NEW YORK-MADRID (EJP)--- A Jewish group fighting anti-Semitism in the world has strongly condemned the decision of the Mayor of a Spanish city to hold a “commemoration of the Palestinian genocide” on the day of Spain’s official Holocaust memorial ceremonies. It called it “shameful.”

The New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called it “shameful”.

In a letter to Susana León Gordillo, Mayor of Ciempozuelos, a city near Madrid, and a member of the ruling Spanish Socialist party (PSOE), ADL’s chairman and national director, Glen S. Lewy and Abraham H. Foxman, said: “Your attempt to equate the industrialized mass murder of six million Jewish women, men and children, as well as millions of others, with the situation of the Palestinian people is shameful.”

They added: “It reflects an extremely disturbing tendency, which is particularly visible in Europe, to dishonor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and de-legitimize the State of Israel by seeking to eradicate the clear moral difference between the Holocaust and the loss of Palestinian lives as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

“Applying the term ‘genocide’ to the Arab-Israeli conflict encourages hatred toward the State of Israel and deliberately insults those of us, both Jews and non-Jews, who seek to solemnly commemorate the victims of the Nazi campaign of slaughter,” ADL said.

The League urged the Mayor to issue an apology for this “deplorable decision and to stand with the people of Spain in their commitment to respecting Holocaust commemoration day in the future.”

Israel's ambassador to Spain, Victor Harel, denounced the city's decision, calling it a "foolish and vile idea". "It offends a large majority of the Spanish people who are united in several parts of Spain in  memory of the victims of the Holocaust".