Israeli attacked in Berlin downplays Islamist threat
Shahak Shapira fears Israeli right will use incident ‘to strengthen nationalism,’ says he’s resolved to stay in Germany
Shahak Shapira, a 26-year-old Israeli man who was beaten by a group of young men in the Berlin subway, said Monday that he did not consider the violent incident to be representative of a general atmosphere in the German capital.
He expressed hope that right-wing factions in Israel would not draw erroneous conclusions from the attack.
“I do not want anyone to use my case in order to strengthen nationalism in Israel,” Shapira told Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth. “I don’t want it to seem like Berlin is just full of bloodthirsty Arabs that are going to kill Jews; I don’t want to be a channel for the extreme right wing.”
Shapira, who resides in Berlin, added that the thought of leaving the city in the wake of the attack had not crossed his mind. “I’m staying in Berlin,” he stated.
Shapira was attacked in the subway on New Year’s Eve, after he asked seven men to stop chanting anti-Jewish songs, AP reported. He then recorded the men on his cellphone. When he got off at the next stop, the men, who Shapira says were speaking both German and Arabic, followed him and demanded that he delete his video. When he refused, some of the men spat on him and beat and kicked him, injuring his head.
Police spokesman Martin Dahms said Monday police were still looking for the attackers.
Following the attack on Shapira, Likud MK Danny Danon asserted that the incident proved that anti-Semitism in Germany had reached new heights. The former deputy foreign minister urged a forceful response, though it was unclear whether he was referring to the attack or to violence in general.
“The beating of a young Israeli by Arabs in Berlin shows that anti-Semitism in Germany has a new face,” Danon wrote in a Facebook post. “Only a tough and uncompromising hand is effective against terrorism and violence.”
In past weeks, rallies against the perceived “Islamization” of Europe have sparked up in multiple cities across Germany. On Monday, thousands of Germans demonstrated in Cologne and several other cities against the ongoing protests by the group calling itself Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West, or PEGIDA, which attracted its biggest crowd yet in Dresden on Monday night.
PEGEIDA’s main demonstration in the eastern city of Dresden, a region that has few immigrants or Muslims, attracted some 18,000, according to police. The demonstrations there have been growing from an initial few hundred in October to around 17,500 at a rally just before Christmas. A smaller protest took place in Berlin Monday as well.
In uncharacteristically frank words in her New Year’s address, Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans to stay away from the Dresden rallies.
When the PEGIDA demonstrators chant “we are the people,” Merkel said “they actually mean ‘you don’t belong because of your religion or your skin.”
PEGIDA organizer Kathrin Oertel slammed the speech at the rally Monday, telling the crowd “in Germany we have political repression again.”
PEGIDA has sought to distance itself from the far-right, saying in its position paper posted on Facebook that it is against “preachers of hate, regardless of what religion” and “radicalism, regardless of whether religiously or politically motivated.”
It has also banned any neo-Nazi symbols and slogans at its rallies, though critics have noted the praise and support it has received from known neo-Nazi groups.
Cem Ozdemir, co-chairman of The Greens party and himself the son of a Turkish immigrant, told n-tv that while he, too, was against any form of extremism, “intolerance cannot be fought with intolerance.”
“The line is not between Christians and Muslims,” he said. “The line is between those who are intolerant… and the others, the majority.”
In Berlin, anti-PEGIDA demonstrator Ursula Wozniak said she had joined the protest because she felt the PEGIDA group was abusing Germany’s democratic tradition.
“What is happening right now in Germany is just extremely shocking,” she said.
PEGIDA was forced to call off its demonstration early in Cologne, after organizers reported being blocked from marching along their planned route, police said.
Other buildings, including several other churches and a museum, joined the Cologne Cathedral in shutting off their lights in support of the anti-PEGIDA demonstrators.
In Dresden, automaker Volkswagen decided to keep its glass-walled manufacturing plant dark, to underscore the company “stands for an open, free and democratic society.”
