NEW YORK – Israeli cabinet minister Natan Sharansky has said that Israel should make no further concessions to Palestinian Authority chairman Yasir Arafat, whom he characterized as “a corrupt dictator who does not want peace.”

Speaking to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in New York City on January 29, 2002, Sharansky said: “No concessions should be made to the Palestinians as long as Arafat as in power, and not to anyone who follows him, if he is also a corrupt dictator with a military junta, who does not peace and continues carrying out terrorism.”

Morton Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) said: “Natan Sharansky, a hero of the Jewish people and voice of moral power, has said clearly what most Israelis and American Jews believe: Arafat is a terrorist and his regime is an evil terrorist dictatorship, to which neither Israel nor America should make any more concessions.”

Meanwhile, 62 prominent American Jewish and Christian leaders have signed a ZOA-organized public statement urging President Bush to respond to Arafat’s “ship of terror” —his attempt to smuggle more than 50 tons of weapons to wage war against Israel— and the almost daily murders of innocent Israelis, by suspending all U.S. relations with Arafat and the PA. It will appear as a full-page advertisement in the days to come in the New York Times, the national Weekly Standard, Jewish newspapers in major cities across the United States, and leading Israeli newspapers such as Ha’aretz and the Jerusalem Post.

The signatories include present or past leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; the Zionist Organization of America; the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN); the National Religious Broadcasters; leaders of worldwide TV and radio Christian ministries; the National Religious Roundtable; AIPAC; B’nai B’rith; the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; the United Jewish Appeal (UJA); the Jewish National Fund; the president of Yeshiva University; the Jewish War Veterans; the Simon Wiesenthal Center; the Rabbinical Assembly; the Rabbinical Council of America, and the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors; former Members of Congress; a former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination; and other distinguished individuals.