Within the EU, only the Netherlands and Britain consider all of Hezbollah a terrorist entity, as do the United States, Canada, Israel and even the Arab League.
BERLIN—The Bundestag, the German federal parliament, hs rejected a resolution presented by the extreme-right Alternative for Germany (‘AfD) party to ban Hezbollah, the Shi’ite Lebanese terror group.
The Christian Democrat Union (CDU), the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Social Democrats (SPD), the Left, Greens and Free Democrats (FDP) rejected the resolution.
“Hezbollah’s goal is the destruction of Israel and the Jews, and we should not be offering a safe haven for them to hide in Germany and finance their armed struggle in Lebanon against Israel from our territory,” said AfD MP Beatrix von Storch, in a statement.
The AfD bill said that Hezbollah, as a proxy organisation of Iran, represents a “danger to Germany’s constitutional order.”
Germany, like the European Union, only considers Hezbollah’s so-called ‘’military wing’’ as a terrorist organisation.
Within the EU, only the Netherlands and Britain consider all of Hezbollah a terrorist entity, as do the United States, Canada, Israel and even the Arab League.
Last week, the Central Council of Jews in Germany called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to fully ban Hezbollah.
The Council’s president, Josef Schuster, told Jewish newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine that “Hezbollah is heavily financed by Iran, and Hezbollah poses, in its entirety, a threat to the entire world.”
“A continuation of the distinction between their individual wings would be negligent and should therefore be corrected as soon as possible,” said Schuster.
In a meeting last week with Chancellor Merkel, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also urged the German government to fully ban the terror group.
“We’re also hoping to get Germany’s help—and we talked about this today—in recognizing Hezbollah as a unified entity and banning it from Germany as our ally, the United Kingdom, did this year,” said Pompeo.
Earlier this week, The Jerusalem Post reported that a German intelligence report from the State of Lower Saxony asserts the number of Hezbollah members and supporters in Germany has climbed from 950 in 2017 to 1,050 in 2018.
