Wiesenthal: Merkel mocks Holocaust due to Iran support
Last month, Merkel’s administration sent government representatives to a pro-Iran business forum.
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel is pictured after speaking during a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, also known as Night of Broken Glass, at Rykestrasse Synagogue, in Berlin, Germany, November 9, 2018(photo credit: AXEL SCHMIDT/REUTERS)
German chancellor Angela Merkel makes a mockery of solidarity with Israel post-Holocaust because of her administration’s zealous support for the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said on Wednesday.Responding to a Jerusalem Post report on Uwe Becker, commissioner of the Hessian federal state government for Jewish life and the fight against antisemitism who called for Merkel to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, Rabbi Abraham Cooper told the Post that Becker was “right to call out Merkel’s continued silence and inaction over Iran’s genocidal threats to destroy Israel. Her business-as-usual attitude toward Mullocracy makes a mockery of Germany’s historic responsibilities to the Jewish people after the Shoah and her assurances of solidarity with Israel.”When asked about Cooper’s criticism, a spokesman for Merkel’s administration responded: “We do not comment on that.”Becker told the Post on Monday that “the current escalation with Israel should be reason enough for Germany to advocate [for] the.... Iran nuclear agreement, which has been undermined by Iran... [as] dead, and for the necessary sanctions against Tehran to become effective again in their entirety.”Germany’s national interest in a secure Israel is “above possible economic interests” rooted in the Iran deal, according to Becker.“If Germany takes its reason for state [raison d’État] seriously, it must immediately freeze its relations with Iran and thus send a clear and unequivocal signal to the Iranian leadership,” Becker said. “It is not a question of a policy against the Iranian people, who are even deprived of important freedom rights by their own government, but of a clear position toward the political leadership in Tehran.”Merkel delivered a speech to the Knesset in 2008 in which she declared Israel’s security interests to be part of Germany’s raison d’État.At the time, the chancellor said that Israel’s security is “non-negotiable” for her government.Becker, who is a member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, is the first antisemitism commissioner in Germany to urge the chancellor to pull the plug on the accord and re-impose economic sanctions against Iran.In February, Merkel’s administration celebrated the Islamic Republic of Iran’s revolution at Tehran’s embassy in Berlin.
Last month Merkel’s administration sent government representatives to a pro-Iran business forum.“Iran perpetuates gross human rights abuses against its own citizens, has planned and carried out terror attacks and assassinations on European soil, and is facilitating Assad’s war crimes in Syria,” US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell said at the time. “Now is not the time to promote business deals that will only send euros to the regime’s coffers at the expense of the Iranian people.”In 2018, Dr. Josef Schuster, president of Germany’s nearly 100,000-member Jewish community, urged Merkel’s administration to stop business deals with Iran’s regime. The US government and Schuster have urged Merkel to outlaw the entire Iranian-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah in Germany. Merkel has repeatedly refused to ban Hezbollah and its 1,050 operatives in the federal republic.
