Simon Wiesenthal Center

In 2013, the SWC released a comprehensive report on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is a global campaign promoting boycotts of several types against Israel. The report analyzed the campaign throughout its various outlets and asserted that the BDS movement is a "thinly-disguised effort to coordinate and complement the violent strategy of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim 'rejectionists' who have refused to make peace with Israel for over six decades, and to pursue a high-profile campaign composed of anti-Israel big lies to help destroy the Jewish State by any and all means". The report also said that the BDS campaign attacks Israel's entire economy and society, holding all (Jewish) Israelis as collectively guilty.[11]

On March 8, 2007, the head of international relations for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Stanley Trevor Samuels, was convicted (and later acquitted in an appeal) of defamation by a Paris courthouse for accusing the French-based Committee for Charity and Support for the Palestinians (CBSP) of sending funds to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.[12]

In its filing of the suit, the CBSP labelled the accusations "ridiculous", stating that its charitable work consisted of providing aid to some 3,000 Palestinian orphans. The court ruled that documents produced by the Wiesenthal Center established no "direct or indirect participation in financing terrorism" on the part of the CBSP, and that the allegations were "seriously defamatory".[12]

The Wiesenthal Center appealed the court ruling, and the appeal was granted in July 2009.[13]

After a Canadian newspaper reported upon the 2006 Iranian sumptuary law controversy (based on a report written by Iranian exiles on Iranian religious minorities being forced to wear badges identifying them to Muslims), the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Marvin Hier, wrote to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan urging the international community to pressure Iran to drop the measure.[14]

Numerous other sources, including Maurice Motamed, the Jewish member of the Iranian parliament and the Iranian Embassy in Canada, refuted the report as untrue. The National Post later retracted the original article ("Iran eyes badges for Jews: Law would require non-Muslim insignia") and published an article, to the contrary ("Experts say reports of badges for Jews in Iran is untrue"). However, the Simon Wiesenthal Center refused to admit any mistake on their part and insisted that the widely debunked allegations were true.[15]

In January 2004, the Paris branch of the center asked the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, to suspend the 'Irish Museum of the Year Award' given to the Hunt Museum in Limerick, until the conclusion of a demanded inquiry into the provenance of a significant number of items in the collection. He argued that this was needed due to the close ties of the founders, John and Gertrude Hunt to the head of the Nazi Party (NSDP-AO) in Ireland, among others, and British suspicions during the war of espionage activity on the part of the couple. The center also claimed, 'The "Hunt Museum Essential Guide" describes only 150 of the over 2000 objects in the Museum's collection and, notably, without providing information on their provenance – data that all museums are now required to provide in accordance with international procedure.'[16]

This essentially accused the Hunt Museum in Limerick of keeping art and artifacts looted during the Second World War, which was described as "unprofessional in the extreme" by the expert Lynn Nicholas that cleared the museum of wrongdoing.[17][18] The claim was taken so seriously that the examination was supervised by the prestigious Royal Irish Academy, whose 2006 report is available on line.[19] McAleese, who had been written to by the center, then criticized a Dr. Samuels of the center for "a tissue of lies", adding that the center had diminished the name of Simon Wiesenthal.[20] The center said that it had prepared its own 150-page report in May 2008 that would be published after vetting by its lawyers, but had not done so as of November 2008.[21] The report was finally made on December 12, 2008.[22]

A branch museum in Jerusalem, expected to be completed in 2021, sparked protests from the city's Muslim population. The museum is being built on a thousand-year-old Muslim graveyard called the Mamilla Cemetery, much of which has already been paved over. The complaints were rejected by Israel's Supreme Court, leading to a demonstration by hundreds of people in November 2008.[23][24] On November 19, 2008 a group of US Jewish and Muslim leaders sent a letter to the Wiesenthal Center urging it to halt the construction of the museum on the site.

As of February 2010, the Museum of Tolerance's plan for construction has been fully approved by Israeli courts and is proceeding at the compound of Mamilla Cemetery. The courts ruled that the compound had been neglected as a spiritual site by the Muslim community, in effect not functioning as a cemetery for decades (while simultaneously used for other purposes), and was thus mundra, i.e. abandoned, under Muslim laws.[25]

The Centre faults the Government of Canada's efforts to investigate and prosecute Nazi war criminals, and claims that approximately 2,000 Nazi war criminals obtained Canadian citizenship by providing false information.[26]

The Simon Wiesenthal Center opposed the construction of Park51, a Muslim community center, two blocks from Ground Zero. The executive director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Manhattan, Rabbi Meyer May said it was "insensitive" to locate the centre there. The Jewish Week noted that the Center itself was once accused of intolerance when it built a museum in Jerusalem on land that was once a Muslim cemetery, after gaining approval from Israeli courts.[27]

The Simon Wiesenthal Center welcomed the news that the Vatican has demanded that Bishop Richard Williamson recant his views denying the Holocaust before being re-admitted to the Roman Catholic Church. Williamson was one of the four priests from the Society of St. Pius X who were excommunicated 20 years ago for taking part in the consecration of Bishops contrary to Canon Law.[28]

The Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized Hugo Chávez for various statements, including his January 2006 statement that "[t]he world is for all of us, then, but it so happens that a minority, the descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ, the descendants of the same ones that kicked Bolívar out of here and also crucified him in their own way over there in Santa Marta, in Colombia. A minority has taken possession all of the wealth of the world..."[29] The Simon Wiesenthal Center omitted the reference to Bolívar without ellipsis, stated that Chávez was referring to Jews, and denounced the remarks as antisemitic by way of his allusions to wealth. Meanwhile, according to Forward.com, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela defended Chávez, stating that he was speaking not of Jews, but of South America's white oligarchy. The Wiesenthal Center's representative in Latin America replied that Chávez's mention of Christ-killers was "ambiguous at best" and that the "decision to criticize Chávez had been taken after careful consideration".[30]

The Simon Wiesenthal Center strongly denounced politician-journalist Soichiro Tahara for his remarks against former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and his daughter, former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka on his TV Asahi program "Sunday Project" in March 2009.

In the live broadcast, Tahara told Tanaka that her father, former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was "done in by America, by the Jews and [Ichiro] Ozawa,[note 1] too, was done in [by America and/or the Jews]."[31]

SWC's associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, condemned the Japanese band Kishidan for wearing uniforms resembling those of the SS, the armed wing of the Nazi party. The band wore military-inspired uniforms, adorned with the German medal Iron Cross and Nazi insignia such as the death skull and SS eagle on MTV Japan's primetime program "Mega Vector." Cooper said in a written protest to the band's management company Sony Music Artists, MTV Japan and the Japanese entertainment group Avex (Kishidan's label at the time being and also the current one) that "there is no excuse for such an outrage" and that "many young Japanese are "woefully uneducated" about the crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany and Japan during the second world war, but global entities like MTV and Sony Music should know better".[32]

As a result, Sony Music Artists and Avex[33] issued a joint statement of public apology on their respective websites.

On November 11, 2018, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action of the Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced BTS with the following statement: “Flags appearing on stage at their concert were eerily similar to the Nazi Swastika. It goes without saying that this group, which was invited to speak at the UN, owes the people of Japan and the victims of the Nazism an apology.”[34]