ADC chairman sends open letter to President Bush
Regional-USA, Politics, 8/29/2001

President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Ziad Asali, on Tuesday sent US President George Bush an open letter expressing concern at Israel's policy of using death squads to assassinate Palestinian political leaders and activists and urging the United States to take action to prevent such crimes.

The ADC President expressed the deep concern of the Arab-American community at the insufficient response of the US Administration to Israel's expanding policy of assassinating Palestinian political leaders and activists in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel.

"While we are well aware of the clear and repeated statements by Administration spokespersons that the United States is opposed to these actions and recognizes that they are provocative and enflame an already volatile situation, we feel that it is imperative that the United States do more to prevent any future assassinations," the letter said adding that the recent murder of Mustafa Al-Zibri (also known as Abu Ali Mustafa) in Ramallah "clearly constitutes a major escalation of the conflict on the part of Israel and opens the door to an endless series of assassinations of political leaders."

Voicing grave concern at the statements by some US senior officials, and stressing the urgent need that the United States send a much clearer, unequivocal message to Israel that this policy is unacceptable, the letter pointed out that the lack of any action on the part of the State Department to hold Israel accountable for these murders creates an impression of tolerance for such killings.

"The assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa, like many others carried out by Israeli death squads in recent months, appears to have been committed using American made and supplied weapons in contravention not only of the 4th Geneva Convention but also American law," the letter stated further, urging the US president "to investigate this patently illegal use of American-supplied weapons by Israel pursuant to issuing a finding regarding Israel's compliance with US laws" and "to halt all further weapons transfers to Israel until the Administration can ensure that these weapons are not used against Palestinian civilians living under Israeli occupation or in violation of US law."

The ADC president recalled that the killings perpetrated by Israel have not only taken the lives of over 50 Palestinian activists and political leaders in recent months, but numerous by-standers including several young children have been killed and maimed in the process. He said the United States, "as Israel's patron, arms-supplier and diplomatic protector, has a profound moral obligation to see to it that Israel's death squads do not continue to work their way through hit lists of Palestinian leaders."

"To simply stand by as these provocations and escalations by Israel continue is to court disaster. We need to use all our influence to stop these killings, and develop a new set of negotiations which can end the occupation, and bring peace to Israelis and freedom to the Palestinians," the ADC president said.

Previous Stories:
  Mubarak, Abdullah, Arafat summit meeting with Bush   (8/22/2001)
  ADC board names new chairman and president   (8/14/2001)
  Arab-Americans urge for U.S. participation in UN conference against racism   (7/28/2001)

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