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Newsletter : 4fax1006.txt
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>JN
>ISRAEL FAXX
>PD OCT. 7, 1994 V2,#183
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Israel Faxx \/ / \/ /
Oct. 7, 1994 Volume 2, #183 / /\__/_/\
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PERES: SYRIA WILL ATTACK ISRAEL IF
Shocking onlookers, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said that even if US troops are stationed on the Golan Heights "Syria is likely to attack Israel even if a peace agreement is reached, if extremist elements in Damascus are disappointed by it. It is likely that leaders will arise in Syria who will deploy anew their tanks and planes, and therefore we must be careful."Israeli Cracking Down on Jewish Extremists
By Al Pessin (Jerusalem) The Israeli government has long fought terrorism from Arabs trying to destroy the Jewish state, and Palestinian leaders have supported and even directed terrorism. But in recent months, Israeli officials have found themselves in the unaccustomed position of cracking down on potential Jewish terrorists, and the new Palestinian Authority is working to prevent further terrorism from its people. On Thursday, the front pages of Israeli newspapers reported on the formal indictment of two Jewish brothers on charges of attempted murder in an attack on an Arab. A month ago, an Israeli soldier was arrested for allegedly trying to pass weapons to Jewish extremists. In between, Palestinian police in Gaza arrested dozens of members of groups which oppose the peace process and continue to attack Israelis -- and the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat declared his authority must improve its anti-terrorism effort. The Israel-Palestinian peace accord is expected to enter its second phase in a few months, and leaders on both sides say terrorism from either side is the greatest threat to that plan. The Palestinian radicals are well known. They oppose the decision by Arafat to abandon the fight against Israel and to live side-by-side with it. The Jewish extremist groups have also existed for a long time, but until the Israel-Palestinian peace accord signed a year ago they did not have a focus for their activities. Now some of them have declared that the agreement to give autonomy to Palestinians is a reason to launch what amounts to a Jewish holy war against Arabs in the occupied territories -- and even against the Israeli government. One of the Jewish extremists is Shmuel Ben Yishai, a resident of the settlement of Kiryat Arba, near the West Bank city of Hebron. He is a member of the radical Kach movement, and he says the Palestinian Autonomy Agreement violates Jewish law because God gave the land to the Jews and that, he says, means war. "We are the owners, and if they want to take the ownership of this land, it's like declaring war. They declare war on the Israeli existence in what you call the occupied territories. So we fight back. And in war there are no laws." Ben Yishai says in war, it is not possible to differentiate between which of your enemies is active and which is not -- so he says, all Muslims are his enemies. One of Ben Yishai's neighbors, Baruch Goldstein, massacred at least 29 Muslims at the historic mosque in Hebron in February. And in the view of some extremist Israelis, including Ben Yishai, Israeli leaders who signed the peace accord with the Palestinians are equally guilty and deserve equal treatment. "We have a government of traitors now, who are ruling the country today, a bunch of traitors. If you are looking at the government as traitors, you have no problem to fight them. You will not hear me calling to do something physical against somebody. But let's say that I will not be sad if I will hear about it." Ben Yishai says his greatest enemies now are the Israeli army and police who are trying to crack down on his group and its supporters.Such radical views have become synonymous with the settlement of Kiryat Arba. But not all Jews there share them. David Ramati is a member of a group called "Love Justice," which says there isno religious justification for a Jewish holy war. "We're trying to make holy peace not holy war, except for deviants that take the law into their own hands and are willing to make Jewish law, to try to twist it to suit their own ends." Ramati's views are, in a way, as extreme as Ben Yishai's. While many peaceful West Bank settlers hope to live under the Israeli flag permanently, even if a Palestinian state is formed, Ramati says that would only deepen divisions between the two communities. "We have to stay on in the West Bank as Jewish Palestinians and give up our Israeli citizenship. So I think that might be a basis for a settlement of the autonomy on the West Bank is to integrate the Jewish community into the Palestinian community as a Palestinian Jewish community." Neither man claims to represent a majority of Jewish settlers on the West Bank. But each claims support for his view is growing. That is an important issue both for the Israeli government and the new Palestinian Authority, because if Ben Yishai is right and extremism grows, the peace accord could be threatened. That is why Israeli extremists are finding themselves the target of Israeli police and intelligence services -- and Palestinian extremists are being targeted by the new Palestinian police.
