So I'm not a fan of beating up 66 year olds, and I tend to read into people the left thinks should be attacked, but why should I care about these German politicians? K they say they don't like Islam, but seems they also don't like Jews, and if they're Nazis they'll side with them.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36722818Anti-Semitism row splits Germany's AfD populist party
6 July 2016
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Image caption Joerg Meuthen (C) said the split was "a painful but necessary step"
The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is surging in opinion polls, has been split by a row over anti-Semitism prompted by the views of one of its lawmakers.
Thirteen of AfD's lawmakers in a state parliament have formed a new bloc, Alternative for Baden-Wuerttemberg.
The dispute erupted over statements by one legislator, who had suggested the Holocaust was given too much attention.
As other MPs were unable to eject him from the party, they formed their own.
The row has also engulfed the AfD's national leadership. Its Eurosceptic, anti-migrant message has propelled it to third place in opinion polls, behind the two parties in Germany's governing coalition.
Wolfgang Gedeon was one of 23 AfD representatives elected to Baden-Wuerttemberg's state parliament in March, after the party took 15.1% of the vote.
In written comments, he had referred to the Holocaust as "certain misdeeds". He has also suggested Holocaust denial - illegal in Germany - was legitimate.
The leader of the AfD in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Joerg Meuthen, who is also the party's co-leader nationally, had tried to get Mr Gedeon expelled from the AfD's fraction, but failed to get the two-thirds majority of his MPs required.
He and the 12 AfD representatives who had voted with him resigned en masse on Tuesday.
The row seems to have driven a further wedge between Mr Meuthen and his national co-chair, Frauke Petry.
Ms Petry travelled unexpectedly to the Baden-Wuerttemberg state capital, Stuttgart, in an apparent effort to resolve the situation.
Despite this, and Mr Gedeon's eventual resignation, Mr Meuthen announced the new grouping and told German media he "didn't know why Ms Petry was there".
Populist party in crisis - BBC Berlin correspondent Jenny Hill
Image copyright Reuters
Image caption In happier days - Mr Meuthen (left) sings at the end of a day of his party's congress on 1 May along with party co-chair Frauke Petry
Alternative for Germany has next year's general election in its sights. Polls suggest it could garner around 15% of the national vote. Its anti-Islam, pro-referendum and anti-European federalism platforms appeal to disenchanted German voters, worried by the EU's initial inability to deal with last summer's refugee crisis.
Anti-Semitism does not appeal to them, however. It's worth noting that AfD has reportedly dropped a proposal to ban circumcision from its recently published manifesto.
The AfD was emboldened by the Brexit vote in the UK; one of its leaders was said to have wept tears of joy at the result. But commentators point out that the political and economic fallout from Brexit may actually increase support for mainstream parties, which are scrambling to promise reforms to a future EU without the UK.
And Baden-Wuerttemberg, so recently a symbol of the AfD's electoral success, now represents the persistent lack of coherence which has plagued the party from infancy. That, and an ongoing power struggle at the very top of the party, may do significant damage.
Germany jolted by AfD poll success
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The AfD came under fire earlier this year when it said that there was "no place for Islam" in Germany in its manifesto. This year, attacks with a far-right motivation have reached a 15-year high, according to the German government.
But since its founding in 2013, the party has been repeatedly shaken by internal rows between its more moderate and extreme factions.
Image copyright EPA
Image caption Some of Wolfgang Gedeon's colleagues in the AfD said his comments on the Holocaust were anti-Semitic
Mr Gedeon's views on the Holocaust were expressed some years ago in a three-volume work on Christian culture in the West.
The row has provoked further recriminations, with the party's national Vice-Chair Alexander Gauland criticising Ms Petry's handling of the affair.
Mr Gedeon's behaviour had damaged the AfD, he told ZDF TV, suggesting the "ripcord" should have been pulled far earlier.
"That's why this chaos has arisen."
More on AfD
Founded in 2013 by Bernd Lucke, Alexander Gauland and Konrad Adam to oppose German-backed bailouts for poorer southern European countries
Mr Lucke, seen as a moderate, quit the party in early July 2015, arguing it was becoming increasingly xenophobic
Right-winger Frauke Petry replaced him as party leader
It became the first anti-euro party to win seats in a German regional parliament, receiving almost 10% of the vote in the eastern German state of Saxony in 2014, and went on to win seats in four other states' parliaments in 2014 and 2015
The party had seven MEPs elected in the 2014 European elections (including Mr Lucke), but only two remain party members
AfD was part of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, like the UK's Conservatives, but one of its two MEPs has been expelled from the group over comments on shooting refugees
At the start of May, AfD members adopted an explicitly anti-Islam policy, declaring that the religion was "not part of Germany" and calling for a ban on minarets, the call to prayer and the full-face veil.
