Germany: Liberal MP accuses German police of covering up Islamic anti-Semitism

(Berlin) Marcel Luthe — a member of Berlin’s state parliament for the liberal FDP Party —has highlighted that up to 60 percent of anti-Semitic offenses have been incorrectly blamed on the far right, thereby diminishing the role played by Muslim extremists and militant anti-Zionists in attacking Jewish targets. He points out that government figures for 2018 showed there had been 324 anti-Semitic acts recorded in Berlin, of which 253 were classified as having come from the extreme right. However, according to Luthe’s findings, far right bigots were only found to have been behind only 133 of these attacks. The remaining 120 offenses were designated as “far right” by default, Luthe said, adding that he had observed a similar pattern in the approach of the police of anti-Semitic acts in 2017 as well.

He argues that antisemitic acts influenced by what the police call “foreign ideology”  — supporters of Islamist terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah — likely made up a larger portion of the attacks on Jews than was visible from the police statistics. According to the police data, only 49 of last year’s incidents were assigned to Islamists, with another seven incidents blamed on supporters of the extreme left. Only the other day Israeli clarinetist Daniel Gurfinkel was violently attacked in the middle of Berlin during an Anti-Israel protest. Can you imagine the outcry from the police if a Muslim had been beaten up in the middle of Berlin during the day?