President Bush Urged To Protest Antisemitic Broadcast At White House Meeting With Abbas

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has urged President Bush to protest the broadcast of an antisemitic sermon by Palestinian TV during his May 26th White House meeting with PA President Abbas. The request to the President by Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, dean and associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (respectively) came on the heels of a May 13th genocidal sermon broadcast live on Palestinian Television by Gaza cleric Sheikh Ibrahim Mudairis. In that sermon, Mudairis, who appears frequently on Palestinian Television, charged that, "The Jews are the cancer spreading all over the world...the Jews are a virus like AIDS hitting humankind...Jews are responsible for all wars and conflicts....Do not ask what Germany did to the Jews but what the Jews did to Germany. True, the Germans killed and burned Jews but the Jews exaggerate the numbers to gain propaganda advantages and sympathy…."

The Sheikh went on to say that God has predetermined that the Jewish problem will be solved with their extermination and that God has also predetermined that Christian-Islam interactions will end with today's Christian countries under Islam.

The Center’s letter to President Bush said in part: "...Mr. President, this speech exceeds in its blatant antisemitism and Holocaust denial even the most hateful sermons preached under Yassir Arafat's rule. Furthermore, it coincided with the civilized world's commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazism. What message does this television broadcast convey to the people of Israel other than to leave them to wonder whether this is the peace dividend they can look forward to from their new Palestinian partners?...We urge you, Mr. President, to discuss this matter with President Abbas when he visits you and to make clear that the seeds of peace cannot be grown in fields of hate," they said.

The current chief of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation was personally appointed by Mr. Abbas and several days ago the Center demanded that he be removed from his position. Reacting to a news report that Palestinian Minister of Information Nabil Shaath has asked the Muslim Waqf and Religious Affairs Ministry who employs Sheik Mudairis, "to suspend him, investigate him and prevent him from delivering further sermons on Fridays," Wiesenthal Center officials said, "While this is a positive development, there will no hopes for a lasting Middle East peace unless President Abbas takes immediate steps to stop all incitement to terrorism, Holocaust denial, and antisemitic hatred on the Palestinian airwaves and school curricula."

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, and the Council of Europe.

For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036, or visit www.wiesenthal.com.