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Europeans must protect Palestinian children from destructive path, Knesset speaker tells EU president

“You have the power to influence and [protect] the younger generation from incitement in schools that is carried out with your money,” Knesset Speaker Levy told EU Parliament president Roberta Metsola. 

By TPS

The Knesset held a special sitting last week in honor of European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, who is on her first official visit outside the European Union states since being appointed to her post in January 2022, the youngest woman to fill this high post.

Prior to Metsola’s address to the Plenum, Knesset Speaker MK Mickey Levy delivered a speech, saying her decision to visit Israel and address the Knesset was a “great honor” and “another expression of the good and strong relations the State of Israel has with the institutions of the European Union.”

Addressing the recent wave of terror attacks in Israel, which claimed 19 lives, Levy referred to the donations the Palestinian Authority (PA) receives from the European Union.

“This terror wave, like many before it, is the result of hatred and incitement that are disseminated against the State of Israel. It starts with the textbooks in the Palestinian Authority, which erase the existence of the State of Israel; anti-Semitic lies about Jews are spread, and there are explicit calls for violence; it continues with the money the Palestinian Authority pays terrorists for killing innocent people, while it receives donations and large amounts of money, also from the European Union; all the way to incitement and lies that are disseminated online – supposedly that the State Israel is harming the holy sites,” he said.

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“These acts and lies fan the flames, spread hatred, create an atmosphere of violence, and eventually bring about a wave of terror.

“The State of Israel expects from you, Madam President, and from all the members of the European Union, to stand by it in the face of these dangerous phenomena, which fuel terror and murder and will never allow us to bring about a solution to the conflict. You have the power to influence and [protect] the younger generation from incitement in schools that is carried out with your money.”

The European Union has passed a law that prohibits the use of its funds to fund the promotion of hate in the PA curriculum.

The PA educational system is notorious for the way it negatively influences the minds of its students and educates them to hate Israel and Israelis through terror-promoting messages. They use cultural mediums such as school plays, sports events and summer camps for this objective.

In line with this policy, the PA has named at least 28 schools after terrorists and at least three schools after Nazi collaborators. Significantly, the PA Ministry of Education is directly and solely responsible for naming schools.

‘To be antisemitic is to be anti-European’

Metsola said during her address to the Knesset that “it pains me to say that today we are seeing anti-Semitism on the rise. We know that this is a warning sign for humanity, and it matters to all of us. I will not be ambiguous: to be anti-Semitic is to be anti-European.”

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Responding, Levy said that “the ancient plague of anti-Semitism has not disappeared from the world. It is spreading and exposing its ugly face time after time, and we must keep fighting it and the dangers it presents.”

He said he was “glad to hear in the speech you delivered following your election that you are committed to the fight against the anti-Semitism plague. Over the past few years, anti-Semitism has been disguising itself as criticism of the State of Israel’s actions.

“I want to make it clear: It is legitimate to criticize the State of Israel and its government, but when a different standard is demanded from the state of the Jewish people – and only from the state of the Jewish people – in relation to its ability to protect itself from terror attacks, that is anti-Semitism. When BDS organizations reject the right of the State of Israel to exist as a Jewish state and undermine the very right of the Jewish people to its own state, this is anti-Semitism. And we expect our friends to say this explicitly and to fight it.”   ​