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Editorials

Article by Dr Shimon Samuels published in The Jerusalem Post
23 May 2022
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-707482

Dieudonné has mutated into a political polemicist and is bent on defaming, denying and deriding the Holocaust and Jews – for which he has been tried in court many times.

We recall how Dieudonné M’bala M’bala began his career as a comedian, together with his Jewish friend, Elie Semoun. After they split, Dieudonné turned antisemitic, expressing friendship towards the late Robert Faurisson, infamous Holocaust denier, and Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the extreme-right party National Front and who had commented “the gas chambers to kill Jews are a mere detail of history.” Jean-Marie is the father of Marine, runner-up in the latest French Presidential elections.

Antisemitism has always permeated Dieudonné’s artistic career. One of the most bizarre of his feature films, The Antisemite, sees his wife begging him to go to a psychologist to treat his Judeophobia, only to discover the psychologist is a Jew, as is his wife.

Article by Dr Shimon Samuels published in The Times of Israel
18 May 2022
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/fiba-secretary-general-and-bilbao-mayor-in-wake-of-violence-against-israeli-fans/

In a letter to Andreas Zagklis, Secretary-General of FIBA (International Basketball Federation) and Juan Maria Aburto Rique, Mayor of Bilbao, Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, expressed outrage in regard to Sunday’s attack on Israeli basketball fans by a so-called ‘pro-Palestinian’ group in Bilbao, Spain. The victims included children with their parents on their way to the stadium. The Hapoel Holon fans had come to Bilbao for an international basketball match against German MHP RiesenLudwigsburg.

The letter stressed: “This is not the first time Israeli fans visiting Spain have been targeted!”

Blog by Dr Shimon Samuels published in The Times of Israel
18 April 2022
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-a-le-pen-administration-would-ruin-france-and-beyond/

Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, ran the long-time French harbour of neo-Nazis, the National Front (Front National – FN). Apart from racism, he had manifold lawsuits for Holocaust denial, calling the Nazi gas chambers “just a detail in World War Two!”

His daughter expelled him from the party, then renaming it “National Rally” (Rassemblement National – RN). Yet many members of the party maintain their national-socialist views, likely to receive government sinecures or even membership in the Cabinet, if elected.

Letter by Dr Shimon Samuels published in The Jerusalem Post
21 March 2022
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-701949

21 March 2022 1 blog
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet attends a special session
of the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in Ukraine at the UN in Geneva
earlier this month (photo Denis Balibouse/Reuters).

Madam Michelle Bachelet,

In 2009, you became president of Chile. Around the same date, as the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s chief delegate to the United Nations in Geneva, I was addressing an NGO preparatory session for the second Durban Review Conference.

Our associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, and I had been at the Durban UN World Conference against Racism in 2001 to combat racism. Indeed, we found every true issue of racial intolerance and discrimination hijacked for a campaign of antisemitic agitation.

Blog by Dr Shimon Samuels published in The Times of Israel
28 January 2022
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/happy-as-a-jew-in-france-what-happened-to-smash-the-dream/

The Wiesenthal Centre chose to open its office in Paris as France had – and still has – the largest Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe. Though religion is not included in state census, it is estimated that there are about 500,000 Jews and over 4 million Muslims.

Despite the 1894 Dreyfus case – the Jewish French army Captain unjustly charged for espionage – that revealed a large retinue of antisemitism in a split country, despite the Vichy collaborationist role in harassing the Jews and deporting over 72,000 to the death camps, the mantra “Happy as a Jew in France!” still persisted.