QUEENS TEEN CAN STAY IN U.S., CONGRESSMAN SAYS
Associated Press, 4/30/03

NEW YORK - A Queens teenager who faced deportation after he reported
to immigration officials under new registration laws will be allowed
to stay in the country, according to a local lawmaker.

Mohammad Safaraz Hussain, 18, a high school basketball player born in
Pakistan and raised in Queens, has been granted an exemption on
humanitarian grounds, U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman said Tuesday.

Hussain came to the U.S. when he was 7 years old to visit his mother,
who was being treated for cancer. His mother died a year later, and
his father died in Pakistan in 2000. Hussain, a junior at Jamaica
High School, was raised by his uncle in Queens.

After new laws required male non-citizens over the age of 16 from
Arab and Muslim countries to register, Hussain reported to
immigration officials and was told he was in the country illegally
and faced deportation.

But after students circulated petitions and Hussain's basketball
coach and Ackerman lobbied on his behalf, it appeared officials were
willing to make an exception...





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FIRST AMERICAN MUSLIM TV CHANNEL
TO DEBUT SUMMER 2004
Press Release, Bridges TV

NEW YORK, NY, May 1, 2003-New York-based Bridges Network, Inc.,
announced today that it will launch Bridges TV, the first ever
nationwide English-language Muslim television channel in North
America. The expected launch date is summer 2004, depending on how
quickly the network can gather the 10,000 paying members necessary to
demonstrate public support.

Bridges TV, which will be broadcast from Manhattan, will emphasize
news stories, and talk shows, wholesome sitcoms, advice shows,
children's programming and movies about Muslim life in America.
Programming will mostly be created, since an English-language genre
targeting American Muslims does not exist.

The venture is spearheaded by Muzzammil S. Hassan, MBA, a bank vice-
president in New York and Omar S. Amanat, founder of Tradescape, an
Internet brokerage firm. Mr. Amanat sold Tradescape last year to
E*Trade (NYSE: ET) for $280,000,000 (million).

Amanat learned early on that even at the height of his financial
success on Wall Street, public perceptions of Muslims prevented him
from being fully accepted.

"I realized that the only way to undo misconceptions was to create
our own media forum from which our stories and culture would be
shared with the world.  Other cultural groups have gained acceptance
and increased understanding through the forum of media. Why can't
Muslims do the same?"

Channels such as Telemundo and the Black Entertainment Television
network have appealed to cultural niche markets. Bridges TV hopes to
follow a similar model and create a diverse genre of programming that
members of the American Muslim community can identify with. That
group is composed approximately one-quarter each of South Asian,
African-American, Arab and Others.

Hassan noted that most members of these groups are moderate Muslims
who cannot identify with the extreme stereotypes often depicted in
Hollywood productions.

"They think they are not accurately portrayed," he said. "Bridges TV
gives American Muslims a voice and will depict them in everyday, real
life situations."

Bridges TV differentiates itself from such foreign language
programming as Zee TV (Hindi), Prime TV (Urdu) and ART TV (Arabic),
which are broadcast in foreign languages and focus on life
experiences in foreign countries. These channels are popular among
immigrant parents, but not with their U.S. born children. "Our
channel is in English and about life in America. We want a Muslim
child who grows up in America to be able to watch our channel and
identify with the characters, or to be engaged by the dialogue of
issues pertinent to him or her," said Amanat.

Amanat added that stories that shed light on the significant
contributions of American Muslims to modern science, art and
entertainment remain untold and will be a focus of Bridges TV
programming. The network seeks to feature sitcoms that represent
American Muslim family life. The Cosby Show, which portrayed a
positive representation of African-American family life, is a model
for such sitcom programming.

Creation of a channel that features American Muslims comes at a time
when the media spotlight is increasingly focused on this population.
The channel hopes to "build bridges" of understanding by providing
Muslims an opportunity to express their views and opinions about
their faith and lifestyle.

Given the estimated eight million Muslims living in North America,
the channel is long overdue, according to network officials. And
studies sponsored by Bridges TV have found that American Muslims are
willing to pay as much as $10 per month above and beyond their
current cable or satellite fee for the channel.

According to a Zogby 2000 survey, at an annual growth of 6%, the
American Muslim population, which at present makes a sizable market,
is expected to double to 15 million in the next ten years.

Although targeted primarily at a North-American Muslim audience,
company officials anticipate that Bridges TV will have some cross-
over appeal to other Americans due to world-wide interest about Islam
and Muslim lifestyles.

The company successfully completed its first round of fundraising
last year, netting $1,000,000 (million) in seed capital from
investors.  Most of this initial money is being used to cover legal,
filming, marketing and licensing fees. With a pledge of financial
support from Amanat, the company's leading investor, the network's
next main milestone is securing the 10,000 paying monthly members
necessary to garner cable and satellite television support.

Initial projections are to broadcast the channel four to six hours
per day. Pending advertising revenue and community support through
monthly subscriptions, Bridges TV hopes to evolve into a full-time
nationwide cable television channel. Their long-term goal is to gain
at least 10% of American Muslim households as monthly subscribers.

So far the response from potential subscribers has been overwhelming.
Over 1,000 paying members have signed up in just one month.

"An American Muslim television channel is the greatest need of our
times," said Amanat. If American Muslims want to bring this kind of
television programming into their home, we need their support as
members -the viability of this project depends on American Muslims."

For more information, photos, bio's and interviews, visit
www.bridges.tv or call:

Omar S. Amanat, Tel.: 917-669-8844, omar@...
Muzzammil Hassan, Tel.: 716-308-6593, mhassan@...
Omar Ghosheh, Tel.: 716-578-1317, oghosheh@...



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Lorenzo Canizares: Zionism is a disgrace to the human race

LaVoz@...

One of the biggest injustices of the twentieth
century -- the 55th anniversary of the establishment
of the State of "Israel" -- is being celebrated in a
manner bordering on the scandalous. The implantation
of the zionist entity in Palestine has been rightly
described as the al-Nakba (the catastrophe) by
Palestinians.

The hoopla surrounding Israeli celebrations
conveniently ignores the fact that European Jews
stole Palestine in connivance with the European
powers, primarily Britain. This was only made
possible by driving out the indigenous population --
the Palestinians -- from their ancestral lands,
through terror and mass murder.

The zionists have peddled the mythology of turning
"deserts into orchards" with the active collaboration
of the West. Their claim to Palestine is based on a
complete perversion of historical facts sprinkled
with Biblical references to geography. The zionists
-- most of them secular fanatics who have nothing to
do with Judaism -- have reduced the Bible to a real
estate manual.

Shedding the blood of the Palestinians launched the
zionist colonial settler enterprise. It has been
sustained through terror, the most common
characteristic of the zionists, for 55 years. More
than 475 Palestinian towns and villages were
completely wiped out. There is no trace left of them
anymore.

Soon after the June 1967 war, Moshe Dayan, the
one-eyed Israeli general (may it burn in the "Gehenna"),
had boasted to a group of visiting Jews from the U.S.
that the present generation had expanded the
boundaries of the State of "Israel" this far. Now it
was up to the next generation to take them further.
He also candidly admitted that hundreds of
Palestinian villages and towns had been wiped out.

Contrary to zionist propaganda, now admitted even by
some Israeli historians, the Palestinian inhabitants
of these once-thriving towns did not flee on orders
from the Arab regimes. They fled in the face of the
zionist terror machine. Deir Yasin (April 9, 1948)
was but one example of numerous zionist atrocities
perpetrated against innocent civilians. Palestinian
women were parade naked in the streets. Many of them
were bayoneted to death before their bodies were
dumped in wells. At least 750,000 Palestinians were
expelled from their homes in this campaign to settle
European Jews in Palestine. This obscenity is being
celebrated today as a great achievement.

Many leaders of the zionist terrorist gangs (may they
also burn in the "Gehenna") -- Menachem Begin,
Yitzhak Shamir et el -- later became prime ministers
of the "only democracy in the Middle East."

While America continues her massive annual handouts
to the parasite state of Israel, many American
citizens are denied many of their basic needs.



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ADL MUST PAY $9.75 MILLION FOR ITS CRIMES: U.S. COURT
http://www.InformationTimes.com

LIBEL AWARD AGAINST ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE UPHELD
http://www.rense.com/general37/RRTO.HTM

THE DEFAMATION LEAGUE
http://www.polyconomics.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=1387

The Defamation League Libel Case: "This case establishes, in a court
of law and under full rules of evidence, that Israel's supporters
smear people as "anti-Semitic" who are not actually anti-Semitic. The
ADL, having over-used this phrase as a smear tactic, have now
rendered the phrase meaningless. Those smeared with the label "anti-
Semite" should use this lawsuit as a precedent and start suing anyone
who publicly attacks them as anti-Semites." -- Michael Rivero -
4/26/2003.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com

LIBEL AWARD AGAINST ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE UPHELD
http://www.rense.com/general37/RRTO.HTM

DENVER, CO, USA, 26 April 2003 (AP) -- A $9.75 million libel award
against the Anti-Defamation League [ADL] for publicly calling an
Evergreen, Colorado, couple anti-Semitic was upheld Tuesday by a
federal appeals court.

William and Dorothy Quigley won the judgment in April 2000 after the
ADL's remarks at a news conference. The incident arose out of a
dispute between the Quigleys and neighbors Mitchell and Candice
Aronson, who are Jewish. The original judgment was $10.5 million, but
a judge reduced that to $9.75 million in 2001 because the Quigleys
had won a separate but related judgment against the Aronsons over
wiretapping violations.

The ADL appealed the libel judgment, but the 10th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals upheld the smaller award. ADL regional director Bruce
DeBoskey declined to comment.

The appeals court overturned the jury's finding that the ADL had
invaded the Quigleys' privacy, saying the jury instructions were
faulty. That decision had no effect on the libel award.

The dispute dates to 1994. The Aronsons claimed the Quigleys made
anti-Semitic remarks in phone conversations that the Aronsons taped.

==============================

April 19, 2001

THE DEFAMATION LEAGUE
http://www.polyconomics.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=1387

Memo To: My Jewish Friends
From: Jude Wanniski
Website: http://www.wanniski.com
Re: Judgment in Denver

by JUDE WANNISKI

Judge Slams ADL for Hurting Couple Tarred As 'Anti-Semites'
http://www.forward.com/issues/2001/01.04.13/news3.html

I'm sorry to tell you how delighted I was to read on the front page
of the Forward's April 13 [2001] issue, which came in the mail
Tuesday, that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has lost the $10
million defamation case brought against it by folks the ADL
called "anti-Semitic." If you have been following my memos here for
any length of time, you know I have been calling the Anti-Defamation
League the "Defamation League." I do so precisely because of its
practice in recent years of stamping the "anti-Semitic" label on
people who insist they are not anti-Semitic. I suppose they do it to
justify the $50 million they raise in contributions every year from
Jewish-Americans who still think Christians and Muslims are
whispering about them in dark corners and want to stamp that out.
When the ADL of the B'nai B'rith was founded 87 years ago, there was
more anti-Semitism than you could shake a stick at, and the ADL
provided a positive force in American society.

Lieberman and Farrakhan
http://polyconomics.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=1070

There is now no anti-Semitism in the United States, period. There may
be in Europe, where it has deep roots, but as I travel in wide
circles of Christians and Muslims I have not heard an anti-Semitic
remark in decades. DECADES. And my close Jewish friends tell me they
are not aware of any anti-Semitism. When I was a boy, I remember
slurs against "the Jews" as being "Christ-killers," but the Catholic
Church stamped out that stuff in the early 1960s, in the reforms of
Vatican II. The ADL has made a game of portraying the Nation of Islam
and its leader, Louis Farrakhan, as being "anti-Semitic," to the
point where a majority of white Americans believe that nonsense. I've
gotten to know Minister Farrakhan like a brother over the last five
years, and know he has made repeated attempts to find reconciliation
with the ADL and the leaders of the Jewish community. He is a Muslim
and has an appreciation of the Palestinian point of view in the
Middle East, but that does not make him "anti-Semitic." He invited me
and my wife Patricia to his World Islamic Conference in Chicago in
1997 and said we could wander in and out of any of the workshops or
plenary sessions. We never heard a single word that I would consider
to be anti-Semitic, and as I had grown up a Catholic in a Jewish
neighborhood of Brooklyn, I would certainly would know anti-Semitism
if I sniffed it.

The case brought before the federal court in Denver by William and
Dorothy Quigley involved a dispute involving a Jewish couple,
Mitchell and Candace Aronson, who moved to the affluent suburb of
Evergreen, Colorado, next to the Quigleys. As the Forward
reports, "The couple was initially befriended by the Quigleys, their
neighbors, but relations quickly began to sour, escalating from
complaints about dogs and stolen plants to an allegation by Mrs.
Aronson that Mr. Quigley tried to run her over with his car." They
contacted the ADL after deciding the Quigleys were trying to drive
them out of the neighborhood because they were Jewish. They had a
tape of a cell phone conversation they say they picked up by accident
on a police radio, which they said were the voices of the
Quigleys "talking about sticking pictures of over doors on their
house, burning their children and wishing they had been blown up in a
terrorist attack in Israel."

Quigley, who was a Hollywood producer (Dirty Dancing among the films
he produced), had been transferred to Denver to head the United
Artists' theater chain. When the anti-Semitic stuff circulated,
he "became a pariah in the business," according to his attorney, Jay
Horowitz. In January 1996, the Quigleys sued the Aronsons and the ADL
for violating their rights under the Federal Wiretap Act. Two years
later, the Aronsons settled out of court but the ADL did not. The
Quigleys accused the ADL of libel, invasion of privacy and violation
of the Federal Wiretap Act. In April 2000, a jury accepted nearly all
the charges and awarded $10.5 million in damages, one of the largest
defamation awards in Colorado. On appeal to U.S. District Court, the
ADL lost most of their arguments March 31. As the Forward reported:

"In upholding the first-ever court defeat handed to the 87-year-old
ADL, U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham said the organization had
endorsed and publicized the bigotry accusations of a Jewish couple
against its neighbors without either investigating the case or
weighing the consequences. 'Based on its position and history as a
well-respected civil-rights institution, it is not unreasonable to
infer that public charges of anti-Semitism leveled by the ADL will be
taken seriously and assumed by many to be true without question, [the
judge wrote on March 31 in a 46-page order and memorandum of decision
obtained by the Forward.] In that respect, the ADL is in a unique
position of being able to cause substantial harm to individuals when
it lends its backing to allegations of anti-Semitism'."

According to the account in the century-old Jewish weekly, the ADL
did not bother to listen to the several hours of tapes made by the
Aronsons at the urging of the ADL. Judge Nottingham characterized the
isolated remarks selected out to build the anti-Semitic accusation
as "mere sarcastic, banal and tasteless remarks uttered in a garden
variety dispute among neighbors." So there we have the "Defamation
League" wiretapping cell phones in search of anti-Semites. My friends
in the Jewish community, I'm sorry to have to bring this up because
it will only irritate you, but I've given you plenty of warning of
how far the ADL has gone in order to justify its existence. You would
be better off closing it down completely and giving that $50 million
a year to your local synagogues.

Fire Abe Foxman.
http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/10-28-98.html

Judaism and Farrakhan
"JUDAISM IS A GUTTER RELIGION."
http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/03-08-00.html

FARRAKHAN and the JEWISH RIFT How It All Started
http://www.finalcall.com/perspectives/rift.html

Adversaries Go Inside ADL's Spying Operation
http://www.examiner.com/news/default.jsp?story=n.adl.0401w
Far from preserving the image of the Jewish people, the ADL's crimes
are a source of constant embarrassment and shame.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS ARTICLE? CLICK THIS WEB LINK TO POST
YOUR COMMENTS, SUGGESTIONS, OR QUESTIONS AT THE INFOTIMES FORUM:
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ADL MUST PAY $9.75 MILLION FOR ITS CRIMES: U.S. COURT
http://www.InformationTimes.com

LIBEL AWARD AGAINST ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE UPHELD
http://www.rense.com/general37/RRTO.HTM

THE DEFAMATION LEAGUE
http://www.polyconomics.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=1387



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41 Arrested at 26 Federal Plaza
OPERATION HOMELAND RESISTANCE

Breaking News... Firing off the opening volley in three days of
planned civil disobedience, 41 activists with "Operation Homeland
Resistance" were arrested outside the NYC Federal Building at 26
Federal Plaza today.

According to a press release, "NYC organizations and New Yorkers will
launch a three-day campaign of civil disobedience and creative
actions Monday, May 5th. The civil disobedience will begin at 11:00am
at 26 Federal Plaza, Manhattan. The campaign called Operation
Homeland Resistance, will highlight issues around the continued
occupation of Iraq and continued domestic war on people of color,
immigrants and the poor within the U.S."

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Operation Homeland Resistance PRESS RELEASE 5/5/03
by nyc 11:43am Mon May 5 '03 (Modified on 4:22pm Mon May 5 '03)
  http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=59025&group=webcast

AS BUSH DECLARES `END' TO MILITARY OPERATIONS IN IRAQ,
OPERATION HOMELAND RESISTANCE LAUNCHES DAYS OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

FOR RELEASE ON MONDAY, MAY 5, 2003:

CONTACT: Collette Carter, (917) 940-7967
Hyun Lee, (718) 415-9610
http://www.homelandresistance.org

AS BUSH DECLARES `END' TO MILITARY OPERATIONS IN IRAQ, OPERATION
HOMELAND RESISTANCE LAUNCHES DAYS OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

May 5, 2003 - Calling President Bush's declaration of victory in Iraq
a front for mismanagement at home and abroad, NYC organizations and
New Yorkers will launch a three-day campaign of civil disobedience
and creative actions Monday, May 5th. The civil disobedience will
begin at 11:00am at 26 Federal Plaza, Manhattan. The campaign called
Operation Homeland Resistance, will highlight issues around the
continued occupation of Iraq and continued domestic war on people of
color, immigrants and the poor within the U.S. The actions will draw
attention to the different ways communities in New York City are
under attack through criminalization of local communities of color,
increased policing and police violence, massive cuts in basic
services, and targeted attacks on immigrant communities.

