The Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced South African officials and Denmark’s Foreign Minister Villy Sovndal’s approval of special labels for products emanating from the West Bank, as “shameless acts of hypocrisy that would ultimately hurt both Palestinians and Israelis.”

“Instead of politicizing beauty cream and oranges from the Holy Land, Denmark and South African officials should be labeling any product or produce emanating from Iran, whose leaders are universally condemned for serially abusing their minorities and continuing to threaten a genocide against the Jewish state,” said Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, the Wiesenthal Center’s Founder and Dean and Associate Dean, in a statement.

This week, according to the FARS News Agency, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi threatened, “the Iranian nation will remain committed to the full annihilation of the Zionist regime of Israel to the end.”

“Is the Danish Foreign Minister saying that Israeli businessmen are a greater threat than the Mullahtocracy in Iran?” asked Wiesenthal Center officials. “The cause of peace and human rights would be better served if Denmark, South Africa and the numerous NGOs committed to singling out the Jewish state for one-sided, punitive initiatives had the guts and moral bearings to instead take on the bullies from Tehran who everyone knows serially abuse their religious minorities and gays and threaten their neighbors with their nuclearization program,” Center officials concluded.


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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).