News Abroad

The Report on European Anti-Semitism that an EU Group Decided Not to Publish

Following is an excerpt from the executive summary of a report prepared for the European Union on the new sources of anti-Semitism in Europe. The EU group that sponsored the report--the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC)-- delayed publication on the grounds that the report is of"poor quality and lacking in empirical evidence," according to an article i

The Pentagon's Misnamed Battle Campaigns

by Max Paul Friedman

Reuters News Agency reported that the Pentagon's code name "Iron Hammer" for its latest offensive in Iraq is an echo (almost certainly unwitting) of the Nazis' Operation Iron Hammer, an air campaign intended to destroy Soviet power plants in World War II. This is not the first time American officials have stumbled into infelicitous language because of their lack of attention to history. But the gaffes are not merely symbolic: they represent a deeper failure that can have se

How to Combat Radical Islamists

by Mehdi Mozaffari

Note: This article is intended to follow another by Mr. Mozaffari, which we published two weeks ago: "Is It Possible to Combat Radical Islamism Without Combating Islam?"We need a cognitive approach to Islamism by conceiving it as a totalitarian ideology. A clear and full internalization of the fact that Islamism is an ideology and not a religion will purify the whole question from a variety of difficul

Bush Officials Are Flunking Anti-Terrorism 101

by Derek Catsam

It is widely accepted that the Bush administration is nothing if not on message. Since the incursion in Iraq, the administration has shown at least one foolish consistency that is, to say the least, problematic. Whenever the president or his aides and advisors refer to attacks against American soldiers in Iraq, they refer to them as acts of terrorism and to the perpetrators as terrorists.* But by any standard definition of terrorism, the administration is misusing the word. This is n

Is It Stupid for Iraqis to Throw Stones at U.S. Tanks?

by Tom Palaima and John Friend

You've seen the photographs, the most current version appearing in newspapers from Fallouja, "the epicenter of anti-American hatred in Iraq." Several boys cluster together. One of them cocks his right arm, his body torqued and ready to throw. In another setting, he could be a Little Leaguer dreaming he is Nomar Garciaparra throwing to first base for the final out against the Yankees. Here, he is throwing a stone. His target is a monstrous American armored personnel c

Why Bush's Israeli Policy Won't Work

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

"Israel should freeze settlement construction, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people and not prejudice final negotiations with the placement of walls and fences," President Bush said in his otherwise defiant speech in Whitehall. With this sentence George W. Bush reassured his audience that American presidents may come and go but the competition to appease the Arabs with Israeli currency remains in tact.

Why Africa Is Finally Getting Attention

by Derek Catsam

In recent months Africa, that most overlooked of continents, has been getting some attention from those of us in "The West." Liberia, the West African state colonized by former slaves and in recent decades beset with ruthless dictators and a devastating civil war was for a while a hot spot worthy of American intervention. America and Great Britain are gingerly trying to deal with the increasingly untenable situation in Zimbabwe, where megalomaniacal president-for-life Robert

Israel's Self-Defeating Policy of Oppression

by Avi Shlaim

In 1923 Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, published an article entitled "On the Iron Wall." He argued that Arab nationalists were bound to oppose the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Consequently, a voluntary agreement between the two sides was unattainable. The only way to realize the Zionist project was behind an iron wall of Jewish military strength. In other words, the Zionist project could only be implemented unilaterally and by military

Is It Possible to Combat Radical Islamism Without Combating Islam?

by Mehdi Mozaffari

We are not facing a religious war. The issue is not war between Islam on the one side and the rest of the world on the other. Neither is it a war that Islam has launched against Christianity or the Western hemisphere. If we take the Clash of Civilization's thesis, it is a fact that Islam as such does not represent a civilization any more. Islamic civilization extinguished many centuries ago; the remainders of which is merely a religion. Even if we wished to combat Isla

President Bush, Radical

by Daniel Pipes

"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe." This sentence, spoken last week by George W. Bush, is about the most jaw-dropping repudiation of an established bipartisan policy ever made by a US president.Not only does it break with a policy the US government has pursued since first becoming a major player in

