"As the only UN Agency with a special mandate for the protection of the integrity of the Holocaust, it is obligated to speak out and condemn Abbas for his desecration of the victims.”
Paris, 3 May 2018
In a letter to UNESCO Director-General, Audrey Azoulay, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, stressed that “UNESCO is the only UN Agency with a special mandate for the protection of the integrity of the Holocaustits commemoration and education.”
Samuels lamented, “Yet, our constituency, especially in Europe, is asking one question: ‘Where is UNESCO when Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian President - in an address to the Palestinian National Council in Ramallah - launched an antisemitic tirade desecrating the memory of the Holocaust and its victims?’"
The letter noted that, “Abbas’ lesson in Holocaust denial has been deemed unacceptable by the European Union, but where is UNESCO?”
Samuels emphasized that, “UNESCO has not always been silent:
- In 2001, the World Heritage Committee meeting in Cairns, Australia, pressed Poland to close the ‘Auschwitz discotheque’;
- In 2003, immediately upon notification by our Centre, Director-General Koichiiro Matsuura demanded and obtained the removal of the tsarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - dubbed ‘A warrant for genocide’ and ‘Hitler’s Bible’ - from an exhibition at the UNESCO-renovated Alexandria Library;
- In 2016, Director-General Irina Bokova rebuked Iranian officials over their ‘Holocaust cartoon contest’. The UNESCO message was that the contest was ‘completely opposed to the spirit of UNESCO... stressing the need to educate people about the genocide against the Jewish people, in order to prevent such crimes from being perpetrated again’.”
The Centre repeated: “So Madam Director-General, where is UNESCO this time?”... continuing, “Abbas’ bigotry, claiming that the persecution of European Jews was ‘caused by their own conduct as bankers and money-lenders’, will further poison his Palestinian audience against their Jewish neighbours and, inevitably, encourage antisemites worldwide.”
The letter claimed that “certainly, the Palestinian President has offended the preamble to the UNESCO Charter by smashing any hope that ‘peace must be constructed in the minds of men’...”
The Centre urged Azoulay “to speak out and condemn Abbas’ double-murder of the Six Million, first by the Nazis and now their denial by the Palestinian leader.”
“Madam Director-General, this time we all need to know ‘where is UNESCO!’,” concluded Samuels.