President Shimon Peres told the European Union Parliament Tuesday, “In the past thousand years, more Jews lived in Europe than in any other continent.  Alas, more Jews were murdered in Europe in the last hundred years than in the preceding two thousand years.”

The first Israeli president to address the current arrangement of the EU Parliament, he recalled his childhood in Europe, where his family escaped in 1934 while “in 1942, most of the inhabitants of my town were burned alive.”

He extolled  the accomplishments of Israel, from making the desert bloom to Israel’s becoming a  ”start-up nation.”

President Peres praised Europe for  having “divorced its past” and for having  “converted the divided Europe of the last thousand years, to the united Europe of today. “

“For us, the Europe of the Shoah is becoming a Europe supporting our renaissance,” he added.

He thanked Europe for its close ties with Israel and pleaded with the Parliament to declare Hizbullah a terrorist organization.

“Today, Hizbullah, supported by Iran, is destroying Lebanon. Hizbullah is a terror organization. Not a political movement,” he stated. “They collect missiles. They are trigger-happy. They hide missiles in peaceful towns and villages. By doing so, they turn them into a war target. Hizbullah divided Lebanon politically, religiously and ethnically. It turned the land of the cedar tree into a scorched and barren land.”

The President also said that Iran not only denies the Holocaust but also calls for a Holocaust. “A nuclear bomb in the hands of an irresponsible regime is an imminent danger to the world,” he said.

He repeated his dream of peace between the Palestinian Authority and Israel but pointed out that the PA used Israel’s withdrawal of Jews and the IDF from Gaza to create a terrorist base instead of building peace.

http://israelisoldiersmother.blogspot.co.il/2012/08/a-journey-of-thousand-steps.html

I sometimes surprise myself with the titles I come up with – this is one of those. I read an article today. My emotions went up and down as I read it, ending with the thought that the man in the story was about to embark on a journey of a thousand steps and that somewhere along that journey, his grandparents would smile.

Szegedi Csanad is a Hungarian politician. He is about 30 years old. He was elected as a Member of the European Parliament as part of the Jobbik party. One of Csanad’s fellow members posted an article that said, ”Given our current situation, anti-Semitism is not just our right, but it is the duty of every Hungarian homeland lover, and we must prepare for armed battle against the Jews.” Jobbik calls itself a “radical nationalism” party – more easily identified as fascists or perhaps neo-Nazis.

And quietly,  Csanad got the shock of a lifetime when he found out, about 7 months ago, that his grandparents were Orthodox Jews but chose to hide their religion. It is understandable – to some extent. They were Holocaust survivors – his grandmother was in Auschwitz…as was my husband’s grandmother. My  husband’s parents survived; though they returned to their tiny villages in Hungary as orphans. Their parents, uncles and aunts, even some of their brothers and sisters had been murdered. All they and their remaining siblings wanted was to leave Europe and get as far away as possible. They tried for Australia, Palestine, the United States – anything that would get them out.

The first visas they got for the whole group were to the US and so they went. They stayed observant Jews and raised their children that way. It was a matter of faith and yes, there was pride in it as well. Csanad’s grandparents chose a different path. I can’t judge them; I can only wonder how they would feel (if they are still alive) or how they might have felt to know that their grandson had become one with the ideology that almost cost them their lives.

And then, Csanad found out – a basic truth. His grandmother and grandfather were Jews. Judaism is passed down in the womb – from mother to child. Csanad’s grandmother gave birth to a Jewish child – a girl. That girl was Jewish, is Jewish. She is a software engineer in Hungary, and her son, Szegedi is Jewish.

Csanad has resigned from Jobbik, though he has requested to keep his position in the European Parliament. And, he has chosen to meet with an Orthodox rabbi, to begin what I believe will be a journey of a thousand steps. I have to believe that somewhere in this world or in the next, his grandparents are watching. Generations of Jews behind them. Perhaps they are not smiling, but I have to believe the weight of the world has been taken off their shoulders and their hearts.

