The Progressive Response
Volume 7, Number 1
January 9, 2003
The Progressive Response (PR) is produced weekly by the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) as part of its Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) project. FPIF, a "Think Tank Without Walls," is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." FPIF is joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/, or email <feedback@fpif.org> to share your thoughts with us.
Tom Barry, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus. He can be contacted at <tom@irc-online.org>.
Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)
Table of Contents
I. Updates and Out-Takes
FRONTIER JUSTICE No. 16 | FOREIGN POLICY AND THE NEW SENATE LEADERSHIP
By John Gershman
KOREA CRISIS: A CHALLENGE FOR PROGRESSIVES
By Tim Shorrock
U.S. SUPPORT FOR THE IRAQI OPPOSITION
By Chris Toensing, Middle East Research & Information Project
SUPPORTING THE PROGRESSIVE RESPONSE
II. Outside the U.S.
INDIA JOINS WASHINGTON'S "HAGUE INVASION"
By Ninan Koshy
III. Letters and Comments
BUYING INTO U.S. GOVERNMENT'S CLAIMS
I. Updates and Out-takes
FRONTIER JUSTICE No. 16 | FOREIGN POLICY AND THE NEW SENATE LEADERSHIP
(Editor's Note: Frontier Justice is a weekly column written alternately by Tom Barry and John Gershman, foreign policy analysts at the Interhemispheric Resource Center, chronicling instances of U.S. unilateralism and its assault on the multilateralism framework for managing global affairs. It is part of the new Project Against the Present Danger. These columns are now indexed on the www.presentdanger.org site at: http://www.presentdanger.org/frontier/2003/index.html.)
By John Gershman
On the heels of Trent Lott's ignominious exit as Senate majority Leader, pundits proclaimed the victory of the new, youthful, Republican leadership in the Senate. The new leadership ostensibly represents the forward-looking views appropriate to the 21st century--conservatism with a greater dose of compassion, as endorsed by President George W. Bush himself.
The poster child for this view is the new Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. On the one hand, Frist represents the Christian internationalist wing of the Republican Party, having worked to provide medical care in the southern Sudan. Frist's evangelical ideology is one he shares with other key Senate and House Republican leaders. On the other hand, his views don't stray too far from the ostensible anachronism of Trent Lott. Last year, the NAACP gave him a 15% ranking, just 3 points better than Lott's 12%. By contrast, genuinely moderate Republicans like Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island received a 48% score.
Frist is also squarely in the anti-choice camp. He's opposed to allowing overseas American soldiers to receive the same access to abortion as Americans at home, voted against family planning programs, and for a ban on late-term abortions. As NARAL Pro-Choice America head Kate Michelman noted, "Senator Frist's position on reproductive choice is virtually indistinguishable from Trent Lott's and, for that matter, from Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms."
Finally, as Peter Beinart noted in the New Republic, he has been willing to sacrifice his compassionate internationalism when the Commander-in-Compassion intervenes. In March 2002, Frist backed the legislation sponsored by Jesse Helms to boost the U.S. international anti-AIDS budget by $500 million. Wearing his compassionate credentials on his sleeve, Frist noted that "This much-needed increase in funding would demonstrate our continued resolve to be a compassionate nation, which refuses to simply look the other way." With Helms in poor health, Frist took responsibility for shepherding the legislation through Congress. When faced with White House opposition Frist backpedaled, reducing the amount to $200 million. The White House promised to fund an additional $300 million over the next two years. But since the Bush administration--in a fit of disingenuous concern over the growing budget deficit of its own making--hasn't even appropriated the $200 million Congress passed in 2002, the promise of an additional $300 million isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Another major difference in the Republican leadership on foreign policy is that we won't have Jesse Helms to kick around any more as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC). His replacement, Richard Lugar of Indiana, will provide new opportunities and some familiar obstacles. The loss of the late Paul Wellstone will be recognizable on the Democratic side of the Committee.
