November 2002
The sorrowful events that have occurred during
the last months in the Middle East region … created the opportunity (or the
pretext) for the resurfacing of feelings and attitudes (if not doctrines) that
some people had managed to keep well covered in the depths of their souls. The
outrageous anti-Semitism of some people, even if few, has been manifested today
under the pretext of the condemnation of the defensive military operations of
the State of Israel...
We focus on all the anti-Semitic expressions,
the inadmissible vilification of the -unique in the history of the Mankind-
Holocaust of 6 million Jews, in an attempt to equate this with the “genocides”
or other expressions –without realizing the seriousness of their meaning– that
have been used as counter-balance to the Holocaust…
In this climate of, to say the least, hysteria
and anti-Semitism, directed by various political and other propagandas, which
prevailed in Greece, there were individual consciences that were opposed to it:
persons who made use of their reason, the objectivity of historical facts,
their memory and judgment. Voices that dared (because it took indeed courage
when the unwise propaganda monologue prevailed) express a different opinion, to
point out the dangerous effects of an extreme anti-Semitism and where this
could lead...
Excerpts from “The ‘other
reason’ for self-consciousness”, editorial in the July-August 2002 issue of
“Hronika”, Organ of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece
(KIS)
This report documents anti-Semitism in Greece from
January 2001 through June 2002, partially updated through October 2002,
primarily on the basis of material published in the mainstream Greek press.
Although some background and references to incidents prior to January 2001 are
included, the aim of this report is to portray the current picture of
anti-Semitism, rather than chart its history or analyze its roots. It is
important to note, however, that, specific events aside, the picture and trends
have remained essentially unchanged for at least the past two decades. GHM and
MRG-G have published material on this topic available at http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/special-issues-antisemitism.html
(English) and http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/greek/special_issues/antisemitism.html
(Greek).[i]
A fundamental obstacle to counteracting anti-Semitism
in Greece is that its existence is systematically denied or ignored. Efforts to
expose it are met with resistance, sometimes even from the Jewish community
itself. Intellectuals and progressives routinely justify and disavow
anti-Semitic discourse as political or scholarly “anti-Zionist” analysis. Jews
are not perceived as a “vulnerable” or “minority” group, per se – just the
opposite, in fact. Elaborate conspiracy theories involving Jewish or “Zionist
Lobbies” with designs on Greece are promulgated as proof of Jewish omnipotence
and an ongoing threat to the territorial, spiritual and cultural integrity of
the Greek nation. The identification of all Jews with Israelis is further
facilitated by the fact that in the Greek language, the words “Israeli” (Israelinos)
and “Israelite” (Israelitis) are often – and often conveniently –
confused.
The Greek government has yet to take a strong and
consistent stand against anti-Semitism. Even extreme anti-Semitic views openly
expressed by Orthodox clergy members, politicians, factions, cultural icons,
and journalists pass without comment. Attacks on Jewish monuments and property
receive little if any attention in the media and faint condemnation by the
political and spiritual leadership. Of course, many members of Greek society
find these acts disturbing. Yet the prevailing tendency is to compare them to
the larger-scale anti-Semitic violence elsewhere in Europe, and judge them to
be inconsequential or at least not a serious threat. There is no public
discussion of the broader implications of these incidents and the culprits are
never named, apprehended or brought to justice. Because anti-Semitism is a
non-issue, no internal or external pressure is exerted to modify media
portrayals or alter public opinion, as is the case with other forms of racism.
Deeply entrenched, anti-Semitism continues to be tolerated if not condoned by
all facets of Greece society.
Everyday Manifestations
Traditional negative Jewish stereotypes abound in
Greek culture. An EU-funded Lambrakis Research Foundation 1993 survey showed
that 57% of Greeks have an aversion to Jews.[ii]
Anti-Semitic remarks or “observations” are voiced in causal conversations on
all levels of society and in the mainstream press and electronic media. Often
visitors to Greece, including those of Greek origin, are shocked by what they
hear.
Characteristically, a woman writes to the weekly Athens
News (16/3/01), “I am Jewish and I have never encountered
so much racism as I have in Greece. In Mykonos last year, a taxi driver – on
discovering that my husband was in the shampoo business in Eastern Europe (and
of course not realizing that we were Jewish) – said ‘if they have Jews there,
you could kill them and make them into soap for your shampoo business’. (…) We
have found the same, be it with a taxi driver, dentist, businessmen etc.”[iii]
In his essay titled “Why Not a Greek ‘Mala’?”
George Gedeon, a Canadian news and current affairs video editor of Greek
(non-Jewish) descent, describes a spectrum of chance anti-Semitic encounters he
had during one brief stay in Greece: “In my hotel room, I was astounded to
witness three separate channels passionately discuss the perennial
“Judeo-Masonic conspiracy”! I watched in horror as a politician, historians,
hosts and viewers joined in orgiastic anti-Jewish discussions and promotion of
literature worthy of Joseph Goebbels. This apparently they do regularly and
without much opposition!”[iv]
Overt anti-Semitic forums are provided in
ultra-nationalist, and/or religious, and/or xenophobic newspapers usually on
the right. They include newspapers with small circulation like Chryssi Avghi
(weekly published by the neo-Nazi organization of the same name), Stochos (traditional
extreme right weekly), Orthodoxos Typos (fundamentalist Orthodox
Christian weekly), Eleftheri Ora and Neoi Anthropoi (daily and
weekly owned by Gregory Michalopoulos, leader of the extreme-right and
military junta apologist National Alliance party, and also host of a program in
TV Polis, successor of Tele Tora owned by him and sold to the
owner of the country’s third in audience TV channel Alpha). They also
include newspapers with large circulations like Hora (pro-conservative
opposition daily, with average sales of 11,000 in August 2002 with the largest
daily selling 92,000), and Alpha Ena (weekly owned by
highly vocal anti-Semite George Karatzaferis, elected member of parliament in
the conservative opposition New Democracy ticket and now leader of the
ultra-nationalist People’s Orthodox Rally –LAOS- party, with average sales of
20,000 in August 2002). Finally, they include a plethora of magazines.
Anti-Semitic propaganda is also regularly broadcast on radio programs, and on
the TV channels TeleAsty (national channel also owned by George
Karatzaferis) as well as inter alia in local TV channels in Thessaloniki –some
of the latter’s programs are also broadcast by a local Patras channel.
Under the most benign conditions media tend to point
out Jewishness. For instance, a movie reviewer for Athinorama (23/1/01),
the weekly culture and entertainment guide to Athens, writes about “a
multinational film, with Jewish-American producers,” but doesn’t mention
the religions of the film’s other Swedish, French and American participants.[v]
Similarly, an article by a major intellectual about Henry Kissinger, in what is
considered as one of the country’s most authoritative newspapers, the largest
selling (206,000 in August 2002) centrist To Vima on Sunday (V,
25/2/01), comments that “the British author is preparing to
publish a book on his German-Jewish-American ‘mentor’.”[vi]
There are also more alarming examples. An article
about the Middle East, which appeared in the country’s second largest daily
(80,000 in August 2002) centrist Ta Nea, contained the phrase, “the
caricature of a Jewish small-time merchant who breaks his promises and goes
back on his signature.” The Central Board of Jewish Communities (KIS)
took umbrage in a letter to the editor, reminding him that “the same
‘caricature’ was used by Hitler.” The paper responded with an
apology for the oversight and a denial of racist intent (N, 17-18/2/01).[vii]
However, the real depth of anti-Semitism in Greek
consciousness is evidenced by the ease with which it manifests itself in
mainstream expression, unimpeded and seemingly unnoticed, during times of
crisis. The Greek press has played a major role in this area. Since September
11th (2001) and with the increasing violence in the Middle East, the
blatant anti-Semitism regularly heard on the fringe has been voiced in the
print (especially) and electronic media by a spectrum of influential
personalities in politics, labor, education, and culture. So widely discussed
was the rumor that 4,000 Jews working in the Word Trade Center were forewarned
and thus escaped death, that a poll taken for state TV NET showed 43% of
Greeks as believing the rumor, as opposed to 30% who did not.[viii]
Moreover, on 2 April 2002, the country’s two largest
dailies, Ta Nea and center-left Eleftherotypia (92,000 in August
2002) and the large rightwing daily (23,000 in August 2002) Apogevmatini
(as its front-page headline) readily printed as unquestionable reality a
heinous libel – supplied to the state Athens News Agency by a
Palestinian organization in Greece and not as an April fools day story…– that
Israelis were trafficking the organs of dead Palestinian fighters and
performing medical experiments on Arab prisoners. In criticism, columnist Paschos
Mandravelis wrote in one of them, Apogevmatini, (Ap, 3/4/02), “The
biggest problem this rumor points out is the deficit of rational thinking in
this country. We are ready to believe everything, except what makes sense.”[ix]
He may have added, “especially when it comes to the Jews.”
The current Jewish population of Greece is estimated
(as the Greek census does not count minorities) at approximately 5,000, 3,000
of whom live in Athens. Eight-six percent of Greek Jewry (pre-1943 total 77,377
persons), most of whom lived in the large northeastern city of Thessaloniki,
lost their lives during the Nazi Occupation of Greece. There presently are
approximately 160 Holocaust survivors living in Greece. The Kentriko
Israilitiko Symvoulio (Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece or KIS)[x] is
the governing body of the Jewish Communities; there are eight active
communities and four defunct ones. KIS (President Moses Constantinis) is
formally affiliated with the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs but is
autonomously administrated and funded. It operates as a legal entity of public
law with a cultural and philanthropic role. Rabbis are selected and paid by the
Community; they do not receive stipends from the government. Because of the
prevailing climate in Greece, KIS had in the past tended to choose its battles
with caution, and often downplayed the existence or extent of anti-Semitism in
Greece, particularly in the international arena. Although members of the Jewish
community occasionally disagreed with KIS’s conservative policy, they appeared
to be reluctant to take individual action.[xi] Moses
Elisaf, professor of internal medicine at the University of Ioannina and
President of the Jewish Community of Ioannina, told Greek Helsinki Monitor
(GHM), “You have to realize, we are tiny communities fighting for our
survival.”[xii] Things
appeared to be changing in recent years.
The same Ministry administers both education and
religious matters, and the government rigorously controls the school
curriculum. In a recent poll of 1,962 adults, aged 18-65+, 53% claimed to
support the separation of church and state, in contrast to 40% who are opposed.[xiii]
However, according to this same poll, 64% of Greeks support the compulsory
course in religion that is taught in 10 of the 12 grades of school.[xiv]
All textbooks are identical for public and private schools and are published by
the state-owned Organization of Textbook Publications (OEDV),[xv]
which is slow to remove objectionable material or make revisions that project
more contemporary, tolerant attitudes. The religion textbooks currently in use
contain discriminatory portrayals of non-Greek Orthodox religions.[xvi]
Although non-Christian Orthodox pupils are exempt from these classes and from
the daily morning prayer, this, in and of itself, establishes a “them” versus
“us” situation.
The Jewish presence in Greece is a “taboo subject”
in school history.[xvii]
The Greek school system continues to produce generations that are under- or
misinformed about the history of Jews in their own country and in the rest of
the world. Anna Frangoudaki, a professor of pedagogy at the University
of Athens, wrote in 1997 about the “inexplicable…nearly
complete absence of Jews in Greek schoolbooks.”[xviii]
She recently confirmed to GHM that this situation has not changed.[xix]
Her article in Ta Nea points out that “There are no Jews in history,
either in Greece or in other countries, and there is no reference whatsoever to
the creation or the existence of the state of Israel. (…) In the 3rd
year high school history book, Jews appear in only three sentences… from their
expulsion from Catholic Spain in the 15th century to the fall of
Constantinople (pp. 46, 11, 112). (…) Even more inexplicable is that the
book contains no mention of Jewish communities in Greece, no reference to their
extensive presence in the economic flourishing of the country or to their
cultural and political significance.”[xx]
Ms. Frangoudaki also notes the book’s dyshistorical
approach to Hitlerism. “The book mentions that the rise of Hitler in Germany
brought about ‘the extermination of the opponents of Nazism, mostly the Jews’
(334). It also mentions that among the misfortunes caused by this war was the
enormous number of victims, including millions among the civilian population,
for various reasons, and through the ‘systematic persecution and extermination
of the Jews’ (348).” Missing from these two phrases, she emphasizes, is the
key fact that the Nazis’ quintessential crime was the extermination of the
Jews. “No mention is made of Germany’s policy of ‘racial cleansing,’ of the
‘final solution,’ or of genocide.”
Among the many pages relating the horrors of the
German Occupation of Greece, there is only one phrase mentioning the “tens
of thousands of civilians, mostly Jews (who) met with a horrible death in
German concentration camps” (361). “But in Greece,” Ms. Frangoudaki
emphasizes, “the Nazi regime didn’t only exterminate ‘tens’ of thousands of
civilians, ‘mostly’ Jews. Besides the tens of thousands of civilians, the Nazis
exterminated hundreds of thousands of Jews and the problem isn’t simply
arithmetical, because they exterminated almost the entire Jewish population of
the country. The absence of Jews from all of history is truly inexcusable, as
is the total lack of mention … of any Greek Jewish citizens. However, the
absence of the Holocaust is not only inexcusable, it is highly problematic
politically.”[xxi]
The cycle of this educational deficit is perpetuated
at the university level where some members of the university community advance
various forms of revisionist history, Zionist conspiracy theories, and
traditional anti-Semitism, examples of which are documented in various sections
of this report. Their students in turn become the educators and molders of the
opinions of the next generation. An incident in the late 1990s testifies to
extent of anti-Semitic bias at the university level. In 1998, the Foreign Ministry
published a book on the history of Greek Jewry coincidentally with the
publication of a newly discovered (in Moscow) archive from the Jewish Community
of Thessaloniki. These publications prompted a debate in academia over the
“national purity” of Greek Jews. The Board of Directors of the Association
of Graduate Students of the Department of History and Archeology of the
University of Athens wrote letters to centrist daily (49,000 copies in
August 2002) To Vima and Ta Nea, claiming to “know for a fact
that Greek Jews did not play any role the national struggles.” This would
mean, as historian Vangelis Kehriotis criticizes, “Jews are included
in the ‘national’ history to the extent that they are seen as having
contributed to the ‘national’ struggles. According to this line of reason, the
rest of the Jews, i.e. the tens of thousands exterminated by the Nazis, are
excluded from Greek history.”[xxii]
Although there is a legal separation of Church and
State in Greece, Orthodox Christianity is enshrined in the Constitution as the
dominant faith of the land. The country’s traditional population –ie excluding
the one million recent immigrants- is formally approximately 98% Christian
Orthodox and religion is an integral part of Greek life, so much so that many
Greeks find it difficult to conceive that someone can be Greek without being of
Greek Orthodox faith.
The Greek Orthodox Church remains a major source of
inherent anti-Semitism. While it formally condemns anti-Semitism, many of its
clergy are openly anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist, and have published literature
on the subject. Furthermore, individual priests are free to preach whatever
they like to their congregations.
Anti-Semitism in Religious Customs
Unlike
the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church has not yet absolved the Jews
for the death of Christ or removed such references from its liturgy. Easter is
by far the most popular holiday in Greece, a time for families and friends to
celebrate with secular festivities and participate in religious devotions. The
Holy Thursday and Good Friday liturgies at the culmination of Holy Week contain
numerous references to the “Jewish
nation,” the nation
responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.
The Jews are
repeatedly called “Theoktoni” (Killers of God), “despised-by-God,” “an impious and illegitimate
people,” and their
punishment is entreated.
Anti-Semitism
is also retained in popular Easter customs, which, like the liturgy, are
repeated every year. On Holy Saturday (4/4/02) state National Hellenic Television (NET) featured “Traditional Easter Customs” on its midday newscast
(15.00-15.15), including the Holy Thursday custom of the “Kapsimo tou Youda” (the burning of Judas’s effigy). According to
Professor Frangiski Abatzopoulou of the University of
Thessaloniki, the Burning of Judas is the
“most familiar and widespread manifestation of traditional anti-Semitism in
Greece.”[xxiii] She notes that “the accusation
[against the Jews] for ‘theoktonia,’ reactivated through liturgy, cannot be
examined in the framework of rationalism given that it is inscribed in
religious experience.”
But, she stresses, “it can be examined
in relation to the mechanism of scapegoating, which constructs the ‘Jew’ as
guilty not only for ‘theoktonia’ but for all the other suffering in the world
as well.”[xxiv]
Although
the official Greek Church has repeatedly formally condemned the custom of the
“Burning of Judas” in the past, this year, NET chose to cover the custom,
without commenting on its ant-Semitic content.
The Greek government’s decision in the spring of 2000
to remove the reference to “religion” from the national identity card was
vehemently opposed by the Orthodox Church. At the time, the immensely popular
Archbishop (of Athens and All Greece) Christodoulos waged a campaign against
the reforms and mobilized thousands of Greek citizens in mass protest rallies
in Athens and Thessaloniki. These were followed by a spate of anti-Semitic
attacks motivated by notions of a “Jewish Plot,” including the extensive
desecration of Jewish cemeteries and the Athens synagogue, and the defacement of
Jewish monuments and private properties with slogans as swastikas.[xxv]
The Archbishop’s anti-Semitic insinuations continued
into 2001. In an interview in To Vima (15/3/01) he directly accused “the
Jews” of instigating the reforms on the basis of supposed proof published
on the Internet: “Do you know who is behind the matter of the identity
cards? The Jews, and for the first time we have the evidence.”[xxvi]
The Archbishop claimed that the request to remove the religious
designation, as well as and to erect a “memorial to the Jews of Thessaloniki
who were sent to the crematoriums,” was initially presented to Prime
Minister Costas Simitis in 1996 by the “Jewish lobby” (Avghi,
3/4/01).[xxvii]
While Jewish organizations had indeed lobbied for years for such action, so had
many Catholic and secular organizations, human rights groups, etc. while the
reference to religion was a violation of the data protection standards
applicable in EU countries.
In 20/3/01,[xxviii]
KIS sent a letter to the center-right daily (44,000 in August 2002) Kathimerini,
denouncing the Archbishop for making incendiary and false claims. “Our
position was clearly and publicly stated so as to prevent any misinterpretation
concerning supposed clandestine or other activities. (…) You confuse…the
matter of the identity cards with that of the Monument to the 60,000 Greek Jews
of Thessaloniki who died in the Nazi concentration camps… a belated debt of the
state to its wrongfully lost citizens.” KIS also reminded the Archbishop
that such rhetoric “helps create an indiscriminate climate of anti-Semitism,
the results [of which] is the eventual vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and
institutions, which You yourself have been obliged to condemn.”[xxix]
However, instead a retraction or apology, Archbishop
Christodoulos wrote a letter of rebuttal (26/3/01) in which he cited theological
grounds for (his and all) anti-Semitism. “I have every reason to believe
that you, the Jews, should be heralds of the historical truth that
anti-Semitism is a phenomenon described even in the Bible, a phenomenon that
has a purely theological explanation and is clearly pre-Christian. The Jews’
eternal enemies did not wait for identity cards to be issued in order to
set up the mechanisms for their extermination.” The Archbishop then
clarified that he “never accused the Jews of ‘clandestine acts’
against Christians. Just the opposite: I mentioned that months ago the U.S.
Jews published on the Internet, informing the international public of what they
had requested from their official Greek interlocutor. It is not the Jews,” he
explains, “but the Greek politicians who acted clandestinely by concealing
from the [Greek] people [the identity of those] whom this demand
serves and for what reasons. Besides, you will surely recall, my dear Mr. Moses
Constantinis, that you accompanied members of the World Jewish Congress from
New York to my office in March 1999, to discuss our Church relaxing its
reservations about removing religion from Greek identity cards. Please note
that in Israel, identity cards record religion.”[xxx]
Nicholas Stavroulakis, Director of the Etz Hayyim
Synagogue in Hania, Crete, expressed outrage (English
Kathimerini/International Herald Tribune (EK/IHT), 2/4/01) at what he
called the Archbishop’s “demeaning” reply and only slightly veiled
anti-Semitism. “It is a pity that a contemporary Christian and a person of
authority and supposed responsibility as Archbishop Christodoulos…has been
saying [such things] with so little sense of either history or responsibility.
(…) To find our own scriptures called in as support for his own twisted form of
‘theological’ explanation and implied justification for anti-Semitism is
demeaning.”[xxxi]
The government’s official rejoinder to the
Archbishop’s blatant and inflammatory anti-Semitic accusations could be
described as laconic and lukewarm, at best. Moreover, statement made by Dimitris
Reppas, the then Government Spokesperson, received very little attention in
the press. A few dailies published brief excerpts, mostly buried in the fine
print.[xxxii]
The English Kathimerini/International Herald
Tribune (20/3/01) gave the government’s response the most emphasis
with the front-page headline: “Archbishop’s ‘Jews’ claim a ‘harmful lie’.”[xxxiii]
The largest of the articles in the Greek language press (in the small but
influential leftist daily –2,000 copies in August 2002- Avghi, 20/3/01)
reports Mr. Reppas as characterizing “false” and “outlandish” the
Archbishop’s claim that “so-called ‘global Judaism’ is to blame for the
identity card issue. (…) A claim such as this, besides being totally
false, also causes problems for the country’s international image given that,
among other things, it casts doubt on the democratic conscience of Greek
citizens.”[xxxiv]
Anti-Semitic Clergy
Many members of the Greek Orthodox clergy openly
promulgate anti-Semitism in articles and treatises.[xxxv]
Secular and nationalistic (right and leftwing) conspiracy theories concerning
the omnipotent “Jewish Lobby” in the United States and the
Jewish-American-Israeli collusion with Turkey - Turkey being the quintessential
enemy of Greece and all things Greek - gain currency when fused to traditional
religious bias.
A characteristic recent example was published in the
“religion and the nation” section of the conservative rightwing weekly (59,000
copies in August 2002) Typos on Sunday (25/2/01), where
the Bishop of Pisidia Methodios Foughias propounds the need for a
“think-tank for Hellenism.”[xxxvi]
His organization, Palintropos Armonia (loosely= “Back to Harmony”), he
claims, would counteract the influence of the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, which he calls a Turkish institution operating under a “Jewish
mantle.” [The Institute for Near East Policy is] “an omnipotent
think-tank funded by Turkey, founded several years ago by the Australian of
Jewish origin, the internationalist Aizik [sic], who is US assistant secretary
of state for Israeli affairs.” Bishop Foughias elaborates: “The
Institute…does not include Turks in its classes, but only American former
officers of the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon, who with Turkish
funds and usually under a ‘Jewish mantle’ promote the interests of
Ankara.”[xxxvii]
In 2000, his monks formed a pop music group called “Eleftheri”
(“Free”), affectionately known as the Rocking Monks. They immediately
received extensive media coverage, and their first CD sold 60,000 – platinum
sales in Greece – only a few weeks after its release.[xxxviii]
“By Your Side,” the group’s third CD in just three years, with English
language remixes of some of their biggest hits, was launched on 11/3/2002 at an
Athens concert attended by more than 700 youngsters.[xxxix]
The group sings out against technology and globalization and now hopes to break
into a wider market and spread their message abroad.[xl]
Father Moulatsiotis, their mentor, manager and spiritual leader, emphasizes
that “the group wants to save young people from the temptations of modern
life and bring them closer to God – by using the same tools as the devil.” On
the sleeve of the new album he claims, “We must propose alternatives and
suggest the right things for people to do.”[xli]
Initially, Father Moulatsiotis’ musical enterprise engendered the requisite
official Church disapproval of its progressive methods of communication.
However, in a recent interview in Apogevmatini (5/4/02) the cleric
attributes the Archbishop’s now “neutral stand” to the fact that he,
Moulatsiotis, has been more successful in “winning back the youth to the
Church.”[xlii]
All this looks like good, clean, spiritual fun until
one examines what it is that is actually behind this “message.” In a three-page
color expose in the center-left weekly (188,000 copies in August 2002) Eleftherotypia
on Sunday (25/2/01), the “Ios tis Kyriakis” [Virus on Sunday]
team of investigative journalists describes their visit to the monastery and
their impressions of Father Moulatsiotis: “Everyone knows him
as the ‘manager of the rocking monks.’ They are slighting him.”[xliii]
One only needs to glance at any of the 250 pages of Father Moulatsiotis’
self-proclaimed best seller, “When will the Second Coming of our Lord
occur?”,[xliv] to
read all manner of vicious anti-Semitism combined with all the paranoid
conspiracy theories of the day. The book, which has reportedly circulated in 17
editions and 200,000 copies since 1984, argues from every position and with
illustrations that Zionism/Judaism/the Jews is the dark force surrounding
technology and globalization, the source of all evil, and the primary threat to
all that Greece holds dear.[xlv]
He even offers a clue to what motivated his entry into the music business: “In
Greece, as Mikis Theodorakis has charged, Zionism controls [recording labels]
MINOS MATSAS and SONS, COLUMBIA and PHILIPS, and that’s how they give our people
the sounds that serve their long-term interests.”[xlvi]
The Ios team writes that Father Moulatsiotis’ “Second
Coming” book “is characterized by extreme anti-Semitism and
espouses all the familiar conspiracy theories: ‘Hitler was a Jew’, ‘Mohammed
was a Jew’, ‘the nation of the Jews is cursed by God’, ‘Since Hitler didn’t
achieve what the Jews wanted so they could rule the East and the West, they
came up with the idea of creating a new empire, the EU.’ (p. 225). The
Antichrist is the European Union: ‘It is rumored that the bearer of number 666
may make his appearance from the EU building. He will of Jewish origin, he will
rule as president of the EU and will switch over to Israel.’ (p. 318).”[xlvii]
Father Nektarios also exposes the plot to annex parts
of Greece, warning that “large tracts of land in Crete, our Greek islands,
and Cyprus are already being purchased by actual representatives of Judaic
interests.”[xlviii] He
claims to have found the proof in a report on the Israeli election campaign
allegedly published in the German newspaper “Die Welt.” “The
political candidates and parties kept repeating to voters: ‘Keep in mind. Our
[Israel’s] fundamental enemy is Hellenism!’” Undeniable evidence, he tells
us, that “the Jews are working insidiously and diabolically against the
Greek Nation and our Orthodoxy. (…) The one-time chosen people of God have
unfortunately become a Theoktonos [Killer of God] and Prophetoktonos [Killer of
Prophets] people, as our Church very rightly calls them.”[xlix]
Then he turns his attack on the Jews of Greece: “Why,
Jews, is Hellenism your enemy? What did the Greeks do to you? (…) We read your
prophecies and saw them come to pass in the figure of Jesus Christ. (…) Why,
Jews, have you forgotten that during your persecution by your fellow countryman
Hitler, we Greeks hid you and protected you so they wouldn’t turn you into
soap? So that’s the thanks you give Greece? Our Church and the Holy Scriptures
are right to call you UNGRATEFUL people.” He calls upon Greek politicians
and clergymen “to take a stand against the unacceptable declarations of the
Jews and enlighten our people about the dark role the Jews are playing.”[l]
And to settle any disputes over the origins of the
blood libel, Father Nektarios enriches his own thesis with the views of 18th
century venerated missionary Saint Cosmas the Etolian on the Jews. “God
lifted his kingdom from the old Rome and besieged the Jews in Jerusalem, and
fathers and mothers slaughtered their children and ate them.” And a more
accessible, contemporary concept: “If a Jew gives you wine or raki, he
surely has first cast a spell on it; and if he doesn’t have time to pee in it,
he’ll spit in it.”[li]
Father Nektarios is also responsible for another
widely circulated anti-Semitic publication that is distributed free outside
churches and in other public places. A local resident of Hania, Crete, recently
informed GHM that this pamphlet is being openly handed out at the town’s public
market.[lii]
(The documented anti-Semitism of the Prefect of Hania and some clerics in
that district is cited elsewhere in this report.[liii])
According to the Ios team, “‘7 Anonymous Orthodox Christians’ is yet
another example of the anti-Semitic claptrap and inane conspiracy theories that
supposedly reveal the designs against Orthodoxy and the Nation. The emphasis,
naturally, is on the condemnation of the ‘Jew-serving’ government, which
suppresses religion from identity cards in order to pave the way for a
thousand-and-one other anti-Hellenic and satanic designs. This platform could
be included in equivalent neo-Nazi platforms that circulate among the lines
devout super-patriots, if most of the references didn’t bear the name of a
popular cleric who characterizes himself as progressive. The source of many
wild tales in this slick brochure is Father Nektarios Moulatsiotis.”[liv]
In addition to his music and publishing enterprises,
Father Moulatsiotis’ monastery is a major pilgrimage site. On their visit in
February 2001, the Ios team reported as many as 100 people attending his Sunday
services.[lv] They
also observed that the monastery’s “souvenir shop” contained “dozens
of Mr. Moulatsiotis’ publications, prominently displayed alongside that bible
of anti-Semitism, ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’.”[lvi]
However, one very significant point missing from the
extensive Ios article and worthy of further investigation is that Father
Moulatisotis’ monastery operates a free summer camp for youths, hosting 200
boys annually.[lvii]
Furthermore, this camp is funded by proceeds from record sales,[lviii]
and from sales of his “Second Coming” book (clearly stated on cover and
back page) and other anti-Semitic publications of his.[lix]
The September 11th Libel
A new anti-Semitic libel implicating the Jews in the
September 11th terror attacks, which originated in the Muslim world
and made its way around the globe via the Internet, found wide acceptance in
Greece. In a statement issued (8/11/01) honoring the anniversary of the
Kristallnacht pogrom in Germany (9/11/1938), now designated the International
Day Against Racism, the collaborating NGOs, Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM)
and Minority Rights Group-Greece (MRG-G) cited “an outbreak of
anti-Semitism in Greece exceeding even that of last year. Thus, anti-Semitism
seems diffused throughout, and tolerated by, Greek society. This year’s most
characteristic example was the widespread espousal as truth of the preposterous
rumor that 4000 Jews had been warned and did not go to their offices on
September 11th, the day of the terror attack in New York.”[lx]
This was substantiated by a television poll conducted for state TV NET on 17-18/10/2001, which showed that 42% of Greeks subscribe to this rumor, as opposed to 30% who do not.[lxi] In another poll, published in Eleftherotypia, the Greeks who believed that the September 11 attacks were the work of Bin Landen (30%) or of some Arab terrorists (9%) were fewer than those who believed that they were perpetrated by the secret services of America (28%) or Israel (8%), or by Americans of the extreme right (4%) or the extreme left (2%).[lxii] These numbers were not surprising, given that the “news” about the alleged Jewish plot was widely published in Greek newspapers, aired on television, adopted by at least one politician from each of the country’s three major parties (governing socialist PASOK, opposition conservative New Democracy, and communist KKE), and repeated by academics and popular personalities.[lxiii] It even appeared in the “Informational Bulletin” of the Technical Chamber of Greece (T.E.E.), an organization representing 80,000 engineers and licensed by the state. On the other hand, no condemnations of the rumor have been made by the government, political parties or journalists’ unions. This silence can be interpreted as complicity or legitimization.
