The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece expresses the outrage and the resentment of the Greek Jews over the desecration of a tomb in the Jewish Cemetery of Ioannina. The tomb was found vandalized on August 5, 2021, with its upper tombstone removed and marble fragments scattered around it.

We strongly condemn this shameful act  of sacrilege which indicates that the hatred of the perpetrators leads to villainous manifestations of violence and fanaticism.

The Jewish cemetery of Ioannina has become the target of antisemitic hatred and has been repeatedly vandalized in the past.

We call upon the competent authorities to arrest the perpetrators and bring them to justice. The Jewish cemetery of Ioannina is not only the resting place of the Jews of the city, it is a place of memory and cultural heritage for the city of Ioannina as a whole.

Athens, August 6, 2021

Central Board of Jewish Communities on Greece 

“If the Arabs put their weapons down, then there will be no war- if the Israelis put their weapons down, then there will be no Israel”. This saying is attributed to Golda Meir, Israel’s first female Prime Minister, when the Jewish state was surrounded by the Arab states that pursued its destruction, with a series of wars against it, since the first day of its independence, on May 14^th 1948.

Unfortunately, the same phrase continues to be relevant in 2021. It could be seen as a communication ploy by the Israelis in order to gain the sympathy of the public. But let us see if this applies in the field of the long-running confrontation, which today focuses on the conflict between Israel and Hamas on its southern border and with Hezbollah and Syria in the north.

If Hamas was to abandon the attrition war against Israel, does anyone doubt that the blockade of the Gaza Strip would have been lifted the very next day? Israel does not have any territorial claims over this strip of land, on the contrary Israel pulled out in 2005, hoping that the Palestinian Authority would have been able to take control of the region and isolate the Islamic movements of Hamas and Jihad. The disarmament of Gaza would be a breath of fresh air for its afflicted population, a new page of growth and prosperity, a new road that would eventually lead to its union with the West Bank of the Jordan River, and in the establishment of a Palestinian state next to the State of Israel with secure borders. Free distribution and movement of people and goods, investments and improvement of the living standards, the end of the bloodshed – this is what the disarmament of Gaza would mean.