Foxman says Obama, Hollande refuse to link Islam to recent terror attacks

National director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, says President Barack Obama and his French counterpart Francois Hollande are refusing to name Islamists as a threat to society.

Foxman made the assertion during a panel discussion in the Czech capital to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Russian troops.

Recent attacks on Jews in Europe dominated the debates during the event, titled “Let My People Live,” which was organized by the Czech government and the European Jewish Congress.

“For Hollande to stand up in front of the world and to say that Charlie Hebdo had nothing to do with Islam is closing your eyes to a reality, to a truth,” Foxman said of the French president’s address following the slaying this month by Islamists of 17 people in the Paris area — four of them at a kosher supermarket and 12 at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly for its lampooning of Islam.

In a public address, Hollande said on January 9: “These fanatics, these ignoramuses, have nothing to do with the Muslim religion.” His statement was widely understood to mean that the terrorists’ interpretation of Islam is false.

On Obama, Foxman said the US president “has called a meeting on February 18 at the White House to discuss what? Extremism? Radical extremism? Hello?! And nobody in the media says how can you close your eyes to what is?”

— JTA