Wiesenthal raps EU endorsement of terror

The Simon Wiesenthal Center sent letters of protest earlier this week expressing "disgust and outrage" to the Tel Aviv embassies of the six EU countries who voted for a virulently anti-Israel UN resolution Monday condoning Palestinian terror.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the center's Israel office, warned in the letters sent to the ambassadors of France, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Spain, and Portugal that the resolution would only encourage Islamic extremists.

Zuroff said ambassadors, of all people, should be aware of the nature of the terror campaign waged against Israel by Palestinian terrorists. The resolution, adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, endorsed a 1982 UN resolution affirming the legitimacy of using "all available means, including armed struggle" by nations fighting occupation.

The resolution also slammed Israel for a long list of alleged human-rights abuses - including "mass killings" - while never once mentioning Palestinian suicide bombers.

In the letter, Zuroff wrote that "as a current resident of the State of Israel, you no doubt are fully aware of the severity of the terror campaign against Israeli civilians launched by the Palestinians in the fall of 2000 with the full support of the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, and its horrific results. We therefore find it extremely difficult to understand how your country can support such a resolution which will only abet and encourage the continuation of the ruthless murder of Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorists." "We urge you to convey our sense of disgust and outrage to your government, in response to its incomprehensible stance on this issue," Zuroff wrote.

Wilfred Geens, Beligum's ambassador to Israel, said the vote "took place in a confused atmosphere." Geens said that his country's representative in Geneva, like the other EU partners, explained the vote "and said that beyond the wording and reference of the resolution, the message he wanted to get across was a call for the end of violence, for dialogue, and for peace - even though some formulations in the text were rather unfortunate." Among the unfortunate formulations, he said, was the reaffirmation of the 1982 resolution legitimating all means in a national liberation struggle.

Geens said that since Belgium voted against that resolution in 1982, it is on "clear footing" on that issue, and does not condone the use of terror.

"Beyond the actual wording," Geens said, "we wanted to send a clear message to end the violence, and an appeal to dialogue and to peace. The gravity of the situation goes beyond the formulation of certain elements in the text."

Excerpted from:
Deseret News, Friday, November 17, 2000

Hate label upsets Utah gun group

Founder says Wiesenthal Center listing is wrong

By Lucinda Dillon
Deseret News staff writer

A Utah women's gun-rights organization has been listed as a hate group by the national Simon Wiesenthal Center, a prominent Los Angeles organization whose focus is ending anti-Semitism and bigotry around the world.

Janalee Tobias, who started Women Against Gun Control, says her group has been wrongly placed on the list, and she is fighting to get the designation rescinded.

"To be labeled a hate group, there is nothing further from the truth," Tobias said today from her South Jordan home. "We love our country, number one. We love our families, and we love our kids. We just want to have a way to protect them."

The Women Against Gun Control Web site proves the group is not hate-based, Tobias said. Under its membership pledge, women must promise to vote, to work to preserve the Second Amendment, to exercise safety and responsibility in the handling of firearms, to believe that guns do not cause crime and to "promise to never cause bodily harm to anyone unless acting in self-defense."

"We do not advocate violence as a way of solving our differences," Tobias said. "Our whole premise is 'Let's work things out, stay out of the courts, talk things out over dinner.' "

And that's what she'd like to do with the people from the Wiesenthal Center who have listed her on the site. "I'd like to tell them what we're about."

The Simon Wiesenthal Center was founded in 1977 and today is an international center with 400,000 members and the renowned Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

The center has offices throughout the world and is dedicated to fighting bigotry and anti-Semitism and pursues an active agenda of related contemporary issues, according to its membership information.

Executives of the center were not available for comment early Friday. But the center's Web site has a large amount of space dedicated to a "Task Force Against Hate," which collects online hate incidents, tracks Web sites and features special reports such as "The Making of a SkinHead," which chronicles the life of T.J. Leyden, a former skinhead who joined the White Supremacy Movement at 15.

A faxed copy of a hate crimes site from the Simon Wiesenthal Center Web site shows Tobias' group listed with other Internet locations such as the "Idaho Militia," "Diannes Patriot Page," "The Shooting Ring," and "God Hates America" sites.

Tobias is an outspoken activist on a number of local issues including gun control. During recent months, she has been the target of threats, property damage and harassment. "And I'm the hate group? I've never done anything like that.

"The bigger issue here is that by saying we are a hate group they are promoting hate."

Bill Palmer, a Houston man whose Web site is also designated as a hate group, is furious.

"To have a group that I formerly respected to put me in the same category with skinheads and Nazis really, really cuts me to the quick," Palmer said Friday from his Houston home.

Palmer is a professional magician, a banjo player and a sometimes actor. He is also an avid defender of the U.S. Constitution, and his views are available on his Web site, www.billpalmer.com/amend2.htm. The page mentioned on the center's report is "Gun Control — and the Constitution of the United States."

"Go to the page," Palmer invited Friday. "There's nothing hateful about it."

Indeed, the Wiesenthal Web site does promote sales of a Digital Hate CD, which lists a variety of hate groups. Palmer purchased a CD last week, and his site and Tobias' Women Against Gun Control are still listed.

"To me, the CD is far more insidious because it goes through the mail," Palmer said. "Who buys it? Is it schools? To some people now, I am considered a hateful person who is against the government because I simply believe in the whole Constitution."

Palmer also participates in a sport called "Cowboy Action Shooting," in which participants dress up in cowboy gear, use old guns and shoot at targets. Families participate in these cowboy gatherings, he said, which promote the old-fashioned morality and sturdiness of cowboy life. He also trains children in gun safety. So he resents that his constitutional beliefs have been couched as hateful.

"How can the people who are supposed to be preventing another Holocaust be against the very thing that could have saved them from the Holocaust in the first place?" Palmer said. "I don't understand it."

groan....it is so tiresome when people ignore what is said and assign thoughts to someone. I don't support Pat Buchanan. Spent months fending off the brigade on FR. I am not now nor ever have been a neoNazi. Some of my best friends are...yadda..yadda..yadda...

The fact of the matter is, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is not the only Jewish group which refuses to acknowledge Castro's crimes. So do the ADL, the B’nai B’rith and American ORT. See a pattern here?

What is the deal? Are you so afraid of the "antisemite" label that you will give left wingers who support a communist dictator a free pass? Isn't it about time conservatives stopped trying to play nice and spit out the truth? I do want to see the ADL demonized. I want to see the Simon Wiesenthal Center be straight and not only condemn Castro but ask for Israel to extradict those hiding out there who are wanted for genocide and crimes against humanity in Poland and Lithuania .

The ADL and the SWC have gotten a free ride for too long.

What does any of the swill you posted on this thread have to do with the subject? Stop making a damn fool of yourself.

The question to you is why you do not want the Simon Weisenthal Center exposed as the left wing phony it is.

The Center does Jews no good. Think about it. People beside me know their bias, that they pick and choose who to go after. Think that helps when there are real antisemites out there burning down synagogues in Europe?

I don't think so. I believe a lot of people say..."oh the Simon Wiesenthal Center...crying again...bunch of left wing political hacks out to make a buck."

That doesn't help Israel or Jews. And that attitude is there as a direct result of groups such as the ADL and the SWC. I would think you would want them exposed.

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