The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), a leading Jewish human rights NGO that has been working to forge ties with moderate Arabs inthe Gulf, commended a Bahrain/ United Arab Emirates bicycling team for participating in the historic Giro d’Italia bicycle race in Jerusalem. “While Abbas curses Jews anddenies the Holocaust, when Hamas deploys more Gazan children and families to the Israeli border in a weekly macabre race to run up needless casualties, our friends from Bahrain and UAE arecycling for peace in the Holy Land,” said Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper Dean and Founder and Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action of the SWC.
“We are saddened but not surprised to see Palestinians, seeking Israel’s destruction launch a hateful attack on social media againstthe race for peace,” Center officialsnoted. “Yet again, Israel is serially abused with scurrilous accusations of ‘apartheid state’ and 'ethnic cleansing.’ We will leave it to the public to understand who is seeking to traveldown the road of peace and who is peddling big-lie tactics that spread hate not hope,” Cooper and Hier added.
Last December, the Simon Wiesenthal Center hosted a delegation of 25 interfaith leaders from Bahrain in Jerusalem. “That delegation wasalso subjected to ferocious and violent firestorm on social media, with Hezbollah’s leader declaring the group should be stoned. Thankfully, the delegation came and walked the streets of the OldCity, despite those threats,” Center officials concluded.
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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the UnitedStates. 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).
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