Geneva, 29 June 2023
Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, called on H.E. Mr. Alain Berset, President of the Swiss Confederation, to ban an event celebrating hate and terror against the State of Israel and the Jewish diaspora.
An exhibition on “Palestinian Resistance” is due to open this Friday, 30 June, until 8 July, at the Cercle du Mail of the Workers’ Party, in rue du Vieux-Billard, Geneva. The posters on display are by Marc Rudin, a.k.a. Jihad Mansour, a Swiss-born artist who died in April this year. He was deeply involved, since the 1970s, with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union, the United Kingdom and the US.
Rudin was sentenced to 8 years jail in Denmark for a bank robbery, intended to fund the PFLP. Over the following years, from Lebanon and Syria, he supported the PFLP by producing posters and militant magazine covers, campaigning for the Intifada, inciting hatred against Israel and the Jews.
The exhibition features posters celebrating martyrdom and armed violence, depicting a “Palestine from the Jordan to the sea” (without Israel), inciting children and women to join the struggle, glorifying terrorism... decorated with keffiyehs, Palestinian flags and macabre symbols of death and murder, such as Kalashnikovs, hand grenades, Molotov bottles, bombs, blood...
The organizer of the event is Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoners’ advocacy organization, outlawed in Israel as “a subsidiary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).”
In a recent pro-Palestinian rally in Berlin, the Samidoun flag was waving over the chorus of “With our soul and our blood we liberate Al-Aqsa!”... “Death, death, death to Israel!" and “Death to the Jews!” - (source: https://twitter.com/democ_de/status/1645067627734155264)
The programme includes the projection of the film “Fedayin, the Struggle of Georges Abdallah”, part of Samidoun's campaign for the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, who is serving a life sentence in France for the murder, in 1982, of US Military Attaché Charles R. Ray and Israeli diplomat, Yacov Barsimantov.
Among the planned speakers is the head of Samidoun, Mohammed Khatiba, who is himself a member of the PFLP. Another probable last-minute speaker could be French national Salah Hamouri, deported from Israel to France on the grounds of suspected terrorist activities. He is now a regular feature of the Palestinian solidarity bandwagon in and around France.
Last month, the City of Geneva cancelled the venue, after understanding the content of this exhibition.
“Mr. President, this event incites to violence and, as such, contravenes the law. We count on you to take immediate action. Otherwise, this glorification of terror could infect with hate against the Jews, first Geneva and Switzerland, but will then certainly spread across Europe,” concluded Samuels.
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