Wiesenthal Center Urges South American Nations To Bar Reported Hamas/Latin American Tour

February 3, 2006

WIESENTHAL CENTER URGES SOUTH AMERICAN NATIONS TO BAR REPORTED HAMAS/LATIN AMERICAN TOUR

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is urging the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela to bar a delegation of Hamas leaders, who Venezuelan Vice President, Jose Vicente Rangell, said were planning to tour Latin America.

In letters to the Ambassadors of the four nations in Washington, D.C., Wiesenthal Center founder and dean, Rabbi Marvin Hier and associate dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper said, “We urge your government to bar such a visit of representatives of an avowed terrorist organization that dispatches suicide bombers against civilian targets and openly calls for the destruction of the State of Israel….” 

They continued, “Further, Hamas’ charter at its core is openly antisemitic and states in part: ‘There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.  Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time…. [The Jews] …were behind World War I, World War II… There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it….’  The Charter goes on to declare Zionism to be ‘behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds.’”

Rabbis Hier and Cooper concluded, “Those committed to peace in the Middle East will help further this goal by standing in solidarity against Hamas unless and until it disavows its terrorist and genocidal agenda.” 

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.

For more information, contact the Center’s public relations department, 310-553-9036.