Germany: Munich gives municipal forum for ‘Don’t buy from the Jewish State' event

The Jerusalem Post reports:

The head of Munich’s Jewish community, Charlotte Knobloch, urged the Bavarian capital on Tuesday to cancel an anti-Israel event calling for the boycott of the Jewish state in a tax-payer funded city building.

"The BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] campaign disguises the socially unacceptable ’Don’t buy from Jews!’ as a modernized form of Nazi jargon in the demand ‘Don’t buy from the Jewish State,”' Knobloch told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

The event “BDS: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” is slated to take place on Saturday and is part of a series of anti-Israel talks to be held in the publicly-funded building Gasteig as part of Munich’s cultural program.

Knobloch said the planned speaker at the Gasteig event, “Niels Helow is activist of the BDS campaign in Germany. This event is a continued effort to defame, delegitimize, ostracize Israel under the cloak of allegedly legitimate criticism. It is assumed that a comprehensive boycott against Israel will be announced and will affect economics, science, culture and all areas of life.

As democrats we must accept other opinions. But I consider it unacceptable that such anti-Israel events---incidentally like the Palestinian conferences, which we have criticized for years—take place in city rooms. The Gasteig should not provide a forum for such propaganda. “ Munich, with 9,500 members, is the second largest Jewish community in Germany. Knobloch oversees Holocaust memorial days for the World Jewish Congress.

The BDS event is slated to coincide with the time period of remembrance covering German pogroms against Jews starting on November 9. 

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