NEW YORK – Just one week after President Bush’s Middle East policy speech, Yasir Arafat’s Fatah movement has publicly urged Arabs to and “strike at Zionist American interests and installations.”

The Fatah Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade issued the call in response to what it called President Bush’s effort “to remove the legitimate leadership of the Palestinian people”—that is, President Bush’s June 24 speech urging the Palestinian Arabs to elect “new leaders, not compromised by terror.”

Arafat issued a statement saying the Fatah threat was “not made in his name.” But he did not condemn the threat, nor did he say he would take any action against those who made the threat. (Jerusalem Post, July 2, 2002)

Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), said: “Just one week has passed since President Bush’s speech urging the Palestinian Arabs to give up terrorism, and it is clear that they have not changed. Fatah’s threat proves that President Bush was right to insist that the Palestinian Arabs elect new leaders who have had no connection to terrorism. We urge the President to explicitly denounce Arafat and Fatah by name, add Fatah to the U.S. list of terrorist groups, and declare all Fatah representatives persona non grata so that they are not able to enter the United States.”

Fatah has claimed responsibility for numerous recent murders of American citizens in Israel, including:

* The June 19, 2002 bombing of a bus stop in Jerusalem, in which seven people were murdered, including 19 year-old U.S. citizen Gila Sara Kessler (whose family came from New York).

* The March 27, 2002 Passover massacre of 29 people in a Netanya hotel, including 90 year-old U.S. citizen Hannah Rogen.

* The February 15, 2002 murder of U.S. citizen Lee Akunis, near Ramallah.

* The January 18, 2002 massacre of six people at a Hadera bat mitzvah celebration, including Aaron Alis, the son of African-American tourists from Chicago.

* The January 15, 2002 murder of 72 year-old Avi Boaz (of New York), near Bethlehem.

* The August 9, 2001, bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, which killed fifteen people, two of them Americans, Mrs. Shoshana Greenbaum and 15 year-old Malka Roth. Four other Americans were wounded in the attack, including Mrs. Chaya Nachenberg of Bronx, NY, who remains in a coma.

* The December 31, 2000 murders of Rabbi Binyamin Kahane and his wife Talia (formerly of Brooklyn, NY) in a drive-by shooting near the Israeli town of Ofra. Five of their six children were injured in the attack.

* The October 30, 2000 murder in Jerusalem of Esh-Kodesh Gilmore, whose family was from Ohio and New Jersey.