Merkel: Our Jewish friends are at home in Germany
Jewish community leaders sat besides German government leaders at a widely advertised “Stand Up Against Anti-Semitism: No More Jew-Hatred” Rally at the Brandenburg Gate on Monday morning (Australian time) in the middle of Berlin, attended by 5,000 people.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, the headline speaker, said Jewish life belongs in Germany.
“That people in Germany are threatened and abused because of their Jewish appearance or their support for Israel is an outrageous scandal that we won’t accept,” Merkel said. “It’s our national and civic duty to fight anti-Semitism. Anyone who hits someone wearing a skullcap is hitting us all. Anyone who damages a Jewish gravestone is disgracing our culture. Anyone who attacks a synagogue is attacking the foundations of our free society.”
Dr Dieter Graumann, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, was the first and one of the most passionate speakers of the afternoon, declaring that anyone who claims to be anti-Israel is really just plain anti-Semitic.
“This latest ant-Semitic outbreak began with the Gaza war,” he said. “But what does one have to do with the other? When we hear, in German streets, shouts of ‘Jews should be gassed,’ or ‘burned,’ or ‘slaughtered,’ this has nothing to do with criticism of Israeli policies. This is pure, unadulterated anti-Semitism, and nothing else.”
Graumann tore into the Muslim organizations that “stir up” anti-Semitism, and called on Jews not to “remain neutral” on issues of Israel. “Our neutrality must end when issues of Israel’s security begins.”
Ronald S. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, which is sponsoring a two-day seminar about the state of Jewish life in Europe, recalled as a young boy going to the New Synagogue (the Oranienburger Synagogue) in Berlin to memorials for Holocaust victims. “I remember non-Jewish Germans coming to do the same thing, as a way to say ‘This should not happen again,’” Lauder said.
“Today, the world looks to Germany for moral, economic and political leadership,” he continued. “But something has changed.”
Lauder called the current anti-Semitism a “medieval stain” on the modern, rapidly changing world. “Let us not let this group of agitators” – those who promote anti-Semitism in Germany, “tear down 70 years of work,” he said.
THE JERUSALEM POST
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