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What is your opnion of William Blum? Is he a crackpot? Is he right, using the Library of Congress as his primary source as he does?
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William Blum left the State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service Officer, because of his opposition to what the United States was doing in Vietnam.
He then became one of the founders and editors of the Washington Free Press, the first "alternative" newspaper in the capital.
* In 1969, he wrote and published an expos?? of the CIA in which was revealed the names and addresses of more than 200 employees of the Agency.
* Mr. Blum has been a freelance journalist in the United States, Europe and South America. His stay in Chile in 1972-3, writing about the Allende government's "socialist experiment" and its tragic overthrow in a CIA-designed coup, instilled in him a personal involvement and an even more heightened interest in what his government was doing in various parts of the world.
* In the mid-1970's, he worked in London with former CIA officer Philip Agee and his associates on their project of exposing CIA personnel and their misdeeds.
* The late 1980s found Mr. Blum living in Los Angeles, teaching and pursuing a career as a screenwriter. Unfortunately, his screenplays all had two (if not three) strikes against them because they dealt with that thing which makes grown men run screaming in Hollywood: ideas and issues.
William Blum is currently living in Washington, DC again, using the Library of Congress and the National Archives to strike fear into the hearts of US government imperialists. Blum maintains his own Web Site and also maintains the Foreign Policy Watch section of ZNet.
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Some interesting pages of Blum's:
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An interesting website which monitors the erosion of civil liberties in the USA.
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Give the public someone to fear and hate.
Again, the USA has done this remarkably well. As in the novel 1984 by George Orwell, they even change their supposed enemy every now and then, depending on their desires and foreign trade requirements, and even then it continues to work just fine. For a while it might be Iran, then suddenly they support Iran and bomb Iraq; for a while it's the USSR, then it's China and North Korea. Who's next? An interesting point is not just that this policy has been so successful in the USA, but the slight twist applied by that nation's governing bodies. They combine a long-term enemy of immense power with a short-term enemy of negligable power. The long-term enemy of great power provides the USA with a socio-political background of on-going fear and suspicion, against which they may easily paint themselves as the "good guys". That long-term foe must remain in place for the good of the USA's self-congratulatory publicity, and to justify such things as military spending and intrusion into the sovereignty of other nations. The short-term foes of lesser power, such as Iraq and Somalia, provide an opportunity for the USA to flex its military muscle now and again, thus demonstrating their power to other nations and reassuring their own public, contributing to the self-congratulatory publicity already in place due to the long-term supposed struggle. And of course there is what some have called the "military-industrial complex", which is nothing more than a bit of quid pro quo between large defence contractors and elected representatives; contractors contribute money to electoral campaigns, and when that representative is in office, he or she assigns government contracts to the companies which supported him or her; and then, as a new representative is in office, he or she bombs some foreign nation to demonstrate their own resolve and to provide a reason for their military spending.
Forgotten heroes in unmarked graves,
Seasons weathered in mismatched grace and destruction.
Ambient lies creating new truths, new reality.
A new apocolypse diverts momentary, travelling, and unwanted attention.
Forgotten heroes in unmarked graves,
Seasons weathered in mismatched grace and destruction.
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What we have is a state declaring in indefinite war against an indefinite enemy for an indefinite duration, with indefinite objectives. The perfect backdrop for affecting changes at home and overseas, for those doing it.
Then allegations without evidence against a small, limited power (Iraq), and a limited war.
Obviously targeting Islamic nations and groups will cause polarisation around the world.
Overall, this is a deliberate polarisation of the world which does what? Increases tensions, raises the likelihood of aggression, and gives more excuse for the actions causing the polarisation, thus it is a vicious (although intended) circle.
Any rational comments on the whole matter? Please leave your patriotism at the door, and wipe your feet...
A very interesting perspective on the USA's current course.
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The United States of America has gone mad
John le Carr??
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.
The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world???s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer???s pocket? At what cost ??? because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people ??? in Iraqi lives?
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America???s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.
Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I???m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam???s downfall ??? just not on Bush???s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America???s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.
God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another???s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.
Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God???s work.
In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that ???somebody??? was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr???s cry: ???That man tried to kill my Daddy.??? But it???s still not personal, this war. It???s still necessary. It???s still God???s work. It???s still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.
To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won???t tell us is the truth about why we???re going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil ??? but oil, money and people???s lives. Saddam???s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn???t, won???t.
