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Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
What did Europe know, and when did it know it – and what is it going to do about it?
We at the Zionist Organization of America want to know—and there must be actual answers following yesterday’s combination of a pogrom against Jews and an Islamist jihadist attack targeting Israeli Jewish soccer fans in Amsterdam. The attacks left dozens of Jews injured, thousands more shaken and all of European and world Jewry horrified.
We condemn in the strongest terms Europe’s failure to adequately address the simmering, open Jew-hatred and previous attacks against Jewish people and Jewish institutions that have been going on for years and have only intensified during the past year. It seems that the safety of Israeli Jews in Europe cannot be guaranteed, and that all European Jews are in danger. This must not be tolerated.
It is clear that authorities have done little, and in some places nothing, about the obvious intensifying anti-Jewish/anti-Israel activities including demands for Jihad, global intifada and calls for the destruction of Israel that have been fueled by false and antisemitic claims of Israeli genocide and inflated numbers of Gazan casualties throughout Europe, as well as misplaced pressure on Israel by some European governments. It was only a matter of time that such a pogrom against Jews would again be perpetrated in Europe. It could have occurred in Paris, or in Oslo, or in Dublin or practically any other capital just as easily as was perpetrated in Amsterdam.
Now that one such attack has occurred, what will the Netherlands government do? What will the other European governments do? What will the United Nations do? They must act. The governments are ultimately responsible for the safety of Jews and Jewish institutions, as they are for all individuals and religious sites. They must act quickly and forcefully at least until there are reforms made throughout their societies that reduce Jew-hatred.
They – like the U.S. government and state governments – must create reforms in education to stem the anti-Jewish/anti-Israel attitudes. This is increasingly important as demographics change. The governments must use the media and their platforms to explain the context of what is taking place in the Middle East and they must publicly and firmly support Israel’s obligation to defend itself against Islamist Jew-hatred and support the Jewish state’s goal of complete victory over the Hamas / Hezbollah / Iranian Islamist Jew-hating, America-hating terrorists and to work to end the threats against the Jewish state and the West. The world and the U.S. must support and even aid Israel in destroying Iran’s oil facilities and nuclear weapons program.
Unless reforms are aggressively made in Europe, there could soon come a time when no Jewish person will be safe in Europe. The U.S. government must also step up protection of Jews and reforms in education.
The ZOA advises that to help bolster the effort in Europe, individuals contact the embassies in Washington of the European countries and the UK (contact information can be found on internet search engines) to calmly and politely but firmly demand that Jews be protected and that Jew-hatred be mitigated. ZOA will continue to monitor the situation in Europe, and to press for the Europeans and the U.S. government to effectively address these problems. They must work to change the education systems, textbooks and sermons in Muslim countries and by Muslim Imams preaching ugly, bigoted hatred against Jews and Christians. They must arrest and imprison those who promote terrorism and violence against innocent Jews and others.
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