Berlin authorities recorded nearly 1,200 crimes related to the Israel-Hamas War after the recent firebombing of a synagogue.
Many of the 1,199 instances of criminal activity involve vandalism targeting Jews and Israel, accusing one or both of genocide against Palestinians.
They also include 345 instances of violent crime, most involving pro-Palestine protesters clashing with German police during riots in the capital.
Police are also investigating 93 cases of incitement of hatred and 21 of threats and illegal coercion, says Die Welt.
Anti-Semitic attacks have increased in Germany since masked perpetrators threw Molotov cocktails at the Orthodox Kahal Adass Jisroel synagogue on 18 October.
The synagogue was built in 2014 on the site of the historic 19th-century Beth Zion, destroyed during 1938’s Kristallnacht.
Is Jewish life coming to an end in Western Europe? asks @Raphfel. https://t.co/WG3HbQSig6
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) November 1, 2023
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was both “ashamed and outraged” at Germany’s recent surge of anti-Semitic violence, speaking at a Kristallnacht commemoration held at the synagogue.
“Essentially this is about keeping the promise given again and again in the decades since 1945… the promise ‘never again’,” he added.
“Every form of anti-Semitism poisons our society,” he told those gathered, insisting Germany would “never tolerate” it.
There are parallels “between the mentality of radical Islamists who want the extermination of Israel and the Jews, and those on the far right who despise our culture of Shoah remembrance,” says 102-year-old holocaust survivor Josef Schuster.
