From : Jasem Awadi <jasem960@yahoo.com>
Sent : Thursday, August 19, 2004 3:29 AM
To : arabtimesnewspaper@hotmail.com
Subject : Fouad Al-Hashem


I am Kuwaiti (bedoon) but live in the US for many years. I write in English because I do not have Arabic computer. I read the article of Mr. Zuhair Jabr about Fouad Al-Hashem, and I support most of his comments.

I know Fouad Al-Hashem and his family since I was a boy. I can tell you that the story about his sister is true. Also, his brother Salah (a lawyer) was well known in the neighbourhood as "Khaneeth Al-Fereej" because many older boys used to do him a lot. Fouad and Salah actually sued their own mother to get more money after their father died.

More important is that Fouad Al-Hashem is very close with the US embassy in Kuwait and gets certain instructions on what to write about especially regarding the support of US policies in the Middle East.

From : virgin moon <virgin191@yahoo.com>
Sent : Friday, June 11, 2004 11:36 AM
To : arabtimesnewspaper@hotmail.com
Subject : MR.Osama fawzi..with all of respect

Dear mr.Osama Fawzi........
first I want to say thank you about your great ideas about our theaves leaders, In fact you help so many people to know with wich animals leaders we live!
MR. Osama....I wrote to ARABTIMES -the best in the world- a letter about this thing wich called AL-QATHAFI and I cant find it on ARABTIMES.
It was first...an other thing...I want to ask you If I can buy the green book by AL-QATHAFI...although I know that he & his book coast nothing...Anyway I like to see how can this animal write !!
Lastly... I hope to be a friend for ARABTIMES ,and my best wishes for you and all of work in ARABTIMES..
best regards........
VIRGIN..

From : hamed hassan <hhamhassan@hotmail.com>
Sent : Saturday, May 1, 2004 10:54 AM
To : <arabtimesnewspaper@hotmail.com>
Subject : The US values

Sir:
Few days ago I was in my way to write you about how important for the united states to prove its bright face in Irag. That is to convince the major silant block in middle east countries as a liberation and not occupation force. However, what I heared and saw now on the international televisions and news was terrible and no one accept it, including those who are looking for the what so called "change" in the political systems and freedom etc...

Now let us ask ourselves, what is the purpose for the iraq occupation if the americans themselves reappoint the eliminated regime once again? Unfortunately, we do not get any answer from any official local newspaper and I think you do know why?.
Nevertheless, I wish to say for the american people, we do not hate the US but unfortunately the current regime you have destroy the bright image of the US as we all used to see, the freedom and justice.
We served at the united states in research for many years and then we moved back to our country to participate in the development of our sociery and to convey the values we learned from the american people. What is happening now make no one belive us and the real image of the US has become worse and therefore we write this massage to whom it may concern.

Hammed Hassan, Ph.D
hhamhassan@hotmail.com


From : Bahjat Abuhadba <babuhadba1@msn.com>
Sent : Monday, May 31, 2004 4:39 AM
To : arabtimesnewspaper@hotmail.com
Subject : Please Do Not Ignore My E-mail!


Dear Dr Fawzi,
After a busy weekend at my part time job. I found it a good idea to check out your web site that I have been visiting since 1999 when I first got internet access in my home town that is located in Ram Allah county. I remember I would wait until it was 9:00 pm to get a bargain on the high price that the local communication company charges for the line connection. I was still a young teenager that time. I found most of what you write entertaining and interesting. Believe or not, minutes before checking out your web site I was watching a weekend movie on one of the local channels here in Nashville. During the view of the movie, they cut down their normal scheduled programs not to broadcast any useless thing like we see somewhere else, but to warn the counties that will be effected by storms and tornados and to give general information from prevention and dealing with the unusual weather wisely. By the way, at this moment I am writing, I can hear the high thunder sound and the heavy rain. Anyway, after listing to those warnings on TV, I started wondering how people in the Middle East don't realize how the system in the United State is not built on any similar base they have there. Don't they know that Bill Gates account by himself is multiple times as much as the whole budget of a couple of Arab countries combined. I opened your website and read your article which was like an answer to what I was wondering about. Really your article is appreciative. I copied and emailed it to some of my classmates in Ram Allah to reply on all their subsequent claims about the issue you were discussing in your article. I personally believe that whatever is going to happen will happen so regardless of what people say they won't change anything. I know how your job causes a lot of trouble for you and the staff working with you. Huston is not that far away from here. Maybe one day I will visit Huston and I am looking forward to having at least a short encounter with you, that is if you don't mind. Take Care. Best Regards.

