T. Belman. I normally support any party that sees Islam for what it is and wants to stand up to it. These European parties are usually on the right and usually nationalistic. They are also pro-Israel. Of course, if any of their policies are threatening to Jews, that’s another story. Less so if only some of its members are proven antisemites. I have taken a lot of flack for being so open to them because, don’t you know, we should never support the extreme right because they are nationalistic and antisemetic. Many people including my daughter have taken me to task for this.
I would like to hear from our followers about your views on these parties in general and specifically what you know about whether AfD should be shunned, embraced or approached with caution. Any evidence you can bring to the table in support of their alleged antisemitism or in support of your views, would be appreciated.
I am much more worried about the threat to the West, including Israel, and its culture, represented by Islam including its systemic antisemitism, than I am of the far right antisemitism.
Legendary former Mossad agent Rafi Eitan, who led the operation to capture Adolf Eichmann, says Israel appreciates AfD’s “attitude toward Judaism” and endorses its hardline toward Muslims • Eitan: Confident AfD will help Israel on any matter we ask it to.
Legendary former Mossad agent who led the operation to capture Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann has expressed surprising support for the nationalist Alternative for Germany party.
The 91-year-old Rafi Eitan said in a video statement on his Facebook page Saturday that Israel appreciates the party’s “attitude toward Judaism.”
“In any case,” he said in the video, “I’m sure that if you work wisely strongly and most important realistically … I’m sure that instead of ‘Alternative for Germany,’ you might become an alternative for all of Europe.”
The party, AfD, won 12.6% of the vote in Germany’s September election to win seats in parliament for the first time in over 60 years and become the country’s third-biggest party.
Its leaders have expressed anti-Semitic statements and played down the crimes of the Nazi regime.
Eitan, a former senior citizens minister, appeared to endorse the party’s hardline toward Muslim immigrants.
In a letter that accompanied the video, posted to AfD’s official Facebook page, Eitan urged AfD members to close their borders “as soon as possible to prevent Muslim immigration.”
“I wish you strength and that you will finally bring an end to the policy of open borders, which could lead to the Islamization of your country,” he wrote.
Israeli Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff condemned Eitan’s statement as “sad and shameful.”
“It is hard to believe how the person who captured Eichmann … is able to praise German right-wingers who so admire the Nazi past and wish on us that they become the alternative of Europe!” Issacharoff said in a tweet.
On September 25, a day after his party entered the German parliament, AfD leader Alexander Gauland sought to alleviate concerns voiced by the country’s Jewish community.
“There’s nothing in our party or in our platform that could or should in any way concern Jewish people who live here in Germany,” Gauland told reporters.
When asked Sunday morning if he had any compunction over voicing his support for a party consisting of numerous anti-Semites and whose leader, Gauland, called Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial a “memorial of shame,” Eitan told the Ynet news portal: “I never heard about that.”
Eitan was also asked whether he was aware that the party’s deputy, Beatrix von Storch, who he personally congratulated in his Facebook video, is the granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister.
“I knew she was related but that doesn’t bother me. We are already three generations after the Holocaust and the opinions and the entire world are changing before our eyes. The media, the internet, this entire system is causing profound social change across the globe and therefore we must approach people, communities, countries and parties in a global manner. There is no escaping this,” Eitan said.
He went on to say he was confident that “the [AfD] party would help Israel on any matter we ask it to.”
@ Ted Belman:
That is probably accurate. However that does not wash clean the out and out hatred of those Nazis / KKK types at Charlottesville.
@ Bear Klein:
But the right are few in number and few in allies. The Left are many in number and have the support of people like Soros, the Democratic Party and the Muslims.
@ Ted Belman:
On the AFD I believe you are right but on Charlottsville you are right about Antifada but perhaps unaware how anti-Semtic the right wing marchers were.
