German youth: Classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization
German Free Democratic Party’s youth organization head: “Hezbollah is, in its entirety, a terror organization, and should as such be classified."
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALSupporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah carry the party's flag in Beirut(photo credit: REUTERS/MOHAMED AZAKIR)
Ria Schröder, the chairwoman of the German Free Democratic Party’s youth organization, announced on Monday that the nearly 10,000-member group passed a resolution demanding that Germany and the European Union classify Hezbollah’s entire movement a terrorist entity.“Hezbollah is, in its entirety, a terror organization, and should as such be classified in Germany and the EU,” Schröder wrote on Twitter, adding that two weeks ago the Young Liberals organization decided to pass the anti-Hezbollah resolution at its conference.According to the Young Liberals’ website, members range in age from 14 to 35.The Free Democratic Party is represented in the Bundestag. The FDP member of parliament, Marcus Faber, wrote on Twitter on Monday that, “Germany should treat, in the future, Hezbollah as a terrorist organization,” and strongly work to make the EU proscribe Hezbollah a terrorist entity. He said the FDP decided to push for a full designation of Hezbollah on Monday at its executive board meeting.When asked by The Jerusalem Post if there is a written resolution, he said “not yet.”Members of the FDP have served as foreign minister over the decades in federal coalition governments.German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration vehemently opposes a full ban of the terrorist organization Hezbollah in Germany, where 1,050 Hezbollah members and supporters operate. Germany and the EU have merely outlawed Hezbollah’s military wing. Brussels and Berlin still work with Hezbollah’s political wing and allow it to raise funds in Europe and spread antisemitic and jihadi ideologies. The Netherlands, the US, the United Kingdom, Israel, Canada and the Arab League have designated Hezbollah’s entire organization as a terrorist entity.In August, the Post first broke the story that a Lebanese member of a Hezbollah-controlled center called Imam Mahdi in the German city of Münster declared that, “We belong to the party of Ruhollah [Khomeini]. We have been accused of being terrorists – we are proud of terrorism.” The German authorities took no action against the Imam Mahdi center Shi’ite mosque.Hezbollah operatives blew up an Israeli tour bus in Burgas, Bulgaria, in 2012, murdering five Israelis and their Bulgarian Muslim bus driver. Hezbollah has also played a key role in the killings of more than 500,000 people in the Syria war. Hezbollah is aligned with Syrian president Bashar Assad and Iran’s clerical regime. The US classifies Iran’s regime as the leading international state-sponsor of terrorism.The Post learned that US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, urges the Merkel administration to ban Hezbollah in every meeting with German officials.
German Deputy Foreign Minister Niels Annen has defended Germany’s decision not to outlaw Hezbollah. After the UK banned all of Hezbollah this year, Annen told Spiegel magazine: “The British move is a national decision that has no direct impact on the position of the German government or the EU.”Annen said Hezbollah is a relevant part of Lebanese society.Last week, the widely-read Bild paper wrote that Annen “makes antisemitism socially respectable” in Germany because of his pro-Iranian regime views and his meeting with the Palestinian NGO al-Haq.Al-Haq employs workers who were members, and possibly still are, of the US- and EU-designated terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation for Palestine. Merkel, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer rejected a plea from the Central Council of Jews in Germany to outlaw Hezbollah.Germany, like much of the rest of the Western world, is experiencing a massive spike in antisemitism, according to all recent statistical data and media reports.
