Brussels/Geneva, October 12th, 2023 – In a speech in the European Parliament on Wednesday ECI Founding Director Tomas Sandell called for “an immediate and unconditional release of all hostages which have been taken by Hamas.” The event took place only four days after Hamas initiated a massive attack on Israel resulting in the death of more than 1200 people, mostly civilians. Seventh October has already been described as “the bloodiest day in the history of the Jewish people after the end of the Holocaust”.
“Not since the days of ISIS and the Nazi Einsatzgruppen has the world seen a similar brutality”, Sandell said and added, “But whereas the Nazis understood to cover up their atrocities, Hamas is openly displaying them for the whole world to watch.“
Earlier in the day European Parliament President Roberta Metsola called out Hamas as “a terrorist organization which does not have any other objective than killing Jews.“
In his speech Sandell noted that “this is a day of reckoning for the European Union and for the whole international community. How did we not manage to restrain Hamas and its enablers, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran, from this deadly attack? Did not Hamas and the Islamic Republic repeatedly call for the extermination of the Jewish state? Now it is high time to blacklist the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and as long as the Palestinian Authority does not condemn this bloodbath, they should not receive any EU aid.”
“Furthermore, after October 7 all aid to the PA needs to be made conditional on immediately stopping all hate speech and incitement to violence in their school textbooks. Finally and most importantly, the time has come to completely dismantle the terror structure of Hamas. The international community needs to give Israel as long as it takes to achieve this objective”, Sandell concluded.
Meanwhile in Geneva, ECI Director for UN Affairs, Gregory Lafitte, spoke at a large solidarity rally on Place des Nations just outside the United Nations, co-hosted by the European Coalition for Israel. In his speech he called the terrorist attack of October 7th “a pogrom”.
Lafitte said, “This was a climax of hundreds of attacks and hate speeches over the years. While we do not understand how the intelligence community did not see this attack coming, we will have to ask ourselves, how could it be that the entire world did not see this climax of Jew hatred dawning? How could the whole word perceive Palestinian terrorism as a legitimate fight? Why were we silent when Israel was treated differently than other nations?” He concluded by asking if it was perhaps because the world did not recognize the hatred of the Jew.
The conference in the European Parliament was organised by Federazione Associazioni Italia Israele and was hosted by MEP Marco Zanni and MEP Marco Campomenosi. European Coalition for Israel will be actively involved in additional demonstrations and vigils in the coming days and weeks.