The insurgents are a hotch-potch of ex-army officers, Baathists and Islamists, not al-Qa'ida, reports Phil Reeves from Baghdad.

November 23, 2003
Independent on Sunday

By Arjan El Fassed, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada.

July 10, 2005

One year after the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in which it made clear that the construction of the Wall and the settlements were illegal, the Israeli cabinet called for "the immediate completion of the security fence [sic] in the Jerusalem area".

With this decision, Israel, once again, defies international law and the advisory of opinion of the ICJ, backed by the General Assembly of the United Nations, which ruled that Israel should not only immediately stop with its construction, but also begin dismantling them and to pay reparations to those who had lost their property as the result of the Wall's construction.

This article, by Arab Media Watch chairman Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi, was originally published in the British-Arab magazine Sharq.

Travel is fast overtaking weather as Londoners' favourite gripe, and in this respect, many of us have a love-hate relationship with mayor Ken Livingstone - we love him for condemning occupation, oppression and injustice, but hate the worsening state of commuting.

By Milan Rai
July 20, 2005

After the Guardian poll yesterday (the public think there's a link with Iraq), the Chatham House report the day before (the Establishment thinks there's a link with Iraq), and the Young Muslims and Extremism report (the Home Office and the Foreign Office think there's a link with Iraq), now we know from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre report (below) that British intelligence think there's a link with Iraq.

By Tariq Ali, author of Speaking of Empires & Resistance.

July 19, 2005

On 8 July I wrote that the London bombings were the result of Blair's participation in the Iraq war. The next day the entire media was united in refusing to accept there was any link. They loyally echoed the Government. Blair said there was no link and tried to prove it by arguing that 'President Putin opposed the war in Iraq but his country has been subjected to terrorism'. He must have thought that British citizens had never heard of Chechnya (Blair had supported Putin's offensive against the Chechens and applauded Russia).

But why did these attacks happen? That is the key question which the entire media and the entire political class in this country tried to ignore. They did so because the government and the main opposition party know perfectly well why it happened. They have a guilty conscience. To accept the link meant that the pro-war politicians and newspaper editors were, at the very least, partially responsible.

By Rob Winder
July 6, 2005
BBC News

Palestinian farmland around the West Bank town of Qalqilya is being poisoned by industrial sewage pumped from nearby Jewish settlements, according to a recent report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

About 200 olive trees have already died from the contamination.

Qalqilya's problems highlight the fears of both Palestinian and Israeli environmentalists that Jewish settlers are regularly polluting the land, air and water of the occupied territories.

By Daniel Ellsberg, who worked in the US State and Defense departments under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. He released the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971.

July 3, 2005
Los Angeles Times

President Bush's explanation Tuesday night for staying the course in Iraq evoked in me a sense of familiarity, but not nostalgia. I had heard virtually all of his themes before, almost word for word, in speeches delivered by three presidents I worked for: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. Not with pride, I recognized that I had proposed some of those very words myself.

Drafting a speech on the Vietnam War for Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara in July 1965, I had the same task as Bush's speechwriters in June 2005: how to rationalize and motivate continued public support for a hopelessly stalemated, unnecessary war our president had lied us into.

Azmi Bishara, leading Palestinian political activist and member of Israel's Knesset, recently said that the Arab media is not powerful because a sceptical Arab public does not believe it. By comparison, the Western media has power simply because its audiences and readers trust what it says. Whilst these are generalisations and there is probably an element of trust and scepticism on both sides, Bishara's statement is not totally without foundation. When the media is in the hands of those with monopolistic power and censorship, it is clear that the media is controlled.  When formal censorship is absent, it is much more difficult to see the levers of power at work. Yet the British media regularly portrays images of Arabs that suit the government's political agenda.

By Paul Findley, former Republican Congressman and chairman of the Council for the National Interest.

Israeli authorities are carrying out a process in East Jerusalem that accurately be described as ethnic cleansing. It is plainly geared to uproot Palestinians from an area that historically has been known as Arab East Jerusalem and convert it into an integral, permanent part of the capital of the Jewish state.

