Palestinian terrorist group campaigns for Bundestag
The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD) joined forces with the PFLP to be on the election ballot.
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALUpdated: AUGUST 28, 2017 12:25Palestinian members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) take part in a military show in Gaza (photo credit: REUTERS)
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an EU and US classified terrorist entity responsible the murders of scores of Israelis, seeks to enter the German Bundestag in the September 24 federal election.“It should not have been allowed to come to this that an anti-Israel terror organization in Germany formed an election alliance and is an election choice,” said Volker Beck, a Green Party MP.Beck, who is chairman of the German-Israel parliamentary group in the Bundestag, said “the federal Interior Ministry must quickly act and ban the PFLP.”The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD) joined forces with the PFLP to be on the election ballot. Germany’s most recent federal intelligence report, from 2016, listed the MLPD as a “leftist extremist party” that has been “unsuccessful in elections.”The MLPD has 1,800 members and supporters, the intelligence report noted.According to an August 16 report by journalist Stefan Laurin in the weekly German-Jewish newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, the federal intelligence agency does not see a problem with PFLP.Though the PFLP is included in the EU terrorist list, the intelligence agency said the PLFP “has not executed up until now any militant actions.”The lack of enforcement of antiterrorism laws regarding PFLP activities by German federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, Berlin’s Mayor Michael Müller and the city authorities in the western city of Wuppertal have raised eyebrows in the German media.The PFLP held a celebration event for the 49th anniversary of the creation of the Palestinian terrorist organization with “the supporters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine” in Berlin in December.According to the PFLP website, the PLO’s ambassador to Germany, Kholoud Daibes, attended the event. A photograph of Doris Ghannam,a representative from the BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions) campaign against Israel in Germany, speaking at the PFLP event is also shown on the website. The location of the PFLP event in December was not cited. The PFLP has attempted to hold events in the publishing house of the socialist newspaper Neues Deutschland (New Germany) in 2016 and 2017.The DAB bank shut the BDS Campaign’s account in 2016.
Leila Khaled, a PFLP plane hijacker, spoke in April 2016 in Wuppertal. Khaled has been on a tour in Europe to support the PFLP and the BDS campaign targeting the Jewish state. Khaled has said that Palestinians have established “that negotiations will be held only with knives and weapons.”Khaled was a key member of a terrorist cell that hijacked TWA Flight 840 in 1969. A year later, she participated in the attempted hijacking of EL AL Flight 219. The Spanish authorities allowed Khaled to receive a literary honor at a book festival in Barcelona in April. The city council of Barcelona funded a radical NGO to cover Khaled’s travel and other costs.Beck, the Green Party lawmaker, said “whoever gives the PFLP money is to be blamed for the support of a terrorist organization.”The MLPD did not immediately respond to a Jerusalem Post press query.