Editorials
Paris, 5 February 2021
Mr. President,
We turn to you in support of the National Assembly Deputy, Meyer Habib, campaign for balance in France Inter broadcasts regarding the State of Israel. This network’s apparent obsessive recidivism in its anti-Israel bias has resulted in a warning from the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA – the French audiovisual regulatory council).
A few examples:
France Inter: “In Gaza, the frontier with Israel is one of the most dangerous in the world. And yet the farmers continue to cultivate their fields, while taking great risks.”
Blog by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Times of Israel
28 January 2021
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/wiesenthal-centre-and-the-1980-copernic-synagogue-in-paris-bombing/
I had come to Paris in 1980 with the grandiose objective to contain antisemitism. Little did I foresee its nature.
On 3 October, the eve of Sukkot (Tabernacles), I was visiting an Israeli journalist, Tamar Cohen. Her houseguest, Aliza Shagrir – wife of the late cineaste Micha Shagrir – had just arrived from Israel. Asking her hostess if she needed anything for dinner, Tamar suggested some dates from the fruit shop three hundred meters away, facing the synagogue on the rue Copernic. We went down to the street together. She turned into Copernic, I continued walking straight ahead. I felt the bomb, where Aliza met her death.
Article by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Jerusalem Post
26 January 2021
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/remembering-the-the-jews-of-mena-on-holocaust-remembrance-day-656797
This article was written following a Zoom meeting with 184 Iraqi Jews worldwide, on the occasion of the Annual Commemoration of the Baghdad Hangings (27 January 1969) - organized by the Community of Babylonian Iraqi Jews of Montreal - including heart-rending testimonies of witnesses of the 'Second Farhud' (violent dispossession).
See more on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0Y_Jj3QCGo&feature=youtu.be
On this Yom Ha’Shoah / International Holocaust Commemoration Day on January 27, we should contemplate what the fate of MENA Jewry would have been had German general Rommel won the Desert Campaign.
Desert Wanderings: The Jewish Nation’s beginnings (photo Haytham Shtayeh / Flash90).
In the spirit of the Abraham Accords, there is a growing interest in the Holocaust and its impact on the Jews of MENA (Middle East/North Africa).
UNESCO Grants Academic Certificates to Incarcerated Terrorists: A Second Round
Paris, 12 January 2021
Madam Director-General,
In the 28 years of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s NGO accreditation to UNESCO, it came as a shock to learn in February 2020, from the well-respected NGO Monitor, that the organization had granted academic certificates to terrorism “graduates” and their murderous “instructors.”
Read more: An Open Letter to Director-General Audrey Azoulay
An Open Letter to Emmanuel Macron, President of France
By Shimon Samuels
Paris, 6 January 2021
Mr. President,
You recently called Islam “a religion in crisis.” You also shut down mosques allegedly frequented by extremists, as centres emanating a hate that encouraged a wave of violence and terrorism.
Your policy was met by anger and anti-French boycott demonstrations across the Muslim world, reminiscent of just such an eruption in response to the Charlie Hebdo Mohammed caricatures.