An overwhelming majority of the German parliament’s lower house voted on Thursday in favor of a resolution that calls for excluding boycotters of Israel from public funding and acknowledges the link between Muslim immigration and antisemitism.
The motion received the support of all the parties of Germany’s left-leaning ruling coalition, which has 415 out of 733 seats in the Bundestag. The center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which helped co-author the resolution, added its 196 seats. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) also supported the resolution with its 76 seats, meaning it had the support of 93% of the Bundestag.
The Left party, which has 28 seats, abstained during the vote, and the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which has 10 seats, was the only political party that voted against the resolution, according to the Tagesschau news site.
The resolution, which is nonbinding, calls to end public funding for entities that engage in antisemitism or seek to boycott Israel and reaffirms Germany’s support for Israel.
It is also the first time that the legislature has named Muslim immigration as a driver of antisemitism—a controversial statement in a country where many consider welcoming asylum seekers the implementation of a lesson learned during Nazism, alongside the need to oppose antisemitism.
“In recent months, the alarming extent of antisemitism has become apparent, based on immigration from the countries of North Africa and the Near and Middle East, where antisemitism and hostility toward Israel are widespread, also due to Islamist and anti-Israel state indoctrination,” the draft resolution reads. It also notes right-wing extremist antisemitism.
In 2023, Germany saw a 95% increase in documented antisemitic incidents over 2022, up to 5,164 cases last year. Half of them, the German Interior Ministry said, occurred after Oct. 7, 2023. On that day, thousands of Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 people in Israel and abducted another 251, plunging the region into war amid an explosion of antisemitic sentiment worldwide.
Beatrix von Storch of the anti-immigration AfD party said during the plenum debate on the resolution: “You finally acknowledge that in addition to the right-wing extremist antisemitism that you invoke like a mantra, there is also dangerous antisemitism from the left” and that “the exploding hatred of Jews in Germany has something to do with immigration and with Islam.”
Several Jewish groups have welcomed the resolution, including the Conference of European Rabbis.
“I hope it leads to positive developments on the ground vis-à-vis the religious freedom and security of the Jewish community in Germany, which is facing major challenges right now,” the CEO of the Munich-based group told JNS ahead of the vote.
