‘Merkel worse than Hitler, envoy Israeli spy,' says antisemitic Iran paper
German commissioner to combat antisemitism tells 'Post': "There is no space for Iran-backed terror in our country'
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a joint news conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (not pictured) at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, October 2, 2019(photo credit: MICHELE TANTUSSI/REUTERS)
BERLIN – The Iranian paper Vatan-e Emrooz (Homeland Today) on Monday lashed out in an antisemitic diatribe against German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the federal republic’s ambassador to Tehran for Berlin’s ban of the Lebanese terrorist movement Hezbollah.A headline of the article reads “Zionist Spy” and shows a picture of Germany’s ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Michael Klor-Berchtold.A separate headline on the front page declares: “Merkel worse than Hitler.”Homeland Today is a full-color daily broadsheet that is operated by Mehrdad Bazrpash – an ally of Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.Bazrpash was a former head of the violently repressive student Basij organization branch at Sharif University of Technology.The paper’s publication started prior to the fraudulent 2009 Iranian presidential election.According to Homeland Today’s article, Klor-Berchtold is a German federal intelligence service spy with “suspicious” ties to Tel Aviv and he should be severely dealt with.Iran’s regime frequently raises bogus accusations alleging for example, without evidence, that foreign diplomats, especially from the United Kingdom, are spies, as well as charging Iranian Jews and Iranian Baha’is with being covert agents.The daily reported about the formation of a “German-Zionist cabal” that has “representatives inside German political establishment and instructs Germany on how to behave.”Homeland Today said Germany’s arrest of the Vienna-based Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi should be contested. Assadi was implicated in a plot to blow up a meeting of Iranian diplomats in 2018 in Paris. German authorities arrested Assadi in Bavaria in 2018.
The paper’s tone and language mirrored articles in the propaganda newspaper Daily Kayhan, which is run by the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei. Kayhan wrote in the same edition that the “Holocaust was a fraud.”Homeland Today wrote that the German government’s move to ban Hezbollah has taken place by order of the Zionist regime.The Daily Kayhan published an article titled “Germany blacklisted Hezbollah out of fear” on Saturday, citing a commentary from the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Hussein Shariatmadari, who wrote: Berlin is effectively “in rent for the Zionists.”After the German government outlawed the Iranian-backed terrorist movement Hezbollah within the federal republic’s borders on Thursday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry slammed Berlin.A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry tweeted that Tehran “strongly condemns the German government’s blacklisting of the Lebanese Hezbollah as a measure serving the objectives of the US and the Zionist regime of Israel.”Uwe Becker, the commissioner of the Hessian federal state government for Jewish life and the fight against antisemitism in Germany, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday: “When the Iranian regime threatens Germany because of its ban on the terrorist organization Hezbollah, Tehran again shows its real face. Germany should answer straight and make clear that there is no space for Iran-backed terror in our country. Tehran supports international terrorism, the Iranian regime permanently threatens to destroy and erase Israel, Tehran is denying the Holocaust. Tehran is attacking Israel with its guards from Syrian ground, with its support of Hezbollah in Lebanon and with its support of terrorism from the Gaza Strip.”Becker, who also serves as president of the German-Israeli Friendship Society, added that “If Germany takes its raison d’état seriously, it must immediately freeze its relations with Iran and send a clear and unequivocal signal to the Iranian leadership. It is not a question of a policy against the Iranian people, who are even deprived of important freedom rights by their own government, but of a clear position towards the political leadership in Tehran.”In 2008, Merkel famously declared in the Knesset that Israel’s security interests are part of Germany's security interests and Israel's national security is “non-negotiable” for her government. Merkel’s pledge to Israel has been defined as raison d’état, or reason for being for her country and Israel.Becker said that “this raison d’état is above possible economic interests, and the threatening words of criticism by the Iranian Regime towards Germany are absolutely unacceptable.”