The claims of antisemitism in the party may have been the result of one agent saboteur, or he could have just been the fall guy, they market as not bad. They also almost all support Israel and a bunch don't support holocaust education in Germany. I do not trust them, but they sound 1% better than Herr Merkel.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/loathed-by-jews-germanys-far-right-afd-loves-the-jewish-state/Germany’s far-right AfD officially launches Jewish wing, drawing outcry
Activist Vera Kosova announced as head of new grouping, currently numbering 19; Israeli envoy reiterates opposition to ‘problematic’ party
By AFP and Raphael Ahren 7 October 2018, 7:13 pm 12
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Vera Kosova smiles after she was elected chairwoman of a new Jewish grouping within Germany's far-right AfD party during the group's founding event on October 7, 2018, in Wiesbaden, western Germany. (AFP PHOTO / dpa / Frank Rumpenhorst)
Vera Kosova smiles after she was elected chairwoman of a new Jewish grouping within Germany's far-right AfD party during the group's founding event on October 7, 2018, in Wiesbaden, western Germany. (AFP PHOTO / dpa / Frank Rumpenhorst)
Germany’s far-right party AfD on Sunday launched a “Jewish” group within its ranks, which it says will battle against mass immigration of Muslim men with anti-Semitic views, sparking an outcry.
At an event in Wiesbaden, near Frankfurt, party activist Vera Kosova — an Uzbek-born Jewish physician — was announced as the chairwoman of the new Jewish grouping within AfD’s ranks.
The party said a group of 19 have formed the “Jews in the AfD” group, and that anyone joining must be a card-carrying member of the party who is either ethnically or religiously Jewish.
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The move drew a backlash from Germany’s Jewish community, which blasted the AfD as a “racist and anti-Semitic party.”
Some 250 people, many from Jewish organizations, also held a protest Sunday in Frankfurt against the new group.
“You won’t get a kosher stamp from us,” said Dalia Grinfeld, who heads the Jewish students Union in Germany, at the protest.
Demonstrators hold a posters reading “AfD is not kosher” as they take part in a rally organized by Germany’s JSUD Jewish students’ union on October 7, 2018 in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany. (AFP PHOTO / dpa / Frank Rumpenhorst)
Leading members of the AfD have come under fire repeatedly for comments that appear to play down the Holocaust.
Party co-leader Alexander Gauland in June described the Nazi period as a mere “speck of bird poo in over 1,000 years of successful German history.”
Another leading AfD politician, Bjoern Hoecke, has criticized the sprawling Holocaust memorial in Berlin, branding it a “monument of shame.”
The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem on Sunday declined to comment, saying the group’s founding was an internal German matter.
Israel’s Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff reiterated his strong opposition to the AfD, given past statements by leaders of the party that were highly offensive to the memory of the Holocaust.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel shakes hands with Israeli Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff at Ben Gurion Airport, on October 3, 2018, as Minister Tzachi Hanegbi looks on. (Avi Davidi/Foreign Ministry)
“My position has been very clear since I arrived in Berlin: this party is problematic. It cannot cover up its anti-Jewish tendencies with a professed support for Israel,” he told The Times of Israel. “I have not met with representatives of the AfD, and I don’t intend on doing so now.”
Issacharoff added that he has yet to receive specific information regarding the identity of Jews are that are publicly promoting the party.
Likud MK Yehudah Glick, however, indicated that Israelis should be open-minded regarding the AfD.
“While I have not investigated the matter of the AfD in depth, I have met with leader Beatrix von Storch and I appreciate her strong support for Israel,” he told The Times of Israel on Sunday.
“It is a shame that in Germany, when there are pressing issues that concern the Jewish community, such as German support for the Iran deal and for anti-Israel NGOs, that Jewish organizations choose to attack their fellow Jews. Rather than attack, why not have an open forum of discussion about the issues of Jewish concern?”
Likud MK Yehudah Glick in the Knesset, May 29, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Glick has been an outspoken advocate of Israel establishing ties with Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, arguing that the party is pro-Israel and is tackling radical Islamists. But the Israeli government is formally boycotting the party over its failure to sufficiently distance itself from its neo-Nazi past.
