Fears of Anti-Semitic Attacks Force Jewish Magazine to Go Incognito

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More than 10,000 German Jews will now receive their monthly magazine, Jüdisches Berlin (Jewish Berlin), without the magazine’s distinctive logo on the envelope to avoid anti-semitic attacks.

A spokesperson for the magazine, Ilan Kiesling, said the move was in response to fears that its readership would be targeted for anti-Semitic attacks.  Many Jews had begun to consider canceling subscriptions to the magazine before the logo was removed as part of a larger set of security measures aimed at protecting the Jewish community in Berlin.  Kiesling pointed to recent attacks in the cities of Copenhagen and Paris, where terrorists murdered five Jews, as part of the reason for growing insecurity among the Jewish community.

A statement has been circulating that has been attributed to Hassan Nasrallah, a chief in the Hezbollah network, which calls Jews “despicable, weak and feeble in psyche,” and contains other anti-Semitic language.  Such statements are common from Hezbollah, who in 2012, were responsible for the bombing of an Israeli tourist bus.  The attack resulted in the deaths of five Israelis and their bus driver, who was Bulgarian.

Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is gratified to see Jewish life within Germany’s cities again.  She iterated that her wish was to “continue living well together with the Jews who are in Germany today.”  However, the Merkel administration has refused to ban Hezbollah’s “political” wing in the Federal Republic. Hezbollah, according to recent intelligence, boasts of nearly a thousand active members in Germany, with about a quarter of them in Berlin.

Henryk M. Broder, a German expert on matters of modern anti-Semitism, called the security measures for the protection of Jews an illusion.  Contrary to Merkel’s optimism, Broder is convinced that circumstances will continue to deteriorate and more attacks will follow the recent problems in Europe.

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