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Columnist Warns Of Jewish and Christian Groups Which Oppose Middle East Peace Process

Allan Brownfeld, Editor
Special Interest Report
September-October 1999

Columnist Doug Bloomfield, writing in The Washington Jewish Week (Sept. 21, 1999), warns of those Jewish and fundamentalist Christian groups which have embarked upon a campaign to bring the Middle East peace process to an end."  


 
He writes that, "Just as there are Palestinian groups who still dream of wiping the criminal Zionist entity off the map, there are Jews who speak in a similar vein. One place to find them in abundance is the Internet."  


 
The Web site of the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, a Houston-based group that proclaims its mission as "to aid Israel in her quest to survive in a hostile world," features "a call to assassinate Yasser Arafat. One of Freeman’s favorite writers is Gary Cooperberg, who insists the only way to bring ‘real peace’ is to go after Arafat and ‘ruthlessly destroy both him and his followers.’ He goes on, in language which could just as easily be from Islamic Jihad or Hamas with the change of a single word: ‘All lands under his present control must be taken back and the PLO must be completely driven out from our homeland with no exceptions."  


 
Cooperberg appears to be advocating violence not only against Arabs, states Bloomfield, "but also against pro-peace Israelis when he accuses Israeli leaders of ‘running our country upon a path of self-destruction...Unless we destroy those who seek our destruction, they will continue to seek our destruction.’"  


 
Emanuel Winston, listed as a member of the Freeman advisory committee and a research associate, questions the Jewishness of Israeli leaders, which Bloomfield calls "a common theme on the far right and reminiscent of the inflammatory mood that led up to the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin."  


 
Another group cited is Women in Green, whose leaders Ruth and Nadia Matar, declared that Prime Minister Ehud Barak "does not believe in the God of Israel" and "completely lacks any understanding of what it means to be a Jewish leader."  


 
In addition to extremist Jewish critics of the peace process, Bloomfield also discusses fundamentalist Christian groups which take a similar position, The National Unity Coalition for Israel (NUC) has accused President Clinton of "betrayal" and "abandonment of Israel." This group is an alliance of right-wing Jewish and Christian organizations.  


 
Bloomfield, who serves as president of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington, concludes: "Sitting in the synagogue on Yom Kippur...we read of how ‘irrational hatred’ among the Jews brought down the second Temple; today venom like that we saw spewed against Rabin is being aimed at Ehud Barak. It should make us worry about the fate of the third Jewish Commonwealth."



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