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		National Affairs
HOLOCAUST MUSEUM: Not a Rationalization   The word “museum” conjures up a place where one goes to relive history, to evoke memories, and to appreciate what our ancestors have achieved through de­cades of struggle to build human civiliza­tion. Mainly, however, it is a cultural activity that feeds our intellectual curios­ity and heightens our appreciation for art and history. In that sense, the Holocaust Mu­seum, which opened its doors in April in the Nation’s capital, is a unique kind of museum. It is not one where visitors go to relive history or be fascinated at early man’s battles with the forces of nature. When one listens to the Holocaust survivors, it is difficult to accept the Holocaust as a history lesson. Rather, it is a human tragedy that is still playing itself out on the stage of the present. European Nazis continuously appear un­der different guises throughout Europe and other parts of the Western world. As a Muslim living in Washington, I decided, for a few hours, to suspend my convictions of practices carried Out by some people who use the Holocaust as an excuse for getting away with all types of injustices toward Palestinians and Leba­nese, and visit the Holocaust Museum. Throughout my education, which was mainly in the West, I heard conflict­ing theories about what had happened to the Jewish community in Europe during World War II. One theory was that the number of those killed was exaggerated, another went as far as to claim that the Holocaust never took place. However, the minute one walks into the museum, all voices of dissent evaporate. I had always hoped that those theo­rists were right and that those human lives had been spared. Unfortunately, I learned, like any doubter would, that the Holo­caust definitely happened, and even more chillingly, that it was not too long ago. To give the people who minimize what happened to the Jews in WWII the benefit of the doubt, one can believe that the Holocaust was beyond their capacity of human acceptance. How did the Muslim community react to the opening of a museum that commemorates atrocities perpetuated by Nazis against Jews? I feel comfortable in saying that anytime Muslims hear about anything that might lead to the diminish­ing of racism, hatred, and discrimina­tion, the community rejoices and wel­comes these efforts. Muslims believe that freedom and human rights are not only to be spoken about, build museums for, and organize seminars around, but are endeavors to be encouraged. From this perspective, the Muslim community welcomes the idea of con­stantly reminding the world that if one does not stop negative, racist, nationalis­tic feelings, there will always be human tragedy. That is why every Muslim identi­fied with Elie Wiesel’s plea when he implored President Clinton in his re­marks during the Museum’s opening, not to repeat the mistake by ignoring what is now happening in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is that kind of approach that could be appreciated by Muslims. Not the ap­proach of Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Rabin who, on a daily basis, perform atrocities against humanity. So we urge those who are dedicated to the belief that this should never hap pen again, to separate themselves from those   people who are using the Holocaust to get away with their inhuman behavior to­ward the people of Lebanon and Pales­tine. Specifically, I would like to ask Charles Krauthammer who wrote an es­say in the May 3, 1993 issue of Time magazine not to exploit the Holocaust to help the Israelis in their abusive acts by giving them the “daily specter of annihi­lation” as a legitimate rationale for their actions. I do not believe that Mr. Krauthammer fully grasped the message of the Holocaust Museum. Instead, he exploited the Holocaust to allow apolo­gists for Israel to cover up Israel’s viola­tions of Palestinian and Lebanese human rights. It is a betrayal to the victims to allow people like Mr. Krauthammer and a symphony of other apologists in the media and in the administration to use the Holocaust in their opportunistic way to ascend to political offices and reap politi­cal gains.  