AJC Criticizes Ashton Remarks on French Jewish School Attack

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Mar 21, 2012, 11:17 ET

NEW YORK, March 21, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC has expressed profound dismay with the remarks of Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, in which she equated the fatal terror attack on a French Jewish school with the situation in Gaza. Ashton was addressing a Palestinian youth event in Brussels.

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AJC Executive Director David Harris, in a letter to Ashton, urged her to recognize publicly "the unique tragedy and unacceptability of murderous anti-Semitism, the solidarity of the EU with the families and the communities targeted in such atrocities, and the unity of the EU in combating such hatred and violence on European soil."

The full text of the AJC letter to Ashton follows:

March 20, 2012

Her Excellency Baroness Catherine Ashton
High Representative of the European Union
for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
European External Action Service
1046 Brussels
Belgium

Your Excellency:

Remarks you delivered yesterday at an UNWRA youth event in Brussels have been interpreted, as you know, as equating the deliberate murder of Jewish children and a rabbi in Toulouse – one of the most grievous anti-Semitic attacks in Europe in decades – with the situation in Gaza. In citing the Toulouse assault, which occurred just hours before you spoke, you also made reference to a recent bus accident that took the lives of many Belgian schoolchildren and to other incidents, including the casualties of violent conflict in Syria.

Certainly any loss of innocent life, particularly children, fills us all with great sadness. We understand that the intention of your remarks was to express empathy for those who have suffered such losses – in Europe and in the Middle East.

But to associate an assortment of tragedies with a vicious hate crime specifically directed against Jews in the heart of Europe – a continent still scarred by the effects of genocidal anti-Semitism – strikes us as inappropriate, regardless of intentions. Similarly, we were dismayed by the impression – left by your remarks – that the murders in Toulouse can be compared in someway with the plight of children living under the rule of a terrorist regime in Gaza that uses them as human shields while firing missiles at Israeli civilians.

It is my and my colleagues' hope that your further statements on yesterday's horrific attack, and that of other European Union leaders, will reflect with suitable force and clarity the unique tragedy and unacceptability of murderous anti-Semitism, the solidarity of the EU with the families and the communities targeted in such atrocities, and the unity of the EU in combating such hatred and violence on European soil.

With the assurance of my profound esteem, I remain,

Respectfully,

David Harris

SOURCE American Jewish Committee