ZOA Slams AIPAC Call to Support Palestinian State

by Avraham Zuroff

May 7, 2009

(IsraelNN.com) The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed “deep concern” that pro-Israel lobbyist group America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has endorsed establishing a Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel’s longest border.

At this week’s annual AIPAC conference, member activists were instructed to ask their congressional representatives to endorse letters addressed to U.S. President Barack Obama that explicitly promote the need for a “viable Palestinian state.”

In a statement issued Wednesday, the ZOA blasted the move, saying it was mystified that “AIPAC is supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state despite the fact that [PA Chairman] Mahmoud Abbas refuses to accept Israel as a Jewish State and other PA leaders refuse to accept Israel at all.”

The ZOA added that when Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Shamir asked AIPAC to support the right of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria, the group refused. 

“The letters being circulated to lawmakers on Capitol Hill are especially troubling in that they promote Palestinian statehood while Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah (strongly supported by Palestinian opinion) refuse to accept Israel or even to depict the country on PA maps, atlases…[Fatah] continues to permit incitement to hatred and murder against Jews and Israel in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps,” the ZOA stated. “Fatah does not arrest and jail terrorists or outlaw terrorist groups; [it] retains the Fatah Constitution with its calls for terrorism and Israel’s destruction; and honors terrorists like George Habash and Samir Kuntar.”

The ZOA charged that the AIPAC action “constitutes a major reward for Palestinian terrorism and non-acceptance of Israel when we should only be rewarding moderation and acceptance and fulfillment of written agreements of Oslo, Wye and the Roadmap.”