Editorials
Op-ed by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Jerusalem Post
11 July 2019
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/UNESCO-World-Heritage-Committee-Azerbaijan-restrains-Palestinian-mayhem-595394
A general view of the UNESCO headquarters in Paris (photo Reuters).
As the 11-day World Heritage Committee (WHC) in Baku winds down, it behooves us to review Jewish-related issues in the context of a UNESCO without the United States and Israel as members.
Of course, the perennial resolutions of Jordan and the Palestinians in Item 7 on “The Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls” and “Hebron/Al-Khalil with the Cave of the Patriarchs” have become banners in the battlefield of heritage.
Their cause had, however, become tempered among the Arab group and the larger number of Muslim member states:
Op-ed by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Jerusalem Post
4 June 2019
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/75th-D-Day-anniversary-A-Jewish-perspective-591594
In June 1940, that same stretch of water had seen “Operation Dynamo,” the evacuation of 338,226 British and French soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, cut off and surrounded by German troops.
Men saved from Dunkirk (photo Jerusalem Post Archive).
Born in London one week after V-E Day, I was raised with an enormous respect for the power of water: the 21 miles of the English Channel that saved Britain from a German invasion – as well as the 330,000 British Jews among the 11 million listed for extermination by the Nazis, in their January 1942 Wannsee Protocol.
Op-ed by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Jerusalem Post
29 May 2019
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/New-European-Parliament-challenges-Israel-and-the-Jews-591062
Radical-left parties’ Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have invited and applauded speakers from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and spokespersons for terrorism.
A dinner meeting at a European Union leaders summit after European Parliament elections (photo Reuters).
In May 2004, then-Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski threw a grand party in Warsaw to celebrate the entry of eight East European countries into the European Union – the so-called “enlargement” process.
Blog by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Jerusalem Post
4 April 2019
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Palestinian-aggression-against-interfaith-harmony-at-UNESCO-586433
UNESCO Chief Audrey Azoulay speaks at the Internet
Governance Forum at UNESCO HQ (photo Reuters).
The United States and Israel left the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on December 31, 2018.
On April 11, the organization’s 58-member executive board will vote on the twice-a-year resolutions on “Occupied Palestine... Jerusalem and its Walls,” “Palestinian Education, Youth,” etc., and on the “Occupied Syrian Golan.”
Letter by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Times of Israel
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/an-open-letter-to-h-m-king-mohammed-vi-of-morocco/
Paris, 19 February 2019
H.M. King Mohammed VI
Rabat, Morocco
Your Majesty,
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is an international Jewish human rights organization with a worldwide constituency of over 400,000 members. It applies the lessons of the Holocaust to counter antisemitism and other contemporary forms of discrimination and hate.
0ne of our major projects is to monitor incitement to hatred and violence on the shelves of international book fairs. The findings are then shared with the authorities of the Frankfurt Book Fair, where, accordingly those publishers identified in contravention of their contract - which prohibits incitement - are duly blacklisted.
Your Majesty’s patronage of the SIEL Casablanca Book Fair ensures the banning of any text insulting to Islam.
Yet, in our seven years of monitoring the SIEL, there has been no such vetting of texts on the Casablanca shelves that offend the Jewish religion and people.
Read more: An Open Letter to H.M. King Mohammed VI of Morocco