Nusseibeh US tour sparks controversy
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MELISSA RADLER and TOM TUGEND Oct. 1, 2002
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NEW YORK The visit of Sari Nusseibeh, the PLO's point man in Jerusalem, to speak at a Conservative synagogue Thursday night has proven controversial in the Jewish community, with Americans for Peace Now, which is sponsoring the talk, clashing publicly with the Zionist Organization of America his pro-peace credentials.
[ Nadine will love this censorship issue -G- ]
Yesterday, a few days after ZOA president Mort Klein wrote a letter to the rabbis at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in which he urged them to boot Nusseibeh from their speakers list, the head of APN's Chicago office, Gidon Remba, published a "white paper" on the group's Web site that detailed Nusseibeh's consistently dovish stance on Israel during the past two years of bloodshed.
APN described ZOA as a "far right-wing organization" and defended Nusseibeh as a moderate, "working tirelessly for an end to Israeli-Palestinian violence."
The paper also seeks to explain questionable incidents that the group says anti-Nusseibeh advocates have mistakenly latched onto as proof of his ill will, such as his appearance alongside the mother of a suicide bomber on Al-Jazeera, and refute allegations it says are false, including the charge, cited by the ZOA, that Nusseibeh offered to helped guide Scud missiles toward their Israeli targets during the Gulf War.
Criticism of Nusseibeh, according to APN president Debra DeLee, is the result of "abject fear of the possible resumption of peace negotiations."
According to Klein, however, Nusseibeh simply doesn't belong in a synagogue. "Such invitations only bestow credibility and legitimacy upon his pro-violence positions," he said.
Last month, Nusseibeh spoke in eight US cities as part of a lecture tour with MK Colette Avital of the Labor Party, MK Avshalom Vilan of Meretz, and Gavri Bargil, head of the Kibbutz Movement
Over the past weekend, the traveling team of Vilan and Nusseibeh was in Los Angeles, speaking at the University Synagogue in Irvine, Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, and a $250 per head fundraiser at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
The latter event drew some 130 people, mostly veteran liberals, who heard the speakers outline their peace platform.
It included the mutual recognition of Israel and a Palestinian state, with the border running roughly along the pre-1967 line, expropriation of most West Bank and Gaza settlements, eastern Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital, and the return of Palestinian refugees to a Palestinian state, but not Israel.
"The dream of both a Big Israel or a Big Palestine is dead," said Vilan.
Nusseibeh described the current situation as a quagmire "in which both sides are killing each other without any particular plan and without a good reason for doing so." |
