News Releases 2024
A report by Shimon Samuels
Paris, 7 November 2024
In 1980, I had arrived in Paris to work as Director for Europe of ADL-B’nai B’rith. I witnessed first-hand what would become a series of terror shootings and bombings of Jewish and Israeli targets throughout France and Europe.
At 6:38 p.m. of Friday 3 October 1980, the beginning of Shabbat and the eve of Sukkot, the wave of Palestinian terrorism began with the attack against the Paris Copernic Synagogue.
On the corner of rue Copernic lived the renowned journalist, Tamar Golan. I had come to wish her a good holiday. Just arrived from Israel for the week-end, was Aliza Shagrir, wife of well-known film maker Micha. She asked Tamar if anything was needed for dinner. The hostess replied, “perhaps a few figs. Go down with Shimon and he’ll show you the fruit shop opposite the synagogue.”
A Report by Shimon Samuels and Alex Uberti
Frankfurt, 24 October 2024
Over the past 23 years we have been monitoring several Arab bookfairs across the Mediterranean and in the Middle East, as well as the biggest World book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany (FBM - the Frankfurter BuchMesse), to identify texts and publishers that peddle hate, especially against the Jews. At the FBM, in compliance with German law and following our alerts, those texts that got through would be checked and confiscated by the local Hessen Police.
At this year’s FBM Press Conference, Samuels asked formidable Turkish writer, Elif Shafak, if she had heard of our yearly mission. She was curious to know more while our friend, the Book Fair’s Director Juergen Boos, was nearby and smiling knowingly.
From Dr Shimon Samuels, Former Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre
Paris, 1 October 2024
At the end of World War 1, the Ottoman Empire was partitioned. In 1920, today’s Lebanon and Syria were taken by France, officially to become part of the French Empire. Though administered by Damascus, Lebanon became mainly for Christians, with smaller numbers of Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, and other local ethnic-religious groups, including Jews, that rose to 10 thousand after the Iraqi Farhud (massacre of Jews) of 1941. Lebanon, and particularly Beirut, became known as “the Paris of the Middle East”.
Until its independence in 1946, despite Shi’a pogroms, Lebanese Jews still felt at home. Most fled to Israel during the Civil War of 1975-1990, prompted by Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian mass-murderer of his own people.
Read more: An Open Letter to Mr Emmanuel Macron, President...
Paris, 30 August 2024
Over the last 15 years, Dr Shimon Samuels, former Director for International Relations of the Wiesenthal Centre, has followed the attempts by the Palestine Football Association (PFA) to expel the Israel Football Association (IFA) from FIFA, the Federation International of Football Associations.
Time and again, he has alerted on spurious politicized claims to this effect, and asked FIFA delegates to limit Palestinian incitement to hatred in the stadiums, with supporters/hooligans shouting racist and antisemitic slogans such as “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas!”
Many countries with ongoing ethnic, religious or political conflicts, found the Palestinian demands to suspend Israel to be a dangerous precedent for themselves.
By Shimon Samuels and Alex Uberti
Paris, 28 August 2024
Last week, the shockwave of 7 October saw the merging of antisemitic hatred and the threat of terrorism also in Europe.
While an Islamist lone wolf was randomly stabbing German citizens in Solingen and a pro-Palestinian Hamas copycat tried to firebomb a synagogue in La-Grande-Motte, France, revolutionary and subversive political movements in Italy were planning a more comprehensive approach to attack Jews and democracy.
In particular, the New Italian Communist Party or (n)PCI presented a list of Jewish and Israeli individuals, companies and institutions to be “isolated, targeted and eliminated”.