EU Supports Palestinian TV's Anti-Semitic Hate Sermons

The EU Commission has had a lot of bad publicity following claims by Communications Commissioner Margot Wallström that to reject ever-closer supranational cooperation is to follow "the old road" to another holocaust.

The Commissioner and other supporters of the EU's draft constitutional document blithely bandy about such unhistorical and inflammatory claims to support their case. They think they can "scare" voters into voting for the draft document. But the effect, certainly in Holland, appears to be counterproductive. Voters don't like being treated like idiots and will usually punish those who do so.

But there is another aspect to the Commission's work, in this context, which hasn't been commented on with anything like the same intensity, although it is far more shocking and has a far directer connection to a potential revival of the Holocaust.

EU taxpayers' money (about 7.5 million euros per month) is being used to support the Palestinian Authority, which, in turn, funds Palestinian Authority TV. On Friday 13th May 2005, as noted here, this station broadcast a "sermon" by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris, part of which said:

"... the Jews are a virus resembling AIDs... the day will come when everything will be relieved of the Jews."

The EU taxpayer is thus paying this station which denounces Jews and foments their destruction. This blog, and millions of decent European taxpayers, will never accept this abuse of our money, and we immediately call on Margot Wallström to answer the following questions:

1. What is her/the Commission's position regarding this misuse of European taxpayers' money?

2. What steps will she/the Commission take to ensure that this abuse stops?

It is insupportable that the EU wants to augment its power when its existing institutions, within the model it wishes to perpetuate, are in such a mess. This horrible anti-semitic angle is not the only scandal: the EU budget has not been passed for ten years, and its anti-fraud office (OLAF) is itself being accused of fraud by the European ombudsman! Added to which, the EU wants to lift the arms embargo on China, another move with no obvious rationale and certainly no popular support. The system, in short, is rotten to the core.

Far from this being the right time to approve the draft constitutional document, this is the time to reconsider precisely which tasks the EU's institutions should be set, and how they should be monitored so that these endless scandals come to an end.