Council on Foreign Relations Rapped for Featuring a Member of the PLO

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith has denounced the Council on Foreign Relations for featuring at its roundtable meeting yesterday Dr. Christopher Giannou, a self-described member of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Abraham Foxman, associate national director of the ADL, in a telegram to Council president Winston Lord, called on the Council to “disassociate itself from the terrorist views which Dr. Giannou espouses” and said it would have been more appropriate for the Council to “expose” Giannou.

But a Council official said today that because an individual is invited to speak to its membership, this does not mean that the person’s views are those held by the Council itself. “It does not follow that by extending invitations, the Council endorses… his or her views,” said Frances Himelfarb, the associate director of meetings.

BACKGROUND OF GIANNOU

Giannou obtained considerable media coverage when during the summer of 1982, at the initial stages of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, he claimed to be an eyewitness to Israeli atrocities and brutality in Lebanon. The Canadian-born Giannou was at the time working in south Lebanon at a hospital facility run by the Palestine Red Crescent Society, the medical arm of the PLO which is headed by Yasir Arafat’s brother, Dr. Fathi Arafat.

In addition, Giannou was detained by the Israelis on suspicion of working for the PLO and was subsequently released to Canadian authorities on June 23, 1982. He later testified before the House Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East and related his account to the United Nations. Israeli officials, including Pinchus Harris, Deputy Surgeon General of the Israel Defense Force, refuted Giannou’s allegations.

In a speech delivered at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts on November 2, 1982, Giannou was quoted as saying, “Technically I am a member of the PLO because I worked in Red Crescent hospitals in Nabitiya and Sidon.” He was also quoted at the same time saying, “The Palestinian cause was a sacred one, and Israel was the enemy.” The quotes were provided by the ADL which attributed them to the Williams Record, a student newspaper.

The Council identified Giannou as a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Red Crescent Society. The roundtable meeting yesterday, as described by a Council official, was off the record and its contents and the comments by Giannou were not for publication. Approximately 40 Council members attended, the official said. The Council, which publishes the journal Foreign Affairs, is a private non-profit research organization which studies American foreign policy issues.

Foxman, in the telegram, said: “For the Council to honor this man is to contradict the ideals and guiding principles that have animated the Council since its inception: peaceful diplomacy to solve conflicts between nations and the respect for objectivity and scholarship in international relations.”