The September 11th libel even reached the
Greek Parliament in a parliamentary question put by George Karatzaferis,
the founder and deputy of the ultra-rightwing LAOS party and a notorious
anti-Semite. (George Karatzaferis was
initially elected to Parliament with the main opposition party New Democracy;
he was expelled from the party not for his racist views, but for his slandering
attacks against the party’s leader and spokesperson in 2000. His views and
activities are discussed at length elsewhere in the report.) On 21/9/2001,
George Karatzaferis asked Foreign Minister George Papandreou to inform
him as to whether he was aware of the articles published in two Israeli
newspapers (Ha’aretz and Yedioth Ahronot), and if he had brought
them to the attention of his European counterparts. According to George
Karatzaferis, these publications “reveal” that the “4000 Jews working
in the Twin Towers did not go to work on the day of the attack”; that “Ariel
Sharon canceled his trip to New York that day where he was to speak at a
celebration of Zionism”; and that “5 Jews were arrested while
videotaping the destruction 4 hours after the event [and] are being held by the
FBI for suspicious behavior interpreted as ridiculing the tragic event.” [lxiv]
The parliamentary question was subsequently published in full in the weekly
newspaper Alpha Ena (22/9/01), owned by George Karatzaferis, and aired
as “news” on the TV station TeleAsty – also owned by him – on which he
provides a regular forum for extreme anti-Semitic and other racist propaganda.
The Embassy of Israel in Athens (EoI, 24/9/01)
categorically rejected as “simply preposterous” all these allegations. “It
is really shameful that these absurd accusations are being propagated by
certain personalities and even politicians in Greece.”[lxv]
When the Embassy statement was made public, the Ios team describes George
Karatzaferis’ reaction: “Karatzaferis showed up in a frenzied state on his
daily TV program ‘TeleAsty’ to literally declare war on Greek Jewry. (…) In a delirium of hatred that the
most fanatic national socialist would envy, the parliamentarian did more than
ascribe the terrorist attack and every evil in the world to the Jews.”[lxvi]
The deeper impact of this defamation, as emphasized by
the Ios journalists, has to do with “understanding how this new anti-Semitic
rumor is used within the Greek context. [George Karatzaferis] openly threatened
Greek citizens of Jewish origin, regarding them as an a-priori fifth column and
excluding them once and for all from the ‘national body’. (…) ‘These people who
have committed outrages throughout this land have no right to protest,’ the
parliamentarian maintained. ‘The Jews are not justified to a voice and to
challenge politicians in Greece. This shows great impudence on their part’.” They point out, “by manipulating the
anti-Semitic substratum of a society that otherwise boasts of its ecumenical
and anti-racist sentiments, this repulsive rumor seems to have fertile ground
at a juncture where the ‘invisible danger’ is easily detected in the figure of
the eternal scapegoat... Unfortunately, it seems that George Karatzaferis is
not alone on this matter.” Indeed his “outrageous frenzy wouldn’t have
mattered so much if the rumor, of which he was the basic linchpin in Greece,
had not appeared virtually uncommented upon in many newspapers (“Adesmeftos
Typos” 22/9, “Vradyni” 22/9, “Paron” 23/9, “Espresso”
24/9, etc) and on numerous TV channels. If it had not been supported by
politicians such as New Democracy deputy Eugene Haitidis and professors
such as Maria Tzani and George Hourmouziadis [KKE-communist
party].” [lxvii]
A few days later, on a minor Athens-centered channel Seven TV discussion
(3/10/01), “when the debate was led to the
anti-Semitic paths prevailing these days, Stelios Papathemelis [PASOK
deputy and former Minister of Public Order] was
wondering, with feigned innocence, why the names of the Jews who were killed in
the twin towers were not released."[lxviii]
There was also the KKE official organ, daily Rizospastis
(9,000 copies in August 2002), that carried articles repeating the libel on
15/9/01 as well as as late as 13/12/01. Just like Eleftherotypia
columnist Andreas Roumeliotis (25/9/01) seemed to giver credit to that
libel quoting Arab newspapers…[lxix]
Finally,
it is important to mention that all extreme-right newspapers reprinted the
libel -Chrysi Agvhi, Stohos and Eleftehri Ora- mainly because the latter’s style
of journalism was being supported if not praised in October 2001 by almost the
whole conservative opposition parliamentary group. In fact 101 New Democracy (ND) (Euro-)parliamentarians condemned with individual
statements (in the October pages of “Eleftheri Ora”) the suspension of
broadcasting of the TV station Teletora, owned by Yorgos Michalopoulos, the ultra-rightwing politician and publisher of Eleftheri Ora with anti-Semitic and racist views corresponding to those
of Karatzaferis. Some of these politicians protested in the name of media
freedom and polyphony. Others affixed laudatory attributes to the station, such
as “national,” “objective,” “serious,” “authoritative,” “free voice,” “fighter,
forum for democracy,” etc. Meanwhile, everyone had read and knew that, in 2000,
Teletora sold its frequency for big money to the new station Polis – where Michalopoulos has a weekly program – and, in 2001,
decided to illegally broadcast on the VHF 3 frequency exclusively reserved for
armed forces use. This is the reason that the E.E.T.T. (National Commission for
Telecommunications and Postal Services) suspended the station’s operation,
along with a host of others for which the N.D. (Euro-)parliamentarians did not
demonstrate comparable “sensitivity.”
The Technical Chamber of Greece (T.E.E.), a
professional organization representing 80,000 engineers and business people,
enabled a mainstream forum for the September 11th libel. In early
October, 2001, two consecutive issues of the T.E.E. weekly Informational
Bulletin, a glossy magazine mailed to all its members, carried two
vehemently anti-Semitic articles claiming that “Zionist conspiracies”
orchestrated the September 11th terrorist attacks. A faction calling
itself “The Engineers (TEE) of Order” signed the articles. The
first essay titled “Who are the Terrorists?” (1/10/01) concludes with
the warning (punctuation theirs): “So BEWARE the Zionist-Type conspiracies
and today’s organs of Globalization… that control the World with Money and the
Veto and scheme to subjugate us. Enough is enough…the strike on Manhattan was
audacious…we won’t take any more. PROPOSAL: Let us once again study the 24
protocols of the ‘elders’ of Zion…to see the scheme and the outcome.”[lxx]
This same text was also published in the ultra-right daily Eleftheri Ora.[lxxi]
The following week (8/10/01), the same column carried
a more incendiary editorial. Titled “We Ask. What is Going On?”, the
article reiterates the grounds of the Word Trade Center rumor, which, according
to the article, were also covered in the press (Eleftherotypia, Alpha Ena,
Eleftheri Ora, Estia, et. al.), supported by “facts” in misspelled
English allegedly quoted from the “Yadiot Ahranot” [sic] Web page.[lxxii]
“The Engineers of (TEE) Order” calls for resistance to the forces of “Zionism,
the foremost satanic conspirator and global terrorist” and concludes with
(punctuation theirs): “The Organs of Zionism have the information, and
they say so. AND WE SAY, and NOT JUST US …RULERS of the world, do not let them
force you to wear the kippa…Note [theirs]: Kippa = Jewish cap (or sign of
subjugation of the goim). Goim = infidel Christian or beast for…slaughter.”[lxxiii]
In response, the Ambassador of Israel to Greece, David
Sasson, wrote an official letter of protest to Costas Liaskas, the
President of T.E.E., warning of the dangers of giving a podium to “a
malicious mixture of prejudice, racism and anti-Semitism supposedly expressed
in the framework of a free exchange of ‘views’.”[lxxiv]
Mr. Liaskas replied, however, that T.E.E. has no authority over the many
political and unionist factions that operate within its framework, and that its
bulletin reserves certain pages in which “the opinions of these factions can
be published exactly as is, without any prior inspection of their contents.”[lxxv]
Rebuking the Ambassador’s remark that such discourse
is inappropriate in a forum of educated individuals, Mr. Liaskas assured him
that for that very reason, the article will be “critically received” by
the bulletin’s readership.[lxxvi]
In a rejoinder, Ambassador Sasson pointed to editorial responsibility and
discretion when it comes to publishing racially incendiary material. “In
this particular instance we are not talking about a scientific or technical
article but about racist propaganda. Once it was published in your bulletin,
this propaganda was disseminated, read and made accessible to all T.E.E.
members. (…) The fact is, no political criterion justifies presenting [such
opinions] in a technical bulletin for Greek businessmen. It is the
responsibility of us all, Mr. President, to unequivocally condemn such
incidents of racism no matter what their origins.”[lxxvii]
The correspondence did not stop there. George
Karatzaferis’ newspaper Alpha Ena (27-28/10/01) devoted an entire page
(complete with a photo captioned “Mister Sasson”) to a rebuttal dated
23/10/2001 and signed by the secretary and spokesperson of the Faction “The
Engineers (TEE) of Order.”[lxxviii]
Written in the same style as the T.E.E. articles (bold face, underlining,
capitalization), the content of this letter – which is simply more of the same
– is venomous, its tone contemptuous, and its delivery hysterical. The author
attacks Ambassador Sasson for, inter alia, his audacity to voice any protest
whatsoever: “My dear Mr. Sasson, I don’t see any ‘malicious mixture of
prejudice, racism and anti-Semitism’ in our articles. We are neither
anti-Semites nor racists. We are Greeks, anti-racists, i.e. anti-Zionists…Don’t
confuse Semitism with Zionism, dear otherwise Mr. Sasson, because, if you do,
you are damaging your country. The Jews are our friends, as you know. The
Zionists are not. (…) Besides, it’s wrong for Jews to almost always
characterize as so-called racist anything written about the works and doings of
Zionists and Jewish-Zionists anywhere in the world.”[lxxix]
Eleftherotypia also published (26/10/01) excerpts of this text,
prefacing it with the Faction’s spokesperson Mr. Sfakianakis’ outraged reaction
that the Ambassador had directed his protest to a third party (Mr. Liaskas),
rather than to the Faction itself.[lxxx]
Several journalists in the Greek and foreign press
noted and condemned the attention and credibility given to the September 11th
rumor.
Takis Michas, in his critical article, “Is Greece a Western
Nation?” (Wall Street Journal, 23/10/01) points out that “allegations
that the Jews were responsible for the September 11th terrorist
attacks were so prominent in sections of the Greek media that the Israeli
Embassy took the unprecedented step of denouncing those allegations as
amounting to ‘criminal, racist, anti-Semitic propaganda resembling that of the
Nazis’.”[lxxxi]
Richardos Someritis records the prevailing opinion trends of that
period in his article “The Greek Paradox” (To Vima, 25/9/01). One
of these is that “September 11th is generally a work of the Jews
(who previously organized their own Holocaust) and the American ‘hawks.’ The
aspiration of the former is to be able to slaughter, unimpaired, all Arabs (?);
the aspiration of the latter is the imposition of a ‘global junta’.” He
points out the ideological confluence on this issue: “This ‘viewpoint’ is
expressed by our own ultra-rightists, while members of the far left have
written about the ‘global junta’ in order to access the Greek conservative
arena.”[lxxxii]
However, the really “dangerous ‘Greek Paradox’,” Someritis stresses, “is
the blanket acceptance and support of these views by so many public
officials.”[lxxxiii]
John Sitilides writes in Odyssey (11-12/01), the
English language magazine out of Greece, that the “palpably absurd theory –
which originated in the Arab world – that Jews in the World Trade Center were
given advance warning of the attacks was given credence by a number of Greek
newspapers and politicians.”[lxxxiv]
Anthee Carassava, the Athens correspondent for Time magazine
(12/11/01) points out that “another issue the Greeks might want to address
is anti-Semitism,” She cites the T.E.E. episode as proof that “some [in
Greece] believe there’s a hidden agenda.”[lxxxv]
Despite international criticism, there are mainstream
efforts to keep the September 11th conspiracy myth alive in the
context of the Middle East conflict. In the following spring, Eleftherotypia
on Sunday (14/4/2002) devoted a full, densely printed page to “The
speech Mikis Theodorakis didn’t give at the concert for Palestinian
solidarity” (which he spearheaded).[lxxxvi]
In several thousand words, the world famous composer and Greece’s 2001 Nobel
Peace candidate essentially maintained that one people’s terrorists are another’s
freedom fighters. Returning to the events of September 11th, he
concludes that the strike was “characterized by an incredibly
high degree of organization and technological means – higher I’d say than that
possessed by the current superpower, the US. (…) As far as physical
perpetrators are concerned there is still no tangible evidence and that’s why
no arrests have been made. There were only moral perpetrators, who have been
sought in Afghanistan…but it would be hard to convince anyone of their level
of technological and organizational capabilities.”[lxxxvii]
The implication being, who else (but the Israelis/Jews) has such
capability?
In the wake of the September 11th tragedy,
the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) asked its
member-unions for a report on national media coverage. GHM, in its press
release of 11/11/2001,[lxxxviii]
noted that the Union of Athens Daily Newspaper Journalists (ESIEA)
misinformed the IFJ on Greek media coverage of the terrorist attacks on the
United States and the air strikes on Afghanistan.[lxxxix]
In its report, ESIEA claimed that the only incidence of anti-Semitism were the
TV broadcasts of TeleCity ([sic] – the channel changed its name to TeleAsty
in 2000), while neglecting to mention that this channel is owned by George
Karatzaferis, a member of the Greek Parliament, and that the anti-Semitic
propaganda has spread beyond that channel.
ESIEA also failed to report the widespread “racial
insults and attacks against the American people” made on television, as
described by Professor Anna Frangoudaki of Athens University in her
critical article “Greek Society’s Attitude Towards the World Political
Nightmare” in Ta Nea (20/10/01).[xc]
Nor did ESIEA note the other prevailing trends mentioned by Richardos Someritis
and Takis Michas in the articles quoted above. In fact, one could have read in
(Ios team in) Eleftherotypia,[xci]
Greece’s largest daily, that these anti-Semitic stories had spread to many
other media, and were reiterated by politicians from the three major parties.[xcii]
It could be rationalized that ESIEA might have some in
difficulty being totally impartial when policing its members. However, the
independent media watchdog, the Greek Information Centre for Racism,
Ecology, Peace and Non-Violence (Infocenter),[xciii]
supplied the official EU European Monitoring Centre on Racism and
Xenophobia (EUMC) -of which it is the licensed and funded NGO correspondent
in Greece- with a matching, equally inaccurate picture of the Greek
public reaction to the September 11th attacks. Infocenter was asked
to provide EUMC with a month-by-month report (12/9-31/12/2001) addressing the
following:
-
acts of violence or aggression and changes in the attitude of the EU
population towards ethnic, cultural or religious minorities (especially
Muslim/Islamic communities but also other vulnerable groups or new types of
victims) related to the recent terrorist attacks in the USA;
-
good practices and positive case studies established in order to reduce
prejudice and violence;
-
reactions of politicians and other opinion leaders including initiatives
to reduce polarization and counteract negative national trends.
Infocenter made only one mention of anti-Semitism in
Greece in its entire report – in the October section – that it assessed as
fringe and inconsequential. All the noise around the alleged Jewish involvement
in September 11th was summed up in the following two sentences: “Also,
it should be noted that a small section of the press published anti-Semitic
articles concerning the rumor that there were no Jews among the victims of the
New York terrorist attacks (for instance, the leading article in the newspaper ‘Hora’
[18/09/2001]). The ultra-nationalist party LAOS launched a campaign through its
TV station (TV-Asty) that was echoed by the newspaper ‘Hora’. The
effect of this campaign cannot be considered politically significant.”[xciv]
Infocenter, like ESIEA, neglects to mention that the
owner of “TV-Asty” (a.k.a. TeleAsty), LAOS party deputy George
Karatzaferis, took this campaign to the Greek Parliament. The report mentions
anti-Americanism and an attempt to burn the American flag (at a football
match), but omits the Israeli flag-burnings.[xcv]
Infocenter mentions the publicly expressed anti-American sentiments of composer
Mikis Theodorakis, but not his Zionist conspiracy insinuations. Nor does it
mention that the extremely influential Archbishop Christodoulos made statements
to the effect that the September 11th attacks were the “wrath of
God.”[xcvi]
The
Organ Trafficking Libel
A
particularly glaring example of media bias and irresponsibility was the
promulgation of a second Arab-born libel that Israelis were trafficking the
organs of dead Palestinians and performing medical experiments on captured
Arabs. This story appeared simultaneously in three major Greek papers, Ta Nea, Eleftherotypia, and Apogevmatini (the latter as its front-page headline), as “news,” with no
questions asked. The papers quoted as their source the state Athens News Agency (Athinaiko Praktoreio Eideision), which received the
text, translated from the Arabic by an organization calling itself the Greek Union of Palestinian Doctors and Pharmacists, and, equally uncritically and
irresponsibly for a state news agency, distributed it on 2 April 2002.
Allegedly, the original article comes from the February 2002 issue of a
Palestinian magazine “An-Nasra”, published in Gaza.
The
front-page headline of Apogevmatini (2/4/02) blares: “They’ve surpassed Nazi atrocity: THEY’RE SELLING
ORGANS of dead Palestinians. Incredible accusation by doctors and pharmacists.” Alongside is a photo of a tiny
child wearing Intifada gear with the caption: “Little Palestinian girl mourns the death of her father while holding a
grenade in her tender hands,” [note: grenade is pinned to her collar] and another photo of a pair of
feet standing on a banner with the Star of David = Swastika. The full-page
story inside, complete with a color photo of kneeling Palestinian police
captives and one of the Arabic magazine page (as proof of authenticity),
carries the headline: “Incredible
charges through Athens News Agency: Organ Trafficking by Israelis. They are
using Arabs as guinea pigs, says Greek Union of Palestinian Doctors.” The opening line reads: “Athens News Agency reports the incredible charges
that Israeli authorities are stealing and selling the organs of dead
Palestinians, charges that were made by the Greek Union of Palestinian Doctors
and Pharmacists.”[xcvii]
Eleftherotypia (2/4/02) reported, “Charges of theft and sale of human organs of dead
Palestinians and the use of Arabs as guinea pigs by Israel occupation forces
are made by the Greek Union of Palestinian Doctors and Pharmacists, according
to the Athens News Agency.”[xcviii]
Ta Nea (2/4/02), under the title, “They steal organs from the dead,” reported accusations of trafficked
organs “from dead Palestinians, who
fall dead from the fire of Israeli forces during conflicts, as well as other
criminal acts such as using Arab detainees as guinea pigs.”[xcix]
The
Embassy of Israel immediately issued (2/4/02) an urgent statement in which the
Ambassador called the story a “horrible
lie,” and blames “the propaganda machine of the Palestinians [for]
exploiting the hospitality of the Greeks in order to spread baseless
lies…without any real evidence.”[c]
Apogevmatini (3/4/02) published the Embassy
disclaimer, following it with a lengthy interview with the President of the
Greek Palestinian Doctors Union, Hassan
Koutsi, who rejoined:
“We knew what their reaction would
be…What Israel is doing is called terrorism. (…) Everything I said is true.
There isn’t a single lie. There is considerable evidence, and when we are ready
we will release it to the media to raise the public consciousness of the world
to put a stop this atrocity. (…) They are fanatic Zionists, dreaming of the
‘Great Israel’. They are the ‘Zionist…Taliban!’.”[ci]
In
a critical article printed directly beneath on the same page, Paschos Mandravelis compares the willingness of the Greek public to
accept this libel to their belief of the “World Trade Center Jews” rumor: “The biggest problem that rumor revealed was the deficit
of rational thought in this country. We are ready to believe everything except
what is logical…We followed virtually the same path again with the unbelievable
charge from the ‘Greek Union of Palestinian Doctors and Pharmacists’.”[cii]
Several
days later, in an interview in Eleftherotypia (6/4/02), Israeli author Amos Oz, who is highly regarded in Greece, gave his opinion on the
Greek media’s reports. “Oh come on,
now! That’s simply a revival of the anti-Semitic myths of the 19th
century that claimed that Jews used the flesh of Christians for their
cannibalistic rituals.”[ciii]
However,
the glaring headline had reverberated from every one of the ubiquitous news
kiosks in the country.
It
is significant to contrast the Greek media’s willing acceptance as fact of the
heinous organ trafficking libel against their in-depth questioning of an
Israeli “planespotting” incident on Crete. Many Greek conspiracy theories focus
on Zionism as a threat to Greek territorial integrity. Several sections of this
report document members of the Church as well as nationalistic elements on both
the right and left who support conspiracy theories concerning the alliance
among Israel, Turkey and the United States and their designs on the annexation
of Cyprus and the island of Crete. The anti-Semitic sentiments of the Prefect
of the Cretan district of Hania, George
Katsenevakis and some
of the clergy of this region are also documented in this report.[civ]
In the fall of 2001, what should have been an
insignificant incident took on the trappings of an espionage thriller, not only
in the fringe press where such stories abound, but also in the country’s major
dailies. On 18 October 2001, four Israeli tourists, part of a group of 150,
were arrested for photographing and/or videotaping in an unmarked but
nevertheless restricted area of the Souda Bay American military base near
Hania, Crete. They were acquitted of all charges by the local court on the
following day.
Although several major papers reported the story
objectively and/or buried it in the fine print,[cv]
or emphasized the complete acquittal of those involved,[cvi]
they still considered this tempest in a teapot newsworthy enough to warrant two
days of coverage. It is notable that similar suspicions and insinuations were
expressed across the spectrum of the Greek press.
Kathimerini called the incident “mysterious,” and put the item on its front
page (19/10/01), explaining on page 5 that “the event raises legitimate
questions in the current context, since the suspects’ activities involved the
American base at Souda, which is used for US operations against the Taliban in
Afghanistan.”[cvii]
In a follow-up the next day (20/10/01), it warned against “the relaxing of
vigilance.” The paper printed the Embassy of Israel’s disclaimer,[cviii]
only to note the fact that it “contains the prediction that ‘they [the 4
Israelis] are certain to be acquitted…’, which clearly was issued prior to the
judicial decision.”[cix]
Rightwing and nationalist daily (5,000 copies in
August 2002) Vradyni also gave the story a front page headline and a
full page article (19/10/01), titled “WAR of Spies in Souda!” with
bulleted subheadings: “Three Israelis arrested after wild manhunt;
Clandestine interrogations by Greek Secret Service; The game Mossad is
playing.”[cx] Written
by the paper’s Hania correspondent Lefteris Vardakis, the article emphasizes
the involvement of the Greek Secret Service and other diplomatic and military
authorities. In an extensive follow-up (20/10/01), titled “Four Israelis are
spies…by mistake,” the same correspondent emphasizes all the “unanswered
questions” surrounding the case.[cxi]
The matter was the subject of the front page headline
and main article in the rightwing, nationalist daily (10,000 copies in August
2002) Adesmeftos Typos (19/10/2001): “WAR GAMES: Shock over Spy Case.
Four Israelis arrested photographing Souda” with bulleted subheadings: “Secret
Service keeps mum over case; [The 4] secretly photographed American base,
airstrips and equipment.” Correspondent Kostas Korelis touches every sensitive
anti-Zionist nerve: “according to sources, the authorities ascertained that
the foreign nationals were carrying false passports” and “the motives of
those arrested have not, at least as of yesterday, been made public, but there
is conjecture that they might have been spying for Turkey.” [cxii]
In his follow-up the next day (20/10/2001) Mr. Korelis attributes the true
significance of the incident to “a recently signed military agreement
between Israel and Turkey…concerning the exchange of intelligence between the
secret services of both countries, a matter that should be of particular
concern to Greece!”[cxiii]
Beneath this article is a separate item reporting the acquittal of the four
individuals.[cxiv]
The political and financial weekly (37,000 copies in
August 2002) Ependytis (27-28/10/01) devoted a full page with the
headline “Mossand [sic] Combing Nicosia and Crete,” in which Manos
Iliadis claims that “what happened on 18 October in Crete also occurred on 7
November 1998 in Cyprus.” He traces other incidents of alleged Israeli
espionage of Greek and Cypriot military operations back to 1975, also claiming
that the woman of the group “was born and studied in Turkey,” as further
proof that Israel is collecting intelligence for its ally Turkey.[cxv]
The front page headline of the ultra-rightwing daily Hora
(20/10/01) reads: “Thriller at Souda: Mossad agents with
video-cameras and false passports are acquitted.” The article stressed the “false
identities,” noting that “this particular ‘detail’ of course went
uncommented upon by the embassy [of Israel in its statement], since some
probably considered it superfluous.”[cxvi]
And, finally, in the tabloid daily (5,000 copies in
August 2002) Traffic (“‘Mossad’ spies combing Greece”
30/10/01) Dinos Efstratiou reports that “former Deputy Defense Minister
Dimitris Apostolakis” provided information that “two of the four
‘tourists’ had been arrested in Cyprus a few days earlier, involved in the very
same ‘sport’ of videotaping military installations!”[cxvii]
The conservative New Democracy party, the
socialist PASOK party, and the communist KKE party have dominated
the Greek political arena since 1980.
Leftists see Israel as an agent of the imperialist
Americans, and PASOK, which is currently in power, has been staunchly
pro-Palestinian since its inception in 1980. On many occasions in the past,
anti-Israel or anti-Zionist remarks have evolved into anti-Jewish attacks and
contributed to the creation of a strongly anti-Semitic climate.[cxviii]
In the early 1980s, the party’s founder, the late Prime Minister Andreas
Papandreou, compared the Israelis to the Nazis.[cxix]
And, in 1988, Greek Justice Minister V. Rotis overruled court decisions
to extradite to Italy Abdel Osama Al-Zomar, an alleged Palestinian terrorist
charged with bombing the Synagogue of Rome. Mr. Rotis claimed that Osama’s acts
were part of the “Palestinian people’s struggle for the liberation of their
homeland, and therefore cannot be considered as acts of terrorism.”[cxx]
The wholesale appropriation of all of the language of
the Holocaust as a means of presenting the crisis in the Middle East is seen by
world Jewry as the most worrisome part of what is being called the “new
anti-Semitism” in Europe.[cxxi]
This trend has been widely adopted in Greece by the press and taken up by a
number of individual politicians. Major human rights groups (Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch, etc.) have well documented that
Israel has been committing multiple human rights violations including war
crimes, but not genocide nor any holocaust. So, to now claim that the Jews are
no longer the victims but the perpetrators of a Holocaust is a grave distortion
of history. It is also a denigration of the unique horror, scope and substance
of the Holocaust, and constitutes an insult to the memory of the many Greek
Jewish victims, survivors and their families. Prime Minister Costas Simitis and
Foreign Minister George Papandreou have not expressed such views,
but other members of their party and cabinet have. Significantly, the political
leadership of Greece has yet to strongly condemn either the blatant
anti-Semitism or the prevalent use of Holocaust rhetoric, even when such
remarks have compromised the state.
The Speaker of the Greek Parliament, Apostolos
Kaklamanis, spoke of “genocide” of the Palestinians when asked about
the events in the Middle East, provoking the state of Israel to launch a
demarche against the Greek government.[cxxii]
Then, the Government Spokesperson, Christos Protopapas, refused to
comment on Mr. Kaklamanis’ remarks, but added insult to injury by claiming that
the Speaker of Parliament had responded to a particularly serious question “with
sensitivity and responsibility …[and was] expressing the sentiments of both the
Parliament and the Greek people.”[cxxiii]
This appears to be so.
Moreover, the Greek press chose to all but ignore the
entire incident, with no discussion regarding its significance or possible
repercussions. For example, Eleftherotypia (3/4/02) tacked the episode
on as a kind of postscript to a list of contemporaneous peacemaking statements
and activities of Prime Minister Simitis and Foreign Minister Papandreou.[cxxiv]
The center-left Ethnos (Eth, 3/4/02) gave the item more space, but in
both cases the story was buried in fine print.[cxxv]
Also, the former PASOK Public Order Minister,
Stelios Papathemelis, has repeatedly spoken out about Israel’s “neo-Nazi”
practices in television interviews.[cxxvi]
And the former Justice Minister, Professor Georgios-Alexandros Mangakis,
is quoted as saying (Eleftherotypia, 2/4/02), “The victims of
Nazism have now become the perpetrators of the crime of genocide. (…) All
Greeks of conscience should stand up for the Palestinians, the new victims of
racism and Nazi atrocity.”[cxxvii]
In late March 2002, the prominent PASOK deputy
and former Foreign Minister, Theodoros Pangalos, launched what amounted
to a siege on the Embassy of Israel to protest military incursions into
Palestinian territory. This enterprise rapidly degenerated into an assault on
Greek Jewry.
First, Theodore Pangalos chose the Sabbath of
Passover, 30 March 2002, to assemble an extempore group of seventeen MPs
from various parties for an unannounced show of protest at the Israeli Embassy.
