RUTHFULLY YOURS

What was Berlin’s chief of police thinking, when she warned Jews and gay people to hide their identities in certain parts of the city?

In an interview last month in the Berliner Zeitung, Barbara Slowik said: ‘There are areas of the city, we need to be perfectly honest here, where I would advise people who wear a kippah or are openly gay or lesbian to be more careful.’ She also said that while she didn’t want to blame any one group for this, ‘there are certain neighbourhoods where the majority of people of Arab origin live, who also have sympathies for terrorist groups… and are openly hostile towards Jews’.

The interview has since caused a huge stir in Germany. Sigmount A Königsberg, a leading Jewish-community activist, praised Slowik for ‘so correctly and clearly’ naming the main perpetrators of anti-Semitism in modern Germany. Berlin’s CDU mayor, Kai Wegner, also backed his police chief: ‘She addresses the problems openly, as I expect from her.’ But there has been plenty of outrage, too. The left-liberal Taz newspaper slammed Slowik’s ‘alarmism’ as a gift to right-wingers and conservatives. There is nothing ‘brave’, it argued, in giving voice to what it characterised as anti-Muslim prejudice.

Slowik’s intervention echoes a similarly bleak warning, made several years ago, by the German government’s anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein. In 2019, he said that he wouldn’t advise Jews to wear the kippah ‘everywhere, all the time’ when out in public. His remarks caused widespread shock and outrage, with many arguing that Germans must never allow there to be ‘no-go areas’ for Jews.

It’s a damning indictment of the German state that now, five years later, the woman whose primary task it is to ensure the safety of Berlin’s streets, is also advising Jews – and now gay people, too – to hide who they are.

In truth, things have got considerably worse since 2019. The Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023 in Israel opened the floodgates to open anti-Semitism in Germany. Within hours of the massacres, people in Berlin’s Neukölln and other areas were seen celebrating and cheering. By December 2023, the police had registered over 1,100 anti-Semitic offences – these included an arson attack against a synagogue and other violent threats. As a result, Israel’s National Security Council issued a travel warning for its citizens travelling to Germany. ‘People should avoid outward displays of their Jewish identity or Israeli citizenship’, the warning said.

If Slowik’s words can be called ‘brave’, then that is only because they mark a change to the usual denialism that characterises the German political class’s attitude to Muslim anti-Semitism. For far too long, the threats emanating from militant Islamism among certain migrant communities have been downplayed or ignored in mainstream and elite circles. Any mention of this has long been considered insulting to migrant communities – or pandering to the right-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Police statistics have also served to obscure the truth. Any case of anti-Semitism in which the perpetrator is unknown is recorded as a case of ‘far right’ crime. That’s why, for years, German elites have been able to claim that anti-Semitism is a problem limited mainly to the right. Even in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October attack, many commentators and academics were still very coy about acknowledging Muslim anti-Semitism – it ‘is widespread throughout German society and is not just a problem for Muslims’, one academic researcher insisted in an interview on 26 October last year.

The Berlin police chief’s remarks show that this denialism is now totally unsustainable. Still, telling Jews and gays to hide their identity is a cowardly response to the problem. As one Jewish journalist argues, it sanctions a form of victim-blaming, allowing the authorities to evade responsibility for guaranteeing the safety of its minority citizens. It also runs counter to everything the German state claims to stand for. Modern Germany, and the city of Berlin in particular, claim to be proud of their thriving gay and Jewish communities. A recent government-led campaign encouraging the ‘visibility’ of Jewish life in Germany looks like a sick joke in light of Slowik’s warning.

It would however be wrong to blame only Slowik and the police – or even just Germany’s migration policies – for the current mess. The real problem is the government’s fundamental lack of clarity about what values it stands for. Germany’s official policies for dealing with anti-Semitism have too often appeared weak, contradictory and self-righteous. German politicians are comfortable in condemning the anti-Semitism of the far right and Germany’s Nazi past. But they are much more nervous when it comes to taking a clear stand against the identitarian, Islamist and Israelophobic forms anti-Semitism takes today.

The German elites’ vacillation over Israel is especially poisonous. Instead of unequivocally acknowledging Israel’s right to defend itself against the deadly attacks from anti-Semitic forces like Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has regularly accused Israel of ‘escalating’ the conflict. In doing so, she gives cover to those who portray Israel as the aggressor – or worse.

Standing up for Israel should not be confused with censoring or silencing those on the Palestinian side, however. Government attempts to shut down ‘pro-Palestinian’ or ‘anti-Zionist’ voices have proven to be counterproductive. On the one hand, the police are unable to guarantee the safety of Jews on Berlin’s streets. On the other, police power is being used to ban pro-Palestine demonstrations and gatherings. In April, the former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, was banned from attending a pro-Palestine event in Berlin. The event was also forcefully shut down by Berlin’s police, only hours after it had started. Seeking to solve a political problem by banning conferences and curtailing free speech is a strategy that is doomed to fail. The April event left the German state looking authoritarian and insincere in its claim to support Western freedoms. It has also allowed some of Germany’s worst anti-Semites to present themselves as victims.

After Slowik’s interview, Berlin’s mayor promised to do his best to address the problems she raised. ‘We will continue to take decisive action against anti-Semitism, hostility towards Israel, homophobia and all forms of crime’, he said. We can only hope that he was being sincere.

Sabine Beppler-Spahl is spiked’s Germany correspondent.