Protest leads to cancellation of BDS event in Germany

“BDS is a serious enemy that contains lying criticism of Israel packaged as Jew-hatred. We have to face it with all our might and it turns out that we are successful."

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
Updated: JANUARY 28, 2019 06:30
BDS News (photo credit: screenshot)
BDS News
(photo credit: screenshot)
A planned protest by anti-BDS activists on Thursday apparently caused the German-Kurdish cultural house in Bonn, in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, to pull the plug on a talk that was slated to feature hardcore supporters of a boycott of the Jewish state.
“BDS is a serious enemy that contains lying criticism of Israel packaged as Jew-hatred. We have to face it with all our might and it turns out that we are successful. It is especially important to educate people about the machinations of these anti-Semites,” Malca Goldstein-Wolf, a German Jewish activist who campaigns against the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement targeting the Jewish state, told The Jerusalem Post.
She stressed the importance for Jews in Germany to engage in organizational protests as a means to influence a change in antisemitic behavior.
Goldstein-Wolf  said that one look at the Facebook page of the “Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East”, a sponsor of the pro-BDS event, shows the Jew-hatred of the group is self-explanatory for any decent person.
Prominent German journalist Henryk Broder, a leading expert of modern antisemitism in Germany, recently called the members of Jewish Voice a “bunch of antisemites.” The group Jewish Voice in Germany lists four members of its organization on its website: Iris Hefets, Shir Hever, Michal Kaiser-Livne and Inna Michaeli.
The canceled BDS event was also sponsored by the Palestinian Community of Germany. On the website of the pro-BDS group Bonn Youth Movement, the Palestinian community wrote the talk by Shir Hever will take place on February 4. The location was not cited. Hever’s talk is entitled: Israel’s Right-Wing Friends in Europe and in the US.
Hever has written about Israel: “So that colonists could bathe there undisturbed. Such overt and daily acts of apartheid influence.” Hever speaking on behalf of the Alternative Information Center, said “Israel is a kind of factory for repression and mechanisms of repression that are being sold to other countries in the world.”
Goldstein-Wolf played a critical role in stopping  the German TV airing of pro-BDS singer Roger Waters in 2017. The Post reported in January that Bonn deleted an advertisement for the pro-BDS event with Hever. The city apologized for posting the event.
The Ruhrbarone news outlet first reported that, “On [the] website of the city of Bonn, an event with the activist Shir Hever is advertised with classic antisemitic statements, which is scheduled to take place in late January in the German-Kurdish cultural house.”