Fifth Annual Wiesenthal Centre Report on Antisemitism at the Casablanca Book Fair (SIEL)

SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE - EUROPE 
Tel. +33-147237637 - Fax: +33-147208401 
E-mail: csweurope@gmail.com 

"Fifth Annual Wiesenthal Centre Report on Antisemitism at the Casablanca Book Fair (SIEL)"

Paris, March 3 2014

"The Minister claimed in 2013 all contested books related to Palestinian resistance.  2014 examples express hate for Jews and Judaism past and present, with little reference to the Middle East."

"Genocidal Syria and anarchic Egypt are still able to distract attention by scapegoating the Jews"

In a letter to the Moroccan Culture Minister, Mohammed Amine Sbihi,  the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, presented his fifth annual monitor of anti-Jewish incitement at the SIEL (Salon International de l'Edition et du Livre), held in Casablance from 13 February. 

Samuels recalled to the Minister that, following our 2013 Report "his telephone call to the Centre to consider adopting the Turkish security method of bar-coding all legitimate volumes admitted to their stands at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which had resulted from our intervention." The letter also informed the Minister that "all 27 exhibitors named in the Centre's 2013 Casablanca report were unsurprisingly absent from the next Frankfurt Book Fair".

Samuels also referred the Minister to his 27 June 2013 letter to the Centre assuring us that "the Ministry of Culture of the Kingdom of
Morocco will remain vigilant and reinforce its control measures so that not one book inciting to hate and racial violence may be found at
the Casablanca Book Fair and in any other functions held under this Ministry."

The Centre noted that "despite this commitment, the SIEL inter-ministerial vetting committee had
missed the following volumes: CLICK TO CONTINUE READING