Adlaccuses U.S. of Trying to Soften Stand on PLO

The Anti Deformation League of B’nai B’rith has accused the U.S. State Department of acclimating the American people to the “smiling false side” of the Palestine Liberation Organization and “creating a misleading impression” of its terrorist character.

In a joint response to a State Department explanation for a visa approval to Shafik Al-Hout, a PLO propagandist who lectured in several U.S. cities recently, ADL’s two top leaders declared, “this State Department decision was unwise and regrettable.”

Maxwell E. Greenberg, ADL’s chairman, and Nathan Perlmutter, director, were reacting to letters each received from Department spokesman Hodding Carter which said that while the PLO is regarded as a “proscribed” organization for which visas are restricted, a waiver was given in the Al-Hout case because he is a “moderate” within the PLO.

In a letter to Carter, the ADL leaders observed his use of the term “moderate’ suggests the ludicrous classification of ‘moderate terrorists. Al-Hout has never spoken out against the ongoing PLO policy of killing innocents, ” and that he therefore shares moral responsibility for such murders, they said.

Carter’s statement that the visa approval for Al-Hout does not change standing. U.S. policy against negotiation with the PLO until it accepts Israel’s right to exist was also challenged by the ADL officials, who declored “in a subtle way, it begins to do just that.”

By providing the PLO with a U.S. platform, said Greenberg and Perlmutter, “we are conveying a message to the PLO (as did Ambassador Andrew Young several months ago when he referred to PLO representatives at the UN as ‘decent men’) that our policy is not firm.” The ADL letter urged continuation of an “uncompromising American policy toward the PLO” because its rejectionist position makes it unsuitable for negotiation.

Referring to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s “live-and-let-live” attitude which opened hope for a peaceful solution to the Middle East problem, the ADL officials noted that “there is absolutely no indication that the PLO is like-minded Our government, therefore, should not contribute to the creation of an impression that the PLO leadership is anything other than the terrorist murderers that they patently, defiantly, even boastfully, are,”