Jewish Committee On The Middle East

P.O. Box 18367 - Washington, D.C. 20036

(202) 362-JCOME, Ext 526 Fax: (202) 362-6965 Email: COME@MiddleEast.Org

PRESS RELEASE - 9/26/96

U.S. SHOULD SUSPEND

AID TO ISRAEL
For spokesperson call (202) 362-5266, Ext 777 (24-hours).


Israeli policies of repression and occupation are possible only because the United States continues to provide Israel the military, financial, and political means to continue those policies.

American support to Israel in amounts provided no other country in the world make the U.S. a complicitous and responsible party in treating Palestinians like Indians on Reservations or Blacks on the former South African Bantustans. Indeed, Israeli policies toward the Palestinians can be appropriately compared with the racist Apartheid policies in the former South Arica that were so widely condemned throughout the world.

Current Israeli policies are not an aberration, they are part of a long-pattern that includes the following:

* Deir Yassein Massacre (1948 -- hundreds)
* Kibya Massacre (1953 - 75)
* Lavon Affair (1955)
* Kfar Qasem Massacre (1956 - 43)
* U.S.S. Liberty Ship Massacre (1967 - 30+)
* Killing of unarmed Egyptian Prisoners of War (1967 - unknown)
* Sabra & Shatilla Massacre & Lebanon invasion (1982 - thousands)
* Shinbet Torture Scandal (1984)
* Tunis Massacre (1985 - 75+)
* Mordechai Vanunu kidnapping and secret trial (1986)
* Abu Jihad assassination in Tunis (1988)
* Dome of the Rock Massacre (1990 - 22)
* Illegal mass expulsions (1993)
* Qana Massacre (1996 - 100+)

JCOME, an independent association of Jewish Americans and supporters -- including Jewish Professors at over 175 universities -- calls on the U.S. government to finally end this complicity with Israel by suspending U.S. assistance to Israel until the Israelis agree to end all settlement activites in the occupied territories including East Jerusalem, abide by all relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions, and agree to independent Palestinian Statehood.

* For additional information and press commentator contact JCOME Chairperson Mark Bruzonsky at (202) 362-5266, Ext 278 - 24-hours daily. Bruzonsky is former Washington representative of the World Jewish Congress, has visited the Middle East region over 150 times, and has published books about the Middle East with Congressional Quarterly, The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian, and the National Geographic. Bruzonsky provided the live commentary for Canadian National TV during the White House Rabin-Arafat ceremony and now hosts the new TV program, "Mid-East Realities", which shows weekly on all major cable systems in the Washington, D.C. area. He is featured as one of the expert commentators in the new multimedia "CD-BOOK" about the Middle East Region, "Lines in the Sand", published last year.

JCOME Advisory Committee: Prof. Jane Adas; Rutgers Univ.; Prof. Alex Alland, Columbia University; Prof. Michael Astour, Univ. of Southern Il.; Prof. Howard Baumgartel, Emeritus Univ. of Kansas; Prof. Charles Black, Emeritus Yale Univ Law School; Jeffrey Blankfort, Labor Committee on the Middle East, San Francisco; Prof. Francis Boyle, Univ of IL Law School; Mark Bruzonsky; Chairperson, Former Washington Representative - World Jewish Congress; Prof. Noam Chomsky, M.I.T.; Mark Dow, Miami; Prof. Richard Falk, Princeton Univ.; Prof. Sherna Gluck, CA State Univ (Long Beach); Prof. Clement Henry, Univ. Of TX; Prof. Herbert Hill, Univ of WI (Madison); Prof. Elie Katz; Sonoma State Univ, CA; Prof. George Kent, Univ. Of Hawaii; Jeremy Levin, Former CNN Beirut Bureau Chief and hostage; Prof. Seymour Melman, Columbia Univ.; Dr. Alan Meyers, Boston; Henry Schwarzschild, New York; Prof. Herbert Schiller, Univ. of CA (San Diego); Prof. J. David Singer, Univ of MI (Ann Arbor); Ms. Shifra Stern, New York.

With Jewish Professors at over 175 Universities and supporters of all backgrounds nationwide.