Meanwhile in Palestine
I wonder if there are any mediocre bombmakers?

By Sharif N Mafi
March 12, 2003
The Iranian

- Key figure in the military wing of Hamas
- One of Hamas founders arrested
- Top bomb maker killed
- Palestinian metal shops destroyed
- 15 people were killed in disputed circumstances

The above are all quoted from the British government's news agency, the BBC. They are not as one might innocently suspect from the partisan Fox News or the publications of the American Enterprise Institute.

From a quick glance over the web pages of the BBC one might be excused to assume that in Palestine (or whatever remains of it) every one is "key". We do not have average Hamas members but only "top" bombmakers. I wonder if there are any mediocre bombmakers?

I am puzzled how this dodgy organization was formed in the first place if on average the Israelis are killing two founders a week. "A rather top-heavy organization," any Merrill Lynch market analyst would argue.

It also appears that there are way too many metal shops, as if Palestinians recently came into the iron-age and are now enjoying the economic fruits of a metal boom, no doubt a bubble. Abdel-Gadir.metal.com is the rage in East Jerusalem, I am told.

We are additionally told by our much adored BBC that loads of people in Palestine are dying under "disputed" circumstances. There is no straight forward and unfussy death these days under the occupation it emerges, but only "disputed" ones.

Seventy people were killed in West Bank and Gaza in the month of February alone; no doubt an arduous task for the local Gaza City Police Constable if all were under suspicious circumstances, as I am persuaded they were.

As he sipped champagne on his deathbed Oscar Wilde was quoted as saying "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple." That is deplorably the essence of our times; we are being deceived by the most prominent journalistic institutions in the West.

Let us not blur our verdict by the coming events in Iraq. The keys to comprehensive peace are in the streets of Jenin and Shatilla Refuge Camps. Not in the oil fields of Kirkuk as the American hope nor in sandy banks of Kut-al-Amara as the British fancy.

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