Greek Prime Minister: No Change in Relations with Israel
February 6, 2015Greece’s new Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, has assured the Israeli ambassador to Athens that Greek-Israeli relations will not change following his election, Kol Yisrael radio reported on Friday.
According to the report, Tsipras met this week with the Ambassador, Irit Ben-Abba, and made clear to her that his government is determined to combat anti-Semitism in Greece and that it will continue to prosecute the leaders of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party.
The meeting comes amid concerns among Greek Jews that the election of Tsipras could jeopardize the relationship between Israel and Greece.
Two members of Tsipras’s Syriza party had been aboard the Mavi Marmara flotilla which attempted to break the “siege on Gaza” in 2010.
“No doubt we will see a big change in the state of diplomatic relations between Greece and Israel, as well as the situation in Greece,” a Jewish community member told Arutz Sheva following the election in the country.
One of Tsipras’s coalition partners is Panos Kammenos, leader of the nationalist Independent Greeks party. Kammenos has been accused of anti-Semitism after he alleged in December that Jews enjoyed preferential tax treatment in Greece.
The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, which came in third in the elections with only 6.4% of the vote, remains a concern for Greek Jews.
Golden Dawn has become notorious for its blatant anti-Semitic and xenophobic rhetoric, openly displaying copies of “Mein Kampf,” as well as other works on Greek racial superiority at party headquarters.
The party’s leader Nikos Michaloliakos has claimed that Nazi concentration camps did not use ovens and gas chambers to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust.
Under the previous government, the party has been the subject of a crackdown by Greek authorities, with several of its leaders being arrested and tried.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)
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