Berlin - The head of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), Dr. Moshe Kantor, accused the Spiegel journalist Jakob Augstein of using his columns to stoke hate against Israel and Jews. In a statement issued to The Jerusalem Post
on Tuesday, Kantor wrote, "Certain journalists and other
opinion-shapers, among them Jakob Augstein, over the last few years have
used their columns to promote hate and fear of the Jewish State and the
Jewish People.”
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) represents
more than 2.5 million of Jews throughout Europe, covering 42 national
Jewish communities.
Kantor, who is widely considered a leading
authority on contemporary anti-Semitism, continued that “ Obviously they
are not the same thing, but when the age-old canards that were used
against Jews for hundreds of years appear to be directly replicated
against the Jewish State this should tell us something about the
dangerous lines which these people are treading. If these people are
using the same unoriginal attacks against the Jewish State as were used
against the Jewish People then we have a right to defend ourselves in
exactly the same way and call this hatred for what it is."
Kantor’s
remarks differed sharply from the Vice President of Germany ‘s Jews,
Salomon Korn, who argued that Augstein’s writings are not anti-Semitic.
Korn along with some German Jewish leaders appear to be a lone voice
among major European and American Jewish leaders.
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