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.
