YOUTH ORG. OF ANGELA MERKEL’S PARTY CALL FOR JERUSALEM AS ISRAEL’S CAPITAL

BENJAMIN WEINTHAL

The JU, with roughly 105,000 members, passed a resolution titled “Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital” at its 59th Germany Day convention, held in Saarland.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a joint news conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (not pictured) at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, October 2, 2019. (photo credit: MICHELE TANTUSSI/REUTERS)

The conservative youth organization, Young Union of Germany [JU], defied its party’s leadership from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union [CDU/CSU] and the Christian Union Party over the weekend by urging the relocation of the country’s embassy to Jerusalem.

The JU, with roughly 105,000 members, passed a resolution titled “Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital” at its 59th Germany Day convention, held in Saarland. According to reports in German media, the JU urged the CDU and CSU parties in the Bundestag to “follow the examples of the USA, Russia, Guatemala and relocate its embassy to Jerusalem and therefore recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

The JU document said that a continued refusal by the German federal government to relocate its embassy could continue to damage the German-Israel relationship.

The Jerusalem Post exclusively reported in 2018 that Merkel intensely lobbied central and European countries not to relocate their embassies to Jerusalem.

The foreign policy spokesman of the CDU, Jürgen Hardt, who is an MP in the Bundestag, rejected the demand of the JU, stating: “The relocation of the embassy would not solve any problems, rather create new problems,” according to the the daily outlet Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung.

The German Union of Jewish Students praised the JU conference on Twitter for urging Germany and the EU to outlaw the entire organization Hezbollah. The Jewish Student group wrote on Twitter: “Thank you for this clear signal against terror and antisemitism.  Stop Hezbollah.”

Merkel and her social democratic foreign minster Heiko Maas have flatly rejected a ban of Hezbollah in Germany, where 1,050 Hezbollah members operate and recruit new members and raise funds for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Germany’s Central Council of Jews in Germany as well as US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, have urged Merkel to outlaw Hezbollah amid a wave of rising antisemitism in the federal republic.

Critics slammed Merkel’s alleged anti-Israel foreign policy over the last week. Hillel Neuer , the executive director of the Geneva-based non-governmental UN Watch, wrote on Twitter ““Dear Foreign Minister, What message does Germany send to its people every year when you support the pathological demonization of the world’s only Jewish state? This year at the UN General Assembly, I urge you to stop depicting Israel as the world’s most evil nation.”