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Anti-Semitism Officer may be called "anti-Semitic".

The controversy surrounding the Baden-Württemberg anti-Semitism commissioner Michael Blume has reached a new level of escalation with a decision by the Hamburg Regional Court.

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Anti-Semitism Officer may be called "anti-Semitic".

The controversy surrounding the Baden-Württemberg anti-Semitism commissioner Michael Blume has reached a new level of escalation with a decision by the Hamburg Regional Court. The preliminary injunction of the 24th Civil Chamber, which WELT has received, obliges Twitter to restore a tweet by lawyer Joachim Steinhöfel that was sent at the end of last month and has since been deleted by the platform.

The article says: “Baden-Württemberg affords an anti-Semitic anti-Semitism commissioner. We also remember that the prime minister is a fan of washcloths.” The latter probably alludes to Winfried Kretschmann's (Green Party) recommendation made a few weeks earlier to use washcloths to save energy. Below the tweet is a collage of critical news articles from German and international media that address Blume's behavior and political positioning in various contexts.

For example, an article in the Jerusalem Post reported on calls for the resignation of former Israeli and American ambassadors and military officials against Blume. The reason: He had described the British Major General Orde Wingate, who enjoyed national hero status in Israel due to his political and military commitment in the 1930s, as a "war criminal".

An article in the "Tagesschau" from the end of last year dealt with Blume's inclusion in the Simon Wiesenthal Center's annual list of the top ten anti-Semites. The Los Angeles-based NGO, founded in 1977, last year included Blume in seventh place, citing, among other things, that he had liked a post on Facebook that compared Zionists with Nazis. This is presumably the process documented here by "Israelnetz".

Other contributions from the collage deal with Blume's assertion, forbidden by a court, that the political author's blog "Axis of the Good" spreads "racist

In the same context, an article in the “Jüdische Rundschau” also accuses Blume of having spoken of “right-wing extremists in the Jewish communities” in an interview with Deutschlandfunk. In a blog post, he also compared the Jewish pro-Israel activist Maca Goldstein-Wolf to Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann, whose department played a key role in organizing the persecution, expulsion and deportation of Jews in the Third Reich; in the current version of the article, however, Goldstein-Wolf is not mentioned; such a comparison cannot be inferred from the presumed original version either.

From this long list of allegations, the Hamburg Regional Court reports only the last two and Blume's description of Wingate as a "war criminal". On this basis, it comes to the conclusion that describing Blume as "anti-Semitic" is a "crisp but still permissible expression of opinion" for which there are "sufficient connecting facts".

Attorney Steinhöfel calls this conclusion to WELT in view of Blume's position "devastating". The fight against anti-Semitism is "too serious a task to be left to a nationally and internationally discredited personality with no qualifications for the office but with an overwhelming need for recognition".

Since the underlying process for the deletion of the tweet was conducted between attorney Steinhöfel and Twitter, Blume himself had no opportunity to comment on the allegations. In this respect, the constellation corresponds to that before the administrative court in Meiningen. In 2019, in a legal dispute between the city of Eisenach and the organizers of a demonstration critical of the AfD, it ruled with great media coverage that Björn Höcke could be described as a fascist - even without having heard the Thuringian AfD boss himself.

This decision-making, which is due to procedural law and without the participation of the actual protagonist, can be found unfortunate, especially since there are many things that could be said to exonerate (but also to further incriminate) Blumes. However, for the admissibility of an expression of opinion, it is not important that it is proven beyond a doubt, but only that there are sufficient indications for it.

In response to a short-term request from WELT, Blume explains that he had "unfortunately had mixed experiences as a representative against anti-Semitism with the federal German judiciary". who insulted him as a "false Jew" who had "forfeited his right to exist".

The description of the British Wingate as an "Israeli military" in the district court's decision was an "embarrassing and anti-Israeli error". He also considers other, unspecified statements in the reasoning of the judgment “to be factually incorrect even at a quick glance”. As far as the topic of anti-Semitism is concerned, he sees “an even greater need for clarification in parts of the judiciary” and is accordingly preparing for proper, longer processes. He understands the associated “legal and, above all, substantive clarifications” “as an important part of my assignment”.

"Kick-off Politics" is WELT's daily news podcast. The most important topic analyzed by WELT editors and the dates of the day. Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or directly via RSS feed.

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