Pro-Israel Italian group accuses world of hypocrisy in Tel Aviv protest

Project Dreyfus protesters held cutouts of world leaders they accused of holding Israel to a double standard.

By JEREMY SHARON
MEMBERS OF Italy’s Dreyfus Project protest on Saturday against the alleged silence of world leaders over a deadly January 1 terrorist attack on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street. (photo credit: DAVID POLACCO)
MEMBERS OF Italy’s Dreyfus Project protest on Saturday against the alleged silence of world leaders over a deadly January 1 terrorist attack on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street.
(photo credit: DAVID POLACCO)
Project Dreyfus, an Italian nonprofit organization that combats anti-Semitism, protested on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv against what it saw as a lack of world attention to a deadly terrorist attack at a bar there last week.
Alon Bakal of Karmiel, 26, and Shimon Ruime of Ofakim, 30, were killed and seven people wounded by Israeli-Arab citizen Nashat Milhem on January 1, who opened fire on patrons of the pub. During his escape from the city Milhem also shot and killed Arab taxi driver Amin Shaaban.
Milhem was killed on Friday after a weeklong police dragnet search for him which ended in his northern hometown of Arara.
During Saturday night’s demonstration, Italian Jewish immigrants and representatives of Project Dreyfus from Italy, stood silently, some holding cutout silhouettes of world leaders they accused of holding Israel to a double standard in its handling of terrorist violence.
Project Dreyfus said Tel Aviv had not received the same global show of solidarity given France after the November 2015 attacks in Paris and the slayings of a year ago at the Charlie Hebdo satirist magazine headquarters and kosher supermarket.
“Again foreign leaders failed to condemn this act of terrorism and the media failed to report it appropriately,” the organization asserted in flyers distributed during the protest.
“Our goal was to criticize the fact that not one world leader truly condemned the terrorist attack at the Simta bar in Tel Aviv,” said Alex Zarfati, President and cofounder of Project Dreyfus. “They didn’t condemn it, even though it’s clear that this is the same kind of terror as the Paris terrorist attacks and the other radical Islamic terrorist attacks that threaten the Western world.”
Gianluca Pontecorvo, the organization’s vice president, said: “I came specially from Rome along with several people, to show our solidarity with all Israeli civilians who have been victims of Palestinian attacks.
“While world leaders have a double standard in their solidarity, we are here to remind the Israelis that they are not alone and to sing Hatikva together. A hymn of peace and brotherhood.”