How History Turned Iraqis Bitter

by Avi Shlaim

Tony Blair and George W. Bush seem unaware, or only dimly aware, of the crucial role that Iraqi history plays in shaping popular attitudes to current conflict. Iraqis are not an inert mass whose sentiments can be switched on and off to serve the agenda of outside powers. They are a proud and patriotic people with a long collective memory. Britain and America feature as anything but benign in this collective memory. Blair has repeatedly emphasised the moral argument behind the resort

America, Beacon of Hope? Once It Was

by Nina Burleigh

A few weeks ago, President George W. Bush went before the UN, asking for money for the United States from the global community. It remains to be seen whether anyone will come to our aid, but it's easy to imagine the eye-rolling in Europe and especially in third world countries, at the sight of the swaggering superpower asking alms. The fact that our president has to hold out the hat before a chilly, unfriendly audience of global diplomats shows just how much America as an idea

Toxic Anti-Semitism in the Muslim World

by Daniel Pipes

The prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, informed the world this month, among other things, that "Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them." Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. national security adviser, described Mahathir's comments as "hateful, they are outrageous." But she then added, "I don't think they are emblematic of the Muslim world." If only she were right about that.

History's Against Us in Iraq

by Tom Engelhardt

Empires invariably think that it's they who are bringing civilization and progress in their train and that only the barbarians, the terrorists, the bitter-enders resist for fear of being thrown onto that dust heap of history. But history is, as it turns out, filled to the brim with barbarians, terrorists, and bitter-enders, not to speak of enraged ordinary people who have seen their friends and relatives die, who feel the discomfort - which has only grown more psychologically unbearabl

An Educated Guess as to Why the Pope Lost Out to Shirin Ebadi for the Nobel Peace Prize

by Irwin Abrams

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has done it again. With the press proclaiming Pope John Paul II as a runaway favorite, and Vaclav Havel, leader of the "velvet revolution" against the communist state, also a possible choice, the Committee surprised Peace Prize watchers by choosing Shirin Ebadi, a Muslim woman of Iran, "for her efforts for democracy and human rights," concentrating "on the struggle for the rights of women and children."The

Was the United States Guilty of Terrorism During the Years It Saw Castro as a Threat?

by Noam Chomsky

Following is an excerpt from Mr. Chomsky's new book, Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books). The Batista dictatorship was overthrown in January 1959 by Castro's guerrilla forces. In March, the National Security Council (NSC) considered means to institute regime change. In

When Soldiers Refuse to Soldier On

by Ruth Rosen

PRESIDENT BUSH is busily trying to convince Americans that the war in Iraq is a phenomenal success. Meanwhile, a recent survey conducted by the military newspaper Stars and Stripes found that half of the troops described their unit's morale as low and a third complained that their mission had little or no value. Many viewed themselves as sitting ducks, rather than soldiers engaged in war.Last year, I heard a historian describe the Iraq war as Vietnam on crack cocaine. It was an

Should We Worry Now that China's Sent an Astronaut into Space?

by Jonathan Coopersmith

What happens now that the world's largest Communist country has launched its first cosmonaut into orbit around the earth? If past experiences are any guide, fear and excitement will dominate reactions in the United States. In April 1961, the Soviet Union made Yuri Gagarin the world's first person in space. That feat sparked waves of panic about American military and technological vulnerability and led president John F. Kennedy to commit the United States to sending men to the moon.

Constitution Writing 101

by Jonathan Dresner

When U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave the Iraqi Governing Council six months to draft a new constitution, I had a flashback. Two years ago, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, I was teaching an undergraduate seminar on the U.S. Occupation of Japan, particularly the drafting of Japan's 1947 Constitution. To give the students a taste of constitution writing, we spent a class writing a new constitution for Iraq. What we came up with in that hour and fifteen minutes is remarkably close to what

Now Is No Time to Go Wobbly in Iraq

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

It's time to face facts. If President Bush's approval rating dropped after he requested 87 billions of dollars for Iraqi reconstruction, it is because the American people are not feeling particularly kindly towards the Iraqi people. And why should they? After all, the Iraqis are killing their sons and daughters, bad mouthing the United States, blaming the coalition for everything that is wrong with their country and failing to turn in not only Saddam and his cronies but those who are