Spain: Anti-Sharon municipality sign

[Erikl]

Spain: Anti-Sharon municipality sign

By HERB KEINON

Along with the local time and temperature, venomous slogans against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israel appear on the municipal information board in the northern Spanish town of Oleiros.

"Let's stop the animal, Sharon the assassin, stop the neo-Nazis," reads the bright-red illuminated sign in the town of a few thousand people located in the Galicia region.

Israel's ambassador to Spain, Victor Harel, protested the message in a letter he sent to the Spanish Foreign Ministry on Monday.

Earlier in the day, Harel called the mayor of Oleiros, Angel Garcia Seoane, who said he stands 100 percent behind the message.

According to Harel, Seoane said that he doesn't have anything against Jews, but feels completely differently about the Israeli government, its head, and those who represent it in Spain.

Harel cut short the conversation with the mayor.

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem expressed its displeasure to the Spanish Embassy in Tel Aviv.

Bustam Mante, the deputy head of the Spanish Embassy, said, "If it is true that a public official publicly insulted the prime minister then it is totally unacceptable."

Mante said he passed the information he received from Jerusalem on to his ministry in Madrid.

The Israeli Embassy in Madrid received word of the sign from residents of the town who sent the embassy an e-mail and pictures of the sign.

In addition to the sign, the Oleiros municipality is selling on its Web site, for 6, T-shirts with anti-Sharon slogans.

SOURCE

This explains where some people on this board from a certain continent get their thoughts from .

Sad to see that less than 60 years passed since WW2, and again there are European politicans who are outright anti-Semites.

Guess though that there's not much to expect from a country that produced the Inquisition, the Jewish Explusion of 1492, and was ruled by a long-running old fashioned FASCIST regime that ended only 30 years ago...

[Asterix]

This explains where some people on this board from a certain continent get their thoughts from .

Sad to see that less than 60 years passed since WW2, and again there are European politicans who are outright anti-Semites.

Guess though that there's not much to expect from a country that produced the Inquisition, the Jewish Explusion of 1492, and was ruled by a long-running old fashioned FASCIST regime that ended only 30 years ago...

358435[/snapback]

It's one thing to disagree with one's policy and another to attack them. I do agree that it's unacceptable for officials to be so outrightly hostile towards democratically elected leaders. But permit me to say Erikl that you seem bit...touchy. Bit oversensitive. I don't think that incidents like this, or like others taking place, like the situation in France, can be put in a melting pot out of which comes the pulp with the label "Europe is anti-Semitic." I'm sure that you do aknowledge the fact that both the great majority of the people on this board and the European politicians are not anti-Semitic. Some might disagree with Israel's policy, but hey, I disagree with Bush's policy, that doesn't make me an anti-American..

And I think it's unfair towards Spain and Spanish people to say "not much to expect from a country that...blah..blah". All that has happened, is gone, is past, finito..If we look in History (in modern History as well) we will not find a single one innocent country.

Except maybe Switzerland

[Erikl]

Asterix, it is said that one who does not remember history, is bound to repeat it.

Ofcourse it will be foolish of me to say that all Europeans, or even the majority of Europeans, today at least, are anti-Semites, or at-least pride of being such.

There are numirous countries in Europe, like Germany, Netherlands, and Italy that has little to almost none anti-Semitism today.

And ofcourse one can disagree with Israel, an criticise it.

But equating Israel to a Nazi state, and accusing it of genocide, not by some layman on the street, but by a politician, is outright anti-Semitic and a cruel blood libel.

Demonizing Israel is anything but a legitimate criticism.

One could expect some ordinary people on the street to do it, cause many of them do not know much, and are fed with info from their news networks and politicans.

But a politican to do that? That's unacceptable!

Also, this is just a tip of the iceberg of another much larger problem, and it's the anti-Israeli campaign waged by many European news networks, that for some hidden reason have an agenda to bash Israel in anyway possible, sometimes slip some pro-Israeli bit so they won't be blamed for bias by their own viewrs. But some news networks don't even bother to do that.

The problem in France is much worst than you think it is - the Arabs there commit anti-Semitic crimes against Jews who lived there for hundreds of years (even thousands... care to equate when did the first Jews came to France, or Gaul at the time, and when did the first Algerian immigrants came?), and persecute them, while the French government and the French public is indifferent of this, and doesn't do much to stop it.

Also, there was a servey in Europe some months ago, and the Spanish public did hold the highest precentage of people who believe in old-fashioned anti-Semitic claims (I think it was 70%+ of the population who hold these views).

I did wrote what I wrote about Spain to unmask this politician's hypocricy - is country is anything but blameless so it can start accusing others, and he shouldn't speak about Nazism and Fascism when his own country has such a bad recent record in exactly those areas .

[kikuchiyo]

it's simply human to have opignions but that was a tad too much...everything is a tad too much.