Paris, 29 April 2022

In a letter to Agence France Presse (AFP) Chairman and CEO, Fabrice Fries, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, expressed horror at an article that whitewashes the Al-Quds Brigade, the armed wing of the terrorist Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)....“Your correspondent enjoys the invitation to visit the ‘tunnel city’ of electric-lighted passages, ventilation and telephone system, leading from Gaza, under the barriers, to Israel.”

Samuels asserted “the horror of the Centre’s membership, especially our French constituents, that AFP – an important global news agency – could sink so low as to heroize a worldwide listed terrorist group, as if they were a branch of the Eurostar under the English Channel.”

The PIJ tour guide described both defensive and offensive tunnels – the second equipped with weapons used to attack Israelis. “Your journalist ‘humorously’ calls it ‘a smuggling route for Kentucky Fried Chicken’!”

The Centre continued, “we hope that this was the act, only, of an antisemitic lone-wolf, a budding militant or uneducated in the subject.”

“Our Centre demands an AFP investigation, condemnation and immediate dismissal of an employee unworthy of the title ‘journalist’,” concluded Samuels.