Jewish groups demand German government confront Muslim anti-Semitism

Jewish organizations demand that public funding for civil and religious groups be granted only if they have distanced themselves from all forms of anti-Semitism.

By: JNS

More than 30 German Jewish groups have called on the government to confront anti-Semitism amid a spate of recent attacks on the Jewish community.

In a declaration published on Monday, Germany’s Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism (JFDA) called on the authorities to crack down harder against anti-Semitic agitation and attacks, Deutsche Welle reported.

Lala Süsskind, chairperson of the JFDA, warned against playing down anti-Semitism among Muslims out of misconceived concern. “Of course, anti-Semitism also exists on the Muslim side,” she told DW.

The groups demanded that public funding for civil and religious groups should be granted only if those groups have publicly distanced themselves from all forms of anti-Semitism—a kind of pro-democracy oath. It also calls on German to adhere to the International Alliance for Holocaust Remembrance’s definition of anti-Semitism.

While the German government has yet to reply to the letter, last week it announced that it would increase financial support to the Central Council of Jews in Germany in order to confront anti-Semitism.

This past week has seen a number of anti-Semitic attacks. On Friday, a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in Offenbach, Germany, was the victim of a verbal assault on his way to synagogue.

“They shouted, ‘sh**ty Jew’ and ‘Free Palestine’ and other things at me,” Rabbi Menachem Mendel Gurevitch wrote in a post on Facebook.

The Offenbach incident follows another incident in Berlin over the weekend, when a young Jewish man was attacked and badly beaten by a group of Muslims. The police arrested 10 men, ages 15 to 21, some of whom were Syrian, on suspicion of involvement.