Posted March 7, 2002

Principled Commentary

[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column of March 4, "The Tide Turns":]

The most intelligent and American principled commentary since the infamous 9/11. Should be faxed to every member of Congress....

~ Armand DeLaurell

Saudi Peace Plan

Being antiwar requires balanced reporting. How sad that an organization claiming to be antiwar will support the brutality of one group and condemn the actions of another.

In Scott McConnell's article: "Sharon to Saudi Peace Plan: Drop Dead" it is interesting to note that Mr. McConnell blames Israel for always destroying peace initiatives. What peace initiative have been offered by Arab countries before?

It is Israel that gave the entire Sinai back to Egypt in exchange for peace, which has been extremely cold. Attacks against Israel by terrorists from the Egyptian border continue to this day and the Egyptian leadership continues to vilify Israel. Jordan received land in exchange for peace.... Last year Israel offered Palestinians almost all of the West Bank and Gaza and even that was rejected by the Palestinians, who did not even make a counteroffer.

The Saudis have yet to actually present their offer that Mr. McConnell claims Israel rejected. Last I checked, Israel's PM himself invited the Saudis to meet and present the deal to Israel. Not only have the Saudis rejected that suggestion but they even refuse to meet any Israeli government members.

Last week the Saudis made a speech in the UN. Rather than present the initiative they claim to have made, the Saudi speaker attacked Israel and made no mention of the suggestion.

~ YFD

Destruction of Israel

[Regarding Scott McConnell's column of March 5, "Sharon to Saudi Peace Plan: Drop Dead":]

For 70 years the Arab world has made no attempt to conceal their intent to destroy first the Jews and later the nation of Israel. The Arab media, every single day, reiterates this goal and yet you ask why the Israelis strike back? The tragedy is that there are plenty of atrocities to score for both sides. When Barak offered peace Arafat said no. Now it looks like only violence and brute force will be in the future for Israeli and Palestinian children. Arafat has spurned opportunity after opportunity to end the violence and made only token attempts to bring the terrorists to justice. His goal is, and has been, the destruction of Israel, all else is window dressing and vain rhetoric. The Israelis strike because they have been struck.

~ Thomas Campbell, MGySgt, USMC, Retired

Scott McConnell replies:

Among the peace initiatives rejected or ignored by Israel were those from Egypt's King Farouk in 1948 and Syria's Husni Zaim in 1949. Avi Shlaim writes, in "The Iron Wall" (Norton, 2001), that "Zaim was desperate for a direct high-level dialogue, but there was no one to talk to on the other side. Ben-Gurion turned down all his invitations to parley, and eventually time ran out for him.. .If his overtures were spurned, if his constructive proposals were not put to the test, and if an opportunity for a breakthrough had been missed, the responsibility must be attributed not to Zaim but to Israel [and] that whole school of thought. . . which maintained that time was on Israel's side and that Israel could manage perfectly well without peace with the Arab states and without a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem."

Egypt's Sadat desperately wanted to avoid a "separate" peace with Israel, (which is the only kind of peace Begin did want, taking Egypt out of the mix, and ignoring the Palestinian issue.). Sadat pushed hard for a political arrangement for the Palestinians, but found in Begin no interlocutor. (Any account of the Camp David accords makes this clear: Brzezinski's memoir is particularly lucid.) Whatever progress might have been made, building on the Sinai agreements, was lost when Israel allowed Sharon a free hand to invade Lebanon. That froze the peace.

I think YFD is implying the Saudi initiative was a fraud, not seriously tended. No one else involved in Middle East diplomacy thinks so, but if this suspicion were grounded, it would soon be apparent to the world. Israel's PM Sharon, of course, has made clear throughout his career that he wants the Palestinians to have no political rights whatsoever on what he calls "The Land of Israel" – i.e the territory allocated to both Jews and Palestinians by the United Nations in 1947.

Thomas Campbell brings up the 2000 near agreement in Camp David, and might have mentioned Taba too, where the two sides were even closer. It would require a long tale to describe accurately how the peace soured from Oslo to Taba-and much attention would be given to the assassination of Rabin, the "targetted killings" of Hamas leaders, the subsequent resort to terrorism on the part of Hamas, and Netanyahu's efforts to stall and scuttle the agreements he never accepted in the first place. I believe Arafat made a terrible error in not making a solid counteroffer to Barak's historic offer; I don't believe that means the Palestinians should never have a state on their native soil.

Kangaroo Court

Thanks, Rep. Paul, for exposing the despicable tactics of the prosecution in the sham "kangaroo court" trying Milosevic at the Hague. Americans would do well to follow these illegal proceedings (if our mass media would allow a full and objective reporting and halt the rehashing of previous lies and propaganda) and the well-explained legal deficiencies going on there that we in the U.S. would never accept....

~ Peter K.

Milosevic Trial Transcripts

George R. of Illinois asked about transcripts for the Milosevic trial. He can find them at http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/transe54.htm

Thanks for your good work.

~ Doug Barrett, Edmonton, Canada

Beware

When those in power benefit from terrorism, beware. Where those in power embrace secrecy, democracy has left the building. Where asking questions of those in power becomes treacherous, dictatorship is not far behind.

~ Alex Nagel

Zim-Bombs-Away

Some very tense and critical developments are occurring right now in southern Africa, in particular Zimbabwe, with the imperialists, led by Britannia and the irrepressible Tony Blair, shaking their sanctimonious fists at President Robert Mugabe and his party, the ZANU (PF), for thumbing their noses at the IMF and its native co-conspirators. We seem to be sliding down an all-too-familiar slippery slope, yet I have seen very few reports on it in the pages of Antiwar.com. Let's try to be proactive on this one and build up some opposition before the World Bank and its military wing turn it into Zim-Bombs-Away. Your readers can learn more about the situation from the following websites:

Global Analysis Zimbabwe: www.glob.co.zw
Daily News: www.dailynews.co.zw
ZANU (PF): www.zanupfpub.co.zw
Zimbabwe Democracy Trust: www.zimbabwedemocracy.trust.org

~ Ken Meyercord