The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has condemned the European Union (EU) for the decision of an EU court to remove Hamas, the murderous terrorist organization that calls in its Charter for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews, from the EU terrorist list.

The EU External Action Service, its foreign policy arm, has said that the decision was technical rather than political and would likely be repealed (Herb Keinon, ‘EU: Decision on removal of Hamas from terror list is legal not political,’ Jerusalem Post, December 17, 2014).

This explanation has not satisfied the Israeli government and the ZOA likewise dismisses it as weak, insufficient and irrelevant.

The ZOA believes that the evidence of Hamas being a terrorist organization is so abundant and which includes literally dozens of documented suicide bombings and other acts of slaughter leading to the murder and maiming of thousands of Israelis over the years, precludes any “technical” excuse for the removal of Hamas from the EU terrorism list.

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “This is an act of Jew-hatred which legitimizes and gives credibility to Hamas, an Islamic Nazi-like terror group, publicly committed to murdering Jews and destroying the Jewish state. It is inexcusable and beyond the pale that the EU Court could make a determination that a terrorist organization that calls for the global murder of Jews in its founding documents and which has actually already murdered and maimed thousands of Jews, should be removed from the EU terrorism list.

“It is irrelevant that the EU External Action Service has stated that EU policy remains at present unchanged. Steps like the court decision are precisely the sort of softening-up steps which precede a political decision to legitimize a terrorist group. Even if explicitly repealed or over-ruled, this decision causes grave damage because it is of inestimable value to a terrorist group that to this very day adheres to a policy of destroying Israel and murdering Jews.

“Only last week, Hamas senior official Mahmoud Al-Zahar said: ‘Anyone who thinks that we will recognize the existence of the [Zionist] entity or the 1967 borders is deluded … Palestine stretches from the Egyptian border in the south to Lebanon in the north, and from Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean sea in the west, and we will never recognize anything less than this.’

“It is incredible and disgusting that the EU Court could take a decision like this about a brazenly genocidal organization whose leaders openly avow its terrorist and criminal aims, especially at at time of rising anti-Semitism endangering Europe’s dwindling Jewish communities.

“Last week, I attended and delivered the keynote address at a conference on anti-Semitism in Brussels. The conference had to be held under tight security. Why? Because Europe is teeming with people seeking to murder Jews. It is simply unsafe for a large Jewish audience to publicly convene in Brussels without tight security. And now the EU Court thinks it is acceptable to legitimize a Jew-killing terrorist movement by removing it from the EU terrorism list?

“I find it remarkable that the EU has itself indulged in Jew-hatred by encouraging anti-Semitism with this decision. Removing Hamas from the EU terrorism list shows that there is no penalty to pay for genocidal anti-Semitism. Moreover, anti-Semitism is often blind. The EU Court has ignored the fact that Hamas and other jihadist terrorist groups endanger non-Jewish Europeans, not just Jews. 

“The Israeli Government is right to regard the EU reaction as inadequate. The EU must do the best it can to undo the damage it has just done by publicly apologizing for the EU Court decision, repudiating it and unambiguously reinstating Hamas on the EU terrorism list.”