German diplomat liked neo-Nazi/KKK tweets
The director of the German Foreign Ministry’s representation for the Palestinian territories, Christian Clages, was revealed on Thursday to have liked scores of antisemitic tweets while using his government Twitter feed.
Germany’s best-selling paper Bild
broke the story and showed screenshots of the tweets on its website, stating the diplomat liked a large number of “antisemitic and anti-Israel” tweets. Bild
wrote that Clages praised a tweet showing “a video of a two-minute mob attack on Israeli soldiers captioned with the words ‘Hats off!’”
The paper commented on a second tweet from Clages, saying: “An article that compares the work of the Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem with the historical account of ‘totalitarian states’ was liked by him as a ‘must-read.”’ Clages previously served the German ambassador to Lebanon.
Bild noted that “Even an exchange between leading US neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier David Duke and a Palestinian follower about an alleged Jewish massacre, the diplomat liked with a heart.”
Dr. Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that “If Germany hopes to play a constructive role in bringing Middle East peace, this is hardly the way to do it, to assign a diplomat who is obviously an antisemite and is adding fuel to the fire. Instead of having a person on the ground to explain antisemitism, he [Clages] encourages antisemitic thinking and theories.”
The paper reported that “An activist who asked spitefully, on the occasion of the first Israeli Moon mission, when Israel will occupy the Moon, got a ‘Like’ from Clages. Likewise, a user who claimed, without a source, that Israel only ‘respects its own religious holidays,’ received a like from Clages.”
A German Foreign Ministry spokesman wrote the Post by email that it finds the content of the tweets “unacceptable” and “emphatically” distances itself from the tweets. The spokesman said the ministry launched an investigation and noted that the liked tweets were deleted. The spokesman declined to say if Clages would be dismissed.