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Anti-semitism in Germany

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A Johns Hopkins professor was beaten up in Germany:

He was in Germany on Wednesday to give a lecture at Bonn University. He was touring the city with a colleague when a man approached him and asked him if he was Jewish. “I started saying that I have sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians and deeply regret the current depressing state of Islamic-Jewish relations,” when the man starting cursing and following him.

After the stranger hit the professor, police arrived and gave the poor scholar a major beating.

The professor’s ancestors were killed in the Holocaust, so the altercation brought back some really bad memories.

14 responses to “Anti-semitism in Germany”

  1. David Gendron Avatar
    David Gendron

    And as usual, police sides with nazis…

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Welcome to Germany, professor.

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  2. Z Avatar
    Z

    Christ. There was a pretty good comment on the orginal article:

    “I think that Melamed’s statement to the police said it all.

    “Every day, everywhere, it becomes more acceptable to utter racist, sexist, anti-Semetic, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBTQ hate-filled diatribes. Not long ago, expressing hate openly was discouraged, but today, the Douche-in-Chief (thanks to Peter Strzok for that apt title) has allowed those with hate and fear in their hearts to speak with impunity. This particular episode took place in Germany, but, LaotianDave, if you think that it’s simply a German phenomenon, you haven’t been paying attention to what people are saying and doing every day in this country.

    ¨Dr. Betsy Smith/Retired Adjunct Professor of ESL/Cape Cod Community College”

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      It was going great until she mentioned sexist and anti-LGBT statements. This is a specifically anti-Semitic attack. And it was very clearly not caused by Trump.

      I’m very disturbed by Americans’ need to make everything in the world about their petty concern of the moment.

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  3. el Avatar
    el

    \ He was touring the city with a colleague when a man approached him and asked him if he was Jewish.

    I suppose the man was Muslim?

    Now may be some people will understand better why my mother and I hid being Jewish while travelling alone in Paris and London a few years ago. When a Muslim couple on a train asked where we were from, I answered – Ukraine.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I love Germany. Not historically, obviously, but what it became since the reunification. I was there back in 2012 and all of this seemed completely impossible. I can’t believe it’s gone in that direction so much.

      Consider, also, the actions of the police that gleefully thumped on a man in a yarmulke and then invented justifications for it. I fail to believe this is accidental.

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      1. el Avatar
        el

        \ I was there back in 2012 and all of this seemed completely impossible. I can’t believe it’s gone in that direction so much.

        As I understand, you were for a short while as a tourist. I do not believe for a second “it’s gone” anywhere much; your impression then was mistaken – that’s all.

        How does such police behavior go together with – to give one example – (lack of serious) treatment of the Cologne attacks, btw? If the German police is so PC it cannot arrest minority criminals, how can it attack an innocent man? And how does it suit German current stance of “we are the most tolerant on Earth” in general ?

        I thought this man was a fool to admit he was Jewish to a potential terrorist, then I read he wore a yarmulke (a kippah, in Hebrew) and understood he was an even bigger fool.

        When Israeli students visit Poland on Holocaust trips, they are told to wear hats to hide kippahs if they are religious boys. There is a good reason for that since I’ve heard of quite a few antisemitic incidents on those trips, including a man with a gas tank running at students and telling them to go away from the place near his house.

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        1. Z Avatar
          Z

          There’s lots to like in Germany, huge amounts of culture, and I’ve never lived there but I’ve been in academic conferences and workshops, where you talk at a deeper level, and I’ve lived in Scandinavia, and I’d say some of the apparent tolerance is pretty thin. Also the idea of integrating to Christian and Nordic and Western European culture is old, it’s not just some EU or other 20th century thing, & v. different from Americas where uniformity is not nearly so much expected.

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  4. el Avatar
    el

    Read the article. The attacker was “a German-Palestinian man”. Of course.

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  5. el Avatar
    el

    Still cannot forget how I was told that me hiding being an Israeli Jew in Europe was a result of (an irrational, as was implied) fear cultivated in Israel. I had nothing to fear from telling Muslims on a train of being an Israeli Jew, right?
    This man thought like you and see where it got him.

    I also feel disgusted by his craven, hypocritical and ineffective reaction: “I started saying that I have sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians and deeply regret the current depressing state of Islamic-Jewish relations”.

    Not that I am a huge hero, but hiding, running away or (counter) attacking are the only things that work in such cases. Such talk only emboldened the Muslim attacker.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Cancer is real. It exists and it’s deadly. Yet going through life consumed by a dread of getting cancer is not a rational or good thing.

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      1. el Avatar
        el

        Not publicly wearing a kippah doesn’t read as being consumed by a dread to me, especially considering the large and rising number of Muslims in Europe.

        I do not see how making oneself stand out from the crowd in a way guaranteed to attract all anti-semites in the vicinity is “a rational or good thing.”

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I don’t see it either, which is why I never said it. 🙂

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  6. el Avatar
    el

    Uri’s column about anti-semitism, Poland, Israel and etc:

    http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1531492715/

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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