Eurasia Press & News
The newly formed Committee to Ban Hezbollah in Germany called on US consumers to boycott German automobiles in an advertisement in The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected outlawing Hezbollah.
The advertisement declares, “Boycott the German car industry until Hezbollah is banned in Germany.”
The full-page advertisement will run for the next four weeks in The Jewish Journal and leads with the statement: “On June 25, 1996, at 9:50 p.m., Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist arm, murdered 19 American airmen at the Khobar Towers in Dharan, Saudi Arabia.”
The advertisement in the community weekly reads: “Yet Germany allows Hezbollah to operate openly on its soil. It’s time to send a message to the German government. Americans will not buy their cars while it allows the murderers of our soldiers to raise money, recruit and propagandize on German soil.”
Merkel’s administration is vehemently opposed to banning Hezbollah’s entire organization in Germany, where at least 950 Hezbollah members operate.
The Jerusalem Post examined German intelligence reports from 2018 stating that Hezbollah operatives recruit new members, transfer funds to the terrorist entity in Lebanon, and spread lethal antisemitic and jihadi ideologies in the federal republic.
The advertisement ends with a quote from famed US president Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”
A picture of the memorial at Patrick Air Force Base for the 19 American airmen murdered by Hezbollah is shown in the advertisement.
A spokesman for the Committee to Ban Hezbollah told the Post that, “Hezbollah is the biggest terrorist threat in the world because it is state-backed.”
The spokesman said the committee plans to send the advertisement to German diplomats and managers of German automobile companies in the US such as Daimler, BMW, Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche.
The committee is slated to also send the ads to mayors in cities where German car plants are situated and to the embassies of Gulf countries.
The spokesman said that the fact that “Hezbollah and Iranians have killed American troops is intolerable.”
Hezbollah is Iran’s chief terrorist proxy in the Middle East.
US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell is pressing for the German government to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Sources say that he brings it up at every meeting he attends with German officials.
The United Kingdom outlawed Hezbollah’s so-called political wing in February. The EU and Germany have merely prescribed Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist entity. The US, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, the Arab League and Israel classify all of Hezbollah a terrorist organization, without dividing the entity into military and political wings.
Merkel has rejected appeals from both the US and the Israeli governments to also designate Hezbollah’s political wing a terrorist entity. Niels Annen, a deputy German foreign minister, said Hezbollah is necessary for stability because it is a part of the Lebanese government. Germany’s foreign ministry, represented by Annen, participated in a ceremony in February to honor Iran’s Islamic revolution.
In 2012, Hezbollah blew up an Israeli tour bus in Burgas, Bulgaria, murdering five Israelis and their Muslim Bulgarian bus driver.
Merkel told Israel’s Knesset last year that the security of the Jewish state is “non-negotiable” for her government.
