German politician tables motion demanding greater support for Israel at 'biased' UN
Israels internationaler Nachrichtensender i24News berichtet über den Antrag der FDP-Fraktion zu antiisraelischen UN-Resolutionen, den ich zusammen mit meinem Kollegen Bijan Djir-Sarai initiiert habe:
FDP lawmaker says motion not meant to muzzle criticism, but to ‚live up to German responsibility to Israel’
BERLIN — In 2018, the UN General Assembly passed 26 resolutions condemning states for various violations, with 21 of them targeting Israel. While such proposals enjoy an almost guaranteed majority due to the large number of Arab states voting in favor of them. But in many cases even allies of Israel have backed the resolutions.Most notably, Germany has voted in favor of 16 resolutions condemning Israel. Now, one German party is seeking to put a stop to that.
“It is time that the political rhetoric of Angela Merkel and [German FM] Heiko Maas, that Israel’s security and its right to exist are our raison d’Etat, be backed up with actions,” stated MP Frank Müller-Rosentritt, representing the Free Democratic Party in the German Parliament, the Bundestag.“Germany almost always stands on the side of countries like Iran, Yemen or Saudi Arabia, that would like to destroy Israel, and that doesn’t look good.”The pro-business opposition party, which holds 80 of the Bundestag’s 709 seats, is now calling for a free vote in the parliament to demand the government change its voting patters in the UN when Israel is concerned.Müller-Rosentritt, who initiated the proposal, told i24NEWS he is confident that members of other parties would gladly lend their support.
“We want to give every parliament member the opportunity to speak out in favor of this,” he explained. “And that would be a tremendous achievement, if the majority of the German parliament will clearly call upon the government: please change your attitude.”Jewish organizations in Germany welcomed the initiative as long-overdue.“Germany must no longer be a follower,” the Berlin branch of the American Jews Committee said, commending the FDP for picking up the important issue.“This must be stopped,” it added.
FDP lawmakers had already confronted Foreign Minister Maas over the issue in November.“I can’t understand why Germany has abandoned Israel on an international stage,” tweeted MP Bijan Djir-Sarai, who is the party’s foreign policy spokesman. “Israel’s friends rightly expect more from us here. Europe must not let Israel down in the UN.”Also the FDP faction’s deputy chairman Alexander Lambsdorff tweeted that “the UN is totally biased against Israel.”Maas then explained that “instead of leaving the debate at an early stage and getting resolution texts against Israel that are much harsher, we want to influence the debates and make sure the texts are not so harsh.”
But Müller-Rosentritt rejects this explanation: “This makes no sense to me – to vote for a less aggressive text against Israel still means to support a text against Israel.”The goal of the initiative is not to block criticism against Israel, the parliamentarian also stressed. “There is enough to criticize about the Israeli government, but our proposal is about living up to the German responsibility towards Israel.”“Most people in Germany are not aware of the problem, of the disproportion in the number of resolutions against Israel,” he added.In the future, says Müller-Rosentritt, the party plans to tackle additional Israel-related issues and promote steps like the inclusion of Hezbollah in the list of terror organizations in Germany and the expansion of youth exchanges between Germany and Israel, as a countermeasure to rising anti-Israeli sentiments.“I am completely aware that we, as a small party, are seeking to achieve here something that is very big,” acknowledged the lawmaker. “But this is politics, and sometimes one needs to think big in order to really change things.”