30 August 2006
Leaders of the Central Council of Jews in Germany have criticized what they perceive as one-sidedness by Germany's Development and Cooperation minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul on the conflict in the Middle East. Wieczorek-Zeul, a left-leaning member of the SPD and in her post since 1998, repeatedly criticized Israel's military actions in Lebanon and at a visit to the country now called for a UN-led investigation of the Israeli bombings. "The demand for an UN investigation shows once again that the minister always has the same reflexes with regard to Israel", Salomon Korn, vice-president of the Central Council, told the newspaper "Frankfurter Rundschau", adding: "If she had the slightest instinct for fairness she would have first visited Israel. He compassion should have first been aimed at the attacked, not the attackers." Korn said that he was not against an independent investigation of actions during the war, but this also had to include the shelling of Israel by rockets launched in Lebanon. Yesterday, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, told "Spiegel Online" that there was "an absolutely anti-Jewish sentiment" in Germany right now. Knobloch blamed politicians such as Wieczorek-Zeul and the Left Party leader Oskar Lafontaine for this development.
