Berlin mayor slams BDS for rally on Kristallnacht remembrance day
Berlin Mayor Michael Müller issued a scathing condemnation of the anti-Israel boycott campaign because of its protest against the Jewish state on Friday, the memorial day for the Kristallnacht pogroms against Jews across Nazi Germany in 1938.
“It is intolerable that BDS carries out its Israeli-hostile antisemitic propaganda on the remembrance day of the November pogroms without consideration of the victims of the Shoah, their family members and the Jewish community,” he said.
Germans committed a wave of attacks on Jews, businesses owned by Jews, and synagogues starting on November 9, 1938. The destruction, murders and mass arrests were an early phase of the Holocaust.
The organization BDS Campaign in Berlin urged on its website people to participate in the boycott-Israel event at the city’s Potsdam Square under the slogan of “For A World Without Walls.”
The global protest action “For A World Without Walls” terms Israel’s West Bank security barrier an “Israeli Apartheid wall on Palestinian land.” Potsdam Square serves as a reminder of the East Germany’s wall that separated West Berlin from East Berlin during the Cold War. Chunks of the Berlin Wall are on display at the site.
Müller blasted BDS Campaign for a “reckless misrepresentation of history” for its likening of Israel’s anti-terrorism barrier to the Berlin Wall. It is unclear if Müller‘s strong words played a role in the low turnout at the rally.
Fabian Weissbarth, the assistant director for the American Jewish Committee office in Berlin, wrote on Twitter: “Global Action Day? In Berlin nobody is interested in BDS. 7 People, 6 movable walls, 2 musicians...”
He showed pictures of the protesters on his Twitter Feed.
Doris Ghannam, a spokeswomen for BDS Campaign in Berlin, did not immediately respond to a Jerusalem Post query on Saturday.
Ghannam is an energetic supporter of the EU- and US-classified terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. She delivered talks in Berlin to honor the PFLP. After a Post investigation into BDS finances in 2016, the French-German bank DAB closed BDS Campaign’s account.
Müller faced a whirlwind of criticism over the summer for his alleged indifference toward outbreaks of BDS in Berlin and pro-Iran and pro-Hezbollah activity calling for the obliteration of the Jewish state.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Post in late August that Mayor Müller is “mainstreaming the BDS movement that never contributes to the daily life of Palestinians. BDS is widely recognized as antisemitic.”
Cooper said Müller’s mayoral counterparts in Frankfurt and Munich recognize the antisemitism of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign targeting Israel and are banning municipal support for BDS activities.
The Wiesenthal Center said at the time it considered including Müller on its list of the Top Ten outbreaks of antisemitism and anti-Israelism in 2017.
“There are two reasons why he [Mueller] could theoretically make the list,” Cooper said. “He is the mayor of, arguably, the most important European city. And his colleagues get it that BDS is not just mean-spirited but downright dangerous.”
A week later, in September, Müller pledged to crack down on BDS in Germany’s capital and take legal action against the annual Iranian regime-sponsored al-Quds Day rally in the city. The Wiesenthal Center dropped the mayor’s name from its list of potential candidates.