An Arab organization has decried the "double standards" of the Dutch public prosecutor's office for taking them to court over a Holocaust cartoon deemed offensive to Jews.
"This cartoon is discriminatory," the prosecuting authority said of the sketch on the website of the Arab European League (AEL) which it said depicted the Nazi holocaust as a figment of Jewish imagination.
"This is offensive to Jews as a group," said a statement.
Last month, Dutch prosecutors ordered the league to remove the cartoon from its website or face prosecution.
The cartoon was punishable, they found, "because it offends Jews on the basis of their race and/or religion."
At the same time, prosecutors had announced they would not put far-right MP Geert Wilders on trial for distributing controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on his website.
It found those cartoons were not offensive towards Muslims, nor contributed to hatred, discrimination or violence against them.
"Double standards"
The AEL, which had originally agreed to remove the cartoon from its website, decided to put it back in protest against this ruling which it described as unfair and incomprehensible.
"Double standards are being applied," says a statement on the website of the league, which said it "stands for the rights of the Arab and Muslim communities in Europe".
The AEL said it had used the Holocaust cartoon when it began a campaign in February 2006 to "illustrate with cartoons the double morals of the West during the Danish cartoon affair."
Abdoulmouthalib Bouzerda, chairman of the Dutch AEL, said the group had published a disclaimer at the time saying it did not support the views of the cartoons it used.
As a supporter of the freedom of speech, the AEL did not complain about the republication of the prophet cartoons in the Netherlands and was trying to show that not only Muslims could be insulted by cartoons, he said.
The prophet cartoons originally appeared in Danish newspapers in September 2005, sparking protests across the Muslim world.