On the plus side, Lugar is supportive of expanding trade ties with Cuba (a not uncommon position among legislators from farm states) and opposed the reappointment of Otto Reich as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs. He also has a long-standing interest in nonproliferation issues. In 1991 he and Democratic Senator Sam Nunn co-sponsored legislation aimed at safeguarding the former Soviet and then Russian stockpile of weapons of mass destruction as well as an employment program for Russian nuclear scientists to prevent their knowledge from being transferred to other countries or to terrorist groups. This became the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program that was highly regarded, if routinely underfunded.
In a December 2002 article in Arms Control Today Lugar outlined his priorities for the coming congressional session, namely an expansion of the Nunn-Lugar program to cover other disarmament and arms control issues in Russia as well as possibly expanding the Nunn-Lugar framework to other countries. The article was fairly blunt about the fact that its most significant opponents are in the Bush administration as well as among some of his fellow Republicans in the Congress.
On other issues, however, Lugar lies squarely in the midst of the Republican party's opposition to any constraints on U.S. policy, such as opposing U.S. membership in the International Criminal Court and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Only two Republicans joined the Democrats in the SFRC to recommend the ratification of CEDAW in June of last year. The opposition to the CEDAW included Helms and Lugar as well as Majority Leader Frist and other luminaries of the "moderate" wing, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, George Allen of Virginia, and Sam Brownback of Kansas. Since the full Senate did not vote on CEDAW before the end of the 107th Congress, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will again need to vote in favor of sending the treaty to the full Senate for ratification.
Welcome to 2003.
(John Gershman <john@irc-online.org> is a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and the Asia/Pacific editor for Foreign Policy in Focus.)
For more see:
Richard G. Lugar, "The Next Steps in U.S. Nonproliferation Policy," Arms Control Today (December 2002)
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_12/lugar_dec02.asp
Peter Beinart, "African Art," The New Republic (January 13, 2003)
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030113&s=trb011303
KOREA CRISIS: A CHALLENGE FOR PROGRESSIVES
By Tim Shorrock
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary, posted in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301korea.html .)
The December election of human rights activist Roh Moo-hyun as South Korea's next president has turned into a giant wake-up call for U.S. policymakers and foreign affairs specialists. At the same time, is it sowing the seeds for a national debate about U.S.-Korean relations that offers a unique opportunity for U.S. progressives and peace activists.
On December 19, Roh won a narrow victory over his conservative challenger, Lee Hoi-chang, despite a last-minute controversy over his remarks that South Korea should mediate, rather than participate in, a future conflict between North Korea and the United States, and a forceful warning to North Korea from U.S. and Japanese defense officials on the eve of the election that Pyongyang's use of weapons of mass destruction "would have the gravest consequences."
As the nuclear standoff has deepened, South Koreans have gone out of their way to tell foreign reporters that they view America as more dangerous to Korea's future than the starvation-ridden police state just a few miles north of their dynamic, internet-savvy democracy. "Bush is a trigger-happy man," a 32-year-old voter in Seoul told the Associated Press on election day. "We need a leader who can say no when we think we should say no. Our country has been too subservient to the United States." Some even defend North Korea's attempts to build nuclear weapons, arguing that Pyongyang has no choice in the face of U.S. hostility, and that a Korean bomb could serve to deter any enemies of a future, united Korea. Many of the Koreans protesting the verdicts on the two U.S. soldiers say they want their government to reconsider the presence of the 37,000 U.S. troops in the country.
The distance between U.S. and South Korean perceptions extends to basic issues of foreign policy. According to a recent poll on global attitudes toward the United States conducted by the Pew Research Center, South Korea stands out in Asia "for its opposition to the war on terrorism and its belief that the United States pays little attention to Seoul's concerns." The poll found that 72% of Koreans oppose the U.S.-led war on terrorism, with only 24% in support of it; in Japan, those figures were almost reversed, with 32% opposed to the war and 61% in favor. Of all the Asian countries polled, South Koreans also had the highest number of people, 73%, who reject the view that U.S. foreign policy considers the interests of other countries.
