[IWAR] ISLAM Free Arab Voice

From: Michael Wilson (MWILSON/0005514706at_private)
Date: Thu Dec 18 1997 - 09:24:39 PST

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    Consider the sourcing and intent before you make comments, please. --MW
    
    From: "The Free Arab Voice" <tfatahat_private>
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.algeria,soc.culture.arabic,soc.culture.egyptian,
    soc.culture.iraq,soc.culture.jordan,soc.culture.lebanon
    Subject: U.S. Policy from Failure to Failure
    Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 01:00:18 -0800
    NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.37.50.111
    
                                   December 16, 1997
            The *FREE ARAB VOICE*
            (Your Voice in a World where the United Nations, Steel, and Fire
    have Turned Justice Mute)
    In this issue of the Free Arab Voice we present:
    1) U.S. Mideast Policy from Failure to Failure: An Analysis of the
    Strategic Loopholes in the U.S. Policy in the Middle East
     by Munir Shafeeq
    
    2)A Statement on the Execution of Four Jordanians in Iraq and the
    Whipping of Fourteen Women in Sudan   by the Free Arab Voice
    
    3)The Story of the non-Semitic Jews: A Historical Perspective on the
    Lack of Connection between Western Jews and Palestine
     by Tawfic Abdul-Fattah
    
    4)AL-AMARIYAH: Thoughts on the Murder of Hundreds of Innocent Iraqi
    Civilians by an Allied Smart Bomb Dropped on that Bomb Shelter    during
    the Gulf War By E.Wasfi
    
    5) Action Alert: A Petition Center on Iraq and other Issues - a New
    Website by the Free Arab Voice
    #########################################################
    For back issues of the Free Arab Voice and relevant articles, please go
    to:
            *AL-MOHARER AL-AUSTRALI* (Arabic/English)
     http://www.ozemail.com.au/~fouad/favoice.htm
     http://www.eisa.net.au/~fouad/
    #########################################################
    1) U.S. Mideast Policy from Failure to Failure   by Munir Shafeeq
       ===========================================
    There's an Arab and international near-consensus holding the U.S.
    government as first culprit for the breakdown that has beset the 'peace
    process' recently.
    
    Total bias by the Clinton administration in favor of Israeli policies
    under both the Labor and the Likud governments left it semi-isolated on
    the official Arab level.  Other great powers, especially France and
    Russia, seized the opening to play ever-growing roles in the very region
    that U.S. foreign policy always wanted to set apart solely by and for
    itself.
    
    But recent developments have shockingly demonstrated that even when the
    U.S. throws all of its weight behind it, a mideast settlement purely on
    Israeli terms is NOT a feasible proposition.
    Moreover, recent developments have shown that the American role in the
    region has begun to shrink off, and that U.S. prestige has begun to
    break down.
    
    Three fine examples of recent American foreign policies blunders in the
    region illustrate the point:
    First there's the dismal lack of success of the State Department in
    harnessing meaningful official Arab participation in Ad-Doha's regional
    economic conference.  Instead, all it got from the larger Arab states
    like Saudi Arabia, and especially from Egypt and Morocco, was a big NO.
    
    Yet that only made Albright stand shaking behind the podium in Ad-Doha
    without finding anything to say except blazing Iraq!  And that was an
    act bereft of courtesy vis-a-vis the Qatari hosts as well as the few
    other Arab delegations participating in the convention.  Then very
    shortly after her speech, Albright deserted the convention which she had
    before braced herself to lead.
    
    The second foreign policy failure was the collective official Arab
    refusal last month to partake in the U.S. administration's plan to deal
    Iraq a devastating military blow.. Subsequently U.S. diplomacy retreated
    before and grudgingly accepted a Russian initiative to resolve the
    festering crisis with Iraq.  That was a retreat that can't be diluted by
    the fact that the [Russian] initiative incorporated the American
    condition of a full return of U.N. inspectors to work, because the U.S.
    really wanted to resolve the crisis differently, i.e., by force with
    official Arab blessing.  Neither does it make the U.S. happy to see
    Russian diplomacy snatch the initiative, or for Russia and France to set
    the Iraqi issue on a different track from that which was previously
    imposed by the governments of the U.S. and the U.K.
    