CLINTON: Tax Increase to Reduce Deficit  Seeking to rally support for his package of proposed tax increases, Presi­dent Clinton said that he would not ap­prove any tax increase legislation that was not tied to spending cuts. His remarks came at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden honoring small busi­ness operators. “Tax increases will go to reduce the deficit, by creating a legally separate deficit reduction trust fund which will tell you where your money is go­ing.” “I think this will do as much as anything else we can do to make our lives healthier over the long run,” President Clinton said. Clinton has said before that he will not sign tax increases into law before Congress passes his spending cut propos­als. Critics of President Clinton’s eco­nomic plan argue that the President is focusing more on tax increases rather than spending cuts in order to reduce the deficit. But Clinton said that he intends to “put every penny of new taxes and the budget cuts proposed in my budget into the trust fund so American people know that it has to go to deficit reduction.” “This budget saves, as I said, about $500,000 million, and the trust fund will insure that we do just that,” he added. In responding to the Clinton pro­posal, Speaker of the House Thomas Foley said that its impact could be “to create a sense of public confidence.” The House Ways and Means Com­mittee, which has House jurisdiction over much of the President’s program, ap­proved the modified version of the tax plan that President Clinton proposed. The Administration’s proposal, would affect taxpayers most directly, including expanded taxation of Social Security ben­efits. A recent Times-Mirror Center poll shows that currently 45% of the Ameri­can public approves of President Clinton’s performance while 37% disapprove. These results indicate a 10% decline in Clinton’s approval rating since first tak­ing office. BOSNIA: Europeans Bow to Serb Delay   After failing to win support from European allies for military action against the servs, the United States signed on to the safe haven plan. Germany and Tur­key criticized the plan as legitimizing Serb territorial gains. German Defense Minister, Volker Ruehe, told reporters at the meeting of NATO Defense Ministries in Brussells that “The expulsion of the Bosnian Muslims must not be allowed to last and must not be sanctioned by draw­ing new borders.” Retired General John Galvin, former commander of the NATO forces told the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee that the Serbs have achieved most of their war aims in Bosnia and may now set their sights on Kosovo and Macedonia. “The Serbs will not stop with the takeover of Bosnia,” Galvin warned. “They will want to exert them­selves in Kosovo and elsewhere, “ he said, adding that the allies will have to contain that possibility. Senator Joseph Biden, a former U.S. Presidential candidate, declared: “Euro­pean policy is based on cultural and religious indifference if not bigotry and I think it is fair to say that this would be an entirely different situation if the Muslims had done what the Serbs have done ... The truth of this is not lost on the Islamic world.” Biden, a Presidential candidate in 1982, and a former member of the For­eign Relations Committee, said that what was happening in Bosnia was not a civil war, but a blatant act of Serbian expan­sion. “Comparing the situation to what the Nazis did in World War H,” he said, “this as then, in my view, is fascist thuggery on the march.” Thanking Warren Christopher, who appeared before the Foreign Relations Committee to express his outrage at the refusal of European leaders to endorse a U.S. call for military intervention in Bosnia, Biden said, “What you have encountered, it seems to me, was a dis­couraging mosaic of indifference, timid­ity, self-delusion and hypocrisy.”  Meanwhile ... Death Still Looms On May 10, 1993, U.N. refugee agency spokesman, John McMillan, ac­cused Bosnian Croat militia forces of conducting a vicious expulsion campaign against Slavic Muslims in the southern city of Mostar. He said that Croat gunmen had forced Muslims to identify their residences with white banners, then to disarm themselves and abandon their homes. Between the Serbs and the Croats, Muslims now continue to be crushed while the U.N. and the rest of the world keep talking about talks. On May 9, 1993, Mostar came under attack from Bosnian Croat forces that forced Mus­lims out of their homes and herded women and children into a soccer stadium as U.N. observers idly and helplessly (and shamefully) watched. This came on the first day of the cease-fire between Bosnian Serbs and Muslims. It is unclear whether any ceasefire can hold in war-tom Bosnia. Having reached the besieged Muslim enclave of Zepa in eastern Bosnia, where 40,000 residents and refugees have been isolated, a team of U.N. military