Letters to the Editor, November 14, 2003

The mere presence of US in Iraq is made worse with their confrontational approach of conducting raids which showed little respect for the cultures, customs and sensitivities there. As more raids were conducted, more attacks were happening, not less. The same places (particularly in the Sunni Triangle) were being raided over and over each time deadly attacks occurred on the US convoys. Arrests were made and the number of arrests increases, not decreases. Will the US ever wins the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, as not only have they failed to provide! security for the country, but continues to humiliate the citizens? The US is now responding, using the Israeli’s style of retaliation, by bombing Tikrit and Fallujah for the guerilla attacks. Such move serves only to terrorize and victimise the local populace. Did the US think that the 'brainless' guerillas would wait after destroying their Humvee so that the 500kg 'smart' bombs could find its way to them? If anything had been successful for US in Iraq, it would be the spawning of more enemies against them.

Issam Rizk

Editor: The literature about the Zionist movement and its main figures is enormous. Just write the word Zionism in any search engine and you will get more references than you can handle. Read the link mentioned below. Also look at this link: The Men from JINSA and CSP, by Jason Vest. If you have a problem opening it, it is mentioned in the note # 16, in my article, "Zionism, the highest stage of imperialism." Generally, anyone who supports the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people is a Zionist. Anyone who supported or support the uprooting of Palestinians and replace them with Jewish immigrants is a Zionist.

Good article but can Arabs & Muslims research further. Arabs because of their easy oil money are very lazy and cannot do anything useful. Most of the other Muslims in the world are too illiterate to do painstaking research and to point out the full details of the malevolent Zionist Jewish influence on American politics. While living in other countries Zionists carry strong loyalties for Israel. more often than not the interests of the country of residence have to be ignored, compromised, sacrificed because of much deeper pro-Israel loyalties. Witness the case of Jonathan Pollard in the US ! Being an American citizen he cared little for the US and stole its deepest secrets because of a deep, natural love for Israel. One for all and All for one !!

But because of 911 and because of Zionist propaganda, most Americans are very badly put off by Arabs and Muslims. they will not listen to anything we say no matter how correct it is.

And so we will have to do a lot of research and build up a lot of proof before the US believes us. To regain Trust We will have to be humble and absolutely truthful with no exaggerations and no distortions.

We will have to be intelligent to expose all the Israeli manipulations, deceptions and cunning strategies. We will also have to guide and educate our masses to respond peacefully and rationally to world events. mahathir mohammad of malayasia has spoken wisely.

We should also not wear our religion on the sleeve but look for promoting Arab and Muslim unity rather than to respond to political events through unintelligent, knee-jerk religious responses.

We must introspect and find out how violence has jumped from a weapon of last resort to the most welcome political strategy.

Also - On the editorial page, please provide a way to post these pages to a friend by writing his email id. regards.

Editor: Amen, waiting for your contribution to educate the world about this topic. You have just bashed Arabs that you want to help. Arabs are not lazy. Most of the researchers you read for are Arabs from oil-exporting states as well as from non-oil-exporting states. Arabs are about 300 millions, oil exporting Gulf states constitute only about 11 percent of them but they produce and finance a considerable amount of knowledge and research.

Israelis can adopt and convert Indian children

Israelis can now adopt children from India under an agreement reached between the two countries about a month ago, Xinhua reported quoting the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on Tuesday.

India initially objected to the Israeli demand to convert the adopted children to Judaism, but it was eventually persuaded to agree, the report said.

Amatzia, a non-profit organisation under the National Religious Party’s Emunah women’s movement, initiated the contact with India after most existing foreign adoption sources dried up.

Romania, the source of most children adopted by Israelis, shut its door to foreign adoptions two years ago as part of a reform in its adoption laws.

Ukraine also halted adoption to Israel for a while, fearing for the children’s safety, while Russia insists on a five-year wait before issuing adoption permits. Last year, the Philippine government announced that it would no longer allow children to be taken to Israel due to the security situation. Israel’s ties with India were formed during an adoption conference held in New Delhi in 2002.

The alternative available to the US forces in Iraq, against the increasing résistance from either the nationalists, the Baathists or Islamists, is to resort to the Israeli technique of massive retaliation against civilian population through carpet-bombing of villages like Takrit and Faluja. The human toll of any such massive strikes will further alienate not only the Iraqis, but the Muslim world as well the rest of world community. Bush war is a very unpopular war. The world has already made up its mind that whatever the different kinds of spin the think tank of neo-con cabal can come up from time to time, ranging from the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to Saddam’s brutalities, to introducing freedom and ‘human rights’ to the despotic world of Middle East backlands, all such attempts will be a transparent failure and non-starter and will not clear Bush from the charge of committing a monumental war crime and a crime against humanity, when US forces had already carrie! d out 37000 aerial bombing sorties killing over 30,000 civilians and according to a UNESCO report a total of 1000 children have died after the Bush declared Victory day, when they handled cluster bombs scattered over the land of Iraq by US forces. Now if Bush and Wolfowitz persist in carrying out further bombings, they run the risk of further widening the war. The warnings that Russia has given, about Iraq becoming a new center of international terrorist playground, are not without firm basis.

President Bush must put a humane face to an exist strategy by calling a grand jarga of all Middle East Arab states and thrash out a common strategy to bring peace and national government to Iraq. Involvement of Arabs in the settlement of Iraqi imbroglio, will be the most reassuring move the US can make to soothe the nerves of all concerned and bring some sanity to the process of handing over Iraq to Iraqis. Any deepening or widening of the war by wiping out villages in Iraq will be very counterproductive and could result in further condemnation of the US from the world community.