The Electronic Intifada

Grave concern for the safety of Palestinian civilians - a call for the universal application of international law

The following remarks were made on behalf of The Electronic Intifada at a press conference organised by the Minnesota branch of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, in Minneapolis on 15 March 2002. 

Washington's Lethal Double Standards

The United States is entirely correct to insist that there can be no justification for the deliberate and indiscriminate use of violence - i.e. terrorism - against civilian non-combattants in political conflicts. Yet in the Middle East it has honoured this principle mainly in the breach, and applied it in a manner at best laughable. 

There is No News Today

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.’ 

'Before our own eyes'

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. 

'The best lack all conviction...'

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.