Christopher Readies Middle East Trip
By Ron Pemstein (State Department) Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara is in Washington for talks with Secretary of State Warren Christopher before Christopher's trip to the Middle East which begins this weekend. The Syrian Foreign Minister says his country is ready to do everything necessary for a peace agreement. But he says an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights is still the main requirement. "Syria is prepared to meet the requirements of peace and those requirements should be objective, should be agreed upon, and in the forefront of these requirements is the full withdrawal from the Golan Heights." US officials say there is still a real gap between the Israeli and Syrian positions on both the substance and procedure of the timing and security arrangements of an Israeli withdrawal. Christopher leaves Washington Saturday for another shuttle mission between Jerusalem and Damascus to try to narrow the gap. Before meeting al-Shara, Christopher said he welcomes public statements from Syrian President Hafez al-Assad about his commitment to peace.Anastasia Claimant Called Fraud
By Andre de Nesnera (London) Anna Anderson -- the woman who for years claimed to be Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Russian czar, Nicholas II -- has turned out to be a fraud. This was the conclusion of Peter Gill, a British forensic scientist who conducted DNA testing on Mrs. Anderson's remains. On the night of July 16,1918, Czar Nicholas II, his wife, five children, and four other people were shot by Bolshevik firing squads outside the Ural mountain town of Ekaterinburg, where they were held prisoner. Historical accounts said the bodies were thrown into a hastily-dug pit and sulphuric acid thrown on the remains to hinder identification. In July 1991, Russian forensic authorities found the bodies and tentatively identified them as the remains of Nicholas and his family. But they needed irrefutable proof -- and they turned to Britain's forensic science service for help. Peter Gill was one of the scientists who authenticated the remains through a modern technique using DNA -- the molecular basis in cells for transmitting hereditary characteristics. However, a mystery still surrounded the Russian royal family. Historical accounts said 11 people were murdered in July 1918 -- but only nine bodies were found in the pit. The missing bodies are those of one of the czar's sons -- Czarevich Alexei -- and of the czar's youngest daughter -- Grand Duchess Anastasia. For years, a woman named Anna Anderson claimed to be Anastasia. She spent most of her life in Germany but moved to the United States and died there in 1984. Her body was cremated. Gill led a forensic team in an effort to establish the true identity of Anna Anderson. His investigation took him to the United States. "In June of this year I went out to the Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville -- which is in Virginia -- to collect bowel samples which had been removed from Anna Anderson during the course of surgery of 1979. These tissue samples had been preserved in paraffin wax and, in fact, there were five different samples." Gill brought the samples to the Forensic Science Services Laboratory in Birmingham where the scientists conducted sophisticated DNA testing. "We extracted DNA from the samples and we carried out DNA profiling and the results of our tests suggested that the DNA from these samples could not have come from a child of the czar and czarina -- and therefore excluded the possibility of the sample having come from Anastasia." If Anna Anderson was not Anastasia -- who was she? Gill then carried out further testing, comparing Anderson's DNA to a relative of a woman known as Franziska Schankowska. "The interest in Schankowska comes in because some individuals believed that Anna Anderson was, in fact, Franziska Schankowska. Very, very little is known about the life of Schankowska prior to 1920 except that she was born around 1896, lived in Pomerania in northern Germany which is adjacent to the Polish border. During the first world war she worked in a munitions factory in Berlin where she was very badly injured in a grenade explosion and subsequently she disappeared in 1920 -- and that was around about the same time as Anna Anderson appeared claiming to be the Royal Duchess Anastasia." Gill says comparing DNA samples from Anderson with those of a relative of Schankowska show an exact match -- lending scientific weight to those who claimed that Anderson was indeed Franziska Schankowska. But there are still unanswered questions surrounding Anastasia and her brother Czarevich Alexei. Their remains were not found in the Ekaterinburg pit with the rest of the Russian royal family. Some historical accounts say their bodies were either burned by the Bolsheviks or buried separately.| Home My Account Search Contact Us |
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