Henryk M. Broder: Meine Kippa liegt im Ring

(translated by googletranslate)

Why am I for the office of president a candidate of the Central Council of Jews.

Henryk M. Broder explains his reasons in this article for the Tagesspiegel.

I have decided after careful consideration, apply for the post of President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. The procedure is not easy, you have to meeting the representatives of a Jewish community, and must be nominated by it. After me, however, two small communities have pledged their support, these are not insurmountable obstacles. In two years, I am 65, I have always done what I wanted to do. Now the time has come to do what I should do.

The official representative of Jews in Germany is in a miserable state. The president - internal "Aunt Charley called - seems overwhelmed by the job. Anyone who reads the press releases issued by her office learns that a visit is part of the wife of the President of the most important experiences of her life. Her deputies are watching each other and wait for whoever goes first to the cover.

What does the Central or refrain, which decides its Secretary General who is trying to compensate for the declining importance of the organization through tactical alliances and sinnfrei activism. Most recently, he has the former Berlin Finance Senator Thilo Sarrazin, tried for his critical remarks about integrationsunwillige migrants in a row with Hitler and Goebbels, and soon after, apologized for the lapse in a way that demonstrated one thing above all: that he has no idea what he is talking.

The Central Council represents a small minority, about Protected content , most of whom arrived after Protected content the former Soviet Union in the Federal Republic, but his word has weight. Rather, it had weight. Meanwhile, his opinions are still largely unnoticed because it is inflated to everything and everyone expresses. Demanding the resignation of Prime Minister, because this has sold out in the choice of words and of a "pogrom against manager said, is not only inappropriate but also stupid. We must raise any claims to ensure their application is not found in the situation. Unless one wants to deliberately make a fool of himself.

The Central Council sees itself as an early warning system against political extremism and other oncoming hazards. That was the role that fell to the Capitoline geese in ancient Rome. However, they did not have prevented the fall of Rome.
It may not be the responsibility of the Central Council, to behave as the good conscience of Germany. It brings nothing, "Resist the beginnings scream!" When a handful of neo-Nazis marched through Möllenhagen in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and demand the ban of the NPD, which the party is about to dismantle itself, only in their apparent importance confirmed. Likewise, it is not the role of the Central Council to require the remaining 79.9 million Germans how they should deal with their history. Proof of love, forced to be, no.

The Central acts as repentance receiving instance and issue safety observations, where there is neither up nor down a shame border. The Central Council has its relations with the Vatican and the German Bishops' Conference as part of the "Williamson affair stopped" temporarily, if a theater wants to perform in the province of Fassbinder's play "The Garbage, the City and Death", runs through the Secretary-General personally to to say the theater people, what they do or should not do. If that is not occupational therapy, then it is just ridiculous.

As president of the Central Council, I will see an end to the small-minded megalomania, which exacts more and more as he is able to afford. I am committed to ensuring that Holocaust denial is repealed as a criminal offense. The law was well intentioned, but has proved to be counterproductive, by idiots to helping to stage a martyr in the struggle for historical truth. Our problem is not the last of the Holocaust, whose factuality is beyond question, but the genocide taking place before our eyes in the Sudan. We do not need more Holocaust memorials and monuments, but an active policy in support of human rights without political consideration of economic interests. Who wants to know about the struggle of dissidents in China and the persecution of Baha'is in Iran, nothing should also on 27 January and on 9 November at home to stay.

I will strive for good relations with the Muslims living in Germany. Not to be religious zealots or the Turkish nationalists, the paragraph Protected content the Turkish Penal Code ( "insulting Turkishness" defend) or play down, and press again any comments on the Armenian issue, but to those that a strict separation of church and state and a secular society occur.

I am convinced that there is no particularistic Jewish interests. Whether someone eats kosher or halal or would you prefer Kassler, is a private matter. Similarly, when and for what God he prays. Religious freedom includes the right to be irreligious and anti-religious and about their own and its neighbors make fun of God, without being threatened to be so. Freedom, democracy, rule of law are the values that must be aggressively defended.

Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, heretics, of Aryans and vegetarians, women and men, straights and gays - my dump is in the ring.

The author is a reporter for "mirror" and a regular guest commentator at the Tagesspiegel.

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