Should commitment to Israel be a prerequisite for naturalization? Saxony-Anhalt’s Interior Minister ordered this by decree. The Minister of Justice thinks that makes sense.
Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann considers the obligation introduced in Saxony-Anhalt to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist before naturalization to be sensible and understandable. “I think you can definitely argue that Israel’s right to exist is, so to speak, an outcome of the free-democratic basic order,” the FDP politician told the German Press Agency.
He added: “There is a very special connection between Germany and Israel – Germany’s responsibility for the unjust Nazi rule and the Holocaust.”
The Interior Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, Tamara Zieschang (CDU), issued a decree in November instructing the state’s naturalization authorities to require people who want to become German citizens to make a corresponding declaration. The following formulation was recommended: “I expressly recognize the special German responsibility for the State of Israel and Israel’s right to exist and condemn any anti-Semitic efforts. I neither pursue efforts that are directed against the State of Israel’s right to exist, nor have I pursued such efforts. ” The decree states that anyone who does not want to make this confession cannot be naturalized.
Traffic light bill
In this context, the Federal Minister of Justice also referred to the regulation provided for in the traffic light coalition’s planned new nationality law, according to which a conviction for a racist or anti-Semitic crime should fundamentally prevent naturalization. He said: “Naturalization can also be ruled out for problematic statements below the criminal liability threshold.”
The prerequisite for naturalization is that the naturalization applicant is committed to the free-democratic basic order. Here, administrative courts have decided that “mere lip service” is not sufficient. “If someone, for example, agitates against the free-democratic basic order on social networks, I think it is right that they are denied naturalization,” said Buschmann. This also has a general preventive effect, “so that people think twice about what they say.”
Controversial slogan
Buschmann has no doubt that the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” should generally be banned. When asked by journalists in November, the spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Maximilian Kall, said: “If this slogan is used as a symbol of Hamas, then it is prohibited by the ban on activities that the BMI has imposed on Hamas for Germany .” This can then also be prosecuted under criminal law and allows the police to intervene during demonstrations.
“There was initially a discussion about whether the slogan should only be banned in a certain context,” said Buschmann. However, he is of the opinion that this sentence is “an explicit confession” of the Islamist Hamas and the pro-Palestinian network Samidoun, which was also banned by Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), and is therefore prohibited.
Source: Stern
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