At the end of this week
anti-Semitic groups around the world will be celebrating the birthday of the
Nazi leader, Adolph Hitler. As synagogues burn in France and Jews are beaten in
the street in Kiev, it would seem that they will also be celebrating the
rejuvenation and rehabilitation of anti-Semitism. Most encouraging for those
celebrants, however, will be the recent announcement, made on Holocaust
Remembrance Day last week, that Germany is suspending arms sales to the State of
Israel at a time when our military is fighting for the lives of our children.
The Washington Post reported that officials in Berlin decided on the
weapons embargo in order “to protest [Israel’s] military action in the West
Bank…”
That “military action in the West Bank,” as it is called, is the
armed defense of Jews against genocidal murderers who would do to the Jews today
what Germans and their allies did to us almost 60 years ago. It is simple
Jew-hatred that motivated those behind the massacre of whole Jewish families
attending the Passover seder in Netanya, the bar-mitzvah
celebration in Jerusalem, the bat-mitzvah party in Hadera or just going
out for food in Haifa. That perverse hatred is also what motivated the
perpetrators of thousands of such massacres on the soil of Europe during World
War II. Thanks to Germany, most of us Jews now know exactly what the PLO
appointed Islamic preacher had in mind when, on Palestinian Authority
television, he called on Moslems to “Kill the Jews. Wherever you find them, Kill
them!” He had in mind a Moslem-sponsored Second Holocaust. The difference is
only one of technical ability.
Where is the German boycott of Arab and
Islamic states that support PLO terrorists in their campaign to make the Land of
Israel judenrein? Where is the German outrage and suspension of European
aid to the PLO, when those monies are funneled to support suicide bombers and
anti-Semitic diatribes in the Arabic media? It is utterly absent, yet the moment
Jews take the war to the enemy, after almost two years of absorbing more
terrorist attacks than any other nation would be willing to, then the voice of
Germany is heard. There is something particularly obscene when Germany, patent
holder for the original Holocaust, decides to effectively aid and abet the new
crop of homicidal Jew-haters by attempting to disarm the Jewish State. Germany
will, as in the past, set the tone for the other nations of Europe in their own
policies towards the Jews.
Let the leaders of Germany know that the Jews
and our allies will not be pressured into allowing any other nation to kill us
with impunity. Let the leaders of Germany know that honoring the memory of the
Holocaust doesn’t mean just standing with a bowed head beside the eternal flame
at Yad VaShem in Jerusalem, it means standing with a raised head to the right of
the Jewish people as they defend themselves against an anti-Semitic onslaught.
Therefore, as a child of Holocaust survivors and as a soldier in the
re-established army of the Jews, I call upon all friends of Israel to boycott
German products and services. I call upon the organizers of today’s rally in
Washington in support of Israel to publicly declare that Germany, and any other
state that denies the right of Jews to defend themselves, has allied itself,
again, with those who openly call “Kill the Jews” and then act to fulfill that
Hitlerite mission. The German leaders must be made aware that their move to
embargo the Jewish state will be met with the economic boycott of Germany by
millions of friends of Israel around the world.
You must tell them:
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder Federal Chancellery
Willy-Brandt Str. 1 10557 Berlin Tel.: (0049) 1888/400-0, (0049)
30/4000-0 Fax: (0049) 30/4000-1818, -1819 E-Mail: bundeskanzler@bundeskanzler.de.
German Embassy in the United States Ambassador Wolfgang
Ischinger German Embassy 4645 Reservoir Road NW Washington, D.C.
20007-1998 USA Tel: (202) 298-4000 Fax: (202) 471-5558
German Embassy in Israel Ambassador Rudolf Dressler 3
Daniel Frisch St. Tel Aviv Israel Tel: 03-6931313 Fax:
03-6950608 e-mail: ger_emb@netvision.net.il.
Yaakov Katz is Chairman of the Board of Arutz Sheva.