Jewish Historian Accuses Three German MPs Of Countering Anti-BDS Act

A prominent German Jewish historian alleged in a blistering commentary last week that three German MPs are seeking to sabotage a resolution that classifies BDS as an antisemitic campaign.

“A minority of members of the Bundestag coalition and opposition wants to prevent” a “financial implementation of the anti-BDS decision of our elected representatives,” Dr. Michael Wolffsohn wrote in the daily broadsheet Die Welt.

Wolffsohn added that a key point of the anti-BDS resolution is, “This should tighten the purse strings of BDS and its German partners.”

All of the mainstream parties voted in May to pass a resolution against the BDS campaign targeting Israel.

The historian said that the MPs “through public, mainly media pressure, and the budgets committee, seek to delete the removal of these funds” to combat BDS.

Wolffsohn wrote his Welt commentary in response to a Der Spiegel article that alleged two tiny pro-Israel NGOs “control” German foreign policy in the Middle East, and with the aid of money and the Mossad, pressured the Bundestag to pass the anti-BDS resolution. German Jews and politicians slammed the article as propagating an anti-Jewish conspiracy theory.

An expert in contemporary German antisemitism, Wolffsohn wrote that Norbert Röttgen of the Christian Democratic Union, Jürgen Trittin of the Green Party and Niels Annen of the Social Democratic Party are the leading MPs who are spearheading the campaign to blunt the anti-BDS resolution.

Röttgen serves as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee for German chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party in the Bundestag. Röttgen claimed along with a group of 19 fellow CDU MPs in May that the resolution does not differentiate between legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies and antisemitism. The anti-BDS resolution could also complicate the work with German NGOs, said the MPs.

Wolffsohn said the alleged anti-Israel activity of Röttgen and the other CDU MPs means “long gone is the uninterrupted pro-Jewish and pro-Israel policy of the CDU of the [Konrad] Adenauer and [Helmut] Kohl era.”

Annen is an undersecretary of state in the German Foreign Ministry, as well as an MP. Annen has faced severe criticism over the last six months for participating in a celebration of Iran’s regime in February at Tehran’s embassy in Berlin.

Annen also rejects a full ban of the Lebanese terrorist entity Hezbollah, whose roughly 1,050 members in Germany raise funds and recruit new members. Hezbollah also spreads jihadi and antisemitic ideologies in the federal republic.

Trittin, along with 15 Green Party MPs, spoke against the May anti-BDS resolution because, they claim, it endangers free speech. The resolution is non-binding.

Trittin praised the far-left antisemite Dieter Kunzelmann after he passed away on May 9. German historians and antisemitism experts strongly suspect Kunzelmann sought to bomb the Jewish community center in Berlin on November 9, 1969 — the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s 1938 Kristallnacht pogroms. Kunzelmann trained in Jordan with Fatah terrorists. He urged the German Left to combat the Jewish state, declaring “When are you finally going to begin the battle against the holy cow, Israel?”

Jerusalem Post media queries to the three German MPs were not returned by press time on Sunday.

As a result of the alleged anti-Israel activities of the MPs, Wolffsohn wrote: “The exodus of French Jews is in progress. Soon also from Germany?”

Benjamin Weinthal is a European correspondent at The Jerusalem Post and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.