"This war has put all of us at risk and soldiers and Iraqis are not
the only casualties. Children here in New York City have been cut off
from basic medical care. Thousands of people have lost their jobs as
the President raids our communities to fund these policies. Many
people who have come to the U.S. in search of a new life have been
detained without cause, without access to legal representation, and
without the ability to even see their families," stated Monami
Maulik, director of Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM).

The group is calling for the three days of civil disobedience in
order to draw attention to the large numbers of people, often ignored
by mainstream media, that are opposed to Bush's policies right here
at "ground zero." "New Yorkers are tired of politicians using the
tragedy of September 11th to engage in military aggression abroad and
domestic repression at home. The bombings of Afghanistan and Iraq
have not made us safer or even brought us closer to any real answers.
These policies have only resulted in making us more vulnerable to
global isolation and local economic crisis." Referring to the Bush
Administration's allocation of millions in US corporate contracts for
the Iraq "rebuilding process" Loira Limbal, an organizer
with "Operation Homeland Resistance" said, "The time for exploiting
mourning to justify bombing and backroom deals is over. This cannot
happen in our name, in the name of those we love."

The action calls on New Yorkers and everyone who believes that this
war is unjust, that human rights matter, and that the Bush
Administration should not place the burden of the war budget on the
backs of everyday people. They are urged "to join us in adding our
voices and our bodies to the continued, world-wide resistance against
the U.S. policies of terrorism at home and abroad."

The action is endorsed by more than 56 local and national social
justice organizations including: Blacks Against War, Desis Rising Up
and Moving, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, NYC AIDS Housing
Network, Harlem Anti-War Coalition, CAAAV: Organizing Asian
Communities, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Audre Lorde Project,
Nodutdol - For Korean Community Development, and United for Peace and
Justice New York.

www.homelandresistance.org

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Pakistanis held in Turkey

ANKARA, May 5: Turkish security forces on Monday detained about 100
would-be illegal immigrants in the western part of the country.

Acting on a tipoff from passers-by, police in Istanbul rounded up 60
illegal immigrants from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh after they
left a building where they were hiding to board a van.

Police said the 60 immigrants had spent several days hiding in a flat
measuring 90 square metres. In a separate operation, security forces
detained 38 illegal immigrants from Pakistan, India, Burundi, Nigeria
and Tanzania in the Aegean province of Izmir.

Three Turks, who were allegedly planning to sail the illegals to a
nearby Greek island, were also taken into police custody.-AFP


http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top12.htm&date=20030506

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"Free" Iraq under the shackles of neo-Colonialism?!



It really incenses the mind of a rational human being, adding insult
to injury, when attempts are being made to demonstrate that corporate-
US has waged this unprovoked war against Iraq for benevolent reasons.
Does any sane person really expect the world to believe that leading
Capitalist state driven by large multinationals have suddenly become
benign? Why the US has selectively chosen to "liberate" the Iraqi's
rather then the Palestinians, Rwandans or the Kashmir's? If the
welfare of the Iraqi's was an important factor for the US, why there
has been so little effort directed towards restoring the vital public
services, which were destroyed by the bombings? Yet the US managed to
deploy adequate resources to securing the oil fields. Now that
Iraqi's have been "freed", why is it a problem for the Anglo-US
forces to hand over the responsibility to the UN, since they have met
their original well-intended objective? Did the "free" Iraqi's get a
choice to say who will be awarded the contracts for reconstruction of
their own country? Is it not being handed on a plate to the US
multinationals (Bechtel)? Perhaps turning the war of "liberation"
into a war of "profit", just like the first Gulf war. Iraqi's are now
paying for the reconstruction of their own country destroyed by
foreign forces with their own oil after they have already paid for it
with their blood. Politically the US is preparing a former convict
(Chalabi) with strong Zionist connections to run Iraq on its behalf,
whilst J. Garner an arms dealer also with Zionist connections is
shaping Iraq to generate other subservient coolies, should Chalabi
suffer the same fate as the recent cleric did in Najaf! The US wants
four military bases in "free" Iraq. What is the need for these bases
since the Bathist regime has collapsed? Does it give us hint about
the future US intention to remove the much discredited Saudi regime,
or perhaps to constrain the Syrians and the Iranians with the same
leverages of Democracy and Human Rights violations?

Despite all this the US continues to deny any aspiration to colonise
Iraq. Much of this denial is under the veil of defining "colonialism"
as was practiced by the British. The objective of colonialism is to
access the valuable raw materials, and then create new markets for
the processed goods; occupation is simply a means to achieve these
objectives. Now that we live in an era of neo-colonialism, direct
occupation has been replaced with more subtle methods.  Create a
government with a friendly native faces who will dance to your
commands, in return for securing their privileges, as the ruling
family in Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, and
Afghanistan demonstrates. In addition there are other powerful tools
like IMF, World Bank that aid such types of neo-colonialism where the
entire country simply becomes mortgaged to these institutions.

As usual the case of US intervention in Bosnia/Kossovo is always
cited to demonstrate her innocence of having any colonialist aims as
well as to dispel the words of George Bush that "this crusade will
take a while". The US was simply behaving as a spectator for most of
the civil war in Bosnia. She only intervened when the Serbs were
practically finished in gaining their domination of the region. The
arms embargo imposed by the UN against the Muslims aided much of the
genocide and suffering. In the end the US carried out some nominal
bombings to subdue the Serbs to prevent destabilisation in Europe,
but nothing compared to the scale of the recent "Shock and Awe". Do
not tell us that this token example was a manifestation of genuine
human compassion on the part of Capitalist Corporate-USA. If so, the
people of Rwanda or Palestine could have done with a small drop of
such resolve that manifested in Bosnia. Similarly at every point of
launching an aggression against the Arabs we hear of sudden plans or
solution for the Palestine problem. Form the first Gulf war there has
been so many "visions" of an independent Palestinian state. Bush
senior, Clinton, Bush Junior, Colin Powell, and now even Tony Blair
has one. He says he has a road map, leading to where and how, no one
knows. Perhaps it is enough for the pro-war Kuwaitis to write about
in their own media in collusion with their pro-Zionist neo-
conservatives friends in the US. But the comments of Ariel Sharon
indicate it is only a mater of time when Tony Blair realises who has
more clout in the US administrations and the Pentagon.

Many of the war hawks commentators have tried to down play the anti-
US sentiments in the Arab/Islamic world as the product of the
curriculum in the Islamic Schools (Madrassas). Such sentiments are
not exclusively confined to the religious Muslims/Arabs but are much
more widespread across the entire world. Do we not witness the entire
world including a significant section of the US population is raged
with anger against the US foreign policy? Sentiments expressed by
many countries that have no historical connection to the Middle East,
its people or its culture. Such widespread emotion is the product of
years of US fundamentalism and brutality around the world rather then
any form of propaganda. Producing the likes of those who plunged into
the buildings with the planes and perhaps they have lost their loved
ones in the various carnages that were undertaken by the US and
Israeli forces. The "road to Basra", Qana, Sabra-Shatila are just a
few examples. In short, 9/11 actions are retaliatory actions and not
an act of unprovoked aggression or the result of the non-political
curriculum of the Madrassas. Similarly many of the relatives of the
victims of this recent war in Iraq and Afghanistan may resort do the
same against the US in the near future. If such punishments were
dispensed, it would be just and moral by any standards.



Now we are expected to accept the twisted logic, which purport that
the killings of the innocents in Iraq have some how been vindicated
on the basis that Saddam would have killed a lot more if left in
power. Putting aside all the legal criteria's that were trampled
upon, by such arguments one can simply execute all known convicts in
society as they may commit the same crime in the future. Has everyone
forgotten the universal principal of "Innocent until proven guilty"?
This now begins to sound a bit like the world of Adolf Hitler, lets
eliminate all elements in society that do not fit our vision, in this
case the American dream (even though it may be a nightmare for the
world). Is it any surprise that the people who are perhaps the most
authoritative on this subject of Adolf Hitler i.e. the Germans, have
started to draw parallels with the regime of Bush, such views were
echoed in many placards in the various demonstrations held around the
world. In addition the Iraqi's themselves did not express their own
opinions for liberation. True liberation comes from within rather
then from an invading force with an alien culture. Hence if the
Iraqi's really desired liberation they would have shown signs of mass
revolt from pre or early phase of the military campaign and
despite "encouragement" given by the British forces in Basra to the
oppressed Shia's, there were never any real signs of a genuine mass
revolt. Even after the downfall of Saddam we see the anti-US
sentiments on the rise in all areas of Iraq. As for highlighting
Saddam's past crimes, US were a party to those crimes.  Saddam is not
some kind of irrational evil character out of Scooby-Doo or from one
of the Hollywood blockbusters. There is an old picture of Donald
Rumsfeld and Saddam shaking hands on a deal, perhaps supplying VX
gas. The US continued to do so long after the Halabja incidence in
1988. Another universal legal principal states that the Criminal
should be punished with the accomplices. Let us not forget those
accomplices, who made a healthy profit out of the blood of the
Iraqi's back then and are doing the same again under a different
guise. The twisted logic continues, as Geoff Hoon recently argued
that Iraqi's are far better of in the post-Saddam era, and
the "discovery" (As if the west had no prior knowledge of this) of
the torture chambers, mass graves relating to the crimes committed in
the 80s are enough to vindicate this illegal war on Iraq. Finding
evidence retrospectively has no legal merit. This is why evidences
obtained without a legal search warrant is simply discarded. In any
case such "evidences" has no relation to the actual justification for
the war. As for Iraqi's being better off, try and tell that to the
ones who have lost their families, possession and suffering from the
destruction of their entire city. Now the nation faces a serious
prospect of turning their country into a pro-Israeli military base
like that of Kuwait.



We were told that Saddam would be disarmed of his WMD (Weapons of
Mass Destruction), which is turning out be weapons of mass lies, as
not an iota of credible evidence found by any INDEPENDENT authority.
Independent verification is central to establishing an unbiased
judgement on any dispute. The coalition were the original Plaintiff
against Iraq, so how is it that they can assume this "Independent"
role of verifying the "evidences", assuming we hear about it? There
is no need as the goal post changes again. Claims are already being
made, that finding WMD was not central to enforcing the resolution
1441 but that Saddam's "breach" was sufficient. Existence of the
circumstantial evidences regarding WMD on paper was sufficient
regardless of its physical existence of WMD. Likewise we heard a free
Iraq will be able do decide their future. As again the goal post is
shifting. Free Iraqis would be free as long as they are subservient
to the US/Israeli interests. Hence the recent demonstrations by the
indigenous "free" population of Iraq in the post Saddam era to
establish an Islamic state has already been opposed by Rumsfeld. The
Blair-Bush administrations pretence about its lofty moral principals
and values only adds bitter resentment. They violate the same
principals without reservation whilst they try to enforce the same on
the rest of the world. Unlawful captivity of the prisoners including
children in Guantanamo-Bay, summery executions in Mazar-e-Sherif,
encouraging Israel to engage in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (Who
were there long before 1948, just like the red-Indians.) in violation
of more UN resolutions then Iraq are few examples of such blatant
hypocrisy. Is it any surprise every time their lips move all we feel
is our stomach turning at the mass of lies, hypocrisy that has been
packaged with the aid of its powerful sophisticated propaganda
machine.

On the subject of Propaganda machine the war waged by the powerful
mass media (CNN, Sky and Zionist-Fox etc), with its
embedded "reporting" has been just as lethal. Just recently we saw
how it manipulated the images of a handful of people composed of US
marines, Chalabi's paid mercenaries and released
convicts "celebrating" the victory of US forces as being
representative of the ordinary 22 Million Iraqi's. Now the media has
shown almost no pictures of all the anti-US demonstrations carried
out by the "Free" Iraqis in their thousands that were "liberated" by
the US. Nor does it show the grieving families and ask of their
opinions on this war of "liberation".

Yamin Zakaria

yaminz@...

UK, London


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Why did Israel shoot an unarmed Briton in the back?

1.  Israelis fire on parents of injured British peace activist
2.  Why was an unarmed Briton shot in the back?

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Israelis fire on parents of injured British peace activist

By Cahal Milmo - 06 May 2003

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=403582

The parents of a British peace activist who was shot in the head by
Israeli troops came under fire themselves as they travelled to the
spot where their son was critically injured.

Anthony and Jocelyn Hurndall were in a British diplomatic convoy
entering the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip when Israeli soldiers at
a checkpoint fired a shot, which passed narrowly over the top of
their vehicles.

The incident on Saturday afternoon took place despite the Israeli
Army being given notice of the journey on at least three occasions –
the last minutes before the convoy arrived.

The Foreign Office said last night that an explanation had been
requested from the Israeli authorities for the warning shot, which
was fired as the two armoured Range Rovers entered the Abu Khouli
checkpoint on the edge of Rafah at about 1pm.

Concerns were being raised yesterday over the conduct of Israeli
soldiers in the south of the Gaza Strip. The incident in which the
Hurndalls were fired at comes not only after their son was shot in
Rafah, but after two other Westerners were killed in the city.

The Hurndalls, whose eldest son, Tom, is in a coma in an Israeli
hospital after he was shot three weeks ago while trying to reach two
Palestinian children, were being accompanied by Tom's youngest
brother and the military and political attachés to the British
embassy in Tel Aviv.

Mrs Hurndall, a schoolteacher from Tufnell Park, north London,
said: "We were passing through the checkpoint very, very slowly when
there was the sound of a bullet – it was like the sound of a large
stone coming off the car.

"What struck me was the ludicrousness of the situation. Here we were,
the parents and brother of someone who has been wounded by Israeli
Defence Forces and who then fire a warning shot over our car for no
apparent reason.

"It was a measure of the insanity that can take hold here." The
single shot was fired from one of two watchtowers that stand above
the checkpoint, causing the two British cars, identifiable by their
white diplomatic plates, to come to an immediate halt.

Not until the defence attaché, Colonel Tom Fitzalan-Howard, had
stepped from the car with his hands in the air to talk with the
soldiers inside the tower was the convoy able to proceed.

Notice that the cars would be passing through Abu Khouli was given at
least three times – in the days before the trip, just as it was
setting off and 10 minutes before it arrived.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "A single warning shot was fired
as our staff were crossing the checkpoint. No-one was injured but the
incident has been raised with the Israeli Defence Forces."

It is understood that an Israeli Army captain at the checkpoint later
told members of the convoy that the shot had been fired because the
vehicles had not stopped. There was no order to do so.

The journey by the Hurndall family to Rafah, where they met peace
activists from the International Solidarity Movement who had been
working with Tom, was made as they launched an appeal to raise
£20,000 to bring him back to Britain by air ambulance.

The 21-year-old student, who was studying photography at Manchester
Metropolitan University, was hit by a high-velocity bullet fired by
an Israeli sniper as he moved towards two frightened Palestinian
children in daylight.

http://www.iap.org E-mails: iapinfo@...
Proudly serving Palestine and al Quds

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Why was an unarmed Briton shot in the back?

Six months after an Israeli sniper killed a top UN official, his
family still
wait for answers

Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Wednesday May 7, 2003
The Guardian

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,950527,00.
html

Six months ago, Jack Straw sounded as if he really meant to lay bare
how an Israeli army sniper came to shoot an unarmed British former
army officer in the back.

The foreign secretary said "everything" would be done to ensure a
thorough investigation into the killing of Iain Hook, the head of a
UN project to reconstruct the obliterated heart of the Jenin refugee
camp. But today Mr Hook's colleagues accuse Israel of covering
up "cold-blooded murder", and Britain and the UN of complicity by
quietly trying to bury the truth to avoid a political confrontation.

The day after the sniper shot Mr Hook as he stood in the UN compound
in Jenin last November, Israel promised Mr Straw a full account of
the killing. Now Israel says its inquiry has been "put aside".

The UN launched its own investigation but its report so disturbed
staff, who called it a whitewash, that it was rewritten and the final
version has not been made public. Meanwhile, the Foreign Office has
retreated from Mr Straw's pledge and brushes aside questions about
the failure to explain the killing as a private matter for the Hook
family.

Paul Wolstenholme, Mr Hook's deputy, who was in the UN compound at
the time of the killing, is critical of all three players for
apparently burying the investigation, because it allows Israeli
soldiers to believe they will not be called to account.

Disheartened


"Having happened once there is a fear that the problem of it
happening again is still there because we have no definitive answer
as to what happened," he said. "I'm gravely disappointed at the fact
that the Israeli response has not been forthcoming. I'm disheartened
at the fact that so little has been done at the political level by
Britain and the UN."

Mr Hook, a former paratrooper from Felixstowe, was employed by Crown
Agents and paid for by the British Department for International
Development to head the Jenin project. He was shot dead by an army
sniper during an Israeli incursion into a city tense and bitter over
the fighting and destruction six months earlier.

The Israeli army sought to muddy the waters. It initially claimed,
falsely, that soldiers had been fired at by Palestinian gunmen within
the compound and said the sniper mistook Mr Hook for a fighter
because he was carrying what appeared to be a gun - which turned out
to be a mobile phone. That account has been widely dismissed, not
least because Mr Hook, 54, was tall with ginger hair, and the sniper
had a powerful aiming sight that gave him a close look at his victim.

The day after the killing, Mr Straw called the then Israeli foreign
minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who agreed to an inquiry. Mr Straw and
the international development secretary, Clare Short, issued a
statement saying: "This is a terrible event. We will do everything
possible to ensure that there is a full investigation."

But not long afterwards an Israeli general delivered a "verbal
report" to the British ambassador, Sherard Cowper-Coles, and tried to
persuade him to accept it as the final word on the shooting. Mr
Cowper-Coles refused and insisted on detailed conclusions in writing.

Since then, Israel has failed to provide a comprehensive explanation
for what did happen, to admit any wrongdoing or error, or to
apologise to Mr Hook's family. A foreign ministry spokesman, Jonathon
Peled, said the verbal report was the end of the matter for now. "A
verbal report was made to the British authorities and there has been
nothing to add."

