Germans Admit Prize Was for Israel-Bashing

by John Rosenthal
In my Wednesday article on Felicia Langer and her receipt of Germany’s highest honor, The Federal Cross of Merit, First Class, I cited from the speech given by Baden-Württemberg government representative Hubert Wicker at the awards ceremony. “An uncompromising engagement on behalf of humanity is the very core of Felicia-Amalia Langer’s existence,” Wicker said, “She is still fighting for human rights and a just peace in the Middle East, whereby she steadfastly pursues her goal of building a bridge between Israelis and Palestinians.” These and other similarly vague comments were made available, here, on the website of the Baden-Württemberg government.
But Wicker appears also to have made comments that were far less vague and that reveal that Langer’s anti-Israeli militancy was part and parcel of the reasons for presenting her the award. Thus in a letter that appeared in yesterday’s edition (July 23) of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Evelyn Hecht-Galinski cites Wicker as having said: “For 23 years you fought against expropriations, the destruction of homes and deportations. Your clients told you about torture, forced confessions, deportations in violation of international law, and punishments resembling clan-liability such as the tearing down of suspects’ houses.” Hecht-Galinski also reveals that she was herself the person who proposed Langer for the award. As mentioned in my previous article (and discussed at length here), Hecht-Galinski is another of the prominent “Jewish critics of Israel” who play a central role in German discussions of the Middle East conflict.
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