Merkel's Disastrous Historical Precedent

From The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 10, 2015

SA paramilitaries outside a Berlin store posting signs with: "Deutsche! Wehrt Euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!" ("Germans! Defend yourselves! Do not buy from Jews!").

Chancellor Merkel could have followed the advice of Bundestag President Norbert Lammert who told Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein in Berlin last week that the EU directive is unwise.  Instead, she chose to follow a disastrous historical precedent.

On April 1, 1933, a week after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, he ordered a boycott of Jewish businesses throughout Germany.  Boycotting Jewish businesses was the prelude to the extermination of six million Jews in Europe.

This year’s EU resolution was passed as the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom was being publically remembered.   On Kristallnacht, Hitler upgraded his boycott to murder Jews, destroy Jewish businesses, demolish thousands of Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools, burn down 1,000 synagogues, and ship 30,000 Jews off to Nazi concentration camps.

Applying a double standard concerning Israel, while ignoring that there are over 200 other territorial disputes worldwide, is European anti-Semitism revisited.

MEL ALEXENBERG

Ra’anana