News Releases 2018
“The perpetrators were the most cowardly of hatemongers, to come like thieves in the night to attack the dead...”
“It is a sad reality that it is mainly Jewish graveyards that are targets, by the extreme right but increasingly by Islamist radical youth.”
Paris, 16 December 2018
“In the antisemitic context of the continuing Saturday 'Yellow Tunic' demonstrations across France, Friday’s desecration of 50 gravestones and a Holocaust monument in Herrlisheim, north of Strasbourg, was one more stab in the collective consciousness of French Jews...”
“This 18th century cemetery had survived the Nazis, who took back this Alsace region into the German Reich throughout World War II,” stated the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels.
Samuels’ own grandparents’ tomb had been destroyed among 25% of the graves in a British Jewish cemetery. On that occasion, he had commented that “the perpetrators were the most cowardly of hatemongers, to come like thieves in the night to attack the dead...” “It is a sad reality that it is mainly Jewish graveyards that are targets, mainly by the extreme right but increasingly by Islamist radical youth,” he added.
The Centre commended the newly appointed Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner: “Only last week, we had turned to the Minister to seek his application of the European Union’s manifesto on antisemitism, to impose harsh penalties on anti-Jewish hate and violence. His visit to the desecrated cemetery was an important step, but the arrest of those responsible is as vital as the police capture and shooting of the nearby Strasbourg Christmas market Jihadist assassin killing shoppers to the cry of 'Allahu Akbar',” concluded Samuels.
Wiesenthal Centre to French Interior Minister: “Paris is Burning and the Jews are Collateral Damage”
“France, last week, joined the other 27 European Union member States in signing a historic manifesto against antisemitism. This has now to be applied by imposing serious arrest warrants and detention orders for incitement to hate and violence against Jews, in what has become a ‘Paris Intifada’.”
“The situation will become a mortal threat with the return of a reported more than 2,000 French terrorist fighters from the ruined Califate. Isis-trained from ten years old to use fire arms, decapitate hostages and brainwashed to hate Jews.”
Paris, 14 December 2018
In a letter to newly appointed French Interior Minister, Christophe Castaner, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed outrage at the antisemitic by-product of the “Yellow Jacket” demonstrations across France.
Samuels recalled that “Hitler, on his one-time visit to Paris, was so impressed, that he established the ‘Für Alle einmal in Paris’ (‘For every Wehrmacht Soldier, one Time in Paris’ as a ‘Rest and Recreation’ Award). During the 1944 Nazi evacuation, he famously telephoned the German Governor to check if his order had been obeyed, shrieking ‘Is Paris burning?’”
Read more: Wiesenthal Centre to French Interior Minister:...
“Now the Minister should not only to disassociate herself but also insist that the CNCDH withdraw the prize definitively.”
Paris, 10 December 2018
Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, congratulated French Justice Minister, Nicole Belloubet, for refusing to grant the French National Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) award following protests from our Centre and other genuine human rights colleagues.
“Now the Minister should show courage, not only to disassociate herself from mayhem, but to insist that the CNCDH withdraw the prize definitively,” stated Samuels.
“The award, if granted, will legitimize terror and boycott targetting Israel and the Jewish people,” concluded the Centre.
"The Centre called on the Minister to forestall what is an antisemitic travesty by withdrawing the prizes to Israeli boycott campaigner Betselem and alleged Palestinian terrorism linked Al Haq."
"This sullies an award to mark the 70th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights authored by Rene Cassin, a French Jew!"
Paris, 7 December 2018
In a letter to French Justice Minister, Nicole Belloubet, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed disgust that, “on International Human Rights Day, the French National Commission for Human Rights (CNCDH) awards its ‘French Republic, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity Prize’ to two recipients that represent the contrary of each of those values:
- The Israeli ‘B’Tselem’ B.D.S. (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaigner against its own country;
- The Palestinian ‘Al Haq’ (Justice), whose leaders, according to NGO Monitor, are active figures of the PFLP - an organization on the EU and US terrorism lists - responsible for the 1976 Air France hijack to Entebbe, among hundreds of attacks on French and other Jewish targets.
Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze: “The brotherhood between the Georgian and Jewish peoples is a song to my ears.”
Tbilisi, Georgia, 28 November 2018
As a Member of the European Jewish Parliament (EJP), Dr. Shimon Samuels – Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre – presented a report on “The Theft of Jewish Identity.”
In the midst of the second round of Presidential elections and surrounded by OSCE Electoral Observers, the EJP delegation was received by Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze and Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Tamar Chugoshvili.