German officials say anti-Semitic incidents up 20% in past year

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.

A man wears a kippa at a demonstration against an anti-Semitic attack in Berlin, Germany, April 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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.