News Releases 2021
Paris, 10 August 2021
Reportedly, a 39 year-old Rwandan refugee admitted setting ablaze the Nantes Cathedral last year, in July 2020. Sent to a psychiatric ward, he was released – apparently under probation awaiting trial – into a nearby Catholic monastery, in the charge of a 60 year-old priest, Fr. Olivier Maire, whose body was found in a nearby village this Monday.
Paris, 7 August 2021
In a letter to former Ha’aretz Editor, Dov Alfon, now Chief Editor of the Centre-Left French Daily Libération, Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed concern at a 3 August appeal, apparently calling for “The Dismantling of the Apartheid Regime in Israel.”
Charles Baccouche, of the Observatoire Juif de France (OJF - Jewish Observatory of France), has listed, in Tribune Juive, the “historical lies” in the article on the history of "Palestine”. The history of the Jewish State has been rewritten as if the Palestinians became the victims of ‘Israeli colonialism and Apartheid’.
U P D A T E - 9 August
Antisemitism at Anti-Vax Rallies in France
The pogrom atmosphere persists. Last Saturday’s anti-vax rally poster in Metz carries the names of mostly Jewish figures.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin is taking action.
(photo RL/DL)
Paris, 4 August 2021
In a letter to French Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed disgust at a campaign against French Jewish Doctors reminiscent of medieval charges of poisoning wells, their 1940’s arrests by Vichy France and Stalin’s 1951 to 1953 “Killer Jewish Doctor’s Plot” against the Soviet Union.
Read more: Wiesenthal Centre to French Interior Minister:...
Paris, 29 July 2021
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre was officially notified last week that a letter dated 19 November 2020 from the Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, to the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, was to become Public Record. A first on the subject of antisemitic terrorism.
That letter was borne out by ACOM (Action and Communication on the Middle East), a Spanish NGO that has successfully fought against BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) targeting Israel.
“European Union Passes New Rules to Counter Terrorism Financing and Money-Laundering as also Addressing Online Terrorism.”
Paris, 26 July 2021
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre was officially notified this week that a letter – dated 19 November 2020 from the Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels – to European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, is to become EU public record.