News Releases 2024
Paris, 19 May 2024
On 6 May, the Honoured Guest of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) annual dinner was the new young Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal.
PM Attal’s speech spanned from his Jewish grandmother’s hiding from the Nazi death trains from Drancy to Auschwitz, up to today’s danger of Islamist extremism.
At that dinner, Dr Shimon Samuels, Emeritus Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, had expressed hope that the new Government would take harder measures against antisemitism.
Doha, 14 May 2024
An open letter to the Prime Minister of Qatar, H.E. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, who inaugurated the Doha Book Fair, that is open from 9 to 18 May, with the slogan: “Knowledge is Light!” in the “Pavilion of Cultural Diversity.”
Dr Shimon Samuels, Emeritus Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, pointed to the Qatari Prime Minister an example of darkness and hate on the stand H4-102, of Dar al Tanoua al Thaqafi... Syrian publisher of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”, translated into Arabic by Mohamed Amin Sabbah.
Photo of the book on the publisher’s shelves at the Doha Book Fair, and a close-up (photo csweurope).
Paris, 9 May 2024
The annual meeting (80th anniversary) of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) focussed on commemorating Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Day), the rise of antisemitism in France, the 7 October attack against Israel by Hamas terrorists and the some 130 hostages still held in captivity.
The Honoured Guest was the new – and maybe the youngest ever, at 35 – Prime Minister of France, Gabriel Attal.
PM Gabriel Attal with Dr Shimon Samuels (photo csweurope).
Read more: Gabriel Attal, the new French Prime Minister, at...
by Shimon Samuels
Paris, 27 April 2024
Each January, I attended the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to discover the forthcoming trends in antisemitism and hate against Israel.
In 2010, the WSF was entering its 10th year of activity, with the main theme being “Palestine” and the preparation of “Flotilla and Flytilla campaigns to Gaza”. The discussion on the Flytilla (an “invasion” of pro-Palestinian militants through airlines) was a failure.
The Flotilla campaign held a session to find an “appropriate and evocative” name. Finally, the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” was chosen, allegedly to bring humanitarian aid to the Strip.
Paris, 15 March 2024
Since the 7-October terror assault on Israel, the Friends of the Wiesenthal Centre, in cooperation with the Mouvement pour la Paix et Contre le Terrorisme (MPCT - Movement for Peace and Against Terrorism), are active in countering antisemitism and hate on the streets of Paris. Over the past week, we have been participating in the following initiatives:
1) On 8 March, while “Score a Goal for Women” was the focus event for UNESCO, “in the streets of Paris, the International Women’s Day rally for universal rights and equality saw a group of Jewish women, expressing solidarity with the female victims held captive by Hamas, heckled and targeted by insults, threats, eggs and soda cans, thrown by ‘pro-Palestinian militants’, stated Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels.
Social grievances have often been parasited recently, by militants hiding behind masks, keffiyehs and flags, and screaming slogans such as “from the river to the sea!” and “Khaybar, Khaybar!” – code-words for their antisemitic genocidal intent. The Centre co-signed an MPCT appeal to defend the dignity of Jewish women after this grotesque aggression.
Samuels at UNESCO (photo csweurope); Remembering 7 October victims at the rally (photo AFP).
Read more: Friends of the Wiesenthal Centre Campaigning in...