'Netanyahu, Tear down that wall': German official under fire for tweet

The scandal-plagued German commissioner Michael Blume, assigned to combat antisemitism in the state of Baden-Württemberg, is under intense fire for endorsing an X post calling on Israel to "tear down" the security fence running through the West Bank.

The pro-Israel X account @SamuelePizzuti, which monitors and criticizes German-animated antisemitism, first located Blume’s resharing of a X post from the anti-Zionist American propagandist Richard Silverstein.

The X post reads: "Mr. Netanyahu, Tear Down This Wall! —Palestinians, tear down their version of the Berlin Wall."

Blume ostensibly deleted his repost sometime in the last week after facing stinging criticism on X for allegedly stoking antisemitism and telling Israel to jeopardize its security. The X post compared Israel’s anti-terrorism fence to the now-defunct Berlin Wall.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Israel office and Eastern European Affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told i24NEWS, “First of all, it is very perplexing that a person whose job it is to fight antisemitism, to make a statement like that regarding the security fence that has reduced terror, saved many lives, and has had a positive effect.”

Zuroff added, “Comparing Israel to the communists and the Soviets is a very unfair comparison, and is made by people who have an innate hatred of Israel and would like to see it disappear.”

The renowned Nazi-hunter had urged Blume to resign in 2019 after he compared Malca Goldstein-Wolf, a German Jewish anti-BDS activist, to the Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann.

Zuroff said “no one cares apparently” in Baden-Württemberg's government about Blume’s outbreaks of antisemitism. “Blume has been doing things like this for years,” and urged Felix Klein, the federal commissioner for combating antisemitism, “to rethink Blume’s job."

i24NEWS reported exclusively last year that former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky—and the founder of the modern definition of antisemitism—termed Blume’s X activity antisemitic

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told i24NEWS, "It's beyond belief. Look what Hamas did in one day when its terrorists breached Israel’s security fence. Tear down this wall? It's disgraceful and disingenuous."

In a December Congressional hearing titled “Addressing the Scourge of Antisemitism in Europe," Rabbi Cooper testified that Blume and a second German official, Gerhard Ulrich, are unfit to be commissioners tasked with fighting antisemitism due to their anti-Jewish and anti-Israel statements. Ulrich is the commissioner in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein.

In a 2017 interview with Catholic news outlet Domradio, Ulrich blasted Israel’s security barrier, comparing it to the Berlin Wall. “Here we see a wall that is significantly higher than the Berlin Wall, and we know that walls never bring peace. In Hebron, we got the impression that terror is produced there rather than overcome,” the former Protestant bishop said.

The head of the German-Israel Friendship Association, Volker Beck, told a local German Jewish newspaper in 2022, after this reporter disclosed Ulrich’s alleged antisemitism, that the former Bishop is “unacceptable” for the job.

German observers say that Blume continues to cling to the office despite the damage he has done to the fight against Jew-hatred, as well as the reputational harm he has inflicted on Baden-Württemberg. Outbreaks of antisemitism have mushroomed in Baden-Württemberg since Blume assumed his post in 2018.

This past December, the German regional outlet SWR reported, “Anti-Jewish hate slogans are part of everyday life in Baden-Württemberg. Israeli flags are also repeatedly destroyed. In the first nine months alone, 184 anti-Semitic crimes were recorded in Baden-Württemberg, as the state Ministry of the Interior announced. That is slightly more than in the first three quarters of the previous year (175).”

Two of the main leaders of the Jewish community in Baden-Württemberg, Barbara Traub and Rami Suliman, did not immediately respond to i24NEWS press queries.

Traub has faced criticism from Martin Widerker, the former head of the Jewish community in Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg, because of her alleged enabling of Blume’s misconduct. Traub and Suliman have refused over the years to urge the city of Stuttgart to scrub an anti-Israel NGO from the municipal website. The Palestine Committee Stuttgart is considered to be a pro-Hamas NGO, and has raised funds for the German and Israel-designated terrorist entity Samidoun.

The tiny communities run by Traub and Suliman are subsidized by the government in Baden-Württemberg. As a result, critics say that the German Jewish community leaders are immersed in a conflict of interest and prioritize the state’s reportedly anti-Israel and pro-Iran regime policies over the security of Jews in Germany. Green Party president of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, personally delivered in 2017 a check for €30,000 ($32,000) to a Lutheran pastor in the West Bank who advocates for the destruction of Israel.

Traub and Suliman have also declined to press the pro-Iranian regime mayor of Freiburg, Martin Horn, to end its twin city partnership with Isfahan. The regime leaders in Isfahan call for the destruction of Israel every year at their annual Al Quds Day demonstration. Freiburg is the only city in Germany that has a municipal partnership with the the government of Iran.  

Blume declined to respond to numerous i24NEWS press queries.