Simon Wiesenthal Center Calls On PA President To Dismiss TV Chief After Live Broadcast of Antisemitic Sermon

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Simon Wiesenthal Center Calls On PA President To Dismiss TV Chief After Live Broadcast of Antisemitic Sermon

"The Jews are the cancer spreading allover the world...the Jews are a virus like AIDS hitting humankind...Jews are responsible for all wars and conflicts....Do not ask what Germany did to the Jews but what the Jewsdid to Germany. True, the Germans killed and burned Jews but the Jews exaggerate the numbers to gain propaganda advantages andsympathy…." - Sheikh IbrahimMudairis, May 13, 2005, Gaza

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to dismiss the head ofPalestinian Television over the airing of a live sermon from a Gaza Mosque delivered by Sheikh Ibrahim Mudairis which was filled with antisemitic attacks and denials of theHolocaust.

During the sermon, in the presence of uniformed Palestinian Authority police, theSheik also asserted that God has predetermined that the Jewish problem will be solved with the extermination of the Jews, and that God hasalso predetermined that Christian-Islam interactions will end with today's Christian countries under Islam.

"Even in the days of Arafat, we did not see such a blatant antisemitic and Holocaust-denying canard broadcast on Palestinian TV, whose current chief waspersonally appointed by Mahmoud Abbas," charged Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Dean and Associate Dean of the Wiesenthal Center.

"This attack comes just days before Mahmoud Abbas’ scheduled meeting with President Bush,and during the week which the civilized world commemorated the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Is this genocidal sermon the kind of peace dividend that thepeople of Israel can look forward to? The first thing that Mahmoud Abbas should say to President Bush at the White House is that he fired the head of Palestinian Broadcasting andall those associated with the broadcast of this ‘big lie,’" Hier and Cooper concluded.

Center officials called on President Bush to raise this issue at the White House during hismeeting with Mahmoud Abbas next week. They also called on the US government to link funding of Palestinian entities to their actions, not their promises.

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Visuals are taken from the sermon given by Sheikh Ibrahim Mudairis in Gaza, aired on Palestinian TV and broadcast on Israel Channel 2 TV, Ehud Yaari.
Quotes courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch

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