News Releases 2021
“May results of the ballot indicate condemnation of extremism in the political arena, tarnished by the use of antisemitic stereotypes and hate speech.”
Paris and Rome, 18 October 2021
Recent months have seen a rise in far right and extreme left antisemitic crime throughout Europe. The former rides the noisy protest of the No-Vax, No-Green-Pass movement. Even more so during elections, as in the Italian municipal ballot, held in two rounds over the past weeks, where the extremists have raised the stakes, influencing and infiltrating the conservative camp as much as possible.
Paris, 14 October 2021
Mohsen Rezaee is one of the suspects behind the 1994 Buenos Aires AMIA Jewish Centre bombing, as Commander in Chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He is now Vice-President of Iran for Economic Affairs.
“According to a report by the highly regarded MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), Rezaee threatens to hold the 10,000 Jews who remained in Iran, as hostages – using the language of Hitler,” claimed Shimon Samuels, the Centre’s Director for International Relations.
Read more: Wiesenthal Centre Slams Iranian Vice President...
Editorial by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Jerusalem Post
11 October 2021
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/antisemitic-laureates-should-not-be-celebrated-681688
Agatha Christie, T.S. Eliot, Roald Dahl and Céline are among the most famous antisemitic laureates, so why are they still celebrated?
Roald Dahl (photo Wikimedia Commons)
On this 60th anniversary of the death of Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (aka Céline), a debate on a newly found cache of his manuscripts raises the question of their antisemitic content.
Read more: Antisemitic Laureates should not be celebrated –...
Blog by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Times of Israel
10 October 2021
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/comments-on-david-colliers-outstanding-report-on-antisemitism-in-ireland/
The journalist, David Collier’s outstanding 202 page report on contemporary antisemitism in Ireland, is shattering… Though the history of Irish Jewry has also lights in the darkness.
At the end of the nineteenth century, while poverty-stricken Irish were emigrating to the United States, they were replaced by impoverished Jewish refugees escaping from the Russian Tsarist Empire. This created resentment from Trade Unions and a 1904 boycott-pogrom in Limerick, that was ended by an Irish Catholic welcome. During the Irish Free State, many Jewish figures identified and even joined the IRA.
Though in World War Two, Ireland mainly accepted Jewish converts to Catholicism, it also accepted a small “Kindertransport” of Jewish children from Nazi Germany.
Read more: Comments on David Collier’s Outstanding Report...
Blog by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Times of Israel
24 September 2021
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/french-train-car-of-dreams-holocaust-vandalism/
Trains des Rêves ‘What Value Life,’ Greg Marshall, not subject to copyright
“Wiesenthal Centre urges vandal be brought to justice, while his lopsided swastika remains as artefact of hate for the comments of visiting tourists.”
American-born Greg Marshall had bought an abandoned train station 3 hours south of Paris, adding a number of train wagons, to serve as a hotel with restaurant cars, while presenting each of the carriages’ history.
Read more: French ‘Train Car of Dreams’: Holocaust Vandalism