CENTRE SIMON WIESENTHAL - EUROPE
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Wiesenthal Centre Urges Dismissal of Top UN Official

In a letter to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Affairs, Dr. Shimon Samuels, applauded the critique by her Spokesman, of UN Rapporteur Jean Ziegler. Ziegler's call to boycott Israel based upon his characterization of Israeli soldiers as "concentration camp guards" and the Gaza Strip as "an immense concentration camp", has been finally denounced.

Samuels noted that "this founder and self-laureate of the oxymoronic 'Muamar Khadafi Human Rights Prize', and his association with convicted French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, are caricatures of his constant expressions of prejudice."

The letter continued, "Above all, Madame High Commissioner, Ziegler has impugned his functions as your Commission's Rapporteur on the Right to Food. He has ignored global food crises in Sudan, North Korea, Bangladesh, etc., to abuse his power for continued assaults on the Jewish State, and to equate the victims of the Nazis with their slaughterers."

The Centre concluded, "Your critique is welcome, but criticism leaves a loophole for recidivism", and urged the Human Rights Commission "to go further", emphasizing that "Ziegler's professional incompetence, and his contribution to racial incitement and Jew hatred, deserve nothing less than his prompt dismissal from the United Nations system."

For further information, please contact Dr. Samuels at +33 6 09 77 01 58.