German lawmakers are considering outlawing the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, JNS reported on Tuesday.
According to a draft resolution sponsored by the AfD Party, the Bundestag will debate a non-binding resolution to “examine whether the conditions exist for a ban on Hezbollah as one organization, and, if necessary, to issue such a prohibition and implement it immediately.”
The resolution says that Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy group, represents a “danger to [Germany’s] constitutional order.”
“Hezbollah’s goal is the destruction of Israel and the Jews, and we should not be offering a safe haven for them to hide in Germany and finance their armed struggle in Lebanon against Israel from our territory,” senior AfD MP Beatrix von Storch said in a statement quoted by JNS.
In 2013, the European Union of which Germany is a member, blacklisted Hezbollah's “military wing” as a terrorist organization, while failing to blacklist the group’s political arm.
However, EU members the Netherlands and United Kingdom consider all of Hezbollah a terrorist entity, as do the United States, Canada, Israel and even the Arab League.
The British government formally announced in February that it intends to ban the political wing of the Hezbollah terror organization, after previously having banned its military wing.
Germany later stated that it will not follow Britain’s lead, with its Minister of State Niels Annen arguing that the Shiite Muslim organization remained a relevant factor in Lebanese society.
Last week, German Jewish leaders called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to fully outlaw Hezbollah.
“The Central Council of Jews in Germany calls for a ban of the Shi’ite militia Hezbollah,” said their leader, Josef Schuster, in the Germany daily Jewish paper Jüdische Allgemeine.
Similarly, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged Germany to follow in Britain’s footsteps.
During his meeting in Berlin with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, Pompeo said, “We’re also hoping to get Germany’s help – and we talked about this today – in recognizing Hezbollah as a unified entity and banning it from Germany as our ally, the United Kingdom, did this year.”