The scandalous process is recognized and deplored by the major news media in Britain and elsewhere and even by some newspapers in Israel, but it is predictably ignored in the United States. Still worse, Washington provides the financial, political and military support without which the cleansing could not go forward.

By Arab Media Watch correspondent Yasser Abu Moailek.

While most people living in the Gaza Strip are keen on following the latest developments of the Israeli withdrawal, Palestinian reforms or the political situation in general, a group of Gazans is keen on following up a different issue.

With charts and diagrams scribbled across the little room allotted to them within the Palestinian General Union of Cultural Centers, the organising committee of Gaza's first theatre festival struggles to meet its deadline of June 16.

By Tanya Reinhart, professor at Tel Aviv University and author of "Israel/Palestine: How to End the 1948 War."

Yediot Aharonot

In the 1960s there were many jokes in Israel about the "Voice of the UAR (United Arab Republic) from Cairo", which broadcasted news in broken Hebrew, written by spokesmen of the Egyptian regime. The absurdity of these broadcasts enhanced the credibility of the IDF spokesmen in our eyes. Today we ourselves are not all that far from the "Voice of the UAR", and in fluent IDF Hebrew.

On 9 May we heard that the Israeli army accidentally fired a shell into Lebanese territory. Hizbullah responded with a single Katusha shell carefully aimed at the industrial zone of the northern Israel town of Shlomi, which was deserted on the eve of Independence Day. At the end of that week, (May 13), the Israeli army announced that it was forced to shoot at Lebanese shepherds. Hizbullah claimed that the fire was directed at houses in the village of Shuba and returned fire, without casualties.

The IDF responded with tanks and aircraft, and announced that it had destroyed four positions, with casualties on the Hizbullah side. "Security sources" explained that Hizbullah was trying to provoke Israel into a confrontation, and even provided the analysis: Hizbullah was trying to consolidate its position in the approaching local elections in Lebanon. They assured us that Israel was making an effort not to get drawn into an escalation. The newspapers published and the columnists recycled this story and analysis in unison.

Only later, on the following week, did it emerge from Fishman's column in the Yediot Ahronot Saturday Supplement that in reality "in Israel they decided to test how high Hizbullah was willing to raise the flame this time."

Arab Media Watch director Victor Kattan interviews Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout, author of the book "Sabra and Shatilla September 1982", which was recently published by Pluto Press.

The name of the book refers to an infamous massacre that took place in Sabra Street and Shatila refugee camp in a popular residential area of Lebanon's capital Beirut over three days in September 1982.

By Arab Media Watch correspondent Yasser Abu Moailek.

Over a crowded table at one of the many coffee shops that line the main street in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, a number of Palestinians - young and old - were preoccupied in heated discussions about the "topic of the hour", as they call it.

Half-empty tea and coffee cups teemed up on the tables, as the space above "Abu Sultan's" coffee shop turned into a murky mixture of cigarette, hubbly-bubbly and car smoke, which increased as the deadline for opening the ballots of the city's municipal elections approached.

Everyone was giving their own forecast of who was going to win, but all admitted that the results would not fall short of surprises, due to the fierce competition between the 68 candidates for the 15 seats of Rafah's municipality.

Rafah is one of 84 Palestinian population centres included in the second stage of the local elections, in which 2,519 candidates will compete for 906 seats, hoping to win some of the expected 400,000 votes in the elections on May 5.

By Bill Christison, who served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis.

July 19, 2005

If he were a thinking person, George W. Bush might today be increasingly concerned that any positive legacy he had ever hoped for was slipping into oblivion. Many observers have long understood that Bush's first target for solidifying U.S. global domination has been the Middle East rather than East Asia or any other area. By now it should be evident even to him that U.S. imperial dreams are already disintegrating into the dust of Iraq.

But Bush by nature is disinclined to think any problem through with care, and glories instead in his chosen image of macho, frontier-American decisiveness -- a "decisiveness" that unfortunately looks much like common stubbornness because it is not buttressed by a rigorously curious or honest intellect. This self-chosen image rather than facts determines Bush's policies when it comes to war and peace, and he still clings to the goal of "transforming" unfriendly nations of the Middle East into neocolonial territories of the U.S. Specifically, despite the continuing drain of Iraq on U.S. resources, he has given no sign of moderating his desire for quick regime change in both Iran and Syria.