A Vice News film crew embedded with a far-right speaker in Charlottesville last weekend seeks to highlight the motivations of white supremacists
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/16/charlottesville-neo-nazis-vice-news-hbo
Thank you all for your comments. Its nice to see that I am in good company.
@Ted Belman:
Correction: I see that your dispute was over Charlottesville not Austria. Sort of related except in Charlottesville, it was about who was worse, and I agree with you , but here it’s about whether to actually support them. It’s possible someone might take a nuanced view of Austria while disagreeing about Charlottesville, I don’t know. Still, this vindicates Eitan’s view.
@ Ted Belman:
Why don’t you ask your daughter if this alters her view:
Israel on the Security Council would be the ultimate game changer, would it not?
See, this why I was never particularly interested in having kids. I figured they’d probably just turn out like me, ungrateful bastards.
Ted –
Your daughter, bright as she most certainly is, has made a mistake by not recognizing crucial facts about AfD. A tremendous effort is being made to connect AfD with Hitler admirers – but this is a lie. AfD isn’t a new form of Hitlerism.
AfD opposes Islam and supports a Jewish State (only partially realized by the ‘State of Israel’). Those who embrace anti-Semitic views tend to cooperate with Islam, as was done by their predecessors in Germany.
It’s common knowledge that the NSDAP was especially keen on incorporating Muslims into their movement… thus the ‘Mufti of Jerusalem’ and his special Islamic SS unit.
There are too many groups who claim to be speaking on behalf of all Jews, but who are actually working only to advance the interests of a small group of Jews. For example, the recent stores that have finally exposed what many of us have know for years concerning the deep cooperation of the ultra-religious parties with the Left and Muslim groups.
We are too easily triggered by well-constructed propaganda. When we have genuine sovereignty over all the land from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, then we can start to realize the hopes that our ancestors embedded in the traditions that survived jihad, pograms, and the Shoah. Right now, we’re more like a bunch of spoiled brats, concerned only with narrow issues. Maturity is needed. Can it be actualized?
@ Ted Belman:
Charlottesville was two bad groups (or more). One the Neo-Nazis, KKK types were and are anti-Semites and disgusting versions of lowlife humans.
Two the Antifa are anarchists and a violent group.
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
That’s my view also.
During the Charlotteville’s riot , I railed against Antifa rather than the the KKK and other alt-right demonstrators. My daughter wouldn’t talk to me for a month.
Ted, of course this was not directed at you.
To all these oh so greatly concerned people, reporting on antisemitism in ‘right wing’ parties. Or concerned about an anti-Semitic resurgence in Eastern Europe.
This is a trap, you are being suckered by the media. Remember, the media is biased, in the US, in Europe and yes in Israel.
There is far more anti-Semitism in the left and in the center, than in right leaning parties.
Just yesterday, the new German center-left coalition tried to sneak in a political platform denying Israel’s right to existence.
There is lots of goodwill towards Israel in so-called right wing parties, although they are still not well experienced. The same can be said about Eastern Europe, including the hapless shooting-in-their-own-foot Polish.
Rafi Eitan has had his faults in the past. But he is right to engage the AFD. We should also positively engage PVV in Holland and others and the Visigrad nations.
These are the people that are pro-Israel. They organize visits to Israel, they sympathize and they are great fans. They have strong elements of this. Of course, they also include some haters in their ranks. But less than the competition.
The Israeli foreign ministry and Jewish communal leaders have not got it. They continue to attack Israel’s friends and make it difficult for them.
History does not always repeat itself. 2018 is not a carbon copy of 1930. And Israeli diplomats and Jewish leaders are conditioned by liberal clichés like the rest of the establishment elite.
Email received.
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
I am much inclined towards this conclusions of this post. They are as factual as President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem being the Capital of Israel. Some of what he says in not provable by me, and much is self0evident and common sense. I am inclined to take up one of the options Ted specified. That is “to approach with caution”. As I so often reiterate,”respect but suspect”. ..
