6 May 2010

European Jews decry Israel policies

A group of over 3,000 European Jews, known as JCall, have signed a petition, speaking out against Israel, that was presented to the European Parliament in Brussels.

"We are speaking as friends of Israel and we are saying: You are going to make a mistake. You have to decide how to behave, not us," David Chemla, head of the group, told the Haaretz newspaper on Monday.

"But as friends, as Jews, we want to tell you that you are going down a wrong path," said Chemla, who moved to France after living in Israel for 10 years and serving in the IDF.

The petition, entitled "Call for Reason", considers the Israeli occupation and settlements "morally and politically wrong," noting that they "feed the unacceptable delegitimisation process that Israel currently faces abroad."

"It comes from the European Jewish communities who are profoundly attached to Israel and who want to say that current Israeli policies are both a source of anxiety for us and a source of insecurity in the long term for Israel as well as a source of injustice for the Palestinians," Patrick Krugman, a French lawyer and spokesman for the group, said.

The document calls on the EU and the US to pressure both parties "and help them achieve a reasonable and rapid solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict."

It says that systematic support of Israeli government policy is dangerous.

The petition's signatories include Bernard-Henri Levy and Alain Finkielkraut, French philosophers, as well as Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the student protests in the 1960s and a politician in the European parliament. [...]

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