Barbara Slowik, the police chief of Berlin, has told yesterday to the media, that Jews and gay people to be extra careful in parts of Berlin where Arabs are in majority.
“To be honest, there are parts of the city where I would tell people who wear a kippah or are openly gay to be more careful,” said the police chief, according to Die Spiegel.
She said, “There are some neighborhoods where most of the people are Arab and support terrorist groups.” She also mentioned that these people were often “openly hostile toward Jews.” Slowik also told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, “Though violent crimes against Jews are rare, every act is one too many.”
Since the attacks on October 7 Anti-Semitism Grown Significantly
A Jewish sports club called Makkabi Berlin’s youth football team said two weeks ago that they were “hunted down” by young people with sticks and knives after a game in an Arab neighborhood of the city. The victims, who were 13 to 15 years old, said they were spit on and abused during the whole game. On the same night, migrant gangs video attacks on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans after their European football match against Ajax in Amsterdam.
Anti-Semitism has risen sharply in Germany since the war in Gaza started. In 2023, there were twice as many recorded incidents as in previous years. As of October 7 of last year, Ms. Slowik says, Berlin police have started more than 6,000 investigations connected to anti-Semitism. Most of them have to do with hate speech or writing posted online.
A football fan was attacked in Berlin for wearing a scarf with a Star of David on it. A synagogue was attacked with a petrol bomb soon after the killings in southern Israel on October 7, and a couple was attacked in a fast food restaurant for speaking Hebrew.
Men in the Berlin neighborhood of Neukolln gave out candy as a party on the day of the Hamas killings. This shocked Germany and made people worry that the recent waves of immigration had made Jewish life less safe.
Neukolln, which is also known for its LGBT nightlife, has the most Arab people of any area in Berlin. The two groups have lived together peacefully for a long time, though there have been a few cases of gay couples being physically attacked in the last few years.
A lot of people in Germany’s Bundestag (national government) voted earlier this month for a new resolution against anti-Semitism that named migration from the Middle East as a cause. As a result of people moving from countries where anti-Semitism and hostility to Israel are common because of state propaganda, the motion written by the Greens, the Social Democrats, and the Christian Democrats warned of a “alarming extent of anti-Semitism.” If the motion is passed, refugees could lose their asylum status if they are found guilty of anti-Semitic crimes.