Israel Matzav

Top Bundestag lawmaker urges Germany to withdraw from Durban III

German Prime Minister Angela Merkel may be having a hard time deciding whether Germany, which professes to be Israel's best friend, belongs at the Durban III conference. But other people in Germany have no problems deciding. They think Germany should join the boycott.

“It can be anticipated that the memorial event on September 22 will be misused as a platform to defame the State of Israel, as happened at the Durban Conference in 2001 and the Durban Review Conference in Geneva in 2009,” Philipp Missfelder, a historian and foreign policy spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, told The Jerusalem Post.

“Germany should refrain from participating in this conference, as it did in 2009.

We should not support with our attendance a conference at which our partner Israel is denounced as an apartheid state.”

Missfelder appears to be the first deputy to break with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle’s plan to participate in Durban III. Missfelder, who turned 32 on Thursday, is viewed as a rising star in the CDU. He is an advocate of strong relations with the Jewish state and the United States.

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Asked about Missfelder’s call for Germany to skip Durban III, a Foreign Ministry spokesman told the Post on Thursday that the ministry “has read very attentively the statements from deputy Missfelder.”

The spokesman reiterated the ministry’s position that the German government is working to “prevent the Durban process from being used to pillory Israel.”

A spokeswoman from Merkel’s office told the Post that the Foreign Ministry’s statement is the “position of the federal government.”

And while Germany's government is pretending that it can stop the anti-Semitism from controlling Durban III, Germany's Jewish community feels otherwise.

In a sign of growing tension over Durban III with Germany’s organized Jewish community, Dr. Dieter Graumann, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the local media that it is long overdue that Germany boycott Durban III.

Durban III is a “disgusting show trial” that once again will place Israel alone in the dock, he said.

Graumann wrote a letter calling for Westerwelle to pull out of the conference because it is a “festival of hostility toward Jews.” It is imperative that Germany show clarity and consistency in terms of combating loathing of Jews, he said. “Germany must not give this hate campaign the appearance of legitimacy.”

Responding to Westerwelle’s decision to ignore his letter and boycott call, Graumann told the DAPD wire service on Monday, “Maybe something will still come – better still, something will happen.”

The Foreign Ministry in Berlin told the Post that Graumann’s letter will be answered.

Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, is split. On the one hand, there are deputies who support strengthening ties with Israel and the US. On the other hand, there are CDU-CSU deputies who promote relations with Israel’s enemies such as Iran.

There are some Germans for whom money - as in trade with Iran - speaks louder than anything else. It's a pity that we don't have an American President who is capable of leading Germany to join most of the rest of the world in sanctioning Iran.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Angela Merkel, Durban III, German-Iranian trade, Germany, Guido Westerwelle

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:41 AM