AJCommitee Calls For Yassar Arafat To Repudiate Aids Slander Against Israel

American Jewish Committee
Friday, 2 May 1997

The American Jewish Committee has called on PLO Chairman Yassar Arafat to unequivocally repudiate a statement by the Palestinian observer to the U.N Commission on Human Rights in which he claimed Israel has infected Palestinian children with the HIV/AIDS virus.

In a letter to Chairman Arafat sent by Robert S. Rifkind and David A. Harris, respectively, president and executive director of the American Jewish Committee, the AJC leaders noted that such statements, if left unchallenged, can only serve to incite hatred and violence.

The letter reads, in part:

"As you know, during the United Nations Commission on Human rights session on March 11th, the Palestinian observer Nabil Ramlawi claimed that Israel had infected 300 Palestinian children with the HIV/AIDS virus. Mr. Ramlawi has not retracted this outrageous slander nor-- to our knowledge-have you denounced it. Even Cairo's al-Ahram, which ran a similar claim on January 22, 1997, issued a full retraction four days later on its front page, pointing out that its report was totally false.

"On behalf of the American Jewish Committee, which has actively supported the peace process, we believe firmly that this baseless obscenity must not be allowed to pass unchallenged or to be used to incite hatred that leads to more violence. We understand that the peace process currently is going through a difficult period. That is all the more reason that Mr. Ramlawi's resurrection of a new version of the vicious centuries-old anti-Semitic 'blood libel' is not only repugnant, but inevitably calls into question the sincerity of your determination to live in peace with Israel.

"We hope that the Palestinian Liberation Organization will unequivocally repudiate Mr. Ramlawi's reprehensible assertion and circulate a copy of its repudiation as a document of the Commission on Human Rights."

For more information, or to contact American Jewish Committee, see their website at: www.ajc.org