An Israeli army spokesman declined to discuss the investigation other
than to say that it is continuing and no date has been set for the
release of a written report.

However, in January, the Israeli defence ministry did dispatch a
brigadier-general to England to see Mr Hook's widow, Kathy, and two
sons, Julian and Nick, who had visited the scene of the killing.

Family troubled


The sons are military officers and were said by an acquaintance from
the investigation to be deeply troubled by the Israeli account of
their father's death. But the source said the Foreign Office had
persuaded them to await the Israeli report before voicing their
concerns publicly.

The source said the Hook family, which declines to talk to the press,
was not impressed by the general's visit. "At no stage in the meeting
did he apologise or admit they had made a mistake," said the source.

The case clearly embarrasses Britain. The Foreign Office will say
only that it is "in close contact with the Israeli military" and that
its primary concern is that Mr Hook's family is satisfied. Asked if
the department had a wider responsibility to help ensure Israeli
accountability for its soldiers' actions, a spokesperson said no.

Much of the pressure for a full account of Mr Hook's death came from
other UN staff. A fortnight after the killing, 64 UN foreign staff
working in the occupied territories signed an open letter which
blamed the Israeli army for Mr Hook's death and called for an end to
what it described as the military's "refusal to respect the most
elementary standards of humanity".

"We condemn the Israeli army in the strongest possible terms for its
wanton act against an unarmed man," it said. "UN staff -
international and Palestinian alike - have been verbally abused,
stripped, beaten, shot at and killed by Israeli soldiers."

Senior UN officials tacitly approved the letter, hoping it would
prevent a cover-up.

The UN inquiry was carried out by a former member of the US naval
intelligence branch, John Logan. He raised eyebrows with expressions
of sympathy for the Israeli army, and for cutting short the
investigation because he had been "threatened". His report generated
so much criticism in the UN's humanitarian operation in the occupied
territories (UNRWA), its department of political affairs and Kofi
Annan's office that it was rewritten.

"A lot of people thought it was a whitewash," said one senior
official. "The investigator had what you might call a more than
normal sympathy for Israel's point of view."

The report's detractors say it put undue emphasis on the actions of
an Irish peace activist, Caoimhe Butterly.

The Israeli account claims the sniper became confused because
Palestinian gunmen had knocked a hole in the UN compound wall and
entered. Mr Wolstenholme and other UN staff deny there were armed men
on the premises. However, the UN report describes Ms Butterly
bringing young men in through the hole, implying the Israelis might
suspect they were fighters when in fact they were unarmed boys in
their early teens desperate to escape fighting outside.

Commando


"No one believes the Israeli story that the sniper thought Iain was
holding a gun," said one UN official close to the
investigation. "This soldier was a trained commando. He had a sight
that magnified at least three times and he was only 20 metres [65ft]
away. What really concerns us is the lack of an apology and remorse.
The message that goes out to every Israeli soldier is that it's OK
to kill the UN."

Among other concerns are that Mr Logan used one of the principal
figures in the incident, Israeli army captain Peter Lerner, as a
translator in interviewing other participants. Mr Hook had sought
Capt Lerner's assistance by mobile phone just minutes before he was
shot.

The rewritten version of the UN report was marked "eyes only" and
delivered to UNRWA's commissioner general, Peter Hansen, while he was
in Beirut to prevent it falling into Israeli hands, although even
then the UN is not certain it remains confidential. Copies have also
been given to Mrs Hook, Jack Straw and Clare Short.

A UN spokesman in New York, Farhan Haq, was unable to say when the
report would be released. However, a source said the UN knows that
the Israelis have obtained a copy of the original report.

"If we press the Israelis to release their report, they have made it
known they will release our first one and say it clears them," he
said. "It's the same if we release the second report, they'll point
to the first and say we only made it tougher for political reasons.
It's a complete mess now. No one has any faith that the truth will be
admitted or the sniper held accountable."

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7,500 ARRESTED FOR PEACE!
IRAQ WAR RESISTANCE AT HOME AND ABROAD
from Jack and Felice Cohen-Joppa, editors of the Nuclear Resister

	 More than 7,500 arrests were reported in the U.S. alone
during anti-war protests between November, 2002 and mid-April, 2003.
The latest edition of the Nuclear Resister newsletter chronicles this
slice of recent anti-war activism that included more than 300 actions
in at least 115 cities and towns in 35 states.
	 Hundreds of people were jailed from overnight to six months,
and updated names and addresses of current prisoners for peace are
available from nukeresister@..., and soon at
www.nonviolence.org/nukeresister
	 This is our history!  Celebrate it, share it, use it to build
the movement against the new American Empire.
	 A FREE sample copy of the 16-page double issue tabloid is
available in print only, by request.  Please send your postal address
to nukeresister@....   Your address will not be shared.
          This issue also includes feature articles on the recent
trial of Plowshares women in Colorado facing 5-8 year sentences;
scores of School of the Americas resisters convicted and sentenced 3-
6 months in prison; Vieques Libre!; Phil Berrigan memorial; prisoner
writings and addresses and more.
	 The chronicle of resistance published in the latest issue of
the Nuclear Resister reveals the extent to which, early on, protest
included active resistance to an invasion of Iraq.  Well before U.S.
and U.K. troops arrived in Iraq, millions of people were
participating in an unprecedented multitude of marches, rallies and
protests across the globe.  Also widespread were acts of nonviolent
civil disobedience in opposition to war.  A deeply held conviction
against military action in Iraq was shared by many people who had
never protested before, and found themselves moved to engage in
"extra-legal" activities for which they were arrested and hauled off
to court and sometimes jail.
	 Many blockades, graffiti, sit-ins, unpermitted marches and
other actions expected to result in arrests did not in fact end that
way.  In contrast, police in city after city were quick to arrest
people who strayed from the sidewalks or "protest pens," and on
several occasions, simply surrounded large groups of peaceful, legal
marchers and arrested everyone.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

	 If you or someone you know is jailed for anti-war actions,
please let us know as soon as possible so that the news can be
included in the next issue.  Write to us at POB 43383, Tucson, AZ
85733 or e-mail nukeresister@...
	 We know that despite our best efforts, we have undoubtedly
missed many arrests that should be included in this listing.  We will
correct, amend, and continue the chronology in the next issue of the
Nuclear Resister, and eventually online.

THE INFORMATION WE NEED:

	 Any information about the arrest or jailing of anti-war and
anti-nuclear demonstrators, either in the United States or other
countries.
		 We would like basic information such as date, place,
brief description of action, number arrested and current legal
status, as well as copies of action or courtroom statements, press
releases, news clippings, poetry and other writings from jail,
graphics, photos, other related documents (citizen warrants, war
crime indictments, etc.) and any personal comments that may be of
interest.  Such statements and documents are appreciated even if we
have already reported on the actions.

SUBSCRIPTIONS!

	 We need yours!  Please support publication of the Nuclear
Resister by subscribing or sending a donation - or both!  You will be
helping to document the resistance and support the imprisoned
resisters.   Subscriptions are US$15/year [US$20 Canada/US$25
overseas].  Send payment in US$ payable to "the Nuclear Resister",
P.O. Box 43383, Tucson  AZ 85733, USA

Contributions of $50 or more are always welcome and are
tax-deductible if made payable to:
"The Progressive Foundation-Nuclear Resister".
ALL SUBSCRIPTIONS MAILED FIRST CLASS.  FREE TO PRISONERS, OF COURSE!

_____________________________________
                    the Nuclear Resister
                    "a chronicle of hope"
                        P.O. Box 43383
                      Tucson  AZ 85733
          - information about and support for
imprisoned anti-nuclear and anti-war activists -
          Jack & Felice Cohen-Joppa, editors
                 phone/fax (520)323-8697
                email:  nukeresister@...
US$15/year/US$20 Canada/US$25 overseas
          - selections from current issue
            - updated prisoner addresses
              - & more can be read at:
     http://www.nonviolence.org/nukeresister
         * FREE SAMPLE ISSUE ON REQUEST *
(please supply a postal address for samples)


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Israeli Tourist Minister Terrorizes Palestinian Homes
by Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
Tuesday May 06, 2003 at 01:01 AM
info@... FAX 972-2-622-1530 PO Box 2030 Jerusalem 91020, Israel

They do it in the middle of the night. On dark nights. Quietly,
stealthily. In large groups. Well organized militias - armed and all.
A crowd of about 50 religious settlers. Came in the night to two
houses in Israeli-annexed, Arab East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah, over
the Green Line. They threw a child out of the broken window they'd
entered by. A two-year-old flying baby, falling from the 2nd storey
window, five meters high, ending up in hospital traumatised.


minister.jpg, image/jpeg, 122x171

SHEIKH JARRAH, EAST JERUSALEM: 28th April, 2003

They do it in the middle of the night. On dark nights. Quietly,
stealthily. In large groups. Well organized militias - armed and all.
A crowd of about 50 religious settlers. Came in the night to two
houses in Israeli-annexed, Arab East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah, over
the Green Line. They threw a child out of the broken window they'd
entered by. A two-year-old flying baby, falling from the 2nd storey
window, five meters high, ending up in hospital traumatised. They hit
a man so badly he was driven away unconscious in an ambulance; I saw
him go. Three others also hospitalised. Blood everywhere, broken
doors, broken windows, chains and padlocks they put on gates to stop
the neighbours coming to help.

They were organised like a small army brigade and came even though
the court has yet to rule finally on this matter. Two even
reconnoitred earlier that evening, arriving at 7.00 pm at the houses,
lying to the people living there that they were from the
Municipality: "How many people live here? We just want to know if the
water's running and electricity switched on?" The residents wouldn't
let them in, knowing at that hour no one comes officially.

By the time I arrived, summoned from sleep by the phone, the baby was
in hospital. Thankfully, a resident phoned a diplomat, the police and
a peace activist. A small handful of us gathered to witness the
aftermath, to learn the truth, to show support and solidarity; while
Saudi TV got it down on film. And the Police and Border Police called
for help let the settlers (these "so called" religious men) go with
no arrests, despite the injuries they'd inflicted. No arrests, no
handcuffs .. the police just let them trickle out of the houses with
their skullcaps neatly in place and their sleeping bags stowed neatly
in their backpacks. Each one's hand-gun neatly out of sight, though
witnesses later told how every single one was armed. We hurled
insults at them in Hebrew, they looked amazed and the police verbally
abused us instead. They offered the police chocolate, these covetous
colonials. Stood in small clusters chatting with them by the four
police jeeps as if there'd been no crime, no criminal
activity. "Moshe, where's my water?" one called to another, as if
nothing unusual was going on. And huddled there, defying outraged,
silent Arab neighbors, reorganizing strategy, before loading into
their parked vehicles which drove away. For now. They will be
back ... As if there'd been no crime.

Since one of them was a Cabinet Minister (Minister of Tourism, Benny
Elon), one must suppose they felt protected by the law and even above
it... They are his gang, his followers, this group of thugs: "Homat
Shalem" activists – an organization he runs. Maybe they'd even
obtained rabbinical sanction for their acts, like Yigal Amir before
murdering a Prime Minister. Benny Elon is also a rabbi. He who
denied, recently in court, knowing of Rabin's murder in advance.
Contrary to what Amir claims.

Today is Monday, 28th April 2003. There is a Road Map initiative
under way in which settlements should be vacated, the Occupation
ceased and land returned to its owners. Are these the last desperate
acts of ethnic cleansers? Or is this their business-as-usual,
arrogantly obscene gesture at the peace process?

No doubt they'll be back, they'll keep on trying, using every trick
as they always have. Hebron was such a case. Ras al Amud, Silwan, the
list goes on… Even now, today, the country's main newspapers deny the
flying baby, talk of a compromise forced on local residents by
police, an eviction order, a lawyer's escort with the gang and a
lawyers' compromise. But the lawyer for the residents tells me all
such reports are lies. Whatever the truth, it's another hotspot,
another bloody thorn in the side of peace. Created by sneaky people,
armed thugs and sundry terrorists, who come in the dark of night, on
the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Stealing someone else's
birthright. Stealing people's homes. Creating refugees. Creating
occupation. Using terror. I called one, to his face, a Nazi. It
seemed the fitting word.



www.icahd.org


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India to deploy Agni missiles this year


By Our Correspondent

NEW DELHI, May 7: India plans to deploy its intermediate range
nuclear-capable Agni I and II missiles in 2003, the government said
in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

Defence Minister George Fernandes said in a written reply that
production of Agni I with a range of 700 kms and Agni II with a reach
of 2000 km had already started and they would be deployed this year.

He said that based on long-term security needs, the government had
approved the development of the longer range 3000 km Agni III
missiles.

"The development is in progress and the missile is likely to be
tested in near future," Mr Fernandes said. He said no date was fixed
for the first launch of the longer version of the Agni, seen as China
specific.

Mr Fernandes said in India's missile programme only the surface-to-
surface army variant of the Prithvi missile had been so far deployed
with the army. The production of longer range 250 kms Prithvi II
had 'started after successful completion of development and flight
testing.'


http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top15.htm&date=20030508

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Daniel Ben Simon: All mapped out

Israeli minister says "It's clear that Islam is on the way to
disappearing"

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=289375&sw=%22It%
27s+clear+that+Islam+is+on+the+way%22

Feeling betrayed by their once-sympathetic prime minister, members of
the Yesha Council prepare for the coming struggle and describe
visions of a world without Islam

The settlers in the territories are fed up with having to confront a
new peace plan every few months. They have had it up to here with the
tension and the anxiety generated by the talk about painful
concessions that have to be made for the sake of peace. They have
neither the interest nor the energy for a new round of battles. They
are convinced that they will bring about the death of the new
plan, as they did with others, when they sent tens of thousands of
people into the streets. Now the guillotine is poised over their
heads again, in the form of the American "road map," and wielding the
guillotine is none other than the person considered the chief
architect of the settlement project. The settlers are stunned that
Ariel Sharon has given his consent to the U.S. plan.

Dozens of members of the Council of Jewish Settlements of Judea,
Samaria and the Gaza District (known as the Yesha Council) met on
Monday of this week in order to prepare for the struggle that will be
launched after the road map is presented. There was an ominous
atmosphere in the meeting, which was closed to the press. "We wanted
to discuss things among ourselves," said the chairman of the council,
Benzi Lieberman. "The situation is very bad."

Lieberman and his colleagues are battle-weary. It's been almost three
years since they declared an uncompromising war against the peace
plan presented by the then prime minister, Ehud Barak, at Camp David.

"After the shock of Camp David, it will take a major disaster to make
people deeply anxious," one of the settlers' leaders admitted. "Barak
placed 100 settlements to be removed on the negotiating table.
Fortunately, nothing came of it - not because of Barak but because
the Arabs are stupid and didn't agree to accept the gift he was
handing them on a platter. We were saved by their stupidity."

This time the settlers were prescient and met for marathon sessions
to look for ways to repulse the latest peace offensive. For fear of
being viewed as chronic peace refuseniks, they looked for
alternatives that would reflect their mood.

"People are always asking us what we propose," Yehiel Hazan, a new
Likud MK and a resident of the West Bank city of Ariel, said at the
emergency meeting this week. "I made the point that we have to come
up with proposals of our own, so we will be able to tell the public
`yes' and not only `no.'"

Are the settlers talking about a true peace plan or a bluff? It
depends on whom you ask. Most of the participants tended to agree
that it's a bluff, but none of them was willing to say so
openly. "Our true goal is to block the road map," said Yehoshua Mor
Yosef, the spokesman of the Yesha Council, candidly. "But we know
that the Israeli public isn't enthusiastic about ruling over Arabs,
so we are telling them that we have a plan, too."

Shaul Goldstein, the head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council,
explained that the Yesha Council plan contains a very generous
package for the Palestinians. "We are creating an alternative plan,
but without maps," he said. "It's a plan that doesn't have a
Palestinian state at the center, but does have possibilities
for civil rights for the Palestinians."

More dangerous than Oslo

After examining the road map thoroughly, the members of the Yesha
Council reached the uniform conclusion that it will be a death
sentence for the settlement enterprise. "It's definitely an
earthquake," asserted Prof. Aryeh Eldad, a new MK from the National
Union during a lunch break between sessions. "If I'm not mistaken,
this is the first time there has been agreement between an American
president and an Israeli prime minister on the establishment of a
Palestinian state."

There was no dispute over the need to launch a relentless battle
against Prime Minister Sharon. "I have to admit that I didn't believe
Sharon would be worse than Barak," sighs Goldstein, "but Sharon is
1,000 times more dangerous than all his predecessors. This is the
first time an Israeli prime minister has agreed to three points: to
freeze building in the settlements, to evacuate outposts and to
work for the creation of a Palestinian state."

The settlers make it sound like they have been betrayed by a close
relative. The more they ponder Sharon's personality, the less they
are able to explain the peace gene that has suddenly appeared in
him. "I just don't understand him," Goldstein said irately. "The man
is out of joint with history. Just now, when everyone understands the
danger of Islamic terrorism, he is establishing a state for them."

Goldstein believes that the road map will not win a majority in the
Likud Party Central Committee and that it's unlikely Sharon will be
able to push it through the Likud Knesset faction: "The Yesha Council
will fight him with all its might, just as it fought against
[Yitzhak] Rabin and Barak. I have gone through three prime ministers,
but Sharon is the toughest adversary because he is one of the family
here."

The settlers are concerned about the day on which they will give the
order for their legions to take to the streets. They know the
settlers are exhausted after two and a half consecutive years of
intifada. It's doubtful whether they will find the strength to block
Sharon. "It's hard to get people to demonstrate today," admits
Yisrael Rosenberg, chairman of the Beit El Council. "Our public
is tired and wants to return to normal life. But if they have to go,
they will."

The settlers were always suspicious of Sharon's true intentions
because of two events, which they found traumatic, in which he was
involved. They will never forget his uprooting of the northern Sinai
settlement of Yamit in 1982, following the peace agreement with
Egypt. And they will not forget the moral and political backing he
gave then prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the Wye
agreement in 1998. Initially, 8 percent of the territory was supposed
to go to the Palestinians, but with Sharon's backing, Netanyahu
agreed to up 13 percent.

