Rising anti-Semitism. From all the usual Islamic suspects.
In Monday’s attack, a man described by the Islamic State terrorist group as one if its “soldiers” killed 12 people and wounded 48 by plowing a stolen truck through the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church market. While police hunt for suspects, the attack is likely to further polarize competing views on Muslim immigration in German society in general – especially among Jews who fear they will be among those targeted by Islamists here.
Following the attack, whose perpetrator is presumed to be at large, the top priority is to take on “this army of Muslims from the wildest part of the earth,” said Pavel Feinstein, a member of Berlin’s Jewish community who supports the far-right Alternative for Germany party, whose manifesto from April declares that “Islam is not part of Germany.” AfD, as the party is known, also is accused of being a hotbed for anti-Semites.
Feinstein, 56, told JTA that he came to espouse the AfD view after hearing the slogan “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas” being chanted at an anti-Israel demonstration two years ago in Berlin.
“They weren’t just Islamists, they were also normal Muslims, students and so on,” he recalled. “And no one was charged or punished.
“Up to then I felt at home in Berlin. And now this feeling is gone.”
Even a Green Party member admits that Jews are not on board with Merkel's Muslim migration.
Jews of all backgrounds here tend to be “skeptical” of the wisdom of letting in large numbers of Muslims, as has been the policy of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Lagodinsky said. But Russian-speaking Jews in Germany generally express this “through a more populist way,” including by “engaging with populist parties and ideas,” he added.
But there are lunatic Israeli lefties, who probably hate Israel, protesting against German Jews for being cautious about Muslims.
On the other hand, in October 2015, the council’s president, Josef Schuster, said in a widely read interview with Die Welt that “there is now fear that with people of Arab origins, anti-Semitism in Germany could increase. I share this concern.”
But his remarks exposed him to heated criticism by some Israelis In Berlin. Several dozen of them, along with non-Israeli activists, protested Schuster’s remarks at a rally in November 2015 outside the council’s offices, carrying posters of Anne Frank and of the biblical quote “Love Thy Neighbor.”
“I cannot stand by when the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany assumes a far-right position, supports limiting refugee quotas and instrumentalizes anti-Semitism, homophobia and sexism while pretending to speak for ‘the Jews’ in Germany,” wrote Shaked Shapir in Berlin’s Hebrew-language magazine, Spitz, which devoted an entire edition to discussing Schuster’s 2015 remarks.
A New Yorker piece suggests the Spitz crowd are lefties. Which means we have lunatic lefties who no doubt have gone from protesting Israel's self-defense to protesting Jewish self-defense in Germany.
But there is a certain mad logic to the whole thing. For a while now European lefties, including Germans, have been showing up in Israel to protest its self-defense against Muslim terrorists. This may be some sort of terrible exchange program that defies all sanity.