In the wake of this week’s bomb blast in Oklahoma City, Israeli, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres called for a new international organization to combat terror.
Peres said the civilized world is facing a new threat from terrorists armed with modern weapons and free movement around the globe.
“We have to have an international effort,” Peres told Israel Television. “We have to reinforce the agencies of information and intelligence [to follow] movement, the getting of weapons, cars, identification.”
At least 36 people were killed, 17 of them children, and hundreds of others wounded when a car bomb exploded in front of a federal office building in Oklahoma City on Wednesday morning. More than 200 people remained unaccounted for Thursday, prompting fears that the death toll will climb.
Peres, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and President Ezer Weizman all cabled condolences to the American people.
In a message to President Clinton, Weizman extended condolences to the families of the dead, and hoped for a speedy recovery to the injured.
In his message to Clinton, Rabin said, “We must strike terror before it hits again” and offered whatever form of assistance and the United States might need.
In the Gaza Strip, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat condemned the attack, as did Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist group that has been responsible for a series of terror attacks on Israelis.
A leader of the extremist Islamic Jihad said his group did not approve of the bombing.
A Hamas official denied that his group was responsible for the Oklahoma City attack.
“Our only goal is to resist the [Israeli] occupation inside the occupied territories, and Sheik Saiyed Abu Musameh, a Hamas leader. “There is no enmity between us and the American.”
Press dismissed the statement as meaningless.
“Since I don’t believe their motives, nor their judgement, nor the position of Hamas, I don’t believe their declaration,” he said.
Peres’ call for an international effort to fight terrorism was echoed in other countries.
“The great nations that are inevitably exposed to this type of savage act must now more than ever coordinate their efforts to fight effectively against terrorism,” said Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac, the front-runner in France’s current presidential campaign.
Government leaders in Canada, England, Italy, Russia, the Philippines and South Korea were also among those sending their condolences to Clinton and the American people in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