Naturally, the Embassy was closed. Unable to deliver their petition, the
Parliamentarians criticized the Ambassador’s absence, with an irate Theodore
Pangalos declaring, “but it isn’t the Sabbath of Passover in Greece and they
should respect the country they’re living in.”[cxxviii]
The Israeli Ambassador responded (in.gr news,
30/3/02) that “the Sabbath is a sacred day of rest for Jews and this is the
period of Passover.” He also noted that there was “no show of
sensitivity at all over the murderous terrorist attack in Netanya that cost the
lives of 21 Israelis during Passover,” wondering if “these individuals
are simply looking to make headlines in the media or do they truly desire a
just peace?”[cxxix]
Ambassador Sasson’s statement prompted snide retorts
from members of the press. Roussos Vranas, in his regular column “Roads”
(Ta Nea, 1/4/02), wrote: “Passover Jewish Pascha. The Israeli
diplomatic mission used the pretext of the Passover holiday to hide from the
Greek parliamentary delegation …[but] the holiday didn’t keep the Israeli
forces from killing unarmed people and reporters.”[cxxx]
The following Monday morning, in an interview on Flash
96 radio (1/4/02), Theodore Pangalos further clarified his anti-Jewish
sentiments as well as his geopolitical bias and ignorance. Confusing the
Sabbath of Passover with Catholic Easter, he called the Ambassador of Israel “arrogant”
for using the “silly argument that it was, he says, the Saturday of Catholic
Pascha [Passover/Easter]. Now, why he, a Jew, should consider it proper
to claim Catholic Easter as a day of absolute rest to us Orthodox Christians
needs to be explained to the people who are giving him hospitality here, i.e.
to the people of Athens, the people of Greece. And I feel we must make an
example of this kind of arrogance… of this gentleman who dared to curse and
scorn in such a fashion the Greek Parliament, the expression of the Greek
people. (…) This is outrageous and unacceptable from a moral and political
standpoint. It brings back memories of Hitlerist ethnic cleansing, and if this
isn’t ethnic cleansing then what is? (…) Because it’s very well-known that…
there were no Israelis in Palestine.”[cxxxi]
Two weeks later (14/4/2002), To Vima on Sunday,
Greece’s largest selling Sunday paper, published a full-page article by
Theodore Pangalos, in which he shifted his attack the Greek Jewish Community.[cxxxii]
He opens with a reference to “the Spanish heritage of the Greek Jewish
Community,”[cxxxiii]
whom he criticizes for “their glaring absence from all the
demonstrations against the massacre of the Palestinians.” This he sees as
an insult to Greek Christians and a personal affront to himself. “I am
certain that some of the [Israeli] tanks contain the grandchildren of people
saved from the Holocaust as a result of the solidarity of their Greek Christian
compatriots. (…) I have the right to say that the silence and apathy or, even
worse, the solidarity of the Greek Jews with the Sharon Government is a heavy
weight on my soul precisely because I have always stood at the side of the
Jewish Community of Greece. Theodore Pangalos also takes sole credit
for the realization of the Holocaust Memorial in Thessaloniki.
He demands that Greek Jews “follow the example of
hundreds of Jewish intellectuals in France” and unequivocally condemn the
Sharon Government. “Then, we who love and admire the history and
civilization of this extraordinary people will be able to stand by them,
without reservation, against all forms of prejudice and attempts at
discrimination.” [cxxxiv]
Theodore Pangalos’ rhetoric was so contemptuous and
insulting that it triggered a rare angry retort from the normally cautious KIS.
The organization addressed a vehement rebuttal to Theodore Pangalos and sent it
to the editor of To Vima (16/4/02). The editor published it in full in
the following Sunday edition (21/4/02), noting that he received many letters
about the Pangalos article but chose to print only this one, “believing that
it expressed the views of the Greek Jews.”[cxxxv]
However strong and thorough this letter may be, it would have been interesting
to see some others. We quote in full:
16 April 2002
Dear Editor-in-Chief,
Concerning the inflammatory style and content of the article by former
Foreign Minister Mr. Theodoros Pangalos, titled ‘Tragedy, confusion and
deplorable incidents,’ which was published in your paper on 14.4.2002, we wish
to make the following points:
Our Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, as the
representative body of Greek Jewry, has intervened as many times as the media
has given it the opportunity to express its views on the tragic events in the
Middle East. On 2.4.2002, it issued a statement in which it clearly expressed
that, among other things, ‘violence, the ongoing war taking place on many
fronts, as well as the increasing terrorist attacks can in no way be justified
as political acts, and they certainly do not lead to durable solutions.’ This
statement was broadcast on the electronic media and published in the press. Mr.
Pangalos, choosing to concern himself with how to create negative impressions
against the Jews of Greece and the Israelis, did not read our unequivocal
statement and, thus, conspicuously did not mention or wished to ignore it in
his article.
Mr. Pangalos refers to the ‘Jews who were saved from the Holocaust
thanks to the solidarity of their Greek Christian compatriots.’ For 50 years we
have never forgotten this solidarity,[cxxxvi] neither, of course, have we overlooked the fact
that the Hitlerist insanity against the Greek Jews was apparently so brutal
that very few were saved, with 86% of them dying in the German camps. (The
prewar Jewish population of Greece was 77,377; 10,226 were saved or returned
from the camps, an 86% loss).
Mr. Pangalos writes that ‘he always stood at the side of the Jewish
community of Greece.’ We thank him for what may be his inner intention.
However, given that the Jewish Community of Greece shares the normal status quo
of equality with other Greeks, it – fortunately – has not yet needed supporters
or opposers.
Mr. Pangalos prides himself that ‘one of the most significant
accomplishments of my life was the Holocaust Monument in Thessaloniki.’ This
Monument to the memory of the Jews of Thessaloniki, which was erected during
the ministry of Mr. Pangalos in 1997 after a delay of 50 long years, is among
the monuments owed to modern Greek history and not to the good will of certain
individuals. No one ‘granted’ it. The 54,000 Greek Jewish citizens of
Thessaloniki who died in the Nazi concentration camps were entitled to it. As
for the installation of the Monument, we must acknowledge the contribution of
Prime Minister Costas Simitis, the then and current Culture Minister Evangelos
Venizelos, and the then deputy Foreign Minister George Papandreou.
Mr. Pangalos admonishes the Greek Jews to follow the ‘example of Vidal
Naquet, Jules Dassin, and Iakovos Kambanellis and hundreds of Jewish
intellectuals in France, who unequivocally condemned the Fascist Sharon
Government for what it is doing now.’ But Mr. Pangalos avoids clarifying that
all these people, and many others in various countries, also condemned the
terrorist acts of the Palestinians against innocent Israelis, something the
former Foreign Minister has not done, even though the Palestinian authority
recently has.
We do not need Mr. Pangalos to tell us what we have to do to serve the
interests of Greece. He should recall, for instance, that in January 1998 when
he was Foreign Minister, we did all that our national conscience demanded of us
at a truly crucial point in Greek affairs. Other ministerial colleagues of Mr.
Pangalos are familiar with similar actions [of ours]. We do not cite them
because we are not seeking applause.
On Saturday, 30 March 2002, Passover Sabbath, Mr. Pangalos led a group
to the Embassy of Israel here – knowing it would be closed – to deliver a
letter of protest. We would like to ask Mr. Pangalos, which Embassy of Greece
abroad or what public service would be open on Greek Orthodox Easter Sunday? It
is fine to try and create impressions, but the truth must not suffer as a
result.
We are limiting our response to what concerns us as Greek Jews, living
in the liberal society of the democratic Greece Mr. Pangalos knows so well.
However, it appears that he does not know equally as well how to distinguish
the democratic from the dictatorial states or Authorities that exist in the
Middle East region.
In closing, we assure you, Mr. Editor, that no one is in favor of an
undeclared war with many fluctuations that has gone on for more than half a
century and has many victims on both sides. The only solution is a just and
lasting peace. A peace that would be served with stability, without
suppression, disparagement, glorification, and primarily without the
propagandistic peace polemics of certain individuals.
Sincerely,
Moses Constantinis, President - Avraam Reitan, Secretary”
Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS)[cxxxvii]
There was little public comment on Theodore Pangalos’
statements. However, Richardos Someritis, in his critical column also in
To Vima (16/4/02), strongly condemned Theodore Pangalos’ rhetoric as
dictatorial. “Some of our compatriots, who don’t seem to have properly
understood the meaning of democracy and human rights, have taken to the
streets, demanding that all those Greeks who happen to be Jewish condemn Sharon
and current Israeli policy… Besides the phrase, ‘national sentiment’ – always
chilling when used in this fashion – they obviously do not know that the new
anti-Semitic trend also began somewhat like this elsewhere in Europe. While
reading ‘To Vima on Sunday,’ I discovered to my distress that one of
these individuals was Mr. Theodoros Pangalos. (…) What gives the former Foreign
Minster the right to make a faction of our Jewish compatriots … of those few,
that is, who have survived? Why doesn’t he demand the same from those
non-Jewish citizens of this county who have a view different from his own?”[cxxxviii]
Underlying Issues
The
strong pro-Palestinian sympathies of the Greek people are typically explained
as an emotional identification with the occupied “underdog” (anywhere in the
world) and a strong democratic reaction against injustice. However, this
argument is inconsistent with the country’s position on other conflicts in the
region. Greece overwhelmingly supported Serbia, both in the Bosnian war and in
Kosovo/a, a major reason for which was Greece’s religious ties to the Orthodox
Christian Serbia. There was no such sympathy for the militarily disadvantaged
Bosnian Muslims or the displaced, persecuted Kosovo/a Albanians, and no
national outcry against the Srbrenica massacre. Many Greeks in fact continue to
believe that Slobodan Milosevic has been wrongfully charged.[cxxxix]
Greece has also maintained a general silence with regard to the Russia-Chechnya
conflict, an area where both religious and political affinities come into play.
What is consistent to almost all the rhetoric around the Middle East is a deep
resentment towards the United States, which is alternately seen as the puppet
or puppeteer of Israel, and an insistence on the collective responsibility of
“the Jews.”
Theodore Pangalos reveals these attitudes in his
article (V, 14/4/02) when he moves on to other issues. After expressing his
sympathies for the Palestinian “suicide warriors,” his outrage at Sharon
“the beast,” and his contempt for “the ‘anti-terrorism’ climate that
developed after September 11th,” he compares America’s tacit
acceptance of Israel’s action with its military initiative against Serbia. “But
how can we ever forget what happened when a bomb – of unknown origin – landed
in the Sarajevo marketplace or when some Albanian peasants took to the streets
– organized, as it was proven. The American eagle immediately spread its wings
to protect human rights and admonish the evil Serbs manu militari.”[cxl]
Richardos Someritis (V, 16/4/02) accused Theodore
Pangalos of being “irresponsible” and “fanatical.”
He points out the selectivity of Greek political opinions, which are often
founded on misinformation and prejudice.[cxli]
“Thus of the 44 months of siege on
Sarajevo by the Serbs and the 12,000 dead citizens, the former – fortunately
not current – Foreign Minister remembers only the ‘marketplace
bomb’ of unknown origin. He modifies the tragic exodus of 700,000 people from
Kosovo (because, Mr. Minister, Albanians are people and you should know that
personally) into an ‘organized, it was proven’ march ‘of some Albanian peasants
who took to the streets.’ Just like that! I suppose that the person who got us
embroiled in the Ocalan affair and has said all manner of things about all
those foreign and semi-foreign leaders, must consider this ‘it was proven’ akin
to the vague ‘it is known’ that supports every form of stupidity and
misinformation.”[cxlii]
The Prefect of Hania, Crete, George Katsenevakis,
who is supported by the small leftwing Synaspismos party,[cxliii]
has a history of anti-Semitism. In October 1999, Mr. Katsenevakis, along with
members of the local clergy, strongly opposed the re-opening of the 15th
century Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Hania, the only remaining Jewish site on the
island of Crete.[cxliv]
He was quoted at the time as saying that monument could be maintained and
promoted for its historic value, but he proposed “eliminating
the religious services… since there is not a sufficient number of faithful to
participate. (…) The services and ceremonies of the synagogue are directed at
whom? … An empty monument, idle tourists or those transported from another
congregation?”[cxlv]
The insinuation being that the synagogue may serve Zionist purposes.
The conflict in the Middle East provided George
Katsenevakis with another opportunity to express his views. After participating
in a large pro-Palestinian rally in Hania on 4 April 2002, he stated to the
local press that: “Peace is being terrorized and civilization is being
murdered. Christ is being re-crucified by the contemporary Caiaphas, the high
priest of Zionism, Sharon… The only thing that the leader of the murder of the
Palestinian people, big brother Bush, and his accomplice, the professional
murderer since 1953, Ariel Sharon, learned from the Holocaust of the Jews
during the German occupation was Hitlerist hatred and the inhuman atrocity of
Nazism.”[cxlvi]
No one is known to have condemned these statements.
George Katsenevakis was re-elected in October 2002 with the support of the same
party, and, more importantly, the majority of the voters.
Ultra-Nationalism and the Extreme Right: George Karazaferis
In a year (2002) marked by an avalanche of
anti-Semitic manifestations, the most disturbing is the recent electoral
success of George Karatzaferis, the leader of the ultra-nationalist LAOS
party. George Karatzaferis, whose name appears many times in this report, is by
far the most outspoken promoter of anti-Semitism (and other racism) in Greek
public life. He was originally elected to Parliament with the conservative New
Democracy party, from which he was expelled for a personal conflict – not
for his views. He is now an independent.
In Greece, after 13 years of legal non-state
television, there are still no official television licenses granted. But among
the channels selected to receive one is that of George Karatzaferis,
TeleAsty, from which he and like-minded guests regularly voice
anti-Semitic, racist and nationalist propaganda. He also owns the weekly
newspaper Alpha Ena, both of which, along with the LAOS party, were
singled out by ESIEA and Infocenter[cxlvii]
as the major (or sole) disseminators of the September 11th libel in
Greece.
In the past, the Jewish community chose to officially
ignore George Karatzaferis and his anti-Semitic parliamentary questions[cxlviii]
on the grounds that such acknowledgment would give him the dimension and
publicity he desires.[cxlix]
However, he remains a sharp thorn in the side of the Jewish community. In the
most causal encounters, the first thing individual Jews ask, without
solicitation, is “can’t you [GHM] do anything about Karatzaferis?”[cl]
It was most dangerous to dismiss George Karatzaferis
as simply a “crackpot” or “extremist,” as many do, especially at a time when
the mainstream right is gaining political power all over Europe, even as it is
forging alliances with the more violent factions of the extreme-right. The
elections for Greater Athens “super-prefect,” on 13 October 2002, where George
Karatzaferis came third with 14% of the vote, proved how dangerous the
tolerance of the intolerance of the extreme right can be. This performance
finally opened a debate on the extreme right:[cli]
many intellectuals, journalists and politicians acknowledged that extreme right
views are spread throughout the political spectrum in Greece and that
Karatzaferis’ performance was alarming. The Ios team in Eleftherotypia
(one of the rare journalists who had for year systematically highlighted the
extreme right’s actions) dedicated a dossier on the racist discourse of
Karatzaferis, including an array of anti-Semitic statements, partly in reply to
his threat that he would file charges against anyone who would call him
fascist, nazi, racist and extreme-rightwinger.[clii]
In a future version of this report the issue will be covered more extensively.
As this report documents, George Karatzaferis is
highly effective in getting his ideas heard. Most ominously, he is being
systematically legitimized by members of the mainstream political arena.
Recently, two important leftwing cadres, KKE deputy Nikos Gatzis and
former Coalition (Syn) deputy Stella Alfieri, gave interviews “on all
the issues” to Alpha Ena (29-30/6/02, p. 28), which praised them as “courageous
politicians.”[cliii]
Then, a corresponding interview was published in the following issue
(6-7/7/02), this time of elder statesman and former Foreign Minister
Michalis Papakonstantinou, known for his moderate views and his
participation in the “Rational Front against Nationalism.” Michalis
Papakonstantinou was juxtaposed with Panteion University professor and tiny
centrist party EDIK President Neoklis Sarris, whose views parallel those
of George Karatzaferis and are regularly extolled in Alpha Ena.[cliv]
As for George Karatzaferis’ possible involvement with
the more violent extreme-right faction, the local daily Proodos (4/7/02)
strongly implied his connection to the partial destruction of the newly
unveiled Holocaust Monument on the island of Rhodes.[clv]
The paper reports, “it should be noted that the Mayor of Rhodes, George
Yannopoulos, recently received a letter from [Karatzaferis] expressing his
opposition to erection of the monument to the Jews in our city,” pointing
out that the systematic vandalism began a few days prior to George Karatzaferis
scheduled visit to the island.[clvi]
Anti-Semitism and Prominent Figures
The
escalation of Israeli military actions in Palestinian territory, starting in
late March 2002, was vehemently denounced by a number of respected national
figures whose reputations as leftist thinkers and activists gave credence to
their views, and whose position ensured substantial media exposure. These
highly publicized protests helped set the precedent for the strident Holocaust
equations, anti-Semitic rhetoric, and a fanatic pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli
bias that virtually prohibited any legitimate discourse on the Middle East.
The “Glezos Eight”
The former Resistance fighter and revered national
symbol, Manolis Glezos, launched one such incident.[clvii]
On 20 March 2002, Manolis Glezos led an eight-member delegation, including a
former MP and representatives from the Athens Labor Center, the “Genoa
2001 Initiative,” the NGO Greek Committee for International Democratic
Solidarity, the Trotskyite “Labor Solidarity,” the Greek Union of
Palestinian Workers, and the Palestinian Community of Athens, to the
Embassy of Israel to lodge a letter of complaint. They did not notify the
Embassy beforehand; the Ambassador was out at the time and no diplomatic
official was available to receive the group. The delegation and members of the
press saw this as an act of supreme arrogance and a reprehensible slap in the
face to the Greek people.
In
a story on the event, titled “Like
Neo-Nazis” (Eleftherotypia, 21/3/02), Manolis Glezos is quoted as saying, “It is insupportable that these people, whom we
protected against Nazi persecution, should be making a Holocaust…” Columnist George Votsis writes, “This is not the first time in history that victims
have turned victimizers. But such a carbon copy?”[clviii] Two days later, George Votsis
responds to the Embassy’s official explanation of the Ambassador’s absence and
its protest of the use of Holocaust rhetoric by insisting that “systematic genocide” is being carried out by Israel. But he clarifies
that Greeks are not anti-Semitic. “Fortunately,
anti-Semitism does not germinate in this land. The Greek people, who sheltered
the Jews against Hitlerist persecution … are pained and outraged when they see
the descendents of Holocaust victims copying their victimizers, in a hideous
fashion, ignorant of history.”[clix]
The Glezos group also responded to the Embassy with
statement titled “The Diplomacy of Genocide and the Solidarity with the
Intifada” (Eleftherotypia 27/3/02). The group accuses Israel
of “the genocide of the Palestinian people, a complete Holocaust like the
one Hitler committed” and declares that the “Intifada is a
righteous uprising against a racist state that serves the imperialistic
interests of a handful of oil multinationals...”[clx]
Mikis Theodorakis
A
major cultural icon who has taken up the banner of Holocaust rhetoric is the
world-renowned composer and Greece’s 2001 Nobel Peace Prize candidate, Mikis
Theodorakis.
In
early April 2002, Mikis Theodorakis wrote an article declaring that “the people of Israel will one day regret allowing
Sharon to drag them into campaign of shame that recalls the crimes of the
Nazis.” The text was
widely published; the three major dailies Eleftherotypia,[clxi]
Ta Nea,[clxii] and To Vima[clxiii] all ran it on the same day
(2/4/02) – the last on its front page. Mikis Theodorakis accuses “the Jews” of “imitating Nazi
barbarity,” of
becoming “more and more enamored with
Nazi methods,” and of
carrying out “the final solution
against the Palestinians.” The Jews, he writes, implement “even
the horrible ‘detail’ of putting indelible numbers on their prisoners’ arms.” (It is worth noting here that two
of these papers (El, N) also carried on the same day the alleged Israeli
organ-trafficking story –see above-, the former on the preceding page). Mikis
Theodorakis subscribes to the conspiracy theories of the day, as well, and his
rhetoric reaches cosmogonist proportions with portents of “biblical disaster. (…) If we leave Palestine alone
at the mercy of the modern conquerors, then we are leaving the door open for
the darkest forces known to mankind to pass through tomorrow.”
In
addition, Mikis Theodorakis spearheaded massive pro-Palestinian concert/rallies
in Syntagma Square in central Athens (10/4/02) and in Thessaloniki (14/4/02),
at which the Star of David was paraded in the form of a swastika. As keynote
speaker at the rally, Mikis Theodorakis opened by declaring Ariel Sharon “a little Hitler” and reiterating what he wrote in his newspaper essay
of several days earlier. Alpha TV, a major commercial channel,
broadcast the entire Athens rally live, with the caption: “We are all Palestinians.” Once again the Greek public heard
(and read in Eleftherotypia the next day) that “the former victims, the Jews, are becoming more and
more enamored by the methods of their former victimizers, the Nazis,” who are conducting “their final solution against the Palestinians.”[clxiv] Alongside its report on the
rally, To Vima printed a statement by the writer
Iakovos Kambanellis, Theodorakis’ collaborator on
“Mauthausen,” a hymn to the victims of the Holocaust. “The songs we wrote about the then-suffering Jews in
Mauthausen have nothing to do with the current “Hitlerists” in Israel.”[clxv]
Several
days later, Mikis Theodorakis wrote a lengthy follow-up to his speech (Eleftherotypia, 14/4/02), in which he suggested that a power greater than
that of the United States was behind the September 11th terror
attacks.[clxvi]
It
is significant to note that on the day following the rally in Thessaloniki, the
Holocaust Monument in that city was defaced and several graves in the Jewish
cemetery of the northern city of Ioannina were desecrated.[clxvii]
“The Letter to the Jews”
The “letter” is addressed to Mavrommatis’ “Jewish
personal friends, Greek Jewish friendly acquaintances and Diaspora Jews” he
knows, “and those with their characteristics.” His concern is over the “neo-Nazi
Israel” and the “Jewish Lobbies [who] have privileged access to play
their cassettes in the electronic brain of the substitute Yahweh, the leader of
the planet.” His grievance is with the “silence of the Jews, the Greek
Jews in particular” in the face of “the Hitlerist Sharon who, with his
alliances with the neo-Fascist phalanges, has created a Mauthausen, if not an
Auschwitz or a Dachau, in 10 days and a genocide that scared even the American
butchers.” He claims that his “will-nilly participation in your Jewish
education,” which he learned “even better than you did,” citing his
knowledge of a variety of spiritual and intellectual sources, gives him the “right
to speak out” and condemn his friends. “Yet now, Elias, you are silent.
Don’t ever call me again.”[clxix]
Both
KIS and the Embassy of
Israel objected
strongly to Dimos Mavrommatis’ text. KIS President Moses Constantinis told GHM that they sent the same letter of protest
(22/3/02) to the editors of both papers; Apogevmatini
chose to publish it
(24/3/02), but not Eleftherotypia, “even though,” he quipped, “it calls itself ‘Eleftherotypia’ [=Press Freedom].” He went on to state that “no comparison can be made between the Holocaust
with its 6 million victims and the response to terrorist activities in Israel.
Every war has its innocent victims. But, sadly, the Greek press counts only the
Palestinian casualties, and not the Israelis.”[clxx]
In
response to Dimos Mavrommatis, KIS wrote that it wished to “establish the truth… and not deal with your racist
comments, such as ‘those who have the characteristics [punctuation theirs] of Jews,’ or your phraseology.”
“We are not among
[the Jewish friends, etc.] you refer to in your letter. We are, however,
Greeks, Jews by religion, with many more personal friends than your 10-12 and
even more Christian fellow-citizen friendly acquaintances. But, unfortunately,
we do not have the opportunity to disseminate messages through the Press as
easily as you do. (…) Certainly, all free, democratic citizens – including
Greek Jews – oppose and condemn violence, whatever its source, however it
manifests itself. We did not, however, read a single reference in your letter
to the Palestinians who, strapped with explosives, spread death among innocent
citizens. (…) Perhaps you consider this violence good? Perhaps this violence is
permissible because does not come from Israelis? (…) You have a right not to be
friends with Elias…But you do not have a right to present the facts
one-sidedly. Since we want to be friends as always with Antonis, Panayotis and
Eleni, and since we wish from the bottom of our hearts for peace-making and
moderating views to reign in the Middle East, we request that you do not
disseminate messages that lead to hatred, that divide friends, that incite
enmity and that distort historic reality.”[clxxi]
Ambassador Sasson (21/3/02) criticized the essay as “blatant anti-Semitic propaganda” and Holocaust revisionism, calling
its views “extremist.” “These new
campaigns to demonize Jews by distorting the actual situation between Israel
and the Palestinians are nothing more than a new form of neo-Nazi racism
directed against Jews. It seems that Mr. Mavrommatis’ hatred and anti-Semitism
have blinded him. But at least as far as his sentiments for the Jews are
concerned, he and those who provided a podium for his extremist views have ceased
pretending to hide their true feelings.”[clxxii]
Yannis Triantis published the Ambassador’s letter
in its entirety in his column in Eleftherotypia (23/3/02), with the following
rejoinder: “I provided a podium to a
stirring text by a learned, daring and progressive writer. It takes audacity –
and presupposes suicidal blindness – to characterize this text as extremist and
anti-Semitic.”[clxxiii]
The
correspondence did not stop there. Although Mavrommatis wrote the essay on his
deathbed, he managed to answer both KIS and Ambassador Sasson (Apogevmatini , 24/3/02), beginning, “I
do not intend to comment in any way on these letters.” Instead, he paraphrased Hannah
Arendt’s words as his own: “After the
Holocaust the German language, the language of poetry, couldn’t find the words
to compose ten verses. It was bankrupt. And whoever believes he can kill a
child and then embrace his own, is deceiving himself in a most pitiful way.”[clxxiv]
When
the author died several days later, he was all but canonized for his integrity
by his colleagues, who appear to have seized the opportunity to exploit their
own anti-Semitic views. The “Letter to
the Jews” was taken
up as a manifesto, and Mavromattis’ plagiarized reply to his critics extolled
throughout the press for its sensitivity and originality. KIS and Ambassador
Sasson, who was ridiculed for his objections, stood alone in their protest.
George Votsis (Eleftherotypia,
2/4/02), reprinted Mavrommatis’ “response
to the revilers … To our Jewish friends, acquaintances and comrades, who
haven’t the right to look us in the eyes as long as they observe this crime
with callowness. For they are accomplices.” The text itself he calls “The conscience of humanity in one thousand words. A
hymn to mankind …[that] should be studied in school … forever inscribed in the
textbooks. For our good children.”[clxxv] In the same edition, Yannis
Triantis writes that
Dimos Mavrommatis was an “eminent
figure of – scholarly – journalism.”[clxxvi] But alongside this, he has put
schematic map of Israel superimposed with a reprint in boldface from Roussos Vranas’ column in Ta Nea – allegedly quoting an Israeli
officer instructing his troops. “We
must analyze and implement the lessons of the battles of the past, even
analyzing how the German army set up the Warsaw ghetto, as abhorrent as that
seems.”[clxxvii]
Then,
on the same day (2/4/02), in case its readers missed it the first time around, Apogevmatini reprinted the entire article on a full page, proclaiming it “Dimos’s Legacy” – “a text,
whose power and truth provokes a myriad of reactions … deserves to be read yet
another time. Especially these days.”[clxxviii]
More
tempered eulogies referred to Mavrommatis as “consistent in his social convictions [who] served Greek journalism
with ethics and an incomparable fighting spirit” (nationalist rightwing daily –41,000 copies in
August 2002- Eleftheros Typos, 2/4/02);[clxxix]
“a cultured man” (Kathimerini, 2/4/02), “who taught writing and ethics” (the Journalists’ Union ESIEA);[clxxx]
and that “his last article proved to be
prophetic” (Avghi, 2/4/02).[clxxxi]
On
the other hand, Pontiki, the center-left satirical weekly
with 25,000 copies in August 2002, (4/4/02), also reprinted the
entire “Letter,” adding boldface for emphasis. It is prefaced by a eulogy in
which Mavrommatis is praised as “a
great man [who wrote] keen, penetrating articles, but always displayed ethics
and modesty,”
followed by a chronicle of the article and a
remark that it provoked “lengthy
letters” of protest
from Ambassador Sasson and KIS.[clxxxii] Similarly, in an emotional
accolade, Petros Mantaios (Eleftherotypia,
4/4/02) called the “Letter” “an example
of profound humanity and profuse courage. For it takes great daring, bravery
and fearlessness to transcend [yourself], to call upon Greek Jews – and,
indeed, with such anguish – to face their responsibilities. (…) writing,
moreover, in his last hours when he could barely speak … he bids goodnight to
life with a text that is a raison d’etre.”[clxxxiii] Again in Eleftherotypia (6/4/02), Olga Bakomarou, in her regular column, reprints Mavrommatis’ reply to his
critics with the preface: “Beautiful
and moving words have been written about the humanity and ethics of Dimos
Mavrommatis, who passed away as he signed his name for the last time to the
stirring text, ‘Letter to the Jews’.”[clxxxiv]
The
only, albeit oblique, reference in the Greek press to the anti-Semitic views of
Mavrommatis (and many others) came from Alexis
Papahelas (To Vima, 4/4/02). “Some
people insist on thoughtlessly using the terms ‘genocide’ or ‘Holocaust’
because they think it sells, without actually thinking about what they are
saying. Still others do not wish to conceal their anti-Semitism and use clumsy
excuses such as ‘I, too, had a Jewish friend’ to hurl the most insulting
stereotypes against Jews. We as individuals must battle such phenomena, because
legitimate, harsh, impassioned criticism of the current barbarity in Israel is
one thing; lightly veiled racism is another.”[clxxxv]
In
contrast, videographer George Gedeon, a Canadian of Greek extraction
who knew nothing about the author, made the following comments (MGSA-L,
28/3/02). “If one reads between the
lines, the disdain and innuendo are deafening. (…) Mr. Mavrommatis’ ‘Letter to Jews’ is not ‘a cry for humanity and
against its extirpation’ but a self praising, patronizing, pompous, ‘holier
than thou’ anti-Jewish rhetoric often in the Greek media. (…) I can not help but see a self-righteous accusation of an
alleged complicity of silence by Greek Jews and the author’s ‘Although I am
more ‘Jewish’ than you, I have the moral right to speak up against Israeli
injustice’ ... an attitude I find presumptuous and unfair.”[clxxxvi]
Without question the media and in particular the press
has played a key role in disseminating the “new anti-Semitism” in
Greece. During spring 2002, mainstream newspapers were deluged with
anti-Semitic editorial, cartoons, comments, and even letters to the editor
equating the – certainly condemnable and probably criminal – activity of the
Israeli army in Palestinian cities with the Holocaust, and Sharon with Hitler.
