Washington, D.C., April 23—NAAA-ADC, the government affairs affiliate of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, expressed its serious concern to the Bush Administration regarding the joint military maneuvers held in the Negev/Nagab Desert in early March. The military exercise, which was made public only on April 23, involved the U.S. Air Force and the Israeli Air Force. NAAA-ADC requested that Secretary Rumsfeld initiate an internal investigation of this affair “due to the clear damage it has caused to our credibility and national interests in the region.”
In a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Khalil Jahshan, President of NAAA-ADC, described the Pentagon‘s decision to proceed with the joint exercise at this critical time as “short-sighted and failing to take into consideration the political impact of such action on our broad national interests in the region.”
Jahshan criticized the Defense Department for approving the maneuvers, with units of the Israeli military at a time when recent actions by the IDF were described as “excessive and disproportionate” by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Jahshan also questioned the timing of such a joint military exercises when the State Department is looking into legal violations by the IDF in using US-supplied weapons against civilian targets.