NEW YORK (CNN) — Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Thursday the city would not accept a $10 million donation for disaster relief from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal after the prince suggested U.S. policies in the Middle East contributed to the September 11 attacks.
“I entirely reject that statement,” Giuliani said. “There is no moral equivalent for this [terrorist] act. There is no justification for it. The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they slaughtered 4,000 or 5,000 innocent people.”
Prince Alwaleed gave the mayor a check after a Thursday morning memorial service at Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center towers destroyed in the attacks.
The prince offered his condolences to the people of New York, but after the ceremony he released a statement suggesting the United States “must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack.”
“The check has not been deposited. The Twin Towers Fund has not accepted it,” Giuliani said in a statement late Thursday.
The prince’s statement said the United States “should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause.
“While the U.N. passed clear resolutions numbered 242 and 338 calling for the Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip decades ago, our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the world turns the other cheek,” the statement said.
Giuliani flatly rejected the prince’s position. “To suggest that there’s a justification for [the terrorist attacks] only invites this happening in the future,” he said. “It is highly irresponsible and very, very dangerous.
“And one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism.
“So I think not only are those statements wrong, they’re part of the problem,” Giuliani said.
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I miss him. Bloomberg is a gd traitor. Freaking Judas.
Giuliani, definitely a class act!
Just like we have learned a lot more by electing Obama than McCain, we have learned a lot from Bloomberg. This is serious stuff, Kids! We have enemies and they’re not playing tiddly-winks. This is no time for guys like Bloomberg, obsessed with salt intake and decibel levels of car horns. The future of the nation is literally at stake.
People are waking up. President Obama let New York down. Mayor Bloomberg let New York down. Now that New York’ers see this, let’s find out what they’re really made of.
I’ll risk being called anti semitic…why do Jews,year in and year out,follow the Democratic Party like cattle? Is it self hatred?
I’ve always wondered that and have assumed it’s some sort of loyalty to FDR. That aside I find it really, really puzzling.
Wish I could figure that one out myself. All of my Jewish friends vote Democrat without exception, and I have yet to see what it’s gotten them.
Only two reasons I can come up with:
(1) As Veruckt mentioned, Jews loved FDR for taking on Hitler; this is best exemplified by the famous book The Chosen, in which the book’s protagonist compares FDR to God.
(2) As a general rule, Jews are highly intelligent and tend toward the intellectual class, and intellectuals tend to vote Democratic.
I must run in a decent crowd, as I’m in contact with so many members of the California Republican Jewish Coalition.
Other than that circle, though, Democrats down the line. Stupid FDR.
I have Jewish friends all over the US and like Eric none of them are Democrats, from my Hassidic friends in Manhatten to the crowd that runs around LA…none of them are Dems. They all despise Obama.
Dennis Prager says that for most American Jews, liberal politics have become a substitute religion. Crossing party lines would be apostasy; they’d genuinely feel they were breaking faith with those who died in the Holocaust.
Irrational, yes. Many people’s religion is.
Huh, Floyd? Huh?
Great job, Mike!
Huh what? Why are Jews Liberal? Norman would know.
That a way to pimp the Amazon Mike… extra cookies in your ration this week.
Maybe next time we could talk about what Rufus posted!
No one ever does. Why break with tradition?
Sorry, Rufus, but you, of all people ought to recognize we Threedonians as tangential thinkers! Or are we just plain schizoid?