Human nature insists that we are so towards ALL entities political, even the enthusiastically Pro-Israel. We would want to find the reason for being Pro-Israel, when so many are not, wouldn’t we – being long past the uncritical acceptance of anything or anybody.
These Nationalist parties should merit our tacit support, because they’re resisting being over-run by Islam. That alone is sufficient reason; if they are ever ruled by Muslim law, their whole country will be a hotbed of official “instant Jew-hate”. Our worry about a few individual Anti-Semites will be completely swamped as if it never was.
The Parties themselves should and most likely will, take care of their Anti-Semites, and remove them
Hugo Schmidt-Fischer Said:
I did no such thing..
Great comment otherwise.
AFD is not an extremist party. It is a party trying to protect its citizens from rape, pillage and to stop the plundering of Germany’s social security system by hostile foreign invaders. And you should not blame them.
Anyone deviating from the official political-correct party line as defined by the mainstream media and establishment elites is wrongly being labeled a Nazi.
Mainstream media and liberal elites have branded parties such as PVV in The Netherlands, AFD in Germany or The Finns Party in Finland as being extreme right wing, or ‘populist’.
But these parties are respectful of democratic procedures. Their leaders are no demagogues, their party events are civilized, and they do not resort to the street violence we are accustomed to from leftist ‘antifa, demonstrations.
Meanwhile, German green and social democrat parties with the tacit support of the ruling christian democrats are actively supporting Arab causes from Gaza to Jenin with cash and moral persuasion and through government-funded, non-government-organizations, that if allowed, would lead divest from Israel and ideally, from their point of view, destroy the Jewish nation and bring about a second holocaust.
Branding the AFD as a Nazi party is disingenuous. The AFD does not espouse genocide, they admire the Jewish land, many of their members support Zionism and they recognize Israel as a bulwark against a hostile Islamic expansion that threatens Europe.
Von Storch’s grandfather was a Nazi? So was practically everyone’s grandfather in Germany. And you will clearly, find more Nazi’s and Jew haters in any party than in the AFD. Certainly within the left leaning parties and their anti-Israel policies.
You want to deal with Germany, Iran’s largest trading partner, you want to receive German reparations? You have to deal Nazi’s and with the children of Nazis. Former President von Weizsäcker’s father was a Nazi. Most of the ruling party members until not long ago were Nazi’s themselves.
You seek to procure mutual-assured-destruction submarines from Germany? Current Chancellor Merkel herself was a DDR communist, the part of Germany that never accepted blame for the holocaust, and avid enemy of the State of Israel.
So now, out of all the parties in Germany, the one you pick to hate is AFD, Israel’s strongest friend?
Are you serious?
Mike Wise
Muslims will cease slaughtering each other in 50 countries around the world. Shiites are massacring Sunnis. Farsi’s are murdering Sunnis. Turks are killing Kurds. ISIS is killing Yazidis. Moslem brotherhood are killing Al Qaeda in the Sinai. Civil wars rage in Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Egypt. Boko Haram Muslims terrorize Nigeria.
refers also to the “global wars of Islam”
Muslims will cease slaughtering each other in 50 countries around the world. Shiites are massacring Sunnis. Farsi’s are murdering Sunnis. Turks are killing Kurds. ISIS is killing Yazidis. Moslem brotherhood are killing Al Qaeda in the Sinai. Civil wars rage in Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Egypt.
Mike Wise is indeed a wise man. This is a remarkable analysis.
This is the actual material world that we are now living in.
I could add also a world of hunger and desperation, of over population, of Misrule by African leaders, of Global Warming, destruction of nature and extinction of species.
I know from my own study that it was and is capitalist farming in Spain that has brought the emblemic Iberian Lynx to the very gate of extinction.
Human beings following money money money. And people try to tell me to stay quiet about the capitalist system.
In this world the AFD is not the answer, but at least they are not telling lies about the “religion” of Islam.