Chaos caps burial of slain PLO deputy

Jonathan C. Randal, The Washington Post, Damascus

Send this clipping to somebody

Transcribed from the clipping

“DAMASCUS, Syria — Amid chaotic scenes of scuffling and emotion, Khalil Wazir, the assassinated second in command of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was buried Wednesday alongside hundreds of Palestinians who have died in their struggle for a homeland.

But intensive diplomatic efforts failed to make Abu Jihad, or Father of Struggle, as he was known, as immediately useful to the Palestinian cause in death as he had been in masterminding activities inside the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza strip… Hanni Hassan, one of Arafat’s closest political advisers, told reporters that for Arafat to have attended the funeral would have been a ‘political event’ and Syria’s invitation for all Palestinians to return for the occasion, including those long blacklisted, ‘was not a political invitation.’” — and, in the adjoining columns, the local story the photograph belongs to: “Steven Lenoff, a Congregation B’nai Torah member who attended the rally, said ‘It’s better than desecrating a synagogue.

At least he has the guts to do it in the open instead of these spineless jellyfish who come out in the middle of the night.’ The grafitti was written sometime between 1 p.m. Saturday and 8:30 a.m. Sunday. Though Boca Raton police detectives are investigating the incidents, no suspects have been reported.

A new phenomenon about the Boca Raton desecrations, Lenoff said, was that they contained a political reference to the slain PLO leader. ‘Previously, graffiti was anti-Semitic in the religious and racist sense,’ he said.

Boca Raton Mayor Emil Danciu also spoke at the rally, saying, ‘I am apologizing for the citizens of Boca Raton to the Jewish community … let’s overcome this by loving each other more.’… Mordechai Winyarz, rabbi at the Boca Raton Synagogue, said after the rally, ‘Most of the speakers tried to emphasize that this was an isolated act of anti-Semitism.

I disagree. I believe there is enormous anti-Semitism in this country and it will emerge in the future. Everything is not fine for Jews. Everyone does not love us.’”

Context added by this archive

The placard is the reason this page is in the archive. The page it is printed on is a report of swastikas painted on a synagogue, and a rabbi saying the desecration was not isolated. Both are here. “Grafitti” is the paper’s.

Cite this clipping

"Chaos caps burial of slain PLO deputy," Boca Raton News, 21 April 1988, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1988-013. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1988-013