Did Israel Inject “AIDS” to Palestinian Children?

Israel cannot allow the Palestinian Authority’s incitement methods to go unchecked.

Nabil Ramlawi, the PLO’s representative in Geneva, apologized last week to the UN Committee on Human Rights for the libelling the Israeli government, and retracted the complaint that he had submitted to the committee, which said that “Israel has, over the past year, injected the AIDS virus into 300 Palestinian children.” However, he has still not retracted his complaint that the [Israeli] health minister “permitted Israeli pharmaceutical companies to conduct dangerous tests on more than 4,000 Palestinian prisoners.”

The AIDS story has been going circulating in the committee since its last session, a year ago. Its chairman, the Czech ambassador, cast doubt on the veracity of the facts on which the complaint was based and did not allow a vote. The PLO representative responded with a letter that he sent last July “My declaration is not exceptional and it is based on various sources, including the media.” However, the media was not enough of a foundation for Nabil Ramlawi, and he was forced to retract his accusations. There is reason to assume that had the committee chairman been a diplomat from an Arab or Muslim country, and not from the Czech Republic, the committee would have voted on the resolution to condemn Israel, without giving time for the PLO representative to apologize for the libel, since that is the routine for UN votes. There is an automatic majority for any condemnation of Israel. Therefore, there is still no assurance that the UN committee will not condemn Israel in the wake of the libel about dangerous medical experiments being performed on Palestinian prisoners.

Israel’s ambassador in Geneva and the Foreign Ministry executive are, apparently, doing their best to stave off the Palestinian attack, but the specific handling of the libel is not enough. The government would do well to deal with this phenomenon at the root level, by presenting the libel as an overt violation of the Hebron Accord, in which the Palestinian Authority undertook to stop all incitement against Israel.

How can the government conduct quiet and substantive negotiations with the Palestinians on the arrangements for the safe passage from Gaza to Judea and Samaria, when it is constantly being forced to defend itself against Palestinian initiatives in the international arena which incite against Israel? How can Israel calmly consider the American mediation proposals on the scope of the IDF withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, when at the same time students in the schools under PA guidance are being educated to wage war for the return of Jaffa and Ramle, Lod and Haifa? And how can the government give up its demand for appropriate security arrangements at Gaza port and the airport at Dahaniya, which would prevent the infiltration of hostile elements to Israel, when at the PA’s television station young Palestinians sing and declaim their readiness to be “martyrs” in the war to liberate the despoiled homeland?

These “educational” activities perpetuate the hostility for the coming generations as well, and they frequently receive support in reports about UN condemnations of Israel. The condemnations signal to Arafat that he does not have to seek dialogue with the [Israeli] government. The countries which vote against Israel, on the erroneous argument that the construction on Har Homa violates the Oslo Accords, promise Arafat that they will convince the United States, which voted against the resolution condemning [Israel], to join the international pressure on Israel. And after they ensured, with their votes and declarations, that Arafat would be convinced to delay progress in negotiations, the countries cry foul over the freeze in the political process.

At the same time, Arafat succeeds in extracting from the Iranian president a declaration of support for his demands. In fact, this is not an unequivocal assurance of a halt of Iran’s support for terrorism, but rather a handing of the key to Arafat, which says that only an agreement acceptable to the Palestinians can lead to a change in Teheran, which the United States so greatly desires. We should not be surprised if this Iranian bait spurs the United States to publish its mediation proposal on the question of the scope of the IDF withdrawal.