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"Stop Israel!" Pleads Israeli Professor

October 26, 2001

"Whether they do produce another fake peace show or not, the US has backed Israel in all of its atrocities, always. None of these would be possible without US military aid and political backing."

"If you go in the morning to demonstrate against the US slaughter of the Afghan people, it does not make much sense to hope in the evening that the butcher will spare the Palestinians." Professor Tanya Reinhart

MID-EAST REALITIES © - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 10/26: One Israeli, not invited by the naive and misguided American Jewish "liberals" to the USA, speaks up from Israel with tremendous courage and conviction. Her name is Tanya Reinhart and she deserves to be taken very seriously -- though far too many don't even know about her. Another Israeli, Uri Avnery, is in Washington at the moment invited by the misguided, the mislead, and in too many cases the co-opted crowd who love to swallow whole his grossly misleading and self-serving "optimism". Especially in view of his past, he deserves to be listened too very carefully...and very skeptically -- though far too many don't understand this. Continued soon...

STOP ISRAEL!

Professor Tanya Reinhart*

[October 25 - Tel Aviv]: For a whole week now, The Israeli army has been terrorizing cities and villages in the West Bank. As in the darkest days at the beginning of the present Intifada, desperate voices and reports pour through the internet, telling of massive shelling, including schools, hospitals, the university and a maternity house in Bethlehem, of curfew, houses being seized or destroyed, water tanks ruined in refugee camps. In Beit Reema, the site of Israel's latest show of horror, Ambulances were not allowed in. local residents witnessed that the wounded were left lying for 5 hours before they were allowed medical care (Ha'aretz Oct 25). Dr Majed Nassar of the Beit Sahour Medical Center reports on Wednesday evening, Oct 24 that "Today we stopped counting the dead and wounded, since the number rises hourly."

The snipers are back, aiming carefully to kill or maim for life. They are not targeting only those that Israel selected to define as "wanted". Of the 26 killed until Oct 23, 16 were civilians, including 4 women, a little girl, and two youths under 16 (Hass, Ha'aretz Oct 24). In the town of Sanour south of Jenin City, 18 year-old Ghada was picking olives with family members, when Israeli snipers opened fire towards them. She was shot in the neck and died instantly. "She was a very kind and loving girl," her mother said. "She was very helpful at home and in the farm. Her sisters and brothers looked up to her. She had a whole life ahead of her and they murdered her in cold blood." (Palestine Media Center, Oct 22).

The Israeli tanks will be forced, eventually, to pull out back to the outskirts of the cities, but this won't bring Ghada back to life. Nor would their departure arise great expectations for Hussam Jabar's family from Beit Jala. "The army had seized their house on Thursday, using a ping pong table to barricade the seven members of the family into the kitchen, and setting up machine-gun posts in the children's bedrooms." When the army started pulling out from Beit Jala, leaving his house "peppered with bullet holes from Palestinian gunmen, and strewn with the debris of some two dozen Israeli soldiers", he told Suzanne Goldenberg from The Guardian that "the Israeli army would soon be back. 'Do you think it makes a difference if they left? They are going back and forth. What makes you think that they have really left?' he said. 'We have an inner feeling that we are an expendable people." (The Guardian, Oct 24).

Indeed this has been the pattern for a long while now. The army enters the cities, sows destruction, and then 'under pressure' pulls out a few hundred meters, till the next time. Each time the scale is bigger.

This time, Israel describes it as an act against terror, retaliating for the assassination of Zeevi. "We are doing precisely what the US is doing in Afghanistan" - explained Raanan Gissin, a spokesman of Sharon, to CNN on Wednesday, Oct 24. Sharon's Czechoslovakia analogy of October 4 (-the world sacrifices Czechoslovakia-Israel, to please Arafat-Hitler) did not find much sympathy even in Israel. The current analogy Sharon has been developing is that Arafat equals Bin Laden, or to give this some more credibility, Arafat and the PA equal the Taliban who host Bin Laden. "Sharon, apparently deliberately echoing President George W. Bush's remarks after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington last month, told an emergency meeting of senior ministers that after the killing of cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi, 'the situation is different today, and will not again be like it was yesterday'." (Ha'aretz, October 18). Like the US,

The consequences of this analogy are obvious: "Israel's Security Cabinet is understood to have sent a blunt message to Mr Arafat that unless Israel's conditions for the extradition etradiction of the killers and the outlawing of all Palestinian terror organizations were adhered to within one week he 'would be treated in the way in which the US treats the Taliban'." (The Times (London), Oct 19). "We will wage all-out war on the terrorists, those who collaborate with them and those who send them" -Sharon promised in his speech to the special Knesset session in memory of the assassinated minister. "As far as I am concerned, the era of Arafat is over." (there).

