A leading member of the nationalist Alternative for Germany party is set to triumph in state elections despite alarm over his extremist past.

Andreas Kalbitz, 46, who leads the party in the eastern state of Brandenburg, said on Tuesday that 'one could accuse me of right-wing extremist connections, but certainly not of having far-right extremist biography.'

With some polls showing Alternative for Germany coming first in next month's state elections in Brandenburg, Kalbitz has faced scrutiny over his past views.

Gideon Botsch, a political scientist at the University of Potsdam, said Kalbitz was 'very clearly rooted in the right-wing extremist scene' from a young age.

Former three-star general Joachim Wundrak is running for mayor of Hanover for Alternative for Germany (AfD) after expressing contempt for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open border policies.

The state of the German government’s fleet of aircraft has come under considerable scrutiny in recent months amid repeated incidents involving the breakdown of VIP planes. Late last year, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Airbus was grounded after a “serious malfunction” left it flying blind during a trip to Argentina for a G20 summit.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas’s trip to New York for a meeting of the UN Security Council got off to a rocky start after his government plane faced two consecutive breakdowns in a matter of hours, the Luftwaffe’s press service has reported.

The US must take its nukes off German soil if it is serious about relocating troops to Poland, a top opposition MP said in a tongue-in-cheek response to a veiled ultimatum from the American envoy.

German lawmakers have reacted to threats made by the US envoy to Berlin, Richard Grenell, saying that Berlin may use the ultimatum as an opportunity to push for the withdrawal of all American assets from Germany.

THE British Army is moving more than 11,000 men, women and children back from Germany.

The suspect is understood to have lived in Germany for four years ,posing as a Syrian refugee. Police earlier ruled out a political or racial context in the case, saying he was likely driven by personal motives, and new details corroborate this theory.

The Stuttgart sword killer, initially believed to be a Syrian refugee, hacked his former roommate to death after the victim discovered that he was a Jordanian living in Germany with a fake identity, Berliner Zeitung daily reports.

Issa Mohammed, 28, butchered a German Kazakh man in the middle of a street in broad daylight last week with what looked like a samurai sword. He fled the scene on a bicycle but was eventually caught in a helicopter manhunt.

Support for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s junior coalition partner slipped to its worst-ever in an opinion poll published on Tuesday, strengthening the possibility an already frayed government could fall apart.

The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has received a groundswell of support in Eastern Germany, leading in polls just weeks before regional elections in three states. Support for major parties is at a historic low.

After receiving many questions on why Deutschlandfunk has not reported on the barbaric sword murder of a Kazakh father (36) in Stuttgart by a man originally believed to be a Syrian but might actually be Jordanian Palestinian (28) according to the tabloid Bild.

The state sponsored broadcaster released the following statement claiming the attack was not of national importance or societal significance unlike the case of a mother and her 8-year-old son being pushed in front of a train by an Eritrean in the same week in Frankfurt.

It is two months since the German Bundestag (parliament) passed a symbolic, non-binding resolution designating the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as “anti-Semitic”. The controversial motion has triggered a noisy debate in Germany and beyond which reads that the campaign to boycott Israeli goods, artists and athletes is “reminiscent of the most terrible chapter in German history” and triggers memories of the Nazi slogan “Don’t buy from Jews”. The resolution also imposed a ban on government support for organisations which back BDS.

The Bundestag completely ignored the loud critiques of the resolution, including those by many German and European intellectuals as well as Jewish and Israeli academics, among which are some prominent researchers into anti-Semitism. So, is the BDS movement anti-Semitic, and why has the German federal parliament adopted this resolution?

Germany’s customs service has intercepted 4.5 tons of cocaine found in a shipping container in Hamburg – the country’s largest drug bust to date.
The container was traveling to the Netherlands from Uruguay and was supposed to be full of soybeans. But German customs agents in the port city of Hamburg instead discovered copious amounts of coke inside.

According to the German daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, a new survey has revealed that the majority of Germans want relations with Russia to normalize.

A recent survey has suggested that about 72 percent of German’s living in the East of the country and 54 percent of West Germans wish for a new rapprochement with Moscow, according to data gathered by the Tagesspiegel.

A Night In Cologne: A series of sexual assaults perpetrated by immigrants on New Year's Eve in Cologne changed Germany's welcoming attitude to refugees and economic migrants.

Germany will refuse to take part in a US-led maritime mission in the Strait of Hormuz, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced. Maas said that there “cannot be a military solution” to the current crisis in the Persian Gulf.

Speaking in Warsaw, Poland, on Wednesday, Maas said that Germany will turn down Washington’s request, which was revealed by the US Embassy in Berlin on Tuesday. The joint US, British, and French operation is aimed at protecting sea traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, and combatting so-called “Iranian aggression.”

The mission was conceived following Iran’s seizure of the British-flagged Stena Impero oil tanker earlier this month, itself widely considered a tit-for-tat response to Britain’s seizure of an Iranian tanker off the coast of Gibraltar several weeks earlier.

Earlier, both German and British officials said they did not support the US's "maximum pressure" strategy against Tehran, instead welcoming an operation proposed by London for a European-led security effort to "protect" commercial vessels operating in the Persian Gulf and near the Strait of Hormuz.

The United States has officially requested Germany, France and the UK to join its military mission in the Gulf to 'combat Iranian aggression,' the US Embassy in Berlin has indicated.

"We have formally asked Germany to help with securing the Strait of Hormuz and fighting Iranian aggression, along with France and the UK," a spokeswoman from the Embassy told the German Press Agency on Tuesday.

Relations between Moscow and EU’s right-wing political parties are a cause for concern, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said during a press conference in Berlin last week.

“Some questions arise here”, she stated. “We have constantly monitored the very strong support that right-leaning parties have received from Russia in one way or the other.”

Mayor of Hockenheim, a city in southwest Germany, was left bloodied and hospitalized after an unknown assailant punched him. Amid a sharp rise in threats to the political elite, one politician has already died. Reports suggest that such attacks are becoming more common.

Dieter Gummer, a member of the notoriously pro-migrant left-wing Social Democratic Party, answered his door on Monday evening to find an unfamiliar face outside. The visitor heavily punched the 67-year-old politician in the face, according to police in nearby Ludwigshafen.

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Could it be possible that we are on the verge of the next “Lehman Brothers moment”?

It takes a lot to rattle Wall Street.

But Deutsche Bank managed to. The beleaguered German giant announced on July 7 that it is laying off 18,000 employees—roughly one-fifth of its global workforce—and pursuing a vast restructuring plan that most notably includes shutting down its global equities trading business.

Though Deutsche’s Bloody Sunday seemed to come out of the blue, it’s actually the culmination of a years-long—some would say decades-long—descent into unprofitability and scandal for the bank, which in the early 1990s set out to make itself into a universal banking powerhouse to rival the behemoths of Wall Street.

These moves may delay Deutsche Bank’s inexorable march into oblivion, but not by much.

The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany has demanded that Amazon (AMZN) take responsibility to remove anti-Semitic products and merchandise from its e-commerce website.

Josef Schuster told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) on Saturday that it is “totally unacceptable that Amazon distributes T-shirts and stickers that glorify Nazi values or right-wing ideas or incite hatred for minorities.”

Schuster said Amazon had a “moral and social responsibility” as one of the world’s largest retailers and should not see itself as merely a “supplier.”

The Chinese military has deployed military personnel and armored medical vehicles to Germany for joint drills, a first for the Chinese People's Liberation Army as it attempts to forge closer ties with Europe.

The joint exercise — Combined Aid 2019 — is focused on preparing troops with the medical service units of the Chinese and German armed forces to respond to humanitarian crises, such as mass casualty incidents and serious disease outbreaks, China's Xinhua News Agency reported.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was seen again shaking uncontrollably, the third time in less than a month, renewing concerns about her health.

Merkel, 64, was attending an event Wednesday with Antti Rinne, the prime minister of Finland. As the pair watched a military honor guard, her arms and legs trembled and she seemed to be mouthing something repeatedly. At one point, she clasped her hands in front of her, trying to control the shaking.

An hour later, at a press briefing with reporters, she declared: “I am well.”

The Bank for Social Economy is considered a relatively progressive bank in Germany because its customers are mostly civil society organisations.

Yet, when it comes to denying Palestinians the right to boycott the Israeli occupation and colonialism, I believe the bank violated the German constitution, by silencing a Jewish organisation that does solidarity work with Palestinian groups in Germany.

Last month, the bank closed the account of Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, a Jewish solidarity organisation in Germany that won the 2019 Gottingen Peace Prize.

Berlin said on Monday it had no plans to send ground troops to Syria, refusing a US request for Germany to ramp up its military involvement in the fight against Islamic State (IS).

US special representative on Syria James Jeffrey had told German media, including the Die Welt newspaper, on Sunday that Washington wanted Berlin to put boots on the ground in northern Syria.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said: "When I say that the government intends to continue with its ongoing measures in the framework of the anti-IS coalition, then that means no ground troops."

Discord broke out in German Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition Sunday, after the United States urged the country to send ground troops to Syria as Washington looks to withdraw from the region.

"We want ground troops from Germany to partly replace our soldiers" in the area as part of the anti-Islamic State coalition, US special representative on Syria James Jeffrey had told German media including Die Welt newspaper.

Jeffrey, who was visiting Berlin for Syria talks, added that he expects an answer this month.

According to a new report from a watchdog on anti-Christian incidents, between April and June Germany saw thirty anti-Christian attacks ranging from thefts to arsons.

The data was compiled by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, who noted around 30 separate incidents between April 1st and June 10th published on the group’s website.

A large number of the cases involved various forms of vandalism, including an incident at the Lutheran Nikolaikirche in Caldern in which the attackers set fire to the hymn book and Bible at the altar of the church, and also left faeces on a bench outside of the church and at the entrance.

The move comes ahead of regional elections amid the growing popularity of the anti-establishment Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party, which calls for stricter migration control, in eastern parts of the country.

The Open Society Foundation NGO of US billionaire George Soros, which has been repeatedly accused of meddling in the domestic affairs of several countries, is planning to support efforts opposing right-wing political forces in eastern Germany. The organisation’s director Selmin Caliskan stated that the NGO will assist groups that “share their values” and promised that details would be announced in the following months.

"The first step will be to launch a local initiative to combat hate crimes in eastern Berlin and the surrounding area with local partners," the organisation's director announced.

The director of the Jewish Museum Berlin was forced to resign last week following pressure from Israel and its lobby.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany criticized the museum for tweeting an article on the 240 Jewish and Israeli scholars who signed a petition opposing the German parliament’s recent motion condemning the BDS – boycott, divest and sanctions – movement for Palestinian rights.

Several German politicians who have publicly stood up for refugees have received death threats since what police are treating as the alleged politically motivated murder of one of Angela Merkel’s party allies.

An email sent to politicians and media organisations across the country on Tuesday night warned that the alleged murder of the Christian Democratic Union politician Walter Lübcke, allegedly by a man linked to the far right, was the first in a line of “upcoming purges” and called for terror attacks on left-leaning politicians, refugees and Jews in Germany.

The mayors of the city of Cologne and the western town of Altena, who have both been victims of knife attacks because of their pro-refugee stances, were singled out in the letter.

Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, narrowly escaped death in 2015 when she was attacked with a hunting knife by a rightwing extremist who said he had wanted to send a signal against the government’s course on the refugee question.

Palestinians are calling for a boycott of the German festival that disinvited American rapper Talib Kweli because of his support for BDS – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.

Earlier this month, the Open Source Festival in the western city of Düsseldorf dropped Kweli for refusing to denounce BDS.

PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, is now calling on other artists to cancel their performances to show solidarity with Kweli.

