"Duisburg candidate for mayor:
"Boycott Israel"
Published: 25 Feb 09, 17:23
Online at: http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20090225-17663.html
Hermann Dierkes, a leftist candidate for mayor in the Ruhr Valley city Duisburg, on Wednesday defended his call for a boycott of Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians despite widespread criticism he was stoking anti-Jewish sentiments in Germany.
“When all the protests and UN resolutions don’t help stop continual human rights abuses then such methods are legitimate,” he said in a statement released by the North Rhine-Westphalian regional chapter of his hard-line socialist party The Left.
“To compare it to the racist Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses is highly disingenuous.”
Dierkes unleashed a storm of criticism this week after saying the Holocaust could not be used as an excuse for Israel’s recent military campaign in the Gaza Strip....
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