On January 23, Sheikh Mohammad al-Issa, the chairman of the influential Saudi Arabia-based Muslim World Society, led a group of Islamic clergymen on a visit to Auschwitz. The visit, writes Edy Cohen, suggests a tectonic shift in Muslim attitudes toward the Holocaust, which has often been downplayed or altogether denied. More typical is the reaction of the Lebanese journalists who filed a complaint in court about a prominent Shiite cleric from their country who joined Issa—accusing him of “contact with the Zionist enemy, contempt for the Islamic religion, and inciting war between Muslims.” Cohen explains:

Many if not most Arabs are only able to see the genocide [of European Jews] in terms of the problems it ostensibly caused Arabs, namely the Palestinians’ loss of the “country” they never had. . . . One of the first cases of public Arab denial of the Holocaust was when [Arab countries] put pressure on West Germany over the issue of German reparations to Holocaust survivors and the state of Israel. In a rare show of unity, the Arab states demanded that Bonn not compensate individual Jews or Israel but should instead give the money to the Palestinians. The Arab League even threatened to sever ties with and boycott West Germany, claiming the Jews were responsible for World War II.

The . . . most common theory belongs to the school of Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority. In . . . his doctoral dissertation, [he] claimed that the Holocaust was a Jewish conspiracy that began when Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, collaborated with Hitler to kill as many Jews as he could in order to justify the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel.

Sadly, in the absence of proper education, many Arabs believe at least one of these conspiracy theories. In Arab countries, not only do [schools] not teach the truth about the Holocaust, but they encourage suspicion toward all books and histories that deal with the subject. The Muslim delegation’s visit to the death camp was considered impossible just a few years ago. There is no doubt that the new openness in Israel’s relationships with the Gulf States contributed to making this historic event a reality.

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.