observers found 10 bodies in a mosque and two badly wounded Muslims in a cellar, according to Barry Frewer, chief spokesman for U.N. humanitarian aid forces. Radio operators m the city said that at least 200 people had been killed by Serb shelling. Muslims and Croats have been al­lies during most of the conflict, but their alliance appears to have collapsed after months of friction and conflict probably due to the Croats’ desire to occupy large chunks of Bosnian territory. Serbs have so far occupied about 70% of Bosnia, usurping land Israel-style from its inhab­itants by sheer brute force. Bosnian Muslim President, Ali Jzzat Begovic, said that he had sent a message to President Franjo Tudjman in neigh­boring Croatia requesting his help in resolving the conflict between Bosnian Croats and Muslims. In a news confer­ence, he expressed concern about reports that 100 trucks carrying Croatian regular army troops were moving into Bosnia toward the town of Kojnice. “If it is true,” he said, “we would accuse Croatia of being an aggressor in our country.” The latest target of Croats has been Mostar, a city near the Croatian border which used to have a population of 125,000 before the factional war in former Yugo­slavia. Croat forces there launched an attack on the Muslims, shelling the city all day long. Frewer said that the local headquarters of Muslim-led Bosnian gov­ernment forces and several other build­ings were on fire. Women and children were led into a soccer stadium by Croat paramilitary groups and men were separated from the women and children and taken to another compound. It is unknown how many other people were rounded up there.   IRAQ:Armed Resistance Continues,Explosions Wreck Baghdad and Mosul   The only news source of what is happening inside Iraq seems to be coming from armed Iraqi opposition groups which are far from being silenced by the repres­sive regime of President Saddam Hussein. In the first week of April, according to the Arabic newspaper, Al-Jihad, armed Iraqi dissidents captured scores of pro-govern­ment forces after engaging with them in battle, lasting for several hours in the southern marshlands. The attack included areas in Nasiriya, al-Mawzar, and al­Shattaniyya. Ninety government troops. including seven senior officers, were killed in the attack. This comes amid reports that the Iraqi army has mined all main highways linking Baghdad to major cities such as Basrah, Imarah, Nasiriyyah, and Qurnah in the south as well as the city of Kirkuk in the north. As many as 10,000 mines have been laid on the highway linking Kirkuk with Leelan, Qadir-Karam, Nawjool and Taqtaq, all in northern Iraq. Barbed wire, in addition to mines, have been used on highways linking Iraq with Saudi Arabia apparently to discourage those who wish to flee Iraq. Iraqis fleeing to Saudi Arabia do not find any hospitality there. An Iraqi Defence Ministry report admitted in the last week of March that as many as 39 military officers of various ranks and 583 regulars joined the ranks of armed opposition groups active in the South. In Kirkuk, three senior officers were arrested and accused of attempting to undermine the regime. They were: Attiya Mahdi Hameed, Nezar Naji All and Hatim Abdel-Hameed. Shakir Mahmood Abdel-Aziz, a senior officer of the 37th division, was executed in early April for allegedly refusing to obey or­ders issued to him and urging others to do likewise. Various armed opposition groups, meanwhile, have been selectively am­bushing Army and plain clothes security officers, killing or wounding a number of them in various attacks, using rocket-propelled grenades, light field artillery, mortar shells, and machine-guns. The list of those killed at their hands during the month of April alone has included Abdel-Bari Karam Wahid, Ma’ood al­Abadi, Zeman Jawi, Sabeeh Ayyar, Abu Wajdi, to name only a few. Liwa al-Sadr, official newspaper of His Eminence Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, indicated in its April 18, 1993 issue that as many as three explosions wrecked Baghdad during the second week of April following an attempt by armed Islamic opposition groups to kidnap Min­ister of Interior Watban al-Tirkriti, Saddam’s half-brother. The newspaper published smuggled photographs of some of the damage caused by those explosions which were timed to coincide with a military parade held in honor of Saddam’s birthday. Other explosions took place at the Fernas Air Base in Mosul, and also in Tirkirit, home­town of Saddam Hussein, killing 140 soldiers and four officers including Gen­eral Salim Zaiz Sheet, Commander of the Engineering Unit of the Fourth Division in Mosul. Liwa al-Sadr is of the opinion that members of the al-Jibouri dissident tribe were probably behind those attacks which took place in retaliation of the killing of the tribe’s chief, chieftains and Army regulars and officers, by forces loyal to Saddam Hussein. There was also an attempt to assassinate the governor of Basrah with the use of explosives and RPGs as he was expected to inaugurate a new Ba’ath Party center in Medeena.   