Influx of Mideast Migrants Brings Fear of Renewed Anti-Semitism to Germany by JNS - BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS

Anti Israel Rally. (Photo: Alan Popely / https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanpopely/ © with Attribution, NonCommercial)

Influx of Mideast Migrants Brings Fear of Renewed Anti-Semitism to Germany

By JNS January 24, 2016  BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS  By: Sean Savage

“Behold, my terror shall not make thee afraid, neither shall my pressure be heavy upon thee.” (Job 33:7)

While Germany takes pride in confronting its Holocaust past and maintaining a strong relationship with Israel, the European nation’s recent influx of more than a million Middle East migrants—many originating in countries like Syria and Iraq, which have deeply rooted anti-Israel and anti-Semitic cultures—has generated fear among German Jews that the refugees will undermine their safety.

In October, an official German state intelligence document leaked to the German weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag warned that the mass migration could conflict with modern German values and lead to “instability in our land.”

“We are importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other peoples as well as a different societal and legal understanding,” the document said.

After the events in the German city of Cologne over New Year’s Eve, when hundreds of women accused migrants of sexually assaulting them, more Germans have grown skeptical about the Mideast refugee situation. A poll released Jan. 15 by public broadcaster ZDF found that 60 percent of Germans doubt the country’s ability to cope with the refugee influx. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has faced growing backlash from the public and members of her own Christian Democratic Union political party, which recently pledged to “tangibly reduce the number of refugees arriving.”

This anxiety has been expressed by some prominent German Jewish leaders, who fear that the migrants will bring anti-Semitism from their home countries. Jutta Wagemann, a spokesperson for the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told JNS.org  “there are concerns in the Jewish community about the anti-Semitism of the Middle East refugees.”

In a joint op-ed with World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder, the Central Council’s president, Josef Schuster, wrote in September that “huge numbers of refugees are of course a big challenge for Europe.”

“It is also important that those who at present can’t return to their home countries will become familiar with our Western values. In Germany, that means respect for the values enshrined in the Constitution and also an acceptance that support for Israel is part of the political DNA of this country. Moreover, society by and large agrees that the Holocaust must be remembered,” they wrote.

This sentiment was shared with Merkel during an October meeting between the Central Council and the leadership of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party. “Many refugees come from countries where Israel is an enemy; this resentment is often transferred to Jews in general,” the Jewish leaders warned.

More recently, prominent German Jewish leaders have been outspoken in expressing their growing fears of the refugee influx, Islamic extremism, and attacks by far-right pro-Nazi extremists.

“No, we are no longer safe here,” said Daniel Killy, leader of the Jewish community in Hamburg, Germany, citing the disintegration of state power, the excesses of the far right, the loss of political credibility, and “the terrible fear of naming Islamism as such” as contributing to an insecure environment for Jews, the German news outlet Tagesshcau.de reported.

Salomon Korn, president of Germany’s Frankfurt Jewish community, said that most of the new arrivals come from countries that do not enjoy an “enlightened” version of Islam, the German daily newspaper The Local reported.

“Many of the refugees had grown up in environments rife with anti-Semitism and a belief in Muslims’ mission to spread their religion,” Korn said.

Despite their fears, Jewish groups have also been at the forefront of helping refugees settle in Germany.

“Many individuals and official representatives of many local communities as well as the Central Council for Jews in Germany and the Central Jewish Social Organization have extended their hands to the newly incoming refugees, have participated in welfare work, and for example explicitly visited refugee homes,” Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, head of the Berlin-based Center for Anti-Semitism Research, told JNS.org.

“At the same time, many voiced their fear of ‘imported anti-Semitism,’ albeit again in a large variety of tones,” Schüler-Springorum added.

Many of Germany’s Jews were refugees themselves, fleeing the former Soviet Union during the latter half of the 20th century. The fact that many Jews chose Germany as their new home was a testament to the country’s post-war efforts in confronting its own dark history of anti-Semitism.

Yet Benjamin Weinthal, a Berlin-based fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, believes that the “challenges are enormous” for Germany, given the fact that the country has had a growing presence of Islamic extremists. According to Weinthal, Germany is also home to 950 active Hezbollah members, 300 Hamas members, and a powerful radical Salafist movement with 7,000 radical Sunni Muslims.

“The Salafists in Germany export fighters to ISIS (Islamic State) and Al-Qaeda in the Syrian and Iraqi war theaters. Many have returned to Germany with combat experience,” Weinthal told JNS.org. “When you factor in Germany’s support for a BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) measure—EU product labeling [of Israeli settlement products]—with the hotbed of jihadism in the country, one can see why Germany has no real political will to tackle the anti-Semitism of many of the refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.”

