Organized by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Israel, the SPD Parliamentary Group chairman and MP Thomas Oppermann and 13 of his colleagues from the SPD Parliamentary Group board visited Israel.Their program included meetings with the German ambassador to Israel, with representatives of the civil society in the Willy-Brandt-Center in Jerusalem as well as a visit of the Church of the Ascension/Augusta-Victoria Foundation, where a meeting with the local association of the SPD together with the reverends, married couple Wohlraab, was arranged.
A meeting with the Parliamentary Groups of the two Israeli social democratic sister-parties Awoda and Meretz including their chairman/chairwoman Isaac Herzog and Zehava Galon marked the highlight of the delegation’s visit. Commemorating the victims of the Shoah, the representatives of the SPD Parliamentary Group delegation laid a wreath at the Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem after they visited this place of remembrance.
Another highlight of the Israel trip was a roundtable discussion with different representatives of Israeli politics and science as well as experts on the Israeli society: Grisha Alroi-Arloser (Israeli-German Society, German-Israeli Chamber of Industry and Commerce), Ilan Ben-Dov (Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Richard C. Schneider (ARD correspondent, Israel), Prof. Moshe Zimmermann (historian, Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Micha Harish (former Israeli Minister of Economy), Prof. Gad Yair (sociologist, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Giora Rosen (publisher, Kibbutz HaMeuchad publishing house).
