ATLANTA, June 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Under pressure from Jewish groups and supporters, CNN founder Ted Turner, Tuesday, June 18, withdrew his earlier assessment that Israel was more responsible than the Palestinians for the ongoing violence in the Middle East.

“I believe the Israeli government has used excessive force to defend itself, but that is not the same as intentionally targeting and killing civilians with suicide bombers,” Turner said in a statement issued by CNN. He serves as vice chairman of CNN’s parent company, AOL Time Warner.

Earlier, London’s The Guardian newspaper published the April 16 interview in which Turner made the comments, along with a warning of possible repercussions for CNN.

Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, Marvin Hier, said “His remarks are obscene and over-the-line.”

In an open letter to the media mogul, the Jewish pressure group, the Anti-Defamation League, said it was “tragically ironic” that Turner’s statements came the same day a bomber killed 19 Israelis in southern Jerusalem.

While some Palestinians have decried CNN as the “Zionist News Network”, it has also been accused of bias by Israelis.

CNN earlier issued a statement saying Turner spoke for himself during the interview.

In the interview, Turner said, “The rich and the powerful, they don’t need to resort to terrorism… The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that’s all they have.”

“The Israelis ... they’ve got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism,” he said.

Turner also drew fire from Republican U.S. lawmaker Tom DeLay, a senior member of the House of Representatives.

“Turner’s thoughts on the Middle East are the rant of a man with a defective moral compass,” DeLay claimed.

The Guardian reported that Andrea Levin, director of the pro-Israeli American media watchdog Camera, called the comments a “reprehensible” attempt to “blur the line between perpetrator and victim.”

A senior minister in Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s cabinet said he welcomed Turner’s comments, the Guardian reported.

“I feel it reflects a more consistent approach,” said Ghassan Khatib, Arafat’s newly appointed labor minister and former director of the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center .

“One of the problems in trying to reduce the violence has been the focus of so much international attention on Israeli rather than Palestinian civilian deaths, although four times as many Palestinians have been killed,” Khatib said.

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