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Germany experienced a sharp rise in the number of recorded antisemitic incidents last year, particularly following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza, according to a monitoring organization.
The number of recorded antisemitic incidents rose by over 80 percent in 2023, according to an annual report by the organization RIAS, which has been monitoring antisemitic incidents in Germany since 2017. In total, 4,782 antisemitic incidents were recorded, a new high since RIAS began keeping track. More than half of those incidents occurred in the final months of the year, after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
“Jewish life in Germany is under greater threat than it has ever been since the Federal Republic of Germany came into existence,” said Felix Klein, a federal commissioner tasked with fighting antisemitism in Germany.
The recorded incidents included seven cases of what RIAS referred to as “extreme violence,” defined as life-threatening attacks, including an attack on a Berlin synagogue with Molotov cocktails in October that shocked and alarmed much of the city’s Jewish community. RIAS also recorded 121 attacks, 329 cases of property damage and 183 threats.
“Since October 7, antisemitism has become visible in Germany in all areas of social spheres in an unprecedented way,” wrote RIAS in its report. “The experiences that Jews living here have been having for many years intensified enormously and became an omnipresent and daily noticeable burden.”
More than 70 percent of the antisemitic incidents recorded after Oct. 7 were “Israel-related,” according to RIAS. “In many cases, previously existing stereotypes that serve to deny, relativize or justify violence against Jews, were transferred to the events of October 7,” wrote the authors of the report.
RIAS employs the “working definition of antisemitism” conceived by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). That definition includes “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” and as “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”
The definition also includes “applying double standards” to Israel “by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
Some critics have argued that the IHRA working definition is too broad, stifling what they say is legitimate criticism of Israel.
“The IHRA definition has often been used to wrongly label criticism of Israel as antisemitic, and thus chill and sometimes suppress, non-violent protest, activism and speech critical of Israel and/or Zionism, including in the US and Europe,” 104 human rights organizations and other civil society groups wrote in an open letter to the U.N. last year.
The Israel-Hamas war is having ramifications for Muslims living in Germany as well, according to CLAIM, an organization that tracks anti-Muslim incidents.
The organization recorded a total of 1,926 such incidents for last year, it said in a report released yesterday, an increase of over 100 percent from the previous year. That includes around 90 attacks on religious institutions such as mosques and cemeteries.
