German Protestant church cancels BDS event linked to Palestinian terrorism
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALDemonstrators attend an 'al-Quds Day' protest rally in Berlin, Germany, July 11, 2015(photo credit: FABRIZIO BENSCH / REUTERS)
The Protestant Church of Germany has canceled an event that was scheduled to feature two hardcore pro-BDS activists, one of whom has ties to fund-raising for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the EU and the US have designated a terrorist organization.“We at Church Day have a clear attitude and have therefore asked the @rosaluxstiftung to disinvite the controversial speakers or to cancel the event,” the church tweeted on Thursday. “The foundation has canceled the event planned for Friday.”Church Day is a Protestant mass event that is being held this year in the city of Dortmund from June 19-23. The tweet was sent to the Church Day’s more than 7,200 followers.The @rosaluxstiftung is the Twitter feed for the left-wing Rosa Luxemburg Foundation that is affiliated with the The Left Party – a German political party in the Bundestag filled with scores of anti-Israel MPs.The news website Ruhrbarone first broke the story about the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation hosting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists; South African Islamic theologian Farid Esack; and Protestant theologian Ulrich Duchrow.Esack is the chairman of BDS South Africa – a powerful anti-Israel organization – who defended calls to “shoot the Jew” during a protest against a concert by an Israeli musician Daniel Zamir in 2013.Esack and Durchow were slated to appear at a workshop titled: “Empires of Mammon or Ways of Justice?”Esack, who claims he propagates “progressive Islam,” said in 2015 that he “would not pray” for Jewish victims murdered by Islamic State terrorists in the attack on the Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Paris.Esack welcomed his “comrade” plane hijacker Leila Khaled, of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, at a South African fund-raiser in 2015.“This is a man [Esack] who expressed antisemitic statements, and who is sympathetic to Holocaust denial. A person with such views has no place as an educator in a university, in particular not in Germany; due to both professional as well as moral and probably also legal reasons,” the Israel Embassy in Berlin told The Jerusalem Post in 2017.
Duchrow has praised Hamas “as a serious political force with great social depth.” The US and the EU classify Hamas as a terrorist entity.Duchrow termed Israel the “spearhead of the current phase of the global imperialist capitalist system.”The Bundestag declared BDS antisemitic in a non-binding resolution passed in May. The Rosa Luxemburg’s Foundation sought another location to hold the event with Esack and Duchrow.
