BDS movement ruled unconstitutional in Germany

Previous attempts at banning the group calling for Israel’s abolishment were unsuccessful.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Germany’s top agency against extremism and espionage ruled on Monday for the first time that the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is unconstitutional and should therefore be banned.

The Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution’s annual report minced no words in condemning the anti-Israel group.

“The goal of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign is… ultimately, to abolish the Israeli state,” it stated. “The unifying ideological leitmotif of the network behind the BDS campaign is thus the negation of Israel’s right to exist.”

This raison d’etre directly clashes with one of Germany’s core principles in a post-Holocaust world, with former chancellor Angela Merkel stating in 2006, for example, that the Jewish state’s right to exist was a German national interest.

The report noted that the movement’s leadership were designated terror groups, saying, “Its governing body, the BDS National Committee, includes, among other organizations, the terrorist organizations Hamas and PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine].”

It specifically called out the communist PFLP for “play[ing] an important role as a bridge between Islamist and secular anti-Israel opponents of the constitution.”

Its pro-Hamas line became obvious following the invasion the group led of Israel on October 7, 2023, when thousands of terrorists murdered, raped and burned to death 1,200 people, the vast majority unarmed civilians, sparking the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

“Supporters of BDS in Berlin justified and/or glorified” the attack, the report said.

While antisemitism is outlawed in Germany, Jew hatred is also included in the movement’s anti-Israel campaigns.

In its pro-Hamas protests over the last year and a half, “signs with stereotypical antisemitic imagery were repeatedly displayed,” the report stated.

Agency head Michael Fischer said that the movement’s activity “violates the principle of peaceful coexistence between nations and therefore justifies action by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.”

Germany’s parliament had already recognized the group’s problematic nature in 2019, passing a resolution entitled “Resolutely oppose the BDS movement – ​​combat antisemitism,” and withdrawing federal financial support from “organizations that express antisemitic views or question Israel’s right to exist.”

The far-right AfD party even proposed banning the BDS movement under the German Association Law.

However, the movement’s supporters fought back in the courts, which in 2022 upheld their right to freedom of expression, regardless of whether the opinion is “considered valuable or worthless, dangerous or harmless.”

In November, the government passed an amendment to an existing law in order to close loopholes that had allowed state funding to slip through to organizations promoting BDS.