Germany: Hezbollah-aligned center declares 'resistance' against Israel

Via The Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):

The chairman of the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic center Al Mahdi in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) urged his supporters to wage “resistance” against Israel on Saturday, according to a report in the regional paper Neue Westfälische.

“Israel is the enemy – we are carry out resistance,” said Hassan Jawad, chairman of the Al Mahdi cultural center in the city of Münster.

Jawad’s cultural center is building a meeting center for 800 to 1,000 religious believers in Bad Oeynhausen, a spa town with a population of nearly 50,000 in NRW. The Al Mahdi center has served as a hotbed for Hezbollah activity for over twenty years, according to the paper.

The NRW interior minister Herbert Reul told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that “when somebody in Germany says that Israel is the enemy, that is, for me, intolerable. I am a big friend of Israel, and the friendship to Israel belongs to Germany’s raison d’état. Therefore this statement [from Hassan Jawad] is condemned by me in the strongest terms.”

When asked if the interior ministry plans to ban the Al Mahdi center, the ministry told The Post that “associations that support Hezbollah can presently be banned, if financial support [for them] is provable.”

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