NEWS The Best Seat In The House American Jew Excluded From Army Auction Los Angeles (JTA) — The Simon Wiesenthal Center is protesting the exclusion of an American Jew from a huge auction of U.S. Army surplus material, being held in Saudi Arabia. The sale, being billed as the Operation Desert Auc- tion, is offering massive quantities of trucks, heavy equipment, tents and scrap metals left in Saudi Arabia ▪ at the conclusion of the Per- sian Gulf War. John Schwartz saw a local announcement of the auc- tion, being held in various phases from May 18 to July 8, in the Saudi port city of Dhahran. The announcement, which was posted at a military surplus depot near Los Angeles, included two logos, one of Marhoon Nasser Auc- tioneers, the other showing an American shield and ` eagle with the words Defense Logistics Agency. ▪ Interested parties were ask- ed to contact the auctioneers for visa applications, listing their names, passport number, nationality and re- ligion. Mr. Schwartz, a longtime scrap metal and surplus dealer, as well as a Holo- caust survivor and combat veteran of the Korean War, _thought the opportunity was too good to pass up. He and his partner, Rita Lowy, fax- ed the required information on June 2, listing Mr. ▪ Schwartz' religion as Jew- ish. The very next day, a fax came back from Mr. Nasser, thanking Mr. Schwartz for his interest and adding, "Since it is difficult to get the visa for a person who is • jewish (sic), we suggest you sent (sic) the particulars of someone else who is other than jewish." Mr. Schwartz turned, with this correspondence, to Rabbi Abraham Cooper, as- sociate dean of the Wiesen- thal Center, who dispatched letters of protest to U.S. Sec- retary of Defense Dick Cheney and to Prince Ban- dar Bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United go States. In the letter to Cheney, Rabbi Cooper asked the Pen- tagon to immediately sus- pend participation in the auction, "which is clearly in O contravention of U.S. law." Addressing the Saudi am- • bassador, Rabbi Cooper urg- ed his government "to im- mediately revise its archaic and demeaning laws" which "in this case, actually forbid American citizen from bid- ding on materials produced in their own country." No answers have been received so far. There are a few aspects of this incident that puzzle Mr. Schwartz. First, since accor- ding to his figures, 80 to 90 percent of American scrap metal and war surplus dealers are Jewish, the Saudi and U.S. government must have known. that some Jews would want to attend the auction. Secondly, he is surprised that the Saudi auctioneer replied immediately by fax and spelled out the reason for the refusal. "He could have sent the reply by mail or pleaded some technicality until it was too late to make the auc- tion," said Mr. Schwartz. A final odd note was added by a June 8 dispatch from the Middle East News Net- work, reporting on the in- itial phase of the auction. The news story noted that while more than 1,300 local and international bidders had registered, "the auction was dominated by Saudi Arabian buyers and not a single international bidder won a bid." Mr. Schwartz commented that "the Japanese usually come in with the highest bids. It looks like the bidding was rigged." Jewish Studies In Moscow Paris (JTA) — The French University in Moscow will establish a chair in Jewish studies next fall, according to Marek Halter, the French Jewish writer who founded the university in 1991. Mr. Halter told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency of his plans as the university graduated its first class. Catherine Tasca, a member of the French Cabinet, and Michele Gendreau- Massaloux, dean of the University of Paris — the Sorbonne —were in Moscow handing out diplomas to 75 graduates. 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