The Simon Wiesenthal Center Urges Congress to Act Over Troubling and Dangerous Iranian Deal.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center Urges Congress to Act Over Troubling and Dangerous Iranian Deal.(swc)

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is writing to you today to express our grave concerns over the announced six-month deal between Iran and the P5+1. Like you, our president and the people of Israel, we would all prefer that Iran can be kept from being a nuclear power through diplomatic means. However, the review of this agreement leaves us deeply troubled.

The most important question is: If the deal collapses in six months, how long would it take the world’s most dangerous regime to produce nuclear weapons? Right now it appears no more than a few months. That is why the deal is so troubling and dangerous:

It fails to dismantle any of the 19,000 estimated centrifuges
It fails to demand the extraction of all of the enriched uranium
It fails to force the cessation of the activities of the heavy water reactor in Arak

If Iran’s only goal was to develop a nuclear ability for civilian use, as it claims, then it has no need for centrifuges and heavy water – these are only needed to create a nuclear weapon. There are 19 countries in the world, from Canada to Indonesia that produce nuclear energy for civilian use without enrichment, centrifuges and heavy water.

We are confronted with a situation where for the first time the world’s superpowers have agreed to allow Iran to enrich uranium — in effect reversing the UN Security Council’s resolutions that they themselves have brought into being. Regarding a critical issue such as this, there is no such thing as “half a solution” — just as Syria’s entire chemical weapons arsenal is being dismantled, that is how Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon should have been dismantled.

As a leader on Capitol Hill, you are fully aware of how many years it took to put strong sanctions into effect. Sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table and strong sanctions would have provided the best chance for solving this issue peacefully. Now they are being given up in exchange for cosmetic Iranian concessions. Their concessions can be reversed within weeks. No one knows how long — if at all — it would take to reestablish the sanctions regime if the six-month deal does not yield positive results.

The North Korean example shows us how agreements of this type with extremist regimes do not lead to a peaceful solution, but instead are used by them to buy time on their way to obtaining a nuclear weapon.
A country that routinely violates U.N. Security Council resolutions, participates in the massacre of Syrian civilians and spreads terror throughout the world will be receiving from the West, an agreement that grants it legitimacy to turn into a nuclear threshold nation. All this, as Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei continues his genocidal rants against the Jewish State of Israel.

Finally, most disturbing of all, is the fate of this agreement depends on one man — the anti-Semitic autocratic Ayatollah Khamenei, just as 75 years ago, the fate of the Munich Agreement rested in the hands of one man — Adolf Hitler.
And nothing in this agreement would stop Tehran from following the example of their North Korean comrades who also used written agreements to simply buy time for them to break out into the nuclear club and destabilize their region, when it suited them.

On behalf of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, we urge you are your colleagues to do everything in your power to keep the pressure on the Iranian regime, to keep it from having the capacity to threaten Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and beyond with nuclear Armageddon.

We thank you for your concern and action and look forward to hearing from you.

Rabbi Marvin Hier Dean and Founder

Rabbi Abraham Cooper Associate Dean

Uproar over 'anti-Semitic' Spiegel columnist - German press rush to support Augstein against the SWC and Broder.

