The Simon Wiesenthal Center joins with all those who recoil at the savagery of Libyan jihadists in the mass beheading of 21 Coptic Christians. The leading Jewish human rights NGO calls on the White House to acknowledge that ISIS targeted Christians for these unspeakable crimes.

“Once again, the Administration refuses to characterize a gruesome Islamist attack as specifically targeting a religious group and that they justify their horrific deeds in the name of Islam,” lamented Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Associate Dean of the Center. “Its statement spoke only of ‘Egyptian citizens’ while ignoring that they were all Coptic Christians killed under a banner reading ‘A Message Signed With Blood to the Nation of the Cross’,” he added. “Statements by England, Canada, and Australia all mentioned that the victims were Christians. How can we begin to fight a threat, if we won’t even name it?,” Cooper also said.

Last week, President Obama, commenting on the terrorist shootings of four Jews at a kosher grocery in Paris last month, characterized the shooter as “randomly shoot[ing] a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris,” disregarding what the gunman himself told French television in the midst of the attack – that he targeted Jews, as a Muslim.

“The Wiesenthal Center calls on Western governments to lead a two-pronged battle against Islamic extremism, extirpating them by force from the mother lode in the Middle East, and cracking down on imams within our own communities who teach hate, martyrdom, and often justify young people enlisting in the cause of Islamist extremism, ” added Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, the Center’s Director of Interfaith Affairs.