Wave of anti-Semitic rallies hits cities across Germany

Wave of anti-Semitic rallies hits cities across Germany.(ToI).

BERLIN — An angry mob gathered on Berlin’s famed Kurfürstendamm avenue Thursday. Draped in Palestinian flags and shaking their fists in rage, they chanted in German, “Jude, Jude feiges Schwein! Komm heraus und kämpf allein!” (“Jew, Jew, cowardly swine, come out and fight on your own!”)

Earlier last week in Dortmund and Frankfurt anti-Israel protester chanted, “Hamas Hamas Juden ins gas!” (“Hamas Hamas Jews to the gas!”). On Friday, a 200-strong mob in Essen chimed in, “Scheiss Juden!” (“Jewish shit”)

This week, similar mobs gathered in Kassel, Nuremberg, Mainz, and other cities throughout Germany. The crowds are largely young, with both immigrants and native Germans, many of Middle Eastern origin.  Politically they span the spectrum, from German neo-Nazis to Marxist anti-Imperialists, from secular Palestinian nationalists to Islamic fundamentalists.

On Monday, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, condemned the rallies and attendant violence.

“We are currently experiencing in this country an explosion of evil and violent hatred of Jews, which shocks and dismays all of us,” he said in a statement. “We would never in our lives have thought it possible anymore that anti-Semitic views of the nastiest and most primitive kind can be chanted on German streets.”

“Jews are once again openly threatened in Germany and sometimes attacked, synagogues are being defaced and declared as targets,” he added.

Yet he notices a fundamental difference in the character of these anti-Semitic marches. “My feeling is that this is not the regular anti-Semitism that we have in Europe… this comes much more from the Muslim side,” said Segal.

Indeed, shouts of “Allahu Akbar” were perhaps the most common refrain throughout the German rallies. 

It may be precisely because of the Islamic nature of the rallies that unlike the robust counter-presence to neo-Nazi rallies from anti-fascists, most of the recent demonstrations, despite their openly anti-Semitic chants, faced little opposition.

On Friday, the Iranian-sponsored Al Quds Day March is likely to be the most extreme of the demonstrations. Even hardened anti-Israel activists like Svenja, 20, from Workers’ Power, a self-described Trotskyist organization, are hesitant about attending the Al Quds Day March. Al Quds is the Arabic term for Jersualem.

“We oppose the Israeli state, and anti-Zionism is important to us, but we have not decided yet if we will attend the Al Quds Day March because of certain extreme elements,” said Svenja. Hmmmm.....Just look carefully at all photo's of rallies, all you see are flags from Arabs, Turks, Jordanians and Muslim counties.Read the full story here.