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4 New Questions for This Year's Passover Dinner

April 2, 2003

Why is it that on all other Passovers we ask four questions probing the past, but on this Passover we ask four additional questions about the future?

After the U.S. "wins" the war, will Iraq become the new West Bank -- with suicide bombers and snipers targeting U.S. soldiers occupying another parcel of Arab land?

Will U.S. soldiers have to set up an Israeli-style roadblock and checkpoint system, and search vehicles, backpacks, even handbags to protect themselves and any U.S.-installed Iraqi regime?

After the U.S. military replaces Saddam Hussein's secular national dictatorship, will the mantle of opposition in Iraq and beyond pass to the more dangerous, transnational Islamist terrorists?

And will George Bush become America's Ariel Sharon, a leader whose blind bellicosity threatens to make Americans as unsafe as Sharon has made Israelis -- with the resulting insecurity, fear and anger helping Bush win reelection?

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Jeff Cohen

Jeff Cohen is an activist and author. Cohen was an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America. In 2002, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC (overseen by NBC News). He is the author of "Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media" - and a co-founder of the online action group, www.RootsAction.org. His website is jeffcohen.org.

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