Chancellor Angela Merkel also came.
She was punctually on the government bench when the Bundestag debated the escalating Middle East conflict on Wednesday.
A current hour had been scheduled.
The fact that the Chancellor is taking part is a good sign, said the deputy chairman of the FDP parliamentary group, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, and addressed to Merkel: "Thank you for being here." Germany has a special responsibility towards Israel and the debate should give the signal that the Bundestag is facing this.
Many other parliamentarians also called for this.
They described two areas in which action had to be taken: On the one hand, it was important to contribute to de-escalation in the Middle East.
On the other hand, it is important to fight the anti-Semitism that flares up in Germany.
With the harshness of the rule of law against hate preachers
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) said that Germany had to counter “anti-Semitic hate preachers, agitators and violent criminals” in the country with all the harshness of the German constitutional state - “regardless of whether they have always lived here or have only come here in recent years”. Everyone should know: “There cannot be an inch of space on our streets for anti-Semitism. Never and never again. ”He condemned the“ rocket terror ”of the Islamist Hamas against Israel in the“ very strongest ”, said Maas. Israel not only has the right but also the duty to protect its citizens.
The foreign minister called for an immediate end to the attacks on Israel, a ceasefire agreement and finally direct talks on how the conflict could be resolved. In the end, both sides should be able to live independently and safely. "We are therefore firmly convinced that this can only be a negotiated two-state solution." In the afternoon, Maas announced that he would travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories very soon, if possible as early as Thursday night, to hold talks there.
Representatives of other political groups also emphasized that Germany was on the side of Israel. The deputy chairman of the Union parliamentary group, Johann Wadephul, said that Israel's security is part of Germany's raison d'etre, as the Chancellor once again expressed in the Knesset in 2008. Specifically, this means that armaments cooperation is part of it.
In this context, he criticized a statement by the SPD co-chairman Norbert Walter-Borjans.
A few days ago he had told the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel that in return for arms deliveries to Israel, Germany had the right to have a say in negotiations on how the situation could be de-escalated.
Wadephul said there should be no "misleading statements" about influencing Israeli decisions.
Lambsdorff called Walter-Borjans' statement “historically forgotten”, stabbing the Jewish state in the back.
“Quo vadis, SPD?” Said the FDP foreign politician.
Legal gap between insult and sedition
The MPs condemned the anti-Semitic riots on German streets and in front of synagogues. Omid Nouripour (Greens) called the events "hideous". Jewish life in Germany is “unfortunately not a matter of course”. It is “the task of all of us” that Jews should not be afraid in their home country Germany. Dirk Wiese (SPD) called the riots “more than worrying” and called for the “never again” to be filled with life. He referred to the plan of Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) to declare inciting insult to be a criminal offense and thus to close a legal gap between insults and incitement to hatred.
Meanwhile, Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) has banned three associations that are said to have collected money in Germany for the pro-Iranian Shiite movement Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah has been banned from being active in Germany for a year. The three now banned associations are replacement organizations of a fundraising association that was banned in 2014, it said. They continued to pursue its unconstitutional endeavors.
As the ministry announced on Wednesday, the ban on the associations "German Lebanese Family", "Menschen für Menschen" (not to be confused with the aid organization founded by Karlheinz Böhm) and "Gib Frieden" was carried out on Wednesday with searches and seizures in Bremen, Hesse, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein and Rhineland-Palatinate. In Germany there is no place of retreat for people who “support terror”, Seehofer said on Twitter.