Wiesenthal Center blasts anti-Israel resolution

"Hypocrisy won the day in Bundestag," center's leaders say.

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
peres bundestag 311 (photo credit: AP)
peres bundestag 311
(photo credit: AP)
“Hypocrisy and double standard immorality won the day in the Bundestag,” Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, dean and associate dean, respectively, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, declared on Friday.
The two men, based in Los Angeles, were discussing the German parliament’s decision to criticize the Israel Navy’s May 31 seizure of ships trying to break the Gaza blockade.
The Bundestag passed a resolution unanimously late Thursday evening calling for an an independent investigation of the violence on the Mavi Marmara and an immediate end to the blockade of Gaza. The cross-party resolution slammed Israel for violating the principle of proportionality.
“We heard no such unanimity from German politicians when Hamas and Hizbullah terrorists targeted Israeli civilians, including Holocaust survivors and their families,” Hier and Cooper said. “We are not surprised that the Left Party, some of whose members support Hamas and Hizbullah and have had the audacity to liken Israel to Nazis, are in lockstep with efforts to demonize the Jewish state, but we are deeply shocked that mainstream German parties rushed to judgment by expressing support for yet another UN-led judicial lynching of Israel, even before the Middle East’s only democracy completed its own investigation.
“Israelis and friends of the Jewish state everywhere reject this outrageous ‘resolution’ – they are not interested in the world’s crocodile tears shed for victims of Hamas terrorism. Jerusalem has the right and moral obligation to protect its 6 million citizens from Hamas and Hizbullah terror and the looming nuclear threat of their sponsors in Teheran,” Hier and Cooper said.
Wolfgang Gehrcke, the Left Party’s foreign policy spokesman who has attended pro-Hamas and pro-Hizbullah rallies, told Reuters, “This marks a profound shift toward Israel in Germany.”
Three Left Party lawmakers were aboard the Mavi Marmara on May 31.
Members of parliament voiced strong support in the German media on Friday for the measure, including Phillip Missfelder, a deputy from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union who considers himself to be an advocate for Israel; deputy Rolf Mützenich from the Social Democrats, who is a member of the German-Israeli parliamentary group but also on the board of the pro-Teheran German-Iranian friendship society; and the Green Party’s deputy Kerstin Müller, also a member of the German-Israeli group.
Rainer Stinner, foreign policy spokesman for the Free Democrats, the party of Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, also endorsed the resolution.
Stinner, a self-described friend of Israel, rejects sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards because it controls vast sectors of the Iranian economy and sanctions could endanger German and European economic interests.
“Germans know full well that there is only one reason why Israel was forced to impose a blockade against Gaza – Hamas. And it’s important to remember that the people of Gaza had a golden opportunity for peace after thenprime minister Sharon unilaterally withdrew from Gaza [in 2005]. Instead of embracing that opportunity, they overwhelmingly voted [in 2006] for Hamas and their Islamist extremism, suicide terror and 8,000 rockets,” the Wiesenthal Center officials said. “That was the time when the Bundestag should have weighed in with a unanimous condemnation.”