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News Releases 2022

Paris, 14 October 2022

Two years ago, on 16 October 2020, a history and geography teacher, Samuel Paty, was assassinated and beheaded in a small town near Paris by a lone-wolf Jihadist of Chechen-Russian origin, incited by an islamist Imam, reportedly because he had shown, among others, caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed to his students during classes on the subject of “freedom of expression”.

This Sunday, 16 October 2022, at 2 p.m., the newly-formed French “Friends of the Wiesenthal Centre” will commemorate Samuel Paty, to remember his role in fighting against hate and intimidation, and upholding freedom of expression.

Paris, 8 October 2022

In a letter to the Swedish Academy’s Chairman of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Prof. Anders Olsson, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, expressed “shock at the 2022 selection...”

“Indeed, in the past, well-known writers such as Agatha Christie, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Roald Dahl, etc. have openly expressed their antisemitism.”

Paris, 6 October 2022

Madam Prime Minister,

Permit me, on behalf of Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean and Founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Centre’s Associate Dean and Director for Global Social Action, as also our worldwide 400,000 members, including the British Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, to wish you every success as Prime Minister.

The Wiesenthal Centre is shocked by the hateful rhetoric of Seyed Hashem Moosavi – Representative of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Director of the Islamic Center of England, based in London.

Paris, 3 October 2022

Abba Eban, Israel’s first international diplomat, represented the new State at the 1947 UN Partition of the Land. The Jews reluctantly accepted that plan, the Arabs refused. Had they accepted, they too would have celebrated 75 years of independence.

The Oslo process that began in 1993 – putting an end to the first Intifada and creating a new framework for Peace – was accepted by Israel, but was not enough for “Palestine”, which blew it up with the second terrorist Intifada.

Egypt and Jordan turned war against Israel into a difficult peace, that their leadership is still keeping alive, for the benefit of all.

Paris, 25 September 2022

Sent before beginning of Rosh Hashanah in Paris
Polling stations close at 11 p.m., exit polls begin at midnight

Italy’s Parliamentary election results will arrive tonight, during the Jewish New Year 5783. The cleaver of a populist front is set to chop the country in two. During the run up to elections, a vociferous, unsatisfied, xenophobic side has politically drowned the moderates, too prudent and intellectualised. The right-wing coalition fields Giorgia Meloni’s party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), in coalition with another populist, Eurosceptic party, the Lega of Matteo Salvini, and with the liberal-conservative Forza Italia, led by the elderly yet still popular Silvio Berlusconi. According to most polls, there is little doubt they will win.

The Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Dr Shimon Samuels – based in Europe for 36 years running – comments on possible consequences, in particular for Italian Jews and for the Diaspora at large.