As he is wont to do, Morton Klein hearkened back to his “former life” as a biostatistician under the employ of the illustrious Linus Pauling.
The double Nobel Prize winner often told Klein, now the president of the Zionist Organization of America, that he wasn’t interested in what he hoped an experiment would prove. He only wanted the hard facts.
So, while Klein has “hopes and dreams” of a post-Arafat Palestinian Gandhi, the facts tell him to expect more of the same.
“The bottom line, to paraphrase James Carville, is ‘it’s the Palestinian Arab culture, stupid,'” he said in a phone interview from his Philadelphia home.
“The issue is not Arafat, as monstrous as he is. The issue is, all the people around him — Abu Allah, Abu Mazen — are all against the existence of a Jewish state. All the cultural organs of the Palestinian Arab territories, the textbooks, TV, radio, sermons and speeches all promote hatred and murder of Jews. So, whether Arafat is here or not, there’s not much difference. There are no moderates to work with.”
Klein will be in San Francisco this week for a pair of free speeches at congregations Ner Tamid and Beth Sholom.
Klein is particularly disillusioned with Abu Allah (aka Ahmed Queria), whom he met with in recent years. When Klein pointed out the necessity of preventing state-run media from fomenting violence against Jews, the Palestinian leader accused him of lying, and denied such events took place in the Palestinian territories.
“So if this guy won’t even acknowledge the truth of that, he’s not going to be transforming it,” said Klein.
“That’s why [the ZOA] was against Oslo from the beginning. Not because we’re ideologically against making concessions if you get real peace. But making concessions with a regime that promotes hatred and murder and won’t arrest terrorists and won’t put Israel on its maps — they’re not interested in peace. It’s the same now.”
With that sentiment in mind, it’s not surprising that Klein and the ZOA are adamantly against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plans to pull out of the Gaza Strip.
Klein wouldn’t oppose the move if Israel got something practical in return. But, as it stands, he sees this as yet another concession to terrorism.
“This only gives the message that terror works,” he said.
“We gave back half the West Bank and 80 percent of Gaza in the past. Why do they think things will get better now?”
Klein runs down a checklist of why he opposes the move: With a decreased Israeli presence, Gaza will become an “armed camp” of Hamas. Heavy weapons and advanced missiles will be smuggled across the border with Egypt. More terrorists will be recruited and trained. Israelis will suffer.
“You’ve got to make the terrorists’ agenda go backwards, not forwards. Their agenda is to get more Jewish land and throw Jews out of their homes, and this promotes that agenda in a positive way,” he said.
“The way to win this war is to not only make clear the terrorists will get nothing through terrorism, but actually make their agenda go backwards. They need to even lose things.”
In addition to his current speaking tour, Klein and the ZOA are actively promoting college speeches by a gay Palestinian man who lives in the territories and uses an assumed name.
The speakers’ wringing condemnations of human rights abuses in Palestinian lands have brought howls of anger from campus Muslim groups, who accuse him of “selling out for Zionist dollars.”
But, noted Klein, the ZOA is only paying his expenses. His speeches are being given for free. And then there’s his safety back home in the Middle East.
“He’s afraid. These people, they kill people. This is serious business.”
Morton Klein will speak at Congregation Ner Tamid at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 13, 1250 Quintara St.; and Congregation Beth Sholom at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 14., 1301 Clement St.