After synagogue attack, German lawmakers under fire for meeting Iranian Holocaust denier
The meeting was an inter-parliamentary gathering that took place in Belgrade.
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALBundestag Vice President Claudia Roth (Green Party), Dagmar Wöhrl (Christian Social Union party) are the two women on the right(photo credit: TWITTER)
Just days after a neo-Nazi terrorist denied the Shoah and murdered two Germans, three members of the German Bundestag are facing charges of hypocrisy for meeting last week with Ali Larijani, an Iranian Holocaust denier who defends the obliteration of Israel.“Shame on you, The Greens!” British antisemitism expert Julia Lenarz tweeted. “Days after the synagogue attack in Halle, vice president of the Bundestag Claudia Roth met Iranian Holocaust denier Ali Larijani. You can’t have it both, fight antisemitism and embrace notorious Jew-haters.”The Iranian regime-controlled Tehran Times media outlet shows a picture of Claudia Roth, vice president of the Green Party in the German parliament, greeting Larijani, the clerical regime’s parliament speaker.A second photograph of Roth show her euphorically welcoming Larijani with open arms and a smile.The widely-circulated Bild paper reported that MPs Peter Beyer, of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, was also present at the meeting with Larijani. Dr. Kazem Moussavi, an Iranian dissident living in Germany, wrote on Twitter that “Roth presents herself as a feminist but courts representatives of the Islamic regime that represses women in Iran and wants to destroy Israel.”The meeting was an inter-parliamentary gathering that took place in Belgrade.Roth, who is widely considered a pro-Iranian regime MP, has previously met with Larijani. In 2009, Larijani defended the Holocaust denial of former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Munich security conference.The German authorities declined at the time to prosecute Larijani for Holocaust denial. Larijani, who has urged the destruction of the Jewish state, has called Israel “racist” and a threat to the Middle East and “humanity.”In 2015, Claudia Roth (Green Party), Dagmar Wöhrl (Christian Social Union party) and Stefan Rebmann (Social Democrats) met Larijani in Iran. Larijani traveled to Belgrade with Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s former deputy foreign minister and who currently serves as special assistant to Larijani.Amir-Abdollahian is secretary-general of the International Conference on Supporting Palestine’s Intifada, which includes the terrorist entities Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
Amir-Abdollahian is also involved in financing the terrorist movement Hezbollah. According to Bild, Germany’s parliament issued a statement that Roth “condemned the permanent threats of officers and the so-called revolutionary guards against Israel” during the talks with the Iranians in Belgrade.The Bundestag statement said the security of Israel has an “absolute priority for Germany’s policies.”The Bild journalist Antje Schippmann savaged the German MPs for meeting with Larijani in a commentary on Sunday, titled a “Shame for the Bundestag.”“After the extreme right-wing attack in Halle, all parties asserted that there was no room for antisemitism,” Schippmann wrote. “They invoked the special obligation of Germany in the fight against the hatred of Jews.”Writing of Roth’s embrace of Larijani, Schippmann wrote “Fortunately, it is unimaginable that she would warmly greet representatives of Nazi gangs in a similar fashion, and only to announce later through her spokesman that their antisemitic threats had been ‘severely condemned.’”The Bild journalist asked “Where does this insufferable double moral standard come from?”Schippmann concluded her commentary by asserting that “The fight against antisemitism is all-encompassing or not at all” and said Roth’s statements against antisemitism are not credible due to her hypocrisy.
