The Times of Israel today reported today on the growing trend of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic protests in Germany.
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!”) …
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.
Dieter Graumann, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, condemned the violence: “We are currently experiencing in this country an explosion of evil and violent hatred of Jews, which shocks and dismays all of us. 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.”
Such violence, featuring troubling undertones, hasn’t been confined to Germany alone. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has condemned the “anti-Semitic” violence that has swept his nation.
Roger Cukierman, head of the umbrella group Crif that represents French Jewish organisations, said Jews were not just afraid, they were anguished.
“What’s happened in the past few days is terrible. They’re shouting ‘Death to the Jews’ and attacking synagogues. It’s completely out of control”, he said.
In March, Valls said, “Criticism of Israel that is based on anti-Zionism — that’s anti-Semitism today, this is the refuge of those who do not accept the State of Israel.” Facing ever more open hostility, a majority of French Jews – the second largest Jewish community outside of Israel – are considering leaving.
Turkey has seen anti-Semitic violence at protests fueled by the inflammatory rhetoric of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party.
Late last week saw a group of pro-Palestinian protesters aggressively set upon a group of pro-Israel protesters in Calgary, Alberta.
One witness said, ““The side supporting Palestine walked over to the other side where the Israelis were and they started chanting things at each other, they started pushing and shoving each other.” Another witness said:
They saw us and crossed over with their Palestinian flags. I looked over and my brother was on the ground with six to seven men on top of him, they were beating up my brother. I ran over there, I was screaming, “Don’t hurt my brother,” and I got punched in the cheek.
In the video embedded below both groups are shouting at each other, but at 1:07 a Palestinian grabs an Israeli flag from one of the pro-Israel protesters.
The blogger “Elder of Ziyon” noticed the selective outrage of the anti-Israel protesters.
If you go to a synagogue instead of a consulate to protest Israel you are an anti-Semite. Pogroms taking place in France. In 2014.
— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) July 20, 2014
[Photo: RuptlyTV / YouTube ]