Update:  (January 30, 2007) The so-called "commemoration of the Palestinian genocide" in Ciempozuelos was cancelled following a public outcry and the intervention of the Spanish Foreign Ministry.

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New York, NY, January 26, 2007 ... The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) strongly condemned the decision of the Mayor of a Spanish city to hold a "commemoration of the Palestinian genocide" on the day of Spain's official Holocaust memorial ceremonies, and called it "shameful."

In a letter to Susana León Gordillo, the Mayor of Ciempozuelos, a city near Madrid, and a member of the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), ADL leaders, Glen S. Lewy, National Chair and Abraham H. Foxman, National Director said, "Your attempt to equate the industrialized mass murder of six million Jewish women, men and children, as well as millions of others, with the situation of the Palestinian people is shameful. It reflects an extremely disturbing tendency, which is particularly visible in Europe, to dishonor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and de-legitimize the State of Israel by seeking to eradicate the clear moral difference between the Holocaust and the loss of Palestinian lives as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"Applying the term 'genocide' to the Arab-Israeli conflict encourages hatred toward the State of Israel and deliberately insults those of us, both Jews and non-Jews, who seek to solemnly commemorate the victims of the Nazi campaign of slaughter."

The League urged the Mayor to issue an apology for this "deplorable decision and to stand with the people of Spain in their commitment to respecting Holocaust commemoration day in the future."

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.