From : Abu Qusai Esam <abqusai@hotmail.com>
Sent : Monday, March 29, 2004 5:24 PM
Subject : reply

This is a relpy to Ibrahim Al Jundi article

Dear Arabtimes, please publish this article

Unfortunately, I had the chance to read your article and see the poison inserted there. I wonder how people like you are so cheap that take the chance to declare a war on their creator and Prophets just to get a hand-full amount of $’s. I wonder how much is your price in the market that makes those Zionist to ride you and hang an advertisement at your ass saying this is cheap and feasible tool for dusting shoes and cleaning dirty hands. You are a good example on the new strategy when masters keeping their hands clean by making their cheap slaves do the dirty work for them. People like you are a good example on the modern occupation when the occupying country uses the local cheap man-power in that particular occupied country to fight, defend, and speak for the interest of their master. You are a dirty representative of many people who basically do the same in Iraq, Palestine and many other areas particularly Egypt and the Nasser of Egypt (the Big movie). Well, I do not want to say more, however, I wish one day to read for an Arab writer something comes from his own imagination and free of under-the-tables charges. I know if your wife kicks you of the bed you will relate that to Islam. At that time you may forget that it’s due to the communities edifications which wanted her (your wife) to be equal with you. Islam is the only religion gave women equal rights with men but stupid person like you are unable…are unable…are unable to understand. But communists like you wanted her to be as cheap item as them to enjoy watching her body in strip shops and night clubs. I wonder what your future project is, do you want the man to get pregnant…as a mean of feeling sorry for women. I know you don’t have an objection on this…because you have sold your identity long back. You cannot decide on this darling. Your master contracted on you cheaply… Mr. cheap or at least PIG (Khanzeer or kalb better).
Be happy, ‘cause this might make you feel happy for feeling there are people read your writing…I just read when I feel I need to spit in someone’s face without getting punishment from Allah. See you are cheap again. People like me are making use of you in a way that relieves their pressure and be forgiven on their bad acts.

From : Valerie Ozsu <ozsuee@pacbell.net>
Sent : Thursday, March 25, 2004 7:31 AM
To : <arabtimesnewspaper@hotmail.com>
Subject : Thoughts on the Murder of Sheik Ahmed Yassin


I was deeply saddened by the brutal assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassine, the spiritual leader of Hamas.

Using American-built Apachi helicopters, Israel's "Man of Peace" (as George Bush called his friend Ariel Sharon) fired six 1.5 ton/rockets against a man in a wheel chair going out for his daily dawn prayers...killing him and 10 others, including 5 children.
I know the man in person...He is not a relative...as you might have thought...

Although I disagree with him politically and ideologically, I respect him and admire him very much...

I respect all those who practise what they preach...even if I do not share their views...

The assassination of Sheikh Yassine will open a Pandora Box...in Palestine...
We Palestinians feel that we find ourselves with our back to the wall....IF there was any...
Plagued with a corrupt leadership, and Arabs who turned their back on us, and an indifferent world....it does not take a genius to imagine how the average Palestinian feels...
Although the assassination was condemned all over the world, it did not merit a compassionate phrase from the Americans...as if we were flies...or rats...
I did not do anything in the past few days...
I did not feel like doing anything or seeing anybody...
I feel so sad...so lonely...so depressed...so helpless....
I was not THERE, in Gaza, when the US-built Apachi showered the refugee camps with death….

I was not there when the frenzied pack besieged the refugee camp of Borj el-Barajneh in Beirut in February 1987, and reduced its inhabitants to eating cats and dogs in order to avert starvation.

I was not there when the massacres of Sabra and Shatila took place in September 1982, and the bodies of thousands of Palestinians were stacked in grotesque piles, fly-covered, rotting in the sun.

