Bill White, U.S. ambassador to Belgium, echoed what Jewish leaders have been saying on Thursday in an official statement posted to the embassy’s website.
“Two authoritative declarations have now set the record straight once and for all: Moshe Aryeh Friedman is not a recognized rabbi and represents no Jewish community,” the U.S. envoy stated.
White cited former Vienna chief rabbi Chaim Eisenberg, who “has clarified that he never verified or endorsed Mr. Friedman’s rabbinical credentials, ordination or status.”
And Belgian and European Jewish groups have “jointly and unequivocally declared that Mr. Friedman does not represent any of their organizations, leads no recognized synagogue or congregation and holds no recognized rabbinical position within Belgium’s official Jewish community,” the U.S. ambassador stated.
An anti-Zionist activist, Friedman initiated a criminal case against three Jewish mohels, ritual circumcisers, in Antwerp.
“There is no ambiguity,” the U.S. ambassador stated. “Mr. Friedman has no mandate whatsoever to speak on behalf of the Jewish community. He speaks only for himself.”
“I strongly urge journalists, politicians and public institutions to stop attributing to him a religious or representative authority that he does not possess,” the envoy stated. “His self-assigned titles should not be repeated as established fact, and any statements he makes must not be presented as reflecting the views of Belgium’s rabbis or the Jewish community.”
White added that Friedman’s “lies and Holocaust denial create antisemitism and harms the Jewish people.”
In 2006, Friedman attended an Iranian foreign ministry two-day conference titled “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision” that featured Holocaust denial and distortion.
The U.S. envoy said of Friedman that “this rogue and dangerous fraudster gained international notoriety through his participation in” the event, “where he was photographed hugging then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
