Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the European Union’s decision to remove Hamas from its terror list, saying Europeans appeared to have learned nothing from the Holocaust.
“In Luxembourg, the European court removed Hamas from the list of terrorist organizations — Hamas that has committed countless war crimes and countless terror acts,” Netanyahu’s office quoted him as saying on Dec. 17. “It seems that too many in Europe, on whose soil 6 million Jews were slaughtered, have learned nothing.”
The Luxembourg-based General Court of the European Union earlier that day annulled Hamas’ inclusion on a blacklist of terrorist groups, saying the 2001 decision was based on press and Internet reports and not legal reasoning. The Dec. 17 move keeps Hamas’ assets frozen for three months pending appeals.
Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, ridiculed the court’s reasoning.
“All the judges had to do was read the Hamas Charter and then have someone translate the thousands of videos and statements released to the public in Arabic, which openly call for and glorify the murder of innocent civilians, men, women and children,” he said in a statement.
Hamas’ military wing was added to the first European Union blacklist of terrorist groups, issued in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Hamas’ political wing was blacklisted in 2003. — j. wire services