German chancellor condemns Berlin synagogue attack

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has strongly condemned a firebomb assault on a synagogue in Berlin, saying “we will never accept when attacks are carried out against Jewish institutions.”

Speaking to reporters during a trip to Egypt, Scholz says that Germany would not accept violent and antisemitic protests and that the protection of Jewish institutions would be further increased.

“It outrages me personally what some of them are shouting and doing, and I am convinced that Germany’s citizens are of the same opinion as me,” says Scholz, who was in Israel yesterday.

“We stand united for the protection also of Jews” in Germany, the chancellor adds.

Police said they were investigating “an attempted serious arson” in which two people approached the synagogue on foot at 3:45 a.m. and threw two Molotov cocktails, which burst on the sidewalk next to the building. The two people, their faces covered, ran away.

A couple of hours later, when police were already investigating the incident, a 30-year-old man approached the synagogue on a scooter, threw it aside and tried running toward the building. When police officers detained him, he resisted and shouted anti-Israeli slogans.

“We are all shocked by this terrorist attack,” Germany’s leading Jewish group, the Central Council of Jews says in a statement. “Above all, the families from the neighborhood around the synagogue are shocked and unsettled. Words become deeds. Hamas’s ideology of extermination against everything Jewish is also having an effect in Germany.”