From: Arutz-7 Editor <editor7@virtual.co.il>
To: arutz-7@ploni.virtual.co.il, arutz7-b@ploni.virtual.co.il
Subject: Arutz-7 News: Thursday, July 2, 1998
Arutz Sheva News Service
<http://www.a7.org>
Thursday, July 2, 1998 / Tammuz 8, 5758
------------------------------------------------
Delivered Daily via Email, Sunday thru Friday
--- See below for subscription instructions ---
TODAY'S HEADLINES:
1. NATIONAL TV PERSONALITY PROTESTS PRESS SILENCE ON ARUTZ-7
2. PRAYER FOR NETANYAHU
1. NATIONAL TV PERSONALITY PROTESTS PRESS SILENCE ON ARUTZ-7
Veteran television and radio commentator Yaakov Achimeir called Arutz-7
today in the framework of the telethon (see below), and made the following
public comments: "I would like to express my astonishment, mixed with
protest, at the fact that I have not seen my journalist colleagues raising
an eyebrow while broadcasters and journalists of Arutz-7 are brought for
police investigation. I think that everything must be done within the
framework of the law, but at least the journalists should be asking,
'What's going on here?', or [calling for a] speedy end to the story,
expressing a hope that the story should end and that a legal solution
should be found for Arutz-7. I can assume that if a different ideological
body was at issue, then it is very likely that the Journalists Association,
of which I a dues-paying member, would have sounded some sort of
statement... It is not conceivable that all the thousands of members would
sit by quietly... I did not turn to the organization, but I am now
speaking publicly, and maybe some of them are hearing me now, and maybe
they will ask themselves what is this silence of the National Journalists
Association... I hear now that some of the Arutz-7 staff are members of the
association, and this is even more astonishing. And I know that Arutz-7
pays royalties to the musicians of Israel for their music, and they too are
silent?! This means that they are only willing to accept money from
Arutz-7, but not willing to say a word of encouragement when the station
goes through hard times?!..."
2. PRAYER FOR NETANYAHU
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi of Safed, said that in response to many
who asked how they could help Prime Minister Netanyahu stand firm under the
pressures he faces, he [Rabbi Eliyahu] composed the following prayer. He
read it aloud on Arutz-7's news hour today, and said that he recited it
this morning when opening the Holy Ark prior to the public reading of the
Torah scroll:
May it be Thy will, our G-d and the G-d of our fathers, to strengthen the
Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, and grant him wisdom and
understanding to preserve the unity of the Nation of Israel and the
integrity of the Land of Israel, and grant him strength and fortitude to
withstand the pressures from within and without, and to act on behalf of
Israel for good and for blessing. May it thus be Thy will, Amen.
***********************************************************************
Friday, July 3, 1998 9 Tammuz 5758
Jerusalem Post - Internet Edition
PM
calls on Palestinians to stop making threats
By
HERB KEINON
JERUSALEM
(July 3) - Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu
called on the Palestinians to stop
making
threats yesterday, a day after Palestinian
Authority
head Yasser Arafat said that "the
patience
of the Palestinian leadership and the
Palestinian
people has run out."
In
statements to the press after meeting with
Canadian
Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs
Stephane
Dion, Netanyahu said that "all these
threats
- this is not an acceptable method to us.
We
are engaged in negotiations, trying to make
progress,
and they are making constant threats:
'if
we do not get what we want, we will resort to
violence.'"
Netanyahu
said this behavior is "precisely the
opposite
of peace, and contravenes the Oslo
Accords.
What are we demanding that he [Arafat]
honor?"
Netanyahu asked. "The Oslo Accords, as he
promised.
From our perspective, these are not
wonderful
agreements, but we are committed to them
-
and he must be as well."
Despite
the problems in the negotiations, contacts
with
the Palestinians are continuing, Netanyahu
said.
"The
problem is not the mechanism of the contacts,
the
problem is their substance," he said.
The
prime minister said that an agreement with the
Palestinians
can be reached "very quickly," as
soon
as the Palestinians fulfill their commitments
under
the Oslo Accords.
