Germany new, old shame
“I can’t tell Jews to wear the kippah everywhere all the time in Germany,” announced that country’s commissioner for anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, on Saturday.
Depressing advice, but honest: Wearing a yarmulke makes you a target for violent haters, and the country has seen a rise in out-of-nowhere assaults on Jews. Interior Ministry stats show anti-Semitic offenses up by nearly 20 percent.
Klein’s superiors, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, spent days walking back the statement, but they had to admit that Germany has a growing problem — a wrenching development for a nation that has spent decades dealing with its guilt in the Holocaust.
Awkwardly for Merkel, the source of the rise in attacks on Jews looks to be the huge wave of Muslim migrants that she allowed in starting in 2015, who carried hate with them from their homelands.
Klein’s honesty forced the rest of the government to step up, at least verbally, with Merkel’s spokesman vowing to “ensure that anybody can move around securely with a skullcap in any place of our country.”
Pray they make good on that promise.
