Mass Antisemitic Rally in Front of Munich Synagogue Calls for Israel’s Eradication
i24 News – Nearly 4,000 anti-Israel protestors turned up on Saturday in front of the main Munich synagogue demanding the...
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[ILLUSTRATIVE] The exterior of the main synagogue in the German city of Munich. Photo: Reuters/Michaela Rehle.
A mix of German Muslim, leftist and mainstream Germans appeared at the mass rally, according to the online German news organization NIUS.
Signs were on display declaring “Israel has no respect for Holocaust.”
Am Shabbat ziehen Judenhasser vor die Synagoge in München und skandieren Hassparolen gegen Juden. Die Menschen dort in Angst um ihr Leben. Wie kann es sein, dass Behörden so etwas geschehen lassen? https://t.co/8iijse7TSq pic.twitter.com/EDiaW5hyP7
— Julian Reichelt (@jreichelt) May 18, 2024
One eyewitness told NIUS that “The noise could be heard in the prayer room” in the synagogue. NUIS wrote that according to one eyewitness, “The demonstration was perceived by the Jewish community as threatening.” The eyewitness added, “What the city of Munich has achieved by approving this demonstration is to terrify the Jewish population.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told i24NEWS, “it is beyond an outrage that the local government allowed a pro-Hamas mob to march outside Munich synagogue, especially on the holy day of Shabbat. 4,000 antisemites given government sanction to curse Israel with tropes in front of a Jewish House of prayer! SWC urges State and Federal authorities to protect the Jewish community from antisemites and government officials who approved this attack.”
The Süddeutsche Zeitung paper reported one speaker at the anti-Israel protest rejected Israel’s existence, saying, “we do not recognize the right to exist if it means displacement and oppression. We only recognize the rights of the oppressed.” Israel was termed a “terrorist state” and a “Zionist regime” at the rally.
NIUS reported one of the organizers from Palestine Speaks group equated Zionism with racism. “Together against Israeli fascism,” was changed at the event and reportedly a number of participants brought large keys with them, which is recognized as a symbol for the demand of the return of Palestinians to Israeli territory.
There has been scarce resistance to rising antisemitism in the southern German city of Munich in the state of Bavaria. The commissioner tasked with antisemitism, Ludwig Spaenle, declined to condemn the Bavaria-based giant engineering company Siemens last year after the multinational’s Turkish subsidiary, Siemens AŞ, signed a contract with Turkish state railway TCDD that pledged Siemens in Turkey would boycott Israel. Critics of modern antisemitism have argued the failure to confront BDS antisemitism emboldens anti-Israel and pro-Hamas organizations.
One German activist, however, took the fight to the pro-Hamas students from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich who set up a tent camp against the Jewish state.
Gerald Hetzel, a 27-year-old law student from Passau in Bavaria, set up a screen across from the tent encampment to show footage of Hamas’ brutality and murder spree on October 7.
He told the Bild paper that “I think the camp is massively intimidating and stressful for Jewish students.” He added “It helps the most to show what happened. In the camp there is never any talk about the fact that more than 130 Israeli hostages are still being held in the Gaza Strip.”
Hetzel also oversees the German-Israel Friendship Society (DIG) in Passau. While Hetzel and DIG-Passau engage in energetic opposition to mushrooming hatred of the Jewish state in southern Germany, observers of pro-Israel activity in German say the DIG-Stuttgart in the neighboring state of Baden-Württemberg refuses to call on the mayor of Stuttgart, Frank Nopper, to delete information on funding Hamas via the Palestine Committee Stuttgart on the city’s website.
After i24 reported on Nopper’s failure to combat the pro-Hamas group listed on city’s website, his spokeswoman, Susanne Kaufmann, told i24 “Frank Nopper is not a head of government, but rather mayor of the state capital Stuttgart. He will not ban the Palestine Committee Stuttgart because he is not allowed to do that. The Ministry of the Interior is responsible for banning extremist organizations, see North Rhine-Westphalia. Please direct questions about a possible ban on the Palestine Committee in Stuttgart to the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Interior.”
North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister banned the pro-Hamas group Palestine Solidarity Duisburg last week.
Baden-Württemberg’s Minister of Interior, Thomas Strobl, refused to answer i24 press queries.
Israeli lawyers told i24 that Nopper can delete all postings of NGOs, including Palestine Committee Stuttgart, on the city website to ensure that the city does not enable Palestine Committee Stuttgart to finance the terrorist entities, Hamas and Samidoun. Nopper has refused to scrub the city’s website of NGOs to prevent Hamas and Samidoun terror financing.
The post Mass Antisemitic Rally in Front of Munich Synagogue Calls for Israel’s Eradication first appeared on Algemeiner.com.