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Is there some significance between the date of this speech and 9/11/01 - was 9/11 Saddam's reply? Some extracts "We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective -- a new world order -- can emerge: a new era -- freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the...

It's economic development, not peace-processing. The latest mission impossible embraced by those who would resolve the Middle East conflict is the effort to "democratize" the Palestinian Authority, an organization that has thrived on repression, violence, and aggressive irredentism. Meanwhile, a far more promising route to peace--the path of economic cooperation and development--is being neglected or given mere lip service. It's as if the only form of economic life possible for Palestinians were the one that has prevailed in the last ten years--the provision of foreign billions to huge bureaucracies that squandered or stole much of it, while lawlessness and corruption...

Arabs 'addicted to illusions,' says ex-Libyan leader Former prime minister offers radical prescription for Mideast reform Attempts to explain the Arab world's increasingly radicalized religion, obsessive hatred of Jews, love affair with "martyrdom" and pervasive authoritarianism have caused analysts both Western and Arab to blame the problems on everything from poverty to Israeli oppression to the corrupting influences of American pop culture. But a new analysis of the root causes of Arab angst, offered this week by a former prime minister of Libya, is startling – even revolutionary – in its candor. Writing in Thursday's edition of the London-based Arabic-language...

<p>ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- CNN founder Ted Turner, reacting to criticism of his comments to a London newspaper about violence in the Middle East, said Tuesday he regretted "any implication that I believe the actions taken by Israel to protect its people are equal to terrorism."</p>

The term non-governmental organisation (NGO) usually evokes images of altruism and compassion, particularly among the anti-globalisation crowd that believes that states, and the politicians who run them, are flawed and their actions need to be tempered. NGOs are supposed to speak up for the weak and downtrodden, and to promote the rights of individuals and minorities. In this spirit, tens of thousands of NGOs have sprung up, concentrating on environmental issues, human rights, humanitarian relief and campaigns against dangerous weapons such as land-mines and small arms. These groups are well funded and use their generous budgets to promote themselves and...

"Following the latest atrocity in Jerusalem, U.S. Secretary of State Powell pleaded with the Palestinians to issue some form of denunciation. Yassir Arafat complained that only the Palestinian side is ever required to denounce terror. Predictably, the palestinian denunciation later mumbles that they, "deplore the murder of civilians on both sides." When trapped in that Berlin bunker in 1945, Arafat's guru would probably have said much the same. Perhaps the palestinians have a point, and so to set the record straight, I do hereby denounce the following in the name of the Jewish People: 1. All Jewish suicide bombers who...

IN 1948, when the armies of five surrounding Arab dictatorships invaded tiny, newborn Israel--in what the secretary general of the Arab League announced was a "war of extermination" against "the Jews"--the United Nations sat on its ass. And did not send a fact-finding mission. But, oh, how the U.N. has been making up for that oversight ever since. For more than 50 years now, the Jews have been its favorite subject. Among the nearly 200 nations represented at the U.N., only Israel has ever been assigned special--reduced--membership privileges, its ambassadors formally barred, for 53 straight years ending only recently, from...

<p>JENIN, West Bank - Palestinian Authority allegations that a large-scale massacre of civilians was committed by Israeli troops during their invasion of the refugee camp here appear to be crumbling under the weight of eyewitness accounts from Palestinian fighters who participated in the battle and camp residents who remained in their homes until the final hours of the fighting.</p>

Remember the East German Olympic judges? They were the ones who would blithely hold up a score of 2.6 for an American skater when all the other judges held up scores in the high nines. One East German judge is comical; a commission stacked with East German judges is what Israel is being asked to accept from the United Nations. The respected diplomats chosen by the UN to judge Israel hardly intend to be as crass as the East Germans were. Who could question the bona fides of the former president of Finland, former head of the International Committee of...

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed a three-person investigative committee to visit the site in Jenin where Israeli efforts to uproot the infrastructure of terror have prompted Arab allegations of "massacre." However, before the "fact-finding team" is dispatched, those who care about fairness should carefully investigate the investigators. Jenin was the center of terror that trained 28 home-grown suicide bombers. Twenty-three of them succeeded as homicide bombers. The area was controlled by the terrorist networks of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigade, and the Tanzim. Within Israel - a country that prides itself on acerbic self-criticism and that...

A man suspected of collaborating with Israel was shot Monday afternoon a short distance from where I stood in the Jenin refugee camp. As aid workers sifted the rubble for bodies in the devastated center, I heard multiple shots coming from an alley.I, along with my Palestinian guides, ran up the alley toward the sound of the gunfire. An aid worker fled down the alley, shaking a stick at men surrounding the victim. Camp residents spotted me running towards the shots with my camera, and tried to pull me away screaming out, "No pictures! No pictures!" Struggling free of the...

