Letter: New York Times Letters to the Editor: Daniel Gavron claims that the Arab world…
ZOA in the news
February 11, 2008

New York Times
Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor:


Daniel Gavron claims that the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, is “on record” as accepting Israel in its pre-1967 borders and that Israel thus has won. (“Israel’s secret success,” Feb. 11, 2008)


I only wish it were so. But no Arab country including the Palestinian Authority (PA) shows “Israel” on any of its official maps. Only “Palestine” is listed, and the Arabs still refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state, while the Saudi-sponsored 2002 initiative, which is supported by the Arab world indicates that no recognition of Israel will be forthcoming until and unless Israel allows Palestinian “refugees” of the 1948 war and their millions of descendants to move to Israel, ensuring Israel’s demise as a Jewish state. Every refugee problem of the last century other than this one was solved by resettlement, not repatriation, yet this initiative explicitly rejects any settlement of these people anywhere else in the Middle East.


The promotion of hatred of Jews and Israel also remains rampant in the Arab media, and schools. Gavron seems to have forgotten social philosopher Ludwig Von Mises’ dictum about creating peace, “The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.” That ideology remains alive and well in the Palestinian Authority, which only last week honored the death of George Habash, a Palestinian terrorist leader, by ordering 3 days of mourning, lowering its flags to half-mast, and officially calling him a “hero and great loss” to the Palestinians.


Morton A. Klein
National President
Zionist Organization of America




Center for Law & Justice
We work to educate the American public and Congress about legal issues in order to advance the interests of Israel and the Jewish people.
We assist American victims of terrorism in vindicating their rights under the law, and seek to hold terrorists and sponsors of terrorism accountable for their actions.
We fight anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias in the media and on college campuses.
We strive to enforce existing law and also to create new law in order to safeguard the rights of the Jewish people in the United States and Israel.