Youth org. of Angela Merkel’s party call for Jerusalem as Israel's capital
The JU document said that a continued refusal by the German federal government to relocate its embassy could continue to damage the relationship between Germany and Israel.
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a joint news conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (not pictured) at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, October 2, 2019(photo credit: MICHELE TANTUSSI/REUTERS)
The conservative youth organization Young Union of Germany (JU) defied its party’s leadership – Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU/CSU) and the Christian Union Party – by urging the relocation of the country’s embassy to Jerusalem.With roughly 105,000 members, the JU passed a resolution over the weekend titled “Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital” at its 59th Germany Day convention, held in Saarland. According to reports in German media, the JU urged the CDU and CSU parties in the Bundestag to “follow the examples of the USA, Russia and Guatemala, and relocate its embassy to Jerusalem and therefore recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”The JU document said that a continued refusal by the German federal government to relocate its embassy could continue to damage the relationship between Germany and Israel.The Jerusalem Post exclusively reported in 2018 that Merkel intensely lobbied European countries not to relocate their embassies to Jerusalem.The foreign policy spokesman of the CDU, Jürgen Hardt, who is an MP in the Bundestag, rejected the demand of the JU, stating: “The relocation of the embassy would not solve any problems, rather [it would] create new problems,” according to the daily outlet Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung.The German Union of Jewish Students praised the JU conference on Twitter for urging Germany and the EU to outlaw the entire organization Hezbollah, writing: “Thank you for this clear signal against terror and antisemitism. Stop Hezbollah.”Merkel and her social democratic foreign minister, Heiko Maas, have flatly rejected a ban of Hezbollah in Germany, where 1,050 Hezbollah members operate, recruit new members and raise funds for Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Central Council of Jews in Germany and US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell have urged Merkel to outlaw Hezbollah amid a wave of rising antisemitism in the federal republic.Critics slammed Merkel’s alleged anti-Israel foreign policy over the last week. Hillel Neuer, executive-director of the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch, wrote on Twitter “Dear Foreign Minister @HeikoMaas, What message does Germany send to its people every year when you support the pathological demonization of the world’s only Jewish state? Thisyear at the UN General Assembly, I urge you to stop depicting Israel as the world’s most evil nation.”Neuer also wrote that when “When Bundestag members Bijan Djir-Sarai and Frank Müller-Rosentritt courageously introduced a resolution calling for an end to Germany’s support for the UN’s demonization of the Jewish state, the Merkel government opposed & defeated it.”Writing in the weekly German paper Jungle World, journalist Alex Feuerherdt, who is an expert on German-Israeli relations, declared: “The promised [German] federal government solidarity with Israel remains merely lip service without any consequence.”The Zionist Organization of America urged the World Jewish Congress last week to rescind its Theodore Herzl Award to Merkel because of her support for the Iran nuclear deal and her alleged failure to combat antisemitism.
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