Belgian PM Yves Leterme: "Israel is linked to the history of Europe"

Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme said "we must be wakeful for a new anti-semitism sometimes too easy trivilialized, and for a new anti-Zionism that is a hidden anti-Semitism that in reality has not accepted the existence of the state of Israel even 60 years after its foundation."

Speaking at a dinner Monday night organized in Brussels by the European Jewish Congress (EJC) and CCOJB, the umbrella representative body of Belgian Jewish organisations, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of 'Kristallnacht', the 1938 anti-Jewish pogroms and to promote tolerance throughout Europe, Leterme said unfortunately intolerance is a recurring phenomenon.

"Therefore the lessons of Kristallnacht must be learned again and again. Forgetting paves the way for troops of intolerance to march again."

"Promoting tolerance is one of the core business of education, especially on a continent that is more and more a multicultural and multi-religious society."

The Prime Minister recalled his reaction to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s statements before the United Nations General Assembly in September.

"It is the duty of the political leaders to systematically refuse statements that are outrageous or hateful. The anti-Semitic views expressed by the Iranian President are totally unacceptable and I condemn those vigorously," he said.

Europe cannot turn its back on Israel

He said Europe "cannot turn its back on Israel."

"Israel is linked to the history of Europe, for more than one reason. We cannot speak about the foundation of the Jewish State without mentioning the Holocaust. The dream of a new Eretz Yisrael was born in Europe in the hearts and minds of Theodor Herzl and his followers. Since many centuries, in many thousands of European Jewish households, Pesach, the Jewish feast of Easter, ends with the wish ‘Next Year in Jerusalem.’ "

Source: EJP