What actually happens, medically, to victims of Palestinian suicide bombings? This question has been expertly addressed by an American physician who had come to lecture at two Jerusalem area hospitals last December and was invited by colleagues at Shaarei Zedek and Hadassah to examine images of the most severely wounded persons. A radiologist in Highland Park, Illinois, Dr. Michael L. Messing subsequently prepared a report on his direct observations that offers us an altogether new level of understanding about Arab terrorism. With such understanding we can all begin to feel the unimaginable pain and suffering not normally communicable by ritualistic...

The Palestinian bombers and their leader, Arafat, have have made it plain that they will not abide Israel's continued existence, and that the West Bank and Gaza will not be enough Two propositions could help some Europeans and Americans clear the fog of moral equivalence that has settled over their perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. First, if the Palestinians were to lay down their arms and renounce the use of force tomorrow, they would get their own state very quickly. They would have peace with the Israelis, and would surely even receive support from Israel in getting themselves established. Second,...

Apathetic, almost laid-back, sometimes even entertaining, is how Thabet Mardawi yesterday described his time as a senior Islamic Jihad member. The terrorist from Jenin, who dispatched nine suicide bombers to fatal attacks inside Israel, is not ashamed of anything he has done. "I am proud," he says, "I did something for my people, for Allah." Does that mean you admit to killing dozens of civilians in these attacks? Mardawi: "All's fair in war." Mardawi, 26, from the village of Araba, west of Jenin in the West Bank, was one of three leading Islamic Jihad members the IDF killed or captured...

Fifth-century Athens was the product of Salamis; the First World War turned parlor Marxism into deadly Communism. The battle of Yorktown cost the British an entire people — unruly offspring that would come to fight, haunt, and eventually save them. The Missouri Compromise was once seen as adept peacemaking; after Fort Sumter, Gettysburg, and Appomattox, such negotiation about an evil like slavery appeared the height of naiveté. For fifty years, through wars, embargoes, lectures, and terror, Americans have assumed that Gulf sheiks that fueled our gas-guzzlers were our friends — and so we politely, but rather amorally, looked the other...

The following is the text of a letter sent to Radix Technologies Ltd. by Jens Peter Hansen, of the SID General Workers Union, a Danish union and the response by Dov Shoam, the CEO of Radix Technologies Ltd. For the complete accompanying story, click here. Name: Jens Peter Hansen Message: To the Manager Just now we're ready to buy 60 pieces off your "Radix protector net solution." But for the moment, when the Israeli militaire is behaving so rough in the Palestinian Areas, nor I or my Union feel that it's is right to make business with companies from your...

.......The prayers that evening, April 2, were interrupted by a gunshot coming from the Franciscan monastery, adjacent to the church's ancient basilica. A bullet blew apart a lock to a century-old side door, enabling a handful of Palestinian gunmen to walk in. Over the next two hours, dozens more followed, about 200 in all, until the sanctuary was filled with Palestinians, black paint streaked across many of their faces. The sudden appearance of a small army of guerrilla fighters in one of the holiest sites in Christianity did not, however, come as a complete surprise to most of the clergy...

As Israeli tanks begin to withdraw from Jenin they leave behind claim and counter-claim over what really happened out of sight of the cameras. Guardian reporters talk to both sides. Sergeant Israel Kaspi is a combat veteran, having seen service in the Yom Kippur war in 1973 and in the Lebanon in 1982. But he said yesterday that the most intense firefight he had ever been involved in took place this month in Jenin, in the West Bank. Sgt Kaspi, who returned home from Jenin on Thursday night, described scenes of ferocious resistance by the Palestinians as the Israeli army...

As pictures of the destruction in Palestinian areas beam out across the world, it is not surprising that US Secretary of State Colin Powell would see fit to meet with relief agencies and pledge US assistance to help relieve the Palestinians' plight. What is less understandable is America's choosing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as the conduit for $30 million in additional aid. UNRWA was founded 52 years ago as a temporary agency to help the Palestinian refugees from the first Arab war to destroy Israel, in 1948. In a report he submitted in November 1951, UNRWA...

Former PM Binyamin Netanyahu's Speech Before the US Senate Following is the address delivered to the US Senate by former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday. Mr. Netanyahu is traveling in the US and Europe as an official emissary of the Government of Israel, working to sway public opinion in Israel’s favor. Distinguished Senators, I have come here to voice what I believe is an urgently needed reminder: That the war on terror can be won with clarity and courage or lost with confusion and vacillation. Seven months ago, on a clear day in the capital of freedom, I was...