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--------------------------------------------
{Please scroll down to end for translation of
important editorial in Arabic
on Abu Mazen's surrender to Sharon. Translated by
Br. Eric Mueller.}
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hamas condemns Abbas' speech as "treasonous,":
says won't talk to him unless
he recants remarks
by Khalid Amayreh
Occupied Jerusalem: 7 June, 2003
(IAP News)
Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups
have castigated PA Prime
Minister Mahmoud Abbas for his "treasonous
speech" during last week's
Israeli-Palestinian
summit in the Jordanian city
of Aqaba last week.
"His speech shocked all of us, he spoke about
Jewish
suffering and he
labeled our resistance to Israeli Nazism as
terror, but he didn't utter a single
word about Israel's rampage of
murder
and
terror
against defenseless men, women
and children," said Abdul Aziz al Rantisi, Hamas
spokesman in Gaza.
Rantsi charged that Abbas "effectively
sacrificed all Palestinian rights"
for the sake of "appeasing the Americans and
obtaining a certificate of good
conduct from the
Bush
Administration."
He pointed out that Hamas wouldn't resume talks
with the Abbas government
until he recanted the content of his speech.
On Friday, tens of thousands of Palestinians
demonstrated throughout Gaza to
protest "the treasonous speech" of the
Palestinian premier.
The protesters carried placards reading "our
struggle against the Nazi
Israeli occupation is not terror."
Another sign read "Abbas, resign now, we don't
want you anymore."
Fatah, the Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front
for the Liberation of
Palestine reacted similarly to Abbas' speech but
called for a "quiet dialogue" with
the Palestinian government.
"We certainly don't agree with what he (Abbas)
said in Aqaba; nontheless,
we believe the Palestinian movements and factions
should continue the dialogue
with the government. But the government will have
to clarify the content of
the speech to the people."
PA Information Minister Nabil Amre said Abbas was
eager to resume talks with
Hamas and clarify to them his statements in
Aqaba.
Amre, who was speaking during an interview with
the Jazeera television
Saturday, said he hoped the "brothers in Hamas
will refrain from convulsive remarks
and instead indulge in a quiet dialogue with the
government."
Meanwhile, Palestinian sources in Gaza reported
that representatives of the
various resistance and political groups in Gaza
would meet Saturday to reach a
common stance on the dialogue with the Abbas
government.
_______________________________________
Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP)
10661 South Roberts Rd, Suite 202 Palos Hills, IL
60465
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Letters
Parvezis Hit Hard
[Ref: to Parwez's "Persian Conspiracy" Theory on
Hadith.]
Ma'sha Allah, I loved this scholarly reply to the
blind followers of Parvez.
Jazakallah.
Iqbal Y. Khan, Toronto,
Canada
----------------------------------------------------------
Really, O'Reilly!
[From Seemi Dallenbach, San Francisco.]
"And I said on my program, if, if the Americans
go in and overthrow Saddam
Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will
apologize to the nation, and I
will not trust the Bush Administration again."
---Fox News's
Bill O'Reilly, on
Good Morning America, March 18
----------------------------------------
For overseas readers: Bill O'Really is a staunch
supporter of the Bush
administration and has his own popular TV
program.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPEAKING OUT FOR
IMAM JAMIL AL-AMIN
[From
Sis. Motisola M. Abdallah,
Atlanta]
Keep the name of Imam Jamil Al-Amin and other
Political Prisoners name before
the system. We will not go away.
Each first Thursday of the month at 10 am the
Georgia Department of
Corrections Board meets. This is the entire
governing body for the entire prison and
corrections system in Georgia. On last Thursday,
June 5th, Brother Bilal Sunni
Ali, lifetime Islamic and community activist,
Coordinator for the Atlanta
International Support Committee for Imam Jamil
Al-Amin and progressive talk show
host and myself were in attendance.
Before each session begins the chairman of the
board extends an invitation
for any one who wishes to introduce themselves.
Br. Bilal, who has attended
these board meetings before, opened with a brief
statement that political prisoner
Imam Jamil Al-Amin's religious rights were being
violated and he was being
held on bogus charges.
To the further annoyance of these board members,
I followed with a statement
that political prisoner Imam Jamil is unfairly
locked down 23/7 and he is not
on death row.
The board is under no obligation to respond.
However, this is an excellent
way of keeping the name of Imam Jamil Al-Amin and
other political prisoner's
right in their faces. We will not go away.
