Berlin’s commissioner to fight antisemitism urges Merkel to ban Hezbollah
Interior minister evaluates a ban of antisemitic Iran-sponsored Al Quds Day march
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALA protester holds a placard reading ‘I boycott Israel, but not the Jews,’ during a demonstration marking al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day), in Berlin on June 1(photo credit: FABRIZIO BENSCH / REUTERS)
The city-state of Berlin’s commissioner to combat antisemitism, Lorenz Korgel, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that he favors a ban of the entire antisemitic terrorist organization Hezbollah in Germany.Korgel said "It is the task of the federal government to implement such a ban,“adding that he advocates a ban of the entire Hezbollah.A spokesman for Berlin’s justice ministry told the Post the Andreas Geisel , the State Minister of the Interior of Berlin, is examining a ban of the Iranian regime and Hezbollah organized Al Quds Day march in Berlin.Geisel has declined to test the law to implement a ban of the slated May Al Quds Day — an annual rally and march in the heart of Berlin which calls for the destruction of Israel and its nearly 7 million Jews.Critics like the US-based human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center say Geisel is not doing enough to stop Al Quds Day. He refuses to test the law to outlaw the march packed with neo-Nazis and operatives and members from EU and US sanctioned terrorist organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hezbollah.Korgel become the second German state antisemitism commissioner to urge Chancellor Angela Merkel to proscribe Hezbollah a terrorist entity. Uwe Becker, the commissioner for the state of Hesse, was the first commissioner to call on Merkel’s administration to designate Hezbollah a terrorist movement. Felix Klein, the federal commissioner to fight antisemitism, has refused to answer multiple queries from the Post about a ban of Hezbollah.Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi-hunter and antisemitism expert for the Simon Wiesenthal Center's office in Jerusalem, told the Post last year that Felix Klein and the EU commissioner to fight antisemitism, Katherina von Schnurbein, should publicly state that Hezbollah’s entire movement should be banned in Germany and the EU. Von Schnurbein and Klein have, in connection with a ban of Hezbollah, remained silent amid rising antisemitism in Europe and Germany.Hezbollah has murdered Jews over the decades in Europe, including Hezbollah operatives who blew up an Israeli tour bus in Bulgaria in 2012, murdering five Israelis and injuring an additional 32.Rabbi Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center told the Post, “Where are you Chancellor Merkel? How can you allow vicious antisemitic Hezbollah operatives to operate on the streets of Berlin to fan the flames of theological and political hatred that is Al Quds Day.”Merkel and her interior minister Horst Seehofer have rejected urgent appeals from the US and Israeli government, as well as her country’s Jewish community, to classify Hezbollah a foreign terrorist organization and ban the Al Quds Day march.
The US, Canada, the Netherlands, Britain, Israel and the Arab League, and a number of Latin America countries have classified Hezbollah’s entire organization as a terrorist entity.Germany, where 1,050 Hezbollah members raise funds and recruit new members, has only outlawed Hezbollah’s so-called “military wing.”The EU has merely also banned the “military wing” and allows the organizations political structure to operate in Europe.