The summer of 2014 can be seen as a watershed moment in modern anti-Semitism in Germany, with a number of protests against Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza leading to an increase in anti-Semitic sentiments and attacks on Jews. At the time, reports indicated that anti-Israel protesters were heard shouting “Gas the Jews,” while a video of a radical Berlin imam show him telling his followers to “kill them (Jews) to the very last one.”

Regarding Germany’s challenge of integrating more than a million migrants, Schüler-Springorum believes that it is possible “with time, money, and the political will to [meet the challenge], even in face of negative events like [New Year’s Eve] in Cologne.”

Schüler-Springorum cited the historic precedent of Germany’s success in dealing with its anti-Semitic past as providing hope that Germany can successfully educate and integrate the current Mideast refugees.

“As my colleague Michael Brenner wrote some weeks ago: Where, if not in Germany, with its achievements in dealing with our own anti-Semitic past—due especially to many grassroots organizations, civil society initiatives, and NGOs—can this be expected to be successful? Not tomorrow, of course, but hopefully in the non-too distant future,” Schüler-Springorum said.

But despite Germany’s success in overcoming its Holocaust past, Weinthal argues that the country has “failed to internalize that modern anti-Semitism—hatred of the Jewish state and the delegitimization of Israel via product labels, for example—is the main problem.”

As such, Weinthal believes that many German Jews will seek aliyah as a viable option, much like their counterparts in France who are moving to Israel in droves, especially after the Islamist terror attacks in Paris last January and November. In 2015, about 200 German Jews made aliyah.

“The threat to the safety of German Jews will continue,” Weinthal said. “Aliyah as an escape hatch for German Jews will be the natural result of Germany’s failure to protect its small Jewish community and stop modern anti-Semitism.”

German Jews fear backlash from country’s welcome of refugees - The Times of Israel

German Jews fear backlash from country’s welcome of refugees

With the wave of migrants, Jewish communities are concerned that a massive influx of Arabs will make their own minority status even more minor

BY URIEL HEILMAN  September 25, 2015  THE TIMES OF ISRAEL



WRITERS

Uriel Heilman

BERLIN (JTA) — The migrants sit slumped together on the sidewalk outside the State Office for Health and Social Affairs here, resting on donated sleeping bags, clutching food handouts, smoking, sleeping, fiddling with their cellphones.

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They have come to this city by the tens of thousands, propelled by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s pledge to welcome at least 800,000 asylum seekers into the country. Many are Syrians, but there also are migrants from Iraq, Pakistan, Albania, Afghanistan and other countries.

The Syrians have braved perilous journeys by inflatable raft through the waters between Turkey and Greece, marched for miles on sunbaked roads en route to Athens, circumvented Hungary’s harsh border controls and passed through Macedonia, Serbia and Austria to find their way onto trains bound for Germany.

“I had five years of civil war in Syria, but the journey here was more dangerous,” said Hadiya Suleiman, a 45-year-old mother of five from Deir ez-Zur in eastern Syria, where ISIS killed her 18-year-old son. “Here, I feel for the first time like a human being. We thank our mother, ‘Mama Merkel.’”

But many Jews are watching the wave of migrants flocking to Germany with some measure of alarm, concerned with what a massive influx of Arabs could mean for Germany’s Jews and the country’s relationship with Israel.

“This is not yet France, this is not yet London,” said one Israeli who has lived in Berlin for about 10 years and asked not to be identified. “Yet,” he added pointedly.

Thousands of migrants line up daily to register at Berlin’s State Office for Health and Social Affairs. (Uriel Heilman/JTA)

Outside the processing center at the health and welfare office in central Berlin, where thousands have come to register as refugees, the wait for documentation can take days, even weeks. In the meantime, the migrants have nowhere to go.

Every evening, a frenzy ensues when volunteers set up metal barricades to prepare for the arrival of buses that will take the lucky ones to shelters for the night. Those who can’t squeeze onto the buses must find a place to bed down on the street or in a nearby park. Police at the site keep watch — more with pity, it seems, than vigilance.

Monika Chmielewska-Pape, a Jewish lawyer originally from Poland, is among the volunteers helping the refugees. She collects clothing for them from friends and neighbors, drives the migrants to administrative appointments and tries to help them navigate Berlin.

‘The situation is very hard for refugees here. If we don’t help them, the people stay on the street’

“There are so many people here and the state is not able to help them,” Chmielewska-Pape told JTA last week. “The situation is very hard for refugees here. If we don’t help them, the people stay on the street.”

But Chmielewska-Pape said she is not typical of Germany’s Jews. Most, she said, are anxious about the migrants, fearful of the consequences of a massive influx of Arabs into Germany. Chmielewska-Pape said her own decision to help the migrants did not come easily, and she keeps her Jewish identity to herself — including from the left-wing Germans who volunteer alongside her and whom Chmielewska-Pape said are not sympathetic toward Israel or the Jews.

