The *FREE ARAB VOICE*
July 3'rd, 1997

In this special 4th of July issue of the Free Arab Voice, we
Present two feature articles:

1- Superpower for Tyranny - a focus on domestic U.S considerations
Favoring the forcible imposition of the so-called New World Order,
as a strategy in American foreign policy. By Fadia Issam Rafeedie,
based on an article by Dr. Jalal Jalamani.

2- A letter from a Palestinian Prisoner - Imad El-Sabe3 is a
Palestinian from Qalqilya who was snatched away from his job
as the head of an NGO that organized activities for impoverished
Palestinian youth. He's been doing time since 1994 for charges
that he neither knows nor is allowed to know according to his
Israeli captors.

A university in Holland wrote to the Israeli embassy in Amsterdam,
informing them that Imad had been awarded a full scholarship to pursue
his doctorate, and that his attendance was requested at the school.
Their requests where, denied ...............

The second article below is a letter from Imad El-Sabe3 in Mejjido
Military Jail.

1- Superpower for Tyranny
=========================
July 4th in America affords the perfect excuse for government
employees to take a day off work, for the common folk to hold
barbecues in their back yards, and for politicians to deliver
well-polished and trite speeches about this country's unprecedented
success in establishing and maintaining the world's first true
democratic experiment, complete with racial diversity and avenues
of endless economic opportunity.

Beneath the glittering visage, however, lies a more sinister,
shrewd, and calculating reality. Rather than championing the SAME
independence for which revolutionary soldiers shed their blood over
two centuries ago for other nations, the U.S. government and 
Pentagon today are part of a despicable agenda to keep the so-called
Third World nations a global permanent underclass.

The pattern is predictable, almost mathematical even.  Every
time a Third World country's economic or sociopolitical currents
deviate from the plans and intentions of American monopolists and
their partners in Europe and Japan, we suddenly start to hear about
human rights violations in that country.  If, God forbid, a sovereign,
foreign developing nation establishes a nationalistic course for its
citizens that interferes with the investments and economic colonial
design handed down by the trilateral world council, it is suddenly
judged by a litmus test which pits it against the phony sanctity of
America's ideals.
 

The ensuing war is not limited to ideological chicken-fighting
either. The alleged human rights violations orchestrate pretexts
to go in and smash up that country and bring it in line to what
America's monopolists and their foreign partners view as the 'holy
order of the universe'. Not much has changed since the Age of
Imperialism, which supposedly ended with World War II!

Hence the U.S. is being restructured economically and militarily
to play the role of a mightily-equipped secretary state-for-hire
enforcer in world affairs. Its mission is to impose the economic
and geopolitical tenets of the "New World Order", typified by 
national and international economic apartheid and massive legalized 
slavery.  

This self-imposed international totalitarian system, headed by the
super-cop U.S. enforcer, requires a strong, material, technological,
and military foundation, which is why the Pentagon recently needed
more state-of-the-art, smart, exotic, extra-sophisticated and
devastating weapons of "conventional" and mass-destruction
capabilities. This is in part to create "clean," "efficient,"
and quick mechanisms of destruction, and in part to discourage
any other competing partner or adversary in the "New World Order"
from making any bid or claim to the role of super-destroyer, 
super-mercenary state, a role at which the U.S. has grown adept and 
comfortable playing...

But not without some serious economic justifications! America 
does not have much of an industry left. It sold or gave away most
of its traditional sectors to the rising tigers of Asia.
It has computers and software to sell, but even in this 'Information
Industry' sector, it has some serious competition to share the world
market with.

Nevertheless, nobody can yet match the U.S. in the business of 
making destructive wars and in the business of inflicting massive 
violence at short notice, anywhere in the world, especially in the 
so-called Third World. 

After all, the country's monopolists have a distinct history of 
cloaking their real self-interest with the language of patriotism and
the goal of 'saving democracy': Installing the military regime of 
Pinochet in Chile in the early 1970's was justified as a safeguard 
against socialism and demagoguery, when in fact it was about the 
security of America's corporate monopolies being on the line.

