Peace activist Abie Nathan celebrated his 64th birthday by announcing a hunger strike beginning at midnight Sunday to protest Israel’s ban on contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Nathan recently served 120 days in jail for meeting with “Palestinians associated with terrorist groups,” including PLO chief Yasir Arafat, and is under advisement that he may have to return to jail as punishment for a subsequent meeting he had with PLO leaders in Tripoli, Libya.
But he considers the ban ridiculous and will continue to protest until the law is changed, Nathan told reporters and friends at his annual birthday reception at the Hilton Hotel here Saturday.
There is no need for peace talks with friends, only with enemies, if one wants to end hostilities and make peace, Nathan said.
“I’m not fasting in order to die, but so that we can all live,” he said.
Nathan finances his peace activities and his disaster relief efforts — most recently for Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq — from advertising revenues earned by his unlicensed Voice of Peace radio station, which has been broadcasting pop music and peace messages in Hebrew and Arabic from a ship outside Israeli territorial waters for the past 25 years.
The Indian-born Nathan, who holds a civilian pilot’s license, also was celebrating the 23rd anniversary of an illegal flight he made to Port Said, Egypt, on a one-man peace mission.
He had hoped at the time to meet with Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was the Egyptian president at the time, to persuade him to make peace with Israel.
But his audacious mission did not succeed, as he was promptly ousted by the Egyptian authorities.
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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.
