February 6, 2010
In News The Israel-Palestine Conflict
NEW YORK – More than 40 Nobel Prize winners from various countries have added their signatures to a full-page ad denouncing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that is due to be published in The New York Times and International Herald Tribune in the next few days.
The ad, initiated by 1986 Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, condemns Iran’s severe human rights violations and warns that Iran’s nuclear program is a danger to humanity. The ad is part of Wiesel’s worldwide campaign to raise awareness of the threat he says Ahmadinejad poses to world peace. Wiesel told Haaretz on Wednesday that he is using his ties with world leaders and heads of state and appearing at international conferences to warn of Ahmadinejad’s intentions. “Governments must stop Ahmadinejad and put him on trial at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on charges of open incitement for genocide,” he said. Wiesel blasted Judge Richard Goldstone, saying his report on the Israeli offensive in Gaza was “a crime against the Jewish people.” Wiesel, who was deported from his hometown of Sighet in Transylvania to Auschwitz, is demanding Hungary open its Nazi-occupation era archives. This would expose the extent of the Hungarian police and army’s persecution of the Jews, he said.