Germany’s spy agency BfV has labeled the entirety of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as an extremist entity.
The BfV domestic intelligence agency, which is in charge of safeguarding Germany’s constitutional order, said the announcement comes after an “intense and comprehensive” examination.
“The ethnicity-and ancestry-based conception of the people that predominates within the party is not compatible with the free democratic order,” the BfV said on Friday.
Hopefully this inspires the other parties to to start the process to see the AfD banned. I know the report might not look like much, because of how obvious the findings are. But previous attempts at banning them have failed because such an official report was missing. So maybe our political system starts getting its shit together.
As we say in Germany: Hope dies last
Germany supports Israel but they’re also critical of it. They have active arrest warrants for Netanyahu if he ever steps foot in their jurisdiction.
For Germany the ideal outcome would be peaceful continuation of both Israel and Palestine. If protecting one means harming the other, they will take no action. Israel is an important military stronghold against eastern powers and will continue to hold special privileges.
We do? Last I checked, the arrest warrant only came from the ICC, which Germany technically has to follow, but we haven’t issued our own arrest warrant, haven’t positioned ourselves clearly in support of the ICC’s warrant, and our politicians appear to be working on legal ways to not have to arrest Netanyahu if he actually comes to visit as planned by Friedrich Merz. All parties currently part of the government, with the only possible exception being The Left, seem to be way too much in favor of Israel.
You’re correct that the warrant is the ICC jurisdiction and not any other courts in Germany. As of May of last year Steffen Hebestreit representing the Olaf Scholz administration said they would.
And that comes after he had been a vocal advocate of Israel up to that point.
What Hebestreit says here is not to be trusted. He is always beating around the bush when he is being asked these questions, and “we will abide by the law” most likely means “we will find every legal loophole to not have to arrest him”. In another press conference held on 2024-11-22, he was asked to clarify the wording on the released statement about the now actually issued arrest warrant, which was actually lacking a statement like the one from May about abiding by the law. When asked about it, he always responded with “I don’t have to answer, I will just refer you to what’s written in the text”, instead of simply stating that “we will abide by the law”. Furthermore, when asked what the federal government had to check before officially acknowledging the arrest warrant, he mentioned that “lawyers had to check if the ICC was even responsible for issuing such an arrest warrant”, even though Wagner, the spokesperson for the State Department, mentioned that “this court [the ICC] is independent and we respect this independence”. Nothing these spokespeople say makes any sense. They respect the independence of the ICC, but have to check if the ICC is actually responsible and has legal authority to issue an arrest warrant in this case? I’m not buying it. They stand behind the ICC and respect its independence, but only when it alligns with the views of the German federal government, which summarizes German politics as a whole quite well.
You can watch the full press conference here (relevant chapter: Haftbefehl gegen Netanjahu (Tilo), ~5:00-16:20, turn on auto-translation if you don’t speak German).
Tell me all the times Israelis have died to protect their Western allies.
Tell it to World Power governments, not me. Iran is in thick with Russia and China and I don’t see any middle eastern nations lining up to join NATO.