This article is cross-posted with permission from Gatestone Institute.
The German government, after years of equivocating, has announced what amounts to a partial ban on the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah — Arabic for “The Party of Allah” — in Germany.
The so-called ban — supported by the center-right Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats, the two parties that make up Germany’s ruling coalition, and also by the classical liberal Free Democrats — has been hailed as “important,” “significant,” and “long overdue.”
The ban is in fact a compromise measure between German lawmakers who want to take a harder line against Iran and those who do not. As a result, the ban falls far short of a complete prohibition on Hezbollah and appears aimed at providing the German government with political cover that allows Germany to claim that it has banned the group even if it has not.
On April 30, the German government’s Federal Gazette (Bundesanzeiger) reported that Hezbollah was subject to an activity ban (Betätigungsverbot), but not an organizational ban (Organisationsverbot) — an important legal distinction because the activity ban is weaker than the organizational ban.
The two-page document, which carefully avoids referring to Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, prohibits the group’s logo to be displayed “in public, in meetings or in writings.” In addition, any assets that Hezbollah may have in Germany are to be confiscated.
The ban does not call for Hezbollah mosques or cultural centers to be closed, nor does it require that members of the group be deported. The ban also does not prohibit Hezbollah operatives from travelling to Germany.
After the so-called ban was made public, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer ordered police to carry out raids on four mosques and cultural centers linked to Hezbollah: Berlin’s al-Irschad mosque, two cultural centers in Bremen and Münster, and a Lebanese community group in Dortmund.
Hezbollah, however, is believed to have more than 30 mosques and cultural centers in Germany, where the group is estimated to have upwards of 1,000 operatives, according to German intelligence assessments. It was not immediately clear why German police did not raid all of the mosques and cultural centers linked to Hezbollah.
In any event, the German government effectively gave Hezbollah at least four months to move its assets and operatives out of Germany. The newspaper Die Welt explained:
“It is still unclear what concrete effects the raids will have…. Berlin SPD politician Tom Schreiber suspects that Hezbollah was prepared for the searches. ‘I assume that an attempt was made to relocate assets and take people out of the country,’ Schreiber told Welt. ‘The question is, what exactly has the ban produced: what assets have been secured, what procedures have been initiated, what further information has been gained about the Hezbollah scene in Germany?'”
On December 19, 2019, the German Parliament, known as the Bundestag, approved a three-page resolution — “Effective Action against Hezbollah” (“Wirksames Vorgehen gegen die Hisbollah”) — that called on the German government to ban the activities of Hezbollah on German territory.
According to the Bundestag, a complete ban of Hezbollah is impossible because the group’s structures in Germany are “not currently ascertainable.” The Bundestag’s statement in the original German states:
“Hezbollah-related association structures, which could justify an organizational ban, are not currently ascertainable.” (“Der Hisbollah zuzurechnende Vereinsstrukturen, die ein vereinsrechtliches Organisationsverbot begründen könnten, seien derzeit jedoch nicht feststellbar.”)
The Deputy Chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Thorsten Frei, stated:
“Hezbollah-related association structures, which could justify an organizational ban (vereinsrechtliches Organisationsverbot), are not ascertainable, despite efforts by the federal government since 2008. An organizational ban is therefore not an option due to the lack of a verifiable domestic organizational structure. However, we are free to pursue an activity ban (Betätigungsverbot) that we have also applied to other terrorist organizations that lack a demonstrable domestic organizational structure.”
It is utterly implausible that Germany, one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced countries in Europe, is unable to ascertain the organizational structure of Hezbollah within its own borders. More plausible is that Germany wants to project a public appearance of cracking down on Hezbollah while maintaining direct access to its leadership.
The idea to ban Hezbollah in its entirety originated with Germany’s conservative party, Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), the third-largest party in the German parliament. The AfD has not been pleased with the partial ban. Addressing the German parliament on December 19, when the Bundestag called on the German government partially to ban Hezbollah, the deputy chairwoman of the AfD parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, Beatrix von Storch, explained:
“Six months ago, the AfD presented a resolution in the Bundestag to ban Hezbollah, a resolution which you vehemently rejected and which, since then, you have blocked in caucus. Now, six months later, you are collectively rushing through the door that we have politically opened. If this would happen with more AfD proposals, Germany would be in a much better place….