If Saddam didn???t have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart???s content. Other leaders do it every day ??? think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.
Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam???s weapons of mass destruction, if he???s still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes??? notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America???s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us ??? to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.
The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair???s part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can???t. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can???t get out.
It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain???s opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that???s Britain???s tragedy, as it is America???s: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair???s best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world???s greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant???s head to wave at the boys?
Blair???s worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.
There is a middle way, but it???s a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.
I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect???s sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can???t explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.
???But will we win, Daddy????
???Of course, child. It will all be over while you???re still in bed.???
???Why????
???Because otherwise Mr Bush???s voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him.???
???But will people be killed, Daddy????
???Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people.???
???Can I watch it on television????
???Only if Mr Bush says you can.???
???And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more????
???Hush child, and go to sleep.???
Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: ???Peace is also Patriotic???. It was gone by the time he???d finished shopping.
The author has also contributed to an openDemocracy debate on Iraq at www.openDemocracy.net
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Source of the article.
An article about Ariel Sharon giving Mossad the go-ahead to murder people even overseas, "for the good of the state".
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Israel unleashes its death squads
January 19, 2003
ISRAELI death squads have been authorised to enter "friendly" countries and assassinate opponents in a move that raises the prospect of political killings in Australia.
Agents of the Israeli secret service Mossad have been given free rein to kill those deemed to be a threat to the Jewish state ??? wherever they are hiding.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has until now refused permission for assassinations on the home ground of allies, has reversed the policy as part of a more aggressive approach to terrorism.
The move was revealed by former Mossad agents in a series of interviews with US news agency United Press International. It was later confirmed by US intelligence officials.
They said the policy raised the potential for killings in countries with close ties to Israel, including the US, Britain and Australia.
One Mossad official told UPI the policy shift was prompted by "a huge budget" increase for the agency as part of "a tougher stance in fighting global jihad (or holy war)".
"Targeted killings" have, in the main, been restricted to the West Bank and Gaza because "no one wanted such operations on their territory", one Israeli official said.
But that is changing with the appointment late last year of new Mossad director Meir Dagan.
Another former Mossad agent told UPI: "Diplomatic constraints have prevented Mossad from carrying out preventive operations (assassinations) on the soil of friendly countries until now."
Mr Sharon and Mr Dagan were now "reversing that policy, even if it risks complications to Israel's bilateral relations".
A third source said Mr Sharon wanted "greater operational maneuverability" for Mossad.
Asked if that meant assassinations within allied countries, he said: "It does."
The move comes in the wake of the assassination by the CIA of al-Qaeda suspects in Yemen.
Qaed Sinan Harithi and five other suspects were killed last year when a unmanned Predator spy plane fired a Hellfire missile at their car.
That attack is thought to have limited the ability of the US to protest about Mossad killings abroad.
"That (the Predator attack) was done on the soil of a friendly ally," an official at the US Congress said. "I don't know on what basis we would be able to protest Israel's actions."
Israel has in the past sent hit squads to kill opponents in hostile countries such as Lebanon, and snatch squads have been used extensively throughout the world.
Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina in 1960, taken to Israel and executed.
In 1986, scientist Mordechai Vanunu was snatched in Rome and transported to Israel after revealing details of Israel's nuclear weapons program. He was sentenced to 18 years jail, only being released from solitary confinement in 1998.
One of the few known cases of Mossad hitmen carrying out an assassination on friendly soil occurred on July 21, 1973, when a Mossad team shot dead Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchikhi as he walked home from the cinema with his pregnant wife in the Norwegian ski resort of Lillehammer.
The assassins apparently mistook Bouchikhi for Hassan Salameh, a PLO intelligence chief suspected of masterminding the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Gullow Gjeseth, who led a Norwegian Government inquiry into the shooting, said: "This was much more than a murder. This was a violation of Norwegian sovereignty."
In January 1996, Israel paid undisclosed damages to Bouchikhi's family, but refused to admit responsibility for the killing.
Mossad is thought to have struck again in October 1995, when the head of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, Fathi al-Shikai, was gunned down on the streets of Malta. The hit, though never formally claimed, had all the trademarks of the agency.
A return to such killings is expected to raise concerns among Israel's Western allies.
