Gold Protests EU Ovation for Abbas Hate Speech

Israel’s Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold has sent a letter of protest to the European Parliament over its standing ovation for a speech by Mahmoud Abbas, despite its anti-Semitic poisoning-wells libel.

In the letter to Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, Gold expressed his “great dismay” at the reception the speech was accorded, The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday.

“As he completed his hateful address, Abbas received a standing ovation from European representatives in the audience,” he wrote. “There was no effort to protest Abbas’ outrageous language after it was delivered. This is unacceptable.”

Gold wrote that “peace can only be built if incitement and hatred are formally rejected by the international community. There is no place for tolerance of any kind for this language, must less for its applause.”
“How on earth can European parliamentarians applaud a statement that comes out of the deepest anti-Semitic mythology of the Middle Ages?“ Gold asked, though he acknowledged that the ovation was for the speech overall, not specifically the accusation that rabbis were urging the poisoning of the Palestinian water supply.

Abbas later issued a retraction.