BERLIN - The German parliament voted on Friday to condemn as anti-Semitic a movement that calls for economic pressure on Israel over its policies on the Palestinians.

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In a move welcomed by Israel, a majority of lawmakers in the Bundestag voted in favour of a motion to label the international Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as an entity that uses anti-Semitic tactics to fulfill its political goals.

A protest calling for the boycott of Israel (Photo: Haggai Dekel)

Securing Israel's survival has been a priority for Germany since the defeat of the Nazi regime that committed the Holocaust, in which an estimated six million Jews were murdered.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the Bundestag decision in a statement on Twitter.

"I hope that this decision will bring about concrete steps and I call upon other countries to adopt similar legislation," he said in a statement in Hebrew on Twitter.

מברך את הבונדסטאג הגרמני על ההחלטה החשובה שמכירה בתנועת החרם על ישראל (BDS) כתנועה אנטישמית ומכריזה שאסור לממנה. בייחוד מעריך את הקריאה של הבונדסטאג שעל גרמניה להפסיק לממן ארגונים שפועלים נגד קיומה של ישראל. מקווה שההחלטה תביא לצעדים ממשיים וקורא למדינות נוספות לאמץ חקיקה דומה — Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) May 17, 2019

The BDS condemned the motion as anti-Palestinian.

"The German establishment is entrenching its complicity in Israel's crimes of military occupation, ethnic cleansing, siege and apartheid, while desperately trying to shield it from accountability to international law," it said on Twitter.

Lawmakers from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party abstained during the symbolic vote. They had submitted their own motion calling for a total ban of the BDS in Germany. That motion was defeated.





Angela Merkel and Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem (Photo: AP)

A majority of the far-left Die Linke party voted against the motion. The party also submitted its own proposal, which called to oppose the BDS and commit the German government to work toward a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on UN Security Council resolutions. Its motion was also defeated.

The latest battle between the BDS and the Israeli government has been over the Eurovision Song Contest final, which takes place in Tel Aviv on Saturday.

In the run-up to the event, the BDS has called on artists, music fans and broadcasters to avoid the event, arguing it amounts to "whitewashing" Israel's policies toward Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The hosts of the Eurovision in Israel at the second semi-final of the competition in Tel Aviv

With Friday's Bundestag motion, Germany has effectively backed Israel's position that international boycotts are discriminatory and anti-Semitic.

The motion said a BDS campaign calling for Israeli products to be labeled with "Don't Buy" stickers was reminiscent of the Nazi-era boycott of Jewish businesses, known in German as "Judenboykott", which used slogans such as: "Don't buy from Jews."





A protest calling for the boycott of Israel (Photo: Haggai Dekel)

"It (the motion) has broader European significance given that BDS makes no attempt to build coexistence and peace between Israel and all of its neighbors," he wrote on Twitter.