Palestinian Terrorist Group Runs for German Parliament

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S. designated terrorist group, is “campaigning as a political party in the September general election to the Bundestag,” according to a Jerusalem Post report by Benjamin Weinthal (“Germany to Permit Palestinian Terror Group to Run for Parliament,” Aug. 31, 2017). The European Union also considers the PFLP to be a terrorist organization.

A spokeswoman for Germany’s Interior Ministry told Weinthal “candidates from parties and candidates in Germany cannot be banned or allowed by the Interior Ministry in Germany.” The PFLP is running on a joint list with the Marxist-Leninist Party.

The Interior Ministry noted that Article 21 of Germany’s constitutional law prevents the PFLP from being considered a political party—accordingly the group cannot campaign independently.

As CAMERA has pointed out, the PFLP is responsible for dozens of terrorist attacks that target the Jewish state and its citizens. Indeed, in Nazi-like fashion, the PFLP has a history of murdering Jews worldwide, irrespective of their citizenship. In one infamous instance, on Oct. 7, 1985, PFLP terrorists hijacked a cruise ship named the Achille Lauro and murdered a 69-year-old American Jewish man, Leon Klinghoffer, who was confined to a wheelchair.

As the Middle East analyst Barry Rubin noted in his 2005 biography Yasser Arafat, one of the PFLP terrorists involved in that operation was a “British neo-Nazi skinhead” who was working for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), an umbrella group dominated by the Fatah movement. Both Fatah and the PLO are currently led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—a man often described by media outlets as a “moderate.”

Weinthal, a research fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, asked if the Interior Ministry planned on outlawing the PFLP. He was told that the Ministry “does not, in general, comment on bans.”

Several German lawmakers and the Israeli political party Yesh Atid have sent a letter to Interior Minister Thomas de Maizere requesting that Berlin ban the PFLP and Hezbollah, another U.S.-designated terrorist group whose operatives are permitted free reign in Germany’s borders. A 2016 German intelligence report indicated that there are at least 950 active Hezbollah members operating in the country. Like the PFLP, Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based, Iranian-proxy, is responsible for murdering Jews throughout the world, including during the 1992 and 1994 bombings in Argentina of the Israeli embassy and the AMIA Jewish community center (“Hezbollah Backgrounder 2016,” CAMERA).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called it a “national duty” for Germans to remember the “Holocaust shame.” However, some Germans seem content to allow antisemitic terrorist groups to operate in their country and, like the Nazis, to mask themselves as a legitimate political party.

Many major U.S. news outlets have ignored this story. A Lexis-Nexis search showed that The Washington Post, USA Today, The Baltimore Sun, and others, failed to carry it. By contrast, in addition to Weinthal’s report in The Jerusalem Post, Fox News also detailed Germany’s decision to allow the PFLP to run for elections (“Palestinian terror group allowed to run in German parliament elections,” Sept. 2, 2017).