Arab Action Against U.S., Israel Demanded in Beirut

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BEIRUT (UPI) — About 70,000 mourners, shouting for revenge, lined Beirut streets or marched in the funeral procession Thursday to honor three guerrilla leaders and six other Palestinians killed in Beirut by Israeli raiders Tuesday. There were also anti-Israel and anti-American demonstrations in other Arab cities. “With blood we shall revenge you,” youths in Beirut shouted.

Others demanded: “Why don’t the Arab governments do something? Bring the Arab armies to Lebanon.” The U.N. Security Council was summoned into urgent session Thursday at Lebanon’s request to discuss the raid and “the threat it poses to the peace and security of the Middle East.”

A military source in Tel Aviv said Israeli security services have begun rounding up Arabs in Israel and Israeli-occupied territory whose names appear on guerrilla rosters captured in Tuesday’s raid. The source said scores of suspects had been arrested and charged with belonging to illegal organizations and that more arrests are expected.

In Beirut the mourners lined the three-mile route from the downtown Grand Omari Mosque, where the main funeral service was held, to the Martyrs Cemetery in a pine wood on Beirut’s southern outskirts. In Cairo, an estimated 3,000 Egyptians and Palestinians marched in a “symbolic” funeral Thursday morning.

There were surprisingly few anti-American chants during the Beirut funeral procession. But one section of mourners shouted in unison: “The enemy did not come from the sea. They did not come by submarine. They came from the American embassy.”

That echoed charges by the Palestinian guerrilla leadership that American CIA agents helped the Israeli raiders and that the U.S. embassy in Beirut sheltered them. The embassy has issued a denial of these charges. At the United Nations, U. S.

Ambassador John Scali indignantly denied Palestinian charges that the United States was involved in the Israeli raid against guerrilla bases. Scali compared the charge with the “big lie” technique of Adolf Hitler during World War II and Arab accusations, which he said later were retracted, that the United States participated actively in Israel’s war against them in 1967.

After Lebanese Ambassador Edward Ghorra opened debate with a demand for “meaningful action in order to put an end to Israel’s aggression against Lebanon,” Scali gained the floor without waiting for an Israeli reply, as is customary.

“The tragic events in Lebanon were followed by attempts to spread a big lie around the world that my government connived, colluded and in some way participated in those events and is harboring some participants in its embassy in Lebanon,” Scali said.

He said that report, not only spread by “clandestine” means but published by recognized media in many countries, was an example of Hitler’s big lie technique in World War II. “It is an art form of the totalitarian mentality,” Scali said. “By its enormity, it succeeds in deluding because no one believes that such a monstrous untruth could be invented.”

The slain leaders buried Thursday included Kamal Nasser, official spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mohammed Yussef Najjar, deputy leader of Al Fatah and Kamal Adwan, spokesman for Al Fatah. Also in the funeral procession were the coffins of other victims of the Israeli attack, including Najjar’s wife.

How this transcription was made

Masthead not readable on the scan. The label on the slide read: [masthead not on scan] — One clipping, one scan. A partial column of a different, unrelated story runs down the right edge (a Washington piece involving Secretary Rogers and diplomats) and a sliver of another down the left edge; neither is transcribed. The story itself is UPI, no reporter named. — NO masthead and NO date line anywhere on this scan. The clipping is an inside page with a photograph, a headline and three columns; nothing names the paper. The date is internally consistent with Maria’s label — the Israeli raid was Tuesday (10 April 1973) and the funeral is reported as having taken place “Thursday” (12 April), so a Friday 13 April paper fits — but it is NOT confirmed from the page. Maria’s label of the paper is also unverifiable from this scan.

Cite this clipping

"Arab Action Against U.S., Israel Demanded in Beirut," (newspaper unidentified), 13 April 1973. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1973-033. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1973-033