Sixteen French organizations comprising the “Common Front For Israel” have asked the French government to close the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Paris office.
According to Shimon Samuels, director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith’s European office in Paris, the appeal, made to the members of the French Parliament, said that despite attempts “to clear the PLO,” the Oct. 3 Rue Copernic synagogue bombing is being traced to international terrorist organizations with links to the PLO.
In calling for the closing of the PLO office, the appeal said the matter should be treated with “urgency” for the welfare of the nation. The Common Front for Israel asserted that unjustifiable attacks on Israel or threats to individual Jews place all nations and all peoples in jeopardy — as was demonstrated in the Rue Copemic bombing, in which non-Jews were also killed.
“It is quite impossible,” the appeal went on, “to draw a distinction between anti-Semitism, which refuses to grant one man the same rights as another because he is a Jew, and anti-Zionism, which refuses to grant a people the same right as other peoples because they are Jews.”
The Common Front for Israel also assailed the French government for what it called a “policy of keeping silent” in the synagogue bombing and for fastering the PLO cause.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