“If the Jews in the AfD believe they can form a positive line of communication within the party, addressing what may be problematic issues, such a development should be welcome. I call for civil discourse rather than infighting and shaming,” Glick said.
“I think that the main concern of Jews today in Germany should be terror of Muslims and anti-Zionism of the left wing parties,” he added.
Ahead of Sunday’s launch, Jewish organizations including the Central Council of Jews in Germany issued a statement describing the AfD as “a racist and anti-Semitic party.”
Committee member Leon Hakobian shows on his mobile phone a preliminary draft of a logo for a new Jewish grouping within Germany’s far-right AfD party during the group’s founding event on October 7, 2018 in Wiesbaden, western Germany. (AFP PHOTO / dpa / Frank Rumpenhorst)
“The AfD is a party that provides a home for hatred for Jews as well as the relativizing, or even denial of the Holocaust,” it said.
The nonpartisan Jewish-German “Values Initiative” has warned the new Jewish group will merely be used as “a fig leaf for coarse AfD racism.”
Most Jews would avoid association with the AfD, Sergey Lagodinsky, Green Party politician and member of Berlin’s Jewish Community Council, told JTA.
“Though there is a high level of anxiety among Jewish communities” from the refugee influx, “there is still a high moral threshold preventing formal forms of engagement” with a far-right party, Lagodinsky said.
The AfD’s deputy parliamentary group leader Beatrix von Storch hit back in an interview published Sunday by broadsheet Welt am Sonntag.
Taking aim at the Central Council of Jews, von Storch compared it to “official churches,” which she dismissed as “part of the establishment.”
Two men wear kippas as they attend a founding event for a new Jewish grouping within Germany’s far-right AfD party on October 7, 2018, in Wiesbaden, western Germany. (AFP PHOTO / dpa / Frank Rumpenhorst)
The AfD positions itself as a group offering voters an “alternative” to mainstream established parties.
Capitalizing on discontent over an influx of asylum seekers in 2015-2016, the AfD is now the biggest opposition party in Germany, with more than 90 seats in parliament.
The deputy parliamentary group leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party, Stephan Harbarth, called the AfD’s bid to start a Jewish wing “hypocrisy.”
“Whoever calls the Holocaust a speck of bird poo in German history does not fight anti-Semitism, but mocks its victims, and definitely does not stand on the side of the Jews,” Harbarth told Sunday’s edition of daily Bild.
JTA, Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The fact that their Jewish division's existence, like you got a Jew-man shield just smile for the cameras, is being attacked by a member of their party and a member said "we prefer to help alive Jews than dead ones", which is logical on the surface but is saying that we don't care if they don't care about the holocaust we want them to protect us, seems like you're walking into a trap bub.
Jewish supporters of Germany’s far-right AfD see party as means to counter anti-Semitism
Since its founding in 2013 as a Euro-skeptic party, the AfD has been criticized by the mainstream German Jewish community over concerns of its views on Muslim migrants and country's Nazi past. Yet Jewish supporters see the opposite. “I prefer to be part of a party that wants to help living Jews, not dead Jews,” said one Jewish supporter.
By Orit Arfa
Members of the new Jewish factions for Germany's far-right AfD Party sing the traditional Jewish song "Oseh Shalom" on stage together. Credit: Orit Arfa.
Members of the new Jewish factions for Germany's far-right AfD Party sing the traditional Jewish song "Oseh Shalom" on stage together. Credit: Orit Arfa.
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(October 9, 2018 / JNS) At a nondescript community center in the city of Wiesbaden on Sunday, dozens of Jews got together to officially form the Jewish faction of the rising right-wing political party in Germany: Alternative for Deutschland (AfD). Judging from the amount of cameras and reporters present—from Deutsche Welle to The New York Times magazine—it would seem that this was the most important Jewish event in Germany since the opening of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
The press conference felt more like a trial: This could be the AfD’s moment of redemption, a chance to prove that it’s not the party of anti-Semites or neo-Nazis that the mainstream media (and the official German Jewish establishment) claims it is. For Jews, it was an ultimate act of defiance—not against the ruling German coalition, but against their co-religionists.
