German commissioner says Merkel’s envoy boosting antisemitism at UN

DECEMBER 14, 2019 23:20

A German state commissioner to combat antisemitism told The Jerusalem Post that his country’s UN ambassador promotes antisemitism at the United Nations when he compared the Jewish state with Hamas.

“The comparison made by [Christoph] Heusgen between Israel’s actions and the terrorism of Hamas damages solidarity with Israel and is unfortunately apt to promote Israeli-related antisemitism,” Uwe Becker, the commissioner tasked to fight antisemitism in the state of Hesse, told the Post.

Becker added that “Germany must also not be a provider for Israel-related antisemitism.” He said that the “political farce” at the UN “can only be answered with no” with respect to Germany’s voting pattern.

Becker was responding to the Post exclusive report on Thursday that the human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center ranked Heusgen seventh on its 2019 list of worst outbreaks of antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents.

Becker, who is also president of the pro-Israel organization, German-Israel association, said that “The inclusion of Mr. Heusgen on the list of the Wiesenthal Center is more than a yellow card for Germany’s voting behavior at the United Nations.” The commissioner said “Germany must show more solidarity toward Israel at the UN and decisively reject in the future anti-Israel resolutions.”

However, on Friday, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Foreign Ministry snubbed Becker, the Israeli government and the Central Council of Jews in Germany, all of whom have urged Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to stop condemning the Jewish state at the UN.

On Friday, Germany joined authoritarian regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran to vote for seven of eight resolutions against Israel. Berlin merely abstained in the eighth anti-Israel resolution.

“Linking Heusgen to antisemitism is absurd,” said deputy Foreign Office spokesman Rainer Breul, according to Deutsche Welle.

Germany’s Foreign Ministry said Heusgen’s voting pattern is decided in the name of Merkel’s administration, which voted 16 times against Israel in 2018 and voted 17 times against the Jewish state in 2019 at the UN.

The Wiesenthal Center said that “Germany is in the midst of a two-year stint on the UN Security Council. Its UN ambassador, Christoph Heusgen, created an uproar by the number of anti-Israel votes he has cast and by his equating 130 rockets fired by terrorist Hamas at Israeli civilians in one week in March with the Jewish state’s demolition of terrorists’ homes.”

Heusgen declared: “We believe that international law is the best way to protect civilians and allow them to live in peace and security and without fear of Israeli bulldozers or Hamas rockets.”

The Wiesenthal Center noted in its justification that Bild, the largest circulation paper in Germany, “accused Heusgen in an editorial of ‘pure malice’ against the Jewish state.”

The Center continued that “Heusgen cast 16 anti-Israel votes at the UN in 2018, abstaining once. In 2019, he voted for nine anti-Israel resolutions, including one labeling Jerusalem’s holiest sites as ‘Palestinian Occupied territory,’ while abstaining three times and opposing only one anti-Israel resolution.”

The entry concluded with stating that “Chancellor Angela Merkel famously declared in a 2008 speech in Israel’s Knesset: ‘The security of Israel is never negotiable for me as German Chancellor.’ Seems Heusgen never got the memo.”