Germany: 'Toiletgate' - official seeks legal action against inclusion on anti-Semitism list

The inclusion of the left Pary official Claudia Haydt [photo] in the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s 2014 list of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incidents provoked an angry email from her, announcing legal action against the human rights organization and other people believed to be in Germany.

In a December 30 email obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post, Hadyt, who is a member of the Left Party’s executive board, writes, “I am at the moment initiating legal action against whose have started the slanderous rumors about my so called ‘involvement’ in ‘Toiletgate,’ but I hope that this will not be necessary in your case.”

The Toiletgate incident is a reference to an anti-Semitic scandal that engulfed the German Left Party in November. According to the Wiesenthal list, Haydt – along with the German Left MPs Annette Groth, Inge Höger, and Heike Hänsel – played a key role in inviting and organizing an event with two fringe anti-Israel extremists. The two extremists chased the party’s fraction leader in the Bundestag, Gregor Gysi, into a parliamentary bathroom while yelling at him as he sought to protect himself from apparently pending bodily harm and verbal abuse. 

Haydt is an employee in Höger’s office. She said her job is to cover “German military policies.” The subject of the email read “urgent. please change mistakes. top ten.” Höger and Groth were on the Turkish vessel Marvi Marmara,which sought to break Israel’s legal blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in 2010. In Haydt’s email, which was filled with examples of broken English, she wrote “I was only involved in the unbearable scene in front of Gregors Gysis office after I was asked for help to escort the Journalist and other guest to the exits of the Bundestag. I can nor see that this merits the label ‘Antisemitism.”’

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