Simcha Dinitz, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, told delegates to the 62nd annual national convention of Hadassah at the Washington Hilton Hotel that the killing by Arabs of Arabs in Lebanon meant that Arabs would have “no hesitation” in killing Jews “if they only could.”
Speaking at the same session, Joseph Sisco, former Undersecretary of State, declared that “the security and survival of Israel must be a non-negotiable premise of American foreign policy.” Sisco, now president of the American University here, added that “this commitment to Israel transcends administrations.”
He also said that as a global power, the interests of the United States “go beyond the Middle East” and “we do have to cultivate Arab friends.” He added that, as former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan once said, “The more friends the United States has among the Arabs, the more it will redound to Israel’s interests.”
Dinitz denounced countries which “even tried to find qualities of moderation” in the Palestine Liberation Organization, adding that others suggested that Israel should negotiate with the PLO “as if national suicide is an international obligation.”
ISRAEL MUST RELY ON ITSELF
Declaring that “this bubble is bursting” for “all the world to see,” Dinitz observed that the PLO “policy of establishing a secular democratic state’ for Christians, Moslems and Jews has gone up in flames in the ruins of Lebanon; and its real character as a coalition of murderers has been demonstrated in Athens, Entebbe, Istanbul, Munich and Maalot,” sites of terrorist attacks on Israelis.
He said that “no one came to extinguish the flames in Lebanon” and that Israel “should never rely on anyone to come to fight for our life and survival in Israel. What we need are tools. We are quite capable of doing the job.”
Reiterating that Israel would “pursue vigorously any possibility for peace” and that “no one needs to preach the virtues of peace to Israel,” Dinitz warned that “any attempt to base Israel’s security on components other than on negotiated, secure and defensible boundaries is self-defeating.”
He said that one of the lessons to learn from Israel’s dramatic rescue of more than 100 hostages at the Entebbe Airport was that “the world must change its attitude toward international terrorism, blackmail and extortion if we are all to make it a safer place to live.” Another lesson he said was that “no more will Jewish life be threatened anywhere in the world with impunity.”
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.
