December 18, 1997
Yasir Arafat has publicly warned of a “Jewish plan” to
destroy the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and has compared Jewish residents
of Jerusalem to “the devil.” The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is
urging the Clinton administration to demand that Arafat cease his hate rhetoric
against Jews, which helps incite Arabs to engage in violence against Jews.
Speaking at the Muslim Summit in Teheran, Iran, on Dec.10, 1997,
Arafat said “I am ringing the bell of danger to warn against the Jewish plan to
build the Temple of Solomon in the place where today stands Al Aqsa Mosque, after
removing the mosque.”
Arafat said: “Rescuing Jerusalem from the devil of invasive
settlements and from the danger of Judaization obliges us to take serious
and urgent actions to protect the city and prevent the Israeli plan…to
protect it from the danger of invasive Judaization, which aims at eliminating its
Islamic and Arab identity, obscure its historic and cultural heritage, and sully
the lofty holy and religious sites.”
The PLO chairman also denounced “the arrogant policies of the
brutal Israeli force and its attempt to impose a solution which will deprive the
Palestinian nation of liberty, independence and sovereignty, and will
desecrate the holy places of Islam and Christianity in the Palestinian land and
Jerusalem.”
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said that “Arafat’s false
accusation that Israel intends to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque creates an
atmosphere that encourages the murder of Jews–just as the Mufti of
Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, used false accusations of a Jewish plot against the
Al Aqsa Mosque to incite the slaughter of hundreds of Jews in Jerusalem,
Hebron, and elsewhere in the 1920s and 1930s.”
Arafat made similar allegations about Jewish plans to harm the
mosque immediately prior to the September 1996 Palestinian Arab rioting, in
which 16 Israelis were killed.
The ZOA president also noted that Arafat’s use of the term “devil”
echoed Arafat’s use of similar language last year, when he called Israel a
“demon” that “swallows up everything, including the process.” (New York
Times, August 7, 1996) Klein said: “Such comparisons of Jews to devils and
demons is reminiscent of Medieval anti-Jewish bigotry, which began with horrifying
analogies and ended in horrifying massacres.”
