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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (21772)	3/20/2002 10:04:20 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Reuters says that the US officially complained to Saudi Arabia about the printing the blood libel, which explains the about-face. BTW, has anyone seen the New York Times mention the story yet? __________________________________________________________ Saudi Article on Jews Prompts Protest Wed Mar 20, 5:19 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has complained to Saudi Arabia about a newspaper article which alleged that Jews add human blood to pastries they eat at the festival of Purim, a U.S. official said Wednesday. The article by Omayma Ahmed al-Jalahma, who teaches at King Faisal University, appeared in the newspaper al-Riyadh on March 10 and has been widely circulated in translation. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "Unfortunately, anti-Semitism continues to be a problem in pro-government and opposition party media throughout the Middle East, including in Saudi media outlets. "Anti-Semitism, wherever it manifests itself, is repugnant. We condemn it in strongest terms. We believe that such material is counterproductive to improving relations and dialogue." He added: "We were particularly concerned by the appearance of an article in a recent Saudi daily repeating a centuries-old calumny. ... We approached the Saudis to register our complaint about the baseless and inflammatory nature of this article." The spokesman did not say how the Saudi authorities responded in this case but in other cases in the past they have promised to "address the issue," he said. He noted that Turki Abdullah al-Sudairi, the editor of the newspaper and the dean of the Saudi press corps, responded to the article on March 19, saying it was unfit for publication. The article said: "This feast requires the Jewish people to provide human blood so that their men of religion can prepare the feast pastry, in other words the rituals of their feast can take place properly only if they shed human blood." It said shedding human blood to make pastries was a permanent feature of Jewish history and law and a fundamental reason for the persecution and eviction of the Jews. The newspaper al-Riyadh is privately owned but, like all Saudi media, it stays within limits set by the government of Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East. The Middle East media monitoring organization MEMRI said the Saudi Embassy in Washington had responded to complaints about the article by saying that al-Riyadh was a small private newspaper and not a government publication. U.S. administrations, under pressure from groups like the Anti-Defamation League, have also complained to the Egyptian government about allegedly anti-Semitic cartoons and articles. An editorial on the Voice of America on Monday said Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries should stop newspapers and radio and television stations from "inciting hatred and violence against Jews". On the al-Riyadh article, it said: "No one who is not blinded by hate for Jews could ever believe such nonsense. ... Surely this is not the way to promote peace between Arab and Jews." VOA editorials are approved by the State Department.