German Green Party slammed for courting Iran after wrestler’s execution
Stop the Bomb accused the Greens of apparently deceiving the public, writing as if they did not know they are “dealing with a state terrorist and antisemitic regime.”
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALSoldiers of the German armed forces Bundeswehr hold the Iranian flag during a ceremony for the diplomatic accreditation of the new ambassador of Iran to Germany in Berlin(photo credit: FABRIZIO BENSCH / REUTERS)
The powerful German Green Party, whose Foreign Policy spokesman Omid Nouripour is on the board of a boycott Israel organization, faced withering criticism from a prominent human rights NGO on Sunday for its efforts to promote dialogue with the clerical regime in Tehran.The NGO Stop the Bomb, which aims to both stop Iran’s ambition to secure a nuclear weapon and promotes civil freedoms in the Islamic Republic, described on Twitter the new Iran policy of the Green Party as “Bankruptcy of the Greens” because it “warms up the dialogue idea” with the regime.Stop the Bomb accused the Greens of apparently deceiving the public, writing as if they did not know they are “dealing with a state terrorist and antisemitic regime.”The Green Party initiative comes one week after Iran’s regime executed Iranian champion wrestler Navid Afkari because he protested against regime corruption in 2018.The United States under both the Obama and Trump administrations declared the Islamic Republic to be the world's largest state-sponsor of terrorism.The Green Party published a list of 25 Iranian demands that the party urged Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration to adopt.The demands ranged from ”public condemnations of the repression of human and civil rights in Iran” to the “release of all political prisoners.” The demands did not call for economic or human rights sanctions targeting Iran’s regime, for example, for the execution of Afkari.The only punitive measure cited, which was ostensibly not proposed as a unilateral domestic German sanction, was “within the framework of the EU, to extend targeted and individual visa and asset freezes for leading government officials and individuals responsible for human rights violations.” The Green Party's punting of a sanction to the EU would effectively make it an uphill battle because the EU requires full consensus.STOP THE BOMB said "It is not individual government officials who are responsible for systematic human rights violations, but the regime as such. In view of the monstrous crimes of the regime, these are not consequences, but window dressing.” Stop the Bomb has devoted over a decade in Europe to raising awareness about Iran's illicit nuclear activities and human rights violations.The largely anti-American Greens criticized the US sanctions regime against Tehran, claiming "the Iranian population is also suffering from the so-called 'maximum pressure' campaign of the Trump administration since the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Vienna nuclear agreement and the intensification of the US sanctions regime.”
German-Iranian dissidents slammed the Greens: “Hypocrisy! What else is there about Mullah antisemitism? You are against the sanctions,” wrote Dr. Kazem Mousavi on Twitter.The Green Party demands make no mention of the Iranian regime’s antisemitism and Holocaust denial. Iran's clerical regime is a leading sponsor of Jew-hatred, the domestic intelligence agency for the city-state of Berlin disclosed in June. Elan Carr, America's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, said earlier this year that Iran is the “world’s chief trafficker in antisemitism” and that “antisemitism isn’t ancillary to the ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran: It is a central, foundational component of the ideology of that regime – and we have to be clear about it, and we have to confront it and call it out for what it is.”A number of Green Party MPs who supported the Iran document allegedly stoked antisemitism against Jews in Israel.Former Green Party politician Volker Beck took to Twitter to defend his party’s new program. Beck faced criticism from the human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center last year for declining to protest his party’s embrace of the Iranian regime Holocaust denier and antisemite Ali Larijani.The vice president of the Green Party in the Bundestag, Claudia Roth, zealously welcomed Larijani for a meeting, prompting Germany’s best-selling paper Bild to declare that Roth is “making antisemitism socially respectable” in the federal republic. When The Jerusalem Post asked Beck about the Stop the Bomb criticism, he refused to comment. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the Post at the time that Beck’s “silence is disturbing” about Roth.Green Party MP Jürgen Trittin, who praised the deceased antisemitic terrorist Dieter Kunzelmann, was a signatory of the Iran document.Beck, who claims to be a “Zionist,” has declined to publicly call for the Green Party to alters its alleged pro-Iranian regime policy and urge Nouripour to resign from the pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions organization German-Palestinian Society. The BDS entity urged the abolition of the Jewish state in its art exhibit. Iran's regime supports BDS activities in Germany. Tuvia Tenenbom, the best-selling Israeli author about German antisemitism, wrote on Facebook about Beck: “With friends like Volker Beck we, Jews, better have enemies!”
