German Jewish leader: Political parties infected with antisemitism
'No one should walk wearing a kippah through Halle'
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALA man carries a wooden Star of David during a protest against antisemitism, racism and nationalism in Berlin, Germany in October(photo credit: REUTERS)
The chairman of the Jewish community in Halle, Germany – where a neo-Nazi attempted to shoot up a synagogue on Yom Kippur – said that all German political parties are infected with Jew-hatred according to a Sunday interview in the Bild paper.“All parties are infected by the antisemitism virus,“ Max Privorozki, head of the tiny Jewish community in Halle, told Bild in an eye-popping interview, adding “I would not recommend to anyone to walk through Halle wearing a kippa.”The interview with Privorozki took place ten weeks after the 27-year-old neo-Nazi Stephen Balliet tried to storm the synagogue on Yom Kippur and murder the 51 worshippers inside. After the failed attempt, he killed two non-Jewish Germans near the synagogue. Balliet subscribed to an antisemitic outlook, writing about the “Zionist-occupied government.”Privorozki told the country’s best-selling paper Bild that if Balliet had succeeded it would have been the largest mass murder of Jews in Germany since the Holocaust.Since the attack, Privorozki said the Halle authorities assigned an additional police contact person for the community, an increase from one to two. He said the police now protect burials of Jewish members.“Just yesterday there was an email in the mailbox of the Jewish Community in Halle, which said: ‘Unfortunately, our grandparents did not completely solve the problem from 1933 to 1945.’“The sender signed it with his full name. I forwarded the email directly to the public prosecutor’s office,” said Privorozki.The Jewish community leader said “Antisemitism is not just a problem of the AfD [Alternative for Germany]. All parties are affected by the antisemitism virus. It is a big problem that everyone points their finger at others, but clears themselves of any suspicion. Of course, the AfD has a big problem with antisemitism and the willingness to stamp it out is less than with other parties.”Leaders of the anti-Immigrant party AfD have played down the remembrance of the Holocaust and praised the role of the German soldiers during WW II.Members of other German political parties have come under fire in 2019 for supporting Iranian antisemites and allegedly mainstreaming Holocaust denial.
Some telling examples of antisemitism scandals over the last year, according to German media reports and critics, unfolded within the German Green Party and the Social Democratic Party.The German Green Party was plunged into its most devastating antisemitism scandal in October, over its vice president’s mainstreaming of a senior Iranian politician who denies the Holocaust and seeks the destruction of the Jewish state. Green Party Bundestag Vice President Claudia Roth’s zealously greeted the speaker of Iran’s ersatz parliament, Ali Larijani a few weeks following the Halle attack.The Islamist Larijani has denied the Holocaust while speaking in Munich and called for the destruction of the Jewish state.A German Green Party MP, who signed on to an anti-Israel Green Party initiative to label Jewish products from the disputed territories in 2013, is on the board of the German-Palestinian Association – an organization that traffics in BDS and antisemitism.Niels Annen, a state secretary in the foreign ministry and an MP for the Social Democratic Party, attended and defended a celebration of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s 40-year revolution at Tehran’s embassy in February. Iran’s regime is the leading state-sponsor of lethal antisemitism, Holocaust denial and terrorism.A 2017 federal government study said 40% of Germans hold a modern antisemitic attitude, namely the intense loathing of the Jewish state. The study revealed that nearly 33 million Germans of 82 million are contaminated with contemporary antisemitism.
