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Friday, January 24, 2025
Hostages’ families urge EU Parliament to rethink hosting Diaspora Minister Chikli on Holocaust Memorial Day
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Ahead of International Holocaust Memorial Day next week, relatives of the Gaza hostages and leading members of dozens of Jewish communities in Europe have asked members of the European Parliament to rethink hosting Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli as a keynote speaker on a panel, the Haaretz daily reports.
The panel, titled “Indoctrinating hatred of Jews: What has changed in 80 years?” is to be hosted on January 28 by MEP Lukas Mandl of Austria and MEP Andrey Kovatchev of Bulgaria as part of a larger event.
In a letter to the panel’s co-hosts, the families of the hostages suggest that Chikli’s inclusion on the panel would be inappropriate, due to his opposition to a hostage deal and the support he has signaled for controversial far-right European politicians.
The signatories include 41 relatives of the hostages, and 32 Jewish community leaders, according to Haaretz.
Chikli’s stance on a hostage deal, they write, “is in stark contrast to the values of empathy and solidarity that should guide us, particularly on Holocaust Remembrance Day.”
They argue too, that his endorsement of far-right politicians including France’s Marine Le Pen and Romania’s Calin Georgescu, who has praised notorious antisemites and Nazi collaborators, “call into question his credibility.”
“His presence in the conference risks legitimizing figures and ideologies that conflict with the core objectives of the European Parliament,” the letter states.
The Times of Israel Community.