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Comments (0)Israeli airlines will not be blacklisted in Europe.
The European Aviation Safety Agency, which last month sent the Israel Civil Aviation Authority an e-mail warning that if its flight safety record did not improve it would blacklist the country’s national airlines, announced March 26 that it would not downgrade the security ratings of El Al, Arkia, Israir and Sun d’Or.
The decision means the airlines can continue to land at European airports.
The Israeli authority also presented the European agency with a plan to be reinstated to the American category 1 safety rating. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration downgraded Israel’s air-safety system to a third-world level last December. The European warning came on the heels of the FAA’s decision to downgrade.
Meanwhile, Ben Gurion International Airport was named top Middle East airport for the second year in a row in an annual survey by the Geneva-based Airports Council International. The survey ranks airports based on more than 30 aspects of service voted on by travelers.
Several airlines also announced new services to Israel. US Airways will offer new direct service between Philadelphia and Ben Gurion beginning July 2. British Airways is adding a new flight to its Tel Aviv-London route beginning June 4.
Meanwhile, El Al will launch a new route to Sao Paolo, Brazil, from Ben Gurion beginning May 2.
Brazilian Bishop Twists the Shoah
A Catholic archbishop in Brazil minimized the Holocaust and declared that Jews dominate the world media.
Dadeus Grings, the archbishop of Porto Alegre, declared that “more Catholics than Jews have died in the Holocaust, but this is not usually told because Jews own the world’s propaganda.”
In a six-page interview that appeared Friday in the Brazilian trade magazine Press & Advertising, Grings went on to say, “How many millions of Catholics were victims of the Holocaust? Twenty-two million? The Jews say they were the major victims but the major victims were the Gypsies, who were exterminated. And they don’t mention this.”
Porto Alegre is home to Brazil’s third largest Jewish community, with some 12,000 Jews.
“It’s not the first time Mr. Grings refers to the Holocaust in a twisted way,” said Henry Chmelnitsky, president of the Rio Grande do Sul Jewish Federation. “Fewer Jews died in World War II because there were and there still are fewer Jews in the world. Proportionally, the extermination minimized by the archbishop meant the slaughter of most of a people that was already small. By reproducing stereotypes created by the Nazis, Grings positions himself on the wrong side of history.”
Grings is the second Catholic bishop in recent months to publicly minimize the Holocaust.
Richard Williams, who headed a seminary in Argentina, caused a furor over his public denial that gas chambers were used to murder Jews during World War II and over claims that no more than 300,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis. His rehabilitation by Pope Benedict XVI in January after decades of exclusion over his membership in an ultra-right traditionalist sect sparked a rift in Catholic-Jewish ties.
Greek Neo-Nazi Acquitted of Holocaust Denial
An Athens appeals court acquitted a well-known Greek neo-Nazi of Holocaust denial.
The five-member court on Friday found Kostas Plevris not guilty of “incitement to racial hatred and violence against the Jews” over his 1,400-page book “Jews—The Whole Truth,” which denies the Holocaust and is blatantly anti-Semitic.
Plevris had been convicted in December 2007 and sentenced to 14 months in prison, as well as three years probation.
The Greek Jewish umbrella organization, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, in a news release said the court’s decision “saddens, perplexes and causes concern among citizens of a modern democratic society as a self-confessed promoter of Nazism and racism remains unpunished though he not only distorts proven historical evidence, but even worse, uses his pen to incite hatred and provoke discrimination and violence against citizens of Greece and Europe.”
In the book, Plevris calls Jews “sub-human” and writes, “I constantly blame the German Nazis for not ridding our Europe of Jewish Zionism when it was in their power to do so.” He also urges his readers to “Free yourselves from Jewish propaganda that deceives you with falsehoods about concentration camps, gas chambers, ‘ovens’ and other fairy tales about the pseudo-holocaust.”
Le Pen Calls Gas Chambers ‘Detail’ of WWII
Extreme rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen told the EU Parliament that “gas chambers were a detail in the history of the Second World War.”
Following the remark, which he made on Wednesday, European Union Parliament members drafted an accord that could prevent the 81-year-old Le Pen from presiding over July’s inaugural session of parliament, Reuters reported.
Usually, the sessions of the European Parliament are chaired by the president of the institution, comprised of directly elected members from the European Union’s 27 member states. Traditionally, the assembly’s inaugural session after elections, during which its president is elected by the parliamentarians, is led by the oldest member of the body. In this case, that would be Le Pen.
A final vote on the accord will be held in April or May, Reuters reported.
Already charged and fined by French courts for similar remarks he made in 1987, Le Pen’s comments outraged European Parliament members and Jewish organizations.
“It would be a shame if Le Pen were allowed to become the doyen of the new European Parliament and would send a bad signal to Europe and the world,” World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said in a statement released Wednesday. Lauder asked parliament members to prevent Le Pen from assuming the honorary role.
The European Jewish Congress condemned Le Pen’s remarks. “We call on European officials to ban hate speeches from the halls of the European Parliament along with those who utter them,” EJC President Moshe Kantor said.
Next week the European Parliament will determine whether Le Pen will be sanctioned for his remarks, with a possible maximum penalty of a 10-day suspension.
Chavez: No plans to Resume Israel Ties
Venezuela’s president said he had no plans to resume ties with Israel in the wake of its military incursion in Gaza.
Hugo Chavez said in an interview Sunday with Al Jazeera that he would not consider resuming diplomatic relations until the Jewish state reconsiders its “genocidal attitude.”
Chavez made his comments in Doha, Qatar, where he is scheduled to attend the second Summit of Arab-South American countries beginning Tuesday. The conference is running in parallel with the Arab League summit currently meeting in the Qatari capital.
Chavez expelled the Israeli delegation in January to protest its military operation in Gaza.
In the same interview, Chavez reaffirmed his close relationship with Iran, referring to the nation and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as Venezuela’s best friend. Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”
“The friendship with Iran has been built up from zero, since at the beginning of our revolution there was an absolute lack of knowledge … of the great development of the Iranian nation,” Chavez said.
Both countries are founding members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and have called for a unified “south-south” axis to create a political counterweight to what they call U.S.-backed imperialism.
While it is not unusual that the two important oil producers have bilateral relations, Chavez has broken the historical balance Venezuela previously maintained in its relationship with Israel and the Middle East.
The increasingly close ties between Chavez and Ahmadinejad have been especially worrisome to members of the local Jewish community in light of rising instances of anti-Semitism since Chavez came to power a decade ago.
Members of the Jewish community here say public outbursts of anti-Semitism, once rare in Venezuela, have become more common as Chavez has adopted a vehemently critical tone against Israel’s military operations, beginning with its war with Hezbollah in 2006.