NEW YORK (WJC) – The World Jewish Congress on Thursday, Feb. 6, called on the Greek party Syriza to withdraw a candidate for a regional governorship who made anti-Semitic statements about Greece’s Prime Minister, Antonis Samaras, and the country’s new public broadcasting channel NERIT.
“Syriza should withdraw the candidacy of Theodoros Karypidis for governor of Western Macedonia because his hateful anti-Semitic conspiracy theories can have no place in public discourse in the world’s oldest democracy,” said WJC President Ronald S. Lauder. “We join Greece’s Jewish communities in calling for Karypidis’s removal from the Syriza list and from the party. Unfortunately, anti-Semitic outbursts such as this are not the reserve of extreme-right parties.”
Syriza, a radical left-wing party, is the main opposition party in Greece. On his Facebook page, Karypidis alleged that NERIT, an acronym, is derived from the Hebrew word for candle, “ner,” which he linked to the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which commemorates the struggle of the Maccabees against the Greeks.
“Samaras is lighting the candles in the seven branched candelabra of the Jews and lighting Greece on fire after his visit to the Thessaloniki Synagogue,” Karypidis wrote, according to a ‘Jewish Telegraphic Agency’ report. “He is organizing a new Hanukkah against the Greeks.”
The synagogue visit to which Karypidis referred was an appearance Samaras made with WJC and Greek Jewish leaders at Thessaloniki’s historic Monastiriotes Synagogue in March 2013,
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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress