Germany: Some Hate Speech 'More Equal than Others'

by Judith Bergman • July 2, 2019 at 5:00 am

Although the "military arm" of Hezbollah is prohibited in the EU, the "political arm" is not, which means that in Germany, Hezbollah is free to engage in "non-military" activities -- such as fundraising.
On the one hand, the federal police conduct countrywide raids on middle-aged Germans who post their thoughts on Facebook, while on the other, members of openly lethal terrorist organizations who espouse nothing but hatred towards a specific ethnic group, the Jews, are not only allowed to march in the heart of the German capital... but are free to organize and fundraise for their purpose.
That participants in the anti-Semitic Al Quds march have been allowed to flaunt their hatred for nearly four decades now, while middle-aged Germans are having their apartments searched for anti-Semitic and racist messages on Facebook, exposes a disturbing double standard in the application of the law.
At the very least, it shows that German authorities appear to harbor extremely selective views of what constitutes hate speech, based, it seems, on nothing more than the identity of the group that voices it.

Pictured: Participants in the anti-Israel Al-Quds Day march wave the flag of the Hezbollah terrorist group, on July 25, 2014 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)

In June, the "Al Quds Day" march took place in Berlin. Al Quds Day, in the words of the late historian Robert S. Wistrich, is "The holiday proclaimed by Khomeini in 1979 to call for Israel's annihilation" which "has since been celebrated worldwide..."

In Germany, Al Quds Day marches have been taking place in the country's capital since the 1980s[1], first in Bonn and since 1996 in Berlin. On Al Quds Day in December 2000, more than 2,000 demonstrators in the Kurfürstendamm -- a central boulevard in Berlin -- called for "the liberation of Palestine and the holy city of Jerusalem". In November 2002, only one year after 9/11, the march featured slogans such as "Death to Israel" and "Death to the USA". At the march in 2016, the slogans were, among others, "Death to Israel", "Zionists kill children", and so on.

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Dublin's Anti-Israel Boycott Bill: Bad for Ireland, Worse for the Palestinians, Terrible for Everyone

by Lawrence A. Franklin • July 2, 2019 at 4:00 am

The chief government figure opposing the bill is Foreign Minister Simon Coveney. Coveney argues that Ireland risks its standing in the European Union because the bill is legally unsound. He is correct. A Brussels-based EU trade official warned the Irish government that "the bill would be in contravention of EU competence on trade matters," as the EU Commercial Treaty demands uniformity in member-state trade policies.
Irish politicians who passed it would likely be regarded as racist, particularly in view of the German Parliament's recent resolution to designate BDS (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel) as anti-Semitic.
In addition, there could be "potentially huge losses of US tax benefits for US companies with subsidiaries in Ireland, if the Bill is passed into law. This could potentially lead to major US companies pulling out of Ireland, and for other companies who were considering relocating, to not do so."
The bill may also may well hurt Ireland's effort to secure a position on the UN Security Council (UNSC) in the 2020-2021 vote by regional member-states in the General Assembly. Canada and Norway are competing with Ireland for the two seats allotted to the UNSC's West Europe/North America region.
[The] legislation... will harm the interests of Palestinians -- an estimated 30,000 of whom are employed by Israeli businesses in the West Bank... The Ireland Israel Alliance also accuses the bill's supporters of hypocrisy, and cites their failure to condemn analogous situations in which Irish firms invest in international companies that do business in other occupied territories around the world.

Leinster House in Dublin, Ireland, the seat of the Irish Parliament. (Image source: Jean Housen/Wikimedia Commons)

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and his governing Fine Gael party oppose a bill that would make it a crime for Irish citizens to import or sell anything produced by Israelis in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Varadkar may wisely be pressuring politicians who voted in favor of the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill to examine the possible negative consequences for Ireland's national interest if the bill becomes law.

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