WIESENTHAL CENTER COMMENDS UN SECURITY COUNCIL FOR DEMANDING IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF KIDNAPPED ISRAELI SOLDIERS AND FOR CONDEMNING SYRIA’S CONTINUED ARMING OF HEZBOLLAH

Center hopes that Secretary General’s leadership will matched by actions on the ground to reunite the Israeli soldiers with their families

The Simon Wiesenthal Center commends the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the UN Security Council for demanding that Hezbollah immediately and unconditionally release Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, the Israeli soldiers kidnapped last summer. The Center also praised the Council’s denouncing of Syria for continuing to smuggle weapons to the terrorist group--a violation the Council’s Resolution 1701 called for at the end of the Lebanon War.

“We commend the leadership of Secretary General Ban for dealing directly and forthrightly on Hezbollah’s failure to release the Israeli soldiers they kidnapped and for not turning a blind eye to Syria’s mocking of the international community’s will by continuing to smuggle arms into Lebanon,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of  the Wiesenthal Center.

“We hope that the leadership exhibited by the Secretary General will be matched by actions on the ground that reunite the kidnapped soldiers with their families and forestall an even greater conflagration than was experienced in last summer’s Lebanon War,” Cooper concluded.

For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036.