RUMBLINGS IN THE GRAVEYARD: ANTI-SEMITISM IN GERMANY….SEE NOTE
GERMANY’S ANTI-SEMITISM PROBLEM: By Melody Sucharewicz
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/germany-s-anti-semitism-problem-1.412090
WHY HAVE JEWS GONE TO LIVE IN GERMANY? ….I’LL NEVER UNDERSTAND IT…. RSK
The complex context within which German youth learn about the Holocaust, relate to their fellow Jewish citizens or form an opinion about Israel, requires more creativity, coordination, long-term budgets and interdisciplinary synergy.
The beauty of statistics: They can turn shocking realities into dry, digestible facts. A study released last month by an independent expert committee in Germany contained 204 pages filled with statistics on anti-Semitic trends there. As comprehensive as the report – which was commissioned by the Bundestag in 2009 – is, so are its results worrying.
Among its “highlights” are the fact that every sixth German believes that the country’s Jews “have too much influence”; one in eight thinks Jews “share the guilt for their persecutions”; and 45 percent feel that “Jews still talk too much about what they went through during the Holocaust.”
The 10-member committee suggests that while criticism of Israel without underlying anti-Semitism exists, even this often carries an “anti-Semitic undertone.” Thus, while 80 percent of Germans critical of Israel do not employ anti-Jewish arguments, these “neutral” critics do “agree with some anti-Semitic statements.”
Which leads to another undigestible figure reflecting the links between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel: According to the study, 44 percent of Germans say they can understand why, considering Israeli policy, people might dislike Jews. Even worse, nearly 60 percent believe that Israel is waging a war of extinction against the Palestinians, while over 40 percent say that “what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is in principle no different from what Nazis did to the Jews in the Third Reich.”
Shocking? Yes, but none of this is completely new. Some of these figures were even higher in 2004, when more than half of Germans agreed that Israel is to the Palestinians what the Nazis were to the Jews.
That outburst of “secondary anti-Semitism” (Holocaust denial or relativization ) appeared during the second intifada, during which German media coverage consistently depicted Israel as an aggressor and the Palestinians as victims, with little coverage devoted to Palestinian terror and its victims.
The moral of the story is that the time has come for a paradigm shift in Germany – concerning the perception and recognition of, and fight against anti-Semitism. Such shifts don’t come easily. They are triggered by an accumulation of developments, which in this case have climaxed with the tangible face of anti-Semitism in Germany as unmasked by the committee.
Among those developments was the exposure last November of the so-called Zwickau neo-Nazi terror cell, which killed nine immigrants and a German policewoman over the past decade. No less disturbing is the rising suspicion that government agencies in the states where it operated were involved in covering it up.
There is also the demographic-generational change Germany is undergoing which, together with apparently severe flaws in the education system, explains another indigestible statistical ingredient in the poisonous pool, revealed in a survey by Stern magazine last month: Every fifth German under 30 has never heard of Auschwitz.
Last but not least is the increasing threat of radical Islam in Germany, which besides inspiring acute fears of terror attacks, inculcates anti-Semitism among a growing group of Muslim youth, who are exposed to bluntly anti-Semitic stereotypes via Turkish, Arab and Iranian media. Together with the German media’s often one-sided coverage of the Middle East conflict – a phenomenon so dangerously linked to the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany that a chapter was devoted to it in the committee’s report – this results in a dangerous cocktail.
Focusing on anti-Semitism in classrooms solely in the historical context is not sufficient. This is one of the report’s concluding criticisms, along with this worrying one: “Germany lacks a comprehensive strategy to fight anti-Semitism.” The strategic insufficiencies include the way that German Jewry responds to the threat. Apart from several private initiatives, there is no coordinated action, no central bureau and no training for young German Jews to fight anti-Semitism. The reflexive complaints simply are not enough.
The good news is that this can be changed. In Angela Merkel and her government, German Jewry has an authentic partner. When the chancellor says she will not tolerate anti-Semitism, she means it. And behind her, a critical mass of citizens echoes this stance.
Statistics remain abstract digits only if political, social and religious leaders do not recognize them as alarm bells, and in turn transform them into triggers for a change: Toward a proactive, comprehensive strategy against anti-Semitism.
The complex context within which German youth learn about the Holocaust, relate to their fellow Jewish citizens or form an opinion about Israel, requires more creativity, more coordination, more long-term budgets, more interdisciplinary synergy.
One hopeful though far from sufficient signal is that, following the disturbing killer cell revelations, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich established a “joint defense center” against neo-Nazi terror – a bureaucratic revolution by German standards.
But as with counter-terrorism programs targeting Islamists, this is the tip of the preventive iceberg. It is the youths’ socialization, during which value and belief systems are formed, and religious, ideological and political identities planted, that is crucial. It is here where schools, parents, state and NGO programs, as well as the media, should internalize a new paradigm to provide target group-specific incentives for a future in which the above figures will be merely bad science fiction.
There are no doubts about the political and social will in Germany to overcome this indigestible reality. But will and outrage are not enough. Monsters have to be fought.
Melody Sucharewicz is a political communications and strategy consultant in Israel and Germany.
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