FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 14, 2001

SCHUMER, CLINTON CALL FOR ERADICATION OF HATE RHETORIC BY THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY

Senators voice concern over discrepancy between Arafat, PA rhetoric to the West and hatred preached to Palestinian people and taught in schools

In the wake of a recent cease-fire agreement in the Middle East, US Senators Charles E. Schumer (D- NY) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) today praised the Bush Administration's efforts in helping the Israelis and the Palestinians reach a cease-fire, but said that President Bush should make clear that no real peace can come unless the Palestinians eradicate the use of hateful, anti-Israeli rhetoric in official statements, school books and newspapers.

"There cannot be a meaningful, lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians if the Palestinian Authority does not act to end the preaching of hate and replace it with the language of peace," the Senators wrote in a letter to President Bush. "That can only come by insisting that all official Palestinian publications - from official statements to newspapers to textbooks - immediately stop printing hateful, anti-Israeli rhetoric that undermines the very possibility of peace."

Earlier this week, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agreed to a US-brokered cease-fire ending eight months of violence that began last fall after the peace negotiations at Camp David broke down.

Schumer and Clinton noted that while Chairman Yasir Arafat speaks of peace to Israel and the West, he continues to call for the destruction of Israel when talking to the Palestinian people. Comments made by Arafat and other Palestinian officials, along with materials taught to schoolchildren frequently call for violence against the Jewish people and the destruction of Israel.

The Senators demonstrated several examples of Palestinian hate rhetoric:

1. "There is no alternative to destroying Israel." (Our Country Palestine - required reading under new Palestinian sixth-grade curriculum - banner on title page of Volume I)
2. "The flare will continue to burn and light up the difficult path before the Palestinian generations, one generation after another, until the flag of Palestine is raised over holy Jerusalem..." (Yasir Arafat, May 15, 2001 speech on Palestinian television)
3. "The day of judgement will not come until the Muslims will fight against Jews and kill them, until the Jews will hide behind stones and trees and the stones and tree will say, 'O servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." (Article in official PA government newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 9, 2001)
4. "Perhaps Allah brought the Jews to our land so that their demise would be here, as it was in their wars with Rome." (Our Country Palestine, introduction to Volume II)
5. "The Palestinian people accepted the Oslo agreements as a first step and not as a permanent arrangement based on the premise that the war and struggle on the ground is more efficient than a struggle from a distant land... for the Palestinian people will continue the revolution until they achieve the goal of the 1965 revolution." (PA Minister Abd el Shahian, May 2000)
6. "The clearest examples of racist belief and racial discrimination in the world are Nazism and Zionism." (Modern Arab History For the 12 Grade, Part I, Lesson #648, p. 123)

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