House to consider condemnation of Erdogan for anti-Semitism

Proposed resolution warns of anti-Semitism in Europe in reaction to Gaza campaign.

By MICHAEL WILNER
Turkish PM, Tayyip Erdogan (photo credit: REUTERS)
Turkish PM, Tayyip Erdogan
(photo credit: REUTERS)
AMMAN – Troubled by the tone that protests against Israel have taken across Europe, members of the US House of Representatives introduced a resolution on Thursday warning against allowing political disapproval of Israeli government policies to manifest as anti-Semitism.
The bipartisan resolution, proposed by congressmen Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) and Peter Roskam (R-Illinois), singles out Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as personally inciting against the Jewish state by “stating that Israel’s defense against Hamas rocket fire is ‘barbarism that surpasses Hitler.’” His language, the resolution asserts, “sparks unwarranted anger towards Jews and endangers the Turkish Jewish community and Jews around the world.”
Upon passage of the resolution, the House would “decry and condemn” Erdogan’s comparison “as an insult to the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust and an affront to those who survived, and their children and grandchildren, the righteous gentiles who saved Jewish lives at peril to their own lives and to those who bravely fought to defeat the Nazis.”
The strongly worded resolution recommits Congress to the global fight against anti-Semitism – and notes the setbacks in that fight, as manifested throughout Operation Protective Edge.
The language calls for the expansion of Holocaust educational programs, noting with alarm recent efforts to raid a synagogue in Paris, the fire-bombing of synagogues in France and Germany, and the imprinting of swastikas throughout the historic Jewish quarter in London.
Demonstrations “have included chants of ‘Death to Jews,’” the resolution laments.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, applauded the introduction of the resolution on Thursday and called on bodies across Europe to follow Congress’s lead.
“Parliamentarians around the world should follow their important lead and demonstrate the will to ensure anti-Semitism has no place in their country, and that Jews have the right to live free of harassment and the fear of violence solely because they are Jewish,” Foxman said in a statement.
The State Department considers freedom from anti-Semitism – and America’s fight for that cause – a matter of religious freedom and a human right.