There is no news today. Or rather the news today is full of stories about Yasir Arafat’s release from his Ramallah prison. This is variously being presented as a cause for jubilation among Palestinians, a personal victory for a ‘defiant’ Arafat, and a ‘success’ for US ‘diplomacy.’ Read more about There is No News Today 

We quite rightly call on the peoples of the world to renounce terrorism as a tactic to further their cause while, quite wrongly, we simultaneously undermine other peaceful, legal avenues where these same people can address their grievances. Read more about On the UN's abandonment of the Jenin inquiry 

Social anthropologists are always on the lookout for dominant ideologies, those structuring systems of ideas, beliefs, and attitudes that undergird and orient everyday thoughts and actions. Read more about Dangerous Assumptions: Insidious Ideologies and Necessary Questions 

Torture is abhorrent. Torture is illegal. Yet torture is inflicted on virtually every imprisoned Palestinian, including children. Despite the universal condemnation of torture, it is still used to extract confessions, to interrogate, to punish or to intimidate. The victims of torture are not just the people in the hands of the torturers. Friends, families and the wider community all suffer. Read more about Torture distorts hopes of future generations 

The falsehood that Israel ever made significant withdrawals from the occupied territories or that the three and a half million Palestinians subject to its military rule ever enjoyed more freedom than any people corralled into tiny ghettos by an oppressor serves the same purpose as the thoroughly debunked myth that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made ‘far-reaching compromises’ at Camp David. Read more about 'Before our own eyes' 

Lately, we watch the news with one eye shut, the other wincing in anticipation of anguish. Though we mumble to ourselves: “It can’t possibly get worse” as the newscaster reports another dozen Israelis or Palestinians are dead, we dare not say it out loud for fear of tempting fate with such presumption. Read more about 'The best lack all conviction...' 

George Bush’s much-anticipated speech on how to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, weighed in at 1,867 words. By my count, more than one thousand words were devoted to criticizing and making demands of the Palestinians, while just 137 words dealt with what Israel should do. Read more about Bush's Speech - A Vision of Permanent War 

Last night’s long-awaited speech by President Bush was to set the pace for the Palestinians and Israelis to step back from the vicious and bloody cycle of violence that has gripped them for nearly two years. Read more about President Bush the Martyr 

The key point about terrorism, on which almost everyone agrees, is that it is politically motivated. This is what distinguishes it from, say, murder or football hooliganism. Terrorism is calculated to terrorize the public or a particular section of it. In the American definition of self defense, however, terrorism can never be inflicted by a state. Read more about World Tolerates Israel's Use of State Terror 

A 23 May 2002 alert from Amnesty International (Killing of Israeli civilians) notes that, “since 29 September 2000, 311 Israeli civilians including 53 children have been killed in suicide bomb and other attacks carried out by members of Palestinian armed groups and individuals.” People should respond en masse to this particular Amnesty alert. It is time that Hamas and Islamic Jihad understand that the citizens of the world consider attacks against civilians to be an illegitimate tactic that undermines legitimate Palestinian resistance to Israeli military occupation, which is their right according to international law. Read more about The nettle that must be grasped