December 20, 2005
Germany’s new chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Israel next month. Government officials said on Monday that Merkel would visit the Jewish state some time in late January. According to Israeli media, the visit is meant to show solidarity following Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s recent calls to “wipe Israel off the map” and his statements denying the Holocaust. Before her election in September, Merkel vowed to press the fight against anti-Semitism and said that Germany would continue to be committed to Israel’s security.
Meanwhile, Charlotte Knobloch, respectively vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and of the World Jewish Congress, has said that Germany and other European states should withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran. It was not reasonable to ask the German envoy to shake hands with a president who was anything but a statesman, Knobloch told AP, adding that the welcome words of condemnation must now be followed by concrete actions against Iran.
