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News Releases 2021

Paris, 4 September 2021

H.E. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas,

We are concerned about German policy to return to the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) table of six – the five UN Security Council Permanent Members: France, UK, US, Russia and China, plus Germany – in talks with Iran.

Of these, China and Russia are strategically involved with Tehran and are, apparently, also close to recognizing a Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Editorial by Shimon Samuels, Alex Uberti
published in The Jerusalem Post
1st September 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/morocco-algeria-and-israel-on-peace-anniversary-opinion-678402

An important background impacting the Accords is the historic status of Jews in Algeria and Morocco, an indicator of each of these two countries’ contemporary attitudes toward Israel.

1 September 2021
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid speaks at a news conference in Rabat, Morocco, last month
(photo Youssef Boudlal/Reuters).

The Abraham Accords’ forthcoming anniversary will celebrate a growing interest in the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa.

“It is a tool of genocidal intent to erase the Jewish State from time and space.”

Paris, 27 August 2021

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed shock at the former’s reception on 19 August of the so-called “UN Palestine Exhibit Books”. The Exhibition includes: “The Palestinian People: Everlasting Roots, Infinite Horizons; Unrealized Roots, Unfulfilled Promises; 70 Years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the Palestinian Naqba (Catastrophe)”.

Paris, 25 August 2021

The Wiesenthal Centre’s call on the Spanish Minister of Universities, Manuel Castells Oliván, for rapid action, together with the Madrid-based ACOM (Action and Communication in the Middle East), resulted in this victory against Holocaust banalization.

25 August 2021

Throughout the day, on social media, there were two denials, but finally the course was announced as definitively cancelled.

Shimon Samuels declared: “We will remain vigilant against copycat attempts to bring this form of antisemitism to campuses across Europe.”

* * *

“My cause was justice, not vengeance. My work is for a better tomorrow and a more secure future for our children and grandchildren.” (Simon Wiesenthal, 1908-2005)

Paris, 23 August 2021

In a letter to Spanish Minister of Universities, Manuel Castells Oliván, the Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, stated, “it has come to the Centre’s attention that the University of Santiago de Compostela will be hosting a ‘seminar’ entitled ‘Auschwitz/Gaza: a testing ground for comparative literature’.”

 23 August 2021

He continued, “This very title and expected content is not an issue of ‘freedom of expression’, but a banalization of the Holocaust, which can incite to hatred and violence against Jews of today.”