From “WIN” 18-5-2019 https://tinyurl.com/yxqw27cq
By Algemeiner Staff
and Agencies
Top Israeli officials
welcomed the German parliament’s condemnation on Friday of the boycott,
divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement as “anti-Semitic.”
The non-binding motion
— submitted by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, their Social Democrat
coalition partners, as well as the Greens and Free Democrats — read, “The
argumentation patterns and methods used by the BDS movement are anti-Semitic.”
“The campaign’s calls
to boycott Israeli artists, as well as stickers on Israeli goods that are meant
to deter people from buying them, also recall the most terrible phase in German
history,” it continued. “The BDS movement’s ‘Don’t Buy’ stickers on Israeli
products inevitably arouse associations with the Nazi slogan, ‘Don’t Buy from
Jews!’ and similar graffiti on facades and shop windows.”
Securing Israel’s
survival has been a priority for Germany since the defeat of the Nazi
dictatorship that committed the Holocaust in which some six million Jews were
murdered.
“I congratulate the
German Bundestag on the important decision branding the boycott movement (BDS) as an anti-Semitic movement and
announcing that it is forbidden to fund it,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said on Friday. “I hope that this decision will bring about concrete
steps and I call upon other countries to adopt similar legislation.”
Israeli Strategic
Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan — who has been in charge of the Jewish state’s
anti-BDS efforts in recent years — called Friday a “historic day in the fight
against the anti-Semitic BDS campaign.”
“The true face of BDS
is being exposed!” he exclaimed.
Israel’s UN envoy,
Danny Danon, stated, “This is a crushing victory for the truth and a great
achievement in the struggle against Israel’s detractors.”
Danon went on to urge
world leaders to “join Germany, and work towards shaping a future without
hatred against Jews and against Israel.”
Israeli Ambassador to
Germany Jeremy Issacharoff tweeted, “We welcome this initiative by its
sponsors. It has broader European significance given that BDS makes no attempt
to build coexistence and peace between Israel and all of its neighbors.”
The BDS movement
slammed the motion.
“The German
establishment is entrenching its complicity in Israel‘s crimes of military
occupation, ethnic cleansing, siege and apartheid, while desperately trying to
shield it from accountability to international law,” it said on Twitter.
Lawmakers from the
far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party abstained during the vote. They
had submitted their own motion calling for a total ban of the BDS in Germany.
That motion was defeated.
A majority of the
far-left Die Linke party had voted against the motion. The party also submitted
its own proposal, which called to oppose the BDS and commit the German
government to work toward a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict based on UN Security Council resolutions. The motion was also
defeated.
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