Over the past week, Roh has begun to implement the policies he outlined in the campaign. This month, Kim Dae Jung's national security adviser and Roh' s foreign policy aides will present a compromise to the Bush administration that would require North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for written guarantees from Washington that the U.S. will not launch a pre-emptive attack on North Korea either by conventional or nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration clearly doesn't like being pressured by its ally to negotiate with the North. In the days before the election, defense hawks tried to send a message to South Korean voters that Roh was making a mistake.
Richard Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon Defense Policy Board, told the conservative daily Chosun Ilbo that the U.S. government has not eliminated the option of using force against North Korea to stop its nuclear program. "The Bush administration will consider all the alternatives, because the dangers involved are so substantial," he said. Perle added that "the dangers to be brought upon us by North Korea's nuclear development is so great that it will result in a quarantine of unprecedented comprehensiveness." That is quite a contrast to Roh's policies of continuing economic exchanges with the North as the dispute is settled through diplomatic means.
On January 7, Doug Bandow, an Asian analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, lambasted South Korean attitudes and declared that "it's time for an amicable divorce rather than a much more bitter parting in the near future." In forums in recent weeks, Bandow, whose views are quite influential within U.S. policy circles, has proposed that the United States should encourage Japan and South Korea to go nuclear in response to the North Korean nuclear threat.
Unfortunately, there have been few voices on the left to counter the conservative hostility to Korea. Aside from a few contributors to the Foreign Policy in Focus think tank and groups like the American Friends Service Committee and the Nautilus Institute in Berkeley, the task of explaining Korea to the public has largely been taken up by mainstream journalists, such as Selig Harrison, and former diplomats, such as Donald Gregg, who once served as U.S. ambassador to South Korea and CIA Station Chief in Seoul. Harrison has been warning for years that the U.S. failure to come through with many of its promises to North Korea in the 1994 Agreed Framework could lead to a new crisis; he has recently published a book, Korea Endgame, that outlines a comprehensive path to creating a lasting peace in Korea and eventually withdrawing U.S. troops. Gregg has been an outspoken advocate of engagement with Pyongyang and has visited there several times to defuse tensions. He and former journalist Don Oberdorfer went to North Korea in November and came back saying that Kim's government was eager for comprehensive talks to resolve the standoff over its uranium enrichment program.
The left, in contrast, has largely abandoned Asia as a focus of political debate. Since Vietnam, East Asia has primarily been of economic interest rather than a political concern. During the 1980s, when South Korea was in the midst of an intense political upheaval, the mainstream left and the peace movement largely ignored the situation. More recently, North Korea and its hereditary form of socialism has became a favorite target for ridicule and hostility among leftists, who as a result have no basis to analyze North Korea's intentions or appreciate why its leaders genuinely fear the United States.
For progressives to play a part in the unfolding debate about Korea policy, it is important to go beyond knee-jerk condemnation of Kim Jong Il and the North Korean political system and understand why and how South Koreans hope to eventually unify with the North. Peace in Korea is not some pipedream, but rather a realistic desire to draw North Korea into the global community through trade, investment, and industrial projects that would help the North feed its own people, bring back an industrial economy that as recently as 20 years ago was larger than the South's, and shift from a military to a civilian economy. The left and the peace movement also need to understand the important role China can play in the process and learn to respect Chinese fears of U.S. domination of Asia. Ending the cold war in Korea requires progressives to jettison their own cold war prejudices and understand the economic and political realities of contemporary Asia.
(Tim Shorrock <tshorrock51@hotmail.com> is a Washington, DC-based journalist who has been writing about Korea for more than 20 years. He is also an FPIF (online at www.fpif.org) contributor on East Asian affairs.)
Also see:
New Dynamics in U.S.-Korean Relations
By Jeffrey Robertson (January 7, 2003)
The victory of the liberal Roh Moo-Hyun in the December 19th South Korean presidential elections has been presented in the western media as a source of future tension in South Korean-U.S. relations. However, it is difficult to argue that anything Roh does could place more tension on the South Korea-U.S. relationship than the Bush administration's unilateral foreign policy.
