Abraham Cooper (right) from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles
Photo: Nick Ut/ AP
For some time now, we have only exchanged meaningful looks at our editorial conference at the "Jewish General" when SPIEGEL, the German Press Agency or other media quote the Simon Wiesenthal Center's annual anti-Semitism list.
In the end, the list only caused us to shake our heads.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, SWC for short, is a sad case.
A once highly respected institution with valued employees and with important functions for Jewish life has discredited itself.
Despite a namesake whose life's work cannot be appreciated enough.
The self-dismantling of the center around Rabbi Abraham Cooper goes so far that his assessments of Germany's most important Jewish newspaper are hardly worth a report.
I'm already hearing criticism from the Jewish bubble that it's not proper to wash dirty laundry in public.
This text here is only the kosher seal for SPIEGEL's critical reports on the Wiesenthal list.
DER SPIEGEL and the Jews - in recent years it has not been a trouble-free relationship.
Nevertheless, I think it's right to write this text here for a readership that is not mostly Jewish: because it doesn't matter who says something.
Because the vast majority of the Jewish community smiles wearily at the annual Wiesenthal list.
Whereas the reflex of non-Jewish German journalists – fortunately – is to take such a list very seriously at first.
The fight against anti-Semitism is too serious to be pursued in the way the Wiesenthal Center unfortunately did with the list.
Baden-Württemberg's Anti-Semitism Commissioner Michael Blume was listed here in 2021 along with the mullahs in Tehran.
In earnest?
Or Chancellor Merkel's then chief diplomat, Christoph Heusgen, whose statements about Israel can be criticized with good reason: side by side with anti-Semitic killers?
Or Jakob Augstein: He was rightly criticized for statements.
But the list from the Wiesenthal Center suddenly put him on a par with the assassin in Halle, who wanted to kill as many Jews as possible.
Would our newspaper, the "Jüdische Allgemeine," be on the list soon?
We asked ourselves that a few days ago.
Similar to Blume, for months people in the vicinity of the Wiesenthal Center made a fuss about one of our editors.
He was even accused of being close to the mullahs' regime in Tehran.
It would be laughable if it wasn't so serious.
We German Jews can now classify the Wiesenthal list.
From the Central Council of Jews to the Jewish communities in Baden-Württemberg to institutions like Makkabi, many took a protective stand against Michael Blume when he was on the list.
But to this day, dismayed inquiries are coming from abroad.
"What's going on in Germany?" our editorial team occasionally hears from interviewees in the USA: "An anti-Semitism commissioner who is anti-Semitic?"
You take the list seriously.
And are appalled that a Jew hater should have gotten such a post.
Blume may not always act happily on social media.
But to even put it in the vicinity of anti-Semitism is fake news.
And although so many have defended him, unfortunately something always sticks.
The Wiesenthal Center with its namesake, the Shoah survivor, Nazi hunter and tireless eyewitness, stands on the shoulders of a giant.
Simon Wiesenthal once wrote about his principles: "The first principle is 'First truth, then justice'."
Truth instead of fake news: For Simon Wiesenthal, that was a matter of course.
Obviously, this is only a very limited part of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's self-image.