These days, antisemitism is manifesting itself again in several countries after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7.
The IHRA definition of antisemitism signed by Spain in 2020
There are various definitions of what antisemitism is. The most widespread in Europe is the one established by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental organization created in 1998 and currently made up of 35 countries, among them Spain. In July 2020, the government of Pedro Sánchez confirmed Spain's adherence to the IHRA's definition of antisemitism, made up of eleven points that indicate what this hate speech against Jews consists of. The definition can be read here.
Two of Sánchez's ministers accuse Israel of 'genocide' but not Hamas
It would be good if the members of Sánchez's government reviewed that definition carefully. In recent days, two Podemos ministers, Ione Belarra and Irene Montero, have repeatedly accused Israel of "genocide", for unwanted casualties of Palestinian civilians in Israeli military operations against Hamas. This accusation is clearly false and is also immoral and obscene, coming from two ministers who have never condemned the murder of hundreds of Israelis, including children, at the hands of Hamas. This Thursday, Podemos vote against the European condemnation of that terrorist attack.
As hundreds of jurists have pointed out, it is Hamas that must be accused of a crime of genocide, since this Islamist terrorist group has committed these crimes after having expressly and publicly proposed to exterminate the Jews. The false accusation of Belarra and Montero is especially infamous, because they accuse the victim of the crime and not the criminal, which is a way of whitewashing the crime and justifying it. Something like this can only be expected from people without moral scruples, without the slightest sense of Justice and that align themselves more with the terrorists rather than with their victims. Something that is not new among the extreme left: rather it is already a custom.
A double standard that the IHRA points out as a manifestation of antisemitism
The IHRA definition states that, among other things, antisemitism is the following: "Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation." The aforementioned Podemos ministers not only fit this definition of antisemitism, but they far exceed it, since Montero and Belarra falsely accuse Israel of something that they do not accuse Hamas or regimes that do deserve to be accused of genocide, like Putin's, with his atrocities against civilians in Ukraine, or the communist dictatorship in China, with the genocide it is committing against the Uyghur people.
Likewise, in 2021 Belarra and Montero voted against the European condemnation of the crimes of Nazism and communism, a text that recalled that "the Nazi and communist regimes carried out mass murders, genocide and deportations and caused a loss of life and freedom in the 20th century on a scale unseen in human history." Thus, these ministers do not believe that regimes that murdered millions of people deserve condemnation, and then they accuse Israel of "genocide" for carrying out a military operation to eliminate dangerous terrorists who have murdered hundreds of defenseless Israeli citizens.
Sánchez is complicit in the infamies of Belarra and Montero for not dismissing them
In the 20th century, the Jewish people suffered the largest planned genocide (that was one) in history. The October 7 terrorist attack against Israel has been the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, a massive crime that reminds us that antisemitism remains a great threat to the civilized world. The response of a part of the Spanish government to that horrendous massacre has been to align itself with the terrorists, criminalize the attacked country and exhibit towards it a hatred that this government does not display towards true tyrants.
If Sánchez does not dismiss these antisemitic ministers, then he is complicit in their infamous statements, in the hate speech they are propagating and in the consequences of that speech, consequences that we have begun to see this week with attacks on Jews in Melilla and el attack against a Jewish hotel yesterday in Barcelona. Some shameful acts that should be prosecuted with the full force of the law, but which the government has not even disapproved.
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Photo: Europa Press.
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