<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 5.50.4611.1300" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> <P>From today's Independent. Vital reading in times like these.</P> <P>"Nineteen years ago today, the greatest act of terrorism – using Israel's own definition of that much misused word – in modern Middle Eastern history began. Does anyone remember the anniversary in the West? How many readers of this article will remember it? I will take a tiny risk and say that no other British newspaper – certainly no American newspaper – will today recall the fact that on 16 September 1982, Israel's Phalangist militia allies started their three-day orgy of rape and knifing and murder in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila that cost 1,800 lives. It followed an Israeli invasion of Lebanon – designed to drive the PLO out of the country and given the green light by the then US Secretary of State, Alexander Haig – which cost the lives of 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinians, almost all of them civilians. That's probably three times the death toll in the World Trade Centre. Yet I do not remember any vigils or memorial services or candle-lighting in America or the West for the innocent dead of Lebanon; I don't recall any stirring speeches about democracy or liberty. In fact, my memory is that the United States spent most of the bloody months of July and August 1982 calling for 'restraint'."</P> <P>And then, further down, is this:</P> <P>"Every effort will be made in the coming days to switch off the 'why' question and concentrate on the who, what and how. CNN and most of the world's media have already obeyed this essential new war rule. I've already seen what happens when this rule is broken. When The Independent published my article on the connection between Middle Eastern injustice and the New York holocaust, the BBC's 24-hour news channel produced an American commentator who remarked that 'Robert Fisk has won the prize for bad taste''. When I raised the same point on an Irish radio talk show, the other guest, a Harvard lawyer, denounced me as a bigot, a liar, a 'dangerous man' and – of course – potentially anti-Semitic. The Irish pulled the plug on him."</P> <P>A "Harvard lawyer" who used the anti-Semitic line? If this isn't Alan Dershowtiz, then I'm losing my sense of smell.</P> <P><A href="http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=94254">http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=94254</A></P> <P>DP</P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>