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Mustafa Al Barghouthi
Following a request from the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice is about to meet to discuss the legality of the wall being built in the Occupied Territories. Through 36 years of occupation the principles of the UN have been noticeably absent from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians have endured war, displacement, hunger, humiliation, and now ghettoization and imprisonment. They have suffered this under the watchful eyes of the international community, yet with no apparent recourse to international justice. Now, as the 23rd of February approaches, and the Palestinians look set to have their day in court, Israel has launched an immense defamation campaign in an attempt to de-legitimize the whole process.
Syed Saleem Shahzad
Since the ratings boost for the Bush administration, following the capture of Saddam Hussein, has been thoroughly knocked back down again by the non-effect it had on resistance forces in Iraq, Washington is determined to boost them again some time this year with the displayed head (detached or not) of Osama bin Laden. Leaving behind the deteriorating security in Afghanistan itself, all the USA troops available have been sent to the Pakistan border, where ‘intelligence’ says he is. “The hunt has been intense,” said Richard Myers, chairman of the USA Joint Chiefs of Staff. But this strategy holds the inherent danger that it might fail, and such an eventuality could be much worse for the USA than would simply leaving him be.
Yamin Zakaria
Western states generally trumpet themselves as being the only adherents of democracy, and any state looking for recognition as a democracy usually seeks the seal of approval from the West. The USA, being the leader of the Western world can be regarded as its high priest. As a high priest, the USA spearheaded the recent war in its name by attacking Iraq even before seeking the approval of the Iraqi population. Pity, such types of ‘noble’ wars were not waged to liberate the apartheid South Africa, genocidal Australia, the Nazi-like segregated ‘holy’ Israel (occupied Palestine), the ‘Republic’ of Saudi Arabia, the oil-field ‘states’ of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, etc. Isn’t there an axiom, which states that consistency in applying a certain standard is evidence of being honest and the absence of which implies hypocrisy?
Kim Sengupta and Arifa Akbar
The images were stark and shocking. Britons, swathed in orange overalls, hooded and shackled, kneeling in front of their American captors. Others, on stretchers, being wheeled into mesh cages. None of them charged, let alone convicted, of any crime, yet facing indefinite sentences in prison. The announcement on Thursday that five of the nine British prisoners at Camp X-Ray were to be released showed, the Government said, that the men had not been forgotten. But even as Jack Straw was making his speech, families and lawyers of the four still being held, with support from Muslim organisations and human rights groups, renewed their protest. There were also demands for explanations as to why it had taken so long to secure the freedom of the others.
Sarah Whalen
"Doublespeak” is a grouping of words that creates an impression of reality, but is mere illusion. This is nothing new. Americans used doublespeak to deceive North American Indians into leaving their ancestral lands. Americans made promises and treaties carefully worded to create one impression, but later found to mean something entirely different. The Indians, dispossessed, complained that “white men” spoke with “forked tongue.” Their language had no word to describe Americans? especially duplicitous form of lying. “Forked tongue” ? a split-ended snake?s tongue going two opposite ways ? was as close as they could come to describe an American mouth in which one set of single-sounding words came out in two opposite-meaning directions.
Dr. Mohamed Khodr
It is no coincidence that “Arabs” and “Islam” became enemies of the “American” state only after the founding of Israel. Prior to that the USA enjoyed great relations with the Arab and Muslim world, especially in their mutual antipathy to Communism. All that changed when Israel’s founders understood that in order to secure America’s support, they must drive a wedge, a fence, a wall, in essence a beltway around the corridors of Washington D.C. that only allows Zionist garbage in and American garbage out. Enter the “Judeo-Christian” world; enter the “shared values”; enter the “only democratic ally” in the Middle East; enter the “strategic special relationship”; enter “what’s good for Israel is good for America”.
John V Whitbeck
It is no accident that there is no agreed definition of “terrorism”, since the word is so subjective as to be devoid of any inherent meaning. In his recent “Meet the Press” interview, USA President Bush was never asked a question about “terrorism”. Yet, in his answers, he used the word (or a variant) 22 times. This word explained, and justified, everything - past, present and future. Few American politicians or commentators dare to question the conventional wisdom that “terrorism” is the greatest threat facing America and the world. This being so, the real threat lies not in the behaviour to which this word is applied but, rather, in the word itself.
Genevieve Cora Fraser
The erection of the world?s largest prison/ghetto/concentration camp is an engineering feat that requires the invasion of farms and fields, refugee camps, villages and cities by massive troops of Israeli occupying forces who close all entrances and intersections before the real brutalization begins. Then the bulldozing of Palestinian homes becomes the centerpiece and justification for the installation of an alleged security barrier that not so surprisingly doesn?t separate Israel from Palestine but of Palestinians from their land. Tanks and armored personnel carriers serve as guard duty for D-9 military bulldozers as they advance under an aerial shield of combat helicopters amidst a barrage of random fire. Somehow ethnic cleansing doesn?t come off so much as clean but an exercise in state-sponsored terrorism, violent, brutal, and murderously obscene.
Hasan Abu Nimah
The current situation of the Palestinian National Authority is critically precarious, and hardly tenable. Israel has destroyed much of the fragile structure built as part of the Oslo process, systematically destroying the Palestinian security forces, reoccupying most of land, almost bankrupting the authority by withholding its funding, and placing the president under a humiliating siege. The PNA, in its turn, has only been reaping failures, indulging in opportunism and corruption, dedicating all its effort to its own survival at any a cost, even if that meant at the expense of the rights of its people. It is high time that, one way or another, this failed leadership should let the beleaguered Palestinians choose the right leaders.
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