Number of anti-Semitic incidents on the rise in Germany

Also, hate and hate speech are increasing on the internet, the German anti-Semitism coordinator Felix Klein announced during the presentation of the National Strategy Against Anti-Semitism and for Jewish Life. That is reported by the German press agency Idea reports. The German government approved the strategy on November 30.

Scapegoat

According to Klein, the strategy comes at the right time. Several people blame the Covid Pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the following inflation on the Jews. According to Klein, hatred of the Jews is "a perceptual structure that provides false and dangerous answers to complex social and political phenomena, especially in times of crisis." In other words, people tend to use the Jews as a scapegoat for societal problems.

Klein's strategy paper emphasises the importance of remembrance. He argues that it is necessary to keep pointing out the dangers of National Socialism because eyewitnesses of the Second World War are slowly becoming rare. "Responsibility for the Shoah establishes the German relationship to Judaism and Israel as a place of refuge for Jewish people from all over the world", the paper reads.

Shootings

German media expressed the suspicion that several attacks on German synagogues were ordered by the Iranian regime. That is reported by Idea. On November 17, an unknown person fired shots at the house of a rabbi next to the synagogue in Essen. The next day, an arson attack targeted a school next to the synagogue in Bochum.

The North Rhine-Westphalian Minister of Interior Affairs, Herbert Reul (CDU), said at a meeting of the State Parliament's Interior Committee that the Islamic regime might have influenced these shootings. According to another report, security services suspect that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are behind the attacks, Idea writes.