In 1995, when Mayor Rudy Giuliani famously barred Yassir Arafat from a City-sponsored Lincoln Center concert for world leaders, the Mayor was rebuked by the State Department and denounced by the left and the Oslo juggernaut. Although it was plain to the Mayor and to some of the rest of us that Arafat was simply an unrepentant terrorist, his comic opera-like pretensions to statesmanship played well to a largely servile world. But that was then. Given the evidence mounting daily of Arafat's systemic duplicity and complicity in the terrorist targeting of innocent civilians, it would hardly be expected that a similar bold stroke would today trigger the same negative reaction.

Yet sad to say, Republican Mayoral aspirant Michael Bloomberg actually chided the Mayor over the incident in an interview the other day. Here is part of what he said:

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“We want to have the United Nations here, we want all those missions here that bring an enormous amount to this city in terms of monies and credibility to this city. With that come some people you don't particularly like or even hate, but you can't have it both ways. If you are going to be a city open to everybody, then you have to let everybody in.”

We have no doubt that Mr. Bloomberg would entertain exceptions to his rule. And one does not have to go back in history to a time when such arch villains as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini enjoyed some support in the international community before they waged war on the world. Should the Mayor of the City of New York be disabled from refusing to honor Saddam Hussein or Muammar Khadaffi? Or the President of the Sudan, a country which enslaves blacks?

So it is disturbing that the man who would be Mayor just does not think that someone who views Jewish lives as political fodder and aims his guns at Jewish children has met the standard for objectionability ? and that is important for New Yorkers to know.

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