Weitzman: “Islamist radicalism is not the only problem, there was anti-Semitism in the West and it is still there”
During his visit to Istanbul I had the chance to meet Mr. Mark Weitzman, the Director of Government Affairs of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and a member of the official US delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, IHRA. We discussed the recent Paris attacks, the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and how to fight the hate in social media. The new year began with attacks to Charlie Hebdo and then to a kosher supermarket right before Shabbat. How do you explain these attacks? What are the motives behind them? It is clearly tied up with Islamist radicalism. A small number of people see answers only in violence and expect the rest of the world to give in to all demands immediately. That is the similarity between the two. The underline issue of anti-Semitism in the supermarket is one that I think a lot of people in the western world and other parts of the world are happy to be ignoring. That is why I was glad to see the secretary general of the United Nations issu...