U.S. SUPPORT FOR THE IRAQI OPPOSITION
By Chris Toensing, Middle East Research & Information Project
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Policy Report, posted in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/papers/iraqoppsupp.html .)
In the hearts of the numerous Iraqi exiles who have kept their distance from the U.S.-backed opposition, apparent U.S. determination to achieve regime change in Iraq creates agonizing ambivalence. Few welcome the prospect of a U.S. invasion or have illusions about the imperial vision that animates the war party in the White House. Many worry about communal strife erupting during or after a war. Such concerns moved 23 independent Iraqi exiles to issue a statement repudiating the London conference's de facto support of U.S. war plans. But many also feel that the regime cannot be dislodged without external intervention, and that whatever government accedes to power after Saddam Hussein is gone cannot possibly be worse than his dictatorship. Even Hamid Majid Musa, secretary general of the Iraqi Communist Party, who opposes the war, says that "there is no way to get rid of Saddam Hussein without the Americans."
Though it is impossible to gauge public opinion inside Iraq with precision, the available evidence indicates that Iraqis in the country harbor a welter of competing emotions about the prospect of U.S.-led regime change. A December 2002 International Crisis Group report found that most Iraqis view the war as inevitable and simply want it to be over quickly. They display surprising indifference to the possibility of U.S. occupation and the exiles' debates over the future shape of Iraqi self-governance. These openly expressed sentiments, coupled with the unprecedented spontaneous demonstrations on October 22 by mothers whose imprisoned sons are still missing after Saddam Hussein supposedly emptied Iraqi jails, appear to be cracks in the previously ironclad edifice of regime control over Iraqi society. Iraqis clearly want an end to their country's 12 years of international isolation. On the other hand, Iraqi nationalism is strong. Press reports from Jordan in December 2002 quote Iraqis living there who vow to return home to fight an invading force. The neoconservatives' predictions that the war will be a "cakewalk," because the population will instantly rally to aid the invaders, appear to be vainglorious at best.
Genuine concern for the plight of ordinary Iraqis would, of course, rule out war as an option for U.S. policy. Having borne the brunt of the economic sanctions for 12 years, Iraqi civilians should not now be forced to pay the costs of war: the inherently indiscriminate bombing, an even further degradation of the country's civilian infrastructure, the prospect of mass refugee flight, tenacious and bloody urban combat, the possibility of chemical/biological weapons use (and disproportionate U.S. response), and the specter of postwar ethnic and sectarian conflict. However, antiwar forces often do not take the horrors of Saddam Hussein's rule seriously enough to propose third alternatives to war or an indefinite continuation of the unacceptable status quo.
A responsible U.S. Iraq policy would respect the authority of the UN and international law. The Bush administration's saber rattling and arm twisting frightened the UN Security Council into producing the current semblance of international consensus behind toughened weapons inspections, and further bellicosity from Washington--coupled with backroom deals over postwar access to Iraqi oilfields--could be used to assemble a "coalition of coercion" behind war. But if justice is to be served, a genuine and discerning international consensus must be built around measures that directly target the regime and avoid punishing ordinary Iraqis for the regime's transgressions, as 12 years of sanctions and bombing have done, and as an invasion would also do.
Economic sanctions should be lifted, but military sanctions and rigorous border inspections must remain in place. Foreign investment should be allowed as a means of enabling the reconstruction of Iraq's civilian infrastructure, especially the water and sanitation systems, whose disrepair has caused the majority of the needless civilian deaths under sanctions. The gradual restoration of Iraq's economy, perhaps spurred by a UN-administered mini-Marshall Plan to rebuild key infrastructure, would remove the regime's ability to blame Iraq's problems on foreign powers.
