(Jewish Group) Germany Has a New Anti-Semitism Problem

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

Adam Armoush, a 21-year-old student who grew up in an Arab family in Israel, wore a kippa in Berlin as an experiment: Would he be attacked for it? The provocation worked almost immediately: A youngster ran at him on the street in one of the city's poshest areas, swinging a belt and shouting anti-Semitic abuse in Arabic.

Germany, whose history makes sure anti-Semitism can never be a mundane problem, has to face up to "imported anti-Semitism," arriving with a tide of Muslim immigrants. After years of sweeping it under the rug, the country must learn to treat it as an integration problem, not just something the police should worry about.

For years, the leaders of the German Jewish community have warned that wearing a kippa could be dangerous in Berlin, especially in areas with a large Muslim population. But German police statistics would make it look as though the issue doesn't exist. According to them, 522 anti-Semitic crimes were registered in Germany in 2017, 479 of them committed by "right-wing extremists" -- that is, neo-Nazis. Only 19 incidents were ascribed to "foreign ideology" or "religious ideology" -- tags that could apply to Jew-hatred as practiced in the Islamic world. But Ann-Christin Wegener wrote in a recent study for the state of Hessen's constitutional protection department that the police tended to attribute the crimes to right-wing extremists when they had no clue of the perpetrators' motivations. Besides, she wrote, "right-wing extremist symbols are banned in Germany, a criminal offense to which there is no Islamist equivalent, and crimes committed using the Arabic or Turkish language result in police attention less frequently." The Israeli in Berlin had the advantage of understanding exactly what his attacker was shouting.

Wegener analysed 7,000 social network comments under 38 media articles and videos about Jews, Israel and anti-Semitism posted to YouTube and Facebook. Of these, 600 turned out to be anti-Semitic, and the ones that could be attributed came in almost equal numbers from neo-Nazis and people of Arabic and Turkish background, with a smattering of the extreme left. The proportion started shifting toward Muslims after 2014, and the Muslim Jew-haters were especially active on the subject of Israel, while the neo-Nazis felt more compelled to comment on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

more...