"We
do not want promises," he said, "We want the
fulfillment
of commitments - timetables,
implementation
and a supervision mechanism."
Regarding
the recent dispute with President Ezer
Weizman,
Netanyahu said that "I think that, for
the
good of the country, it is important for the
president
and prime minister of the state of
Israel
to settle all issues on the agenda between
them
and certainly not through public dispute."
***********************************************************************
To: (IL/ROOT &
BRANCH ASSOCIATION, LTD.), rb@rb.org.il
From: "Root & Branch
Association, Ltd."<rbranch@netvision.net.il>
Subject: Islam/Palazzi: "NO AUTHENTIC
THEOLOGICAL REASON
WHY
MOSLEMS SHOULD NOT RECOGNIZE THE STATE OF
ISRAEL
- AM YISRAEL CHAI!"
"NO AUTHENTIC THEOLOGICAL REASON WHY MOSLEMS SHOULD NOT
RECOGNIZE THE STATE OF ISRAEL - AM YISROEL CHAI!"
by Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi
JERUSALEM, July 2, 1998, Root & Branch: From an Islamic point of
view, is there any fundamental reason which prohibits Moslems from
recognizing Israel as a friendly State?
I realize that a negative answer to the above question is taken for
granted by popular opinion. My approach, however, is not based on
popular opinion or the current political situation, but on a
theological analysis of authentic Islamic sources.
Viewing the Jewish return to Israel as a Western invasion and Zionists
as recent colonizers is new. It has no basis in authentic Islamic
faith. According to the Koran, no person, people or religious
community can claim a permanent right of possession over any
territory. The Earth belongs exclusively to G-d, and He is free to
entrust sovereignty over land to whomever He likes for whatever time
period that He chooses.
"Say: 'O God, King of the kingdom (1), Thou givest the kingdom to whom
Thou pleasest, and Thou strippest off the kingdom from whom Thou
pleasest; Thou endowest with honour whom Thou pleasest, and Thou
bringest low whom Thou pleasest: all the best is in Thy hand. Verily,
Thou hast power over all things.'"(2) (Koran 3:26)
>From the above Koranic verse we deduce a basic principle of the
Monotheistic philosophy of history: G-d chooses as He likes in the relationship
between peoples and countries. Sometimes He gives a land to a people,
and sometimes He takes His possession back and gives it to another
people. In general, we can say that He gives as a reward for
faithfulness and takes back as a punishment for wickedness, but this
rule does not permit us to say that God's ways are always plain and
clear to our eyes, since His secrets are inaccessible to the human
intellect.
Using Islam as a basis for preventing Arabs from recognizing any
sovereign right of Jews over the Land of Israel is new. Such beliefs
are not found in classical Islamic sources. Concluding that
anti-Zionism is the logical outgrowth of Islamic faith is wrong. This
conclusion represents the false transformation of Islam from a
religion into a secularized ideology.
Such a false transformation of Islam was in fact made by the late
Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini. He is the one person most
responsible, both morally and materially, for the repeated Arab
defeats in their conflict with the Jews in Israel. Husseni not only
incited Arabs against Jews. He also encouraged the torture and murder
of all Arabs who correctly understood that Arab cooperation with Jews
was a precious opportunity for the development of the Land of Israel.
Husseini ended his woeful life by putting his perverted religious
teachings at the service of the evil and pagan Nazis.
After Husseini came Jamal al-Din 'Abd al-Nasser. Nasser based his
policy on Pan-Arabism, hatred and contempt for Jews, and an alliance
with the atheistic Soviet Union. Nasser's terrible choices were
critical factors in maintaining Arab backwardness. Fortunately, most
of Nasser's mistakes were afterward corrected by the martyr Anwar
Sadat. (3)
After the defeat of Nasserianism, Islamic fundamentalist movements
made anti-Zionism the primary feature of their propaganda. They
presented the negation of any Jewish rights to the Land of Israel as
rooted in authentic Islam and derived from authentic Islamic religious
principles.