By Iqbal Jassat, chairperson of the Media Review Network.

July 18, 2005

The jailing of a New York Times reporter Judith Miller on the eve of London's shattering experience may be entirely coincidental, but the cruel irony of her incarceration in Washington while London's Underground exploded is absorbing.

Miller's reputation as an Islamophobe flows from Edward Said's description of her as "trading in the Islamic Threat". Her particular mission has been to advance the millennial thesis that militant Islam is a danger to the West - that is at the core of Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations diatribe.

The carnage in London has supposedly provided Miller-type "experts" a fresh opportunity to indulge in their penchant for Islam-bashing. But this does not remove from media-houses the responsibility to scrupulously ensure that malicious generalizations and speculative pontifications on Islam do not promote Islamophobia.

By Robert A. Pape, associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and author of the forthcoming "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism."

New York Times

Many Americans are mystified by the recent rise in the number and the audacity of suicide attacks in Iraq. The lull in violence after January's successful elections seemed to suggest that the march of democracy was trampling the threat of terrorism. But as electoral politics is taking root, the Iraqi insurgency and suicide terrorism are actually gaining momentum. In the past two weeks, suicide attackers have killed more than 420 Iraqis working with the United States and its allies. There were 20 such incidents in 2003, nearly 50 in 2004, and they are on pace to set a new record this year.

To make sense of this apparent contradiction, one has to understand the strategic logic of suicide terrorism. Since Muslim terrorists professing religious motives have perpetrated many of the attacks, it might seem obvious that Islamic fundamentalism is the central cause, and thus the wholesale transformation of Muslim societies into secular democracies, even at the barrel of a gun, is the obvious solution. However, the presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is misleading, and it may spur American policies that are likely to worsen the situation.

By Alison Weir, executive director of If Americans Knew.

A little over a week ago, some members of our organization, If Americans Knew, met with New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent to discuss the findings of a detailed study we had completed of two years worth of Times news stories on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Okrent was going to be writing a column discussing the paper's coverage of Israel/Palestine, and we felt our study would be an important resource.

By Arab Media Watch correspondent Yasser Abu Moailek.

Rafah City resident Abu Mohammed whipped out his mobile phone and quickly dialled a number.

"Hello. Please send me 750 watermelons and five crutches, and make that fast," Abu Mohammed said and hung up. An ordinary phone call of a Palestinian merchant working in vegetables and accessories for the elderly or disabled, one might think. However, the sentence bore a meaning that Abu Mohammed largely hides from the public.

Donned in a black mask, Abu Mohammed spoke about a subject that most Rafah residents fear to mention: weapons trading and smuggling, an industry that has grown since the eruption of the current intifada almost five years ago.

Tim Llewellyn was the BBC's Middle East correspondent twice from 1976-1982 and 1987-1992. Based in Beirut and Cyprus, Llewellyn covered the Lebanese civil war, the Iranian Revolution, the Tanker Wars, the first Palestinian intifada, and the first Gulf War. He was one of the first foreign correspondents to enter the camps of Sabra and Shatila after the massacres there by Phalangist Forces under the auspices of the Israeli army in September 1982.

In this interview with Arab Media Watch director Victor Kattan, Llewellyn talks candidly about the BBC, and the pressures that organisation and its correspondents are under, when reporting from the Middle East.

Agence France Presse
March 21, 2005

ALGIERS - Oil-rich Algeria will use its role as host to this week's Arab League summit to put behind it more than a decade of bloody civil war and become a prime mover in the Arab world.

Britain and Europe are funding Israel's occupation and expansion, writes Karma Nabulsi, Arab Media Watch advisor, research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and former PLO representative.

March 1, 2005
The Guardian

By Arab Media Watch member Omar Waraich.

Few cut as colourful figure in the British parliament as George Galloway. In a House of Commons awash with charmless backbenchers noted for their congenital caution, Galloway stands salient. The Scottish MP has, throughout his parliamentary career, had plaudits and odium lavished upon him in equal measure. A Guardian strapline probably described him best: "A maverick reviled by party hierarchy but admired by (his) constituents".

