Israeli Embassy Urges Belarusian Authorities to Review Decision Not to Initiate Criminal Case on Defilement of Israeli Cultural-informational Center

At night of 11-12 November in the memorial to Holocaust victims Iama (Pit) unknown persons drew a large swastika, the sculptural composition Last way was smeared with paint and fly-sheets of unknown Front of Aryan resistance White Russia were scattered around. At about the same time unknown persons drew a swastika and wrote Beat Jews on a wall of the Israeli Cultural-informational Center in Minsk. In the first case a criminal case for fomenting of national enmity was brought, whereas the second action was qualified as violation of presidential decree #31 of 17 January 2006 – smearing of walls.

In his interview to Belorusy i rynok newspaper the Ambassador of Israel in Belarus said: ‘It seems quite strange to us that in the law machinery of Belarus there work people who consider words like ‘Beat Jews’ and swastika drawings as smearing of walls, not as fomenting of national enmity and humiliation of national honor and dignity’. The head of the diplomatic mission emphasized that bring a criminal case on this fact would show that anti-Semitic acts that besmear the reputation of Belarus can’t stay unpunished.