BERLIN – The associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Abraham
Cooper, on Thursday labeled the Der Spiegel columnist Jakob Augstein an
“anti-Semite” for the first time since the outbreak of a dispute over Augstein’s
alleged anti-Israel and anti-Semitic columns. Cooper said Augstein’s attacks on
Israeli haredim were “classical medieval Jew-hatred.”
The Wiesenthal
Center had previously termed Augstein’s rhetoric explicitly anti-Semitic but
waited to see if Augstein would change his mind and apologize to Jews and his
readers.
Cooper also expressed his organization’s “gratitude to
Chancellor [Angela] Merkel for confronting Egyptian President [Mohamed] Morsi on
his anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitism of the Muslim Brotherhood” last week in
Berlin. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement, with which Morsi is affiliated,
topped the Wiesenthal’s 2012 top 10 list of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel
personages and associations.
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