Dozens of Jewish scholars have signed a letter in support of Peter Schäfer, the former director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum forced out over criticism of a tweet linking to a pro-Israel boycott article.

According to the report by JTA, the letter – signed by 45 academic Talmud scholars – is “unprecedented among the Talmudist community”, which normally “tends to shy away from commenting on current affairs”.

The letter, co-organised by Tel Aviv University-based Ishay Rosen Zvi, and Princeton University Professor Moulie Vidas, follows on from a separate letter signed by “a broader group of Jewish studies scholars”, protesting that Schäfer’s reputation had been “smeared in public”.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was spotted visibly unsteady and shaking when she met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The 64-year-old politician later said she recovered from the sickly condition after drinking water.

Merkel felt unwell while she greeted Zelensky outside the chancellery amid hot weather in Berlin. The two leaders were listening to a band, playing national anthems of the two countries, when Merkel started shaking and swaying around a little, footage from the scene shows.

Ahead of a visit by German lawmakers to Russia, one of them, Gregor Gysi from the left-wing party Die Linke, has accused Angela Merkel of failing to steer relations between the two countries out of the impasse in which they’ve been mired for years.

The number 2 in the Bundestag’s German-Russian group, Gregor Gysi, from Die Linke has told Sputnik that lifting tit-for-tat sanctions would help to solve international conflicts.

“The sanctions, imposed by the West, further aggravated the situation [in relations with Russia]. Russia responded with sanctions, too. That is why lifting them bilaterally would be a condition for renewing active dynamics in the dialogue between Germany and Russia”, Gysi stated, noting this demands that the German government take a corresponding stance.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has courted growing anti-immigrant opinion in Germany by claiming the country's attempts to create a multicultural society have "utterly failed".

Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democratic Union party, Merkel said the idea of people from different cultural backgrounds living happily "side by side" did not work.

She said the onus was on immigrants to do more to integrate into German society.

"This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed," Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, west of Berlin, yesterday.

US president Donald Trump says he is considering slapping sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project, insisting that the US has a much “better” alternative for Europe.

“[It’s] something that I’ve been looking at and I’m thinking about,” the US president said, answering a reporter’s question about using sanctions to block the project.

He added that he was the one who’d brought up “the pipeline problem,” referring to his earlier attacks against Russia’s energy supplies to Europe, and Germany in particular, as it is the entry point of the new export gas pipeline.

Some 240 Israeli and Jewish academics and intellectuals have sent a letter to the Germany government urging it not to enact in to law a bill that would define the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement as “anti-Semitic”.

If it is passed in to law, the currently non-binding motion, which was passed by the Bundestag – parliament – in May, would be the first official law in Europe to classify BDS activity as anti-Semitic.

Despite winning huge support among vast sections of the major parties, including the Social Democrats, the Free Democratic Party, and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, the law has also drawn a significant amount of criticism and condemnation.

The German government is examining whether to adopt a motion by its parliament that defines the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic and bans it from use of public buildings – and how such a decision would affect German funding to groups that support the movement.

Haaretz has learned that Israel and various public diplomacy groups are pressuring Germany to adopt the motion, stirring strong disagreements among government ministries. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bureau has yet to decide on an official position.

During his trip to the UK, where he took part in D-Day commemoration events and met European leaders, the US president sat down with Fox News to debunk critics who predicted his international policy would mean failure, NATO’s fracture, and the isolation of the US.

US President Donald Trump has denounced critics of his NATO policy, saying while the alliance “was going down” over the last 15 years, it is “like a rocket ship up” now. According to the US commander-in-chief’s interview with Fox News, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg sided with him.

