The rate of anti-Semitic crimes in Germany remains high, with an average of four incidents per day in 2017.
By: AP and World Israel News Staff
German authorities say the number of anti-Semitic crimes in the country remains high, with the equivalent of nearly four incidents per day in 2017.
Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper cited on Monday a report prepared for a German parliamentary party showing that, based on preliminary figures, 1,453 anti-Semitic incidents were reported in 2017.
Of those, 32 were acts of violence and 160 involved property damage, with 898 classified as “incitement,” like hate speech.
Those numbers are in line with 1,468 incidents recorded in 2016 and 1,366 in 2015.
Jewish groups have expressed concern that the influx of over 1 million migrants since 2015 from primarily Muslim nations could make anti-Semitism a greater problem. The figures show that 1,377 of the incidents involved far-right perpetrators, and only 25 were categorized as “religiously motivated” involving foreign-born or German Muslims.
The head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, warned in November that anti-Semitism is growing in the country, causing concern for a community that is otherwise blossoming more than seven decades after the Holocaust.
Schuster said that Jews in Germany fear the increased anti-Semitism of far right nationalists, in addition to hate from Muslim immigrants and leftists who often disguise their anti-Semitism as criticism of Israel.
Schuster commented that in recent surveys “90 percent of Jews perceive anti-Semitism as a very big problem and … 70 percent avoid carrying any Jewish symbols in public.”
Similar trends of mounting anti-Semitism have also emerged in the US, the UK and Australia.