Wiesenthal Centre to Danish and Dutch Prime Ministers: “Condemn Ma’an News Agency for ‘Body Organs’ Calumny and Withdraw Your Funding from that Organ of Hate”

August 24, 2009

CENTRE SIMON WIESENTHAL – EUROPE
66 rue Laugier, 75017 Paris - Tel: +33 (0) 1 47 23 76 37
Fax: +33 (0) 1 47 20 84 01
E-mail: csweurope@gmail.com


Wiesenthal Centre to Danish and Dutch Prime Ministers: “Condemn Ma’an News Agency for ‘Body Organs’ Calumny and Withdraw Your Funding from that Organ of Hate”

Paris 

In letters to Danish Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Dutch Prime Minister, Jan-Peter Balkenende, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, urged the withdrawal of their governments’ funding from the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency. Ma’an has published a libellous report entitled “Disappearances, Holding Bodies, Organ Theft - Intertwined Crimes”.

Samuels noted that “the appearance of this venomous screed was orchestrated to follow and to reinforce the egregious defamatory claim by the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, that the Israel Defence Forces ‘killed Palestinian civilians to harvest their body organs’ ”.

The letter pointed to both of these governments “taking extreme damage control measures following the wildfire spread of anti-Danish incitement and violence in the aftermath of the so-called ‘Muhammad cartoons crisis’ and the anti-Dutch threats in the wake of the screening of the film ‘Fitna’, in the Netherlands”.

Samuels added “It should be now apparent that in continuing to finance Ma’an, Denmark and the Netherlands may be viewed as complicit in that agency’s calls for assault against Jews and its sabotage of any hopes for an Israeli-Palestinian peace”.

The Centre urged the two Prime Ministers “to vigorously condemn Ma’an’s racist slander in the language of the notorious medieval antisemitic blood-libels. At the same time, we expect your country to withdraw its financial support to Ma’an as a clear message that calumnies and hatemongering are inimical to Denmark and the Netherland’s policies and values”.

The letters stressed that “A primary axiom of Judaism is the sanctity of the human body. The ‘body organ’ big lie against the Jewish State is worthy of Goebbels and, sustained by Internet infinite repetition, it will haunt all who share this chain of defamation”.

“Inadequate action on this matter would result in the Danish and Dutch authorities’ co-responsibility for potentially violent consequences”, concluded Samuels.

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, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).

For further information contact Shimon Samuels at +336 09770158.