ERITREA: On the Road to Independence On April 23, 1993, thousands of Eritreans voted yes to a referendum on independence from Ethiopia which they have been fighting for the past thirty years. The struggle for independence has been undertaken by both the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front and the Tigrayan Ethiopian People’s Revolution­ary Democratic Front. As many as one hundred thousand lives have been lost in the war for independence. Eritrea is predominantly Muslim. Asmara, a Red Sea port city, is it’s capital. The popula­tion of Eritrea is estimated at 3.2 million. Eritrea is strategically located on the narrow B ab al-Mandab strait that leads to the Gulf of Aden through which most of the Western world’s oil passes.  AZERBAIJAN:Armenian-Styled “Eth­nic Cleaning”  Armenians and Azerbaijanis have been fighting one another over ethnic enclaves, and the fighting that has re­ceived the widest publicity involves the Nagomo Karabakh region, an area con­trolled by Azerbaijanis but having an ethnic Armenian majority. It has been forcibly seized by Armenian forces. Its capture means a virtual annexation of the mountainous enclave to Armenia by a 60 mile wide belt of Azeri hill country. Since they lost control over it, the Azerbaijanis have become targets of Ar­menian shells raining from the Fizuli district. This shelling leads one to con­sider the possibility of expansion of Ar­menian-controlled territory and the pos­sibility of further “ethnic cleansing” like the one going on for the past year in Bosnia. Presently, Armenia controls one­tenth of Azerbaij an, and there seems to be no end in sight to the Annenian ambition to seize control of more Azerbaijani ter­ritory. Five thousand Azeri residents of the city of Kelbadzhar have been tortured and humiliated and many taken to camps in Armenia, according to the Defence Ministry of Azerbaijan. About 39,000 Azerbaijanis have fled the fighting, and as many as 15,000 people are missing. Old men and women, the sick, and the children have been left behind because they could not flee, nor could they be carried away to safety.   PEACE TALK:  No Progress   Israelis and Palestinians concluded their ninth round of peace talks without reaching an agreement on the principles of Palestinian self-rule in the occupied territories. Haider Abdul-Shafi, chief Palestin­ian negotiator announced: “I regret to say that we did not reach agreement that permits a declaration about agreed upon principles, so we end this round without reaching this hoped for agreement. The U.S. intervened directly in the talks and presented a paper trying to bridge the difference on self-rule. Abdul-Shafi said the Palestinians had not rejected the U.S. document and said that the Palestinians will be meeting U.S. officials to discuss it. In Tunis, P.L.O. information chief, Yasser Abed Rabbo described the U.S. document as a remake of Israeli propos­als and could not be discussed. He said the United States had taken a “dangerous step because it means that the U.S. spon­sor is openly siding with Israel after committing itself to take a neutral and honest stand.”   PALESTINE:Israeli Outrage Con­sumes Palestinians   On April 11, 1993, Israeli occupy­ing forces shot and wounded twenty-one year old Muhammad Abdel-Fattah Durkhan as he was trying to visit some of his relatives in the Nusayrat refugee camp. His brother, Anas, said that the Israelis wounded his brother in the leg before they were able to capture him and take him to an unidentified location under Israeli con­trol. His family has been pleading to Israeli occupiers of Palestine as well as human rights organizations to get a word about his condition, fearing the possibil­ity that the Israelis may have already killed him or may kill him as they interro­gate him. In the Gaza district, Israeli missiles demolished 18 Palestinian homes on April 21, 1993 at Hayy at-Tuffah in the after­math of a manhunt for guerilla members of Izzad-Deen al-Quassam unit, leaving all their residents homeless.