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| Muslim European group posts anti-Semitic cartoons
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Photo: By Nabucho for http://www.arabeuropean.org/
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A Dutch Jewish organization has filed charges with the public prosecutor after a Belgian-Dutch Muslim political organization, the Arab European League, posted several anti-Semitic cartoons on its website last Saturday.
The Arab European League has claimed that it posted these images to test the West’s reaction.
While the cartoons depicting prophet Mohammed wearing a turban-shaped bomb have enflamed Muslims from Indonesia to Lebanon, the Muslim organization in Europe wants to show that it is not only Muslims who can be offended and has attempted to exact revenge.
The cartoons published on the AEL’s website feature anti-Semitic and inflammatory images including a scene where Anne Frank is in bed with Adolf Hitler. In the cartoon Hitler is pictured saying to Anne Frank “Write this one in your diary, Anne.”
Another has Steven Spielberg and Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson discussing making a film on the Holocaust with Jackson quoted as saying "I don’t think I have that much imagination."
Testing Europe’s sacred cows
Lebanese born Dyab Abou Jahjah, the AEL’s founder, defended the group’s actions on the Dutch television program Nova Saturday. "Europe has its sacred cows, even if they’re not religious sacred cows," Jahjah told the program.
The internet site did issue a disclaimer to accompany the cartoons saying that the cartoons were part of an exercise in freedom of speech.
The internet site regularly posts articles skeptical of the Holocaust or that six million Jews died and articles supporting the view of the Iran’s President that Israel should be destroyed.
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Lebanese born Dyab Abou Jahjah, the Arab European League's founder | The Hague-based pro=Israel group “Center for Information and Documentation Israel” (CIDI) said it had filed a formal complaint in Amsterdam about the AEL cartoons.
Their publication is “a nightmare for the thousands of Jewish victims of the Holocaust who are still alive,” centre director Ronny Naftaniel said in a statement, adding that it was bizarre to retaliate against Jews for the Mohammed cartoons.
In its legal charges against the AEL, CIDI pointed out that cartoons are offensive to Jews, they question the Holocaust, and as such they are punishable under Dutch law.
Ronny Naftaniel wondered “why AEL so desperately wants to relay its anger about the Danish cartoons to the Jewish community in the Netherlands.” “Only the law ordains what is allowed and what is not allowed. Setting populations against each other, insulting war victims, or storming Western office buildings in the Arab world are intolerable ways of expressing frustration,” he added.
Muslim political movement
With headquarters in Belgium but also represented in Holland, the Arab European League has been recently active in trying to develop an Arab Muslim political movement in Europe. The AEL participated in federal elections in Belgium in 2003 under the umbrella name ’Resist’ along with a marginal far left political party.
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt blamed the group for inciting violence during street riots in the city of Antwerp in 2002.
Meanwhile a British periodical, the Muslim Weekly, has been condemned by for its portrayal of Israeli acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with typically anti-Semitic overtones. Andrew Dismore, a Labour Member of Parliamant, said the cartoon was "obscene" and in terribly "bad taste", and has now made a formal complaint to the paper. Dismore added: "This cartoon depicts people in the most obscene fashion, reminiscent of Die Sturmer, the Nazi propaganda sheet. It denigrates and incites hatred towards Jewish people."
The EU is concerned
While several thousands of Muslims, angered by the Mohammed cartoons, staged protest marches in Brussels and Paris on Sunday, several European leaders have demanded that the European Union react as a bloc. However, the Austrian EU presidency is enacting a policy of restraint. “For the moment we have no plans to call for a crisis meeting. If we call upon the ministers of the 25 member states, we would like to see something coming out of it," an Austrian spokesman said.
The EU had asked the Palestinian Authority to provide protection for its institutions in the Gaza Strip after Palestinian protestors hurled stones at EU offices in protest over the Mohammed cartoons. “The EU Commission deeply regrets that Europeans who are working to bring a better life to Palestinians should be the subject of such attacks,” an EU statement said.
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