German NGOs, MPs make Wiesenthal list of top 2020 antisemitism outbreaks
Warning about 're-legitimization' of dangerous antisemitic BDS movement in Germany.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFA general view during a session of the lower house of parliament Bundestag, in Berlin, Germany July 1, 2020(photo credit: REUTERS/FABRIZIO BENSCH)
Some German cultural groups and politicians are on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of 10 worst cases of antisemitism and anti-Israel activity in 2020, The Jerusalem Post has learned. The anti-Nazi, human-rights organization is due to publish its list on Tuesday.“German elite launch all-out assault to re-legitimize antisemitic BDS,” the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that targets Israel, the Wiesenthal Center wrote.“Meeting secretly for a year, the so-called Union of Cultural Institutions comprising over two dozen of Germany’s Who’s Who – including the Goethe Institute, the Federal Cultural Foundation, the Berlin Deutsches Theater, the German Academic Artists Exchange, the Berliner Festspiele and the Einstein Forum – attacked the Bundestag’s BDS vote as violating free speech,” said entry No. 7 on its top-10 list.“The signees specifically thanked Andreas Görgen, Foreign Ministry Director-General for Cultural Affairs and Communication, ‘for advice and discussion contributions.’ The SWC criticized Görgen earlier for defending a leading proponent of BDS in South Africa,” the Los-Angeles based Wiesenthal Center wrote.In April, the Post uncovered and reported on Görgen’s tweets in support of the pro-BDS academic Achille Mbembe, who was accused of minimizing the Holocaust.“A similar call followed from nine hundred artists, academics, writers, and other cultural figures who called the anti-BDS-resolution ‘dangerous’ and ‘detrimental to the democratic public sphere,’” the Wiesenthal Center wrote.“All this may help explain why three MPs continue their support for the antisemitic German-Palestine Society (GPS), which also promotes BDS,” it added.“Meanwhile, the prestigious Jusos, the Socialist Youth Movement of Germany’s SPD Party, passed a solidarity resolution with the youth wing of Fatah, the main faction of the PLO, as a ‘sister organization.’ Bild reported that some protesters at a Fatah Youth demonstration in 2018 wore fake explosive belts and chanted slogans calling for Israel’s destruction,” the Wiesenthal Center wrote.“German officials acknowledge that antisemitic hate crimes, from neo-Nazis to Islamists, continue their alarming rise. Almost a year to the day of the Halle synagogue attack, a religious student was gravely wounded by a neo-Nazi outside a Hamburg Synagogue.“But none of those hate crimes or the growing embrace of mutual peace, trade and cultural ties between Israel and Arab states stopped key elites seeking to overturn the Bundestag’s vote that labeled BDS as antisemitic,” the Wiesenthal Center wrote.
