German officials say anti-Semitic incidents up 20% in past year
Minister says almost 90% of attacks on Jews committed by far-right; Islamophobic incidents, politically motivated crimes are down
German security officials said Tuesday that the number of anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner incidents rose in the country last year, despite an overall fall in politically motivated crimes.
Anti-Semitic incidents rose by 19.6 percent to 1,799 in 2018, with 89.1% of them involving far-right perpetrators.
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas commented on the figures, noting at a conference inaugurating a European network to combat anti-Semitism that hatred of Jews in Germany was “not an imported product,” German news agency dpa reported.
However, Maas said that in the fight against anti-Semitism, crimes by immigrants should also be looked at “just as decisively.”
The report did not give exact numbers for attacks committed by radical Islamists, only saying the government recorded a decline in 2018. It said a possible reason cited by the Interior Ministry was the Islamic State terror group losing significant ground in Syria and Iraq.
Islamophobic crimes were down from 1,075 in 2017 to 910 in 2018, while anti-Christian attack were down from 129 to 121.
In all, xenophobic incidents rose 19.7% to 7,701 amid an overall uptick in hate crimes to 8,113, from 7,913.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said politically motivated crime overall was down 8.7% in 2018, to 36,062 incidents, praising the trend but saying the figures were still too high.
Right-wing crimes made up most of the incidents at 20,431, down 0.4%. Of those, 1,156 involved violence, up 2.3%.
Left-wing crime dropped 18.4% to 7,961 incidents. The fall in violent left-wing crime was even greater — down 31.9% to 1,340 incidents. More than half of the violent offenses were against police.