"We will never forget his uprooting of Yamit," Lieberman asserted, to
which Goldstein added, "We will never forget these two events. But
now we are dealing with a far more serious decree. The road map is
far more dangerous than Oslo."

`Founders' syndrome'

In another few days, Tourism Minister Benny Elon (National Union)
will make public a plan he has prepared that seeks to resolve the
Palestinian question once and for all. Sharon is unlikely to adopt
the plan, though. True, it proposes a two-state model, but as part of
the plan, the Palestinian state will be established in Jordan and
will then, of course, maintain friendly and peaceful relations with
Israel. King Abdullah will not have to abdicate and there will be no
urgent need to bring about the collapse of the Hashemite regime.
Abdullah can become part of the new regime.

Elon saw no need to attend the emergency meeting; He has his own way
to torpedo attempts of this kind by prime ministers. His immediate
plan is to make a tour of the Bible Belt in the United States in
which he will meet with politicians, public figures, lobbyists and
thousands of Evangelists whose soul goes out to Zion. This is the new
arena of activity for the Israeli right. For everyone who wants to
thwart a political move involving Israel and the Palestinians,
everyone who wants to organize a petition against the president of
the United States, everyone who believes that the Land of Israel
belongs in full and forever to the Jewish people - a visit to this
community is mandatory.

The Christian fundamentalists have hooked up with their Jewish allies
and created a formidable messianic alignment. The events of September
11, 2001, intensified this Jewish-Christian alliance, which includes
some 40 million Americans. "I am very much at home among the
Christians who support Israel," Elon stated proudly. "These are
people who are wild about Israel and believe in the annexation of
Judea and Samaria and even in the transfer of Palestinians from the
soil of the Land of Israel. Compared to them, I am considered a
dove."

These believers are not acting solely for the sake of heaven. While
many are motivated by the divine imperative in the Bible, from which
they conclude that they should love the Jews, others are driven by
messianic fervor. A war of Gog and Magog, they believe, will herald
the second coming of Jesus, and the Jews will have to become
Christians; those who refuse will be put to death.

But that bridge will be crossed when we come to it. In the meantime,
they say, until that critical period arrives, the world can expect
good things: Islam will disappear or undergo a radical
transformation.

"It's clear that Islam is on the way to disappearing," Elon asserts
with certainty. "What we are now seeing across the Muslim world is
not a powerful surge of faith but the dying embers of Islam. How will
it disappear? Very simply. Within a few years a Christian crusade
against Islam will be launched, which will be the major event of this
millennium. Obviously, we will be up against quite a large problem
when only the two great religions of Judaism and Christianity remain,
but that's still a long way off."

Until then the road map is stuck in Elon's throat like a bone. Like
his settler colleagues, he too suspected Sharon's intentions from the
beginning. His apprehension only increased in the wake of Sharon's
interview with Haaretz last month in which he ceded Beit El, Shilo
and Bethlehem. Elon, a resident of Beit El, was appalled. "I felt a
terrible pain, I even cried," he relates. "I told the others that we
will fight Sharon with all our might. He should know that we will cut
ourselves off from him long before Israel cuts itself off from Beit
El."

Elon has a complex relationship with Sharon, who, he says, suffers
from a "founders' syndrome." He refers to people who established the
state and fought for it, but were seized by weakness in their old
age. Elon is convinced that Sharon's ambition is to leave behind a
peace treaty after he dies. "He was the one who established the
settlements and the outposts, and now he feels the need to close the
circle and evacuate them. We will not let him ... Just as Ashkelon
was once Majdal, Ramallah will cease to be Ramallah. It will become
Ramat El [`height of God']. I have no doubt that within a few years
the refugee camps will no longer be here. The whole people of Israel
will return to the Land of Israel."

No empty caravans

Until the arrival of the road map, the settlers were engaged in
reordering and rehabilitating their lives. They fortified their
homes, placing iron bars in the windows and fences around their
houses to prevent Palestinian infiltrations. The past few months saw
a decline in the tension and anxiety, and the residents of
the settlements readied themselves for the resumption of the routine
they were accustomed to before the outbreak of the intifada at the
end of September, 2000.

They began driving on the main roads again, and Israelis and
Palestinians drove alongside one another, as they had in the past.
There were also fewer checkpoints and the wait to get through them
was shorter. Israelis and Palestinians feel that life is about to
change.

A few hundred meters from Beit El are the high-rise buildings of
Ramallah. Until a few months ago, the sounds of gunfire kept everyone
on edge. Now it's quiet. Even Ayosh Junction, which was a lethal
arena of battle during the intifada, has returned to normality. Some
of the buildings whose walls were blown out by Israeli army tank
shells have been repaired and the occupants have moved back in.

Despite the hell of the past 31 months, the settlements expanded. New
neighborhoods were built and outposts appeared on the nearby hills.
In Beit El, 30 families moved into a new neighborhood, whose
construction was completed last summer; construction will soon begin
of another neighborhood, consisting of 28 dwellings. The new families
will join the 900 families that already live in this large settlement
on the outskirts of Ramallah.

"I don't have room for even one new family," Yisrael Rosenberg, the
head of the Beit El Council, complains. "I don't have even one empty
caravan."

The settlements have diverse methods of expanding. Over and above
natural increase, political developments and terrorist attacks
actually bring about a growth in the population: In the period of the
intifada, 15 new-immigrant families from France settled in Beit El.
Another group of 80 families is expected soon.

"That's how it is," says David Schawat from France, who settled at
Beit El nine years ago, "the Jews are returning home." Similarly, the
road map is expected to strengthen rather than weaken the
settlements. "The prime minister's miserable remark about Beit El
will bring more new immigrants here," he says, "because whenever we
are wronged, new people come to live with us."

Matti Ehrlichman, the physician of Beit El, has an answer to all
these blows. Whether it's terrorism or the road map, what makes the
difference as far as he is concerned is the womb of the Jewish
mother. "I have 170 babies in Beit El every year," he exults. "That
means there is life, young couples, a reality that is beyond any
government plan. If you want to know whether a settlement is a
concrete fact or a bluff, check its birth rate - 170 infants mean
that Beit El is not just a hill or an outpost or even a settlement:
It's a whole slice of life, and that's what counts."

At mid-morning the siren sounded to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Beit El stopped working. The girls in the religious school placed a
large yellow patch in the form of the Star of David on the wall, and
in its center the word "Jude." The Jewish past plays a central role
in setting the agenda of the settlements. Perhaps that is the secret
of their strength.

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US to control Iraq economy

UNITED NATIONS, May 8: The United States has drafted a UN Security
Council resolution to immediately lift sanctions against Iraq and put
control of its economy under the US-led occupying forces for up to 12
months.

Oil revenues would go into an Assistance Fund, to be spent at the
direction of the occupying power in consultation with an Iraqi
interim administration, the draft says.

The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, told
reporters he would present the draft to the council on Friday and
said he wanted it adopted within two weeks, and by June 3 at the
latest.

The draft would immediately lift all UN sanctions imposed on Iraq
after its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 except an arms embargo.
The draft "notes the establishment of an Iraqi Assistance Fund" to be
used:

"To meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people, for the economic
reconstruction and repair of Iraq's infrastructure, for the continued
disarmament of Iraq, and for the costs of indigenous civilian
administration, and for other other purposes benefitting the people
of Iraq."

The Fund would have an international advisory board with
representatives of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the IMF and the
World Bank.

The board would appoint independent public accountants as auditors,
part of whose job it would be to ensure that Iraq's crude oil and
petroleum products are sold at fair world prices.

"All proceeds from such sales shall be deposited into the Iraqi
Assistance Fund, until such time as a new Iraqi government is
properly constituted and capable of discharging its
responsibilities," the draft says.

In the nine months before the US-led invasion on March 20, Iraq
exported an average of nearly 1.5 million barrels of oil a day, and
total sales in that period were close to 10 billion dollars.

The draft says money deposited in the Fund "shall be disbursed at the
direction of the Authority" - its word for the US and British forces
and the administration which has followed them into Iraq.-AFP

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top14.htm&date=20030509

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INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT

Friday, May 9, 2003

For Immediate Release


ISRAELI FORCES RAID ISM OFFICE

[Beit Sahour, Occupied Palestine] Israeli forces raided the ISM

office this morning, confiscating equipment and material and

snatching three women. At 12:30pm on Friday, May 9, approximately 20

military vehicles, army jeeps and a large armored personnel carrier

(intended for many arrests) surrounded the ISM media office in Beit

Sahour. Dozens of soldiers, border police and civilian police

officers raided the ISM office, confiscating all computers, not only

in the ISM office but in the nearby office of the Palestinian Centre

for Rapprochement. Files, CD, and photos were all pillaged, while

soldiers broke equipment and damaged office space. Israeli forces

kidnapped Palestinian volunteer, Fida, American volunteer, Flo, and

a worker with Human Rights Watch visiting the office. At the time of

this writing, Fida has been released, and the internationals seem to

have been moved to the office of the Israeli Ministry of Interior,

most probably for deportation.



The Israeli government has declared an open war on international

peace and human rights workers. Israeli forces are doing everything

in their power to specifically prevent the nonviolent resistance to

their military rule. The stepped-up harassment of internationals and

journalists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is nothing short

of a further attempt to shield from the international community the

brutality of daily Israeli military actions against the Palestinian

people.



The ISM, however, has no plans to leave the Palestinian areas nor to

reduce our actions or our efforts. We need your help. Please protest:



In the US: Contact your congressperson, the State Department and the

White House using this link.

http://www.cflweb.org/congress_merge_.htm or http://www.congress.gov

Also call the State Department and demand action. STATE DEPARTMENT 1-

202-647-5150



For UK, Please call THE FOREIGN OFFICE 020 7008 1500, Also Contact

your MP and Prime Minister



For Israel Contact Israeli Minister of Interior, Tel: +972-2-629-

4701; Fax: +972-2-629-4750

Israeli Foreign Minister, Silvan Shalom Fax: +972-2-5303704 e-mail:

sar@...

Defense Minister, Shaul Mofaz Fax: +972-3-6916940, 6976990 e-mail:

sar@...

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fax: (+972-2) 566-4838 or 651-3955 or

651-2631



For Canada: Minister of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham, House of

Commons, Ottawa ON K1A 0A6; Fax 613-996-3443 e-mail:
Graham.B@...



Everyone, Contact the Israeli embassy in your country



See our website: www.palsolidarity.org for more ways to help or get

involved.



For more information, please call: +972-2-277-4602

http://www.iap.org E-mails: iapinfo@...

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Leila Khaled, A Woman At War

"I MADE THE RING FROM A BULLET AND THE PIN OF A HAND GRENADE"

When Palestinian liberation fighter Leila Khaled
hijacked her first plane in 1969, she became
the international pin-up of armed struggle. Then she
underwent cosmetic surgery so she could
do it again. Thirty years on, she talks to Katharine
Viner about being a woman at war.

[The Guardian, Feb 6th , 2003
In a way, the whole story is in the ring. The iconic
photograph of Leila Khaled, the picture which made her
the symbol of Palestinian resistance and female power,
is extraordinary in many ways: the gun held in fragile
hands, the shiny hair wrapped in a keffiah , the
delicate Audrey Hepburn
face refusing to meet your eye. But it's the ring,
resting delicately on her third finger. To fuse an
object of feminine adornment, of frivolity, with a
bullet: that is Khaled's story, the reason behind her
image's enduring power. Beauty mixed with violence.

And the ring? "I made it from the pin of a hand
grenade - from the first grenade I ever used in
training," she says. "I just wrapped it around a
bullet."

Leila Khaled - international hijacker for the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the
papers' favourite 70s "girl terrorist" and "deadly
beauty" - is now 57, and sitting with me in the House
of Commons for her first ever interview on British
soil. Her cheekbones are still like knives; her eyes
are gentle but flicker when moved. She has a Rothmans
cigarette constantly dangling languorously between her
fingers (she once said of a potentially boring time in
Kuwait:
"I was politically conscious and a chain smoker - I
needed no other diversions").

She is, of course, wearing a keffiah, fringed with
wool in the Palestinian colours of red, green, black
and white, like a shawl. But she looks very different
now from the way she did in that famous photo, and not
just because of age. Since that picture was taken in
1969, after her first (successful) hijack of a TWA
plane, Khaled underwent no fewer than six cosmetic
operations on her face, so that no one would ever
recognise her again. She refused to wander around with
the
face of an icon.

"The surgeon just made a few differences to my nose
and my chin," she says. "But it worked. No one
recognised me." She elected to have surgery without a
general anaesthetic; because, as she said in her
autobiography: "I have a cause higher and nobler than
my own, a cause to which all private interests and
concerns must be subordinated."

Such revolutionary-speak is a reminder that Khaled is
from a very different time: an age when hijacks were a
political tool of the moment, when commitment, extreme
risk and sacrifice were admired and often
romanticised. Her sexuality was always emphasised; as
recently as 1980, a Norwegian newspaper made jokes
about her "bombs" (Norwegian slang for breasts) and
she is supposed to have been the inspiration for
Leela, Dr Who's foxy sidekick in 1975.

She is the pin-up of armed struggle; like her hero,
Che Guevara, Khaled had the glamour as well as the
belief. She had a certain disdain for her fellow
western revolutionaries, however: "We found it very
amusing that they honestly believed they were making a
'revolution' if they undressed in public, seized a
university building, or shouted an obscenity at
bureaucrats,"
she says.

The surgery meant that Khaled was able to undertake
her second hijack without detection; this time of an
El Al jet from Amsterdam. "At Amsterdam airport my
comrade Patrick [Arguello, a Nicaraguan] and I were
stopped by Israeli officers," she says. "They searched
our bags very thoroughly, but they didn't find
anything in there. Because the grenades were in my
pockets."
She takes a deep breath. "We had passports from
Honduras. The officer said to me, 'do you speak
Spanish?' At once I said, 'Si señor' - I was lucky,
because they were the only words I knew."

In mid-flight, Khaled and Arguello tried to storm the
cockpit. They banged on the door; Khaled took the pins
out of her grenades with her teeth and ordered the
captain to let them in. But there were armed guards on
the plane and they began to shoot. "Patrick was shot
in the back four times, and another man came with a
bottle of whisky and banged it over his head," says
Khaled. "It was terrible." Why didn't they shoot her?
"I had grenades," she says, with a shrug of her
shoulders.

"Eventually I was hit on the back of my head, and I
lost consciousness. When I woke up I was tied up and
being kicked. "Passengers were shouting; I heard a
woman scream, 'Stop the bloodshed'. But we had very
strict instructions: don't hurt the passengers. Only
defend yourselves."

But the grenades would have hurt the passengers, had
she released them. "I did not want to blow up the
plane," she says, sternly. "It was only to threaten."
(While the PFLP was involved in other controversial
armed actions in Israel, including some which led to
the deaths of civilians,
no one died during either of the hijacks in which
Khaled was involved.

The plane landed at Heathrow and Khaled was taken to
Ealing police station where she was held for 28 days,
until the then prime minister, Edward Heath, released
her in exchange for western hostages held by the PFLP.
Her stay in Britain was pleasant, she says. "People
were very nice. They would say to each other: is she
the one? They could hardly believe it, this tiny
creature sitting on the bench. I was 26 and I was very
thin. I had two policewomen with me in my cell, and we
were always discussing our cause and our suffering.
After I left I sent them books about Palestine; they
asked me to. We wrote to each other. One of them had a
problem with her
boyfriend, and we often discussed this."

It's an intriguing thought: the Palestinian
revolutionary and the Ealing policewoman finding
common ground by discussing men.

Although it is not, perhaps, so surprising. Women have
always related to Khaled. As Eileen Macdonald, in her
book Shoot the Women First, puts it: "She shattered a
million and one taboos overnight and she
revolutionised the thinking of hundreds of other angry
young women around the world."

She flamboyantly overcame the patriarchal restrictions
of Arab society where women are traditionally
subservient to their husbands, by taking an equal
fighting role with men, by getting divorced and
remarried, having children in her late 30s, and
rejecting vanity by having her face reconstructed for
her cause.

There were difficulties with being both a woman and a
fighter, however. "In the beginning, all women had to
prove that we could be equal to men in armed
struggle," says Khaled. "So we wanted to be like men -
even in our appearance." Robin Morgan, in her book,
The Demon Lover: The Sexuality of Terrorism, writes
about how Khaled lost out in two ways.

The men in her organisation resented the attention she
got, while women were frustrated that she never spoke
about women, only about the revolution. (She once
said, "I represent Palestinians, not women.") This has
echoes of something Mairead Farrell, the IRA volunteer
who was shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1988,
once said: "I'm oppressed as a woman, but I'm also
oppressed because I'm Irish ... We can't successfully
end our oppression as women until we first end the
oppression of our country."

But things seem to have changed for Khaled. "I no
longer think it's necessary to prove ourselves as
women by imitating men," she says. "I have learned
that a woman can be a fighter, a freedom fighter, a
political activist, and that she can fall in love, and
be loved, she can be married, have children, be a
mother.

"You see, at the beginning we were only interested in
the revolution. We were not mature enough politically.
The question of women is a part of our struggle but
not the only part. Revolution must mean life also;
every aspect of life." Is she a Palestinian first, or
a woman first? "I cannot
differentiate," she says. "A woman and a Palestinian
at the same time."

Khaled was born in Haifa, now on the Israeli coast,
but became a refugee with her family at a camp in
Tyre, Lebanon, as a toddler in 1948. (During her 1969
hijacking of the TWA flight she forced the pilot to
fly over Haifa, so that she could look at the home
town she was not permitted to visit.) She can barely
recall a time when she was not politicised: she
remembers at the age of four being told by her mother
not to pick oranges because they were in Lebanon; the
fruit was not theirs, they were not in Haifa now. She
committed herself full-time to armed struggle at the
age of 15.

