Mr. President;
Thank you for meeting with the delegation of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Thank you for your continued strong support of and friendship with the State of Israel.
This is the Wiesenthal Center’s fourth meeting with a President of France at the Elysee Palace.
I want to take this opportunity to immediately reciprocate your kindness and extend an invitation on behalf of our Board of Trustees to deliver a human rights address at our renowned Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles in the near future.
We meet at a pivotal time in history, when the Jewish community and France’s democratic values are under unprecedented attack by the forces of extremism both from the Far-Right and from extreme Islamist purveyors of religious intolerance, violence and murder.
We appreciated that in immediately aftermath of the murders of a Rabbi and young children on the grounds of a Yeshiva in Toulouse you and then-President Sarkozy suspended your campaigns to come to Toulouse and denounce the savagery. But unfortunately, today, Mohammed Merah along with the French-born murderer of innocents at the Brussels Jewish Museum, are revered by many young Muslims, here in France and around the world.
Why is this so?
Certainly, the Internet plays a role, but we believe the main reason is that religious leadership of the Muslim communities remains part of the problem, not part of the solution.
As Simon Wiesenthal told President Mitterrand in this historic place, “The Nazi Holocaust could never had happened if not for the enablers; the Clergy and teachers who waited in silence and failed to protest when their protests could have made a difference.”
Mr. President, even in this magnificent City, the cradle of human rights, the world witnessed the price of silence when Jewish citizens were taken from their homes during the Shoah and sent to Drancy and ultimately to their deaths at Auschwitz.
Mr. President, in our time these French-born terrorists, like other terrorists were not born with hate in their hearts. Who are the teachers and enablers of these Jihadists who inspired them to go to Syria, to become apostles of hate and violence?
Where are the ringing condemnations from religious leaders-- of the Jihadist terrorism on the streets of Europe?
In the presence of French, American, Canadian and British Jewish leaders gathered here today, I declare with certainty that if G-d forbid, a terrorist attack was carried out by a Jew against innocent civilians, there would be wall-to-wall public condemnation by every Jewish leader in the world.
No less should be expected from the leaders of the largest Muslim population in Europe.
We eagerly look forward to learning what steps are being undertaken by your government to address this crisis that threatens the viability of the French Jewish Community.
Thank you…
