Republicans Call on Dukakis to Remove Pro-arab Dnc Members

Three Republican lawmakers on Friday called on Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis to remove three pro-Palestinian members of the Democratic National Committee.

Reps. Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.) and John Miller (R-Wash.), who are Jewish, and Rep. Norman Lent (R-N.Y.) asked Dukakis to “act at once to dismiss” the three. They are:

The Rev. Willie Barrow, executive director of Operation PUSH, the Chicago-based organization founded by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Barrow is considered a supporter of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has made several disparaging remarks about Jews and Judaism.

Robert Farrell, a Los Angeles city councilman, who in 1986 said that “Israel is treating West Bank Arabs the same way the Nazis treated European Jews.”

Ruth Ann Skaff of Houston, a spokeswoman for the pro-Palestinian Ad Hoc Committee on Lebanon.

The three were among ten Jackson supporters added to the Democratic National Committee as part of a unity agreement between Jackson and Dukakis at the start the Democratic National Convention in July.

‘PATHETIC’ CHARGES

The presence of the three “raises questions about Dukakis’ judgment and his submission to Jesse Jackson,” the lawmakers said in a statement. “If Jackson has this much influence now, what kind of influence will he have in a Dukakis White House?”

Hyman Bookbinder, special adviser to the Dukakis campaign on the Middle East, human rights and the underprivileged, called the lawmakers’ charges “pathetic.”

“There is just no comparison between the two things they are trying to make similar,” Bookbinder said.

He was referring to the resignations last week of allegedly anti-Jewish members of Vice President George Bush’s Coalition of Ethnic Nationalities, an organ of the Republican nominee’s presidential campaign.