Germany plans database to tackle rising anti-Semitism

The German government plans to establish a new national database to register anti-Semitic crimes and incidents, amid rising concern over the safety of the Jewish community in the country.

Felix Klein, the government’s new anti-Semitism commissioner, said current criminal statistics did not capture the full extent of the problem, in part because they ignored verbal abuse and other incidents that fell short of criminal behaviour.

He also voiced doubt about whether the existing database accurately identified the background of many perpetrators.

“It shows that more than 90 per cent of all anti-Semitic crimes are committed by rightwing extremists. The victims, Jews living in Germany, tell us something completely different: they feel that Muslim-motivated anti-Semitism is much more dangerous than appears in the statistics,” Mr Klein told journalists late last week.

He also suggested a change to the German criminal code that would toughen penalties for physical assaults if the attack was motivated by racial, religious or ethnic hatred.

Mr Klein’s appointment to the newly created post is itself a sign of the growing alarm in Germany. The career diplomat officially takes office on May 1. German politicians have sharply condemned a series of high-profile anti-Semitic incidents in recent weeks, including the physical attack on a young Israeli wearing a yarmulke, the head covering used by religious Jews. The attacker, who flogged his victim with a belt, was later identified as a Palestinian refugee from Syria who arrived in Germany in 2015.

The incident reignited concern over the consequences of the 2015-2016 Syrian refugee crisis for Jewish life in the country. In recent months, German media have reported widely on claims that Jews face growing abuse from young Muslims, especially in schools in Berlin and other large cities.

Those reports, however, have yet to register in official German police statistics, which in fact show anti-Semitic crimes falling slightly. According to official records, there were 1,453 such crimes in 2017, down from 1,468 the year before. Since 2001, the number of anti-Semitic crimes has fluctuated between 1,268 and 1,809 a year.

Other sources, however, suggest that Jews in Germany are confronted by a rise in abuse and attacks. Rias, a Berlin-based project that tries to capture anti-Semitic incidents that fall below the criminal threshold, counted 947 such cases last year. That was an increase of 60 per cent compared with 2016, though Rias cautioned that part of the rise was due to the fact that its database had become better known.

Mr Klein said a new database would be just a first step, and would be followed by “bespoke measures” to combat anti-Semitism through education and other means. “We need to know where it lives, what motivates it, how strong it is and what regions in Germany are affected,” he said.

The commissioner also cautioned against blaming Germany’s anti-Semitism problem on the recent arrival of Muslim migrants, pointing out that synagogues and other Jewish institutions were placed under special police guard long before the refugee crisis.

“There are reliable surveys that show that about 20 per cent of Germans hold anti-Semitic views. That share has not declined for many years,” he said. Mr Klein added: “We must not allow one minority to be played off against the other, and in particular Jews against Muslims.”