Letters to the Editor, September 13, 2003

First of all let me introduce myself, my name is Sami Zouehid, I am half British half Lebanese living in England, I would like to thank you for finally telling the real story of what goes on in our homeland of the Middle East. The way the West depicts what goes on out there in their media is all one big propaganda movie fooling all their citizens, I don't know what I would do without reading your website each and every day, long may it continue.................

Sami Farid Zouehid

Israel's decision to expel Yasser Arafat

Israel's decision to expel Yasser Arafat just proves that they have no interest in peace, and have intention of following the so called 'Roadmap to Peace'. History has shown all to well that fighting terrorism with terrorism does not solve anything. If the British government had started bulldozing houses in Northern Ireland and using the air force to bomb IRA hideouts whenever a bomb went off, we would have never seen an end to the violence, so how can anyone sit back and Israel acts in such a way?

Ariel Sharon is by far the biggest risk to peace in the Middle East, far much more than Saddam Hussein ever was. After all, Israel has proven stocks of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. Their apartheid wall is a grave injustice, how can any country serious about peace build such monstrous barrier.

We recently launched a branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in York, and have a stall in the town each week. We have received a lot of support from the public for what we are doing, and can see that the majority of the public are in support of the Palestinian people. It is important that anyone against the injustices in Palestine should get out on the streets and show people what is happening, because we cannot rely on the media to show a true picture of the hell Palestinians have to live through.

Andrew Collingwood, York, UK

Editor: I salute you, Andrew, and other members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. I hope that peace activists activists everywhere mobilize organizing demonstrations everywhere in support of the Palestinian people and their President in order to thwart the Israeli government decision to exile President Arafat.

Arafat's crime is quite clear....

He's the leader of a people who won't give up, and won't give in to the rule of force.

One thing is axiomatic to any discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States; Yasser Arafat is (described in the US as) a terrorist. It is a denunciation so widely circulated and reflexively accepted that the public assumes it is an immutable fact of nature, like Newton's Law or Einstein's Relativity.
And, even though Arafat has been squatting in his hovel in Ramallah for two years surrounded by the entire Israeli War Machine, his image, as perpetrator of "all things evil", still persists.

Does anyone seriously believe that Arafat (who is under the most extraordinary 24 hour surveillance of anyone on the planet) is directly involved in the current rash of (Israeli assassinations and) terrorist bombings?

Of course not. It's complete rubbish.

The intifada began with Prime Minister Sharon's provocative appearance at the AL Aqsa Mosque with 1000 members of the IDF, arrogantly thumbing his nose at the 3 million Muslims in Palestine.

Well, he got what he wanted, a three year war with no reprieve.

Three years of the most gut wrenching, loathsome, despicable assaults on a civilian population, the world has seen in a very long time.

Mr. Sharon affectionately refers to this as eradicating the "infrastructure of terrorism."

I'm sure his understudy in Washington DC would agree.

But, what about Arafat, how is he central to this debate? After all, he's been effectively out of the hunt for two years.

Arafat's crime is quite clear....he's the leader of a people who won't give up, and won't give in to the rule of force.
That's high praise for a terrorist.

Mike Whitney

Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l'Homme (FIDH)

Ligue des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen (LDH)

Israël - Palestine

Expulsion d’Arafat : la force contre le droit

Paris, le 12 septembre 2003 - Le gouvernement Israélien a pris la décision de procéder à l'expulsion de Yasser Arafat tout en en reportant la mise en œuvre.

La FIDH et la LDH condamnent cette nouvelle fuite en avant des autorités israéliennes.

Expulser de son pays un responsable démocratiquement élu par son peuple, c'est adopter une attitude dictée par la force et non par le droit.

Les violences aveugles supportées par les civils israéliens, les assassinats extra judiciaires commis par l'armée israélienne comme le sort dramatique que connaît toute la population palestinienne ne cesseront pas parce que le gouvernement israélien aura désigné son interlocuteur parmi les responsables palestiniens. Tout au contraire, expulser Yasser Arafat ne peut que rendre un peu plus difficile toute perspective de paix et attiser le conflit.

Plus que jamais, il est indispensable que la communauté internationale intervienne et impose un processus qui permette d'en terminer avec les violences et d'ouvrir de réelles négociations.

La FIDH et la LDH demandent aux autorités françaises d'agir en ce sens et d'intervenir auprès des membres de l'Union européenne pour qu'ils manifestent auprès du gouvernement israélien leur opposition résolue à la décision d'expulser Yasser Arafat.

L'Union européenne doit enfin et par tous moyens utiles, prendre toutes ses responsabilités en faveur du droit et de la paix.

LDH : +33-1 56 55 51 09
FIDH : +33-1 43 55 25 18

The Israelisation of America

Most of the US administration's and media's information on the Arabs is now derived from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), co-founded by Meyrav Wurmser, director of the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute. According to the Guardian, MEMRI is connected with Israeli Army Intelligence and feeds the media and politicians with highly selective quotations from extreme Arab publications.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/655/op41.htm

Hilmi Salem

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).