The majority of the rhetoric and imagery contained direct references to
religion and “the Jews,” with some attacks on Greek Jews, specifically, for
their collective responsibility. The sweeping anti-Israeli/anti-Zionist bias of
the Greek media, which occasionally slipped into blatant propaganda, thwarted
any legitimate criticism of Israeli policy, any serious debate of the Middle
East crisis, as well as any condemnation whatsoever of Palestinian terrorist
actions. The words “terrorist” and “terrorism” in reference to Palestinians
consistently appear in quotation marks.
The unilateral view of the Arab-Israeli conflict
created an unlikely union comprising the extreme right, the ultra-nationalists,
and the Church together with the intellectual left and the Communists.
Especially in April 2002, the convergence was so complete that it was difficult
to distinguish political leanings or even between the fringe and mainstream
press. Tangible evidence of this are the numerous ideas, texts, cartoons, and
even writers themselves that trafficked freely across the lines.
One ironic example of this fringe-mainstream alliance
is the front-page headline, “Zionists Control the Media,” in the
large-circulation rightwing Apogevmatini (16/3/02), supporting an
interview with an advisor to Iran’s President Hatami. The page with the article
was reprinted in the newspaper of the white-supremacist neo-Nazi group
Chryssi Avghi (22/3/02), with the exclamation that the “especially
important interview…says out loud for the first time what CHRYSSI AVGHI has
always maintained and reiterated!”[clxxxvii]
Another
example of the convergence of the marginal and mainstream press, on the
opposite side of the spectrum, appeared in the splinter communist weekly (2,000
copies in August 2002) Prin (7/4/02), whose entire front page
was a graphic color photo of a Palestinian funeral procession emblazoned with
the word “Genocide!”[clxxxviii] The centerfold article, with the
headline “Uprising against the
Neo-Nazis,” speaks of
“Israel’s Nazi practices” and declares: “We are with the Intifada without being
anti-Semites.”[clxxxix] Included in this same issue are two articles on the same subject by George Delastik and Petros
Papakonstantinou,
both regular contributors to the center-right Kathimerini.
Delastik writes of “the genocide of the
Palestinians” and the “Israeli humanoid beasts [who] will pay for their
crimes that they now think they’ll get away with. That’s what the Nazis
thought.” In the
center of the article is a white swastika on a black square.[cxc]
Papakonstantou calls for the end of “genocide” under the headline “Bush gives green light for Holocaust in Palestine.”[cxci]
Holocaust analogies and distinctions between
anti-Semitism and “anti-Zionism” are used to legitimize racism. When KIS, the
Israeli Embassy, NGOs, or individual citizens contest these positions, they are
ridiculed, scorned or ignored.
Columnist
Takis Fotopoulos, in an essay (Eleftherotypia, 7/4/02) titled “Anti-Semitism,
Anti-Zionism and ‘Terrorism’,” writes that the “recent
attacks on synagogues and other related targets in Europe and elsewhere … have
led some to conclude that we are facing a new rise in anti-Semitism.” He goes on to clarify that he is “not talking, of course, about Zionist propaganda
and its mouthpieces in non-governmental organizations who have characterized
even my own views as anti-Semitic because I dared criticize the atrocities of
Zionism in its efforts to carry out the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”[cxcii]
This
remark carries the footnote: “see
dialogue with the spokesperson for Amnesty International and GHM [sic], P.
Dimitras.”[cxciii] GHM spokesperson Panayote
Dimitras responded in a letter to the editor (El, 9/4/02), clarifying that he
is neither the spokesperson for Amnesty International, nor has he ever held a
dialogue with Mr. Fotopoulos. The latter, he states, could not take place “as a matter of principle [since] a dialogue with
individuals who express anti-Semitic stereotypes is unacceptable.” In his letter, Panayote Dimitras
also takes the opportunity to express his “distress
over the anti-Semitic stereotypes that have been used in Eleftherotypia in
articles and cartoons” during
this period. “Israel is currently
leading in contempt for human rights, humanitarian justice and international
legal standards. The international community should stringently and
systematically condemn it and should (but unfortunately won’t) bring it to
justice for all this. Nevertheless, those who resort to inappropriate analogies
to the Holocaust and Nazi atrocity, to adopting the concept of collective
responsibility, or to propagating traditional anti-Semitic
stereotypes essentially nullify efforts to rigorously condemn Israel, and give
the impression that they are not motivated by justice but by intolerance.”[cxciv]
To
this, Fotopoulos replied that Dimitras “verifies
beyond a shadow of doubt that he is a mouthpiece for Zionist propaganda given
that he has the gall to again characterize me for ‘expressing anti-Semitic
stereotypes’ when the objective of my article was precisely to categorize the
fundamental difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, which Mr.
Dimitras intentionally blurs.” He also asks for Dimitras “to prove that the position of the NGO he represents is not the
familiar position of Western propaganda. (…) And if he cannot, then the dialogue
with mouthpieces of Zionist and Western propaganda is impossible.”[cxcv]
Here,
it should be noted that Takis Fotopoulos has a history of voicing anti-Semitic
ideas in the guise of scholarly research. One such recent example appeared in
the same column several months earlier (Eleftherotypia, 15/12/01), titled “The next target: the destruction of the Palestinian
[state].” In this
essay, he presents “documentation” that the “Zionists currently comprise the component parts of the transnational
elite because of their economic, political, as well as general social power.” He goes on to “cite three indicative examples,” two of which have to do with the
number of “Zionists” in the Clinton, Bush and Blair cabinets. The third and
most preposterous is based on the alleged suppression of genetic findings from “an important scientific journal (Human Immunology)
…Because it disputed the biblical dogma that forms the basis for the Zionist
state, and in particular the myth of the chosen and genetically superior Jewish
people, by proving that Palestinians and Jews are genetically identical!” [punctuation his][cxcvi]
There are other instances when those protesting the
excesses of the press and the use of Holocaust rhetoric were similarly
squelched or disparaged, such as in the exchange of letters published in Eleftherotypia.
A Holocaust survivor writes (6/4/02), “I am a Greek Jew who
unfortunately survived the Holocaust only to now see the media using this
event, unique in history in scale and atrocity, in order to create false
impressions. I lost my family then, 33 immediate relatives, Greece lost 57,000
of its citizens (including those who fought and were injured in the war of
1940) and Europe lost 6 million people, solely because they were Jewish. They
had no territorial disputes, nor did they use terrorist actions. I therefore
forbid the frivolous use of this tragedy for any other purpose.”[cxcvii]
Another reader answers her (13/4/02) by first telling her that he respects and
honors the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and admitting that the
current appropriation of the term is “to some extent, frivolous.” But,
he informs her, “since you have chosen to live in a democratic nation, and
not a totalitarian regime, you have no right to ‘forbid,’ albeit rhetorically,
the use of any term. If, finally…[you] don’t ascribe the term ‘terrorist’ to
Israeli national ‘policy,’ then I fear you haven’t learned anything from the
brutal experience of the Holocaust. I regret that you are my fellow citizen!”[cxcviii]
Also in April, the Israeli Embassy privately
protested to some journalists about the way events were being portrayed in the
media. Several of them then complained to ESIEA, the union organization
responsible for defending the working rights of journalists and maintaining
ethical standards in the Greek press, that the Embassy was attempting
“political interference” in their work. In response, the Union’s President,
Aristidis Manolakos, sent a letter of condemnation to the Ambassador, which
he publicized, in which he stated: “You will understand, I assume, that the
Greek press and electronic media cannot keep silent in the face of a genocide.”[cxcix]
The following sampling of headlines, statements, and
passages appearing across the spectrum of the Greek press and media in March
and April 2002 demonstrate the pervasiveness of Nazi imagery and Holocaust
degradation.
The center-left Eleftherotypia used a
postage-stamp sized logo to label the upper corners of some its pages during
the period 2-14 April. The first version, which ran from 2/4-4/4, was a
miniaturized color photo of a dead Palestinian superimposed with the words “Holocaust
II.”[cc] The
second version, a larger photo of Palestinians sitting in the ruins of
Ramallah, superimposed with the words “The Holocaust of the Palestinians,”
ran for at least a week from 7/4-14/4.[cci]
Articles branded with this rubric include one by Mikis Theodorakis
(discussed elsewhere in this report),[ccii]
a human-interest feature about a Greek-Israeli girl and a Palestinian boy
collaborating for peace,[cciii]
an Israeli peace demonstration,[cciv]
and one covering U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powel’s visit to the region.[ccv]
However, one of the most extreme examples of Holocaust
debasement was published in the center-right Kathimerini (17/3/02), in
an essay by Christos Yannaras, a professor of philosophy at Panteion
University and prominent neo-Orthodox theologian (and published subscriber to
the “Kissinger Declaration” conspiracy theory[ccvi])
titled “Desecration of the [Religious] Dialogue.” Yannaras writes, “No
‘religious leader’ has distinguished himself… by raising his voice in behalf of
all the Palestinians who were burned with phosphorous bombs (death in the Nazi
crematoria was a pleasure in comparison to this horror…)….”[ccvii]
This “fact,” he claims, is “documented by a Westerner Robert Fisk,” in
his book. The fact is, British journalist Robert Fisk wrote exactly the
opposite in his 1992 book, “Pity the Nation. Lebanon at War”.[ccviii]
A condemnation of Christos Yannaras by Angelos
Elefantis was published in the monthly Politis magazine he publishes
(March 2002) and reprinted in the progressive-left Avghi (13/4/02).
Elefantis notes: “Whoever condemns the brutal actions of the current Israeli
government against the Palestinians is not necessarily an anti-Semite, nor is
someone who supports the Palestinians in their quest for a homeland…nor is
anyone an anti-Semite for condemning the atrocities of the Israeli army in the
occupied territories… But, if anyone thinks that death in the Nazi crematoria was
a pleasure in comparison to what the Israelis are doing today – is or is he
not an anti-Semite? This thought never crossed the mind of Christos Yannaras,
the theologian professor of philosophy at the Panteion University. And no one
accuses him of anti-Semitism. Simply, a similar thought or comparison of entirely
dissimilar things led him to ‘forget’ that six million Jews died in the Nazi
extermination camps. Enjoying themselves. Yannaras was not concerned about the
utter uniqueness of the Holocaust, nor about maintaining even the most
rudimentary good terms with rationality and history.”[ccix]
On 1 April 2002, Roussos Vranas gave the title “Hypocrites”
to his regular column in the centrist Ta Nea. He begins with a remark
about the Embassy of Israel being closed on Passover[ccx]
and ends with the “news” he’s heard about Israeli soldiers studying Nazi
methods.[ccxi] His
conclusion: “The Israelis are showing that they have finally gotten over the
Holocaust. Now that the former victims have become victimizers, maybe it’s time
for us to get over it too.”[ccxii]
Four days later, Vranas (5/402) takes umbrage with the Israelis for
objecting to Holocaust analogies: “So Ramallah was forgotten immediately.
Only Auschwitz has remained. (…) [Israel] doesn’t have concentration camps and
hasn’t exterminated one third of the Palestinian population in gas chambers.
Therefore whatever Israel does is OK. (…) As long as these atrocities fall
short, if only a little, of the atrocities once committed in Nazi Germany…Let
no one dare draw parallels.”[ccxiii]
The front page of the center-left daily (50,000 copies
in August 2002) Ethnos (2/4/02) carried the headline “Israel is
undaunted: Step-by-Step they proceed in a new Holocaust,” with a two-page
color spread titled “Israelis take battle positions for a Holocaust.”[ccxiv]
Inside the same issue was a brief article on the synagogue attacks in
France: “French President Jacques Chirac called upon the French police
authorities to take strong measures to protect places of religious worship
throughout the country.” It then goes on to say, “The actions of the
Israelite lobby in France did not thwart demonstrations protesting Israeli
military interventions,” which it describes.[ccxv]
Also in the same issue, Anna Panayotarea, a prominent journalist and
professor at the Media Studies Department of the University of Macedonia[ccxvi]
with a daily program on the most popular TV channel Mega titled her
column: “Holocaust without end.”[ccxvii]
Eleftherotypia’s contributing editor Victor Netas remembers
(2/4/02) witnessing the series of Nazi prohibitions on the Jews of Thessaloniki
preceding their eventual deportation, in 1943, to death camps in Europe. He
then states, “I would never have imagined that the descendents of the
victims of the Nazi atrocity and barbarity would repeat, after about 60 years
with memories of the ‘holocaust’ still fresh, the same things against another
people, the Palestinians.” He then quotes (as do a number of journalists
during this time) the Portuguese writer Jose Saramago on Ramallah: “We
can compare this crime to everything that happened in Auschwitz.”[ccxviii]
Karolos Brousalis, a regular columnist in Ethnos (“Anti-thesis”),
authored two anti-Semitic essays, two days apart. The first, titled “The
Hour of Judgment” (2/4/02), begins: “A half-century of a free state is
already too much for the Israelites. The Zionist residents of the state of
Israel, whom I, at least, distinguish from the Jews, because religion cannot
compromise with the neo-Nazis of the Middle East no matter how much Zionist and
American propaganda tries to turn the victimizers into ‘victims of terrorism’.”
He goes on: “Both the first teacher, Adolph Hitler, and his shining pupil
were ‘voted in by the people.’ The Germans had the alibi that ‘they didn’t know
about the crematoria,’ but the Israelis don’t have this excuse, since TV
channels around the world are showing the gas chamber in which they have
isolated Yasser Arafat.” He claims that if the Israelis don’t overthrow
their warmongering prime minister “they will lose, just as they have so many
times in the past, the victims of their intemperate belief in their own
‘superiority.’”[ccxix]
His next essay (4/4/02) appears alongside the “Ramalauswitz” cartoon described
below.[ccxx] Under
the titled “Parallel Lives,” Brousalis relates the events leading up to
the Holocaust, which he claims “could be” what is going on in Sharon’s
Israel, beginning, “just as Daladier and Chamberlain “watched the rise of
fascism in Germany in the secret hope that Hitler would be a deterrent to
communism, so we watch the rise of fascism in Israel, which Chirac and Blair
justify as a ‘deterrent to terrorism’.” [ccxxi]
He calls Sharon “Hitler’s counterpart” who shows “the same
unmitigated gall as Hitler [when he unilaterally abrogated the Treaty of Versailles
[when he, Sharon] ‘protested’ because the Speaker of the Greek Parliament
called a spade a spade and genocide, genocide.” He also says that the
swastika, adopted at Nuremberg, “could be the ‘Star of David’.” That the
“the ban on the participation of Jews in the political life of the country
could be the ban on Palestinians to elect their leadership.” The Nazi “ban
on marriage as well as all sexual relations between Jewish and non-Jewish
Germans, and even the ban on ‘true Germans’ entering Jewish homes…could be the
ban on the physical movements of Palestinians and their leaders in [what is
their legitimately autonomous land].” That the “obligatory surrendering
of Jewish-owned businesses could be cutting off of electric power, water and
food to the Palestinians who live under a regime of foreign occupation.” The
next steps, Brousalis writes, such as “stripping Jews of their right to
vote, could be the extermination or elimination of the elected Palestinian
leadership.” That Jews serving in the civil service or army were put on
indefinite leave “could be the removal of the right of Palestinians to work
because of the blockade conditions under which they are trying to survive. And
of course, Jewish pensions were halted. In Palestine there are no pensions. Veterans
are sent directly to cemeteries by the bullets of the armed cowards of
contemporary ‘anti-terrorist’ fascism.” He continues: “In 1939 Hitler
retook the Rhineland and abrogated the Pact of Locarno. In 2002 Sharon sent his
tanks into Bethlehem and abrogated the Oslo Accord. (…) The French and
English gave away Czechoslovakia in exchange for their peace of mind [in the
Munich Pact]. Hitler’s Israeli counterpart has gone much further: In 2002,
hiding behind the power of Bush, he disregards the UN referendum.”[ccxxii]
The editorial column in Eleftherotypia (2/4/02)
titled “Barbed Wire” begins with the declaration that “by building a
prison of barbed wire and earth around Yasser Arafat’s office, Ariel Sharon is
simultaneously building a global anti-Jewish climate.” And goes on to say, “the
Israeli army is conducting a genocide when it shoots kids and bulldozes
wretched settlements, driving Palestinians to desperation and suicide
operations.”[ccxxiii]
The editorial of the fortnightly left magazine Anti
(5/4/2002) states, “the practices of the state of Israel are daily reminders
of the Nazi genocide against the Gypsies and the Jews.” [ccxxiv]
George Stamatopoulos (Eleftherotypia, 6/4/2002) begins an
article remarking that, “There are many who won’t tolerate the concepts
‘fascism’, ‘Holocaust’, and ‘Nazi’ in reference to Israel. How is it possible –
they say – to compare Sharon to Hitler?” And concludes that, “Evil
has no gradations; therefore Israel is a fascist state, there is a Holocaust,
they are employing Nazi war methods; nothing more, nothing less.”[ccxxv]
Vassilis Moulopoulos, the domestic affairs editor of
the centrist To Vima writes (7/4/02) that our leaders
are helplessly watching “the greatest
genocide in modern history,” and that “Sharon…is not a Nazi,
but he is using Nazi methods of annihilating populations.”[ccxxvi]
In leftist weekly Epochi (7/4/02), the group “Space
for Dialogue and Joint Action of the Left,” (around the Synaspismos
party) condemned “the genocide of the Palestinian people….”[ccxxvii]
One week later (14/4/02), the paper published an article drawing parallels
between April 1933 and April 2002. The article begins: “History goes in
cycles and very often repeats itself in reverse: Former victims turn into
victimizers, as though they have never been taught.”[ccxxviii]
Kostis Papayiorgis comments in the financial weekly Ependytis (6-7/4-2002) that “CNN
(…) continued its pro-Zionist chant” even when “Arafat was hanging from the gallows.”[ccxxix]
Television viewers also heard similar rhetoric. For
instance, on the evening news on Passover Wednesday (27/3/02), Alpha TV
correspondent Eleni Kaloyeropoulou broadcast shrilly from the Middle
East, “They’re attacking us! (…) Israelis are exterminating the young
generation of Palestinians; they [the Jews] have forgotten what the Greeks did
for them.” Several days later, in an interview on the same channel, she claimed,
“Israelis are cutting the fingers off of Palestinian children.”[ccxxx]
Similarly, George Filipakis reported on the news broadcast of the fourth
in audience Star Channel (27/3/02) that “Israelis are implementing a
new fascist policy.”
Also on Alpha (26/5/02), the official envoy of
the Palestinian Authority in Greece, Abdullah Abdullah, declared, “Of
course, what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians is far worse than
anything the Germans did to the Jews.” His interviewer and program host, Andreas
Andrianopoulos, only response was a simple, congenial grin.[ccxxxi]
Traditional anti-Semitism
In some cases, leftist and mainstream forums made no
pretence of their traditional anti-Semitic sentiments.
An article in the left weekly (6,000 copies in August
2002) Paron (7/4/2002) begins: “The genocide of the Palestinian
people…”[ccxxxii]
Below this is a anti-Semitic “poem” by George Papayannopoulos,
highlighted in a colored box, with verses such as: “jew, jew, jew – jew,
jew, jew. Hebrew, Jew. Widely scattered / zionist, zionist, Zionist. God’s
Chosen Executioner… Jewish Zionist in Israel. In the Land of ancestors, the
real estate of the settler descendents…”[ccxxxiii]
On Eleftherotypia’s TV page (3/4/02), Andreas
Roumeliotis titles his column with “Outside the Synagogue.” What
begins as praise of the Israeli peace movement – i.e. the positive, non-Zionist
side of the Jews – shifts midway through into a medieval analysis of the Jewish
character, with the author priding himself on his insight and tolerance (See
addendum 3). He tells us, inter alia, that “the Jews are a nation apart…they
buy you and sell you… they pull the strings everywhere and are behind
everything important.” Hitler recognized these “virtues and sent them to
become soap. (…) They move from country to country with a stuffed purse…many
concealing their ethnic identities.” But, these days, he informs us, “Jewish
girls are really cute” and willing to intermarry. So, Roumeliotis is “not
anti-Jewish…so what if wealth is [a Jew’s] life’s dream, that’s his problem. I
don’t envy him; I don’t hate him. I am against Zionism. Against the insane
hierarchy that believes that they represent God, that their people are God’s
‘chosen people’ who must prevail.” [ccxxxiv]
Eleftherotypia even chose to publish a number of blatantly
anti-Semitic letters-to-the-editor. In addition to the readers’ correspondence
quoted above,[ccxxxv] on
4/4/02, the editor chose to print a nationalistic “poem” contributed by a
reader, comparing Messolonghi (the site of a famous massacre of Greeks by Turks
in the War for Independence) to Ramallah: “Yaweh! How the Jews forgot those
years…when their tormenters dragged them to the furnaces / made them into
fertilizer, toilet paper and soap! (…) / Gigantic trusts, ‘Market’ diplomacy,
Jews, World leaders and big interests….”[ccxxxvi]
Legal Action
Most
significantly, the following reader’s letter, published on 15/4/02, prompted
Greek Helsinki Monitor to first react with a letter to the newspaper’s
director, and then press charges against Eleftherotypia for violating
Greek anti-racist
A
reader from Patras writes: “The Jews today are lucky that no one intends to
deprive them of the right to be called human beings, when they aren’t, if we
consider their united, heartfelt desire to applaud Israel’s murderous
incursions against the civilian population of the Palestinian people, whom they
themselves have victimized. Americans support Jews, not because they love them
but because they fear them. Since America is now a colony of Israel, the big
Jewish bankers of America and a lot of Jewish millionaires think nothing of
provoking a financial crash, and one, in fact, much bigger than what happened
in 1929. Besides, it’s a proven fact that Jews are untrustworthy and fickle.
They infiltrate societies, first playing the poor souls to generate pity and,
when the time comes, they’ll grab you by the throat. Besides the fact that
their country, Israel, has always cast negative votes on the Cyprus issue in
the UN, the Jews sustain an unaccountable hatred for us Greeks. And the
explanation one might surmise is that they envy us because our country gave the
light of civilization to all other peoples, for which they are grateful.”[ccxxxviii]
GHM promptly (15/4/2002) sent an
urgent letter to Eleftherotypia director Seraphim Fyntanidis requesting that he immediately publish a denouncement
of the contents of the above letter and
“an apology to the Jews, whom this letter profoundly offends.”[ccxxxix] As there was no reaction, GHM
pressed charges against Eleftherotypia (unfortunately many of the eminent
Greek Jews who were asked to co-submit the complaint refused) on 1/8/2002 for
violation of articles 1 (prohibiting racial discrimination or hatred) and 2
(prohibiting public expressions through the press of ideas offensive to persons
due to their origin). Athens Prosecutor Georgios
Gerakis immediately
indicted the newspaper and a court hearing is expected in the end of 2002 or
the beginning of 2003.
Anti-Semitic Cartoons
One picture is worth 1000 words. And a deluge of
anti-Semitic cartoons appeared in the mainstream press during March and,
especially, April 2002, inspired by the escalating violence in Israel.
Particular offenders were Eleftherotypia, Ta Nea and Ethnos.
Besides traditional caricatures of Jews, Holocaust equations became
increasingly strident. Ramallah is routinely depicted as a Nazi concentration
camp or the Warsaw Ghetto, Ariel Sharon as a Jewish Hitler, and Israeli
soldiers as Nazi militia or demonic forces. Israeli soldiers prominently
display the emblems of Judaism: Star of David, yarmulke; or of Nazism: the
swastika; or both. Yasser Arafat is portrayed as Christ and the Palestinians
are always wretched victims: persecuted wartime Jews, concentration camp
inmates, Christian prophets, Greek revolutionaries, or even ancient Greek
heroes. The standoff at the Church of the Nativity and the Greek Orthodox
Easter season generated many analogies between the role of Jews (Israelis) in
the Crucifixions of Christ (Arafat) and the Prophets (Palestinians). U.S.
President George W. Bush very often appears as Ariel Sharon’s sidekick or
counsel.
An example of Jewish stereotyping with a
nationalistic/anti-globalism/American twist was published in financial section
of Eleftherotypia (23-3-02). A Greek revolutionary, circa 1821, is
borrowing money from an (English-speaking) greedy banker. The caption reads:
“Ibrahim is leaving, Shylock is coming!”[ccxl]
By the end of March, however, the Arab/Israeli theme
took over.
The most striking Holocaust caricature was the one
that occupied the entire front page of the April 1st edition of Eleftherotypia.
The eye-catching image was clearly designed to create a sensation, first,
because it was the work of Greece’s distinguished political cartoonist KYR
and, second, because of its bold, graphic style. It must also be noted that
newspapers are traditionally hung outside the kiosks and newsstands; as the
Greece’s largest paper, Eleftherotypia has the prominent position. In
the picture, two white figures are contrasted against a solid black ground on
which is written “HOLOCAUST II” in blood-red. The larger of the
two figures is wearing S.S. garb with a blue Star of David dominating his
helmet. He is leading at gunpoint a terrified, emaciated figure with his hands
up over his head, who is wearing a kaffiyeh and a blue striped concentration
camp uniform on which is a large yellow five-pointed star. The caption reads: “Sharon’s
war machine is attempting to carry out a new Holocaust, a new genocide.”
And, to support the claim, superimposed on the drawing is an archival photo of
a Nazi soldier similarly terrorizing a young Jewish boy.[ccxli]
In a letter to the paper expressing her distress over
this publication, Greek author Eva Omiroli wrote (3/4/02), “Tabloid
headlines and sensationalist images are in no way conducive to providing
information. Rather, they constitute time-bombs of prejudice, discrimination,
fanaticism and inevitable racism.”[ccxlii]
The editor saw fit to publish Ms. Omiroli’s plea, but not to heed it. The
deluge of anti-Semitic caricatures and texts in Eleftherotypia only
intensified as the days went by.
A cartoon in Ta Nea (30/3/02) shows the
smoldering ruins of a city labeled “Ramallah.” Ariel Sharon is depicted
on the left, dressed in military fatigues and holding a gun. A traditional
European Jewish man, wearing a yarmulke, is standing behind him, holding a
suitcase labeled “Israel.” The Sharon figure says, “We exterminated
them and we can relax.” The Jew replies, “That’s what Hitler thought
about us, Sharon!”[ccxliii]
Besides perpetuating traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes (long nose, beard,
yarmulke, stooped shoulders, a wanderer with a bag [of money]) and denigrating
the Holocaust, the cartoon also portrays Jews as foreign colonizers of Israel.
Also on 30/3/02, Eleftherotypia published a
color cartoon by their resident cartoonist, Stathis, equating the Nazi
destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto with the Israeli attack on Ramallah. A
cadaver-like German soldier stands in the foreground, his arm resting on a sign
reading “Warsaw Ghetto 1944.” Behind him are the smoldering ruins of a town
labeled “Ramallah 2002.” The soldier is musing: “Finally things are
complete! Just as we killed the Jews then, so now are the Jews killing the
memory of those who were killed.”[ccxliv]
The day following the “tabloid” cover, and before Eva
Omiroli’s letter was printed, Eleftherotypia (2/4/02) carried a cartoon
showing a wooden boat labeled “Arc II” with two disembodied voices in
balloon captions. One says, “Sharon, which species will be saved?” The
other says, “The two of us President Bush.” The boat is floating on a
sea labeled “blood” filled with the waving arms of drowning people.[ccxlv]
A cartoon by Dimitris Hantzopoulos (Ta Nea,
1/4/02) shows an Israeli soldier (Star of David on his sleeve) holding a
machine gun to the head of a kneeling, ragged Palestinian. In the background
are the smoking ruins of a town. The Israeli says, “I’m not sorry for doing
to you what the Nazis did to us. I am sorry for those to whom you’ll do what we
are doing to you!”[ccxlvi]
Ethnos (4/4/02) published a cartoon of Ariel Sharon and
George Bush goose stepping in front of a concentration camp (gun turret, barbed
wire, kneeling prisoners) labeled “Ramalauswitz” [sic]. Sharon
says, “World-leader, they hate us!” Bush replies, “Therefore we are,
Sharon.”[ccxlvii]
The weekly (142,000 copies in August 2002) Ethnos
on Sunday (7/4/02) carried two cartoons. One (p. 16) shows two husky
soldiers in S.S. uniforms with Stars of David on their helmets. The soldier on
the right is threatening a kneeling, terrified Palestinian with a knife. The
other, holding a diminutive Palestinian over his knee and stabbing him in the
back, is saying to his buddy, “Don’t feel guilty, brother! We weren’t in
Auschwitz and Dachau to suffer, but to learn!”[ccxlviii]
The second (p. 42), titled “David & Goliath 2002 AD”, hits all the
bases. The contemporary dark force, a hi-tech, heavily armed robot-giant with a
Star of David on its helmet is blasting holes in a kneeling, naked Palestinian,
who is armed only with a slingshot. A laser beam issues from the Star. The
accompanying rhyming text, a take-off on the Greek National Anthem, substitutes
“Sharon” for “Psarron” (an island), “horror” for “glory,” “blood
drenched helmet” for “laurel wreath” and “Zion” for “barren land.”
There is also a sidebar about Sharon being an “executioner” but unlike
Milosevic won’t be tried for his crimes, a reference to Shatilla and Sabra, and
a couplet about the Bethlehem standoff and the “newly crucified”
Palestinian rebels.[ccxlix]
The weekly Epochi (7/4/02) published a
full-page discussion between Yannis Banias –leader of a small leftist
party- and Panayotis Lafazanis, MP from Synaspismos, two members
of the Greek delegation that visited the occupied territories in early April.
The title of the text is a reference to Golgotha, the Crucifixion and the
Resurrection. It is illustrated with a drawing of a soldier with a Star of
David on his helmet, standing on a mound of skulls and holding one skull,
Hamlet-like, in his hand, saying, “To massacre or to kill? That is the question.”
