News Releases 2010
Paris, 15 March 2010
In a letter to Gregor Gysi, Chairman of the Left Party (Die Linke) Parliamentary Group and Petra Pau, the Party's Vice President of the Bundestag, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr.Shimon Samuels, declared that "we are sickened at the statements by your party representative in Duisberg, North Rhine – Westfalia, Hermann Dierkes".
The letter continued, "the fact that he endorses Palestinian violence and the boycott of Israel as 'an apartheid regime',is bad enough. However,his questioning of Israel's right to exist and his belittling of the severity of the Holocaust, take him beyond the pale, in challenging the so-called 'German-Israeli special relationship' over the past four decades of diplomatic normalization.
Paris, 2 March 2010
In a letter to UN Human Rights Commissioner Navanethem Pillay, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, called on her responsibilities as "Secretary-General of the Durban Review Conference and custodian of its 2009 Declaration and Programme of Action".
Samuels noted that "you have at hand a well-funded Anti-Discrimination Unit and the apparatus to investigate and censure the incitement to hatred, in all United Nations member-states, within the context of your mandate for the Durban Implementation Process".
The Centre drew her attention to "an outrageous phenomenon last week that provides a perfect case-study of 'racism within education' consonant with the Durban instruments."
Paris, 23 February 2010
In a letter to Echorouk(The Dawn) of Algeria,Chief Editor Abdelkrim Alem, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations,Dr.Shimon Samuels, noted that "one of our members has brought to our attention an interview granted by your Arabic – language edition to Robert Faurisson, a Franco-British self-styled "historian", convicted on several occasions by French courts for his bigotry and distortions of history that, arguably, serve Nazi and neo-Nazi causes."
Paris, 15 February 2010
In a letter to UK Liberal Party Leader, Nick Clegg, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, commended him for “ firing your Health Spokesperson in the House of Lords, Baroness Jenny Tonge, for her obscene call ‘for an inquiry into allegations that Israeli soldiers were involved in organ trafficking in Haiti.
’ This hatemongering was apparently also disseminated online by the Palestine Telegraph, of which Tonge is a Patron and, subsequently, posted on YouTube.”
Read more: Wiesenthal Centre to UK Liberal Democrat Party:...
Paris, 28 January 2010
In a letter to 56 State Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) newly appointed Chairman in Office, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabeyev, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre‘s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, wished the Minister success, adding that "in view of Kazakhstan’s record of ethnic harmony, your country is well-placed to address the unprecedented level - since World War II – of antisemitism across Europe."
Samuels emphasized that, “several of the OSCE’s 56 State Parties are in violation of the 2004 Berlin Declaration on Antisemitism, especially in that ‘political issues…in Israel…never justify antisemitism’ and of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency 2004 Working Definition that views ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self–determination e.g. by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour’, is a contributing factor to antisemitism.”