The “standing ovations” interrupted Harvard speech Angela Merkel shocked me. How could a so-called US elite university like Harvard fall for so many flat phrases of the German chancellor? Has Trump’s mental level reached such a low point that even Harvard professors and students applaud everything that comes from the supposed “salvific figure” of German politics, “the most powerful woman in the world”? How Merkel “beautified” her GDR past was already unbearable. How she got from her apartment in East Berlin, which was close to the wall that she “could not overcome” for a long time. “Every day I had to turn in front of freedom,” she can complain so only in distant Harvard, because they do not know that Merkel in the GDR has led a privileged life. Speaking of and by the way: For years, the Palestinians have been forced by Israeli disregard of international law, before the IGH report illegal Israeli Apartheid Wall “turn from freedom”.

The president of the regional council of the central German city of Kassel was found dead in his garden early Sunday morning. He was shot with a short-barreled weapon from close range, according to investigators. There was no indication of suicide.

Medical officials attempted to resuscitate Lübcke, but their efforts were unsuccessful, authorities said at a press conference on Monday.

Police said they were looking for a perpetrator and investigating in "all directions." However, there was yet no information about possible suspects or a motive. Authorities also refused to answer most reporters' questions about the apparent crime, citing the ongoing investigation.

Regional news outlet HNA reported that Lübcke had been found with a bullet wound to his head, and that police had found no weapon at the scene.

There's another player on the world's anti-encryption stage. Some German government officials apparently feel it's OK for people to have encryption, but not secure encryption. The German government is exploring the idea of asking forcing tech companies to backdoor their encrypted communications platforms, presumably for the greater good of insecure humanity.

Government officials in Germany are reportedly mulling a law to force chat app providers to hand over end-to-end encrypted conversations in plain text on demand.

According to Der Spiegel this month, the Euro nation's Ministry of the Interior wants a new set of rules that would require operators of services like WhatsApp, Signal, Apple iMessage, and Telegram to cough up plain-text records of people's private enciphered chats to authorities that obtain a court order.

Andrea Nahles said she will resign as the leader of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD). It comes a week after the establishment parties took a big hit, losing the combined majority in the EU elections.

Nahles announced that she will step as down as SPD leader and the head of its group in the national parliament on Tuesday.

Some local media cited sources saying that Nahles is also considering giving up her seat in the parliament and quitting politics altogether.

Five police officers have been injured in violent clashes with asylum seekers, who have staged a riot in a shelter in the state of Bavaria, Germany. German crime statistics also show that migrant violence is becoming a new trend.
Police were deployed to a large refugee shelter located in the small Bavarian community of Stephansposching on Friday evening following reports of asylum seekers going on a rampage. When the officers arrived at the scene, they were confronted by a group of some 30 aggressive refugees and migrants, Bavarian Radio reports, citing police.

The German chancellor devoted much of her Harvard University speech to attacking President Trump, as she urged graduates to “tear down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness”. Despite never mentioning the US President by name, Ms Merkel attacked several cornerstones the Trump Presidency, including protectionism, free trade and climate change. In a further jibe, the 64-year-old chancellor called on the students to “tear down walls”, the opposite of Mr Trump’s 2016 battlecry where he promised to “build the wall” to stop immigrants crossing the border with Mexico.

While drawing on her experiences of life in former East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ms Merkel said: “Tear down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness, for nothing has to stay as it is.”

Speaking at the Ivy League university to students and alumni, the German chancellor received a standing ovation when she said it was important not to “describe lies as truth, and truth as lies”.

Only around 20 per cent of the Germans are comfortable expressing their opinions freely in public. Most feel like censorship is taking over especially when it comes to the taboo subjects of refugees and Islam.

The study also found that most Germans feel comfortable expressing their views among friends but not in public because there are too many unwritten laws, which opinions are acceptable and which aren’t.

Israeli Major Arye Sharuz Shalicar was promoting his new book The New German Anti-Semite at a high school in Aurich in northwest Germany, on 17 May, when two activists, one German and one Israeli, interrupted his speech.

“As soon as we got word of the upcoming events we tried to intervene,” Christoph Glanz told The Electronic Intifada.

“Shalicar has written two more or less autobiographical books which contain a lot of slander, character assassination and at their core claim that anti-Semitism is everywhere and most prominent among leftists, Muslims and self-hating Jews.”