The Gulf War was fought over oil fields, literally and figuratively,
Not because some bleeding heart politicians could not bear to see a
sovereign Kuwait under 'military occupation'... 
 

The list is endless; so are the justifications. Perhaps it is 
inaccurate to blame soldiers or even generals in the U.S. forces
for being forced to play the role. They follow orders and commands
from the White House and from Congress, who all ultimately follow
orders from the real kings and the 'queens behind the scenes'.

But in such a mind set and under such designs, Washington, D.C.
and the Pentagon, in essence, are serving as a war department of
the world's monopolistic super council. 

In this new role, however, the Pentagon won't need much of the 
classical formations and layers of troops from all branches of
military services. Rather, it will boost its expenditures on new
generations of high-tech weapons or modify existing ones by 50%
while shedding 109,000 of the 'useless' personnel... But of course,
the small percentage of Americans who own or manage the
military-industrial-complex corporations, a tiny percentage of
America's scientists and engineers, the highest echelons of the
military brass, and America's political class will all benefit from
these developments, keeping in mind, naturally, that taxpayers are the
ones who end up paying for these new bouts of increased expenditure.

Clearly the ruling super-monopolist club in America, and its 
'representatives' in the White House and in Congress, are not going
to tell you that they want to use the Pentagon as an arm of
destruction and terror worldwide, or that they wish to impose the
international economic apartheid system. Instead, they claim that
the U.S. needs a post-cold-war state-of-the-art "defense" against
"international terrorism", against "domestic terrorism, against 

"drug trafficking", against "rogue states", against "the Russian, Italian,
or Mexican Mafia", against a "potential evil empire" in China, and
a host of other manufactured "threats", turned on and off conveniently
to raise the budget of the Pentagon's welfare system using your tax
dollars and mine.

And note the role of Zionist links in Hollywood here that
continuously produce dramas or action movies to inculcate those
"threats" in people's minds and imagination. Example:  'Executive 
Decision', 'Path to Paradise', and even 'Independence Day'.

Wake up America! The Pentagon is no longer concerned with real 
and legitimate tasks of national defense against real threats.  
Today's Pentagon is fully designed and prepared to enforce, along
with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a tyrannical new world
order of economic, racial, and cultural apartheid reaching Fascist
proportions and ushering in disastrous results.

This order stands in direct conflict with this country's ideals, 
morals, legal foundations, and integrity.  So this 4th of July,
cheers. 

When the smoke from the firecrackers clears, we will see that
innocent people get burned, and the scum, rises to the top.
	  

2- From A Palestinian In Jail:
=========================
by: Imad Al-Sabe3

Title:  666666
        646633
        63336
        63
        433333
        etc., etc.

These are months. Take the first line, add the numbers up = six 
times six is thirty six, months that is. Three years. It is the
way Ali Jaradat's detention is composed: the original detention
order of six months, followed by five consecutive extension orders,
each six months in duration.

The second line is Ahmad's; the third Elia's; the fourth Khaled's;
and so on and so on. Numbers -- simple and pure -- inscribed on bits
of paper.

All together, put one on top of the other, through a straight
forward arithmetic calculation, and what you get is a mountain,
ever rising, of years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds.

It's colossal. It's frightening.

Years and years of so many human beings' lives taken away, stolen,
usurped, confined, suspended, canceled, obliterated, confiscated,
pilfered.

"Administrative detention." The Israeli version of apartheid-era
South Africa's Ninety-Day Detention Law, of El Salvador's Decree No.
507 of December 3, 1980, of countless other Laws, Decrees, State of
Emergency Regulations, Military Orders that go to make figures stuffed
into reports, the 'raw material' of committees, campaigns, appeals,
web-sites.

The United Nations Economic and Social Council even has a
'Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions.' Its report for 1995
carries the serial number e/CN4/1966/40. Palestinian administrative
detainees are briefly mentioned there: not all of them, just six, that
funny number again.

"Security threats." That's how we are described. That's why they
are obliged to put us in prison. That's why they resort to special
decrees, why they have eliminated due legal process, with its stifling,
laborious, time-consuming legal procedures, formalities, niceties.

