Jewish-Arab Group Seeks to Ease Conflict
A group of Americans of Arab and Jewish descent Saturday urged their countrymen to promote peace in the Middle East by sharing information and friendship with their counterparts in Israel and Arab states.
The Jewish-Arab Coalition for Peace announced a national campaign to focus American attention on Arab-Israeli grievances “as an alternative to continued chain-reaction military activities,” spokeswoman Hoda Seifdien said in Los Angeles. The politically neutral group of American professionals doubled its international membership to 3,000 recently because of the TWA hijacking, Seifdien claimed.
“We Americans do not want to get involved in the problems of the Middle East, but the fact is we are involved,” she said. “So . . . let us be responsibly involved. Obviously, this is not the last terrorist act we will be subject to unless Americans act now.”
Seifdien said her group is inviting scholars from Israel and Arab nations and Lebanese Shiite leader Nabih Berri to a forum this fall in Cyprus to relieve tensions.
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