Pro-BDS activists disrupt Berlin festival event
Anti-Israel activists in Berlin lashed out at a podium discussion at the Pop Cultural festival opening on Thursday, disrupting the panel conversation because the Jewish state provided a small donation to the event.
Highly aggressive BDS activists shouted at the podium participants: “Israel is an apartheid state. Are you not ashamed? You are racists who support the Apartheid regime. You are the true antisemite. You are criminals. Because of leftists like you I support BDS.”
German media reported on the outbursts directed at Shelly Kupferberg, the journalist and podium moderator, the Israeli author Lizzy Doron and Berlin’s Left party cultural senator Klaus Lederer. The podium panel was titled “Boycott” and had to be ended because of the hostility created by the anti-Israel activists in the audience.
Six artists have boycotted the Berlin Pop Culture Festival, because Israel contributed €1,200 to cover the travel expenses for its artistic participation.
BDS has infected Berlin, and posters across the city showed an imploded city with the statement: “Pop Culture. Sponsored by Apartheid.” Lederer has won praise for his opposition to the BDS campaign and is widely considered a rare voice among the German Left who rejects assaults on Israel’s existence. Lederer termed BDS “structural antisemitism.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center told The Jerusalem Post, that ““In 2018 BDS is a litmus test for antisemitism. No German institution should ever support a campaign to cripple and endanger the largest Jewish community in the world.”
Michaela Engelmeier, a top level German Social Democratic politician,told the Post on Tuesday that “My opinion is that no one, no institution, no societal group, really no one should work together with BDS or hold accounts for these antisemitic groups.”
While the Berlin cultural festival has explicitly countered BDS, a large music and cultural event – the Ruhrtriennale festival in the city of Bochum in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia – has mainstreamed BDS, according to critics. The pro-Israel organizations German-Israel friendship society and its youth organization have called for protests against the Ruhrtriennale on Saturday. The DIG youth forum wrote on its Twitter feed: “No podium discussion for the BDS campaign at the Ruhrtriennale” and “No space for antisemitism!” and “No space for anti-normalization campaigns against the Jewish state!”
DIG President Helmut Konighaus equated BDS with the Nazi-era boycott movement targeting German Jewish businesses. He said that “In truth, BDS is nothing more than a modern ‘don’t buy from Jews!.’” Anti-BDS activists and Jewish leaders have called for Stefanie Carp, the director of the Ruhrtriennale, to resign.
In an interview with the Ruhrbarone online news website, antisemitism expert Prof. Samuel Salzborn said “BDS makes the life for Jews in Germany dangerous.” The Bank for Social Economy, located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, enables the largest number of BDS groups to finance economic warfare against the Jewish state. The bank’s CEO Harald Schmitz declined to respond to Post queries about his defense of BDS bank accounts.