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September 27, 2002/Tishri 21 5763, Vol. 55, No. 5
Anti-Semitic campaign fails
TOBY AXELROD
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
BERLIN - Jewish leaders are celebrating the results of Germany's national elections as a sign that anti-Semitic campaigns do not pay.
As the results from the Sept. 22 election came in, one politician - Jurgen Mollemann, vice president of the Free Democratic Party - paid for his negative campaign with his job.
Mollemann, who long has expressed sympathy for Palestinian suicide bombers, roiled Germany earlier this year when he said that Michel Friedman, a vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, helped provoke anti-Semitism by his manner and behavior.
Though xenophobia and right-wing populism are rising in other parts of Europe, Mollemann's party was hurt by his statements, which many saw as anti-Semitic. His party's poor showing cost the opposition Christian Social Union/Christian Democratic Union a chance to build a governing coalition.
Instead, Chancellor Ger-hard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party will remain in power with its partner of four years, the Green Party.
The election was described as the closest in Germany's postwar history.
"The most important result is that if you bring anti-Semitic ideas into an election campaign in this country, the people don't accept it," Friedman said in a telephone interview with JTA.
Earlier this year, Friedman called Mollemann's anti-Israel statements one-sided and anti-Semitic.
Paul Spiegel, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said, "The voters showed clearly that German democracy is healthy."
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