The U.S. should back the formation of an international tribunal, under UN or independent auspices, to indict Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Iran-Iraq War, during the genocidal Anfal campaign against the Kurds in 1987-88, and both during and since the Gulf War. Human Rights Watch estimates that 115 army and security services officers were implicated in the Anfal campaign alone, and that the total number complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity is much larger. In November, a Danish prosecutor indicted exiled General Nizar al-Khazraji for his part in the Anfal campaign. Some in the Iraqi opposition lamented al-Khazraji's indictment, because it may discourage his high-ranking peers (who might also face prosecution) from carrying out a coup. But there should be no guarantees of immunity to implicated army or state security officers. The compelling need to bring Iraqi war criminals to justice, rather than using them as a tool for regime change, should drive international justice efforts.
Such measures do not promise a quick end to Saddam Hussein's regime, but they hold out the possibility of peaceful, democratic change in Iraq--a possibility foreclosed by the false choice between war and perpetual rollovers of sanctions. In the meantime, the U.S. should steer clear of anointing any group of outsiders as a government-in-waiting, eschew bankrolling coup attempts in contravention of international and U.S. law, and abandon any plans to govern Iraq through a military proconsul after invading and occupying the country. The political future of Iraq must be for Iraqis to decide.
(Chris Toensing <ctoensing@merip.org> is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org), and he is editor of Middle East Report, a publication of the Middle East Research and Information Project. The views expressed here are his own.)
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II. Outside the U.S.
(Editor's Note: FPIF's "Outside the U.S." component aims to bring non-U.S. voices into the U.S. policy debate and to foster dialog between Northern and Southern actors in global affairs issues. Please visit our Outside the U.S. page for other non-U.S. perspectives on global affairs and for information about submissions at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/index.html. If you're interested in submitting commentaries for our use, please send your solicitation to John Gershman at <john@irc-online.org>.)
INDIA JOINS WASHINGTON'S "HAGUE INVASION"
By Ninan Koshy
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Outside the U.S. Present Danger commentary, posted in its entirety at: http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2003/0301icc.html .)
The Bush administration has enlisted India in its campaign against the newly formed International Criminal Court. On December 26th representatives of both governments signed an agreement, which provides that neither country will surrender persons of the other country to any international tribunal without the other country's express consent. Of all the sixteen countries that have signed such bilateral agreements with the U.S.--most of them under pressure or threat--India is by far the most significant.
"As strong, vibrant democracies both India and the U.S. share concerns about the possible conflict between robust, national judicial processes and international tribunals as also the impact of such tribunals on national sovereignty," India's Foreign Office spokesperson said. He added that New Delhi's concerns related to its army personnel involved in international peacekeeping operations. The U.S. Ambassador said, "We (U.S. and India) are concerned about the International Criminal Court treaty with respect to the inadequacy of checks and balances, the impact of the treaty on national sovereignty, and the potential for conflict with the UN Charter." While the Bush administration can be credited with consistency--though not principles--in its position on the International Criminal Court, India can claim neither consistency nor principles in this exercise.
The Rome Treaty of July 17, 1998 by which 160 nations decided to establish a permanent International Criminal Court to try individuals for the most serious offences of international concern, such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, officially came into force on July 1, 2002. A critical missing link in the international legal system was thus provided. The International Court of Justice at The Hague handles only cases between States, not individuals. Without an international criminal court for dealing with individual responsibility as an enforcement mechanism, acts of genocide and egregious violations of human rights have most often gone unpunished.
At the United Nations Diplomatic Conference, which made the Agreement, the main objections raised by India were not against what was in the agreement but what was left out. The Head of the Indian Delegation had of course raised the question of sovereignty and told the Conference, "the ICC should be based on the principles of complementarity of state sovereignty and non-intervention in the internal affairs of state." This is well taken care of in the Statutes.
According to the Statutes, the International Criminal Court will not supersede but complement national jurisdiction. Under the principle of complementarity, the International Criminal Court will act only when national courts are unable or unwilling to exercise jurisdiction. If a national court is willing and able to exercise jurisdiction, the International Criminal Court cannot intervene and no nationals of that State can be brought before it except in cases referred to it by the United Nations Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The grounds for admitting a case to the Court are specified in the Statute and the circumstances that govern inability and unwillingness are carefully defined so as to avoid arbitrary decisions. In addition, the accused and interested States, whether or not parties to the Statute, may challenge the jurisdiction of the Court or admissibility of the case. They also have a right to appeal any related decision.
