Annette Groth

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Annette Groth (2014)

Annette Groth (born May 16, 1954 in Gadderbaum ) is a German politician of the Die Linke party and was a member of the German Bundestag .

Life

education and profession

From 1974 to 1979 she studied development sociology, economics and business administration and international politics at the Free University of Berlin . She received her diploma in sociology . Her diploma thesis dealt with the role of the brigades in the development process of Botswana .

After completing her studies, she worked as a visiting lecturer at the Lüneburg University of Applied Sciences and as a research assistant at the Wuppertal University.

From 1981 to 1984 she worked as a research assistant at the European research institute Ecumenical Research Exchange (ERE) in Rotterdam on the subject of migrant workers in the EC . From 1984 to 1987 she worked in the office of the Protestant Student Community in Stuttgart as an ecumenical consultant. From 1992 to 1997 she was "Education Officer" at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva . From 1997 to 1999 Annette Groth worked as the director of the Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism (ECTWT) and editor of the quarterly magazine Contours in Barbados . For a while she was u. a. worked at the Diakonisches Werk der EKD , before she became a scientific advisor in the parliamentary group Die Linke in 2007.

Annette Groth was active at attac and was co-founder of the “attac Anti-GATS campaign” and the nationwide “attac EU-AG”. She is also a member of NaturFreunde .

Party career

From 2007 to 2009 Groth was a member of the state board of the party Die Linke in Baden-Württemberg , member of the “AK European Integration”, the “BAG Peace and International Politics” and active in the European Left Party in the feminist structures “EL-Fem”.

At the same time she is a member of the forum of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Baden-Württemberg.

Member of Parliament

Groth was nominated for the 2009 Bundestag election by Die Linke as a direct candidate for the Pforzheim constituency and received 6.8 percent of the first votes . She was elected to the 17th Bundestag via the Baden-Württemberg state list of the party Die Linke . In the 2013 federal election , she ran in the constituency of the federal constituency of Lake Constance and moved back into the state list.

For the parliamentary group Die Linke , Groth was the spokesperson for human rights policy. She was a member of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid . There she was also chairman of the parliamentary group. She sat on the Committee on Transport and Digital Infrastructure . She was also a deputy member of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Sustainable Development.

She was elected chairman of the German-Greek parliamentary group of the German Bundestag. She was also a member of the Migration Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe .

Groth decided not to run for the 2017 federal election.

Controversy

Ship to Gaza

The “Mavi Marmara”, on which Annette Groth and others tried in vain to reach the Gaza Strip in 2010

Together with the then MPs of the Left Party, Inge Höger and Norman Paech , Groth took part in the Ship-to-Gaza convoy at the end of May 2010 , which tried to break the Israeli sea blockade of the Gaza Strip . On board the Mavi Marmara and trapped below deck, she witnessed the Ship-to-Gaza incident in which the Israeli Navy shot and killed nine passengers. The course is controversial. Upon their return, Groh described the incident as an “act of piracy ” and accused the Israeli soldiers of killing unarmed passengers with bullets in the head and refusing medical treatment to the injured so that they bleed to death.

Groth assessed the Turkish group IHH , which organized the convoy, as a “humanitarian organization” for “human rights and freedom”. The television magazine Kulturzeit accused Groth and other convoy participants of apparently having “little fear of contact” with Islamists when it comes to their goals . The newspaper Die Welt confronted Groth with declarations of war by the Islamist organizers of the convoy against Israel, which contradicted the claim of an "anti-war party". The social scientist Samuel Salzborn classified the participation of Left Party MPs in the Gaza convoy in 2011 as an indication of rising anti-Semitism in this party.

civil war in Syria

In 2013, Groth and other members of the left-wing parliamentary group asked the federal government to what extent the Federal Foreign Office was supporting aid organizations in “areas controlled by the Syrian rebels”. The questioners accused the aid organizations of “violating Syrian sovereignty” and the German government of “destabilization” and “regime change”. Supporters of the Syrian opposition accused them of taking the “anti-imperialist” rhetoric of Bashar al-Assad in a twisted logic at face value and of ignoring the motives and program of the opposition.

