“Everything that happens today in the world has to do with the Zionists,” he said. “American Jews are behind the world economic crisis that has hit Greece also.”

The composer also warned "we're in danger! Zionism and it leaders are here, meeting in our country! "This is no laughing matter.”

For good measure, he added that Zionism controls “America and the banking system that Greece is now a victim of."

Theodorakis also criticized Prime Minister George Papandreou for seeking closer ties with Israel, claiming that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, is guilty of “war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza.”

Theodorakis’ inflammatory comments outraged The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which demanded that the International Music Council (IMC) strip the composer of the IMC-UNESCO International Music Prize he won six years ago.

In a letter to the IMC, The Wiesenthal Center stated that Theodorakis "offends all Jews, now including the identity of many of his predecessor awardees, such as Leonard Bernstein, Daniel Barenboim, Benny Goodman, Gidon Kremer, Yehudi Menuhin."

In response to the gathering storm, Kyriakos Loukakis, the Greek ambassador to Israel, wrote in an e-mail to The Jerusalem Post: “I would like to inform you that, as a matter of principle, we do not comment on opinions of private citizens. Secondly, the Greek government has always opposed extreme views. Thirdly, relations between Greece and Israel are very friendly.”

However, anti-Semitism remains a problem in Greece (as well as racism against waves of immigrants from the Middle East and Asia who have arrived in recent years).

During World War II, at least 60,000 Greek Jews were rounded up by the Nazis and sent to death camps Auschwitz and Treblinka. Only about 6,000 Jews remain in the country now.

Greece did not even formally recognize Israel until 1991.

Since the Greek government dedicated a Holocaust Memorial in Athens last May, synagogues and Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized and the Jewish Museum of Greece was daubed with swastikas.

Last month, a far-right member of Athens City Council Nikolaos Michaloliakos, caused a scandal when he allegedly gave a Nazi salute during a heated argument in a municipal meeting.

Michaloliakos is leader of Chrysi Avgi party, which has reportedly been involved with violent attacks against immigrants in Athens.

Last December, an important Greek Orthodox priest, The Metropolite of Piraeus Seraphim, also blamed the Jews for being responsible for the country’s economic crisis (he was quickly condemned by the Athens government).

Another prominent Greek anti-Semite is Konstantinos Plevris, an attorney and Holocaust denier who was sentenced to prison in 2007 for inciting racial hatred with a book entitled "Jews: The Whole Truth." His sentence was later overturned.

David Saltiel, president of the Central Jewish Board of Greece, told the Los Angeles Times: "We've always been under siege by fanatics and far-right political movements here. The fear now is that anti-Semitism will get worse with the financial crisis."

Meanwhile, trade between Greece and Israel amounted to about $500-million last year and is poised to increase. The Israelis are exporting computer software, electronic and medical equipment, while the Greeks export raw materials and agricultural products.

http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/114612/20110221/greece-israel.htm

Anti-Semitism flares in Greece

Nearly 70 years later, Athens, one of the last European capitals to commemorate those who perished at the hands of Nazi forces, finally has a Holocaust memorial.

But since its dedication in May, synagogues have been targeted, Jewish cemeteries desecrated, Holocaust monuments elsewhere in Greece vandalized and the Jewish Museum of Greece, in the capital, defaced with swastikas. What's more, an alarming chunk of Athenians in November supported the election of a neo-Nazi candidate to the capital's city council.

The ocher-colored marble sculpture in the shape of a broken-up Star of David, its triangular tips dismembered, points toward the 29 Greek cities from which at least 60,000 Jews were gathered and deported to the Auschwitz and Treblinka extermination camps between 1943 and 1944.

The deaths of these victims are memorialized amid striking serenity. Set within a patch of olive and almond trees, and its pieces embedded alongside an herb garden of lavender, marjoram and thyme, the sculpture symbolizes survival and healing. Or is supposed to.

Although anti-Semitism is an old and shameful part of Europe's history, Greece, more than many European nations, continues to wrestle with strong anti-Jewish feelings.

Such sentiments have been revived amid the angst and anger of the Greek economic crisis.

"We've always been under siege by fanatics and far-right political movements here," said David Saltiel, president of the Central Jewish Board of Greece, which represents the country's 6,000 Jews. "The fear now is that anti-Semitism will get worse with the financial crisis."

Well into the nation's worst recession in 17 years, the government in Athens was thrown a bailout lifeline of $146 billion by the European Union and International Monetary Fund last year in exchange for draconian reforms and cost-cutting measures designed to slash the country's yawning budget deficit, equal to 15.4% of gross domestic product.

The measures are thought to be responsible for a surge in hate crimes against minorities by Greeks venting rage over rising unemployment and immigration.

Strapped for cash, the Socialist government has been aggressively wooing rich sovereign investors, tapping into deep pockets in China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and, now, Israel.

This month, scores of Jewish American leaders arrived in Athens to advance Israel's revived relations with Greece, but not all here were happy to see yarmulkes on Greek streets, much less in the offices of senior politicians, including the country's president.

"We're in danger!" warned renowned composer Mikis Theodorakis, who in the course of a television interview openly conceded that he was an anti-Semite. "Zionism and it leaders are here, meeting in our country!

"This is no laughing matter," he railed, berating Zionism and its "control over America and the banking system that Greece is now a victim of."

Such beliefs aren't new. Nor are they just Greek.

What's different in Greece is the level of tolerance for anti-Semitism.

"There is zip, zilch, zero reaction to any semblance of anti-Semitism," said human rights activist Panayotes Dimitras, "leaving the door wide-open for extremists to come in and exploit this phobic society, more so now, in this time of crisis."

Some critics fault the country's Jewish organizations for shunning quick public reaction to attacks; others point to the attitude of some church prelates and to Greece's failure to come to terms with its once-multicultural identity and harrowing past.

"Whatever the cause," said Anna Stai of the Anti-Nazi Initiative, "Greece can no longer sit in denial about its anti-Jewish feelings. It's dangerous."

Take the case of Konstantinos Plevris.

A self-avowed anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, the 70-year-old lawyer was sentenced to 14 months in prison in 2007 for inciting racial hatred with his book "Jews: The Whole Truth." In 2009, the decision was overturned, and a year later, the Supreme Court upheld Plevris' acquittal, arguing that his "scientific work" did not target the Jews as a race or religion but, rather, their "conspiratorial pursuit of global domination," according to a copy of the 2010 decision.

World Jewish organizations kicked up a storm in protest, but in Athens, mainstream news media offered scant coverage of the ruling and the government remained silent.

Two weeks ago, Stai and other members of the Anti-Nazi Initiative traveled to Brussels to lobby for support from European lawmakers.

"There is such a strong undercurrent of anti-Jewish feeling in Greece," said Dimitras, the human rights activist, "that any hope of drawing attention to the problem must now come from outside pressure."

Others say there is still hope within.

"We're at a turning point as a society today," said Zanet I. Battinou, standing before a scale model of the Holocaust memorial showcased at the Jewish Museum of Greece, which she directs. "If we found the courage to take on responsibility for the financial mess we find ourselves in today, then we can take responsibility in facing down one of our worst traits."

If anything, she quips, "we're running out of scapegoats."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-greece-anti-semiti...