I was not there because of a trick of fate…..


But it was ‘there’, in the refugee camps, that I grew up and made my original leap to a maturing consciousness. The unspeakable pain that has characterized the camps’ 50-year existence remains mine, an indivisible part of my inner history.

I can no more get outside it than I can get outside my own skin. This is so not only because I am a Palestinian activist and scholar who predictably, inevitably, must draw for his material on the tragic background of his people’s struggle, but also because, very simply, growing up Palestinian - growing up, in other words, afflicted with a sense of ‘otherness’ - is something that constantly addresses every impulse in our lives.

For when Palestinians were dealt their cruel fate by Zionism, Zionists never asked if we were Muslim or Christian, rich or poor, radical or conservative - they asked if we were Palestinian. It was the name, and all the historical cargo the name brought with it, that was made cause. Shared equally by every member of the community, the notion of ‘Palestinianness’ thus derives its validity for us, from a communal sense of reference.

To be sure, the experience of some Palestinians does differ from that of others. Diaspora Palestinians, for example, were born or grew up in exile. They have never known what it is to walk the streets of a Palestinian city (though some will tell you that a refugee camp is a transplanted Palestinian city complete with its own Palestinian idiom, metaphor and ambience).

To walk the streets of a Palestinian city that is to live no longer in the metropolis of a host state where you are placed close to the door for easy eviction - is an image that has always tormented and fascinated Diaspora Palestinians. It is an exquisite thought, like first love. And the experience of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza varies with this, of course, in the sense that they do live in their cities, in their homeland. But their experience locks on ours in another way - they do not live free.

Living under occupation, whether Jordanian or Israeli, they were never a determining force in their destiny as all free men and women are. And finally the experience of our fellow Palestinians who stayed behind in 1948 in what later became Israel, aligns itself with ours in that it too exhibits the same alienation, destitution and anguish that characterizes the mass sentiment of the whole of Palestinian society.

But we remember.

I will indulge a recollection from the late 1950s when I was growing up in the Palestinian refugee camp of Burj al-Barajneh, on the outskirts of Beirut. I was witness at the time to an incident where a Palestinian peddler called Abu Hassan one afternoon had all his merchandise, along with a cart he displayed it on, confiscated by the Lebanese police. He was told that as a Palestinian he was an alien, and as an alien he had no right to engage in employment ‘whether paid or unpaid’.

The incident was devastating to me as an impressionable teenager. It had this impact, not only because I was a politicized youngster - we all were - but also because Abu Hassan happened to be my father. My father’s response to the incident was to explain it away, even to justify it, by drawing on the inner resources of the typical exile. He observed: ‘Well, this is not our country after all. We have to wait until we return to our own’.

Within less than a decade - which saw my father’s transition from a self-sufficient, proud Palestinian living in his own homeland, to a desperate, helpless nonentity peddling surreptitiously around the streets of Beirut or lining up abjectly at UNRWA food depots for our food rations - his hair had turned snow white, his voice lost its edge and he was often heard to mumble incoherently about how he wished he were dead. His wish was soon granted.

I suppose he wanted to die because he could not explain, armed with his simple peasant logic, why all this had happened to him, to his family, to his people and to his nation. But in dying as he did, through strangulation of the spirit by ‘refugeeism’, my father and his generation left us important legacies that animated in us complex energies about who we were and where we came from. Americans and Israelis, along with the rest of the world, refuse to believe this.

For example in 1954, a principal architect of the Cold War called John Foster Dulles, actually said: ‘The Palestinian problem will be solved in time, only when a new generation of Palestinians grow up with no attachment to the land’. And Israelis have never ceased to harp on how Palestinians should be settled or resettle in under-populated regions of the Arab world.

These people are pitifully naive, unendurably slow to catch up with ‘the reality principle’. Three generations of Palestinians - my parents’, my own, and that of the intifadah - have interacted, and transmitted to each other the legacy that living free in our homeland is the one tangible pivot of our identity.

It is an appalling contradiction because to my generation of Palestinians, exiled for 50 years, the concept of homeland has become nearly incomprehensible. Our destiny has forced us to come to terms with the idea that homelessness is the homeland.

