Beatrix von
Storch
EU-Israel Relations
German Bundestag,
January 30, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/143, pp. 17909-17910
[Beatrix von Storch
is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from Berlin. She is a lawyer and here introduces an AfD motion
(Drucksache 19/16855) to “Improve Relations between the EU and Israel.” Heiko Maas (SPD) is the German Foreign Minister.]
Right honorable Frau President. Dear
colleagues.
After 13 years, Germany again takes the chair
of the EU Council. We demand of the Federal government in the first of our two
motions today: Use this chairmanship to improve the relations between the EU
and Israel. That is urgently necessary.
A November poll by the MITVIM Institute, together
with your Friedrich Ebert Foundation, indicated that only 27 percent of
Israelis see the EU as a friend of Israel, but 45 percent as an enemy. The
overwhelming majority in this poll expressed more trust in Trump’s America or
Putin’s Russia than in the EU. That gives us something to think about.
The biased, pro-Islamist and anti-Israeli
attitude of the EU Commission and the EU Parliament weighs heavily on the
relations with Israel. That is especially clear in three points: The EU refuses
to designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization, the EU
supports the anti-semitic BDS movement and the EU discriminates against Israel
in that they now label wares as being from Jewish settlements; it could also be
said that they stigmatize.
The Jüdische
Allgemeine Zeitung in November wrote of Heiko Maas’s speeches on anti-semitism, if I may cite: “He uses phrases who has nothing concrete
to say.”
Marianne
Schneider (SPD): The AfD has a lot of experience in that!
The Federal government affirms Germany’s
historic responsibility. But when it comes to the concrete, you kneel before
the Islam lobby, as in the Kuwait Airways case, the subject of the second of
our motions today.The anti-discrimination offices take aim at any Handwerkmeister who incorrectly describes positions according
to gender. Yet an Arab aviation company can discriminate against Israeli
citizens at a German airport and refuse to carry? Consider just for once if
Lufthansa did that with Turks, Syrians or Iraqis.
Vice-president Petra Pau: Frau von Storch
–
No, thank you very much – How great would be
the uproar? But with the Israelis: Complete and total silence. That is
unacceptable and therefore: Approve today this motion from us. Put a stop to
this intolerable practice!
Demands that the EU halt attacks on Israel
will be ignored, blocked and, in the worst case, sabotaged.
First: Hezbollah. In the EU committee
yesterday, my colleague Sigbert Droese asked the Foreign Minister: Will the
Federal government during its Council presidency work to classify Hezbollah as
a terrorist organization and indeed as a whole? The answer was: That will not
fly. What good is a EU which not even once is ready to classify as such a
terrorist organization? What good is a EU which intentionally makes itself an
area of return for terrorists? We do not want that.
Second: BDS [Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions]. We demand that the Bundestag resolution “Resolute Opposition to BDS”
be implemented. The EU foreign policy representative has expressly declared
that membership in the BDS anti-semitic movement does not lead to an exclusion
from EU funds. That is incompatible with this Bundestag’s resolution. German
tax money may not flow into the BDS movement, not even indirectly via the EU
budget.
Third: The labeling duty. Central president
Schuster yesterday yet again emphasized that to the Interior committee. The labeling
duty for wares from the Jewish settlements is a discriminatory double standard.
It pertains only to Israel and not to the rest of the world where there are
also conflicts.
Alexander
Lambsdorff (FDP): Which however was not deliberated on before the EuGH
[European Court of Justice].
The Jerusalem
Post headline on that: While Jihadis Attack Israel, EU Engages in
Israel-bashing.
[Translated
by Todd Martin]
