SPOTLIGHT ON
THE EXTREMISTS
...Although Yasser Arafat has been repeatedly videotaped calling for "jihad" against Israel, and although Arafat himself has confirmed the authenticity of the tapes, Robert Lifton, former president of the American Jewish Congress, is not so sure.
In the September edition of Lifton's "Occasional Letter" (a pompous, rambling 3-page newsletter that Lifton circulates), he complained that "opponents of the peace process have come up with a new tactic"--distributing tapes "of a speech supposedly delivered by Arafat" calling for jihad. "Whether or not the tapes are authentic and whether or not Arafat's use of the word 'Jihad' has the negative implications ascribed to it," Lifton writes, " all that matters is what he is doing."
Lifton did not consider the possibility that what Arafat is "doing" by calling for jihad is inciting Arabs to put jihad into action...
...Leftwing Israeli poet Yitzhak Laor, who once accused Jewish settlers of using Arab blood in their Passover matzohs, has struck again. In a recent issue of the Jerusalem Report, Laor compared the Oklahoma City terrorist attack to America's "barbaric bombing" of Baghdad during the Gulf War...
...Presumably on the basis of the theory that the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it, the far left has developed a new fundraising technique: accuse the media of conspiring to aid the Israeli right. In a September 21 fundraising letter for his radical-left journal, Tikkun, Michael Lerner made the bizarre claim that "the American Jewish press has given much favorable representation to the settlers and the opponents of peace, and very little to the peace movement's positions"...
...Nasr Al-Kidwa, director of the PLO's Mission at the United Nations, called Mayor Giuliani's ejection of Yasser Arafat from a mayoral concert reception a "foolish, hateful and ignorant stance."
Al-Kidwa accused Giuliani of "pandering to the vote of certain extremists" and ignoring the view of "mainstream groups, including the American Jewish Committee"...Meanwhile, PLO spokesman Marwan Kanafani, in Gaza, declared: "We know the job of the mayor of New York is to be a puppet of the Jewish and Israeli lobby"...
...Israel-bashing reporter Maureen Meehan has been fired by Newsday and National Public Radio for falsely claiming that she is not married to PLO official Jiries Atrash. But NBC radio and the Christian Science Monitor are still using Meehan's reports...
...Writing in the pro-PLO Jerusalem Times, Arab-American activist James Zogby praised "AIPAC and the
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American Jewish Congress" for having "spoken in defense of continuing Palestinian aid" at recent Congressional hearings. Zogby was upset, however, at the "extremist elements" who came to the hearings "with voluminous files and information: transcripts of Arafat speeches, records of PLO correspondence, detailed accounts of PLO behavior and statements--and it is from these that they make their anti-Palestinian propaganda"...
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