Since the time of the hijacks, Khaled has lived in
Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, and has brought up two sons
who are now 18 and 15. She continued her activism,
first as a fighter and then as a politician for the
PFLP as a member of the Palestinian National Council.
(Her sons offer to be her bodyguards and when they
were small really did say: "Tell us stories about the
struggle, mum.")

But she is still as radical as ever. "The struggle of
the Palestinians has taken many faces. Armed struggle,
intifada, and now both. Which means as long as there
is occupation in our country, the conflict will
continue." She demands the right to
self-determination, a state with Jerusalem as
its capital, the right to return for refugees and the
withdrawal of Israel from all the land it has occupied
since 1967. "Otherwise the purpose for conflict will
always be there." And now? "Now people are fed up.
They are saying: now and forever. Let's do it. This
time."

What she says can be difficult for peaceniks, or
pacifists, to hear - the unashamed justification for
violence. Many ordinary Palestinians share her views,
many politicians do not. Similarly, views on Khaled
herself are mixed, even among Palestinians: some think
she is an inspiring heroine, others believe she
reinforces the old 70s image of Palestinians as
terrorists.

Is she a terrorist? "Whenever I hear this word I ask
another question," she says. "Who planted terrorism in
our area? Some came and took our land, forced us to
leave, forced us to live in camps. I think this is
terrorism. Using means to resist this terrorism and
stop its effects - this is called struggle." She
recalls in her memoirs thinking of the risk to
children she saw on the plane she was hijacking, and
telling herself: "We Palestinians are children too and
we are a part
of the human race."

Would she still die for the Palestinian cause? She
draws on her long cigarette, and turns to face me
after some silence. "Of course." She shakes her head,
smiling, cigarette burning in her hand. "Of course."

http://jerusalem.indymedia.org/news/2003/03/109180.php

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CIVIL LIBERTIES UNDER FIRE FROM PATRIOT ACT
Bill Straub, Scripps Howard, 5/7/03
http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=CIVILLIBERTIES-05-07-
03&cat=WW

Jason Halperin and a friend were enjoying dinner at an Indian
restaurant off Times Square in New York on March 20 when five
policemen, guns drawn and wearing bulletproof vests, stormed in and
ordered patrons and employees to gather in the rear of the building.

The police, Halperin said, pointed their guns "indiscriminately" at
the frightened diners and workers and proceeded to kick down doors to
closets and bathrooms, "their fingers glued to their triggers."

Eventually, he said, 10 other law enforcement officials wearing suits
entered the now-secured restaurant, some identifying themselves as
members of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

"I explained that we were just eating dinner and asked why we were
being held," Halperin said. "I was told by the INS agent that we
would be released once they had confirmation that we had no
outstanding warrants and our immigration status was okayed."

Despite the customers' protests, Halperin said, an agent insisted
they had the authority to detain them indefinitely. He quoted the
agent as saying, "You are being held under the Patriot Act, following
suspicion under a homeland security investigation."

Indeed, Halperin said he later learned, the federal government has
the power under the law, passed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist
incidents, to hold individuals without a warrant...

Incidents like the one involving Halperin - subsequently released
without charge - are attracting attention from organizations and
defenders of civil liberties who feel the Patriot Act is quickly
eroding individual rights and freedoms...

-----

MUSLIM DETAILS BIAS COMPLAINT
Bryon Okada and Darren Barbee, Fort Worth Star Telegram
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/5813604.htm

Wajahat Sayeed of Plano believes he was singled out by American
Airlines because of his dark skin and beard, which he keeps full for
religious reasons. Sayeed was escorted off American Flight 1048 at
Dallas/Fort Worth Airport in October, and searched and humiliated, he
alleged in a complaint that motivated the U.S. Department of
Transportation to pursue the nation's first racial and religion bias
case against an airline about two weeks ago.

"I couldn't just sit back and not do anything about it," said Sayeed,
who will not benefit financially from the complaint...

Sayeed is one of 10 people, many of them U.S. citizens, who are the
basis of the Transportation Department's complaint. Attempts to
contact another complainant from Grand Prairie were unsuccessful.

In October, a crew member told Sayeed, who is from India and is not a
U.S. citizen, that he was being searched because he had made a
passenger on the plane nervous, he said. Sayeed said he was asleep
when he was asked to leave the plane.

"They do not have, in my assessment, a blanket authority to
discriminate and violate my civil rights," said Sayeed, a former
executive director of the Muslim Legal Fund of America...

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SLAIN IRAQI CLERIC SAID TO BE CIA ALLY
KNUT ROYCE, The Star, 5/2/03
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?
pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1051643360301&call
_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724

WASHINGTON-The United States suffered a major blow in its campaign to
recruit friendly Shiite clerics inside Iraq last month when it lost
an influential religious ally to an angry mob - and as much as $13
million the CIA had given him to cultivate supporters.

While he was widely perceived to be pro-American, Iraqis were unaware
that the cleric, Abdul Majid al-Khoei, had agreed to use the CIA cash
in a covert program to enlist support within the splintered Shiite
community, according to knowledgeable U.S. sources…


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COULD ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR ASSETS SURVIVE A PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE?
http://www.janes.com

by HAROLD HOUGH

Although Israel has often said that it would not be the first to
introduce nuclear weapons into the region, Israeli officials have
often publicly implied that certain circumstances - especially the
use of chemical weapons by their enemies - would elicit a nuclear
response. In fact, evidence indicates that Israel might launch a pre-
emptive nuclear strike under certain conditions. A critical part of
Israel's nuclear strategy is the Jericho 2 missile, and some insight
can be gained into the Jericho 2 and its employment by studying
satellite imagery of the missile base at Zachariah, several miles
southeast of Tel Aviv. Off-nadir viewing by satellites like the high-
resolution Indian IRS-C allows the development of three dimensional
scenes, which highlight the geological structures that house the
missile bunkers. Combined with other imagery and advanced enhancement
techniques, significant intelligence can be gathered concerning
Israel's nuclear strategy.

The Jericho 2

Several satellite images showed the massive Jericho 2 transporter-
erector-launcher (TEL) during training exercises on a small pad north
of the nuclear weapon bunkers at the missile base at Zachariah (which
in Hebrew means 'God remembers with vengeance'). The resolution makes
accurate measurement difficult, but the best estimate obtainable
suggests the missile transporter is about 16 m long, 4 m wide and 3 m
high (according to reports, the missile is 14 m long and l.5 m wide).
There is no indication of whether the TEL is wheeled or tracked, but
there is no evidence that it is on rails. The missile transporter
also has three support vehicles around it. Adjacent to the TEL and
probably connected to it by cables is a guidance programmer and power
vehicle approximately the size of a truck. On the other side of the
pad, about 10 m away, are two other vehicles: probably a firing
control vehicle and a communications vehicle. Such a configuration
would mirror that of the Pershing II missile system deployed by the
USA in Europe and then dismantled under the INF Treaty. This would
confirm reports that Israel was very interested in the design of the
Pershing missile and aggressively pursued US technology to build the
Jericho. Although the range of the Jericho 2 is unconfirmed,
scientists have estimated its maximum range as 5,000 km with a
warhead of 1,000 kg: enough for a nuclear weapon.

Missile Base Vulnerability

Although the approximately 50 Jericho 2 missiles housed at Zachariah
are formidable, an analysis of the base with satellite imagery shows
considerable weaknesses. Even though the base was built in the 1980s,
when the Soviet Union was considered a threat, the base is vulnerable
to a Soviet nuclear strike. The Jericho 2 missile is deployed on a
lightly armoured transporter and there is little above ground
protection. Contrary to published reports, there are no signs of
missile silos in the satellite imagery. These are distinctive, since
they have heavy silo closure doors that can withstand a nearby
nuclear blast and clear debris piled on top of them. Instead, the
missiles appear to be stored in limestone caves under the site. If
ordered to attack, the missiles would leave their underground
shelters and move to prepared cul-de-sacs or deploy around the
countryside. Clearly, the missile base was not designed to survive a
Soviet attack since an accurate Soviet ICBM could easily destroy the
base and everything underground. According to analysts, Israeli
strategy vis-a-vis the USSR was to immediately retaliate, before the
base was destroyed.

Although the Soviet threat is gone, the missile base remains
vulnerable to a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile such as the Chinese
M-9, which has a CEP of 300 m - accurate enough to threaten the base.
Although accuracy and the type of nuclear explosion would determine
the extent of the damage, a quick review of the effects of a nuclear
blast raise serious questions about Zachariah's ability to survive a
Third World-produced nuclear missile. If a missile containing a
crude, 20 kiloton nuclear warhead detonated 2,200 m above and 1,000 m
away from its intended target within Zachariah, the surface target
would still sustain severe damage from heat, radiation and blast
effects. Two kilometres from ground zero, the shock wave (at 34.5
KPa) would be powerful enough to destroy unreinforced buildings and
unprotected TELs, while the thermal radiation (10 calories/cm2) would
be enough to ignite combustible materials. If the base were hit with
missiles having the accuracy of the M-9, even reinforced underground
caves would be seriously damaged by a ground burst.

ICBM silos like those in the USA and Russia are designed to protect
the crew and equipment from the blast, heat and radiation damage of a
nearby nuclear blast. Constructed from above ground and then covered
with dirt, they are built using a single cement pour to provide
structural integrity and shock support and incorporate tunnels that
can survive the fracturing and ground movement sustained by a ground
burst while allowing instant access to the surface.

The base at Zachariah is built in a limestone region and probably
uses caves, which are common to the area. An analysis of three-
dimensional imagery based on satellite data shows entrances leading
into several small hills, which have probably been hollowed out to
house the Jericho 2 and its TELs. In the case of the two largest
bunker complexes, hills surround the entrances to the bunkers,
providing a degree of protection to the entrance. However, these
caves cannot be reinforced to provide the same blast protection as a
specially built blast- proof bunker. Even a low-yield nuclear ground
blast could fracture and shift the ground enough for tunnels leading
from the bunkers to the surface to be impassable to TELs. Since the
missile site covers an area smaller than 6 x 4 km, just a few nuclear-
tipped missiles might neutralise Israel's missile threat and damage
the nearby bunkers holding the air force's nuclear gravity bombs. By
being vulnerable to a ballistic missile with a crude nuclear device,
Israel may be forced to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike rather
than risk losing its ability to respond with nuclear weapons. This
vulnerability appears to show an inertia within the Israeli military
and has serious implications for the region. Instead of reviewing its
nuclear strategy after the fall of the Soviet Union and focusing on
making a nuclear deterrent that could survive an attack by Third
World nuclear weapons, Israel continued to focus on producing more
nuclear weapons as if envisioning a nuclear exchange with a
geographically large country.

During the Cold War both US and Soviet leaders had numerous false
indications of attacks by the other side. In each case, the leaders
waited until further evidence showed that the launch signal was
false. Part of this willingness to wait was due to the knowledge that
their nuclear deterrent was dispersed throughout their country and
hardened against attack.

Nuclear Weapon Bunkers

Just to the south of the Jericho 2 training pad are several bunkers
thought to contain nuclear gravity bombs for Israel's attack
squadrons at the Tel Nof air base just a few kilometres to the
northwest. Although some bunker dimensions vary, five of the larger
ones are about 15 m wide and 20 m long. The above-ground height is 6
m. In all, there are 21 pads, each with a bunker. The scarring around
the site indicates that the bunkers were built at different times,
and the condition of the roads leading to each bunker indicates that
they are all in use.

The size and number of bunkers indicates that Israel's nuclear
arsenal is larger than many estimate. If Israel's nuclear gravity
bombs are similar to those of the USA, then their approximate
dimensions are 4 m long, 0.5 m wide and about 350 kg in weight.
Assuming the devices are stacked three high, that they are only
stored along the wall of the bunker so the bunker centre can be used
for testing and maintenance and that each bomb is given a space of 5
m x l m x l m, then the larger bunkers could conservatively house
more than 30 weapons each. Consequently, just the five large bunkers
at this site could alone easily store about 150 weapons. This is more
than other reports state and supports indications that the Israeli
arsenal may contain as many as 400 nuclear weapons with a total
combined yield of 50 MT (see JIR Special Report No. 14, p.15).

The size of the Israeli nuclear arsenal, the uncertainty of how it
would be used and the risk of a mistake raises many questions in the
unstable Middle East. Although Israel is the dominant conventional
military power in the region, could the vulnerability of its nuclear
force tempt the Israeli Government to launch a pre-emptive nuclear
strike against another country? There is also the question of
Israel's growing nuclear arsenal - even though its enemies are
geographically small and militarily weaker. These questions must be
answered if a serious miscalculation is to be avoided in the future.

====================

OIL FROM IRAQ: AN ISRAELI PIPEDREAM?
http://www.janes.com
http://www.janes.com/regional_news/africa_middle_east/news/fr/fr030416
_1_n.shtml
http://www.rense.com/general37/oilfro.htm
16 April 2003

Israel stands to benefit greatly from the US-led war on Iraq,
primarily by getting rid of an implacable foe in President Saddam
Hussein and the threat from the weapons of mass destruction he was
alleged to possess. But it seems the Israelis have other things in
mind.

An intriguing pointer to one potentially significant benefit was a
report by [Israeli] Haaretz [daily newspaper] on 31 March [2003] that
[Israeli] minister for national infrastructures Joseph Paritzky was
considering the possibility of reopening the long-defunct oil
pipeline from Mosul [Iraq] to the Mediterranean port of Haifa
[Israel]. With Israel lacking energy resources of its own and
depending on highly expensive oil from Russia, reopening the pipeline
would transform its economy.

To resume supplies from Mosul to Haifa would require the approval of
whatever Iraqi government emerges and presumably the Jordanian
government, through whose territory it would be likely to run.
Paritzky's ministry was reported to have said on 9 April [2003] that
it would hold discussions with Jordanian authorities on resuming oil
supplies from Mosul, with one source saying the Jordanians
were "optimistic." Jordan, aware of the deep political sensitivities
involved, immediately denied there were any such talks.

Paritzky said he was certain the USA would respond favourably to the
idea of resurrecting the [oil] pipeline. Indeed, according to Western
diplomatic sources in the region, the USA has discussed this with
Iraqi opposition groups.

It is understood from diplomatic sources that the Bush Administration
has said it will not support lifting UN sanctions on Iraq unless
Saddam's successors agree to supply Israel with oil.

All of this lends weight to the theory that [war criminal George W.]
Bush's war is part of a masterplan to reshape the Middle East to
serve Israel's interests. Haaretz quoted Paritzky as saying that the
[oil] pipeline project is economically justifiable because it would
dramatically reduce Israel's energy bill.

US efforts to get Iraqi oil to Israel are not surprising. Under a
1975 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the US guaranteed all
Israel's oil needs in the event of a crisis. The MoU, which has been
quietly renewed every five years, also committed the USA to construct
and stock a supplementary strategic reserve for Israel, equivalent to
some US$ 3 billion in 2002. Special legislation was enacted to exempt
Israel from restrictions on oil exports from the USA.

Moreover, the USA agreed to divert oil from its home market, even if
that entailed domestic shortages, and guaranteed delivery of the
promised oil in its own tankers if commercial shippers were unwilling
or not available to carry the crude to Israel. All of this adds up to
a potentially massive financial commitment.

The USA has another reason for supporting Paritzky's project: a land
route for Iraqi oil direct to the Mediterranean would lessen US
dependence on Gulf oil supplies. Direct access to the world's second-
largest oil reserves (with the possibility of expansion through so-
far untapped deposits) is an important strategic objective.