The assassinations are likely to be carried out by a unit of Mossad's secret Metsada department called the Kidon, a Hebrew word meaning "bayonet".
The agents will have to answer to Mr Dagan, who has been described by a CIA agent as having a "real killer instinct".
Officially, Israel has refused to confirm or deny the policy change.
Kim Farber, a diplomat at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, told UPI: "There is so little information available on this, there is nothing I can add."
A spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer yesterday refused to comment on the possibility of Mossad agents operating in Australia.
Sunday Herald Sun
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Source of the article.
Another article about the USA's pre-invasion propaganda campaign.
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America tore out 8000 pages of Iraq dossier
America tore out 8000 pages of Iraq dossier
By James Cusick and Felicity Arbuthnot
THE United States edited out more than 8000 crucial pages of Iraq's 11,800-page dossier on weapons, before passing on a sanitised version to the 10 non-permanent members of the United Nations security council.
The full extent of Washington's complete control over who sees what in the crucial Iraqi dossier calls into question the allegations made by US Secretary of State Colin Powell that 'omissions' in the document constituted a 'material breach' of the latest UN resolution on Iraq.
Last week, Secretary General of the UN Kofi Annan accepted that it was 'unfortunate' that his organisation had allowed the US to take the only complete dossier and edit it. He admitted 'the approach and style were wrong' and Norway, a member of the security council, says it is being treated like a 'second-class country'.
Although Powell called the Iraqi dossier a 'catalogue of recycled information and flagrant omissions', the non-permanent members of the security council will have no way of testing the US claims for themselves. This will be crucial if the US and the UK go back to the security council seeking explicit authorisation for war on Iraq if breaches of resolution 1441 are confirmed when the weapons inspectors -- this weekend investigating 10 sites in Iraq, including an oil refinery south of Baghdad -- deliver their report to the UN next month.
A UN source in New York said: 'The questions being asked are valid. What did the US take out? And if weapons inspectors are supposed to be checking against the dossier's content, how can any future claim be verified. In effect the US is saying trust us, and there are many who just will not.'
Current and former UN diplomats are said to be livid at what some have called the 'theft' of the Iraqi document by the US. Hans von Sponeck, the former assistant general secretary of the UN and the UN's humanitarian co- ordinator in Iraq until 2000, said: 'This is an outrageous attempt by the US to mislead.'
Although the five permanent members of the security council -- the US, the UK, France, China and Russia -- have had access to the complete version, there was agreement that the US be allowed to edit the dossier on the ground that its contents were 'risky' in terms of security on weapons proliferation.
Yesterday, US President George W Bush announced that a planned trip to several African countries, scheduled for January, had been cancelled. As he gave the go-ahead to double the current 50,000 US troops deployed in the Gulf by early January, he used his weekly radio address to say that 'the men and women in the [US] military, many of whom will spend Christmas at posts and bases far from home' were the only thing that stood between 'Americans and grave danger'.
An equally pessimistic view of the immediate future came from the Vatican. Pope John Paul II promised the Catholic church would not cease to have its voice heard and would offer prayers 'in the face of this horizon bathed in blood'.
Despite the prayers, the US military isn't expecting peace. Yesterday, General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, was asked if US forces were ready if called upon immediately. General Myers simply said: 'You bet.'
The language coming from Baghdad was equally gung ho. The Iraqi newspaper Babel, owned by Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday, likened US and UK political leaders to ruthless Mongol conquerors of the past.
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Source of the article.
An article I found on the PNA website. The author is a freelance journalist covering the Israel/Palestine conflict.
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Israeli Textbooks and Children's Literature Promote Racism and Hatred Toward Palestinians and Arabs
Date:15/05/2001
Israeli school textbooks as well as children's storybooks, according to recent academic studies and surveys, portray
Palestinians and Arabs as "murderers," "rioters," "suspicious," and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the exception in Israeli schoolbooks.
Professor Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University studied 124 elementary, middle- and high school textbooks on grammar and Hebrew literature, history, geography and citizenship. Bar-Tal concluded that Israeli textbooks present the view that Jews are involved in a justified, even humanitarian, war against an Arab enemy that refuses to accept and acknowledge the existence and rights of Jews in Israel.
