Speak up against anti- Semitism

GERMANY 

Andreas Kopietz

Berliner Zeitung

Berliners will speak out against only the most egregious instances of anti-Semitism, said Andreas Kopietz. City authorities banned two Palestinian rappers from performing at a Palestinian solidarity rally at the Brandenburg Gate last week, because the pair’s lyrics include shout-outs to terrorists who kill Jews and call for Tel Aviv to be razed to the ground. But too often, we let anti-Semites get away with it. Passengers simply “look away” when drunken hooligans on the subway shout that Jews should be gassed. People say nothing when a dinner-party guest begins to rant about how Jewish money controls the world. It’s getting worse and worse: In the first six months of the year, more than 400 anti-Semitic incidents were reported in Berlin; they included a man in a yarmulke getting spat on in the street and being called “Yahudi” (Arabic for Jew) and a Jewish woman receiving a “threatening letter full of ashes.” We can blame some of this on Muslim immigrants and some on the far right, but anti-Semitism “slumbers in more Germans than one thinks.” It is there whenever we laugh nervously at a Jewish joke or keep quiet out of timidity. It’s time for Berliners to find the “civic courage” to speak up. If we don’t actively oppose anti-Semitism, “history tells us where it can lead.”

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