Berliners fight anti-Semitism among Muslims

[Behind the Aegis]

Anti-Jewish sentiments are thought to be deeply rooted in a fifth of the ethnic German population, and some Muslim residents also hold clearly anti-Semitic views. Berlin activists wants to change that.

Yasmin Kassar is one of the many activists in Berlin who find anti-Jewish sentiments among young Muslims intolerable. For a year and a half now, the Syrian-German woman has been working to change people's attitudes in Kreuzberg, a neighborhood with a large Muslim population.



"You can see that whenever the Israeli-Palestinian conflict gets worse - like when we had the Gaza conflict towards the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 - anti-Semitic views are articulated here more often by residents with a Muslim background," Kassar told Deutsche Welle.

But instead of criticizing the particular aspects of the Israeli government's policies, it's often Jews in general who become the target of verbal - and in rare cases physical - attacks in Berlin.

At the Kreuzberg Initiative Against Anti-Semitism (KIGA), Yasmin helps to develop programs and concepts to enable multi-ethnic schools to tackle anti-Jewish sentiments with sound arguments. There's a lot of work to be done.

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[LeftishBrit]

1. Good for Yasmin Kassar; such initiatives are important

Minority group members everywhere need to 'all hang together or we will all hang separately'. Apart from the intrinsic evil of all such prejudices, an antisemitic Europaean Muslim (or Islamophobic Jew, or anti-Black Asian, etc., etc.) is just playing into the hands of the neo-Nazis.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. ...and the uber-right.

(25)

[onager]

3. She's certainly right about Gaza - I was in Egypt then.

I spent most of the years 2005-2009 working and living in Alexandria, Egypt.

FWIW (probably not much) I didn't hear that much overt anti-Semitism in Egypt. Plenty of anti-Israeli sentiment, yes. Especially at "high-stress" times like the Gaza incidents, or in 2006 when Israel went into Lebannon.

But at least among the Egyptians I worked/socialized with, the religious was usually kept separate from the political. More than once I've heard Egyptians discuss Hitler and the Holocaust, in pretty much the same way anyone does - "How did the world let that happen?" and "It should never happen again."

I also worked for 2 years in Saudi Arabia, where I DID hear plenty of anti-Semitism, of the ugliest kind. More than once in Saudi Arabia I heard - "Hitler should have finished the job."

When Operation Desert Shield started, I'll never forget the huge posters that went up. They were a cartoonish caricature of an American soldier, with a rifle and American flag on his sleeve. But his facial features were drawn as the archetypical "hook-nosed Jew" wearing a yarmulke.

Since we were over there saving the worthless asses of the corrupt and useless Saudi royal family, that really pissed me off.

Oh, and in Saudi bookstores, the Koran was often sold right beside that old forgery, "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion." Apparently someone spends a lot of money subsidizing the distribution of the "Protocols" all over the Middle East, in Arabic and other languages, since I saw it all over the place. I could make a pretty good guess as to where that funding comes from...