German president honours lawyer who uses Israeli-apartheid analogy and condemns Israeli leaders as war criminals
If you thought it was just Britain, you’d be wrong. The increasing legitimacy being accorded to use of the apartheid analogy in relation to Israel is now widespread right across western Europe. The latest evidence of this comes from Germany. The Jerusalem Post is reporting today that German President Horst Köhler has awarded the ‘Federal Cross of Merit, first class’ to a lawyer who regularly uses the apartheid analogy and condemns Israeli leaders as “war criminals”.
The lawyer, Felicia Langer, is Israeli but lives in the German city of Tübingen. The Jerusalem Post quoted an outraged Dieter Graumann, Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, who described Langer as a “militant and fanatical hater of Israel.”
Though there is no suggestion that Langer was given the award because of her hatred of Israel it is a sign of the times that, even in Germany, such hateful attitudes towards the Jewish state carry no social stigma.
The paper quoted Graumann as saying of the affair:
“Fact-based critique of concrete Israeli policies is of course always legitimate – and one hears it most loudly in Israel itself. But Ms. Langer is known particularly for entertaining a mean-spirited, militant hatred of Israel, which only succeeds in getting such effective public attention because she does this as a Jewish person – as she herself stresses.”
In other words, the German authorities must have known what they were doing when they gave her the award. A spokesman for the state of Baden-Württemberg was quoted as saying that the award had been bestowed in recognition of “her humanitarian service, independent of political, ideological or religious motivation.”
Langer has called Israel “the apartheid of the present” and, according to the Jerusalem Post, she has gone on record as praising Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who seeks Israel’s destruction.
I would like to repeat that Langer was given this award by the president of Germany.
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Tags: Israel