The irony of refugees fleeing through Europe to the relative safe haven of Germany is not lost on anyone here. Seventy-five years ago Jews were the refugees, trying to flee a genocidal German chancellor whose name became synonymous with evil. Few countries were willing to accept Jewish refugees; most were turned back and perished at the hands of Hitler’s Nazis.

Today, Germany occupies the opposite role, lauded as the most humanitarian and welcoming country in Europe. Both critics and supporters of Merkel’s refugee policy cite Germany’s past as a major motivating factor.

“Why is Germany more welcoming than other countries? Because of history,” said Berliner Stefan Hitziger. “It’s not only guilt, it’s a chance for Germany. It’s a chance for us to rebuild society anew, to have new inputs and new outputs.”

Some 1,500 refugees are being housed at a sports facility adjacent to the Olympic stadium where Germany hosted the 1936 Olympics. (Uriel Heilman/JTA)

But many Jews here believe that Germany’s atonement for its past is coming at Jewish expense. They’re worried that the influx of hundreds of thousands of Muslims will turn Germany into a place hostile to Jewish concerns and to Israel – and that along with the migrants there are terrorist infiltrators who will try to realize their dreams of jihad on German soil.

It’s not that Jews in Germany are unmoved by the plight of the downtrodden migrants — many Jews here are themselves migrants from the former Soviet Union — but sympathy takes a back seat to the harsh concerns of realpolitik.

“I have no problem contributing some money to help some people, but for the German government to accept a tide of refugees? No,” said a Jewish immigrant who lives in Potsdam, near Berlin. Like others interviewed for this story who criticized Merkel’s welcome of the refugees, he asked that he not be identified.

‘These Arabs have no possibility of integration. They can’t contribute to society. I prefer Balkan immigration’

“These Arabs have no possibility of integration,” he said. “They can’t contribute to society. I prefer Balkan immigration.”

For now, Germany’s Jews are keeping a low profile. They number some 200,000 in a country of 80 million. Their political influence is negligible.

“Why should the Jews talk publicly about it?” the Potsdam Jew said. “We’re not significant enough to make a difference in state policy.”

Jews aren’t the only ones with deep reservations, even resentment, toward the migrants. Many Germans share similar concerns about terrorist infiltrators and how Germany might be transformed by a massive influx of Arab and Muslim migrants. They, too, don’t want the problems of France, where unemployment, poverty and radicalism are problems among the country’s six million Muslims.

In a country where obsession with pure Germanic lineage still lingers, some Germans express their concerns more bluntly.

‘In 100 years there will be no more German people in Germany, only Arabians and maybe Chinese’

“In 100 years there will be no more German people in Germany, only Arabians and maybe Chinese,” said Otto, a Berlin taxi driver. “Berlin is full of immigrants from Poland, Russia and Turkey. The Poles have integrated well, the Russians so-so and the Turks hardly at all. The Arabs will be even worse.”

Josef Schuster, the president of Germany’s main Jewish body, the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has come out in favor of welcoming the migrants. In a September 10 Op-Ed in Die Welt, he shunned any Jewish association with neo-Nazis screaming “Foreigners out!” and evoked the Jews’ own history as refugees. But he also said that Germany must make sure the refugees respect Germany’s positions on Israel and the Holocaust, not alter them.

“It’s also important that those who at present can’t return to their home countries will become familiar with our Western values,” Schuster wrote. “In Germany, that means respect for the values enshrined in the Constitution and also an acceptance that support for Israel is part of the political DNA of this country. Moreover, society by and large agrees that the Holocaust must be remembered.”

Migrant children play at a temporary camp for asylum-seekers near the main railway station in Munich, southern Germany, on September 13, 2015. (Andreas Gebert/DPA/AFP)

History isn’t the only reason Merkel is welcoming the migrants. With negative population growth, Germany needs more people to help sustain its economy, the strongest in Europe. At its current birth rate of 1.38 children per woman, the lowest in the world, Germany’s population will shrink by some 20 percent over the next 45 years. An influx of immigrants could offset the shrinking workforce.

For historical and practical reasons, it is vital to make sure these migrants are integrated successfully into German society, said Nina Peretz, a lay leader at the progressive Conservative Fraenkelufer Synagogue in Berlin. Peretz is helping spearhead a project to distribute Jewish-donated goods to the migrants on November 22, Europe’s annual Mitzvah Day.

“You need to give these people a future in Germany because a large number are staying,” Peretz said. “If you don’t let them work and study, then you will have a problem. You have to integrate them and take the risk of what will happen. If you don’t help them, if you don’t talk to them, then the situation is uncontrollable.”