religion
Many more anti-Semitic and Islamophobic crimes
A participant in the “Alliance Against Anti-Semitism calls for solidarity with Israel” rally. The number of anti-Semitic crimes has increased enormously in recent months. photo
© Thomas Banneyer/dpa
The brutal Hamas attack in Israel and the thousands of civilians killed in the Gaza Strip are also having an impact in Germany. This is shown by data from statistics on politically motivated crime.
The number of anti-Semitic motivated people Crime has increased enormously in recent months. As can be seen from an answer from the Federal Government to a question from Union MP Christoph de Vries (CDU), which was available to the German Press Agency, Islamophobic crimes have more than doubled in the same period.
The background for both developments is likely to be the terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7th and the war in the Palestinian Gaza Strip that began shortly afterwards. In 2023, the police registered 5,154 acts nationwide in which an anti-Semitic motive was suspected – significantly more than in the previous year. In 2022, the number of anti-Semitic crimes recorded fell by almost 13 percent to 2,641 crimes.
765 anti-Semitic crimes in 3 months
According to the information, 765 anti-Semitic crimes were reported in the first three months of this year. In 2023, 1,464 crimes nationwide were classified as Islamophobic – after 610 crimes motivated by Islamophobia in the previous year. In the first quarter of 2024, the police counted 137 Islamophobic crimes.
In its response, the federal government pointed out that the police statistics on politically motivated crime for 2023 and the current year are still preliminary in nature because subsequent reports or new findings may result in changes.
If you look at the number of people who were injured in anti-Semitic or Islamophobic crimes, you can see that significantly more anti-Semitic than Islamophobic acts were registered. However, the number of injured people was similar in both cases last year.
De Vries: This “requires very concrete measures”
According to statistics, 56 people were injured in anti-Semitic acts in 2023. There were seven injuries in the first quarter of this year. There were 53 people injured in Islamophobic crimes in Germany last year. In the first three months of this year, the police counted nine injured people here.
“Fighting anti-Semitism requires very concrete measures and not the constant repetition of empty phrases without any legislative consequences,” said domestic politician de Vries. “Our goal is a cross-party catalog of measures with the traffic light factions.” Last week, the Union submitted several proposals that, in its view, serve to combat anti-Semitism. Among other things, the group proposed making so-called sympathy advertising for criminal and terrorist organizations a criminal offense again.