The scandal-plagued Berlin Center for Anti-Semitism Research has been thrown into a new crisis for its failure to advise the German government to pull out of the so-called Durban II meeting - the UN's World Conference Against Racism - which opens on April 20 in Geneva.
Anti-Zionist Jews and pro...

Anti-Zionist Jews and pro-Palestinian supporters participate in a protest march in Durban to coincide with the opening of the 2001 UN Racism Conference [archive].
Photo: AP [file]

The International Auschwitz Committee, the director of the Yale University Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, and the Berlin German Jewish community have slammed the Center for its participation in Durban II and its neglect of Iran's genocidal threats toward Israel.

According to critics, the Center has departed from its core mission to research anti-Semitism and is trivializing the Holocaust by comparing it with hatred of Islam.

"The center should say that [Durban II] is anti-Semitism," Noah Flug, chairman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors and president of the International Auschwitz Committee, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

It was a "mistake" that the center was not publicly urging the German government to boycott Durban II, Flug said, speaking from Jerusalem.

Wolfgang Benz, the Berlin Center's director, sent the Post a statement late last month saying he would neither grant interviews nor comment, but he "authorized" two academics at the center, Dr. Peter Widmann and Dr. Angelika Königseder, to answer queries. "It is not our function as academics to tell the German government what to do," Widmann told the Post.

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