Israel's Ambassador to Germany, Yaakov Hadas-Handelsman, slammed a German columnist for comparing the Gaza Strip to a concentration camp, denouncing growing left-wing anti-Semitism in the country.
Journalist and author Jakob Augstein also said "Gaza is a place out of the end of times... 1.7 million people live there on 360 sq. kilometers. Israel incubates its own opponents there."
"That is shameful,"said Hadas-Handelsman, in an interview with the regional daily newspaper Rheinische Post.
In Der Spiegel magazine, Augstein this week said he “went too far” by the word “camp” but he nevertheless again attacked Israel and compared it to the former apartheid regime in South Africa. He said he has never been to Israel and said he would not visit.
The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center included Augstein on its 2012 top-10 list of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic slurs.
According to Ephraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's representative in Israel, "Augstein shouldn't be placed at No. 1 on the list, but because of various statements that he has made, that could have come straight out of 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' he definitely deserves the No. 9 spot."
In Western Europe, he says, "there are three sources of anti-Semitism: the Muslim communities, the extreme right and the extreme left. In Germany, the authorities clamp down hard on the first two, but they do nothing against the third group, to which Augstein belongs."
On a talk show last year, Augstein compared the Nazi crimes in the Holocaust with the policies of the Israeli government. He did not retract his comparison during the Spiegel interview.
Hadas-Handelsman said it is different when a German criticizes Israel in contrast with a Brit or a Norwegian. He urged Germans to be more sensitive and careful with their criticisms of Israel. The ambassador added that anti-Semitism has morphed into new areas and "today we are observing a growing anti-Semitism from the Left."

EJP