Security.  "Yeah, yeah, yeah," says Yitzhak Mordechai, the Israeli
Defense Minister, speaking in the Knesset. 'Administrative detention
is not very nice. I agree. I know something about democracy and the
rule of law and all that. But it is so effective a tool in fighting
terrorism that we simply cannot, should not even think of giving it
up."

    So effective!

Of course, it is "effective." Bashing somebody's head in with a
baseball bat is "effective." Bombing a ten story building to
eliminate a thief is "effective." Burning a forest to light a
cigarette is "effective." Firing a hundred workers is "effective."

It depends on what your purpose is, on what you are trying to achieve.
It's all so relative. You can look at it this way, you can look at it
that way. It is up to your view of human life and its worth, to your Weltanschauung.

"To be imprisoned without knowing why, without being able to find 
out what the charges against you are -- what could be worse?" asks
Tzahi Hanegbi, the Israeli Minister of Justice.

"But," he adds, "security makes it necessary, no matter how unpleasant."
Amos Oz: "The law shall level the mountain," we are told, "but not
right now. For the time being, security must level the law... a 
specious security that bears within it the seeds of its own 
destruction."

"For the time being": pre-Oslo, post-Oslo; pre-redeployment, 
post-redeployment; 1974, 1987, 1988, 1993, 1995, 1997;
pre-the-pull-out from H1 in Hebron, post-we're-talking-again;
when Labor-Meretz was in power, after Likud-Gesher-Tsomet-Shas-Third
Way-Sharansky came to power.

For the time being.

For the time being. Samir was 34 when he came in, he's 37 now; my
daughter Deena was six months old, her age is 21 months now; Ashraf
Daraghma's father was alive; he's passed away since; Mohammed was in
school, now he's in prison; Hassan had jet black hair, now it's turning
grey; etc, etc....

Transmogrifications.

You come in for six months, you've already spent thirty-two, have
four more to go, but still cannot be certain that when this last
extension runs its course, you'll be going home. A hill turns into a
mountain; a drop into a pond; a tiny point into a large circle.

"Ah well... detention is terrible. Much worse than a sentence when
you're sure when the end will come, even if it's years ahead -
you know as well as I do." -- Nadine Gordimer, My Son's Story.

"Once again the world outside was sealed off. There was only the
long stretch of days ahead. No landmarks that I could envisage.
In spite of recalling myself again and again to the accuracy of my
intuition, in spite of the preparation this afforded, this was still
a residue of blasted hope..."-- Wole Soyinka, The Man Died.

"But sometimes you get a funny feeling inside. Maybe your number
really would come up one day. God, just to think, you might walk out
and go home!" -- Solzhenystyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Legal recourse: Appeal court. A single military judge presides
imperiously. On the table to his right sits the administrative 
detainee, next to him his lawyer. On the opposite table sits the
military prosecutor and by his side the collector and guardian of the
'evidence,' kept in thick files with red plastic covers, where the
'classified information' lies.

Act One: "What?" asks the laywer. "Classified information," is the
answer.

Act Two: "How?" asks the lawyer.  "Classified information," is the
answer.

Act Three: "Why?" asks the lawyer.  "Classified information," is the
answer.

Curtain.
This is the law in operation. 782 years after the Magna Carta.  So
we decided to boycott these fine courts.

"The judge asked me twice if this was meant as a verbal attack on 
them, and I said it wasn't. I just wanted to read the passage," -- 
Turkish dissident Mahir Gunsiray, charged with "insulting the bench," 
after quoting a scene from Kafka's The Trial. Reported in Newsweek,
October 14, 1996.

Your number will come up one day. Not to go home, but so that you
are informed of yet another extension. Extensions are, I surmise, a
subtle and malicious form of psychological torture. One almost sees
the gleeful smile on the 'invisible' face of the man in the shadows
putting his signature on the next extension order.

'Another six months. Another four, three, two... His life is mine!'
he says.

     MY life is mine!
     My life is Reem's, is Deena's.
     "It is wrong. The question is not whether I can bear it or not.
      The issue is, should I have to bear it." -- Soyinka.

-- Mejiddo Military Jail March 5, 1997.

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