"The early textbooks tended to describe acts of Arabs as hostile, deviant, cruel, immoral, unfair, with the intention to hurt Jews and to annihilate the State of Israel. Within this frame of reference, Arabs were delegitimized by the use of such labels as 'robbers,' 'bloodthirsty,' and 'killers,'" said Professor Bar- Tal, adding that there has been little positive revision in the curriculum over the years.
Bar-Tal pointed out that Israeli textbooks continue to present Jews as industrious, brave and determined to cope with the difficulties of "improving the country in ways they believe the Arabs are incapable of."
Hebrew-language geography books from the 1950s through 1970s focused on the glory of Israel's ancient past and how the land was "neglected and destroyed" by the Arabs until the Jews returned from their forced exile and revived it "with the help of the Zionist movement."
"This attitude served to justify the return of the Jews, implying that they care enough about the country to turn the swamps and deserts into blossoming farmland; this effectively delegitimizes the Arab claim to the same land," Bar-Tal told the Washington Report. "The message was that the Palestinians were primitive and neglected the country and did not cultivate the land."
This message, continued Bar-Tal, was further emphasized in textbooks by the use of blatant negative stereotyping which featured Arabs as: "unenlightened, inferior, fatalistic, unproductive and apathetic." Further, according to the textbooks, the Arabs were "tribal, vengeful, exotic, poor, sick, dirty, noisy, colored" and "they burn, murder, destroy, and are easily inflamed."
Textbooks currently being used in the Israeli school system, says Bar-Tal, contain less direct denigration of Arabs but continue to stereotype them negatively when referring to them. He pointed out that Hebrew-as well as Arabic-language textbooks used in elementary and junior high schools contain very few references either to Arabs or to Arab-Jewish relations. The coordinator of a Palestinian NGO in Israel said that major historical events hardly get a mention either.
"When I was in high school 12 years ago, the date '1948' barely appeared in any textbooks except for a mention that there was a conflict, Palestinians refused to accept a U.N. solution and ran away instead," said Jamal Atamneh, coordinator of the Arab Education Committee in Support of Local Councils, a Haifa-based NGO. "Today the idea communicated to schoolchildren is basically the same: there are winners and losers in every conflict. When they teach about 'peace and co-existence,' it is to teach us how to get along with Jews."
Atamneh explained that textbooks used by the nearly one million Arab Israelis (one-fifth of Israel's population) are in Arabic but are written by and issued from the Israeli Ministry of Education, where Palestinians have no influence or input.
"Fewer than 1 percent of the jobs in the Education Ministry, not counting teachers, are held by Palestinians," Atamneh said. "For the past 15 years, not one new Palestinian academic has been placed in a high position in the ministry. There are no Palestinians involved in preparing the Arabic-language curriculum [and] obviously, there is no such thing as affirmative action in Israel."
In addition, there are no Arabic-language universities in Israel. Haifa University, Atamneh points out, has had a steady 20 percent Arab student population for the past 20 years. "How can that figure have remained the same after all these years when the population in the north [of Israel] has grown to over 50 percent Arab?"
Answering his own question, Atamneh rattles off statistics that reflect excellent high school scores among Arab students which he contrasts to their subsequent lower-than-average performance in Hebrew-language college entrance exams given by the state.
"No major scholarships have ever been awarded to an Arab; there are no dorms for Arabs and no college-related jobs or financial aid programs. They justify this legal discrimination by the fact that we do not serve in the army. There are numerous blatant and official methods used to keep Palestinian Arabs out of the universities."
Absence of Palestinian Identity in Schoolbooks
Dr. Eli Podeh, lecturer in the Department of Islamic Studies and Middle East History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, says that while certain changes in Israeli textbooks are slowly being implemented, the discussion of Palestinian national and civil identity is never touched upon.
"Passages from 'experts' about the existence of a Palestinian identity were introduced, but in general it appeared that the
textbook authors were not eager to adopt it," said Dr. Podeh, adding that "the connection between Palestinians in Israel and Arabs in Arab countries is not discussed. Especially evident is the lack of a discussion on the orientation of Palestinians to the [occupied] territories.
"While new textbooks attempt to correct some of the earlier distortions, these books as well contain overt and covert fabrications," said Dr. Podeh. "The establishment has preferred-or felt itself forced-to encourage the cover-up and condemn the perplexity."
One Israeli public high school student told the Washington Report that the contents of the schoolbooks and the viewpoints expressed by some teachers indeed have a lasting negative effect on youngsters' attitudes toward Palestinians.