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Since its founding in 2013 as a Euro-skeptic party, the AfD has been sidelined by the official German Jewish community. As the media got wind of the group’s formation, 17 Jewish organizations united together with a gusto unseen over other issues of Jewish concern, such as Germany’s support of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal; Germany’s funding of anti-Israel NGOs; and, more locally, allegedly anti-Israel content at the Berlin’s pubic Jewish Museum. Led by the Zentralat der Juden (Central Council of Jews), organizations like the Abraham Geiger College and the American Jewish Committee Berlin signed a joint statement categorically calling AFD “anti-Semitic,” “anti-democratic” and “no party for Jews.”
Ten members of “Jews in the AfD” (JAfD) sat on stage, with men donning kipahs they don’t normally wear, to answer media questions and defend their decision with equal gusto. The founders didn’t expect this much attention, but they expected opposition, even to the extent of being barred from their original Frankfurt location due to pressure—a German boycott of Jews the Zentralat didn’t mind. The Zentralat also sponsored chartered busses for a demonstration of Jewish university students held in Frankfurt at the time of the caucus. There, signs came out against certifying the AfD as “kosher.”
The press conference held by the new Jewish faction of Germany’s far-right AfD Party, which generated intense media interest. Credit: Orit Arfa.
To some, the new location for the caucus turned out to be symbolic. When a speaker recounted German cities where Muslim migrants attacked young girls, one Jewish member, Micha, shouted: “And right here!”
Just a few hundred meters away, the murdered, violated body of Jewish schoolgirl, Susanna Feldmann, was found near train tracks. Micha, a family friend who recalls a young Susanna playing on his lap, switched from the Linke (“Left”) Party to the AfD after her murder by an Iraqi asylum-seeker who stayed in the country illegally.
“It finished me,” he said. At his request, the musical interlude of “Kol Nidrei” was played in Feldmann’s memory.
Russian-Jewish participation
JAfD members support the party as the only one speaking out against massive Muslim migration that they link to a rise in anti-Semitism and terror, viewing themselves as part of a growing, conservative European movement battling a left-wing trend towards open borders, globalization and what they view as the breakdown of Judeo-Christian values caused by mass Muslim migration.
Wolfgang Fuhl, co-chair of JAfD and a former Zentralat board member, reserved his harshest criticism for German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Party.
“I used to be a member of the SPD (Social Democratic Party), but I got more conservative as I got older and joined the CDU,” he said at the press conference. “I didn’t leave the CDU. The CDU left me. Under Merkel, the CDU has shifted to the left.”
He declined to respond to his Jewish foes, except to accuse the Zentralat of becoming an arm of the Merkel government in the spirit of “don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
Unlike in the United States, Germany does not separate religion and state. German Jews (and other religious members) can opt to register and be taxed as members of their religious community. The Zentralat today receives government funding to the tune of 13 million euros a year (nearly $15 million). Of the 200,000 Jews estimated to be living in Germany, the majority hail from the former Soviet Union, who were welcomed to Germany after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Russian-speaking Jews form half of the founding members of “Jews in the AfD.”
The idea for the faction began with Fuhl’s internal, informal talks with fellow AfD members. A WhatsApp group soon formed for the like-minded, “rebellious” Jews to dish on “Fake (German) News,” the perceived weakness of the German Jewish community, and bona-fide “neo-Nazis.”
A representative from the office of Bundestag member and party leader Beatrix Von Storch eventually joined the chat. The Jews in the AfD happily got what the Jewish community made taboo: direct lines of communication with Germany’s most controversial political party.
‘I know that Jews are patriots’
At the event, AfD politicians across the political hierarchy seemed to compete over who could give the more pro-Jewish, pro-Israel speech.
“I was really shocked to see what was written about your meeting. Just shocked,” said Erika Steinbach, a former CDU leader and now chair of the AfD-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus
Foundation. “I could never imagine that in a democracy, a decision freely made by people, by Jews, irrespective of their party, would be treated in such a terrible way.”
She, along with other party members, cited causes for concern for Jews in Germany: attacks against Jews for wearing kipahs and reported taunting of Jewish schoolchildren.
“I know that Jews are patriots,” she said, adding that she would never join an anti-Semitic party. A common refrain at the caucus was: “Judaism belongs to Germany,” unlike Islam.
Beatrix von Storch likened the Jewish criticism of JAfD to criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom she categorizes along with a hero among European patriots, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Members of the Jewish faction to Germany’s AfD pose in front a party flag and the German flag. Credit: Orit Arfa.
The Netanyahu government, including the Israeli Ambassador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff, however, has maintained distance to the AfD.
Likud Party Knesset member Yehuda Glick, who has also been lobbying to forge diplomatic contacts with the right-wing Freedom Party in Austria, arguing that they have eschewed any Nazi roots, is one of the few Israeli politicians openly calling for dialogue with the AfD.