Uproar over 'anti-Semitic' Spiegel columnist - German press rush to support Augstein against the SWC and Broder.(JPost).The inclusion of a Spiegel online columnist in a 2012 top-ten list of anti-Semites has sparked a fierce debate in the German media since the beginning of the new year.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center ranked Jakob Augstein ninth for his written attacks on Jews and the State of Israel. He is a columnist for Spiegel online, owns a large stake in the Hamburg-based Der Spiegel magazine, and is owner of the left-wing weekly Der Freitag.
German mainstream media outlets from the Left to the Right rushed to defend Augstein against his critics, which include the popular Jewish author and Die Welt journalist Henryk M. Broder.
Writing in the social democratic-leaning Rundschau, Christian Bommarius, a journalist not known for writing about Israel and Jews, said Broder engaged in “character assassination” regarding Augstein and colluded with the Wiesenthal Center to damage his reputation.
Broder told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that “Jew-hatred is the common denominator” among the journalistic and blogger defenders of Augstein. He paraphrased a sentence attributed to Kaiser Wilhelm II – “I know no more parties, I know only Germans!” – by saying, “I don’t know any parties in Germany, I know only anti-Semites.”
Broder sees the debate as positive because it “brings clarity and light” to how anti-Semites think and to the modernity of Augstein’s expressions of Jew-hatred and demonization of Israel.
In response to the list, Augstein wrote on his Facebook page that he respected the work of the Wiesenthal Center but saw a weakening of the fight against anti-Semitism when “critical journalism is defamed as racist or anti-Semitic.”
Augstein’s father Rudolf founded Der Spiegel.
Speaking on the telephone with the Post from Los Angeles, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, doubled-down in his defense of the list, saying that Augstein had crossed the line of former refusenik Natan Sharanksy’s definition of anti-Semitism.
This is “not about journalism,” Cooper said, and Augstein “should not try to hide behind that he is a journalist. So what? His statements are not defensible.”
Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg, head of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, told the Post: “Critics of Israel evolve into anti- Semitic racists when they apply unique standards, deny the right of the Jewish people to sovereign equality among the nations or invoke the imagery and themes of classical and theological Jew-hatred. Thus, as Broder shows, when Augstein and his defenders obsessively and irrationally attack Israel and promote BDS [boycott, divestment and sanction] campaigns [against Israel] – which combine all three dimensions – they are indeed anti-Semitic, as also highlighted in the case of Judith Butler.”
Butler, an anti-Zionist US professor, called on Germans to boycott Israel last year and has termed Hezbollah and Hamas “social movements that are progressive” and part of the Left.
Augstein defended her in one his columns.
Experts in Germany have defended Broder.
In an email to the Post on Thursday, Dr. Clemens Heni, director of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), wrote about Frankfurter Rundschau journalist Christian Bommarius that he “promotes anti-Semitism.
"He is in support of Augstein and defames journalist Henryk M. Broder in the most disgusting way possible. He compares the German-Jewish journalist to Nazi language and pornography and to Nazis like Hitler, Goebbels, and Streicher.”
Alex Feuerherdt, a German journalist who contributes articles to the main German Jewish newspaper Die Jüdische Allgemeine and other publications, told the Post that "it is grotesque that the scandal in Germany is not Augstein's attacks on Israel but that the Simon Wiesenthal Center included him in its top-ten list."
Feuerherdt, who has written extensively about contemporary anti-Semitism in Germany, bemoaned" that the issue now was not anti-Semites but those who criticize the anti-Semites." Asked if the Augstein controversy would change anti-Semitic views in Germany toward Israel and Jews, Broder said, "It won't change much."Read the full story here.

The Wiesenthal Center Releases List of Top Anti-Semitic, Anti-Israel Slurs of the Year.

The Wiesenthal Center Releases List of Top Anti-Semitic, Anti-Israel Slurs of the Year.HT: JewishJournal.
1. EGYPT’S MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

Today effectively rules the Arab world’s largest and most important nation

MOHAMMED BADIE

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD’S MORAL GUIDE

“The Jews have dominated the land, spread corruption on earth, spilled the blood of believers and in their actions profaned holy places. Zionists only understand the language of force and will not relent without duress. This will happen only through holy Jihad.”
- Mohammed Badie

FUTOUGH ABD AL-NABI MANSOUR

EGYPTIAN CLERIC, HEADS RELIGIOUS ENDOWMENT FOR THE MATROUH GOVERATE

“Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters – Oh Allah, disperse them and render them asunder, Oh Allah, demonstrate your might and greatness upon them.”
At a nationally televised service at el-Tenaim Mosque attended by Egyptian President Morsi, cleric Al Nabi Mansour prays, Morsi was shown fervently answering “Amin” (Amen).

- Futouh Abd Al-Nabi Mansour, October 19, 2012 - source: MEMRI

2. IRANIAN REGIME

MAHAMOUD AHMADINEJAD

PRESIDENT OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

“It has now been some 400 years that a horrendous Zionist clan has been ruling the major world affairs. And behind the scenes of the major power circles, in political, media, monetary, and banking organizations in the world, they have been the decision-makers, to an extent that a big power with a huge economy and over 300 million population, the presidential election hopefuls must go kiss the feet of the Zionists to ensure their victory in the elections.”

- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, July 1, 2012, Speaking to Ambassadors of Islamic Countries

MAJOR GENERAL HASSAN FIROUZABADI

ARMED FORCES CHIEF OF STAFF

“The Iranian nation is standing for its cause that is the full annihilation of Israel.”

- Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, August 5, 2012

MOHAMED RAHIMI

FIRST VICE PRESIDENT

[The Talmud] “...teaches [the Jews] how to destroy non-Jews so as to protect an embryo in the womb of a Jewish mother.” As ‘evidence’ of Jewish control of international illegal drug trade, the vice president alleged that there isn’t “a single addict among the Zionists.”

At a ceremony in Tehran marking International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

3. ISRAEL SLANDERED BY BRAZILIAN CARTOONIST

CARLOS LATUFF

CARTOONIST

During the recent conflict instigated by Hamas against the Jewish state, the Brazilian cartoonist slandered Israel and her Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for doing what every world leader would do against the onslaught of rocket attacks targeting innocent civilians.

