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Annual report: Network Rias: 2700 cases of anti-Semitism recorded

Annual report: Network Rias: 2700 cases of anti-Semitism recorded

The Rias network has been setting up reporting points for anti-Jewish incidents since 2018. The recorded incidents show: Jews in Germany feel threatened or even attacked every day.

Verbal abuse, graffiti, attacks against Jews in Germany: reporting offices of the Rias network recorded 2,738 anti-Semitic incidents last year. These included 63 assaults and six cases of extreme violence.

The 2021 annual report was presented by Rias board member Benjamin Steinitz on Tuesday in Berlin. Important drivers from his point of view: the corona pandemic with its anti-Jewish conspiracy stories and the Middle East conflict with anti-Semitic criticism of Israel.

Rias stands for Federal Association of Research and Information Centers on Antisemitism. Those affected can contact eight reporting points in the network. In contrast to the criminal statistics, non-criminal anti-Semitic incidents are also recorded. In 2020, Rias had registered 1,909 such cases – but with fewer registration offices. The fact that the number is now approaching the three-thousand mark is frightening, said the federal government’s anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein. But “at the same time, each of the reported incidents is also a step towards reducing the number of unreported cases”.

According to Rias, about half of all recorded incidents – 54 percent – could not be assigned to a clear world view. Where possible, right-wing extremists were the largest group at 17 percent. A total of 964 perpetrators were registered.

Extreme violence in Hamburg and Berlin

Among cases of “extreme violence”, Rias counts, for example, the attack on a Jewish participant in a vigil for Israel in Hamburg and a shot at a Jewish community center in Berlin. Statistically, according to Rias, there was an anti-Semitic attack every sixth day. However, there were arithmetically more than seven anti-Semitic incidents per day.

For example, the door of a Jewish tenant in Berlin was pelted with eggs, according to the annual report. “HH” was smeared on the doorbell of a Jewish shop – the abbreviation used by right-wing extremists for “Heil Hitler”. In a restaurant in Heidelberg, a man threatened a guest wearing a Star of David necklace with the words: “I’ll kill you! I am Hitler.”

In 2021, a total of 964 individuals were directly affected by anti-Semitic incidents. Anti-Semitism is part of everyday life – a background noise, as Marina Chernivsky from the Ofek counseling center for victims of anti-Semitic violence and discrimination called it.

But Rias also sees “opportunity structures” – occasions that repeatedly lead to anti-Semitic incidents. “Almost a third of all anti-Semitic incidents known to RIAs were related to the corona pandemic,” the network notes. These include graffiti, conspiracy stories about alleged Jewish masterminds or profiteers, but also relativization of the Shoah, for example when opponents of vaccination wore yellow stars.

The second reason was the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in May 2021. Overall, Rias assigned 26 percent of the recorded anti-Semitic incidents to Israel-related anti-Semitism – with 723 cases, about twice as many as in 2020.

Source: Stern

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