Germany: Munich mayor snubs Israel's request to cancel city-funded anti-Semitic BDS event

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

The Jerusalem Post reports (via Elder of Zyion):

Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter [a Socialist] on Friday refused a request from Israel’s consul-general in the city to pull the plug on an allegedly anti-Semitic event in a municipal building advocating a boycott of the Jewish state.

“We are in touch with the municipality of Munich in order to prevent this event from happening,” diplomat Dan Shaham wrote to The Jerusalem Post on Friday. “We are awaiting their decision.”

Reiter’s press spokesman, Stefan Hauf, wrote the Post: “The mayor made a call to General-Consul Dan Shaham and argued that he does not have a basis to cancel the event. According to the cultural representative, the event is merely a lecture, and a call to boycott is not planned.”

Shaham told the Post on Saturday, “We are sorry that this anti-Semitic BDS group has been allowed to use a municipal room to call for a boycott against Israel, which is by law not allowed in Germany.”

He added that the boycott-Israel event is taking place two days before the memorial events for the 1938 Kristallnacht pogroms in Germany and “in a city that in which National Socialism had its beginning.”

“Those who do not see the anti-Semitic tone and character of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign do not want to see it,” Volker Beck, a Bundestag deputy for the Green Party, told the Post. “[Advocating BDS] is indeed protected by freedom of expression, but this should not be sponsored by a particular city’s municipality. I consider that unacceptable.”  Read more.