Zayed centre hits back at Jewish critics

The Zayed Centre for Coordi-nation and Follow-up (ZCCF), yesterday hit back at Jewish critics who tried to rubbish its seminar held this week highlighting Israel's attempts to use anti-Semitism as a propaganda weapon to promote its own interests.

The Abu Dhabi-based ZCCF, an affiliate of the Arab League, said it was surprised at angry reactions by the American Jewish Congress and other Jewish personalities and organisations in Israel about the symposium, in which the Arab League and several experts participated.

The Arab League's Secretary General Amr Moussa also rebuffed Jewish accusations against the Cairo-based League over its participation in the seminar which they claimed was intended to conceal facts about the so-called holocaust of Jews.

"We in Zayed centre express our great surprise at the manner which was followed by Israeli and Jewish diplomatic and media groups regarding the seminar and its recommendations," the ZCCF said in a statement yesterday.

"The accusations promulgated by Israeli parties against Zayed Centre did not take into consideration the basic principles which the centre adopted in organising that seminar.

"The main goal of this conference was to present concrete scientific facts clarifying the dubious use of the anti-semitism concept through the Arab-Israeli conflict. These facts have also been confirmed by contemporary Israeli historians and were reviewed and discussed by well-know scholars and intellectuals at the conference."

The centre said it was reacting to accusations from Jewish groups in Israel and from the President of the American Jewish Congress, Jack Rosen, who also attacked the Arab League over its participation in the seminar and what he alleged were its attempts to deny that a holocaust against Jews took place during the World War II.

"These voices will only make Zayed centre more determined to work for revealing right and dealing with all issues through a scientific and objective way. The centre will also remain a platform for all intellectual and political opinions."

The centre quoted Rosen as claiming in a statement from Washington: "Anyone who expects better from the Arab League just does not realise that some of its member states have been supporters of and participants in Nazi and neo-Nazi activities both during World War II and ever since.

"It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the Arab League is now participating in the denial that Nazis killed millions of Jews."

It also reported him as saying that hatred of Jews "is a fact of life in the Arab world and that some Arab leaders were fervent supporters of the Nazis during World War II."

He also claimed that the "fact that the very same Arab League whose members are expected to establish full and friendly relations with Israel according to this year's Saudi peace plan, are still denying the holocaust which sends a powerful message that Arab governments remain committed to the big lie that for more than half a century has fuelled Arab efforts to eliminate the Jewish state."

But an angry Arab League secretary general dismissed such allegations which he said were merely part of an Israeli smear campaign against Arabs.

Mousa stressed that Arab states sympathised with the Jews in Europe and what they faced during World War II.

"No one can accuse Arabs of persecuting the Jews at any time or any place. Indeed, history testifies to several incidents in which Arabs provided refuge to Jews," he said.

"At the same time we should now stand forcefully against the war crimes, killings and insults perpetrated against the Palestinian people. Arabs have never taken a hostile attitude against other religions, including Jews, nor can they be described as being anti-semitists because they themselves are semites."

Mousa stressed that the present conflict in the Middle East is not between religions but between "repressive Israeli occupation forces and the will of the Palestinian people who are trying to defend their land and set up their own state on the land occupied by Israel, in 1967."