"Our books basically tell us that everything the Jews do is fine and legitimate and Arabs are wrong and violent and are trying to exterminate us," said Daniel Banvolegyi, a 17-year-old high school student in Jerusalem.
"We are accustomed to hearing the same thing, only one side of the story. They teach us that Israel became a state in 1948 and that the Arabs started a war. They don't mention what happened to the Arabs-they never mention anything about refugees or Arabs having to leave their towns and homes," said Banvolegyi.
Banvolegyi, who will be a high school senior this fall, and then will be drafted into the Israeli army next summer, said he argues with his friends about what he regards as racism in the textbooks and on the part of the teachers. He pointed out a worrisome example of how damaging the textbooks and prevailing attitudes can be.
"One kid told me he was angry because of something he read or discussed in school and that he felt like punching the first Arab he saw," said Banvolegyi. "Instead of teaching tolerance and reconciliation, the books and some teachers' attitudes are increasing hatred for Arabs."
Banvolegyi spoke about his schoolmates who, he says, "are dying to go into combat and kill Arabs. I try to talk to them but they say I don't care about this country. But I do care and that's why I tell them peace and justice are the only ways to work things out."
Racist Israeli Upbringing
Considering what the schools have to offer, both Banvolegyi and Atamneh agree that the oral tradition is one of the few ways to get the story straight.
"Unfortunately Israeli children's books are not an option for promoting equality in this society," said Atamneh, citing a book
written by Israeli writer/researcher Adir Cohen called An Ugly Face in the Mirror.
Cohen's book is a study of the nature of children's upbringing in Israel, concentrating on how the historical establishment sees and portrays Arab Palestinians as well as how Jewish Israeli children perceive Palestinians. One section of the book was based on the results of a survey taken of a group of 4th to 6th grade Jewish students at a school in Haifa. The pupils were asked five questions about their attitude toward Arabs, how they recognize them and how they relate to them. The results were as shocking as they were disturbing:
Seventy five percent of the children described the "Arab" as a murderer, one who kidnaps children, a criminal and a terrorist. Eighty percent said they saw the Arab as someone dirty with a terrifying face. Ninety percent of the students stated they believe that Palestinians have no rights whatsoever to the land in Israel or Palestine
Cohen also researched 1,700 Israeli children's books published after 1967. He found that 520 of the books contained humiliating, negative descriptions of Palestinians. He also took pains to break down the descriptions:
Sixty six percent of the 520 books refer to Arabs as violent; 52 percent as evil; 37 percent as liars; 31 percent as greedy; 28 percent as two-faced; 27 percent as traitors, etc.
Cohen points out that the authors of these children's books effectively instill hatred toward Arabs by means of stripping them of their human nature and classifying them in another category. In a sampling of 86 books, Cohen counted the following descriptions used to dehumanize Arabs: Murderer was used 21 times; snake, 6 times; dirty, 9 times; vicious animal, 17 times; bloodthirsty, 21 times; warmonger, 17 times; killer, 13 times; believer in myths, 9 times; and a camel's hump, 2 times.
Cohen's study concludes that such descriptions of Arabs are part and parcel of convictions and a culture rampant in Hebrew literature and history books. He writes that Israeli authors and writers confess to deliberately portraying the Arab character in this way, particularly to their younger audience, in order to influence their outlook early on so as to prepare them to deal with Arabs.
"So you can see that if you grew up reading or studying from these books, you'd never know anything else," said Atamneh.
"But in the case of Palestinians, we grow up 500 meters away from what used to be a town or village and is now a Jewish settlement. Our parents and grandparents tell us all about it; endlessly they talk about it. It's the only way."
Maureen Meehan is a free-lance journalist who covers the West Bank and Jerusalem.
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Source of the article.
And to be fair, here are some articles about education in Palestinian areas:
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An interesting webpage about the USA's invasion of Iraq in 2003.
GENERAL:
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HISTORY:
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UN RESOLUTIONS:
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MAPS:
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Some interesting links. There's some good reading in this lot, for those who would care to do so.
Threatening to nuke people:
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Attacking sovereign nations:
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Using chemical/biological weapons against its own people:
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Killing its own citizens:
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Killing *other* civilians:
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Starts wars for profit, not peace:
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Now, who is the "terror" in this supposed war?
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