Like an existential thirst we keep our shared moral and cultural notion of ‘Palestinianness’, even as we have wandered the globe all these years wearing our sense of ‘otherness’. Being stateless is the only state we belong to, and we have long since developed an aboriginal sense about how to live in this peculiar condition.

Palestinians have come to feel that they belong to a nation much larger than territorial Palestine, a nation that is diversely rich, cogent and genuine, even if the political configurations seem to make it otherwise.

But as Palestinians we are constantly afflicted by our people’s dreams for normal statehood, our unendurably pitiful search for a place to escape the terrors of our history. Dreams of this kind are more intense than material fact. They become a focus for the emotions, more real than reality itself.

Palestinians have suffered the institutionalized humiliation of military occupation, the helplessness of statelessness, the ravages of concussion bombs, the horror of massacres. We have suffered merciless sieges by frenzied packs outside our camps in Lebanon, and degradation from the code of bullying which is embraced by settlers on the West Bank.

Yet in the very excesses of our suffering ties our continual claim to dignity and rebirth. We have become ennobled by the vengeful spite of our enemies. Even if others do not see us so, it is our own self-image that the future calls.

Though this suffering has not nearly come to an end, there is hope. For when it finishes, as it must, in the inevitable establishment of a Palestinian state, we will be there.

We will be there not only to rejoice in the resurrection of our national existence, but because at last, at long last, we will have realized a desperate need - to live in a country where we will have our own government to assail; our own politicians, bureaucrats and elected bodies to ridicule; our own futures to debate.

No-one realizes how formidably exquisite a thought it is to a Palestinian writer like myself, raised in a refugee camp, stateless all his life, to be able to dream thus.

Abdel-Qader Yassine


From : yarob kanaan <arab_critic@hotmail.com>
Sent : Sunday, March 21, 2004 5:44 AM
To : arabtimesnewspaper@hotmail.com
Subject : Palestinians and Jordan once again!!!!

Dear Sir,

It seems that I have to revisit the topic of "Palestinians in Jordan", although I was under the impression that I have addressed it in my last article.

For some reason, many of our east Jordanian brothers, have a problem with any Palestinian Jordanian with any ties in the west bank.
They always raise the same argument, that we "Palestinian Jordanians" have to decide whether we want to be Jordanians or Palestinians. They have big doubts on our loyalty!!!
Jordan, has many ethnicities other than East Jordanians and Palestinians. However, Jordanians of Syrian or Caucasian origins don't the same type of questions Palestinians get!
They made a big deal of the same subject, when Taher Al Masri became the Prime Minister of Jordan. How can he be the PM of Jordan, while he holds a "yellow card" (to those who don't know the yellow card: it is given to Jordanians who can go to the west bank"? Another question was, how come he is the PM and one of his relatives is a minister in the PNA ?

I have a very simple answer to all those who suffer from what I call "Palestino Phobia" / "Loyalty Insecurity".
First of all, those Palestinians in Jordan are citizens by law. Some of them became so after 1948 and many of them became so, after 1951, after the declaration of the union between the west bank and the east bank. They are as loyal to Jordan as anyone. Also, they are loyal to Palestine and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it back. If we all believe the slogans our Royal Family keep saying, there shouldn't be any conflict what so ever between both loyalties. If anything, the loyalty to Jordan and Palestine should complement each other. If all what we all claim about our Arabism/Islamism is true, then the Pan Arab interests, the Pan Islamic interests, the Jordanian interests and the Palestinian interests should be the same and identical.
I, as a Palestinian, feel for our brothers in Iraq as much as I feel for my own family in Palestine. If things were up to me, I would fight to restore the "Escandaroon" from Turkey and "Sebta and Maleela" from Spain. I would be backing the UAE to restore its islands,… There are many wounds in the Arab body. One tries to heel the most bleeding ones first, but has the rest of the wounds in mind as well. This is how we all should be feeling, and I am positive that this is how most of us do feel.

