United States Congress Helsinki Commission Hearing “Combatting Antisemitism in the OSCE Region: Taking Stock of the Situation Today"

December 5, 2011

CENTRE SIMON WIESENTHAL - EUROPE
66, rue Laugier
75017 Paris-France
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Washington DC, Friday, December 2,


Testimony of Dr. Shimon Samuels, Director for International Relations, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Paris, France


Mr. Chairman,


I opened the European office of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Paris, in 1988, to focus on three challenges:

1) In Western Europe, the second religion demographically was already Islam - inter-faith outreach was necessary – as was the monitoring of incipient extremism.

2) tremors in Eastern Europe, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, signalled a neo-nationalism redolent of past phantoms – monitoring was required.

3) flea markets across Europe sold under the counter floppy disks of neo-Nazi games (for Amiga and Commodore 64 proto-computers) - hate would advance exponentially with that technology and had to be monitored.

By the Millennium, the year 2000: our first focus was now characterized by the Durban process, which in turn inspired a Jihadist antisemitism terrorism nexus, with Middle East satellite television and website inculcation and recruitment in Europe.

The second focus was marked by the EU enlargement. In April 2004, a Warsaw welcome party focussed on the challenges facing the East European new members. I was invited to speak on antisemitism in the West and scapegoating in the East, the latter as a result of painful withdrawal from the central Soviet to the capitalist market economy. That same month, the OSCE Berlin Declaration on Antisemitism was enunciated, setting a new threshold of standards for the region.

I addressed the States Parties, noting that "You are the same nations we meet at Geneva in the UN Human Rights Commission (now Council). Yet, here, at the OSCE, the language is different, perhaps due to the absence of the tyrannies and NGO's whose vested agenda is to perpetuate the Middle East conflict".

I viewed the OSCE as the answer to the stultification of the UN system, even today exemplified only last week by the appointment of Syria to a human rights role in UNESCO.

What forms of antisemitism did the Berlin Declaration not foresee?

That which, at the 2010 Astana OSCE High-level Meeting, I called supercessionism. Just as the early Church first viewed itself as "Israel non in carne sed in spiritum" (not in the flesh but in the spirit), so today, we witness an identity theft of the Jewish narrative among several OSCE parties.

In Eastern Europe, the Baltics and Ukraine - a seemingly innocent conflation is made between the Holocaust and the atrocities of Stalin.
It’s political instrument, "The Prague Declaration" seeks, through the European Parliament, to replace the 27 January "Holocaust Commemoration Day" (Auschwitz liberation day) with a "Double Genocide Day" on 23 August (which marks the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that resulted in the
1939-1941 Soviet occupation of the countries concerned).

- in Western Europe, the ongoing "Durban process" has redefined "Holocaust" as "Naqba" (the 1948 catastrophe of Israel's birth); antisemitism according to Teheran University, “until 1948 victimized the Jew. Due to the victory of Zionism, since 1948 it targets the other Semite : -the Arab. In Orwellian doublespeak, it concludes that ‘if antisemitism is Arabophobia then Zionism is antisemitism.’”

Add into the mix the terms "apartheid" and BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanction), which are misappropriated from South African victimology to castigate the State of Israel.


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).


For further information contact Dr. Shimon Samuels on 0033(0)609770158, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter page or mobile device.

The Norwegian Foreign Minister specialises in Holocaust imagery to depict the Palestinian predicament.He does not appreciate the dangererous consequences of his allusions for,if Gaza is Auschwitz, then Auschwitz is but a lie.

The antisemitic backlash in Europe to this historical gangrene, or gangreening of history, is to be exacerbated further via the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO. In that context, supercessionism aims to cut the Jewish link to the Holy Land.

The Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb have been rebaptised as mosques. Now, laid out in the volume "Buraq Wall"- which I purchased at the Frankfurt Book Fair - Islam contends that Buraq, the winged-steed, carried Muhammad from Mecca, via Jerusalem, on a night flight pilgrimage to heaven and back. The mount was tethered during the stopover at the Wailing or Western Wall of the Temple Mount.Hence, “The Buraq Wall”
calls Judaism’s holiest site: "a Jewish heresy of aggression against a Muslim heritage shrine".

Last week, "Travel Palestine" (a film clip found on YouTube), funded by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), expunges all Jewish roots in the Holy Land.

Jews also have a trinity: the People, the Book, the Land. Eliminate one leg of the triangle, delete all.

Not perceived in the Berlin Declaration and even more dangerous, is the demonstration that "the enemy of the good is indifference" – there we encounter a new phase of antisemitism:- Ahmadinejad stated: "the Holocaust is a lie", and was answered by a wave of international condemnation.
A little while later, he continued: "Wipe Israel off the Map", this passed with muted indignation.
His repeated: "Jews are vermin, bacilli, a tumour" are met with fatigue.
By a numbing-effect, he tests the limits of Western timidity. Voila, the “antisemitism of indifference”.

This week, 5,000 Tahrir Square demonstrators in Cairo, screeching "Death to the Jews", created no global expression of outrage.

The bar has been raised on antisemitism.

After eight assaults on the Rabbi of Malmo, Sweden - a community of 700 Jews and 70,000 Muslims - the Wiesenthal Centre during a visit in January 2011, imposed a "travel advisory" on the city. Our campaign resulted in the Swedish government finally subsidizing community security. Faced with the Mayor's total indifference, the Rabbi was further subject to 15 assaults since our visit. Indeed, the Muslim community has now joined us in criticizing Malmo's inattentiveness to hate-crimes.

Next month, January 20, we will mark the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Protocol, which was drafted at a meeting of fifteen Nazi bureaucrats in Berlin, to coordinate the extermination of 11,000,000 Jews as the final solution of the Jewish question. I stress that the Protocol lists 11,000,000.

Six million were murdered - Eleven million were the intent.
I have always respected the power of water, 30 miles of British Channel saved my family and the 330,000 Jews of England on that list.

Today, 30 miles of Channel are as defensible as 3,000 miles of Atlantic waters. Zero! We are all tripwires criss-crossing the OSCE region.

Recently discovered documentation of Nazi Germany's strategic designs on Persia’s oil wealth, includes a Wannsee - style memorandum of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust : Therein he consigns up to 100,000 Iranian Jews to extermination. The current President of Iran persists in his intentions to finish the job.

Simon Wiesenthal said, “what starts with the Jews never ends with them”.
On the Venezuelan coast, Iran is building a Shahab-3 missile base with a range of 2,000 miles facing these United States.

Twice – in two World Wars – you have invoked the Monroe Doctrine to redress the balance of the Old World. Indeed, as wa speak, under your inspiration, in Panama, the 28th General Assembly of the Latin American Parliament (PARLATINO) has adopted a Wiesenthal Centre drafted Resolution to Combat Antisemitism in the Americas : “Conspiracy Theories, Holocaust Denial and Delegitimization of the Jewish Sovereignty are Contributing Factors to Antisemitism.”

Mr. Chairman, through this Commission, which I consider an early-warning system, we call on the US government to maintain that balance in the OSCE region. For if antisemitism is indeed a benchmark, then this session must be replayed at a purpose-built High-Level OSCE meeting under the forthcoming Irish Presidency, perhaps to be called, “Berlin II
: Stocktaking and Counteracting Antisemitism in the OSCE Region”.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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).

For further information contact Dr. Shimon Samuels on 0033(0)609770158, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter page or mobile device.