Von: Gaby Spronz <info@aktionsforum-israel.de>
Gesendet: Sonntag, 20. Oktober 2019 02:12
An: 'Benjamin Weintal; Yaakov Katz
Betreff: The case Blume/Malca/Aktionsforum Israel
Priorität: Hoch
Hi Benny,
You complained that we separated from Malca and her team and sent me 25 mails with questions.
Here is my answer to your inquiry over these 25 e-mails.
I intend to publish my answer to you together with your answers.
Please provide me your answers for my question before October 22ed cob.
As you know, the Aktionsforum-Israel is combatting BDS, Antisemitism and bias reporting about Israel since years.
Our priority is on bias reporting.
We have a working group in Facebook and a separate open site with information and space for discussions.
Malca was a member of our working group until our separation. I will explain later the reason.
Malca has her own group. I have also been a member of her group until my ejection out of Malca’s group.
The working group is not a Media or press organization, neither is it a space for spreading or promoting opinions. In the group we analyze cases prepare action and coordinate them.
We are a closed group in order to protect our actions. Submitting any group’s information outside the group is prohibited by our rules which have been checked by a lawyer.
In one case we already went legally successful against breaking this rule.
In regards to your question Benny, you ask, is the Forum repressing freedom of speech, when separating from Malca and her team.
As mentioned, we have an open site/page in Facebook. This is the site “Aktionsforum Israel” in Facebook.
Everybody worldwide is free to post there, also Malca can freely post there.
So freedom of speech of anybody is granted by us, also for the persons separated from us.
They are free to post in our public site as they wish, also with opinions against us.
On September 15th we organized a benefit festival against cultural boycott with the target to donate 100% of the money for Israel Trauma Coalition (ITC), an organization treating kids round Gaza suffering from Trauma under the attacks out of Gaza.
A link to the homepage of the festival:
As mentioned, Malca has her own group.
In Malca’s group a campaign has been started against this festival, claiming that Mrs. Schnarrenberger the commissioner against antisemitism in Nordrein Westfallen ist not only an anti-Semite but has even personally robbed Jews by “Arisierung”.
Accordingly, our event has been widely been stamped as antisemitic.
This pattern has also been implied in regards to other supporters of the festival.
This inhibited our work.
Malca is responsible for her group.
Malca herself did not interfere or protect us, she even liked some postings there.
When I complained about this, I have been ejected out of Malca’s group.
This was far before the relevant case for you, which you addressed here.
This is the main reason, why we decided to separate the groups.
Questions:
Next subject: The case Blume
The Forum has predefined subjects and targets on which we want to work. Other subjects are excluded and we do not deal with them.
Some additional subjects, that are internally Controversial, like “Stolpersteine” we exclude as well, as they would split the forum and cause internal conflicts. Out of my experience, such conflicts may even destroy the Forum completely.
We discussed the case Blume fully openly and also critically in the beginning.
We do not really consider the case Blume as our subject, as it was handled very controversially and there was a big struggle.
Also, the way one member acted was very critical. This member triggered other members to go against the Forum and the administrators.
I see it as my duty to protect the forum.
Question:
The biggest struggle was about your report.
Generally, we had no issue about criticism but the last case caused the majority of the members headaches.
They said, you missed in your report some facts.
The real facts are, when Mr. Blume has been noticed about his critical click, he immediately deleted it, Blocked the posting person and published a statement saying “Anybody compering Zionism with Nazism is my enemy”.
Questions:
Malca and her team continued to ignore the facts missing in your report, causing an extreme escalation of the discussion and loosing first members.
They caused a lot of anger in the Forum.
The Jewish communities in Germany had a long straggle for the implementation of commissioners for antisemitism.
As my feedback from Malca’s team, is that one of their targets is to eliminate the position of the commissioners for Antisemitism.
