BERLIN – The local branch of the neo-Nazi party (NPD) expressed solidarity for
the campaign calling for a boycott of Israeli products that is supported by the
German city of Jena’s Social Democratic Mayor Albrecht Schröter and the
left-wing NGO Pax Christi.
The NPD branch in the state of Thuringia,
where Jena is located, quickly issued accolades on Monday to Schröter on its
website. The neo-Nazis wrote that he is “courageous” for his anti-Israel
conduct and noted “as nationalists who have to deal every day with these
Jewish/left-liberal defamation tactics, we think of Goethe’s sorcerer’s
apprentice, who couldn’t get rid of the spirits he called.”
Schröter
refused to answer queries from The Jerusalem Post about whether the boycott was
creating an anti-Israel and anti- Jewish climate in Jena. He reiterated his
pro-boycott action in an opinion piece on Monday in the local Thüringische
Landeszeitung.
According to the mayor, his goal “is to demand mandatory
labeling of goods from illegal Israeli settlements that occupy Palestinian
territory.” Anti-boycott critics say the boycott’s language is nebulous and
sweeping, and results in a boycott of Israeli-labeled products.
The Simon
Wiesenthal Center’s international director, Dr. Shimon Samuels, told the Post on
Monday that the human rights group may issue a formal travel advisory to warn
Diaspora Jews and Israelis about visits to the city because of the possibility
of anti-Semitic violence.
Samuels said the Wiesenthal Center will
“consider a travel advisory about Jena” because the anti-Israel boycott
“campaign can result in physical [acts of] anti-Semitism.”
He cited the
center’s 2010 warning issued against the Swedish city of Malmo because Social
Democratic Mayor Ilmar Reepalu contributed to citysponsored anti-Semitism that
endangered Jews.
“The boycott is a form of discrimination and illegal. It
is not just a boycott against settlements; that is an excuse. It is a boycott
against the State of Israel,” said Samuels.
“This is not the first time
that we have had anti-Semitism from Pax Christi,” he continued, noting that the
mayor and Pax Christi chose not to boycott states like Syria that are engaged in
human rights violations.
Thuringia and the city of Jena are hotbeds of
neo-Nazi activity. Kevin Zdiara, the deputy chairman of the German-Israel
friendship society (DIG) in Thuringia’s capital Erfurt, told the Post that in
Jena “there is a Nazi problem,” that the terrorists of the national socialist
underground came from Jena and that Nazis continue to meet at the property of
the “Brown House,” a local center for the far-right.
Zdiara, who first
shined a light on the boycott in a German online publication, added that there
is certainly enough for the mayor to do in Jena instead of issuing one-sided
statements against Israel. He termed Schröter’s arguments “in certain areas to
resemble anti-Zionist anti-Semitism” because the remarks meet Natan Sharansky’s
3-D test for modern anti-Semitism – demonization, double standards and
delegitimization.
In an email to the Post on Tuesday, Dr. Moshe Kantor,
the president of the European Jewish Congress, wrote, “Unfortunately, only eight
decades since Jewish businesses were first boycotted, a German mayor supports a
boycott of products from the Jewish state. With all the real and systematic
human rights abuses happening in the world, the fact that a German mayor chooses
to single out the only Jewish state cannot be overlooked.”
“While the
mayor has automatically self-defended himself from accusations of anti-Semitism,
this should fool no one. It meets all the criteria of the European Union’s
working definition of anti-Semitism and should be rightly condemned,” Kantor
continued.