“AfD members have come out with very strong statements in support of Israel and the Jewish people, and, with polls showing it is now ranked as the second-largest party in Germany, it would be extremely unwise to dogmatically shun dialogue with them,” he said.
Addressing Israeli policy, Bundestag member Petr Bystron hailed the “historic day” and castigated the German government’s increase of funding to UNWRA, as well as its criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. “I can pledge in my name and in the name of the members of the Bundestag that we’re the only party that wants this European support of Palestinian terrorism to come to an end,” he said.
‘That doesn’t automatically make it an anti-Semitic party’
Jews in the AfD hope to engage the party about incidents, policies and statements that have been cited as proof of anti-Semitism endemic to the party. For instance, the AfD platform forbids kosher ritual animal slaughter, which subsumes the Jewish shechita—a target of the Muslim population.
“It’s a problem, but that doesn’t automatically make it an anti-Semitic party,” said Fuhl. “There is disagreement about it within the party, and we’ll address it.”
Other oft-cited problematic AfD statements include AfD chair Alexander Gauland calling the Holocaust a “bird speck in glorious German history,” and regional parliament member Björn Höcke saying the grand Berlin Holocaust memorial is a “monument of shame.” JAfD doesn’t necessarily see these comments as trivializing the Shoah, believing such words have been interpreted out of context or overplayed by the media.
“I prefer to be part of a party that wants to help living Jews, not dead Jews,” Fuhl said to applause.
Perhaps as an unintended consequence, the event has snaked out alleged anti-Semites. In condemning the founding of JAfD, regional AfD parliament member Wolfgang Gedeon who has been accused of trafficking in Jewish conspiracy theories, wrote on Facebook: “The AfD has adopted a positive attitude towards the real, Christian identity of the European continent for good reason. In the best case, this group [the JAfD] is completely unnecessary; in the worst case, it is a Zionist lobby organization which runs against the interests of Germany and the Germans.”
Beatrix von Storch rejected Gedeon’s message, telling JNS: “The founding of the JAfD enjoys enormous support within the party. [Gedeon’s] statements are inherently false, politically irrelevant and isolated within the party.”
https://www.thelocal.de/20170927/why-israel-doesnt-really-know-how-to-deal-with-the-afdhy Israel doesn’t really know how to deal with the AfD
DPA/The Local
[email protected] @thelocalgermany
27 September 2017
15:55 CEST+02:00
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Why Israel doesn’t really know how to deal with the AfD
Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: DPA.
The Israeli government has stayed largely quiet on the Alternative for Germany's (AfD) march into the national parliament, despite the upset it has caused among Holocaust survivors.
In Germany and internationally, the news that the AfD won 12.6 percent of the vote in the national election on Sunday was met with shock among Jewish associations.
Ronald S. Lauder, President of the Jewish World Congress, said it was “abhorrent”. He described the AfD as a “shameful movement” which recalls the worst times in German history.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany (ZJD), has repeatedly criticized the party in the past, due to historical revisionist comments made by senior AfD members.
"Unfortunately our worst fears have come true: a party which tolerates extreme right-wing opinions in its ranks and which incites against minorities has made it into the national parliament," said ZJD President Josef Schuster on Sunday.
But in Israel the reaction has been more ambivalent. While Holocaust survivors in the Jewish state have expressed horror at the emergence of a strong far-right party in Germany, the government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been reluctant to pass judgement.
Netanyahu’s initial response to Sunday’s election was to congratulate Angela Merkel, while making no mention of the AfD.
On Tuesday the right-wing Israeli leader eventually addressed the issue, albeit indirectly. In a statement, he expressed concern “at increasing anti-Semitism in recent years among political elements on the right and left in Germany, and among Islamists there.”
Efraim Zuroff, a Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem sees Israel “in a dilemma in relation to certain right-wing populists parties which have sympathies for Israel but also have anti-Semitic roots."
“That’s a problem that isn’t unique in Germany,” he said, describing similar phenomena in Australia, France and the Netherlands.
While the AfD have as yet said little on their official position towards Israel, lead candidate Alexander Gauland stated on Monday that “of course we stand on Israel’s side."
At the same time, the populist party have often stressed the threat posed to German society by radical Islam, a position which chimes with Netanyahu's right-wing government.
Topic: Video statement from Alice Weidel on attack of AfD member (Read 1872 times)