    But the third foreign policy blunder is perhaps the cruelest.  It stems
    from the extraordinary success of the Islamic Summit in Tehran, Iran,
    regarding both the resolutions adopted and the reconciliations, or dual
    agreements, that took place behind the scenes there.  That failure was
    further highlighted by the stark contrast between the relative positions
    of the U.S. administration and the Iranian leadership in the week during
    which the summit took place: The U.S. administration seemed deprived of
    its closest allies in the Islamic world while fifty-four Islamic states
    crowded all around Iran in an atmosphere of friendship.
    
    Thus the success of the Islamic Summit in Tehran simply put the U.S.
    administration in an unenviable position as it lost the initiative while
    the momentum began to turn against it.  Additionally, that may carry the
    probable consequence of encouraging other hitherto pliant states to
    defend their interests and to seek a more just world order, instead of
    submitting meekly to an unjust Zionist world order that is run by a U.S.
    administration that thrives on arrogance and wallows in double
    standards.  That should be good news even to Iraq as well as Libya,
    Syria, and Sudan.
    
    Undoubtedly the U.S. administration is getting busy right now trying to
    extract lessons from and to contain the consequences of the three
    aforementioned failures.  Several statements made by Clinton a couple of
    weeks ago hinted that these recent U.S. foreign policy failures may be
    attributable to the stalemate in the 'peace process'.  Some analysts
    henceforth interpreted Clinton's statements as indicative of
    dissatisfaction with Netanyahu's policies, thus rendering them their due
    share of blame for the official Arabian scattering away from the
    American line on the Middle East, and for the growing Iranian, Russian,
    and French roles in a traditionally American dominion.
    
    Nevertheless, if we assumed that the logical conclusion of Clinton's
    statements will manifest itself in a serious and credible attempt to
    distance American from Israeli positions, we have to first figure out
    with Clinton how he may pull off such a policy shift while he remains a
    powerless prisoner in the grip of the Zionist lobby in his National
    Security Council, his administration, Congress, and the Media!!  We
    can't either forget the Attorney General and the big file full of
    scandals he's got on the Clintons.
    
    Yet and in spite of all that, if Clinton doesn't make for a significant
    foreign policy change, his administration will continue to leap swiftly
    from one mideast failure to another.
    
    #######################################################
    2) A Statement from the Free Arab Voice on the Execution of Four
    Jordanians in Iraq and the Whipping of Fourteen Women in Sudan:
    Just as much as we should all condemn the siege on Iraq and the
    sanctions on Sudan as inhumane weapons of mass destructions,
    Just as much as we should all support Iraq and Sudan in their struggle
    against the international forces of death and destruction arrayed
    against them,
    
    Just as much as we should all recognize that the U.S. government and
    "Israel" only insincerely toy with the issue of democracy for the sake
    of political expediency,
    
    We should also speak out against the execution of four Jordanians in
    Iraq for petty crimes, and the whipping of fourteen women in Sudan for
    objecting to enlisting high school kids in the war in the South because
    that is simply WRONG.
    
    It is wrong morally as well as politically.  It was wrong not only
    because the residents of Jordan are some of the staunchest supporters of
    Iraq, or because the Sudanese women were punished even though they
    didn't violate any Islamic or secular code, but also because these
    violations gave political ammunition to the proponents of sanctions, to
    those who never flinched as five Jordanians farmers were killed by
    Israeli soldiers in the Jordan valley more than a year ago, and because
    it embarrassed those who always argued for lifting the sanctions.
    
