http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/04/01/News/News.23950.html
NY mayor blasts 'distorted' Israel coverage
By Melissa Radler, Jerusalem Post April 01, 2001
(April 1) NEW YORK - As Israel came under international fire for
Wednesday's retaliatory strikes against Force 17 targets, New York
City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called a press conference to express his
solidarity with Israel and decry anti-Israel bias in the media.
Flanked by Jewish leaders representing a broad range of religious and
political views, Giuliani was applauded for calling Israel's military
action "necessary" and "justified," and for calling on Palestinian
Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to end terrorist attacks.
Giuliani said he sent a picture of 10-month old Shalhevet Pass, who
was killed on Monday in Hebron by a Palestinian sniper, to President
George W. Bush, and mayoral aides circulated letters of solidarity
Giuliani wrote yesterday to Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert and Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon.
Giuliani also called for an end to the US government's policy -
evident during the Clinton administration - of moral equivalency
between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and pressuring Israel
to negotiate under fire with the Palestinians. "You can't ask people
to agree to a process in which more of their children are likely to
be killed," he said.
The media's extensive coverage of Israel's retaliatory strikes on
Wednesday and it's corresponding lack of coverage of Pass's
murder"demonstrates disparity in coverage," said Giuliani. "The
coverage of Israel is extremely distorted," he said.
Giuliani said he has been aware of Arafat's involvement in terrorism
since his days as a federal prosecutor, and that in 1995, expelled
Arafat from the United Nations' 50th anniversary celebrations, held
in New York, because he felt, in part, that "our government and our
media had been romanticizing Arafat as a man you can sit down at a
table with like a business meeting and conduct negotiations."
While he advocated travel to Israel for all New Yorkers, Giuliani
said he is prohibited from traveling to the Middle East due to
treatment he is receiving for prostate cancer, but that he may make a
trip within the next few months.
Hundreds of New Yorkers gathered Thursday in front of the PLO mission
at the United Nations for a vigil commemorating more than 70 Israelis
who have been killed in terrorist attacks since September.
Holding brightly colored photos of Pass, passing around photographs
and bios of other victims, and waving Israeli flags, demonstrators
alternated between singing Jewish prayers, reading out names of
terror victims and chanting "Arafat's a war criminal." Speakers
decried violence against Jewish targets and calling on the United
States government to exclude Arafat from the White House.
The demonstration was cosponsored by the Coalition for Jewish
Concerns-Amcha, and Americans for a Safe Israel.
