EXB 172

ANTISEMITISM
Meanwhile, Islamophobic tweets by the far right didn’t seem to cause
as much commotion. Eager to seize on any and every bit of evidence
that refugees are a threat, AfD politicians were swift to react. Before the
identity of the perpetrator was officially revealed, deputy party chairman
Georg Pazderski wrote, “With the influx of Muslims, antisemitism
has again become admissible.” But the sentiment was not confined to
the AfD. Rather it was echoed by Germany’s mainstream leaders.
A new “imported” antisemitism?
“We have a new phenomenon, as we have many refugees among whom
there are, for example, people of Arab origin who bring a different
kind of antisemitism into the country...” This was Merkel on Israeli
Channel 10 news on April 24. The chancellor’s words sparked a flurry
of headlines such as “Merkel denounces Arab immigrants’ anti-Semitism”
(The Independent) and “After a massive refugee influx, Germany
is confronting an imported anti-Semitism” (The National Post).
Germany seemed to be discovering a new
concept: Muslim, politely named “imported”
antisemitism, an atavistic hatred brought
to Germany through its open borders and a
blind asylum policy. Interior minister Horst
Seehofer of the conservative CSU, known
for his opposition to Merkel’s refugee policy,
was an early fan of the concept. In May, at a
press conference on the 2017 crime statistics,
Seehofer was seen not only boasting a
country that is “safer than ever”, but also
deploring a 2.5 percent rise in antisemitic
crimes: “For the first time so-called ‘imported
antisemitic crime’ is rising again,” he said,
while having to acknowledge: “at this point
95 percent of 1504 antisemitic crimes in 2017
had a right-wing motivation behind them.”
In short: there are no statistics supporting a
new Muslim threat to Jews in Germany. For
Berlin, that number is 92 percent, while only
5.9 percent could be traced to “foreign ideology”
(this category includes crimes related
to the Israel-Palestine conflict) and a mere
1.7 percent were counted as motivated by
religious ideology (see graph p10).
But no one seems to trust the police’s
numbers. Especially not Felix Klein, Germany’s
first ever national commissioner for
antisemitism, who was tasked with answering
questions and concerns among the foreign
media, even before officially taking office on
May 1. At a press conference on April 28, the
career diplomat, who is not Jewish himself, explained that these stats
were “not representative”, insisting that the feeling among the Jewish
community tells a different story: “They feel that Muslim antisemitism
is much more dangerous than it appears to be in the statistics,”
he said. In the Washington Post a day earlier, he’d spoken of a “great
influx of refugees and people who came to Germany that were raised
[...] with certain perceptions of Jews in Israel that are totally unacceptable
to German society.” He concluded the press conference by
unveiling plans for a new monitoring system in which data would flow
from local Jewish groups to the police in Germany’s 16 federal states.
Dissenting voices
Wolfgang Benz, former history professor and still one of German’s
leading experts on antisemitism and discrimination (see next page),
has been following the developments with concern: “There is no
such thing as a ‘new’ antisemitism. It’s always the same old thing
working with the same old resentment,” he says. The 77-year-old
who led Germany’s only academic institute devoted solely to research
on antisemitism has been warning of Islamophobia for years.
“What’s ‘new’ now is that we have new scapegoats and new political
voices such as AfD and Pegida that have made hatred against Muslims
their programme.” He points out that the recent hype about
a new antisemitic threat in Germany is based on a small number
of actual incidents which have been blown out of proportion by
outsized media coverage.
And he has a point. Looking at police statistics it is hard to find
the data that would confirm a dramatically increased danger for
Jews living in the city. While official records list a total of 288
crimes with an antisemitic motivation for 2017 (29 cases more
than 2016) there have been fewer violent ones (seven assaults in
2017, down from 10 the previous year). Meanwhile, the number of
Islamophobic attacks has also increased to
a total of nine assaults in 2017. The total
number of violent hate crimes in Berlin for
2017 was 253 (see chart page 8). Different,
now often cited, numbers show a jump from
590 in 2016 to 947 in 2017, but these are
self-reported antisemitic incidents collected
by Berlin’s centre for Research and Information
on Antisemitism in Berlin (RIAS). “The
problem with such data is that they rely on
‘self-reporting’: all you need is to call or fill
out the online form. Those things are bound
up with so much emotion that it makes it
hard to filter,” explains Benz, who adds:
“Meanwhile, Muslims who wear a headscarf
are abused on a regular basis, as are Sinti
and Roma. Those go largely under-reported.”
Like last month, when a young Muslim
woman was hit in the face by a 60-something
German man for wearing a headscarf
– it sparked little outrage besides a few dry
lines in the domestic press.
“I am honestly very sceptical about the
statement that antisemitism is on the
rise. Statistics always point to between
1000-1500 cases per year. It doesn’t really
change,” says Àrmin Langer, the Jewish
activist behind Neukölln Jewish-Muslim organisation
Salaam-Shalom “You cannot use
Agata Sasiuk
the experience of one stroll down the street
to draw conclusions – which is what happened
after the Prenzlauer Berg attack.” As
for the link made between Muslim immigrants and antisemitism,
he calls it flat-out propaganda. “I saw an article saying that there is
an ‘antisemitism tsunami’ in Berlin. This doesn’t offer solutions, it
just creates drama,” adds the 28-year-old Hungarian-born Berliner.
Since 2014 he’s been working on promoting dialogue through
regular sports and food events and talks at public schools. “I am
not saying that there isn’t any antisemitism amongst Muslims, of
course there is, but among Germans too. And this claim that Islam
is the problem now makes the lives of refugees very hard and helps
AfD and Pegida gain support. It is so counter-productive.” Langer
has mixed feelings about the kippa protest: “This broad solidarity
should be welcomed, but the kippa is not a neutral piece of fabric.
It is not the symbol of German democracy. Since late antiquity this
garment stands for the expression of one’s Jewish faith. It’s not the
right symbol.”
JUNE 2018
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