Frankfurt Jewish president and official want MP to resign from BDS group

Green Party MP Omid Nouripour sought to sanction Jewish products from West Bank in 2013

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
Uwe Becker (photo credit: CDU-KREISVERBAND FRANKFURT)
Uwe Becker
(photo credit: CDU-KREISVERBAND FRANKFURT)
The walls are closing in on the controversial foreign policy spokesman for the German Green Party, Omid Nouripour, after the president of Frankfurt’s Jewish community and the commissioner to combat antisemitism in the state of Hesse covering Nouripour’s election district urged him to resign from an allegedly pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), antisemitic organization.
Nouripour’s election district is located in the city of Frankfurt in the state of Hesse and he is on the advisory board of the German-Palestinian Society (DPG), an organization that advocates the BDS campaign against the Jewish state.
“If the DPG does not officially distance itself from BDS and declare that it rejects BDS, Mr. Nouripour should also resign from his position on the advisory board,” Uwe Becker, the commissioner of the Hessian federal state government for Jewish life and the fight against antisemitism, told The Jerusalem Post by email on Monday.
When asked about Becker’s comment, Salomon Korn, the president of Frankfurt’s roughly 7,000-member Jewish community, told the Post by email “I agree with Mr. Becker’s statement.”
The one-two punch of Becker and Korn against Nouripour, who has denied his BDS activity, is a dramatic setback for him and his party, which have been embroiled in antisemitism scandals over the years.
Bastian Zander, a spokesman for the party of Becker, the Christian Democratic Union in the state of Hesse, told the Post that it subscribes to Becker’s call for Nouripour to abandon his post at the DPG.
In an email obtained by the Post, Nouripour wrote “I am definitely not a member of a BDS organization. For heaven’s sake, why would I support such a shabby initiative like BDS?”
Nouripour appears to be hiding behind a technical language interpretation. While he is on the advisory board of the BDS entity, he claims he is not a member. Nouripour refused to answer numerous Post queries, including whether he deceived the German public and German Jews about his role on the advisory board of a major BDS organization.
The DPG continues to support BDS and has consistently refused to abandon its position for BDS. The organization declined to answer multiple Post queries. In late June, the DPG sent a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel, urging her to sanction Israel by suspending the “EU-Israel Association Agreement.”
The agreement covers such areas as political dialogue, economic development and free trade arrangements. It is unclear if Nouripour played a role in approving the BDS letter to Merkel. Nazih Musharbash, the president of the DPG, has declined to answer Post press queries.
Becker did note that “I have seen [Nouripour] as someone who has clearly positioned himself against BDS. According to my information, Mr. Nouripour advocated intensively on the part of the Green Party for the anti-BDS decision of the German Bundestag – what is to be commended.” Korn also agrees with the statement from Becker.
THE BUNDESTAG classified BDS as an antisemitic movement in 2019.
Nouripour, however, has faced criticism over the years for his role in implementing a 2013 BDS initiative in the Bundestag. The anti-Israel measure called for the labeling of Jewish products from the disputed West Bank territory.
Sacha Stawski, a German Jew who lives in Frankfurt and oversees the I Like Israel organization, told the Post that “I also take the clear position that the MPs concerned should immediately give up their membership in the DPG and should clearly distance themselves from the organization, as well as from BDS.”
Two additional alleged anti-Israel MPs are on the board of the DPG, including Christina Buchholz from the Left Party, who has defended the “resistance” of the terrorist entities Hamas and Hezbollah against the Jewish state.
When asked about the MPs on the advisory board of the BDS group, the spokeswoman for Israel’s embassy in Berlin, Shir Gideon, told the Post that “at the moment, we do not wish to comment.”
Social Democratic Party MP Aydan Özoguz is also on the board.
Stawski, who is also the editor-in-chief of Honestly Concerned, a media watchdog group that monitors antisemitism in the German media, said that “there is nothing to prevent MPs from being committed to the interests of the Palestinian people, but not at the expense of Israel’s right to exist, or from an organization that does not clearly distance itself from BDS – or even terrorism. The DPG clearly acts against the anti-BDS decision of the Bundestag, as well as in contrast to the Germany’s expressed raison d’être for Israel’s security,which therefore explicitly excludes membership for all MPs [in a BDS group].”
The DPG declined to tell the Post if it considers the jihadi movements Hamas and Hezbollah to be terrorist entities.
Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor and president of Munich’s Jewish community, told the Post in late May that the three members of the Bundestag should resign from the DPG because the organization supports the BDS campaign against Israel. “All true democrats ought to follow in der Beek’s example and leave the DPG advisory board,” Knobloch said.
She was referring to the Free Democratic Party MP Olaf in der Beek, who resigned from the advisory board of DPG in May because the organization would not reject BDS. Neo-Nazi parties such as The Third Way, the NPD and the Right support BDS.
German Jews and German-Iranian dissidents have urged Nouripour to take the high moral road and resign from the DPG. The Green Party faced allegations of mainstreaming antisemitism in Germany after its vice president, Claudia Roth, zealously embraced the Iranian regime Holocaust denier Ali Larijani. Larijani, the former speaker of Iran’s pseudo parliament, has urged the obliteration of the Jewish state. The Post reached out to Green Party leaders Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock about Nouripour’s alleged BDS activity.
Orit Arfa contributed reporting to this article.
   
   
   


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