At the end of the 19th century, Jews constituted a plurality of the population of the Ottoman city of Salonica; this continued to be the case after 1912, when Greece seized the city and renamed it Thessaloniki. When World War I broke out, Thessaloniki played an important role as a harbor for Allied naval forces, and it endured a bombardment by Austrian planes in 1915. A single housewife roasting eggplants, however, would bring much greater destruction to the city, and especially its Jewish quarter, when an accidental fire in her kitchen got out of control. Ro Oranim writes:

On the evening of August 19, 1917, [after burning for 32 hours], the flames were finally brought under control, but the damage had been done. Forty-five percent of the population of Thessaloniki, approximately 70,000 people, were left homeless with nothing left to show for their lives . . . other than the smoking embers of the 9,500 homes that had found themselves in the destructive path of the insatiable blaze.

For the Jews of Thessaloniki, the majority population in the city, the devastating rampage of the fire proved catastrophic. Before the fire, the city was considered to be the “Jerusalem of the Balkans,” with a rich, thriving, and educated melting pot of Jews from different countries and cultures who came together to build a new life. Along with the local post offices, banks, and newspaper offices, the local Jewish schools, community centers, the Jewish college, and 32 synagogues were completely destroyed along with the entirety of the archives of the community which held records of a centuries-long history of Jewish presence in Thessaloniki. . . . [Due to the fire], many Jews were forced to emigrate and left their home for Athens, the United States, France, and the Land of Israel in the hopes of starting over. . . .

After previous fires in the city the government had simply allowed for people to rebuild, but after the great fire of 1917, the government decided to use the opportunity to . . . build a fully modernized, Hellenized city from the ashes. As part of the planning process, the government revoked the old rights and deeds to the land and the former owners were [merely] given the opportunity to bid on plots of land at auction. [Thus] the government seriously hindered the ability of the Jewish community to reestablish itself.

On the eve of World War II, Thessaloniki’s Jewish population had declined to 40 percent of the city’s total. Those who had emigrated following the fire, however, proved the most fortunate, as the Nazis would oversee the murder of some 90 percent of those who remained.

Established in 2012 and maintaining branches in Europe, North America, and Iran, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Network claims its goal is merely to show “solidarity” for imprisoned Palestinians. The organization’s leader, however, has admitted to being a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a notorious terrorist group whose most recent accomplishments include murdering a seventeen-year-old girl. As Arsen Ostrovsky and Patricia Teitelbaum point out, Samidoun is just one example of how the European Union allows Iran-backed terrorists to operate in its midst:

The PFLP is a proxy of the Iranian regime, which provides the terror group with money, training, and weapons. Samidoun . . . has a branch in Tehran. It has even held events there, under the pretext of “cultural activity,” to elicit support for operations in Europe. Its leader, Khaled Barakat, is a regular on Iran’s state [channel] PressTV, calling for violence and lauding Iran’s involvement in the region. It is utterly incomprehensible, therefore, that the EU has not yet designated Samidoun a terror group.

According to the Council of the European Union, groups and/or individuals can be added to the EU terror list on the basis of “proposals submitted by member states based on a decision by a competent authority of a member state or a third country.” In this regard, there is already a standing designation by Israel of Samidoun as a terror group and a decision of a German court finding Barakat to be a senior PFLP operative.

Given the irrefutable axis-of-terror between Samidoun, PFLP, and the Iranian regime, the EU has a duty to put Samidoun and senior Samidoun leaders on the EU terror list. It should do this not as some favor to Israel, but because otherwise it continues to turn a blind eye to a group that presents a clear and present security threat to the European Union and EU citizens.