German Government Contractor Smears Israel: ‘Not a Democracy’

TEL AVIV – A German government contractor, who is also a representative of Amnesty International, delivered an antisemitic speech in which she accused Israel of “executing” peaceful Palestinian protesters and blamed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the recent influx of refugees into Europe, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Petra Schöning, who works for the German government’s development agency GIZ and is a pro-Palestinian activist, gave a lecture titled “Politics and Day to Day Life: Perspectives on the West Bank and Gaza” at the Episcopal Academy in the German city of Aachen.

In her speech, Schöning charged that “Israel is not a democracy.”

Schöning, whose role at GIZ includes — in her words — “train[ing] specialists dispatched by the German government to Israel and the Palestinian Territories,” said Israel summarily executes demonstrators at the weekly riots on the Gaza border dubbed the March of the Return.

For over a year since the launch of the border protests, Palestinian demonstrators have hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers, burned tires, broken through the security fence with weapons, used snipers to shoot Israeli soldiers and launched petrol and explosives-laden “terror kites,” birthday balloons and other incendiary devices over the border into Israeli territory, which have sparked thousands of fires and decimated most of the farmland in Israel’s south.

Israeli soldiers have used tear gas and, in some cases, live fire. Some 200 Palestinians have been killed during the riots. The head of the military’s Southern Command last week defended the use of live fire, saying that the nature of the riots, which includes thick black smoke from burning rubber tires, means that less lethal methods have proven ineffective.

“If I had one wish, it would be for better non-lethal weapons,” Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi said.

He added that so far there had not been a single incident of an Israeli soldier just “deciding to shoot into the crowd, even on tough days” and that soldiers are required to follow a strict protocol that includes receiving approval from senior commanders before a shot can be fired. The IDF also performs investigations into every bullet fired, he added.

Schöning also falsely accused Israel’s Ministry of Culture of banning a novel, All the Rivers, which tells the story of a love affair between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man. The book, authored by Dorit Rabinyan, was excluded from Israel’s public high school curriculum four years ago but has not been censored and is still widely available for purchase in book stores.

Schöning slammed Israel’s policy of “arbitrary detention” of Palestinians who have been involved in attacks against Israelis. According to the report, she lambasted the Israeli government for cutting off funds to the Palestinian Authority over the latter’s “pay-for-slay” scheme in which Palestinian terrorists and their families receive a monthly salary, saying Israel’s interference on the issue constituted “bad-faith harassment.”

Elisabeth Paul, a member of the Greater Aachen Area Regional Council for the Green party, slammed Schöning’s talk as “antisemitic disinformation and propaganda.”

Monika Schwarz-Friesel, a leading German expert on antisemitism, echoed that sentiment.

“Today, obsessive rants against the State of Israel represent the most pervasive way to express hatred of Jews,” Schwarz-Friesel said. “Camouflaging their statements as political criticism and humanitarian concern, contemporary antisemites spread statements such as Israel is not a democracy, Israel uses disproportionate force, boycott of Israel is to be welcomed and accuse Israel of imaginary misdeeds.”

“Without any reasonable substantiation, the State of Israel is blamed for all kind of problems in the world and its right to exist as a Jewish state is rejected,” Schwarz-Friesel continued.

Last May, German newspaper Bild published a report charging GIZ with working with Palestinian organizations that call for the destruction of Israel.

In March 2018, Jerusalem-based watchdog NGO Monitor released a report on antisemitic statements made by GIZ employees.