(JTA) — An Egyptian activist’s nomination for a prestigious European honor was withdrawn because he has called for the mass killing of Israelis.
The withdrawal of Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s nomination for the Sakharov Prize was announced Wednesday by the coalition of European Parliament left-wing parties that had nominated him.
“It emerges that one of the bloggers we proposed, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who was a victim of repression in Egypt and jailed several times, called for the murder ‘of a critical number of Israelis’ in a tweet in 2012. We did not avail of this information when we put forward his candidacy,” Gabi Zimmer, president of the GUE/NGL Group in the European Parliament, wrote.
Named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought was established in 1988 by the European Parliament in order to honor individuals or groups striving to defend human rights and freedom of thought and expression.
“We cannot and will not tolerate such behavior,” Zimmer wrote in her statement about Abd El-Fattah’s 2012 remark about Israelis. “This call goes against all our principles as well as the criteria for nomination for the Sakharov Prize. Our group has always favored debate and political confrontation between peoples, including the Israeli people.”
In Egypt, El-Fattah is about to be tried under laws banning certain kinds of protest. In addition, he appealed a separate verdict of a month in prison for “insulting the interior ministry,” legal sources told Ahram Online.
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