Anti-Semitic threats up in Germany, Switzerland

Jewish communities in Germany and Switzerland are facing a growing number of threats and anti-Semitic incitement since the outbreak of the IDF operation in Gaza. The President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday in an exclusive interview that there had been an increased number of threats directed at the community.

Knobloch linked the current round of anti-Jewish sentiments in Germany to the Hamas conflict, comparing the situation to the fierce hostility among many Germans toward Jews during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. She pinned the blame on the German media, which has “not paid attention to rocket fire” of Hamas on Sderot and Ashkelon. Knobloch said three of her grandchildren were living in Israel, and added that her 18-year-old grandson had just been called to active duty. The mushrooming sense of insecurity among European Jews prompted Dr. Shimon Samuels, the head of the Paris-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, to issue letters on Wednesday to the interior ministers of a number of European countries. A copy of the letter to German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, which the Post obtained, states that the center “is gravely concerned at the increasingly threatening situation for Jewish communities,” and “the banners and invective of demonstrators are degenerating to calls for violence against German Jewish citizens.”

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