A group tracking antisemitism in Germany said Tuesday that it documented a drastic increase of antisemitic incidents in the country in the month after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
The RIAS group said it recorded 994 incidents, which is an average of 29 incidents per day and an increase of 320% compared to the same time period in 2022. The group looked at the time period from Oct. 7 to Nov. 9.
Among the 994 antisemitic incidents, there were three cases of extreme violence, 29 attacks, targeted damage to 72 properties, 32 threats, four mass mailings and 854 cases of offensive behavior.
Many Jews in Germany experienced antisemitic incidents in their everyday lives and even those who weren’t exposed to any antisemitic incidents reported feelings of insecurity and fear, said RIAS, which is an abbreviation in German for the Department for Research and Information on Antisemitism.
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These are the “right by accident” people that make it so hard to have meaningful discussions.
You’re absolutely correct and we shouldn’t ignore genuine acts of antisemitism just because Israel’s government is doing terrible things.
They’ve created a self fulfilling prophecy.
“Zionist’s propaganda will cause people to ignore genuine antisemitism”, they cry, as they ignore genuine antisemitism in an article about an increase in attacks.
I think we need to sort the points being made here:
The article states that specifically since the conflict in Israel escalated, antisemitism in Germany went up. What people here are criticizing is that many other “increases of antisemitism” turned out to be criticisms of Israel that were wrongly labeled as antisemitism.
Te article does not say that the incidents that undoubtedly were antisemitism were caused by the reported surge since the Hamas attack. Being German, I’d guess that those weren’t, but caused by
a) criminal neo Nazis who have become more overt since the refugee crisis in 2016
b) Islamic family clan groups that have been developing in Germany mostly unhindered and are only being fought hard for the last few years now. They often hold very hostile stances towards Jews as well.
So those crimes do exist but they sadly have existed since way before the attack by Hamas and will continue to exist way longer than the conflict lasts. Nazis in Germany are even worse than other Nazis since they cannot claim that they didn’t know what the real Nazis did. There usually is a lot of lying involved in those groups to justify their disgusting actions.
Most Synagogues in Germany usually have a constant police presence in front of them and my blood starts boiling every fucking day I see that police car in front of the synagogue where I live.
That’s not what they’re saying. These counts usually consider anti-Zionism the same as anti-Semitism, so the question becomes: How much of that 320% is actual anti-Semitism vs anti-Zionism. I mean, it says 854 case of offensive behavior. How many of those were “Palestine should be free” or “fuck Zionism”?
Not saying actual anti-Semitism didn’t increase; I know it did.
The actual count of these offensive behavior incidents isn’t so relevant, I feel. The institute in the article is attempting to quantify the level of antisemitism, and while I’d agree that statements decrying Israeli occupation or yearning for Palestinian freedom aren’t in any way antisemitic incidents and, if included (which doesn’t seem unlikely, but I didn’t see a way to check), shouldn’t be. Though it does make the number bigger, and maybe they are hoping to create a shock through that to encourage action against the violence and more tangible attacks, which are far more distressing to me.
Having slurs thrown at you because you decided to wear a Star of David around your neck isn’t a terribly uncommon experience, but it’s unsettling in the very least. And the user using an increase in antisemitic violence, physical attacks, a place of worship being bombed, as a pulpit to decry Zionism is vulgar and shows an utter disregard for the people harmed by bigotry.
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I can’t see your comment in the post, has it been shadowbanned?
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Yeah, similarly I saw the ADL had said that in the US antisemitism on X (Twitter) has risen by 900%. While it is of course true that antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise, the stuff the ADL labels as antisemitism is insane. A jew not being (fully) Zionist? Antisemitist. So yeah, I want to believe those numbers but their own insanity makes me doubt them.