In the text itself, Yannis Banias wonders: “How can these people, who
suffered so much from the Germans, be training a new generation to think the
same way as the Nazis?”[ccl]
A cartoon in To Vima on Sunday (7/4/02) shows
President Bush off to the left, speaking to Ariel Sharon, who is wearing army
fatigues and a yarmulke, and holding a machine gun. The Sharon figure is
propelling at gunpoint a beleaguered woman (who could either be Palestinian or
European Jewish) with her head covered. She is carrying a purse that says “peace
in the Middle East” on it. Bush is telling Sharon, “Take it easy,
Ariel!” Sharon replies, “I got it George. No crematoria! No gas
chambers! Just exiles!”[ccli]
Eleftherotypia cartoonist Stathis reappears (11/4/02) with a
Crucifixion/Auschwitz reference. His – by now trademark – Nazi soldier-cadaver
is standing between two rows of Palestinians on their way to Golgotha, which is
seen in the distance. He is shouting, “Those killed by the bad Ariel Sharon
and the bad George Bush to the left. Those killed by the good Shimon Perez and
the good Colin Powel to the right.”[cclii]
The front page of Epochi (14/4/02)
contains a report by the Greek delegation on the Palestinian condition, with an
illustration of Ariel Sharon saying, “Everyone’s pressuring me to stop the
slaughter.” A spectral, devil-winged Hitler is patting him on the shoulder,
saying, “Don’t listen to them, Sharon. They were doing the same to me.”[ccliii]
Stathis (in Eleftherotypia, 14/4/02) also
targeted nationalistic sentiments by casting heroes from ancient Greek tragedy
as Nazi-era Jewish victims. The ribbon at the top of the cartoon reads,
“Jenin: Apartheid Even After Death”. In the center is an Israeli soldier
who this time not only has a Star of David on his helmet but a swastika on his
chest as well. He is saying, “Not only do we kill them, but we decide who,
when and where and why we bury them or not!” Lying at dead at his feet are
Heteocles and Polynikis, heroes from Sophocles’ “Antigone,” the two brothers
who killed each other in battle and were denied burial, a great dishonor in
ancient Greece.[ccliv]
And with preparations underway for Greek Orthodox Holy
Week, Ta Nea (18/4/02) published Dimitris Hantzopoulos’ blatantly
anti-Semitic cartoon that shows Yasser Arafat struggling up Golgotha bearing a
cross. Arafat says, “Well, I know that history repeats itself as a farce!”
The Israeli soldier behind him replies, “Atta boy! And now you’ll learn that
religion repeats itself, too!”[cclv]
Holocaust Remembrance Day
On
Sunday, 14 April 2002, Greek Jewish survivors and the families and friends of
the dead observed Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Several
days earlier, Yannis Liapis wrote an essay titled “Never again!” (Eleftherotypia, 9/4/02), purporting to describe
– but actually parodying – the memorial service for the 50,000 Thessaloniki
Jews who perished in the Holocaust, to which he is invited every year. He gives
the statistics of the Greek Jewish losses (96.5%) in order to point out that
there is no such census of Palestinian losses. “Still,” he
writes, “on Sunday, April 14th,
everything will go according to plan. Only that the hymns and motions and all
that is symbolic will contain an intangible sarcasm.” The irony, he insinuates, is
contained in the formal invitation from the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki: “Most will prick up their ears at the parenthetical
phrase: ‘Today, when the nightmare of Nazism appears to be reawakening, we hope
that our innocent brethren are the last victims of racial hatred…’.”[cclvi]
The
Jewish Community of Thessaloniki (JCT) expressed its “profound resentment”[cclvii] towards the article, which “insulted the sacred memory of the 50,000 Greek Jews
of Thessaloniki.” The
Community noted its distress over events in the Middle East, its ardent wishes
for a just peace in the region, and its regret that “today, too, just as with any resurgence of the
Arab-Israeli crisis, our Holocaust is degraded with unjust and thoughtless
comparisons such those you attempt to make.” [cclviii]
The JCT statement was printed in Eleftherotypia (12/4/02) followed by Mr. Liapis’s reply. Undaunted, Mr.
Liapis wrote, “once again, my
fellow-citizens, the descendants of the Sephardim acted like they didn’t
understand … what so enraged them was not that there was, as they write, an
‘appraisal of the victims’ [but that] there was an appraisal of the
victimizers. And they all know who the victimizers are.”[cclix]
Here
too, there is a discernable difference between the tone and rhetoric used to
cover this event in the English language press and that of the mainstream
papers. Spyros Payiatakis (EK/IHT, 4/15/02) describes the
Holocaust memorial service, noting that the gathered mourners were “shielded by heavy security for fear of attacks
motivated by the violence in the Middle East. (…) Poor Jews! Greek
passport-holding Jews continue to face abominable challenges. Daily they have
to affront barrages of criticism, while” as one Thessaloniki Jew admitted to the author, “‘inside us we feel on the defensive and are
uncomfortable with the events that are taking place in the Middle East’.” He quotes Helena Smith from The Guardian as “rightly detecting ‘a whiff of anti-Semitism in some Greeks’ support
for the Palestinians’.”[cclx]
From
time to time, articles and statements have appeared – most often in the foreign
language press and in the small-circulation, progressive left Avghi – criticizing the inappropriateness of Holocaust rhetoric
and other anti-Semitic expressions. The anti-Israeli climate in Greece was so
pervasive, however, that it left little room for anything but pleas for
moderation and objectivity. Moreover, these texts were frequently presented in
ways that diluted their impact, questioned their validity, and/or trivialized
their message, either printed in inferior positions, on the same page with more
eye-catching features supporting the objectionable material, or buried in the
small print.
Prophetically,
in February 2001, the Sunday edition of Avghi ran a full-page article,
translated from the French, with archival photographs of concentration camp
victims, analyzing the phenomenon of Holocaust denial or negation and its
dangerous ramifications. The author explains the phenomenon of “denegationism” as “a continuation
of totalitarianism by other means: (…) Indeed, the
existence of anti-Semitism is so mentally enteric in the afflicted person that
the acceptance of the Jewish enemy in the state of victim is an unbearable
image. (…) Thus the crime is shifted: the ruins of Dresden and Hiroshima are
raised order to cover up the ovens of Auschwitz and Treblinka.”[cclxi]
On
2 April 2002, provoked by the escalating crisis in the Middle East, KIS issued a statement reiterating “its
firm position for the need to restart negotiations that will lead to a
permanent and lasting peace in the region.” In the same statement, it expressed its “deep resentment towards part of the Press – and
not only the Press – for the unjust and unacceptable comparison of the
Holocaust … with Palestinian losses.” Condemning the “blind
terrorist attacks,”
KIS declared its hope and expectation that “prudence and moderation will prevail so that the peoples of the region
can coexist in peace and security.”[cclxii]
The
already brief KIS statement appeared in synopsized form in Ta Nea (4/4/02)[cclxiii]
on page 50, alongside an article by Roussos
Vranas (the author of
anti-Semitic articles quoted elsewhere in this report) about Israeli
persecution of journalists.[cclxiv]
To Vima (3/4/02) quoted both the KIS and Israeli Embassy
objections to the Holocaust equations in a single, larger text on page 4.[cclxv]
Apogevmatini (3/4/02) published the entire
statement on page 12, beneath which was a small note on a synagogue attack in
France.[cclxvi]
Finally, Avghi published the KIS statement
intact (5/4/2002) on page 6.[cclxvii]
Despite
KIS’s and Ambassador Sasson’s repeated public and private entreaties to public
figures and members of the press, the Holocaust equations and anti-Semitic
rhetoric continued unabated.
Even
still, in addition to several articles quoted elsewhere in this report, a
handful of Greek journalists have criticized the trends in the press and the
lack of objectivity when presenting the Arab/Israeli conflict.
Paschos Mandravelis was among the first. In an article
in Apogevmatini (3/4/02), Mandravelis criticizes
the reaction of Greek society to the Middle East crisis and the inappropriate
use of Holocaust rhetoric. “Right now
crimes are occurring in Palestine, but they don’t constitute either a Holocaust
or genocide. The latter is systematic, mass murder designed to completely
obliterate a population. (…) For this (if no other reason) it is inappropriate
to equate the Star of David with the swastika. The second thing we must
distinguish is that all Jews are not Israelis and all Israelis are not
accomplices in the crime currently being committed in Palestine. (…) There are
those Jews and those Israelites [sic] who are opposed. They are many. It’s just
that the voices of conscience are always eclipsed by the cries of the
warmongers. Therefore, it demeans the Greek protest when demonstrators show up
outside the Israeli Embassy wearing T-shirts that say ‘Fuck Israel’. (…) Our
opposition is political and must remain so.” [cclxviii]
A
note in Avghi (5/4/02) exposes the information
deficit in the Greek media, questioning rhetorically if it was simply an “oversight” that television coverage of a large anti-war demonstration
in Jerusalem neglected to show the Israeli protesters. “We waited eagerly to hear the views, especially of
the Israeli citizens who… at the risk of being called ‘traitors’ by their
fanatic compatriots had come out to declare their indignation at the fascist
policies of their government and their desire to live in peace with the
Palestinian people. Instead, we heard only some hurried statements from certain
members of the Greek parliamentary delegation and some activists from other
countries, which we already knew very well, anyway. Could this have been an
intentional ‘oversight’ that serves a selective informing? Or perhaps they
didn’t have any more time to waste, being pressed to begin, once again, as they
do every evening, the heated debates over the current reality shows.”[cclxix] (The same peace march motivated
A. Romeliotis’ anti-Semitic article, “Outside
the Synagogue” (Eth,
3/4/02).[cclxx])
Dionyssis Gousetis (Avghi,
6/4/02) repeatedly stresses (punctuation his) that “SHARON IS BAD” and that “his
policy is criminal.” But
he emphasizes that “it is a far cry
from genocide, Misters Kaklamanis, Pangalos, Ecevit. (…) Until yesterday,
genocide meant the policy of physically annihilating a nation. (…)
ELEFTHEROTYPIA’s permanent rubric with the word HOLOCAUST II is at the very
least inappropriate. (…) APOGEVMATINI ’s front-page attestation that Israelis
are selling the organs of dead Palestinians is inflammatory. (…) The claim that
Arab detainees are being used for medical experiments similar to Mengele’s is
not invoked even by the Palestinians….”[cclxxi]
Another
libel, disseminated in the spring of 2002 by the Greek media, was that Israeli
soldiers had orders to shoot members of the press. The tabloid Traffic, on its front page (6/4/02), quotes Synaspismos Euro-MP Alekos
Alavanos (“who managed to sneak into Ramallah”) as saying, “Israelis have orders to shoot to kill on the
slightest provocation, even when it comes politicians and reporters.”[cclxxii] In condemnation of this libel and
Greek media bias in general, Yannis
Tzannetakos writes
that same day (Eleftherotypia, 6/4/02) that “objectivity on the Palestinian issue does not
exist.” He notes, “A few days ago a correspondent (I won’t reveal
which paper) reported that Israeli soldiers have orders to shoot reporters! As
if that was possible! Nevertheless, the claim remained undisputed. I do not
accept the “innocence” of the error. And I do categorize the dissemination of
this so-called information that is part of the commitment [to present the facts
in a biased way].”[cclxxiii]
Israeli
author Amos Oz, in an interview by Takis Michas (Eleftherotypia, 6/4/02),[cclxxiv]
says, “The comparison [of the Holocaust
with Sharon’s policies] is an insult to humanity and to common sense. I don’t
recall any humanitarian missions visiting the victims of Auschwitz to express
their support. Nor do I recall any victims of Auschwitz carrying out bombing
attacks on daycare centers and schools in Germany. We should always distinguish
between different levels of evil. Those who cannot distinguish varying levels
or degrees of evil, in effect, become the servants of that evil.” About “conceptual genocide,” Oz
responds, “One can dispute the borders
or size of the state of Israel – but to call a border dispute between two
neighboring nations a form of ‘Holocaust’ is an abuse of the term. Using this
same rationale, I could claim that the opinions Greek-Cypriots have of
Turkish-Cypriots or vice versa are forms of ‘Holocaust.’ They aren’t, of
course.”[cclxxv]
On
the front page of Sunday’s Avghi (14/4/02) Dimitris Raftopoulos
writes, “Politicians, intellectuals,
artists, and hosts of others have become ensnared in a self-feeding bidding war
of Sharon-hating that has turned into prejudice and blindness. (…) Those who
currently support the entire line and the unilateral anti-Zionist view ought to
reflect on whether they are siding with the idea of Israel’s disappearance. If
this is what they want and hope for, let them say so. Peace is not served by
peace polemics.”[cclxxvi]
In
Sunday’s Kathimerini (14/4/2002), in a critique of
Israeli military policies, Pantelis
Boukalas speaks about
the “time-honored antipathy towards
Jews” that exists in
Greece. “No one has the right to claim
that anti-Semitism was eradicated along with the Nazis and their atrocity. Nor
can any respectable person help but recognize that, in Greece, there are
fanatic enemies of the Israelites en masse (and not just of the Israeli
military and political leaders), who are exploiting the time-honored antipathy
towards the Jews. [This antipathy] has wormed its way into our proverbs, fairy
tales, and even our respectable literature (science fiction has even been
published in which Zeus finally annihilates Jehovah in outer space and the
Greeks become rulers of the Galaxy). (…) To date, no [new] anti-Semitic attacks
have been reported. (But some were reported in the past, during ‘neutral’
times, against graves, against politicians of Jewish origin and against the
home of Jules Dassin [husband of the late Melina Mercouri].)[cclxxvii] However, there are still bigots and ‘Jew-baiters’
(including G. Karatzaferis, who happens to be an MP, the leader of a
nationalistic political party and the owner of a television channel on which he
blatantly attacks Jews).”[cclxxviii] As for anti-Semitic attacks,
unfortunately Boukalas spoke too soon. The following day, serious incidents of
vandalism took place in two Greek cities.[cclxxix]
Anti-Semitic
Incidents
To
properly evaluate the significance of anti-Semitic incidents in this country,
one must examine them in the context of the Greek reality. The tendency in
Greece is to compare its anti-Semitic manifestations to those elsewhere,
particularly in France, and complacently conclude: “Greece is not so bad.”[cclxxx]
Indeed, in light of the extremely violent recent attacks in other parts of
Europe, corresponding incidents in Greece may seem mild. But their seriousness
must not be underrated, which is generally the case. Worse, hardly anyone hears
about them and condemnations are usually absent.
Most
of the country’s 5,000 Jews now live in Greater Athens (c. 3,000). Greek Jews
do not publicly wear yarmulkes or other religious attire; there are no orthodox
groups (Hassidim, etc), no yeshivas, no Jewish “quarters,” and no immigrant or
refugee Jewish population. In other words, the Jewish Community of Greece
presents few targets.
The
capital’s synagogue is located in downtown Athens, in a secluded cul-de-sac
that is closed to traffic. Due to past incidents of vandalism, the synagogue is
now guarded 24 hours, as are most other Jewish monuments and community
buildings – something not required at any of the city’s other minority places
of worship or social clubs. Police guard the entrance to the Jewish Museum in
Athens, as well as the lobby of building housing the social club when it holds
events. When Jewish sites and properties are left unguarded they are subject to
vandalism.
Numerous
anti-Semitic incidents, from graffiti on buildings to more destructive attacks
on public and private property, have been recorded in recent years. The most
violent and widespread took place in 2000, following the mass protests led by
Archbishop Christodoulos over the removal of the religion category from the
official identity card.[cclxxxi]
In
small local communities, minor bureaucratic and personal harassment such as
“weird phone calls”[cclxxxii]
is considered part of life.
Thessaloniki (2001)
On
15 May 2001, during much quieter times, the Jewish cemetery in Stavroupoli
(Thessaloniki) was vandalized. The Macedonian
News Agency (MPA)
reported that “given the type of
vandalism committed, the Thessaloniki police conclude that the unknown persons,
who forced the front gate and broke six grave markers, were not members of
neo-Nazi organizations but probably petty thieves.” Andreas Sefihas, President of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki,
corroborated the police findings.[cclxxxiii]
Ta Nea also reported the incident, adding, “neo-Nazi elements are usually behind such attacks.”[cclxxxiv]
Mr. Iosafat, speaking for the Jewish
Community of Thessaloniki, confirmed to GHM that this was, indeed, the work of
petty thieves. There was no neo-Nazi graffiti; the cemetery office was broken
into and a wireless phone and some petty cash taken. Moreover, he told GHM that
“the grave markers had been carefully
lifted up, not broken.”[cclxxxv]
Crete
In
spring 2002, during more difficult times, Nicholas
Stavroulakis,
Director of Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Hania, Crete, was “pleased to report” to GHM that “they
have had no incidents save that the announcement panel of the synagogue was
smashed on the first day of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.” He clarified that “the police have been very good and have a person
watching over the site in the evenings.”[cclxxxvi]
Rhodes
On
the other hand,
“To make matters
worse,” she said, the
opening of a parallel exhibition at the Archeological Museum of
Rhodes was announced on the cultural page of the local leftist local daily Drasis (10/6/02),[cclxxxix]
illustrated with a reprint of Stathis’ “Warsaw Ghetto = Ramallah”
cartoon from Eleftherotypia (30/3/02).[ccxc]
Despite the 24-hour police protection that they’d had since the harassment
began,
The
festivities went off smoothly. But things did not stay that way. On 4 July
2002, just ten days after the ceremony, the local daily Proodos reported an incident of “unprecedented vandalism” when, the previous Tuesday night (2/7/02), “unknown vandals all but destroyed the monument that
was erected in the Square of the Jewish Martyrs!” The article reports that the
perpetrators cut the decorative wire encasing the monument and “significantly damaged the inscriptions, which they
scraped away in an attempt to erase what was written!” According to the paper, this
incident, which was “foreign to the
history and culture of Rhodes,” provoked a strong reaction in the local inhabitants. It
also pointed out that the Mayor of Rhodes, George
Yannopoulos “recently received a letter form MP and LAOS party
leader George Karatzaferis, expressing
his opposition to the erection of the monument to the Jews in that city,” emphasizing that George
Karatzaferis was scheduled to visit Rhodes that Saturday.[ccxcii]
Cohen
confirmed the Proodos report to GHM, but added that
from the beginning, the monument was disrespected by local residents in
general. “People were sitting on it and
eating their sandwiches and throwing the wrappings there.” In addition, she informed GHM
that the desecration had taken place over several days. The removal of the
letters of the inscription, a process requiring tools and effort, began on
Sunday night (30/6) with the wire finally found pushed down around the monument’s
base on Wednesday morning (3/7). The Community has applied to the Archeological
Service for permission to install a bulletproof glass enclosure for the
inscription and a tall protective railing around the entire monument, and hoped
that the state would defray the cost. She said she believed “anti-Semitism is the worst in Rhodes; such
desecration hasn't happened anywhere else in Greece. We are beautifying the
city [with the monument], and not doing anything to disrupt anyone’s life or
work. This,” she said “is pure anti-Semitism at its worst.” [ccxciii]
Athens
The months of March and April were marked by numerous,
boisterous pro-Palestinian-pro-Intifada/anti-Israeli demonstrations throughout
the city and at the Israeli Embassy. Posters and paraphernalia were everywhere,
including the public schools.[ccxciv]
The Embassy of Israel told GHM that members of the Jewish community were
reporting they were fearful of the anti-Semitic climate being created in the
media and on the streets. In conversations with GHM and in a confidential
report that subsequently reached the public, official Embassy sources
maintained that, during April, a large number of Greek Jews telephoned the
Embassy and/or met with Ambassador Sasson, strongly urging him to take action “to
try to stop the outrage in the press, which they felt was beginning to affect
them.”[ccxcv]
Thessaloniki
Given
the patterns of the past[ccxcvi]
and in light of the attacks on Jewish targets elsewhere in Europe (and covered
in the Greek media), it was predictable that Jewish sites would be vandalized
if left unprotected during these difficult times. Despite this, the Holocaust
Monument in Thessaloniki was defaced on 15 April, just one day after the
Holocaust Memorial service (which was attended by senior government officials)
and one day, too, after a large pro-Palestinian demonstration (led by Mikis
Theodorakis) in that city. A large quantity of red paint (to indicate
bloodshed) was dripped on and around the monument and the word “Palestinians”
was written in red paint on the marble pavement in front.
That
same night, at least four headstones in the 13th century Jewish
cemetery of the northwestern city of Ioannina were desecrated. (See below.) One
of the graves belonged to Joseph Ganis, whose entire estate, over 1 billion
Greek drachmas, was recently bequeathed to the University of Ioannina.
KIS
spoke of a “revival of racial hatred” provoked by politicians and the
media. In a press
release, distributed to the media, Prime Minister Costas Simitis, members of
the PASOK government, and political party leaders,[ccxcvii]
KIS expressed its “deep regret” at the incident, warning that “the irresponsible and careless conduct of some
political figures and part of the mass media towards the Jews of Greece,
conduct indicating a lack of awareness of historical reality, has led to the
revival of racial hatred.” KIS blamed the vandalism on “marginal
groups and individuals, hidden behind the propaganda related to the tragic
events and the anti-Semitic ideas, which have been unscrupulously disseminated
by the parties mentioned above. (…) As for those who preach anti-Semitism, they
can now admire the actual results of their efforts.”[ccxcviii]
As
it has in the past,[ccxcix]
KIS once again “urged the Greek
government to take steps to protect Jewish institutions and sites, as well as
to condemn all racist manifestations.”[ccc]
Not
surprisingly, Eleftherotypia (17/4/02) gave the story another
slant, calling the desecration of the Holocaust Monument “a red protest, symbolic of blood, over the
extermination of the Palestinians by the Israeli troops.” It specifically points out that
no paint was put on the monument itself – there was only writing on the marble
pavement and drops of paint on the wreath that had been laid the previous day –
implying that the reports (and Jewish reaction) had been exaggerated. The
article goes on to say that the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki “spoke of the ‘desecration’ of the Monument,” with the word “desecration” in quotes, hence disclaiming the term. It
also quotes JCT on the negative role of the media and others in the vandalism. “This sacrilege is the result of the charged
atmosphere created by the recent crisis in the Middle East. Because a portion
of the media, and not only the media, used this as an opportunity to once again
degrade the Holocaust. And this is the result.”[ccci]
Certainly,
the Greek authorities should have anticipated these and possibly worse
incidents. The logical question therefore is, why the monument was not guarded,
unless it guarded and the guards did not react.
Ioannina
While
the Thessaloniki vandalism has been written off as the work of the usual
“unknown vandals,” the Ioannina cemetery desecration (15-16 April 2002) shows
evidence of being a murkier affair. The Jewish Community of Ioannina is one of
the oldest in Greece. Moses Elisaf, Professor of Internal Medicine
at the University of Ioannina and President of the city’s Jewish Community told
GHM that the community has good relations with the local authorities and that
there have been no other anti-Semitic incidents there in recent years. However,
he also noted, “there is an ongoing
anti-Semitism that finds cover behind the Israel-Palestinian conflict.”[cccii]
In
its only coverage of the incident, Eleftherotypia (17/4/02) reported that the
vandalism “occurred sometime during the
previous fortnight… and was discovered by citizens visiting the cemetery.” [ccciii] However, this was not the case.
Several local papers published conflicting versions, none of which support the
above, and neither Eleftherotypia nor any other national paper
followed up on the story. On 23/4/02, Associated
Press reported that
Moses Elisaf had submitted an official request to the public prosecutor for a
formal investigation into reports that police officers may have been involved
in the desecration.[ccciv]
“These incidents have shaken the
members of Ioannina’s Jewish community and other Jewish communities around
Greece,” Professor
Elisaf said. “For this reason we ask
that abundant light be shed on the case and that every facet of the accusation
made in the published report be investigated so that those responsible for
these illegal and criminal acts are punished.”[cccv]
Mr.
Elisaf’s concerns, it turns out, were prompted by an article, published the
previous day on the front page of the regional daily Erevna (22/4/02), alleging police participation in the desecration
and their subsequent cover-up of the incident.[cccvi]
The article, titled “What were they
doing in the Jewish cemetery…?”, reported that members of the police department, responding
to a call that “something was going on
and noises were heard in the Jewish cemetery,” found “ four
men ‘doing something’ in the dark and went to apprehend them. To their surprise
they were confronted with Mr. Dekoumes, Head of Security and Narcotics [of the
local police department] and three of their fellow officers! They saw the
cemetery smashed up … a chase followed with guns drawn, and Mr. Dekoumes and
his three colleagues successfully evading arrest!” The paper notes that Dekoumes
immediately went on sick leave, leaving his companions to assert that they were
“at the cemetery on a narcotics
stakeout.” If this
indeed was so, the article questions, why didn’t the police immediately report
the incident to the Prosecutor, instead of “allowing the act to be attributed to unknown persons who hate Jews.”[cccvii]
A
second version of the story, provided by the pro-PASOK local papers, Iperotikos Agon and Neoi Agones (Chief Dekoumes is a PASOK
appointee), maintains that PASOK Deputy Agriculture Minister Vangelis Argyris and his family, whose home borders the cemetery, heard
noises coming from the place in question. Concerned, they called the Chief of
Security, who, even though he was off duty at the time, allegedly took it upon
himself to call three of his colleagues and rush to the scene. According to
this version, Dekoumes’ hasty action was justified because he recalled “the recent break-in by Albanians at the Minister’s
home.” Both papers
cite friction within the police department and bipartisan animosities for the
charges that they consider preposterous.[cccviii]
On
the opposite side, a regular columnist for local daily Proinos Logos (24/4/02), Mr.
Yannakis, satirized
the story, spoofing the Police defense and insinuating that the PASOK party
machine was responsible for the cover-up. However, Yannakis consistently calls the
Jewish residents as Israelis and refers to “their struggle with the Palestinians.” He, too, insists that the incident had nothing to do
with the shame of anti-Semitism. “Nothing
will make us swallow the story that all this happened by chance and that nobody
is responsible for anything. (…) But the matter has another dimension. When did
the vandalism in the Jewish cemetery occur? When did the police confirm it?
When did the Jewish Community find out about it? Why, on the day after the
incident, did the Israelis [sic] pay a visit with their security guards to
ascertain what their colleagues had ascertained during the night? All this
caused the Israeli [sic] Community to speak of racist manifestations in our
city and associate these events with their [sic] struggle with the
Palestinians. Now, I believe that these same people see the matter from another
angle and will not rush to castigate Ioannina society, which has never made an
issue of racism.”[cccix]
That
same day (24/4/02) Proinos Logos also published a statement by the
University of Ioannina denouncing the desecration of the
grave of University benefactor Joseph Ganis. “The Israeli [sic] Community has contributed to the advancement of the
country and to its democratic expression. The vandalism against it and its
sacred symbols are acts that have no association with our people’s tradition.
(…) The entire University Community denounces such acts and asserts that the
Israeli [sic] Community has always supported the academic institution and the
ideology of benefaction.”[cccx]
It
is significant to note that every one of these articles, regardless of the
scenario and politics it supports, in one way or another disclaim anti-Semitism
as the motive behind the cemetery desecration. In a twisted form of logic, the
Jewish Community is faulted for shaming its community. In reaction to this, Mr.
Elisaf writes, (Proinos Logos, 1/5/02) “Mr. Yannakis denounces the
Jewish Community for believing this heinous act to be an extreme expression of
the anti-Semitism that has emerged in the past weeks on the pretext of the
tragic events in the Middle East. Mr. Yannakis, moreover, puts forth the view
that racist and anti-Semitic phenomena do not exist in our city.” Refraining from directly
commenting on the allegations against the police, Mr. Elisaf stressed in no
uncertain terms that the desecration of the graves should be seen solely as a manifestation
of the “revived anti-Semitic climate… It is difficult to attribute this barbaric act to other motives.” [cccxi]
In
the same letter Elisaf also thanked Mayor Papastavrou of Ioannina and Prefect Pantoulas and the University
of Ioannina for
publicly condemning the incident and for fully supporting reparations of the
damage. However, he sternly warned, “it
should not escape your attention that racism, xenophobia, the demonizing of the
other, and anti-Semitism continue to survive and poison contemporary societies.
Thus, the one-sided presentation of the events in the Middle East, which
intentionally confuses the government of Israel with Jews throughout the world,
the demonizing of the Jew, who is held responsible for all the evils of
humanity, the barbaric contempt and degradation of the Holocaust, which
constitutes the apex of human tragedies and which with great ease is compared
to the violence and excesses seen between warring factions in the Middle East,
provides the ammunition to those who chronically long to hate, and leads to
abominable acts of violence [such as this one].” Mr. Elisaf also corrects the terminology used: “The Israelites of Ioannina are Greeks of Jewish
religion and not Israelis (which means citizens of the state of Israel,
regardless of religion).”[cccxii]
In
all such incidents, the state usually conducts a routine investigation, called
a Sworn Administrative Inquiry (E.D.E). But the culprits are
never found.[cccxiii]
However, after Moses Elisaf filed a second action, the local Prosecutor of the
Court of First Instance, Mr. Loutas, launched a further Urgent
Preliminary Investigation. Hopefully, the seriousness of these incriminations (Erevna published a lengthy follow-up analysis of local reaction[cccxiv])
will produce more conclusive results. Elisaf told GHM that he paid a visit to
the Chief of the local Police and the local authorities, requesting a thorough
investigation and their complete support.[cccxv]
The case is currently under investigation.[cccxvi]
It
should be stressed that, even given the newsworthiness of this story, hardly
anything was reported in the national press. Mr. Elisaf told GHM that the AP article (23/4/02),[cccxvii]
which GHM sent to him, was the first he had seen of the matter outside the
local press. He reiterated his firm conviction that the desecration was an act
of pure anti-Semitism and nothing else.[cccxviii]
This
report was completed, in a first draft, in the summer of 2002. Additional
material that has become available since then is appended in this section. GHM
and MRG-G hope to produce a second version of the report that would cover more
systematically the second half of 2002.
