Broad spectrum of German political student groups reject BDS campaign
“What remains is the call for more Israel solidarity & against all antisemitism!” tweeted Ruben Gerczikow, a member of the executive board of Jewish Student Union Germany.
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALVienna students fight antisemitism(photo credit: TIMO MULLER)
University student groups affiliated with major German political parties passed an anti-BDS resolution at the first German-Israel student conference on Sunday, held in Frankfurt.“An alliance across the political spectrum sending a strong signal against any kind of antisemitism and against BDS – I hope with this unity we are more effective in excluding antisemitism from universities and creating spaces where Jews feel welcome and safe any time,” Felix Schmitz, a spokesman for the campus Greens, wrote on Twitter.“What remains is the call for more Israel solidarity & against all antisemitism!” tweeted Ruben Gerczikow , a member of the executive board of Jewish Student Union Germany.Ruben Gerczikow, a member of the executive board of Jewish Student Union Germany, shared the union's post on Twitter: “While today at #DISK19 we adopted a joint resolution against antisemitism & BDS at colleges, Abbas names a university for terrorists!”The hashtag DISK19 signifies the German-Israel student conference 2019. According to a daily Welt article from last week, the resolution states: “For us, any cooperation with BDS, its actors, supporters and partners is excluded.”The resolution further noted: “The boycott campaign against Israel represents a particularly aggressive expression of Israeli antisemitism, for which there can be no room at German universities.”Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Fatah Party, named a faculty department at Al-Istiqlal University in Jericho after the Palestinian terrorist Khalil Al-Wazir Abu Jihad.Abu Jihad was the mastermind of the Munich Olympic terrorist attack that murdered 11 Israeli athletes and a Munich police officer in 1972. Abu Jihad was responsible for the murders of at least 125 Israelis, including the hijacking of a bus and killing of 37 civilians, 12 of them children.Shahar Arieli, an Israeli diplomat from the embassy in Berlin, attended the German-Israeli student event along with Uwe Becker, commissioner of the Hessian federal state government for Jewish life and the fight against antisemitism. Frankfurt is located in the state of Hesse.According to the FZS, the umbrella organization for student groups in Germany, 180 people registered for the German-Israel student conference.
The student groups behind the anti-BDS resolution range from the Christian Democratic students, Young Socialists student groups, Liberal student groups and Green Party student associations. The FZS and the youth forum of the German-Israeli Society also played a role in supporting the anti-BDS resolution.
