by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld
A mixed legacy
Angela Merkel, photo by Arno Mikkor via Flickr CC
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,055, January 3, 2019
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Angela Merkel’s tenure
as Chancellor of Germany is drawing to a close. While she has always
shown great empathy for Germany’s Jews, her 2015 decision to open the
country’s gates to migrants led to the influx of approximately a million
and a half people (so far), mainly from Muslim countries, which has in
turn strengthened Germany’s longstanding anti-Semitism. Helmut Kohl, who
was CDU chancellor from 1982-98, enabled the strengthening of the
German Jewish community through major immigration from Russia. Merkel’s
legacy, by contrast, may well be a substantial diminishment of the
German Jewish community through emigration.
As of a few weeks ago, German Chancellor Angela
Merkel is no longer chair of the Christian Democrat Party (CDU), and she
will not stand for the chancellorship – a position she has held since
2005 – after the next elections. As her tenure at Germany’s helm is
drawing to a close, the media have started to analyze her performance
and speculate about her legacy.
This is thus a good moment to begin to look at
Merkel’s legacy with regard to Germany’s Jews. Previous CDU leader
Helmut Kohl, who served as chancellor from 1982-98, enabled an estimated
170,000 Russian Jews to immigrate to Germany. As a result of that
policy, Germany once again has a significant Jewish community. The
country’s organized Jewish community currently has close to 100,000
members (which is, however, barely more than 0.1% of Germany’s
population).
In terms of rhetoric, Merkel has been consistently
supportive of Germany’s Jews. In November 2018 she spoke at the major
Berlin Rykestrasse synagogue on the occasion of the 80th
anniversary of Kristallnacht, saying, “Jewish life is blossoming again
in Germany. An unexpected gift to us after the Shoah… but we are also
witnessing a worrying anti-Semitism that threatens Jewish life in our
country.” She added, significantly, that violence against Jews committed
by far-right militants or Muslims was on the rise in Germany.
A year ago, Merkel would not have mentioned
Muslims as among those guilty of anti-Semitic acts, though they have in
fact been responsible for a substantial proportion of them for years.
That changed in December 2017, when Muslims burned a homemade Israeli
flag in Berlin. The video went around the world and created associations
with the far more serious book burnings that took place under Hitler’s
government.
Several politicians then started acknowledging
Muslim anti-Semitism, and after some time, Merkel had to do the same.
Still, German statistics on anti-Semitic incidents remain heavily
manipulated. Anti-Semitic acts committed by unidentified individuals are
routinely, and often incorrectly, attributed to the extreme right.
At the end of 2018, a study was published by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) entitled Experiences and Perceptions of Antisemitism.
The study provided data on how self-defining Jews in 12 EU countries
see and experience Jew-hatred. The report provides important relative
data, even if in absolute terms it is not statistically significant.
Though somewhat behind France on this issue, Germany was one of five
countries where the great majority of interviewees saw anti-Semitism as a
big problem.
Compared to a previous FRA study from 2012, a far
larger share of Jews now see anti-Semitism as a problem, with all
interviewees saying it has increased over the past five years. Germany
is also among the countries in Europe where expressions of hostility
toward Jews in the street and in other public spaces is considered a
very big or fairly big problem.
The majority of German respondents said they
regularly hear the statement “Israelis behave like Nazis toward the
Palestinians.” A significant number have also heard negative statements
about Jews at political or social events. Germany is also among the
countries with the highest level of Jews familiar with anti-Semitic
incidents either as witnesses or through their circle of family members
and close friends.
The majority of German Jews say they worry about
verbal insults and possible harassment in the future, or alternatively
that a family member or close friend might be subject to insults or
harassment. Many German Jews avoid certain places in their local area or
neighborhood, at least occasionally, because they do not feel safe
there as Jews. In Hungary, Belgium, France, and Germany, a large
minority of respondents indicate that they have considered emigrating in
the past five years because they do not feel safe at home as Jews.
In December, the Berlin Jewish community’s Anti-Semitism Commissioner, Sigmount Königsberg,
said the subject of emigration comes up more and more in Jewish
community decisions. He added that every corner of Berlin has become
potentially dangerous for Jews.
From a managerial and political point of view,
Merkel governed Germany well until 2015. The country withstood the major
challenges of the worldwide 2008 economic crisis without huge problems.
Under her chancellorship, Germany’s dominance of the EU increased. She
successfully pushed her candidate, former Luxemburg PM Jean-Claude
Juncker, through as president of the EU Commission.
Yet her legacy may well be heavily influenced by a
single fateful decision: to open Germany’s borders to migrants in
September 2015. Since then, about a million and a half migrants have
entered the country. Many came from Muslim countries, in particular
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Merkel misjudged both the extent of the
problems that so many non-Europeans would bring with them and the
absorption capacity of the German population.
The official accounting is that there are three to
four anti-Semitic incidents per day in Germany. There are probably
more, however, because many victims do not report them. German Jews
increasingly feel the brunt of two threatening phenomena: the large
proportion of anti-Semites among Muslim migrants and their descendants,
and the revitalization of the anti-Semitic extreme right. Even if the
situation does not get worse, it is already bad and unlikely to improve.
The Hanns-Seidel Foundation studied attitudes of
migrants in the German federal state of Bavaria. It found that more than
half of those from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan believe that Jews have
“too much influence” in the world.
A study by historian Gunther Jikeli about Syrian
and Iraqi migrants in Germany, commissioned by the American Jewish
Committee, was summarized thus by the organization’s Berlin Director
Deidre Berger: “Until now, reports that many new arrivals in Germany
espouse anti-Semitism have been largely anecdotal. But this new
scientific analysis shows that the problem is widespread in the refugee
communities from Syria and Iraq. Anti-Semitic attitudes, stereotypes,
and conspiracy theories are common, as well as a categorical rejection
by many of the State of Israel.”
Germany’s newly appointed Anti-Semitism
Commissioner, Felix Klein, has said he is not surprised that many German
Jews are debating whether to leave. This leads to a troubling question:
Whereas Chancellor Kohl enabled the building up of a greatly increased
Jewish community through immigration, will Chancellor Merkel’s legacy be
a substantially diminishing Jewish community through emigration?
BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/angela-merkel-jews/
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