World Media Watch for April 3, 2002

BUZZFLASH NOTE: Once again, these are the views and perspectives of the individual papers, not of BuzzFlash or Gloria. They offer BuzzFlash readers a way of reading what other nations are saying about the crisis, whether we like it or not. We repeat: This is not an endorsement of their viewpoints.

http://www.buzzflash.com/mediawatch

1//Ha'aretz, Israel--THE WAR LOOKS DIFFERENT ABROAD - AND MAYBE SO DO THE FACTS (Both in New York and Tel Aviv, when journalists cease collecting facts and asking questions, and instead turn to beating the war drums . . . it's time to say good-bye, at least in the meanwhile, to a free press.)

2//The Daily Star, Lebanon--TENSIONS ALONG BORDER ARE 'VERY SCARY' (The growing prospect of a "second front" being opened along the Lebanon-Israel border could provide the spark for a regional conflict, United Nations officials warned Monday.)

3//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--THE MAKE-BELIEVE WORLDS OF BUSH AND SHARON (After the government of Israel leaked a secret study to the New York Times last December stating that Yasser Arafat had become irrelevant to the peace process, George W Bush latched on to that fiction. Ever since then, the US government has harped on that theme so incessantly that one had to remind oneself that it was originally conjured up in Israel.)

4//Arab News, Saudi Arabia--IT'S THE OCCUPATION, STUPID (Bill Clinton coined the phrase "It's the economy, stupid" during his election campaign against Bush Sr. Now is the time for us to say: "It's the occupation, stupid".)

5//The Guardian, UK--COMMENT: WEAPON OF MASS DISRUPTION (Arab governments remain largely impotent, while Israel bears down on the Palestinians. But they have one weapon that strikes fear in the west - oil.)

6//Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippines--TRACING TERRORIST FUNDS (Press Secretary Rigoberto Tiglao said the government was checking out an FBI report that the Abu Sayyaf had funneled to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida international terrorist network part of the ransom money it collected for the Sipadan hostages.)

1//Ha'aretz Wednesday, April 03, 2002 Nisan 21, 5762 Israel Time: 04:12 (GMT+3)
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=147713&con
trassID=2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y&itemNo=147713

Media
THE WAR LOOKS DIFFERENT ABROAD - AND MAYBE SO DO THE FACTS
By Aviv Lavie

At the height of the newspaper wiretapping scandal, when the pages of the two daily tabloids were turned into a battlefield of insults and distortions lacking any basic journalistic standards, there were those who proposed that the only way to save the newspapers' honor would be to leave the reporting in the hands of outside news agencies. Lately, it appears to be time to raise the idea again - for coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A journey through the TV and radio channels and the pages of the newspapers exposes a huge and embarrassing gap between what is reported to us and what is seen, heard, and read in the world - not only in the commentaries and analytical pieces, but also in the reporting of the dry facts.

Israel looks like an isolated media island, with most of the reporters drafted into the cause of convincing themselves and the reader that the government and army are perfectly justified in whatever they do. Some have actually been drafted - Yedioth Aharonoth has started running a regular column by its reporter, Guy Leshem, who reports with determination from the heart of the West Bank, straight from his military reserve service. This is another step in erasing the line between the defense framework and the editorial framework that is supposed to report and criticize.

An Israeli citizen interested in a more complex picture of reality has to rely on the remote control and the computer mouse. "I've been here many years but I don't remember such a dark period in the Israeli press," complained one foreign correspondent, who indeed has been here many years. But even if he slightly exaggerated, it's not a totally unrealistic assessment.

The defense minister stuck to his word and absolutely prohibited sending Israeli reporters along with the army into Ramallah. The result: The Israeli media has no information about what is going on in the town.

(SNIP)

Both in New York and Tel Aviv, when journalists cease collecting facts and asking questions, and instead turn to beating the war drums - yesterday, Ma'ariv editor Amnon Dankner ran a front page article devoted to smashing, killing, trampling and destroying - it's time to say good-bye, at least in the meanwhile, to a free press.

After the war, in a week or two, or a month, or maybe much longer, reporters will have to confront the things they wrote and said. Or maybe they won't. The archives are full of dusty folders full of the articles that appeared before the Yom Kippur War, and those extolling the consensus around the invasion of Lebanon. Nobody has yet really paid for what was written then, and already a new bill is mounting.

2//The Daily Star Beirut, Tuesday, April 02, 2002. Updated 08:30 AM +2GMT
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/02_04_02/art11.htm

TENSIONS ALONG BORDER ARE 'VERY SCARY'
Area 'could boil over any minute'

Nicholas Blanford
Daily Star staff

The growing prospect of a "second front" being opened along the Lebanon-Israel border could provide the spark for a regional conflict, United Nations officials warned Monday.

