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Jewish scholars call on Assad to fire editor

WASHINGTON -- Jewish community leaders and scholars have called on President Hafez Assad to fire his state-appointed editor who said Israel's crimes are greater than those of the Nazis and then termed the Holocaust a fabrication.

The protest, organized by the New York-based Zionist Organization of America, called on Assad to denounce an editorial in the government daily Tishrin and fire its editor, Mohammed Kheir Wadi. The statement urged Assad "to take steps to ensure that Syrian government publications in the future refrain from denying or distorting the Holocaust and to surrender for prosecution all Nazi war criminals presently being shelters in Syria."

Alois Brunner, the chief aide to Adolf Eichmann, regarded as the architect of the Holocaust, has been given shelter in Syria, the statement said.

ZOA national president Morton Klein is a son of Holocaust survivors.

The signatories include Neal Scher, former executive director of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee and chief of the Justice Department's unit that pursues Nazi war criminals.

In Monday's editorial, Wadi said Israel invented "the myth of the Holocaust ... invents stories about the Holocaust and exaggerates it to astronomical levels to receive more money from Germany and other Western establishments."

The protest statement by Jewish scholars said Syrian government publications have repeatedly denied the Holocaust and claimed that Israeli policies are worst than those of the Nazis.

The Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman, who has lobbied for U.S. military aid to Syria, condemned the Syrian editorial. "The Syrian press has published articles containing anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and comparisons of Israel and Israeli leaders to the Nazis," he said.