[Copyright © 2003 Jane's Information Group - http://www.janes.com ]

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS ARTICLE? CLICK THIS WEB LINK TO POST
YOUR COMMENTS, SUGGESTIONS, OR QUESTIONS AT THE INFOTIMES FORUM:
http://www.dream-tools.com/tools/messages.mv?index+infotimes

WHEN WILL U.S. LAUNCH PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKES TO DESTROY ISRAEL'S 400
NUCLEAR WEAPONS?
Israeli nuclear, laser, biological and chemical weapons are a very
serious threat to America.
http://www.InformationTimes.com

COULD ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR ASSETS SURVIVE A PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE?
http://www.janes.com
http://www.janes.com/regional_news/africa_middle_east/news/jir/jir9909
01_1_n.shtml
01/09/1997

OIL FROM IRAQ: AN ISRAELI PIPEDREAM?
http://www.janes.com
http://www.janes.com/regional_news/africa_middle_east/news/fr/fr030416
_1_n.shtml
16 April 2003

Israeli Commandoes In Iraq To Assassinate 500 Iraqi Scientists
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3006.htm

'KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF IRAQI OIL', MIDEAST STATES TELL THE BUSH OIL
MAFIA
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0419-01.htm

U.S., UK and Israel Also Have Nuclear, Laser, Biological, Chemical
Arms and Many Other Weapons of Mass Destruction.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2935.htm
--> Republican Weapons of "Mass Deception"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2938.htm

Over 200,000 Iraqis Demonstrate in Baghdad and other cities: "Iraq
for the Iraqis!"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3012.htm

Tens of Thousands of Iraqi-Muslims in Baghdad Demand Immediate
Withdrawal of US-UK Troops from Iraq
http://english.aljazeera.net

U.S. Has No Legitimate Right To Iraqi Oil And Lifting Of Sanctions On
Iraq Must Wait, Say Neighbors
http://www.rense.com/general37/righu.htm
http://english.aljazeera.net

Bush-Blair-Sharon War in Iraq a Reason for Shame
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0418-05.htm

No Oil For Blood: A Post-War Boycott in the Making
http://www.onlinejournal.com
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/042003Rockwell/042003rock
well.html

Republican Company Chosen by Pentagon to Extinguish Iraqi Oil Well
Fires has History of Supporting Terrorist Regimes
http://www.onlinejournal.com
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/042003Leopold/042003leopo
ld.html

Defending Human Rights Worldwide
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1272
--> U.S. Plans Continue to Meet Stiff Resistance In Iraq, Middle East
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1271
--> Abu Abbas Isn't Worth It
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1269
--> Saddam's Fall: a Warning to the "Third World"
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1267
http://www.malaysiakini.com
--> Road to Baghdad: the Movie
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1264
--> Being Intimate with an Elephant
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1261

Reasons Not to Invade Iraq, by George Bush Sr.
Why We Didn't Remove Saddam
by George Bush [Sr.] and Brent Scowcroft
Time magazine -- 2 March 1998
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3019.htm
http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/bushsr-iraq.htm

Former Top German Minister Rejects U.S. Official Story Of 9-11 Attacks
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/VonBuelow.html

This Much is True: We Remember
Jews Like Us
http://www.counterpunch.org/jackson04182003.html
--> Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel
http://www.jppi.org
--> Not In My Name
http://www.nimn.org
--> Jews Against the Occupation
http://www.jewsagainsttheoccupation.org
--> Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace
http://www.btvshalom.org

Successive U.S. Dictators Installed, Financed, Supported and
Promoted 'Friendly' Dictators, Tyrants, Terrorists, Human Rights
Abusers, Crooks and Criminals in Many Countries of the World.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2844.htm

Anti-American Israeli-Zionist-NeoCon-Fundamentalist President George
W. Bush Orders U.S. Soldiers: 'I want you to die for Greater Israel
in Iraq, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan,
Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar,
Bahrain, Oman, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Philippines, Venezuela,
Cuba, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Malaysia
and elsewhere. I want the Zionists, Neo-Conservatives and Israeli-
Jews to enslave all Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Socialists,
Communists and other nations to rule the whole world.'
http://www.informationtimes.com
http://www.alfredlilienthal.com/greaterisrael.htm

NO War For Greater Israel
http://www.informationtimes.com
http://www.nowarforisrael.com

U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Iraq Increases Worldwide Hatred
Against the Bush Regime: Pakistani MP
http://www.irna.com/en/head/030416102117.ehe.shtml
--> Click This Web Link to Find Out Why almost the entire world hates
the Bush-Cheney-Blair-Sharon regimes and successive Zionist-NeoCon-
Fundamentalist politicians of the USA, Britain and Israel. They do
NOT hate all Americans or America. They only hate the Bush-Cheney-
Blair-Sharon juntas, all anti-American Zionists, Neo-Conservatives,
religious fanatics and other imperialistic terrorists, war criminals
and serial killers who kill, rob and enslave oppressed nations. They
love all progressives, greens, libertarians, liberals, socialists,
conservatives and all other peace-loving Americans and America.
http://www.informationtimes.com
http://www.americanstateterrorism.com
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2823.htm

WHO ARE THE WORLD'S MOST WANTED TERRORISTS?
http://www.pentagonlies.com/terrorists.html
--> The Pentagon Lies
http://www.pentagonlies.com/main.html
--> Top 10 Defense Contractors in the United States Who Always Want
War, Death and Destruction.
http://www.pentagonlies.com/defensecontractors.html

Leftist Parties of the World
http://www.broadleft.org

The Above and Following Websites Expose the Big Lies, Frauds and
Corruption of the Corporate Media Mafia Every Day:
http://www.InformationTimes.com/weblinks
--> WEB LINKS OF MANY ANTI-WAR GROUPS
http://www.InformationTimes.com
-->



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MISS. MARKS ENSLAVED PRINCE'S FREEDOM
MATT VOLZ, Associated Press, 4/28/03

NATCHEZ, Miss. (AP) - Artemus Gaye was a teenager fleeing civil war
in Liberia when he first heard the story of how his ancestor, an
African warrior prince, was sold into slavery on a Mississippi
plantation.

Gaye's 92-year-old great-great-grandmother used the tale of Abd al-
Rahman Ibrahima as a diversion when fighting forced the family to
abandon their home in 1990. It stuck with the 13-year-old.

After years of locating documents and descendants to piece together
the rest of the story, Gaye organized a "freedom festival" to mark
the 175th anniversary of Ibrahima's release and return to Africa.
Descendants of the slave prince and slave master Thomas Foster,
academicians, and Ibrahima's liberators gathered in the Mississippi
River town of Natchez to re-enact the tale.

"There aren't too many stories equal to it," said Allan Austin,
author of the book ``African Muslims in Antebellum America."

Ibrahima was born in 1762 as a prince in Futa Jallon, today part of
Guinea in western Africa. He was captured in battle by enemies, sold
into slavery and shipped to America. Foster, who owned a plantation
near Natchez, bought him in 1789…

In 1807, John Cox, a doctor who had fallen ill in Africa in 1781 and
was cared for by Ibrahima's family, traveled to Mississippi and
happened to meet Ibrahima at a market north of Natchez.

Cox recognized Ibrahima as the son of the king who had saved his
life. Cox tried to buy Ibrahima's freedom, but Foster refused and
kept Ibrahima as a slave for 20 more years.

Ibrahima's story reached Andrew Marschalk, editor of the Mississippi
State Gazette in Natchez. Marschalk pleaded Ibrahima's case to Henry
Clay, who was then secretary of state.

In 1828, Foster relented. Ibrahima, 66, was able to buy his and his
wife's freedom with the aid of the community and the American
Colonization Society, an organization that sent free blacks in
America to Africa. His fame spread across the country.

"He was a man who became very famous for his dignity, for his courage
and for his strength," Austin said.

Ibrahima sailed for Liberia in 1829. He died from malaria two months
after arriving…

In early April, descendants of Ibrahima, Foster and Marschalk
gathered under a marker at the site of Marschalk's Natchez home, now
a cracked and bumpy parking lot. They read the proclamation freeing
Ibrahima, then walked to the nearby Mississippi River. Using a moored
riverboat casino, they re-enacted Ibrahima's departure from Natchez…

Betty McGehee, a 72-year-old descendant of Thomas Foster,
participated in the re-enactment. When she first learned of her
family connection to the story about 40 years ago, she was a little
ashamed.

"I was embarrassed that Thomas Foster held on for so long and didn't
free him for so many years," she said.

McGehee said she felt none of that today. The festival allowed her to
create a connection with other descendants and genealogists, she
said.

Natchez is using the story of Ibrahima to boost its attractiveness as
an African-American heritage tourism market, said Connie Taunton,
marketing director for the Natchez Convention and Visitors Bureau. A
portrait of the slave prince is on the cover of a brochure promoting
heritage tourism…

SEE ALSO:

Ibrahima's life is detailed in "Prince Among Slaves" by Terry Alford.
Excerpts from the book are available at www.amazon.com

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1350kg of heroin seized
------------------------------------------------------------------
Staff Reporter
QUETTA, May 6: The Customs officials on Tuesday seized 1350 kg of
heroin after heavy exchange of fire with smugglers in Koh-i-
Sulaiman area of the Chaghai district, some 200 kilometres west of
this provincial capital.

"It is the biggest seizure of heroin in Pakistan," Quetta
Collector of Customs Munir Qureshi told Dawn. "The value of the
seized heroin is $500 million in the international market," he
said, adding that the consignment had been brought from
Afghanistan for its onward smuggling to European countries.....

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top12.htm&date=20030507

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No exchange of fire took place when Israeli soldiers shot dead a
British cameraman.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Autopsy of British cameraman shows he was killed by IDF fire

By Haaretz Service and Agencies  - May 8, 2003

  http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/291216.html

British journalist James Miller, who was shot dead last week in the
Gaza Strip town of Rafah, was hit by IDF fire, not by Palestinian
fire, according to an autopsy carried out at by the Forensic
Institute, Israel Radio reported Thursday.

A pathologist sent from Britain by Miller's family participated in
the autopsy, the radio said. The dissection showed that the cameraman
was shot from the front, and not from behind, as the IDF claimed. He
was wearing a helmet and a flack jacket, but was hit in the neck.

Two Palestinians killed in Gaza Strip, two Hamas men die in West
Bank, Gaza A Palestinian man was killed in the Gaza Strip early
Thursday morning by IDF gunfire, Palestinian sources reported.
According to the army, troops guarding at the Tufah checkpoint, west
of Khan Yunis, opened fire when the 30-year-old man approached the
Neve Dekalim settlement and did not comply with their demand that
he stop.

Palestinian hospital officials said that the man apparently died of
injuries caused by an IDF tank shell. Palestinian residents who live
in the area said they heard the sound of two tank shells exploding
just before dawn.

A Palestinian toddler was killed Wednesday by IDF fire in a Gaza
Strip refugee camp. Two Hamas militants were also killed Wednesday;
one in an explosion blast in a West Bank house and the second by IDF
gunfire.

Alian Bashiti, aged eighteen months, was in his house in the Khan
Yunis refugee camp when he was hit in the neck by an IDF bullet. He
died shortly afterwards.

Witnesses in Khan Yunis camp said that IDF soldiers fired at the
neighborhood from the nearby settlements of Morag and Ganei Tal.

The IDF expressed regret for the death of the baby. IDF spokesman
Jacob Dalal said soldiers at an outpost guarding settlements had
returned fire after coming under attack from Palestinians.

The IDF confirmed that it had shot dead Ahmed Gouda, 18, in the Gaza
Strip, but denied the Hamas claim that he had been on an "operation"
in northern Gaza, saying that he had been following IDF troops when
they had opened fire.

Earlier in the day, a senior Hamas fugitive was killed in a
mysterious explosion in the West Bank. The militant group accused IDF
troops of setting off the blast, which was denied by Palestinian
sources and the IDF.

The explosion occured at around 8:30 A.M. in an apartment in the
village of Zawata near the city of Nablus, killing Amin Fadel, 28.
Fadel, who had been wanted by Israel for the past two years, had
rented the apartment four days earlier.

A Hamas source said IDF soldiers opened fire at the building in which
Fadel was hiding.

But an IDF official said that the army had no connection to the blast.
Palestinian sources said the explosion that killed Fadel was likely
the result of a "work accident," Israel Radio said.

The mayor of Zawata said IDF troops had imposed a curfew on the
village several hours before the explosion. Local firefighters said
the blast went off inside the house, ruling out a missile strike.

http://www.iap.org E-mails: iapinfo@...
Proudly serving Palestine and al Quds
---------------------------------------------------------------------

PCHR's investigation and eyewitnesses' statements deny Israeli claims:

No exchange of fire took place when Israeli soldiers shot dead a
British journalist

Ref: 58/2003
Date: 3 May 2003

http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2003/59-2003.htm

Investigation conducted by PCHR and eyewitnesses' testimonies proves
that Israeli soldiers willfully shot dead James Miller, a British
cameraman, contrary to the claims of the Israeli military southern
command that Israeli soldiers returned fire coming from Palestinian
sources, so Miller was shot.  According to PCHR's investigation also,
Israeli soldiers did not offered Miller immediate medical aid.
Miller succumbed to his injury later.  PCHR strongly condemns this
crime, which was the second of its kind against journalists in two
weeks, and calls for an international investigation into it.



According to PCHR's investigation, at approximately 19:30 on Friday,
2 May 2003, a number of British journalists, accompanied by
Palestinian assistants, went to the area of Salah al-Din Gate at the
border with Egypt in Rafah.  The group included 3 British
journalists: James Miller, 34, the owner of Frost Bite for
media production; Sierra Shah, 38, a journalist; and Daniel Edge,
25, a staff assistant, and two Palestinians: Mowaffaq al-Khatib, 25,
the guide of the staff; and 'Abdul Rahman 'Abdullah, 25, a
translator.



In his testimony to PCHR, the translator, 'Abdul Rahman 'Abdullah
said that he and other members of the group entered the house of
Fawzi al-Sha'er and started filming agricultural land leveling and
house demolition by Israeli military bulldozers, approximately 150m
away.  About half an hour later, Tamer Ziara, a cameraman of
Associated Press, joint the group.  'Abdullah added:


"At approximately 23:30, we decided to leave the house and the area,
but we realized that we were blocked inside the house and Israeli
tanks were very close.  We decided to get out of the house and
introducing ourselves to Israeli soldiers and telling them about our
work and that we would like to leave the area, to avoid being fired
at by Israeli soldiers if we did not tell them.  Three of us got out;
I was carrying a white flag, James was holding a lamb directed at the
flag and Sierra was raising her hands.  We were all wearing helmets
and bullet proof suits, on which "TV" was written.  We walked about
20m towards the tanks.  We called on Israeli soldiers saying that we
were British journalists who wanted to leave the area, but they did
not reply.  Suddenly, they fired at us, wounding James.  James cried
and we shouted on Israeli soldiers to stop shooting and told them
that one of us was wounded.  We asked them for help as James was
intensely bleeding.  I went back to the house and told the others
that James was wounded and asked them to call an ambulance.  Then, I
ran towards the tanks to ask Israeli soldiers for help, but they did
not reply.  I returned to James and tried with Daniel and Sierra to
evacuate him from the area.  We carried him and when we began to
walk, Israeli soldiers on one of the tanks called on us to stop, but
we continued to walk.  Two armored personnel carriers moved towards
us.  When they were 10m away from us, Israeli soldiers ordered us to
put James on the front of the carrier.  I told them that he was in
bad condition and should be put inside the vehicles, but they
insisted to put him on the front of the carrier.  We tried more than
once, but we failed to put him on the front of the carrier as it was
high.  James fell more than once, but Israeli soldiers did not help
us.  After several failed attempts, Israeli soldiers got out of the
carrier and put him on its front.  Then, the Sierra left the area
with the carrier."


Later, Israeli sources reported that James Miller was transferred to
an Israeli military location in Rafah, where he succumbed to his
wounded before evacuating him to hospital.



According to eyewitnesses, no exchange of fire took place in the area
between Israeli occupying forces and Palestinian gunmen.  The
translator also asserted that the group decided to leave the house
when the area was quiet.  The same was said by Tamer Ziara, who
joined the group later, asserting that only Israeli occupying forces
fired at the area.



James Miller and his colleagues had been in the Gaza Strip for
several weeks, filming a documentary on the lives of Palestinian
children along the border with Egypt in Rafah, for the US Home Book
Offices.


PCHR strongly condemns this new Israeli attack on journalists, which
was the second of its kind in two weeks, after killing Nazeeh
Darwaza, a cameraman of Palestinian Television, in Nablus on 19 April
2003.  Thus, the number of journalists killed by Israeli occupying
forces since the beginning of al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000 has
increased to 7; 5 Palestinians and two foreigners, while the number
of wounded journalists has been 94.



PCHR reiterates its call upon the international community and the High
Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the
Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 1949 to fulfill
their obligations under the Convention to ensure respect for the
Convention in all circumstances and effectively intervene to stop
violations of the Conventions perpetrated by Israeli occupying
forces.  As investigations conducted by the Israeli army and
the state of Israel are incredible, PCHR calls for forming an
international inquiry mission to investigate this crime and hundreds
of similar crimes, which prove the excessive use of force by Israeli
occupying forces against protected civilians.

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A feel of occupied Iraq...
By Jerry Levin
jlevin0320@...

From The Inside Looking Out: Report-18
-A Tank Called "Hostile"-

(Baghdad, Iraq May 2, 2003) Like warriors of old,
soldiers assigned to Tanks like to give their weapons
names. When selected, the names are stenciled-in large
black easy to read letters-on the right and left sides
of the barrels of their vehicles' powerful canon. The
honor of actually choosing a name usually goes to the
crew's "gunner."

There are probably as many reasons for each name as
there are tanks in the U. S. arsenal. For instance,
the meaning of "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue,"
or "Camel Tow" seemed clear enough to me. But another
name, which I saw on a Tank standing guard just inside
the entrance to the Republican Palace, one of Sadaam
Hussein's former palatial places of rest and work,
suggested that I not make any assumptions about it,
even though it bore the potentially revelatory title
of "Astonished."

So I asked the gunner, if there was any special reason
as to why he settled on that name.

"Not really," he answered amiably. "I got me a
dictionary. Started at the front and kept going until
I found a word I liked."

"Does it fit with what you are doing now?"

"I hadn't really thought about that. I just liked the
name."

However, the soldier, who named the first U. S. Tank
we encountered as we reentered Baghdad on April 18,
clearly had an attitude, which was unambiguously
expressed on the barrel of his gun: "Hostile."

"O. K., so that's an attitude," I thought, "but does
that also express an intention?"

Not long after that the intention issue popped up
again when we encountered another Tank whose
inscription asked the worrisome question, "Where's The Bitches?" Not
being able to question the author, I nevertheless believe that in
his case, we were encountering an adolescent or barely post
adolescent fantasy put stupidly into words-but not intention.

Bad enough, however, because such a message cannot be reassuring to
Baghdad women, very few of whom are venturing from their homes these
days, because of their fear of looting, robbery, and worse by their
own men. "If the soldiers won't protect them, a brother of one
college age woman worried, "who will? My sister will not leave our
house, unless I go with her."

Another time we glimpsed the barrel of another Tank as
it rumbled noisily down a main thoroughfare. It was
providing protection for one of the ubiquitous convoys
moving warily-guns at the ready-which one encounters
round the clock everywhere every day: hodgepodges of
solemn humvees, severe armored personnel carriers,
unyielding trucks, determined tankers, and resourceful
recovery vehicles that look as if they had been
assembled by a committee, as well as the
aforementioned don't-tread-on-me tanks.

The Tank's name was "Agamemnon." Since there was no
way I was going to be able to get the convoy to stop
in order to ask Agamemnon's gunner the reasoning
behind his choice, I could only wonder about it:
especially the extent and bent of his erudition.

Who in the gunner's mind is/was Agamemnon? A good guy
or a bad guy? What is his view of Agamemnon's war/and
this latest mother of all wars of liberation, and the
rationale/incident used to fan the flames of assertive militancy and
eventual aggression back not only in the days of Troy but right now
as well? And does he recognize the screaming subtext to the
Agamemnon story with respect to the futility of war and violence? In
one way or another both war and violence can be counted on to change
lives inevitably for the worse for both those who engineer war and
violence or who are helplessly touched by it.

