NEW YORK - The official Palestinian Authority newspaper has accused the CIA of masterminding the Muslim Chechnyan terrorist siege of a Moscow theater that resulted in the deaths of 118 hostages.

    Fuad Abu Hajleh, senior columnist for the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, wrote on October 29, 2002 that the CIA masterminded the attack in response to Russia’s opposition in the UN to American policy concerning Iraq:

    “President Putin’s ambassador to the Security Council is threatening to vote against the American’s proposed resolution to attack Iraq. This is how we view the operation in the Moscow theater; we are of the opinion that the sympathy and friendship that bond Washington to several Islamic movements in Europe, among them the Chechens, cannot possibly be one-sided and there has to be some sort of repayment of the American friendship by the Mujahedin of Chechnya, Bosnia, Hercegovina and Kosovo. The CIA will never acknowledge its responsibility for this operation which claimed over 170 lives, including those of the perpetrators… However, the American message reached Moscow and was, perhaps, read the same way by the decision makers in France, who oppose the American pressure in the Security Council…we fear a recurrence of a bloody scene in the capitol of [our] friends, the French. We hope they are preparing for such an eventuality, lest it be Moscow first and Paris next.”

    The editorial is the latest in a series of anti-American statements and actions by the Palestinian Arabs, which included an October 23 cartoon in the PA-sponsored newspaper Al Ayam portraying President Bush as the Washington, D.C. sniper; and two cartoons on September 11 in the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida mocking the victims of the 9/11 attack and labeling them victims of “American hegemony.”
(Translations courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch)

    For a free copy of the ZOA’s report, Anti-American Statements and Actions by the Palestinian Arabs, please call the ZOA at 212-481-1500.

    Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), said: “CIA agents are currently stationed in Palestinian Authority territory, training members of their terrorist ’security forces’–yet the PA’s newspaper spreads vicious anti-American libels. American taxpayers’ money should not be used to finance this pro-terrorist, anti-American regime. The U.S. has been giving the Palestinian Arabs more than $100-million each year–a total of nearly $1-billion in aid since 1994. It would be fitting to take that aid and give it to victims of terrorism instead.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 7th, 2002 and is filed under arabpress.