NEW YORK- A prominent member of the House International Relations Committee has publicly declared his opposition to U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority and demanded that the PA stop naming streets in honor of terrorists.
U.S. Representative Joseph M. Hoeffel (D-PA), speaking in the House of Representatives, said:
We need the Palestinians to crack down on terror and they haven’t done it … we must demand and see a greater commitment toward peace and the end of terrorism from the Palestinians before we reward them with money or support that in fact could be used against the Israeli people … Before we seriously pursue the Road Map and before we send $20 million to the Palestinian Authority, the PA should at a minimum take five steps:
1. Arrest terrorist leaders.
2. Confiscate weapons that can be used against innocent Israelis.
3. Dismantle terrorist organizations.
4. Change the cultural bias that allows anti-Semitism to be taught in the schools and broadcast on radio and TV.
5. Stop the practice of honoring suicide terrorists with posters and street names.
Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), said: “Congressman Hoeffel is to be praised for his courageous and principled stand. We are grateful to him for his outspoken stance against the Palestinian Authority’s policy of coddling and glorifying Palestinian Arab terrorists. Telling the truth about the Palestinian Authority’s pro-terrorist actions is a crucial part of America’s fight against terrorism worldwide.”
Examples of streets and other public sites in
PA-controlled areas that are named after terrorists:
* A street in the PA-ruled town of Beit Lahiya, and a public square in the PA-ruled city of Jericho, are named after Yiyhe Ayyash. Ayyash, who died in 1996, was named by the State Department as a prime suspect in the August 21, 1995 Jerusalem bus bombing in which Connecticut schoolteacher Joan Davenny was murdered.
* A street in the PA-ruled town of Al-Bireh is named after Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf), a PLO leader involved in planning many attacks, including the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre, in which 12 people were murdered, including a U.S. citizen, David Berger of Cleveland, Ohio.
* There are PA summer camps named after Jihad Al-Amarin, a Fatah leader who died last year; suicide bomber Ayyat al-Akhras, who murdered two Israelis in a Jerusalem supermarket bombing on March 29, 2002; and Dalal Mughrabi, who helped carry out the 1978 Tel Aviv Highway Massacre of 38 people (including Gail Rubin, niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff).
There is also a school in the PA-ruled town of Al-Shuyukh, a kindergarten in the PA-ruled town of Dura, and a Fatah Women’s Young Staff Preparatory Course, all named after Mughrabi.
* A square in the PA-ruled city of Jenin is named after the Iraqi bomber who murdered four American soldiers in a suicide carbomb attack on March 27, 2003.
* A student organization at the PA’s Al Quds Open University, in the town of Tubass, is named after suicide bomber Wafa Idris, the first woman suicide bomber, whose attack in Jerusalem on Jan. 27, 2002, murdered one person and wounded over 150.
* A soccer tournament in PA-ruled Tulkarm in January 2003 was named after suicide bomber Abd Al-Baset Odeh, who massacred 30 people in a Netanya hotel on Passover eve in 2002, including a 90 year-old U.S. citizen, Mrs. Hannah Rogen.