The Other War

By Alyssa A. Lappen
AmericanThinker.com | March 11, 2006

In The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy, veteran journalist Stephanie Gutmann provides careful documentation of the myriad ways in which the mainstream media coverage of the Middle East has been grossly compromised. Gutmann spent part of her teenage years in Israel and the disputed territories with her psychologist father, who studies ‘cross-cultural features of aging.’ On her return to the U.S., she was hardly a Zionist. On the contrary, throughout her college years in Ann Arbor, and later, she hung out with the solidly anti-Israel ‘left.’

But in September 2000 when the current war against Israel began, Gutmann found herself glued to her television, and increasingly disturbed by the inaccurate portrayal of Israel as the next Tiananmen Square, where ‘Large Mechanized Brutes’ converged on ‘Small Vulnerable Brown People.’ Even in her leftist experiences, Israel was simply not a country that ‘would countenance regular, systematic brutality against civilians, [or] produce soldiers capable of doing such a thing.’

Thus in October 2000, she followed the ‘great herd of foreign press’ and freelancers that decamped to Jerusalem to cover some action and pad their bank accounts. She found the press, then and during a return trip in 2002, almost universally pro—Palestinian and anti—Israel. Many foreign reporters, who habitually hang out in the American Colony Hotel, ‘on the other side of the Green Line, in East Jerusalem,’ cheerily announced this fact. Of course, this attitude does not make for unbiased, complete or factual news. But in general, whatever Palestinian officials say, reporters in Israel accept as unmitigated truth, without question or challenge. And whatever Israeli officials say, the same reporters consider suspect propaganda. The press rarely if ever applies equal skepticism to both sides. Continue reading “The Other War” →


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The Hamas-Russia Connection

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 10, 2006

Russia’s determination to undermine the U.S. policy in the Middle East may well weaken U.S. power. But opposing punitive sanctions for Iran at the U.N. and endorsing HAMAS is likely to cost Russia dearly.

On March 8, 2006, after discussing the Iran crisis with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov conveyed Russia’s objections to sanctioning Iran, while warning that “there is no military solution to this crisis.” Instead, he welcomed the European Union proposal to continue exploring diplomatic solutions with Iran, despite years of European-led negotiations that merely allowed Tehran to continue to develop its nuclear program. And nuclear weapons in Iran, are likely to pose a grave danger to Russia; much graver than to the U.S.

In a similar move, after visiting the State Department, Lavrov said that the HAMAS government should receive international funding because HAMAS chief Khaled Mashaal had assured him that the money would “be spent in a transparent manner.” And Like Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas before him, Mashaal promised Lavrov to allow international monitors to ensure this.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Khaled Mashaal noted, “At the Russian Foreign Ministry we felt that we were being understood.” Continue reading “The Hamas-Russia Connection” →


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Ports and pitchforks

By Diana West
Washington Times | March 3, 2006

One of the weirder sideshows to open alongside a main event — the proposed operational transfer of six major American ports to a firm owned by the United Arab Emirates — is the growing chorus of road-company Zolas, “J’accusing” everybody opposed to the sale of “xenophobia,” “isolationist mass hysteria,” “bigotry,” “nativism,” “panic,” and “prejudice” against innocent Araby.

Such accusations are supposed to make you hang your head in shame. They make me shake mine in consternation — wondering how in tarnation a hefty chunk of the American elite has the chutzpah to castigate the American people (64 percent of whom, says a Rasmussen poll, think the deal is a Bad Thing) for “xenophobia” and “prejudice” on behalf of a culture that is the embodiment of xenophobia and prejudice. The words precisely describe the official state of normal in the Arab-Islamic world since at least 1948, when the modern state of Israel was founded.

Nonetheless, we’re the “pitchfork-wielding xenophobes” en route to the “Dark Ages,” says the New York Times‘ Thomas Friedman. I’d say we’re heading in the other direction, trying to escape the Dark Ages — as represented by the spreading influence of sharia (Islamic law), which, in terms of the sharia-compliant port deal, would make deep inroads into global financial markets. I would add, as Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen have suggested in this newspaper, “It’s time for the United States to limit financial transactions that involve American companies” — and the U.S. government — “to governance by secular laws.” Continue reading “Ports and pitchforks” →


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The Burning Issue

By Alyssa A. Lappen and Jack D. Lauber
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 1, 2006

Establishing U.S. energy independence won the attention of President George W. Bush in his January 31 2006 State of the Union Address. The President called on research scientists and the energy industry to help the U.S. replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.”

To do that, the President seeks a 22 percent increase in Department of Energy research into clean energy, and heavy investment in “zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy.” He also urges the auto industry to promote a major fuel shift, from imported oil to better hybrid and electric car batteries and hydrogen. Furthermore, within six years he seeks a switch to “cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks, or switch grass.”

The President’s long-term goal is to “dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.”

Naturally, big oil executives pronounce, with doom and gloom, that such goals are implausible and unfeasible. At a February 8 energy conference in Houston, Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Stuart McGill stated that it is a “misperception” that the U.S. can achieve energy independence any time soon. Continue reading “The Burning Issue” →


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Hamas More Don’t We Know?

Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review | March 1, 2006

The $8 billion deal to turn over commercial shipping operations at major American ports to Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates, continues to stoke controversy. The Bush administration and other supporters of the deal insist that, despite a history of facilitating al Qaeda — including what the 9/11 Commission described as contacts between high-regime officials and Osama bin Laden himself — the UAE is a “good friend” and a valuable ally in the war on terror.

Nevertheless, it has become necessary to ask whether, even now, the UAE is in felony violation of the 1996 law that has become the cornerstone of U.S. counterterrorism enforcement. Is the UAE providing material support to Hamas, a specially designated terrorist organization?

Any American citizen doing such a thing would be sent to prison. Any American company doing it would surely be convicted and put out of business — and its principals liable for prosecution and imprisonment. Continue reading “Hamas More Don’t We Know?” →


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Embarrassing questions for Bush

By Rachel Ehrenfeld & Alyssa Lappen
WorldNetDaily | February 27, 2006 | 1:00 a.m. Eastern

Something strange is going on in our nation’s capital. The lack of transparency with which the U.S. administration has handled the ports sale to Dubai Ports World is just the latest in a series of troubling incidents in which the administration tried to force its will on the public, policy and lawmakers.

In the second week of February, several government agencies — handling national security issues — began a massive campaign to disrupt and discredit a major counter-intelligence conference whose participants and speakers included former and current top U.S. and foreign government, security, defense and intelligence officials and experts.

The Feb. 17, 2006 conference in Arlington, Va., was organized by the Intelligence Summit, a young, private, nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, headed by former U.S. prosecutor John Loftus. Since its planning began a year in advance, the conference attracted hundreds of government officials, security analysts, intelligence, counter-terrorism officers and corporate executives to speak and attend hundreds of sessions over three days. Continue reading “Embarrassing questions for Bush” →


All Articles, Poems & Commentaries Copyright © 1971-2021 Alyssa A. Lappen
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Printing is allowed for personal use only | Commercial usage (For Profit) is a copyright violation and written permission must be granted first.