German neo-Nazi, Green Parties laud EU branding Israeli products

The German neo-Nazi party The Third Way and the Green Party welcomed the EU top court ruling that mandates Israeli products from the disputed territories must be branded with a label to show consumers that they were not produced in Israel proper.

The Third Way “has been calling for years to boycott all products from the terrorist state of Israel,” declared an entry on the party’s website earlier this month after the EU’s top court ruled Israeli goods from the territories must be labeled with a punitive demarcation system.

The Third Way added a link to an article from 2014 titled: “Israel Boycott: What anyone can do against Zionist genocide.”

A graphic on the Third Way’s  entry states: “Boycott products from Israel: 729=Made in Israel.” The number 729 is used in bar codes to identify Israel-based products and companies.

The intelligence agency for the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate wrote in its 2018 report: “The Third Way’s slogan ‘Boycott Products from Israel’… betrays significant parallels to the anti-Jewish agitation of the National Socialists.”

German intelligence officials in the state of Baden Württemberg wrote in a 2018 report that propaganda from the Third Way calling to boycott Israeli products “roughly recalls similar measures against German Jews by the National Socialists, for example, on April 1, 1933 (the slogan: ‘Germans! Defend yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!’).”

MPs from the German Green Party have sought to label Jewish products from the West Bank, Golan Heights and east Jerusalem since 2013.

The European Court “has judged that products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank + the occupied territories in the #EU must be clearly declared. No more! But not less. For me, it is the right of #consumers to make an informed choice. #Righttoknow,” tweeted Green Party MP Renate Künast on Tuesday.

In contrast to the Greens in the Bundestag, the Netherlands parliament rejected the European court’s decision because the measure is discriminatory.

Künast once invoked a contemporary antisemitic conspiracy theory to describe a German organization as a “Mossad front” that seeks to advance Israel’s security and stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

In 2012, a second German neo-Nazi party, the National Democratic Party (NPD), submitted a legislative initiative in the parliament of the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to mark Israeli products. The NPD motion at the time called for “Palestinian and Israeli products” to be labeled and for a “clear designation of origin” to be implemented.

The Green Party’s legislative initiative in 2013 appeared to be a copy-cat of the neo-Nazi-sponsored legislation from the previous year.

The Green Party MPs who signed off on the anti-Israel labeling measure in 2013, including some who have been accused of mainstreaming antisemitism, were: Kerstin Müller, Marieluise Beck, Agnes Brugger, Viola von Cramon-Taubadel, Thilo Hoppe, Uwe Kekeritz, Katja Keul, Ute Koczy, Tom Koenigs, Omid Nouripour, Lisa Paus, Claudia Roth, Manuel Sarrazin and Dr. Frithjof Schmidt.

The Green Party and the neo-Nazi parties have not advocated a punitive labeling system for any country involved in the more than 200 territorial disputes across the globe.

In 1983, the Green Party put out a “Green Calendar” with the headline “Israel, the gang of murderers” and urged a “boycott of goods from Israel.” The German daily Die Welt published an article titled ‘The long tradition of Green Anti-Zionism,” in which the Green Party’s history of blaming Israel for the Middle East’s problems was highlighted.

The Jerusalem Post exclusively reported in November that investigative series into bank accounts and online payment services for organizations that support Palestinian and Hezbollah terrorism, as well as BDS, caused The Third Way to pull the plug on its online fund-raising this year.

According to the organization’s website, members of The Third Way met with the extremist Syrian Social Nationalist Party in Lebanon and representatives of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria.

In May 2017, the Post reported that the website of The Third Way published a report in April on a visit by its members to Lebanon to champion Hezbollah’s war against Israel.