We owe General Amos Gilad, Israeli national defence spokesman, for doing Bush the disservice of openly stating that the war of aggression o­n Iraq "is in the service of Israel", which is something our organisations have suggested for many long months but which has not been brought to the fore even by the international anti-war movement.

As reported by AFP o­n April 7, Gen Gilad said: "A very large threat which was hanging over Israel's eastern border has disappearedwithout Iraq, there is no longer the possibility of a united Arab front o­n our eastern border.

"Saddam's regime was a threat to us. It's disappearance bolsters American hegemony in the region and deprives Syria of its strategic rear."

Then Ari Shavit writes in the Israel daily Haaretz ('White man's burden') that the belief in the war in Iraq, "that ardent faith, was disseminated by a group of 25 or 30 neo-conservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate o­ne another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving force of history".

He goes o­n to say that the war of aggression "is being fought to consolidate a new world order, to create a new Middle East". Kristol is quoted as saying that "the choice is between extremist Islam, secular fascism or democracy".

The war is based o­n a new 'American' understanding of which they've convinced Mr Bush "that if the US does not shape the world in its image, the world will shape the US in its image".

Krauthammer insists that "the US must implement an aggressive policy of pre-emption". The group envisaged a war won quickly and without a bloodbath which would make the US a colossus that would dictate the world order.

In further substantiation of the power of this Zionist-Jewish-right-wing Christian alliance, Thomas Friedman is quoted as saying "...could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened".

And then read Michael Linds' 'The weird men behind George W Bush's war' ( New Statesman , April 7, 2003) who writes of a largely Jewish-American movement which morphed "into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history", people who admire "Israeli Likud party tactics, including preventive warfare".

"The neo-con defence intellectuals, as well as being in or around the actual Pentagon, are at the centre of a metaphorical 'pentagon' of the Israel lobby and the religious right, plus conservative think-tanks, foundations and media empires. Think-tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) provide homes for neo-con 'in-and-outers' when they are out of government (Perle is a fellow at AEI).

"The major link between the conservative think-tanks and the Israel lobby is the Washington-based and Likud-supporting Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), which co-opts many non-Jewish defence experts by sending them o­n trips to Israel.

It flew out the retired General Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq. In October 2000, he co-signed a Jinsa letter that began: 'We believe that during the current upheavals in Israel, the Israel defence forces have exercised remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of [the] Palestinian Authority.'

"The Israel lobby itself is divided into Jewish and Christian wings. Wolfowitz and Feith have close ties to the Jewish-American Israel lobby. Wolfowitz, who has relatives in Israel, has served as the Bush administration's liaison to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

"Feith was given an award by the Zionist Organisation of America, citing him as a "pro-Israel activist". While out of power in the Clinton years, Feith collaborating with Perle, co-authored for Likud a policy paper that advised the Israeli government to end the Oslo peace process, reoccupy the [Palestinian] territories and crush Yasser Arafat's government."

It was Cheney who positioned these dangerous hard-liners including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby to counter Secretary of State Powell and others. They took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience and Southern Christian fundamentalism which admires macho Israeli soldiers and is fervently Christian-Zionist.

In the service of Israel, Wolfowitz and others in the Project for the New American Century urged the invasion of Iraq throughout the Clinton years. In signed public letters, they called o­n the US to invade and occupy Iraq, to bomb Hezbollah bases in Lebanon and to threaten states such as Syria and Iran with US attacks.

If we're effectively to struggle against this dangerous 'new world order', we must know well the nature of the beast.

Ahmad Azam Abdul Rahman

President, Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia

Alijah Gordon

Chairperson/Trustee, MSRI/Sponsorship of Palestinian Children

Hishamudin Ubaidulla

Chairperson, MSRI/'Deir Yassin Remembered' Committee