Possibly, Sharon and his cabinet count on the Western world to swallow this analogy. If the standards are that the whole Afghan people can be bombarded and starved to death as a collective punishment for an act of terror, why shouldn't Israel follow the same standards?

Indeed, for almost a week, Israel has been allowed to carry its work of destruction undisturbed. Until Monday, Oct 23, the US and others expressed some dissatisfaction, but nothing else. This contrasts sharply with the endless international pressure on Arafat. "US Consul General in Jerusalem Ronald Schlicher met with Arafat, and demanded that he take swift action against those responsible for the assassination. European Union nations were also pressing the Palestinians to make arrests...U.N. Middle East envoy Terje Larsen met three times with Arafat, telling the Palestinian leader that he must order the arrests of the murderers" (Ha'aretz, Oct 18), and that's how it went on the whole week.

Why didn't anybody exert the same pressure on Israel, right at the start, not to 'retaliate'? In the prevailing frame of mind it is unthinkable to even ask why nobody puts pressure on Sharon to arrest the Israeli army terrorists who assassinated Palestinian political leaders. But at least he could be pressed to wait the week that Arafat was formally given in the cabinet's decision.

This may look mysterious to the many who just a long week ago attached hopes to the new 'Peace initiative' which the US has launched since the beginning of October. "The idea of a Palestinian state has always been part of a vision", Bush declared solemnly on the 2nd of October. It was leaked that the US had already prepared a detailed plan for a peace settlement, that was only frozen because of the September 11 events. We heard that a draft of a speech by Powell was prepared for the event, which he will soon find the right occasion to deliver.

Only few in the Western media expressed the kind of skepticism that this was met with in the Arab media. As Michael Jansen noted in the Jordanian Time of October 5, "the timing of the Bush remark and the leak are important. They came on the eve of visits by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Oman. Washington is eager to convince these governments to permit the use of their territory for the coming offensive against Afghanistan... Once again, Arab governments are supposed to sign on to a US program of action without any concrete quid pro quo... Thus, a vague Bush statement and a leak by an anonymous official of the existence of a plan which is not revealed are supposed to convince the Arabs that the administration has good intentions."

The 'peace initiatives' intensified around the gathering of the emergency meeting (Oct 9) of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), which includes 56 countries, whose silence or cooperation were important, at the moment to the US. At this stage, more details were flared up in the air to make it all look concrete, and Bush's spokesman, Tony Blair, has entered the picture. Blair, who returned to London from a two-day visit to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Egypt, was quite open in explaining the urgency: "One thing becoming increasingly clear to me is the need to upgrade our media and public opinion operations in the Arab and Muslim world". (The Guardian, Oct 12). This PR phase culminated in a joint press-conference of Blair and Arafat in October 15.

It didn't require much creativity to generate this show. The script was ready from the days of the Gulf war. To reward the Arab world for its cooperation, the US organized the Madrid conference which marked the era of an eternal 'peace process', thus allowing Israel to continue the occupation undisturbed. This round, however, the US feels much stronger, as the sole ruler of the world, and it is not obvious at all that they intend to go on with even that much.

Aluf Ben reports in Ha'aretz Oct 18 that, "according to a US report", Colin Powell is leaning towards a decision to cancel his plans to deliver a speech on United States policy in the Middle East. "According to the report, policy makers in the American administration feel that there is no longer a need for a Powell speech because President George Bush has already presented his vision for the Middle East in statements over the past few weeks. With the cancellation of Powell's speech, most of the steps planned by the administration for increased involvement in the Middle East will have been removed from the agenda... American diplomats sent a message to Sharon this week saying that the administration has no plans to launch a Middle East diplomatic initiative in the near future, and that any steps will be coordinated with Israel in advance." (Though this appeared in Ha'aretz web site at the day of Zeevi's assassination, it is obvious that the US report was prepared earlier.)

Whether they do produce another fake peace show or not, the US has backed Israel in all of its atrocities, always. None of these would be possible without US military aid and political backing. Had the US wanted to stop Israel now, this could be easily done at any moment - Just freeze immediately all military aid, for starts. Instead, on Wednesday October 24, the day the headlines announced that Bush and powell's patience with Israel is expiring, the US senate approved again $2.76 billion in assistance for Israel, more than any other country in the world. Out of this sum, $2.04 billion is a special military aid (Ha'aretz web-site, Oct 25). The US may slow Sharon down when he is becoming inconvenient, but they will not save the Palestinians and will not end the occupation. No appeal to Powell can change this.

