Brussels, January 30th, 2023 – Seven Jews were killed outside a synagogue in Jerusalem late on Friday night by a 21-year-old Palestinian terrorist while the international community had just concluded the marking of International Holocaust Remembrance Day with commemoration events being held around the world, including in the United Nations in New York and the European Parliament in Brussels. On Saturday two Jews were seriously wounded in a second shooting attack by a 13-year-old Palestinian.
In a statement in Brussels on Friday evening ECI Founding Director Tomas Sandell said, “the liberation of the Nazi death camps in Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945 did not put an end to antisemitism. Seventy-eight years later, on the Shabbat evening of January 27, seven Jews were brutally gunned down outside a synagogue in Jerusalem for no other reason than being Jews. Remembering the victims of the Holocaust is not an excuse for turning a blind eye to the ongoing murder of Jews still today, he said. At the Holocaust Remembrance ceremony in the European Parliament on Thursday morning it was noted that the mass murder of Jews did not begin when the first Jews were transported to the Nazi concentration camps. “It began when Jews were being dehumanized”, said European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.
ECI’s Sandell concludes, “The dehumanization of Jews continues to this very day. This can also be found in Palestinian school textbooks which has been rightly condemned by the European Parliament but still receives funding from European governments to this very day. As European citizens we cannot be collaborators, enablers or even bystanders when Jews are killed today for the same reason as seventy eight years ago.
Never again means never again!”