Hungarian Jews “feel increasing danger” in a country with a government that condones anti-Semitism, the president of Hungary’s Jewish community said.

Peter Feldmajer, president of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, made the remarks Tuesday at a conference on anti-Semitism in the European Parliament in Brussels.

Though Hungarian government officials say they want to combat anti-Semitism, “behind the curtain we face a dark image,” said Feldmajer, who described the government’s policy as “two-faced.”

The extreme-right Jobbik party constantly libels Jews while the state celebrates anti-Semites in school curriculums, he said. And he noted that  several Hungarian municipalities have erected statues honoring Miklos Horthy, the Hungarian Quisling. Under his rule, 450,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to their death in the Holocaust.

“Streets and squares are named after Horthy, who stands as a hero for the people. The Hungarian Jewish people feel increasing danger,” Feldmajer said.

Panayote Dimitras of the Greek Helsinki Monitor, a watchdog on hate crimes, has quoted surveys showing that 80 percent of the Greek and Hungarian populations favored deporting foreigners.

“It’s no coincidence these are the only countries with neo-Nazi parties in parliament,” Dimitras said.

The conference in the Belgian capital was co-organized by B’nai B’rith Europe and CEJI-a Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe, along with the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism. Some 40 people attended, including several lawmakers.

Reinold Simon, the honorary president of B’nai B’rith Europe, said constant contact with EU institutions was the key to fighting anti-Semitism. In 2005 he founded the Foreign Affairs Network, which is represented at the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg, as well as at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, among other institutions.

Ron Rafaeli of SPCJ, the security service of France’s Jewish communities, recalled “a previous and similar meeting on anti-Semitism in 2002, when Mohammed Merah was a boy.” Merah, a French-Algerian radical Islamist, killed three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse in March.

“Only education will ensure no new Mohammed Merahs,” Rafaeli said.

John Mann, a British lawmaker and chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism at the European Parliament, told JTA that part of his job was to “get the European Union to promote more programs that educate to tolerance, like that of CEJI and of Yad Vashem.”

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement praised the EU on Wednesday for deciding not to renew a contract with the world’s largest security solutions company, because it also does business with Israel.

Group 4 Securicor (G4S), a UK-based company, has provided security services to the buildings of the European Parliament since 2008 – but lost the tender as of April 13, because it also provides security services to Jewish communities, security checkpoints and Israeli prisons at which Arab convicts from Judea and Samaria are held, according to BDS.

The BDS movement claims G4S, which has a contract with the Israeli Prison Authority since 2007, provides security systems for the Ketziot and Megiddo prisons, the Ofer prison, and the Koshon and Moskobiyyeh detention facilities, and provides equipment to Israeli security points in Judea and Samaria, as well as to private businesses in those areas.

According to claims posted on the BDS Movement website by the European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine (ECCP), a network of associations, NGOs, committees and international solidarity movements out of Belgium, 28 Members of the European Parliament issued a letter to then-EU Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, demanding that the Parliament drop its contract with G4S because of its dealings with Israel.  Concurrently, ECCP hired a legal team and conducted a major campaign against G4S, in conjunction with Merton Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Waltham Forest Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods.

“The contract award notice (service contract 118611-2012) published on the EU official tenders’ website on April 13th shows that G4S hast lost its contract with the European Parliament” as a result of the campaign, according to the BDS movement website.

BDS and ECCP failed to mention during their campaign and in their letters of protest that G4S also does business in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan, as well as throughout Europe, in Russia, throughout Asia, in several Latin American countries, in Africa, in the US and Canada.

On Wednesday, a day they called “Palestinian Prisoners Day”, the BDS movement called for San Francisco to halt its dealings with G4S on its website.

The ECCP took the opportunity to praise Palestinians:  “People of conscience across Europe are inspired by the new wave of peaceful resistance by Palestinian prisoners”.