Ayoon wa Azan (An Hour Of Truce)

Jihad Al Khazen      Al-Hayat     2003/10/9

I gave myself an hour of truce from the discussions of the UN General Assembly in New York last week, and I walked to a bookstore on Fifth Avenue called Barnes and Noble. There, I stopped at the section of latest Non-Fiction books, as my work barely leaves me time to read novels.

I was surprised to find that the section I knew so well, or really the only section I knew, contained five books by radical American right-wingers, written by neo-conservatives and advocates of Israel, attacking the other America, or that of the rest of the people or most of them. This helped me understand U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, when he told an Arab minister that he was coming under a war waged against him.

There was a book called Bush vs The Beltway, by Laurie Mylroie; the headline can be better understood through the subtitle: How The State Department And The CIA Tried To Stop War On Terror.

Mylroie is a Zionist down to the bones, from the American Enterprise Institute. She had published a book on Iraq years ago, a lying book just like its author, so the new one is definitely of the same kind. I did not buy it because I refuse to be of any use to this advocate of Israel.

I also found another book called Treason, by Ann Coulter, with the following subtitle: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to War on Terror. This radical is always attacking the New York Times because it's moderate and liberal. Hence, I have no respect for her to buy her "betraying" book, since the only betrayal I know in the U.S. is that of the radicals for their country.

There were another three books that I didn't buy:

-Dangerous Diplomacy, by Joel Mowbray, with the following subtitle: How the State Department Threatens America's Security.

-1,000 Years for Revenge, by Peter Lance, with the following subtitle: International Terrorism and the FBI - the Untold Story.

-The Case For Israel, by Allan Dershowitz, who is another Zionist supporting Israel and investing his academic knowledge to deny that Israel is about to destroy U.S. interests in the Middle East, creating enmity for it among 1.5 billion Arabs and Muslims.

Besides what I saw in one corner of the library, there were other books such as Why America Slept, by Gerald Posner; it is one of the lowest and most lying books as it tries to associate all Arabs and Muslims with terrorism to divert people's attention from Israel's terrorism and Nazi practices.

I stop here to relate something I had heard in the speech of Mr. Farouk Al Sharaa, Syria's Foreign Minister, at the UN General Assembly, when he pointed at Israel's disregard of international legitimacy in refusing to carry out 37 Security Council resolutions and about 600 General Assembly resolutions. Several Arab ministers also mentioned this issue, which is repeated every year in Arab speeches. I was reading during the evening a review of a new book on the international organization called Act of Creation: The Founding Of The United Nations, by Stephen Schlesinger, and I found that Richard Holbrooke, the former U.S. ambassador to the UN, said in his introduction of the book that the neutral countries have constantly voted against Israel in resolutions, which he described as filled with cheap symbolic and meaningless expressions that harmed the international organization and the peace process in the Middle East.

Holbrooke is not a radical, nor is he a neo-conservative. Still, he is standing against the world to support Israel, hence expressing an American stance that would encourage it to commit more crimes. If this is Holbrooke's stand, then the reader can imagine that of the real radicals I had started with.

In addition to the books and their authors, there are research institutes and newspapers.

I found on the American Enterprise Institute website an article by Joshua Muravchik regarding the U.S. Department experts' report, which stated that enmity towards America has increased worldwide, especially among 1.5 billion Arabs and Muslims. The article reflects the report because it addresses public policy and the necessity to give a true image of the U.S., which reminds me of similar Arab campaigns following the 9/11 attacks, a couple of years ago, aimed at the necessity to give a true image of the Arabs abroad.

The Arab image is bad, and sending it to the outside world is a scandal; the failure in sending it is one of the best kinds of failure we are suffering, and the American image is also bad, but for different reasons than ours. Hence, sending it is pointless, as what is required is to improve it before transferring it to people, just like the Arab image abroad will improve all by itself in case it does on the inside.

Frankly, I don't think that the American image will improve no matter how hard the public policy experts try by giving it another name, the propaganda, as it is all about lies, and we all saw last week U.S. Chief Inspector David Kay say clearly that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction; American and British newspapers I read published this news, sometimes with strong comments, but other newspapers chose another path.

The Guardian, The Independent, The New York Times and The Washington Post all clearly stated there were no weapons there. However, the Daily Telegraph said "No weapons yet, and Straw says the war is justified." On the other hand, the Times chose to say that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq intensifies. As for the Washington Times, it published a strange headline saying that there had been evidence on the intention to obtain weapons.

This is madness, not journalism. While every newspaper or journalist is entitled to voice his or her opinion, what we are looking at here is no opinion, but lies and manipulation of clear information.

The reader might recall that the staff of the U.S. administration, from President Bush to Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, all insisted on the presence of weapons of mass destruction and on the fact that war was justified despite lack of proof.

Can anyone in the world believe this? I think that the counter-campaign in books, research centers, newspapers and others, as well as the official lying, is proof of weakness not power. These people have been framed and they will pay in the upcoming elections.