The pic is from a Greek newspaper's website.
It is reported also that the second attack caused important damage in the Synagogue, destroying almost two thousands books and causing serious damage in the wooden roof of building.
Posted on 01/22/2010 7:54:52 AM PST by csvset
Two British men have been arrested in connection with arson attacks on a medieval synagogue on the Greek island of Crete.
The two men, who have not been named, are being held in the coastal town of Hania.
A Greek man is also in custody and two Americans are being sought.
Hania's Etz Hayyim synagogue has been targeted by arsonists twice this month. The UK embassy in Athens said two British men had been arrested on charges of arson.
The BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens said, according to the police, the men are aged 23 and 33 and are nightclub waiters in the seaside town.
Jewish monument Police said they were arrested after a 24-year-old Greek man confessed, our correspondent added. The British men have been offered assistance by consul staff on the island.
The first attack happened on 5 January but it was the second attack on Saturday 16 January which caused extensive damage to the synagogue's wooden structure, its archive material and technical equipment.
The Etz Hayyim synagogue, which dates back to the Middle Ages, is the only surviving Jewish monument on the island of Crete.
It was restored in the late 1990s and has since become a memorial and a tourist attraction.
By 1941 most of the Jews in Crete had emigrated, leaving only the Hania community of about 270 people.
They were deported by Nazi invaders in 1944 and died when their ship was bombed and sunk by the Allies.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
The pic is from a Greek newspaper's website.
It is reported also that the second attack caused important damage in the Synagogue, destroying almost two thousands books and causing serious damage in the wooden roof of building.
By chance do they have British names, like Graham or Nigel?
Horrible. :(
I didn’t realize there were Amish in the UK!
“Britons? John Smith and Richard Browne? Somehow I doubt that.”
I have been digging and the international media is scrupulously avoiding printing the names or anything else indicating the ethnicity or religion of the alleged perpetrators.
I wonder why...
I understand GB is exporting the Amish faith now. I’ll have to research their views regarding the Jews.
“Where’s my Nigel?” (very obscure!)
oh, good point. I was thinking skinheads, but you could be right.
2. Mohammad
“I was thinking skinheads, but you could be right.”
Let us consider the relative likelihood of Greeks tolerating skinheads vs them tolerating extremists of a certain “other” demographic.
I daresay if they were skinheads or the like, the press would not have been so hesitant about naming the perpetrators’ backgrounds, don’t you?
Skinheads could be a possibility. I guess we’ll have to wait and find out.
It will please me to no end to see a mosque burning.
Sorry muzzies, but that’s what it’s come to.
Please go away and take your moon god with you.
Religious tolerance is fundamental to a civil society. No faith or belief (I draw the line at interspecies sex and child molestation) should be attacked or persecuted.
Radical Islam is about the only sect that consistently violates the rule of tolerance and is a wrong path. We who don’t like radical Islam should not stoop to that level, we have to stick with fair treatment. I don’t mean we should be blinded by political correctness at the airport check in line, we have the right to profile and take preventative steps for the survival of our civil society.
Those who sleep through the night while a synagogue burns in their own town are a metaphor for Greece's attitude to anti-Semitism. The fundamental problem with Greek anti-Semitism is not that it is rampant. It is that in a country of 11 million with just 5,000 Jews, few Greeks care to resist it. Greece suffers from a lack of moral, religious and social leadership denouncing the embarrassment of anti-Semitism, be it vandalism or the now banal comparison of Israel with the Nazis in the national media.
The indifference of many Greeks is unsurprising. The official version of the history ensures that few know of the Jewish component of Greece's past. Many Greeks do not know that their second largest city, Salonika, had a Jewish majority for most of its modern history. Instead of the Holocaust being treated as a moment for moral and historical reflection, it is portrayed as an opportunity for national self-congratulation because of the rescue of a small number of Greek Jews. The genuine heroism of Greek Christians who saved Greek Jews from the Nazis in such places as Zakynthos and Athens is used to obscure the collaboration and indifference that helped condemn tens of thousands of Greek Jews to death in Salonika and northern Greece.
This ignorance has been reinforced by historians, Greek and foreign alike, who have largely skated over collaboration during the Holocaust. Like the Greek government, historians prefer to emphasize the rescue of Jews rather than prompt an examination of the often shameful and ambiguous stance that too many Greeks took during the Second World War. The leaders of Greece's barely 5,000 strong Jewish community take a similar historical approach for obvious political reasons. Over sixty years after the Holocaust, myths prevail over scholarship.
Most Greek politicians are complicit, failing to take anti-Semitism seriously as a local problem. With the admirable exception of former conservative prime minister Constantine Mitsotakis, who has vigorously condemned the arson attacks, Greek politicians have responded lethargically to the latest incidents. This is despite the tremendous and commendable efforts of such organizations of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which has sought to educate Greek opinion leaders. The AJC's efforts have convinced some Greek politicians that their country is diminished by ignoring anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, too many still regard anti-Semitism as a public relations issue that affects Greece's image abroad, rather a moral question bearing upon its social sanity at home.
Very occasionally, some principled citizens express their disgust, but national figures generally do not bother to support these small local initiatives. In December 2009 hundreds of non-Jews in Ionnina formed a human chain around the Jewish cemetery there to protest its repeated desecration. In Salonika a few young historians have begun to ask questions about the massive theft of Jewish property during the war.
What these handfuls of activists have understood is that anti-Semitism can be as harmful to non-Jews as to Jews. Only a handful of Jews remain in Chania and Ioannina. These are places more of Jewish memory than of community—over 90% of Chania and Ioannina's Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. The non-Jews in these towns now have to live with the lingering hate and immoral ambivalence that over sixty years ago allowed so many Greek Jews to be taken away to their deaths.
I was familiar with CIA being completely incompetent and having problems coordinating with other secret services but as it seems they can't even organise a proper act of provocation anymore.
As expected a few hours after the attack the state department issued a warning about widespread anti-Semitism in Greece.
I was familiar with CIA being completely incompetent and having problems coordinating with other secret services but as it seems they can't even organise a proper act of provocation anymore.
As expected a few hours after the attack the state department issued a warning about widespread anti-Semitism in Greece.
Still no names have been released on the suspects. Very curious.
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