Wiesenthal Center urges Berlin to ban antisemitic al-Quds rally
The Simon Wiesenthal Center wants the mayor of Berlin to pull the plug on the Iranian regime-sponsored al-Quds rally slated for Saturday in Berlin that will call for the destruction of the Jewish state.
The center’s associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that Berlin’s mayor, Michael Müller, “should come out and ban the al-Quds” demonstration and follow the lead of Germany’s commissioner for combating antisemitism.
Germany’s commissioner Felix Klein told the Berlin-based Tagesspiegel paper on Wednesday that he would find a ban of the rally to be right. However, he added there are legal hurdles to overcome for a ban.
Cooper said that the Wiesenthal Center “applauds the German commissioner for calling for a ban and agrees with him.”
Cooper asked why Müller has not come out with a statement against al-Quds Day.
He added that “it is time to put a stop to it [al-Quds Day] because it was created by a theocratic government in Iran. Iran is a Holocaust-denying state.”
Iran’s regime stokes anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli hatred every day around the world, said Cooper.
According to Berlin’s domestic intelligence agency, 250 Hezbollah members operate in Berlin. The Tagesspiegel reported that 2,000 people registered to march in the al-Quds Day event in the heart of Berlin’s bustling shopping district.
The founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, inaugurated in 1979 the al-Quds Day as a worldwide demonstration to protest the existence of the Jewish state.
When asked about the Wiesenthal Center’s criticism, Claudia Sünder, a spokeswoman for the mayor, wrote to the Post by email that the mayor initiated an “intensive legal investigation, with the goal to ban antisemitic and anti-Israel demonstrations like the upcoming June 9 registered so-called al-Quds march.”
She said that the result of the investigation is not legally certain to overrule the right of assembly and demonstration of the al-Quds march. “According to the assessment of the Berlin senate and the mayor, it would be fatal if a such a ban were legally overruled, because that would merely play into the hands of the event organizers.”