22.06.2010  |  Author: CAA

SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE - EUROPE
Tel. +33-147237637 - Fax: +33-147208401
e-mail: csweurope@gmail.com

Mr. Jens Stoltenberg
Prime Minister
Oslo,Norway

Paris, 22 June 2010

Mr. Prime Minister,

Two days ago, on 20 June, much of Europe marked "International Refugee
Day" to celebrate the contribution made by refugees and migrants to
their host countries and also the injustices they face.

United for Intercultural Action issued a special report for the occasion
entitled, '13,824 Deaths: Blood on European Hands' ­ a litany including
286 drownings and harrowing stories at detention facilities across the
continent.

Most strangely, Norway ­ the country of the Nobel Peace Prize and donor
of huge subsidies to ostensible human rights defence agencies ­ remained
silent regarding atrocities visited on defenceless refugees in Europe.

Yet tomorrow, 23 June, the University of Oslo intends to vote on a full
academic boycott of Israeli institutions of Higher Education.

Mr. Prime Minister, among your academics, trade unionists and much of
your media, are some who may be suffering from Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder (OCD). In this case, the national defence mechanism in response
to pangs of guilt for the deportation of Norwegian Jews ­ what I would
call "the Quisling syndrome" for the Nazi-collaborator who ruled your
country during the Holocaust. This has led to a default fixation upon
the Jewish survivor state.

Through a role reversal - by demonizing the contemporary Jew as
perpetrator ­ Norwegian collective memory may achieve a catharsis. So
much simpler and cleaner than confronting the deaths of 13,824 refugees
on European soil or in international waters flowing near the coast of
Norway and its neighbours.

Should Oslo University choose to expiate its hard-to-find conscience by
isolating Israeli scholars, it will have diminished its own reputation
for independent scholarship, conducted a collective punishment and
breached European anti-discrimination provisions, based upon religious,
ethnic or national origins. The University may, arguably, thus expose
itself to legal counter-measures.

Above all, Norway will have demonstrated its priorities in human rights
concerns, while 13,824 refugees - and counting - die on your very
doorstep. We urge you to invoke your moral standing and honour to
readjust these priorities and to see this mischievous Motion withdrawn
definitively.

Most respectfully,

Dr. Shimon Samuels
Director for International Relations


CC:
Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean and Founder, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Los Angeles
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Los Angeles

SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE - EUROPE
66 rue Laugier - 75017 Paris
Tel. +33-147237637 - Fax: +33-147208401
e-mail: csweurope@gmail.com

22.06.2010  |  Author: CAA

A letter from Professor Samuel M. Edelman, Ph.D. Executive Director, SPME was sent to the Rector at The University of Oslo prior to the university's administration's addressing of a proposal about boycotting Israeli academic institutions and culture. The proposal was promoted by Helle Linné Eriksen.
 
The letter may be read by clicking at the SPME logo to the right (pfd).

 

04.06.2010  |  Author: Shimon Samuels

Wiesenthal Centre Open Letter to UN Human Rights Commissioner:
"The Goldstone Syndrome Inverts Justice, Turning the Victim into the Perpetrator Already Sentenced Before Proceedings Begin"

Paris, 2 June 2010

In a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Navi Pillay, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr.Shimon Samuels, stated:

-"Madam High Commissioner,

Your office is a Palace named for American President Woodrow Wilson, who believed his post World War I settlement would make that "a war to end all wars" - a settlement that included "a Jewish national home" in its ancestral land, then known as Palestine.

You sit on the throne of human rights envisioned by Rene Cassin, a French Jew who crafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who forged the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Both were convinced that their labours would ensure that the Holocaust would never be repeated and that the first line of that defence would be Jewish sovereignty in the renascent State of Israel.

The United Nations and your High Commission were born in the aftermath of that unprecedented global bloodletting as instruments of "the sons of light", the Atlantic Alliance, that had crushed the Nazi-Fascist "sons of darkness".

15.04.2010  |  Author: CAA In an open letter to US President Barack  Obama, Ronald S. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), today writes that Jews around the world are concerned about the dramatic deterioration of diplomatic relations between the United States and Israel in recent months. Lauder emphasizes that" Israel has made unprecedented concessions, including the most far-reaching settlement moratorium in its history, and declared its support for a two-state solution." The WJC president asks: "Why does the thrust of this Administration's Middle East rhetoric seem to blame Israel for the lack of movement on peace talks? After all, it is the Palestinians, not Israel, who refuse to negotiate."�

Lauder also queries President Obama on America's wider strategy for the Middle East: "The Administration's desire to improve relations with the Muslim world is well known. But is friction with Israel part of this new strategy? Is it assumed worsening relations with Israel can improve relations with Muslims? History is clear on the matter: appeasement does not work. It can achieve the opposite of what is intended."

17.01.2010  |  Author: CAA

By Isi Leibler
January 17, 2010

Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Gahr Støre, who is visiting Israel today, represents a government that all too often seizes the opportunity to , the Jewish state and is renowned as one of the principal Israel-bashers in Europe.

Jews have mixed feelings about Norway. They have fond memories of the resistance displayed by Norwegian King Haakon VII against the Nazis, but are obliged to balance this with the collaborator Vidkun Quisling, whose name has become a universal term for describing traitors.

To this day, Norway retains an unenviable reputation for sanctioning cruel blood sports like hunting, and is reviled as one of the last countries that still condone whaling. Yet this is the country that banned Jewish ritual slaughter even before the Nazis did so in Germany.

25.01.2010  |  Author: SWC In a letter to Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed "outrage at the mounting academic anti-Israel bigotry of Norwegian universities."

15.02.2010  |  Author: CAA Disclosures that the New Israel Fund (NIF) aids anti-Israeli, and even antisemitic groups, have ripped through the Jewish world.