    But it really shouldn't embarrass us! Because we should continue our
    work to lift the criminal sanctions that kill our people with external
    hands while we fight to achieve democracy on the internal front.
    Eventhough death from without is more serious and much more extensive,
    the people have to be free from within if they are to fully mobilize
    against Zionism and the unjust new world order.
    
    That's why we have no choice but to fight on both fronts.
    That is our destiny.
                                        The Free Arab Voice
    #######################################################
    3) The Story of the non-Semitic Jews    by Tawfic Abdul-Fattah
       =================================
    Once upon a time in ancient Khazaria the entire kingdom converted to
    Judaism by decree from the king.
    Arthur Koestler, a Jew born in 1905 in Budapest, writes that
    the Khazars who flourished from the 7th to the 11th century were in
    those bygone days a major political power.
    Their empire extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian and from
    the Caucasus to the Volga. They were located "between two major
    world powers: the Eastern Roman Empire in Byzantium and the
    triumphant followers of Muhammad".
    
    Since the world was then polarized between these two superpowers,
    representing Christianity (western style) and Islam, the Khazar empire
    representing a third force could only maintain its political and
    ideological independence by accepting neither Christianity nor Islam
    "for either choice would have automatically subordinated it to the
    authority of the Roman Emperor or the Caliph of Baghdad."
    
    Not wishing to be dominated by either of the two, the Khazar king
    "embraced the Jewish faith" in AD 740 and ordered his subjects to
    do the same. Judaism thus became the official state religion of the
    Khazars.
    
    Obviously the king's motives in adopting Judaism were purely political.
    "The bulk of modern Jewry is not of Palestinian, but of Caucasian
    origin", Koestler writes. "Their ancestors came not from the Jordan but
    from the Volga, not from Canaan but from the Caucasus."  And he
    stresses: "The mainstream of Jewish migrations did not flow from the
    Mediterranean across France and Germany to the east and then back again.
    The stream moved in a consistently western direction, from the Caucasus,
    from the Ukraine into Poland and thence into Central Europe".
    
    While Jews of different origin also contributed to the existing Jewish
    world community, "the main bulk originated from the Khazar country" in
    the Ex-Soviet Union.
    
    Based on his research which was summed in his book "The Thirteenth
    Tribe", Koestler refutes the notion of a Jewish "race" stating that most
    Jews of the contemporary world did not come from Palestine and are not
    even of Semitic origin. In fact, his research shows that most Jews
    originated in what today is the Ex-USSR. And that a group of people
    there became Jews through conversion, on the orders of their king.
    People under Khazar dominion included the Bulgars, Burtas, Ghuzz,
    Magyars (Hungarians), the Gothic and Greek colonies of the Crimea,
    and the Slavonic tribes in the northwestern woodland.
    
    According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, in the 16th century Jews
    numbered about one million. Koestler quotes scholars documenting that at
    the time "the majority of those who professed the Judaic faith were
    Khazars."
    
    As Koestler points out, Jews of our times fall into two main
    divisions: Sephardim and Ashkena-zim.
    The Sephardim, the descendants of the Jews who had lived in Spain until
    their expulsion, with the Muslims, at the end of the 15th
    century, and who later settled in the countries bordering on the
    Mediterranean, spoke a Spanish-Hebrew dialect, Ladino. In the 1960s, the
    Sephardim numbered about 500,000.
    
    The Ashkenazim at the same period were about 11 million. Thus, "in
    common parlance, Jew is practically synonymous with Ashkenazi Jew".
    However, Koestler adds, the term Ashkenazim is misleading because it is
    generally applied to Germany, thus contributing to the legend that
    modern Jewry originated on the Rhine. There is, however, no other term
    to refer to the non-Sephardic majority of contemporary Jewry, which came
    after conversion to Judaism from the Khazar country.
    
