BERLIN – Antisemitic crime was at its highest since 2001 in Germany, authorities announced on Wednesday, with more than 2,000 crimes targeting Jews in 2019. The number of antisemitic crimes in 2019 was 13% higher than it was in 2018.
The Berlin paper Tagesspiegel reported, “most offenses against Jews are assigned to right-wing offenders. The most brutal attack was the attack by Stephan Balliet on the synagogue in Halle in October. Balliet tried unsuccessfully to open the door to the fully occupied synagogue and then, in his anger, killed two passersby.”
The neo-Nazi Balliet was wedded to an antisemitic world view that included the “Zionist-occupied government” theory.
Germany’s statistical data about the causes of antisemitism have faced criticism over the years.
In 2017, German paper Die Welt reported an outbreak of Islamic-animated antisemitism was registered as right-wing extremism. According to the report, “the Islamic share of antisemitic offenses is clearly under-counted in police statistics.”