Germany: Distorted antisemitism statistics

Via The Algemeiner (Manfred Gerstenfeld):

The German Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer recently presented the country’s criminal statistics for 2017. These included 1,500 criminal antisemitic acts — about four per day. The minister claimed that 95% of these were motivated by right-wing attitudes. Another source reported that there were 947 antisemitic incidents in Berlin in 2017, an increase of 60% from the year before.

But if right-wing perpetrators of antisemitic acts were so dominant, why did several leading politicians come out in the last few months against Muslim antisemitism? The major public exposure of Muslim hate crimes against Jews in Germany started after the burning of a homemade Israeli flag in Berlin in December 2017. The video of this event went viral around the world.

For many years, Muslim antisemitism has been intentionally ignored and sometimes whitewashed in Germany. Severe criminal cases coming out of parts of this community were treated as “incidents” instead of as a structural problem.

Since last December this has suddenly changed. The Christian Democrat Jens Spahn — the current Minister of Health and former Deputy Minister of Finance — put it clearly. He said that antisemitism in some Muslim countries was omnipresent. He mentioned ongoing incitement in families and mosques. He furthermore stressed that Muslim immigration had brought additional antisemitism to Germany. Spahn called on German Muslim organizations to do their duty and condemn the antisemitic crimes committed by Muslims.

By April, even Chancellor Angela Merkel felt she could no longer remain silent. After yet another antisemitic attack in Berlin, she said that the authorities should act with extreme force against antisemitism — both by Germans and Arabs.

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