    After the destruction of their empire (in the 12th or 13th century), the
    Jewish Khazars migrated into those regions of Eastern Europe, mainly
    Russia and Poland, where at the dawn of the modern age the greatest
    concentrations of Jews were found. It is "well documented", Koestler
    writes, that the numerically and socially dominant element
    in the Jewish population of Hungary during the Middle Ages was of Khazar
    origin.
    
    An Israeli scholar, A. N. Poliak, a Tel Aviv University professor of
    medieval Jewish history quoted by Koestler, states that the descendants
    of Khazar Jews, "those who stayed where they were (in Khazaria), those
    who emigrated to the United States and to other countries, and those who
    went to Israel--constitute now the large majority of world Jewry."
    Since Israel's support among millions of American Christians is
    founded on a concept that God had bequeathed territory to a biblical
    "tribe" of Oriental Middle Eastern Jews, it becomes ironic to learn
    from Koestler's research, that most Jews today are neither hereditary
    natives from the "holy land" nor any other eastern tribe.
    
    Koestler, who originally published the Thirteenth Tribe in 1976, noted
    that the story of the Khazar empire "begins to look like the most cruel
    hoax history has ever perpetrated." The Palestinians, imprisoned and
    brutalized by this Zionist "hoax" and showered by ink based resolutions,
    the likes of UN 194, would be the first to agree.
    
    In sight of these findings, one might naively infer that the only
    thing standing between the Palestinians and their rightful land
    is nothing but a Rabbi waiting to bless them with his faith,
    hence making them worthy of their homes.
    
    Shall we then say, Mazeltov, or shall we concur that the Palestinian,
    under the eyes of his father, is being once more. . . . Crucified !
    P.S. The book "The Thirteenth Tribe has been difficult to find. It
    disappeared from many library shelves. A check at the Library of
    Congress reveals that the most prestigious library in the U.S had one
    reading copy.  That one copy, however, is "missing from the shelf" :)
    [Arthur Koestler (1905-83)is Hungarian-born British author].
    ########################################################
    4)AL-AMARIYAH: Thoughts on the Murder of Hundreds of Iraqi Civilians
    by Allied Bombs during the Gulf War in Al-Amariyah Bomb Shelter
      by  E. Wasfi
    
    The acrid smell of burning flesh
    Rises above the smoking ruins;
    A child once laughed no longer cries,
    The shelter she sought is now her grave.
    "This Bud's for you," the pilot yelled,
    And clicked the button dropping the bomb;
    The crisscross target in his sight,
    A surgical strike, then head for home.
    There are no pictures in the news
    To tell the story of this holocaust;
    Only reports of collateral damage
    And sanctions in place to finish the job.
    ##########################################################
    5) Action Alert: A Petition Center for Iraq and Other Issues.
    The Free Arab Voice will soon launch its new website which will have a
    special section for petitions and action alerts on Iraq and other Arab
    causes.
    
    The idea is to post any petition or action alert there that serves the
    purpose of lifting the sanctions on Iraq so those interested can visit
    the site and sign or join the action announced.
    The new FAV website will be open to all individuals and groups who want
    to work sincerely for Palestinian, Iraqi, or other Arab causes.
    If you or your group are interested, please contact the FAV's webmaster
    Tawfic Abdul-Fattah:  tfatahat_private
    We believe in collective effort and cooperation, and will be open to
    suggestions.
    
    If you want to visit the site which is still under construction, please
    go to www.mindspring.com/~fav
    #########################################################
    The Free Arab Voice welcomes your comments and accepts submissions at
    the email addresses below and above. We can help you publicize your
    events and activities (on the house) if you support Arab and Palestinian
    causes.
    You can also use those same email addresses if you wish us to quit
    sending our messages to you.
    Also email us if interested in receiving back issues of the Free Arab
    Voice, such as the Special Issue on Iraq, the Special Issue on Syria,
    the Issue on the Jerusalem Bombing, or the Declaration of Principles
    (DOP)...
    Editor: Ibrahim Alloush     alloushat_private
    Website: Tawfic Abdul-Fattah  tfatahat_private
    



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