“Nevertheless, your resolution has two central weaknesses. The first weakness is that you are asking for only an activity ban (Betätigungsverbot). We want a specific organizational ban (Organisationsverbot). According to the Crime Fighting Law (Verbrechensbekämpfungsgesetz) of 1994, the activity ban is the weaker legal means when compared to an organizational ban. There is no reason in the world why you would fight a terrorist organization with the weaker means and not the stronger. You are making a loud bark, but you are not biting.
“The second fundamental weakness of your resolution is your justification for using the weaker means. You write, and I quote, ‘Hezbollah-related association structures, which could justify an organizational ban (vereinsrechtliches Organisationsverbot), are not ascertainable.’ That is objectively false, as confirmed by the 2017 and 2018 annual reports of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV). The 2018 report states, and I quote, ‘In Germany, Hezbollah followers maintain organizational and ideological cohesion, among other things, in local mosque associations, which are primarily financed by donations.’ Do you even read your own intelligence reports? In case it is too long for you to read, it is located on page 214. Just check it!
“If you do not want to touch Hezbollah’s mosque associations, then this resolution is pure symbolism politics (Symbolpolitik), and symbolism politics cannot continue. What is needed is the complete ban of Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s propaganda and terror financing in Germany must be stopped. The mosque associations that exist must be disbanded, and most importantly, Hezbollah supporters must be deported. This, by the way, is also demanded by the Bundestag’s Anti-Semitism Resolution, which expressly calls for the deportation of supporters of anti-Semitism. If this does not apply to supporters of Hezbollah, which wants to send Jews to the gas chambers, and wants to destroy Israel, then to whom could it apply?”
On April 30, after the German government announced its half-measure against Hezbollah, von Storch said:
“Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has finally pushed through a ban on Hezbollah in Germany, which the Alternative for Germany (AfD) faction has been demanding for a very long time but was blocked in the Bundestag. The AfD welcomes Seehofer’s measures against the Hezbollah terrorist organization, although they are not sufficiently extensive. The AfD continues to demand that the Islamic terrorist organization be completely banned from organizing and we regret that our request in the Bundestag has been rejected. There is no place for Israel haters in Germany.”
The AfD’s Chairman in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag, Petr Bystron, added:
“This step was long overdue. The Federal Government has finally given in to pressure from the AfD parliamentary group. Hezbollah was allowed to do mischief in Germany for far too long: the Al-Quds March in Berlin demanded the destruction of Israel, speakers were allowed to spread their anti-Semitic agitation in Berlin and Hamburg.
“Now further steps must follow: Taxpayer support of anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) organizations close to the SPD, the Greens and the Left, must end, as well as the taxpayer’s funding of the Hezbollah government in Lebanon and the Islamic terrorist regime in Tehran. We will now pay particular attention to the infiltration of German universities and public broadcasting by sympathizers of these terrorist organizations. The ‘ban on activity’ was only the first step. The fight goes on.”
To read the rest of this article, click here.
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
RichardL says
Good analysis. One correction though: the CDU, CSU, FDP, SPD, GREEN, Linke, are all communist/socialist open border parties. They are all in government together and vote for each other. The CDU elected a founding member of a neo-Stalinist group that is under observation by the BfV to the state supreme court. The only liberal party is the AfD. They are somewhere between the Republicans and Democrats over here. They have been pushing for a ban of Hezballah and many other islamic groups and are branded islamophobe.
mortimer says
Germany did not ‘HALF-BAN’ the Nazi Party.
Islam has killed many more than Nazism.
mortimer says
Imagine if they translated the Arabic ‘Hezbollah’ into English or German?
The names would be (the political) Party of God or Partei Gottes.
Supremacist and presumptuous, isn’t it? How can they of Hezbollah … mere humans … presume to speak for God? It is a statement of infallibility.
The implication is that THEY speak for Allah and everyone else speaks for Satan. Well, that further implies that Satan must be subdued at all cost. Many political parties are arrogant, but this is the top.
RichardL says
The party of allah, not of God. God is the Judaeo-Christian deity, whereas allah is the deity of islam. Makes my blood boil when my Egyptian friends use allah. Arabic is the language created for islam’s unholy book.
And we know what allah wants: hatred, killing, misery, camel-urine drinking, headbanging, etc.
gravenimage says
Germany’s Partial Ban of Hezbollah: A Half-Measure
……………
Yes, this is a half measure. Still better than nothing, though.
And welcome to Soeren Kern as a Jihad Watch contributor.