In the spring of 2002, the Embassy of Israel in Athens
submitted a five-page confidential report on the “sharp rise in anti-Semitic
expressions in Greece since the end of March” to the major Jewish and
Israeli organizations in the United States (American Jewish Committee, Simon
Wiesenthal Foundation, American Jewish Congress, Ant-Defamation League, World
Jewish Congress, et al). The Embassy report, based in part on material
documented by GHM in the present report, cites “the main vehicles of this
anti-Semitism have been the Greek press, a number of Greek politicians and
cultural figures and social organizations.” Moreover, the report claims
that “the rhetoric was malicious enough to cause a feeling of imminent
threat or danger among the members of the Greek-Jewish Community,” who, it
stated, contacted the Embassy with their fears.[cccxx]
Both the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation and the Anti-Defamation
League (ADL) found the material troubling enough to use it in their
publications and entreat the Greek government to take a stronger stand against
anti-Semitic expression.
The Simon Wiesenthal Foundation reported that,
on 8 July 2002, during an OSCE parliamentary discussion of current European
anti-Semitism, it urged Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis and other Greek
leaders to publicly condemn the use of anti-Semitic stereotypes and Nazi
imagery that have characterized much of the public and media criticism of
Israel during the current Middle East conflict. With the Center’s release of
its 15-page dossier, Dr. Shimon Samuels, the Jewish NGO’s Director for
International Liaison, charged that, “anti-Israeli fanaticism has
degenerated into anti-Jewish hate mongering by leading intellectuals and
politicians, which has gone unchallenged by the leadership of Greece.” Dr.
Samuels, along with Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Center’s Associate Dean,
indicated that the Wiesenthal Center is “launching a campaign to convince
the Greek authorities, NGOs and public opinion that criticism of Israel must be
decoupled from Nazi and racist imagery. Failure to do so could jeopardize Jews
in Greece and poison the environment leading up to the 2004 Olympic Games.”[cccxxi]
Also on the basis of the Embassy report, on 22 July
2002, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called upon the Government of
Greece to condemn a recent rise of anti-Semitic depictions and articles in the
Greek press. The organization’s National Chairman, Glen A. Tobias, and
National Director, Abraham H. Foxman, expressed their growing
concern in a letter to Prime Minister Simitis: “Even in nations like Greece
where the press is free, it is essential that the government take
responsibility to set a tone of tolerance and speak out strongly against these
anti-Semitic, hateful sentiments. Unfortunately, such articles and depictions
in the media create an environment of hostility toward Israel and Jews in
Greece, similar to other European nations that have experienced a rise in
anti-Semitism.”[cccxxii]
As examples, ADL published cartoons from Eleftherotypia (1/4/02), Ta
Nea (1/4/02), and Ethnos (7/4/02)[cccxxiii]
on its website. ADL also reportedly addressed these issues in a meeting with Dimitris
Platis, Consul General of Greece in New York.[cccxxiv]
The Embassy of Israel report was leaked to the Jerusalem
Press, and was finally covered by Takis Michas in Eleftherotypia (2/7/02),
with the heading: “Report says Jews here in danger because the public,
politicians and press condemn the slaughter of Palestinians.” Michas writes
of a “new period of intense crisis in the “never particularly warm relations
between the Greek government and the Jewish element in the U.S.” Among the
key incidents he cites from the report, he also noted that the “Israeli
Embassy in Athens was deluged by telephone calls from members of the Jewish
Community declaring that the anti-Semitic rhetoric made them feel that they
were ‘in direct danger and threat’.” [cccxxv]
The Jewish community strongly objected to the fact
that the Embassy went over its head and distributed such a report abroad. A
commentary on Mr. Michas’ article (Eleftherotypia on Sunday, 7/7/02),
quotes prominent members of the Jewish Community disclaiming previous knowledge
of the report’s contents and denying their distress over the recent rise of
anti-Semitism in Greece. The article makes a point that these particular Jews
had (even) been targets of anti-Semitic attacks in the past.[cccxxvi]
KIS President Moses Constantinis is quoted as
being “surprised” by the report. Although he, too, has observed “a
rise in anti-Semitism,” he reportedly is not troubled by it – quite
different from KIS’s statement on the vandalism in Ioannina and Thessaloniki.[cccxxvii]
“I don’t see this rise as worrisome. I can personally tell you that I am not
getting any threatening phone calls, nor is anyone threatening me.”[cccxxviii]
In the same article, Rena Molcho, a professor
of political science and history at the Panteion University in Athens, also
claims she is “not troubled by the ‘sharp rise in anti-Semitism’.” This,
despite the fact, as the article points out, that she had been a target in the
past of the anti-Semitic publication Stochos. Although she refused to
comment on the report itself, she reportedly questioned whether, indeed, the
Embassy has received phone calls from worried Greek Jews: “let them provide
their names.”[cccxxix]
Nicolas Hannan Stavroulakis, Director of Etz Hayyim
Synagogue in Hania, Crete, is quoted as sharing the same opinion. The article
notes his previous conflict with the Prefect of Hania, who was opposed to the
reconstruction of the synagogue, but goes on to say that Stavroulakis “does
not feel that the relationship between Greek Christians and Greek Jews has been
shaken.” He went on to mention that the “the ordinary person usually
does not make the distinction between Israelites and Israelis.”[cccxxx]
However, when speaking to GHM on 2/8/2002, Nicolas Stavroulakis amended his
statement to include that “Yes, anti-Semitism is virulent and endemic in
Greece, but it is the prerogative of Greek Jews to do something about it. This
[EoI report] is not the way to do it.” While he admitted, “There have
been some rather chilling anti-Semitic demonstrations in front of Israeli
interests in Thessaloniki and in front of the Embassy in Athens, but people
don’t actually feel a threat.”[cccxxxi]
According to the article, “upon hearing of the
existence of such a report, many Greek Jews recalled the events of 1965 in
Morocco, when a similar ‘firman’ was made public.”[cccxxxii]
As a result, many Jews were frightened for no reason whatsoever into leaving
that region. This same historical concern was expressed to GHM.[cccxxxiii]
In the far-left Prin (28/7/02), George
Delastik[cccxxxiv]
calls the Embassy report part of a global “ideological terrorism of the
Jews” to silence vehement criticism of Israel by denouncing it as
anti-Semitism. “On the pretext of the supposed anti-Semitism of the
Europeans, the Jewish lobby throughout the world has been mobilized to exercise
ideological terrorism to cover up the brutal policy of genocide implemented by
the murderous terrorist state of Israel against the Palestinians.” Delastik
describes an elaborate Jewish Diaspora conspiracy and propaganda machine that
encompasses world politics and culture, extending its reach even to the Cannes
Film Festival and the Miss Universe Contest. But these he sees as minor
incidents to be dealt with individually. According to him: “The enormous
issue, which absolutely must be rebuffed in a decisive, organized fashion, is
the program of ideological terrorism that the Jews have launched on a global
scale against anyone who condemns the policies of the abominable terrorist
state of Israel.” He concludes by rallying his compatriots, who have no
need to worry about being racist. “The Germans, who during the Nazi era
burned the Jews in ovens, may have a guilt complex today and yield to Jewish
pressures about ‘anti-Semitism’. The Greeks, however, and especially the Left
must be relentless foes of the policies of Israel. We do not possess any
anti-Semitism, nor do we have to apologize for any dark past.”[cccxxxv]
On 11 July 2002, Amnesty International made
public its 40-page report, “Without distinction: attacks on civilians by
Palestinian armed groups,”[cccxxxvi]
a summary of which was immediately translated into Greek by the Greek Section
of Amnesty International.[cccxxxvii]
The report, which documents 128 attacks by Palestinian armed groups and
Palestinian individuals since September 2000, causing the death of at least 350
civilians, denounces these acts. “Whatever the cause for the which the
people are fighting, there can never be a justification for direct attacks on
civilians. (…) Targeting civilians is contrary to fundamental principles of
humanity enshrined in international law…Civilians should never be the focus of
attack, not in the name of security and not in the name of liberty. We call on
the leadership of all Palestinian armed groups to cease attacking civilians,
immediately and unconditionally.”[cccxxxviii]
On the occasion of the AI report, Sabby Mionis,
a member of the Jewish community, wrote a letter to the editor of Kathimerini
(20/7/02) in which he suggests that “many ‘democratic’ Greeks who justify
and excuse such tactics [Palestinian attacks on civilians] ought to consider
Amnesty International’s position. (…) Politicians and other prominent figures
should finally stop compromising Greece and the majority of Greek citizens with
their unbridled anti-Semitism.”[cccxxxix]
UN Report on Jenin
Following the publication of the UN report on Jenin,
on 1 August 2002, Eleftherotypia published on 8 August 2002 very short
excerpts from three letters to the editor by Sabby Mionis, Katerina Psomiadi,
and G. B. asking Greek media in general and Eleftherotypia in particular
to apologize for their previous disinformation at the expense of Israel (about
500 dead and 6,000 injured Palestinians during the operations in Jenin) and “its
anti-Israeli attitude that feeds the worst form of anti-Jewish racism in
Greece.” The newspaper’s lengthier answer stated that it “condemns any
criminal – terrorist action … But there is an asymmetry between the Palestinian
terrorist actions and Sharon’s state terrorism. The first are carried out by
desperate kamikaze, … while Sharon responds with a declaration of war which is
the worst form of terrorism… The number of dead from the Israeli invasion was
indeed smaller than initially reported. But we cannot ask for apologies from
those who condemned the homicides, instead from those who committed them.
Otherwise, anti-Semitism and Semitism are both forms of racism that “E” fights
against always and everywhere.”[cccxl]
ADL Calls On Greek Government To Condemn
Anti-Semitism In The Press
New York, N.Y., October 3, 2002 ... The
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today called on government leaders in Greece to
speak out against anti-Semitic depictions of Israelis and Jews in the Greek
media, an issue recently raised in a meeting with Greek Foreign Minister
Yeoryios Papandreou. The League contacted the Foreign Minister to bring
attention to a recent example of anti-Semitism in the media.
In a letter to Mr. Papandreou, Glen A. Tobias,
ADL National Chairman, and Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said:
We were pleased to have had the opportunity to
meet with you in New York and appreciate your positive response to our
concerns, particularly of the depiction of Israelis and Jews in the Greek
press. Unfortunately, many articles and caricatures appearing in Greek
newspapers cross the line from criticism of the State of Israel into blatant
anti-Semitism.
One recent example is a cartoon that appeared
in the newspaper, Eleftherotypia on September 24, 2002, portraying a Nazi-like
Israeli soldier with a Star of David on his helmet. The soldier informing the
Nazi officer next to him that: "Arafat is not a person the Reich can talk
to anymore," is clearly an offensive comparison between Israelis and the
Nazis of the Third Reich. The response of the Nazi officer, "Why? Is he a
Jew," diminishes the horrors of the Holocaust by comparing Arafat's plight
to the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
Such depictions in the media create an
environment of hostility towards Israel and Jews in Greece. Even in nations
like Greece where the press is free, it is essential that the government take
responsibility to set a tone of tolerance and speak out strongly against these
anti-Semitic, hateful sentiments. We hope you will do so in light of this most
recent manifestation of anti-Semitism.
http://www.adl.org/presrele/asint%5F13/4167%5F13.asp
The answer by cartoonist Stathis was published
in Eleftherotypia on 22 October 2002 (http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_fpage_text.jsp?dt=22/10/2002&id=3533024).
“A cartoon (of the undersigned) published in
our newspaper on September 24, 2002 fell into the hands of the ADL and through
the internet and other newspapers on the planet it started to accuse the Greek
press of . . . anti-Semitism!
The ADL (based in New York) is an “International
Organization” ( pro Israeli) “against defamation.” Therefore, on October 3,
2002 the ADL came into contact with the Greek Foreign Minister, Mr. George
Papandreou “in order to drive his attention to a recent incident of
anti – Semitism in the Greek press,” namely the cartoon we are presenting. (the
paper then presents the cartoon)
In a letter to Mr. Papandreou, the President of the ADL, Mr.
Glen Tobias and its Director, Abraham Foxman wrote: (bold letters
are added by Stavropoulos ) “We were glad we had the opportunity to meet you in
New York and we appreciate your positive response to our worries
especially with regard to the presentation of Israelis and Jews in the Greek
press.
“Unfortunately, many articles and caricatures
which appeared in Greek newspapers cross the line of criticism against the
state of Israel into expressions of blatant anti – Semitism.”
And after they describe the cartoon of
“Eleftherotypia” in detail and after making references to an “insulting
comparison between Israelis and Nazis” as well as the “horror of the
Holocaust,” the two heads of this pro – Israeli Lobby (in the US but an
international league abroad) they conclude:
“Even in states like Greece where the press is
free, it is necessary for the government to take the responsibility to
set a tone of tolerance and strongly condemn these anti – Semitic, hateful
statements.”
The first thing this column has to stress is
the usual and known practice of the Israelis to stigmatize anyone
who is not a Zionist as an anti – Semite.
One can accept or reject the message
which the cartoon conveys (anti – Zionist and anti – Fascist) or in any case
judge it, but to defame someone and stigmatize him for anti – Semitism (like
the Anti – Defamation League did) is too much (even for hysterical people).
But the outrageous thing is something else! The call on the Greek Government
to admonish the Greek Press!! It is also an intervention into our
internal affairs in other words telling us what the government should do.
It is also a savage effort to censor what the press is writing or
what the government is telling it to write!!!
Obviously the totalitarianism developing
against the press in the US (with cartoonists being the victims) as well as the
innate totalitarianism of the Fascist Israeli State makes these two
rogues from the ADL think that Greece is a colony!
We should note here, that to his credit,
the Foreign Minister, Mr. Papandreou, rejected the “advice” of the ADL
(there was no positive response of the Minister” like the one described by the
two responsible officials from the ADL). At least Mr. Beglitis assured
the President of the Union of Greek Journalists (ESHEA), Mr. Aristidis
Manolakos, who showed an interest in the issue, that this was the case.
Finally, we should note (it is also to its credit)
that “Epochi” is the only Greek newspaper which concerned itself (and
was enraged) with this vile incident of intervention and effort of
censorship! What happened to the others? Are we getting used to Fascism
knocking on our doors or perhaps sitting in our living room?”
A week later (29 October 2002) Eleftherotypia
published a letter from the First Secretary of the Israeli Embassy in Athens, Mrs.
Sylvia Berladski Barouch, and a rejoinder by Stathis (http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_text.jsp?dt=29/10/2002&c=112&id=53205136).
Dialogue about the Issue
opened with the ADL Letter
We received and are publishing the following
letter from the First Secretary of the Israeli Embassy in Athens, Mrs. Sylvia
Berladski Barouch:
“Dear Mr. Fyntanidis,
In his answer to the letter sent by the Anti
Defamation League to the Greek Foreign Minister, Mr. George Papandreou,
published in your newspaper yesterday (22.10.2002), your cartoonist and
commentator, Mr. Stathis Stavropoulos, claims that his cartoons (and by
extension he himself) are anti – Zionist and have no relation to anti –
Semitism.
I will not refer to the issue of anti –Semitism
and the ADL since it is an independent organization, which I do not represent.
However, as an Israeli diplomat I would like to refer to the issue of anti –
Zionism, an ideology which Mr. Stavropoulos says that he embraces.
Does Mr. Stavropoulos know what Zionism is? And
if he does where does he get his definition of the word? From his blatant and
proud anti – Zionism, one would think that Zionism is a great evil
(unfortunately a large segment of Greek public opinion believes this) and that
all of us must proudly resist against it. It is horrible. It is obvious Mr.
Stavropoulos did not learn about Zionism from the fathers of the Zionist
movement and does not know that in reality Zionism is the Jewish renaissance movement
aimed at creating a Jewish state (finally after 2000 years of exile imposed on
the Jews by the European powers at the time). Perhaps Mr. Stavropoulos is
basing his information about Zionism on the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion
(an anti – Semitic myth written in Russia during the 19th century
which accuses Jews of wanting to take over the World).
It is really ridiculous and sad for Israelis
and Jews to read an article in a newspaper of a friendly country, in which a
commentator proudly announces that he is against the national movement for
their independence. Are there incidents in the Israeli press with articles of
journalists coming out against the Greek national movement of the Revolution of
1821 which led Greece to independence? No, one would never encounter such
disrespect. On the contrary, Greece is extolled in the Israeli press for its
nice, hospitable people, its beautiful beaches and its fantastic food. Greek
music is constantly heard on the country’s radio and television stations. Greek
singers are among the most popular in Israel. Of all this makes me wonder how
naďve we are, when Mr. Stavropoulos speaks about the “innate totalitarianism of
the Fascist Israeli State.” If he has that to say about Israel then I cannot
wait to see what he has to say (in cartoons or articles) about “flourishing
democracies” in the Middle East like Iraq. I think it is important for Israelis
to learn about these views in the Greek press and draw their own conclusions.
On a level of principles, I would like to raise
the following questions: Do Greeks have more of a right to independence than
Jews? Have not the Jews, including Greek Jews suffered enough in order to
justifiably be on the side of the nations which according to the Europeans have
a right to have their own State? And pay attention, Mr. Stavropoulos is not
saying that he is criticizing the behavior or policy of Israel (something
completely legimate) but that he is an anti – Zionist, in other words he is
against the existence of the State of Israel. I think that when Mr.
Stavropoulos learns about the real meaning of Zionism, then he will understand
his mistake and I hope the readers of his articles will understand them as
well.
Please publish this letter in full in order to
rectify the truth.
Sincerely,
Sylvia Berladski Barcouch
First Secretary
Embassy of Israel
“First of all, Mrs. Barouch does not say a word
about the primary issue, that is the effort of the ADL to intervene in our
internal affairs (with recommendations to the Greek Government) and its
intention to censor (by asking to Greek Government to reign in the Greek
press). Humbly, the First Secretary of the Israeli Embassy tries to avoid the
substance of the issue, stating that she does not represent the ADL and then
goes farther.
Second, we are not waiting for Mrs. Barouch to
teach us how the Zionist movement started and where it ended up. Does she
perhaps want to teach us what a “kibbutz” is or who Einstein was?
Third, it would be better for all of us if
Greece were known in her country not for “its beautiful beaches and fantastic
food,” but for its civilization, its philosophers, its poets and generally its
art and literature!
Fourth, the insolent stance and hidden threats
in the letter of Mrs. Barouch (of the type: “it is important for Israelis to
learn about these views in the Greek press and draw their own conclusions) –
these threats coincide with the threats of the ADL and the international tactic
of the Israelis to try and completely terrorize those who condemn the Fascist
crimes they are committing, dishonoring their own history. (Just the day before
yesterday, the new Chief of the Mossad, General Dagan stated that he believed
in the creation of “execution squads” against the Palestinians and the leader
of the Herut Party believes that for “every dead Israeli, there should be 1000
dead Palestinians”. Where will all of this lead to?
Fifth, it seems that the blood the Israelis
have spilled has made them so savage that they are coming out against those who
have defended them for a long time. In my twenty years as a journalist, I have
defended their rights, the same way I have condemned their crimes. Have they
become so stupid that they are defaming and stigmatizing those who have done
them no wrong?
Finally, Robert Fisk (the Independent) is right
when he writes that “in the largest part of the Western World a miserable
campaign of defamation is being imposed against any journalist or activist who
dares to criticize the policy of Israel or those who develop it. The objective
is to close the mouths of the critics!
So the thing that pains you Mrs. Barouch is
whether or not I know what Zionism is? “If today the Zionist views of the
1930’s calling for the massive expulsion of the Palestinians have prevailed”
(V. Nettas. “Eleftherotypia”), then the commandment of the Bible (put a knife
in the mouth of every male and take their women, children and animals as loot
(Bible, Chapter K): note this is an exact translation I did, but I cannot find
the exact phrasing from the Bible) is the horror which awaits us.
Stathis Stavropoulos
This was followed by a protest letter by the
Ambassador of Israel in Greece, David Sasson, to the Union of Athens
Dailies’ Journalists (ESHEA).
Mr. Aristidis Manolakos
President of the Union of Greek Journalists
(ESHEA)
20 Akadimias St. 10671
Dear Mr. Manolakos,
Yesterday (31.10.2002), in respective articles
titled “The Embassy of Israel Demands Censorship of the Press” and “Raw
Intervention of the Israeli Embassy in the Greek Press,” “Rizospastis” and
“Stochos” newspapers shamelessly accuse the Israeli Embassy of trying to censor
the Greek press. They refer to two different issues but try to present them as
one. The first issue is a press release issued by the Anti – Defamation League
concerning a cartoon published in “Eleftherotypia” newspaper. The second is a
letter sent by the Israeli Embassy’s First Secretary, Mrs. Sylvia Berladski
Barouch in response to an article written by “Eleftherotypia’s” cartoonist, Mr.
Stathis Stavropoulos.
In her letter, Mrs. Berladski clearly states
that she does not represent the Anti – Defamation League, an independent
international organization, but that as an Israeli diplomat she felt compelled
to respond to certain wrongful allegations Mr. Stavropoulos made about the
Zionist movement. Nevertheless, both “Rizospastis” and “Stochos” hosted
articles with misleading titles which try to present the ADL and the Israeli
Embassy as the same thing. They even go as far as to accuse the embassy of
trying to “threaten” and “censor” the press because it sent a response to a
Greek newspaper.
The right of an embassy’s representative to
respond to an article is an undeniable democratic right in an open society with
a free press. Any attempts to present this as an effort to “censor” or
“threaten” the press is in our view irresponsible, unacceptable and unethical.
It is in and of itself an effort to censor the embassy.
Although we certainly do not agree on all
issues, the Embassy of Israel prides itself on the excellent cooperation it
enjoys with hundreds of Greek journalists. We are telling you that we will
simply not tolerate this unfair assault on our reputation. We call on the ESHEA
to immediately take action to stop this unethical campaign of defamation
against our embassy.
With honor,
David Sasson
Ambassador of Israel
Simon Wiesenthal Centre Calls for Closing Down
of Karatzaferis’ TV Station
Two days after the electoral success of extreme right
and anti-Semite George Karatzaferis, the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued the
following release.
CENTRE SIMON WIESENTHAL -
SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE
64, avenue Marceau - 75008
Paris - Tιl.: 33 (0) 1 47 23 76 37 - Fax: 33 (0) 1 47 20 84 01
E-mail : csweurope@compuserve.com
Wiesenthal Centre to Greek Minister of Interior:
"Close Down Racist Politician's Television Mouthpiece for Hate"
Paris, 15 October 2002
In a letter to Greek Minister of the Interior,
Constantine Skandalidis, the Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International
Liaison, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed concern at "the empowerment of the
racist extreme right party Popular Orthodox Rally, by a nightly propaganda show
on the Athens-Piraeus television station owned by its leader Giorgos
Karatzaferis."
The letter continued, "Karatzaferis has
attacked the current Greek Prime Minister and the former Deputy Foreign
Minister (now Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights) for their
ostensible 'Jewish origins, as thus being unable to defend Greek interests'. He
also propagates the calumny that 'the Jews were behind the 9/11 attacks and,
for that reason, 4,000 Jews were warned not to go to work that morning at the
World Trade Center'."
The Wiesenthal Centre urged the Greek
authorities "to take the necessary measures to close down Katzaferis'
television station - a mouthpiece for hate - which is operating in violation of
Greece's obligations under European conventions against incitement to racism
and violence."
George Karatzaferis reacted with a strongly-worded
request to the Minister of Interior (18/10/02) to give him a copy of the
“slandering” letter so that he takes legal action against its authors, whom he
attacked in the letter, as well as in his speech at a public rally in
Thessaloniki the previous day. The texts are not available in English.[cccxli]
At the same time, a columnist in Eleftherotypia, Yannis Triantis wrote
on the issue (18/10/2002):
KARA-CRAZINESS AND MR. SAMUELS
By Yannis Triandis
http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_text.jsp?dt=18/10/2002&c=112&id=48725616,92843952
And with the craziness and Kara – Craziness at
its forte, the Erasmian Mr. Samuels arrives on the scene, who asks for the
television station of Karatzaferis (Tileasty) to be closed! Because – he says –
“racist ideas” are disseminated through the station, a fact which shows
that the station is “operating in contradiction to Greece’s obligations in
European conventions relating to combatting racism and violence” (from
“Kathimerini”). Mr. Simon Samuels is the director of the International Jewish
Wiesenthal Center. And he communicated to the Minister of the Interior, Mr.
Skandalidis, through a letter. By its subject this initiative reminds one of an
issue of immediate importance: How does one combat invective? (the repulsive
things, insinuations, and attacks of Mr. Karatzaferis are in fact examples of
invective). What do the basic elements of democracy impose on us? How
does an open, democratic society react to provocations? Who and with what
criteria will determine if we are dealing with incidents of racism, xenophobia,
anti – Semitism, etc, when there are tremendous differences of
interpretation regarding the specific issues (for example, certain
individuals consider even the most sincere criticism of Sharon and his work
expressions of anti – Semitism.) The road of prohibition is a slippery one. And
it is especially dangerous when it concerns the freedom of expression.
Unfortunately, the “school of thought” which Mr. Samuels’s logic appears to be
obeying ignores the danger of the issue. And it opens the Winds of Aeolus
(Pandora’s box) with a light heart doing an injustice to good intentions and
desirable objectives.
INDUSTRY? . . .Of the
Holocaust:
“In the kiosks in Germany, Hungary, Poland,
Austria and France there was one category which was dominant: books concerning
the Holocaust of the Jews during the Second World War,” commented Greek
publishers who visted the 54th Event in Frankfurt. (from Olga Sella
in “Kathimerini” (“Kathimerini” is another well known paper in Greece)
“The trend is not new and does not only concern
books. In cinema bright steps have been taken and films have been awarded with
a similar subject matter. What exactly is going on? Is it the need for
Europeans to remind and teach the younger generation about one of the most
horrible moments of mankind in an indirect and easily understandable way? Is
the phenomenon connected to the rise of the extreme – Right in Europe. Or is it
simply the extension of what the Jewish analyst Norman Finkelstein has termed
the “industry of the Holocaust” in his book which circulated two years ago in
the US? (In Greece the book has been published under the same title by Eikostos
Protos Publications.
Yorgos Margaritis, an associate professor of
history says that Europe is trying to defend itself. “To react to the pressure
of America by clarifying its stance towards the Jews. Ultimately to exonerate
itself and become autonomous.”
The ‘Havra Ioudaion’ Issue
“The “Havra” in the Greek
Language
http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_text.jsp?dt=17/10/2002&c=110&id=98787488
As a result of yesterday’s headline of
“Eleftherotypia” “Nea Dimokratia is a Havra Ioudeon” (Hevra of Jews),” we
received the following letter from the Central Board of Greek Jewish
Communities:
“As we have informed you in the past, “Havra”
(Hevra) means the holy place of worship of the faithful of the Jewish religion
where they gather for group prayer like a Church. We feel that the use of the
expression “Havra Ioudeon” to characterize other situations is an insult
against our religion.”
Response of “Eleftherotypia”
There are two interpretations of the expression
in question. Its Jewish definition and the one established in the Greek
language which means rowdy mob gathering. We would kindly ask you to stop
seeing insults, anti-Semitism and racism everywhere, because in addition you
are insulting the Greek language. We are presenting the interpretation which
has been recorded in Greek dictionaries.
Havra (Hevra) 1) synagogue of the Jews 2) noisy
gathering, a crowd of people shouting, ex: the gathering was a “Havra Ioudeon”
(Hevra of Jews) (G. Babiniotis, Dictionary)
Havra or Jewish Havra 1) synagogue of the Jews
2) noisy gathering, rowdy mob gathering (Tegopoulos - Fytrakis Dictionary)
PS: The same answer goes for the letters from
Mssrs. Isaac, A. Meir, Jacque David, and Yiannis Solomon.
The newspapers’ contributors were probably not
impressed. On 24 October 2002, Marine Petroutsou used again the term, in
her column “Zap Zap” to comment the disarray in a televised debate (http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_text.jsp?dt=24/10/2002&c=113&id=100392864).
This letter is written to my 10-12 personal friends.
And to 30-40 Greek Jewish friendly acquaintances, as well as the 15 Diaspora
Jews I know (and those who have their characteristics, whom I don’t know
personally). It concerns the silence they have chosen, and it creates a gap
between them and us.
The
issue is the existence of the neo-Nazi Israel. The factors: a “chosen” people
and another “degenerate” people (Abraham is the root of both according to their
holy scriptures). A state, which was militaristically constructed and whose
today is hooked on the absolute myths of yesterday and the absolutist missions
of tomorrow, is eliminating – with the help of Diaspora Jews – all possibility
for the existence and functioning of [another] people. The Jewish Lobbies have
privileged access to play their cassettes in the electronic brain of the
substitute Yahweh, the leader of the planet. The Hitlerist Sharon who, with his
alliances to the neo-Fascist phalanges, has created a Mauthausen, if not an
Auschwitz or a Dachau in 10 days and a genocide that scared even the American
butchers. He ghettoized all of Palestine (what differences did the ghettos of
Warsaw, etc. have?) and his thugs (his S.S.?) wrote numbers on the
Palestinians’ hands and foreheads. Yet you are silent? There is a weight on
your tongues and hands. Why? And what is that weight?
My right to speak out? I partook, willy-nilly, in your
Jewish education. When I finished elementary school along with 12 years of
church-going, I knew the Old Testament – not the Christian stuff but the
pre-Christian Old Testament that was translated by Jews for Jews – even better
than you did,
as you admitted. Better than I knew Greek mythology and history. In three
more years of high school learning I was initiated into literature (Psalms,
Song of Songs, the Wisdom of Ben Sirah and Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Maccabees).
Marx and Freud haunted my teens and some years
following – as they did yours. Einstein, the saint without a halo, and Wiener,
the father of cybernetics, who refused to direct Israel’s military industry,
guided us to maturity. Finally, you yourselves introduced me to the Greek Jew
[poet and scholar] Joseph Eligia as well as your own then-untranslated Hannah
Arendt. A cursory reading of her work convinces one why Israel is the special
heir to the Nazism that she theoretically ought to have hated. And you, as I well
know, are not
cursory readers. Yet you are silent.
