NEW YORK – In a recent statement issued by Jesse Jackson, Sr., founder and President of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, he stated: “We grieve the passing of the leader and father of the Palestinian people, Yasir Arafat. He did much during his life on earth; his legacy will live forever…against the odds, he built a people from identity crisis to a state, much like George Washington and Mandela…Chairman Arafat rose from a rootless beginning like Moses…and led his people from darkness to light…”

ZOA President Morton A. Klein said: “it is shocking that Jesse Jackson would compare Yasir Arafat, the father of modern international terrorism, airplane hijackings, and one of history’s biggest killers of Jews, to George Washington, Nelson Mandela and Moses. Arafat, a man who was banned from the White House for his evil and terroristic actions, should not be receiving praise from a Christian Reverend.

“We now wonder how sincere was Jackson’s apology for having called New York ‘Hymietown’, having said he was ‘sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust’, and having called Zionism ‘a poisonous weed.'”