With two attacks staged against Israeli troops over the weekend ­ including the first direct assault on an outpost along the Lebanon-Israel border in almost two years ­ the frontier district is at its most volatile since the Israeli troop withdrawal in May 2000. Staffan de Mistura, the top UN official in Lebanon, said that the world body was "extremely concerned" over the "new trend" of attacks outside the Shebaa Farms. "This is a time in which such activities are particularly dangerous in view of the potential of an explosive regional environment," he told The Daily Star. UNIFIL senior adviser Timur Goksel said the border "could boil over at any minute."

"It's all going in a very wrong, very scary, direction," he warned. An Israeli border post near Ramieh and Aita al-Shaab in the western sector of the former occupation zone was attacked just after midnight on Monday by four unidentified gunmen who used machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. No Israeli casualties were reported. Israeli troops and a helicopter gunship returned fire, reportedly wounding two of the attackers. The assault was the first against a military target on Israeli soil since the end of the occupation. The attack came a day after Hizbullah fighters pounded six Israeli outposts in the Shebaa Farms with an estimated 50 Sagger anti-tank missiles and 100 mortar rounds.

Hizbullah linked the attack to developments in Ramallah, warning Israel against launching further operations in Palestinian territory: "Otherwise serious consequences will befall the Zionist enemy."

(MORE)

3//Asia Times Online April 3, 2002
http://www.atimes.com/front/DD03Aa02.html

THE MAKE-BELIEVE WORLDS OF BUSH AND SHARON
By Ehsan Ahrari
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD is a Norfolk, VA-based strategic analyst

After the government of Israel leaked a secret study to the New York Times last December stating that Yasser Arafat had become irrelevant to the peace process, George W Bush latched on to that fiction. Ever since then, the US government has harped on that theme so incessantly that one had to remind oneself that it was originally conjured up in Israel.

All manifestations of violence everywhere, and for whatever cause, must be condemned with all the moral fortitude that men and women of all religions can muster. But this should be done with an equally powerful sense of fair play and justice. The Israeli government and the Palestinians have both been parties to the spirals of violence that are ceaselessly escalating, it seems, during the al-Aqsa Intifada. But the Bush administration lost its moral authority when it continued to insist that only Yasser Arafat must control acts of extremism and terror perpetrated on the Palestinian side.

No similarly phrased condemnations have been made of acts of terrorism committed by the government of Ariel Sharon in the name of carrying out "targeted assassinations", and in the latest incursions into Palestine. The United States has always had a low reputation among Arabs for its demonstration of impartiality and objectivity, but that reputation has been so severely damaged under the Bush presidency that it may not recover from it for long time, if ever.

How can the US government condemn Iraq's Saddam Hussein for flouting the United Nations sanctions imposed since the Gulf War of 1991, but maintain a deafening silence on the Israeli use of American-supplied weapons to kill Palestinians - acts that are not only against international law, but also grossly violate US laws? This question and many others related to double standards are being raised with such intensity in the streets and the diwans (rooms where friendly gatherings are held in Muslim countries) of the Middle East that no Arab emir, sultan, king or "president for life" can ignore them any longer.

(SNIP)

Sharon did not allow Arafat (and consider the use of word "allow", as if he would not be paroled by the Israeli premier) to travel to Beirut to attend last week's Arab summit in Beirut, where an interesting plan proposed by Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdel Aziz of Saudi Arabia, over the modality of the peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, was discussed, proposed and subsequently rejected by Israel. Sharon's statement that he reserved the right to deny re-entry for Arafat from Beirut was the clincher in the latter's decision not to attend the Beirut summit. But the power of the information age is such that it creates and recreates its own heroes and fall guys. Sharon does not realize how badly he is losing in this silly tug-and-pull of one-upmanship. Worse yet, Bush is perceived as an equal party to it.

As events in Palestine move inextricably to a head with the latest Israeli offensive, in the longer term there is little doubt that the "two-nation" reality will materialize and Palestine will become a separate state. But between the time that happens and now, will the United States recapture its leadership role with a view to prodding both sides to agree on the modalities of separate states, or will it continue its silly exercise of harping on the fictitious irrelevance of Yasser Arafat.

4//Arab News, Saudi Arabia's First English Language Daily 03 April 2002 / 20 Muharram 1423
http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=13993

IT'S THE OCCUPATION, STUPID
By Jamal Kashoggi, Deputy Editor in Chief

The American readers who frequently visit our website keep on asking our opinion about Palestinian "suicide operations", as though they are completely unaware of the gruesome human rights violations committed by the Israelis in the last occupied piece of land on earth.

