The Diplomat
The anti-Semitic accusations made last 13th at a rally in Madrid in homage to the Blue Division have provoked the reaction of the Israeli Embassy in Spain and the Jewish communities in our country.
Thus, the Israeli ambassador, Rodica Radian-Gordon, wrote on her Twitter account: “The anti-Semitic proclamations uttered at the tribute in Madrid to the Blue Division are repugnant and have no place in a democratic society”.
“Education and learning the truth about history is the way to prevent the past from repeating itself,” the ambassador added.
For its part, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE), chaired since May last year by Isaac Benzaquén, issued a statement describing as “inadmissible” that the accusations made in this act remain unpunished “in a State of full rights and solid democracy such as Spain”.
Therefore, they demand that the Hate Crimes Prosecutor’s Office investigate ex officio what happened and, if necessary, prosecute and condemn the events that took place in the aforementioned act. It was a march in which some 300 people participated to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the battle of Krasny Bor, fought by Nazi Germany together with the Blue Division against the Soviet Union.
The march concluded at the Almudena cemetery, where one of the participants, named Isabel Medina Peralta, dressed in a blue Falangist shirt, took the floor and affirmed, among other things, that “the enemy will always be the same, although with different masks: the Jew”. “Nothing is more accurate -he insisted- than this statement: the Jew is the guilty one, the Jew is the guilty one and the Blue Division fought for it”.
The Federation of Jewish Communities recalls that Spain endorsed in July 2020 its adherence to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which considers as anti-Semitism to accuse Jews as a collective of being guilty of an event.
For this reason, the FCJE announced that, together with the Platform against Antisemitism and the Movement against Intolerance, they will act “with all the legal tools” at their disposal.
