Wiesenthal Center Protests Use Of Nazi Imagery In Anti-Israel Cartoon Published In Norwegian Paper

July 20, 2006

WIESENTHAL CENTER PROTESTS USE OF NAZI IMAGERY IN ANTI-ISRAEL CARTOON PUBLISHED IN NORWEGIAN PAPER

The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the publication of a political cartoon in the Oslo daily Dagbladet that associated Israel’s involvement in Gaza to Nazi brutality. The cartoon, by noted Norwegian cartoonist Finn Graff, depicts Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as an armed Nazi concentration camp guard standing on a balcony overlooking scores of Palestinian victimsa reference to a harrowing scene in the film Schindler’s List.

In a letter to  Kurt Vollebaek, Norway’s Ambassador to the United States, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of  the Wiesenthal Center, acknowledged Norway’s right to free speech, but called on their government to publicly denounce this “antisemitic attack that manages simultaneously to denigrate the victims of the Nazi Holocaust and incite hatred against Israel and her supporters in your country.”

Rabbi Cooper also protested the timing of the cartoon’s publication citing that “hundreds of Israelis have been killed and injured by unprovoked cross-border attacks by terrorist organizations.”

Cooper expressed hope that in light of this controversy, the Norwegian government will support UN Security Council Resolution 1559 which would end the “Hezbollah threat that has wreaked such suffering on innocents on both sides of the Israeli/Lebanese border.”

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 and the Council of Europe.

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