There was no immediate reaction from administration sources today to CBS News White House correspondent Robert Pierpoint’s charge that the U.S. government followed a “double standard” in its response to acts of violent and terror by both Israel and Palestinian terrorists.
In a biting attack over the CBS Radio Network this morning Pierpoint noted that Secretary of State William P. Rogers had suggested the death penalty for eight terrorists who murdered two American and one Belgian diplomats in Khartoum last Thursday. But “there was next to no outcry in this country” when “the Israelis a few weeks ago carried out a commando-type raid deep into Lebanon, striking at Palestinian refugee camps 130 miles from their own territory and snuffing out thirty or forty lives in the process.” Pierpoint said.
He also noted that Sen. Hugh Scott (R.Pa.) the Republican Senate Minority Leader said of the Khartoum terrorists after a meeting with President Nixon yesterday “I hope they shoot them all, and the sooner the better.” He said that neither Rogers nor Scott mentioned a trial or “the possibility that if a fair trial were held it might turn out that not all the terrorists were guilty of the murders.”
JEWS HAVE HUGE PROPAGANDA MACHINE IN U.S.
“What this seems to add up to is a double standard in this country toward terror and murder,” Pierpoint said. “For so long, Americans have become used to thinking of the Israelis as the good guys, and Arabs as the bad guys, that many react emotionally along the lines of previous prejudices. The fact is that both sides have committed unforgivable acts of terror. Both sides have killed innocents. Both sides have legitimate grievances and illegitimate methods of expressing them.”
Pierpoint said the Arab act of sheer terror may be the “more irrational. At least it was not backed by a relatively rational government which justifies its actions as necessary.” He added: “The Israelis have and utilize a formidable political and propaganda force in this country in the form of six million Jews. The Arabs with only slightly less than a million descendants in America are just beginning to organize a nationwide counter force. Perhaps this will help bring balance. In the meantime, the rest of us might apply more study, balance and fair play to the difficult problems of the Middle East.”
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