I would have felt best about his choice, if I could
have thought that it was irony driven. But I'll never
know. So, I can only hope that was the case, because
it is very possible that instead of thinking
ironically he may well have thought about Agamemnon
the way so many contemporary super patriots do about
War of 1812 hero Stephan Decatur whose indelible words
are said to be, "Our country! In her intercourse with
foreign nations may she always be right; but our
country right or wrong." With that sort of ideological precedent as
a prevalent superscription to U. S. history, the logic that followed
inevitably almost two hundred years later was and remains, "If you
are not with us, you are against us."

The fall-out from that line of reasoning has been-not necessarily in
order of significance-1) the emergence, I am told, of "liberty
fries," in fast food outlets all across America, and 2) an
increasingly frustrated Iraqi population, many of whom are now
feeling snookered by the propaganda campaign waged by the allies
during the build up to the invasion. It seemed to promise much in
the way of installing quickly a new normalcy in return for Iraqi
civilians (and soldiers) sitting on the sidelines during the
fighting. And for the most part, most Iraqis taking the propaganda
promises as binding contracts did sit it out.

Apparently the allied propaganda-inspired Iraqi
assumption was that the occupiers would deal with
their needs not just with promised professional nation-rebuilding
aplomb but-more important than that-with dispatch. But the
occupiers, until now, have been proving that they have been much
more professionally adept and efficient at the making of the war
than quickly solving the problems created by it.

A characteristic of this failure is a detectable
penchant for making excuses for the frustrating pace
of repairing critical damage to Iraq's vital
institutions-as well as its national psyche-instead of providing, as
required, the wherewithal needed for the people of Iraq to be able
to pick up the ball of liberation and run with it.

In specific terms, the "wherewithal" that is lacking
remains 1) security: Looting continues; and now a new
problem is mushrooming out of control-unexploded
explosives left over from the Iraqi arsenal lying
dangerously out in the open in every part of the city.
The occupation is barely coming to grips with both
this terrifying issue and the rising toll of curious
young people being wounded, maimed and worse when
venturing into areas that the military still have not
closed off or even marked as dangerous.

2) reliable electrical power: Vast sections of the
city remain without it. As a result, in those places
there is no running water.

3) water purification, garbage collection, and
sewerage treatment facilities continue to be
inoperable. As a result, dysentery and diarrhea
stricken children are flooding already overcrowded, understaffed,
and medicine-short hospitals.

4) education: Some school grounds have been occupied
by slow to leave soldiers intent on uncovering
abandoned or craftily stashed weapons left behind by
Iraqi military and paramilitaries. Some Iraqi parents
and educators claim this is hampering their efforts to
get schools up and running again.

5) a health and nutrition infrastructure: Hospitals
are still being attacked and looted of medicine and
equipment while minimal food supplies remain out of
reach of the city's poor.

6) wage producing jobs for Iraq's willing educated
workers, especially in vital governmental ministries.
What good jobs there are, so goes the complaint, are
going mainly to former Bath Party workers, the party
of Sadaam.

When trying to get to the bottom of these issues, it
is becoming increasingly evident that with respect to
all those urgent needs the occupiers are also proving professionally
(or is it reflexively) adept at hiding out or passing the buck. For
instance, for the better part of April, the military was not
accessible to the voicing and/or inquiring into such urgent concerns
as those listed above by the handful of frustrated hand wringing
NGOs in Baghdad. Finally late in April the occupation did begin
providing a daily forum-consisting of a gaggle of low to mid-level
officers-to discuss problematic elements of the occupation with the
NGOs.

However, the loudest and clearest message emerging
from those meetings is that the occupiers do not
recognize that fixing them is really their job. In
fact, more than once, attendees have been told that
it's up to the NGOs to resolve the current crises.

Moreover, questions or statements concerning the
intent or efficacy of occupation policy too often are
met with suspicion bordering on paranoia, because the
only officers accessible thus far to queries are at
the stage in their careers where carrying out policy
with as few waves as possible washing up the chain of command-for
which they can be held accountable in a way that might cloud their
performance evaluations-seems to be a daily be all and end all for
them.

"The generals make policy. We are just doing our
duty," is the gist of an unspoken refrain.

In other words: Make war not love.

As one clearly beating-around-the bush officer said
warily to me after I asked a simple hidden agenda-less
"soft ball" question, "When I talk to you guys, I
always worry whether my answer is going to come back
to haunt me."

Despite such discouraging responses, I often do
encounter a more encouraging side to what might be
termed a more positive operative ethos among allied
military in Iraq. One was actually delivered to me confidentially by
a subordinate of the officer mentioned directly above. "Look," the
not much younger man said sotto voce, while looking carefully over
his shoulder, "if we can't do better than this and soon, the
honeymoon for us is going to be over quickly. And when it does end,"
he continued-mixing his metaphors-"it will go off like a rocket!"

Another constructive example was related by Iraq Peace
Team stalwart, Wade Hudson, who said that one veteran
of the allies' dash from Kuwait to Baghdad, told him
that during the entire campaign he just couldn't bring
himself to fire a single shot. The soldier told Wade
that although it may have looked like he was
participating in the shooting, he was only pretending.

Also encouraging-kind of-was a conversation I had with
a member of the crew of another Tank named "California Dreaming."
Here's what I mean by "kind of."

"We had a job to do," the First Lieutenant said, "but
I sure didn't like a lot of it."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the wrong people die too often in these things.
I'm stuck with the memory of the morning, when we
first reached Baghdad and we were manning a
checkpoint. An Iraqi family kept coming on to us.
Maybe they did not understand that we were trying to
get them to stop. But our rules of engagement were to
shoot anyone who wouldn't. But they kept coming.

"Despite our frantic efforts to try to get them to
understand that they needed to stop, they just kept
coming. So I gave the order to shoot, which we did;
and an unarmed family-a woman and her kids-were
killed. All of them were killed. This happened earlier
at Un Qsr too: the exact same thing. I don't like
having to live with that."

"So now what?" I asked.

"Well, I know one thing. When I get home, I'm quitting
the army. I'm not going to volunteer to do this
again."

"What will you do?"

"I'm going to be a man of peace from now on."

"Meaning?"

"I'm going to join the FBI."

This is the eighteenth in a series of micro-reports, commentaries,
and or analyses that I will be sending routinely from the Occupied
Territories or, for an as yet undetermined time from Iraq or
neighboring Jordan. If the information or ideas seems helpful,
please feel free to forward them to others. It would be a privilege
to add their names to this mailing list, if they so requested. As
always I will be grateful for feedback-Jerry Levin.

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4 more Al Qaeda men held


By Our Staff Reporter

KARACHI, May 3: Four more foreigners were picked up in a pre- dawn
raid on Saturday for alleged links with the Al Qaeda network. Two
were nabbed from Karachi and two from Balochistan.

Intelligence and law enforcement agencies had detained almost 20
persons by Friday night in the new crackdown on the Al Qaeda network.
These include some of Arab origin.

Well-placed sources in the intelligence agencies said they had
intercepted a satellite telephone conversation in Arabic and raided a
place in Winder, Balochistan, in the early hours on Saturday from
where they picked up Jawwad Al Bashar, an Egyptian national. The
agencies also nabbed an Afghan national Farzand Shah Inquilabi in the
same vicinity.

The intelligence agencies questioned the two, who led investigators
to Khuda ki Basti, a lower middle class township in Surjani Town,
Karachi, from where two more Egyptian nationals were picked up. They
were identified as Abdul Khaliq Mohammad and Abi Abdullah.

The sources said three Kalashnikov rifles, four TT pistols, laptop
computers, satellite phones, communication devices, modems and other
communication-related accessories were recovered from the arrested
suspects besides some explosives.

The operation to track down Al Qaeda members began with the detention
of Waleed Mohammad bin Attash, a Yemeni national, allegedly involved
in bombing the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 US sailors. Five other
suspects were also detained along with Attash on Tuesday last.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the US warning about a possible air
attack on its consulate in Karachi, the police have tightened
security at the consulate and other US interests in the metropolis.

Acting Saddar town police chief Imran Shaukat said: "We spoke to the
experts who say that it is almost impossible to crash a commercial
aircraft into the US consulate as it is surrounded by high rise
buildings."

He quoted the experts as saying that the existing conditions could
not allow a commercial aircraft to hit the US consulate. The other
possibility was using a Cessna aircraft which in Karachi are operated
by Schon Club. "We spoke to Schon Club authorities who said that they
have not been chartering their aircraft for several years and had
their own trained pilots to operate their planes. There are pilots
learning how to fly an aircraft but there is a strict check on them",
he added.

The only possibility left was that a helicopter belonging to the Edhi
Foundation could be used. But Mr Shaukat said: "We are maintaining
strict vigilance."

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top7.htm&date=20030504

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Kabul to get Nato forces
------------------------------------------------------------------
Staff Correspondent
WASHINGTON, May 6: The Nato allies have accepted responsibility
for the next deployment of the International Security Force for
Afghanistan and are also considering a potential role in Iraq, the
State Department said on Tuesday.

Earlier, Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters in
Washington the Nato deployment in Afghanistan "shows that the
alliance recognizes that it has new kinds of responsibilities and
is responding to new challenges and to new threats."....

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top16.htm&date=20030507

------------------------------------------------------------------
Shariat only source of law in Afghanistan
------------------------------------------------------------------
KABUL, May 3: Shariat (Islamic Law) is the "only source" of
legislation in
Afghanistan, deputy chief justice Fazel Ahmad Manawi has declared.
"The only source of legislation in Afghanistan is Islamic Shariat
law," Manawi said late Friday, outlining the major recommendations
made by a council of 75 religious leaders from across the country.

The three-day council, or shura, organized by the Supreme Court,
ended on Wednesday.....(AFP)

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top14.htm&date=20030504



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Nationalist, Islamic movements warn Abbas' government against budging
to Zionist pressure

Occupied Jerusalem: 27 April, 2003 (IAP News)

Palestinian nationalist and Islamic movements on Sunday warned the new
Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbas against budging to Zionist
and American pressure.


The coalition of the Islamic and nationalist forces issued a leaflet
Sunday, urging the Abbas' government to be faithful to the legitimate
rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people.


"The government must be faithful and answerable to the people of
Palestine, not to the criminal Zionist aggressors and their
obsequious American allies," said the leaflet.


The leaflet tacitly warned that the Palestinian people and its
resistance forces would topple the government if it deviated from the
national line.


In addition, the leaflet called for cementing internal Palestinian
unity, saying national unity was the sole guarantee for the
continuity of Palestinian struggle for freedom, liberation and
independence.

http://www.iap.org E-mails: iapinfo@...

-------------------------------------------------------------------
ISRAELI COMMUNICATION PRIORITIES 2003

Please visit: http://www.adc.org/luntzwexneranalysis.pdf


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GOOD NEWS: TX JUDGE AWARDS CUSTODY TO MUSLIM MOM

FATHER LOSES CUSTODY BATTLE
Sarah Coppola, Austin American-Statesman, 4/25/03
http://www.statesman.com/default/content/auto/epaper/editions/friday/m
etro_state_3.html

GEORGETOWN -- A Wimberley man who argued that he should be given
custody of his 10-year-old son partly because his ex-wife had entered
into an arranged marriage lost his court battle Thursday.

Doug Anderson -- whose former wife, Michelle, married a Muslim man --
sued for custody of his son shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, prompting allegations of bigotry from some Islamic
groups.

Anderson's lawyer, however, argued that Michelle Anderson's marriage
was part of a lifelong pattern of instability and poor choices
affecting the couple's son, Kyle.

Brenda Rhea, Michelle Anderson's lawyer, called the lawsuit "a
horrible case of bigotry" in her final argument before state District
Judge Burt Carnes. Rhea accused Doug Anderson of failing to maintain
a close relationship with his son and waffling on his own religious
beliefs.

Explaining his decision to leave Kyle in his mother's custody, Carnes
said, "Despite everything that's going on in the mother's life, she's
managed to maintain a stable environment for the boy..."

Michelle Anderson burst into tears, and her husband, Abdellah Adouli,
rushed to hug her.

"I feel a lot of relief. I just want everyone to be able to move on,"
she said. "I hope one day my family can come to peace inside
themselves with my religion and my husband."

Her case drew attention from the Council on American-Islamic
Relations, a national group that raised thousands of dollars for her
legal fund...

SEE ALSO:

CAIR'S ORIGINAL ACTION ALERT ISSUED 8/8/02

TEXAS MOTHER MAY LOSE CHILD AFTER ACCEPTING ISLAM

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 8/8/02) - CAIR today said a custody dispute in
Texas is being fueled by anti-Muslim bias. A Muslim mother in that
state is being threatened with losing her nine-year-old son after she
accepted Islam and married a native of Morocco. CAIR is urging
Muslims and other people of conscience to help support the woman's
legal defense.

The boy's father, who admits the mother left him because of his
drinking, says he is seeking physical custody so that his son
can "have a normal life" and an "all-American home." In the "Home
Study Report for Custody" filed with the court, a social worker
states: "[The mother's] conversion to Islam and her subsequent
arranged marriage to a foreigner are very basic issues in this case,
and are certainly unusual from the point of view of prevalent
American culture."

A hearing on the case is scheduled for August 13. At that hearing,
the father's attorney will call a Christian minister and an
anthropologist to offer their views on Islam and Muslim culture.

The report also states: "[The Mother's] decision to become a Muslim
shocked and surprised her family and those who know her...Although
this [her arranged marriage] is customary in the Islamic community,
it is well out of the American mainstream."

Transcripts of the mother's deposition indicate that Islam, and anti-
Muslim bias, are central to the custody dispute. In that deposition,
the mother was questioned about her views on the 9/11 attacks (she
condemned them), her Islamic attire and the possibility of financial
assistance from the Muslim community for legal expenses.

The entire dispute began when the woman's mother, who refuses to
speak to her daughter since her conversion to Islam, approached the
boy's father three days after the 9/11 attacks and asked him to seek
custody.

"A mother should not be threatened with losing her child merely
because she accepts Islam and tries to build a stable home by
marrying a Muslim man. There is nothing 'un-American' about an
Islamic home and assertions to the contrary are based on stereotyping
and prejudice," said CAIR Civil Rights Manager Joshua Salaam. Salaam
added that his group is dealing with other custody cases in which the
parent's faith is a central issue…



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Text of interview with Pict Defence Force spokesperson:
May 9th, 2003 (19 Pitn, 2542 in old money)



(Pict Defence Force spokesperson, flanked by members of its political
wing, emphasises a point at an interview given to various press
agencies at a secure location in Aberforth ("Edinburgh")  on May 9th,
2003, corresponding to 19 Pitn, 2542


Why are Picts building in Edinburgh?

We call it Aberforth – Edwin had no right to name a city after
himself. We are the original owners of this land which you call "Scot-
Land" and we are building these settlements in Pictland to fulfill
the prophecy of the which promises the return of this land to the
Picts, as the Picked People of the Great Spirit. (I am not religious
myself, but many of my fellow Picts believe in this prophecy.)



Picts are not happy in any other countries – we want our own land and
we are going to take it!



What about Scots? Where will they go?

There is probably no such thing as Scots, they're all usurpers of our
land. They are all descended from Romans, Vikings, Saxons, Irish,
Normans, and a host of other riff-raff. Many are terrorists or at
least potential terrorists and will have to transfer or relocate to
other countries in Europe. There are many European countries for them
to choose from. This will be the ONLY Pictish land on the face of the
earth. It is sacred. How can they be so selfish!



This does not sound realistic. How on earth are you going to achieve
that?

Not realistic. Get real! Tell that to the Israelis, who did it and
are doing it to the Palestinians We can do it to so-called "Scots".
You just need determination, weapons and powerful friends. We are
joining the US-British War against Terrorism and, together with, an
admittedly controversial figure, Ariel Sharon of Israel, we will kill
anyone who opposes us and we have very high hopes that George Bush
and Tony Blair will support us fully, even if they have to criticize
us sometimes in public!



OK, I see what you are saying but this is not very civilised.

We are beyond your ideas of "civilized". We are fighting for our
survival as a people. Scots only want to kill Picts, all of us, by
driving us into the North Sea, or maybe the Minch, or the Moray Firth
even. They don't say this openly but that is what they want. Getting
rid of so-called Scots and building settlements is essential to
establishing Greater Pictland. Our Ministry of the Interior has
announced: "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land
confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid Scotland
of its Scottish population" (*)  Our great general, Dai `An, also
enjoins us: "Let us make our reckoning today. We are a generation of
settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not
be able to plant a tree or build a house"



Surely Scots are not going to be happy with your plan. They are
certain to fight back. How are you going to deal with them if they
resist?

We will rule over them with an iron fist until they give in. And
we'll get away with it because we'll be part of the War against
Terrorim and they will be terrorists. We will insist on calling them
terrorists – then we can do whatever we want to them. Scots are all
terrorists!



How is the rest of the world going to live with all the pain you
cause Scots?

An ancient recipe called "Denial". We can even say that they never
existed: "There was no such thing as the Scots. They never existed"
says our greatest wise woman, Gol Dam Aier. Anyway, if there is a
people called Scots, then these Scots are all terrorists.



This is really mad. Are there no sane Picts among you who think
otherwise?

Good that you asked. Actually, we're the humane Picts. We are, in
fact, uncomfortable with the actions of our brothers and sisters,
some of the Sacred Book Picts. Unlike them, we are generous, kind and
giving by nature.



In the case of Aberforth, for example, we have gone so far as to
offer the natives a whole part of the city, including great tower
blocks rising to the sky. This generous offer was transmitted to the
new mayor and City Council through the good offices of the United
States Consulate here in the city. Sadly, we hear, the City Council
are still not happy and are demanding more land from what will be the
ONLY Pictish homeland in the whole entire world. And this from
Europeans on the edge of the vast continent of Europe! Apart from
insisting on having two huge sets of tower blocks adjacent to each
other, the new Mayor wants access to the water supply. This
intransigence only strengthens the hand of the extremists among the
Picts. We hope that men of goodwill can come together to prevail upon
Edwin-burgh City Council to see reason.



Are there some Picts who say that this is wrong?

There are some dissenting Picts, "self-haters"; other objectors
are "anti-Pict".



You are reported to have among your ranks people who do not seem to
be Pictish at all! Why?