The question of loyalty of the Palestinians in Jordan brings me to the same question regarding any Jordanian holding a second citizenship. How are they looked upon?
Many of our high ranking officials in Jordan hold a second passport, mainly "US" and "British". Unfortunately, no one seems to have any doubts about their loyalties? Although, the US, the UK and the west in general are perceived as imperialists, colonials and in the best case are not trusted!

The mobs in Jordan had a problem with Queen Alia (God rest her sole) and have the same problem with Queen Rania for one simple reason. Because of her Palestinian origins!!!! I heard that in one of the soccer matches that the King himself attended, the crowds were asking the king to divorce the queen because she is Palestinian!!!!
These same mobs, did not have any problems with the British queen Mona or the American queen Noor!!!!
The fact that our current king is a British subject and the crown prince is an American citizen doesn't seem to annoy anyone either!!!!!

I don't know how to analyse this? Is it an inferiority complex? Is it our fascination with the white race? Our subliminal inferiority towards our previous colonial occupiers?

The more replies I receive, the more my doubts that we will ever be able to over come our differences and move forward.
For God's sake, look at the US. It is composed of all the ethnicities in the world. However, most of the people in the US, have learnt to live together and coexist.
Yes, there are still some short comings in the US example I am giving, but, if we in the Arab world can be like the US, trust me many of our issues would be resolved.

Finally, I ask Allah to guide us all to the right behaviours and decisions.

Yours,

Palestinian in the Diaspora

From : Reem Al-Halabi <rhalabi@cresoft.com>
Sent : Wednesday, March 17, 2004 12:01 PM
To : <arabtimesnewspaper@hotmail.com>
Subject : King Syed Haider Ali Shah

King Abdullah II of hashemite kingdom of Jordan is only 43rd generation direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh), and king Mohammed VI of the kingdom of Morocco is only 22nd monarch of the Alauite Dynasty. Former primer minister of Pakistan Benezir Bhutto is only 16th generation direct descendant of the prophet. My neighbor's 6 years old son in Dubai from Bangladesh Syed Haider Ali Shah is only 12th generation direct descendant of the prophet.

My Bangali friend's family was smarter than king Abdullah's family - they took a short cut and became closer to the prophet. Therefore, legally Syed Haider Ali Shah should be the king of hashemite kingdom, but...

king Abdullah II had Islamic education earlier than Syed Haider Ali Shah - In fact according to "official website" http://www.kingabdullah.jo of hashemite king of Jordan, king Abdullah II was born in 1962 and graduated from Islamic Education College, Amman in 1966. Graduating at age of 4 making him youngest Islamic scholar in the history of humanity. Therefore he has the right to rule the hashemite kingdom.

Unlike my Bangali friend's 6 years old son Syed Haider Ali Shah who didn't go to school in Dubai, but at least he has longer name than king Abdullah II - therefore I believe he should rule the hashemite kingdom.

King Abdullah II was smarter than Syed Haider Ali Shah - at least after graduating from Islamic Education College, Amman at age of 4 - He went to England to proceed his higher studies at Saint Edmund's School which is affiliated to church of England. Unlike Syed Haider Ali Shah who went to Islamic Madressah in his village after his family got deported from Dubai for illegally overstaying. Since my friend's family can't go abroad any more - there king Abdullah II has legal right to remain king of hashemite kingdom.

Best Regards,
Reem Al-Halabi, Dubai, UAE

From : Amer Abu-Zeineh <a.abu-zeineh@postgrad.umist.ac.uk>
Sent : Thursday, March 11, 2004 4:42 PM
To : <arabtimesnewspaper@hotmail.com>
Subject : Superficial Articel Mr. Osama

Dear Mr. Osama,

I always respect you and your opinions. I am very keen to read every new articles you write. However, I am surprised to read your latest article about Amro Khaled. I felt that you are superficial in your writing. Actually if Amro Khaled put peruke or not, it is not a big deal and that does not change the people attitude towards Amro Khaled. I would like to advise you Mr Osama, If there is anything wrong with Amro Khaled, I would really appreciate it if you write that down with realistic evidences. Evidences mean REAL evidences and not to rely on mails from unknown person. I do not defend Amro, but I am advising you since that article has neither the quality nor the deep view tha we know in your previous articles.