According to the Berlin daily, Der Tagesspiegel, a fundraiser for the terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was held on July 11 in Berlin. The Mayor of Berlin, Michael Muller, who has been publicly accused of being soft on antisemitism and terrorism, ignited a firestorm for allowing the fundraiser to proceed.
Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Director of Nazi War Crime Research, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Israel told the Jerusalem Post:”PFLP should be banned from staging events anywhere in the world.”
Zuroff also stated: “The Mayor should have said he found this offensive. The PFLP has murdered innocent civilians in many places.” The military wing of the PFLP, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, takes pride in launching Sumud rockets from the Gaza strip, which are aimed at the Israeli town of Sderot.
The Democratic Committee for Palestine reportedly held the fundraiser in the publishing house of the socialist newspaper, Neus Deutschland (New Germany).
The PFLP, who supports the destruction of Israel, is known for suicide bombings, plane hijackings, and targeted murders. And one of those tragic murders included the 2001 assassination of the Israeli Minister of Tourism, Rehavam Zee’evi.
But this is not the first fundraiser in Germany for the PFLP. At the University of Hamburg, a guest professor from South Africa, BDS supporter, Farid Esack, invited his “comrade”, the PFLP terrorist, Leila Khaled, to a fundraiser for the PFLP in 2015. Khaled is the world’s first female plane hijacker.
Not surprisingly, Esack’s actions were widely condemned. Dr. Efraim Zuroff, in an article in the Jerusalem Post said: “A person who is sponsoring an unrepentant terrorist is hardly a person who should be educating German students.” And Zuroff, who added that “BDS is antisemitism” certainly has the support of German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, whose Christian Democratic party declared BDS to be antisemitic at a party congress in 2016.
But just like BDS, fundraisers for terrorists in Germany are not banned. However, making a Nazi salute is banned. And, on August 4, two unnamed male tourists from China found out about this law the hard way, when they were arrested by Berlin police for snapping cellphone photos of each other giving Nazi salutes, in front of the Reichstag, the seat of the lower house of the German Parliament.
Obviously, saluting Hitler is abhorrent behavior, and it is understandable why the German government, given the horrors of Germany’s past, are happy to set this limit on free speech, and punish those who celebrate, even symbolically, Hitler’s barbaric regime.
But reason also dictates that raising money for terrorists, so that they can buy weapons and kill innocent people, is clearly a greater threat to the 82 million people living in Germany than a raised arm.
However, given the tragic terrorist attacks that Germany has suffered, officials, to their credit, do not whitewash the potential terrorist threats that the country is still facing. The BfV, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, released its annual report in 2016. Tragically, the document reveals that Radical Islam is alive and well.
The numbers: There are 24,400 Islamists, 10,OOO Salafists, Sunni Muslims who believe that the German Constitution must be replaced by sharia law, and 10,000 members of the Turkish Islamist Milliu Gorus.
In addition, there are 680 potential Islamist threats influenced by Salafist ideology.
BvF also confirmed that hundreds of “jihadists” entered the country when one million migrants entered Germany during the humanitarian crisis in Syria.
According to Hans-Georg Maassen, who heads the BfV, “we must expect further attacks by individuals or terrorist groups.”
Maasen explained:”Islamist terrorism is the biggest challenge facing BfV and we see it as one of the biggest security threats facing the internal security of Germany”.
But there is progress. Maassen told reporters that Germany has “dramatically stepped up its efforts to combat Islamist militancy, with a record number of arrests, prosecutions, and departures over the past year”, Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizere told the press.
But that statement leads to this question: Since Germany’s commitment to defeat terrorism is beyond dispute, why is it legal to raise money for terrorists? And what does that mean for German Jews?.
The answer, which has existed for thousands of years is, of course, antisemitism. Daniel Killy told the Jerusalem Post that Germany’s Jews are faced with antisemitism that is caused by “a combination of extreme right wing forces, deteriorating security, and [Germany’s] welcoming of refugees brought up in cultures ‘steeped in hatred’ for Jews”.
Of the 118,000 Jews in Germany, 2,500 of them live in the city of Hamburg, where Killy is the leader of the Jewish community.
“We no longer feel safe here,” Killy stated.
All eyes on Germany.