Writing for the Ruhrbarone, the German Journalist Stefan Laurin said \u201dEmily Dische-Becker, one of the initiators of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, will be present, as she was in Zurich. One of the main aims of the declaration is to exonerate the BDS campaign, whose goal is the destruction of Israel through economic and cultural boycotts, from the accusation of antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ruhbarone said the Stuttgart event (\u201cOn the critique of freedom and its repression in liberal democracies\u201d) is a kind of Act 2 of an anti-Israel event held in December in Zurich, Switzerland with many of the same activists, who will attend the Stuttgart symposium.<\/p>\n
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The Swiss daily NZZ wrote about the Zurich event \u201cFrom the participants’ point of view, Germany, with its special responsibility towards Israel, has maneuvered itself into a position that can no longer be justified today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The zealous pro-BDS activist Hanno Hauenstein is listed as a symposium participant. According to February 15 article on the Vienna-based mena-watch think tank website by German journalist Stefan Frank, \u201cThe BDS activist Hanno Hauenstein spread a rumor with a false report that quickly became widespread\u201d that the German supermarket chain \u201cRewe has removed Israeli wines from its product range.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palestinian activists attack Israeli envoy to Spain<\/p>\n
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, told i24NEWS that he sees an anti-Isarel international campaign unfolding to gut the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and replace it with a feeble definition\u2014the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.<\/p>\n
The Stuttgart event symposium \u201cmimics or follows the same sort of event in Switzerland. It is beginning to appear that there is a renewed effort to attack IHRA, not on its merits. This is the third effort to attack the growing worldwide acceptance of IHRA. This is not part of an academic discussion about which one is better in the pursuit of peace. There are those opposed to IHRA and they are not ready to say, we lost. \u201c<\/p>\n
Cooper said \u201canti-Zionists like the new Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, are opposed to IHRA. \u201cThe first thing he did was remove the commitment to operate under IHRA\u201d in New York, said Cooper, who has testified on antisemitism in Congress. Germany\u2019s Federal government accepted the IHRA definition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what the city of Stuttgart is investing in, so they can mask their attacks to weaken protections for the Jewish people,\u201c said Cooper, adding \u201cThe Simon Wiesenthal Center would love to hear what the Mayor of Stuttgart and Governor of the state have to say about this program in Stuttgart. Antisemitism is unleashed. What should the leaders of Stuttgart understand from this move. \u201c<\/p>\n
Cooper argued that \u201cThere are many cultural figures who hate Jews\u201d and are happy to use the pre-text of academia and culture to attack Jews and Israel. \u201dShame on all of them,\u201d said the expert on antisemitism.<\/p>\n
The controversial Christian Democratic Union party Mayor of Stuttgart, Frank Nopper, and the city officials, Marc Gegenfurtner and Fabian Meyer, who are funding the alleged anti-Israel symposium, refused to answer numerous i24NEWS press queries.<\/p>\n
Cooper said \u201cThis is a renewed effort to defeat IHRA because it is standing in the way of Israel and Jew-haters. IHRA correctly points out there are red lines when criticizing Israel, They are well defined and accepted on nearly every continent. If you need guidance where valid criticism of Israel ends, and where antisemitism starts, that is IHRA.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cooper noted IHRA helps refute the demonization of Israel\u2018s self-defense war in Gaza against the US and EU-designated terrorist movement, Hamas. Cooper said \u201cThere was no genocide and there was no starvation\u201d in Gaza. It was the demonization of Israel.\u201d He stressed that\u201d IHRA is one of the most important achievements, and one of the most effective legal and pedagogical tools, to explain what is antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n
UN to hold summit to finalize antisemitism action plan | May 4<\/p>\n
Cooper has also accused the alleged anti-Israel civil servant in Stuttgart, Michael Blume, with the demonization of Jews and Israel. Blume is tasked with fighting antisemitism but two German courts declared that he can be termed \u201cantisemitic\u201d because of his attacks on a Zionist German Jew, Malca Goldstein-Wolf and Israel, i24NEWS reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n