https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/anti-semitism-europe-muslim-immigrants/
Downplaying the role of Muslim immigrants distorts the truth.
The latest news about the surge of anti-Semitism in Europe may not surprise people who worry about the rise of European populist parties. The populists opposing European unity and globalism are easily identified with the old Right in many countries. Many of their supporters — whether the right-wing AfD in Germany, the National Front in France led by Marine Le Pen, or the conservative ruling parties in such countries as Poland and Hungary — are also identified with traditional anti-Semitic attitudes.
So when a German federal official recently advised Jews to avoid wearing a kippah or religious head covering in public so they wouldn’t be targeted for violence, most foreign observers concluded that it was right-wing anti-Semites who have been attacking Jews, given that right-wingers have been making gains in elections, including in the recent European Parliament election.
The official, Felix Klein, Germany’s first “Commissioner for Jewish life in Germany and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism,” was criticized by many, including Israeli president Reuven Rivlin, for surrendering to the forces of hate. The outrage inspired the newspaper Der Bild to publish a cutout version of a kipah for readers to wear in solidarity with Jews.
Earlier this month, a New York Times Magazine story titled “The New German Anti-Semitism” reported that “police statistics attribute 89 percent of all anti-Semitic crimes to right-wing extremists.” But the same article went on to question that statistic. According to the Times, when German authorities can’t directly attribute a motive for an attack on a Jewish target (and they often cannot), they ascribe it to the Right. But a European Union survey of German Jews conducted last year showed that a plurality of Jews who say they experienced anti-Semitic harassment said the perpetrators were Muslim extremists. Yet, as the Times noted, the German government has been insisting that country’s anti-Semitism problem has not been imported from the Middle East.