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Syria Reiterates Israeli "Nazism" Charges
MADRID, May 3 (News Agencies) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday reasserted that "the racism of the Israelis is worse than Nazism," charging that an unnamed Israeli minister had called for Palestinians to be exterminated.
Assad, speaking alongside Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, also said that Israel had "no real will to reach a peace agreement with the Arabs."
He further expressed skepticism about an attempt by Egypt and Jordan to craft a ceasefire agreement to end the current round of deadly violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Assad's statement about Nazism came in response to a question asking him whether he stood by a similar comment he had made at an Arab summit in Amman on March 27th.
On that occasion the Syrian leader said that Israeli society was "more racist than the Nazis."
Assad defended his statement, adding that "an Israeli minister said that the solution for Palestine was to empty it of Palestinians to preserve the purity of the Jewish people."
"The same person demanded that Israeli Arabs should be marked with a yellow badge," he said.
"That same person asked the Israeli government to exterminate Arabs and so I leave it to you to judge whether this is Nazism," said Assad.
The Syrian leader did not identify the Israeli official who made the remarks.
His reference to yellow badges apparently related to the yellow stars that the Nazis forced Jews to wear in European countries they occupied during World War II.
At the press conference, Aznar reaffirmed his concern over the situation in the Middle East, calling for "a complete halt to acts of violence and the implementation of confidence-building measures."
The Spanish leader had earlier held several hours of talks with Assad, who arrived in Madrid on Wednesday and is due to leave for home on Friday.
Assad, who is making his first official visit to Europe since he took over from his late father in July last year, was later due to travel to the southern city of Cordoba, formerly a major Muslim center.
There he is due to visit an exhibition of art from the Ummayad period, which stretched from the eighth to the 11th century.
His wife, Asma al-Assad, accompanied the Syrian leader on the trip.
Meanwhile in Egypt, journalists on Thursday rejected Israeli charges of "anti-Semitism," saying they would be undeterred in pursuing their "mission" to fight injustice against the Palestinians.
"Israel opened fire on Egyptian journalists on the pretext that they are anti-Semitic, but this new Israeli campaign does not prevent [the journalists] from doing their duty to support the Palestinian people," they said in a statement.
The Egyptian Journalists Association issued the statement to mark World Press Freedom Day sponsored by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Yehuda Lancry, told the U.N. Security Council on April 23rd that racism and anti-Semitism were prevalent in the Egyptian and Arab media.
"The Egyptian press has also been a major promoter of anti-Semitic diatribes and cartoons that are disturbingly reminiscent of the anti-Jewish propaganda once prevalent in Nazi Germany," Lancry said.
But Egyptian journalists said, "They were and will remain loyal to their mission to fight aggression and aggressors and defend the Palestinian people and their right to return and to build their independent state."
On Monday, Israel's ambassador to Egypt, Zvi Mazel, sent the Egyptian government an official protest over a newspaper photograph showing Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres dressed as a Nazi.
During a visit here Sunday, Peres and his Egyptian counterpart, Amr Mussa, traded accusations over the photo.
"I think that it hurts me, but it hurts more the paper," Peres said after an Israeli journalist asked him to comment on the photo.
An angry Mussa jumped into the debate and suggested there was Israeli hypocrisy, as he recalled remarks from Israeli rabbis who denounced Arabs as snakes and cockroaches and who said God had regretted creating them.
Both Mussa and Peres agreed such hatred had to stop.
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