“The city of Frankfurt will, in the future, only work with banks who do not maintain business relations with the antisemitic BDS movement.”

The Cologne-based Bank for Social Economy will be forbidden to conduct business with the city of Frankfurt – Germany’s financial capital – because of the bank’s accounts for boycott groups targeting Israel, Frankfurt Deputy Mayor Uwe Becker told The Jerusalem Post.

“The city of Frankfurt will, in the future, only work with banks who do not maintain business relations with the antisemitic BDS movement, and, accordingly, with BDS organizations,” Becker, who is also Frankfurt’s treasurer, said on Tuesday.

“I consider it extremely problematic when banks, including in Germany, maintain business relations with organizations that incite antisemitism and place Israel’s existence in question,” he said. “Against this background, the Bank for Social Economy should reconsider its position, particularly since the German Bundestag has also in the meantime assessed BDS as antisemitic.”

Becker, a member of the Christian Democratic Union, is one of the most prominent pro-Israel politicians in Germany.

The Bank for Social Economy (Bank für Sozialwirtschaft) maintains numerous BDS accounts for organizations that advance or support BDS-activity. One of the groups – Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East – has been widely slammed by German-Jewish leaders and establishment Jewish human rights organizations in Israel, Germany and the US. The bank’s CEO Harald Schmitz has gone to great lengths to defend Jewish Voice on the bank’s website and in press communications to groups protesting the alleged antisemitic policies of the bank. Schmitz declined to respond to Post queries regarding Becker’s criticism of the bank.

Becker said, “The BDS-movement expresses with its messages the same language that the National Socialists once used: ‘Don’t buy from Jews!’.” The Frankfurt municipal authorities classified BDS as antisemitic, he said.

“The core of BDS is to delegitimize the State of Israel with the goals of boycott and defamation,” Becker added.

Read More: Jerusalem Post