From the Editor
HOW MUCH DID THAT
SATELLITE COST?
The recent contoversy over the Clinton administration using satellite surveillance to spy on the Jewish residents of Judea-Samaria raises an important question about the manner in which the American public's hard-earned tax dollars are being spent.
Members of the House and Senate appropriations committee should be investigating how much the administration spent for the "vital" task of estimating how many Jewish homes in the settlements are unoccupied. How much did it cost American taxpayers to launch that satellite?
How much did it cost to hire satellite technology experts to maintain it? How much did it cost to analyze the data it provides? And, of course, how is it that such a sophisticated and costly satellite produced such blatantly false data?
Finally, those Members of Congress who are particularly interested in matters of racial or ethnic discrimination should be asking the President when he intends to use those same satellite systems to estimate the number of unoccupied Arab homes that the PLO has built in the territories in order to block Jewish development. Or is the administration interested in housing projects only when Israelis can be blamed?
BUT WHAT IS NETANYAHU
GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
The Israeli government has been turning out a steady of stream of informative and well-documented reports on PLO violations of the Oslo accords. In the past six months or so, there have been reports on the PLO's refusal to extradite terrorists to Israel, the PLO's infringements of the status of Jerusalem, and several reports on speeches of incitement given by senior PLO officials.
The latest such report onPLO incitement appears on page 4 of this issue of Outpost. It is a valuable document that should prove immensely useful to pro-Israel activists in making their case.
It lists recent statements made by senior PLO officials or on official PLO radio stations, calling on the Arabs to "redeem Palestine with blood," threatening that "a declaration of war awaits," calling Jews "the greatest enemies of us Muslims," and asserting the PLO's right to "Haifa and Jaffa, Lod and Ramle, Acre, Safed and Tiberias"--all cities within Israel's pre-1967 borders.
Such statements are dangerous words that could inspire murder. They are blatant violations of the Oslo accords. Most of all, however, these statements raise painful questions about the direction and goal of Prime
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Minister Netanyahu's policy and goals. To put it bluntly, if the PLO is saying and doing such things, what is the Netanyahu goverment going to do about it? Until now, the government has done much complaining and hand-wringing about the PLO, but what steps will the government take to actually force the PLO to stop it?
Will Netanyahu make the renewal of negotiations conditional on the PLO halting its incitement, or extraditing terrorists, or disarming Hamas? Will the prime minister make negotiations conditional on anything? Or will he continue to just issue tough-sounding statements that have n othing behind them? Israel's friends around the world anxiously await the answer.
REVOKE ARAFAT'S
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is to be commended for its campaign to persuade the Nobel Peace Prize Committee to revoke the prize given to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in 1994. Three years and 240 dead Israelis later, it has become sadly obvious that Arafat was not a man of peace and that he deserved no peace prize.
Will other prominent Jewish organizations follow the Wiesenthal Center's lead? At the time the award was given, Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League publicly defended it, as did other Jewish "leaders." Lately, however, the ADL has sponsored advertisements in the New York Times and elsewhere, criticizing Arafat's policy of murdering Arabs who sell land to Jews.
Even the American Jewish Committee has taken out ads raising questions about Arafat's behavior. Are these Johnnie-come-latelies just jumping on the complain-about-Arafat bandwagon, now that the PLO is less popular than it once was? Or have they had a sincere change of heart? Whether or not they second the call for revoking Arafat's Nobel Peace Prize will test their sincerity.
Outpost
is published by
Americans for A Safe Israel
Herbert Zweibon, Chairman
Helen Freedman, Executive Director
1623 Third Ave. (at 92nd St..) -Suite 205
New York, NY 10128
tel (212) 828-2424 / fax (212) 828-1717
e-mail: afsi@interport.net
web site: http://www.afsi.org/afsi
Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Erich Isaac, Ruth King,
George Rubin, Herbert Zweibon.
Outpost is distributed free to members of
Americans For a Safe Israel.
Annual membership: $50.
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