WIESENTHAL CENTER TO FRENCH PRESIDENT HOLLANDE: STOP FRANCE-LED CALL FOR INTERNATIONAL MONITORS ON TEMPLE MOUNT

France should urge  observers be deployed on Fridays at the Mosques, where Imams, some wielding knives, repeat lies of a non-existent threat to al Aqsa and incite young Palestinians to brutally attack Jews.

October 19, 2015

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human Rights NGO is urging French President Hollande to abort France’s initiative at the UN Security Council that reportedly would place international observers on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

An October 18th letter from Rabbis Marvin Hier, Dean and Founder and Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the leading Jewish human rights group to the French president said in part:

"We have just returned from three weeks in Jerusalem to celebrate the holiest days in the Jewish Year. We can personally attest that there was no attempt by Israel to change the status quo at al Aqsa; that in fact, that lie was instigated by Palestinian extremists, then validated and repeated by PA President Abbas.

The result has been a barbaric campaign of knifings, shootings and car-rammings by Palestinians against their Jewish neighbors. It is unacceptable that your government would reward Palestinian lies with resolution calling for “restraint” on all sides, maintaining the “status quo” and sending international observers to The Temple Mount."

 Center officials continued, "Mr. President, what would France do, if it were to be confronted with such barbarity on the streets of Paris? You would not call in foreign observers to protect Frenchmen. Israel is simply doing what every democracy would do to protect her citizens from this new campaign of violence."

"Mr. President, the Simon Wiesenthal Center acknowledges your government’s efforts to protect French Jewry from the ever-present danger of terrorist and violent attacks. For France to now give any credibility to Palestinian lies about false allegations of alleged changes by Israel of the long-standing status quo on The Temple Mount will only serve to further inflame anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments among French Muslims."

"Mr. President, we respectfully suggest that if the UN Security Council wishes to send international observers to The Holy Land,  France should urge that these observers  deployed on Fridays at the Mosques, where Imams, some wielding knives, repeat lies of a non-existent threat to al Aqsa and incite young Palestinians to brutally attack Jews”, Rabbi Hier and Cooper concluded.