In a statement issued at the launch in Jerusalem of the 2009 Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism, the Association of Lithuanian Jews called on the Forum ‘to forcefully condemn the Prague Declaration, which seeks to create a false symmetry between Nazi and Soviet crimes, and is an attempt to obfuscate and diminish the Holocaust by various means (including an attempt to redefine genocide)’. The statement describes the Prague Declaration as ‘a prime symptom of a new and dangerous strain of antisemitism that seeks to distort the history of the Holocaust and to confuse perpetrators and victims’.

Jerusalem Post coverage: 17 Dec 2009 and 18 Dec 2009.

The Prague Declaration was proclaimed in June 2008 as the de facto manifesto of the ‘Double Genocide’ movement. It and its associated resolutions have been widely condemned by human rights activists, including British MP John Mann, chairman of the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism. MP John Mann was honored by Israel’s Knesset on 16 Dec 2009. He spoke out forcefully at the Global Forum against the Prague Declaration and various ultranationalist campaigns in Eastern Europe to declare ‘equivalence’ of Nazi and Soviet crimes.