They are all Picts.  Some have just converted to Pictism, by
accepting the Pictish Sacred Book.



And some have not. They even eat leavened bread and wear trousers. So
you do not have to be a religious Pict to be a Pict?

Not necessarily. If you're granny was sort of Pict-ish, or anyway if
you're not a Scot, we'll take you! We decide who is and is not a Pict.



So you do not have to be a religious Pict to be a Pict? I am getting
all confused here. Can you tell me more about why are you doing this?

Now you are going into muddy waters - just remember, we are the
victims, the rightful owners of this land, and the Scots are
terrorists or potential terrorists. Lets not discuss; let's just
repeat, please.



This is very important. Why not discuss the issue?

War against terrorism…Scots terrorists…weak on terrorism…harbouring
terrorists…Picts against terrorism…Scots terrorism…Pictish counter-
terrorism…Scots safe haven… Al MacQaeda…



What are your immediate plans?

Within a very short time, the world will sit up and take notice of
our claims which have been ignored for too long (a few thousands
years actually). We will carry out an action in Aberforth (so-called
Edinburgh) to assert our inalienable, national rights to this soil
and to begin the process of driving out the interlopers, the so-
called "Scots" who have squatted on the sacred soil of Pictland for
too long.



S-C. Moghnabirr

Pict Defence Force

Aberforth

May 9th, 2003 / 19 Pitn, 2542



All communications, including requests for enlistment, to
pictdefenceforce@...

2.
PICT HOLY BOOK
(condensed version)

  Verse 1

And the Great Spirit has given all of these lands to those whom he
named Picts, on the undeniable grounds that we were "picked" by
Him. "Picked have you been by Me above all others," He boomed and
thus bore we the solemn name of Picts. No other tribes picked He. And
at that dreamy time there were no people there who committed the
abomination of eating leavened bread whic is named Ho-vis or wearing
trousers. And all the Picts lived peacefully in that bounteous land,
except for a few raids on neighbours for plunder. And the Picts,
being upright in the eyes of the Great Maker of the World,  regretted
all the massacres which they were forced to carry out in self-defence
during these activities, even though the Great maker of the World
allows us to massacre in self-defence



Verse 2

But some Picts ate of the leavened bread which is named Ho-vis, and
some took to wearing trousers, which angered the Great Spirit and he
allowed his beloved Picts to be massacred and driven off their lands
by alien peoples. The Great maker of the World summoned up the vile
Scottii and the Romans and the Vikings and the Saxons and a whole
list of other invaders allowed He to scourge and expel the Picts from
their native Pictland. Verily we were seriously "un-picked" for quite
a long time.



Verse 3

For the Picts did wander in the wilderness for near 2,000 years,
living beyond and even among the barbarian Scottii and Angles and
Welsh. Some tribes of Picts wandered off to France and Italy and went
native and good luck to them. But the Great Spirit punished most of
his Picts for all of their 2,000-year sojourn in the lands of Bri-
tain.



Verse 4

Yet during all this lamentation, the Picts have held on for our Great
Maker of the world did make a Covenant with us that we would return
to our homeland. And a long succession of Pictish holy men and wise
women have reported visions and trances and heavy binges during which
this Covenant with his "Picked People" has been renewed. For we are
still the "Picked People" of the Great Spirit. Yeah, even as He toys
with us.



Verse 5

Now although we must have been very wicked, possibly wearing not just
trousers but even flares during our long exile, we are not without
feeling for those abominators who have usurped our lands and occupied
our hearths through the ages.  Thus our recent prophet promised to
redeem us by finding us  "a land without people for a people without
a land". Verily, however, Antarctica is only for total nutters and we
are coming to take back the cities and towns and villages and hamlets
and fields and locks and stocks and barrels of our ancestral home,
Pictland, which has been usurped and occupied by the barbarian
Scottii. Even have they renamed our land "Scot-land" and turned it
into a place where trousers are worn and levened bread which is named
Ho-vis is eaten.



Verse 6

When we have redeemed Holy Pict-land, the natives will be treated
according to their right due as those shunned by the Great Spirit.
For we will be over them and they will be under us and all good
things of Earth will be ours and they will be allowed to dwell and
toil and moil in our land until we deem them ready for transfer to
that Isle called Man.



Verse 7

And that is about that. Verily the Great Maker of the World smiles
upon us and enjoins us to scourge the natives. We have got it made.
Wretches who fail to see the light must be made to flee the darkness
and seek illumination. Such include all manner of socialists and
greens and human rights campaigners of every stripe and hue.



Verse 8

And the Great Maker of the World promises that he will remain with
His "Picked People"  until they return to their Land. Enjoineth He us
to commence at the Great Capital of Aberforth ("Edin-Burgh") and
there will our new stone circle be builded, which will attract more
tourists than Stonehenge and greatly benefit the hotel trade of
Aberforth, who seem to call all the shots in that city these days.



Verse 9

To the Scottii whom the Great Spirit used as an instrument to sore
harry and scourge his Picts (we who are his favourites!), He says
that their job is now done and it is time to leave so-called "Scot-
land" and make way for His "Picked People". "This is tough love,"
sayeth, the Great Maker of the World, "Get over it! Move on!"



Verse 10

And to those who raise their hands against the anointed of the Great
Maker of the World, we will smite them and scourge them and keep them
lowly in status in the land of the Picts. Lowly will they be and
named as doers of terror. Unto the tenth generation.

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NOTE: Help The Needy sponsored Iraqi orphans and supported hungry
families in Iraq. They were in no way connected with Saddam Hussein.
---------------------------------------
MUSLIMS UNITE OVER WORRIES ABOUT BIAS
Renee K. Gadoua Post-Standard, 5/4/03
http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-
8/105203736667880.xml

The treatment of three suspects and up to 150 local Muslims
questioned during the investigation of Help the Needy reflects a
pattern of harassment and suspicion all over the country, a
representative of a national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group
says.

"When I walk through an airport with my wife, people become
suspicious by the way we look that we are prone to do something
violent," said Joshua Salaam, an African-American Muslim who is
manager of the civil rights department of the Washington, D.C.-based
Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Salaam said the arrests of three Central New York men accused of
illegally sending money to Iraq through a Syracuse-based charity, the
tactics used in questioning potential witnesses and much of the
media's coverage of the incident mirror the fear and ignorance of
Islam spurred by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks...

The Muslim community has criticized law enforcement, saying
investigators and prosecutors harassed and intimidated its members
and asked inappropriate questions about their religious beliefs.
Prosecutors have said they have received no formal complaints about
their actions during questioning of witnesses in the case.

Attending the forum were many members of the local peace community;
fewer than half were from the Muslim community. Speakers included
Thomas J. Costello, auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of
Syracuse; and Imam Ahmed Nezar Kobeisy, spiritual leader of the
Islamic Society of Central New York...

In the days following the arrests, several local religious leaders
said members of the Muslim community feared speaking out would
jeopardize their citizenship or student visa status or spur anti-
Islamic backlash.

Linda Bergh, a member of James Street United Methodist Church, said
she offered to share stories of some women questioned at the forum.

"They were afraid to tell me," she said. "They were afraid to have
that represented at a public meeting. They are afraid it will somehow
be traced back and used against them because they are Arab or they
are Muslim."

Magda Bayoumi, questioned Feb. 26 by officials, said she refuses to
be silenced by the atmosphere of fear.

"I am proud to be a Muslim," she said. "I cannot be more proud of
anything else. I will not be afraid. I will not crumble. I will stand
up tall."





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US frees 13 PoWs
------------------------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON, May 9: Thirteen prisoners from the war in Afghanistan
were flown out of a US navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on
Thursday after being cleared for release by US authorities,
defence officials said here.

"A number of detainees have departed Guantanamo Bay," said Lt
Commander Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman....(AFP)

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top16.htm&date=20030510

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Amnesty International delegates denied access to Gaza (Below)
----------------------------------------------------------------
Israel's 'We have the right to kill you' visa for Gaza

by Nigel Parry and Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 10 May 2003

http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article1462.shtml

On 8 May 2003, the Electronic Intifada obtained and published the
text of a document distributed by the Israeli military to foreign
diplomatic representatives. The document, entitled "Form to be filled
out and submitted to IDF authorities prior to entry to the Gaza
Strip", is mandatory for all internationals to sign in exchange for
passage into Gaza.  (see:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1452.shtml)

The document is primarily aimed at excluding foreign peace activists
associated with the International Solidarity Movement, a group
mentioned by name in the document, or any similar groups undertaking
nonviolent direct action to thwart Israeli military violence against
civilians and their property in the Gaza Strip.

The form requires activists to declare that they have "no association
with the organization known as ISM (International Solidarity
Movement) nor any other organization whose aim is to disrupt IDF
operations," describing this activity as "criminal."

Seeking to sidestep Israeli legal responsibility for violence
directed at activists who are confronting illegal Israeli actions in
occupied Gaza, the document assumes the following responsibility onto
the signer: "I am aware of the risks involved and accept that the
Government of the State of Israel and its organs cannot be held
responsible for death, injury and/or damage/loss of property which
may be incurred as a result of military activity." In essence, the
form represents an Israeli 'We have the right to kill you' visa
for Gaza.

The new measure additionally aims to bar all internationals from key
areas of Gaza. "The Military Installation Area along the border with
Egypt," states the text, "is IDF administered territory and is
strictly out of bounds to foreign nationals. Please note that this
area has been the site of intense hostilities and is extremely
dangerous."

The area described above is Rafah, a Palestinian city of 130,000
inhabitants on the southern border where the Gaza Strip meets Egypt.
Surrounded by several refugee camps, Rafah is an area of extreme
poverty and has borne the brunt of some of the harshest Israeli
repression during the Intifada. To describe it as "the site of
intense hostilities" is to imply there is a war being waged between
two armies. The reality is far more one-sided, with Israel's nightly
shelling of civilian homes which are also razed in regular bulldozing
campaigns and instance after instance in which civilians have been
shot and killed in situations where Israeli soldiers were not
threatened or under attack.

Internationals have not been spared. Between March 16th and May 2nd --
  a period of less than two months -- Israeli troops killed three
foreign nationals. American ISM activist Rachel Corrie was crushed by
an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah on March 16th. British ISM activist Tom
Hurndall was left clinically dead after being shot in Rafah on April
12th. And British journalist James Miller was shot and killed in
Rafah on May 2nd.

Israel claimed that the bulldozer driver did not see Rachel Corrie,
an assertion rejected as ridiculous by eyewitnesses who noted that
the bulldozers and a tank present left the scene after Corrie was
crushed without offering any medical aid to her. Israel claimed that
Hurndall and Miller were shot in "crossfire" accidents. Eyewitnesses
noted that there was no concurrent Palestinian attack on Israeli
troops on either occasion. Only Israel was shooting.

The effect of this sequence of clear instances of excessive and
unlawful use of force involving internationals posing no threat to
Israeli troops has been that eyes of the world have been opened to
the impunity with which Israel acts in the occupied territories. This
is something Israel clearly does not want to see continue, hence the
new conditions on entry to Gaza.


The legality of the declaration

Declarations that violate fundamental human rights or attempt to
abrogate them have no validity under international law, and are an
illegal form of coercion. In this case, Articles 19 and 20 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights state that:

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers... Everyone has the right to freedom of
peaceful assembly and association."

This includes the right to associate oneself with the International
Solidarity Movement, to visit their members, and to be an eyewitness -
- one of the most immediate forms of "media" there is -- in Rafah.

Additionally, the Fourth Geneva Convention mandates Israel, as the
Occupying Power, to protect civilians and be solely responsible for
the actions of its forces in the occupied territories. Human rights,
as stated in the first sentence of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights are "inalienable", a key concept in international law.
Webster's dictionary defines "inalienable" as "incapable of being
alienated, surrendered, or transferred to another; not alienable; as,
in inalienable birthright." As such, regardless of what international
visitors may sign, international law does not recognise these
declarations as binding or in any way excusing Israel from its legal
responsibilities.

A 9 May 2003 news release from Amnesty International after its
delegates refused to sign the waver in order to enter Gaza stated:
"The organization is categorically opposed to any attempt to get
people to sign away their rights. The signing of 'waivers' does not
absolve the Israeli army of its responsibility in any way, nor the
Israeli authorities of their duties to ensure that armed forces
respect human rights in all circumstances... The organization is
concerned that one aim of these new and drastic restrictions is
to prevent outside monitoring and scrutiny of the conduct of the
Israeli army. It is also concerned that these restrictions will lead
to more killings in Gaza and calls on the army to immediately end the
use of excessive and unlawful force."

Conclusions

It is hard to fathom what Israel thinks it can achieve by insisting
that international visitors sign this bizarre and legalistic form in
order to enter a geographic region where Israel itself has typically
acted in utter violation of all commonly understood interpretations
of international human rights law, to say nothing of universal
notions of morality.

If Israel bulldozes another Rachel Corrie, will we accept her murder
just because the next Rachel Corrie signed a declaration upon entry
to Gaza that stated that she would not stand in front of bulldozers?
When Israel shoots its next Tom Hurndall or James Miller, will we nod
understandingly simply because point four on the declaration states
that "Foreign nationals are strongly advised to stay well clear of
military activity?"

Of course not.

In all civil rights movements in the past, there has come a point
where both those struggling for freedom and those reporting on the
struggle for the international media have confronted unjust laws.
Trying to bar activists from the areas where they typically confront
Israeli human rights violations is essentially asking for people to
make a "loyalty declaration" to a system of military occupation that
is the cause of untold misery for millions of Palestinians for over
half a century. As a result, the document is fundamentally
meaningless.

Instead of addressing any of the root causes that fuel the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, such as ending the violence of Israel's
military occupation against Palestinian civilians, Israel prefers
instead to remove more of the eyewitnesses who can give us an honest
account of what life on the ground in southern Gaza is like.

On 20 March 2003, Israeli peace activist Billie Moskona-Lerman spent
a night with two activists from the International Solidarity Movement
who were acting as human shields in the home of a Palestinian family
in Rafah: "It was at 7.30 that I went with Laura and Joe to stay the
night in the house of Muhammad Jamil Kushta, the first house fronting
the IDF position on the Egyptian border, an ill-fated house... Rains
of ammunition, bullets came down on us on that one single night. A
single night, for me. The shooting went on continuously from 1.30 to
4.15, near the first light. Only then it calmed down." At one point
during the night, Billie's host Muhammad notes, "You hear it so
close, because they are shooting at the wall near us." Their
subsequent exchange gives us a clear and disturbing picture of life
for Palestinians in Rafah: "So they never hit your house itself?" I
ask him with an enormous burst of hope.

"Oh, sometimes they do. Look at the bullet holes". I raise my head
and look to the sides. The ceiling is fool of holes, the side walls
are cut up. So is the kitchen wall near the tap, near the table, in
the toilet, one centimetre from the children's beds. Some of the
holes have been filled up. Every night, once the shooting ends, Jamil
closes the bullet holes with white cement. The walls are patchwork,
and if you dare approach the window you can see that Jamil and Nora's
home is surrounded by ruins on all sides.

Source: "'I was a human shield': An Israeli visits ISM in Rafah",
Billie Moskona-Lerman, Live from Palestine/The Electronic Intifada, 1
May 2003

The ridiculous document and its ongoing implementation concurrent
with raids on the offices of peace activists in other areas of the
occupied territories and the expulsion of activists from Gaza reveals
an Israel desperate to pull the rug back over the hellish situation
in southern Gaza and elsewhere that its recent clumsy killings of
foreign activists and news professionals has uncovered.

Even as Israel has begun brazenly to shoot international peace
workers, as it has for decades shot Palestinians, European and
American governments continue to aid and abet the perpetrator by
directly supplying both the murder weapons and the legal and
political cover needed to allow the Israeli colonisation project
to continue daily.

At some point, enough people in the world will clue in to the obvious
fact that there can only be so many "accidents" in occupied
Palestine, and the critical mass will form to birth a movement equal
or greater in size to that which the Anti-Apartheid Movement reached
in the late 1980s, the period immediately before it defeated White
South Africa.

Until that snowball starts to roll -- and let us recognise that
moment is inevitable given the righteous anger of the millions of
people on the earth who have become eyewitnesses-by-media to Israel's
repression of the Palestinian uprising -- we should feel deep shame.

Nigel Parry and Ali Abunimah

Nigel Parry and Ali Abunimah are two of the co-founders of Electronic
Intifada.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Amnesty International delegates denied access to Gaza

May 9, 2003

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE150402003

Amnesty International today condemned the Israeli authorities'
decision
requiring foreigners entering Gaza to sign "waivers" that absolve
Israel from
responsibility should they be killed or injured.

"The organization is categorically opposed to any attempt to get
people to sign
away their rights," Amnesty International said. "The signing
of 'waivers' does
not absolve the Israeli army of its responsibility in any way, nor
the Israeli
authorities of their duties to ensure that armed froces respect human
rights in
all circumstances."

The organization is concerned that one aim of these new and drastic
restrictions
is to prevent outside monitoring and scrutiny of the conduct of the
Israeli
army. It is also concerned that these restrictions will lead to more
killings in
Gaza and calls on the army to immediately end the use of excessive
and unlawful
force.

Amnesty International's delegates were denied access to Gaza today.
They were
required to sign the "waivers" which they refused to do. The
organization has
repeatedly demanded that international human rights monitors be
deployed in
Israel and the Occupied Territories to ensure that international
standards are
abided by.

"We condemn all unlawful killings of civilians, including children,
in Israel
and the Occupied Territories, whether committed by members of the
Israeli army
or members of armed Palestinian groups," Amnesty International said.

Background
The declaration to be signed states, among other things, that the
individual
"accept(s) that the government of the state of Israel and its organs
cannot be
held responsible for death, injury and/or damage/loss of property
which may be
incurred as a result of military activity".



Public Document
****************************************
For more information please call Amnesty International's press office
in London,
UK, on +44 20 7413 5566
Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW. web:
http://www.amnesty.org

For latest human rights news view http://news.amnesty.org



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