed to the teeth, along with officers of the Intelligence service (mukhabarat), stormed the house of Siajj Said Daraghmeh near Jabri on the Gardens Street in Amman.

"RIGHT OF RETURN" AMERICAN STYLE - PART 3
(April 4, 2001)
Saturday a few thousand Arab Americans are planning to make it to Washington "demanding" the "Right of Return" for Palestinian refugees. What should one think about this?

"RIGHT OF RETURN" CONF A "DISASTER" - PART 2
(April 3, 2001)
The region itself has corrupt and incompetent "client regimes", now including that of Yasser Arafat. And that explains a great deal why such an important and rich part of the world with over 200 million people is so regularly humbled and bleeding.

"RIGHT OF RETURN" AMERICAN STYLE - PART 1
(April 3, 2001)
This year the selected slogan for Arab Americans is "the Right of Return". A couple of years ago at the time of the 50th anniversary of the 1948 war -- the "nakba", the "disaster" -- the slogan was "the Quilt".

"INVASION" PREPARATIONS AS MUBARAK COMES COLLECTING
(April 2, 2001)
Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has come to Washington once again. His visits have become customary to in a sense collect his allowance and meet with his new American keepers, which are in fact really the old Bush crowd he is very familiar with.

PERES 'MORE AGGRESSIVE' THAN SHARON
(April 2, 2001)
"Peres is more aggressive than I am, (said Sharon). "Peres responded (to the Cabinet), "Yes, he had to restrain me this time."

PLOT TO KILL ARAFAT'S TOP PEOPLE
(April 1, 2001)
Yesterday the Senior U.S. Senator from New York, Chuck Shumer, went before the Washington cameras to denounce Yasser Arafat as a "terrorist" and demand he comply with U.S./Israeli dictate or else.

ANOTHER ARAB SUMMIT COMES AND GOES
(April 1, 2001)
If the demonstrators going to the Palestinian Rally in New York next weekend had any guts, and any smarts, after they gather at the Israeli Consulate they would move on and conduct their serious shouting where the Arab Ambassadors and the Arab League hang their sorry hats.




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