Simon Wiesenthal Center Joined by Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) Release 2015 Top Ten Worst Global Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Incidents

December 30, 2015

Wiesenthal Center Founder: Islamic Fundamentalism is Main Cause for Surge of Anti-Semitism. Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen: Palestine Authority incitement must stop if there is to be any hope for peace -

Miami, Florida…. Rabbi’s Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Founder and Dean and Associate Dean of the Jewish human rights NGO, The Simon Wiesenthal Center, were joined by Congresswoman Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) to announce the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s 2015 Top Ten Worst Global Anti-Semitic / Anti-Israel Incidents at a press briefing on Wednesday, December 30, 2015 at the Adventura Turnberry Jewish Center in Miami Florida.

Rabbi Cooper stated, “2015 was a disastrous year for anti-Semitism, across Europe, on our nation’s campuses, online and beyond.” Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) who is a longtime leader on human rights issues and a staunch supporter spoke at the press conference and stated, “Earlier this year, The House passed a resolution that Congressman Ted Deutch and I authored to condemn anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement from within the Palestinian Authority. There should be no doubt that the Palestinian Authority sets the tone with its incitement, resulting in the recent wave of attacks that we’re seeing against innocent civilians.” She added, “The Palestinian Authority’s anti-Israel incitement is causing tension, violence, and terror. This must no longer be tolerated,” she concluded.

Rabbi Hier declared, “The shooter in San Bernardino grew up in a home led by a father who himself is an Anti-Semite. It clearly influenced the young man whose hate was transformed into terrorist deeds…It is time to give a name, a source to much of today’s hatred of Jews—it is Islamic Fundamentalism…it is past time for moderate Muslims to speak out against this hatred. It has been left unnamed by the Obama Administration; left unnamed and unchallenged it will only grow,” he concluded.

SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER: 2015 Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Incidents
#TopTenAntiSemitic2015

# 1 INSPIRING SAN BERNARDINO: TERRORIST’S HATE
“I told him he had to stay calm and be patient because in two years Israel will not exist anymore. Geopolitics is changing: Russia, China and America don’t want Jews there anymore. They are going to bring the Jews back to Ukraine …” Sayed Farouk, father of San Bernardino terrorist mass murderer in La Stampa interview in which he validated his son’s hatred for Jews even while attempting to dissuade him from acting out violently.

# 2 ISIS
A video purportedly produced by ISIS, shows a knife-wielding ISIS fighter standing near two masked gunmen. The narrator announces that the war against the Jews “will soon be launched, God willing,” he says. “To all the Jews, grandsons of apes and pigs, we are coming at you from all over the world. … [The war] is soon; it won’t be long, God willing, God willing,” Another video released in Hebrew threatens, “Soon, there will not be even a single Jew left in Jerusalem or the rest of the country. We will keep going until we eradicate this disease worldwide.”

# 3 EUROPEAN UNION
The European Union has chosen to label products from the Golan Heights and disputed territories on the West Bank alone, ignoring the products of other occupied and disputed territories in the world such as Western Sahara, Kashmir, Tibet and products from areas controlled by terrorist Hamas and Hezbollah. This use of double standards against Israel typifies modern anti-Israelism and has been at the core of anti-Semitism for many centuries.

# 4 US CAMPUSES
In March, a female Jewish student applicant for the Student Council’s Judicial Board at UCLA, was initially rejected after being asked: “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?”
”Zionists should be sent to the gas chamber” was painted on a sidewalk at UC-Berkeley.

Social media messages aimed at University of Chicago students urged, “Gas them, burn them and dismantle their power structure. Humanity cannot progress with the parasitic Jew.”
“[The two hate crime incidents against me] serve as a great example for how classic anti-Semitism is being cleanly repackaged as anti-Israeli sentiment and then perpetrated under that name. It’s still the same old hatred that caused the Holocaust; it’s still out and about today. But it operates under the name of something else today.” (student at Claremont, CA - September 2015)
Joint Trinity College/ Louis Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law nationwide survey: Over 50% of 1,157 self-identified Jewish students at 55 campuses reported having been subjected to or having witnessed anti-Semitism on their campuses.

# 5 PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY/UNRWA
”All these divisions, Al-Aqsa is ours, and the (Church of the) Holy Sepulcher is ours, everything is ours, all ours. They (the Jews and Christians) have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet and we won’t allow them to.”--PA President Mahmoud Abbas (September 16, 2015)
“It has been reported that Israelis harvest body parts by people killed by Israeli troops. ... Bodies were returned with missing corneas and other organs, further confirming past reports of organ harvesting by the occupying power from the Palestinian victims of its brutality.”
− Riyad Mansour-Chief Palestinian Delegate to UN’s letter to UN Security Council.
The UN acknowledges that at least twenty-two Palestinian employees of UNRWA (the UN Palestinian relief agency) including some UNRWA teachers, have openly encouraged and celebrated the knifing and shooting attacks against, “Jewish apes and pigs.”