German diplomats recently visited the Gaza Strip and an Arab capital where Hamas leaders were present in an effort to broker a prisoner ?exchange deal between ?Israel and the Palestinian faction, i24news quoted Palestinian sources as saying.

According to the sources, Hamas insisted that all Palestinian prisoners previously released under the Shalit prisoners deal but who were later rearrested by Israel be released before any new talks could begin.

The same sources said Marwan Issa, commander of the Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, and Hamas chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, recently visited Cairo and discussed with Egyptian officials the ceasefire between Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip and Israel and the possibility of a prisoner exchange deal.

A Berlin area branch of the right-wing anti-migrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has faced backlash after posting and then deleting a photoshopped map calling the west and the south of the country a “German Caliphate.”
The graphic, posted by AfD’s Berlin-Lichtenberg Facebook page a day after the European Parliament vote ended, featured the flag of Germany over the country’s eastern states, where AfD won the most support. The five federal states and Berlin were painted blue and titled the Federal Republic of Germany.

In contrast, the west and the south of the country were painted green and emblazoned with a black flag featuring the shahadah, or Islamic declaration of faith. The states were branded the “German Caliphate,” while a caption to the post read: “Pictures speak louder than words.”

While the account that posted the image removed it within hours of uploading, it still managed to stir some controversy on social media.

If the Tories thought they were having trouble getting rid of Theresa May, they should spare a thought for the German CDU where Angela Merkel has just announced that she won’t be resigning as German Chancellor after all. Heiliger Strohsack!

Merkel has reportedly decided that her chosen successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, abbreviated to slightly dubious acronym ‘AKK’, is not up to the job after watching her popularity slide since she took over leadership of the CDU. AKK led the CDU to its worst ever performance in the EU elections, which people actually care about in Germany. Merkel now wants to hang on at least until 2021. As long as Theresa May doesn’t get any ideas…

The CDU's abysmal showing in last week's EU Parliamentary election marked the party's worst result ever in a national election. And apparently, the the loss of the CDU/CSU's position as the largest party in the bloc's largest legislative body was the last straw for Chancellor Angela Merkel, who reportedly regrets her decision to step aside as party leader last year - a decision she made to clear the way for her chosen successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, or AKK.

According to media reports, Merkel is so frustrated with AKK over a series of missteps by the new CDU party leader that the chancellor has decided to withdraw her political support, throwing her well-laid succession plans into disarray.

Merkel's determination that AKK is not 'up to the job' of being chancellor comes as AKK and others within the CDU have pressured Merkel to step down early to give AKK a better shot at securing a full term in 2021.

The German Chancellor vowed to step down and handed over leadership of the Christian Democratic Union to Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer last year. But a free speech row has seen Ms Merkel seemingly withdraw her support for her apparent heir. Sources close to the veteran leader have suggested that she doesn’t have faith in her successor.

Mrs Merkel’s plans to quit at the end of her term in 2021 remain intact but she is not willing to spend anymore political capital defending Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer.

The revelation could spark a re-run of last year’s leadership campaign in order to find an alternative candidate.

Historic losses for Germany’s two governing parties and a Green surge in Sunday’s European elections have ratcheted up the pressure on Angela Merkel’s embattled coalition government.

Both of the country’s established centrist parties slumped to their worst result in the postwar era as voters from each side of the political divide switched support to a buoyant Green party, emboldening critics who would like to pull the plug on the current power-sharing arrangement in Berlin.

While the alliance of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, still emerged top with 28.9% of the vote, it shed five seats.

Meanwhile the centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD), junior coalition partner in the national government, endured a humbling evening.

This week Palestinians marched to Germany’s diplomatic offices in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Ramallah and in the besieged Gaza Strip to protest the German Bundestag’s recent resolution equating the BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – movement for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism.

The marchers in Ramallah on Wednesday delivered a letter signed by representatives of 200 Palestinian civil society groups condemning “in the strongest terms the German parliament’s resolution, which is based on outright lies.”

