NEWS RELEASE
Zionist Organization of America
Jacob & Libby Goodman ZOA House, 4 East 34th Street, New York, N.Y. 10016
(212) 481-1500 Fax: (212) 481-1515 email@zoa.org www.zoa.org

March 7, 2007
Contact Morton A. Klein at: (212) 481-1500
Attn: NEWS EDITOR

Ignores Arab terror & Arab Jew-hatred

JORDAN'S KING ABDULLAH TO U.S. CONGRESS:
NO JUSTICE FOR PALESTINIANS IS CAUSE OF
REGIONAL & WORLD PROBLEMS

New York -- King Abdullah II of Jordan yesterday addressed a joint
session of Congress in which he essentially blamed Israel for the absence of
peace in the Middle East and failed to mention, let alone condemn, Arab
anti-Semitism and terror and incitement against Israel. Prior to leaving for
Washington, D.C., Abdullah blamed Israel even more starkly, stating that
"The main responsibility (for achieving peace) lies with Israel, which must
choose either to remain a prisoner of the mentality of 'Israel the fortress'
or to live in peace and stability with its neighbors" ( Washington Post,
March 7).

Statements by Abdullah in his speech to Congress:

"The wellspring of regional division, the source of resentment and
frustration far beyond, is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine .
This is the core issue. And this core issue is not only producing severe
consequences for our region, it is producing severe consequences for our
world."
"Sixty years of Palestinian dispossession, 40 years under occupation, a
stop- and-go peace process - all this has left a bitter legacy of
disappointment and despair on all sides"
"Palestinians and Israelis are not the only victims .We saw the violence
ricochet into destruction in Lebanon last summer. And people around the
world have been the victims of terrorists and extremists who use the
grievance of this conflict to legitimize and encourage acts of violence. We
must work together to restore peace, hope and opportunity to the Palestinian
people, and in so doing we will begin a process of bringing peace" to the
region."
"[Muslims] want to know how it is that ordinary Palestinians are still
without rights and without a country. They ask whether the West really means
what it says about equality and respect and universal justice."
"Nothing can achieve that [legacy of justice] more effectively, nothing can
assert America's moral vision more clearly, nothing can reach and teach the
world's youth more directly, than your leadership in a peace process that
delivers results not next year, not in five years, but this year."
"The commitment we made in the [Saudi] Arab Peace Initiative is real." [
This so-called peace initiative demands Israel's return to the indefensible
pre-1967 borders, its acceptance of Palestinian Arab refugees and their
millions of descendants and the relinquishing of half of Jerusalem including
the Temple Mount and other Jewish holy places].

Some reactions to Abdullah's speech:

House Majority leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD): "Disappointed" (New York
Sun, March 8).
Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA):
"profoundly disappointing . a missed opportunity" (New York Sun, March 8);
[The speech was filed with] "platitudes . [it] is sort of unrealistic at a
time when the dominant element in the Palestinian area does not recognize
the existence of Israel" (New York Times, March 8).
Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY): "I was troubled to hear the suggestion that the
fact that Sunni and Shia are murdering each other is somehow the fault of
the Israelis. This implication is a dangerous one and completely
unacceptable" (New York Sun , March 8).

New York Sun editorial: " If one were to distill 110% wrongheadedness and
then distill it again a second, third, and fourth time, one couldn't come up
with a speech as purely wrongheaded as the one that the Hashemite king,
Abdullah II, delivered yesterday to a joint meeting of Congress. The king's
aim amounted to blaming Israel for all the world's problems . Balderdash is
the kindest way to describe [his speech]. It doesn't track with the actions
of the violent terrorists, and it doesn't track with their statements. If
the terrorists are upset about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, why
are they setting off bombs in Indonesia and Spain and Saudi Arabia and Iraq,
which are hardly in the vanguard of support for Israel?" ( New York Sun,
March 8).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, "King Abdullah's speech to
Congress, despite the use of some nice-sounding phrases about America and
one reference to Israel having a place in the region was actually an
exercise in playing to Arab and Muslim hostility against both Israel and the
United States. Abdullah basically blamed the Israelis for all the ills of
the Middle East by falsely claiming that the Israeli-Palestinian Arab
conflict is the source of all regional and world problems. Really? What has
this conflict got to do with Syria's desire to dominate Lebanon? What has
this got to do with the Sunni and Shiite warfare in Iraq? What has this to
do with Islamists murdering tens of thousands in Algeria over the last 15
years? What has this to do with the genocide committee by Arab Muslims
against non-Muslims in Sudan? What did this have to do with the 1980-1988
Iran-Iraq war and the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait? One doesn't need to
read between the lines too carefully to see that he is blaming Israel for
Palestinian Arab statelessness rather than decades of Arab/Muslim hostility
to the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state. In fact, Palestinian Arab
statelessness is the direct consequence of Palestinian Arabs rejecting
statehood three times in the last century (1937, 1947, 2000) in favor of
continuing to wage war on Israel and deny its legitimacy in an attempt to
destroy it.

"It is nonsense and dishonest for Abdullah to speak of 60 years of
Palestinian dispossession and 40 years of statelessness. Palestinian Arabs
fled to make way for Arab armies promising to erase the new state of Israel
in 1948. Those who didn't flee became Israeli citizens with full rights. In
contrast, Jews who lived in areas seized by Jordan and other Arab armies
were completely driven out and their homes and communities were simply
destroyed. In Jordan, it is illegal for Jews to reside there, yet Abdullah
has the gall of speaking about the denial of justice by Israel.
Additionally, why is Abdullah speaking of only 40 years of Palestinian Arab
statelessness? Because his own kingdom seized most of the territories
earmarked by the UN for a Palestinian state in 1947. From 1948 to 1967,
Jordan controlled all of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. Did Jordan
create a Palestinian Arab state?

"He is also demanding greater US involvement in the Arab war against Israel
as if the U.S. is not strongly involved already and as if American
involvement is the issue rather than the fact that the Palestinian Authority
(PA) refuses to end terrorism, jail and arrest terrorists and end the
incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools
and youth camps that feeds terrorism. Clearly, Abdullah's interest in even
greater U.S. involvement clearly means to him more pressure on Israel to
make still more territorial concessions to Palestinian Arabs.

"Once again, instead of honesty and taking responsibility for Arab attitudes
and conduct, Abdullah seeks to deflect the responsibility for the absence of
peace throughout the Middle East on Israel and the United States. Some
American ally. Some Israeli peace partner. Some moderate.

"King Abdullah has insulted the intelligence and knowledge of the U.S.
Congress by preaching falsehoods and distortions about the causes and
resolutions of the problems in the in the Middle East and the world. These
problems can only be solved by facing the truth and reality of the increase
of radical Islamic radical jihadist movements whose goals are the
Islamization of the West and the destruction of Israel and the reality that
the Palestinian Authority Has not fulfilled a single aspect of its
agreements with Israel for 13 years. Unfortunately, the so-called moderate
king ignored every truth and fed Congress lies.

"We agree with the New York Sun whose editorial stated that the U.S.
Congress "will not be gulled by a foreign potentate offering up Israel as a
scapegoat for troubles that originate with the failings of the Arab and
Islamic world and their nondemocratic leaders, Abdullah among them."