Growing International Movement to Boycott Israel Is Condemned by Germany Support for the BDS initiative is broad-based across Europe’s center-left, but Berlin’s resolution says its methods recall Nazi-era campaigns By Bojan Pancevski
https://www.wsj.com/articles/growing-international-movement-to-boycott-israel-is-condemned-by-germany-11558108099
The German parliament condemned as anti-Semitic a growing international movement that targets Israel and called on the government to withdraw funding for events or institutions affiliated with the initiative.
The Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement, which originated in Palestinian circles, calls for academic, cultural, economic and academic boycotts of Israel. Support for BDS is broad-based across the European center-left, but it also has backing among segments of the far-right and the far-left as well as in some Islamist groupings. It has also gained traction in the U.S.
On Friday, a broad majority of German legislators supported a resolution titled “Decisively Oppose the BDS Movement and Fight Anti-Semitism” that strongly condemned the initiative and compared its methods to Nazi-era campaigns targeting Jewish businesses in Germany.
The resolution will immediately stop funding and other forms of support for BDS-related events from the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, but it isn’t binding on the government. A spokesman for the German government didn’t immediately comment on whether it would follow parliament’s lead.
Legislators specifically criticized the “Don’t Buy” stickers that the BDS movement attaches to Israeli products.
“The ‘Don’t Buy’ stickers that the BDS puts on Israeli products inevitably prompt associations to the National Socialist slogan ‘Don’t Buy From Jews!’ and the corresponding smears on facades and shop windows,” the resolution said in reference to Nazi oppression of German Jews.
After an emotional debate, a majority of legislators voted in favor of the resolution, which was co-sponsored by Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc and its coalition partners the Social Democrats, as well as the opposition Free Democratic Party and the Greens. Lawmakers from the opposition party The Left mainly voted against the resolution, while all lawmakers for the Alternative for Germany abstained, arguing that the resolution didn’t go far enough and that BDS should be banned as an organization.
Most critics of the resolution said moving against the BDS movement could cut off German funding for moderate Palestinian nongovernmental organizations, but Bijan Djir-Sarai, a Free Democrat legislator who proposed the resolution, said the risk was small.
“This will have consequences for organizations that are also active in Germany and often act in an anti-Semitic way. It will be different for organizations that do real work and organize help for Palestinians,” Mr. Djir-Sarai told German public radio Friday. The resolution, he added, wasn’t about condemning criticism of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.
The Israeli government and many supporters of Israel have for many years opposed the BDS movement, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Twitter that he welcomed the German parliament’s action.
More than 60 Israeli and Jewish academics warned against the resolution in a letter to the German parliament, however, arguing that it would equate anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of Israeli policies.
In Germany, BDS regularly holds events at universities, public squares and concerts.
One of BDS’s founders, Omar Barghouti, was prevented from entering the U.S. last month after his visa was revoked for immigration reasons. Mr. Barghouti, who has said that Israel was an apartheid state, claimed in interviews that the entry ban was politically motivated.
More than two-dozen U.S. states have passed anti-BDS legislation, which is being challenged in some of them on grounds of free speech. Notable figures such as the musician Roger Waters, author Alice Walker, politician Jill Stein and cleric Desmond Tutu have supported BDS.
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