It is ironic that India, which had tabled an amendment in Rome to include the use of nuclear weapons as a crime, has signed an impunity agreement with the United States, which in its current strategic posture has stated that it will use nuclear weapons in the face of "surprising developments"--even against non-nuclear states.
At the time of voting on the Statutes of the International Criminal Court, the Indian "non-position" puzzled many diplomats, who saw a confusion of thought rather than a principled stance. In sharp contrast to the marshalling of cogent arguments at the end of the negotiations on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Indian delegation at Rome appeared to lack conviction and abstained without explanation. On June 16, 1998 one month before the vote, the Indian delegate had told the Conference, "Despite the odds, this is a course worth pursuing for all those committed to the basic objections of establishing a universal international criminal court. My delegation assures you of our support in such an endeavor."
The notion of international impunity is a key concept of the Bush doctrine of war fighting. "Changing the regime of an adversary state" and "occupying foreign territory" are important parts of the Bush doctrine evolved in the context of the War on Terror. Military strategists know full well that imperial conquest and occupation invariably involve crimes against civilians. Washington's definitive rejection of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over its imperial armies is in essence a license for crimes against humanity. The National Security Strategy of the USA declares, "The U.S. will never subject its citizens to the newly created International Criminal Court--whose jurisdiction does not extend to the Americans."
India was one of the first countries to declare unequivocal support for the Bush administration's War on Terror. From that time Washington has been assiduously promoting the Indian government, which is ideologically committed to a militaristic policy, as the most important "strategic partner" in the region. The current leadership in New Delhi has since been dismantling the entire rationale of non-alignment and the edifice of an independent foreign policy, thus subjugating India's national interests to U.S. war plans.
(Dr. Ninan Koshy <knkoshy@vsnl.com> is a political commentator based in Trivandrum, Kerala, India, author of The War on Terror: Reordering the World (DAGA Press, 2002), and a regular analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
III. Letters and Comments
I share the worries expressed in "Our Fateful Choice: Global Leader or Global Cop?", but I feel that I cannot endorse its statement, because I don't agree with the criticism of the Bush administration, which in my opinion is so radical that becomes unjust.
- Giuliana Fedeli <aduafienigelli@yahoo.it>
BUYING INTO U.S. GOVERNMENT'S CLAIMS
I'd like to point out what I think is missing from the statement and should be there, or at least more specifically:
Discussion of "What U.S. leaders really want." If in fact, these leaders don't give a hoot about strengthening the UN and international cooperation, joining the ICC, fighting global warming, etc., etc. and are concerned primarily with establishing a world empire for the benefit of the right corporations and individuals, for globalization and military domination ... is there much that we or anyone else can suggest as a remedy? I don't know, but I think the question should be at least addressed.
There's no explicit recognition that terrorism against the U.S. is largely an act of retaliation and revenge for many American actions and policies, particularly in the Middle East, and that thus the best or only way to put an end to anti-U.S. terrorism is to take away the terrorists' motivations by changing Washington's behavior. Lastly, to say that "the existence of repressive, militaristic states like Iraq underscore the continuing need for multilateral responses to security threats" sounds like you're buying into the U.S. government's claim that Iraq is indeed a threat to the United States. Do you really believe that? If you do, I think that much of your statement becomes irrelevant.
- Bill Blum <bblum6@aol.com>
I have read some of your articles about the Middle East and the recommendations you make. I find them very biased. You cannot blame Israel and the U.S. for every wrong in the world. The famous line is "It takes 2 to tango." Your references are known anti-Israel writers. Maybe it is time you put things in more perspective and give both sides to the story.
- Bruce Milner <bruce.milner@retalix.com>
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