As the brutality of Israel’s systemic apartheid is being unveiled, human rights activists who speak up about Israel’s crimes against humanity become a target of political persecution. Berlin is currently witnessing a crackdown on freedom of expression as German authorities yield to Israeli government pressure to criminalize dissent. Whereas Berlin has positioned itself as the last bastion for Zionism over the past decades, activities to challenge it are of a growing concern for the authorities. Recent efforts to suppress such critical voices include the German Parliament’s anti-BDS Resolution as well as the violent arrests, deletion of video evidence and literally gagging of protesters at IsraelTag. These along with the revoking of Rasmea Odeh’s European visa and the cancellation of her public talk with poet Dareen Tatour, at the behest of the Israeli government only weeks earlier.

In a symbolic move on Friday, the German parliament condemned the BDS – boycott, divest and sanctions – movement for Palestinian rights as anti-Semitic.

The Bundestag passed the motion “Resisting the BDS movement decisively – fighting anti-Semitism,” brought by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, the center-left Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats.

Inspired by the tactics of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, the BDS movement was founded by some 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005 with the aim of pressuring Israel to respect Palestinian rights and international law.

It explicitly calls for Israel to end its occupation of Arab lands conquered during the 1967 war; abolish all discriminatory laws and policies against Palestinian citizens of Israel; and respect the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as outlined in UN resolution 194.

Germany’s decision to equate the boycott of Israel with anti-Semitism “violates international law”, “international legitimacy” and is “immoral”, the Boycott Campaign – Palestine said in a statement today.

“This immoral decision violates as well human rights, freedom of expression and the right of people to support the oppressed around the world,” the movement added.

BCP warned that this decision “will give immunity and strengthen the occupation and encourage it to continue to commit further crimes and apartheid acts against the Palestinian people.”

Fatal and shameful, what took place last week in the German Bundestag.Indeed, one felt reminded of Reichstag times, when Jews were discriminated and marginalized in Germany. This time, however, all “democratic” parties together voted for a ban on the BDS movement. It strongly reminded of the “Enabling Act” of March 24, 1933, the official law for the relief of the people and the Reich. Only the SPD voted against it then. So how can you compare “Enabling Act” and the anti-BDS motion, which “resolutely” opposes the BDS movement and wants to fight anti-Semitism? One can, because both decisions are deliberately not “constitutional”. Does not our constitution clearly state the right to freedom of expression?

Bundestag resolution “authorizes” to anti-Semitism and disregard of human rights

he White Rose movement opposed Hitler, Nazi rule and World War Two. The White Rose movement is probably the most famous of the civilian resistance movements that developed within Nazi Germany but some of its members paid a terrible price for their stand against the system.

Alarmist articles started circulating shortly after, some claiming Germany is “the first country in the world to criminalise BDS”.

Thus, for example, an interview with the Berlin-based political economist Shir Hever, opens: “The German parliament, the Bundestag, has just passed an unprecedented piece of legislation condemning the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, known as the BDS. They deemed BDS as antisemitic and illegal. This makes Germany the first and only country in the world to criminalise the BDS movement.”

Hever offers an interesting (if not quite convincing) explanation of Germany’s condemnation of BDS. Recalling that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had twice asserted that it was Hajj Amin al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem, and not Adolf Hitler, who first came up with the idea of exterminating the Jews, Hever suggests that Netanyahu was giving the Germans a way out of their guilt over the Holocaust.

Germany’s parliament has passed a motion defining the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic. It calls on Berlin to cut funding to groups supporting BDS.

The Bundestag voted to adopt the non-binding motion backed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party on Friday, making it the first European parliament to do so.

Source: Middle East Monitor

Germany today voted to define the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic, becoming the first major European parliament to do so.

The German parliament – known as the Bundestag – this afternoon voted to accept a motion defining BDS as anti-Semitic. The motion, “Resist the BDS Movement – Fighting Antisemitism,” was sponsored by the Bundestag’s two largest parties – Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian-Democratic Union and the Social Democrat party – as well as the Green Party and the Free Democratic Party.

