The World Jewish Congress today called on the Greek party Syriza to withdraw a candidate for a regional governorship who made anti-Semitic statements about Greece’s Prime Minister, Antonis Samaras, and the country’s new public broadcasting channel NERIT.

“Syriza should withdraw the candidacy of Theodoros Karypidis for governor of Western Macedonia because his hateful anti-Semitic conspiracy theories can have no place in public discourse in the world’s oldest democracy,” said WJC President Ronald S. Lauder. “We join Greece’s Jewish communities in calling for Karypidis’s removal from the Syriza list and from the party. Unfortunately, anti-Semitic outbursts such as this are not the reserve of extreme-right parties.”

Syriza, a radical left-wing party, is the main opposition party in Greece. On his Facebook page, Karypidis alleged that NERIT, an acronym, is derived from the Hebrew word for candle, “ner,” which he linked to the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which commemorates the struggle of the Maccabees against the Greeks. “Samaras is lighting the candles in the seven branched candelabra of the Jews and lighting Greece on fire after his visit to the Thessaloniki Synagogue,” Karypidis wrote, according to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report. “He is organizing a new Hanukkah against the Greeks.”

The synagogue visit to which Karypidis referred was an appearance Samaras made with WJC and Greek Jewish leaders at Thessaloniki’s historic Monastiriotes Synagogue in March 2013, at a ceremony commemorating the 1943 deportation of 50,000 of the city’s Jews to the Nazi death camps. It was the first such visit a Greek prime minister had made in the last 100 years.

The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS), a WJC affiliate, issued a statement that said: “We hope that the leadership of Syriza, which is a significant democratic party, will take all the necessary measures so that those who express views that incite racial hatred, intolerance, and anti-Semitism, remain on the margins of Greek society. It is our common duty to safeguard the principles of democracy, freedom and religious tolerance in the 2014 Greece, against those who serve the forces of darkness and anti-Semitic stereotypes. We hope that the party of Syriza will continue to strictly follow the policy against racism and anti-Semitism which is adopted by all democratic parties in Greece and in Europe.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)