In February, BDS activists in Hamburg targeted a nine-day series of concerts called “Sounds of Israel” that featured Israeli musicians. That same month, BDS activists in Berlin protested Israeli participation in the annualFruit Logistica trade fair.
In November 2011, BDS activists launched a nationwide protest against Israel agricultural exports; BDS protests were held in Berlin, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Munich and Stuttgart.
In April, the Duisburg branch of the German Left Party (Die Linke) posted a flyer on its website with a swastika morphing into a Star of David, and called for a boycott of Israeli products. The flyer, which calls Israel a “rogue state” and a “warmonger” states: “Oppose the moral blackmail of the so-called Holocaust! Truth makes free!” This is a play on “Arbeit macht Frei!,” located above the entrance gate to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
In March, a group called the “Bremer Peace Forum” in the northern Germany city of Bremen staged protests in front of supermarkets urging Germans to boycott Israeli products. The Forum protesters distributed leaflets showing pictures of bloody oranges and held posters with the slogan: “Save the Palestinian people.”
The German Left Party, in a Call to Action said: “Israel has occupied the West Bank for decades, contrary to numerous UN resolutions. More and more illegal Jewish settlements are being built and Israel exports the fruits that are harvested from there. This is against international law and the exports from the occupied territories are illegal. A boycott of Israeli products will move public opinion in order to increase international pressure on Israel, just as happened in South Africa.”
Later that month, the German Bundestag [Parliament] held a debate over accusations of anti-Semitism within the Germany Left Party following the release of an in-depth study by two German sociologists titled “Anti-Semites as a Coalition Partner.” The report says that “anti-Zionist anti-Semitism” has become the dominant consensus position within the Left Party and that this trend is gaining force.
Originally published by Gatestone Institute http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org