News Releases 2016
Article publlished in the Buenos Aires Herald .com: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/219059/
By Tomás Brockenshire Herald Staff
Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Shimon Samuels on the prospect of trying suspects in absentia
As Director for International Relations for the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Europe office, Shimon Samuels is headquartered in Paris but spends much of his time on the road advancing the Center’s priorities. Samuels travelled to Buenos Aires last month, meeting with the Herald to discuss not only the 22nd anniversary of the AMIA Jewish community centre bombing but also the prospects of holding trials in absentia and the relationship with the Mauricio Macri government.
Aside from the AMIA commemorations, what are your primary objectives for this trip to Buenos Aires?
"Had they proposed that the Israeli teams in question play matches with their Palestinian neighbours, such football pitch encounters may have helped reignite mutual hope in a floundering peace process."
"This Palestinian mischief has hijacked several international organisations. FIFA's mission is to promote global soccer, however, as a meeting-point for peace."
Paris, 1 August
In a letter to FIFA (International Federation of Football Associations)
President, Gianni Infantino, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for
International Relations Dr. Shimon Samuels, noted that, "we were
present in Zürich – at the July 2015, 65th FIFA Congress – to protest
the then Palestinian attempt to expel the Israel Football Association
(IFA)" adding, "as a result, FIFA created a monitoring committee,
including representatives of both the IFA and PFA (Palestinian
Football Association)to overcome the latter's constant attempts to
politicize world soccer".
My Open Letter to French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault: “ Argentina Commemorates the AMIA Jewish Centre Bombing – France Meets with Hizbollah”' can be found at:
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/an-open-letter-to-french-foreign-minister-jean-marc-ayrault-argentina-commemorates-the-amia-jewish-centre-bombing-france-meets-with-hizbollah/ .
M. Jean-Marc Ayrault, Foreign Minister 37, Quai d’Orsay, Paris
Buenos Aires, 18 July 2016
Mr. Foreign Minister,
Today, Argentina commemorates the 22nd anniversary of the AMIA Jewish Welfare Centre bombing.
On 18 July 1994, 85 people died and over 300 were wounded at the hands of the Lebanese Shia’h terrorist movement, Hizbollah, financed and planned by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Mr. Foreign Minister, last week you were in Beirut, reportedly meeting with the leadership of Hizbollah, claiming that your interlocutors were from the Jihadist political wing rather than their uncouth military – an argument that attempts to disassociate the chicken from the egg.
Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed on behalf of the Centre’s 400,000 members – of which 2,000 in France – “our solidarity with the wounded and the families of the victims in last night’s Nice massacre.”
He added that “terror must be fought without euphemism. For too long, the acts of the perpetrators have been justified by a ‘culture of apology’: the attackers are ‘disaffected’, ‘victims of discrimination’, ‘embittered’, ‘misled youth’, etc.” …. “Terrorism cannot be fought by international conferences on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or by United Nations resolutions.”
Remotely controlled from the Middle East or financed by Iran, “lone wolf” terror in Europe, especially in France, cannot be fought by appeasement. The result is always that “he who feeds the crocodile will still be eaten last,” concluded Samuels.
“Should this perverse exercise proceed, the condition of Jews across Europe will be clear – abandonment by their own governments... It could be seen as a step towards a new ‘Kristallnacht’ – a surrender and endorsement of the most extreme elements of left, right and Jihadist.”
Istanbul, 14 July 2016
In letters to French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May, Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, called on all three “to press Brussels immediately to halt a European Union draft resolution about to be submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting here in Istanbul.”
The resolution serves as an alternative to a Palestinian draft in denying the tie between the Jewish People and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem – Judaism's holiest site.
Read more: Wiesenthal Centre Calls on Hollande, Merkel and...