November 2012

4. EUROPEAN FOOTBALL (SOCCER) FANS’ ANTI- SEMITISM

The problem of anti-Semitic abuse at soccer matches which until recently has been limited to Eastern Europe, has been revived in Western Europe. The most serious situation has been a resurgence of anti-Semitic chanting toward one particular team, Tottenham Hotspur, which is based in a traditionally Jewish section of London. In a recent match against a rival West Ham United, sections of its fans chanted, “Adolf Hitler’s coming for you” and “You’re getting gassed in the morning” and making hissing noises like the sound of a gas chamber. A reporter for the Telegraph said, “We are not talking about a few isolated crooners here. A significant proportion of West Ham’s travelling support participated.“ Because Tottenham has the largest Jewish fan base in England, it has long been the target of anti-Semitism—so much so that the fans have adopted the slurs “Yid” and “Yiddo” as a way of deflecting abuse.

5. UKRAINE’S ANTI-SEMITIC “SVABODA” (FREEDOM) PARTY

OLEG TYAGNIBOK

LEADER OF THE SVABODA PARTY

In recent elections the radical right party won 41 seats in the Ukrainian Parliament (12% of the popular vote). Tyagnibok has called for purges of the approximately 400,000 Jews and other minorities living in Ukraine and has demanded that Ukraine be liberated from what he calls, the “Muscovite Jewish Mafia.”

- Oleg Tyagnibok

IGOR MIROSHNICHENKO

MEMBER OF UKRANIAN PARLIAMENT SLANDERS U.S. ACTRESS MILA KUNIS

MP Igor Miroshnichenko, recently labeled noted Ukrainian-born American actress Mila Kunis, a ‘zhydovka’, (dirty Jewess). Zhid is an insidious slur used against Jews since the times of the Czar and invoked by the Nazis and their collaborators as they rounded up the Jews to murder them at Babi Yar and in the death camps. Mila Kunis’ family, like countless thousands of other Ukrainian Jewish families, left the Ukraine in the first place because of anti-Semitism. The Wiesenthal Center has urged Prime Minister Azarov to publicly denounce the political extremists.

6. GREECE’S GOLDEN DAWN PARTY

NIKOLAOS MICHALOLIAKOS

GOLDEN DAWN FOUNDER

Nikolaos Michaloliakos, Golden Dawn’s founder appeared to give a Nazi salute in the Athens City Council. He claims that it was merely “the salute of the national youth organization of Ioannis Metaxas.”

In May 2012, he told an interviewer that six million did not die in the Nazi Holocaust. He called the figure an exaggeration. “There were no ovens. This is a lie…there were no gas chambers, either”

- Nikolaos Michaloliakos

See related Youtube: http://youtu.be/yXy7f17GXtQ

The Times of London reports that Golden Dawn’s member Artemis Matthaiopoulos, elected MP for the town of Serres, was the front man of the Nazi punk band Pogrom. One of the band’s songs, “Auschwitz” included anti-Semitic lyrics such as “f*** Wiesenthal”, “f*** Anne Frank”, “f*** the whole tribe of Abraham”, “Juden raus” and “The Star of David makes me vomit.” Matthaiopoulos is the second neo-Nazi rocker to represent Golden Dawn in the Greek Parliament.

ILIAS KASIDIARIS

SPOKESPERSON FOR THE GOLDEN DAWN PARTY

During a session of the Greek Parliament that was discussing an assault charge against Kasidiaris, he read from the notoriously anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’s” protocol #19. It alleges that Jewish leaders seek to discredit patriots as part of their attempt to take over governments: “In order to destroy the prestige of heroism, we shall send them for trial for theft, murder and every kind of abominable and filthy crime.”

- Ilias Kasidiaris

7. FAR-RIGHT HUNGARIAN JOBBIK PARTY

MARTON GYONGYOSI

FOREIGN POLICY CABINET

On October 26, Marton Gyongyosi, far-right party leader criticized Hungary’s foreign ministry for supporting Israel and raised the specter of dual loyalty by calling for background checks on Hungarian Jewish citizens. “I think now is the time to assess how many people there are of Jewish origin here, and especially in the Hungarian parliament who represent a certain national security risk of Hungary.”

- Marton Gyongyosi

Gyongyosi’s remarks spurred other lawmakers to wear Jewish stars in protest and led to public demonstrations.