Hannah Arendt directly described how the entire German
people became accomplices of Nazism and its crimes. Indirectly – and she died
before she could see it – she condemns you as neo-Nazi accomplices of the
Hitlerist Sharon. To rise again, Germany had a Thomas Mann, a Brecht, an
Adenauer, a Willy Brandt, anti-Nazis all of them. Haven’t you gotten wind of
the fact that, since the founding of Israel, Jewish geniuses are spicing up
less and less the table of world intellect? With whom will you return? With a
Shimon Perez? Who, he himself a colleague of the Hitlerist, claims that we must
not humiliate human beings with numbers, evidently their extermination
suffices.
Finally, I remember going with a mixed group of
friends to see “The Balcony,” by the brilliant, marginal Genet. (At that time,
a Greek Jew was something like a friend from Kalamata or Crete to us.) And, I
recall discussing the scene when the leader of the revolution took over the
brothel and the wise “madam” had prepared a police chief’s uniform for him so
that he could satisfy his dark, repressed desires.
And then you, in an almost Sephardic voice that I had
never heard before, said prophetically, for the play had shades of your own Freud: Imagine
a prime minister in the Brothel of Israel with Hitler’s repressed desires? And
the group froze. I stammered some accusation of exaggeration (30-40 years have
gone by since) then. Yet now, Elias, you are silent. Don’t ever call me again.
P.S. It is not customary for a Greek to write a letter
to the Jews. However, the Jews, in a letter to the Spartans call them second
cousins to Abraham. This “kinship” is the second factor that legitimizes me.
And, subsequently, your ancestors discovered God, and mine, man and Logos. Both
sides bear both burdens. Yet despite this, I no longer want any relation to
your guilty Vidal Naquet-type silence.”
2. Excerpts from the Thessaloniki Jewish Community statement.
“Certainly, we are
aware that we are holding this year’s memorial under the weight of recent
developments in the Middle East. Certainly, we believe that the conditions
still exist for a permanent solution that enables all the peoples in the region
to coexist in peace and security. Certainly, we are profoundly saddened by the
fact that today, too, just as with any resurgence of the Arab-Israeli crisis,
our Holocaust is degraded with unjust and thoughtless comparisons such those
you attempt to make. (…) We, too, legitimately hope that our innocent brethren
are the last victims of the racial hatred, which, unfortunately, we feel is
touching us again. Because the present crisis will pass. The repercussions,
however, of implicating the Holocaust, as you have attempted, will,
unfortunately, remain and we fear that they will feed this hatred. (…) As for
us, we will hold our memorial service again, not only to honor the memory of
the dead, but also to awaken the conscience of the living. That is the only
justice for those we have lost. And that justice we will forever owe them.”
3. “Outside the Synagogue” by Andreas Roumeliotis (excerpts)
“Yes,
this has soul and I like it. (…) I don’t believe that the Zionist fanatics
express the majority. The nation of Israel has produced hundreds of Leftwing
intellectuals, communist leaders, and skeptics. I’m not one of those who
believe that all these people were and are pawns of Zionism, hired reapers who
serve the choices of an obscurantist, mystical religious hierarchy.
Anyway you have it, the Jews are a nation apart.
Amazing merchants, they buy you and sell you; they manage to dominate
everywhere and control the decision-making centers all over the world.
A capable race, a handful of people pull the strings
everywhere and are behind everything important; they can take mud and turn it
into gold. These were the virtues that Hitler recognized, and saw them as a
threat to the ‘superior Aryan race,’ and sent them to become soap. (…)
They move from country to county with a stuffed purse…
Many of them concealing their ethnic identity, they regard you with suspicion,
they are afraid of their shadows. (…)
But
let’s not be excessive. Gone are the days when they married among themselves
and were a closed caste. Things have changed. Jewish girls are really cute and
if they like you they’ll be with you; they don’t demand that you change your
faith or attend synagogue.
I am not
anti-Jewish. I acknowledge a person’s abilities to earn money. And so what if
wealth is his life’s dream, that’s his problem. I don’t envy him; I don’t hate
him. I am against Zionism. Against the insane hierarchy that believes that they
represent God, that their people are God’s ‘chosen people’ who must prevail.
With violence. The same violence that they themselves experienced in the flesh
from Hitler. With a new Holocaust, this time with Palestinians as their
victims. I’m against that.”
ENDNOTES
[i] Some comprehensive analyses of
anti-Semitism in Greece may be found in:
Daniel Perdurant:
“Antisemitism in Contemporary Greek Society”, 1995, documents anti-Semitism
from 1980-1995 and provides some background information http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/english/reports/perdurant-on-greek-antisemitism.html.
Hannah Goldberg
“On Anti-Semitism In Greece” AIM, 07/12/2000
http://www.aimpress.org/dyn/trae/archive/data/200012/01207-005-trae-ath.htm
Comments on
Hannah Goldberg's Article, "On Anti-Semitism in Greece",
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/english/organizations/aim_15_03_01.html
Hannah Goldberg
“Debate On Anti-Semitism in Greece” AIM, 17/03/2001
http://www.aimpress.org/dyn/trae/archive/data/200103/10317-005-trae-ath.htm
George Gedeon
“Why not a Greek ‘Mala’? (Reflections on a Greek play on a Polish Jewess)”
15/03/2002
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/english/countries/greece/gedeon_15_03_02.doc
[ii] Survey by Opinion (1,200 interviews, 20/1-20/2/1993), for the Lambrakis Research Foundation: prepared by a team of academics under C. Tsoukalas and El. Nikolakopoulos and financed by the European Union; the survey was ‘buried’ by its sponsors and revealed in the Greek press by GHM on International Human Rights day, 10/12/1995 http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/english/articles/nationalism_intolerance.doc.
[iii] “Media racism”, Letter to editor, Georgette Gelbard, Athens News, 16/3/2001.
[iv] George Gedeon: “Why not a Greek ‘Mala’?” (Reflections on a Greek play on a Polish Jewess), 15/03/2002, http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/english/countries/greece/gedeon_15_03_02.doc
[v] Babis Aktsoglou: Review of the movie “Chocolate”, Athinorama 23/1-2/2/2001.
[vi] Marios Ploritis: “The disastrous ‘wizard’”, V, 25/2/2001.
[vii] Central Board of Jewish Communities (KIS), N, 17-18/3/2001.
[viii] Poll conducted by KAPA Research among 622 households in the Greater Athens area for the program “Protagonistes” aired 18/10/2001 on NET (New Hellenic Television).
[ix] Paschos Mandravelis: “Truth and War (when war breaks out, truth is the first victim)”, Ap, 3/4/2002, p. 13.
[xi] Based on conversations and email correspondence between GHM and numerous Greek Jewish citizens and community leaders.
[xii] Telephone conversation with GHM, 3/7/2002, on the occasion of the Ioannina Jewish cemetery desecration.
[xiii] “Panhellenic Socio-Political Study” of adults 18-65+, conducted April 2002 by ALCO for the program “Protagonistes” broadcast on state TV NET.
[xiv] In response to the question “Should teaching of religions [plural] be optional in schools: 30.1% agree, 63.9% disagree.
[xv] See op. cit. Perdurant for
discussion of anti-Semitism in schoolbooks and efforts by KIS to make revisions
in the 1980s, including unsuccessful attempts to implement
[xvi] GHM Parallel Report on Greece’s Compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, August 2001, available at http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/english/organizations/ghm_crc.doc.
[xvii] According to Paul Isaac Hagouel, V, 17/1/1999, article code B12523B081.
[xviii] Anna Frangoudaki: “Jews and School History”, N, 10/5/1997, p. 13. Also available at http://ta-nea.dolnet.gr/neaweb/nsearch.print_unique?entypo=A&f=15832&m+P13&=1.
[xix] Telephone conversation, fall 2001.
[xx] Frangoudaki op. cit.
[xxi] Ibid.
[xxii] This event was published and discussed in articles in N, the leftist Avghi, and at length in Vangelis Kehriotis: “National Struggles and University Neo-Conservatism”, V, 17/1/1999, article code B12523B081.
[xxiii] Fragiski Abatzopoulou is a professor of modern Greek language at the University of Thessaloniki. The article, “Folk Anti-Semitism: The Burning of Judas” (El, 26/4/2001) contains quotes from her book “The Other under persecution” (The image of the Jew in literature – Questions of History and Mythmaking), Themelio, 1998. It is available at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_text.jsp?dt=26/04/2001&c=113&id=87821404.
[xxiv] Ibid.
[xxv] Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM) Report 2000, section 5.5, available at www.greekhelsinki.gr; World Jewish Congress Report, September/October 2000, p. 29-30; GREECE: Debate On Anti-Semitism in Greece, AIM, 17/03/2001 available at http://www.aimpress.org/dyn/trae/archive/data/200103/10317-005-trae-ath.htm.
[xxvi] Report and commentary: “How he responds to the Israelite Council [KIS]: Christodoulos persists with Anti-Semitic Statements”, A, 3/4/2001, p. 5.
[xxvii] Ibid.
[xxviii] Both the KIS letter and the Archbishop’s reply were printed in full in Sunday’s K, 8/4/2001, Antonis Karakayannis: “Does God want eternal punishment for the Jews?” p. 14. Excerpts of correspondence also published in El, 2/4/200, and A, 3/4/2001.
[xxix] The identity card issue sparked more that a week of vandalism of Jewish monuments and private property in May 2000. On 29-5-2000, 100 graves in Greece’s largest Jewish cemetery in Nikaia (Greater Athens) were desecrated with swastikas and neo-Nazi slogans, an act condemned by the government and Archbishop Christodoulos (GHM report 2000, pp. 27-28).
[xxx] Archbishop Christodoulos’ reply to KIS (26/3/2001) op. cit. K, 8/3/2001.
[xxxi] Letters to the Editor: Nicholas Hanann Stavroulakis: “History and responsibility.” EK/IHT, 2/4/2001.
[xxxii] “D. Reppas on Christodoulos: Groundless lies concerning ‘global Judaism’”, A, 20/3/2001; briefer coverage in V (20/3/2001) and (fine print) E (20/3/2001).
[xxxiii] Front page and news: K/IHT, 20/3/2001).
[xxxiv] Ibid. A.
[xxxv] Op. cit. Perdurant.
[xxxvi] “A think-tank for Hellenism” E.T. 25/2/2001, p. 14.
[xxxvii] According to NIRA’s World Directory of Think Tanks (http://www.nira.go.jp/ice/tt-info/nwdtt99/c1279.html) The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (http://www.washingtoninstitute.org) is an “independent institute” founded in 1985 by Martin Indyk, currently [1998] US assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs. It is “dedicated to scholarly research and informed debate on U.S. interests in the Middle East.” It is 90% funded by private donations and its geographic scope is the Middle East, including North Africa. There are many Turkish fellows in its Turkish Research Program.
[xxxviii]BBC News website “Greece is the
word for pop monks” 21/20/2000 at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/newsid_1871000/1871276.stm
and also “Rocking monks strike platinum” at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/newsid_1182000/1182690.stm
also “Rocking Monks of Greece Eye Charts” by George Karahalis (Reuters) at http://rd.yahoo.com/alerts/email/news/*http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=nm/20020312/music_nm/people_greece_monks_dc_1
[xxxix] Ibid. “Rocking Monks of Greece Eye Charts”
[xl] Ibid.
[xli] Ibid.
[xlii] Interview by Kostas Papapetrou: “And if I am a rocker do not fear me”, Ap, 5/4/2002, front page headline and 2-page color spread, pp. 18-19.
[xliii] Ios [Virus] Group: “A Miraculous Disneyland”, “The ‘beliefs’ of Father Nektarios”, El. 25/2/01, pp. 45-47. Also available at www.iospress.gr.
[xliv] Father Nektarios Moulatsiotis: When will the Second Coming of our Lord occur?, Christian Missionary Press, Trikoforos Fokida. 2000.
[xlv] Ibid.
[xlvi] Ibid. p. 164.
[xlvii] Op. cit. Ios.
[xlviii] Ibid. p. 164.
[xlix] Ibid. pp. 188, 190.
[l] Ibid. pp. 190-192.
[li] Ibid. p. 194.
[lii] Conversation with local resident.
[liii] See section on anti-Semitic politicians: George Katsenevakis.
[liv] Op. cit. Ios.
[lv] Op. cit. Ios group
[lvi] Ibid.
[lvii] Op. cit. Moulatsiotis, “Second Coming”, endpage.
[lviii] Op. cit. “Rocking monks strike platinum”.
[lix] Op. cit. Moulatsiotis.
[lx] GHM – MRG-G press release, 8-11-2001, Topic: Commemoration of “Kristallnacht”. Anti-Semitism is Diffused and Tolerated in Greece available in English at http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/english/organizations/ghm/ghm_09_11_01.rtf.
[lxi] Conducted by KAPA Research among 622 households in greater Athens area for the program “Protagonistes” aired 18/10/2001 on NET (National Hellenic Television).
[lxii] Nationwide poll carried out between 26/10-6/11 by “Opinion,” published in “Eleftherotypia” 10/11/01, and available at
[lxiii] Ios Group: “A lie transforms into anti-Semitic hysteria and reaches Greek parliament”, published in El, and available at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_pl_fpage_text.jsp?dt=29/09/2001&id=56459; excerpts in English available at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/balkanhr/message/2978. See also Manolis Vasilakis “Kala na pathoun!: I elliniki koini gnomi meta tin 11i Septemvriou” (They deserved it! Greek public opinion after September 11) “Gnoseis” publishers, (Athens: 2002), pp. 100-105 on “To ‘Neo evraiko eglima’” (The ‘new Jewish crime’).
[lxiv] English translation of complete parliamentary question is available at GHM website
[lxv] EoI Press Release 24/9/2001.
[lxvi] Op. cit. Ios: “A lie transforms.”
[lxvii] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/balkanhr/message/2978 and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/balkanhr/message/2979
[lxix] Vasilakis, op.cit.
[lxx] “Informational Bulletin” of the Technical Chamber of Greece (T.E.E.) issue 2168, 1/10/2001.
[lxxi] As stated in Alpha Ena, 27-28/10/2001, p. 9.
[lxxii] Op cit. T.E.E. Bulletin issue 2169, 8-10-2001. Note: Kippa = Yarmulke, the skullcap worn by Jewish men when in the sight of God; Goim (Hebrew, pl.) = non-Jew.
[lxxiii] Ibid.
[lxxiv] EoI Press Release, 23/10/2001; and Letter to the President of T.E.E., 22/10/2001.
[lxxv] Letter signed Costas Liaskas, President of T.E.E., to Ambassador Sasson, protocol no. 32513. 2/11/2001.
[lxxvi] Ibid.
[lxxvii] Letter signed David Sasson, Ambassador of Israel, to Costas Liaskas, 7/11/2001.
[lxxviii] “A Regime of Censorship”, Alpha Ena, 27-28/10/2001, p. 9.
[lxxix] Ibid.
[lxxx] Ibid.
[lxxxi] Takis Michas is the author of “The Unholy Alliance: Greece and Milosevic’s Serbia during the 1990s”, Texas A & M University Press, Spring 2002. The WSJ text also available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/balkanhr/message/2954.
[lxxxii] Published in V and also available in English at http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/english/countries/greece/vima_25_09_01.doc.
[lxxxiii] Ibid.
[lxxxiv] John Sitilides: “A Certain Loss of Innocence” published in Odyssey, 11-12/2001 and available at http://www.odyssey.gr/templates/features.asp?issuno=’200106’&iss=’2001’&categA=2&categB=0&ThemNo=1&window=November/December2001.
[lxxxv] Anthee Carassava: “Greece’s Mixed Feelings”, Time, 12/11/ 2001, p. 31.
[lxxxvi] “Everything Mikis didn’t say”. Entire text in quotes. El, 16/4/2002, p. 16.
[lxxxvii] Ibid.
[lxxxviii] GHM Press Release, 11 November 2001, Topic: Greek Journalists’ Union (ESIEA) Misinforms International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) on Greek Media Coverage of Terrorist Attacks on the US and of Air Strikes on Afghanistan.
[lxxxix] Complete ESIEA report was published in Avghi on 17/10/2001 (“Greek Journalists Side with Peace”) and is available at http://193.218.80.70/cgi-bin/hwebpressrem.exe?-V=hpress_int&-A=267733&-P and in English at http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/english/organizations/ghm/ghm_11_11_01.rtf
[xc] Also available at http://ta-nea.dolnet.gr/neaweb/nsearch.print_unique?entypo=A&f=17172&m=R09&aa=1
[xci] Op. cit.
[xcii] Op. cit.
[xciii] Infocenter is part of the RAXEN network of National Focal Points (NFPs), which make reports to the EUMC.
[xciv] Reports on Greece, 12 September – 31 December 2001: B. Report No. 2 – 19 October 2001, section 1.2. Entire report available at http://www.eumc.eu.int/publications/terror-report/collection/Greece.pdf
[xcv] Op. cit. Carassava.
[xcvi] Op. cit. Stilides.
[xcvii] Also available at http://www.in.gr/innews/kiosk/nkiosk.asp?ord=6&date=2/4/2002&nid=7
[xcviii] “Charges of trafficking dead Palestinians’ organs”, El, 2/4/2002, p.13.
[xcix] N, 2/2/2002, p. 16.
[c] Provided to GHM by the press office of the Embassy of Israel in Athens.
[ci] Nikos Demisiotis: “Contra over organ trafficking”, Ap, 3/4/2002, p. 13.
[cii] Op. cit. Mandraveli: “Truth and war”.
[ciii] “Arafat is waging two wars”, Amos Oz interviewed by Takis Michas, El, 6/4/2002, p. 17.
[civ] See section on anti-Semitic politicians.
[cv] “Four Israelis Caught Videotaping the base at Souda”, El, 19/10/2001, p. 45; “4 Souda Israelis Unanimously Innocent”, El, 20/10/2001, p. 49; “National Information Service investigates curious case”, V, 19/10/2001, p. A21; “Acquittal of ‘spies’ who videotaped Souda”, V, 20/10/2001, p. A20.
[cvi] “Four Israelis arrested in Crete were acquitted”, A, 20/10/2001, p 6.
[cvii] “’Videographers’ at Souda”, K, 19/10/2001, pp. 1,5.
[cviii] EoI press release, 19/10/2001. The Consular Department of the Embassy of Israel immediately disavowed the incident, asserting that these were “simple tourists on an organized company vacation in Crete,” and that it was “absolutely certain that they will be found innocent…since there is absolutely no basis for any charges against them.”
[cix] “Contractor took down the sign, the four Israelis are innocent”, K, 20/10/2001, p. 5.
[cx] Lefteris Vardakis: “Three [sic] Israelis were videotaping Souda installations”, Vr, 19/10/2001, pp. 1,9.
[cxi] Lefteris Vardakis: “The four Israelis are Spies…by mistake”, Vr, 20/10/2001, p. 17.
[cxii] Kostas Korelis: “Suspect aliens arrested in Souda”, AT, 19/10/2001, pp. 1-2.
[cxiii] Kostas Korelis: “Unanswered questions on the Souda case”, AT, 20/10/2001, p. 9
[cxiv] “Israelis are Innocent”, AT, 20/10/2001, p. 9.
[cxv] Manos Iliadis: “Mossand [sic] Combing Nicosia and Crete”, Ependytis, 27-28/10/2001, p. 55.
[cxvi] “Israelis who photographed Souda base are innocent”, Hora, 20/10/2001, pp. 1, 19.
[cxvii] “‘Mossad’ spies combing Greece”, Traffic, 30/10/2001, p. 7.
[cxviii] Op. cit Perdurant gives detailed account of anti-Semitism in Greek politics, 1980-1995.
[cxix] Ibid.
[cxx] Ibid.
[cxxi] According to Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Newsweek, April 1, 2002, p. 16.
[cxxii] “Simitis: Violence breeds violence”, El, 3/4/2002, p. 15; “‘Genocide’: Protopapas’ Cover-up of Kaklamanis’ Statements”, Eth, 3/4/2002, p. 16. This remark provoked Israel to launch a demarche against the Greek government. (Also, Perdurant documents that in 1988, as Minister of Education and Religion, Mr. Kaklamanis demonstrated a lack of sensitivity to the Jews of Greece when he declined to override the Pedagogical Institute’s decision to retain anti-Semitic texts in schoolbooks, claiming that the Institute was outside his control.)
[cxxiii] Ibid.
[cxxiv] Ibid. El, 3/4/2002, p. 15.
[cxxv] Op.cit. Eth, 3/4/2002, p. 16.
[cxxvi] EoI sources.
[cxxvii] “Mangakis: Let’s Condemn Them All”, El, 2/4/2002, p. 15.
[cxxviii] “Protest Demonstration of Greek MPs at the Embassy of Israel in Athens”, Macedonian News Agency, 30/3/2002, available at http://www.mpa.gr/article.html?doc_id=259517
[cxxix] “Reactions in Greece. Protest Demonstration at the embassy of Israel in Athens by Greek MPs”, 30/3/2002, available at http://www.in.gr/news/article.asp?IngEntityID=369739.
[cxxx] Roussos Vranas: “Hypocrites - Dromi,” N, 1/4/2002, p. 60.
[cxxxi] Theodoros Pangalos interviewed by Pavlos Tsimas on the program “Imerologio”, FLASH radio 96.0, Monday, 1/4/2002, 09:00-10:00.
[cxxxii] Theodoros Pangalos: “Tragedy, Confusion and Deplorable Incidents”, V, Sunday, 14/4/2002, p. A12.
[cxxxiii] The implication is that Greek Jews are not true Greeks.
[cxxxiv] Op. cit. Pangalos.
[cxxxv] “The other side of the events in the Middle East”, V, 21/4/2002.
[cxxxvi] Emphasized in literature distributed by the Jewish Museum of Greece and in their guided tours; Of the exhibition “The Jews of Greece, Persecuted and Rescuers” in Strasbourg (2001) organized by the Jewish Museum and the Hellenic Ministry of the Press, J.M.G. curator Zanet Batinou told GHM that “there was no deviation from the historical angle, but we do not mention traitors because there is no lesson to be learned there.”; also, on 8/4/2002, the Ambassador of Israel and the President of KIS bestowed the “Righteous among the Nations” award, the highest honor that can be bestowed by the State of Israel, on “13 Greek citizens who risked their lives to save their persecuted Jewish compatriots during the Nazi occupation of Greece.” Approx. 215 Greeks have already received the award. (Embassy of Israel press release, 8/4/2002).
[cxxxvii] VimaonSunday,21/4/02,http://tovima.dolnet.gr/demo/owa/tobhma.print_unique?e=B&f=13543&m=A14&aa=2&cookie=
[cxxxviii] Richardos Someritis: “Theodoros Pangalos, Positions and Oppositions”, V, Tuesday, 16/4/2002, p.5
[cxxxix] An analysis of the Greek government’s support of the Milosevic regime is presented by Takis Michas in his book “The Unholy Alliance: Greece and Milosevic’s Serbia during the 1990s”, Texas A & M University Press, Spring 2002. Also, many articles and cartoons quoted in this report compare the criminality of Sharon with that of Milosevic, pointing out that although Sharon is worse he will not share the same fate.
[cxl] Op. cit. Pangalos.
[cxli] Op. cit. Someritis. See also op. cit Michas.
[cxlii] Ibid. Someritis.
[cxliii] Progressive Left Coalition party.
[cxliv] “Reopening of Jewish Synagogue Revives Prejudices”, GHM / MRG-G press release, 13/10/1999, available at http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/special-issues-antisemitism.html. The incident prompted Synaspismos Party activist and local resident, Manolis Gazis, to protest (A, 7/10/99) “the ridiculous fear of the ‘Priests of Sfakia’” and the“similar (though slightly veiled) fears” of the Prefect,“that after the Synagogue’s inauguration Hania will be swamped by Jewish agents who will settle in our city to alter its character and eventually annex Crete to Israel!” (GHM / MRG-G press release 13/10/1999 op. cit.)
[cxlv] Ibid; also op. cit. AP 1999.
[cxlvi] “Last Night in Hania: Impressive rally for the Palestinian people”, Haniotika Nea, 5/4/2002.
[cxlvii] See section on September 11th.
[cxlviii] Op. cit. Goldberg: “Anti-Semitism in Greece”; GHM press release “We Declare Ourselves Jews…” 9/11/00; also see section on September 11th.
[cxlix] Benjamin Albalas in an interview with Hannah Goldberg, 11/2000.
[cl] Conversations with various members of the Jewish community
[cli] See web page with scores of related articles at http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/greek/special_issues/akrodexia.html
[clii] “His Struggle!” Ios Eleftherotypia
20/10/02. We reprint here in Greek the excerpts on Karatzaferis’ anti-Semitism.
ΓΙΩΡΓΟΣ
ΚΑΡΑΤΖΑΦΕΡΗΣ
Ο Αγών
του!
.......
***Ο κ. Κ. δεν
είναι
αντισημίτης
Πρόκειται
ασφαλώς για
παρεξήγηση.
Απλώς ο
ιδρυτής του
ΛΑΟΣ ασκεί το
εθνικό του
χρέος να
αποκαλύπτει
εβραϊκό δάκτυλο
παντού: στο
ΠΑΣΟΚ, στη Νέα
Δημοκρατία,
στα μέσα ενημέρωσης,
στο κράτος:
*«Ζούμε σε
μια χώρα που
εβραιοκρατείται.
Ο πρωθυπουργός
έλκει την
καταγωγή από
κει. Ααρών
Αβουρής ο
παππούς του. Ο
Γεώργιος
Παπανδρέου
έχει τη γιαγιά
του, η οποία
ήταν
Πολωνοεβραία, η
Μινέικο. Ολη η
κυβέρνηση
ε-βραι-ο-κρα-τεί-ται».
Αυτά έλεγε ο κ. Κ.
από την
εκπομπή του
στο ιδιόκτητο
κανάλι του
στις 24 Μαΐου 2000.
Λίγες μόλις
μέρες μετά τις
εκλογές του 2000
αποκαλύπτει
εβραϊκό
δάκτυλο και
στο συνδυασμό
που συμμετείχε
ο ίδιος, τη Νέα
Δημοκρατία:
«Και στον Στ.
Μάνο, αν ψάξετε,
κι εκεί θα βρείτε
εβραϊκή ρίζα.
Οπου δείτε
υποστηρικτή
του θέματος
(ενν. του
θέματος των
ταυτοτήτων)
έχει εβραϊκή
ρίζα. Να ψάξετε.
Στην
οικογένεια,
στη γυναίκα
του, στην
πεθερά του».
*Τα ίδια
αναφέρει ο κ. Κ.
και για τον
πρώην αρχηγό
του, τον οποίο
υμνούσε πριν
από λίγα
χρόνια «Χέρι
χέρι, με τον
Εβερτ αρχηγό».
Στην ίδια
εκπομπή ο
ιδρυτής του
ΛΑΟΣ αναφέρει:
«Ο δικός μου ο
άνθρωπος, ο
Λάμπρος
Λαμπράκος,
είδε τον κ. Εβερτ
κατά την
επίσημη
επίσκεψή του
στη Νέα Υόρκη
να πηγαίνει
στη Μεγάλη
Συναγωγή των
Εβραίων, να
φοράει το
σκουφάκι του
και να
εισχωρεί στα
ενδότερα».
*Την
επομένη ο Κ.
επαναλαμβάνει
τα ίδια, με την
εξής διαφορά:
εμφανίζει τον
κ. Εβερτ να
επισκέπτεται τη
Μεγάλη Στοά
της
Ουάσιγκτον,
μπλέκοντας
έτσι Εβραίους
και Τέκτονες,
αλλά και δύο
αμερικανικές
μεγαλουπόλεις.
Σε λίγες μέρες
(29/5/2000) στην
«εβραϊκή
συνωμοσία»
περιλαμβάνεται
και ο πρόεδρος
του Συμβουλίου
Αποδήμου
Ελληνισμού:
«Εμαθα σήμερα
ότι η σύζυγος του
κ. Αθενς είναι
Ελβετοεβραία.
Ενα-ένα
ενώνονται τα
κομμάτια του
παζλ. Οσοι
βρίσκονται
μέσα σ' αυτή τη
διαδικασία
έχουν δούναι
και λαβείν με
το Ισραήλ».
*Αλλά ο κ. Κ.
έχει την
απάντησή του.
Στο συνδυασμό
του για τη
διεκδίκηση της
υπερνομαρχίας
συμπεριέλαβε,
λέει, και δύο
Εβραίους. Αυτό
ήταν το επιχείρημά
του, όταν
αποκαλύφθηκε η
παρουσία της
Χρυσής Αυγής
στο συνδυασμό
του. Μάλιστα
για να
αποσείσει
εντελώς την
εναντίον του
κατηγορία περί
ρατσισμού, ο κ. Κ.
δήλωσε ότι
έχει
συμπεριλάβει
στο συνδυασμό
του και δύο
ομοφυλόφιλους
καθώς και έναν
τσιγγάνο. Πραγματική
υπέρβαση...
*Το αστείο
είναι ότι
αυτές οι
δηλώσεις του κ.
Κ. προκάλεσαν
την επίσημη
διαμαρτυρία
της... Χρυσής
Αυγής, η οποία
διά του φίρερ
Μιχαλολιάκου
ανακοίνωσε ότι
απέχει των
εκλογών (πλην
των 4 στελεχών
τους):
«Μας θλίβει
βαθύτατα ότι
απέναντι στην
παρουσία μελών
της Χρυσής
Αυγής στο
ψηφοδέλτιό
τους χρησιμοποιήθηκε
ως αντίπαλον
δέος η ύπαρξη
εβραίων, κιναίδων
και γύφτων και
δηλώνουμε ότι
αυτή η αντιμετώπιση
ηθικά δεν μας
καλύπτει».
Βιάστηκαν οι
ευέξαπτοι
αντισημίτες.
Τελικά, όπως
επισημαίνει το
Κεντρικό
Ισραηλιτικό
Συμβούλιο, η
συμμετοχή Εβραίων
ήταν ένα ακόμα
ψεματάκι του κ.
Κ.: «Το Κεντρικό
Ισραηλιτικό
Συμβούλιο
Ελλάδος θεωρεί
απαραίτητο να
διευκρινίσει
ότι το
διατυμπανιζόμενο
από τον υποψήφιο
υπερνομάρχη
Αττικής κ. Γ.
