European Jewish groups condemn Brussels attacks

European Jewish groups express shock and anger following a series of attacks that left at least 26 dead in the Belgian capital.

“This is yet another shocking, appalling and deadly attack on innocent Europeans by radical terrorists,” European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor says in a statement. Kantor called the attacks “shots at the heart of Europe” that he says should galvanize counter-terrorist actions.

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said his organization is “united in prayers at this hour with the families of the victims and the injured.”

He calls the attacks, whose perpetrators have not yet been publicly identified, the “latest act of war of Islamic fascism against the capital of Europe,” adding: “As in the biblical story of Esther, which will be read in all the synagogues later this week, evil can and will be destroyed only by recognizing it, and fighting it.”

— JTA