PLO's Claim that Jews Not Linked to Bibical Israelites is Latest of PLO's Many Lies

July 11, 1997

PLO Television's false claim that today's Jews have no connection to the ancient Israelites of the Bible "is a disgraceful and patently fraudulent attempt to sever the link between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel," said Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). "This violates the Oslo accord by challenging Israel's very right to exist, and it incites Arabs to seek Israel's elimination."

The program broadcast on PLO Television, in June, featured Palestinian Arab historian Jarid al-Kidwa, who claimed that "all the events surrounding Kings Saul, David and Rehoboam occurred in Yemen, and no Hebrew remnants were found in Israel, for a very simple reason--because they were never here." Al-Kidwa said: "Most of the Khazars [a Turkish tribe that converted to Judaism in medieval times] are the Ashkenazic Jews who arrived in Palestine. As Allah is my witness, in my blood flows more of the Children of Israel and the ancient Hebrews than in the blood of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu."

According to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz (July 6, 1997), al- Kidwa also said: "The stories of the Torah and the Bible did not take place in the Land of Israel--they occurred in the Arabian peninsula, primarily in Yemen. The identity of our father Ibrahim [Abraham] who is mentioned in the Koran is clear. From the Koran's description of him it arises that he lived in the southern Hejaz [Saudi arabia], near Mecca."

ZOA president Morton A. Klein said: "Yasir Arafat has not condemned the latest PLO lie denying any link between modern Jews and the Biblical Israelites, which openly disparages basic Jewish beliefs. Arafat seems to have learned well from other dictators, who understood that the bigger the lie, and the more frequently it is repeated, the more people will believe it. Arafat must order a halt to the spreading of these lies, and he must publicly apologize to World Jewry."

Other anti-Israel fabrications that Arafat and the PLO have circulated include:

• Abdel Hamid al-Qudsi, Deputy Minister of the PLO's Palestinian Authority Ministry of Supplies, declared: "Israel is distributing food containing material that causes cancer and hormones that harm male virility and other spoiled food products in the Palestinian Authority's territories in order to poison and harm the Palestinian population. We absolutely feel that it is an organized plan and conspiracy which is under the auspices of the Israel Defense Forces this is a planned and initiated war against the Palestinian people." (Yediot Ahronot, June 25, 1997)

• A Palestinian Arab prisoner who claimed to be a Shin Bet agent was presented at a press conference organized by the PLO police in Gaza on May 4, 1997. The prisoner, Ibrahim Halabi, claimed that the Shin Bet recruited him to carry out two recent attacks on Israeli school buses in Gaza, and gave him the explosives. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesman said the allegation was "a fabrication," (N.Y. Times, May 5, 1997)

• "Allow me to remind you here of what the Israeli government is intent upon doing--and that is digging a tunnel under the western wall of Al Aqsa mosque." (Yasir Arafat, speech to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 23, 1997)

• "The Israeli authorities infected by injection 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus during the years of the intifada." (Nabil Ramlawi, the PLO representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Jerusalem Post, March 17, 1997)

• "Jerusalem is not a Jewish city, despite the biblical myth implanted in some minds...There is no tangible evidence of Jewish existence from the so-called 'Temple Mount Era'...The location of the Temple Mount is in question...it might be in Jericho or somewhere else." (Walid M. Awad, Director of Foreign Publications for the PLO's Palestine Ministry of Information, interviewed by the IMRA news agency, Dec.25, 1996.)

• "Abraham was neither Jewish nor a Hebrew, but was simply an Iraqi. The Jews have no right to claim part of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Abraham's resting place, as a synagogue. Rather, the whole building should be a mosque." (Yasir Arafat, quoted in the Jerusalem Report, Dec. 26, 1996)

• "The Palestinian Authority is now claiming that Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem is the traditional tomb of the Cushite servant of Mohammed." (Ha'aretz, Oct.9, 1996)

• "That is not the Western Wall at all, but a Moslem shrine." (Yasir Arafat, quoted in Ma'ariv, Oct. 11, 1996)

• Regarding weapons in the hands of Arab terrorists, Arafat said, "These weapons could be obtained only from high authorities with great influence on the Israeli side." (Jerusalem Post, March 22, 1996)

• "An unholy conspiracy of Israeli 'fanatics', who are members of a shadowy group of ex-IDF people called 'OAS', and Moslem extremists were behind [the Feb.1996] suicide bombings, PalestinianAuthority President Yasser Arafat told foreign diplomats...Arafat is known to have said last year, before [Ehud] Barak became [Israel's] foreign minister, that 'Barak is one of the big bosses of the OAS'..." (Jerusalem Post, Feb.27, 1996)

• "The people of Israel realize perfectly well that they have no temples or ruins near Al Aqsa Mosque. According to the Koran, the people of Israel lived somewhere to the west of Bethlehem...they were living in Bethlehem and not in Jerusalem." (Sheikh Ismail Jamal, the PLO's Director of the Islamic Wakf in Jericho, quoted in the Chicago Jewish Sentinel, May 18, 1995)

• Referring to the Arab terrorist attack in Beit Lid, in which22 Israelis were killed, and other attacks in 1995, Arafat said, "I have evidences that these terrorist activities have been done through coordination between these fanatic Islamic groups and some elements on the Israeli side." (Washington Post, May 2, 1995)

• Arafat once "convened a conference of the international press to claim that an imprint of an ancient Judean coin on the Israeli 10-agorot coin was Israel's imperialistic expansion map. This coin, he said, shows that Israel plans to conquer Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and parts of Egypt and Saudi Arabia." (Jerusalem Post, Feb. 22, 1995)

• "PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, in interviews published yesterday, accused IDF troops of aiding the spread of arms in the territories in a plot to create chaos in Palestinian self-rule areas...'This weapons trade is being carried out under the auspices of some Israeli officers in the West Bank and Gaza. This is part of a wicked plan'..." (Jerusalem Post, Feb. 18 & Feb. 19, 1994)

• "Israel has been using chemical weapons against Palestinians in the territories for 27 months with the support of the U.S. It's not tear gas, it's chemical weapons." (Yasir Arafat, Jerusalem Post, April 1, 1990)