(JTA)
– The Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed “disgust and
outrage” over the front-page of a Lithuanian tabloid
newspaper that it termed a “blatantly anti-Semitic attack
on the Lithuanian Jewish community.”
The front page of the Dec. 21 edition of the Lithuanian tabloid “Vakaro Zionios”
bore a large picture of the Vilnius Chabad Rabbi, Sholom-Ber
Krinsky, in his Chasidic garb and gesturing with a finger.
Above the photo ran a huge headline reading “Zydai” (the
Jews) and, in much smaller print “see no need to pay
their Social Security taxes.”
The caption and an article
on inside pages singled out the Chabad school as one
of several offenders. The article also listed the “top
ten” offenders delinquent in their payments, and no Jewish
organization figured in the list.
The front page headline, caption
and photograph “clearly create the mistaken impression
that it is the Jews who are robbing the Lithuanian people,”
Wiesenthal Center Israel director Efraim Zuroff said
in a statement Wednesday. “This type of blatant anti-Semitic
lie is particularly reprehensible and dangerous in financially-beleaguered
Lithuania and what is even more shocking is that this
anti-Semitic incitement, which threatens the entire Lithuanian
Jewish community, has not elicited a single negative
reaction from any government official, religious leader
or foreign ambassador.”
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