* Professor Tanya Reinhart teaches linguistics at Tel Aviv University and the University of Ultrecht in the Netherlands.



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October 2001


Magazine






Bio and Nuclear Threats Escalate As Purposeful Leaks Proliferate to Mass Media
(October 26, 2001)
The timing of newsstories like this in the major Western media should be suspect now more than ever. For more than ever in fact governments and intelligence agencies are using the mass media by leaking things at times of convenience and more importantly with their own twists and turns.

"Stop Israel!" Pleads Israeli Professor
(October 26, 2001)
One Israeli, not invited by the naive and misguided American Jewish "liberals" to the USA, speaks up from Israel with tremendous courage and conviction. Her name is Tanya Reinhart and she deserves to be taken very seriously -- though far too many don't even know about her.

"Palestinian Statehood" - Another Grotesque Deception Unfolds
(October 25, 2001)
The political smokescreens are lifting a bit as the pressures build to go beyond mere words, yet at the same time a purposeful distorting haze is taking over. Bottom line: the kind of "Palestinian State" Yasser Arafat has maneuvered his people toward and is being cornered into implementing is a grotesque distortion of their aspirations and of what use to be meant by the term "Palestinian State."

"A Pen Bought And Sold" - A Saudi Poem Revisited - MER FlashBack
(October 21, 2001)
Change comes in the Middle East, as elsewhere, in complex ways. There is the regular daily news of course; and in the region especially it is inextricably intertwined with an ever-more-sophisticated and propagandistic journalistic establishment.

WHY AMERICA MUST STOP THE WAR NOW
(October 24, 2001)
Both of the Georges are oh so full of themselves cocky -- just the personality type so many American's truly love. One is (to the amazement of many who wonder how in the world the U.S. chooses such persons to lead it) the President of the United States.

Massacres and Devastation Escalate Further In Palestine
(October 24, 2001)
The Palestinians are essentially defenseless with their backs up against the wall, the firing wall. Their "leadership" has been so corrupted and infiltrated that the Arafat regime has hardly any credibility with its own, not to mention anyone else.

Torture Now Coming to USA?
(October 22, 2001)
Adopting the tactics (as well as the goals) of the Israelis, and the methods long taught by the CIA in Latin America as well as the Middle East, the brave new world post 11 September is changing the face of the American homeland in ways nearly all Americans would have seriously resisted just a few long weeks ago.

Millions Likely To Die in Afghanistan U.N. Warns
(October 21, 2001)
As for Afghanistan, the American CIA worked behind the scenes to bring on the Soviet invasion of 1979, then engaged the Soviet Empire in a way that brought about the near-total devastation of Afghanistan and a huge uncounted death toll.

It's "New Imperialism" says leading British MP
(October 21, 2001)
Much pressure is building at the United Nations to not open itself to still more charges of being complicitous in "genocide", not to mention to do something to stop being seen as "an extension of the American State Department" (the actual private words of a senior U.N. official).

"Comply! Resistance Is Futile!"
(October 20, 2001)
British MP (Member of Parliament) George Galloway calls it the "new imperialism" (his article coming later today). On the whole the Anglo-British press is working up quite a frenzy (with notable exceptions like The Guardian and The Independent in the UK, sometimes The Nation in the U.S.).

The "Arafat Era" Collapsing or About To Be Reborn?
(October 20, 2001)
Yasser Arafat is losing both his grip on power (extended to him by the Israelis and the Americans for the past decade since the Gulf War) and his credibility (with his own people) at the same time.

The Coming Arab Crash
(October 19, 2001)
The west's most important friends in the Arab Middle East - Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah of Jordan, Mubarak of Egypt and the PLO's Yasser Arafat - are probably the world's most vulnerable political quartet.

Saudi Amb Bandar Badly Fails, Saudi Royals in Paralysis, US Relations in Doubt
(October 19, 2001)
Prince Bandar bin Sultan's 20+ year strategy has now substantially failed. Years ago, very much behind-the-scenes of course, the very controversial and in some circles much despised Saudi Ambassador in Washington began a relationship with the some of the most conservative and militant circles in Washington, very much including those associated with the powerful Israeli/Jewish lobby.