For those of you who are activist for political
prisoners, you may find out
when your state board of corrections meet and
perhaps attend these sessions.
Try entering Department of Corrections with your
state's name on the web as a
start for information about these meetings. Each
state may have different
sessions; however in Georgia one has the right to
make a brief statement at these
meetings.
You may also obtain relevant information as to
your state's prison
population, budgets, location of private prisons,
other statistics and information as
to how these board members are elected. The state
of Georgia Corrections Board
members is comprised of 75% former or retired
sheriffs who are appointed by
the Governor and confirmed by the senate.
At the end of the board meeting, a presentation
was made to the Georgia
Department Board of Corrections of a bouquet of
flowers from the American Police
Hall of Fame Association.
How quaint and intimate these devils be.
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Even by Secularist Standards, Abu Mazen Sold out
to Sharon
Here is a translation of the lead editorial from
the
London-based independent Arabic daily newspaper
"al-Quds al-Arabi"
written by its editor, a
former
member of the Palestine National Council Abd
al-Bari
Atwan. I believe he does a good job of outlining
what
is so very bad about the recent Aqaba and Sharm
ash-Shaykh summits, the "Road Map" that the
US
and
Zionists
are pushing and the resultant US-Zionist
domination of the Arab and indeed Islamic world.
This is important for us to be aware of because
right
now even some supposed "Palestine supporters" are
going around urging support of this atrocious
"Road
Map."
Wa-s-salam!
Eric Mueller
Texas
---------------------------------
Al-Quds al-Arabi, London, Thursday 5 June 2003.
Sorry, Abu Mazen, but here we part.
By Abd al-Bari Atwan.
The most dangerous thing about the Sharm
ash-Shaykh
and al-Aqabah summits, held last Tuesday and
Wednesday, was the fact that both were so
blatantly
focused on "Arab terrorism" that it was obscene.
All
participating parties pledged to fight it
mercilessly.
Yet we heard not a word, not even in passing,
about
"Israeli" terrorism, which has taken the lives of
more
than three thousand Arab human beings in less
than two
years, has destroyed thousands of homes, and
brought
injury to at least seven thousand wounded
victims.
We listened to all the speeches and remarks of
the
Arabs in the Sharm ash-Shaykh summit in the hopes
of
hearing at least some timid condemnation of this
terrorism. We failed to find any. What we did
find,
instead was an exaggerated zeal on their parts
for the
security, stability, and prosperity of "Israel."
We expected Mr. Mahmud Abbas Abu Mazen, the
Palestinian leader crowned by the Americans and
accepted by the Arab leaders at Sharm ash-Shaykh,
to
correct this error in the speech he delivered
before
the world in the tripartite Aqabah summit. But
his
speech was like those of the khawajas [i.e.,
"westerners and their lackeys", trans.]– he
denounced
Palestinian terror and declared it to be in
violation
of our religious and moral traditions. He
pledged to
crack down on it resolutely and mercilessly. It
seemed as if he was talking about some other
religion,
some other moral values with which we are not
familiar.
Mr. Abu Mazen spoke about the sufferings of the
Palestinians and about the agonies of the
"Israelis,"
indeed, he was more compassionate and sympathetic
with
the latter. We know about the sufferings of the
Palestinians – and we also know what the source
of
those sufferings is – but we know nothing about
any
"Israeli" agonies, unless those are the agonies
that
result from being tired of killing, razing,
destroying, expropriating land, butchering
children,
and murdering the innocent.
The Aqabah summit, in our estimation, is much
more
dangerous than the two Camp David summits – the
first
with Sadat, Begin, and Carter; and the second
with
Arafat, Barak and Clinton. It is more dangerous
than
the Oslo Agreements and all the subsequent
meetings
and summits in Sharm ash-Shaykh or the White
House.
The following points explain why:
First. The American President George Bush said
during
his address at the Aqabah Summit that he supports
and
endorses the security and stability of the
"Jewish
State." This in itself amounts to America’s
adoption
of the positions of Sharon and the entire
extremist
"Israeli" right wing.
The recognition of "Israel" as a Jewish state
means,
in legal terms, that this is a state for the Jews
only, and that it has no room for others in it.
That
is, that the million Arab "Israelis" currently
living
in Galilee, the Triangle, and the Naqab have no
right
to remain there, just as they have no right to
demand
equality. They are Arab Christians and Arab
Muslims,
so they must move to the Palestinian state that
will
be set up to absorb them.