The suicide attacks are undoubtedly as horrible as the Apache helicopters shooting at the Arab woman and her children while they were on their way home from school in Nablus, tearing them to pieces. Or as much as Israeli soldiers leaving a wounded Palestinian to bleed to death on the street. Or detaining hospital-bound pregnant women at checkpoints, so they have to give birth on the side of the road.

This is all a daily reality. But my Americans friends never refer to it. Instead, they keep on asking about the "legality" of killing an Israeli woman pregnant with twins during a suicide operation.

For my part, I would ask them about the "legality" of Israeli soldiers murdering hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including women and children. I would also ask them about how they can justify subjecting the entire Palestinian population to virtual imprisonment. We would end up being like deaf men engaging in a heated debate, while all around them the death toll mounts.

If he wanted to, the American president could bring peace to the holy land. All he would have to do is telephone Sharon. The president, unfortunately, sees only "terrorism and suicide attacks". He refuses to look into the causes that provoke such desperate behavior.

Bill Clinton coined the phrase "It's the economy, stupid" during his election campaign against Bush Sr.

Now is the time for us to say: "It's the occupation, stupid".

(SNIP)

So it would seem that there remains a huge void between the Americans and us. To fill it, we have to agree on the meaning of words and phrases such "occupation, settlements, bypass roads, areas under temporary Israeli control," and, of course, their favorite one, "terrorism".

5//The Guardian Tuesday April 2, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,677739,00.html

Comment
WEAPON OF MASS DISRUPTION

Major Middle East oil producers have ignored calls for an oil embargo from Iran and Iraq, but in the longer term they may be unable to resist pressure to use this weapon of last resort, writes Mark Tran…

Arab governments remain largely impotent, while Israel bears down on the Palestinians. But they have one weapon that strikes fear in the west - oil.

Iran today became the latest oil producer to raise the spectre of an oil embargo as a way of making the US put pressure on Israel in the increasingly bloody conflict with the Palestinians.

Speaking at the Islamic conference of foreign ministers on terrorism in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, said Iran would not rule out the use of oil supplies as a "`weapon".

The oil markets have already been rattled following similar comments from Iraq.

In statements carried in the official Iraqi media, the ruling Ba'ath party yesterday called on Arab oil producers to reimpose the oil boycott against supporters of Israel, namely the US.

For the time being, oil experts are dismissing the comments from Iran and Iraq, Israel's most hardline opponents, as sabre-rattling for domestic consumption rather than as serious threats.

An embargo would only work if Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, agrees to such a move - the equivalent of going nuclear as far the oil kingdom is concerned.

(SNIP)

With the 1973 experience seared into the consciousness of oil producers, Opec, the oil cartel, has little appetite to travel down the same road.

But they are coming under increasing public pressure to show some solidarity with the Palestinians.

(SNIP)

Meanwhile, Iraq and Iran already are pouring fuel on the fire with a populist message that may well resonate with Arabs on the street.

"I believe the Islamic world has enough instruments to use, but it all depends on the collective decision of the Islamic countries," Mr Kharazi said. "If they decide to use oil as a weapon, certainly it would be very effective."

For now that's a big if. But if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict spreads and sucks in the rest of the region, Arab oil producers may feel they have little choice but to fall back on their weapon of last resort - double-edged as it may be.

6//Philippine Daily Inquirer Posted: 0:04 AM (Manila Time) | Apr. 03, 2002
http://www.inq7.net/nat/2002/apr/03/nat_4-1.htm

TRACING TERRORIST FUNDS
Libya linked to money trail

By Michael Lim Ubac
Inquirer News Service

Where's the money?

THE JUSTICE department and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation are looking into the possible involvement of Libya in the Sipadan crisis and subsequent hostage-taking incidents in Palawan and Mindanao, Justice Undersecretary Jose Calida said Tuesday.

This developed as the Department of Justice began the work of establishing the paper trail of the ransom money that was paid to the Abu Sayyaf bandit group during the Sipadan hostage crisis in 2000.

Press Secretary Rigoberto Tiglao said the government was checking out an FBI report that the Abu Sayyaf had funneled to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida international terrorist network part of the ransom money it collected for the Sipadan hostages.

He said the FBI had obtained the evidence "from different countries."

Millions of dollars were paid to the bandit group in exchange for the release of most of the 21 hostages who were taken from the Sipadan resort-island of Malaysia in April 2000.

(MORE)

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© 2002, Gloria R. Lalumia
insight@zianet.com

More Stuff at: http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical

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