The text of the motion stated that “the German Bundestag is unwavering in its commitment to condemn and combat anti-Semitic in all its forms,” stressing it will oppose “anyone who defames people because of their Jewish identity […] questions the right of the Jewish and democratic state of Israel to exist or Israel’s right to defend itself.”

In an interview with the German daily Zueddeutche Zeitung ahead of the European elections Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged Europe to unite and stand up to the US, Russia, and China. Amid the ongoing tussle with Washington over higher import tariffs and the US pulling out of the Iran deal, one of Europe’s most powerful politicians stated that “the old certainties of the postwar order no longer apply” expressing confidence that “Europe needs to reposition itself in a changed world”.

The German government has made secret the number of “refugees” arriving in the country by plane after previous figures showed it was as high as 30 per cent.

The idea of refugees risking their lives to flee war torn countries, whether by land or even more dangerous boat journey, has been popularized by the media.

However, at least a third of asylum seekers who enter Germany do so via a quick flight.

Warsaw has refused to compensate Jewish families for the property they lost during WWII, and said that Germany owes Poland up to a ‘trillion’ in reparations.

“The Polish position is firm and clear: we don’t owe anything to anybody,” the government’s spokesperson, Joanna Kopcinska, stressed during an interview on a local radio station on Thursday.

The German army suspended its training programs for Iraqi troops due to increasing tensions in the region, the Defense Ministry said. The move comes after the US ordered partial evacuation of its embassy in Baghdad.

Berlin made the decision to suspend the training of Iraqi soldiers while “orienting itself toward our partner countries,” the Defense Ministry’s spokesperson, Jens Flosdorff, told reporters.

He said that there is “no concrete threat” to German troops at the moment but the decision to halt the training of local forces was made because the situation on the ground in general is becoming more tense.

A group of Republican and Democratic U.S. senators introduced legislation on Tuesday seeking sanctions targeting the Nord Stream 2, a planned gas pipeline from Russia to Germany under fire from the United States and some European Union countries.

The bill introduced by Republican Senators Ted Cruz, John Barrasso and Tom Cotton and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, seeks to impose travel and financial sanctions on companies and individuals involved in constructing the pipeline.

The legislation reflects continued U.S. concerns over Russian influence in Europe, but the measure is many steps from becoming law. It would need to pass both the Senate and House of Representatives and be signed by President Donald Trump to go into effect.

We should all defend ourselves against such openly publicized manipulations of Israeli propagandists and warmongers in the “public law”!

The statement comes a few days after the US slapped a new round of sanctions on Iran’s steel, iron, aluminium and copper sectors following Tehran’s move to suspend some of its obligations under the nuclear deal in light of Washington’s decision to intensify restrictive measures.

Speaking to Bild newspaper, US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell warned that companies involved in business with Iran could be blocked from the US market.

“You can do as much business as you want in Iran, but we have a say with regards to your visa. Because if you do something, we’re not going to agree to let you enter our country”, he warned.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo abruptly cancelled his visit to Germany this week, where he was scheduled to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel. This has sparked speculations about US-German relations falling apart and prompted a Sueddeutsche Zeitung journalist to call on Berlin to develop a strategy for the post-Trump era.

The abrupt cancellation of Mike Pompeo’s visit “is difficult to excuse”, Daniel Broessler noted in an article for the respected outlet Sueddeutsche Zeitung. He points out that there is rudeness in the world of diplomacy, like missing important international meetings as foreign minister, and insolence, referring to Pompeo’s announcement just hours before meeting Angela Merkel and his German counterpart Heiko Maas.

The heir to the British throne begins his big German tour on 7 May. Ahead of the visit, his address to a party in Berlin, reportedly considered to be Prince Charles’ “olive branch” over the chaos around the UK-EU’s divorce, has been leaked to the media. The royal is expected to talk about the UK’s special relations with the European powerhouse.