As you criticized Mr. Blume for not acting against Arabic Antisemitism and being anti-Israeli:
As I always desire a clear and correct situation before acting, I wish to hear all sides and obtain a complete picture. I approached Mr. Blume directly and confronted him with some questions and got answered as following:
„Herr Dr. Blume,
Was machen Sie überhaupt gegen Antisemitismus in Deutschland und für Juden?
Machen Sie auch etwas bezüglich Israelkritik und Arabischen Antisemitismus?
Machen Sie auch Fehler?“
(Translation:
"Dr. Blume,
What are you actually doing against anti-Semitism in Germany and for Jews?
Do you also do anything concerning Israel related antisemitism and Arab anti-Semitism?
Do you also make mistakes? "
His Answers:
Lieber Herr Spronz,
vielen Dank für Ihre Anfrage. Tatsächlich konnte in meinem ersten Amtsjahr als Beauftragter der Landesregierung gegen Antisemitismus viel erreicht werden. So konnte ich:
Weil ich dort auch den linken und arabischen Antisemitismus anspreche und u.a. die Nakba-Ausstellung im Kapitel "Israelbezogener Antisemitismus" als "einseitig" kritisiere, werde ich auch öffentlich von Gruppen wie dem "Palästinakomittee" als "Mitarbeiter von Netanjahu & Trump" bezeichnet und gefordert, meinen Bericht zu ändern. Das habe ich abgelehnt und halte Stand. Alle Fraktionen im Landtag Außer der AfD - in der es keine einheitliche Linie gab - haben meine Arbeit und Empfehlungen in dieser Woche im Parlament gewürdigt, zudem die jüdischen Landesgemeinden, die Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft Stuttgart und die Vertreter des Staates Israel. Selbstverständlich mache auch ich Fehler, aber ich kann doch sagen, dass wir für den Kampf gegen Antisemitismus, für das jüdische Leben und die deutsch-israelischen Beziehungen viel erreicht haben und hart weiterarbeiten. Gerne dürfen Sie diese Erklärung von mir in jeder Weise weitergeben und zitieren.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Dr. Michael Blume“
Translation:
Dear Mr. Spronz,
Thank you for your request. In fact, a lot could be achieved in my first year in office as the state government commissioner against anti-Semitism. So I could:
As I also address left and Arab anti-Semitism, criticize the Nakba exhibition in the chapter "Israel-related anti-Semitism" as "one-sided", I am also publicly named by groups such as the "Palestine Committee" as "employees of Netanyahu & Trump" and called to change my report. I refused. All parliamentary groups except the AfD in which there was no uniform line honored my work and recommendations in parliament this week, as did the Jewish regional communities, the German-Israeli Society in Stuttgart and the representatives of the State of Israel. Of course, I make mistakes too, but I can say that we have achieved a lot for the fight against anti-Semitism, for Jewish life and German-Israeli relations and are continuing to work hard. You are welcome to pass on and quote this statement from me in any way.
Kind regards
Dr. Michael Blume "
Questions to you Benny:
Additional questions to you:
Last not least:
I decline all your nasty accusation, as implied in your questions.
Freedom of speech is given in the open site of the Aktionsforum.
I explained why we separated from persons.
I explained we wanted to separate in peace.
I have been ejected from Malca’s group in first place.
We do not have any issues with criticism, we do criticize and are being criticized, but we insist it should be fair, this is also one of our main tasks concerning Israel.
Accordingly, we also did definitely criticize Mr. Blume with his “like” at a Jewish Facebook friend of his, saying Malca is not a real Jew.
We however insist of dealing with all cases according to the rule, the truth, THE HALL TRUTH, and only the truth.
Up to now Only the leaders of the Forum are involved.
I must mention, that I am personally very disappointed by this action of yours after such a long time, acting side by side. I basically feel not only betrayed by you but even by far more than that. I am missing the words to describe it.
I hope this answers your questions out of your many different e-mails to your satisfaction.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Gaby Spronz