Jewish groups call for action after attacks

Jewish groups are expressing shock and anger following the attacks in Belgium.

Kenneth Bandler, director of media relations for the American Jewish Committee, links the attacks to the slaying of four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in May 2014. “What began with the jihadist fatal attack on the Jewish Museum nearly two years ago has now reached the airport and metro,” he writes in an email about the Tuesday morning attacks in Brussels.

“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 calls the attacks “shots at the heart of Europe” that should galvanize counter-terrorist actions.

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, says 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.”

MK Tzipi Livni tweets her condolences over the attacks and says Israel and Belgium are united against terror.

My condolences to the Belgian people who experienced cruel terrorism. In this battle for our values we are all on the same side, inc. Israel

— ציפי לבני Tzipi Livni (@Tzipi_Livni) March 22, 2016