Germany
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Sixty Jewish organizations, including the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and the European Jewish Congress, have released a joint appeal against voting for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Germany’s upcoming elections.

“Vote for an unquestionably democratic party on September 26, 2021 and help banish the AfD from the German Bundestag,” said the appeal, released on Thursday.

“The elections to the Bundestag will be taking place in just over two weeks will decide whether the AfD can once again wreak havoc in the Bundestag, the heart of our democracy,” the letter continued. “A party in which anti-Semites and right-wing extremists are at home. A party in which anti-Semitism, racism and misanthropy find their breeding ground.”

The appeal went on to say that the 60 organizations – including various regional Jewish communities in Germany, the World Jewish Congress (WJC), the Claims Conference, the Orthodox Rabbinical Conference Germany (ORD), Maccabi Germany, the Union of Progressive Jews, the Abraham Geiger College, the Rabbinical Seminary Berlin, the Center for Jewish Studies Heidelberg – were “convinced that the AfD is a radical and anti-religious party.”

They added: “Politicians of the party relativize the Shoah. They regard minorities as inferior and divide our society. The AfD opposes the European Union and thus the European peace project. The AfD is not an alternative in the Bundestag elections.”

The appeal blamed the AfD for exploiting Jews to serve its needs, stating that “Jews serve in the AfD’s program solely to give expression to the party’s anti-Muslim resentment” and that the AfD uses Jews “to spread its racist and anti-Muslim slogans among the people. But we do not want to and will not be their fig leaf.”

In July, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany called on the country’s main political parties to distance themselves from the AfD, ahead of the country’s elections.