Salam Al-Marayati

* Your July 12 editorial about the nomination of Salam Al-Marayati to the U.S. government National Commission on Terrorism asserted that his opponents found only “a few sentences [by Al-Marayati] that some might infer to be insufficiently condemnatory” of terrorism. We opposed Al-Marayati because of his many statements justifying terrorism against Israel and America and taking other extremist positions.

Al-Marayati responded to a March 1997 Hamas suicide bombing, in which three Israeli women were murdered, by saying Israel’s prime minister “bears the brunt of responsibility.” Marayati said that while some people consider Saddam Hussein “reckless . . . the same can be said about U.S. policy as a result of its reactionary mode” (September 1996). The Muslim Public Affairs Council, of which Al-Marayati is director, condemned America’s attack on terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in August 1998 as “illegal, immoral and illogical.” He accused Israel of “defaming the prophet [Muhammad],” an incendiary accusation that easily could have incited anti-Israel violence (July 1997).

MORTON A. KLEIN, President

Zionist Organization of America

New York