U.S. State Dept, A.I.D.,
and PLO Also Testified
NEW YORK- Morton A. Klein, the National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), this week testified before a U.S. Senate hearing on the Palestinian Authority’s policy of educating Arab children to hate Jews and Israel and to glorify violence.
The hearing was held on October 30, 2003, by the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. The subcommittee is chaired by U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), who organized the hearing. U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) also took an active part in the hearing.
ZOA President Klein was the only official of a Jewish organization to testify at the hearing. The others who testified were the PLO/PA representative in Washington, Hassan Abdel Rahman; James Kunder, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Near East Affairs of the U.S. Agency for International Development; David Satterfield, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs; Richard Solomon, President of the U.S. Institute of Peace; Itamar Marcus, Chairman of Palestinian Media Watch; and Ziyad Asali, President of the American Task for Palestine.
At the hearing, PMW’s Marcus showed a film of PA schoolchildren speaking about their desire to murder Jews, and translated speeches by PA officials, broadcasts on PA television, and excerpts from PA textbooks inciting hatred and murder of Jews.
In his remarks, Rahman initially claimed that the film’s translations of PA schoolbooks and speeches “are mistranslations.” When challenged by the Senators about that claim, Rahman then claimed that even if they were not mistranslated, “they are just expressions of religious belief, and it does not matter what they are saying, if it’s a religious belief.”
ZOA president Klein began his testimony by refuting a number of Rahman’s allegations. In a particularly dramatic moment, Klein, in response to Rahman’s claim that the PA wants to live in peace with Israel, held up a piece of Rahman’s own official PA letterhead, which shows a map of all of Israel labeled “Palestine.” Later, he held up a poster that the PA pays for and distributes, glorifying suicide bombers.
In response to Rahman’s claim that most people in America and Israel support the creation of a Palestinian Arab state, Klein cited a recent McLaughlin poll showing by 71-13%, Americans oppose such a state, and a recent Geocartography poll showing that by 61-31%, Israelis oppose it.
In response to Rahman’s claim that most Palestinian Arabs oppose terrorism, Klein cited polls showing that between two-thirds and three-quarters of Palestinian Arabs support suicide bombings and a poll taken earlier this month by Frank Luntz and the Palestinian Center for Public, which found that 59% of Palestinian Arabs support continuing violence against Israel, even if Israel surrenders all of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and eastern Jerusalem. The ZOA president also quoted from the many interviews with parents of suicide bombers, who expressed pride in their children’s actions.
Refuting Rahman’s claim that Israel had stolen Arab lands from “Palestine,” Klein explained that there never was an independent country called Palestine, which for many centuries had been largely uninhabited, and challenged Rahman to “name one Palestinian king or queen.” Rahman was silent.
In his testimony, Klein explained that the PA’s policy of educating children to hate Jews, Israel, and America “is just one part of a much bigger problem: the continuing refusal of the Palestinian Arabs to give up violence and their goal of eventually destroying the State of Israel.” He said:
“Both the Oslo accords and the Bush Road Map plan require the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, which it created, to undertake a number of steps to facilitate peace and demonstrate that they would peacefully coexist with Israel. But …. they failed to outlaw terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They failed to confiscate the terrorists’ tens of thousands of weapons, to arrest terrorists, and to dismantle the terrorists’ infrastructure of training camps and arms depots. Their leaders, including past prime minister Mahmoud Abbas and current prime minister Ahmed Qurei, have vowed that they will never fight against Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Instead of halting anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement, as the accords require, they increased the incitement. They developed an entire culture of hatred… In October 2000, the PA launched a terrorist war against Israel that continues to this day. Arafat’s own Fatah movement carries out the majority of the terrorist attacks…
“The time has come to recognize that the Palestinian Authority is not a partner for peace, and to end all relations with it. Not just Yasir Arafat, but the entire PA is a corrupt terrorist regime that must be dismantled, exactly as the regime of Saddam Hussein was dismantled…
“Second, Congress should make U.S. aid to the Palestinian Arabs conditional on the complete reforming of their educational system … In addition, Congress should make further U.S. contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, conditional on changes in the Palestinian Arabs schools that UNRWA administers.”
He concluded: “I formerly worked as biostatistician for the two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling. I was responsible for analyzing the data of experiments, and after each experiment, Professor Pauling would say, “I am not interested in what your hopes and dreams for this experiment were, I am only interested in what the data shows.” In the same way, when you look at the evidence you must conclude that the Palestinian Arabs are not interested in peace with Israel.”