# 6 IRAN
“I am telling you… God willing, there will be no Zionist regime in 25 years. Second, during this period, the spirit of fighting, heroism and jihad will keep you worried every moment.” – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei (New York Times September 9, 2015)
Officials in Tehran have announced a 2016 Holocaust Cartoon contest, expected to draw entries from 50 countries. The first contest, held in 2006, trivialized the crimes of Nazi Germany and cast doubt on Jewish suffering during the Shoah. The new contest will highlight the “hypocrisy of the West”, where debate on the Holocaust is allegedly restricted despite traditions of free speech.

# 7 EUROPE: CULTURE & SPORTS
A music festival in Spain cancelled the performance of American Jewish rapper, Matisyahu, because the artist wouldn’t sign a pledge supporting the Palestinian State. The BDS movement accused Matisyahu of being a “Zionist” who supports the practice of “apartheid and ethnic cleansing”. International protests forced organizers to reinstate the young singer.
In June, hundreds of Bosnian soccer fans rioted outside a hotel in Zenica, where Israel’s national Football team was staying. Photos from the match showed fans stomping on an Israeli flag and shouting, “Palestine” and “Kill, Kill, Kill the Jews.”
*800 miles to the west, in the Netherlands, Utrecht fans taunted their counterparts from Amsterdam, chanting, “My father was in the commandos, my mother was in the SS. Together they burned Jews, because Jews burn best.” Amsterdam is viewed by many as a “Jewish city” because it is the center of Jewish life in the country.

# 8 UK JEREMY CORBYN, BRITISH LABOR PARTY LEADER & GERALD KAUFMAN, LABOUR MP
Some 250,000 voters handed new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a first round absolute majority. In the past, Corbyn has called Hamas and Hezbollah his “friends”, received funding from Ted Honderlich, a promoter of anti-Israel violence, and also appeared with Holocaust denier, Paul Eisen, even donating to his charity, Deir Yassin Remembered. “Eisen wrote that aq has, “… Attended every

“The majority of the “attempted stabbing” incidents are based on false claims. They are executing Palestinians on the streets and then they fabricate the stabbing story. Several videos came out after some of these incidents that clearly show those Palestinians killed posing no harm at all but they got shot anyway and some were executed after they were injured on the ground. It is enough for an Israeli to scream terrorist and if you look like an Arab you will be shot dead on the spot.” – Gerald Kaufman, Labour MP

# 9 KUWAIT
How deep is the (official) hatred of Israel in some Arab nations? CNN reported that on December 15th, Kuwait Airways informed the U.S. Department of Transportation that they will stop service between JFK and London. This, after US authorities threatened legal action against Kuwait Airlines for its refusal to sell a ticket to Eldad Gatt, an Israeli citizen. Seems it is against Kuwaiti law to do business with Israelis and against US law to discriminate against anyone based on nationality.

# 10 POLAND
A demonstration against accepting Syrian refugees in Wroclaw morphed into a vicious anti-Semitic display when dozens of demonstrators began burning stereotypic effigies of ultra-orthodox Jews. The demonstration took place in front of City Hall and in full view of police, who took no action.
Pro-ISIS, Holocaust denying, Hitler-praising, anti-Semitic graffiti was painted at the Jewish cemetery in Sochaczew, Poland in December. Vandals are reported to have destroyed the Ohel Tzadik memorial and monuments dedicated to the Sochaczew Jews murdered by the Germans during the Nazi occupation. The desecrations included “Allah Bless Hitler”, “Islamic State Was Here” and “Islam Will Dominate”.
During a November meeting of the Poznan City Council considering new names for streets came, Professor Janusz Kaspuscinski suggested naming the street leading to a major garbage incinerator, “Oswiecimska (Auschwitz) Street.”

DISHONORABLE MENTION
City of Munich for allowing an anti-Israel BDS event on the anniversary of Kristallnacht-the 1938 Nazi pogrom that torched German synagogues, and left at least 91 Jews dead and tens of thousands in concentration camps.
Community leader Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor protested: “The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement disguises the socially unacceptable (Holocaust era), ‘Don’t buy from Jews!’ as a modernized form of Nazi jargon by demanding, ‘Don’t buy from the Jewish state.’”
Jakob Augstein, part owner of and columnist for German newsweekly Der Spiegel, for drawing parallels in his column subtitled, “Fascism is not a phenomenon of the past,” between Israel’s Netanyahu-led government and historical European fascism, France’s National Front party and the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD). Augstein wrote, “So right-wing like the German right-wing populists is the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Volker Beck, the Green Party spokesman for Interior Affairs and Religion, charged that for Augstein, “Israel is to blame for everything – somehow also still for the right-wing populists of the AfD. Mr. Augstein is once again on the wrong track with his Israel obsession.” In 2012, Augstein was included in the Center’s Top 10 list after equating Islamic extremists to Hasidic Jews in Israel.

Then Argentina President Christina Kirchner who invoked the Jewish moneylender, “Shylock,” to explain the country’s woes to schoolchildren. Kirchner asked students studying “Romeo and Juliet”; whether they had read the “Merchant of Venice” in order to understand what “vulture funds” were doing to their country. She interrupted their amusement, telling them, “Don’t laugh. Usury and blood suckers have been immortalized in the world’s best literature for centuries.”