However, despite years of shunning a life of comfort behind the parapet, courting controversy and generating headlines, few could have imagined the events of the last two years that left his political life dangling on the precipice.

By Arab Media Watch correspondent Yasser Baraka.

For two years Walid Thabet, auditor at Al Quds Open University in northern Gaza who lives in the packed Jabaliya refugee camp, heard the deafening sound of a Qassam rocket launched at an Israeli settlement or town almost every morning. It became his alarm clock for work.

However, Walid says he has not heard that sound since municipal elections took place almost a month ago.

The fact that militant groups, namely the Islamic ones led by Hamas, have changed their ways and toned down their attacks on Israel reflects a new approach based almost completely on diplomacy and involvement in the political life of the Gaza Strip.

By Patrick Seale
February 4, 2005
Al Hayat

On January 9, Palestinians elected Mahmoud Abbas president of the Palestinian Authority and, on January 30, Iraqis went to the polls to elect a National Assembly. These two elections have been hailed as triumphant steps towards democracy in the Arab world, a vindication of President George W Bush's campaign for the 'forward march of freedom'.

What is the reality behind these elections? What did Palestinians and Iraqis actually vote for?

In both cases, the elections took place under foreign occupation. This inevitably meant that they were neither totally fair nor wholly legitimate.

This feature, by Arab Media Watch chairman Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi, was originally published in British-Arab magazine Sharq.

At first glance, one could be forgiven for perceiving Gazan artist Laila Shawa as quiet and reserved. But scratch the surface and one finds a passionate, opinionated critic of our times, whose views are as strongly held as they are coolly conveyed.

By Terry Eagleton, professor of cultural theory at Manchester University.

January 26, 2005
The Guardian

While insurgents have been blowing themselves apart in Israel and Iraq, a silence has prevailed about what suicide bombing actually involves. Like hunger strikers, suicide bombers are not necessarily in love with death. They kill themselves because they can see no other way of attaining justice; and the fact that they have to do so is part of the injustice.

BBC News
January 22, 2005

US President George W Bush's inauguration speech has taken until Saturday to register on the comment pages of the Arab press, but the verdict is almost unanimous.

For most papers, Mr Bush's promise to spread freedom and democracy lacks any sort of credibility, and much is made of his failure to mention events in Iraq or the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Four Guantanamo Britons are coming home. Don't forget those left behind, writes George Brent Mickum IV, a senior partner in the Washington law firm Keller and Heckman, and the US counsel for UK residents Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna, and British citizen Martin Mubanga.

January 12, 2005
The Guardian

By Arab Media Watch correspondent Yasser Baraka.

The plain appearance of 'R' did not explain much of the nature of his rather obscure but misunderstood job. At first he had to lie to hide it, but when assured of anonymity he started elaborating more about it.

Inside one of the modest half-built houses in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, AMW met with R, a fulltime tunnel-digger with fascinating tales of his 10-year-old experience tunneling under the Israeli-Egyptian-Palestinian borders.

By Heba Saleh
BBC News
December 30, 2004

The Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarak is nearing the end of his fourth term in office, and the expectation is that he will seek another six-year mandate.

Next October he will have been 24 years in the job, making him the longest-serving president in modern Egyptian history.

A small Cairo-based elite is saying 'Enough' to Hosni Mubarak

The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) will almost certainly nominate Mr Mubarak as its candidate and Egyptians will be asked to ratify its choice in a referendum.

The current Egyptian constitution does not allow for direct presidential elections contested by more than one candidate.

But as the expiry of Mr Mubarak's term approaches, many in the Egyptian opposition and in civil society have been calling for amendments to the constitution.

By Ray Hanania, a US-based Arab Media Watch member and award-winning writer.

This feature, by Arab Media Watch chairman Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi, will be published in the January 2005 launch edition of the English-language, British-Arab magazine Sharq.

What do a Moroccan graduate in Willesden, three Lebanese students on Edgware Road, a Syrian student in Knightsbridge and an Iraqi woman in Kilburn have in common?