Demands to withdraw from politics in the wake of the so-called toilet affair in 2014

In 2014, Annette Groth was involved in the so-called toilet affair. At an event on the Gaza war, one of the speakers pressed the leader of the Left, Gregor Gysi . The incidents sparked a renewed debate about anti-Semitism in the Left Party, in the course of which several high-ranking members of the party called for Groth and other participants to withdraw from the parliamentary group and the Bundestag. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center , which classified the events as the fourth worst anti-Semitic incident in 2014, Groth, among others, played a "decisive role" in the course of the incident of "stirring up hatred against Israel" and was himself "part of a larger group of hardcore Israel opponents among the Left MPs. "

Statements classified as anti-Semitic

At the Protestant Church Congress in Stuttgart in 2015, Groth claimed that Israel's government had deliberately destroyed the drinking water supply in the Gaza Strip, so that thousands of tons of toxic chemicals were gradually making their way into the Mediterranean. By Joachim Schroeder and Sophie Hafner this statement is in the documentation and marginalized Select - Hatred of Jews in Europe as a variant of the anti-Semitic legend of poisoning wells arranged.

Disagreement with the parliamentary group's resolution against anti-Semitism and the BDS campaign

After the Bremen State Association of the Left had supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign in 2011 and numerous party members nationwide, including u. a. Katja Kipping and Bodo Ramelow had signed a statement against it, in which the campaign was explicitly described as " anti-Semitism ", "reminding of the Nazi slogan ' Don't buy from the Jew '", the left-wing faction decided unanimously to support it calls for boycotts, a one-state solution or another Gaza flotilla were clearly rejected because Groth and 14 other parliamentary group members either stayed away from the vote or left the meeting room beforehand. On the occasion of a conference in Heidelberg in May 2018, Groth openly advertised the BDS campaign.

Renewed participation in the Gaza flotilla and support for the BDS campaign

After leaving the Bundestag, Groth announced that she would again take part in a planned Gaza flotilla in July 2018. The party executive has now distanced itself from the views of the “Israel critics” around Groth. They are accused of “lack of distance to Islamist groups with openly anti-Semitic positions” and “one-sided assignment of blame”. Groth also supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign , which is now officially classified as anti-Semitic by her party.

Web links

Commons : Annette Groth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. 2017 Bundestag election: Claudia Haydt stands for "Die Linke" , Südkurier from October 14, 2016
  2. ^ After the offshore attack: Left-wing politicians accuse Israel of war crimes. , Handelsblatt Online from June 1, 2010
  3. Interview: The dead had headshots ( memento from January 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Stuttgarter Zeitung from June 7, 2010
  4. Kulturzeit: Questionable peace mission.
  5. Boris Kálnoky : Middle East: The Islamist Background of the Gaza Fleet , Die Welt, June 12, 2010
  6. ^ Study reveals anti-Semitism in the Left Party , Die Welt, May 19, 2011
  7. German Bundestag, 17th electoral period, printed matter 17/13811, 06/07/2013, pp. 9–11, pdf ; Text of the request ( memento of September 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ^ Sophia Deeg, Left Orientalism - Syria and Die Linke , SoZonline 03/2014 ; Sophia Deeg, Revolution - a problem for the German left , SoZonline 05/2015
  9. https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article135851827/Linke-Politikerinnen-auf-Liste-der-Antisemiten-2014.html
  10. https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article134377963/Linke-wollen-Urheber-des-Klo-Skandals-rauswerfen.html
  11. http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/antisemitische-argumentationsmuster-nach-der-jagd-auf-gysi-entlaedt-sich-die-wut-in-der-linken/10983888.html
  12. List of the Wiesenthal Center: 4th place for anti-Israel left. In: taz.de . December 30, 2014, accessed July 27, 2017 .
  13. Alex Feuerherdt (Jüdische Rundschau, June 1, 2017): arte prevents an anti-Semitism documentary from being broadcast ; Arno Frank: TV documentary on anti-Semitism, With Elan into the minefield , Spiegel, June 14, 2017; Rene Martens: Censorship of an anti-Semitism documentary. One does not like to see defensive Jews , Taz, June 11, 2017
  14. Leandros Fischer: Between internationalism and reasons of state: The dispute over the Middle East conflict in the DIE LINKE party. Springer, Wiesbaden 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-13353-5 , pp. 249 and 294
  15. Bruno Engelin: Left Party: Unanimously with dissenters - parliamentary group disputes anti-Semitism resolution , Jüdische Allgemeine dated June 16, 2011
  16. ↑ Boycott Israel or not? , Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung from May 28, 2018
  17. "At the end of July we will break the blockade" , Deutschlandradio from May 29, 2018