[ALBSA-Info] Fwd: GHM: Anti-Semitism and Racism in Greece: Op-Ed in WSJ on the Occasion of Kristalnacht Commemoration

[AAlibali]

--- In balkanhr at yahoogroups.com, Greek Helsinki Monitor <office at g...> wrote:

GREEK HELSINKI MONITOR (GHM)
Address: P.O. Box 60820, 15304 Glyka Nera
Telephone: (+30) 210.347.22.59. Fax: (+30) 210.601.87.60
e-mail: office at g... website: 
<http://www.greekhelsinki.gr>http://www.greekhelsinki.gr
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PRESS RELEASE

7 November 2003

TOPIC: ANTI-SEMITISM AND RACISM IN GREECE: AN OP-ED IN WALL STREET JOURNAL 
ON THE OCCASION OF KRISTLANACHT COMMEMORATION

Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM) distributes an article in today's Wall Street 
Journal, co-signed by its Spokesperson, on anti-Semitism and racism in 
Greece, published on the occasion of the commemoration of Kristalnacht on 9 
November. Last minute necessary editing by the paper led to some -minor for 
the essence- errors like calling Dimitris Kitsikis a caricaturist rather 
than academic, and mentioning Kefallonia as a newspaper instead of as the 
place where the event mentioned took plACE


Wall Street Journal

7 November 2003

Where Jews Are Unwelcome
By SHIMON SAMUELS and PANAYOTE DIMITRAS
online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106816383763403600-search,00.htm

Sunday marks the 65th anniversary of the Nazi "Night of Broken Glass," 
Kristalnacht, the prelude to the Holocaust. The slogan after that carnage 
was "never again," but in Greece anti-semitism has reared its head "again." 
Therefore, we in the Wiesenthal Center see it as our sad duty to issue 
hereby a travel advisory for Greece , suggesting that those visiting use 
extreme caution until authorities take appropriate measures to contain 
antisemitism and other expressions of hate.

At the same time, the Greek Helsinki Monitor, the Greek branch of the 
OSCE's International Helsinki Federation, is launching litigation in the 
hope that the Greek courts and the Greek state will process those breaking 
laws against incitement to hatred.

Why are we collectively taking such action? Antisemitism is a paradigm for 
all forms of xenophobia and a barometric measure of an atmosphere that can 
menace the very fabric of society for all its citizens. Incitement of it 
violates EU provisions and threatens to extinguish the ideals of the 
Olympic flame which, next August, will return to the birthplace of the Games.

The Jewish community has been present in Greece since Biblical times. It 
reached almost 80,000 before the war, but most of them perished at 
Auschwitz. Today only 5,000 remain. Over the past 20 months we have 
monitored a pattern of attacks against this ancient community. One of the 
latest was the desecration last month of the Holocaust memorial in the 
Jewish cemetery of Ioannina. It was the sixth such incident against Jewish 
monuments in Ioannina, Salonika and Rhodes.

Construction began on a Holocaust memorial on the island of Rhodes in May, 
2002. On June 10, the Rhodes local daily Drasis reprinted a March cartoon 
from the pro-government paper Eleftherotypia equating the Nazi destruction 
of Warsaw Ghetto with Israeli attack on Ramallah. In it a Nazi ghost 
soldier mused: "Finally things are complete! Just as we killed the Jews 
then, so now are the Jews killing the memory of those who were killed." 
Stathis added its own flair by adorning the cartoon with "Warsaw Ghetto = 
Ramallah."

By June the Jewish Community of Rhodes spokesperson was reporting verbal 
and physical harassment of workers at the memorial, requiring 24-hour 
police protection. Seven days after the official unveiling of the Memorial 
on June 23 the first signs of desecration began to appear, the gradual 
removal of letters of inscription. By July 3 we had the partial permanent 
destruction of the Memorial, with the decorative wire cut and the base of 
the monument attacked.

In July this year the newspaper Stochos interviewed the caricaturist 
Dimitris Kitsikis, who said, "It's a fact that the Jews are the Greeks' 
great rivals . . . The Jews and the Greeks are competing for who will reign 
over the planet . . . I'm sure we will beat the Jews."

