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by Mohammed Ayub Ali Khan CHICAGO (Islam Online) - New York Senate candidates Rick Lazio (R) and Hillary Clinton (D) are resorting to interesting attacks in an effort to score political points against one other to gain the vital Jewish vote in New York. On Sunday, the New York Post published a picture of Lazio shaking hands with Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat. The never-before-seen picture, taken by a White House photographer, shows a smiling Lazio in a "grip and grin" with Arafat during an official visit to the Middle East in 1998 by the Clintons, Lazio and other U.S. representatives. On Friday, Lazio criticized President Clinton for shaking hands with Cuba's Fidel Castro during a chance meeting at the U.N. Millennium Summit in New York last week. A White House spokesman said that the two leaders only exchanged 'pleasantries'. Lazio said, "I think we send the wrong message when we embrace - whether it's Mrs. Arafat or Fidel Castro. "I would not have shook Fidel Castro's hand." He also criticized Hillary Clinton for hugging and kissing Arafat's wife, Suha, after she made an "anti-Israeli" speech last year. Lazio, however, was embarrassed after the publication of his own picture with Arafat and was rebuked by his own party for the apparent hypocrisy. New York's Republican Mayor Giuliani, an ardent Arafat baiter, said that he was "confounded" by his fellow Republicans decision to meet Arafat. He said that Lazio's handshake might lead to the "romanticization" of "murdering dictators." According to the New York Post, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said, "I wonder if Mr. Lazio knows how to say 'hypocrite' in Arabic? "He should stop the hypocrisy and start coming clean with New Yorkers." In response, Lazio spokesman Dan McLagan fired, "There's a world of difference between a perfunctory handshake and kissing a woman after she accuses Israel of gassing little children." "Mrs. Clinton's husband has calluses on his hands from his many handshakes with Arafat, so if she thinks that's inappropriate, she should take it up with the President." Hillary Clinton, for her part, defended her actions by saying that her kissing of Suha was just a formality similar to a hand-shake and that it would have caused a "international incident" had she rebuffed Suha on the day of their meeting. |
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