Second, this racist designation of the Jewish
state
signifies the cancellation in practice of the
right of
return for more than six million Palestinians.
The
right of return to this Jewish state has become
limited to the Jewish "race" exclusively, and the
Palestinian refugees are not Jews.
Third. The Road Map that the Sharm ash-Shaykh
and
Aqabah summits were brought together to adopt and
implement is the product of four parties: the
United
Nations, Europe, Russia, and the United States.
It is
noteworthy that none of the three other parties
were
invited to these two summit meetings. The
American
Administration alone took it upon itself to
implement
the Road Map; it alone decided that it would send
exclusively American observers to supervise its
practical application.
Fourth. We didn't hear the word Jerusalem in any
of
the speeches by the Arab leaders in the Sharm
ash-Shaykh Summit, nor in the address of
President
Bush. Mr. Abu Mazen absolutely never addressed
that
topic in his speech, as if this word were some
"infamy
of Satan’s handiwork."
[al-Qur'an 5:90]
Similarly we
heard not a word about the right of return, which
means that we are looking at an enormous
conspiracy
aimed at knocking out these two fundamental
pillars of
legitimate Palestinian rights.
Fifth. In his speech Mr. Abu Mazen pledged that
he
would act against incitement of violence and
hate, and
that he would take measures to guarantee that no
incitement would arise out of Palestinian
institutions. This means, very simply, that any
person who advocates the intifada is a terrorist
inciting to violence, and every writer who
mentions
the right of Palestinians to return and who
affirms
that "Israel" was established on the land of the
Palestinian people is a hate monger.
It follows from what Mr. Abu Mazen said, that we
are
supposed to praise "Israeli" "generosity,"
celebrate
the "Israeli" model of "tolerance and justice,"
and
denounce any Arab or European who regards Sharon
as a
terrorist. We must affirm instead that he is a
man of
peace who never, ever committed any massacres.
Terrorists and racists are only to be found among
the
Palestinians, members of Hamas, the
Islamic Jihad,
and
the "extremist" military organizations like the
Popular Front and the Democratic Front. They
deserve
to be killed, wiped out, because they encourage
"hate
and violence" and the elimination of the
"civilized,
democratic state of 'Israel,'" the gift of
America and
the West to the backward Arab East.
We now are face to face with a catastrophe. The
countdown to Palestinian internal strife and
civil war
has begun. Abu Mazen is today talking to Hamas
and
the Jihad, asking for a cease fire, in order to
gain
time and to delay until the Palestinian Security
Forces, now being trained by experts from the C.
I. A.
in special camps in Jericho, are ready for this
task.
Abu Mazen pledged to disarm the resistance and to
put
an end to the "militarization of the intifada."
He
considers the weapons of the Palestinian Security
Forces to be the only legitimate weapons in
Palestinian hands. Our experience tells us that
the
fighters of Hamas, the Jihad, and the Martyrs of
al-Aqsa Brigades will never voluntarily hand over
their weapons. Catastrophe, therefore, is
coming.
Yet it is to be a magical type of catastrophe – a
Palestinian catastrophe, naturally – but it is to
be
salvation for the "Israelis." Sharon failed to
stop
the intifada with all the repression, terror, and
bloodiness he had at his command. So now he is
entrusting the Palestinians themselves with that
task,
and calling on the leader of the most powerful
state
on earth to witness the arrangement.
We wish to tell Mr. Abu Mazen that we stick by
the
right to return, and to all the territory of
Palestine. We, and with us the vast majority of
the
Palestinian people, are clinging to Jerusalem as
the
capital of the Palestinian state. We will
continue
our incitement for the return of these rights in
toto,
and we will never shower the occupier with
flowers.
We will never dance the dabkah or sing our
folksongs
in celebration over each new Jewish settlement
they
set up or expand. We will plant the values of
liberation in the minds and hearts of our
children in
the refugee camps disbursed in exile, reminding
them
to hold fast to their right to return to Yaffa,
Haifa,
Akka, Safad, al-Majdal, Tarshiha, Asdud, Hamamah,
ar-Ramleh, and Bir as-Saba'.
It causes us no harm if we are accused of
incitement
or even of terrorism. The French were not
terrorists
when they resisted the Nazis, and the Americans
were
not terrorists when they took up arms against the
British colonialists.
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2003-06-10 Tue 19:08ct