News Release
September 18, 2011
Washington, D.C. – Eighty-five leading Holocaust and genocide scholars have signed a petition urging President Obama to condemn the new government of Libya for last week hosting a visit by Sudanese President Omar Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for his role in the Darfur genocide.
“Especially in view of the role the United States played in bringing about the overthrow of the Gadaffi regime,” the Holocaust scholars wrote, “the U.S. has a right, and a moral obligation, to demand that the new Libya join us in treating perpetrators of genocide as pariahs.”
The petition was organized by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, in Washington, D.C.
The petition urges President Obama to “speak out publicly against Libya’s embrace of Bashir and to make it clear to the international community that the U.S. regards the hosting of visits by Bashir as unacceptable.” The scholars call for “a firmer policy by the U.S. toward perpetrators of genocide and those who coddle them.”
The signatories on the petition, who come from the United States, Europe, and Israel, include a number of the most distinguished figures in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies, among them:
* Prof. David S. Wyman, author of The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945.
* Prof. Yehuda Bauer, former director of Yad Vashem’s International Center for Holocaust Studies.
* Prof. Deborah Lipstadt, author of History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving.
* Prof. Israel W. Charny, editor of the Encyclopedia of Genocide.
* Dr. Gregory Stanton, president of Genocide Watch.
January 2012