Worse Than Worthless Wartime "Promises"
(October 18, 2001)
The list of broken and disingenuous "promises" made to the Arabs by Western political leaders is something befitting a "Saturday Night Live" parody skit -- if only they would dare!

"New Era" Says Sharon Reacting In Character to "Gandhi" Assassination
(October 17, 2001)
He had called the Palestinians "lice" and "vermin" and "cancer", and he had urged their "transfer" or "extermination". Just Monday he has tendered his resignation as Minister of Tourism, insisting that Ariel Sharon was being too moderate and too compromising.

"PALESTINIAN STATE" a la WASHINGTON and LONDON
(October 17, 2001)
As for the British, what's going on in both Palestine and Kashmir, the two most likely potential nuclear flashpoints in our world today, can be traced back directly to what the British did in these areas when they were the "Empire"

FAR RIGHT-WING ISRAELI MINISTER ASSASSINATED THIS MORNING
(October 17, 2001)
For some time now Palestinians have been warning that because of Israel's assassination of Palestinian leaders, "crossing the red line" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they would respond.

Red Cross Bombed in Kabul Before Presidential Red Cross Visit in Washington
(October 16, 2001)
You gotta love the chutzpa of the Americans. Today the President went a few blocks from the White House to the Headquarters of the American Red Cross -- a little photo op designed to further enlist "the children of America" in his recently announced effort to help the children of Afghanistan. But just as President Bush was getting ready to do his Red Cross pictures reports came in from Afghanistan that the major Red Cross center in Kabul, complete with large Red Cross emblem on its roof, was destroyed by American bombs.

Saudi/U.S. "Meltdown"? And Neutralizing Al Jazeera With A Firm Embrace
(October 16, 2001)
While American and British officials rush to make one TV appearance after another with continual reassurances everything is going "as planned", that's not quite the reality of the situation as this article in today's Guardian makes quite evident.

What Can We Do About Terrorism? by Lt. Col Robert M. Bowman (ret)
(October 15, 2001)
"Mr. President, you did not tell the American people the truth about why we are the targets of terrorism. You said that we are the target because we stand for democracy, freedom, and human rights in the world. Baloney! We are the target of terrorists because we stand for dictatorship, bondage, and human exploitation in the world."

Pentagon Far More Confused and Uncertain Than Americans Realize
(October 15, 2001)
The Bush administration is growing increasingly alarmed by the direction of the military campaign in Afghanistan after a week of almost continuous bombing has failed to dislodge either Osama bin Laden or the Taliban leadership.

Al-Qaeda Weekend Statement
(October 15, 2001)
This isn't really about "secret messages". Anyone with a $300 satellite dish can watch the statements in full, in Arabic, on al Jazeera; and the text is widely available on the Internet, in this case from London and the BBC!

Hundreds Dead in Nigeria
(October 14, 2001)
Hundreds of people have been killed in religious clashes after anti-U.S. protests turned violent, sources have told CNN. The demonstrations against the U.S.-led missile strikes on Afghanistan began peacefully on Friday but spiralled into a killing spree during Saturday, CNN's Lagos bureau chief Jeff Koinange said.

akistan's Benazir Opens Campaign in Washington as Pakistan Trembles Anarchy
(October 14, 2001)
Benazir Bhutto came to Washington this week to open her campaign for a third term as Prime Minister of the world's second largest, and only nuclear armed, Muslim State -- her first two terms she was overthrown, political and financial corruption was rampant, and her arranged husband remains in a Karachi prison.

Iraq Likely To Be Next "Phase"
(October 14, 2001)
A powerful coalition of "hawkish" government officials, lobbyists (especially those connected with the Israelis and the arms corporations), conservative press publications and columnists, many of the national Jewish organizations, as well as millions of Christian fundamentalists associated with Pat Robertson and his daily TV "700 Club" program, is mobilized to make sure that "America's new war" does not end with Afghanistan and al-Qaeda.

Saudi Royals Bugged, Embarrassed, Unstable
(October 13, 2001)
The following information is about to come out in THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE on Monday and is being leaked in Washington this weekend to stir up interest and try to get publicity for the magazine and author on the Sunday talk shows tomorrow.

Attacks and Demonstrations Escalating in Arab and Muslim Countries
(October 13, 2001)
Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in various cities in the Middle East to protest the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan. Many more thronged to mosques for Friday prayers throughout the region and heard anti-American sermons.

