NEW YORK- The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) opposes the Bush administration’s plan to send a senior U.S. official to the funeral of Yasir Arafat, in view of the fact that Arafat is responsible for the murders of two U.S. diplomats and many other Americans.

Since the 1960s, Palestinian Arab terrorists have murdered more than 100 Americans in Israel and the territories. Most of the killers came from Arafat’s PLO. In 1973, PLO terrorists took a number of diplomats hostage in Sudan, and Arafat ordered them to execute the U.S. ambassador, Cleo Noel, and his deputy, George C. Moore.

Arafat also directed some of the most notorious terrorist massacres in modern times, such as the murder of eleven Israeli athletes (one of them a U.S. citizen) at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and the murder of twenty-two Israeli school children in the town of Ma’alot in 1974.

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein, Chairman of the Board Dr. Alan Mazurek, and National Executive Committee chairman Dr. Michael Goldblatt have sent telegrams to President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, stating: “A terrorist leader who has American blood on his hands does not deserve the honor of having a U.S. government official at his funeral. Just as the U.S. government will not send a representative to the funerals of Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein one day, it should not send one to the funeral of mass-murderer Yasir Arafat. Just days after an election in which moral values were the most important issue for America’s citizens, how does it promote moral values to send a U.S. representative to the funeral of the father of airplane hijacking and suicide bombing, someone who trained an entire generation of terrorists and ordered, directed and paid for the murder of so many Israelis and Americans.”