TEL AVIV – German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party on Wednesday passed a resolution opposing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, labeling anti-Israel activism anti-Semitic and comparing BDS to Nazi boycotts.
“Who today under the flag of the BDS movement calls to boycott Israeli goods and services speaks the same language in which people were called to not buy from Jews. That is nothing other than coarse anti-Semitism,” the Jerusalem Post cited the CDU as saying.
Noting the comparison between BDS and the National Socialists’ boycott of Jews in the 1930s, the CDU said BDS dresses up anti-Semitism in the “new clothes of the 21st century,” i.e., anti-Zionism.
“The German CDU declares with this motion its disapproval and rejection of every form of BDS activity and condemns these activities as anti-Semitic. The CDU will decisively oppose every hostile action that Israel faces.
“The CDU professes its deep friendship toward Israel and continues to work toward a peaceful solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,” the resolution read.
Merkel was nominated again to run as the party’s candidate in next year’s federal election.
Last month, Breitbart Jerusalem reported that organizers of a Holocaust remembrance ceremony in the town of Oldenburg in lower Saxony attempted to “remove with physical violence” a Jewish man for marching with the Israeli flag while allowing anti-Israel activists, and those sporting the Palestinian scarf, or keffiyeh, to participate.
Rabid anti-Israel activist and teacher Christoph Glanz, who accused Israel of genocide and said the Israeli government was “a racist freak show,” also took part in the march.
Glanz accused Israel of “crimes against humanity” and “ethnic cleansing.” He also said Israel is engaged in genocidal activities.
In September, Glanz published a call in the teachers’ union magazine for a blanket boycott of Israel in the first incident of its kind since the Holocaust, plunging Oldenburg into the center of an anti-Semitism firestorm.
Israel’s ambassador to Germany slammed the town’s BDS activities last week, the Jerusalem Post said, citing the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung daily.
“In Oldenburg a teacher agitates against Israel in an official way; in a magazine of the GEW labor union [the Education and Science Workers Union]. This teacher publicly spreads the proposal to relocate Israel to Baden-Württemberg” in southeastern Germany, Yakov Hadas-Handelsman said according to the report.
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