Western Commando Forces Getting Ready
(October 13, 2001)
This article in The Telegraph today is a good outline of what now seems likely to be immediately ahead in Afghanistan, pushed forward by weather considerations as well as by current expectations that American-sponsored key governments in Pakistan, Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, as well as the Arafat Regime, will all be able to weather the political storms with much expanded and mostly covert continual help from the western governments and intelligence services.

"War of the Worlds" by Mark Bruzonsky
(October 11, 2001)
In the case of America's new war, the full might of the USA is being mobilized not against the armies of other nation states, but against the fanatical descendants of a puritanical militant Islam whose calling has become relentless opposition to American hegemony and passionate assertion of their own quaintly medieval religious constructs.

Arafat Begs Israelis To Save Him
(October 10, 2001)
It's a most complicated political dance than ever at this historical crossroads. But bottom line Yasser Arafat and his regime have now, even more than before, thrown their future to the Israelis and the now omnipresent CIA...

Uri Avneri - Fronting for Arafat and for a Castrated "Palestinian State"
(October 10, 2001)
The Israeli writer and activist Uri Avneri is "on tour" in the USA on his way to Washington. It shouldn't come as a surprise that a few naive or on- the-take "peace groups" -- Jewish and otherwise -- have invited him to speak.

After Afghanistan, U.S. has Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine in its Sights
(October 10, 2001)
In this case there should be no one saying down the road that they didn't know what was being planned. The Americans have said publicly and in many different ways right from the start of this "new war" that it wasn't going to end with Osama bin Laden, with the Taliban government, or with Afghanistan.

The "Palestinian State" Charade
(October 9, 2001)
Most of the Arab regimes, including that of Yasser Arafat, have proved themselves so co-opted and so gullible over the years that you can't blame the Americans for continuing to try their little tricks and deceptions -- just look how well, at least from their point-of-view, such things have worked in the past..

Anthrax Terrorism Now Likely
(October 9, 2001)
Federal officials suspect foul play rather than an environmental source is at the root of two Florida anthrax cases that have left one man dead and hundreds of co-workers lining up for medical tests.

Biological Attack? Inept or Demonstration?
(October 9, 2001)
Is someone sending a message that they can do it, a kind of primative, and deadly, deterrence attempt to try to protect themselves? Might this be an "inept attack" as today's TIMES in London suggests in its headline? As the third case of Anthrax in Florida is reported this morning, something seems to be up as the following reports indicate.

Bush versus bin Laden - Syria Elected to Security Council
(October 8, 2001)
It's all quite amazing really, President George W. Bush versus Osama bin Laden. On the one hand you have the most powerful man in the world commanding the full might of not only the world's only superpower but a whole entourage of Western European allies, the new Russia, and to a considerable extent at least behind-the-scenes many Arab and Muslim "client regimes".

Arafat's Army Opens Fire On Its Own - More Anthrax in Florida?
(October 8, 2001)
The Palestinian leadership rushed to distance itself Monday from Osama bin Laden while its police forces opened fire on university students protesting the U.S.-led military strikes on Afghanistan.

FBI Knocked...He's Not Home But You Can Find Him at the White House
(October 8, 2001)
Now the world will become much more confusing and dangerous, and the opponents of the American Empire will obviously be forced even deeper underground -- both literally and figuratively -- becoming even more insular and isolated among themselves leading to who knows what kind of future blowback.

US Journalist Warns: "Do not try to change the government in Afghanistan!"
(October 7, 2001)
Late friday evening one of the leading American journalists who is an expert on the Middle East and Islamic affairs was asked a question on CNN to which she immediately briefly answered...and that was that...no more was asked or answered.

"Our Friends are Killers, Crooks and Torturers"
(October 7, 2001)
Surely the British Prime Minister should know better than to try to simplify such a complex world we live in to that understandable by a third-grader. If not we have a little weekend reading Mr. Blair should be doing, starting in one of his own newspapers which we surely hope, especially now, he can find a few moments to read on a regular basis, The Independent.

History Corrected - U.S. Wanted Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
(October 6, 2001)
The world believes that there was an invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union on 24 December 1979 and then, in response, the U.S. and Muslim countries rallied to help Afghanistan repel the invaders. Wrong...just as so much of the widely accepted history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the actual realities of U.S. involvements in the Middle East are wrong because of the manipulation of history by various governments and intelligence agencies -- most especially the U.S. and Israel, the CIA and the Mossad.

UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS FOR AMERICANS TO PONDER
(October 6, 2001)
"Could it be that the stygian anger that led to the attacks has its taproot not in American freedom and democracy, but in the US government's record of commitment and support to exactly the opposite things - to military and economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorship, religious bigotry and unimaginable genocide (outside America)?"

MER EDITORIAL: POSSIBLE WAY OUT!
(October 5, 2001)
The government in Afghanistan, popularly known as The Taliban, has finally taken what could be a significant step. Just hours ago through its official representative in Pakistan the Afghan government has publicly offered to turn Osama bin Laden over...not to the United States, but to another Islamic country.

CANADIAN PROFESSOR TAKES ON THE U.S.A
(October 5, 2001)
"The women in the audience -- academics, union members, mental health workers and advocates for female inmates, embraced her anti-American rhetoric, repeatedly interrupting her with cheers and standing ovations."

THE CIA, ISI, PAKISTAN, AFGHANISTAN - A LITTLE HISTORY
(October 5, 2001)
Now we know that a few years ago, when President Bill Clinton was meeting privately one-on-one with the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, the U.S. "hired" the agents of the infamous Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) to assassinate Osama bin Laden.

NEWSFLASH: LAST MOMENT ARAB COLD FEET - RUMSFELD RUSHES TO THE REGION
(October 3, 2001)
The United States and Britain yesterday called off military strikes against terrorist targets in Afghanistan at the last minute. Washington officials say today that a severe attack of last-minute cold feet by some key Arab members of the coalition caused President Bush to postpone the operation.

WHERE DID THE TALIBAN COME FROM?
(October 3, 2001)
Osama bin Laden, arch nemesis of America today, is blowback from recent history -- the Gulf war, the permanent stationing of American forces in Arabia, and other American policies in the region, including the deceptive "peace process" fronting for Israel's brutal subjugation of the Palestinians.

BOTH SAUDIS AND PAKISTANIS CONTINUE TO ACTUALLY SAY NO
(October 3, 2001)
The American Secretary of Defense is rushing to the Middle East, goal #1 to try one more time to "convince" the Saudis that Prince Sultan Airbase and its super-modern regional control center -- just completed in fact during the summer at a cost of many billions -- is needed for the new war.

U.S. PREPARES FOR CRUSADER WAR - "OPEN-ENDED WAR WITHOUT CONSTRAINT"
(October 2, 2001)
"Drafted with a small coterie of loyal aides, mainly civilian political appointees at the Pentagon, the plans argue for open-ended war without constraint either of time or geography and potentially engulfing the entire Middle East and central Asia... The plans put before the President during the past few days involve expanding the war beyond Afghanistan to include similar incursions by special ops forces - followed by air strikes by the bombers they would guide - into Iraq, Syria and the Beqaa Valley area of Lebanon, where the Syrian-backed Hizbollah (Party of God) fighters that harass Israel are based."

READYING THE CRUSADE - ARMIES, PRESS, PUBLIC
(October 2, 2001)
Anyone with an ear tuned to Washington's politicians, lobbyists, and opinion molders can hear it quite loudly and clearly at this point. After taking down Osama bin Laden's al Queda network (said to be in some 50+ countries), after changing the government in Afghanistan, the American-led crusade (now more politely known by Colin Powell's term "campaign") will attempt to march on through the Middle East, next stop Baghdad.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT SAYS POWELL - "PALESTINIAN STATE"
(October 2, 2001)
It took them who intially talked of "crusade" nearly three weeks to figure out that all the "coalition building" wasn't going nearly as well as they keep saying in public and that doing something about all the Israeli oppression and "terrorism" against the essentially imprisoned Palestinian population would be a good idea in the post 11 September world and before the bombs start falling on Muslims here and there.

ARMY WANTS TO KILL ARAFAT SAYS PERES!
(October 1, 2001)
The situation is now so tense in Israel in dealing with the "Palestinian Authority" -- which it should be remembered the Israelis themselves created just a few years ago -- that Shimon Peres is getting more and more desperate.

DAMASCAS GATHERING OF PALESTINIANS
(October 1, 2001)
The Palestinian opposition is usually very weak and confused. Had that not been the case for some time now Yasser Arafat would never have been able to do the things he has done for so long now, especially since the Gulf War; nor would Arafat have have been able to retain power these past few traumatic years, however weakened himself at this point.

CHOMSKY ANSWERS
(October 1, 2001)
Yes, it will be very interesting to see if and how Noam Chomsky answers the at first blush surprising attacks from Christopher Hitchens, who has now not only endorsed the new war but also at least parts of the "New World Order" that underpins it.




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