Καρατζαφέρη
ότι στο ψηφοδέλτιό
του μετέχουν
δύο πολίτες
εβραϊκού θρησκεύματος
δεν είναι
αληθές. Ο κ. Γ. Κ.,
επί σειρά ετών,
συνηθίζει σε
θέματα που
αφορούν τον
εβραϊσμό να
παραποιεί
ανεπίτρεπτα
την αλήθεια».
*Βέβαια,
όταν ήθελε να
συσπειρώσει
τον κόσμο του, άλλα
μας έλεγε ο κ. Κ.
Θυμόμαστε την
ομιλία του
στην Κόρινθο
τον περασμένο
Μάιο (28/5/02): «Πρώτον:
Δεν είμαι Εβραίος.
Ας το πει αυτό
κι ο
πρωθυπουργός.
Δεύτερον: Δεν
είμαι κομμουνιστής.
Ας το πει αυτό
κι ο κ.
Καραμανλής.
Τρίτον: Δεν
είμαι
ομοφυλόφιλος.
Αυτό δεν
μπορεί να το πούνε
πολλοί».
*Αλλά ας μην
στενοχωρούνται
οι σκληροί
οπαδοί του κ. Κ.
Στο συνδυασμό
του
περιλαμβάνονται
και άλλα στελέχη
που διεκδικούν
επάξια το
χαρακτηρισμό
του γνήσιου
αντισημίτη και
ακροδεξιού. Ξεχωρίζουμε
το
δημοσιογράφο
του «Στόχου»
Χρήστο Βίρλα
και κυρίως τον
εκδότη, Ιωάννη
Σχοινά, ο
οποίος ήδη από
το 1982 είχε
αποκαλύψει την
αδικία που
υφίσταται ο
Ρούντολφ Ες,
από τις στήλες
του επίσημου
οργάνου του
ακραίου
φιλοχουντικού
ΕΝΕΚ «Νέα Θέσις».
Πρόκειται για
εξέχουσα
φυσιογνωμία
της
μεταπολιτευτικής
ακροδεξιάς,
ιδρυτικό μέλος
πολλών
οργανώσεων του
χώρου και,
φυσικά, στενό
συνεργάτη του
Πλεύρη.
.........
***Ο κ. Κ. δεν
είναι οπαδός
των θεωριών
συνωμοσίας
Ως γνωστόν,
το βασικό όπλο
στην
προπαγάνδα των
ακροδεξιών
σχημάτων από
την εποχή του
μεσοπολέμου είναι
η διάχυση
συνωμοτικών
θεωριών. Ο κ. Κ. το
αποφεύγει όσο
μπορεί, αλλά
καμιά φορά του
ξεφεύγει. Είναι,
βλέπετε, κι
αυτός ο
Θεσσαλονικεύς
εκ Πελοποννήσου,
ο οποίος
μοιράζεται
κάθε μεσημέρι
την εκπομπή
του αρχηγού,
πουλώντας
τηλεφωνικά όλα
τα μυθεύματα
της σύγχρονης
συνωμοσιολογικής
παραφιλολογίας.
Λίγο Πλεύρη,
λίγο Γεωργαλά,
λίγο
πρωτόκολλα των
σοφών της Σιών...
Αυτά τα
τελευταία τα
έχει αναλύσει
ο ίδιος ο
νεόκοπος
θεωρητικός της
«σκέψης Κ.», σε
δίτομο πολυσέλιδο
έργο, στο οποίο
«αποδεικνύει»
την εφαρμογή
τους.
*Αναγκάζεται,
λοιπόν, και ο
αρχηγός να
βάλει ένα χεράκι:
«(Ολα)
συμβαίνουν εις
εφαρμογήν των
Πρωτοκόλλων
της Σιών. Εις
εφαρμογήν της
Νέας Τάξεως
πραγμάτων. Και
ποιοι
εξυπηρετούνται;
Από τη μια
μεριά οι
Εβραίοι, που
είναι ο άμεσος
αυτουργός κι
από την άλλη ο
Πάπας και το
Βατικανό που
είναι ο έμμεσος
αυτουργός. (...)
Μπορώ να σας
φέρω
περισσότερα του
ενός
παραδείγματα
συνωμοσίας του
Βατικανού και των
Εβραίων κατά
της Ελλάδος.
Οχι ένα, όχι δύο,
πάρα πολλά. (...) Ο
Κώστας
Καραμανλής
πήγε με το ίδιο
αεροπλάνο, το
ίδιο
αυτοκίνητο
στην ίδια
λέσχη με τον Γιωργάκη,
στη Λέσχη
Μπίλντερμπεργκ»
(24/5/00).
«Η Λέσχη
Μπίλντερμπεργκ
συνεδρίασε στη
Σκοτία. Μέσα είναι
ο Καραμανλής
και ο
Γιωργάκης
Παπανδρέου, μέσα
είναι και ο
Τζεμ, επίσης
εξισλαμισθείς
Εβραίος, και
όλο εκείνο το
συνάφι το
οποίο
γνωρίσαμε,
προεξάρχοντος
του άλλου
Εβραίου, του κ.
Χόλμπρουκ» (29/5/00). «Η Νέα
Τάξη πραγμάτων
σημαίνει (ότι
είμαστε) μαριονέτα
στα χέρια των
Εβραίων.
Ισοπέδωση.
Πρωτόκολλα της
Σιών. Η
Παγκυβέρνηση
έγινε στην
Ευρώπη. Το ενιαίο
νόμισμα έγινε
κι αυτό. Το
χορεύουν όπως
θέλουν. Ξέρετε
τι χρήματα
κερδίζουν οι
Εβραίοι μ' αυτό το
ανεβοκατέβασμα;
Οδηγούμεθα εις
πραγμάτωσιν των
στόχων που
είχαν τεθεί
από 200 χρόνια» (24/5/00).
........
[cliii] GHM press release 5/7/2002, “Leftwing (Former) Deputies Legitimize Karatzaferis’ Extreme Rightwing”.
[cliv] GHM press release 8/7/2002, “Michalis Papakonstantinou also – following the Leftwing (former) MPs – Legitimizes Karatzaferis’ Extreme Rightwing”.
[clv] See section on Anti-Semitic Incidents: Rhodes.
[clvi] “Monument to Jews in Rhodes is Smashed”, Proodos, 4/7/2002.
[clvii] During the Nazi occupation, the then teenaged Glezos climbed the Acropolis and replaced the Nazi flag with the Greek one. This act of bravery and defiance and a lifetime of leftwing advocacy have earned him a respected place in Greek culture. Despite this, in the first round of the Athens-Piraeus super-prefecture elections of 13/10/02, Glezos came fourth (11%) to Karataferis (14%).
[clviii] George Votsis: “Like Neo-Nazis”, El, 21/03/2002, also available at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_pl_text.jsp?c=110&id=64277172 and in English at GHM website
[clix] Y. Votsis: “Barrage of Letters: Embassy of Israel on the Palestinian protest”, El, 23/03/2002, also available at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_pl_text.jsp?dt=23/03/2002&c=110&id=9920980.
[clx] Published in El, 27/03/2002 and also available, abridged, at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_pl_text.jsp?dt=23/03/2002&c=110&id=5877252.
[clxi] Under “Holocaust II” logo, “Mikis Theodorakis: Where are the people?” El, 2/4/2002, p. 14.
[clxii] “The Jews are imitating the crimes of the Nazis: The former victims are enchanted with the methods of their former victims”, N, 2/4/2002, p. 45.
[clxiii] “The Israelis will someday regret”, V, 2/4/2002, pp. 1, 5.
[clxiv] Georgia Dama: “Notes of Rage”, El, 11/4/2002, p. 16.
[clxv] Iakovos Kambanellis: “Mauthausen and the ‘Hitlerists’”, V, 11/4/2002, p. 5.
[clxvi] See section on September 11th.
[clxvii] See section on anti-Semitic incidents.
[clxviii] Dimos Mavrommatis: “A letter to the Jews”, Ap, 17/03/2002; also Yannis Triantis: “The guilty silence (and the Inaction)…”), El, 19/03/2002, also available, abridged, at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_pl_text.jsp?dt=19/03/2002&c=112&id=2640036
[clxix] See addendum 1 for complete English translation by GHM of the Greek original.
[clxx] Telephone conversation with GHM, 1/4/02.
[clxxi] KIS letter dated 22/3/2002, signed by Moses Konstantinis, President, and Avraam Reitan, Secretary.
[clxxii] Full EoI response available in El, see following note.
[clxxiii] Yannis Triantis: “And the Ambassador of Israel on the ‘Letter to the Jews’”, El, 23/3/2002, p. 12, also available at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_pl_text.jsp?dt=23/03/2002&c=110&id=17823572.
[clxxiv] KIS and EoI letters and reply were published in Ap, 24/3/2002.
[clxxv] George Votsis: The Very Name of Humanity”, El, 2/4/2002, p. 5.
[clxxvi] Yannis Triantis: “Rampaging tanks and words”, El, 2/4/2002, p. 63.
[clxxvii] From Roussos Vranas’ column “Hypocrites”, N, 1/4/2002, p. 60.
[clxxviii] “Dimos’ Legacy”, Ap, 2/4/2002, p. 10.
[clxxix] “Last Goodbye to Dimos Mavrommatis”, E.T., 2/4/2002, p. 13.
[clxxx] “In brief”, K, 2/4/2002, p. 4.
[clxxxi] “Without Dimos Mavrommatis”, A, 2/4/2002, p. 28.
[clxxxii] “A Journalist-Paragon Passed Away”, Pontiki, 4/4/2002, p. 42.
[clxxxiii] Petros Mantaios: “Ashen silent stones”, El, 4/4/02, p. 2.
[clxxxiv] Olga Bakomarou: “Close-ups”, El, 6/4/2002.
[clxxxv] Alexis Papahelas: “American obessions – European absence”, V, 4/4/2002, p. 5.
[clxxxvi] MGSA-L digest, 28 March 2002.
[clxxxvii] Front page headline, Apogevmatini , 16/3/2002; Chryssi Avghi, 22/3/2002, p. 13.
[clxxxviii] Prin, issue 561, Sunday 7/4/2002, front page.
[clxxxix] Ibid. pp. 12-13.
[cxc] Ibid. George Delastik: “Iraq is also dying in Ramallah”, p. 3.
[cxci] Ibid. Petros Papakonstantinou, p. 24.
[cxcii] Takis Fotopoulos: “Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism and ‘Terrorism’”, El, 7/4/2002, p. 9, and also available at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_pl_fpage_text.jsp?id=68098260.
[cxciii] The website Mr. Fotopoulos gives for this dialogue is http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/fotopoulos/grmisc/amnestydialogue.htm.
[cxciv] Published in El, 9/4/2002 and also available at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_pl_fpage_text.jsp?c=112&id=62813956.
[cxcv] Ibid.
[cxcvi] Takis Fotopoulos: “Next target: the destruction of the Palestinian [organization]”, El, 15/12/2001, p. 9, available at www.inclusivedemocracy.org/fotopoulos/.
[cxcvii] Yvet-Beza Leon, Attica: “On the Holocaust”, El, 6/4/2002, p. 70.
[cxcviii] Yannis Kontos, Athens: “On the meaning of ‘Holocaust’”, El, 13/4/2002.
[cxcix] Letter from ESIEA, protocol number 820/10-04-02, 10/4/2002, supplied by EoI.
[cc] El, 2/4/2002 p. 14; 4/4/2002, p. 11.
[cci] Ibid. 7/4/2002, p. 10; 14/4/2002, p. 20.
[ccii] “Mikis Theodorakis: Where are the people?”, El, 2/4/2002.
[cciii] Dimitris Nanouris, Nadia Vassiliadou: “Two ‘enemies’ side-by-side”, El, 7/4/2002.
[cciv] Dina Vagena: “Naziim!!!” “(means Nazi in Hebrew)”: El, 4/4/2002.
[ccv] Nikola Vouleli: “Powel Walking the Tightrope”, El, 14/4/2002.
[ccvi] See Ios team: “Conspiracy Theories a la Hellenika: Part 1, A diachronic ‘declaration’”, El. 1/4/2001, www.iospress.gr. Kissinger is despised in Greece for his role in the Cyprus issue. His being American Jewish only adds to the brew. According to the Ios article, the unverified source of the “Kissinger Declaration” – the foundation for Greek contemporary conspiracy theories – was the English language “Turkish Daily News” of 17/2/1997, in which Kissinger is reported to have said, “The Greek nation is difficult to govern, so we must strike deeply at its roots. I.e. we must strike at its language, religion, its intellectual and historical consciousness, in order to neutralize any possibility for it to grow, distinguish itself, and prevail, for it to not harass us in the Balkans, in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the Middle East, in that entire weak region that is so strategically important to us, for US policy.”
[ccvii] Christos Yannaras: “The Desecration of the Dialogue”, K, 17/3/2002.
[ccviii] British journalist Robert Fisk is indeed highly critical of Israeli policies as well as what he sees as the Israel’s exploitation of the Holocaust for its own ends. On the other hand, he is a staunch opponent of Holocaust denial and revisionism. The July-August 2002 issue of the KIS bimonthly bulletin, “Chronika”, “When Malice is the Driving Force”, pp. 24-25, disproves Mr. Yannaras with research into Mr. Fisk’s book “Pity the Nation. Lebanon at War”, 1992.
[ccix] Angelos Elefantis: “About Enjoyment”, Avghi, 13/4/2002, originally published in Politis magazine, March 2002, also available at http://193.218.80.70/cgi-bin/hwebpressrem.exe?-A=284816&-w=&-V=hpress_int&-P.
[ccx] Op. cit. Section on Pangalos and Triantis on Mavrommatis.
[ccxi] Ibid.
[ccxii] Roussos Vranas: “Dromoi: Hypocrites”, N, 1/4/2002, p. 60.
[ccxiii] Roussos Vrana: “Dromi”, N, 5/4/2002, p. 42.
[ccxiv] Maria Kralli: Israelis take battle positions for a new Holocaust”, Eth, 2/4/2002. Front page and pp. 16-17.
[ccxv] “Three Synagogues Struck”, Eth, 2/4/2002, p. 16.
[ccxvi] The Ios group also cites Anna Panayotarea as a subscriber to popular conspiracy theories. Op cit. Ios: “Conspiracy Theories a la Hellenika” part 1, El. 1/4/2001.
[ccxvii] Anna Panayotarea: “Anna in Wonderland”, Eth, 2/4/2002, p. 6.
[ccxviii] Victoras Netas: “With Blessings the Return to Barbarity”, El, 2/4/2002, p. 9.
[ccxix] Karolos Brousalis: “The Hour of Judgment”, Eth, 2/4/2002, p. 11.
[ccxx] Op. cit. Eth 4/4/02, p. 11. See section on anti-Semitic cartoons.
[ccxxi] Karolos Brousalis: “Parallel Lives”, Antitheses, Eth, 4/4/2002, p.11, also available at http://www.ethnos.gr/pages/2002/apr/4/P060105.htm.
[ccxxii] Ibid.
[ccxxiii] “Apopseis: Barbed Wire”, El, 2/4/2002, p. 8.
[ccxxiv] “We are all Palestinians”, editorial, anti, 5/4/2002.
[ccxxv] George Stamatopoulos: “Apo-stasis”: “Fascism and Holocaust”, El, 6/4/2002, p. 2.
[ccxxvi] Vassilis Moulopoulos: “The Triumph of Terrorism”, V, 7/4/2002, p. A11.
[ccxxvii] Space for Dialogue and Joint Action of the Left: “The hearts of all peoples in the world is in Palestine”, Epochi, 7/4/2002, p. 11.
[ccxxviii] Eleni Syrigou-Rigou: “Voices of resistance then and now”, Epochi, 14/4/2002, p. 2.
[ccxxix] Kostis Papayiorgis: “The Level Crossing”, Ependytis, 6-7/4/2002, p. 4.
[ccxxx] Interview with George Eikonomeas, “Panorama”, Alpha TV, Friday 5/4/2002.
[ccxxxi] “Proklises”, Alpha TV, Sunday, 26/5/2002, 11.00-12.00.
[ccxxxii] “They are deserting the Palestinians to the mercy of Sharon”, Paron, 7/4/2002, p. 12.
[ccxxxiii] George Papayannopoulos: “A Kind of Prose (Dedicated to the Palestinian People Who are Martyrs”, Paron, 7/4/2002.
[ccxxxiv] Andreas Roumeliotis: “Outside the Synagogue”, El, 3/4/2002.
[ccxxxv] See beginning of section for exchange of letters in which a Holocaust survivor is put in her place.
[ccxxxvi] Letter to the editor signed by Athanasios Gotovos, Ioannina: “The Messolonghi of Ramallah”, El, 4/4/2002, p. 60.
[ccxxxvii] Laws 927/1979 and 1419/1984
specifically state that:
“Whoever intentionally and publicly instigates, either orally or in the press or through written texts and illustrations or through any other means, acts or activities capable of provoking discrimination, hatred or violence against persons or a group of persons, solely because of their racial, religious or national origin, may be punished with imprisonment of up to two years or a fine or both.”
[ccxxxviii] Letter to the editor signed by Konstantinos Papandreou, Fares-Patras: “About Jews”, El, 15/4/2002, also available at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_pl_text.jsp?c=112&id=21903572.
[ccxxxix] Letter to Seraphim Fyntanidis, Editor of Eleftherotypia, signed Panayote Dimitras, GHM Spokesperson, 15/4/2002: “Urgent letter about today’s anti-Semitic publication”
[ccxl] Diogenes Kamenos, El,
Financial section, Saturday, 23/3/2002, p. 27.
http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_fpage_text.jsp?dt=23/03/2002&id=76940756
[ccxli] KYR, El, Monday, 1/4/2002, Front page. http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1.jsp?dt=01/04/2002
[ccxlii] Eva Omiroli: “On ‘Holocaust II’”, letter to the editor, El, 3/4/2002. P. 6, http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_text.jsp?dt=03/04/2002&c=110&id=70589460
[ccxliii] Kostas Mitropoulos, N, Opinions section, Weekend edition, 30-31/3/2002, p. 4. http://ta-nea.dolnet.gr/neaweb/neafile.print_unique?e=A&f=17300&m=N04&aa=1
[ccxliv] Stathis, El, 30/3/2002,
not uploaded by Eleftherotypia; available at
[ccxlv] Yannis Kalaitzis, El, Tuesday,
2/4/2002, p. 8.
http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_fpage_text.jsp?dt=02/04/2002&id=94968788
[ccxlvi] Dimitris Hantzopoulos, N, Mikropoliticos section, Monday, 1/4/2002, p. 5. http://ta-nea.dolnet.gr/neaweb/neafile.print_unique?e=A&f=17301&m=N05&aa=1
[ccxlvii] Yannis Ioannou, 3/4/02: Eth, Thursday, 4/4/2002, p. 11.
[ccxlviii] Toliadis, Eth, Sunday, 7/4/2002, p. 16.
[ccxlix] Theo, Eth, Sunday, 7/4/2002, p. 42.
[ccl] Edited by Nikos Servetas: “Kraniou Topos [literally, a barren place, but also the term for the site of the Crucifixion; the skulls in the cartoon play on the Greek word kranio (=skull/helmet) with the skulls in the cartoon] and the hope of resurrection”, Epochi, 7/4/2002, p. 3.
[ccli] Kostas Mitropoulos, V, 7/4/2002, p. A10. http://tovima.dolnet.gr/demo/owa/tobhma.print_unique?e=B&f=13531&m=A10&aa=1&cookie=
[cclii] Stathis, El, Thursday, 11/4/2002. http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_fpage_text.jsp?dt=11/04/2002&id=33538132,
[ccliii] Kostas Koufovorgos, illustrating “A caravan for Palestine”, Epochi, 14/4/2002. Front page.
[ccliv] Stathis, El. Monday, 15/4/2002, p. 6. http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_fpage_text.jsp?dt=15/04/2002&id=29123764
[cclv] Dimitris Hantzopoulos, N, Thursday, 18/4/2002. http://ta-nea.dolnet.gr/neaweb/neafile.print_unique?e=A&f=17316&m=N16&aa=1
[cclvi] Yannis Liapis: “Never again!”, El, 9/4/2002, p. 47.
[cclvii] Note: the phrase in the Greek press release, “vathitati lipi”, appeared in the JTC English translation as “profound resentment”. Another translation could be “profound regret”.
[cclviii] “Dialogue with the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki” El, 12/4/2002, p. 17.
[cclix] Reply of Yannis Liapis. Ibid.
[cclx] Spyros Payiatakis: “Letter from Thessaloniki: Blessed are the Peacemakers”, EK/IHT, 15/4/2002, also available at ekathimerini.com.
[cclxi] Presented by Andreas Pantazopoulos: Christian Goden?: “Denial and Totalitarianism”, Avghi, 11/2/2001, p. 30. http://193.218.80.70/cgi-bin/hwebpressrem.exe?-A=243612&-w=&-V=hpress_int&-P
[cclxii] KIS press release, 2/4/2002, official English translation.
[cclxiii] “Moderation Demanded”, N, 4/4/2002, p. 50.
[cclxiv] Roussos Vranas: “They are also striking journalists”, N, 4/4/2002, p. 50.
[cclxv] “Unjust and unacceptable is comparison to the Holocaust”, V, 3/4/2002, p. 4.
[cclxvi] “The Central Jewish Board” and “Attack on synagogue”, Ap, 3/4/2002, p. 12.
[cclxvii] “Negotiations again, not comparisons with the Holocaust”, A, 5/4/2002, p. 6.
[cclxviii] See op. cit. Mandravelis: “Truth and War”, Ap, 3/4/02.
[cclxix] H.M.: “Oversight?” A, 5/4/2002, p. 23.
[cclxx] Op. cit., see Roumeliotis, addendum 3.
[cclxxi] Dionyssis Gousetis: “Ungrateful voice” Avghi, 6/4/2002, p. 20.
[cclxxii] “How I experienced the horror of Ramallah” Alekos Alvanos interviewed by Dimitris Konstantaras, traffic, 6/4/2002, pp. 1, 3.
[cclxxiii] Yannis Tzannetakos: “Since objectivity on the Palestinian issue does not exist”, Eleftherotypia, 6/4/2002, p 10.
[cclxxiv] See also op. cit. for Mr. Oz’s comment on the organ trafficking libel in the same interview.
[cclxxv] “Arafat is waging two wars”, Amos Oz interviewed by Takis Michas, El, 6/4/2002, p. 17.
[cclxxvi] Dimitris Raftopoulos: “More Peace Battles”, A, 14/4/2002, pp. 1-2.
[cclxxvii] Pantelis Boukalas is referring to anti-Semitic outbreaks in the wake of the ID card controversy, and George Karatzaferis’ attacks against former deputy foreign minister Christos Rozakis in 1996, for his Jewish origins. There was also a similar attack on current Prime Minister Costas Simitis for an alleged Jewish wedding of his daughter. On the latter two incidents, that took the form of parliamentary questions see http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/english/pressrelease/9-11-00.html. Karatzaferis has also claimed Simitis himself is of Jewish origins.
[cclxxviii] Pantelis Boukalas: “The ‘chosen peoples’ and their obsessions”, K, 14/4/2002, p. 4.
[cclxxix] One day after the article was published, the Holocaust Monument in Thessaloniki and the Jewish cemetery in Ioannina were vandalized. See relevant section in report.
[cclxxx] See note 1.
[cclxxxi] See sections on Religious anti-Semitism and Archbishop Christodoulos.
[cclxxxii] Mentioned to GHM in April/May by Carmen Cohen from Rhodes and Nicholas Stavroulakis from Hania, Crete.
[cclxxxiii] “Andreas Sefihas: It was not an act of vandals”, http://www.mpa.gr/article.html?doc_id=191898.
[cclxxxiv] “Break-in at Jewish Cemetery in Stavroupoli”, N, 15/5/2001.
[cclxxxv] Telephone conversation, 17/5/2001.
[cclxxxvi] Email correspondence, 25/5/2002. Hania has an official Jewish population of one.
[cclxxxvii] Telephone conversation, 12/5/2002.
[cclxxxviii] In conversation with a GHM member in early June, she mentioned, for instance, that for the past ten years she had been routinely granted the necessary permit to drive her car into the old town, where the Community has its offices. This year, however, her permit was refused.
[cclxxxix] “Exhibition on the Jewish Community of Rhodes”, Drasis, 10/6/2002, Cultural events page.
[ccxc] See section on anti-Semitic cartoons
[ccxci] Op. cit. telephone conversation, 12/5/2002
[ccxcii] “Monument to Jews in Rhodes Damaged: Unprecedented Vandalism”, Proodos, 4/7/2002.
[ccxciii] Telephone conversation with GHM 8/7/2002.
[ccxciv] A high school teacher in the Peristeri district of Athens told GHM that Palestinian solidarity posters were taped to the walls of in the hallway of her school.
[ccxcv] Official EoI spokesperson in conversation with GHM, April.
[ccxcvi] Op. cit. GHM report 2000, pp. 27-28. WJC report Sept/Oct. 2000. These incidents were the repercussions of Archbishop Christodoulos’ campaign to retain the religion designation on Greek ID cards. He and other members of the clergy directly blamed the Jews as part of an international conspiracy to destroy Hellenism.
[ccxcvii] KIS sources.
[ccxcviii] KIS press release, 16/4/2002, English translation by them.
[ccxcix] KIS president Moses Constantinis is quoted in the World Jewish Council Report (op. cit. 2000) as regretting that “the Greek government did not react to the other vandalism,” and as calling on the state to take a firm public stand in defiance of anti-Semitism.
[ccc] Op. cit. KIS press release 16/4.
[ccci] “Red paint on the Holocaust Monument”, El, 17/4/2002, also available at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_text.jsp?c=111&id=28665284.
[cccii] Conversation and email statement to GHM from Moses Elisaf, 4/7/2002.
[ccciii] Op. cit. El, “Red paint”.
[ccciv] “Jewish leader asks prosecutor to investigate alleged police involvement in vandalism” AP, 23/4/2002, available at http://rd.yahoo.com/alerts/email/news/*http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020423/ap_wo_en_ge/greece_jews_6.
[cccv] Coversation with GHM 2/7/2002.
[cccvi] “What were they doing in the Jewish cemetery the night of the desecration?” I Erevna, 22/4/2002.
[cccvii] Ibid.
[cccviii] Vangelis Mastoras: “Police: The Questions”, Neoi Agones, 23/4/2002; G.K.: “When will they come to their senses?” Epirotikos Agon, 23/4/2002.
[cccix] From Yannakis’ column “Daring Comments” Proinos Logos, 24/4/2002.
[cccx] “University condemns vandalism of Ganis’ grave”, Proinos Logos, 24/4/2002.
[cccxi] “Desecration of the graves due to anti-Semitism”, Letter to the editor, Moses Elisaf, Proinos Logos, 1/5/2002.
[cccxii] Ibid.
[cccxiii] According KIS press officer Efie Edrati, in conversation with GHM, 2/7/2002.
[cccxiv] “Police swallowed its tongue: Prosecutor ordered Urgent Investigation on Police”, I Erevna, 29/4/2002, Front page and pp. 8, 9. Article also explores the discrepancies in how various local dailies presented the incident.
[cccxv] Conversation with GHM, 2/7/2002.
[cccxvi] Ibid.
[cccxvii] Op. cit. AP, 23/4/2002.
[cccxviii] Conversation with GHM 2/7/2002.
[cccxix] http://www.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_263706_18/04/2002_22233
and
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/news/content.asp?aid=15589
[cccxx] See section on anti-Semitic incidents.
[cccxxi] “Wiesenthal Center: Unanswered Antisemitism in Greece’s Mainstream Could Open the Door to Violence and Poison the Environment Leading up to Olympic Games,” 8/7/2002, available at http://www.wiesenthal.com/social/press/pr_item.cfm?ItemID=6006.
[cccxxii] “ADL Calls on Greek Government to Condemn Anti-Semitim in The Press,” New York, NY, 22/7/2002, available at http://www.adl.org/PreRele/ASInt_13/4134_13.asp.
[cccxxiii] See section on anti-Semitic cartoons.
[cccxxiv] Op. cit. “ADL calls on Greek Government.”
[cccxxv] Takis Michas: “Embassy of Israel speaks of danger in Greece”, El, 2/7/2002, also available at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_pl_text.jsp?dt=02/07/2002&c=110&id=82254400.
[cccxxvi] Georgia Linardou: “The Expose that Exposes: Anti-Semitic climate seen in Greece”, El, 7/7/2002, also available at http://www.enet.gr/online/online_pl_text.jsp?c=111&id=4818144.
[cccxxvii] Op. cit. section on anti-Semitic incidents, and other KIS statements elsewhere in report.
[cccxxviii] Op. cit. Linardou.
[cccxxix] Ibid.
[cccxxx] Ibid.
[cccxxxi] Conversation with GHM, 2/8/2002.
[cccxxxii] Op. cit. note 12.
[cccxxxiii] Conversations with members of the Jewish community.
[cccxxxiv] Mr. Delastik is best known for his writing in Kathimerini, quoted elsewhere in this report.
[cccxxxv] George Delastik: “Ideological terrorism of the Jews”, Prin, 28/7/2002, p. 3.
[cccxxxvi] AI INDEX: MDE 15/104/2002, more information available at http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/MDE020032002?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES\ISRAEL/OCCUPIED+TERRITORIES.
[cccxxxvii] AI INDEX: MDE 02/003/2002, more information available at http://www.amnesty.org/.
[cccxxxviii] News release issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, available at http://www.amnesty.org/news/.
[cccxxxix] Sabby Mionis: “International Amnesty condemns Palestinians” letter to editor, K, 20/7/2002.
[cccxl] “Forms of racism” Eleftherotypia
8/8/02
http://www.enet.gr/online/online_p1_text.jsp?dt=08/08/2002&c=112&id=18874944
[cccxli] At http://groups.yahoo.com/group/greekhr/message/2866 one can read the full text of the speech, the letter to the Minister and the letter replying to an Independent article on him (available with GHM factual corrections at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/balkanhr/message/4671) that probably triggered the Simon Wiesenthal Center letter.