Then in August, the left-wing newspaper Kefallonia objected to the presence 
of an Israeli delegation at the 50th anniversary commemoration of Israeli 
aid after a 1953 earthquake, using Holocaust analogies. The Communist Party 
and the left-wing Neo Aristero Revma party called Israel's ambassador and 
visiting Israeli military officers "agents of the worst holocaust in 
contemporary times" and Israel a "Hitlerist regime."

These are just a few samples. On Oct. 14, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and 
the Greek Helsinki Monitor responded by presenting a report entitled 
"Twenty Months of Antisemitic Invective in Greece (March 2002-October 
2003)" to the Warsaw Human Dimension Meeting of the Organization for 
Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece also denounced "this 
climate of hysteria and anti-Semitism manifested under the pretext of the 
condemnation of the defensive military operations of the State of Israel, 
with anti-Semitic expressions, and the inadmissible vilification of the 
Holocaust of six million Jews." No Greek newspaper ever reported this 
statement. The quality press did however endorse an exhibit glorifying 
Palestinian suicide bombings against Israelis which opened on Oct. 20 in 
Athens.

Greek legislation (Law 927/79) penalizes incitement to hatred or violence. 
It has remained unused due to lack of will of prosecutors and judges to 
condemn such expressions. The Greek Helsinki Monitor launched litigation 
actions regarding the publication of antisemitic, anti-Albanian, anti-Roma 
and anti-immigrant letters and discriminatory want-ads in mainstream 
newspapers. Almost all such suits have been quashed on grounds of "lack of 
intent" or statutes of limitations.

GHM and the International Helsinki Federation called on Minister of Justice 
Philipos Petsalnikos in September to seek judicial review of all 
anti-Semitic, Roma-bashing or xenophobic statements that the Greek courts 
had determined were not racist but acceptable. No such action was taken.

The Wiesenthal Center has also called on Prime Minister Costas Simitis to 
condemn this tolerance of antisemitism. On May 27 one of us, Mr. Samuels, 
met in Athens with the prime minister's diplomatic counselor, Ambassador 
Theodoros Sotiropoulos. He promised statements at the highest level against 
all forms of incitement, as did two of his diplomatic colleagues in Unesco 
and the OSCE. Their silence has since been deafening.

Mr. Samuels is director for international liaison of the Simon Wiesenthal 
Centre in Paris, while Mr. Dimitras is spokesperson of Greek Helsinki 
Monitor in Athens.



____________________________________________________

Internet Addresses: Balkan Human Rights Web Pages: 
<http://www.greekhelsinki.gr>http://www.greekhelsinki.gr
The Balkan Human Rights 
List: 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/balkanhr>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/balkanhr
The Greek Human Rights List: 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/greekhr>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/greekhr
Center of Documentation and Information on Minorities in Europe - Southeast 
Europe: <http://www.cedime.net>http://www.cedime.net
GHM Board: Kevin Boyle, Panayote Dimitras, Orestis Georgiadis, Dimitrina 
Petrova, Gregory Vallianatos.
International Advisory Committee: Savvas Agouridis, Teuta Arifi, Ivo Banac, 
Vladimir Bilandzic, Marcel Courthiade, Loring Danforth, Fernand de 
Varennes, Victor-Yves Ghebali, Henri Giordan, Krassimir Kanev, Will 
Kymlicka, Magda Opalski, Theodore S. Orlin, Dimitrina Petrova, Alan 
Phillips, Aaron Rhodes, Vladimir Solonari, Patrick Thornberry, Stefan 
Troebst, Boris Tsilevich, Tibor Varady, Marc Weller.
Affiliation to International Organizations: Consortium of Minority 
Resources (COMIR), Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), 
European Roma Rights Center (ERRC), International Freedom of Expression 
Exchange (IFEX), International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), 
Minority Rights Group International (MRGI), One World Net, South East 
Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), World Organization Against Torture (OMCT).
--- End forwarded message ---