THE LAND OF ISRAEL IN KORANIC EXEGESIS
The fundamentalist Moslem program to use Islam as an instrument for
political warfare against Jews finds a major obstacle in the Koran
itself. Both the Bible and the Koran state quite clearly that the
right of the Israelites to the Land of Israel does not depend on
conquest and colonization. This right flows from the will of almighty
G-d Himself.
Both the Jewish and Islamic Scriptures teach that G-d, through His
chosen servant Moses, decided to free the offspring of Jacob from
slavery in Egypt and to constitute them as heirs of the Promised Land.
Whoever claims that Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel is
something new and rooted in human politics denies divine revelation
and divine prophecy as explicitly expressed in our Holy Books (the
Bible and Koran).
The Koran relates the words by which Moses ordered the Israelites to
conquer the Land:
"And [remember] when Moses said to his people: 'O my people, call in
remembrance the favour of G-d unto you, when he produced prophets
among you, made you kings, and gave to you what He had not given to
any other among the peoples. O my people, enter the Holy Land which
G-d has assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then
will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin.'" (4) (Koran 5:20-21)
Moreover - and those who try to use Islam as a weapon against Israel
always conveniently ignore this point - the Holy Koran explicitly
refers to the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel before the Last
Judgment - where it says:
"And thereafter We [Allah] said to the Children of Israel: 'Dwell
securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to
pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd.'" (5) (Koran
17:104)
Therefore, from an Islamic point of view, there is NO fundamental
reason which prohibits Moslems from recognizing Israel as a friendly
State.
Am Yisroel Chai!
NOTES
1. The original Arabic word we translated as "kingdom" is mulk, from a
Semitic root m-l-k, that is common to both Arabic and Hebrew.
According to Islamic theological terminology, the three synonyms for
"kingdom" are mulk, malakūt and jabarūt. They refer respectively to
the physical, psychical and spiritual levels of existence. Of course,
G-d can be called King of all of them; if here only mulk is quoted, it
depends on the fact that this verse directly concerns the earthly
domain. To denote a kingdom in the secular and political sense, Arabic
commonly uses another derived form, that is mamlakah.
2. Koran 3:26. For typographical reasons, it is not possible to
reproduce here the original Arabic text of the Koran, which must
nevertheless be understood as quoted. As well here as in other Koranic
quotations, the English translation of the meaning of Koranic words
from Arabic is my own, but based on the most authoritative English
commentaries, such as M. Marmaduke Pickthall's "The Meaning of The
Glorious Koran" (Beirut 1973), 'A. Yūsuf 'Ali, "The Holy Koran - Text,
Translation and Commentary" (Maryland 1983) and A. 'A. Maududi "The
Holy Koran - Text, Translation and Brief Notes" (Lahore 1986).
3. In using the term "martyr" I do not simply refer to one who lost
his life for a good cause. I give a precise translation of the Arabic
word "shahid," which identifies a "martyr" in the strictly religious
sense; that is to say, someone who spent his life serving the cause of
G-d. Since making peace with former enemies is an explicit Koranic
order (see Koran 8:61), and since, according to Islam, Peace is G-d
Himself, any believer who is killed because of his search for Peace
must be understood as a religious martyr. The same considerations
clearly apply to Yitzhak Rabin.
4. Koran 5:20-21 (emphasis added).
5. Koran 17:104 (emphasis added).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi of Rome, Italy, is Moslem Co-Chairman of the
Root & Branch Association's Islam-Israel Fellowship, which encourages
a positive Moslem attitude towards Jews and Israel based on the
authentic teachings of Mohammed as revealed by the Koran and Hadith
(Islamic oral tradition). Dr. Asher Eder of Jerusalem, Israel, is the
Jewish Co-Chairman of the Islam-Israel Fellowship.
Prof. Palazzi is also Secretary General of the Italian Muslim
Association and an Imam (spiritual teacher) of the Italian Islamic
Community. He holds a Ph.D in Islamic Sciences by decreee of the
Grand Mufti of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
***********************************************************************