Daily SumUp

Germany has faced a "tsunami of anti-Semitism" since Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, according to the government's commissioner for the fight against anti-Jewish hatred.

Felix Klein told AFP that "open and aggressive anti-Semitism in all its forms" was "stronger than at any time since 1945", both in Germany and worldwide.

Klein said that "since October 7 we have experienced a tsunami of anti-Semitism" and that the Hamas attack had led to "further breaches in the existing defences in our society" against such prejudice.

The surge pointed to a "worrying absurdity" as the October 7 attack had killed "more Jews than at any point since the Holocaust", said Klein, the Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight against Anti-Semitism.

He noted that in the crime statistics for 2023 there were around 5,000 anti-Semitic incidents, of which "half were committed after October 7".

Klein told AFP that alongside "classic German anti-Semitism of a right-wing kind", it was also on the rise in left-wing and Islamist milieus and "alliances between different currents".

The Hamas October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Israel's retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 41,788 people, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The United Nations has described the figures as reliable.

Germany, influenced by its own World War II history when millions of Jews were killed by the Nazis, has steadfastly backed Israel and its right of self-defence following the October 7 attack.

However it has also pushed for a ceasefire in Gaza and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to abide by international law.

Klein called on civil society "under no circumstances to allow Jews to be made responsible for what is happening in the Middle East".

Anti-Semitism was a "poison for social cohesion", he said.

However Klein maintained that Germany was "well-equipped" to deal with anti-Semitism compared to other countries, pointing to institutional changes which were now "bearing fruit".

These included the creation of anti-Semitism commissioners in all of Germany's federal regions and "more awareness" of the issue among police and prosecutors.

Klein said there had been no noticeable trend of Jewish people leaving Germany over the past year and that surveys had shown that German security services were trusted.

He cautioned that security for the Jewish community was the "prerequisite for its visibility" and that Jewish life in Germany was "under greater pressure than at any time since the foundation of the Federal Republic" in the years after World War II.

Klein called for more action on anti-Semitism prevention in German schools to combat what he called a "massive deterioration in discourse", as well more transparency from judicial authorities about the number of investigations into anti-Semitic offences.

He warned that anti-Semitism programmes "must not be cut", in an allusion to government negotiations over next year's federal budget.