8. NORWAY HONORS PROMOTER OF ANTI-SEMITIC CONSPIRACY CANARDS

TROND ALI LINSTAD

Trond Ali Linstad’s website warns readers to “beware the Jews” and the “influence they have in newspaper, in other media, and in many political organs.” Linstad depicts violence against Israel as a “great success” and supports use of the slogan -”Kharibat Khybarj” a jihadist term for terrorism against Jews. He also alleges “every president in the US must adapt to the Jewish lobby,“ which he says undermines US policy.

- Trond Ali Linstad

Despite his notorious record, in 2012 Linstad was nominated by King Harald V for the Royal Service Medal, which recognizes people for work in the arts, science, industry and public service!

9. INFLUENTIAL GERMAN MEDIA PERSONALITY’S BIGOTRY

JAKOB AUGSTEIN

OWNER/EDITOR, DER FREITAG WEEKLY

CONTRIBUTOR, SPIEGEL ONLINE

“With backing from the US, where the president must secure the support of Jewish lobby groups, and in Germany, where coping with history, in the meantime, has a military component, the Netanyahu government keeps the world on a leash with an ever-swelling war chant.”

“Israel’s nuclear power is a danger to the already fragile peace of the world. This statement has triggered an outcry.Because it’s true. And because it was made by a German, Guenter Grass, author and Nobel Prize winner. That is the key point. One must, therefore, thank him for taking it upon himself to speak for us all.”

“Israel is threatened by Islamic fundamentalists in its neighborhood. But the Jews also have their fundamentalists, the ultra-orthodox Hareidim. They are not a small splinter group. They make up 10% of the Israeli population. They are cut from the same cloth as their Islamic fundamentalist opponents. They follow the law of revenge.”

“The fire burns in Libya, Sudan, Yemen, in countries which are among the poorest on earth. But those who set the fires live elsewhere. Furious young people burn the American, and recently, the German flag. They, too, are victims, just like the dead at Benghazi and Sanaa. Whom does this all this violence benefit? Always the insane and unscrupulous. And this time it’s the U.S. Republicans and Israeli government.”

“Gaza is a place out of the end of times….1.7 million people live there on 360 sq. kilometers. Israel incubates its own opponents there.”

All translated quotes from Spiegel Online

- Jakob Augstein

Respected Die Welt columnist Henryk M. Broder, who has testified as an expert in the Bundestag about German anti-Semitism, labeled Augstein a “little Streicher” adding: “Jakob Augstein is not a salon anti-Semite, he’s a pure anti-Semite…an offender by conviction who only missed the opportunity to make his career with the Gestapo because he was born after the war. He certainly would have had what it takes.”

10. Louis Farrakhan

In the past, Louis Farrakhan has claimed that Jews controlled the slave trade, the US Government, and continue to seek world domination. In 2012, Farrakhan intensified his anti-Semitic rhetoric.

“Jews control the media. They said it themselves… In Washington right next to the Holocaust museum is the Federal Reserve where they print the money. Is that an accident?”

October 21, 2012 at Mosque Maryam in Chicago

“…Did you know the Koran says that Jews are the most violent of people? I didn’t write it, but I’m living to see it.”

February 26, 2012 – Savior’s Day Speech, Chicago

“Brothers and sisters, you’ve gotta stop being guided by the controlled media that is owned by Zionist forces that want to make you pawns in the struggle of Israel and Zionism.”

“Guidance in a Time of Trouble” speech in San Diego, 5/27/12

“I don’t know how many Jews were killed. I know something happened in Nazi Germany, and if it’s one million, two million, three million; it’s one million, two million, three million too many. But to deny a person the right to challenge your articulation of numbers and to put you in jail if you deny aspects of the Holocaust... You can’t speak about Jews. You can’t criticize Jews. If you do, you’re an anti-Semite.”

Farrakhan: How many of you are lawyers? Only have one in the house? No wonder we go to jail so much, brother! But at the top of the law profession, who are the top in law?

Audience: Jews.

Farrakhan: Sorry I didn’t hear you.

Audience: Jews!

Farrakhan: Any doctors in the house? Ain’t got no doctors? Oh there’s one way in the back. At the top of the medical profession, the top in that are members of the Jewish community. Anybody in media? Who’s the top in that field?

Audience: Jews.

Farrakhan: Anybody a rapper in the house? There’s rappers. You can rap, ain’t nothing wrong with that, but at the top of that are those that control the industry. Any of you have Hollywood ambitions, Broadway ambitions? Who’s the top of that?

Audience: Jews.

Farrakhan: Same people! They’re masters in business. Well I’m not a businessman I’m a banker. Well who’s the master of the bankers?

Audience: Jews.

Farrakhan: TALK TO ME!

Audience: Jews!

- Holy Day of Atonement Keynote Address, Mosque Maryam, Chicago