Cowell trolled over £90,000 Israel gift

Cowell trolled over £90,000 Israel gift: X Factor mogul sent images of dead children on Twitter after he donated money to soldiers' organisation

He has never been afraid of getting into spats on his reality TV shows, but now Simon Cowell has found himself in the middle of a much more serious conflict.

The X Factor mogul has been bombarded with gruesome images of dead Palestinian children by protesters who accuse him of helping the Israeli invasion of Gaza.

It comes amid fears of growing anti-Semitism across Europe as violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza escalates.

Opponents of Israel's two-week military action have seized on a £90,000 donation Cowell made to the Friends of the Israel Defence Forces (FIDF) at a fundraiser last year.

The organisation, founded by Holocaust survivors in 1981, says on its website that it provides Israeli soldiers with ‘love, support and care in an effort to ease the burden they carry on behalf of the Jewish community worldwide.’

At a fundraiser in Beverley Hills, hosted by billionaire TV magnate Haim Saban, Cowell, 54, publicly gave $150,000 [£90,000] to the cause.

Overall, the gala dinner, which was attended by more than 1,000 supporters including singer Lionel Ritchie, raised more than £12million for the FIDF.

But in the wake of this month’s conflict in Gaza, dozens of Palestinian supporters attacked Cowell on Twitter and posted graphic reminders of the death toll online in an effort to shame him for his generosity.

Alongside an image of four dead Palestinian children on stretchers, one poster – writing under the name Leema – told Cowell: ‘You have blood on ur hands’.

Another, using the name kiks, sent him a picture of a grieving father holding his dead baby and wrote: ‘u donated money to israel to do this. Now imagine this was ur child’.

A third, tmrottweiler, said: ‘Well at least Simon Cowell doesn’t have to go to Israel to see how the money he raised 4 the idf is being spent he just has 2 watch the news.’

Other messages suggested the music mogul was part of a 'Zionist' plot and accused him taking orders from his 'masters in Tel Aviv'.

Israel has come under mounting pressure in recent days after a tank shell hit a hospital, killing five people and injuring 70.

Since July 8 – when it launched airstrikes in response to Palestinian rocket fire - at least 550 Palestinians and 27 Israelis have died.

The United Nations, which has called for an immediate ceasefire, said at least 1,370 homes have been destroyed in Gaza and more than 100,000 displaced. The UK has pledged more than £5million in emergency support.

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Jewish groups expressed disgust over the tide of hate crimes and warned of ‘a new level of hatred and violence in all of Europe’.

Foreign ministers from Germany, France and Italy yesterday issued a joint statement condemning the rise in anti-Semitic protests and violence and vowed to combat hostility against Jewish people.

In Germany, there have been reports of protesters chanting ‘Jews to the gas chambers’. Police in Berlin have banned race-hate slogans that reappeared after being originally used in the days of the Nazis.

Officers had to protect an Israeli tourist at the weekend after protesters spotted his yarmulke (a small, round cap) and reportedly charged towards him shouting ‘Jew! We’ll get you.’

Fourteen people were arrested in the western city of Essen on suspicion of planning an attack on a synagogue. The imam of a Berlin mosque is under investigation after allegedly calling on Muslims to murder ‘Zionist Jews’.

In Paris, hundreds of protesters have attacked synagogues and set fire to shops in the suburb of Sarcelles, nicknamed Little Jerusalem.

Posters urged anti-Israel demonstrators to join ‘a raid on the Jewish district’, saying: ‘Come equipped with hammers, fire extinguishers and batons.’

Rioters face riot police, following a pro-Palestinian demonstration, in Sarcelles, north of Paris, on Sunday

Witnesses said several hundred youths marched on a synagogue chanting ‘Death to Jews’ and were beaten back by riot police using tear gas. The protesters then targeted a shopping centre, a kosher grocery and a Jewish-owned chemist.

Police said 19 people were arrested after the violence on Sunday. Eight synagogues in France were said to have been targeted in the last week. In the Netherlands, the home of the Dutch chief rabbi was attacked twice in one week.

Dieter Graumann, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said the rise in attacks was a terrifying reminder of an era that was thought to be in the distant past.

He said: ‘We are currently experiencing in this country an explosion of evil and violent hatred of Jews, which shocks and dismays all of us.

‘We would never in our lives have thought it possible any more that anti-Semitic views of the nastiest and most primitive kind can be chanted on German streets.’

French youth defying a ban on a protest against Israel's Gaza offensive went on a rampage in a Paris suburb

French prime minister Manuel Valls condemned the violence in Paris as ‘intolerable’ and warned that France faced ‘a new form of anti-Semitism’.

Roger Cukierman, of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, said Jews were living in fear.

He said: ‘They are not shouting “Death to the Israelis” on the streets of Paris. They are screaming “Death to the Jews”.’

One long-time resident of Sarcelles, called Laetitia, told the France 24 TV channel: ‘We called our town Little Jerusalem because we felt at home here. We were safe, there were never any problems. And I just wasn’t expecting anything like this. We are very shocked.’

French President Francois Hollande met Jewish and Muslim leaders in the Elysee Palace on Monday and told them that fighting anti-Semitism will be a ‘national cause’.

The Jewish population of Germany has increased in the past two decades to around 250,000, most of them migrants from the former Soviet Union who came after German reunification.

In Gaza yesterday Israel continued to pound targets. A United Nations school sheltering displaced Palestinians was hit by shells. More than 600 Palestinians have been killed in the two-week battle between Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. The UN estimates that at least three quarters of the deaths were civilians.

Israel says 27 of its soldiers have been killed in the fighting. Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel during the current conflict, killing two civilians. Some American and European airlines yesterday halted flights to Israel after a rocket landed near Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport.

Delta, United Airlines, Germany’s Lufthansa and Air France suspended services in a sign of anxieties about jets flying near war zones following the Malaysia Airlines disaster in Ukraine.

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