Germany: Government refuses to label BDS as antisemitism

Via The Jerusalem Post:

Germany has rejected a definition of anti-Semitism that labels the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) as anti-Semitic.

Responding to a legislative questionnaire released Thursday by leading Green Party MP Volker Beck, the Merkel administration wrote that “there does not exist a general academic definition” of anti-Semitism.

Beck, who heads the German- Israel parliamentary group in the Bundestag, sharply criticized the Merkel administration: “Here the federal government has cowered,” he said. “There is no doubt of the anti-Semitic motivation within the spectrum of the BDS campaign. BDS aims essentially against Jewish Israelis and is therefore anti-Semitic. Whoever aggressively boycotts Israeli goods and people, should also be viewed as anti-Semitic by the federal government.”

The German government said it defined anti-Semitism, as “political, social, racist and religious” hostility toward Jews. The Merkel administration claimed it was not aware that the office of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights took down the modern working definition of anti-Semitism from its website in late 2013.