Israel Matzav

Sunday, July 03, 2011

Germany's infatuation with Iran

You will recall that I reported last week on the rude surprise that awaited members of Israel's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee at the Bundestag in Berlin; the presence of member's of the Iranian Majilis. Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Benny Weinthal reports that the encounter has strained Israeli-German relations.

So is Germany so infatuated with Iran? Benny explains. Polenz’s defense on Friday of the Majlis members’ visit should also be accompanied by a healthy dose of skepticism.

Last October, Bundestag deputy Peter Gauweiler, from the CDU’s Bavarian sister party CSU and chairman of the legislature’s Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Educational Policies, led a group of German lawmakers who met with Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s parliament, in Iran. That’s the same Larijani who at the 2009 Munich security conference caused an uproar when he said his country has “different perspectives on the Holocaust.”

The group of German legislators, including deputies from the Greens, Social Democrats, CDU and the Left Party, also met during the October 2010 trip to the Islamic Republic with Ali Larijani’s brother Mohammad Javad Larijani, who heads the human rights council in the Iranian judiciary.

Mohammad Larijani in 2008 – during a German Foreign Ministry-sponsored event close to Berlin’s Holocaust memorial – denied the Holocaust and called for Israel’s destruction. The Bundestag members last year chose not to publicly criticize the Holocaust denial and the genocidal statements of the Larijani brothers. A month after the Gauweiler delegation visited Iran, Elke Hoff, a lawmaker from Foreign Minister Westerwelle’s Free Democratic Party, met “senior Iranian officials” during a trip to the Islamic Republic.

Hoff subsequently refused to answer press queries at the time about her trip to Iran. She is a member of the Bundestag’s Defense Committee and its Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non- Proliferation. She is also member of the German-Iranian parliamentary group and serves on the board of the German Near and Middle East Association, a pro-Iranian business trade organization. The association’s honorary chairman is former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who met President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran to promote German- Iranian trade in 2009.

What perhaps made the recent diplomatic row over Germany hosting Iran’s Majlis into a crisis for the Israeli-German “special relationship” was that MKs, particularly Mofaz, directly experienced a strange fusion of the Bundestag with members of the Majlis. Mofaz, who left Iran at age nine for Israel, is known for a hawkish posture toward Iran’s anti-Israel policies and its nuclear weapons program.

The long-standing relations between the Majlis and the Bundestag have been reported on, largely in the Israeli and the US press, but first-hand experience last week seems to have brought the depth and the intensity of German-Iranian relations to the fore for Israel’s lawmakers.

I guess the Iranians are the most likely party to forgive the Germans for perpetrating the Holocaust. Guilt wears off quickly, doesn't it? Disgusting....

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Bundestag, Iranian Majilis, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Shaul Mofaz

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Germany's schizophrenia

Germany is having trouble deciding which side it's on between Israel and Iran. On Thursday, they invited the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to visit the Bundestag at the same time that the Germans were hosting an official Iranian delegation.

The committee members, including Chairman MK Shaul Mofaz (Kadima), were surprised to find that while they were visiting the German parliament's Defense Committee, representatives of the Majilis, Iran's parliament, were speaking before the Bundestag's Foreign Affairs Committee.

"It cannot be that while Germany calls for tough sanctions against the Iranian regime, official representatives of Germany undermine this policy by meeting with Majilis members," the MKs said in a statement. "They are sending the message that sanctions against Iran are passed with a wink."

The Israeli delegation, which included Mofaz, MK Roni Bar-On (Kadima), MK Moshe Mutz Matalon (Israel Beiteinu), MK Zeev Bielski (Kadima) and MK Einat Wilf (Independence), originally wanted to "make a big stink," an FADC spokesman said. However, after consulting with the Israeli Embassy in Berlin, the MKs sent a letter of protest to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as the German foreign minister, the Bundestag's speaker, and the chairman of the Bundestag Defense Committee.

The MKs also expressed their ire in the joint meeting with the Bundestag's committee.

The FADC spokesman said the German lawmakers' response was "not convincing enough," and the committee remembers refused to shelf the letter.

"We, the members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, on an official visit to Berlin, firmly protest the visit of Iranian Majilis members in Berlin and express our deep disappointment in their acceptance by German officials, including the German parliament," the letter reads.

The MKs wrote: "The Iranian Majilis is a façade of a parliament that covers a murderous regime that oppresses its people and tortures young students and protesters. They support and export terror, aid Assad's regime in repressing protests against him, deny the Holocaust, all while manufacturing nuclear weapons and missiles in order to commit genocide against the Jews and erase our only state from the map."

"We cannot stand by while German representatives hold a dialogue with a regime that calls for genocide," the MKs explained. "We are very concerned about these dangerous ties between German representatives and their Iranian counterparts, and hope that these ties will end."

"We cannot be silent while the representatives of a murderous regime are accepted in the heart of democratic Europe," the letter concluded.

There really hasn't been much change in the past 70 years, has there? They're just nicer about it.

Labels: Bundestag, Iranian Majilis, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee