9/16/14, "What’s Behind Germany’s New Anti-Semitism," NY Times Op-ed, Jochen Bittner, Hamburg, Germany
"Europe is living through a new wave of anti-Semitism. The president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews calls it the worst the Continent has seen since World War II.
He may well be right. Attacks on synagogues are an almost weekly
occurrence, and openly anti-Semitic chants are commonplace on
well-attended marches from London to Rome. And yet it is here, in
Germany, where the rise in anti-Semitism is most historically painful.
On
Sunday, thousands of people marched through Berlin in response, and
heard both Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck denounce the resurgence in anti-Jewish hatred.
We’ve
seen this before, of course. But there’s an important difference this
time. The new anti-Semitism does not originate solely with the typical
white-supremacist neo-Nazi; instead, the ugly truth that many in Europe
don’t want to confront is that much of the anti-Jewish animus originates
with European people of Muslim background.
Until
recently, Germany has been unwilling to discuss this trend. Germans
have always seen Muslim anti-Semitism as a less problematic version of
the “original” version, and therefore a distraction from the well-known
problem of anti-Jewish sentiment within a majority of society.
And
yet the German police have noted a disturbing rise in the number of
people of Arabic and Turkish descent arrested on suspicion of
anti-Semitic acts in recent years, especially over the last several
months. After noticing an alarming uptick in anti-Semitic sentiment
among immigrant students, the German government is considering a special
fund for Holocaust education.
Of
course, anti-Semitism didn’t originate with Europe’s Muslims, nor are
they its only proponents today. The traditional anti-Semitism of
Europe’s far right persists. So, too, does that of the far left, as a
negative byproduct of sympathy for the Palestinian
liberation struggle. There’s also an anti-Semitism of the center, a
subcategory of the sort of casual anti-Americanism and anticapitalism
that many otherwise moderate Europeans espouse.
But
the rise of Muslim anti-Semitism is responsible for the recent change
in the tone of hate in Germany. Until recently, the country’s
anti-Semitism has been largely coded and anonymous. Messages might be
spray-painted on walls at night; during the day, though, it would be
rare to hear someone shout, as protesters did in Berlin in July, “Jews
to the gas!” Another popular slogan at this and other rallies was “Jew,
coward pig, come out and fight alone!” — shouted just yards from
Berlin’s main Holocaust memorial. And this is the difference today: An
anti-Semitism that is not only passionate, but also unaware of, or
indifferent to, Germany’s special history.
Talking
to Muslim friends, I can’t help but believe that the audacity of
today’s anti-Semitism is in part a result of the exploitation of a
“victim status,” an underdog sentiment that too many European Muslims
have embraced enthusiastically. This is not just the sort of
social-science explanation we often hear for hatred, as racism from
people who are themselves the victims of racism and discrimination.
Yes,
there is discrimination against and exclusion of Muslims in Europe, and
many of them certainly have reason to be frustrated. But this sentiment
is more complex, born not only from how someone feels about himself and
his neighbors, but about himself and his country. It is twofold:
Germany’s history is not my history. And: I’ll never fully belong to
your nation anyway, so why should I take on its burdens as you do?
One
friend, whose parents are from Turkey, told me that when she learned
about the Holocaust at her German school, she wondered what all that had
to do with her biography. As someone born in 1973, though with blond
hair, I could ask the same question.
The
point is, it’s not about personal involvement; it is not in our blood,
but it is in our history, in the timeline of a place that migrants have
become part of. For Germans, accepting responsibility for the Holocaust
has to mean feeling ultimately and more than any other nations’ citizens
responsible for keeping the memory of its horrors alive — simply
because those crimes were ordered from our soil.
Nothing
more, but also nothing less has to be expected from every citizen of
this country, no matter where her or his parents are from.
What
has become obvious this summer is that the “old” Germans have not yet
managed to properly deliver this message to all the “new” Germans.
Emotionally, this may have been understandable, given how many
“bio-Germans,” as we call ethnic Germans, actually had Nazi family
members that they still got to know, which may have made them wary of
telling others what to think.
But
the lesson of the Holocaust is a lesson for mankind. And it’s every
German’s job to make that clear at all times and to everyone, regardless
of where you think you come from."
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