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TAGS: KMDR JO
 
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION ON ISRAEL-HEZBOLLAH COMBAT AND IRAQ 
 
Editorial Commentary on Israel-Hezbollah Combat 
 
-- "The reaping of war" 
 
Chief Editor Ayman Safadi writes on the back-page of independent, 
centrist Arabic daily Al-Ghad (07/30), "More than 90% of Israelis 
support the war on Lebanon.  Chief editors of major Israeli 
newspapers and major writers and columnists justify the bloodshed 
that the Israeli terror machine has inflicted upon Lebanon.  Some 
even call for exterminating entire Lebanese villages.  Almost all of 
Israel supports the killing of the Lebanese.  This is a stand that 
nullifies Israel's claims that it wants peace.  Whoever supports the 
killing of innocent people is a proponent of war not a proponent of 
peace.  No one then should blame the Arabs for seeing Israel as the 
enemy throughout history.  All that Israel does entrenches the 
enmity towards it.  How can the Arab not hate Israel, and beyond it 
America, when they sleep and wake up on a daily basis to the images 
of Lebanese and Palestinian children whose bodies are torn by 
Israel, to the images of mothers mourning their children, and to the 
images of men whose dignity was usurped because they were unable to 
protect their homes?  The war on Lebanon will end sooner or later. 
The refugees will return to their homes, the mothers will overcome 
their losses and life will go back to Lebanon.  Then, Israel will 
have achieved one thing only: more hatred for it and more rejection 
of it as a country in the midst of the Arabs.  And then, the U.S. 
administration will have destroyed everything that its predecessors 
have accomplished in terms of creating a climate that accommodates 
Israel as part of a peaceful and secure Middle East.  America will 
not succeed in building a new Middle East.  The characteristics of 
this new Middle East that Washington is promising indicates a 
deformed situation of an Arab world dominated by Israel and 
formulated by the United States in a way that serves Israel's 
aspirations, expansion and racism....  Here they are, the 
Arab-Israeli peace treaties, worthless and meaningless documents. 
Peace is a status of popular acceptance of agreements that guarantee 
respect for the parties' rights, and not just documents deposited 
with the United Nations, which itself has been diminished and turned 
by Washington into a corridor for passing its decisions.  Despite 
this, the Jordanians and Egyptians cannot cancel the peace treaties. 
 The cost would be too high....  But they can maintain the peace 
treaties as they are: papers with no meaning.  No Israeli tourists 
in Jordan anymore and no people-to-people relations.  The situation 
must stay like this.  The Jordanians and Egyptians must refuse to 
receive Israeli tourists in the future, and all studies centers and 
civil society institutions must refuse to talk to them.  Let the 
land of Jordan and Egypt be inaccessible to the Israelis.  Let 
Israel stay besieged by its own fears, a rogue countries rejected in 
its surroundings and outcast by its neighbors.  After all, a people 
that applauds the killing of an Arab people do not deserve from the 
Arabs except hatred and animosity." 
 
-- "Rice again" 
 
Center-left, influential Arabic daily Ad-Dustour (07/30) editorial 
opines:  "U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns to the 
region after the war between Hezbollah and Israel has become more 
flammable....  By all standards, the U.S. administration's 
miscalculation of the situation in the region becomes apparent.  It 
has stayed prisoner of the wrong ideas that it recently set off; it 
has divided parties into allies and enemies; it has given up even 
the minimum role of mediator or broker of the peace process in the 
Middle East.  Instead, it focused on Israel as the strategic ally 
that complements its own presence.  The United States has never, 
despite its absolute support of Israel, shown this form of direct 
animosity towards Arab rights.  Its position did not take into 
consideration humanitarian aspects neither in terms of respect for 
human rights nor in terms of respect for international treaties.  It 
even supported and encouraged not arriving at a ceasefire despite 
what it saw and heard about the mass murders and war crimes that are 
being perpetrated by Israel in Palestine and Lebanon....  Rice now 
wants to return to the region to manage the conflict in a different 
way." 
 
Editorial Commentary on Iraq 
 
-- "Nouri Maliki's speech at the White House" 
 
Columnist Kamal Rashid writes on the op-ed page of center-left, 
influential Arabic daily Ad-Dustour (07/30):  "I felt sadness and 
resentment as I listened to the Iraqi Prime Minister deliver his 
speech before the elite American politicians, businessmen and 
economists who constitute the only party capable of rejecting, 
approving or amending President Bush's decisions.  This is the first 
Iraqi prime minister who stands like that and is given the honor of 
addressing the American elite.  The question is why?  The speech did 
not serve Iraq and the Iraqi cause, but rather the American 
president and his policy in Iraq.  He came to say to the Americans 
that they are wrong about President Bush and his war in Iraq, and 
that all of Iraq, represented by its elected prime minister came to 
thank them, President Bush, the U.S. administration and the American 
army for what they have done to liberate Iraq....  Maliki spoke 
about the role of the Americans and their service to liberating 
Iraq, spreading security and stability, protecting freedom and 
democracy in Iraq, and fighting terrorism.  It is as if he forgot 
how many Iraqis die every day and the increased security chaos under 
Maliki's leadership himself.  It is under Maliki himself that 
killing by name and identity was being done.  It is under him that 
scientists and deputies were killed....  Why did you not talk about 
the shameful acts of the Americans, their crimes in Abu Ghraib 
prison, the killing, the torture, the sadism, the revenge and the 
rape of men and women?  Why did you not talk about the sectarian 
rivalry that is being nurtured by the Americans and the British?" 
HALE